The Petitjean Heir

by Nunya Carley


Only she remembered what happened at her wedding. Not her warm-blooded family, devoted fiance, nor even her family’s preacher, a man who knew Ella since she took her very first breath. No human would be allowed to recollect the unbelievable events from that day.

Now it was seven months later, and Ella wallowed in her newest shiny room, trying not to vomit from the overwhelming new rug smell permeating every corner. Nausea was part of her life now, so she sat down and lay back on the perfectly comfortable velvet chaise, remaining completely still to combat the morning sickness. 

With nothing but time to think, Ella closed her eyes and let her mind wander back to that last fateful day.

A wedding was supposed to be the most special event of a girl’s whole life, or so grandma had always said during their long days of homemaking. Her father’s mother, also Ella's caregiver and guardian, would use daily consistency of words to train her granddaughter on how to be a good girl, a good person, and someday, a good wife. A man would come along in the future, she insisted, to sweep her off her feet with love, and take her away to a new life. 

The most important part of the overly repeated lesson was what grandma always finished with. Ella was extra special and beautiful, she said, the reason why the boys and even older men smiled at her everywhere she went. But they all wanted one thing, grandma warned, and it all started with a big ol’ smile and flirt.

Grandma’s words, ending with an angry tone Ella never could understand, replayed in her head over and over. Don’t end up being the conquest of some greasy-palmed man. Dream, instead, of the wonderful life you will have, and you will have it. And so, that’s what she did. 

Ella used her imagination to conjure an idyllic life for herself, like the ones she saw on TV. A working man and a stay-at-home mother who would raise the best, smartest children. She stayed happy, faithful, and pure of heart, storing up all her teenage hormone passion for the man she would call husband, whoever he might be. 

By her teens, a husband was the only thing she longed for in her daydreams and at night. Now it was comical to think of how stupid-minded she’d been. 

The love, friendship, and closeness grandma promised were not to be. In a weird and unbelievable series of events, Ella transformed from sixteen to twenty-six in the matter of seconds. Her mind matured, along with her body, but she didn’t have any wisdom from those formative years. Nothing to help her survive in this new world that kept her hostage, the Othersworld. 

Ella cried for her grandmother for the first couple of weeks, begging God for guidance. There was never any answer. She needed to know how to deal with being touched by this unintended husband, a repulsive creature whose appearance terrified her whenever he came to her.

Instead of the real-world knowledge that comes with maturity, Ella’s capacity included how to do a bunch of things she’d probably never have the chance to do again. Like growing vegetables and taking care of chickens. Keeping the house clean, making clothing, and cooking - all important tasks in the future world her Hungarian immigrant grandmother readied her for. 

Ella yearned to return to a simpler time, when she was just an eager student, taught by her maternal figure, who was also her best friend. She had no friends in school, mainly because her special needs required a monitor to accompany her everywhere she went. A teen with a built-in babysitter. Who would want that?

All she had was her grandmother, who was not quiet about how much she feared for her granddaughter’s future, because of her developmental status. At sixteen, Ella was already catching the eye of older men, none of whom knew her nights had to be monitored for the telltale signs of a seizure, or how her brain aged more slowly than her body. Although she was old enough to marry with parental consent, she was only testing at a seventh-grade level. 

The day Ray Darling came to their door to drop off the dairy order, which his father usually brought, became a dream come true for all of them. 

Ray was big and strong, and couldn’t help but smile as her grandmother introduced the two. At eighteen, he’d quit school and gone to work on the family farm he'd inherit someday as the only child of an older couple. Ella thought he was nice, but didn’t think grandma would let her have romance yet. 

Exactly one week after the teenagers met, her grandmother came down with a cold that worsened with the passing of each night. Two weeks and six hospital visits later, grandma called Mr. Darling to come in a hurry. Ella curled up next to the big old French doors that led to the dining room and eavesdropped on her grandmother as she told Ray’s father of her proposition. 

Recalling how her grandmother treated her like a child perturbed the now twenty-six-year-old with the social functioning of a teen. Didn’t give her any choice in the decisions. Perhaps if she hadn’t merely gone along with the matriarch’s plan of marrying her off in a quickie ceremony with Ray, Ella wouldn’t be trapped in the situation she is in now.

Nausea crept up her throat again, and she swallowed it back down. Slowly, she moved her hands down to her belly and rubbed it in a light circular pattern. Too hard, hurt, but if she did it lightly, the creature growing within her would move and give reprieve to whatever internal organ it was crushing. She turned back to her memories.

The adults remained in seclusion for more than an hour, talking in hushed tones as they managed to plan a quick, small event. Ella’s only living relative was her grandmother, but Ray had several siblings who came and brought their own children to the Darling family’s well-used outdoor pavilion. It was on the front side of the farm, and Ella marvelled at all of the wildflowers, bees, and butterflies around.

Although scared of spending a night without her grandmother, Ella’s excitement grew with each new friendly person she met. I was kind of excited at the end, she remembered her last remaining piece of joy from that day. Then, the time came for her to put the dress on and stand in front of Reverend Ferenci, bound to answer, ‘I do.’ 

Ella recalled how she stood listening to him say the words, fidgeting with her dainty lace gloves. The family heirlooms were as scratchy and irritating as they were beautiful, and she was focused on them when it happened.

A sudden gust of wind hit her from behind, accompanied by the sound of Ray collapsing and gasping from the seated participants. Ella looked down to the floor at her fiancé, who looked like he’d merely fallen asleep. 

“Don’t worry about him, my love. He will wake soon enough.” 

Looking to see who owned the loud and commanding, unfamiliar voice, she found a human unlike anything she’d ever seen. At first glance, he looked elegant, handsome even, but impossibly pale. He more resembled someone who had died and been dug up and brought back to life. 

The tall stranger reached out and touched her face, his dead white hands streaking against her cheek like a burning, icy wind. He stood where Ray was standing a minute prior, and effortlessly pushed her betrothed out of his way with one foot. The clamor of the well-dressed crowd became unbearably loud until he responded with the wave of his hand and one word. “Silence!”

Every person complied. They all sat, wide-eyed and full of fear as the intruder took hold of Ella and turned her back toward Reverend Ferenci. “Let us finish with this ceremony,” he instructed. 

Without any words of protest, the preacher said his words, and when it came time to say “I do,” Ella’s lips uttered words that her brain did not want to speak. The agreement was not of her will at all, yet was proclaimed with her mouth, in her own voice. 

The uninvited guest remained quiet for a moment before also saying the finalizing words. “I most certainly do. Forever.” His wedding crasher voice was the only thing she could hear as everything around her remained quiet. “You won’t understand this, my perfect specimen of love, but I will now transport you to my homeland, and when you wake tomorrow, you will be twenty-six years old.” His mischievous eyes sparkled like aluminum in the sun, “and then, he added, “my bride, we will consummate our marriage.”

Dead metal, her immature mind joked, thinking about the strange look in his eyes. That’s funny. Yeah. At the overprotected age of sixteen, Ella had no idea what the word consummate meant. She remained entranced by his shimmering eyes while her body stood still. She couldn’t turn away. 

Once again, she tried to open her mouth but couldn’t speak. Her lips would not move. 

Reconciling to the paralyzing terror, she focused on the man whom she had married, while he returned the stare. The veins in his face looked like tiny wriggling blood snakes that were moving around, somehow living under his sickly white skin. The sight of them mesmerized her, and they stood for an eternity, while he subconsciously told her the story of who he was and why she was chosen. 

Nicolas Petitjean was a vampire, the one true creature of the night who would outlive all of the humans Ella knew or would meet in the future. The history of his line led back to a Norman-Frenchwoman named Jeanne Mathiot. Her name indicated what she was. A gift of God. Soon to be bearer of an immortal legend.

In a land of dark-haired French, Jeanne was both antagonized and prized for her stunning beauty that stood in contrast with all others around her. But in the 10th century, she was worth nothing. Just a girl captured by a Francian Lord and kept as plunder by a man who already had a noble wife and children. As the inevitable pregnancies occurred, the bastard children would be discreetly sold off or exchanged for some sort of gain.

When Isabelle was born, her gray eyes and full head of blonde Viking hair caused much grief.  She was nurtured by her mother for the first ten years, before her father, Lord Petitjean, ripped her away from the only love she’d ever known. He sold her to a sadistic marquis who tortured her in ways designed to erase her natural beauty.  

Odo Mitry sliced Isabelle’s face every day, the number of days evident by a face covered in scars. At other times, he drank too much mead and got creative. Instead of angry jagged slashes, he carved symbols and words into her flesh, then paraded her, bloody and crying from pain, in front of his friends. No one dared stop him. 

As a direct descendant of Charlemagne himself, he was considered royalty. Odo owned all of the land for as far as the eye could see, and every person who lived on it. 

Years after her torture began, Isabelle had a child who was rushed away to somewhere they never told. She continued crying until the following night, when she started having nighttime seizures. In response to her falling out of bed and all the injuries that went with it, they began tying her to furniture and calling on practitioners of both Christianity and maleficium to save her. 

Together, the good and the bad simultaneously performed rituals and chants and administered prayers and potions. This was done often, by various people and in many different combinations. As a result, they were unaware of exactly which enchantment or invocation was responsible for creating the spectacular end result. An unholy immortal being capable of causing great destruction.

That was precisely what Isabelle did. First, she killed Odo Mitry and everyone who enabled him. Then she sought retribution against her father, along with everyone else with blood that smelled like his. But she missed one. 

An unborn child of Lord Petitjean’s was tucked safely within the womb of a favorite servant who had been sent away to bear the child in secret. A child who not only became sole heir to the Petitjean fortune and legacy, but who sired his own group of children who were direct ancestors to Nicolas Petitjean, Ella’s vampire husband. 

Ella fell asleep holding her achy stomach and thinking about all the things she’d learned, and the childhood happiness she would never experience again. She was here because of the very thing her grandmother frequently declared: she was special. Not because of her looks or kindness, but because she had a rare variant of her epileptic encephalopathy, the same seizure-causing ailment that plagued Isabelle Petitjean. 

For reasons no one quite understood, only females afflicted with the rare condition could successfully bear the offspring of a vampire. This was the true reason she’d been chosen. Nicolas revealed it to her on her first night in Othersworld, when he accompanied her through the stone corridors to the rooms meticulously prepared for Ella’s confinement. And she would remain there, he informed her in a calm, authoritative tone, until she bore a minimum of three children for him.

Ella would never be permitted to stop procreating until at least three children were sired, at least one of which had to be the coveted holy grail: a male heir. The weight of her reality settled on her as she began to think positively. 

One pregnancy, almost done. 

Two more to go.