Mara the Wicked (A "Dead Seed" story)

Six: The Taste of Freedom

Note: A good song to go with this chapter is "Natural Born Sinner" by In This Moment.

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Mara was careful not to make the chains rattle as she crept down the hallway. There was no sign of the man who had freed her. She wished he would have taken the chains off her wrists too but at least she could move around in them. They didn't confine her arms or hands to the point of her being useless at least—they only kept her from using her magic.

Following the corridor, Mara came to a heavy oak door. She stood on her tip toes and tried to see out the small window at the top. Too short. If her magic wasn't confined, she would have been able to lift herself up. She would have to just wing it and hope there wasn't anyone waiting on the other side of the door. This had to be a trap, right? If Aimeric was going to free her, he would have done it himself, she was sure of it.

Mara reached her hand out to the handle on the door and went to press the latch. The sound of sobbing caught her ears. Someone was crying; the sound echoing through the hallway. Curiosity getting the better of her, Mara turned and went to find the source of the crying. A few doors down, she heard the sobs at their loudest. Quietly, she opened the door and peered inside. The room was illuminated by torches on the walls. The smell of putrid sores and old blood—along with fresh blood—invaded her nostrils. The smell of iron was heavy in the air—chains, weapons, cages. There must have been a dozen or more of them; all ages; both males and females. Humans. Prisoners of Aimeric. Some were in cages, some chained to the wall. One woman lay naked and strapped to a surgery table, her arms and legs bound with spikes through her hands and feet. Her face was so bloody Mara couldn't tell how old she might be or if she was ugly or pretty. Every person in the room was wounded, tortured. Some were sobbing. Some looked like they had mentally checked out long ago and were just waiting for death. A couple of them looked up in fear when Mara had opened the door.

Chuckling to herself, Mara muttered, "you sick bastard," and then closed the door. She didn't have time to investigate further; she wanted to get out of here.

She tiptoed back to the oak door and carefully pressed the latch, hoping it wasn't locked. Click. Good, it wasn't. Mara was greeted with a moonless night and the smell of fresh rain. She climbed up a concrete staircase, rising out of her basement prison as if she had been reborn again.

Her bare feet touched slippery wet grass and she stopped for a minute to observe her surroundings. She didn't know where she was but if she didn't know any better she would think this house and yard were something out of a fairy tale. Trees and flowers splattered the entire yard like a painting. The house was so clean and normal looking on the outside. Who would have guessed the horrors that waited inside?

Stepping through a path between rose bushes, Mara made her way to a huge pond, the water lapping gently at the edge of it. There was a dock that led to a floating gazebo. Mara walked down the dock, peering into the dark water as she went. Her nose had caught the scent of more blood. Was this where they dumped the bodies when they were finished playing? How many of "them" were there? Mara wondered. Was this house a nest? Or just a few rogue vampires?

Mara made it to the gazebo and looked over the side of its wooden walls. There was a rowboat tied up at the edge of the dock that curled around the gazebo. Solar lights painted the edge of the dock and as Mara peered into the water, she realized a pair of eyes were staring back at her from the floor of the pond.

Squinting, Mara looked closer. There were several bodies anchored in the pond, some decaying with their rotting flesh waving around in the water like a flag, others looked perfectly intact, preserved, and almost still alive. There's no way they could be alive still. They were only humans; they would have drowned in minutes.