Episode 26: Night Queen
You can never leave the past behind. Remembering where you come from, and where you’ve walked, it matters. It shapes you. But it isn’t enough. Intention. Aim. Ambition. How you arrive, that’s what they remember.
Life over a long enough span, it’s easy to forget. Memory loosens. Moments slip. Faces dim. Points on a timeline are more easily evoked when there was something at stake...love or loss, victory or defeat. The good times comfort. The failures resonate.
The arc of Elizabeth Jovan is a very long one. Her maturation, her experiences, her ascension to the top, was rocky at times, taking lifetimes to unfold. Where she ended up was never what she’d dreamt of, or sought. Yet on the eve of it, about to be crowned Queen of her kind, felt both earned and bittersweet. Hours before the coronation, she’d sit alone, quiet, contemplating.
Elizabeth Jovan - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
Striking blonde hair, soft features, a timeless stillness about her, Elizabeth wore an age far older than she looked. And over the many, many years she experienced, she thought back remembering a time long before with the other two...the past unspooling. The strife, parting ways bitterly in the darkness, never to see each other again.
She heard accounts of Anu, coming by way of rumors, the horror, the chaos, the legend of how he met his end. She saw Rah in the mind of another. His death tragic and unjust...But she’d wonder if either thought of her after they parted, or in their final moments if they held the same regrets that she did.
Her husband, Seamus having just read the book “The Time Machine”, by HG Wells, the two discussed the fanciful theory of going forward or back in time. An intellectual banter, if time yielded, where would you go? They had traded possibilities, drew lines through history. And though she’d seen so much already, her first thought was not to chase the wondrous future, but to return, to go back and see her fellow travelers one last time. To not just remember Anu and Rah, but too see them as they were, to reminisce about where they came from. To stand inside one last moment with the only two on this earth who had ever truly known the real her. But such things belonged to fiction.
She wiped a tear, and the memory broke at a knock on the door...Seamus.
SEAMUS: They’re ready for you, my love.
ELIZABETH: I’ll be there in a moment.
Postcard from Detroit, circa 1910 - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
The year, 1910, in the burgeoning city of Detroit, Michigan. The Royal Arm, a fitting venue for the site of the coronation of Elizabeth Jovan, first Queen of the Vampires. The oldest of her kind in existence.
She’d seen life evolve over a grand span, witnessing human evolution, change on a large-scale, and Empires rise and fall. Her blood had spread far and wide, multiplying into a vast Brood. She’d observed power, how aristocracies and leaders endured, by blunt leverage and practiced positioning.
So when unification came to a vote, the numbers made it simple, her Underlings ensured a landslide. But this wasn’t by her design. For Elizabeth, it was an example of survival of the fittest. Time and the potency of her blood cast into an inferior genetic sea, spreading outward over a long enough span.
Thousands were in attendance. The ceremony rivaling those of old Europe as she could recall. Vampires coming from far and wide to witness the historic event. In her, a want ran deep, to rule justly, to carry her kind into the centuries ahead.
Taking her seat on the throne, she’d look out at her beloved, Seamus, so many trials and tribulations they’d been through. Her emotions welling again, Elizabeth would draw a quiet breath, and let her eyes fall closed for a moment...
More memories, older ones, flooded her mind.
Travelers from a distant world - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
Three travelers from another world sealed into pressure suits, with reflective bubble helmets. Strapped in tightly, their craft making a violent descent. The cabin shaking -- their speed increasing. A bright, blinding light coming from a thick-plated window in front of them. Not sunlight, but hull metal, white-hot from atmospheric entry. A deafening RUMBLE. An automated message in an alien tongue--
AUTOMATED VOICE: Impact imminent. Crash sequence initiated.
Flames trailing to smoke. Falling faster through ozone. The weight of gravity pulling the craft forcefully downward. Through the window, hurling faster and faster toward terra firma. Then -- IMPACT.
Applause would bring her back to the ceremony, and a shiver of her forceful welcome to our planet, ran down her spine. Elizabeth would catch her breath, as a shimmering crown was placed upon her head, as the ruler of them all...
Elizabeth crowned Queen of the Vampires - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
Then, from the crowd…
VICTOR: Death to the old guard! Death to Ezath!!!
A face she recognized, Victor, a Vampire responsible for the death of one of her fellow travelers, surging out of the crowd with a blade.
Victor emerges from the crowd - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
His fangs protracted. Black nictitating membranes, a sort of extra eyelid, drew across his eyes for protection. He launched, coming at her, a straight line for her heart. Seamus moved without thinking, taking the knife in the chest, saving his beloved from sure death.
Pandemonium broke, the room fractured. Some lunged for Victor. Others formed a wall around him...Signs of a coordinated coup.
In the chaos, Victor slipped free. As loyal vampires swarmed to Elizabeth and others fled, she caught another familiar face in the rush -- Royce. She had not seen him in centuries. Her offspring, turned sworn enemy. Their eyes met...he broke away, vanishing into the crowd like smoke. And in that instant, Elizabeth knew, this was his design.
Atop her head sat the crown, the Queen of the Vampires. Her first order, wielding her newfound power, a call to her subjects to bring her the heads of Royce and Victor. She wanted their blood.
TO BE CONTINUED…