Episode 41: Forsaken

For years Keiko and Suzu stayed on the run, stalking the night. Keiko, still unsure what she’d become, used her new strengths for survival, money taken from those she fed on, safer rooms, warmer clothes, a better life for her growing child. Of course, Suzu was loyal to Keiko, but feared her mother had become a Demon. Nonetheless, she stayed at her side for decades. 

By 1602, in a hilltop castle in Iida, Japan, Suzu was in her late eighties, her health failing, breath thin, hands like paper in the glow of an oil-lamp. Keiko who’d remained unchanged, couldn’t imagine life without her daughter, though she was powerless to stop time.

Suzu on her deathbed - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC

But over the decades, having played the events of the night on the path, over and over in her mind, Keiko suspected the powers she gained were from consuming a small amount of blood from her attacker. She’d experimented on hapless victims before killing them. She knew what her blood was capable of, and the dose needed to change someone, to keep them in a perpetual state of undying. Keiko begged Suzu to drink her blood, to stay alive, but Suzu refused.   

Thankful for all Keiko provided as a parent, Suzu could see the monster her mother had become...As Suzu had spent her life, since the night of the change, bringing victims for Keiko to feed on.

As the sun of dawn was coming, Suzu, taking her final, dying breaths, Keiko force fed her some of her blood -- transforming her daughter into a vampire. But Suzu’s life as a creature of the night didn’t last but a single slumber...

The day pressed on, Keiko and the newly made Suzu, rested...as the last minutes of daylight thinned at the horizon Keiko woke, certain life would go on now that Suzu had turned. But she found the chamber empty. She searched the dim room.

A shape stirred in the corner by the blacked-out window. Suzu, hair matted, clothes soaked, eyes hollow black, fangs bared, stepped from the shadows, rage clenched in both fists.

Suzu the Vampire - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC

OLDER SUZU: Mother, how could you do this to me?

KEIKO: It’s a miracle. You live as I do...I can feel you in my mind. 

OLDER SUZU: You made me a demon. Why? I don’t want your curse.

KEIKO: It isn’t a curse. It’s life without sickness… without death.

OLDER SUZU: I wanted death. I had made my peace.

KEIKO: Suzu...what’s that smell?

That’s when Keiko noticed, the broken lamp at Suzu’s feet. Oil covering her clothes and hair. Suzu opened her hands to reveal a flint and strike. 

KEIKO: Please, daughter, I beg you--

OLDER SUZU: My pain ends now, but I hope yours haunts you until the end of time. I hate you!

They both moved at once. Suzu reached the shutters first and threw them wide. The setting, but still bright sun, knifed in -- Keiko reeled back, skin sizzling. Suzu’s flesh also smoked and blistered in the sun. She struck the flint, once, twice, it caught the oil, and flame climbed her like a veil. Pinned back by daylight, Keiko collapsed in the shadows, forced to watch as the fire consumed Suzu. The room filled with light and smoke, within moments there was nothing left to save.

Keiko, helpless to stop Suzu - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC

Keiko abandoned the stone comfort of Iida with nothing left to anchor her. Years slid past and grief dulled to a hard, usable edge. Something kept her moving, answers, maybe? A name for what she’d become...perhaps even a companion who might understand. Or death. Whatever waited at the end of the trail, she meant to meet it.

Her birth into night had been blind. In Japan there were no campfire tales of Ezath or the European blood-folk to guide her. It had been trial and error when discovering and perfecting the rules that applied in her life, along with her gifts. But daylight’s exile turned an already awkward woman into a ghost among her own kind. And with the loss of Suzu, she was a very angry vampire. As decades passed, and her search for her maker wore on, in her mind she began to envision a violent confrontation between the two. One that would see her get revenge for the curse he passed to her. 

In 1657, the trail drew her to Edo. Rumors in alleyways, scents in the wind, faint and familiar, told her he was here, hiding. She slipped through the ghettos, following the thread...when the night brightened wrong. Heat rolled down the streets. Sparks climbed the sky. A fire took its first hungry breath and then another. 

The Great Fire of Edo, painted by artist Hoshinobu Arakida - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC

MAN: EVERYONE RUN...FIRE!

The “Great Fire” raged. Bells clanged and paper walls became torches, Keiko lifted her head into the smoke. Somewhere inside that roar was the scent she’d chased for a century, and the monster who’d made her.

Down a dark, narrow alley, a thin cry pulled her in. Anu was bent over a girl, feeding in the chaos. Surprise replaced the duel she’d rehearsed -- no grand clash, no decrees, just an accidental vampire and an indifferent maker, meeting by firelight...but he only sensed she was a creature “like” him, not “of” him. 

Anu doesn’t recognize Keiko - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC

ANU: What are you doing here?

KEIKO: You took everything from me. I’ve come to kill you.

He stared...puzzled, thoughts searching.

KEIKO: You don’t remember? More than a hundred years ago, you attacked me. I cut you with my dagger.

Raking his memory, he found the shard.

ANU: You slashed at my throat and ran. I didn’t feel you born. I never saw you in my mind’s eye. 

KEIKO: And if you had?

ANU: I don’t know...I feel you now. You have much pain inside.

KEIKO: Would you have wanted me? Taken care of me?

ANU: I never meant to make you. I was drunk on blood. You were...a mistake.

Keiko begs for mercy from her maker - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC

Her anger quickly turned to tears.

KEIKO: Then kill me. End my suffering.

ANU: I never wanted another to carry my blood. But you do...You should go...before the humans find you. 

KEIKO: I need you. I need to know what I am. How to live in this world. I don’t want to be alone anymore.

But he didn’t want her. He turned away. Anu fled into the burning streets, abandoning her to the fire and the sirens of the city.

AYA: Help...me...

Also abandoned in the alley, the girl Anu was feeding on, bleeding out. Her name was Aya. She lived on the streets, a homeless beggar, caught by Anu as she tried to escape the inferno. The girl reached a trembling hand toward Keiko.

Aya in need of help - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC

Seeing the fear in Aya’s eyes. A reminder of her beloved Suzu. Keiko knew the price of solitude and responded by gifting her blood, transforming Aya into a Vampire. The alley held a new pair of shadows...And an unlikely family was born.

TO BE CONTINUED…