by Amy Patrick
I got the chance to ask Imogen about it that night. She summoned me to meet her at the cavern entrance.
“Take a walk with me,” she said and stepped out into the night.
I followed her to an expansive rose garden. In the silvery moonlight, it was nearly impossible to discern their various colors, but their collective fragrance was heavenly.
She walked among them, touching a flower lightly then moving to the next bush where she did the same, speaking to the blossoms and caressing them almost as if they were beloved pets or small children.
“How are your studies going?” she finally asked.
“Very well, I think. The instructors are patient. I’m learning a lot. Today I learned more about how humans are turned. It made me wonder...”
“Yes? Go ahead and ask, child.”
“Are you... you’re not a...”
My voice trailed off as I lost my nerve. When people here at the Bastion spoke of Imogen, it was always in hushed tones tinged with equal parts respect and fear.
She’d treated me well, spoken to me gently, and literally saved my life, but still... I got the sense that offending her would be a mistake. And she might not appreciate being called a word like “common.”
“A common vampire?” She finished the question for me. “No. I am not. I wondered when you’d ask. I’m an Arch Vampire. I’ve got ancestry that would make a historian’s head spin.”
Never mind the historians—my head was spinning. I thought I’d turned Josiah with that single bite in the hospital.
Was it possible he’d been bitten by fourteen other vampires before me? Perhaps I wasn’t as guilty as I felt.
But then Imogen dropped the other shoe. Plucking a rose from its stem, she captured its petals in her hand then opened it, releasing them to the night wind.
“You must be careful, my child, when your training is complete and you do go out into the world... because you are my child.”
“What do you mean?”
“When someone is turned in the usual way, by a swarm, they become members of the hive, but they have no real ‘maker.’ You’re not like the other vampires you’ve met here. I turned you. Which means you must be discriminating with your feeding.”
“Discriminating?”
“Very. You must make wise choices. Either drain the human completely... or be very sure you want them alive. Forever. We won’t know until we’ve tested your abilities, but as my direct descendant, you may very well have the same gift I do. You may be capable of turning someone with a single bite.”
Josiah. I gasped. I was guilty. I swallowed a surge of bile that must have been imaginary since I hadn’t eaten anything in weeks.
“You don’t need to test me. I’ve already done it.”
Imogen held up a finger. “I know about the boy—unfortunate situation. But it’s not a certainty that you turned him. It’s possible he had been bitten before and was either unaware of it or hiding it. Not everyone freely admits what they’ve been doing in their personal time. Not even Amish teenagers,” she added with a twinkle in her eye. “We’ll arrange a test for you soon.”
“A test? You mean... you want me to bite someone and try to turn them?”
“Exactly. We’ll make sure the human is a virgin this time—I’m not talking about sex. I mean the unbitten sort of virgin,” she added.
I shook my head vigorously. “I can’t do that.”
“Actually, it’s very likely you can. As I said, you’re my daughter.”
“No, I mean I don’t want to do that. I’m not sure it’s good for humans to be turned.”
If there was even the slightest possibility of me turning someone, I was never going to bite another human. I’d learned my lesson with Josiah.
Intending to save his life, I’d only succeeded in multiplying one tragedy into three.
Imogen rolled her eyes and snorted. “You sound like my sister.”
Strolling to another rose bush, she leaned down and inhaled the fragrance of a large bloom before looking up and speaking almost casually.
“What do you know about the origins of our species?”
“I haven’t gotten to vampire biology yet. All I know is it has something to do with bees and elephants because they assigned us some books about them to read.”
“The cradle of life was also the cradle of death,” she said. “That’s where it started. Africa.”
Snapping several stems with her fingers, she began gathering a bouquet of long-stemmed roses.
“Our scientists believe the East African lowland honeybee began migrating to Asia in the thirteenth century,” she explained. “There, some of the East African lowland queens mated with local honeybee drones, resulting in what is now called the Africanized honeybee—also known as killer bees.”
She punctuated this last with a sly smile before going on.
“In countries such as Sri Lanka, India, Nepal, and Thailand, Asian elephants are ten times more endangered than their African cousins. Can you guess why?”
I shrugged, unsure of the answer and really confused about where she was going with all this.
“People kill them for their ivory tusks?” I guessed.
“You’re partially correct. Poachers also sell the skin, the trunk, the feet, and other parts on the black market. It’s highly in demand for use in traditional medicine. Many of the practitioners, and their customers, believe that eating an animal gives one some of the properties of that animal. Wild tigers and pangolins are nearly extinct now in China because of their value in traditional Chinese medicine, and bats are routinely eaten or used in traditional cures.”
I shivered, grossed out at the thought, but if anyone should be understanding of cultural differences, it was me.
“In Myanmar, you can walk into a major market and purchase a slice of elephant skin, which they believe heals eczema,” Imogen continued. “In spite of the advent of modern medicine, the demand for exotic animal parts like rhinoceros horns, tiger bones and claws, pangolin scales, even donkey hides has actually been increasing. That, of course, drives the animal trafficking. A kilogram of elephant skin goes for about a hundred dollars. To protect the endangered elephants, conservationists use swarms of African bees to try to drive wild herds away from the areas poachers are known to frequent. Elephants are terrified of bees.”
“Their stingers can penetrate an elephant’s hide?”
“No. It’s too thick, but when bees swarm—and African bees swarm aggressively—hundreds might sting an elephant in its most sensitive areas, the trunk, mouth, and eyes. Perhaps even thousands.”
I cringed, getting a mental picture of the horrifying attack.
“Our ancestors derived from such an incident,” Imogen said. “Our researchers have extensively studied the origin of our species. They’ve tracked it back to a single Asian elephant. It disturbed a hive—they can house forty-thousand or more bees—and was stung in overwhelming numbers. Some enterprising fellow then found the dead elephant and sold its parts, resulting in quite a payday no doubt. But that wasn’t the only result. We don’t know the exact number, but many people ingested the medicines that were made from that elephant, who’d been poisoned with the venom of thousands of bees. The humans took ill, appeared to die, and then awoke hours or days later, depending on their health before they took this ‘cure.’”
“They became vampires,” I said, understanding now.
“Yes. The mass amounts of venom caused their livers to fail. Like all of our kind, they were no longer able to digest food and process its fats, carbohydrates, and protein and get the nutrients into the bloodstream. They were forced to drink the nutrient-rich blood of humans to survive. Those who refused and continued to attempt to eat human food, died. That’s also why our kind cannot carry children to viability. The liver is what produces blood during fetal development.”
“So vampires can get pregnant?”
“Not all of them—not the worker bees.” She wrinkled her nose at her pun. “But
there are tales of queens mating successfully and producing live offspring. Long before my time—I’ve never seen it happen, but there is always hope.”
“Is that why it takes so many vampire bites to turn a human? Because we’re essentially like bees?”
“Exactly—a single bee sting is unlikely to kill a human. But a swarm...”
She smiled, and I wondered how it could be so beautiful and so terrifying at the same time.
“People think of elephants as calm, friendly creatures because of the pitiful, defeated examples they’ve seen in zoos,” she said. “But in the wild, when threatened, an elephant can be extremely dangerous, deadly even. Elephants kill five hundred humans a year. Thousand pound logs are like twigs to them, and when provoked they can rampage with devastating results.”
Her tone expressed admiration. “Both our ancestral species are quite deadly when they want to be. Did you know both are matriarchal as well?”
I shook my head. Neither my Amish schooling nor my own reading had included any information on the societal relationships of either elephants or bees.
“They always look to a female for leadership,” Imogen said. “No one is sure why elephants are this way, but in honeybees, it’s a pheromone possessed by the queen bee that causes the drones to follow and serve her—and die to protect her if necessary. She is also responsible for the well-being of her hive. Which is why you, little one, will make an excellent queen someday.”
“Queen? Me?”
She lifted her hands in a reassuring gesture. “Not for a long time—I’m nowhere near ready to hand over my reign. Perhaps a few thousand years from now. But when the time comes, you will be ready, and I’ll rest easy knowing our people are in competent hands.”
“This is... this all sounds crazy. I may be your daughter, but I would make a terrible ‘queen bee.’”
“At the moment, yes, but you’ll learn. I will teach you everything I know.”
“But I don’t even have that... pheromone thing or whatever.”
“Don’t you?” She gave me a smirk. “Do you find the others here treat you differently from your little friends Heather and Kerri?”
“Kelly.”
“Whatever.” She flipped a hand to the side. “The point is the others can sense your power. I didn’t tell our hive I’d turned you—they just knew it when they met you. You see, little one, I’ve given you a tremendous gift. There’s only one step left to determine whether you are a true descendant of our glorious queens... and whether you will help lead our people to victory over the humans.”
I wrapped my arms around my middle, trying to suppress the shaky feeling in my stomach. My voice shook too.
“What are you talking about?”
My shock must have been obvious to her because she laughed, a melodic sound that was more fearsome than it was pleasing.
“Your destiny.”
Destiny.
There was that word again. Reece had used it to describe us—and we’d had only one magical evening together before everything had changed. Before he’d vanished, and I’d become something other than human.
I still felt human, though, and I couldn’t imagine ever hurting people like my family and the members of my community—anyone really. Imogen needed to understand that.
If she really was determined to create an heir, some kind of warrior princess, she’d have to go bite another girl.
“I was raised to seek peace with everyone, whether they’re like me or not,” I said. “To turn the other cheek when I’m offended, to avoid conflict. I’m not a soldier, and I’m certainly not some kind of general. I’m sorry but I think you have the wrong person.”
There was a flash of annoyance across her face—as plain to see as my mother’s exasperation with me used to be when I talked about wanting to travel and have adventures.
But then Imogen’s expression smoothed, and she gave me the same cool smile she usually wore.
“I understand. And though I did gift you with your second life, it is yours to use as you wish. You are free to stay in the Bastion in whatever capacity you choose, or you may leave when your training is complete and go wherever you’d like to go.”
Turning away, she resumed her stroll through the garden. At a loss for what else to do, I followed her.
Honestly, I was a little surprised she hadn’t reacted with more anger. Maybe the others here were wrong to fear her as they did. She was actually quite reasonable.
As she walked, Imogen reached out and stripped the petals from the roses she passed, crushing them in her fist before letting them fall to the ground.
“By the way, my Bloodbound are following up on some interesting reports in the area where we found you,” she said in a casual tone. “We think it may be the young male from the red car.”
My attention left the pulverized petals and riveted to her, my pulse picking up speed.
Reece. “What kind of reports?”
“There have been a few... incidents in the area over the past few weeks. Kannon is handling it. He took several Bloodbound with him to investigate. Perhaps he’ll return with some news on your friend.”
She stopped walking and turned to face me. “Would it make you happy to see him?”
Happy. That wasn’t a word I’d expected to ever associate with myself again.
But the instant she’d mentioned the possibility of finding Reece still alive, my supposedly undead heart thumped several times.
It might not have been happiness exactly, but it was definitely something.
For the first time since being turned, I felt alive.
13
The Rogue
I returned to the Bastion with new hope—and a new perspective as well.
The others here had treated me differently, not because I’d grown up Amish (though that probably hadn’t helped,) but because I’d been turned by Imogen herself.
They were afraid of her. Were they really afraid of me too, as she had suggested?
The notion seemed ridiculous. I had to have been the worst vampire in the history of the race. But I did start making more of an effort to be outgoing and friendly toward the others instead of waiting for them to reach out to me.
It made a difference. Instead of looking away when they’d pass me in the corridors, people said hello.
The other new vampires in my classes began to joke around with me and even invite me to hang out. I started forming friendships in addition to the ones I shared with Kelly and Heather.
Speaking of my two best friends, they were excitedly whispering together about something when I caught up with them in a cavern everyone called the Rainbow Cave because of its multi-hued iridescent drip formations.
It was a popular hang-out spot for the younger vampires, and they stood together at the bank of one of the cavern’s three flowing streams. One of my favorite spots in the Bastion, this particular stream was fed at one end by a thirty-foot high waterfall.
“Hi. What’s going on?” I asked.
“Come here,” Kelly said in a conspiratorial whisper. She and Heather drew me closer to the noisy waterfall, perhaps to camouflage the discussion from the astute hearing of our fellow vampires.
Whatever the secret was, it must have been a good one. Both were grinning ear to ear and practically wiggling with excitement.
“Guess who’s coming to Washington D.C.?” Heather asked.
“I have no idea.” I hadn’t left the Bastion in weeks, and neither had they, so I wasn’t sure how they knew anything about what was going on in the outside world.
“Sadie Aldritch,” she said. “It’s only two hours’ drive from here.”
“Okaaaay,” I said, dragging out the word to express my confusion. “So what?”
“So, we’re going to go see her,” Kelly told me. “She’ll be speaking on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and lead a peaceful sit-in. It’s so unfair how vampires aren’t allowed to gather in groups of more than ten while the humans get to do whatever they want
whenever they want with whomever they want—in any number they want. It’s going to be epic, and we could help make a difference. You have to come with us.”
I looked at my friends like they were crazy. Because they were.
“We’re not allowed to leave until our training is complete, and I definitely don’t think they’ll make an exception for Sadie Aldritch’s speech. Imogen hates her.”
“Well, it’s not for a couple of months. Sadie’s holding the demonstration on Devil’s Night, October thirtieth, to make a point. Training should be done by then,” Kelly explained. “After that, we can come and go as we please.”
Imogen had said that during my last meeting with her, and I was certainly intrigued by the idea of hearing the leader of the Vampire-Human Coalition speak. It was impossible to imagine our leader sanctioning such an outing though.
“Imogen won’t like it,” I warned.
Kelly shrugged. “So? She doesn’t have to know. Besides, she may be the boss in here, but it’s still a free country out there. Heather’s car is parked at a farm not too far from here. If anyone asks, we’ll say we’re going out for a girls night in the city.”
She and Heather giggled like my little sisters had when they’d gotten into the cookie jar before suppertime.
“Do you really think it’ll be okay?” I asked with rising excitement.
“Absolutely,” Heather said and raised one brow. “And there won’t be any questions. I’ve got a new... friend who guards the cavern entrance at night. Robbie. He’ll keep his mouth shut. Believe me, he’ll do anything I ask him to.”
Now I joined in the giggling. “You are so bad.”
“I know,” she said. “And I’m not a bit sorry. He is so cute. Wait till you meet him.”
Just then the chime of the pipe organ system sounded through the cavern. Many decades ago, a mathematician and scientist touring the cavern had discovered musical notes could be played by tapping some of the stalactite formations.
He’d spent three years studying the stalactites and identifying which ones would be appropriate to use in the creation of a unique and massive musical instrument, a natural pipe organ.
