The II AM Trilogy Collection

by Christopher Buecheler

  Two, unfamiliar with the mechanics of her own body now, pressed too hard, tore instead of pierced. The blood flowed out around her lips, dripped down her chin. Theroen, his unearthly calm never leaving him, lifted his hand to her head, pressed her against him. Two wrapped her arms about him, fastened herself securely to his neck. Drank. Swallowed.

  Warmth unlike anything she had ever known. Dizziness, desire. The blood coursed over her tongue, down her throat, hot and wet and alive. Two moaned, her arms tightening, and here it seemed was everything she had ever wanted. Thoughts of heroin were cleared from her mind. This was freedom. This was love. The full, rich liquid of life which Theroen now gave her freely was beyond anything in the scope of her experience.

  She dropped backwards, satiated in only moments. She lay on the bed, Theroen next to her, gasping, reeling. Weeping again? It seemed she had wept more in the past two days than ever before in her life. Joy, pain, fear, desire.

  “I understand,” Theroen whispered into her ear. “Ah, Two. There will be so much for us after. Soon, my love. Soon.”

  Soon, Two thought. Soon and then forever. She held on to Theroen, lost in the blood, lost in the ecstasy of it all. Small kisses now, lover’s kisses, and the joy she felt was too real to be wrong, too powerful to be denied. The moment it was safe for him to do so, Two was prepared to beg for Theroen to drain her, and fill her with his blood, and finish her transformation.

  Immortality beckoned.

  * * *

  Chapter 3

  The Priest, the Seamstress, the Student

  The Mansion. November.

  Her half-vampire nature was affecting the withdrawal. The symptoms had persisted for several weeks before finally ceasing. Two had been forced to endure them, as she and Theroen realized feeding from him delayed her recovery. This was not made any easier by the hunger. Even if Two had been able to stand up to the heroin, she could not go for more than a day or two without feeding.

  She found it frustrating. Theroen was more patient.

  “A few weeks, Two, that is all. You are fighting it well. The symptoms are lessening. Soon you will be free of this entirely.”

  Two knew this was true. Yes, she was fighting hard against the withdrawal, spending much of her time in bed with Theroen at her side. Yes, the symptoms were lessening. Yes, she would soon be free of it. It didn’t dampen her anger, her sense that it was profoundly unfair that she should have to go through this at all.

  After a few weeks, Two had grown curious as to why her transformation was not progressing. She drank from Theroen routinely. Shouldn’t she be a full vampire by now? She had asked Theroen one night after drinking, sitting with him in a small parlor on the western edge of the mansion’s first floor. The room was dimly lit, the walls lined with leather-bound books, furnished with couches of crushed red velvet and dark mahogany. Theroen had explained that he considered the room ‘his’ and had cleared most of Abraham’s clutter from it long ago.

  “No. Right now, I am only replacing the blood your body uses to power itself. Think of it like trying to gain weight. If you burn every calorie you take in, there is no change. When you take in my blood, your body converts it to a compatible form with its own. Right now, your blood is not complete.

  “When I finish you, I will drain you as far as you can go, nearly to death. Then you will drink from me. Your body will be so desperate for the blood that it will absorb it without conversion. You will effectively replace your blood with mine. Over time, and with repeated feedings, that blood will work within you, changing you. Some of the effects will be immediate, but most will only be a shadow of the abilities you will one day possess.”

  Two raised her eyebrows. “Repeated feedings?”

  “Our strain of vampire is very powerful. The ruling class, effectively. But the nature of the blood differs from the other strains. Our fledglings must drink, periodically, from their masters, or risk reversion.”

  “I can be human again?”

  “You can.”

  Two contemplated this.

  “You’ll need to explain this all to me some day, Theroen. How vampire bodies work.”

  “What I know, I will tell you. Unfortunately, Abraham has limited my access to writings on the subject, so there may be questions I cannot answer. I will try my best, though, and there will be many years in which we can learn, after you are complete.”

  If I let you complete me, Two thought, but she found that this carried little weight. The idea that she could return to humanity was intellectually interesting, but she no longer held the belief that vampires were monsters. Not all of them, at any rate. She was no longer terrified by the prospect of becoming one.

  If Theroen heard any of these thoughts, he gave no indication.

  Two was not prepared for a lecture on vampire physiology at the moment. She was still too warm and content from the blood. It would put her to sleep. She changed the subject.

  “Where is Melissa?”

  She had seen the perky young vampire here and there throughout the past few weeks. Melissa would stop by periodically to say hello, although she seemed to have knack for catching Two at a bad time, and her visits were usually restricted to a greeting, a short expression of sympathy, perhaps a few questions. After “let me know if there’s anything I can do for you” (which Two believed to be genuine sentiment), Melissa would leave to hunt. For the past few days, though, she had been simply gone.

  “Melissa stays in the city sometimes, if she’s in the mood. She will return eventually.”

  “Ah.” Two lounged on her couch, happy to be where she was. Thoughts of drugs and needles, pimps and hookers were far from her mind. That life was gone. Dead. The last remnants of it had largely left her this week, with the end of the withdrawal. Her mind instead looked toward the future: a life of luxury and power. It seemed miraculous how quickly her life had changed.

  Change: Two was wearing a pink dress and a diamond necklace that must have cost more than she had earned in her entire life. She had not put on a pair of jeans since her bath with Melissa, only a series of gowns and robes. Theroen had not forced these things on her. Two had chosen them. She enjoyed it, this expression of femininity, so rare in her previous life. She knew it wouldn’t last. She liked wearing jeans and a t-shirt, liked pulling her hair back into a ponytail and forgetting about it. But for now, she was content with the dresses.

  Theroen rarely left her side. When he left, usually to feed, he was rarely gone for more than an hour, and he spent most of his time doing his best to make her comfortable. The withdrawal, it seemed, sometimes pained him more than it did her. His sorrow at seeing her suffer filled Two with an odd happiness. It proved that he cared.

  “Is there anything specific you would like to know, Two?”

  Two considered this question. For days now, she and Theroen had hardly uttered a word to each other. There had been little need. He could read her mind. His expressions, his touches, these were enough for Two. They had forever for talking, and in the time before forever she wished only to enjoy his presence.

  Now, though, she was curious. “There’s a lot I’d like to know, Theroen. Where should I start?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “How very Zen.”

  Theroen smiled, nodded, continued to look at Two in his direct manner. From anyone else, this would have set her slightly on edge. With Theroen it was simply natural.

  “Who are you?” Two asked, smiling slightly.

  Theroen nodded, as if he approved of the question.

  “I am Theroen Anders. I was born in Norway, in the late 16th century. My family immigrated to Great Britain while I was still very young. It was there I met Abraham, there I felt the temptation of immortal life and succumbed to it. I haunted London like a bloodthirsty ghoul for more than a hundred years. The new world called, we answered, and have been here since.”

  He raised his eyebrows, as if questioning whether this would suffice. Two smiled, shook her head.

 
“No, Theroen. Who are you?”

  He grinned, expecting this.

  “You’d have me condense four hundred years into an evening?”

  “Four hundred years are four hundred years. A story’s a story, Theroen. It will take as long as it has to.”

  Theroen looked into her eyes, and Two felt herself swimming suddenly. She gasped.

  “Don’t fight.” Theroen’s voice, next to her yet distant. “Don’t fight, Two.”

  Two breathed deeply. Stopped fighting. Floated. Descended.

  * * *

  His belief in God was unshakeable, impossible to destroy. It was the glowing light that directed his every action, his every thought.

  Theroen had been a priest for less than half a decade, and he still loved God in the pure, glorious, righteous way reserved even in the clergy only for the very young. His black robes were only clothes; his faith was his armor, and Theroen cut through the sea of unbelievers around him without a fear in the world.

  Two resisted this vision, incredulous. Theroen, a priest? It was impossible, this being who seemed so utterly comfortable with his vampire nature. Theroen reminded her again not to fight the trance. Sit, watch, understand.

  His parents. Mother, hair blonde, eyes blue, tall and broad through the shoulders. Lithe but full at the bust and hips, she was a picture of beauty standing at the window in Theroen’s tiny room, singing lullabies, whispering softly to her young child where they might someday go, what they might someday see.

  Father, dark in hair, dark in eyes, like Theroen himself. Grecian in ancestry, but without the wiry curls, which had been ironed from his head by the passing of generations.

  Theroen, child of no more than a year, black hair, brown eyes, his mother’s pale skin, the face a combination of features that would someday serve to make him a handsome young man. His face would make women shake their heads behind his back. A priest? Looking like that? A waste.

  Theroen did not know if his memories of this time were accurate, or fabricated from stories and assumptions. He believed them to be honest recollection, but would never truly know. In these memories, mother and father fight sometimes. Living is difficult. The house is small, drafty, uncomfortable. The theatre has not called in weeks. They have no roles.

  In London, though, there is work. Father makes trips there, auditions repeatedly, desperate, despairing. The alcohol is beginning to take hold of him even now.

  He is granted reprieve when the notice finally arrives. An actor is needed. He has been called. At three years of age, Theroen said goodbye to the land of his birth, a land he would never see again.

  Never? Two asked, pulling back from the vision momentarily, never in so many years?

  Never has there been time, nor any great desire, Theroen answered.

  It was a happy childhood. London before the industrial revolution, a thriving metropolis, dirty to be certain but still possessed of a remarkable charm Two could find no words to describe. Theroen, age nine, running through the streets ahead of his mother and father. Running to see the players in the square, the Italian entertainers with their puppets and music and dancing. Laughing and running, never seeing the horse bearing down on him, its rider as distracted by the sights and sounds as Theroen himself.

  The horse tried to clear him, but failed. Theroen remembered the sharp crack of its hoof against his forehead, the blooming brightness in front of his vision. He remembered the second hit, coming as the back of his head connected with the cobblestones. The force of the impact was tremendous. He imagined that everyone in the world must have heard the sound of it.

  All of this was clear in his mind, but Theroen remembered no pain. Only the flat, hard cracking sound and then rolling, horrified faces rushing toward him, the world graying, fading. His mother, tears pouring from her eyes, pulling at her own hair as if somehow in injuring herself she might heal her son. It’s all right, mamma, he wanted to say. It doesn’t hurt.

  Darkness, then. The clip-clop noise of horse hooves, but this time he moved along with them. There were rushed, babbling voices, more weeping, a rough hand holding his.

  Even Theroen could not entirely piece together the events that followed. Vast blank spaces lay in his memory, interrupted by photo-flashes of consciousness. A bed somewhere, his father sitting in a chair, looking out into cold London rain and weeping without realizing it. Rough shadow of a beard, unkempt hair. Staring and weeping. It was the most frightening vision Theroen could recall, worse even than when the bottle finally took hold of the man for good. Theroen had never seen the man looking so forlorn, would never see him so again.

  Another period of blankness, and then his mother, leaning over him, wiping his forehead with a damp cloth. She was singing to him, those old lullabies. He’d asked for the songs to stop some years ago, a young man in a child’s body, no longer needing the comfort they brought. But now? Oh, now they were comfort eternal. He was so frightened. These periods of blankness terrified him. There was nothing, except the knowledge of nothing, and he thought for the first time in his mortal life that he might be coming to understand what death was.

  Ah, if he could have cried out, he would have wailed. Little heart racing at the thought that there was nothing more, that there was no heaven, no God waiting for him at the gates, ready to embrace him and comfort him and help him to understand what it all meant, this mortal life.

  More grey. Then the vision.

  A doctor, a nurse, and his mother. She was arguing, fighting, weeping again. The doctor looked sympathetic, but firm.

  “There is nothing we can do. We have bled him, tried every potent tonic known to raise one from unconsciousness. There is nothing we can do. He will drink broth, if we pour it down his throat, but he does not awaken. There is nothing we can do.” Over and over. A litany, a chant, a curse.

  Behind them, like the coming of the dawn, a light was growing, so bright it burned his eyes. How could they not notice this? How could they go on squabbling with each other when faced with such a thing?

  Through their arguing, he heard the sound, building and building. A rushing, driving sound that seemed to swell until it was near unbearable, as if all of the voices in the world whispered at once. The light throbbed and pulsed. Theroen wept. Fear, awe, confusion. Was this death, then? Perhaps his acceptance into heaven after his stay in grey purgatory?

  Is that what you wish, then? It was all voices, no voices, a whisper on the wind, a chorus of screams. Theroen’s temples throbbed with it.

  He tried to shake his head. No. No, this was not what he wanted. Death? He was nine years old. There was still so much to do, to explore, to see, to know.

  You would live?

  Thereon found he could answer the voice, could have spoken to it all along.

  Yes. I would live. Until I am dragged, kicking and screaming, to my death, I would live.

  So be it. Speak, Theroen. Call to them.

  I cannot.

  But he could, and did, opening his mouth, stretching his throat, peering desperate from his bed as the light and the noise receded.

  “Mother …”

  The word cut across the room, stopping his mother mid-sentence. She turned, the doctor and nurse staring with frank disbelief. There were tears again, now, welling in his mother’s eyes, but not those of anger and frustration and sorrow shed just moments ago. Theroen sat up, blinked, tried his voice again. He looked his mother in her eyes, took in her joyful weeping with that same calm that would be with him for all his life. He spoke from his bed, spoke for the first time since the horse had hit him, spoke for the first time since he had descended into the depths of coma, five months before.

  “Mother, I wish to go to church.”

  * * *

  “From that day forward, there was no question in my mind what I was meant to do. I was meant to live, yes, but more than that; I was meant to communicate what I had seen to others. I had been sent a vision from God. A reprieve from death. You ask how I could be a priest? I ask you … how co
uld I not?”

  Two looked at him, somewhat astounded. A vision from God? She knew how it would be considered in this modern era: a vision from the subconscious. Nothing more.

  Thereon grinned, picking this thought from her mind as he so frequently did.

  “Is there any real difference? I woke. I moved. I spoke. Are these things not miraculous?” He paused, looked out the window, seemed to ponder for a moment. He looked back at Two and shrugged.

  “People do not survive comas of that duration unfazed. There is brain damage, if not death. Yet I was fine. More than fine; I awoke with the clearest sense of purpose I was ever to feel, until the moment I first laid eyes on you. Ten years old, I began my studies. Three years younger than any before accepted to the clergy. Such was my fervor, so substantial my knowledge of the Bible within only a few months from when I awakened, that there was no reason to deny me.”

  “And oh, how my father despised it …” The words trailed off, a bitter smile at his lips.

  Two was about to speak when the howling began. She jerked around instinctively, knocking a pretty crystal ballerina off the table by her couch. It thumped into the plush oriental carpet, unhurt. Two stared out the window. In the reflection of the lamplight she saw Theroen shake his head. He reached down to pick up the figurine, studied it for a moment, set it back on the table. More howling, and Theroen looked toward the window again, his eyes full of remorse and pity.

  “What is it, Theroen? I’ve heard it before.”

  “I am Abraham’s son. Melissa his daughter. That? That is nothing more than a diabolical experiment. Daughter? How could she be? To say so denotes some sort of humanity, and all of that has been lost.”

  Two looked at him, confused. “There’s another vampire?”

  “There are many others. Of Abraham’s line, though, there is only one more to tell of. One more you have not met. An attempt that should never have occurred. His arrogance …” Theroen trailed off. Two had rarely seen him truly angry, but he appeared so now. He shook his head again.