Important: I do not own the rights of any of the images posted here, with time I'll try to find the authors and give credits*My father used to say that the past is the only dead thing that smells sweet. I'm not so sure about it.
I'm the only daughter of Irene Mihaela and Armand De Leon. He was a renowned dementlieuse teacher, scholar, historian, author of many books on the most diverse subjects but mainly about the past of Barovia. He was also a medicine man and an inventor, known for his peculiar gadgets and unorthodox methods. He was a genius, the kind of man that had everything to be rich. But not with the reputation he built for himself along the years. His conspiracy theories gave him the title of "Professor Loonie" and that eventually destroyed his career at the University of Dementlieu.
He taught me many things and before my seventh birthday I could already speak Balok, Mordentish and the common trade tongue. I could fix any mechanical thing that wasn't working the way it should, like clocks or musical boxes, my favourite. I had quite a collection, my father used to bring a new one for me everytime he came back from a trip. I loved to open them to see the mechanisms, dissemble it and put it all back together. He used to say my brain was the family's most precious treasure. I remember when I used to sit on his desk while he translated old runes carved in stone, papers, scrolls and sometimes books heavier than myself at that age. And the stories he used to tell me definetelly were too heavy for a girl of that age but I loved to hear them. My mother on the other side was a simple, gentle and timid barovian lady, a woman of the house, much younger than him and extremely devoted to us. She never cared about the things people said about her husband and was always busy with the kitchen, the corn plantation, the cattle and her roses, the most precious thing in her life. She actually won contests of the most beautiful roses in Barovia back in the day and even traveled beyond the mists to expose them in fairs and such. Thats how they met. Despite my father's bankruptcy, we were happy, we had a farm that was in her family for generations, a small plantation and a few animals. We even had a swing in an old weeping willow tree in front of the house. For me, that farm was the whole world.
But those happy years wouldn't last long. When I was about ten, my father was out on a field trip to some ruins with a group that hired him as a translator, leaving me and my mother alone. The farm was somewhere between Vallaki and the Village of Barovia, not far from the Midway Haven. Every now and then we had people at our door asking for directions, food or shelter. That night my mother opened the door to a stranger during a storm even if my father always warned her not to do so when he wasn't home. But that man standing there all soaked in the storm on a cold winter night broke my mother's heart. And it wasn't the only thing he would break. With all the innocence in her heart she invited him in. He smiled. I'll never forget that smile. From that night on everything changed in our lives.
He was a charming and very educated akiri man dressed in fancy clothes and he introduced himself as Razjan Jaffar, a former colleague of my father at the university. However, there was something sinister about him, those eyes, that smirk that never left his face. It was clear that he had no interest in me and suddenly my mom ordered me to leave the room. That was the first time she "ordered" anything with that tone in her voice. It was like that man could speak through her lips and even If I was scared to death, as the obedient child I was I went to my father's library, locked the door and stood there praying for that man to go away. Pray. That's something I never did again.
I could hear their laugh, the sound of a bottle of wine being opened even tho she has never been a drinker. It was obvious that from the moment he stepped inside the house, my mother wasn't herself. But why was she acting like that? I was too young to understand how powerful these cursed things are. And I think even now I'm still too young to understand why he didn't simply killed us. But I have my guesses. At some point silence took over, I was too afraid to check but I knew something wasn't right. It was too damn quiet, even the farm animals were in complete silence. I don't know how much time passed, minutes, hours maybe, it felt like an eternity, but eventually I heard my father's horse. I knew something bad was about to happen but before I could do anything I heard the door being opened, his voice yelling "Honey, I was right!" and then a muffled scream followed by the sound of breaking glass. When I ran to the living room I saw him on the floor bleeding, his throat cut and to my terror, my mother drinking the blood that flowed from his neck while that mysterious man watched with a satisfied smile on his face. I just stood there in shock. The man took one of my father's books, a big black book he had just finished to translate from some ancient language, along with his diary containing all his notes and thoughts about it. That charming man didn't even looked behind when he left the house and in the shape of a big black wolf, disappeared into the night. That was the last time I saw the vampire that took my family from me.
As soon as he left the house my mother came back to herself and realized what she was doing, taking a few steps back from my father's body. But by some miracle he was still alive and managed to hold her with a holy symbol and words I'll never forget, guiding her to the basement where he locked her and barred the door with a chair. He then carved runes all over the door while his neck was still bleeding. I still couldn't move, my father finally took care of his own wounds but not before closing all the windows and curtains in a burst of paranoia. And they would stay that way for a long time. The morning came and my mother finally stopped whimpering in the basement, my father spent the entire night with his face buried in books and old scrolls, it was like I wasn't there, he didn't said a single word to me the whole time. We didn't left the house that day, or that week. The windows remained closed, so as the curtains. At nightfall my mom's muffled cry could be heard coming from the basement, all the animals in the farm were restless, one of the horses actually tried to jump over the fence and got killed by wolves. By the way, seems like all the wolves in Barovia gathered around the farm that night. With the days passing her voice sounded increasingly desperate, asking, begging for blood.
"Please, honey, its me, I love you, give me some, just a little bit, it hurts, it hurts so much, please, I beg you, just a little bit". Those cries for help every now and them turned to demonic screams, screams that still haunt my dreams. She wasn't lying. She wasn't bluffing. She was in pain, suffering in a way a mortal would never understand. She needed blood. Human blood.
My father tried animals of all kind first, from chickens to our old dog. He even took his own blood. And mine. He created a medical apparatus just to take small doses of our blood and he did it many times. But he would find out that wasn't enough. A month had passed, we were too weak to keep taking our blood and eventually my mom's rage outbursts ended, she almost broke her chains a couple times, the runes were the only thing keeping her incapable of using any powers she could discover, like turning into some animal or even mist. But now she was too weak even to stand up. Our daily doses of blood wouldn't be enough. It was possible to watch her from the keyhole, she was defying, her beauty was fading, she was starting to look like a corpse, it wouldn't take long.
But one night something that didn't happened for a long time, finally happened again. Someone eventually knocked at our door. My father seemed desperate at first but when he saw that it was just an unarmed young man seeking refugee for the night his expression changed. I knew what he was about to do. He opened the door and invited the boy in, offered him wine and a warm place by the fire. The kid was one of those talkative people and the more he spoke more my father seemed decided. He had no family, no loved ones, the mists brought him to Barovia and he still had no idea where he was. A wanderer, someone no one would miss. At some point my father said he needed more firewood and asked the kid to get some in the basement. I didn't mentioned before, but I never spoke a word again since that night my mother was turned. So I just watched in silence while the man went downstairs in the dark, holding only a candle, half drunk and with a smile on his face for having a roof over his head and a friendly family taking care of him. He didn't even noticed the runes carved on the wood. I felt bad but part of me wanted that too, I couldn't watch my mother die. Anyway, I didn't know she was already dead. My father locked the door behind him and all we could hear was a sound that probably can be heard only in the jungle, when the beasts are feasting while their prey is still alive.
That was the first of many people my father lured into our house. Homeless people, outlanders looking for directions, some of his former students or anyone stupid enough to wander around our land. But mostly children. He was in charge of the kidnappings and left me in care of everything else, like cooking, taking care of the few animals left, keeping the front of the house clean and the windows open during day so people don't notice anything strange. And to always light a lantern on our porch at night. I wish I could say that I was just a child and didn't know what I was doing, but that wouldn't be entirely true. I couldn't stand the idea of losing my mother.
Three whole years passed and for all that time the secret was kept, everyone believed that my father was just a sad lunatic and although I was visibly a malnourished, pale and extremely fragile child, no one would notice since I barely left the house. I was also prohibited to enter the basement, I could only see my mother through the keyhole. At least when my father was home. He had to make money and he was usually out during day. What he was doing to bring gold home I have no idea, I never asked and I never cared. I actually liked when he was out. It didn't took long for me to figure how to open the lock and everytime he left the house I went in to see my her, or what was left of her. Her moods changed abruptally, she could sound as a frightened child or a fierce beast, but somehow I was never afraid of her. I often offered my wrist, my legs, or any other part of my body my father wouldn't see the bite mark. She always took care to not drink too much from me, except for one time, the only time I was really scared of her. She drank too much and she wouldn't stop, I tried to push her away in vain and on that moment I realized that even if she wasn't capable of hurting me in life, that thing she had became was. She came back to herself just before killing me, pushed me away with the strenght of five men and ordered me to never go in there again. It was the second time she ordered me anything with that tone of voice. And the last.
The inevitable happened. Rumours spread about missing people, fathers looking for their children, all of them last seen around that area, screams coming from the old house at night, animals getting agitated near the farm and even gypsy wards around our land. Eventually it came to the knowledge of the guard and the church of the Morning Lord. It was an autumn morning when they knocked down the door and found our slaughter house, countless bodies buried in the field, some still waiting to be bury, personal belongings of dozens of people, bizarre medical tools and gadgets, and to the surprise of all, some children still alive in the basement, held captive in cages. My mother was crying when they dragged her outside. She burst into flames and I can still hear her screams when I close my eyes. My father was hanged in our tree and left there for the crows. They used my swing's rope to do it. They finally set the entire house on fire. The house, the barn, the long gone plantation, my memories, my musical boxes, our lives. Everything was destroyed by the fire.
None of those men knew I was their child, they took me for one of the missing kids. Since there was no one looking for me, I was sent to the orphanage as an ordinary orphan. But there's was nothing ordinary about me. It took me almost five years to start speaking again and that only happened after hundreds of hours of treatment with a man named Dr. Gaspar on the orphanage, a doctor of the mind. He became curious about the children rescued from that haunted house and took care of all of them for free, but I knew his interest in me was deeper. It didn't took long for him to realize I wasn't a traumatized kidnap victim, but the traumatized daughter of a vampire and a man driven mad by sadness. He actually took me home with him and with time I became his assistant. The next years were somehow peaceful, he taught me how to deal with my memories, my nightmares, my demons, my guilt and with time I could say that three suicide attempts later, he healed me. At least what could be healed, some scars were too deep even for him. But good things don't last much in my life and when I was seventeen he was killed by a patient he was treating. I was left own my own again. I was too old for the orphanage and I wouldn't go back there even if I wasn't, I would have to start taking care of myself.
If there's something my father taught me is that people pay for old things. The older, the dustier, the deeper it was buried, more they will pay. At that age I became a grave robber. I know, there's nothing to be proud on this line of work, but I needed to eat. Not that I didn't cared about the dead, I just cared more about myself. And I still had a dream and a long way to go to reach it. The University Of Dementlieu, the center of the core's knowledge, where my father once was a teacher and where he dreamed to send me when I came to age. It was my dream too. Specially cause no one in Barovia seemed willing to talk about what I wanted to talk. Vampires. The simple mention of the word was enough to get in trouble. And I needed to learn everything about them. Everything.
Relic after relic, tomb after tomb, I made my way to Port a Lucine and graduated with honours as a Historian. My father would be proud of me, so would my mother. I spent most of my time there at the library and gathered as much information as I could about the only thing that mattered to me. I was a prodigy in my class but I declined their offer to become an academic and took the road back to Barovia to find the vampire that stole my life. I was no longer a child. I would not fear him like last time. I would not run. I would not flinch. Fear is the only thing I decided to left buried in the past.
My hunt was about to begin.