“You must hear this,” Shenmé said. “It’s crucial, master.”
“What?” I pulled my leg away, as she tugged at my cuff.
“Evelina must feed on the blood of her own,” she said. “Her constitution is fragile.”
“If she was made with my venom, she may feed on any blood she pleases.” The hackles on my neck rose, as pride pricked at me.
Shenmé reached for me again, desperate for me to hear her. I cringed at her dying energy, pulling me down into her vortex. “Evelina is like me, like Byron.” She faced upward and whispered as though into my ear, “Master,” she called me, “you must see the pattern.”
I did not until she said it. Byron, Shenmé, and Evelina, all made from my venom, the purest source, and I was the target, my line the one being destroyed by sullied blood.
“She has fed on the den donors,” I said, yanking Shenmé up from the deck. “Has she been poisoned too?”
“All of them drink bad blood.”
“No. No.” I steadied my hand, and returned her to the berth, letting my rage diffuse itself. “She will not suffer for this.”
“She must drink from her own.” Shenmé said the words with clenched teeth. My outrage had shaken her and increased the pain.
“Every vampire here will suffer the same fate.”
“Why have there been no signs? Others who have begun to suffer, too?”
She shook her head. “It’s the venom.”
“What do you mean?”
“Our venom—it’s made for our venom.”
“They all have traces of my venom in them.”
“Yes.”
Time, quantity, and purity of venom determined the rate at which a vampire would collapse from the poisoned blood, and eventually be incapable of feeding.
“Why do you say she must drink of her own?”
“It’s the only way to know—” Shenmé toppled over and I rushed to her. She whispered, her voice a ghost beneath a small heap of clothing, “He has destroyed both races and created his own.”
“Who?”
“The god of doom.”
She meant my nemesis. I questioned how one could acquire such power, only to learn it was inherent. Shenmé’s broken frame said it all. The ancient one had returned for the shade I had denied him all those years ago. The dark soil of Elysium awaited me, my having slipped through the fields of asphodel once, and Hades sent the goddess of vengeance to repossess what was still his.
“Nemesis is a bitter goddess,” I said.
I had underestimated her reach, spreading across generations of time and faith. I abandoned my pantheon long ago since none had been my equal. But now the ancient goddess reminded me of the havoc she could wreak. Narcissus had seen nothing compared to what she had planned for the son of Peleus. She was the figure of divine retribution, seeking payment from those who had succumbed to hubris, but she had become more wrathful with time, with technology, having lain dormant for so long. She lusted for vengeance now, for revenge was not enough, and Laszlo Arros was her weapon of choice.
“There’s no good blood,” Shenmé said.
From what I could tell, Muriel, Captain Jem, and Lucia were the only uncontaminated sources of blood onboard a ship of poisonous donors. And no vampire could learn that truth.
“The brood will sting, master.”
I believed that, for they were all headed toward the same tortured fate. The infection had already taken hold of some of them, though they showed no symptoms yet. Once the vampires onboard started getting sick, suspicions would arise. I had to get off the ship with what was mine.
Shenmé gripped me with her brittle claws, cracked and chipped, as she held on to something solid. “Take them and go,” she said. “Save your descendants.” She looked up at me with her fiery eyes and I beheld the pain beneath.
I cradled her in my arms, an act of tenderness Byron had denied me. My anger had subsided at the sight of her demise.
“Toss me overboard,” she said. “Let my ashes find their way along the Feng and back to you. I’ll get the chance to start again, sweet master.” She closed her eyes and whispered her final words to me, “Save your offspring.”
It is quite something to see a corpse crumble before your eyes—Lot’s wife and the pillar of salt and all.
The Last Blood
Vincent paused in his dictation and tore the pen from my hand, slamming it down on the drafting table without moving from his spot in the corner. “Do you know why you have no offspring?”
My throat relaxed, as his force seemed to wane, his hold on me loosening.
“Speak,” he said.
“Gerenios said I was to remain alone.”
“A monk in the high tower,” he scoffed.
“I’m not like the others.”
“Ah,” his voice grumbled as he rose from the chair. “You think you have no match.” He tapped his feet along the planks, as he crossed to reach me. He grabbed my chin before I could resist, and held my face up to his.
“Look,” he said.
Terror seized me, as he opened his mouth to bare his metal fangs. The words on the page had not done them justice. They would even frighten Minos, the sinners’ counsel with the horrid curling tale. I shut my eyes, and he tossed my head to the side.
“You have her eyes,” he said.
“Whose—,” my voice got caught in my throat.
“Do you wonder about your guardian?”
“How do you know about him?”
“There is nothing about you I do not know,” he said, as he floated back to the nook, dragging a fingernail along the stone wall. He scarred one whole side of the tower with a deep groove.
He was furthest from me now, but his black soul drowned out my light.
“Can you see the line I’ve made?”
“Yes,” I said, freed from his paralysis.
“A lifeline,” he said. “Do you see the line that is made by the cracks between the stones? The seam that runs the entire length of the tower from bottom to top, into the earth below and through the parapet above us into the endless sky?”
I imagined the invisible grid he drew for me and nodded.
“Good,” he said. “Tell me, which line represents your life?”
I swallowed and looked up at him as though to look away were worse, desperate to see in him the creature Evelina had softened and loved.
“The shorter one,” I said.
“Wrong.”
I didn’t understand how my lifeline could be the longer, unless his wasn’t the other object of comparison.
“It is not a question of length,” he said. “It is a matter of direction.”
He ran his hand along the groove he’d made, savoring its tactility as if it were Braille meant to tell the tip of his finger a story.
“Mine sits along the horizon, endless and circular,” he said. “Yours runs upward.” He looked up, and spread his arms wide.
I would’ve told him I didn’t understand if he hadn’t terrified me so. He seemed engrossed in the groove of the line he’d etched, his concentration pouring into the fissure like water through a duct.
He brought his head forward and stared at the groove, as he moved to my side. He dropped his gaze from the wall to the text I’d begun, and smiled. The scribbled language of the colony wasn’t as beautiful as his tongue. He stood so close I could’ve touched him, though I kept my hands tucked in the sleeves of my pullover, afraid to test his chimericality. He read my thoughts as easily as if I’d spoken them aloud, and reached out to prove he was no shadow.
“I am glad I frighten you, Dagur,” he said. “I have been soft for too long.”
I knew you’d come, I wanted to say, my tongue tied up in knots.
“My final message held you in suspense, did it? What was it I wrote, ‘I am coming for you, Dagur. Keep the blood warm.’ Was that it?”
I shook my head, as my pulse quickened. The throbbing in my temples showed in the veins of my neck.
“T
here was more, no?” With a swipe of his hand, he freed my voice box. “Speak it.”
“I am the last of your kind,” I squeaked.
“Ah, yes,” he said. “You. You are the last.” He pointed his sharpened finger at me. “You are so much more, too.” He backed away again, a misshapen smile corrupting his looks, as he retreated to the chair in the nook. “Your blood is dear to me.” He lingered over the word dear, repeating it twice, and then said, “Caro, in Italian.”
As hard as I tried, I couldn’t stop thinking of the novice, the young Italian girl, the pregnant waif who stole his heart and became his counterpart by another’s hand. She rushed at me and I saw the face of Evelina Caro as clearly as my own.
“I didn’t mean to,” I spat out the words before he seized my larynx again and shut me up for good.
“Ready the pen,” he said with a growl.
I obeyed and turned back to the flat surface of my drafting table, my only comfort. I was most calm when I worked, transcribed, repaired, connected textual pieces. My role as his amanuensis suited me better than blood donor.
“Shall we return to the ship to learn more about Laszlo Arros?” He inhaled a great gust of air, and began again.
Muriel Heath
The light in Muriel’s compartment radiated with the sheer amber veil placed over the single lamp burning on the bureau. The smell of her ichor was so thick I could taste it in the creases of my tongue, but the sight of my counterpart feeding bit at my heart more readily. I admired Evelina as she indulged in a feeding as hearty as a banqueter. I smiled when she looked up and wiped her chin. The sight of the pomegranate stain made my spine ache for the days when veins bled like water in streams, days she had missed. She would never know my world, I thought then, unaware several decades of pleasure still lay ahead for us.
“Let me see to Vincent,” Muriel whispered to Evelina.
“I must speak with Muriel in private,” I said.
To persuade Evelina to leave me was as difficult then as pulling her from her donor. She had latched onto the soul we shared and clung to it.
“I won’t leave you,” she whined.
“I will not be long.”
“Is she gone?”
“Xing Fu is no more.”
“I must see my maker, then.”
“No,” I said.
She looked up at me with the aspect I will always remember.
“Was it like Byron?” She asked softly.
I nodded. “Cixi will be mourning.”
“Not me,” she said.
“You have no reason to mourn.”
My venom coursed through her. She was mine—my one, my only, my confidante—my counterpart—me. I planned to share most things with her, even Byron’s correspondence, but I could not speak to Muriel about the facility in Evelina’s presence. For both Muriel’s and Lucia’s safety, my vampire could not learn the truth about the den. Peter could read her mind, but I did not know who else had the gift.
“Go,” I said to my vampire.
She flew to me and kissed my mouth hard, pulling my heart up through my throat, between my teeth, tasting it for herself. Our embrace lasted for infinity, long past these mortal shells.
Muriel spoke freely once Evelina was gone, telling me what she recalled about her time at the facility.
“Your father never returned?” I asked.
“He was the head of an American militia established by the Nortrak’s alliance. They told me he was sent out to gather support and died on the mission.”
“That is what they told you?”
She nodded.
“Was he infected?”
She shrugged and looked to the side, showing me her neck. “I heard he died before it all started.”
“How did you escape the facility?”
“Veor helped me leave.” She wrung her hands and then wiped a single tear from her cheek. “I just don’t remember much of—well, how we got here.”
I waited as she gathered herself, though I longed to feed. The blood from Evelina’s bite had already congealed, and I desired to touch the girl’s neck where my counterpart’s lips had caressed her skin. The bond between us maddened me—I blame it for my moments of distraction.
“Do you remember meeting the Empress?”
“Yes.”
“Did that happen on the ship or in the Nortrak?”
“I don’t recall, but I know I visited her cabin as soon as I arrived.”
“How did you get the letters?”
“The letters?”
“Byron’s letters,” I said. “You used them to buy your way onboard.”
Her eyes lost their sparkle. “I don’t recall any letters.”
“Are you sure?”
She shook her head. “I don’t really know. Veor might remember—should I call him in?”
I gestured no need. “I see your bond is strong.”
She smiled with a closed mouth. “He’s good to me.”
“So you have no idea how you came by the letters?”
“The letters—no, I have no idea.” She tossed her head to the side and sighed. “I don’t remember everything, but some things still haunt me.”
“May I?” I sat next to her on the berth. “I have a gift for finding lost memories.”
“Oh,” she said.
I reached for her hands and held them in mine.
“Will it hurt?” She asked, sitting back.
I told her how important it was for me to learn the truth, and that I could only do so with her help. “Okay,” she murmured.
“I am simply going to touch your head, right here.” I used the tip of my finger to tap her temple gently. The pain would come later, after I had poked about in her head and left my coldness behind. She would have a headache fiercer than any she had ever known, though I did not tell her.
She pulled her hair over her shoulder, freeing up the right side of her head. My touch made her wince, though I had barely begun to fish, sending my net into her mind’s abyss. I gently penetrated her skull with my energy, like an electric pulse wandering between synapses, searching for memory. To envision Byron’s letters, his hand, his stationery, was enough to find my way, and I watched it as though it were a scene playing out on a movie screen.
The gloomy setting did not come in as clearly as she did, wearing a thin slip, her shoulders covered with the blanket she had pulled off the cot. Muriel pulled her legs, leaden with their weight, out from under the covers and over the side of the bed. She would have no visitors, and the child would not stir. Now is the time, she thought.
She walked with a limp to the door, and pulled the hairpin from her bun, slipping it into the lock, exactly as she had been taught. The latch clicked and she slid the partitioned door open. She waited and counted, as instructed. One – two – three, she thought. Her mouth burned with the dryness peeling her throat. She looked both ways down the corridor and took off to the left, just as she had been coached to do.
Her mind grew foggy, as she passed the pods that held others like her, cells of vesselhood filled with surrogates. It was all she knew for a long time, her brain having been scrubbed from the moment she arrived, the severed synapses too damaged to be reconnected again. Muriel recalled the smell of lilac blooms and honeybees on sweetclover and thistle, as she made her way down the brightly lit corridor, the lights generating artificial sunlight. She had been underground so long, her pupils could not handle daytime. She pinched her eyes shut and ran her hand along the smooth wall beside her, letting it guide her. Her feet were bare, and the little toe on her left foot was still bandaged from a test she had endured at the hands of her doctor.
“Syster. Yar haër,” Veor said, meeting her in the hallway.
When he appeared in front of her, her shoulders dropped and she practically fell into his arms. He carried her for some time, until they reached a chamber that looked nothing like the place from where she had come. This room was dimly lit, its walls covered with artifacts, museum pieces and preci
ous keepsakes. Muriel did not waste time looking at them, but shuffled through a stack of papers on the top of a metal desk. Then she pulled open the side drawers and looked in each one.
“Drawtum, syster.”
“I am,” she whispered, as she tried the bottom drawer. She rifled through the trinkets on the desktop for a sharp object and then pulled another pin from her hair, tinkering with the drawer’s lock until it gave in. She yanked it open and took out the books tucked inside.
“De ar under,” Veor said, pointing to the drawer.
She paused and looked inside more deeply, reaching in and pulling up on a silk tongue that lay flat at the back. The wooden shelf lifted, and she slid the cover off the secret compartment. She glanced at Veor, standing erect by the door, his head looking one way and then the other.
Once Muriel had pulled off the cover, I saw what she saw. The stack of letters for which I had been sifting through her mind. The letters were bound with a twine, the top one showing Byron’s elegant hand as plain as it did sitting in my own pocket.
“No gön comer,” Veor said.
Muriel gasped and grabbed the letters, tucking them up under the blanket still wrapped around her shoulders.
He rushed to her and swept her up, carrying her as if she had been pulled from a house aflame. She let her head roll onto his chest and closed her eyes, cutting off her sight, and mine. I snapped back to our reality as abruptly as if I had slammed into an iron wall. I watched her, waiting for her to recover.
“There’s more,” she whispered. “Find the ship.”
I placed my hand on her temple again, letting it sink into my skin as though it were clay and I its maker. I sought the ship, and found the snowy shores of the Nortrak. The cold and ice ran through her, as she stood beside Veor in her thin slip and blanket. The wind picked up and the snow was tossed about, blinding her with her own hair. She pulled it away from her eyes when Veor said, “Nestun dar, syster.”
He held her close, as a troop came forward through the snow, walking above it as though it could not slow them down. I did not recognize the vampires as they drew close, for Muriel shut her eyes again and laid her head against Veor’s chest.
The Journal of Vincent Du Maurier Trilogy (Books 1, 2, 3) Page 48
