Some women are buried. Not all of them stay that way.
Long before Bram Stoker gave the world Dracula — and he was Irish, let us not forget — Ireland already had its vampire. Her name was Dearg Due. It means, simply, red blood sucker. But her story is far more than her name suggests.
She was, by all accounts, beautiful. The kind of beautiful that made men forget themselves. Her father noticed, and sold her to a wealthy but cruel man who wanted her loveliness the way one wants a painting — to own it, to control it, to keep it behind locked doors.
She died young. Some say of grief. Some say of something darker.
They buried her in Waterford, beneath the earth of a place called Strongbow's Tree. And for a while, she stayed.
Then she rose.
On the anniversary of her death, once a year, Dearg Due walks again. She finds the men who wronged her — or men who remind her of them. She leans close. She kisses them.
They do not survive the kiss.
The only protection? Pile stones upon her grave before nightfall. Heavy ones. Enough to hold her down for another year.
But someone has to remember. And memories, like graves, are not always tended.
There is a particular kind of rage that does not die with the body. It waits. It learns patience underground. And when it finally surfaces — it is wearing a beautiful face.