Chapter 13: And Gill Came Tumbling After

Seeking feedback on my work-in-process cozy fantasy novel, Jack and the Beanstalk Cafe.

Gillian

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Gillian screamed as Jack disappeared over the ledge of the steep hill. She ran to the spot where he fell and peered down, but couldn’t see anything in the darkness. So, she did the only thing she could, and leaped down after him.

It occurred to her as she tumbled, that jumping down a sheer hillside probably wasn’t her brightest idea. She grasped at dirt and roots and was able to right herself and slide to an almost graceful stop at the bottom of the incline.

She found Jack sprawled on the ground, his head angled unnaturally against a large rock. Gillian’s nostrils flared and her throat tightened as the metallic scent of a rather substantial quantity of blood flooded her senses.

No, no, no, no.

Her breath hitched as she knelt in the dirt next to his prone body and felt around his head for the wound. Her fingers found where the bone on the top of his head was broken and warm, sticky blood soaked into his hair. The only sounds in the still night were the pounding in her ears and the distant caw of a crow.

Wait. The only sounds?

Gillian lowered her head to Jack’s chest and was met with silence. His heart wasn’t beating.

She looked around in a panic for someone to help, but of course they were alone. Gillian’s mind ran through everything she’d learned in books about the human body. Pressure on the wound, disinfecting, stitching, pounding on the chest, breathing air into the lungs. She didn’t know how to do any of that.

Suddenly, a thought occurred to her and she recoiled. No, she couldn’t do that. But what other options did she have? She had to do something for Jack. She couldn’t let him die because of her.

Her hand trembled as she raised her wrist to her mouth. She winced as her canines lengthened into sharp points that pierced into her flesh. Two dots of blood formed on her pale skin and she lowered her wrist to Jack’s mouth, dripping the crimson liquid between his parted lips.

Gillian had always known her vampire blood had healing properties for mortals, but she’d never dared to use it. Her father had chosen not to share with her the exact quantity of blood needed to finish healing a mortal before it stopped being beneficial and began transforming their body. In all the story books, humans were always worried about a vampire bite turning them. They didn’t know you had to feed from the vampire yourself.

Gillian lifted her hand from Jack’s mouth after a minute and let out a sob, silently pleading with the universe to spare him. From death, yes. But also from life as a vampire if her estimate had been wrong.

Looking down at Jack’s pale face, the only color was the remnants of her own blood on his lips. She brushed a thumb across his mouth to wipe it away, her thoughts drifting back to their almost-kiss in the chapel. She wished they could be transported back to that moment, before Alice came into their lives and ruined everything.

She wasn’t certain he believed that he was a warlock and she was a vampire. But the look of horror on his face when he’d looked at her last would be something she’d never forget. She’d been a fool to think they could stay friends– this was always how it was going to end.

Gillian heard the heartbeat a fraction of a second before Jack dragged in a shaky breath.

“Jack! You’re ok!” A laugh bubbled up in her throat and escaped her lips as the tension of the last several minutes dissolved.

But Jack didn’t reply– his eyes were still shut.

She leaned over him to check the crown of his head, the bones now felt solid beneath the blood-matted hair.

Gillian waited one minute, then two; but he still didn’t stir. She debated whether she should give him more blood, but his heartbeat was steady and this breath even.

Looking up at the moon, she estimated there were about four hours until dawn. If he didn’t wake up soon, she would need to find shelter. Still weakened from the silver poisoning and blood loss, Gillian knew she would not be able to carry him back up the hill to the witch’s cottage. The only hope was to walk around the summit and go back to the castle.

With one last attempt to wake Jack up, she stood and awkwardly hoisted him over her shoulder.

By the time she made it back to the castle grounds, the horizon was lit with a pre-dawn glow. They had made it with less than an hour to spare. With one last break at the castle entrance, Gillian hauled Jack over her shoulder again and trudged across the dirt path to the chapel.

The door to the church was still open and Gillian even found her rucksack where she’d abandoned it. She took Jack to a dark corner in the crypt and laid him down carefully, propping his head on her coat. His heartbeat was still steady and color was returning to his skin. Satisfied, she settled into the shadows to wait.

***

By mid-morning, Gillian had grown restless. Jack was stable but hadn’t woken yet.

“Jack, are you there?” she asked in vain, giving his shoulder a nudge. “I need you to wake up and call me Gill and ask invasive questions about my childhood. I don’t mind it, really.”

Jack continued to lie in silence, his chest rising and falling evenly.

“Do you want me to tell you about my first kiss? Of course you do, you nosy man,” she said with a smile.

“Where to begin?” She drummed her fingers on the cold stone floor at her sides before continuing.

“Back when I was a young vampire– only about two hundred– I was still in my rebellious phase and refused to drink human blood, but I had to be stealthy so father wouldn’t put me in the dungeons again…” A chill ran up her spine at the thought and she shook it away.

“Anyway, back then I just pretended to drink the blood, then I’d sneak away to steal sheep from the locals. That’s when I first laid eyes on Luca.”

Gillian smiled to herself thinking of the young shepherd boy with his long lashes and pink cheeks. Because she was turned at such a young age, at two hundred vampire years, she was really only a teenager. The curse of immortality was fifty years of adolescence.

“Luca,” she continued, “tended his family’s sheep at night. I’d wait in the shadows and watch him until he inevitably closed his eyes. He saw me one day– thankfully before I had gotten away with one of his sheep– and we struck up a friendship. I started meeting him every night and we’d talk for hours and hours.”

It had been her first interaction with a human who didn’t cower in fear. The boy had no idea what she was and she gladly pretended to be just a normal girl. It had given her a glimpse into what her life could have been– should have been– if she’d been able to grow up with her real family. If the Count hadn’t stolen her.

Letting out a breath, Gillian continued telling her story to the silent crypt.

“After months of meeting like this almost every night, Luca and I grew close. He was my best friend and he said I was his. We kissed for the first time under the apple tree where he’d carved our names. It was… magical. I know that sounds so cheesy but there’s no other way to describe it. It was messy and awkward and perfect.”

Gillian closed her eyes and smiled, thinking back to those days. She’d been fantasizing about falling in love, getting married, growing old– dreams that were crushed violently by reality.

“Maybe I should end the story here. Let that fairytale be the only thing you hear. But I’ve spent too long trying to forget the rest.” She sighed again.

“A few weeks after that first kiss, I grew careless. I always had to hurry back to the castle before my father suspected what I was doing. Instead of quietly luring a sheep away to the darkness, I took a quick drink of a plump lamb as soon as Luca had fallen asleep. But the bleating woke him. He saw everything.”

Gillian shuddered at the memory of Luca’s horrified face– it was eerily similar to the look Jack had given her before falling down the hill. She glanced over at Jack’s now calm face, the even rise and fall of his breathing, and her own chest tightened. Things would never be the same between them.

“The next time I saw Luca was at the front of a mob of townspeople. He’d told the whole village I was a monster and they stormed the castle gates– pitchforks, torches, the whole thing. Father’s men took care of it, of course…”

Gillian trailed off, her mood now sour.

“At least now I know better than to expect friendship from a human,” she muttered to herself.

Her eyes drifted aimlessly around the room until they landed on Jack’s satchel, a folded paper sticking out of the opening. Gillian rolled her eyes and pulled the bag onto her lap.

***

Half an hour later, Gillian had a neat pile of papers stacked in front of her. Jack’s bag had been a disaster– loose sheets haphazardly shoved in and crumpled amongst his clothes and books. She had no idea how he lived his life like this.

She’d thumbed through the ancient book the witch had given him in the cottage but it was mostly gibberish to her. It appeared to be full of spells but the writing was in an ancient language or encryption she’d never seen before. Within the pages, she’d also found another set of runes– the diamond shape and inscriptions almost identical to the two they’d found already.

“At least Andrei didn’t get this,” she muttered.

She’d known Andrei since she was a small child. He was her father’s right hand man. The one he entrusted most to carry out his most sensitive tasks. Finding these runes must have been a top priority for the Count. Gillian shuddered when she thought of how close Jack had been to being taken, too.

With Jack still out cold, she began to organize his research into something resembling order. Scanning each page, she sorted them into stacks– the sketches of the runes in one, the translations they’d worked on together in another. Then, she came across the drawings they’d made when trying to figure out the meaning of the translations. It seemed like a lifetime ago, sitting in her flat giggling over ancient words.

“Hold on,” she said to herself, looking down at the diamond shape she’d drawn for Jack where she’d attempted to explain the cardinal directions referenced in the runes.

“Where is that map sketch?”

Gillian quickly found the sheet of paper where she’d traced a triangle over the map of England and looked at them together.

“A diamond is actually just a set of inverted triangles,” she whispered to herself.

Gillian pulled out the sketches of the runes next and held them up against her rough line drawings. Each of the runes was in the shape of a diamond, too. Or as she now saw it, two triangles. She felt her heart pick up speed as she realized she was on the verge of discovering something.

Rifling through the stack of pages with the translation work, she found what she was looking for and reviewed Jack’s tight scrawl.

The north point finds.

“That must mean the Derby runes. The cave drawing was the north point. Of course! We always knew these were tracking runes. This one must have the spell for finding father!” She set the sketch of the rune in front of her and returned her attention to the translation.

The east point brings death.

“And the east point must mean the praetorium engraving in London,” she muttered as she set the drawing of the rune to her right. “Dad always suspected the runes could be used to kill him. I guess this is the one.”

She looked down again at Jack’s writing.

The west point brings death.

“And the west point has to mean the final rune in the witch’s book here in Bath.” She pulled the heavy tome over and opened it to the drawing. “But why does this one also bring death? Why are there two?”

Her mind racing, she tried to sift through all the pieces. There had to be a way to figure this out. She knew Alice didn’t want the Vampire King to get his hands on the runes, but the witch wanted them to be used to kill him, right?

Gillian thought back to what Alice had said to Jack when she’d handed him the grimoire.

“Learn the magic running through your blood and ruin the Vampire King once and for all,” she repeated to herself. “Ruin? Why didn’t she say kill?”

Frantically, Gillian searched through the pages to find the original translation from the runic inscriptions to latin.

“Punctum occidentale mortalitatem affert,” she read. “Oh. Oh! Mortalitatem! That means mortality not death!”

She felt dizzy. The room spun as her mind pulled the pieces together.

“This rune won’t kill us. It will make us mortal,” she whispered. “This will be a fate worse than death for the Vampire King. This will ruin him.”

She laughed and looked over at Jack’s prone form.

“If you were more organized, we might have figured this out sooner,” she said to the silent room. “You are, without a doubt, the worst scientist I’ve ever heard of.”

“Ah, but you have heard of me,” came a croaking voice.

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Chapter 14