“Jerusa Phoenix.”
Jerusa felt as though the floor vanished beneath her.
“Jerusa, it’s okay. They are gone now. You can come out.”
She remained still for a moment, not sure she had heard right. Timidly, she poked her head through the slit in the curtain. Celeste stood in the doorway, looking even more frightened than Jerusa felt. A girlish smile, easy and unbidden, appeared on Celeste’s face and she beckoned for Jerusa to hurry.
“Come on. Let’s get you out of here and back to your room before the daylight lockdown.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Silvanus stood in the shade of the trees, far enough inside the forest where he wouldn’t be noticed by human eyes, watching the home that Jerusa shared with Shufah and Taos.
Dusk was still a few hours away. He had planned to wait until dark before visiting Jerusa, but he could sense that she and the other vampires were not home. The daylight defenses had not been activated, the blackout shutters had not been drawn, the alarm wasn’t activated and an unmistakable stillness settled over the house.
He had many reasons to make the journey back. He needed to retrace his steps, to figure out the piece to the puzzle he had missed the first night he had appeared here. He also wanted to thank Shufah for leading him to the Erinyes. Alecto, Megaera and Tisiphone had helped him to better understand his origins, though, if they were right, it meant that Jerusa could never be like him. But now that he was back, he realized that most of all, he just wanted to see Jerusa.
Silvanus took a step and with just a thought, traveled from the shadow-soaked forest to the interior of the garage. One of the spaces was filled with Thad Campbell’s Jeep, which looked to have taken some damage and not from another car.
With another step, Silvanus appeared inside the house. He moved from room to room, mulling over every detail. Nothing seemed to be disturbed, yet he felt that the house had been abandoned in urgency. He worked his way down to the basement and then into the emergency vault they kept hidden. He was right. The house was deserted.
His blood had changed Jerusa into a powerful vampire. She was with Shufah who was ancient and wise, and Taos who had brute strength and the fire gift. Wherever Jerusa was, Silvanus was sure she was okay. Yet, he couldn’t help but worry. He considered using his strange teleportation to guide him to her, but that didn’t seem to work so well. Who knew where he might end up?
He thought back to the first time he had tried to locate someone. He had just escaped the Purgatory facility and had pressed his gift to take him to another like himself. Instead he found himself in this town, following a pair of vampires.
He pondered further, the night he had discovered Kole and Taos feeding on a group of hobos. He hadn’t actually appeared before the vampires, but had discovered them traveling the abandoned train tracks. When he first materialized in this town, naked and confused, he found himself standing before a mortal woman.
At least he had believed her to be mortal.
The woman had been pretty, young, perhaps in her early twenties. She had been wearing a hooded sweatshirt, shorts and tennis shoes, which seemed appropriate for hiking down a wooded trail at night during the summer. When he had appeared before her unannounced, she seemed genuinely shocked. She didn’t scream or call out for help, but it was obvious his sudden manifestation had jumbled her wits. She had turned, ran back down the path and vanished.
She had behaved, more or less, how any other mortal would have to such an odd occurrence. Humans are an unpredictable breed. Whereas some might have fled, others might have tried to attack him, so hers wasn’t out of the scope of normal reactions. Yet there had been something strange about her.
On a whim, Silvanus decided to check one more place, before moving on to the abandoned train tracks cutting through the forest that had been restructured as a walking trail. He took a step, leaving Jerusa’s house and arriving outside of Debra Phoenix’s house.
He appeared across the street, around the corner of a neighboring house. A couple of police cars were parked in Debra Phoenix’s driveway. A loose collection of neighbors stood just off the property, whispering to each other, as though they had important secrets to discuss.
Silvanus reached out for their minds, gently probing their thoughts, so as to not be detected. From what he could gather, there had been a disturbance late last night. The neighbor to the south had heard the commotion, but chalked it up to another fight between the controlling Debra and her strange, sickly daughter. Some of the others claimed to have heard the same thing, though most were lying.
The neighbors didn’t seem to have high opinions of Debra or Jerusa. Most of those in the gossiping crowd believed Debra to be unstable, capable of all kinds of deranged acts. There was a running rumor that her husband had never really left, but that she had murdered him and stuffed him in the crawlspace or behind one of the walls. They joked that she abused Jerusa, tying the poor girl to her bed at night or beating her when she didn’t clean the house. Some believed that Debra suffered from Munchausen-by-proxy Syndrome and was poisoning poor Jerusa. Why else would the child have spent so much time in and out of hospitals? It was only a matter of time before it came to violence. Most in the crowd were surprised that the police hadn’t become involved sooner.
Silvanus left the minds of the neighbors and turned instead to the police officers who had discovered signs of a struggle and were now entering the house.
Though the disturbance had happened sometime last night, it wasn’t until about an hour ago that a neighbor, walking her dog, noticed a broken window and decided to call the police.
Silvanus searched the house through the eyes and minds of the police officers. Most of the house was undisturbed, except for the kitchen and nothing seemed to be missing. Neither Debra nor Jerusa was home and there was no sign of foul play.
The window had been broken from the inside out, meaning Jerusa or one of the other vampires had had to make a fast escape. But escape from what? And the fact that Debra was missing brought a chill over him.
Silvanus’s lip curled in disgust as he watched one of the officers discover an envelope of money in a kitchen drawer, then swiftly tuck it into his pocket. He justified the theft by the fact that the family was either dead or he could blame the loss on one of their neighbors.
The other officer’s thoughts were no better. He moved from room to room, disappointed that there were no dead bodies to report. He had been on the force for a long time and he longed to come across some murder/suicide scene. Something gritty and perverse enough to get him interviewed on TV.
Silvanus withdrew from the minds of the police officers, feeling dirty and saddened by what he had witnessed. He hated being able to hear thoughts, though it had come in handy, helping him integrate into the mortal world with great speed. He did his best to stay out of mortal minds, only venturing in if he needed some vital piece of information. He did, however, wish he could read the minds of vampires, but they were locked to him.
Something jostled within Silvanus’s mind. A thought, just out of reach of his mental grasp, a fossil buried deep underground with only the tip breaking the surface.
He remembered the night he had first appeared in this town, when he had willed himself to find others that shared his rare gifts. The woman, shocked and frightened by the naked stranger appearing before her. How, for the briefest of moments, she seemed to recognize him—perhaps not who he was but what he was.
And then it hit him, what had made the woman seem so strange. He hadn’t been able to read her thoughts.
When Silvanus had first appeared in this town and found the pair of vampires hunting in the forest, he had assumed that he had teleported to them because they were the closest thing to himself. But now he saw the foolishness in that theory. He had spanned a great distance from Purgatory and America had no shortage of vampires. Why wouldn’t he have just transported to the closest vampire?
What if he had been wrong all along? What if his gift had giv
en him just what he desired? What if the startled woman had been a Divine Vampire?
Everything about the woman, from her scent, to the sounds of her body, to her movement, seemed so utterly human that he had never before questioned it. He had been so new to this life, so unaware of his own abilities that he never questioned why he could hear the thoughts of other humans, but not hers.
Had not the three Furies, with their combined senses, mistaken him for human at first?
Silvanus stepped out from his hiding spot, catching the eyes of several onlookers. He scanned their minds. They thought him extraordinarily handsome, but none questioned whether or not he was a human.
“Hey,” one of the police officers called. “Hey you, come here.” He had stepped out of the house and noticed some of the female neighbors staring at Silvanus. His suspicions were up, but not about Silvanus’s humanity. “I want to talk to you.”
Silvanus started around the corner of the house. The cop took off at a run to pursue him. His shoes kicked up the gravel from the driveway, his breathing tightened. He unclasped his gun and drew it from the holster.
Silvanus focused his thoughts on the woman he had met six months ago. In his mind’s eye he traced every line of her face, every feature. As he did this, he thought of the other Divine Vampires—ten more if the Erinyes were correct. Was this woman one of the ten? If she was truly one of the Divines, why hadn’t she revealed herself to Silvanus? There was no way she could have mistaken him for a human. Not the way he had appeared before her out of thin air.
The cop was getting closer. He crossed the street and was almost around the front corner. Silvanus was in the back yard now, treading in slow, even steps, allowing the desire to find another Divine Vampire to flood his mind, as he had that night outside of Purgatory. He didn’t concern himself with a location. All that mattered was finding that woman.
As the cop turned the rear corner of the house, preparing to call out or maybe even fire his gun, he caught one brief glimpse of Silvanus and then in the next step he was gone.
The roar of many voices filled Silvanus’s ears. He opened his eyes to find hundreds of people moving up and down the sidewalk behind him. Traffic in the street, the majority being cabs, seemed almost at a standstill and the drivers made full use of their horns. Tall buildings—masterpieces of metal, concrete and glass—rose high into the air, leaving only a small strip of blue sky visible. He plucked from the mind of a passing man the name of the city: New York. He stood before the outdoor patio of a restaurant, where people dined despite the cool autumn breeze. No one had noticed him appear out of nowhere, or if they did, they weren’t impressed. Only one set of eyes were upon him and this time they were neither frightened nor surprised.
“I was wondering when you would figure it out,” she said. She leaned back, holding a steaming mug of coffee in her hands. “I was hoping you wouldn’t. That you’d just go on doing your own thing, but I guess it’s inevitable.” Silvanus was at a loss for words. She motioned for him to sit. “Don’t just stand there like some crazed stalker. C’mon, let’s get this over with.”
Silvanus pulled the chair out and sat, never once taking his eyes off of the woman, for fear that she might be gone when he glanced back. He reached for her mind and found it inaccessible.
“Don’t do that,” she said. He frowned as though he didn’t understand, but she didn’t buy it. “Don’t try to read my mind. First, you can’t and second, it’s rude.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, not sure what else to say. “I didn’t mean to be rude.”
“It’s okay,” she said with a shrug. “Save it for the humans. But if you’d like some free advice, limit the time you spend in their heads. Most of what you’ll find there isn’t pretty.”
“I believe you.”
A waitress came to the table and placed a decadent looking piece of dark chocolate cake before the woman. “Anything for you?” she asked Silvanus.
Silvanus looked from the cake to the woman to the waitress. He didn’t know what to say. He had never hidden himself among so many humans. The woman took pity on him and asked the waitress to bring him the same. She sped off with a fake smile plastered to her face.
At first, Silvanus thought she had ordered the cake to better blend with the humans around her, but then she picked up her fork, cut a piece and put it in her mouth. She chewed the cake slowly, then swallowed with a tiny shudder of pleasure. Silvanus watched, mesmerized by this.
She smiled at him. “You’ve never tasted food, have you?”
“I didn’t know I could.” He felt giddy at the thought of eating and drinking like a mortal. “I assumed we were like the blood drinkers.”
She laughed as though this was the most absurd concept she had ever heard. “Oh no. Not at all. We have our similarities, sure, but we evolved past those barbarians long ago, didn’t we?”
“I don’t understand. They call us Divine Vampires. Is there a connection between us and the blood drinkers?”
She took another bite of cake. “As I said, we evolved. We moved past the need for blood and climbed to a higher station.”
“How did we do that?”
The waitress returned with his chocolate cake before the woman could answer. Silvanus stared down at the dessert, fascinated and full of anticipation. He picked up his fork, cut off a large bite and shoveled it in his mouth. His breath caught in his chest at the rush of flavor. Never had he imagined something so sweet, so delicious. It was all he could do not to plunge his face down to the plate and feast like a pig. He forced himself to use the fork, devouring the large piece in five bites. The woman didn’t seem appalled by his table manners, in fact she matched him fork for fork.
“Wonderful, isn’t it?”
Silvanus smiled at her. He longed for more, yet felt happy and content. “And it won’t harm us?”
“Of course not,” she said furrowing her brows. “It would sicken the blood drinkers, but we do not drink blood.”
Silvanus thought back to the one and only time he had tasted blood—when he had replaced Jerusa’s savage-infected blood with his own. It had nearly killed him, if that was even possible. Just the thought of those days, hiding in darkness, alone, waiting for that festering sickness to leave him, made his flesh go cold.
“And we can eat anything we like?”
“Yes. Anything and everything, though you’ll find that you won’t get much more out of it other than the taste.”
“So, we cannot survive on it?”
“I’m afraid not. Your body will consume every part of it, yet it cannot give you the power to sustain life. Only feeding can do that.”
“So, we are like the blood drinkers. Taking a life to prolong our own.”
“Life demands life,” she said. “But we and we alone have the ability to feed from our prey without causing harm. The blood drinkers can feed without killing, but they risk passing on their vile disease.”
Once again Silvanus’s mind ran back to the four he fed upon in Purgatory and a dagger of guilt twisted in his gut. “You’re talking about taking just a small bit from several humans, aren’t you?”
“Why yes.” She seemed surprised by his revelation. “Why do you think we hide among the mortals? In a place like this city, I can stroll down the street gathering all that I need and never harm a single person. You didn’t know this?”
“I guess I had my suspicions.”
“How long have you been awake?”
“Six months. I woke up in a laboratory hidden in the mountains. I had been encased in some black shell.”
“Strange,” she said, drifting off into her own thoughts. “Where did they find you?”
“I’m not sure. They weren’t exactly forthcoming with the information.”
“What did the shell look like?”
“It was black, like obsidian glass.”
That wasn’t the description she was looking for and it annoyed her to have to explain. “Was it thick or thin?”
Silvanus thought back. His birth into the world had been traumatic, as most are he supposed, and he had been consumed with hunger pangs, confused and eager to escape. “Thick. I could see the impression of my body within, but the outside held no markings. Why? What does that mean?”
She looked at him for a long moment over the table. “It means that you took on the change a very long time ago. What do you remember? I mean, from your life before.”
“Nothing before waking up in the mountains. What do you mean by took on the change? Changed from what?”
She eyed him as though she weren’t sure if he was mocking her or not. “Changed from being a blood drinker, of course. I said we evolved past those barbarians. What did you think I meant?”
“So, it’s true then. We are descended from the blood drinkers.”
“Descended? No. We are perfected.”
“I met a trio of vampires, hiding and on the run from the Stewards. They told me of a rumor that a Divine Vampire is born when a blood drinker denies his nature. That if they can purge themselves of their thirst that they will become like us. Is this true?”
She rolled her eyes. “Ah, the Stewards of Life. Such a bunch of arrogant tyrants. They have been trying to gain our secrets for millennia. They believe they hold the key, but there is more than one lock.”
“I’m confused again.”
“The Stewards believe that, to become Divine, a vampire must refuse blood and bring about that terrible disease they call the Stone Cloak. That is why they will destroy any vampire that refuses to feed on blood.”
“So, the shell that I broke free of, that is the Stone Cloak?”
“Yes. I believe that you wore it a long time and must have suffered terribly in whatever dark depth you were cast in. That is why we cannot remember our lives before. Or at least that is the consensus among the ten of us. Eleven now that you are here.”
“You can’t remember who you were before, either? Not your name, your family, where you came from?”
Perpetual Creatures, Volumes 1-3: A Vampire and Ghost Thriller Series Page 46
