"Yes." I stepped forward. "Do you mind if we get this inspection over? I have some work to do."
"'Course, Brother. 'Course. Lead on."
He looked around my cell, under the bed, under the desk. "You mind?" He pointed to the dresser and opened each drawer.
He approached the bed again and my heart stirred. Under the mattress lay the bloody T-shirt. Boring into his mind with my glance, I willed him away from it. He stopped in his tracks, scratched his head as though he'd forgotten what he was doing, and glanced at his clipboard. "Well, that'll do her," he said.
After nosing around in the boiler room and the storage areas, he departed.
Compline was already over, and the monks had retired. I grabbed the bloody T-shirt and tossed it into my tomb. I went out into the night for air, but the humid atmosphere weighed me down as if the ocean itself pressed me to its depths.
Chapter Twenty
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After 2,000 years, I found mystery in few things. But Michael proved to be an enigma. After feeling our eyes, our souls connect, speaking without words as we traipsed through the woods, as we crossed the grounds behind the monastery the night I sucked the life from Luke, I expected to see him nightly, to hold secret rendezvous of sweet passion, to lead him away from St. Thomas, ultimately to the Kingdom of Darkness. But I walked the grounds, the woods, alone for more than a week. I saw no sign of him under the September moon.
In chapel he gazed steadily from his breviary to the high altar, as though he conducted telepathic communications with one of the plaster saints in the niches. He knelt when the others knelt, but not meekly with his head bowed. Even as he knelt, his keen eyes bore into some private apparition. I frequently drew his gaze to me with my own bold stare, and for many seconds we would survey one another as though we placidly watched our reflections in a mirror. But he did not linger after prayers, and I did not pursue him.
Until finally I noticed a change in his expression. His contemplation of me across the aisle warmed to desire, and I felt in an instant how much he craved me. That night I found him in the greenhouse, dark except for a lone bulb in the far corner. Outside, branches brushed wistfully against the glass roof. Passing tables of ivy twisting down to the slate floor and row upon row of bright annuals, I found Michael bent over a cart of herbs divided into small white cartons. He wore gym trunks and a tank top. His shoulders and arms were brown from the sun, his hair gathered into a ponytail. He glanced up as I approached, and then continued removing the herbs from their containers and inserting them into trays of dirt.
"You haven't come to me," I said. Humidifiers made the air practically unbearable even though I had changed out of my habit after the sheriff left and slipped into light clothing.
"I needed time." With a small trowel, he loosened a sprig of parsley from its container and planted it in the earth.
"Time? For what? To confirm my desire for you or yours for me?"
"Neither." He glanced up as he continued transplanting the herbs. "A very wise woman once taught me to wait, to listen."
"Listen? To what? To God?" I folded my arms.
"To the night, to the wind, to my fantasies, my nightmares. To spirits, too." He looked up again.
"And what kind of spirits speak to you?" I wasn't sure if he was playing with me.
"All kinds. Evil. Good. Spirits of ages past. Spirits speaking through the pages of books. The old woman, Jana, was my grandmother, my mother's mother, a Creole in New Orleans, where I grew up. She ran a tarot shop in the French Quarter, voodoo dolls on the walls, and crucifixes, altars for saints, candles burning everywhere. She had quite a clientele. Sometimes I sat in the corner while she read their tarot cards."
"Your grandmother raised you?"
"No. My father. A thick-headed Italian drunk. My mother died when I was a baby. But I spoke to her, through Jana. She burned spices at her mausoleum in St. Louis Cemetery."
"You are serious."
He looked up as though surprised I had doubted.
"Come walk with me, in the woods. Tell me about this sorceress grandmother of yours."
"Let me finish these first. I'll meet you on the grounds in half an hour."
Thirty minutes later, he strode up the incline from the buildings, cutting a confident, athletic silhouette in the moonlight. I led the way to a familiar path. When we reached it, I turned to him.
"Not a stickler about the Grand Silence, are you?"
"The Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath." He stooped to inspect a glittering stone, then hurled it into the trees.
"Tell me more about your adventures in spiritualism." I longed to take him in my arms, but his reserve stopped me.
He shrugged. "What's to tell? I spoke to my mother. I've done it more than once. I've spoken to Jana too, now that she's gone. I learned quite a bit from her."
"Such as?"
"Such as discerning forces at work around me, attuning myself to them." He spoke as though he referred to a power no more unusual than the ability to tell whether the moon was full. "Forces? You mean evil spirits or some such thing?" He looked at me with curiosity. "Evil and good."
"Not a very monklike thing, is it? Why enter a monastery if you want to tell fortunes in the French Quarter?"
"Why did I enter? I don't want to bore you with all of that." I grabbed his arm. "You know nothing you could say would bore me."
"Yes, I know."
"Then tell me."
We had steadily climbed the hillside to the clearing where Luke and I used to come, about 100 meters from where I had disposed of his body. Michael's eyes had adjusted to the dark, and during our walk he'd turned off the flashlight he carried.
But now he turned it back on and scanned the clearing. "What are you looking for?"
"Just a place to sit. Over there." He pointed to the fallen tree. We sat on the dew-dampened ground, leaning against the tree. Michael folded his legs yoga-style and leaned his head back to view the stars.
"This is my fifth year in these mountains," he said. "The life of a monk has fascinated me since childhood. The ritual, the silence, the solitude. Working with the earth. Poring through volumes on philosophy and mysticism. The sublime chants."
"And celibacy?"
"As a discipline, it has its place. It strengthens the soul."
"For what purpose? To overcome evil, I suppose." He smiled at my cynical tone. "Wasn't it idealism that brought you to the monastery?"
"No. It was anger. Survival, too, and power."
He registered the passion in my words but made no response, only turning his eyes back to the sky. "I used to think I had to fight evil. But Jana corrected me. Evil, she said, lurks everywhere, even in your own soul—especially there. Never underestimate it. Don't pretend to banish it. Respect it. Listen to it, and even evil will speak to you."
"Don't tell me you have a closet full of voodoo dolls."
Michael laughed and slapped my leg.
I grasped his hand, shoved him gently to the ground, and, lying over him, kissed him. The heat of desire flashed through my veins. His heart pounded too, through his meaty chest. I felt him stiffen against my loins. So much blood, so close to my thirsty soul, pumping so mightily, like the raging waters behind a dam.
"No, not now," he said.
"I want you."
"Not now!" He pushed me off him.
I was furious. I wanted to shout, Do you know who I am? The words echoed through my head, discipline alone restraining my tongue from speaking them.
But Michael's eyes told me he knew what I was thinking anyway. And his unspoken response, as clear and firm as his own voice, sounded in my brain: "The link between body and soul—it confuses me, Victor. I'm learning."
Chapter Twenty-one
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Autumn came and vanished, the oak tree in the courtyard surrendering its last leaves in mid-November when, by day, I knew, the sky grew ashen and more intrusive through the naked branches of the woods. With the passing months
fire raged through my veins and my spirit marched toward the trophy I'd coveted for two millennia: life with an eternal comrade.
I met Michael every night, and while the others wasted their hours in mortal sleep, we trod the woods under skies moonlit or black. We discussed occult and mystical volumes in the shadows of the library's stacks, and embraced in the humid jungle of the greenhouse.
Yet both of us guarded our secrets: I, my predatory and preternatural nature; he, the reason for his caution, his reluctance to yield his body to me despite the passion he could not hide.
I longed to take him, wholly, lustfully, his soul along with his body. But a companion worthy of me must surrender freely. His strength, his mysterious mind, raised him higher and higher in my estimation. Still, as the energy between our souls intensified like the friction of pistons in an engine, my restraint threatened to explode.
In the meantime, after our nocturnal rendezvous, I continued to feed on undesirables in the city—prostitutes, vagrants, drug addicts holed up in condemned shacks. Driven by my desire for Michael, I tore at jugulars with a fury, lapped up warm blood from full breasts, sated myself to the point of drunkenness on a slew of victims in one night. The headlines of the newspaper flashed my rampages to the whole city—terrified though I had restricted my prey to undesirables. The police had established that the murders took place between midnight and dawn. They kept surveillance not only in the red light district and the projects, but in the other urban neighborhoods, where half their fleet of cars patrolled the streets through the night.
The vast number of murders brought in federal agents to investigate—not only the killings in the city, but those in the mountains too. The whole cursed area, yet again in my long life, became the notorious central subject of the local and also wider-ranging media. I knew as technology advanced investigators could easily trace my path of destruction across the globe. It was only a matter of time before they linked the blood feasts in Knoxville with those in the English village I'd escaped.
A group of monks gathered around the television one night to watch a national report on the massacres.
The expressionless newscaster, unnaturally tan, peered into the camera. "Federal agents still search for leads in what has now become an international crime. Scotland Yard believes a cult could be at work in the killings, most of which involved the draining of the victim's blood, usually through the jugular vein, vampire-style. In fact, U.S. investigators believe a satanic cult steeped in vampire lore is behind the massacres. We interviewed FBI Director Walter Searling today in Washington."
Here the camera flashed to a hallway in the FBI building. A lanky blond reporter held a microphone in front of the neat, mustachioed director.
"We have followed the pattern of killings," he said, "and we're certain that a series of murders in Boyshire, England, were committed by the same group as those in Knoxville. We've been working closely with Scotland Yard, and we are certain we will find the perpetrators."
"So you're certain that a group of people are responsible for the crimes?" The reporter took the microphone away from the director's lips just long enough to ask her question.
"No, we are not, although it would be more feasible considering the widespread nature of the killings. We might be trailing someone like the Boston Strangler or Jack the Ripper, but psychologists tell us that serial killers usually restrict themselves to specific geographical areas."
"What about Ted Bundy?"
"There are always exceptions. We're considering the possibility that one person is acting alone, but it's most likely a group."
"Any clues at all about the identity of the killer or killers?"
"We're putting together a profile of the perpetrators. It's just a matter of time. In the meantime, local police have increased surveillance in the Knoxville area."
Following the interview several residents of Knoxville recounted to another reporter the grisly scenes I'd left behind. The brothers leaned forward on their chairs or shook their heads.
"What a god-awful thing." Brother Raymond took a drink from a bottle of beer and wiped his lips.
"They shouldn't show this gruesome stuff on television." Brother Herbert, a big-jowled professor on sabbatical from a university in Europe, frowned as the camera panned across a bloody bed.
The others sighed and moaned, and for the rest of the social hour the killings formed the topic of conversations around the coffee table and the bar. Michael had watched the news program intensely, but I saw nothing in his expression suggesting he suspected the truth.
How long, I wondered, until the investigators found monasteries at the center of both massacres? How long before they came to hunt me down in the crypt of St. Thomas?
The moment was ripe for claiming a place in the Dark Kingdom. Once I'd secured my consort, I could leave the detestable life of feedings and tombs and flights from those who hunted me.
The silence of Joshu over the summer and autumn months went unbroken, a sign that I had finally found his replacement. But though no visions of Joshu visited me, other apparitions did. Often, as I slumbered in the dank mausoleum, Tiresia's eyes, full of malice and sensuality, teased me in my dreams. "What are you waiting for, Victor?" she would say. "Your world awaits you. The time has come." Her ebony limbs and breasts cut a silhouette into a full white moon. A sleek mare galloped across the sky and Tiresia's creator and consort, a barrel-chested, hairy soldier, dismounted and wrapped her in his embrace.
Horrible apparitions haunted me too, apparitions of Luke. As I slept in the coffin or became entranced by a demonic book, he would moan and call my name from the woods. His voice would come closer and closer and finally he would stand naked before me, the gash in his throat oozing blood that streamed down his pallid chest. His listless eyes would fall on me and, panting for air, he would speak:
"Let me be your consort, Victor. Take me from this hell."
"What hell?" I would demand.
"It's cold here. Like ice, Victor, like ice. I'm freezing." He would futilely rub his arms. "Take me up."
"You've passed to another world. It's too late. Go back, damn you."
During the vision I would will Luke to vanish, the way the dreamer tries to alter a nightmare just as the demon's hand reaches for him, but my mind had no effect. Plaintive Luke remained, gasping for air, repeating his speech, until I reached out to kill him once again, when he would bare his teeth at me and fade into nothing.
Michael, on the other hand, appeared to enjoy more comforting visits from the supernatural world. When he'd first told me of Jana and his dabblings in spiritualism, I was amused. Not that I doubted the communications he received: Every human has a sixth sense, as they say, though in most it goes undiscovered or ignored. However, the magnitude of his experiences and the identity of his visitor roused my interest and envy.
The first time I witnessed his ecstatic seizure was a December night during Advent, when purple cloths draped the altar and pulpit. When Michael failed to show up in the crypt at the appointed hour, I searched for him and found him in the dark chapel, kneeling before the crucifix on the high altar, completely naked, his hands stretched out as though he were crucified. Light from the vigil lamp suspended by a chain near the tabernacle cast a red glow across his face.
"Michael, what are you doing?"
I touched his shoulder but he gave no sign of recognizing me. His eyes, like the eyes of a corpse, stared ahead as though they focused on nothing at all. His body was as cold as a corpse, too. Giving up my attempt to shake him from this reverie, I sat on the sanctuary steps to observe him and, if I could, to enter into his strange communion with the world beyond.
For a quarter of an hour his muscular arms stayed frozen in place, his body as immobile as the statues above him. Then, as though riding a mighty jet of air, he rose, locked into the same position, until he was level with the crucifix mounted on the gabled apex of the reredos.
Then he chanted over and over "O Crux, ave spes unica," words from a hymn
I particularly despised—the damned "placing hope in the cross." His clear voice reached a crescendo and then faded. Finally he struck his breast and muttered, "Eripe me, Domine, ab homine malo." Who was the evil man he sought refuge from? I wondered. I who could give him what heaven only pretended to give?
Suddenly the pallor of the marble corpus of the crucifix melted away like a coat of paint, revealing the brown flesh, the true features of Joshu himself.
"Joshu!" I yelled, jumping to my feet. Levitating myself to the pair floating near the vaulted ceiling, I tried to grasp first Joshu, then Michael, but what seemed to be a wall of glass prevented me from making contact. I remained a spectator.
Now Michael's body relaxed and spun around toward me. His cock was erect. He licked his lips and sensuously caressed his chest. Joshu approached him and, flinging his arms around his waist, kissed his neck. In that moment I thought I beheld twin Joshus, their sinewy bodies, their strong features and dark coloring were so alike. Michael panted, Joshu's hands remaining fixed around him, and he finally moaned as though climaxing. But though his cock remained stiffened by the blood of passion, nothing spewed forth at the moment of orgasm.
Joshu released him and resumed his place on the reredos.
"No, Joshu!" I cried. "Come back, damn you!"
His placid face showed no sign of hearing my demand. The human color faded from his flesh and he solidified once again into the corpus that resembled a pious artist's fantasy, not the man who smelled of Hebrew wine and spices, of labor's musky sweat, of the desert and the sea.
Michael floated back to the sanctuary and landed in a heap near his crumpled habit. Descending to him, I crouched to touch his forehead, before like ice, now burning with fever. Unconscious and trembling, he moaned and called out Joshu's name. I scooped his naked body in my arms, along with his clothes, and carried him to his cell by way of the corridor along the library, a safer route than past the abbot's rooms. I lay him upon his narrow bed and, checking the dark corridor before closing the door, rinsed a washcloth with cool water from the basin in the corner and mopped his face and neck.
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