Sisters Of The Fallen

This is my submission for the 2016 Halloween Story Contest. It is a gothic horror novella based on the vampire mythos. My goal was to try and make the vampires as dark and scary as they were seductive and I hope you will find my attempt successful. The story is a bit of a slow burn since I've taken time to establish the characters, setting, and atmosphere before the action truly begins but the plot picks up quite a bit after the first few pages. Don't worry, there are still plenty of sex scenes but I tried to make this a real story with a beginning, middle, and end so the plot needs to develop before we get to the good parts. The story is a long read, but for your benefit I've partitioned the story into chapters with breaks so that you can stop at certain points if you are unwilling or unable to read the entire story in one sitting. Good stopping points would be the end of Chapter 3 on page 9, the end of Chapter 5 on page 15, and then the very end of the story on page 23. I hope you enjoy my tale.

Resubmission: There were some concerns raised in a previous draft about the age of some characters. It wasn't my intention to portray underage sexual encounters but some poor math on my part made it seem that way. I've changed the ages of some of the characters to ensure everything is 18+.

+++++ Chapter I: The Ascent +++++

The Carpathian Mountains in Transylvania, 1616 A.D.

The creaking wheels of the horse-drawn carriage rumbled up and down as they slowly revolved. The car shook interminably as it clambered over the rugged and unkempt road. The clopping of horse's hooves added to the cacophony generated by this mode of travel, disturbing the still silence of the surrounding forest. The dirt path the carriage traveled upon looked like it hadn't been maintained for years and the forest encroaching on both sides of the road threatened to overtake the clearing through the overgrowth that had likely been created centuries before. The trees were so near that the sharp points of branches scraped along the side of the carriage where the path narrowed. The tree limbs reached out for the occupants of the car almost like a predator's claws grasping for its prey.

The carriage climbed higher and higher over the mountain path, always ascending at a slight incline whenever the team of horses wasn't struggling to pull the covered wagon uphill. It was late in the day, and the descending sun showed with a brilliantly orange light over a clear sky. The blood-orange rays of color shimmered as they cascaded over and down the range of the surrounding mountains. The road cut a clear path between the two largest peaks of this mountain range and led directly up to the grounds of Castle Sidexes. The castle itself was an ancient fortress that had been erected on the highest crest of the tallest mountain in the region. The air at this elevation was thin and cool and made it difficult to breathe for those unused to the height. The castle rested in a perfectly defensible position that was ideal for repelling an invading army but so remote that it was hard to believe the building was inhabited.

Curtains drawn over the side windows of the carriage prevented the setting sun from blinding those inside. The four Pierocent sisters sat in the cramped cabin, facing each other with two siblings to each side. The gnarled and neglected road caused the young women to bounce in their seats with every rise and fall of the carriage. The thin cushion covering the wooden benches they sat upon did not do nearly enough to protect their bottoms from the jostling. But despite the discomfort, none of the girls deigned to be the first to perform an action so unladylike as rubbing their sore backsides. The carriage had to be rented on the cheap due to the newfound and still bewildering circumstances the sisters had found themselves in. They had only found one man willing to drive the carriage. All the other drivers in the nearest town refused to ride this close to the castle. The locals were a superstitious folk who considered the mountains and the wilderness that surrounded them to be cursed. They claimed no one who set foot on the grounds of Castle Sidexes came out alive. An entirely preposterous notion considering Mirela, the oldest of the Pierocent sisters, had corresponded with the Count and Countess claiming lordship of the castle on several occasions.

The driver of the carriage was a vile man named Caine who had long, shaggy black hair, a dark complexion, and a sharp hooked nose. He grinned at Mirela lecherously every time she spoke with him and Mirela did not care at all for the way he leered at her younger sisters out of the corners of his wandering eyes. Even worse, he treated his horses cruelly. He struck his mounts with a barbed whip in a frenzy to compel the reluctant beasts to climb up the long, treacherous ascent until the animals were past the point of exhaustion. The horses tried to turn back on more than a few occasions, but Caine's vicious whip kept them moving forward despite lashes of blood making red crosses on their backs their backs and foam dripping from their mouths. Mirela's heart went out to the poor animals and she regretted ever hiring this evil man.

Mirela peered out the window at the dark forest they were traversing. The woods were eerily quiet and no wildlife could be seen or heard. But wait... there was something out there. A large, shaggy wolf stared back at her from behind a thorn bush, never breaking its yellow, glowing gaze as its eyes followed the wagon's crossing. For just an instant as the carriage passed, Mirela and the wolf's eyes met. Mirela saw the wolf licking its chops and she could tell the creature was wondering what her flesh would taste like. Mirela shivered.

Mirela was the oldest daughter of a Transylvanian family of minor nobility. The village that her father had been the lord of was a bit of backwater compared to most of the voivodeships of the province but it was a beautiful little town that Mirela and her sisters had loved fiercely. The Pierocents had borne only girls; the few male children they had propagated either died early in childhood or were birthed stillborn. With no obvious male heirs, the Pierocent women were the strength and foundation of the family.

"Are we there yet?" Mirela's sister Loredana complained. "My rump is so sore and aching."

Loredana's whining, simpering tone was beginning to wear on her sisters. Loredana's poor attitude showed itself before they even left their manor and had remained unchanged for the duration of their journey.

Bianca, the second oldest daughter, harrumphed. She said beneath her breath, "If we had a leu for every time you've had a sore bottom in your life maybe we wouldn't be destitute."

Loredana's loose skirts were unfortunately a well-known fact to all the men from their village. Bianca not been so quiet as she had assumed. Mirela gave Bianca a withering glare to let her know that this chiding was not helping.

"We are nearly at Castle Sidexes," Mirela said as she consulted one of her maps and correlated their position to an unusual rock formation in the shape of a hand they had recently passed that served as a landmark. The castle was on no map she had found aside from this decaying parchment kept in her family records. "We should all be enormously grateful to Count Turenau and the rest of his family for taking us in now that we are at our most desperate."

As the oldest of the sisters, Mirela felt a tremendous amount of responsibility for keeping her siblings safe and cared for. She had always been the most sensible and thoughtful of the Pierocent daughters. Mirela was a handsome young woman whose face was perhaps a bit too hard-edged to be considered truly beautiful. Mirela had hazel-colored eyes that took on an almost greenish tinge under a certain light. She possessed long, flowing brunette hair identical to her mother's beautiful locks though her appearance took after her father's side of the family more. Mirela's skin was the same pale white tone that the rest of her family shared. Despite her smooth, luscious tresses of hair, Mirela often wore her hair up in a tight bun. Mirela had a skinny frame with wide, bony hips and slim waist with two small bulbs for a bosom. She might as well have been flatchested in comparison to her younger sisters.

Today Mirela wore a rugged woolen riding dress colored in white with a high collar and long sleeves. White gloves covered her hands while tall, fashionable brown leather boots covered her legs up to her knees. Mirela's dress fit loosely upon her and provided little definition to the form of her body. Modest clothing that had been specifically chosen because it did little to entice the eye. The dress proved useful for such an arduous journey and at least prevented Caine from leering at her as often as he did Loredana and Bianca.

Mirela was twenty-seven years old and nearly past the marriageable age of her life. The prospect of spinsterdom loomed if she did not find a husband soon. It wasn't that Mirela was unattractive or wouldn't make a fine wife. She knew how to run a household and she descended from a good family that could provide a handsome dowry. But Mirela possessed a keen intelligence and a passionately devout, almost haughty manner that when combined seemed to intimidate men and drive them away from her.

Despite her current reticence, Mirela had been a bit wild in her younger days. She drank ale with men in bawdy taverns and had more than a few romps in the hay with them. It was a strange time for Mirela considering she had never before behaved that way. She had mostly been acting out after her younger sister and best friend Bianca found herself married well before Mirela. The normally pious and sober Mirela behaved this way partly out of jealousy but also due to loneliness after losing her closest sibling. Mirela always ended these whimful trysts as soon as she felt a hand sneak beneath her skirt and run up her thigh. Unlike Loredana, Mirela understood the value of her virginity and the importance to her family of approaching the wedding chapel unsullied. Mirela held a strong Christian faith and planned to go to her marriage bed pure. But she would only be young once and didn't see any harm in kissing a few boys before binding herself to a man for the rest of her days. Mirela's irresponsible days were short-lived however. Her youth was tragically cut short and her life irrevocably altered by an accident that occurred five years before.

Merila's father, Lord Pierocent, had been thrown from his horse while out hunting and landed right on the crown of his head. He was unconscious for over three days before finally awaking from his coma. Lord Pierocent was never quite the same after that. He managed to relearn how to walk, eat, and dress himself but it took longer for his full capacities of speech to return. Though he eventually returned to some semblance of normalcy Lord Pierocent refused to ever ride a horse again. Mirela's father remained a bit touched in the head, given to muttering and paranoia and unable to wrap his formerly sharp mind around subjects more complex than buttoning his nightshirt.

Mirela's mother was a gorgeous but rather simple woman who had been married for her beauty and family connections rather than out of any sort of affection or admiration for her intellect or character. She could certainly order the maids and other servants around and was especially adept at planning great feasts and parties but Lady Pierocent proved woefully incapable of managing the family's finances. She also lacked the organizational mind and ability to devise and implement the planting, buying, and selling of local wheat, rye, and other crops that sustained the family, the townsfolk, the servants, and the serfs who cultivated the land for them. In addition, Mirela's father owned outright or had invested in several other enterprises including milling, shipping, mining, and metalworks. The family faced a potential disaster without someone shrewd and capable there to manage their dominion competently.

Fortunately, Mirela proved more than capable of overseeing the her father's dominion. She had observed and assisted her father in his dealings since she became a teenager. Her father had realized early on the powerful intellect that Mirela possessed and began to include her in business decisions from an early age. Mirela formulated her own ideas for how to maintain their family investments but never gave voice to her plans so she would not appear to be contradicting her father's will. Now that Mirela was thrust by necessity into the position her father formerly held, she implemented the ideas that had previously only been fancies in her mind. Not only did she maintain the Pierocent finances and businesses with aplomb, she actually improved their income by eliminating inefficiencies and making prudent investments. She hired a brilliant young bookkeeper named Bac Disperat who helped expand their holdings even further. Under Mirela's leadership, the modestly wealthy family quickly became rich.

Though her father technically still held his seat as lord of the voivodeship, Mirela had assumed the role of head of the family in all but name. Mirela assumed this might make her an even more desirable prospect for marriage, but her two younger sisters were the ones who seemed to draw all the attention of men. Running the household took all Mirela's time and while she had obtained a position of power few women could ever hope of attaining her youth slowly slipped away from her. Mirela's father might have once been able to pluck a minor lord's marriageable young son from another province with relative ease for Mirela to wed, but he no longer had the mind to focus on such an undertaking. Mirela's mother was flighty and seemed rather uncaring for Mirela's plight. The truth was that her mother resented Mirela for usurping her role as the most powerful and influential female in the household. Lady Pierocent's oldest child constantly circumvented her wishes for the management of the family manor and wouldn't cut her in on any of the family business besides providing her an allowance for clothing, furniture, and parties. Mirela instead spent most of their growing fortune on donations to the church and for good works to aid the poor townspeople. Lady Pierocent despised how her own offspring disrespected her and treated her like a kept woman. The servants soon began referring to Mirela as the Lady Pierocent rather than her mother, angering the woman even further. Mirela's mother could tell her daughter was lonely, but rather than consoling her she hoped to see her miserable for a few more years. Eventually she planned to send Mirela off somewhere far away like France or Austria to be married so she could reassume the title of Lady Pierocent.

Mirela now appeared likely to enter her thirtieth year still unmarried and still a virgin. This should have bothered her, but it didn't. Mirela cherished her prominent role in the family and realized that women almost never wielded the power and authority she held. Mirela enjoyed her work too much to be tied down to a husband who would not be so accommodating to a woman having such a large degree of power within his household. Mirela planned to settle down once she was good and ready and until then she would continue attaining fabulous wealth and enjoying life to the fullest. But then her parents were brutally murdered.

The half dozen knights that served as their guards swore there was no way the manor could have been infiltrated without them knowing. A fresh snowfall revealed no tracks or footprints indicating how the break-in occurred. Maybe the guards were just saying that to cover their tracks in the face of sheer incompetence. Regardless, on a beautiful, peaceful winter morning Mirela's mother and father were found murdered in their bedroom. Lord Pierocent's head had been completely severed from his body while the Lady Pierocent had been discovered lying lifelessly upon her bed with her throat torn messily apart. While gore covered the floor that her father's body laid upon and the bedsheets where her mother had breathed her last, the bodies of Mirela's parents were completely drained of blood. The guards found no evidence of a break-in, no weapons left behind, and no apparent motive for such a heinous crime.

The serfs and other servants that worked at the manor were a simple and superstitious folk who naturally assumed some supernatural force had been behind the killings. Some of them even believed Mirela herself was responsible. No woman who had assumed a position of power like hers could possibly possess altruistic intentions. Godly women were not meant to rule but rather be subservient to their fathers and husbands and any woman who believed otherwise belonged to the devil. The servants huddled together in corners of the manor and whispered to themselves quietly, claiming that Mirela was a witch who had cast an enchantment on her father to dull his wits. When that wasn't enough to attain the power she lusted for Mirela slayed her own parents and drank their blood so she might attain eternal youth.

The servants soon began making the sign of the cross on their chests or spitting on the floor as they passed Mirela in the hallway. It upset Mirela tremendously to find that despite living her life through Christ and doing so much to help the poor she was feared rather than admired. She thought that through her pious nature she might set an example to others but instead the servants who had worked for the family since Mirela was a small child despised her. Though she believed in Hell and the devil as any good Christian would, Mirela didn't hold with such superstition as these peasants believed. The world had entered the seventeenth century just a decade before, and it marked the beginning of an enlightened age that Mirela hoped would eliminate these backward kinds of beliefs. But these serfs were poorly educated folk who preferred simple answers for the unexplainable.

While the deaths of their parents was shocking, disaster truly struck the family when Bac Disperat disappeared along with all the holdings the Pierocents had ever deposited. Further investigation found that all their money had been divested from the family enterprises in the last few days before their parent's murders. Mirela appealed to the banks and money lenders they dealt with, claiming these withdrawals were obviously fraudulent. But every bank was able to produce a note that Disperat had provided them upon withdrawal of their funds. The signed and notarized letters all stated that Mirela's father, of sound mind, had authorized Bac to divest all their savings. Mirela inspected the notes closely and confirmed they were indeed her father's signature. Mirela had no idea why her father would do such a thing, but it wasn't like she could ask him now. With Bac still missing along with the family fortune, the Pierocents were destitute.

Mirela did everything she could to keep the household running and take care of her three younger sisters. While the servants were continually suspicious of Mirela, they would continue to work as long as they were still provided food and shelter. Mirela sold several precious family heirlooms in order to keep the serfs fed and working hard. She had banked on this year's harvest turning enough of a profit to keep the family afloat until Bac could be found and their financial situation resolved. But an unusually wet and cold spring led to a poor harvest eventually turned to a famine that further exacerbated their monetary woes. The servants wondered out loud whether the Pierocent family was cursed due to their daughter's unimaginable crime. Farmers, maids, gardeners, laundresses: they all began leaving the estate in droves until all but a couple servants and a single guard remained.