text: The Death Knell and the Vampire of Ogrencisi The Vampire of Ogrencisi witnessed how his closest ally, another immortal, was dissipated by being beheaded in the battle between the Turks and the Templars. A templar beheaded him and put a sword through his heart. Only a woman could distract him that way, Ogrencisi surmised. He slew the soldier who killed his friend and ended the battle but not without knowing where the woman was. She took refuge in a monastery among the nuns in the Balkan mountain. She was a Christian, an angel, who accompanied the Templars on battles. It was said that his ally, a moor and the Angel were lovers. Knowing where she was, an augur told him to take the child who was to be his bride in twenty- one years’ time. And so, he travelled on a lone horse to find them. Inside the monastery, the Angel had given birth to the unearthly child. But the skies filled with clouds to occlude the sun and became one in a phalanx following the Vampire of Ogrensici towards the monastery. The Angel looked out the seared shut stained glass window pane of colored saints. She found darkness descend in the middle of a bright, trilling, snow capped day. How the vampire knew of where she was is no wonder. The evil had their ways of knowing and they paid a high price for it. The angel pursed her lips as she suckled her child. There was only one thing she could do. To confront the vampire and end him before he could take her child away. A gust of wind wailed and blew off the tapers and lamplights. The younger nuns huddled together and made the sign of the cross. The elderly nuns who were more familiar of the vampire and knew of his cruelty guided the younger nuns to pray the Ave Maria. No matter what, the elders told them, do not look into his eyes. But the angel was determined not to allow the vampire to enter the convent and sow fear into the peaceful convent to whom she owed her refuge and delivery. The day turned into a starless night as the wind howled and grew restless against the stained- glass windows whose saints began to bleed tears of blood. The Vampire of Ogrencisi had arrived. As some would assume, he would be weary from battle. But he trudged up the steep mountain trail until he almost reached the peak where the monastery stood carved like a relief against the bolster of rocks. It was the most beautiful monastery anyone have ever seen with a garden of blue roses and verdant green grasses whose fertility against the cold was most unusual indeed. But there it was, the last bastion of belief the angel was prepared to defend against all odds. And what of her lover, the Turkish moor. He died as the death knell of the monastery bells tolled for the sext or the middle prayers. The angel felt the first pangs of childbirth and fell to the ground grappling the grass among the blue roses where she walked each day to lower the child from her womb. She knew then, that her lover, the moor, had died. Now, his friend was coming for her child. They both loved him, but in different ways. He would do everything to find the child and bring her back to his manor as his ward. Which only meant, she, the angel was a block to the augured future he so believed in. The angel would prove the augur made a terrible mistake and change the course of the future. Her daughter was not to become a vampire. She was to be an angel, just as darkness was to be turned to light. The angel placed her finger into the palm of her daughter and this closed about her own like a flower closing at night after a day in bloom. She kissed her daughter’s forehead and seared her forehead with holy water. When she battled with Christians against the moors, she did so with her wings folded behind her back lest they betray her for being an unearthly creature, an angel of God. The moor wanted to see her fly, but she could only cover him with her wings as he lay cold beside her when they loved. The angel placed her daughter to the care of a nun, wrapped in sheepskin. Barefoot she drew her sword from beneath the cot she had been sleeping in for the past months. It was a long sword, heavy with metal hammered to perfection by holy alchemists. She dragged the heavy sword through the dark, cold hallways of the monastery and it flickered fire from the friction of metal against stony ground. The nuns prayed for her absolution, to destroy now, being an angel of death. Soon, she was outside the front garden and the nuns opened the gates to release her towards their fate. It was a cold, heartless landscape she encountered for the wind, sleet and snow all conspired to make her turn back. But she was unearthly as the vampire was. Immortal with no end in sight, one could say, she was his equal and yet only one would remain standing before the night. Through the thickness of the dark, the angel tried to find him, walking away from the monastery until she found him before her on a horse, drawing his sword and ready to slay her. The angel ran towards him, this time with her sword raised heavy on her hands. Her wings unfolded behind her ranging a mile from wingtip to wingtip and she flew over him. With a clear sweep of her sword she slew his head and severed it from his body. He toppled down from his horse and she landed on his chest to pierce his heart with a twist to make certain, absolutely certain that he, would die. The sun, slowly appeared in accretion and the clouds dispersed into pieces until they disappeared from the sky. Brightness lay its mantle on the snow and it soon melted. Tonight, the stars and moon brightened the nightscape as the angel rocked her daughter from a chair by a warm fire knowing fully well she had saved her child from an immortal life with the Vampire of Ogrencisi. ***