#thralls

The most twisted thing about thralldom — the part that kept Cleo awake at nights, and drove her to work Oakhurst’s fields until exhaustion forced her eyelids shut — was that she’d loved him. She’d loved him and it hadn’t been her fault. That was, in a way, even worse.

Cleo’s love for Aric — for her master — had been a helpless, desperate, craven sort of love. A love that did not hesitate, did not question, did not demand answers or softness, reciprocation or respect. The love of a dog, crawling on its belly toward the man who kicks it for sport. The love of a child for the only father they would ever know.

A love powerful enough, even, to overwhelm the hate.

Because the hatred had never faded. Unable to bloom, it had instead grown roots of iron as the years passed, tempered by the memory of fire and a mother’s final screams. Cleo could not bring herself to hate Aric, however much she tried; denied of its proper target, Cleo’s hatred had instead turned inwards and eaten her from the inside out.

For eight decades, that had been her life. Fear, shame and pride — her self — forced under the yoke, driven to serve other emotions. Other qualities more useful to a vampire’s thrall.

Devotion. Adoration. Obedience.

(And, oh — how obedient she had been)

“My little hunting falcon,” he’d called her. 

(Cleo had loved his voice. Beautiful. Refined. Rich as honey and warm as summer sunshine)

But that was later, after she had proven herself useful. It had been months — years — before she’d earned even a word of his praise. Fresh from the pyre, with her mother’s pleas for mercy still ringing in her ears, Aric had tossed Cleo a knife and given her his first command.

“Go and fetch some kine. Bring them back here — alive, dead, I don’t care. Just make sure the blood stays fresh.”

She’d picked up the knife with numb and trembling fingers, noting dimly how the long scratches on her arms, the bruises on her knuckles were already fading. The taste of Aric’s blood was still in her mouth, still coating her tongue and she wanted to scream. Wanted to turn the knife onto herself and cut him out.

(If she had been wiser, she would have taken the opportunity)

Instead, she’d dropped the knife and spat at him. A kitten, baring needle-sharp teeth at a lion.

Her mother's murderer had laughed at her then, a sound of genuine mirth. “You’ll learn.”

It had taken him three days to unmake her. Each day, a little more blood forced past clenched jaws. Each night, another link added to her chains. After the second mouthful of Aric’s blood, everything Cleo had learned from her mother, everything she thought she knew was suddenly made unclear. By the third, she no longer cared what Aric asked her to do, as long as he paid her the slightest attention.

Cleo was thirteen when she was thralled. She wonders, sometimes, if things would have been different if she’d been given time to grow into herself. But young minds are fertile fields for twisted seeds to grow.

“Go. Hunt for me,” he’d commanded her again. This time, Cleo took up the knife. Her hands no longer trembled.

That was the first time she’d called him master.

Cleo was little more than a child then. Human. Alone. She knew nothing about fighting, had none of the skills required to do what Aric was asking of her. He'd probably intended for her to fail. One last way to punish her mother for the crime of telling him no.

But Cleo had obeyed. She'd walked, barefoot and uncertain, to the crossroads near the compound and waited. Waited for what she wasn't quite certain. To be noticed. For kindness or charity or — or pity to lure a traveler into stopping. What she’d gotten instead was interest.

Three men. All of them armed. All of them dirty. All of them looking at her in a way that Cleo didn’t recognize and was too young to properly fear. (Why did it make her stomach feel tight?)

Cleo learned three things that day:

That thralls are far, far stronger than she had realized.

That not all injuries are visible, or heal quickly.

That not all people deserved to live.

She brought three corpses back to Aric the next day. They were all still reasonably fresh.

From that day forward, Cleo was a Harvester.

Every week she left her master’s compound, alone. Each weekend she returned with blood — living or bottled — to sustain the vampires there. Approximately one human a day. Seven humans a week. Every week, for eighty years.

Twenty-nine thousand, two hundred and eighteen. The number of people she’d killed before coming to Oakhurst.

Over the years, Cleo became very very good at judging people. As her fighting skills improved — as her strength and speed grew, keeping pace with her developing body — she became efficiently deadly. The towns around her master’s new holdings had never been safer. Thugs, thieves, highwaymen and robbers soon learned to stay clear of the mysterious “dead zone” in Aric's lands.

Unfortunately, criminals and predators weren’t always enough to satisfy her master's appetite for blood. Cleo knew that. Came to accept it as the years wore on and her sense of horror grew calluses. Sometimes there were lean weeks, days when she was unlucky or unable to venture far enough afield to find an appropriate target for her ire. Sometimes, her master grew impatient and wanted his blood fresh.

Ultimately, the bond left her no choice: when she could find nothing else, Cleo would follow orders. Do what had to be done.

Always.

(She'd tried to make it gentle)

(She knew how little that mattered, in the end)

And throughout it all she kept her other instructions — her secret ones — tucked away in her chest like a promise.

“Little falcon,” her master had breathed into her ear one night, “If I am ever killed, if they ever betray me, make sure that I am avenged. I know that I can count on you.”

And so it was with tears in her eyes and a horrible wrenching feeling in her gut that Cleo sealed the doors to the compound on that terrible August dawn. Doused the doors with oil (They were wooden. Why had a group of vampires built the place out of wood?). Lit the torch.

Tossed it onto the makeshift pyre.

There were more than a dozen vampires in there — some who had known Cleo since her mother adopted her. Some who’d tried to help her, to befriend the mortal thrall living in their midst.

Cleo had never been able to afford the luxury of friendship.

The fire spread, lighting the sky as Cleo turned her back on everything she had ever known. There were no orders to follow now. No master to serve. Nothing to give her direction after Aric's death.

Cleo’s mind wouldn’t go there. Couldn’t process the ache, the terrible relief. The heartbreak that she fought but could never deny.

What she did have was a single, grim purpose. Cleo knew what happened to thralls suddenly deprived of blood. Aric had let her feel the start of the withdrawal on several occasions, enough for the horror of it to take root in her mind. Cleo would not go through that.

She had to find more blood. Or finally become the thing that she had been raised to be.

It was a simple, when put into those terms.

Cleo checked her knife, hefted her pack, and turned her steps towards Oakhurst.

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