#Premascine

[m-blackwell-and-associates]

A bastard's bastard. pt 2

Lillian looked at the hair in her hands. Four days after the incident and her body had stopped withering. Not quite a walking corpse, but certainly nothing that would walk in public and not cause notice. Her hair, her beautiful dark auburn hair, had continued to wither away until it became brittle and thin. Now it was the hair of an old woman standing on the edge of her grave. The nuns at school had alternately praised her for her luck and admonished her not to give into the vanity that was the sin of all women. If they could see her now, holding handfuls of faded dried up weeds.  

A knock at the door made her cry out in alarm, "No! Don't come in!" She didn't want to see anyone until she could come to terms with what she was. But someone entered anyway.

"Mother," Lillia whispered, suddenly wishing to cry. Instead, she covered her drawn and sunken face behind knobby hands. "Don't look at me!"

Catherine Rosselini came to her daughter with soothing sounds of comfort. "Oh sweetheart, don't hide from me. You're as beautiful now as you were when you were born."

Lillian choked on her mother’s good humor and obvious lie. "Newborns are ugly."

"Not to their mothers." Catherine laughed, not hesitating to put her arms around her daughter, holding the cold and stiff body tight. Desperately needing the comfort, Lillian returned the embrace still feeling tears that wouldn't fall.  Could she still cry in this state, or would she always feel stuck not being able to purge what was in her heart?

"What do I do now?" she whispered into her mother’s shoulder, only just now realizing she was dressed for a formal evening. Count Rossellini was hosting his own descendants tonight at the family gathering, an invitation that Catherine had coveted more than anything, finally getting to mingle with the greatest of her relations.  Lillian backed away hastily, less her changed countenance somehow stain the dress.  She felt filthy in this condition, still smelling the canal water that had flooded that pit and wondered if, like her missing tears, if she’d ever feel clean again.

"You put on the dress I brought you and you hold your head up high and you remind everyone that you have been triply blessed this year. And when that poor excuse of a father of yours hosts the Milliners at the end of the week as the youngest family, you'll attend that one too and remind every one of those ignorant Yankees exactly what you bring to the table."

"Why'd you do it?"

"Do what, honey?"

"Sleep with dad if you hate him so much?"

Catherine looked thoughtful, smoothing back the thin scant wisps of hair that still graced Lillian’s head. "Because it was the price of my independence, darling. And besides, it brought me you and your little brothers and I didn't have to chain myself to some fat lugard of a man for the rest of my life. You," she kissed Lillian's cheek. "Were entirely worth putting up with that dithering ass. And this," she kissed Lillian's other cheek. "Has made every insult worth it. My precious daughter given the Kiss just hours after the Milliners were formally included in the family. By one of the elders no less. It is very possible you are closer in blood to Uncle Ambrogino than you are to your father!"

The way her mother laughed, it was clearly the crow of triumph.  It was apparently a mark of status to have a close family be….whatever she was now.  Whatever status Catherine had gained by having Old Man Milliner’s bastards had somehow increased by her literal falling in with Mathias. 

"How...how did you know to send me there? To the well? How did you know there'd be family there?"  Lillian tried to forget the screams of the people they pushed in - Frances’ wife and all his descendants, by blood or by marriage, that had refused to bend a knee to the horror that was the Giovanni.  It was Frances’ proof of loyalty, that everyone walking would be bound, one way or another, to the family business.  She had already heard the servants gossiping on the haggling being done over the newly widowed and who would take them of Frances’ hands.

Again that thoughtful look as if Catherine was considering the events and if the story could be told. "My uncle married outside of the family. She was an only child, an heiress to use the old fashion term, so it was permitted.  There wouldn't be anyone to challenge the inheritance or any of her own family she could run to if she....discovered any of the family business. It was eventually discovered she had been having an affair. He couldn't divorce her and risk losing any of the estate, or her taking the one child he knew for sure was his, so he demanded that Count Rossellini do something. And so he did. My uncle's wife, her lover, and their children were all pushed into the well. We were all brought to watch as a reminder that one doesn't betray the family."

It was said so casually that Lillian felt colder than she had been, staring at her mother in something akin to shock.  “And…and no one thought her death suspicious?”

“It's easy to fake a drowning death in Venice, my dear.  What was left of the bodies showed up in the lagoon eventually.  A boat accident was to blame.”

"Did you...expect this to happen to me?"  Lillian pressed withered hands to her sunken cheeks.

"Absolutely not! Nothing from that pit has ever created a childe, not by any family story I've ever heard. I sent you to follow our cousins because I wanted you to know that there were resources here that you could make use of. If you needed them."

[m-blackwell-and-associates]

A bastard's bastard.

It was the yelling that woke her, the loud roar of men all piling over one another in order to be heard and obeyed with no one actually doing the active part of listening. She hurt deep down in the muscle, almost the bone, an ache that felt like she was being slowly pulled apart only to be pushed together again. Lillian opened her eyes to see a monster staring down at her, the corpse pale skin bloated and slick from years in the water, stained with the grime and filth of the canals. It grinned to see her, a rictus of sharp teeth behind tight skin, a gush of filthy water coming from its mouth.

Lillian screamed. Or tried to, all that came out was the same filthy water, leaving a taste so foul she thought she would die. She felt the sewage run down her throat and over her chest, suddenly becoming aware she was as bare as a stone, sprawled on the slick stairs of the well. She drew herself up into a ball, hiding her filthy nakedness from the monster before her and the men yelling above. The water now cleared from her lungs, she did scream, weak and thin and quivering.   The monster did not seem to care, turning its face from her to the men above who suddenly went silent.

"Fuck me. She's alive,” whispered one.

"Jesus motherfucker Christ, someone get Ambrogino." When no one moved. "Get Ambrogino!"

There was the sound of hurried footsteps and scuffing on the worn stones.  Voices began again, jumbling over one another.

"Who the fuck is that down there?"

"That's the Milliner’s bastard."

"Milliner?  Frances Milliner?”

“Fuck. The one that just got turned?"

“Ambrogino is going to kill us.  We’re the next for the well.”

"She came as part of the entourage. She was supposed to be married off and there was a fist fight with the Rossellini over the contract."

“What was she doing following us here?”

Lillian didn't pay any attention to the men above, realizing she wasn't as scared as she should be nor was she as cold. The monster must have sensed this and looked at her again. With some difficulty, as if attempting to remember the actions, "Ioveanus".

She swallowed and nodded. "Lillian Milliner...Ioveanus."

It laughed then, a terrible wet noise. When it spoke, it spoke in Latin and her grade school instruction was insufficient to understand. She didn't have time to interrupt when the roar above her began again. Lillian looked up to see the hulking form of Ambrogino, the most important of the Anziani. Or so she'd been told. He took one look at the thing on the stairs with her and his eyes bulged. He began yelling, not at the men around him or her, but at the thing from the water. All she understood was "Mathias".

Her father was there suddenly, showing more concern and attention than she had never known him to be capable of.

"Uncle!" Francis cried, apparently addressing Ambrogino who was still in the rapid Latin argument with the thing from the well. "Is she okay? What happened to Lillian?"

"Your bastard went and did something no one has done in centuries!" the elder cried. "How did she even know to come here?"

"But what happened?!"

"She got the Kiss," one of the men said, speaking as though he had possession of a terrible truth. "We thought it grabbed her to eat her, like the ones we pushed in. They went down and we thought for sure she was a gonner, but then he come up again and laid her on the stair. He's been waiting like that the entire time."

“Tore a big hole in her.  Nearly bit her clean in half.  We watched it heal up.”

Ambrogino shook both fists in the air, one a withered blackened claw of a hand, yelling incoherently, but the monster - Mathias Lillian corrected herself - waited patiently for this storm to pass.  The head of the Anziani calmed after a moment and spoke bitterly. "Niece, I would like to introduce you to your sire. Mathais Ioveanus Premascine."

A number of the men crossed themselves, in a habit of spiritual protection. Francis Milliner's concern turned to anger.

"She was my daughter! She was mine to turn!"

"You never would have been allowed," Ambrogino said bluntly, tucking hands into the sleeves of his robes. "You've only just been given the Kiss. You have to prove yourself worthy of childer. If your offspring had promise, she would have been given to another per family tradition. It looks as if our cousin made the decision for us. Someone get this woman some clothing and take her back to the family gathering.  I need to speak to the others."

Lillian watched Mathais back away slowly, almost slithering down the damp and ancient stairs. "Why me?" She asked, not knowing if he could even understand her.

It paused, and its slurry liquid voice said "Mors in aqua" and sank beneath the fetid water.