Sacred Night

They took her away seven nights after the full moon. The priests had come to her family's small farm in the Red Fields and within hours they left again with her in tow. Mei had brought nothing with her but the clothes on her back. She had cried and clung to her parents and asked them why they were sending her away. “It is an honor, little Mei,” Momma had said. “The moon has looked upon you with her divine light and chosen you to serve her.” Father had been no better, but he'd hugged Mei close and kissed her forehead, scraping his fangs along her skin. “Go and do your duty, quinai. To serve moon and country...there can be nothing greater. This is hard for us, you must know, but it must be so. You'll understand, one day.”

She didn't want to understand, not some day and not now. Not ever. The moon had chosen her. Fine. Why did she have to leave home to serve it? Why did she have to leave her Momma and Father? Not leave, she knew, but given. They'd given her away. All because of when she'd first bled.

The priests themselves said little, which gave Mei plenty of time to think during the long journey from her family farm, the only home she'd known, to the temple of the Sacred Night. Both of them were old vampires, with faces like worn leather and hair gone white. The man had a long beard that hid half his face and a bald head that made his ears look absurdly huge. The woman's hair was done up in a bun, her eyes close together, her nose flat, even for a vampire. They ate nothing during the four-night journey, just stared down the road as the wagon lumbered along, the old mule's hooves clop-clopping on the dirt paths. They slept in black canvas tents when the White Watcher rose in the east. They'd brought food; a cage of pigeons that they gave to Mei to feast upon when she was hungry. She didn't want to eat, not in front of her captors, but the pigeons were fat and tasty-looking, and after two nights her throat was so dry that she could barely swallow. She took one of the pigeons in her small hands as it flapped and burbled, looking at her with its large, liquid eyes. “Sorry, pigeon,” she said quietly as she drove her fangs into it. She wrenched her head to the side, one quick jerk, and the bird went limp in her hands. Before the blood had a chance to cool she lapped it up, ripping away the feathers and thin skin with her teeth and nails. When the bird was just a dried husk she made to throw it to the roadside, but the priestess stopped her.

“Do not,” she said. She extended a hand and Mei gave her the tiny corpse. “You took the life of this creature to sustain yourself. Its sacrifice shall not go forgotten.”

“It's just a bird,” Mei said.

The other priest spoke. “Child, what did your parents do before every meal?”

Mei felt a stab of anger towards the priest. What right did she have to talk about Momma and Father? But she answered. “They thanked Mother Moon.”

“Indeed.” The priestess tucked the bird into a pouch tied to red sash round her waist. “The creature's blood is yours. The blood of the world belongs to the vampires. The rest belongs to the moon, who protects us and gave us birth.”

“Praise be to her,” the other priest said.

“You are to be a priest,” the woman said. “You must know these things.”

“I don't want to be a priest,” Mei said. Her voice caught in her throat, and she wondered for a moment if she'd swallowed a feather by accident. “I want to be a farmer like Momma and Father. I want to see the Blackfangs and the Silver Shore and everything else. I don't want to...” She blinked to stop the tears. She was thirteen. Her first monthly blood had come. She was not a little girl anymore, and she wouldn't let these strange old vampires see her cry.

“The moon chose you,” the female priest said. “Your first blood came when she was at her greatest power, when she was full and round. Forever now you shall bleed when the moon is full. When she is at her greatest power, so too will you be at yours. Women have always been favored in the service of the moon, but you, little one, are special. Holy.”

Mei didn't want to be holy and she didn't want to be in the service of anyone. But if she didn't have a choice, perhaps being in service to the moon wouldn't be too bad. Perhaps.

The moon was a crescent when they arrived at the temple. Mei's first impression was one of complete awe. The building was larger than any one she'd seen before. The whole thing was built of some dark, polished wood, but the roof was white and so clean that it reflected the moonlight. Through the arching front gate was a large courtyard, bare except for a rectangular slab of smooth, polished stone. It was pale, and clean, but the ground around it was dark and the two bloodwood trees on either side left little doubt as to its purpose.

The female priest saw Mei staring, so she spoke. “Every full moon we offer a blood sacrifice to the moon.” She gestured to the altar. “With our gifts, the moon knows our devotion to her and so she continues to stave off the White Watcher.”

They brought the mule and cart to a shed in the back of the temple where an acolyte in white robes led the animal to its pen. The acolyte's hood was up, but to Mei he looked young, fifteen or sixteen. Perhaps she wouldn't be the only young one in the temple. That made her feel better.

But once she was inside the temple of Scared Night, she wasn't so sure. Every vampire she saw looked to be her parent's age or older, shuffling around in robes of black or white with red sashes. None of them spoke. The temple's interior was made of the same dark wood – the bloodwood, she realized, aged and polished till it looked like stone. Chalices of silver, gold and jade rested upon tables between tall candles. Silk banners and woolen tapestries hung everywhere, depicting scenes of sacrifice, slaughter and rebirth. One massive tapestry at the end of the echoing main hall showed the moon and sun fighting over the Blackfang Mountains. Momma had told Mei the story several times, of how the moon had given birth to her children the vampires, and the jealous sun tried to kill them. Every other living thing relied on the White Watcher, but he was a jealous god. The vampires, blessed by the moon, were separate from the rest of the world. So it was.

The two priests led Mei past all the wonders and into a narrow hallway where many sliding doors indicated rooms. The priests waited outside one and called out, and the door was opened from within. Kneeling on a cushion was the oldest vampire Mei had ever seen. Her face was more lines than smooth, her thinning hair pooled around her on the floor, and her fangs almost reached her chin. And when she opened her eyes, they were dim.

“Reverend Mother,” the male priest said. “We have brought the child.”

The old vampire extended a claw and gestured to Mei. She stepped forward, hesitantly. “How old are you?” the Reverend Mother asked in a voice as thin and crackly as old rice paper.

“Thirteen.” The sight of the vampire's eyes, her flopping ears and ragged wings unnerved Mei. How old was this woman? A hundred? Several centuries? That wasn't true though. Vampires never lived to be that old. That was just something humans thought.

The Reverend Mother touched Mei's cheek with one long claw, gently. She pressed her finger in, turning Mei's face to one side, then the other. Mei shuddered. “I will see you on the full moon. Should your cycle remain true, we will know that you belong here.”

Mei didn't know what to say, so she just said, “Yes.”

She was given her own room and a set of clothes to wear, simple roughcloth robes. Her room had a pallet to sleep on and a scroll inscribed with prayers on the wall. Mei went to sleep without saying her morning prayers as usual. She was feeling rather resentful towards the moon right now and everyone in the temple. Prayers were the last thing she wanted. What she wanted was her bed back home, her parents and friends, the simple comforts of tending the farm and exploring the fields and nearby forests of pine, hemlock and hawthorn. Home was what she wanted. This was not home. It never would be.

The rest of the month passed slowly. Mei met the rest of the priests, acolytes and adepts in that time. There was Gen, the boy she'd seen tending the stable. He was an orphan, she found out, who'd been brought in by Brother Xiaoli after trying to pick his pocket. “It's a home,” he told her as he brought in fresh water for the mules and animals in the pens. Most of them were sleeping. Sometimes during the days Mei thought she could hear the mules braying and the chickens clucking through her dreams. But most likely she was remembering the sounds of the farm back home. “I never had a home before this. Brother Xiaoli's the closest thing I have to a father.” Brother Xiaoli himself was one of the younger priests, close to her father's age and stern as well, but Gen assured her that Xiaoli was kind to the acolytes. There was the old vampire who kept the histories of the temple of Sacred Night, Brother Bo, a tiny male with thick glasses whose robes were perpetually covered in dust, his hands black with ink. Mei spent an entire day with him as he told her about the wandering priest who had built the temple with his own hands, brick by brick, and about the old Kings of Night who had ruled Xima back when it was known as the Glorious Kingdom. There was Qi and Yi, two priestesses never seen apart. Everyone said they were close friends but Mei had only seen them fighting, usually arguing about something that had happened many years ago that neither of them could properly remember. Mei decided she liked them.

Then there was the two priests who had brought her to the temple, Brother Shen and Sister Daiyu. Neither of them had said much to her since her arrival, but they were both cold and silent and it seemed that most of the others treated them with a mixture of respect and fear. Mei avoided them when she could.

Mealtimes were passed in a basement hall lit by candle and torch. Prayers and thanks were given by a different priest or acolyte every time. The food was simple; rice soaked in blood from a cow or mule, dark bread, thin soups that spoke of marrow and blood. Mei took her meals with Gen most of the time, though sometimes the two priests that had brought her to the temple sat with her and asked her questions about how she was adapting to life in the temple. The Reverend Mother was never present. Brother Bo said she preferred to eat in the privacy of her chambers, but Gen swore that she was so old that she never ate anymore. “Besides,” he whispered to Mei one night, “I think she'll only drink human blood. Have you ever had human?”

“No,” said Mei. There had only been cows and chickens on her farm back home. She'd never even seen a human. “Have you?”

“Once,” said Gen. “When I was young and living on the streets of Goang by the Silver Shore. A ship of human traders from the First Union came to dock and I hadn't eaten in two days...” He ran a forked tongue over his thin, black lips. “Best thing I've ever tasted. I didn't take much, but I wanted to. I wanted to. Nothing compares to a human.”

The moon changed from a sickle-thin crescent to an empty space in the sky, then waxed and grew until it was a half circle. Mei was taught the prayers for each phase of the moon. “Mother moon grows and shrinks,” Sister Qi told her. “For the one night she is gone from the sky our prayers must be the strongest, so that we may lend her our strength.”

“Then she will return to protect us from the White Watcher,” Yi added. “Then a new month begins, and so the cycle continues anew.”

 

As the full moon approached Mei found herself becoming more and more uncomfortable, as if a horde of moths had hatched in her belly, fluttering about and beating at her stomach walls, anxious to make their way out. It was just nerves, she told herself. But the feeling moved further down and turned into pain, and on the night the full moon she found her robes stained with her own blood. She was brought before the Reverend Mother, who was still on her cushion as if she hadn't moved in a month. The old vampire took just one look at Mei, shaking and clasping her hands together tightly, and said, “She has been chosen.” Mei was brought out into the courtyard, protesting all the while, near dragged along by two priests. “I don't want to,” she said, but it was pointless.

The courtyard was awash in moonlight, casting everything in black and white and silver. The moon herself hung low and heavy in the sky, its lower half tinted a dusky red, each mark upon her face distinct and dark. The courtyard was crowed with (it seemed like) every vampire in the temple. Hoods covered their faces, though she recognized stout Qi and Yi and tiny Brother Bo. She was brought before the altar. There, Brother Shen handed her a stone knife. It was cold against her sweaty palms. “What...” she began, but her question was answered when Sister Daiyu approached the altar with a pure white bull in tow. “No.”

Shen placed his hands on Mei's shoulder, tightly. “You must. There is no question of it now.”

Daiyu tugged the nervous bull forward and shoved its head down onto the altar. “Quickly, child,” she hissed. The bull's eyes rolled madly and it squirmed, but Sister Daiyu's hold was strong. “Do it!”

Mei reached out towards the bull with the knife. “I can't,” she said, so quietly that she thought no one could hear. She'd killed animals before, chickens and little things when her family needed to eat. But not this. Not something just to appease the moon. The bull's eyes met hers, and Mei felt her heart catch in her throat.

Brother Shen grabbed her hand and before Mei could do anything to stop him he slashed the knife across the bull's throat. She cried out as the bull screamed and writhed. Its blood, hot and sweet-smelling, gushed across the pure white altar, and the blood looked almost black in the night. Brother Shen let her hand go and the knife fell from Mei's hand. “Drink,” he whispered in her ear. She didn't want to. She tried to back away from the dying bull, but Brother Shen blocked her path. The scent of the spilled blood coiled unto her nostrils, deep and rich. Her stomach rumbled and the pain below made itself known as her gut twisted. She closed her eyes and fell before the altar and, closing her ears to the last of the bull's dying breaths, she ran her tongue along the altar. Flavor flooded her mouth and her hunger drove her on. Soon she found herself at the bull's throat, her fangs tearing away the fur and skin as the blood pumped out slowly.

 

“Sister Mei!” she heard Shen call out through the haze of feeding. “Chosen by the moon! Blessed be she who is one with the whim of Mother Moon! Blessed is she!”

“Blessed is she!” the rest of the vampires called, and they extended their wings until the sound of their cries echoed around the courtyard of Mei's new home.