“Then you did not know your son was stealing into my home to see her at night?”
“I… yes, I knew. But I thought it was just the once,” the magician said. “It was three nights ago. I overheard them talking in the courtyard. I had a very stern discussion with Paulo afterwards.”
“I knew as well,” the senator confessed. “Cirio came to me and told me what had happened the next morning. In truth, I am not opposed to a union of our families. I had very nearly given up hope that my daughter would ever find a man who could both meet her standards and abide her forthright nature. But this--! This is not the way to do it!”
“I know. I apologize.”
“There should be a marriage contract, a proper ceremony…”
“Yes, I know.”
“Those children are not half as wise as they would like to believe they are! We need to find them before they get themselves in trouble. Pompeii can be a cutthroat town.”
“We’ll find them, Cornelius,” the magician said, rising. “I’ll send my people out looking for them immediately. Have you already dispatched your slaves to find them?”
The senator nodded, rising with him. “Yes, yes, the moment I found out she was gone. And what of us?”
“We’ll search, too,” Gon said, wiping his eyes with his napkin.
They checked the boy’s room to see if he had left a note, like Julia, hoping for some clue that might indicate where they had gone, but there was no note. The boy’s bed hadn’t even been slept in.
The magician dispatched nearly half his staff to comb the city, instructing them to check each of the city gates to see if the children had passed through them early that morning. After the servants had raced on their way, the magician and the senator departed the villa to look on their own.
It was only pretense, and painful pretense at that, for the bright Augustus sun drilled into his eye sockets like white hot pokers the whole afternoon. The magician did not believe they would find the children. If they were anywhere nearby, his amplified senses would have picked them up immediately. Wherever they were, they were far beyond his range. He only accompanied the senator to appease his worried neighbor. Luckily, Cornelius Varus was old and unaccustomed to exertion, and was soon overwhelmed by the relentless heat. They returned to the villa so the mortal could rest and cool down.
“I will go out again tonight, after dusk, and search some more,” the magician promised his friend. “You should stay home in case the servants return with news… or the children decide to come back.”
Wiping the sweat from his brick red face, Varus nodded gratefully.
“You are right, of course,” the senator said. “We could search the city for weeks and not find them, especially if they don’t want to be found. All we can do is wait for them to return, and pray they do not get themselves killed in the meantime.”
Cornelius departed to wait in his own home, promising to send word immediately should any of his servants return with news of their children. The magician promised to do the same.
Shortly after the senator left, a courier arrived with a letter from Baiae. Fulvius brought it to the magician as he sat waiting for dusk in his chambers.
“What is this?” the magician demanded, taking the rolled papyrus from the old man.
“A letter from Baiae, the courier said. I do not recognize the seal.”
The magician broke the wax seal and unrolled the parchment with a scowl. For a moment, he had thought it might be from Apollonius.
The letter was written in a form of Latin so old only a few mortal scholars might have been able to translate it, but the magician had no difficulty reading it. It was from the immortals of Baiae. He had completely forgotten he’d written to them. He hoped they were not coming anytime soon.
The letter said:
Germanis,
We are delighted to hear that you have taken a companion, and honored that you’ve invited us to your home to meet your new acolyte. However, we must regretfully, and most respectfully, decline your invitation. Moreover, we feel obliged to send you a warning. As you know, our Sister of the Night, Murcella, has the oracular sight. Recently, she has had visions that a great calamity will befall this region. Though she does not know when it will happen, or how exactly it may come to pass, she has had dreams of death and great terror. She says that the ground will tremble as of a great beast rising from its slumber, and she has seen a storm of stones that will blot out the very sun. We urge you to abandon these lands as soon as possible, as we have already done, and to take those you love most with you if you can. By the time you receive this letter we will have already departed. We go west, to Rome, and perhaps even further than that, if Murcella is unsatisfied that we have gone far enough to be safe. Perhaps we will see you there. Until then, know that we are and shall forever remain your Brothers and Sisters in the Night.
Yours eternally,
Sollemnes
“Dominus?” Fulvius said, frightened by the scowl on the magician’s face.
Gon was too distracted to correct the old man, as much as he hated being called “master”.
He rolled the parchment back up and slipped it into the pocket of his tunic. “You’re dismissed, Fulvius,” he said gently. After the old man had shuffled away, the magician rose and began to pace about his sitting room.
Though she does not know when it will happen, or how exactly it may come to pass, she has had dreams of death and great terror...
He knew Murcella. He had lived among the striga of Baiae for several years. She was not often wrong, and Sollemnes was not a frivolous man. He would not uproot his family and move his household to Rome if he did not think the sybil’s vision had some validity. Had she foreseen another great earthquake, like the one that had nearly leveled Pompeii almost twenty years ago? But what of the “storm of stones” she had glimpsed in her visions? A rockslide from the mountain? Some strange weather phenomenon? He had heard of rains of fish and frogs, and things even stranger than that, but stones? A wind would have to be very powerful indeed to bear aloft so many stones-- enough to blot out the sun!
The magician was not in Pompeii during the great earthquake that struck the city seventeen years ago. He had been touring the Greek isles with his soul mate Zenzele. After word of the quake reached them in Rhodes, they had parted ways, Zenzele to Egypt, and he to Pompeii to see to the repairs of his various estates.
He remembered his shock when he first laid eyes on the devastation: the city lying in ruins, her walls crumbled, homes leveled, temples dashed to the earth. It looked as if the gods themselves had run amok in the streets. The rich had forsaken the city like fleas abandoning the carcass of a dead dog. Most had never returned. All that remained were the poor, the mad, the cunning and the obstinate. If another such earthquake happened again, he did not know if he would even bother to rebuild. Though he had always held Pompeii close to his heart, he wasn’t the type to keep thrusting his hand into a beehive, no matter how sweet the honey might be.
Of course, Murcella might be wrong. She’d had false visions before. And even if her premonitions came true, the calamity she had foreseen might not befall Pompeii, but some other unlucky city along the Bay of Naples. Baiae. Stabiae. Herculaneum. Still, he had noticed the ground trembling more and more frequently of late. In the last couple months, they had come almost weekly. Sometimes two or three in the same day. It couldn’t be mere coincidence.
Too many surprises. Too many questions. Too many unknowns. The magician felt like a cornered animal. It was a relief when night fell and he could go in search of his wayward son.
He stopped by the house of Varus to see if his neighbor had any news of the children.
“Nothing,” the retired senator said with a weary shake of his head. He had been drinking. He reeked of worry and wine. “And you? Were they spotted passing through the city gates? Did your servants check at all the inns?”
Yes, they had, and no, the customs officers who manned the city gates did not recall an
yone of their description leaving the city—but thousands passed through the gates every day. Pompeii was a tourist town, and had a very busy port. Several of his servants had been laughed at when they inquired of the two at the gates.
“I suspected as much,” Cornelius said glumly. “Well, I suppose there is nothing to do but wait. Wait and worry and pray. Why do children treat their parents so poorly, Germanis? Have we not been good to them? Worked our fingers to the bone to provide for them? Was it not enough to worry ourselves to death for their safety when they were babies? Now they are grown up, and they do it to us again!”
The magician consoled his friend, laughing sympathetically. “I share your pain, Cornelius. I go now to search for the children one last time before I retire for the night.”
The senator tried to talk him out of it. “It will do no good to search for them tonight,” he said. “You’ll wear yourself out, or get your throat cut in some dirty backstreet. Stay here. Help me finish off this wine. We’ll get drunk and lament the trials of widowed fathers!”
The magician laughed and clapped his friend on the shoulder. “I may take you up on that offer, but I’d like to check a few more places tonight, now that the sun is down and I can roam without discomfort.”
Cornelius nodded. “Well, take a couple bodyguards along, just to be safe.”
“I will.”
But he didn’t, of course. He had no need of bodyguards. Certainly not mortal bodyguards. He was old. Old before the Etruscans even settled in this region, pushed out of their homeland by the Gauls. He had been decapitated, quartered, impaled by weapons long since gone to dust, and still he lived. No petty thief or vicious cutthroat posed him any danger. He was the monster they cowered from in their alleys and stinking bolt holes. They even had a name for him, whispered with superstitious dread in the lowest taverns and filthiest brothels of the city: tectum cursor. The roof runner.
The good citizens of Pompeii might be ignorant of his predations, but his prey were not.
He took to the roofs now, but not to hunt his supper. He hunted, instead, for his son.
Oh, Paulo, what am I going to do with you? he thought.
He circled the city of Pompeii, sending out his far ranging senses to locate the boy. He searched for the woman, too, for his get was very good at eluding his maker’s detection. He had proved that when he stole away with his mortal lover without the magician discerning it. Now he turned the full force of his amplified senses to the task of finding them. He laid down his mental barriers and let the sights and sounds and smells of the city wash over his consciousness. It was like a whirlwind, or a great roaring flood. Any lesser mind might have buckled beneath the onslaught, but not the ancient magician, not the one called Gon.
He sifted through the raging waters, searching for some clue to the whereabouts of the wayward youngsters. Some smell, left by the woman-child as she trailed her hand upon a fence. Whispered declarations of love, traded in the darkness in some nearby hostel.
Nothing.
Frustrated, the striga went to the north wall and climbed over it. Perhaps the boy had taken his lover to Vesuvius, to make an immortal of her, just as his maker had done to him. He prayed the boy was not so foolish—not so selfish!—but he knew from bitter experience that the man-child had a great capacity for both. All men did, especially when it came to love.
He bound over the nighted landscape, passing the farms and scattered villas that peppered the foothills of the mountain, climbing up, up, to the secret cave where he had transformed the boy into a demigod.
“Paulo?” he called, ducking his head into the cavern. And then by his birth name: “Apollonius!”
The boy was not there, but the faint scent of his lover’s perfume lingered: rose petals and iris in a base of Onfacio. It was an expensive brand from the town of Palestrina. Unmistakable.
The magician’s heart plummeted. He had hoped that Apollonius would not try to make a goddess of the mortal woman he had become so infatuated with, but if he had brought Julia here… the odds of that happening had increased exponentially.
His shoulders fell and he scrubbed his face with his hand. “Oh, Paulo,” he murmured, and then he turned and went home to await his son’s return.
Amatores
They returned three days later, shortly after dusk.
The magician sensed them the instant they neared the villa. He heard them whispering encouragements to one another as they hurried along the street. And he could smell the woman’s perfume: ghost-scent of rose petals and lilies. He could also tell by her odor that she was no longer mortal. Mortals have an opulent aroma-- a mélange of pheromones and stomach gases, blood, sweat, shit, and the excretions of their reproductive organs-- nigh irresistible to the creatures of the night. The striga have no natural aroma, only what smells cling to them from their environment.
So he has done it, the magician thought.
The thought came without anger or condemnation. What could he do about it now? What good would it do to be wrathful, to punish the boy and his new-made bride? He was not predisposed to put the child out, exile him from his heart and his home, so he sat. He put aside his reading and waited.
They knocked on the door, greeted the porter when he let them into the courtyard. They had a brief, low conversation with the tall Nubian, laughing nervously, then crossed the peristyle to the terrace.
In the house. Down the corridor.
“Father?” Apollonius said, standing in the doorway.
Gon turned to him. “Paulo.”
The girl, Julia, was standing just out of sight. The magician could hear her wringing her hands anxiously. If she were still mortal, he would have heard her heart racing, smelled the metallic odor of fear-sweat. But she was not mortal. There was only silence from her, apart from the dry rustling sound of her hands twining restlessly, and the faint smell of rose petals.
The magician made a subtle gesture with his fingers, smiling. “Well, let me have a look at her.”
Apollonius turned toward his bride and motioned for her to step forward.
She slid into view, brow furrowed with worry.
She was beautiful.
The living blood had made her a goddess. Flesh as white as new fallen snow. Lips as red as rubies. Her curly brown hair had taken on a new luster, the highlights glinting like polished copper. Her eyes, like the magician’s, had transformed from brown to gold. They glittered as she looked from father to son, catching the lamplight and encapsulating it so that it looked like two tiny candles flickered within her pupils.
She was not a powerful lamia. He could see that she was not a true immortal, not an Eternal like himself. She would live a thousand years, perhaps, maybe less, but she would live out those years in absolute perfection of form, the embodiment of the female ideal.
“Venus, in her jealousy, would strike you down,” the magician said wonderingly.
Julia stared at him is disbelief. The muscles of her neck and upper torso relaxed, and she smiled hesitantly. She had fine, sharp fangs.
“Apollonius was certain you would be furious,” the young woman said.
The magician shrugged. “I am. I am not. We all do foolish things in our youth. You would not be so troubled of my opinion if you knew all the mistakes I have made in my lifetime.”
“So you think I am a mistake?” Julia asked, looking anxious again.
“Of course you are, if I am thinking of your father,” the magician replied. “Not for Paulo, I am certain, and not so much for myself. I will enjoy your company, until you decide to abandon me—as you will, someday. As you should. All young birds must fly the nest. I’m afraid, however, you’ve dashed your father’s hopes. He will never be a grandfather now. Paulo informed you of that aspect of our curse, did he not?”
The girl nodded, looking ashamed.
“So we can stay?” Apollonius blurted. He could scarce contain himself, he was so anxious. The magician saw that the boy had been certain of his maker’s rage, that he had expe
cted to be rebuked, perhaps even exiled, and it made him sad.
“Of course you can stay. Did you expect me to put you out?”
“I was afraid--”
“Then you do not know me half as well as you think you do.” He waved them into his sitting room. “Come inside. Shut the door. We have too many servants, and they are all equipped with functional ears and tongues, I assure you.”
Julia laughed softly and approached the ancient striga. Apollonius followed. He looked as if he could not quite accept that he would not be punished. Too many years in bondage to Laevinus, where he had been beaten for the slightest infraction-- or none at all. Perhaps someday he would forget the stings of his childhood.
The magician rose as the boy closed the door. He went to a dresser and began to slide the drawers open and shut. “You will, I assume, visit your father next?”
“Yes,” Julia said.
“Then you must disguise your new complexion. The man believes that we are albinos, but he will not believe such a fanciful lie of you. He will know immediately that you are changed. Your appearance might even frighten him. Unless you plan to tell him what we are…?”
“No!” Julia gasped. “I’m sure my elopement has been enough of a strain on him.”
“Has Paulo told you why mortal men must never learn of our existence?”
“Yes.”
“Ah! Here it is!” The magician took a box from one of the drawers. It was fetchingly engraved— a buxom Venus in repose-- and filled with small jars of cosmetics. He passed it to Julia, and motioned for her to sit in his chair. “You will have to perform this ritual every day now, so long as your father lives. You can defend your new sleeping habits by saying that you are accommodating your husband’s infirmity, but your whited appearance will have to be concealed.”
Julia sat and he handed her a mirror. He pointed to one of the jars in the box. “Try that one first. That tint, I have found, gives the most natural hue to our flesh, and it will last through most of the evening if you do not get it wet. That one, applied to the cheeks, will give you the blush of good health.”
Apollonius (The Oldest Living Vampire Saga) Page 10
