by Aiden James
He insisted again that I take the glass, which I reluctantly did. Then he gently scooped up my daughter into his arms while directing me into the chair.
“Why is the plane moving?” I said, suspiciously, as I glanced out the window view shared by both seats.
“For security concerns, it can’t stay where we had it parked,” he said, retaking his seat. He smiled lovingly at my daughter who he gently cradled like a cherished football against his muscular forearm. “The plane will stop moving before we finish our discussion.”
I nodded thoughtfully while watching the hangar get smaller behind us.
“So, I take it that you knew about my date this afternoon.”
I looked for something other than the state of us to talk about. But then I pictured Peter’s new love, Sara, in my mind and felt the air being sucked out of me once more.
“Yes, I did,” he said, glancing out the window before looking at me again. This time his loving smile was directed at me. “You had to resolve your relationship with Peter to come to grips with what is in the past and what is in your future, Txema.”
“Why do you even care?” I almost regretted the harshness the question was laced with. But I couldn’t help it. “And why travel a few thousand miles across the Atlantic to find out how things turned out—that’s a little creepy, don’t you think?”
“It was four thousand, three hundred, and fifty-three miles from Paris to here,” he said. I felt some vindication to know I’d hit a nerve. “But, no, it’s not creepy, not when I love someone and care only that they are completely safe and happy.”
His eyes narrowed and they glistened.
“So, you’ve done something like this before?” I wasn’t ready yet to let his heart off any easier. “I thought that’s what servants and hired vampires were for.”
“Txema, stop it!” he said, his tone more hurt than angry. He smiled again at Alaia, who cooed and nuzzled into his arm. He gently stroked her hair and then looked back at me, with a serious expression. “It’s more than an adolescent curiosity about your welfare. I honestly love you. I’m in love with you, and I’ve felt that way since when we first met on my boat last year.”
I didn’t know what to say. Part of me felt this was so inappropriate. This whole scene seemed out of whack. I had just experienced my heart being ripped out of my chest by losing the man I likely would’ve married had the war waged by Ralu against his brother Gustav never taken place. Yet, another part of me, deeper than the other, felt good. In fact, it felt fantastic that this man who would be a fine prize in any age, whether modern or any other time along his two thousand year life, desired only me and no one else. But, I needed time to sort through both the numbness, and the exquisite thrill to know which one was the stronger of the two emotions, and therefore would endure the longest. Of course, I couldn’t help but wonder why he felt that way about me.
The plane picked up speed, and I realized we had veered onto a runway.
“Goddamn it, Racco, you lied to me!” I fumed. “You said the plane would stop moving after we finished our discussion!”
“I didn’t lie, Txema.” He calmly secured his grip on my daughter while he pulled a shoulder harness around him and her. He motioned for me to do the same with the harness on my seat. “We just have lots to talk about. You should buckle up, ma chérie!”
At first I remained defiant, leaning forward in my seat while I glared at him. But when the plane lifted briefly, bounced upon the runway, and rose high into the air, I took his advice. Hurriedly securing my seatbelt, I continued to eye him angrily.
“They will kill you when they find out you did this, you know,” I said sullenly, once the plane had cleared the airport and headed east. The neighborhoods and highways below looked like they’d all easily fit inside the slight gap inside my clenched fist. “There’s far too much at stake for the vampires of Europe to allow you to go unpunished for running off with us.”
“Do you enjoy the prospect of being a lifelong blood bank for them?” he said, smirking slightly before returning his loving gaze to Alaia.
“No, of course not!” Indignant, I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. I hated the squeaks from the expensive leather, since it amplified every movement much louder than I would’ve liked. “I’m much more than that to them―and so is Alaia! They need us for survival, yes, but they will always love and protect us. At least they’ve never deserted me.”
Another look of pain as he glanced sharply in my direction; however, he didn’t respond right away.
“You remind me so much of Chanson, when we shared a similar discussion centuries ago,” he said while looking out through the window closest to us. We had just entered a misty cloudbank, leaving little to discern outside the plane. “She defended Gustav’s actions at the time, along with a handful of other vampires who are no longer with us. It was the beginning of her downfall.”
He shook his head sadly while absently stroking Alaia’s silky hair.
“Is that when you fathered two girls with her?” I was unable to restrain the knowing smirk that forced its way upon my face. “Was it your way of making her feel better about her misfortunate lot in life? After all, who’d ever want to be food for the immortals?”
He looked up at me with an even deeper pained expression on his face. “So, you’ve heard about our daughters?”
“Two babies born out of wedlock—it must’ve been a real party for my dear cousin back then.” I said, picturing Chanson as the victim of a much more experienced and devious male in a time I assumed was more naïve or at least less open about the true nature of female/male dynamics. I wondered how long it took before Racco took off and left her. A few days? Or, perhaps, he lasted a week before deserting her. Was I just fooling myself? Would it be any different for me?
“You could never understand what it was like back then.” He snarled. Even so, his face had turned several shades darker with a deep crimson tint. He was seriously pissed. “Chanson was the first woman I ever truly loved and the girls—our daughters, were the most beautiful children I’ve ever sired…”
His eyes filled with tears and he looked away. Talk about feeling like an evil bitch. Yes, I wanted to get his previous relationship with my vampire cousin out in the open, to expose the fact I knew about the two of them, and how wronged I’ve felt by his seduction last winter since he chose to go after someone who shared Chanson’s bloodline. I mean, isn’t that sort of like sleeping with cousins or even sisters? It made me feel cheap and no more respectable than if I’d been one of his barmaid whores from a bygone century.
“I’m sorry, but I do want to know what this was all about back then, and what it means for your present relationship with Chanson,” I said, hoping he’d perceive my gentler tone as the olive branch I intended. “What were your daughters’ names?”
“Jacqueline and Marissa,” he said, taking a deep breath before going on. Meanwhile, Alaia yawned, perhaps signaling she somehow knew that the more hostile moments between Racco and I had passed. “From what I understand, Jacqueline was the one given credit for reintroducing the bloodline to your ancestors. But, soon after our daughters were born, other female cousins of hers—nieces of Chanson’s—developed the birthmark and soon became carriers of it, as well.”
“Are you saying that some women among my ancestors simply woke up one day with this cursed thing on their throats?” I pointed at mine incredulously. “That’s fucking absurd!”
“So it would seem,” he said. “Although, it happened over the course of several years, each of the women given the mark all bore children with the same twin teardrops along the left side of their necks. At first, it was a mixture of males and females born with the birthmark, but eventually, it became only females again who carried the ‘gift.’ Truthfully, they were the only ones to survive, as I witnessed several males with the mark who were stillborn back then.”
“Then what does it matter if I die, really, if more will just be born with this stupid vampiric tramp stamp on
their necks?”
“Nobody knows first, if it will happen again, and second, how long it will take. Ralu has been much more aggressive in his purge of your relatives this time around. Quite frankly, there just aren’t many of you left, even distantly related. Many of the seeming random massacres across the globe have been communities destroyed just because they may have this seed dormant in their blood. You, my dear, are the proverbial bird in the hand, and Gustav’s bastard brother is doing his best to burn all the bushes to the ground.”
I nodded, more to let him know I considered what he told me to be true. Admittedly, there was enough implied information for me to fill in some of the blanks for what he didn’t share, like the resultant peaceful co-existence between him and the majority of civilized vamps. Gustav and Racco definitely were on friendly terms when I watched them interact last November. But, I worried now that what Racco had just done by kidnapping me and Alaia would totally erase all goodwill between them.
“What do you believe will happen to you when Gustav and the others catch up to you?”
“Other than a nasty verbal confrontation and some bared fangs? Absolutely nothing.” He laughed, and Alaia made a chirping sound, as if she wanted to join in. She was awake and smiling at him again.
“Are you ready for me to take her off your hands yet?” I couldn’t help but smile at the two of them. “She’s probably ready for a change by now.”
“She seems fine. Maybe in a little while she will be ready to discard me like her momma has,” he said, adding a playful wink for me to keep my dander down. “I know you are worried about the volatile anger you’ve experienced with the civilized breeds of vampires. It would take an incredibly horrid thing for them to even consider killing me.”
“How can you be so certain?”
“Because I know how to permanently destroy them all,” he said, and his tone was a curious mixture of triumph and sadness, as if he knew the recipe but hoped never to use it. “Every vampire on the planet could be gone within a few days if I were ever to reveal their ultimate true death formula.”
I remembered my conversation with Kazikli about the most common ways to kill a vampire, and how my guardians mentioned a certain kind of silver could prove fatal to them. Kazikli especially seemed uncomfortable discussing the subject.
“Is the weapon silver?’”
He eyed me curiously and shook his head ‘no.’
“Not silver in the sense we would think of it,” he said. “But, there is a metal that carries a similar color and has a nickname that makes it sound like the two metals are related in some way.”
He paused to study my confused expression, as if expecting me to guess the answer to his riddle.
“It’s a form of hydrargyrum, better known as mercury,” he said, pausing a moment for me to join in with the rest of the answer, which I still didn’t know. “You’ve never heard of ‘quicksilver?’”
“Yeah, yes I’ve heard of it,” I said, seeing the connection to what Raquel had mentioned about a particular kind of silver that could kill a vampire. “So, how is mercury worse for vampires than it is for humans?”
“When mixed with a certain rare version of gold it becomes extremely toxic to them. The mixture is lethal because of the mercury’s liquid form, which enables the elixir to spread through their bodies like a flame on a river of gasoline,” he said. “The fumes from heating mercury aren’t combustible on their own, but readily react with numerous other elements and are most harmful to humans, and if a child is involved, the exposure can kill them. A vampire’s immortality in some ways is like a young human child—the metabolism and growth rate of new cells is similar. Do you remember how I told you what happens to my body when we took the helicopter up into the Pyrenees Mountains back in November?”
“Yeah, I remember,” I said, nodding as I pictured our conversation. “You told me your body’s cells are in a perpetual state of regeneration.”
“Yes, that’s precisely true!” he said, sounding quite pleased I remembered. “A vampire’s metabolism is even faster, which is why they have ravenous appetites that are difficult to control—especially for the younger converts. That same high metabolism becomes a literal fuse to a bomb when they encounter the gold-laced mercury I mentioned. A thimble-sized serving can kill an adult vampire in minutes, and a bathtub full could bring down much of Ralu’s army.”
“As well as destroy all of the civilized vampires in the world,” I whispered softly, picturing a horrible demise for the vampires I held dear to my heart. “You’ve never used such an elixir on anyone, I hope?”
“Never,” he said, and then relaxed in his chair while studying me again. This time he wore a curious expression. “Neither me nor my brother, Comte, created this elixir. He has never wished to annihilate our eternal companions any more than I have. It was devised by one of the oldest vampires alive today, and he did it as a means to end his own existence.”
“Who was that?”
I honestly had no clue as to who it could be, largely because I’d never known a vampire who didn’t cherish their life—definitely not anyone in my immediate group of guardians. As for the ancient ones, Gustav seemed to thoroughly enjoy the regality and privilege of his kingly status. Ralu’s loathing was for his enemies only, and he obviously craved power and dominion over others. Nora had too much compassion for humans and vampires to fit the self-loathing vamp profile. As for Kazikli, despite his pleasant disposition and concern for others, every now and then I caught a glimpse of enormous inner turmoil.
“It’s not Kazikli, is it?” I thought about what this ancient vampire told me in our long talk alongside the Kosi riverbank in Nepal. His candidacy was more based on the fact he raised Comte and Racco in ancient Persia, and was responsible for their development as expert alchemists. By virtue of his knowledge of rare potions and magical elixirs alone, he would be a logical suspect.
“Yes, it was Kazikli,” said Racco, his tone filled with surprise while his expression bore admiration for my guess. “The first century of any vampire’s existence is the worst one, since it often includes long term separation from their creator into the undead state, for one reason and another. Add to that the inevitable old age and dying that eventually finds all of their mortal loved ones, and you have one hell of a depressing lot to face. Suicide is fairly frequent, and almost always drawn out and excruciatingly painful.”
“What, like stepping out into the sun?” I asked. He nodded grimly. “It seems like getting beheaded or stabbed through the heart with a wooden stake would be better than what the elixir will do.”
“That’s true,” he said. “But the elixir was born out of Kazikli’s desire to find something quick and relatively painless. The end result failed to meet that expectation.”
“Sounds like he fucked up,” I said, adding a wry smile to try and stop the mood from heading south again.
“Yes, I believe in so many words that was his assessment,” he said, smiling wryly, as well. “It was in the early days of Ralu’s underground cave kingdom, and Kazikli experimented upon the wilder, untamed vampires, the first Chupacabra strains Ralu had encouraged by his own abstention from feeding on your ancestors’ sacred blood. None of the civilized vampires looked upon these others as their brethren, so killing a few in pursuit of scientific knowledge and improved sorcerer magic wasn’t disdained.”
“Oh… I’ll bet that’s another grudge held by Ralu,” I said, knowing how most humans would react to that sort of thing.
This fact alone shed light on the demon vampire king’s relentless violence toward the human race and any vampires who have opposed him. If this were how he and his kind had been treated for centuries―along with being hunted by humans armed with torches and pitchforks at midnight―surely an evil mind would believe the opportunity to extract prolonged retribution in the present age was deserved payback for all sins wrought against him and his progeny. I began to wonder if he hadn’t started out as evil to begin with after all. If I understood Rac
co correctly, he was the first―and only―vampire ever to voluntarily decide to stop snacking on me and my kind. And what did it get him? Ostracized and his progeny experimented on like rats. If the fucker weren’t trying to kill me, I might feel bad for him. Whatever the cause of his disposition, there could be no doubt that he was anything but evil.
“Why don’t we suspend this discussion on such gruesome subjects for now?” Racco said, likely in response to my worried frown. I realized I enjoyed the privacy of my thoughts once more, and he had misinterpreted the cause of my expression. He gazed out the window at the sun behind us, which steadily descended toward the western horizon. “You’ve hardly touched your wine. Would you prefer that I freshen your glass?”
“Sure.”
He walked over to a small bar nearby… so fluid in his movements, a man never out of control of himself.
“Would you like a chilled glass this time?” he said, wearing an impish grin. “Mercel told me how the colder glasses were your preference on Christmas Eve. Or, we could keep things as they are, in the more traditional way.”
“Geez, I forgot all about that.” I chuckled at the memory of asking Mercel for a frosted glass after the first one was given to me on accident. I honestly don’t know why it became my preference that night, but it did. Maybe because I believed I was going to be stuck in a Siberian-like existence in China forever. “Yeah, I’ll take a frosted glass. What the hell.”
Racco chuckled along with me, and after allowing me a few minutes to freshen up and take care of Alaia’s needs, we soon were drinking his Bordeaux vineyard’s finest merlot and talking about lighter subjects. I thought it might mean avoiding all vampire topics, but that’s mostly what we talked about. We touched on my adventures in China and Nepal, as well as his search for a Ralu-proof safe haven in countries such as Italy, Greece, and Romania.
