I still wake to the smell of smoke, sometimes.
We made Vienna our home until war, my old enemy, came to the city in the early 1500s. Suleiman the Magnificent sent his gleaming ranks of Ottoman soldiers to seize the city. Their brightly colored tents encircled the city for months, unbothered by the cold rains of fall. Vienna was torn between the Hungarians and the Austrians, an attractive jewel to any expansion-minded ruler and a more valuable bargaining chip by far. Seemingly overnight, there were hundreds of thousands of troops outside our city, and emissaries were sent to negotiate a surrender.
The energy in the city was one of abject dread. Rumors flew about Turks digging under the city, and we could hear the distant detonation of explosives by night, rattling the thick defensive walls.
Religious fervor whipped the churches into a frenzy, and I often heard people talking in hushed whispers about the end of days when I slipped into the chapel to pray in the evening. My piety was a sporadic, half-feral thing, sometimes lashing out at God with teeth bared, other times nuzzling against His loving providence like a kitten, but prayer steadied me. Whether I was talking to myself or something more, it brought me peace.
The world we had all known, it seemed, was drawing to a close.
You did not fear the Ottomans, not their weapons or their foreign ways. You admired their tactical skills, their finely crafted weapons, and spoke highly of their customs to me behind closed doors, the way you might talk about the Swedes or the French. You had lived too long to fear one culture more than another, and you had seen more empires fall than I could fathom even existing. War and desolation was par for the course, and so was the inevitable rebuilding and cultural flourishing that came after.
“Perhaps Vienna will remake herself if the city falls,” you mused once, watching frightened citizens hurry by outside our windows as the encroaching army drew closer. “Perhaps she will become a flower of art, or a trading center worthy of her position.”
You did not seem concerned with the human toll such a remaking would demand.
As the trade routes in and out of the city were choked out by the Ottomans, Vienna’s tables became more and more meagre, but you and I feasted nightly. Chaos ruled the streets, and people were so preoccupied with their own concerns that they were willing to look the other way if someone went missing. There were more young people roaming the streets, restless and wound up with fighting instinct. You welcomed them with open arms, even brought some of them into our bed to toy with before you took your fatal bite.
We grew fat and happy in the city’s discontent, and you quietly began pulling your money out of Viennese ventures and cashing out your investments in gold. Another move was coming, then. There wasn’t much time left.
My killing sprees grew bolder, more indiscriminate. The frantic atmosphere covered my tracks and allowed me access to men whose disappearances would have otherwise been thoroughly investigated. I went after magistrates, keepers of the peace, wealthy merchants, degenerates all of them. I ripped the throat out of a man who had violated his own daughter, then left a whole month’s worth of the allowance you gave me at the foot of his daughter’s bed. I ran a war profiteer through with one of the swords he so happily sold to both sides, then delicately supped from his wrist in his smithy. It was like sitting at my father’s knee as a child, cozy in the glow of a blacksmith’s fire while I enjoyed my simple meals.
It wasn’t a vendetta now, it was a purge; my last-ditch effort to cleanse the city of the wretches who haunted her dark corners. I would not leave Vienna in their clutches. Despite the way you turned your nose up to my nightly vigilante activities, my heart was steadfast. Why else would God allow me to fall into your hands if he did not want me to use my monstrousness to serve the common good?
I began to say goodbye to my beloved city, going for long walks at dusk to try and catch a bit of her color, see a few of her inhabitants before night fell. I was in love with every cobblestone, every bridge, every butcher’s boy and flower-selling girl. Vienna seemed to me a perfect encapsulation of the wonder of city life, and I shuddered to think she may fall.
Either way, you and I wouldn’t be there to see it.
We fled under cover of night, through an underground tunnel known only to a few. I ran with your jewels sewn into my dress, with hidden pockets to hide silver and gold. We abandoned everything in the townhouse; my fine dresses and shoes, Hanne’s lovingly embroidered pillows, your scientific equipment in the basement. We would rebuild even better than before in our new home, you told me.