by Aderyn Wood
Michael tried not to care either way, but he hoped it was the latter. He frowned as he became conscious of his thoughts. Strange, he rarely thought of Judith anymore. It was Emma who filled his mind most now, and his heart. A shiver gripped him, and he clenched his hands into fists. It was dangerous to let his mind drift that way. He had to be strong. Guard your heart, his Nan’s warning echoed in his thoughts, and Michael shut the lid on them, and all memory of Judith.
Near their guesthouse stood a liquor shop. Michael entered. Every night took them further from Emma’s last feed. Alcohol was a necessity. Its dulling effects on her urges were mysterious to say the least, but Michael was thankful for them.
He exited the shop with a bag containing two vodka bottles. Over the harbour, the horn blasts from incoming ferries swirled in the breeze. More tourists were arriving at Alexandria and a medley of languages filled the night air. Only a few nights ago, Michael and Emma had been among them. Michael scanned the harbour. It was always busy, no matter the time – day or night. One vessel caught Michael’s attention as it motored with seemingly too much speed to one of the jetties. Something about it seemed familiar. He’d seen that boat before… the tingling in his hands confirmed it. Then the hulking figure on the deck stole his gaze and Michael gasped, dropping the bag. One of the vodka bottles smashed on the pavement, and Michael swore under his breath as passers-by turned to frown his way.
He bent to the bag, glancing up constantly to watch that boat. That vessel had been moored in the bay in Greece, right near Amynta’s boat shed. He and Emma had ridden past it when they stole the slayer’s motorbike. And that man on the deck looked exactly like the vampire who’d pursued Michael and Emma as they made their escape from Amynta’s dungeon. Or his twin.
“Impossible,” Michael whispered as he clutched the bag now holding one bottle and the broken remains of the other.
Michael had staked Vincent. The huge vampire disintegrated to nothing but congealed blood and dust. And before that, Emma had sucked the very life out of his human twin brother.
But there was no mistaking the bulky form of the man who now stalked the deck of the incoming cruiser, preparing to moor. It was either Vincent or his brother. Somehow, one of them, or even both, had survived.
Another figure walked the deck, appearing suddenly from the cabin. Michael recognised her instantly. The red hair and confident strut told him all he needed to know.
“Jesus!” he hissed as he thumped the pavement, nearly running to get back to Emma.
The guesthouse came up quick enough, though it seemed Michael’s ragged breath alerted all of Alexandria to his whereabouts. Questions of the connection Amynta held with vampires returned. It was likely she knew their precise location. They had to flee, now. Hopefully Amynta would be distracted for a time with her arrival to the city. He cursed himself again for not thinking to fuel the bike.
He opened the gate to access the steps that took him up to their apartment. The accommodation proved an excellent location for a vampire, with an inbuilt robe in the bedroom, large enough to enclose Emma safely during the day, but it was accessible to all and sundry. If Amynta came here, there was nowhere to hide.
Michael unlocked the door with a trembling hand, then opened it with force, almost dropping the other bottle. He stalked through the short passageway and called Emma’s name twice before coming to a dramatic halt in the living room.
Emma, crouched on the floor, looked up at him with black monster eyes. Eyes he’d seen thrice before. Once in Amynta’s dungeon when she’d sucked Vincent’s brother dry of his blood. Once in the crypt of an old ruined church in Italy, when he’d stupidly woken her – a sleeping vampire. And once when she’d attacked Judith. The eyes were filled with dark crimson and red veins dominated their edges. Emma’s skin had turned a strange shade of blue, and the veins a darker tone of the same colour, they bulged from her skin. Her fangs were long. Her mouth dripped red.
“Emma!” Michael said, and the fear in his own voice was too easy to detect. He cleared his throat and forced his breath and heart to calm. “What have you done?”
Slowly she stood, and Michael took a short step closer. On the floor lay Hany, the guesthouse porter, blood pumping slowly from a wound on his neck, skin pale. A pile of new clothes by his side.
Chapter 4
In the hour before dusk, deep within a tomb in the oldest part of Père Lachaise Cemetery, an ancient vampire slept a fitful rest. Visions crowded his consciousness with such clarity the Old One believed he existed in the dream…
It began with a forest. Tall cedars covered a mountain. The forest was dark, but safe enough. Many creatures filled it; the hoots of owls and the baying of a wolf echoed off mountain peaks. Deep in the dark heart of the cedars stood a camp. Tents of worn leather had been pitched in a circular pattern, each bearing symbols and rudimentary pictures. A wolf’s head with a human body. An eagle. A rose. And on one shelter – the red tent – the unmistakeable image of a pentagram scarred the surface. From within that tent came a sharp, high-pitched scream.
The vampire opened his eyes.
Nathaniel sat up with a jolt, filling his lungs with the stale air of the tomb. It was an odd thing to do, to gasp like he was human. It was more so strange to have dreamt like one. Though now, when he tried to remember the dreams, they dissolved like steam in midwinter air. He recalled a red tent with some kind of symbol, and a scream. Yes, the scream had echoed as he woke.
He shook his head and ran a hand through his long hair, which had somehow become tangled in his sleep – odd for he never moved when at rest. Stranger still was the sheen of perspiration on his forehead. He’d not felt this way for centuries. Not since he was human. Indeed, it was as though he woke from human sleep. His mind was groggy, and he longed for a basin of cool water into which he could plunge his face.
The tomb was bereft of basins and water. It was cool and empty, and its familiarity calmed him. Nathaniel had gone to some effort to furnish it. The marble sarcophagus – still open from the morning when he’d checked the lance – dominated the space, but a few additional items gave it a sense of home. An eighteenth-century chaise longue occupied the majority of space along the north wall, and a rococo table in the corner held a few bottles of the finest brandy, all stolen of course. Both pieces of furniture were priceless. Both had been pilfered by Nathaniel over a century past. There was an iron sconce on the wall. An old-fashioned addition that allowed mourners to visit the tomb and light a candle. No such paraphernalia would be included in tombs these days. The rats no longer remembered the dead the way they used to. But it was a handy thing for a vampire.
Nathaniel didn’t mind the dark, not at all, but sometimes a little light was necessary to help him seduce a victim. Or frighten one. Or simply to read by candlelight the old-fashioned way. He kept a stash of candles for such a purpose, and he rose now to light the one still in the sconce.
Dull candlelight filled the space, and he leaned on the sarcophagus to consider the strangeness of the act of dreaming. Images flickered unbidden in his mind – a forest of cedar. Few such forests existed anymore. And the ones that had… he knew only too well where they were located. Or used to be.
Nathaniel paced a few swift steps as more images from the dream returned to him. The encampment with the red tent. That pentagram. It was too similar to the very pavilion that had obsessed him all those centuries ago.
“No, not similar. The very same.”
A violent panic lurched though him with a sudden awareness of the familiar scent lingering in the tomb. He sniffed the air in an attempt to identify it, it was bitter and acrid, but his senses seemed to dull, so he quit trying to smell and glanced around instead. Something echoed. A scream? Nothing but the candle and the dancing shadows moved. It was just the dream playing tricks on him, and he forced his mind to still. No one was here. The tomb was safe.
Safe from Amynta and her minions. But perhaps the slayer was behind these dreams somehow. Amynta had certain u
nnatural skills, that was a certainty, and she had posed a serious threat to his very existence on more than one occasion. But he was an Old One, and had overpowered her, or outsmarted her at least, and they’d come to a truce after a time.
But Amynta was agitating once more. Schleck was enough proof of that. Nathaniel nearly shivered as he recalled their last meeting, decades ago. Schleck’s joy of torture was not something he would forget. She possessed an impressive collection of fine silver blades that unnerved even an Old One like himself.
Things had changed. Amynta sought him again. Schleck had wanted the Lance of Constantine, and so too did Georgette.
“But why?” Nathaniel spoke quietly. He sniffed the air once more, there it was again. A scent, odd yet familiar.
Nathaniel turned and took the few short steps to the open sarcophagus. It was gloomy in the depths of the old tomb, but his sharp gaze found the oak chest in an instant. Opened. Empty.
“Fuck!” he told the gloom. “No!” he added as he bowed his head to look more deeply. The lance was gone. Even the red silk was nowhere to be seen. Taken.
He bent his head and forced air through his nose. A new scent, subtle and also vaguely familiar, mingled with the other and filled his nostrils – buttery cinnamon.
“Georgette,” he whispered.
In the next moment he also recognised the first scent. Holy water, of course! She must’ve sprayed it about while he’d slept. Its charms would have prevented him from waking. It was the real thing too, made by no ordinary priest, and Nathaniel briefly wondered how she’d acquired such a rarity before a fury of rage gripped him.
His hands clenched tight, but he forced them open and willed anger from his mind as he paced the tomb, focusing on the scant clues available to him. Georgette, that ox of a policewoman continued to evade him. He’d tracked her the moment he’d spied her loitering at Emma’s apartment. Emma had disappeared just when he needed her. Only a dim awareness of his progeny had nestled in his blood. Emma was far away, and weak. It repulsed him to think of her. She was still refusing her nature, that much he knew.
Instead, he’d found Georgette fussing with a camera and other recording equipment in Emma’s apartment. Nathaniel had recognised the equipment. It was used by specialists to gain precious information on ghosts and demons. Most of the rats who chased paranormal activities were nothing more than bored humans, pathetically searching for evidence to prove life could offer more than the monotonous drudgery they were irrevocably enslaved to – what they called ‘life’. Such equipment was snapped up for large sums. Few knew it could also be employed to capture vague images of vampires. The eyes at least.
It had piqued his interest immediately. Just who was Georgette? Did she hope to learn more about his kind? The notion had caused his blood to boil with rage and from that moment, she’d become a target. It was a part of his make-up that had grown into something of an obsession over the centuries. Since awakening from his first dormancy, an Old One, he couldn’t let any human with knowledge of vampires live to tell the tale.
Georgette had to die.
He narrowed his eyes as he thought of her. “Yes, quite the mystery.”
She had no fear. None whatsoever, and that was as interesting to him as it was troubling. He’d never met a rat who held no fear of his kind. Unless they were a slayer like Amynta. Or knew the tricks to hide their fear like he suspected Schleck did.
And Georgette tasted good. Fuck, she’d tasted good. He’d only had a trifle, barely a drop, but her blood was thick and sweet, and he could guzzle it all night long. Even with the foulness of the cinnamon. Perhaps he should hunt her down and keep her as his special treat.
He shook the thought off as he rubbed his eyes, trying to rub away the grogginess that stubbornly lingered. Keeping humans as an on-tap food source never worked out. Too much to do with feeding them, clothing them, keeping them free from disease, and keeping them quiet. Rats got whiney too easily. And the fear, if it lingered too long, would eventually taint their blood making them bitter and overripe. He’d tried it a handful of times in the past. But he’d inevitably forget all about them and they’d died of starvation. Not that he’d cared, but it proved too dangerous with the authorities finding the corpse. And when the police and the media found out, Amynta would come sniffing and try to kill him. Again.
“Georgette,” he whispered once more, and he allowed his mind to fill with the vision of her bulky form, her frizzy blonde hair, her green eyes. His blood tracked her in an instant and a sense of her filled his mind. She had left the city and was moving eastward. In a car or a train most likely.
“East.”
A rush of urgency swelled within him for the chase. That cedar forest from the dream, he somehow felt exactly where it was, or used to be. Was that where Georgette was now headed? Strange, it seemed Emma had gone a similar path.
He glanced to the corner where he’d hung his coat upon the sole hook in the wall. He carried few possessions now. Only one object of importance, aside from that lance – a diary, so old some of its pages were crumbling. It was one of the reasons he’d sought Emma again, against his better judgement. Perhaps she could help him to preserve the diary. He’d written it centuries past, when he’d first left England in pursuit of the Gypsy woman. He had no need of the diary, of course. Its contents were firmly burned on his mind’s eye. His power of recall, like all his kind, was so strong he could recite any part of a text he’d read, even if only fleetingly.
But the diary served another purpose. In it he’d sketched a number of portraits in his first decade as a vampire when the nostalgia was almost crippling. There was a sketch of his mother who had been a scullery maid in the viscount’s manse. And the viscount himself, Nathaniel’s father, who’d seduced his mother and produced him, an illegitimate son and constant disappointment to him. “If only you could see me now, Father,” Nathaniel whispered the lament he’d said a thousand times before.
Life as a bastard hadn’t been a bad one. Nathaniel was educated and treated well, almost like a noble himself. He was, after all, the viscount’s only child. A bastard heir was better than no heir at all. In time, Nathaniel would have inherited all his father’s lands and responsibilities. Would he have made his father proud?
Probably not.
He stood and pulled the diary from the coat pocket, being careful with the delicate pages, he turned to a well-worn sketch – a portrait of himself as captain of his father’s war band. He was a fine-looking man, even then. In the portrait he stood tall, cuirass, gauntlets and greaves well-polished. Sword, striking at his side. Nathaniel curled his lip. The fools who called themselves soldiers today when they pressed their computer buttons to launch a missile, or pulled a trigger to shoot bullets, they had no notion what real battle was. The colour of mud, the din of steel, the stench of shit and blood. The feeling of running a man through with a sword and watching his unaccepting eyes as he died.
Nathaniel took one last, lingering look at the portrait. Memories rushed back to him, as usual. He recalled seeing himself thus dressed in the tall mirrors of his father’s hall once, and he’d felt pride at the sight of who he was. A man. Almost a nobleman. A captain. A son a father could be proud of.
Certainly, Nathaniel could conjure the image in his mind whenever he chose, and often he did. But the vampire was a nostalgic creature, and the yearning never went away. More and more Nathanial found himself opening his old diary to look at the sketch with his own eyes rather than the eye of the mind. It gave him a visceral pleasure, and few things gave him such simple rewards now.
If only he could get his hands on the diary he wrote before. The one Emma translated for all the world to read on that ludicrous blog. That would give him pleasure to hold again. To smell. To see before him the inky words he’d written while still human. But the chances of stealing that old book were scant. Amynta no doubt held possession of it. Schleck would have made it so. Still, she’d stolen the lance, perhaps it was not impossible to claim his diar
y from her too.
Regardless, he still had this diary. His hands hovered over one page, so worn the edges had frayed and dissolved over time. His heart quickened at the thought of it fraying completely. If only he’d thought to have Emma conserve it before. He held his thumb over the fragile page, wanting to open it to reveal that sketch. But something made him resist. If he looked at her, he might descend into a black reverie that could last days.
He shook his head and put the diary down upon the sarcophagus. The air was disgusting in the tomb, the holy water still lingered and burned his nostrils. It was time to get out.
“East,” he said again. “Egypt.” That was the place the dreams showed him and that was where Emma went and where Georgette now headed. With the Lance of Constantine. Nathaniel turned and brushed dust from his coat. He would go east too.
Chapter 5
We march the streets, heading toward the tourist hub where all-night booking agents, car hire, and money exchange shops huddle together in a neon blaze. We are on the run. Again. I wipe my mouth and touch my cheeks for the tenth time since we fled the scene. My fingers show no sign of blood. I changed into the new clothes the youth had acquired for us and washed my face and hands as best I could. It all happened so quickly. He was there. The hunger piqued. His young blood smelled too good.
I lost all control.
Michael walks with long strides ahead of me. His thoughts are awash with regret about that damned motorbike, but we had to flee the guesthouse, especially in light of Amynta’s surprise arrival to Alexandria, and the bike was useless without fuel. Michael’s black coat flaps behind him. He leans slightly forward, as though he’s trying to out-walk his anger. I have the strange thought he must be cold in the chilly night, and I’m glad he has his woollen coat. Temperature no longer affects me. I could stand naked in a blizzard and I wouldn’t mind.
