Empire of Vampires ✔️

Chapter Thirty-Two

A Century Ago

Danyel gazed bright-eyed into the mountain lake. The water glistened and shimmered with the glow of a single lily. He watched it slowly falling from above until it lay on the funeral bed of a lady who looked just like an older version of the girl in his visions. 

'Take care of her,' she whispered to her devout husband with her last breath, holding her new-born child tightly until her arms finally dropped to the sides. She convulsed in her fits, her neck stretching all the way back until her head lay limp, hanging out of the bed. Poppy had lost her mother the day she was born.

The husband fell to pieces at the sight of his dying wife. He had never wanted a child because his wife alone was everything that he had ever needed. And now she was gone. She was dead because of this baby and his soul was filled with hate as he looked upon the happily gurgling child.

He wished that he were burying the corpse of his child instead of the body of his wife. When she was having her difficult labour he had begged the nurse to risk the child's life and save hers instead, but the nurse had looked upon him in disgust and said that the child will live.

The vision shifted and now Poppy was in pre-school. She was an uncared for child; her clothes were unwashed and her long hair uncut and unkempt. She had no shoes that day for her father had thrown them at her in a fit of rage the night before. He had missed on his last try and they had smashed against the wall, breaking their poor frame.

Her father was constantly under the effects of opiates. He sent her every day on long walks to the old war tunnels, around where bunches of poppies grew amidst clusters of beautiful white lilies. She was sent to harvest the poppy seeds from the seedpod of the opium poppy.

The seeds became coated by opium extract as she picked them and they were intentionally not washed so that the opiate component may remain intact. She carefully prepared the mixture for her father to ingest every morning and night. He had named her Poppy after the love of his beloved drug.

The poppy seeds had a hard shell but her father was much too impatient to wait for it to soak overnight. He insisted that she peel them by hand using her little fingernails. Poppy cried every time she peeled them. It hurt so much when the hard shell slipped into the sensitive part between her fingertip and her nail.

She started giggling and talking to herself to get her mind off the pain of her bleeding nails. Her father sent her back to the poppy field and she sang softly to herself as she knelt there and picked them. There were a few beautiful lilies growing there sparsely, and Poppy had heard of the magical meadow that was just on the other side of the tunnel she sat by.

'Pretty little lily- pretty little lilyyy...

I wish I could be like youuu!'

Poppy sang a little poem that she had made up. She caressed the white petals and they soaked in the blood of her broken-off nails, glowing slightly in her bloody touch. 'I wish I was a Lily and not a Poppy,' she giggled, 'They're just so much prettier.' She picked a few of the white flowers along with the seeds and lost herself in a daydream as she lay on the grass beside them and rested for a little while.

Her father screamed when she came home late and covered in dirt. He struck her across the face and pushed her till she fell against the column that stood in the middle of their sparse home. He pinned her onto the column and tied her there with rope to leave her till the next morning as punishment. Poppy garbled to herself incoherently as she stood tied to the column while she prepared her father's mixture. She wanted it to be over. She wanted to be left alone.

Her father impatiently swallowed the mixture in a big gulp that night. The strong opiates flooded his system, overpowering his weak form and sending him crashing to the floor in a fit. He tried to grab a table on his way down, upending it in the process, and Poppy's gathering basket fell onto the floor along with him.

He shook violently in his overdose. The breath left his body and breathed new life into the lilies that fell from her basket. The lilies creeped up his chest and caressed the skin on his face as they caught his last breath and shone brighter than ever. His frenzied fits finally stilled in a motionless death.

The lilies bloomed and glowed with unnatural light. Poppy silently watched the beautiful flower turning even more gorgeous as it stole the final moments of her father's wasted life.

Present Day

Danyel stood by the same mountain lake, revisiting the nightmare that he wasn't able to stop. He had searched for her the rest of the century, unknowing where she was or when she would be born.

His eyes were wet once more in remembrance of her past and his gut twisted and wrenched till he threw up. It happened to him every time he had a vision; or when he recalled an especially bad one. He vowed once more that he would never let his Poppy suffer again.

Now that he knew she was alive and near, he had to find her. He had to save her. He'd do anything to save her.

And there just might be one person who could help.