I AM MOVING THIS TO ROYAL ROAD.

Blood Moon
by
Heather Farthing, (c)2024, all rights reserved

Chapter one

Chapter two

The broth is warm, fresh, meaty and full of iron. I’ve never tasted something so delicious, and I drink greedily from the water bottle. It is my whole world, my existence, and everything I want and need.

The woman with the vaguely European accent smiles.

“You have got to be the hungriest pup I have ever seen.”

Too soon, the water bottle is empty, but so am I. I want more. I need more.

“That’s enough!” she chides. “It’s all gone.”

That’s not good enough. There’s a noise in the back of my throat, and my jaws snapping at her fingers.

“No!” she snarls, swatting my cheek, hard enough to sting.

Tears start brimming at my eyes. What just happened? She…hit me?

“Oh, I’m sorry, love, but you can’t bite people when you don’t get what you want.”

But…I’m hungry.

“You need to go back to sleep, love. I think you’re getting grouchy.”

Didn’t I just wake up?

The woman is an elegant beauty in the prime of youth, with flawless porcelain skin and raven-black hair, done up in a graceful bun, showing off her swan-like neck. Her dress is beaded black, like something from the twenties or older, gauzy and shimmery.

I whimper again and reach for the water bottle, set on an ornate redwood side table.

“You’re going to make yourself sick like that,” she protests, moving it away from me.

“Zinovia,” a second voice calls from the door. “How is he this evening?”

The woman stands up and curtsies politely. “Hungry, mistress. And a bit…bitey.”

“Hmm…well, do see that the biting is kept to a minimum. It wouldn’t do to have more…accidents.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

Mistress? I didn’t think we did the “master and servant” thing here in the United States. But the accents…maybe they’re from somewhere else?

The small woman at the door can’t be more than twenty, but she carries the same weight and bearing as Dame Judy Dench in Shakespeare in Love. Her dress is more extravagant, with a high, beaded collar draped with rubies, or an impressive facsimile.

And there’s a feeling towards her. Warm, comforting, maternal.

“Let me look at you, pup,” she commands, and I find myself sitting up as best as I can, the room spinning uncomfortably.

The first woman holds my shoulders to steady me. Bile rises into the back of my throat, and my ears are ringing.
“Is his condition…normal?” the stern woman asks.

“So far…yes, Mistress. He’s highly feverish, however, but everything seems within normal boundaries.”

“See that it stays that way. I won’t have those dogs in my home again.”

“Of course, Mistress. He’ll be a good, strong son when he’s ready to fledge.”

The stern woman smiles pleasantly. “Oh, yes. I’ve been thinking of names for him, and agents have already been dispatched to deal with…loose ends. Poor soul, house fire I’m afraid. The body is unidentifiable, poor thing.”

“Yes, mistress.”

“I want his education started as soon as possible. I’ll have the remedial lessons sent up immediately. See that he gets started.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“And you, my boy, go back to sleep and stop giving your minder such trouble.”

With that, the woman is gone, vanishing out the door like a ghost. The room spins and my head throbs. I’m so tired.

“Lay back down, love,” the first woman whispers, guiding me back onto the pillows.

Soon, it’s as dark as the black silk sheets.

***

I wake to the smell of the thick, rich broth, warm in the cool hands of the woman, and I’m eager for it. She holds the bottle above me like I’m a bottle-fed baby lamb, letting me suck it dry. The broth is my whole world and everything in it.

“Good, good. You want to grow strong like Mistress Léontine, yes?”

Her cool hand strokes mine gently, soft and supple to the touch. Her fingernails are painted black, taping to sharp points.

I’m full to bursting, but I still want more, and whimper plaintively when she takes the bottle away.

“You’ll make yourself sick, Young Master. Perhaps instead you would like a bath? Or I could read to you. The mistress wants your education to start as soon as possible.”

I reach for the bottle, even though I know it’s empty. She takes my hand and folds it hers.

“Patience, love. Perhaps after a bath.”

She walks across the room and wheels a chair up to me, a high-backed, big-wheeled antique thing. When the wheels are locked in place, she tries to pull me up by my armpits, but the room spins.

“Oh, love, you are burning up. The bath should help.”
I whimper and shake my head. The room spins, the floor bucks. I can’t…

Somehow I’m standing, her supporting most of my weight, feet unsteady and knees weak. The adjacent bathroom is nearby. I think I can…reaching out to the doorway, as if I could drag it to me.

“No, love, the chair.”

I don’t need a wheelchair. I’m an adult, and not an invalid…

The room tilts sharply, and suddenly I’m seated, a stinging bruise on my left side where I took it at a bad angle. The room lurches, I stifle a gag. My breath smells like broth.

“That’s a good pup.”

The black silk pajamas burn against my skin. I feel hot, flushed, dizzy.

The bathroom is an opulent affair I thought only royalty could afford, with a bathtub the size of a small pool. The sound of the water pounds against my ears, and the cloyingly sweet smell of lavender and vanilla she pours into the water is even worse, making me gag.

Soon, the tub is full of purplish, overpoweringly-scented foam, and the woman wants to undress me, which makes my cheeks feel even hotter, brushing her hands away.

“You’re not the first pup I’ve taken care of for the mistress, and you won’t be the last,” she chides, undoing the buttons on my shirt. “Besides, it’s nothing I haven’t seen already.”

She pulls me up and sits me on the side of the tub to pull off my pants. I put my face in my hands in abject mortification. One leg at a time, she slides me into the cool water of the tub, my nose still assaulted by the smell of the bath oils and salts.

There’s a toy boat in the water, which I sail through the foam as though it’s going in and out of fog.

“That’s the Bella Nuit,” the woman (Zen…Zia…?) explains. “It’s the ship that originally brought the mistress to the New World.”

The little thing is exquisitely crafted, with a real wood hull and cloth sails. There’s even tiny rope rigging.
“Belle Nuit,” I repeat.

“Very good, love,” Zia smiles. “The mistress first arrived in the New World in 1678.”

“1678,” I repeat. That doesn’t seem right. It’s…what year is it?

The cool water makes me shiver, but I feel a bit more lucid, my fever going down, I suppose.

From next to the tap, there is a shower head, which Zia takes and begins spraying my head. I cough and sputter, fighting back against the spray, blocking my face with my arms.

“None of that, Young Master,” she chides, scrubbing my hair with potently lavender/chamomile shampoo. “Your hair is beautiful, love. Like the mistress.”

I squirm when she sprays my hair clean, and then trying to climb up the side of the tub in red embarrassment when she goes after me with a long-handled scrub brush, hot tears filling my eyes. There’s rumble deep in my throat, and a feeling at my throbbing teeth, the need to bite, so I do.

“Young Master, if you don’t stop I will put a bit on you, so help me!” she hisses, a squeaking noise at the high points.

Seething, the rumble continues as she drains the water and rinses my skin with the shower head. Bare and exposed, trying to afford myself some dignity, it is a relief when she wraps me in a fluffy black towel big enough to cover me from head to toe, and then helps me out of the tub and back into the chair, shivering, teeth chattering.

After she pushes me back toward the bed, she retrieves another set of black silk pajamas, these with embroidery like roses, and helps me back into them, angling me back on the bed to make it easier to pull my pants up.

When all is said and done, I burrow into the heavy, black comforter, hair still wet, shivering and teeth chattering. I can’t help but yawn, worn and strung out, back facing her in shame, hands shaking like low blood sugar.

“Go back to sleep, love,” she whispers. “You can feed again when you wake.”

But I’m hungry now. But also so very tired, but not ready for sleep.

Softly, she begins to hum a melody, and then sing in some sort of Eastern European language I don’t recognize.

She’s singing me to sleep, rubbing my back, the smell of lavender and vanilla and chamomile sticking to my skin like a veil. The spinning of the room feels like a gentle, if nauseating, rock.

What am I, a child?

***

I’m kneeling next to the bed, clinging to the blankets and sheets like a life raft in a stormy sea, shaking and unable to get my knees under me, gagging and dry-heaving, probably from hunger.

What am I doing? I don’t…remember.

I’m stuck, shivering between floor and bed, until I hear the soft steps of Zia.

“Master!” she gasps, setting aside her tray on the bedside table.

“Mmmh!” I grunt as she seizes me under the arms, hauling me back onto the bed. She is very strong.

“What’s the matter, Young Master?” she breathes, laying me on the bed. “Did you need something?”

I don’t…I don’t remember.

“Want…” I murmur softly, trying to remember. A book? Radio? Television?

“Did you want to see your progenitor?” she asks. “That’s normal. I’ll tell her you asked for her.”

Is that who I was trying to find?

Zia strokes my cheek as she reaches for another delicious bottle of broth and a book, holding the bottle for me in one hand as she reads in French from the book.

“Il était une fois un très riche marchand qui avait six enfants, trois fils et trois filles; étant un homme sensé, il n'épargna aucun coût pour leur éducation, mais leur donna toutes sortes de maîtres. Ses filles étaient extrêmement belles, surtout la plus jeune. Quand elle était petite, tout le monde l'admirait et l'appelait ‘La petite Belle’; de sorte qu'en grandissant, elle s'appelait encore la Belle, ce qui rendait ses sœurs très jalouses…”
She reads until the bottle is drained, but I want more, whimpering in hunger.

“Settle, Master,” she says, grasping my reaching hand in hers to pull it away from the bottle.

My teeth hurt into the jawbone. The eyeteeth in particular feel strange, puffy and dead.

“We’ll keep reading until it’s time for another feeding, love,” Zia says, picking her place out of the book.

Hunger gnaws at my belly, ceaseless and demanding. I don’t remember being so hungry before. It stays at the point of nausea, an endless craving that only the broth can fill, and yet never does.

I pick at the threading on my sheets. My fingertips are sore and a bit red. With a sickening crunch, the nail on my right index finger bends straight upright, revealing bare, tender flesh, blood forming at the nail bed. The fingertip throbs, the exposed nail bed burns at the air.
My heartbeat quickens, my eyes feel hot. This isn’t good, this isn’t normal. Radiation poisoning? What makes fingernails fall out?

Whimpering and sniffling, I hold my hand out to Zia, who is too pale to blanch at the sight, but makes a good approximation, grabbing my hand to examine it.

“Oh, Master!” she gasps. “Wait right here, we’ll fix this up right away!”

She dashes away, leaving me cradling my abused hand, trembling, hot tears running down my cheeks. Something’s happening to me. This isn’t right.

After what could be minutes or hours, Zia returns with a manicure set and a first aid kit. She trims the broken nail to the root with nail clippers, and then pulls at it the rest unpleasantly with a pair of tweezers, until the nail bed is open, empty, and exposed. She cleans the site with alcohol, which smells terrible, and burns like the dickens, sending me squirming, kicking, and whimpering, she having to hold my wrist under her arm with an iron grip to bandage the wound.

“It’s over, love,” she whispers consolingly, rubbing my hand.

“Wh-what?” I ask, eyes wide, trembling. “Why?”

She bites her lip, with long, canine-like teeth, like carved pearls, pricking the pale skin.

“That’s a matter for the mistress, but in the meantime…oh! Yes, something special just for you, young master.”

A tall, pale man dressed in a butler’s uniform straight from Downton Abbey’s neo-goth Halloween revival, steps into the room, holding a plastic water bottle on a tray, and carries it over to Zia before dismissing himself.

It smells heavenly, the sweetest ambrosia of the gods, warm in a way different from the last batch, thick and rich. I wipe my tears away and stop my sniffling as I drink.