Blood Legacy

By Raquel Pagno

Michael’s eyes were like two emeralds. Incredibly green, they mirrored something sweet, a tenderness almost incredible, a kind of enchantment capable of enchanting her completely. Carmen couldn’t believe that he was alive, hidden in the ruins of the big house that once had been her family’s, in a remote and mysterious past, in which her mother, Teresa, made sure to protect her from. It was Michael who saved her grandmother, Francesca, when she had fled from the bloody massacres from the war in Italy; it was him who had saved her two children, from complete misery. And it was him who cursed them. Michael was the last of the vampires and only the last witch could make his deepest desire come true: to make a heir, capable of perpetuate the specie and continue his history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BadPress
• Release date: May 5, 2017
• ISBN: 9781507182628

Book preview

Prologue

In war times everything is dark, dingy. The fear hides the souls, locks it forever in a very tight trunks. And the smiles fade from the afflicted faces that long for news from the ones that went to the battle. And we, the women, just cry and try to live life in some kind of way.

But, grandma, I was worried. Will the war come to get me?

No, dear, the war won’t come, she would always answer with that tenderness on face covered with wrinkles, that already in that time showed signs of the suffering she endured and the hard life she had lived while entailing her fingers in the curls of my hair.

I didn’t remember the whole story. I was about eight years old and it would be difficult to remember, so I just asked the same questions. And I heard the same answers. Despite that, I didn’t understand very well what she wanted to say with all those crying explanation, I had it in my heart the sensation that something bad happened in distant past, way before I was born. What I knew it was related to the old mansion I always stopped to look, ever since I started to go to school. That place fascinated me, it appealed to me in a way I couldn’t stop from staring at it, with its crooked windows that looked back at me inviting me in, to get to know what one day was of big importance and now wasn’t but ruins. I imagined myself living in that place and these thoughts were like memories and brought me nostalgia from things I had never lived.

The intimacy feeling with that house increased with the years, and I daydreamed of how it would be inside. I saw in my head the exact placement of each room and how it was decorated in its glory days. I imagined how the house as saw it in an old family photograph album, yellow by time, that my grandma kept inside her wardrobe, under badly folded clothes, as if it was a valuable treasure the family photos. In them I recognized the face of my mother, of my uncle and of grandma, and I also saw twin girls and an elegant man with a mysterious look who I thought was my grandfather, and then I’d ask about him.

It wasn’t enough hunger and misery, war had to come, she complained closing her eyes as if to pull the older memories. The war took your grandfather away. And it never gives them who it takes, and if it does, they aren’t but rags, human rags that aren’t fit for a thing just to give us more work and more expenses.

I could feel in the bitterness of her voice the sadness she carried with her. She was always like that and I leaned to get to know her, hiding the pain she felt in those hate and cruelty words. My mother used to say that she was dry, she had no more good feelings, just bitterness and resentment, that she was mean and only saw flaws in the few who surrounded her. But I knew she wasn’t like that. She was sweet, full of delicious secrets, that once in a while she let it escape when we found something in the middle of the tiny bedroom she lived in.

But the biggest secret, and worst of all, this she kept to herself, while time passed and we - my sister and I, she’s two years younger than me - grew up in a hurry, and my mother was getting old and finished. A long time after that, still in my teenage years, I started to understand what all that meant. I stopped asking about my grandfather and about the war. I began to feel nauseas when I saw the pain on my grandmother’s face every time she heard my incessant questions. My interest now was another, very different.

But, let us start from the beginning.

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THE INTRIGUING PAST

It was the winter of 1934. After a lot of suffering with fascism and Italy newly unified, the Italian people filled the harbors trying to escape the horrors that installed itself in the country, the battles and the internal conflicts they were full of and now the fear a new war caused. Francesca, my grandmother, squeezed herself in the middle of the crowd, protecting her belly with her hands, pregnant with Marco and carrying Teresa by the hand, my mother, who was three years old. She was only nineteen at the time, and her mother passed away right after her marriage. She died of tuberculoses.

Francesca remembers how her mother got weak in her last few days. She didn’t have food and medicine. She didn’t have anything. The husband, sent to the battle fields, wasn’t spared to help the poor sick wife, whom Francesca had to take care of as if she was a baby.

Francesca’s father wanted to marry the daughter off right away and that’s why he got her a young husband. Young enough to not have been called to battle. She cried, saying she didn’t want to follow her mother’s fate, that went sick because she didn’t eat so there could be more for her children. There was no party. Just a frightened priest, a scared groom and a tuberculous mother who passed away only two months after the wedding.

Or at least, this is how I remember. One loses the sense of time after a few years of war. Francesca said.

After Francesca’s mother passed away, the newly weds started living their life alone in the house that had beed her parents. An old mansion, very battered, in the middle of a rural state, where before the war had been an extensive vineyard. The house had fireplaces in three rooms, among them, the couples room where almost a year later they consummated the wedding, with Francesca going on sixteen and the poor groom with nearly completed sixteen years. That’s when Teresa was conceived.

Francesca’s weedy husband was called to fight in the war after he was nineteen, when they assumed he was already freed from the battle fields. The first thought that occurred to them when the letter arrived was to run. Far away, to America, where there was no war yet. Francesca crammed the few clothes her daughter had in a suitcase with some pieces of bread and molded cheese, and she sewn onto the hem of her skirts objects she thought it could have some value in America, like bead rosary, a small bible that belonged to her grandmother and rosary blessed by the pope himself, that was highly regarded and that her tuberculous mother said it had powers to the one carrying it. She would also bring the photographs she had of the family because she was hoping to come back one day, meet the ones that stayed.

Francesca remembered specially Teresa’s frozen hands, in the night they spend on the open air in the harbor, waiting for a ship destined to America, or some good soul that was willing to clandestinely take them. Her young husband hugged her and little Teresa, trying to warm them and crying softly, praying and asking God for forgiveness to not have been able to spare his family of such injustice. Francesca still remembered his exact words.

The next day, at noon, a huge ship appeared on the horizon, fast and majestic, cutting the sea white foam. Soon, evil-looking men started to walk among the frightened people that waited and push towards the ship. They spoke a language Francesca couldn’t define what it was. They chose some people and carried them to the great ship. Others were sent away, rejected as dogs, and some were assaulted with punches and kicks. Francesca feared going closer, but her husband insisted. The evil-looking man grabbed her suitcase and pushed her in. The husband, didn’t have the same luck. The man assaulted him and handed him to the officers. Francesca never knew what happened to him. They only thing she was sure was that he was going to be taken to the battle fields. She never got news from him, nor could she. He left without knowing where she was going.

The journey is always the worst of her memories, or maybe I’m the one who thinks it’s the worst, because that’s the part that always scares me the most when I listen. She talked of the ship as a stinky and cold prison, where merciless man frequently carried women and children to the deck to work till exhaustion cleaning the cabins and the deck, where the cold devastated the weak body of the people they had already taken all their luggage and left only with the tatter clothes on their bodies. Hunger devastated even more the skinny bodies, devastated the malnutrition of the soul and carried them to death. Francesca tells, with a weak face, that the corpses would stay days, even weeks among the living, rotting slowly, spreading unbearable smells that were even worst than the excrements mixed with the dirty smell that came from the filthy bodies.

The journey seemed no to have an end. We thought we weren’t going to get anywhere, that they had brought us to that damn ship to die in those stinky holds, says Francesca, her face with strong lines, as if her strength poured out of these almost unbearable memories, as if she could confront the world since she had survived that journey. After that, I was almost never afraid of anything else. Not of diseases, nor pain, nor hunger, none of that scares me. Just money and power, these I fear.

But grandma, money? Why exactly money, that can make all dreams come true, causes you so much fear? we would ask curiously.

Because money is a curse. Brings a fake power, makes some people thing they are better than others. Makes a lot of people commit crimes, let them kill for money, let them die for it. Money attacks curses and things worse than curses.

What things?

It s enough. Children, go to bed! nervously interrupted my mother, Teresa, every time my grandma talked about money and its curses. We tried to protest, but she was implacable when she wanted to take us out of the scene. We then, went to our bedrooms and pressed our ear on the wall to try to hear about what they were talking in our absence.

Mom, I already asked you not to torment the girls with these stories! said my mother, vexed.

They need to know... she just answered.

Then, grandma would go to her bedroom, but on the next day when mother left to work, there we were listening and interrogating grandma Francesca again. She had something hidden, a precious secrets she wanted to tell us, from which mother would always try to protect us. We would hear the whole story again, trying to go further each time, but she would always end with the arrival of the immigrants in Brazil, after months of suffering, tempests at high sea and the birth of uncle Marco, still on the ship. After disembarking, grandma’s memory would always get weak and she would never go beyond. It didn’t matter how much we insisted, there was always an excuse and she would stop talking.

It s getting late. You still haven t done your homework. I’m sleepy, I think I’m going to take a nap. Those were her common excuses. But we were curious, we didn’t think about giving up.

One night, while we were watching a movie in the little black and white television, sitting on pillows at grandma’s feet, part of the secret was revealed, kind of not wanting, with a certain remorse, or just in a fantasia reverie of the tired mind.

I have been like that, like these people you’re seeing on TV. I was once beautiful like them, I had a lot of money and a huge mansion, with lots and maids. She stopped for a moment and sighed longly. This was the worst time of my life, the time I was the most unhappy... 

My sister and me just looked at each other, with no courage of asking anything, afraid to look her and see that there in those memories it would be stored terrible information, maybe monsters from the past she always wanted to run from. Then, I got up and sat beside grandma. I gently held her hand and kissed her blistered fingers. I took a deep breath and started to ask. And she, without strength to lie anymore or to hide anything else, responded...

PART 1 - THE BENEFACTOR

THE JOURNEY

There were many rumors among the deserters like me. Many of those people affirmed we were being taken to America and that we would be sacrificed by the native Americans in some kind of ritual; others would say that we were being taken to work in the big mines of gold and precious rocks in Africa. I never believed in both stories. I was terrified, but not enough to believe in rumors. I was still very young and dreamt of a true love, someone that would save me with my children, from all of that disgrace and suffering.

When we got to this weird land, Brazil, I still didn’t understand why I was among the chosen ones and why my husband had been given to the soldiers in the harbor to go to fight or maybe just to be murdered with so many others. I got here without speaking or understanding a word in Portuguese, without a friend or someone to talk to, and with two rickety almost dead babies on my arms. I was very sick, weak because there was no food and intoxicated with the smells of the journey, steeped in my nose, and I didn’t care anymore where we were or what we were here for. Suffering was in everyone, and it seemed that nothing would be capable of hurting us more than we already were.

We were disembarked as pigs, put in overloaded trucks that went to the dry roads for hours and hours. The sick and the wounded were immediately separated from the the others. Women and men were analyzed, as if they were slaves to be bought by arrogant men that were forming lines by the trucks. Some women cried and sobbed, desperately asking for something for their children to eat and drink. I hugged my frail children, but I didn’t cry or expressed any feeling. I had to idea what was going on. There was so much fear that it was already in my soul as a part of me and I held my children close just by instance, without caring if they were suffering or not, not fearing if they died.

That was when a man got up in the truck and, speaking in perfect Italian, announced that we were brought to work for housing and free food. The barons should pick who they wanted to take to work and for that, it was needed of us to go under some examinations before leaving. They looked the teeth and what was left from the men’s muscles. They analyzed the women’s hands and even their waists thinned by months of hunger. Some were chosen, some weren’t. Relatives hugged and refused to leave each other, but when they realized it was the only way to survive, they ended up accepting and said good-byes among vows of meeting agin in the future.

More and more people were being chosen by the minute and my children and me were being left behind. Some would get near, showing some interest, but soon they mumbled something and walked away with the stronger ones. Teresa was holding the hem of my skirt, making my body bend by the weight of her body that was barely bearing little Marco on my arms. I remember having to remove her hand from my skirt more than once, but she was whining in fear and grabbed me again. My head hurt too much to think or to concentrate in what was happening. I remember having seen the world spin and after that, I don’t recall anything else from that day.

When I woke up, I was in a huge room, surrounded by pages that were putting white cloths soaked in cold water on my forehead. I got up fast looking for my children. I saw Teresa sitting in a corner on a few silk pillows, with rosy cheeks and a nanny that smiled while they played with beautiful porcelain dolls, which I have only seen in my dreams. On the other side, a little closer to my bed, was a white crib with golden ornaments and a lace veil, where I figured Marco was sleeping. I heard a voice calling in a strange language, I turned and came upon a young black woman carrying Marco on her arms, feeding him her own milk. In horror, I tried to take Marco from her, but she looked and smiled, giving him to me without resistance.

I pinched myself more than once, trying to wake from that strange dream, in which I couldn’t understand a single word that anyone tried to communicate to me and saw my children surrounded by luxury there was no way I could maintain. All those people seemed to have the mission of making our wishes come true, they were all beautiful as angels and always smiling, they seemed to be satisfied in serving us. Then I started to thing that we had died and gone to Heaven, or that only I had died and was in Heaven, just imagining my children there, but they were but spectra.

The days were long, filled with hefty tables of the most diverse variety of fruit, goat milk and delicacies sweet and salty. Twice a day, one of the women brought us clean clothes and helped us change them. The sheets, always white as everything in there, were also changed everyday, clean, soft and scented. The baths were with warm water and scented foam, that made a silky cover above the water and amused Teresa with little bubbles that popped on there little nose. It was as if the war hadn’t go to that Heaven, and to me, it was as if it had never existed.

After a few days, when we recovered and were no more hungry, I noticed a certain agitation among the ones serving us. It was a sunny afternoon, when the temperature was way too high, punishing the tanned bodies. I heard whispers between one smile and the other, as if I could understand them. Anxiety was in the air, fear too, they knew something extraordinary was about to happen. They looked the distant meadow through the windows as if they were waiting for someone. I just pretended not to have noticed, but I confess I was worried.

Night arrived, as always, we were taken to the luxury bedrooms, while the pages fanned us with huge banana tree leaves to keep the terrible heat at bay and the insects that buzzed in our ears. We were like princes, as kings in a dream castle. But when the sleep and real dreams arrived, it was the war I saw and dead people falling on the floor with bullet holes on their bloody bodies, and that’s why I wish I never had to sleep again. When my eyes couldn’t keep open anymore, I fell on the bed, beaten, defeated.

THE PROPOSAL

That morning, when I woke up, there were no pages, none of the angels that treated us so carefulness. I crossed the porch and got out for a walk through the green field that lost itself on the horizon, surrounded by branches of the closed up forrest that from there I could see as tiny green dots. Marco and Teresa were resting in their ornate cribs, a tranquil sleep and without preoccupations, maybe taken by sweet dreams. I thought it was weird that there were no people around, to saddle horses or to chop wood, or even the strong black people that rode horses bareback through the fields. When I realized I was already too far from the big house. Then, I got back. I thought that one of the children might already have woken up and be crying because of my absence, a silly worry, from a mother, an alarm that warned danger.

From far away, I heard Teresa laughing. I was quick to imagine that one of the nannies was playing with her. I went up to the porch, but found the door closed. I knocked. Teresa and the person making her laugh seemed not to listen. I ran around the house looking for another entrance but I didn’t find an unlocked door, just rock walls too high for me to climb. I went back to the porch and shook the lock, shaking the stained glass on the old and noble wood door. I heard the steps of someone approaching, firm steps, of a decided person. My heart was racing as soon as I saw him with Teresa on his arms. I was afraid he had done something to her during the time I left her alone, being time so unpredictable, and in that place it was so uncontrollable, I had no idea if it was a little time or not. But both smiled, specially Teresa, what shook away the bad thoughts of my mind.

The fear went away slowly, as soon as I had Teresa on my arms. I put her back on the crib and gave her one of the dolls, only then I took a notice of the man there. His steps didn’t fool me, he was strong, maybe violent, however his green eyes mirrored something deeply sweet, an incredible tenderness, a kind of charm. He wasn’t a page, like some many that had served us, it was evident by the way he was dressing. He wore an elegant white suit, leather shoes and, by the side of the bed there was a hat and an ivory cane with golden ornaments, that seemed to match perfectly with the things around. His features were symmetric, a bit harsh, of a decided man, who owns himself.

He took a few steps in my direction, where I observed Marco still sleeping. I backed up immediately, standing between the man and the crib. He seemed to feel my fear and stopped, he sat on the edge bed slowly, still with a smile on his lips, amused by me. I lowed my eyes, instinctively, avoiding his dagger look that chased me, that analyzed every part of my body.

Don’t be afraid,  he said.

Why am I here? I asked aggressively, scared. I wasn’t sure I really wanted to know the answer. So many hypotheses had crossed my mind and now I was afraid that one of them was true.

You’ll know. Tonight.

I... I... Have a husband... He... Is in the war, but he’ll be back soon and... I stuttered, thinking the worst. I immediately thought I had become a prostitute. How haven’t I thought about that before? It was known that women were traffic to many parts of the world to work in prostitution. I was afraid that America was one of the places where worth-for-nothing foreigners weren’t but for sleeping with man from the land.

Stay calm, I m just asking you to dinner, he responded softly, looking me with such sweet and tenderness that I had never seen in my husband’s eyes. He was too seductive for me to say no to his invitation. After all, he saved me from terror of the plantation fields to which I was going to be sent to, why would he hurt me now?

Dinner... But... I... 

Right here, in the living room, I’m sure have seen it already, isn’t that right?

Me? I haven’t left the bedroom. No one asked me to visit the rest of the house and I felt it would be rude of me if...

It’s already, you don’t have to apologize, he interrupted me. It’s alright. I’ll send you adequate clothes. I have something to propose to you.

Propose? Propose what?

You’ll know.  He got up and put on his hat. He waved at Teresa with his charming cane and left. Teresa laughed to him, before him leaving. I wanted to follow him, see where he was going to, ask if we could talk a little more. There were so many questions to ask... But the door was locked from the outside. I went back to Teresa and Marco that had already woken up with hunger. We had our breakfast by ourselves for the first time since we arrived.

The privacy made the morning go really slow, and only at lunch time one of the maids that alternated in breastfeeding Marco appeared with a tray of varied food. I wanted to start a conversation with her, but it was obvious that she didn’t understand my idiom. I tried asking her name with gestures and signs and saying my own name, that she repeated with difficulty. That was the most I was able to communicate with any of them, I also noticed a fear on her look that day.

In the afternoon, I walked to the door a few times trying to go to the rest of the house, that I realized it was huge, but was always stopped by one of the maids, that distracted me with excuses, callings,