Time for Eternity

by Susan Squires

  “My dear Ms. Suchet,” it began. How did the woman know her name? Ominous.

  I know you will not seek my help. So I leave this book to you instead, as a kind of a challenge. Please reserve judgment about what I tell you until you have read my note through and looked at the book. This is not a gift I give lightly. You are the first person with whom I have shared my secret in nearly two hundred years. What secret, you ask? Let us begin with the fact that time is not linear, but a vortex. It is possible to jump from one part of the vortex into another. (Remember, you are to reserve your judgment.) My friend Leonardo built me a machine. With a vampire’s power and his genius, it is possible to go to another time. I went back and changed a decision I regretted all my life.

  You can change what happened to you too, Ms. Suchet. The machine is in Florence under the Baptistery of the Duomo. We should have destroyed it. But it would have been like destroying part of Leonardo. We simply couldn’t bring ourselves to do it. On the attached sheet you will find directions.

  Be warned. There will be difficulties. This will be like no adventure you have ever embarked upon. But what choice have you? This is the only way to discover what you truly want and claim it.

  Do not let regret poison you, child. Have the courage to change your destiny as I changed mine. My heartfelt best wishes go with you.

  Donnatella di Poliziano

  Emotions chased one another through Frankie’s belly and up into her throat. Time machine? The woman was a loon.

  Yet the world held vampires. How many people would think that was crazy?

  Her heart began to thump uncomfortably in her chest. What if you could change things, just as she had daydreamed for so many years? What if she didn’t have to be vampire?

  She opened the book. The leather was supple and cared for. The sheets were vellum. That had to mean it was really old. Her Latin was a little rusty, but there was a note to Donnatella and no one could miss the signature. Leonardo da Vinci. Donna’s friend was da Vinci? Possible, if she had lived since ancient Rome. Of course the signature might not be real. The note said … that time was a vortex. Yeah, I got that part from Donna’s letter. She skimmed ahead. That you could think of another time and the machine would … would take you there. Oh, right, and how was that? And the machine couldn’t stay in the new time forever. It would slip back to its point of origin. She flipped the pages. Lots of diagrams and scribbled notes, indecipherable. It looked like the notes were written right to left, as though to be read in a mirror.

  This was bullshit, of course.

  Her eyes slid back to the signature. Da Vinci. He’d invented a flying machine four hundred years before the Wright brothers … If anyone could have invented a time machine, wouldn’t it be Leonardo da Vinci?

  She sat in the dim blue glow of Ozone, the open book seeming to float in the circle of brighter light on the table. What was even more stupid than this obvious hoax was that somewhere inside she wanted desperately for it to be true. This was her chance to make that daydream real. The universe was granting her one wish.

  Okay, authenticate the book. If the book was real …

  She’d have a decision to make.

  Frankie looked up at the amazing green and white checkerboard marble of the cathedral called Il Duomo in Florence, glimmering in the streetlights. Vespers were just ending. Worshippers poured out the great bronze doors. In the streets to either side tourists were dining in the busy trattorias. Frankie still couldn’t believe she was in Italy. She’d taken the overnight flight from San Francisco to New York, and another to Paris the next night and then on to Florence on the third night. She still couldn’t avoid some daylight, what with the time changes. Sunlight burned her, though the burns it induced couldn’t kill her. So she bundled up as though she were a strict Muslim. That caused some stares. But at least her trip was only uncomfortable, not actually shriek-inducing. She hated to admit she wanted this fantasy to be true that much.

  You’re just going to look and see if it’s there.

  There was no way she was going to find a time machine built by Leonardo da Vinci in the crypts under the Baptistery. So this whole journey was a stupid waste of effort.

  The young woman in that tiny shop off Market Street hadn’t looked much like an expert in old books. But the prof from Berkeley who frequented Ozone said she was. The girl confirmed the book was real and written by da Vinci. She almost didn’t need to say it outright. The reverence in her voice after she compared the signature to known da Vinci autographs, examined the paper, tested a tiny spot of ink, said it for her. She said it was characteristic that he wrote from right to left. He was left-handed. She’d translated passages more precisely for Frankie: the theory of how the machine worked, how he’d built it. And his note to Donna, like a kind of preface. The note said he’d never found enough power to operate the machine. But he thought that Donna could. He knew what she was.

  That still sent chills down Frankie’s spine. Vampires could call on the power of the parasite in their blood. There was a lot of it. Frankie didn’t know exactly how much. After some hesitant early experiments, she never used her power except to run out her fangs, and then she used as little as possible, at least until this week. But she’d seen Henri actually call power to create a whirling blackness and just … disappear. It was how vampires moved around without being seen. Handy for what she’d been up to in Florence. And no doubt the source of the bat myth. Who knew the source of the other myths—silver and holy water, wolfsbane? Thank God they were myths. She liked silver jewelry. And who wanted pizza without garlic?

  So she left the book with the amazed girl as a gift, taking only Donna’s note and directions with her. And here she was in Florence, just to see if this could possibly be true. Not that it could. Not that she’d do anything if it were.

  Who was she kidding? If she didn’t intend to use the machine if she found one then why had she used her power to disappear and reappear inside a hospital supply room to steal enough morphine to float a ship? She had never dared to use her power in that way before. And why had she bought clothes that might be mistaken for 1794? Waisted, full-length skirt in revolutionary blue, flat leather slippers, and an off-the-shoulder red blouse with a white scarf looking very much like a fichu. Let’s not forget the fact that she’d gone back to her natural blond curls, sans spikes. They might very well be mistaken for hair arranged à l’enfant, as she’d worn it so long ago.

  There should be no lying to herself. She’d bought a replica of a gladiator’s sword and it was packed, along with a change of clothes, in a leather gym bag that had cost her a fortune at the Hermes store. The very concept of using it on Henri caused a shudder in her. Could she do this? She bit her lip. She wouldn’t have to do anything. There was no time machine under the Baptistery.

  Yet she’d bought Canadian maple leaves and South African Krugerrands at a precious metals exchange because she’d need currency good even in 1794, and nothing was easier to exchange than gold.

  No, there was no question about what she was going to do if she found some kind of a machine under the Duomo’s Baptistery. Or about how much she wanted it to be there.

  She moved through the stream of worshippers to the cobbled pavement outside the cathedral. Across an open plaza the ornate octagonal Baptistery rose. She slipped inside the great bronze doors and slid into the shadows of one of the marble columns that marched around the perimeter in pairs. She hadn’t been in a church in two hundred years. Priests moved quietly about dousing lamps, signaling the visitors that it was time to leave. Soon only the many candles to the right of the altar shed their flickering light across the intricately tiled floor. To other visitors the amazing dome covered with mosaics in medieval glory and liberally doused with gilt would be lost in shadow. But Frankie could see it clearly, along with the statues lining the upper gallery whose bases held the relics of the saints they portrayed. The remaining priest looked around and, thinking the Baptistery empty, slipped out a side door.

 
; Frankie exhaled. Okay. Okay, she could do this. She didn’t even need to refer to Donna’s note. She’d memorized it long ago. She crossed the marble mosaic floor to the altar at the far side and peered behind it.

  Merde! Uh, maybe she shouldn’t say that here. Or even think it, no matter how surprised she was at the gaping aperture at her feet. Donna was right. A stairway led down. Frankie was having difficulty getting enough air. It wasn’t that the Baptistery was stuffy. Three breaths. Okay. She started down into the darkness. The air rising from below was cooler. A warm, if faint, glow increased as she descended. Bending to peer out before she took the last three steps, she saw a wide, empty room lit by a single lamp standing on a kind of altar in the middle. Donna said it always burned there. Marble coffins lined the edges, the profiles of their owners trapped in stone. The floor was made of heavy marble slabs with worn lettering. The place smelled like a basement. But there was also an aroma of dust and stone that somehow combined to convey age.

  One slab was not inset. Frankie chewed on her lips. Just as Donna had said.

  Below that slab were catacombs. She knew what that meant. Decaying bodies. Maybe rats. Crap in a hat. Could she do it? Just to see that a stupid machine wasn’t there? Frankie should just turn right around and run up these stairs as fast as she could.

  But she didn’t.

  It was impossible to undo what had happened to her. Even if the time machine was there (which it wasn’t), even if it could take her back (which it couldn’t), she might not be able to bring herself to kill Henri, or he might kill her instead. He was certainly stronger than she was. But if she didn’t try, she would live forever half-drowned in a river of isolation and regret, hating what she was, with even escape into suicide impossible. She’d probably go mad, just as Donna had said.

  So she had to try. And that meant lifting up the slab with the strength of a vampire and going down into the catacombs.

  A nervous giggle escaped her and echoed against the sarcophagi. What was she afraid of? She was a vampire, for God’s sake! She couldn’t die. She’d heal a rat bite. Was she afraid she’d catch death from some moldering corpses? Not possible. But if it was, so what? She’d welcome death if she could escape eternity as a vampire. And the truth was, she herself was way worse than anything down in those crypts.

  She strode across the floor to get the lamp and set it down next to the slab. She crouched and heaved the stone to the side. Echoes reverberated from the stone arches as she set it down. The angle of the hole revealed only darkness. Still she picked up the lantern and started down the worn stone steps. The walls of the stairwell were dry, surprisingly, and when she got to the bottom, the shadowy niches that surrounded her seemed to contain only dust. Not so bad. She held up the light, just to face her fears. Dust and some crumbly bones. Okay, there was one where the skull was pretty much intact. And here and there some primitive crucifixes, some scraps of leather were evident. There was a feeling of fullness and … timelessness in the air.

  She could deal. No sign of rats yet. Save the best for last.

  She opened up the little map Donna had drawn. The catacombs formed a maze and she had to get to the other side. Kinda like the first computer games she’d played. Hope she didn’t run into any gobbling ghosts. She muttered directions to herself as she turned corners. Left, right, right … Finally she came to a long straight corridor.

  Bingo. She strode down between the niches stacked four high to the wall at the end. She knelt. Tenth brick up from the bottom. Push.

  She wasn’t sure if she was surprised or not when a portion of the wall swung open. Maybe this was an elaborate hoax to see just how far she’d go. Maybe someone inside that darkness was waiting to pop up and make a funny home video.

  It was a mark of her desperation that she didn’t care. She stepped over the threshold.

  Two

  Her gasp sounded loud in the silence.

  A huge machine towered over her. Giant gears and levers interlocked with smaller ones in some crazy pattern that was … well, beautiful. The metal gleamed golden, shiny with oil. Probably bronze. At points in the mechanism were set what looked like jewels the size of her fist, red and green and blue. Those couldn’t be real. Could they? From the center of the machine thrust a three-foot rod topped by a glittering, clear stone.

  Merde. That was a diamond.

  She stood, transfixed. Slowly the whole thing began to sink in. She was in a secret room hidden in the catacombs beneath a cathedral in Florence looking at a time machine built by Leonardo da Vinci that could be powered only by his friend who was a vampire.

  And Frankie. She could power it too. She just had to draw her power like she did to run out her fangs and feed, or when she had appeared inside that hospital supply room. Only more. Way more.

  It was so unreal that it felt very real. She was a vampire who couldn’t exist, but did. So why not a time machine to take her back and correct the very thing that had made her vampire?

  Uh-oh. Bad thought. What if she changed the world by going back?

  If she was never made vampire, the Frankie who had lived two hundred years would cease to be. But she’d never done anything important. She’d slinked along the shadows of life, trying not to be noticed. No one would miss her if she were successful and died after a single lifetime. And she’d probably only deprive Henri of a few weeks or months until he was guillotined. Who would miss a slimeball like that? Besides, Donna had gone back and corrected her mistake and the world hadn’t ended.

  She stood there, breathing hard. Her life in the eighteenth century washed over her. Not great. The hooped skirts, the restrictions on women. Hated those. Hell, the head lice in those damned wigs everyone else wore or their ratted natural hair were pretty horrible. Even the first time around, she’d refused that fashion. People didn’t bathe often. Their clothes couldn’t be sent to the dry cleaners either. A bastard daughter of the Vicomte d’Evron and his opera dancer, she’d never known her mother, and she didn’t belong in her father’s world. At twenty-one she’d had no prospects, living in genteel poverty in Paris, attendant and dependent upon a kind woman with no prospects herself. She’d been an outcast even before becoming a monster. Bread riots, starvation. And of course there was the Reign of Terror. People were denounced and guillotined for just thinking things that weren’t sufficiently revolutionary. More than a hundred thousand died during those awful years. She and Madame LaFleur had lived in constant fear.

  When Henri saved her from the mob, it had seemed a miracle. No wonder her childish crush had turned to deeper feeling for him. He might have been callous and devil-may-care, but he was also fearless. That was awfully attractive to someone who felt powerless.

  But she’d been naïve then. When she went back now she’d have two hundred years under her belt. The eighteenth century would be a piece of cake. She wouldn’t think about the deed she was going to do. It was the price of saving her soul. Henri’s death should make her mortal again. Then she wouldn’t have the power to run the time machine. So the modern world would be lost forever unless she could just ride along when it returned to the present day. Eighteenth century or twenty-first? It didn’t matter. She’d be human again.

  She was already thinking about going back in time as if it were possible. Yeah. Well, no time like the present to find out. Just do it, girl. Frankie stepped forward and grabbed the diamond. She pulled.

  Nothing happened.

  Oh, the power part. She pushed the lever back up. Companion! she called, as though she needed it to run out her canines. Power surged up her veins like throbbing desire. Red film descended over her field of vision. To anyone watching her, her eyes would have gone red. Companion, more! The throbbing became almost relentless. A whirl of darkness seeped up around her ankles. Uh-oh. She wanted her power directed to the machine, not to disappearing. She pushed down the darkness and concentrated on the machine. Her body tightened. She pulled the lever. Beyond the throb of power in her ears she heard the machine creak.


  Still nothing happened.

  This was going to take some doing. She called for more power, focusing all her attention on the machine. The giant gear in the center of the machine began to slowly grind, setting all the smaller wheels in frantic motion.

  Bingo. Companion! Her body arched as the power sang in her veins and the song shrieked up the scale.

  The gears whirred so fast they were almost invisible. She should think about the instant she wanted to land in. Before the time Henri had cut himself on that stupid breaking glass. Just at the time she’d been taken into his household, so she’d have easy access …

  God! A luminescent glow began to seep outward from her body, forming a blinding white corona. She’d never known she had so much power. The tension in her body, the shriek in her veins, were almost unbearable. Could she survive this?

  Then the gears slowed. Everything slowed, even her thoughts. Had she failed?

  Power still hummed in the air. It smelled like the ozone left in the air after lightning. She grimaced in a rictus smile. She couldn’t escape ozone even here. She pushed for more power.

  It didn’t matter. The gears all stopped.

  She’d failed. She strained toward the eighteenth century, trying to imagine it, the dirty streets, the roaming mobs of Paris. Poverty and ugliness. What a contrast with the luxury of Versailles that Henri had showed her …

  Everything snapped back into motion and she felt herself being flung like a stone in a slingshot into more and more and more speed. The jewels lit up. They magnified the power into colored beams that crisscrossed, swinging in arcs across the stone ceiling. Pain surged into every fiber of her body.