The Violet Hour - Before the Beginning - Phisto

I'd spent the night with an unmemorable coloratura.  Her blood tasted like her voice, light and uninteresting.  I'd broken a cardinal rule when I compelled her from sheer boredom, to allow me to taste the thin line of blood that ran inside her thigh.  I fought my nature and sliced into the teal lined flesh with sensitivity that I did not feel. I couldn't afford to leave the silly little soprano, with the voice of a bird, scarred.   Her blood did little to excite me.  It was almost as insufferable as the antiseptic fare that I procured, through other means, from labs and hospitals.

"That was delightful my dear." I lied.  "I don't think that your talent will take you far, so I'd perfect  your other abilities.  Men can be very generous when you know how to please them in the bedroom."   I rose from the disheveled bed, gathered my few things and had closed the apartment door before a glass slammed behind me into the door's cheap wooden veneer.

I hated boredom.  It was too tedious.  I had begun to think of a little vacation or sport in a less populated area than New York.  We had auditions the next day for the new season at the American Opera Center.  Singers, singers and more singers.  Had I known that I was about to meet her, i would have spent a more comfortable night.

Jasmine was about to change everything.  I saw a way to accomplish everything that mattered   fame, power and the destruction of my bete noir - all because of one girl with a gift in her throat.

I laughed and laughed until lightening slashed the New York skyline.  I could now control the elements and that made me laugh even more.  And thunder shook the concrete that I stood upon, and rain slashed the night.

The Violet Hour - Before the Beginning - Phisto

            I came into my physical form, five hundred years earlier as Count Ferenc Nadasdy.  I was betrothed to a rare woman, Erzsebet Bathory, who matched my tastes for cruelty and was blessed with good lineage as the cousin to the Prince of Transylvania.  The Turkish forces of the Ottoman Empire had overrun the region. They and the Austrians fought throughout my distinguished military career for the blood drenched land that was not only bloodied from battle, but from Erzsebet’s fascination with torturing young female servants and bathing in their blood.  She was later known as the Queen of Blood.  I called her companion.  Though our tale is much more complicated than that.  Much.

            

           You understand that I was accustomed to having many enemies.  I had begun to thrill with each 

additional foe and spent my life plotting how to destroy them either through a gore-heavy death or 

through political and financial ruin.  Once again, my enemies were now escalating. 

The Violet Hour Prologue - Before the Beginning - Luca

My life had taken on a symmetrical solitary pattern that gave me peace.  That is until I began to hear her sound that caressed my senses until I was in torment.  It had a familiar quality and I thought that I was merely remembering my wife, Fiora.  But it was more than that.  Much more.

I'd grown complacent in my spiritual practice and hadn't maintained the vigilance that was prudent for a supernatural, such as I.  Even though I was half man - half angel, I'd forgotten the fires in which my supernatural form had been forged and became involved with the world.  I was a brilliant young composer at Juilliard.  It's not necessary for me to feign a false sense of humility. I'd had five hundred years to perfect my craft.  Nothing less than brilliance was acceptable.  But my spiritual practice hadn't developed with the same velocity.  I'd been celibate for the last three hundred years for I knew that intimacy would bring me to the brink of murder.  And I could no longer tolerate that.  I'd learned to survive by other means from Indian monks with whom I'd studied for two hundred years.

But my human longing had been awakened with her sound.  It snaked through my mind, my very veins with a sensuality that made me remember too much. And the remembering awakened my longing and in turn my desire.  I had to be near her.  Even though I hadn't met her yet.

When she came to Juilliard to audition, every sense, every cell was acutely attuned to her being.  And I wanted to seek her out, even as I knew that I couldn't dare to engage with her.  But I was again misguided for my inattention left her prey to the one creature whom I hated above all else.  He understood her talent and how he could use it to escalate our centuries old feud.  Phisto had also calculated how he could manipulate her talent to increase his fame.
So my effort to protect her had endangered her.  And I would do anything to protect her from one such as he, a Vampire.  Anything.

The Violet Hour Prologue - The Story Continues - Jasmine

I began to acknowledge some of Grappa's tastes and passions since we were then living together.  Basically I was something spectral casting shadows on the walls but not really interactive, so I was pretty impressionable.  My grief needed an outlet but I couldn't find a way to give voice to it. I felt like I was drifting amidst shadow figures and images of a world that no longer fit into a recognizable pattern.  I chose to leave my furniture at my parents' home and stayed in the room that Grappa had decorated for me years ago.  I floated through cool lavender colors and longed for the heat of recognition and love to warm my bones.


PTSD is how they classified my disorder, post traumatic stress syndrome.  It's one of the great conditions where time doesn't heal all wounds but you actually start to feel worse.  So after six months, when the nightmares started and I gradually stopped communicating verbally, Grappa began to get worried.  Really worried.  He was always cheerful, but I could see the strain behind the healthy rose color that stained his cheeks and offset his trim white beard.  His dimples didn't flash as often when he smiled because he smiled much less often, or at least without any real authenticity.  Grappa was a powerful man with a few boat loads of money so he started asking around for a good therapist.  He'd decided that the school counselor was less than adequate.

The first night that I awakened screaming from a classic abandonment dream, I saw his hands shake and hated myself for adding to his grief.  I had dreamed that I was in a car with my parents and that they had invited me to tour the Amalfi Coast with them.  My father was singing in his floating tenor voice and my mom was singing all of the wrong words when suddenly Dad lost control of the car.  The car began to tip over the edge of the hazardous pass when my parents disappeared and I was alone in the car as it fell over and over and over again.  All that remained was my screams, which apparently awakened Grappa.  When he asked me what had happened, I couldn't speak.  I could only shake and cry.

Desperate for a way to reach me, Grappa began to hum some melodies from operatic arias that comforted him.  I couldn't speak but I could relate to the music.  Then he'd bought me an I Pod and downloaded some of his favorite music.  I was compelled by the music of a young composer, Luca Cantanta.  Grappa told me that Luca's surname meant song, in Italian.  Something about his music seduced me musically and in other ways that were beyond my years.  I felt as though angels wings were brushing against my soul when I listened to his haunting and hypnotic melodies.

I didn't know that years later I would not only meet, but love someone like Luca.  Even though I was suffering, I was also preparing for my destiny.  I couldn't know then where it would take me.  Thank God for that.

The Violet Hour - Prologue - Before the Beginning -Jasmine

It was the summer of my thirteenth year. I was staying with my grandfather, Grappa, in his hilltop home in San Rafael.  My parents were touring the Amalfi coast together.  I wasn't happy with the arrangement.  Sure, I adored my Grappa, but they were always leaving me behind.  I wanted to be included in their little secret society just once.  Especially since I was entering high school in the Fall.  I deservedly felt like I should have been granted a pass to their freakin holiday plans.  Wasn't I part of their family as well?

As the weeks passed, I'd begun to feel safe and pampered with Grappa.  His high definition blue eyes always held me in love.  I knew what I meant to him.  I just didn't know what I meant to my parents.  I always felt like I was intruding on a date that they alone had been meant to share. But Grappa had taken some time off from his Biotech company, Gene Designs, and we'd traveled to see the Hearst Castle and to Disney World.  I was spending the afternoon with my best friend when Grappa found us in the gazebo making calls on the new cell phone that he'd bought me.

"You can reach your parents anytime with this," he'd said.  And I believed him and it made me feel better.

But that was before he came to me with such sorrow weighing the blue of his eyes that they almost seemed black.  That was the day that he told me I could never reach my parents again.  Not with a cell phone, the Concorde, nothing.  They'd been killed while driving the Amalfi Coast at night.  All that I heard was that they didn't love me enough to stay, enough to invite me on their little summer fling.

I began to recede more completely into the silences that comforted me when I felt that I wasn't acknowledged by my parents.  Why did they have me anyway?  All they needed was each other.  I heard fragments of what he said and saw the strain in his eyes while he tried to control the grief that battered his soul.  I would live with him or we could move back to my parents' home together.  It would be my choice.  I chose to live with Grappa.  I didn't want to return to a home where I'd felt like some vestigial organ.  I wanted to hurt them as they'd hurt me.  So I turned away from the life that we'd had, such as it had been.  And solitude and anguish became my new home.

Paranormal Reunions - Lovers Reuniting

I tore through the awakening dawn running towards my lover.  Briefly I acknowledged that it could have been Storm who had survived the killing night.  Perhaps I was about to die.  But I had already chosen.  I would not live without Cairn.  I felt his energy flickering as I drew closer.  Then I saw him approaching, slowly but steadily.  He'd returned to me.  His immortal life had not been ended by the darker demon.

One never knows the depth of their joy until they've feared that they would never see a loved one again, and have been granted a reprieve.  I felt as though I soared as I gathered his bloodied body into my arms.

"Thank God," I choked.

He held my face in his battle roughened hands and my heart filled with intense gratitude as I beheld the green love in his eyes.  So familiar had they become to me that it seemed they were my only home.

"What of Storm?"

"He walks the earth still."

I saw the rage and frustration that played in his eyes.  I wanted to shriek my anguish even as I was grateful that Cairn at least, had survived as well.

"What happened?" I asked gently as I led him towards the cottage.

"I'd managed to overpower him as I surrounded him with images of rebirth, awakening and love. He grew weaker as I intensified my concentration.  I gripped his vicious face and held him as he struggled against the flow of my blood that sprayed into his mouth.  My blood is poisonous for a Vampire."

How had I come to this point where I was having a conversation with a Vampayre - whom I adored - about destroying a powerful and misogynistic Vampire.  It was too unreal.

"There was a shower of darkness that briefly obscured Beltaine's fire.  I thought that the light was lost.  And this smell, like rotted flesh but worse, overwhelmed me.  It stank of putrid and violent desecration of all that I'd held sacred.  I reeled from the stench even as I fought to hold Storm within my grasp. Storm bellowed like the souls of the damned and then he disappeared within the darkest shadows of the beast that had come to claim him.  It was his god, who had saved him.  God help us now."

"I have to tell Morgana that she is not yet safe."

"Don't. Don't alarm her now.  We must consider our options and call her once we have a plan. The detective is still watching over her."

"What good can a mortal man be against such paranormal evil?"

"I will find another way." Cairn said and stroked my face with his bloodied finger.  Though he was stronger and walking with more energy.  His life force was returning, as it always did when he focused on light and love.

He was home. That was all that I cared for at the moment.  Though I should not have so easily been relieved.  There were many battles yet to come and torments that my love could not quickly navigate.

Death's Passage through Night - Solstice On

I heard my mother's voice telling me that "there would be a softening in the wind." It was one of her signature expressions for when she felt that times had gotten too tough. It gave me courage for I knew that she was referring to Cairn. I had become too agitated to tune into the battle with any real clarity. So I called on my faith.

I knew that Storm had labeled the Beltaine ritual as pagan even as he sacrificed virgins and young female animals to the fierce god that he had served. Such was the path of political might. The voices that rang with the loudest condemnation were often the same ones that committed the most heinous transgressions. The rumors said that Storm was born with a terrible physical defect that a witch had caused by cursing his pregnant mother. Others said that his mother had serviced influential men in their small Roman village, and that he hated women ever after. Who knows what forms the heart of a demon to beat within flesh and blood? But demon he was. Vampire demon.

The magical fires burned like bleeding torches and surrounded the cottage in a fiery womb. I no longer feared for my safety. If Cairn were taken from me I wanted to join him and my mother in realms beyond this earthly template.

Dawn began to spread across the sky like rose petals scattered on a bridal bed.  I didn't think that I'd see any bridal bed today or any other day.  Not without my partner.  I closed my eyes to see if any of the images had cleared.  I fell to my knees when I felt Cairn's energy.  It was weakened but steady.  I felt Reiki's energetic heat leap in my hands.  I knew that he yet lived.  I ran to the window and noted that the fires were banked.  I searched the awakening distance for his form.  My vision had begun to blur when I saw a flickering movement.  I tore out of the cottage oblivious to my safety or anything other than Cairn.  Perhaps I was running to Storm's arms.  Either way, this hideous night spent at death's altar was ending.  I was ready to face the outcome.