Mercy in the Undertow

It was hard work hauling bodies out of the Strid, but someone had to do it. There were always tourists or ramblers or foolish aristocrats who didn’t know the place’s reputation, or else thought the treacherous current would make an exception in their case.

It never did, though. Brithwen should know. She’d lived centuries in this glade, watching the beeches and the ancient, thick-trunked oaks grow and die and grow again. She disliked when it became noisy with search and rescue teams, with their loud sirens and fluorescent jackets, making bonemeal of a job she’d been doing perfectly well since before the Norman conquest.

Brithwen was a strong swimmer, and she knew the rapids well, and she had the advantage of not needing to breathe. She dragged today’s corpse out of the roil of white water and onto the rocky bank, turning her over. The woman was dressed in a neoprene wetsuit, soaked dark hair slicked across her face, skin ashen and bloodless.

Brithwen closed her eyes, already knowing this was a last resort case.

She took a moment to whisper a prayer; St. Cuthbert and all saints, preserve her soul inviolate.

She hoped that she was wrong, and breathing into the mouth and pressing the chest would work this time. But something in her knew even now that this woman was too far from life. Not quite dead either, though. There was a certain itch in Brithwen’s soul, some instinct that lived in the dividing line where the foul blood had seeped into her. It told her she could help here, at least by a certain definition.

God may have abandoned her here, but in a thousand years she had formed no plans to abandon him back. She was duty bound to do good, even at the mercy of the blood-hunger, even condemned to remain pinned to the earth by her feet until the Last Judgement. Maybe that was why she tried: some thin hope of redemption. Or maybe she simply preferred her home not to be choked with bodies.

Either way, what she was about to do was better done to the almost-dead, rather than those who had a chance at a normal life and death.

Brithwen leaned over the woman, unzipping her wetsuit to expose her throat. The skin was smooth and wet, still slightly warm. Brithwen ran a finger down it, feeling the place where the pulse should be.

“Fishing again, Bri?”

Brithwen hissed and crossed herself, startled from her deep concentration by the familiar voice. She looked up to see him standing over her, waving in her face, and sighed in fond exasperation. “Leave off, Lorrie-lad!”

“Don’t call me that. I’m fifty fucking years old. Even when I was a child no one called me that.”

“Lawrence, then. Leave off.”

The truth was, he would always be fifteen years old to her. She had pulled him from the Strid in 1987 with his lungs full of water, another last resort case. After she’d brought him back he’d sobbed and babbled about his new Walkman getting lost, before he’d noticed the blood on them both. Then he’d shaken in her arms, his body not yet used to being without the shock responses that it should have – no racing heart, no flush beneath the skin, breathing optional.

She’d helped him through the confusion and consuming hunger of rebirth, fed him more of her blood, that unholy communion that connected them all across the centuries. She’d gone back into the Strid and found his sunglasses and his Walkman for him, waterlogged though it was.

He still wore those sunglasses, most days; they were blocky, angular, back in style again. Perhaps the sun bothered him more than it did her, or perhaps he just liked them. Lawrence was somewhat prone to vanity, his hair always slicked back or spiked or artfully tousled, changing with the fashions. These days he wore finely tailored suits, that went some of the way to disguising the fact that he still had the body of a fifteen-year-old. His money came from something to do with computers that Brithwen didn’t understand, but he seemed to have plenty of it now.

Lawrence was away most of the time. He disliked the Strid – understandable, Brithwen thought, since he had drowned here. But he always came back to see her anyway. By contrast, Brithwen had never felt at home in cities for long. Things changed too quickly there. Others of their kind might reinvent themselves with the turn of history, but she preferred to stay where she was, quietly saving the unwary. A little blood was enough for her, taken as payment for saving a life.

At least, in a manner of speaking.

Lawrence had perched delicately on a rock so as not to get his expensive shoes wet, peering down with interest at the woman lying before her.

“Ooh.” He lifted up his sunglasses to get a better look. “She’s hot.”

“Behave yourself, Lorrie,” Brithwen scolded.

She leaned down and brought her mouth to the cooling skin, tracing it with her teeth. She could smell her time running out, the life ebbing away. She whispered a prayer against the place, and sank her teeth in. Thick blood filled her mouth with lingering heat, like stepping into the glow of a hearth on a winter night.

She had to concentrate, so as not to lose herself in the sensation of it. Brithwen could drain her dry so easily, throw the empty, broken vessel of the body into the Strid where it would never be found by the living. But instead she must only take a little, just enough to sustain her. She’d never truly understood temptation before the first time she’d done this to someone. Brithwen thought the devil couldn’t possibly be involved in this, though; not with the way her world narrowed to only her and the dying woman in her arms.

With effort, Brithwen pulled back, licking the taste from her lips. She unbuttoned the cuff of her soaked shirt, plunging her teeth into her own wrist, their blood already mingling. She pressed the wound to the woman’s slack mouth, and closed her eyes for several agonising seconds.

Then the woman began to stir, her tongue moving, pressing into the wound like an infant seeking milk.

Brithwen held her arm there, stroking the woman’s wet hair through the thrashing and the spasms, whispering comfort, singing to her as the transformation took hold. She only wished her own had been this gentle. The Abbess had not been this kind to her girls.

But that was a millennium ago and more. Since then, Brithwen had tried to do better. She had learned to speak her reassurances in every variation of the language that changed around her, learned to understand these dying people and their fears.

And yet she still needed to eat. Unable to resist the sight of the glistening wound any longer, Brithwen pulled the woman into her arms in a sitting position and drank from her throat again. At the same time she felt teeth clamp to the side of her own neck above her collar, inexpert and clumsy. From the corner of her eye she saw Lawrence shift on the rock, mouth open with undisguised bloodlust as he watched from behind his sunglasses.

A moment later the woman tore herself away, gasping.

“Simon,” she said, blood spilling down her chest from her open mouth. “Where is he? Is he safe?”

Her accent was one Brithwen couldn’t identify – something European, but beyond that she had no idea. Lawrence would probably know; he was far more worldly than she. Having been born in on the Northumberland shoreline, and then made her home in the green hills of Yorkshire, Brithwen considered herself as well-travelled as she ever wanted to be. But Lawrence had spent time in London, Japan, America, places Brithwen could barely imagine setting foot, though she had until the last days to walk this earth.

“I haven’t seen anyone else here,” Lawrence said. “Who’s Simon?”

“My fiancé.” The woman trembled, blood dripping down her chin, words coming all at once like the boil of the current in the Strid. “He must be okay, yes? He knows this part of the country well, and this river, he suggested we come here… I’m just a beginner, but he said it was one of the safest places…”

Brithwen felt a chill crawl beneath her skin, that not even fresh blood could chase away. She opened her mouth to speak, but Lawrence beat her to it.

“Ah. Sorry to break it to you love, but he was probably trying to murder you.”

“What?”

“Happens all the time. I saw a YouTube video about it.”

Brithwen gave Lawrence a quelling look, clutching the woman’s hands to still their shaking. They had already cooled to the same temperature as her own skin. “Shh, shush now. What’s your name?”

“Katarina.”

St Catherine, patron saint of unmarried girls, watch over her. She nodded. “I’m Brithwen, this is Lawrence–”

“Are you going to kill me?” Katarina interrupted.

Brithwen sighed, and once again Lawrence beat her to the answer.

“I’m afraid it’s a bit late for that.”

Katarina looked between them, eyes huge in her pale face. She’d be starving now, Brithwen knew. It would be affecting her judgement. Brithwen felt those hungry eyes rake over her, the blood on her face, her wet clothes: sensible flannel shirt tucked into jeans with work boots, the heavy leather belt with a myriad of small useful things Brithwen had gathered hanging from it. The white cotton headscarf that bound up the long braid of her hair; she’d never become used to wearing it loose like people did this century, and never cared to try. Katarina’s eyes lingered on the crucifix at her throat. “Are you an angel?”

Brithwen almost laughed. “No, sweet. Not quite.”

Lawrence snorted, and was about to speak again, when there was a noise from the trees. Brithwen shifted to put herself in front of Katarina, but Lawrence was already running, fleet and strong when he wanted to be.

A moment later he was back, with a smile that was all teeth. “Some bloke, coming this way. Blond hair, jawline, expensive outdoor wear…”

“That’s him! That’s Simon!” Katarina said. “Ah, he must be looking for me…”

If Brithwen hadn’t known Lawrence so well, she wouldn’t have noticed the sadness in the tilt of his mouth.

“Yeah. Probably. …You know, the crowbar he had with him really didn’t go with his outfit.” He looked at Brithwen, teeth bared, white and sharp. “What do you think, Bri? You didn’t even get a full meal. Still hungry?”

“Yes,” she said slowly, letting go of Katarina’s cold hands. The taste of blood still ached in her mouth, the want sharpening into something incandescent, righteous. “I think I am.”