"The celebrations continued on late into the night and into the early morning before my wife cuddled in beside me as I sat amongst the men on a sofa. She let her head lean lightly against my chest and closed her eyes as I supported her, and in mere moments she was asleep in my arms.
"'Well Sebastien,' my new father in-law began, 'it appears that your new wife has had all that the day can afford her. I suggest that you two carry on home and allow us the finish the wedding party in due style, and take what is left of the night to afford.' I nodded to him as I looked down at her sleeping form and summoned the litter.
"'Aye sir, I do believe that you are right and we will be going on home directly.' A slave of my house appeared then in the doorway letting me know deftly that they were ready to depart as soon as we were ready to board. I gave my goodnights and accepted my final congratulations as I bent to hoist her up into my arms. She stirred and I set her back down at her request, though she continued to cling to me in her sleepiness.
"The outside air seemed to awaken her as we rode home, I in comfort and her in growing nerves. She shifted and blushed an uncountable number of times and could not let her eyes remain on my own, but instead could only sneak glimpses of my body as I pretended to stare out the window without notice. She was completely pallid as I helped her down from the little box-like conveyance and led her towards the front entrance after dismissing my servants. The house slaves smiled through their own lack of sleep, happy to see their master finally settled with a respectable woman like the General's only daughter.
"'Is there anything that you would like Synnove? Are you hungry or would you care for some wine? This is your home now and I will not have you feel a stranger to it.'
"'No, I am fine.' She smiled up at me through her own nervousness, clutching at my hand and fiddling with my own largish fingers in comparison to her long, slender ones. It was then that I led her to the bedchamber. I will not, for obvious reasons, go into the immediate events that followed, but instead proceed towards the relevant information. To dwell on the immediate would not be proper towards you or Synnove, her memory or herself as she stands now. I will only mention that it came to pass that I heard a noise, the shuffle of feet I thought, in the garden, and I left her alone to investigate. I had hidden the knowledge from her that our army to the north, led by the man whose name I now carry as a remembrance and a penance, had begun rumors of naming Diocletian emperor once Numerianus went to the lands of the dead. The rumors also said that they would use any means to ensure his rein; any means. I was a primary target as I had spoken loudly in the senate of the foolishness of marching off to war. I had even suggested sending spies to their lands and that we go about this cautiously and with open eyes. Some openly ridiculed me, saying that I opposed Numerianus' rule or feared war, depending on where they stood on the entire matter of succession. This continued until the day that only one of our men returned to report of the legions hiding in the forested lands and of the traps that they had set for our men as they marched. We surely would have been slaughtered as lambs. For this, my name was placed high on the list of those to be directly affected by them, and as I prowled the garden, finding two that were easily slaughtered, it struck me. What good would it be to murder me? It would not be enough to change the minds of the senate now to murder only me, or a few other members, they would have to strike smartly. I nearly wretched when I heard the gruff male laughter emanating from my new wife's and my chambers. I ran back to the room as swiftly as my trembling legs would carry me, but it was all for naught. They had stolen her maidenhead and left her murdered on our bed. I saw only the back of Diocletian as he jumped out of the window after his men.
"What could I do? I fell to my knees beside the bed, pulling her naked and lifeless body down into my lap, sobbing uncontrollably and swearing to the ears of all that heard my rage and sorrow that night, that I would seek out and kill the man that had done this. In my rage at her for not opening her eyes to my calls, for her spirit not reviving that lifeless shell that I held, I set about the entire house destroying all that she had done to it.
"It was during a break in the rampage that her father and brothers entered my common room to find me, half mad, stretched low on a large chair muttering of revenge. One of my most loyal slaves had run for them upon hearing my initial fit and finding her dead in the bedchamber. Seeing me in such a state brought the reality crashing down on them and the oldest, Synnove's favorite, and the General rushed towards the master suit to find her maidservants dressing her broken body as the youngest helped me back to my feet and lead me there. I crumbled again, sinking to the marble floor in the room, my face burying its grief in my hands, my ears picking up the oaths of murder from the other three men.
"On the morrow, she was buried in the garden of her father's home. I do not recall that day for the numbness of my mind and body. I remember only the blackness that I felt as the sun beat down on me. I wanted it to rain, and thunder to the gods my unrest and unhappiness. We knew each other for such a short time, but I loved her completely and like no other has loved another. I cannot explain it. I knew that I could not live without her, and for the next three years I lived as a man on borrowed time. I lived as a man, through the blood and war and the wet and cold, as a man that was sustained only by hate. Listen, I seethe still now as I speak of it! Neither her father, nor her brothers lived as I lived those years on the hunt. I lived as a man possessed as they said then and would have said now. The tales of the Christians burned in my ears, they had made a martyr of us both. In their tale, however, I was captured and murdered by archers of the Praetorian Guard; something that was not even in practice yet, but such is the retelling of tales. I returned to avenge her, they said, as they believed the ring to be the reason behind the attack, knowing little of matters of the forum and my wearing of the ring she gave me openly after the attack. The second martyrdom of Saint Sebastien was also to be ordered by Diocletian, and this was death by beating, but the lie of this was to come later. The story of it fulfilled its purpose for them and spurred me on, the truth and the could-be lie of it. My thoughts were all of death; my eyes saw only blood and the shine of a blade as it cut through their stinking hides. By this time, Numerianus had died and Diocletian's troops had named him Emperor, bringing Carinus to the battle. We were in our forth year of war. The year was 285 AD.
"It was not long before sunset when our armies marched victorious over the hills of Moesia in the rain to meet and capture the rabble that remained of Diocletian's armies. They were beaten, or so we thought. His top officers had all been murdered by the blood red rage of us, or fled for their own wives and children. This I allowed them, for it was all that I had wanted before it was taken so stupidly from me. But this bit of grace was a mistake too. The sun burned the horizon orange as is slid below the level of the damp, before I stood facing the man that was responsible for it all. And I cut him down without mercy as he had cut her air from her lungs! I took everything from him that he took from her, I then looked to the final sun as the blood ran off my sword and the rain drenched me. The sounds of the executions had rung in my ears only moments before, but they were distant now. Carinus was far from my mind; we had made sure that he was kept at a safe and honorable distance from the heat of the ruin.
"I felt empty. I felt as if my spirit had finally giving up its last claims on my flesh, as the hate that I felt died with that man and was now replaced by the complete emptiness and the all consuming desire to rest eternally. I watched that last sun set as I thought of how I would finally come back to my love, my Child of the Sun; what means by which could I find my final rest in the ground? I did not imagine that I would never truly rest in it, that I would die and then not die as the cold hand gripped me and the powerful mind silenced my voice.
"To be cheated of her once, is mortally painful, and I slayed a thousand men in my grief. But here, after my final revenge, after fulfilling the promise that I made to her spirit and her empty flesh, to her father and to her brothers, to be cheated of her shining face once again and forever was beyond any endurance. I ripped my creator to shreds during the transformation; there was absolutely nothing left of him, save a pile of indistinguishable flesh.
"I smelt it burn as I took to the ground at sunrise.
"I awoke the next evening with a hunger spurred on by the rivers of blood that coursed through the hills of that place. I rampaged to feed it, killing all that crossed my path as I wandered, and I wandered for weeks on end, running from something but not entirely sure what it was. It was in this time that Carinus was slaughtered by one of his own officers and a man that had pleaded mercy wildly to escape my blade at Moesia, named himself Diocletian and took control of the empire. Rome was never so raped before, her new leader a thief to take her throne. The real Diocletian had been buried namelessly in the fields. And so the tyranny began with deceit. Funny really, it only fueled my wanderings. Finally, I came to the sea; the beautiful Mediterranean, black as ink and touched with blue under the night sky. It was nearing morning as I stretched out on the sand praying that the rising sun would claim my life as easily as it had claimed that of my maker. I wanted to be with Synnove again, and the only image I could conjure was that of the sun blazing a halo behind her black hair. I was lost in my daze as morning drew near. My vampyre instincts burning in my mind trying to tell me to seek shelter. But I would not. There was nothing left for me, not even Rome. I could hear my name on the lips and in the minds of men. The Praetorian Guard had been newly formed and I was once again on the top of the list to be dispatched."
"But you are here now Sebastien, so I know that you did live through both possibilities." Her eyes were hard yet on their edges, but her voice and their heart were soft. It was not an accusation, and I nodded my hanging head at her.
"I wanted to rest eternally, every piece of me longed for it. I wanted to rest in her arms as she had on the night that it all began. But it was as the sky turned purple, touched with the first shades of red and orange that I discerned a figure walking lightly in the surf, making her way down the beach in robes of flowing white: Roman robes. At once I knew it for Synnove, but I could not force myself to rise to meet her. I could not push the thought of death from my mind to make my muscles work once again, as if some mystical atrophy had set in.
"She seemed to look down on me with pity as she paused by my side, before kneeling, then laying beside me in the soft, wet sand. She caressed my face, her own resting on her outstretched arm and speckled now with the grayish grains, as she whispered through her soft fleshy lips: 'It is not your time yet my love. You are to live a long time hence, and then I shall come again to be with you, for it was not my time either. The final events of that night were not supposed to be. Live now, and I will come again one day and we shall be together. Like the Christian's God I shall come. For now, flee the sun, as you are a ward of the night until I come again. Go.' She breathed the last word as my mind yielded to my instincts and her will, and I ran down the beach to the palm forest behind it, my arms and legs pumping with newfound life, almost dragging my heavy soul along. Then I took to the ground.
"I have lived a life of searching, endless searching, for her. I searched first, the Christians' minds and then their Bible. I searched their priests, and when I could find nothing, I slaughtered them in my rage. As I aged, I searched monasteries and churches and raped knowledge from their sacred scrolls and books, not finding her until now. I came to the Americas as my final resort, following a fool's dream. I had long been a great friend and contributor to the main sect of the Catholic Church, and any news of a child born of some miraculous events was to be brought to my attention. It did not matter where the babe was, especially if she possessed shining black hair and eyes of an unnatural pale blue. They asked no questions of it, save that it was honorable in intention, and they gratefully accepted the gold that I doled out for their services and their silence.
"I chased across the world after many an infant; each possessing the qualities that I described, always to find that the babe was not Synnove. The eyes were forever only a colder shade of blue: wholly natural. I did not dream of ever finding her here. I thought it all a lie, constructed by demon bent on tormenting me or her spirit , so that I would not take my life: so that I would die with honor one day. Then one eve, as I sat miserable and cursing the god before me, having just returned from another fruitless mission, stretched out in the first carved, oaken pew of the chapel staring up at the carved Christ on his cross, one of the brothers bust down the aisle. The monk was running as fast as his old legs could carry him. Another child had been born. The town is in an uproar and the Reverend is calling for a witch trail, for the babe's eyes are the most unnatural shade of blue.
"My heart panged with pain that I had not thought possible to endure another futile task and my mind sought out that of the infant, but found nothing but a mewling child suffering the loss of her mother as the monk informed me that she was of the Americas. This was a great journey to undertake, and one that was particularly dangerous to me, so I nodded my understanding and bid him keep me informed of this one. As she grew, I would consider whether or not I should chase across the Atlantic Ocean for her. 'Tell me, though,' I asked, 'what name did the good Reverend record for this child in his letter?' I could not have been prepared for the answer. Not in all my years of searching for her, had he replied with a single word: 'Synnove.' I began to cry softly, letting one reddish tear roll down the side of one cheek and off the plane of my face, near my ears, as I continued to stared up at the tortured figure on the cross before me. The monk nodded solemnly, touching my cool forehead lightly with three fingers and then left me in silence at the foot of the Christian God.
"It took me years to put the trip together, to find a trustworthy ship and a reliable and sealed mouth crew. All the while I kept an eye to the minds of men as well as the parchment letters that they read and wrote. I did not think, or rather I feared that it would not be her as I slipped into the box that was to carry me through the days to the New World, and the now young woman that was called 'the witch' on paper. I did not think I would find her. But I found her here, in this little town of iron and hypocrisy. I found her."
"And you would take her life again to redeem yourself and to keep her with you always?" I looked up sharply from my reprieve. I had not thought of what I would do when I found her again. I think I half expected that I would be magically transformed back to the man that I had once been. I think I thought that I would be renewed again at the sight of her, that my flesh would warm in her radiant light and I would regain my humanity. I think I thought that suddenly time would reverse itself and we would be standing, pressed together again, for the first time, as we were the night that she was taken from me.
I think I thought that I would ignore the footfalls or find some reasonable explanation for them and not the screams in the night that had been. I think I thought I was to be saved from the horror and the pain of it all. I thought that we would awaken in each other's arms, as it was meant to be, in the cool of the morning sun as it brightened the horizon. I have been haunted by dreams of what we would do then, of our children and our prosperity in all things of love and of Rome. I thought that she would give me the fairy tale as they say now, and that everything would be all right. I thought that it would be paradise on earth and that we had survived the Last Judgment. I think I thought I would rise again from the dead after these thousand years.
It was simply not so, and it struck me hard as I stood there. The old witch saw my new consciousness of it in my crestfallen eyes as I turned. She placed her hand on my cold, stone-like shoulder before we each hung our heads and retreated, I back into the rain and her back to her warm fire and home.
