by J. S. Volpe
She smiles sadly and strokes my hair. “Oh, Hull is still around, as far as I know.”
“But that was over four hundred years ago! How can a human—a mortal—live that long?”
“Some find ways if they’re determined enough.” She plucks the book from my hands. “But enough for tonight. It is late, and you must sleep. You have work in the fields tomorrow.”
She is right. Much as I hate to admit it, much as I’d love to stay by her side forever, she is right.
But maybe, just maybe, I will not be working in the fields much longer. Will not be human much longer. Will spend my days with the Masters, as their equal. I hope so with all my heart and soul.
* * *
Two days later all the mortals of Merrimont gather at the mouth of the Conduit at sunset. Everyone is tense and excited, particularly the six of us whose time it is to be paired together. I am as tense and excited as the others, if not more so, but for very different reasons. By law, those chosen to ascend are not permitted to breed. Thus I shall learn in a few short minutes which fate the Masters have selected for me.
The moment the jagged peaks of the mountains snip away the last rays of sunlight, the iron door at the other end of the Conduit opens, and the Masters start filing out of the darkness. All twenty-two Masters have come, an unprecedented occurrence. Eight or ten is usual for a Pairing Ceremony. In light of this, my hope of ascending blossoms into a near-certainty. My heart races with anticipation. My hands shake. My mouth is dry and rough, and tastes faintly of copper.
I watch Larissa closely as she takes her place in the assembly, but I cannot read her expression and she will not meet my eyes. Nor can I decipher the stolid countenance of Andilaveris, the leader of Merrimont. He is short and stocky, with a hawk-like nose, hair the same leaden gray as the mountains, and skin a shade darker than most of the other Masters.
Andilaveris pulls a scroll from beneath his dark-blue cloak.
“The time of the Pairing has come again,” he says in his low, resonant voice. “You have among you six of mating age. They shall now step forward as I read their names…”
We do—Spiro Agnew, Marilyn Monroe III, Mary Magdalene VII, Buddha IX, Sinead O’Connor, and me. Three men, three women. There should be three perfect pairings. Should be, but I pray not.
“Buddha IX shall mate with Sinead O’Connor,” Andilaveris says. “And Spiro Agnew shall mate with Mary Magdalene VII.” He pauses, looks down at the scroll, looks up. I notice that several Masters are staring at me.
“Marilyn Monroe shall mate with Joshua, a male mortal from Thule Castle, who will be moved here at the end of the month.”
The mortals gasp. I can almost feel their collective gaze pressing upon my back like a steady warm wind. Andilaveris’s eyes meet mine and he gives a faint nod. Then he furls his scroll and says, “Jesus Christ XIV shall not mate. He shall undergo the Ceremony of Ascension one week from tonight. If he survives intact, he will be transferred to Thule Castle.”
He and the other Masters turn and disappear into the Conduit, leaving me alone with the mortals. Though I know they were staring at me moments earlier, none will now meet my eyes.
I take a step toward them, and they retreat from me. Marilyn Monroe whirls and runs for her hut. Spiro is the only one who does not move. He simply stands there, staring without expression at the dirt. I approach him. He draws in a breath and stiffens. His eyes rise halfway toward my face, then fall back to the dirt.
“Spiro—” I say.
“Why do you speak to me?” he whispers through gritted teeth and stiff lips, as if he does not want to be seen talking to me. He sounds angry and bitter. “You’re not one of us anymore. You’re one of them. You shouldn’t associate with us any longer.”
His words hit me like a punch to the gut. Why is he acting this way? Does he think I am abandoning him? Or is he jealous that I have been chosen and that his own chance to become immortal, beautiful, and wise has passed forever?
Before I can think of anything to say, he turns away and walks slowly toward his hut, eyes still on the ground.
Three times I call his name. My only answer is his hut door slamming shut.
* * *
I am with Larissa the following night, for my turn in the feeding has come again.
We lie upon her bed, she sated from my blood, I sated from the pleasure it has given her, my head resting upon her white, motionless breast, and I ask, “What did Andilaveris mean when he implied that I might not survive the Ascension?”
She fixes me with a long look. A drop of my blood gleams dark red in the corner of her mouth.
“There are risks,” she says. “The method by which a human is transformed into a vampire requires the vampire to first drain the human of most of his or her blood. Before the human can expire, he or she must then drink the vampire’s blood. In the majority of cases, things work out perfectly. But rarely—perhaps one time in twenty—the flow of blood to the human’s brain is diminished long enough for brain damage to occur. The result in such cases is a mindless, monstrous thing, possessing a vampire’s strength, endurance, and immortality, but lacking all higher cognitive functions. When a tragedy of this nature occurs, the new vampire is immediately destroyed. By us, at any rate. Some vampires let these hideous abortions roam free to terrorize the living. And in fact we, too, used to let them live before we banded together here. But such savage creatures would now attract far too much attention.” She looks at me. “Knowing all this, do you still desire to ascend?”
“Of course.”
She smiles and strokes my cheek. “I thought so.” She cocks her head, considering. “You will need a new name. ‘Jesus Christ XIV’ is a poor name for a Master.”
“Who will choose my new name?”
She laughs, a high, happy sound that cascades down my soul like a cool, clear waterfall.
“You will, of course.”
I am stunned into silence at the thought of such freedom. My world is indeed changing in ways I never dreamed possible.
Then a somber thought takes me, and I raise my head from her breast and look at her with dark, imploring eyes. “Must I go to Thule Castle?”
She looks away, eyes clouded. “It is an honor. That is the castle led by Korrel Orloth himself. They have been in need of a new vampire for quite a while now, ever since Jesse left. And given that they had a slight overpopulation problem among their mortals, it seemed only logical to arrange a trade—a new vampire for one of their mortals.”
“Yes, but do I have no choice?” My heart pounds at this daring and perhaps presumptuous question. Am I overstepping my bounds? I am not yet her equal, after all.
But her only response is a sigh. “Not in this case. Korrel Orloth himself has deemed it necessary, and he is the wisest and most senior of us all.”
I saw Korrel Orloth once before, when he and his fellow residents of Thule Castle attended a party here. I was among a dozen mortals chosen to serve as attendants. He is a small, wizened vampire, who obviously ascended when he was already an old man. His elderly appearance fascinated all of us mortals; we rarely see such a thing, for when a mortal reaches fifty—the age at which the body starts failing and work performance declines—the Masters fully drain him or her of blood in a ritual they call the Final Feast, then burn the body to ash and scatter it in the fields. So we watched Korrel Orloth with something approaching awe.
But while he appeared aged, his faculties, both mental and physical, seemed in no way diminished. If anything, he was more intelligent, more graceful, than any other vampire I have ever seen.
Still, I do not care to spend my eternal days with him and the other residents of Thule Castle, far from the faces with which I am most familiar, and I tell this to Larissa.
She looks at me sadly, and I see she feels the same way…but will do nothing about it.
“It is for the best,” she says. “Experience has taught us that a newly ascended vampire must be separated from all his former friends and as
sociates among the living. To remain in contact with them would present you with a web of complications. Your allegiance would be torn.”
“But it is not being parted from Spiro and the others that bothers me; it is being parted from you.”
She grants me a radiant smile edged with sorrow. “But you see, you must also be parted from the vampires whom you knew in your mortal life. You cannot truly consider yourself an equal if you are surrounded by those whom you are used to calling ‘master.’ You need a fresh start, with fresh faces and fresh relationships.”
“Ah.” The wisdom of this is irrefutable, but my heart remains dark and heavy.
Seeing this, she tries to brighten my gloom. “You will enjoy Thule Castle. I have been there many times. It is larger and more beautiful than Merrimont. And I am envious that you will see Korrel Orloth on a regular basis. He is so very wise and brilliant. It was his idea for us to move to the Wilds in the first place, you know.”
“Really?” Despite myself, I am already fascinated. This is a part of the Masters’ history I have not been privy to before.
“Oh, yes. Do you remember my mentioning a vampire slayer named Hull the other day?”
“Yes.”
“He was the primary impetus behind our move here. Before that, we vampires were mostly lone, isolated hunters, feeding on villagers in one area until the people banded together and drove us out, then moving on to repeat the process in some new locale. That had been our life since time immemorial—feeding and fleeing, feeding and fleeing, little better than wolves or sharks or any other feeble-minded predator.
“Hull changed all that. He was—he is—driven to slay all vampires everywhere. And he made great strides in that direction, slaughtering uncountable numbers of our brethren in every corner of the continent. Yorga fell in that time. And Sebastian the Red, as I mentioned during our last session. And mighty Countess Bathory. And fair, kind Louis.
“Our disorganization made it easy for Hull to cut great swaths through our ranks. But late in the second century, Korrel Orloth, after losing many of his friends to Hull and seeing several attempts on Hull’s life fail miserably, realized that we had to drop out of sight and separate ourselves from the mortal world lest we become extinct. But how could we do that without spending our days feeding on the blood of deer and wild boar and copoleths? That was when it dawned on him that we should simply do what humans and other races have been doing for millennia: raise our own livestock.
“He contacted vampires across the continent and outlined his plan. We had to find a remote location, he said, and there build fortresses attached to walled villages modeled after normal human towns. Into these villages we must bring abducted human children of good health and fair countenance, children young enough to be remolded to our own aims.
“Many vampires refused to participate, and Korrel Orloth left them to their fate. Many others agreed, though, and within a year he had over a hundred vampires on his side. It was time, then, to implement the plan.
“Working quickly and secretly, we erected seven castles here in the Wilds. Then seven hundred mortal children from far and wide were stolen from their beds and cradles in the dead of night and transported here. And we raised them to be our livestock, keeping them ignorant of the outside world and content with their lot, which is indeed vastly more comfortable than that of free mortals.
“And here we have stayed for three hundred years. And of the fate of the vampire lords who shunned the plan—and of Hull himself—we know very little, for we maintain no contact with the outside world, save for when we must replenish certain supplies or abduct a few new mortal children to keep the gene stock fresh.”
“So Hull could be dead by now…”
She cocks an eyebrow at me, as if annoyed with my naïveté.
“Theoretically. But I would not presume so. He was driven, you see.” Her eyes take on a disturbed, faraway cast, as if she wanders now in troubling memories, and I see something, some strange emotion, deep within them. “He made it his life’s goal to destroy us. And he honed his body and his mind until he was the perfect killing machine. They say that he could hear a leaf fall from a mile away, and that he moved so fast you wouldn’t be aware he had drawn his sword until your head was already on the floor.”
She shudders—an action unusual for one unliving—and I identify that odd emotion filling her eyes: It is fear. I have never seen a Master afraid before, and the sight of it inspires my own fear.
To assuage it, I divert the conversation down a less distressing path. “What is a copoleth?”
She looks at me with her mouth agape in surprise, then bursts into laughter that sounds a touch too relieved for my comfort.
“Do not concern yourself with that right now,” she says, ruffling my hair with affection. “You will learn of such matters soon enough.”
“After my ascension.”
“Yes. And that is only five days from now.”
“Only five days,” I say, my voice full of wonder at the prospect. Only five more days of imperfection, of gracelessness.
Of life.
* * *
The following afternoon two dozen of us are in the orchard picking apples, when I hear cries and shouts behind me.
I turn. A crowd of fellow apple-pickers stands gawking at a figure climbing the high stone wall three hundred feet away. Even from this distance, I immediately recognize Spiro. He seems to have found or fashioned a series of crevices in the stones just large enough for him to use as hand- and foot-holds.
When he reaches the top, he stands up, swaying a little for balance, and looks back. Does he look at me, or for me? I cannot tell. He is silhouetted against the bright afternoon sky, and his face is simply a black oval, featureless and sinister.
I half expect one of the Masters to pop up next to him and sweep him away, for it is rumored among us mortals that the thick wall contains a secret passage throughout its course that the Masters patrol during the day. Perhaps it is simply a story concocted to discourage would-be escapees. Or perhaps it is true, but Spiro’s luck is such that any patrolling Masters are far from his chosen point of flight. In any case no pale hands rise from the ramparts to drag him to his doom, and after giving us a vigorous wave Spiro navigates his way across the spikes crowning the wall and then climbs down out of sight on the opposite side.
I turn to the castle. It is again Campielos’s turn to watch us, and watch he does from a high window, his expression calm as he peers for any sign of Spiro beyond the wall.
In all my life only two mortals have fled the castle, and both times the Masters rode out that very night on their black steeds, their cloaks billowing behind them, the joy of the hunt blazing in their eyes. And both times the Masters returned long before dawn, looking content and ruddy and well-fed, and those two escapees were never mentioned again.
Poor Spiro. Tonight the Masters will feast.
* * *
I am awakened less than an hour before sunrise by the distant whinny of horses and the low thunder of hoof-beats. The Masters have returned from the hunt.
I hurry outside and peek around the castle’s northwest corner just in time to see the Masters cross the bridge to the front gate. They sit slumped on their horses, not talking, not laughing. Something has gone wrong.
The anxieties and imagined misfortunes that quickly fill my head make returning to sleep impossible and carry over into the daylight hours, rendering my work in the fields half-hearted and sloppy.
Finally evening falls and those whose turn it is to sate the Masters’ hunger enter the castle. When they return after the night’s feast, they report that the Masters seemed preoccupied and disconcerted. Feeding was brusque, and pleasantries were dispensed with entirely.
Some of the Masters, they say, looked anxious, others angry. None would discuss the previous night’s hunt. One mortal was even slapped for asking about it.
Michael was overheard telling another Master that he was sure Spiro will eventually be fou
nd—most likely as a pile of well-gnawed bones.
Alas for Spiro, Michael is almost certainly correct. The castle is many miles from even the smallest settlement, and every one of those miles harbors a thousand different dangers.
I cannot fathom why Spiro, or anyone, would choose to forsake the safety and pleasures of Merrimont. I understand his being upset at not having been chosen. And I suppose I understand his incessant dreaming of some mortal paradise in the outside world. But to throw one’s life away because of such vapors is insanity.
After the Pairing Ceremony I tried several times to talk to him, hoping to understand and allay his unhappiness, but he always strode away without a word, refusing to even meet my eyes. If, then, he meets his doom in the gullet of some hideous beast, it is his own fault. He chose his fate. I did all I could to help him.
* * *
Tonight I am with Larissa again, our last session before my ascension.
After feasting, she reveals details of the search for Spiro, who is still missing after more than two days. She is much more forthcoming now that I have been chosen. Rightly so, I suppose. I will be of her brood soon, so there is little point in excluding me.
The hunters, she tells me, followed Spiro’s trail due south for over five miles, an incredible distance. Never had a mortal fled so far without being captured or devoured by the beasts of the Wilds. Then his course turned southeast, following an old cart-path, unused now for over a century but still visible as a deep rut winding across the weedy hills. His tracks led along the path for another two miles, at which point the hunters found something extraordinary.
Spiro’s trail ended at fresh cart tracks in the dirt. The cart, pulled by two horses, had been headed north, toward the castles, but where it met Spiro’s tracks, it turned around and went back the way it had come.
Seeing that the hunt would last hours or days more and that barely enough time remained before dawn for a return trip to Merrimont, the Masters then and there chose a group of four to continue following the cart tracks. In charge of this group was Nimbus, who despite her love of flamboyant outfits is one of our best trackers. They will spend their days in underground stone crypts accessible through camouflaged trapdoors. Larissa says that the Masters have dug numerous such hidey-holes throughout this section of the Wilds. Whatever they find, the search party has been ordered to return two nights hence, for every Master of a castle must attend an Ascension.
