The II AM Trilogy Collection

by Christopher Buecheler

  Vanessa considered this for a time and said, “OK. If it will make you happy, I’ll talk to him. They’d better keep some bars between us, though, or I’m just going to end up strangling him. He never knew when to shut up, and I swear to God he makes a sport out of pissing me off.”

  Charles laughed a bit. “Yes, I remember.”

  Vanessa reached out and pressed the down button on the elevator.

  “The guards have instructions to let you pass,” Charles said. “Take as long as you need. You need not report to me immediately afterwards. I’ve no doubt you are exhausted. Get some rest, write your reports, and then schedule a meeting with me. We’ll discuss your brother then.”

  “All right. If you think it will help the Emperor, then I’m happy to do it.”

  “Everything you have done since you came here has helped the Emperor.”

  “Oh, come on …”

  “Truly, Vanessa. You are one of our finest soldiers. I understand that you are disappointed with last night’s action, but if you are in any way worried about the Emperor’s judgment, then let me assuage those doubts right now. He is very pleased. I have heard it from him personally, and I can assure you that your promotion to Captain is but a mere formality at this point.”

  Vanessa felt her cheeks warm again and turned away from Charles for a moment to collect herself. Captain? That was crazy. She had only been made lieutenant a few months ago.

  As if guessing her thoughts, Charles said, “It seems fast, I know, but you have proven yourself. Again and again, you have proven yourself. We are watching, Vanessa – the Emperor, the colonels, and me. He sees all, and through him we see as well. You are the very best we—”

  Charles stopped speaking suddenly and looked up, and to the left, as if receiving word from on high. His right eye twitched once, and then again, and he drew in a sharp breath. He began to make a noise, loud and high pitched, like an engine with a slipped belt that screeches, shrill, in the middle of the night. His lips pulled back in a grimace that made Vanessa wince.

  “Charles?! Are you OK?” she cried, dimly aware that behind her the elevator doors were opening. Two people stepped out and stopped, frozen in their tracks. A small, silver strand of drool had begun to run from the left side of Charles’s mouth, which was frozen in rictus, and Vanessa felt for one short moment the obscene urge to reach forward and wipe it away.

  If I don’t do something, he’s going to die right here, Vanessa thought, and a bright streak of adrenaline flashed through her, seeming to loosen the grip that fear and panic had held on her body. She spun to the soldiers behind her and saw that she knew one of them.

  “Woodson, go get Doctor Chambers, right fucking now!” she snarled. The blonde boy – he was barely more than eighteen – didn’t disappoint her, taking off down the hall without so much as a ‘yes, ma’am.’ The other one – a tall, black recruit whose name she didn’t know – stared at her, and Vanessa stabbed a finger at him.

  “Take off your shirt. Take it off!”

  He did as he was told, pulling the grey T-shirt over his head and holding it out to her. Vanessa snatched it from his hands and spun again, back toward Charles, whose entire body had seized and contorted, twisting like the limbs of a water-starved tree in some distant desert.

  “You’re going to be fine, Charles,” she said. She dropped the shirt on the ground and stepped forward, stooping down and placing one hand against the back of his knees. With the other she took his shoulder and pulled, and this seemed to break his paralysis. He slumped and she caught him, helping him to the ground and resting his head on the balled-up shirt. His eyes had rolled upward, and while the screeching noise had stopped, he was now making a clicking, coughing noise that she liked even less.

  “Lieutenant?” the private asked, uncertain of what to do next.

  “Empty your pockets,” Vanessa said, and even in the midst of this crisis, she was able to appreciate the fact that he didn’t ask her why; he just did what he was told. His pockets contained a keychain, a battered wallet, a multi-tool and a pen. She grabbed this last with one hand and extended it out to him.

  “Get that between his teeth and over his tongue. Move, private!”

  The soldier leaned forward, prying open the jaws that Charles had clenched so tightly shut, and pushed the pen in. It caught in Charles’s molars, holding his tongue down. The speed and intensity of his noises – those click-click-cough sounds that made her spine crawl – intensified, and for a moment she thought this was the end, but then they faltered, and his seizures seemed to lessen.

  “Good,” she said. “You all right?”

  “Better than him,” the soldier said, and Vanessa gave a short, surprised laugh.

  “No kidding. Listen, you stay here and help me keep this old, ugly motherfucker alive, OK? I am not going to let him die in some shitty hallway. We clear?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She heard the sound of running feet in the hallways and looked up to see the first private, Woodson, returning with Doctor Chambers.

  “What happened?” the doctor asked as he ran up, dropping down to his knees next to Vanessa.

  “Seizure, I think,” she said. “He was right in the middle of talking and just … locked up. We did the best we could.”

  “You did fine. The pen was good. We don’t need our friend choking to death on his own tongue.”

  No, Vanessa thought. We really don’t need that.

  The doctor was holding one of Charles’s eyes open, shining a small light into it. There was no consciousness or comprehension to be found there, just an empty gaze. The doctor shook his head and made a small noise of distaste.

  “We’re going to have to move him,” he said, standing up. “Stay here with him. I’m going to send someone back with a gurney.”

  “Hey, sure,” Vanessa said. It wasn’t like she was going anywhere, at least not until she was sure Charles was stabilized.

  The doctor hurried off down the hall, and Vanessa rubbed a hand across her face and shook her head, trying to clear it. She had already been tired, the small sleep on the flight home doing little for her, and now that the adrenaline was leaving her body she felt suddenly exhausted. Fuzzy.

  “Can we do anything else to help, Lieutenant?” Private Woodson asked her, and Vanessa shook her head.

  “No. Wait, yes. Stick around and help me when it’s time to lift him. After that I’ll let you go, and if I made you late for anything, just tell the officer in charge to take it up with me directly. I’ll smooth it out.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Woodson said, and for a few moments they stayed like that in silence. Vanessa looked down and was surprised to see that she was holding Charles’s hand; she couldn’t remember having taken it.

  “I am so fucking tired,” she said to no one in particular.

  “Heard you had a busy night, Lieutenant,” Woodson ventured.

  “That’s an understatement.”

  “Guess you get to add saving the Emperor’s Left Hand to your list.”

  Vanessa gave him a wan smile. “I’d rather have skipped that one. I’d be asleep by now, and this guy would be down in his office writing reports.”

  “Yeah. And I’d be running laps.”

  “Guess you didn’t make out too bad,” Vanessa said, and he laughed.

  “Guess not.”

  Vanessa could see a young woman in a white coat rushing up the hall with a gurney. In a few moments more, they were lifting Charles up onto it, and he was headed back toward the infirmary. Vanessa dismissed the privates and, not knowing what else to do, turned and headed for the medical wing.

  * * *

  After four days, Charles had shown no signs of waking up. Vanessa visited him at times, between sleeping, writing her reports, physical training, and briefing what was left of her squad. She watched Captain Perrault as best she could to see if there were any changes in her behavior, but there was nothing perceptible. The woman had always kept to herself, and that hadn’t changed; V
anessa barely saw her.

  Vanessa had wondered whether her promotion to captain would have to wait for Charles to wake up, if he ever did, but that turned out not to be the case. Colonel Palowski had contacted her less than twelve hours after her return to Chicago and made it official, handing her a set of gold bars and shaking her hand. Upon her return to the barracks, Park and Carrie had surprised her with two bottles of champagne and a fifth of whiskey.

  They’d gotten drunk and reminisced about their exploits with Janus and Burke, Paulo and Connors. They were all of similar ages and had come up together. Now four of them were dead, but they had died in glorious combat with the enemy during what had proved a highly successful mission. The vampires were scattered and running scared. It was wonderful, even though it was also awful, and in between cheers and laughter Vanessa had twice found herself near tears. Drunk and depressed and elated all at the same time, she had finally climbed into bed.

  She still needed more men, and was unsure from where to draw them. Other captains and lieutenants watched their squads like hawks. Lifting some green rookie was one thing, but pulling a fully capable combatant from another squad, let alone a soldier as talented as her people had been, was something else entirely. No officer in their right mind would let someone like that go.

  She wanted to talk to Charles about it, but the man appeared to be in a deep coma. Doctor Chambers had confided in her that he was not sure whether Charles would ever come out of it. The three colonels – Palowski, Miller, and Davis – had stepped up in his absence, but eventually the Emperor was going to have to pick a new Left Hand. Even if Charles awoke, it was obvious that the stress of his duties was becoming too much for him.

  She had taken to reading to Charles from her reports, hoping that some of what she had to say might penetrate through whatever was ailing him and remind him that there were people who still needed his help and advice. Her most recent report, which she had filed with the three colonels only hours before, related a lengthy discussion – she didn’t quite dare call it an argument – with Captain Perrault about tactics.

  “The Captain told me that she thought we were waiting too long. We spoke about this at great length, and the Captain confided in me that she possessed a great need to hunt and that our current inaction was only amplifying this need. She told me it was a curse that she inherited during her – and I quote these words exactly – ‘brief, lamentable time’ as a vampire.”

  She glanced up at the clock. In two hours, she was due to run her diminished squad through their training exercises. There should be plenty of time to finish, especially since Charles presently made so excellent a listener.

  “I was taken aback by this dialog. The Captain rarely speaks of anything personal with me, and has never before mentioned her time as a vampire. The closest she has ever come in the past was the phrase ‘the time before the Children,’ by which she seemed to imply everything from her birth up to the day that Charles recruited her. To hear her speak so directly about being a vampire, and about her need to hunt, was disconcerting.

  “I expressed to the Captain my belief that various squad members needed time to heal and decompress, and she lashed out at me, saying that she had no time for anyone with such frail bodies or psyches. Here I will quote her exact words at some length …”

  She glanced over at Charles, who was still breathing peacefully, eyes closed. Was any of this getting through to him? Did it matter? What was she hoping to accomplish and why did she even care? He was an old, sick man, and he was not her father. Her father had been dead for almost fifteen years.

  Vanessa closed her eyes and tried to remember what her father had looked like, and she was dismayed by how long it took her to conjure up his image. She had a few pictures, of course, shoved in a shoebox at the back of her closet, but she had long ago put the man in the ground, both physically and mentally. Digging out the shoebox sometimes felt like digging up a grave. Still, there was something disturbing about not being able to pull up his face at a moment’s notice, the way she had been able to as a teenager. It was—

  “Were you intending on reading me the Captain’s quote, or is your story finished for the day?” Charles asked her in a weak, hoarse voice, and Vanessa gasped, turning to stare at him. He was looking up at her with half-lidded eyes, or more accurately with one, as the left eye seemed to be looking off into the distance.

  “You’re awake?” Vanessa asked, hating the incredulity that was so audible in her voice.

  “I am,” Charles said, his voice still cracked and broken. “I have been for, oh, a few paragraphs now, though I must admit I cannot pinpoint the exact moment I became aware you were reading to me. Please, Vanessa, could you find me some water?”

  “Absolutely. Listen, Charles, I should tell Doc Chambers that—”

  “Not yet,” he said, and managed to hold up a hand. “Water, please, and then a moment of your time.”

  Vanessa thought about protesting and decided against it. If Charles wanted to postpone his talk with the doctor, who was she to argue with him? She stood and crossed to the sink at the far end of the infirmary, filled a paper cup with water, and brought it back to him. Charles reached out with his right hand, but it was shaking so much that she made a sound of negation and with her own hand brought the cup to his lips. He drank, coughed a little, drank some more, and laid his head back against the pillow.

  “I can feel the left half of my body, but cannot make it move,” he said, and the tone of his voice conveyed not disturbance but mere curiosity.

  “Can I do anything else for you?” Vanessa asked, and Charles made a sighing, laughing sound, and he managed to shake his head.

  “I think not. Thank you for your kindness, Vanessa. I may not have been awake for much of the past few days, and when I was I could not speak, but there have been moments of lucidity here and there. You’ve brought me a great deal of comfort in what I believe are my final days.”

  “Don’t—”

  “One must at times accept the inevitable, my dear,” Charles said. “The tumor in the center of my brain reached the size of a golf ball weeks ago and only continues to grow.”

  Vanessa absorbed this information in silence, finally asking, “There’s nothing they can do?”

  “We discussed some possible treatments, and Doctor Chambers wanted to go forth with them, but it was clear he held little belief they would work. In the end, it would be a long, debilitating, and painful round of chemotherapy and radiation, the result of which would be that I would lose all of my hair, spend my time constantly vomiting, and still be left at the end with an inoperable tumor consuming more and more of my brain. I chose to pass.”

  “Oh, Charles …”

  “Please, Vanessa, if you would do me any favors, then spare me your pity. I have lived my life in service to my Emperor, and that service has been good. I have helped him to find his greatest weapon and launch the largest assault against vampire society since the time of the Incas. I will die with as much dignity as my current condition will allow.”

  Vanessa was quiet for a time, considering this, and at last she nodded. “Fine, then. No pity, but you have to tell me how to help make your … whatever time you have left, what can I do to make it good for you?”

  Charles smiled and closed his eyes, and for a moment Vanessa thought he had slipped back into the depths of coma. Then he took a deep breath and opened his eyes again, looked over at her with his good right eye, and said, “The Emperor will need a new Left Hand.”

  “Which one of the colonels are you going to choose?” Vanessa asked, and Charles made a feeble attempt to shake his head.

  “It won’t be one of them. It will be someone younger, someone who can be molded, someone who will take the time and make the effort to understand the ways and reasoning of our Emperor. It will be someone with the strength to tolerate his power and the foresight to understand his vision.”

  Charles looked over at her, and his parched lips formed something that resembled a
smile, although she noticed – and it broke her heart to see it – that the left side of his mouth could not fully curl.

  “I have recommended you,” he told her, and for a time Vanessa found herself unable to respond. She sat in her chair, first looking at him and then staring for a long while at the blank wall to her right.

  “I’m not ready,” she told him at last, and Charles again made that wheezing, laughing noise.

  “No one could be,” he said.

  “I’m not … I’m only a captain. Barely that. I’m too young.”

  “You are a year older than I was, when I was chosen.”

  “I’m not experienced enough!”

  “You have more tactical experience than any previous Left Hand.”

  “But my squad … my people …”

  “All of the Emperor’s Children will now be your people,” Charles told her. His tone was calm and confident, neither perturbed nor dissuaded by her arguments.

  “Charles, this is insane. You can’t be serious. Let me get Doctor Chambers. He can—”

  “The only thing Doctor Chambers can do for me now is keep me comfortable until the inevitable, Vanessa. I do not believe that will be very long. For now, I assure you, I am not insane. I have already nominated you. I did so months ago, when this malady first came to my attention. When he thinks the time is right, the Emperor will bless you, and you will be made his Left Hand. It is already done. You are my choice.”

  Vanessa bit her lower lip, so hard and for so long and with so little conscious thought that she was surprised by the sudden salt taste of blood seeping around her teeth and onto her tongue.

  “Charles, I’m scared,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper, and at this Charles favored her with the kindest, most sincere smile she could remember receiving since her parents’ deaths.

  “So was I,” he told her.

  “What if I’m not good enough?”

  “The most important thing is that you are true to yourself. Vanessa, the Emperor is not looking for a sycophant. He has many of those, and their worth to him is quite low. You and Captain Perrault are something better. You will think on your own, make choices on your own, and sometimes the Emperor will not agree with those choices. You have the strength to stand up for yourself even against the force he can bring to bear.”