Lamia Read online

  LAMIA

  Copyright 2012 by Juliandes

  This book contains explicit scenes of sex and violence and is only suitable for a mature audience. The story is purely fictitious and is not intended to represent any persons, countries or organisations.

  CHAPTER 1

  People tell me that vampires are not real; that they were invented by fiction writers, yet the notion of the vampire goes back much further into folk lore. These same people stare at me in disbelief when I tell them that I once knew one. She was not the vampire of legend, she had not been bitten by one of the undead; she did not dissolve in the sun’s rays or have an aversion to holy water or silver crosses. She did not sleep in a coffin or fly through the night sky. She did however bite into the bodies of living people and suck their blood. She caused the most appalling injuries to those she did not kill and she became the most feared creature in the whole of Latin America. This was the life she had chosen for herself simply to survive, but survival eventually turned into power, love and ambition. The locals called her Lamia, but I knew her as a shy young girl called Maria.

  It was gap year and I had decided to spend it by immersing myself in another culture. A Christian missionary visited my local church on a fund-raising trip to England and immediately I warmed to the man. His face lit up as he recounted tales of Latin America. There were stories of joy and hardship, of sadness and fun, but most of all of building a community spirit in a place where people had so little. His latest project was to build a first-aid centre in a remote place, high in the Colombian Andes. This project appealed to me; it would be the last exciting year before the hard work of getting my degree. My parents are both stockbrokers and my future was secure, but I knew that still I needed to put in the work. When I discussed the project with dad, he was very much in favour, saying that I should get out and see some of the real world before becoming enmeshed in the financial nets of the stock market. He even donated a modest amount, probably more to save his soul that out of altruism, but every donation was appreciated.

  After another month I had flown across the Atlantic, across America, then south to Bogotá before taking a short hop to an Andean landing strip where I was met by the Rev. Swan.

  “Rev. Swan!”

  “Just call me John out here,” were the first words he spoke. “Did you have a good trip?”

  “Tiring. I believe we still have a bit of a drive.”

  “A couple of bumpy hours in the Land Rover. I’m afraid you won’t get much sleep on the way.”

  John was right, the track was bumpy with the odd boulder tossed in for good measure, but as we climbed higher, the stunning scenery of the rain forest made me glad to be awake.

  The drop in temperature was apparent as we drove up knotted roads, climbing ever higher through the Andean jungle. I had imagined it to be much warmer but John had pre-warned me of chilly nights and warm days. It was late November, just at the end of the rainy season and everything was wonderfully green. The light began to fade just as we pulled into a small village of half-a-dozen or more wooden buildings. We were met by a woman in her forties, with shoulder-length brown hair tied in a pony tail. John embraced her as they met. Then she extended a hand to me.

  “You must be Michael,” she said in a cultured English tone that belied her dress. “I’m Patricia, John’s wife.”

  John looked a little embarrassed at his breach in etiquette by not having introduced me as he should.

  “You’ve had a long journey. I’ve put some food in your room and we can sort you out in the morning.”

  “Thank you Patricia, it’s good to be here.”

  John led me to my room which was annexed onto the kitchen and sleeping quarters they used, although it was accessed through a different door. He pointed to a hut some distance away.

  “That is the toilet. If the door is open it’s vacant.”

  Then he left me and I closed the door, thrilled to have finally arrived. There was a ewer and a basin on a small table. I brushed my teeth and went to bed. I was tired; I would unpack in the morning.

  CHAPTER 2

  I was awoken by voices and the general bustle outside. I got out of bed, still feeling the effects of my journey. Livestock were being fed and it seemed that the day had begun without me. I buttoned up my jacket against the chilled morning air and wandered next door in search of my hosts.

  Tapping lightly on the open door, I walked into an empty kitchen. A voice behind me made me spin around.

  “You must be Michael.”

  There, standing before me was the most delightful girl I had ever seen. Short and rather pale but with vivid blue eyes and tresses of golden hair tied back loosely. Her accent was English and I was so stunned by this apparition that I was momentarily rendered speechless.

  “Well, you are Michael are you not?”

  Every time she finished speaking, her eyes dropped towards the floor. I thought it would be good to get to know this beauty during my stay. Her eyes once again rose to meet mine.

  “Er, yes,” I said. “I’m Michael.”

  I extended my hand and watched her eyes once again drop as we shook hands. A slight blush coloured her cheeks at the physical contact.

  “I’m Maria. Here, sit down and I’ll get your breakfast.”

  I sat at the table while I watched her working at the stove. I could not take my eyes off her.

  “Did you have a good journey?”

  “Very long,” I replied although my mind was not on the subject.

  “We thought you might like a lay-in this morning.”

  “Oh did I oversleep? What time is it?”

  Maria automatically glanced out of the window, much as one might look at a watch.

  “It’s been light for a time,” she said without too much emphasis.

  She put some bread on a plate, placing it on the table. Then she brought a bowl of white liquid with what looked like an eye in the centre. I took my spoon and carefully lifted up the central mass, assuring myself that it was in fact an egg. There were other lumps in the liquid and some green leaves sprinkled over the top. It was the least appetizing breakfast I had ever seen!

  “Have you had Changua before?” asked her sweet voice.

  Not wanting to show my ignorance I dug myself into a pit.

  “Yes of course,” came the unwise words from my mouth.

  She seemed amused as she watched me move the lumps around with my spoon before tearing off a piece of bread and dipping the corner into the white liquid. I hesitated before putting it into my mouth which made Maria smile. Then she brought another bowl with sliced mangoes which she set down beside me.

  “You might prefer these,” she said as she smiled and left the room.

  I was still holding the piece of bread as I considered what had just happened. This place might be even more interesting that I had thought! I hoped Maria was going to have volunteered for the entire season and that we might become friends. As I sat musing, I realised that I had been dunking and eating the bread. It seemed that the liquid was milk with onions and herbs and an egg. It was quite palatable which both surprised and delighted me. This would reinforce my statement that I had eaten it before.

  Breakfast concluded with the freshest mangoes I had ever eaten. I rinsed out the bowls and then wandered outside, asking one of the natives where I might find John or Patricia, although I was more interested where Maria was. He pointed to some building work which was going on at one end of the village. A sudden pang of guilt gripped me as I realised that the work had been going on while I slept in.

  “Good morning Michael,” said John cheerily as I approached the building. “You’re just in time.”

  “Sure, where do you want me?”

  “We’re about to lift this frame into place.”

  On the gro
und were the frameworks for all four sides of the building. Two ropes were attached to the top of one frame with some local men ready to haul it vertically. I was positioned at one corner with John at the other and three locals in the middle for the initial lift. We lifted, the guys on the ropes took over and in a moment the frame was vertical, its protruding ends slotting neatly into pre-dug holes. Then it was straight onto the other end, then the sides and in a short time I was holding the joints together for the men to fix. I was breathless by the time the corners were joined and was about to sit on a large rock that was jutting out of the ground, when I caught sight of Maria with a tray of drinks. This very much speeded my recovery and she offered me one as I approached. John and Patricia joined us and what John said next and even more, Maria’s answer, made me think twice.

  “You’ve met Maria, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, she cooked me breakfast.”

  He put his arm around her and I was stabbed by a pang of jealousy.

  “She’s the best cook around and the prettiest,” he said, kissing her on the head.

  “She certainly is!” I enthused, jumping in with both feet.

  “Stop it dad,” replied Maria, making me wish that my last comment had not been made so enthusiastically.

  “You know that you and mum taught me to cook.”

  Maria carried the tray over to the grateful workforce, relieving me of some of my embarrassment. I tried to change the subject.

  “How long have you two been in Colombia?”

  “Only five years but we’ve been in South America for the last nineteen years. Maria was born in Peru two years after we became missionaries.”

  “Yes,” added Patricia. “Having our first child in a strange country with sparse medical aid was more than a little scary.”

  “So Maria knows Latin American life very well.”

  “Better than we do,” said John. “She speaks Spanish as well as she speaks English and knows all the customs and superstitions of every area we’ve lived in. We couldn’t do our job without her. She even knows the herbs that the locals use in their medicine, some of which are extremely poisonous. Patricia is a very experienced nurse but when we run out of certain medications, Maria can usually save the day by using the local plant life.”

  I was now beginning to understand their respective jobs. John held religious ceremonies and offered pastoral care while helping out in the medical centre run by his wife. I guessed that after the medical centre was built, we would then construct a chapel.

  “What does Maria do?” I asked, trying not to sound too interested.

  “Oh Maria’s not here all the time. She goes to an American boarding school in Bogotá paid for with a trust, set up by the church. She spends her holidays here helping us.”

  My heart sank. I had hoped that she would be there for the full year. Then Patricia inadvertently came to my rescue.

  “She will be home from now on; at least until she decides whether or not she wants to go to university.”

  I felt fantastic! Maria, at seventeen, was a year my junior and I knew that I would have to very respectful, especially where her parents were concerned, although I was not planning anything dishonourable. I just wanted to start by our being friends. Nothing wrong with that.

  The next few weeks saw the medical centre open and there were plans to build a chapel. There was always something to do, from the simple day to day chores to searching for fruit or helping one of the local farmers to pull his donkey out of a ditch or repair his house or his fences. It was not that the locals were incapable of achieving these tasks; it was that most could not afford to do so. Any wood we had left over went to the needy, as did our labour and often the odd meal or two. The aim was to build a community, not just of worshipers but a social network of help and friendship, based around the church. The local community was strong but the aim was to extend it much further into more isolated communities as well. John would go trekking for days with Maria, contacting distant communities. One challenge was that many of them would move from one season to another.

  I had been there for several months before Maria stopped blushing in my presence. She became somewhat of an enigma to me. While she was generally shy, at work she was just the opposite. I saw her deal with broken bones and deep lacerations while her mother dealt with more serious cases. It was as if her training simply took over, giving her the confidence to make decisions. At times she could be very forceful with some of the patients who were not sure of western medicines. She could read people well and seemed to know which patients could be convinced and which would only respond to the traditional medicines, which she would prepare.

  Then came the day when the wood arrived to build the chapel. John was very busy organising the workforce and sorting out plans he had drawn. One of the farmers had stopped off at our village on his way from the valley back to his farm and we gave him food as he rested. His aging Land Rover stood outside, stacked with jerry-cans of fuel. There were no fuel stations this high up and he, or one of the other farmers who probably shared the vehicle would have to visit the valley again to fuel up. Maria seemed to know the farmer well and she sat with him as he ate. I was helping to stack the wood as John approached.

  “I have a favour to ask,” he said. “Maria needs to replenish her stocks of herbs, roots and other things for her medicine. Roberto usually takes her up and I usually go with her, but as you can see, I’m up to my eyeballs in this building project and Roberto is almost ready to leave. Would you mind going with her? I know she’d think nothing of going on her own but I wouldn’t feel safe thinking of her sleeping out there on her own for a couple of nights.”

  I thought I had died and gone to heaven! I had just been asked if I minded spending two nights out in the wilderness with the most beautiful girl I had seen in years! Then I remembered she was John’s daughter.

  “I’ll be happy to,” I said, trying not to sound excited. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep her safe.”

  “Thanks Michael. You’d better throw a few things in a bag and I’ll talk to Maria.”

  I went to my room and tried to think of what to take. Toothbrush, soap flannel, some aftershave that I had worn during the Christmas celebrations, deodorant. There was a knock on the door and Maria stood there with her backpack slung over her shoulder.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  “Almost. I’m not quite sure what to take.”

  Maria pushed past me and walked up to the bed. She folded my two blankets lengthways and rolled them. Then she emptied my backpack onto the bed and I noticed a flicker of a smile. She stuffed the blankets into my pack and then attacked my drawers. Four pairs of socks, two thick jumpers, waterproof trousers, one shirt and a pair of boxers. Stuffing them into my pack she grabbed hold of my big coat.

  “There, now you’re ready,” she said as she bundled everything into my arms and ushered me out of the door and towards the truck where Roberto was waiting.

  There was no time to argue. Throwing our packs in the back I realised that Maria’s pack was much bigger than mine. We squeezed together in the front, a position which delighted me for two-and-a-half hours. Roberto did not speak very much English but he and Maria chatted in Spanish for twenty minutes or so before she fell asleep. At one point her head rested on my shoulder and I would have loved to have been able to free my arm to put it around her, but with the tight squeeze, my arm was trapped firmly by my side. I was surprised that Maria could sleep on such a bumpy road but Roberto had to rouse her when he stopped in the middle of nowhere, to drop us off.

  “Muchas gracias Roberto,” she said as we carefully untangled ourselves from the vehicle, retrieved our packs and watched as it drove out of sight.

  I stretched my cramped muscles as I surveyed the rugged landscape, realising why John did not want his daughter to be out here all alone. The sun was quite warm but the air had the chill of altitude about it and I wondered what temperatures the night would bring. I had promised to look after Maria but I was begin
ning to suspect that it would be she looking after me.

  There were four water bottles on the ground. Maria clipped two to her pack and I did the same.

  “Come on,” she said. “Time’s getting on and we’ve got some distance to travel.”

  “What time is Roberto picking us up?”

  “He’s not. We’ll work our way down to the village.”

  With that she set off up a steep slope with me tagging along behind. Up above I saw snow-capped mountains and down below stretched the rainforest with its myriad of greens, dense and forbidding.

  “I wouldn’t like to get lost out here!” I remarked, mostly to make conversation.

  “Well don’t! But if you do, just stay where you are and I’ll find you. You can’t just wander around here without knowing a thing or two.”

  We hiked over rocks with vegetation in between. We wandered through a dense fog which Maria assured me was actually cloud. Every now and then she would stop to pick some leaves, bits of bark, roots and other objects which I could not identify, placing them all in a bag. I had thought that I was fit, but I found myself flagging as Maria pressed on. It was a relief when we came to a few small farm buildings, thinking that we would rest there.

  Maria approached one of the men who seemed to know her. We sat on a log while she chatted to him in Spanish, leaving me feeling a little left out by my ignorance. A woman who I assumed to be the man’s wife brought us some cups of a kind of tea I had never tasted before. I sniffed it and was looking round for somewhere to secretly empty it, when Maria put her hand on my arm.

  “Drink it,” she commanded. “Make sure you finish it.”

  I thought that my not drinking it might have offended the farmers, so I finished every drop.

  “Moi bien!” I proclaimed, using the few words of Spanish at my disposal.

  Maria and the farmer both glanced at me expressionless, before resuming their conversation.

  Eventually the visit was over. The farmer handed a bag of something to Maria and we put on our packs and continued our trek. I noticed that my temperature had dropped during our rest and I was glad to be on the move again, feeling full of energy.