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LIGHT AND SHADOW
THE TWINS

By Caireen Kelley

ISBN 978-0-9561884-6-5

The Beginning:

    The twenty-first century was – in the opinion of the Colony Leader – a disaster. Mortal women thought too much, became involved in politics after having received the right to vote and ‘neglected’ their duties and their children’s education. This ‘disaster’ was one of the reasons why the whole Colony lived isolated from the outside world.
    The Colony had hard rules to prevent their women from rebelling against the life they lived.
    One of the rules was that women were not allowed to watch TV, read newspapers and so on because if they found out what was going on in the world outside, they would wish the same for themselves – which could not possibly be allowed. For the same reason the girls of the Colony were taught together by the same teacher in town, while the boys usually attended the local school.
Every firstborn child had to be a boy, as firstborns inherited their father’s title in case of his retirement – for death seemed to be rather unnatural for an un-dead being.
    There also was a third rule: Women always had to be obedient and follow all orders that the men gave them because women were worth far less than men.
    The other reason was because the whole town was inhabited by vampires. Not created vampires, but a vampire race – vampires that get married and have children, vampires that can get older if they want to. Traditionally they were all named after trees, stones or plants. Still, they were living dead, independent from Oxygen, immune against sunlight, without a heartbeat and incapable of digesting anything else other than blood. They could drink liquids without suffering from any fatal consequences – but the liquids would not taste of anything. Yet, they did not hunt anything other than animals. And there was a limit of how many animals were allowed to be killed. These were rules of survival.
Some hundred years ago the first Lord Blackthorn bought the castle, known then as Dun Dreach-Fhoula or Castle of the Blood Visage, the adjoining grounds and the surrounding forests from its owner. The castle was located in County Kerry, more exactly in the Macgillycuddy Reeks.
    It should be mentioned here that the first owner of the castle was in fact another vampire, who decided to move to another country after centuries of being confronted with the fears and superstitions of the local people. He was married and had two sons and three daughters. While the parents and sons hunted only animals the daughters enjoyed using the powers they had to attract and seduce local men. Many young men had followed the appealing melody of a voice or a female shape in the shadows to their doom. So it was a rational and logic decision to leave before the mortals could find out about their existence.
    Whenever mortals are confronted with something that differs from what they know to be ‘normal’, they usually react with fear. Sometimes those fears get so strong that one person’s opinion can change the opinion of a million of other people – everybody will believe the possible danger and – more importantly – that the danger has to be gotten ‘rid of’. The history books are filled with more than enough examples of those fears – fears that, in retrospect, appear rather irrational. Millions of innocent people have been murdered because they were considered to be ‘dangerous’ – the ‘danger’ being in most cases nothing else than superstition and fear.
    A high stone wall was built almost immediately around the edges of the property, creating a protected space, where the first settlers built their houses.
Lord Blackthorn also claimed the right to hunt in the surrounding forests. Nobody else but him – and later the town inhabitants – was allowed to hunt in this area. The mortals would probably have agreed sooner, had they known how he hunted…
    Lord Blackthorn provided homeless and/or nomadic vampires with a home and a future. Out of gratitude the settlers declared him and the firstborn children of his family for the generations to come to be their rightful leaders. Many generations of Blackthorns had led the Colony so far – women as well as men. It was only under the present Colony Leader, Lord Rowan Blackthorn, that the rules against women had been created and enforced. Changes were coming and he was not prepared to deal with them – or rather refused to deal with them.
    The castle was made from grey stones and stood on top of a hill. It had a rectangular shape, about four storeys high, with one round tower on each corner. The entrance to the castle was at the west side. One of the later Lord Blackthorns added a balcony on each tower, at the height of the second storey, in the early twentieth century. Below the hill, in all directions around the castle, were Tudor-style houses. On the southern side of the hill, just below the castle, were a few shops. Clothing boutiques, a music shop, which sold all kinds of music equipment, instruments and notes, one shop that sold almost everything –needles and thread, knitting wool, pens and note pads, wax candles and even bandages and plasters – a book shop and two hairdressers – one for men, one for women. There were no hospitals, grocery shops or pharmacies, not even a coffee shop or a pub. Vampires had no need for medication as they never got sick. If a baby was about to be born, the help of one of the witches living in the cottages halfway between the vampire town and the mortal town would be called upon.
    The whole town was surrounded by a high stone wall. The only ways to leave or to enter the town were four well-guarded wooden and cast iron gates – one gate for each cardinal point. Twenty mortals would not be strong enough to open them as the inside of these gates was covered with massive steel plates. Three of the gates opened into the wilderness of the surrounding forests. No roads led from three of these gates into the wilderness but four roads led from the castle towards the gates. Only the South Gate was connected with a road which led to a mortal town, located a couple of miles down the road at the bottom of the mountains, and also bypassed a group of twelve cottages, located halfway between the two towns. The South Gate was usually closed to prevent uninvited visitors from entering the town. Somebody passing through this gate would be confronted with the south facing wall of the castle and two of the towers.
    On each side of the castle – behind some houses, close to the stone wall – was a long row of stables. Four stables were there altogether, one in each quarter of the town. Approximately two hundred horses were held in those stables. They were exercised regularly, of course, but the reason for the horses to be in this town at all was a security measure. Mortals usually buy cans with food for emergencies. Vampires keep animals as a food source for emergencies. Horses had rich, strong blood, so one vampire would probably be content with as little as one pint of blood.
    The horses were taken care of by a vet, who also used them as blood donors, which means he took blood of them using a complicated-looking apparatus and stored the blood in clear plastic bags. Each household had a fridge full of blood bags.
    But most of the people living in the town preferred to hunt. Shooting a sitting duck is neither much of a challenge nor as much fun.
Adult vampires usually don’t require more than one or two pints of blood a day, if they rest for several hours and don’t get injured. But infants, children and adolescent vampires needed much more blood as their bodies were constantly growing and developing. A newborn vampire usually required at least five blood bags a day, sometimes more.
    So it was important that the children learned to control their urges as soon as they learned how to hunt. If just one vampire was not able to control himself or herself and was either seen by mortals while feeding or – much worse – attacked and killed mortals to feed from them it would be only a matter of time until the mortals began to shout for stakes and torches. Although stakes would have been no real help against a vampire of the Blackthorn Colony.
On the other hand a vampire, who doesn’t drink blood, first looses his or her supernatural powers and special abilities. If he or she continues to starve himself or herself from nourishment he or she falls into a coma after approximately four weeks.
    However, if the comatose vampire doesn’t receive nourishment at all he or she can stay in a coma for several hundred years, even millennia, until he or she receives nourishment but the vampire will never die from starvation.
It takes vast amounts of blood to reanimate a vampire in a coma – approximately the blood of three huge horses after being comatose for several centuries. A vampire who doesn’t receive the amount of blood he or she needs when being woken will be ravenous and hunt until his or her thirst is positively sated. Most of the stories about vampires rising from graves and killing whoever crosses their path are actually based on the story of a re-awakening vampire. So, it is rather obvious, why vampires avoid falling into a coma in the first place.
    There are not many ways to kill a vampire. The famous stake through the heart works on some of them, but the only way to make sure a vampire is actually dead – or rather extinguished – is to burn him or her alive.