“What does that mean?”
“It could mean she didn’t see him,” he said. “Or he’s not real.”
“Real?”
“Like he’s someone she imagined into being.”
“A phantom?”
“More like a fear.”
“And you see her taking the sample from this shadow?”
He nodded.
“Does Laszlo Arros mean anything to you?”
He shook his head. “Sounds like Lazarus.”
“This is not a joke.”
“Of course not,” he said. “I haven’t heard that name, but I can probe Youlan.”
“Does that require the physical?” I smiled to break the tension, and the cabin warmed.
“Just this,” he said, lifting a hand to his temple.
Perhaps it was his grin, or the teasing gesture he made with his tongue, but I sensed more. His own vault had been cracked and his secrets would come pouring out.
I took the bible from his hands, and rummaged through it. When I returned it to him, I asked him to read me something.
He rolled his shoulders back and held his head up, as he flipped to the back of the book, turning the cotton pages with care. When he settled on a passage, he recited it.
“But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection.” He looked up at me for approval, and I shook my head, prompting him to turn the page over once more.
“And God shall wipe away all tears—”
I stopped him and stepped forward, leading his finger down the page a little. “Begin from there,” I said without looking at the text.
“And he said unto me, it is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.” He looked up for my approval, and I nodded.
“He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son. But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.”
I gestured for him to stop. He smiled when he saw the look on my face. “Ah, you knew I’d turn to the apocalypse, didn’t you?”
“From what other book could you choose but Revelation?”
“I see the end, Vincent.”
“Of course you do.”
“But I want to stop it. I do. I just can’t see how. I can’t—ah.” His face lit up. “The resurrection is yet to come.”
“We have already succumbed to the second death,” I said. “We have inherited the earth. All that is left to conquer is the metaphysical sphere.”
“The end.”
“Is simply the beginning.”
“Youlan,” he said, “has told me things about the facility.”
“Such as?”
“There are others,” he said. “But to know them would scorch you where you stood.”
“A perfectly biblical thing for you to say, but what do you mean?”
“It is a facility of reproduction.”
“I have heard.”
“But not just cloning,” he said. “A new breed altogether.”
Peter assured me he learned it all from Youlan.
“The facility is where the matrices are found.”
“Which are?”
“Hubs of cellular regeneration.”
“Muriel has told me some of this.”
Peter raised a hand and said, “Forgive me, but this is not about human reproduction. Rather the opposite.”
“Destruction of the species.”
“The chrysalis in which the plague was formed.”
“I do not understand,” I said.
“Youlan has no connection to it and yet I sense it’s automatic for her.”
“What is?”
“She is a part of it,” he said. “She is at its center.”
“She is connected to the bloodless, like Rangu?”
“No.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“She is a blank canvas, in ways.”
“What do you see when you read her?”
“It’s more about what I don’t see. She has the space for memories, but most are two-dimensional. Almost like they come from a book, or a database. They’re not compiled from experience.”
“She has been programmed?”
“Or reprogrammed.”
“Was she human before her awakening?”
He cleared his throat and said, “Of course.”
“What are you keeping from me?”
“She evinces the end,” he mumbled.
“What does that mean?”
He shrugged.
“Tell me.”
He shuffled from one foot to the next. “Ah,” he said. “You think I’m keeping something from you, but I’m not.”
“But you have tried.”
“I have.”
“Begin with how you met Youlan.”
He took in a false breath and said, “I was sent with the others to fetch her because I could teach her the language.”
“Mandarin?” I asked.
“She didn’t speak,” he said.
“She was a mute?”
Peter nodded.
“How is that possible?”
“When she finally started talking, she told me language wasn’t necessary.”
“That is the oddest claim to make, no?”
“I thought so,” he said. “But I assumed her point was that she and the others at the facility spoke using telepathy.”
“Telepathy still requires language, or some kind of linguistic model.”
“True.”
My suspicions of Youlan grew, but her reveal only came later.
“She hasn’t spoken about her past,” he said. “Or her time in the facility. But she was loyal to Cixi from the start, as though she’d been commanded to obey the Empress.”
“Commanded, or programmed?”
The corners of his mouth turned up and he said, “The difference is slight.”
I did not agree. “They appear to have a longstanding relationship. When I arrived, I thought she was in fact the Empress’s progeny.”
“I don’t doubt it,” he said. “It’s just a hunch, but I think she was made for the Empress.”
“Are you speaking metaphorically?”
He glanced to the side and said, “I don’t know. They just seem to jell.”
I increased the space between us and took up post on a chair across from his berth. He placed the bible on the shelf beside him and then sat on the berth with his elbows on his knees, leaning in as he waited for my next question.
I chose this one carefully, “When did you first hear I was aboard the Empress’s ship?”
He thread his fingers and leaned forward even more. “We all knew you were coming,” he said.
“The entire crew?”
He nodded. “You’re the reason we docked in Genoa.” He swallowed and grit his teeth, hiding a pinch of anger. “Vlad had tracked you, and alerted the Empress to your location.”
“The Empress was a part of it?”
“No,” he said. “She didn’t want Evelina. Wallach was supposed to bring you to the meeting point.”
“But instead he took mother and child.”
“Exactly,” he said. “She had no choice but to use them to lure you here.”
“Why?”
“She wanted to bring you onboard.”
“Yes,” I said. “But why was she seeking me out?”
He shrugged. “Only she can tell you that.”
She did not only give up the last of her human blood to Laszlo Arros for my venom, but also promised to bring me back, in the flesh.
“What did it cost the Empress to engage Vlad to track me down?”
He looked away.
“I assume it was something valuable or she woul
d not have had me take his head.”
“It was.” Peter’s color turned and his face went gray.
“I see,” I said. “Is that why you have taken a new lover?”
“Vivian was not one of us,” he said. “She was a human girl.”
“A donor?”
I recalled the mangled and desperate girl beneath Vlad’s floorboards at the museum. Her blood had been authentic, some of the last, but I did not doubt she was dead by now.
“I cherished her,” Peter said. “Not just her blood, but I would have died to protect her.”
“What happened?”
“I was not here when he came for her,” he said. “I was with Evelina.”
“You met Evelina and brought her onboard?”
“Zhi and I, and a few others.”
“Was Evelina to be Vivian’s replacement?”
He shrugged and looked away.
“Did you crave Evelina’s blood?”
He stood up and rushed across the cabin, his hands tugging at my chest, as he gripped the lapels of my coat. The gesture surprised me since he did not often show ire. Like a succubus, his hurt had latched on and hardened him. “Evelina is yours,” he said.
His eyes gave him away. A hint, a sparkle on his retina suggesting he had seen more.
“Tell me what you know about Evelina’s capture?”
“You think she was found by chance,” he said. “But she was planted.”
“You are not talking about the hamlet with Wallach?”
He shook is head. “Pregnant and vulnerable.”
I had never questioned our having discovered Evelina and her small group at a turn of Fortune’s wheel. Maxine had died for discovering her. The thought of Evelina being planted there, awaiting me, seemed incredulous. Such circumstances would have been impossible to plan.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Never mind,” he said, releasing his hold on my collar and stepping back. “You do not believe as I do. You lack faith in my God, the Christian God. You cannot see providence in the call of the sparrow.”
I grabbed him by the collar then, pulling him into me, knocking my forehead up against his, penetrating his mind, and crashing through the door of his mental shrine. Galla was there, his Huguenot mother too, and several more cherry faces before I saw my girl. He had reserved a special place for her portrait, hung on a corner wall behind a piece of glass just as Da Vinci’s sitter once haunted the halls of the Louvre.
I bared my fangs and kissed Peter on the lips, pulling the truth through his teeth. The shock of my caress made him drop his guard, and his memories came pouring out as water through a sieve. I saw him with Zhi, collecting Evelina and Lucia from the hamlet. She looked at ease, and smiled at Peter, and said, “I must not leave him.”
The blow of her voice, addressing him in the memory, spun me out of his mind and launched me back to the present where we stood face to face. I pushed him off me, and he flew into the berth, his head slamming into the railing. He moaned and I growled, rushing at him and grabbing his neck, sinking my claws into the skin of his gorge.
“She doesn’t recall meeting me,” he said. “She didn’t know me once she woke.”
“Why?”
“Those memories were erased.”
“By whom?”
“The Empress—”
I crushed Peter’s larynx, and he could no longer speak, though I caught her name in the syllables he tried to pronounce, Eh, vah, lee, nah. My rage had dulled the sound of Evelina’s approach, but when I sensed her near, I released him with his head barely intact.
“Speak,” I said. “Quickly.”
He massaged his neck, and looked down at the deck. “It’s not what you think,” he whispered with a gasp.
“How did she come to be a part of this?” I spoke through gritted teeth.
“Byron arranged everything.”
“What everything?”
“I have seen it,” he said. “Deep in the recesses of her mind there is a screen through which only I can see. She doesn’t know it. She can’t recall. Byron saw to that. He concealed the memory, though why he didn’t erase it, I can’t tell you.”
“What memory?”
“I don’t think you’re prepared to hear such bold truth.”
I stepped forward and he cowered. “Tell me.”
“Promise me you won’t tell her,” he said. “It’s concealed for a reason. She’s not strong enough to bear the weight of such truth.”
“What truth?” My voice boomed, and shook the bulkheads of his small compartment.
“I think Lucia is yours.”
I would like to say Peter’s confession struck me dumb, but it was in fact the rap on the hatch that stayed my question. Evelina’s small voice reached through metal and tugged at my heart.
“May I come in?” She asked.
Peter called to her and she broke into the compartment, placing herself between the two of us.
“You mustn’t,” she said. “It will destroy me.”
I stared down at her face, an oval scape of holiness, and admired the halo she seemed to wear. Like Narcissus’s object in the pool, my impossible love stared back at me. She would be my undoing.
“Do not interfere,” I said. With my ire eased, shock crept in to steal its place.
“Peter hasn’t done anything wrong,” she said.
“How could you know?” I asked.
She reached up and touched the side of my cheek with a cold hand. “He could never.”
Peter looked from me to her, admiring the net into which I had been flung. “I was telling Vincent something he didn’t know, and it angered him.”
“What?” She asked. “What was it?”
“Peter has a knack for discovering hidden things.”
“He has a habit of reading minds he shouldn’t,” she said with a glance back at him.
Peter offered her a half-smile and she tugged at my sleeve.
“I see,” she said. “Neither of you will tell me.”
Peter leaned close to her, and touched her hand. “My insight isn’t always welcome, but it’s honest.”
“What do you know of honesty, priest?”
He flinched and straightened his back. “How easily it may destroy those too weak to face it.” He looked from me to Evelina, and then reached for the deck with his eyes.
She turned to me and said, “Is this about my maker?”
“Yes,” I said.
“It’s not Cixi, is it?”
“Perhaps Peter can tell you to whom you belong,” I said.
“You know, don’t you?” She touched his shoulder and he looked up at her.
“I do,” he said.
“Tell me the truth.”
He looked to me and I gestured my approval. Her connection to me was not one I intended to keep from her.
“You are made with Vincent’s venom,” he said.
She scowled at me, and I admired the twinkle of rage in her eye. “You were here?” Her voice rose to a screech. “You were on the ship?” She thrust her hands at my chest and attempted to throw me back, but I did not budge. She released a roar, as rage tore at her from the inside. “How could you abandon me?” She asked, defeated but angered still.
“Evelina,” Peter said. “This is not Vincent’s doing.”
“Who, then?” She raged at him and he flinched.
“Stop,” I said. “Sit.” My voice boomed the command and she obeyed, dropping onto the berth with a sulk like that of a petulant child. “Do not make me scold you.”
She looked up with fierce eyes that said, I dare you. I teetered on rage and passion, twins from the same womb.
Much more patient than I, Peter sat beside her and took her hand in his. “The Empress used a sample of Vincent’s venom to awaken you to this life.”
“Was I dead?” She asked. “Was I going to die?”
Peter sighed and said, “No.”
“So she did this to me?” Her voice exploded anew
, but Peter stroked her wrist and his touch seemed to quell her ire.
“She may have,” he said.
“What do you mean? Were you there too?” Her eyes grew wide.
“No,” I said. “Neither Peter nor I were present when the Empress stuck the claw in your neck.”
“I thought I stole the claw.” She looked up at me, and I drew her in. “I remember sticking my own neck. Did she do it?” She rose and rushed to me, clinging like an injured child is wont to find comfort in a parent’s embrace. “This is the most wretched news.” Her voice cracked and she would have wept had she tears to shed.
“Is it?” Peter said. “Evelina, you belong to the origin. Vincent is your maker.”
The priest sought my forgiveness with his words, but I had yet to grant it, though Evelina’s presence dulled my sensibilities. She had slipped her hand in mine, desperate to be connected, not realizing the child we shared had cleaved her to me long ago.
Lucia, the Gem
The pen resisted my scrawl, as Vincent shuffled in the darkness. I could barely finish the last stroke before the instrument was torn from my fingers and pulled to the surface of the drafting table. The air in the room seemed to circulate again with a renewed freshness, and the perpetual hum in the tower, which ceased with his arrival, returned with a rumbling through the cracks of the stony cavern. The tightening across my brow loosened too, and the pressure in my inner ears popped.
I turned to inspect the room, getting up from the stool to look out the window. The sun had refused to set, suspended between night and day. Dusk would keep the orb encamped on the horizon until the stars forfeited their shine and permitted the sky to blue.
I returned to the drafting table to read what I’d written, but as I leafed through the pages, they proved blank. I searched the side of the drafting table, the floor, the small shelf of books, the hamper at my side, even inside the stove, but no trace of them remained.
Insanity nibbled at me, as the memory of him faded. I started to forget his name, as silence replaced the tenor of his voice. And then I was lost.
I looked around the studio where I’d worked for more than a decade, and didn’t recognize my home. The pens I’d cherished in the can on the edge of the drafting table, suspended from the ledge, were darts of ink belonging to another. The glass cases, still broken on the stone floor, showed the image of a face I didn’t recognize, and even the small mirror hung on the wall behind me revealed a foreign aspect.
The Journal of Vincent Du Maurier Trilogy (Books 1, 2, 3) Page 51
