by Elena May
He smiled. “Given that we are reluctant allies, I will let that slide.”
“But she also looks different,” Myra said.
“She is short, you mean,” said Vlad. “This is what happens when you eat poorly. Human blood lets a vampire achieve their full potential. Most of us were shorter while human—after all, some of us come from a time when the tallest of men were rarely any taller than you. Human blood gives us strength and the ability to develop to the limits our bodies would allow. Ila stayed off human blood, apart from that processed garbage from hospitals, and so she remains as tall as she was as a human. And given the nutrition she was subjected to, her height is no wonder.”
“That’s not the only thing,” said Myra. “She just doesn’t look like you, or Tristan and Armida. Her face is round and chubby, while all three of you have cheekbones sharp enough to cut a diamond. She is still extremely beautiful, and I certainly see why Tristan noticed her. It’s just different.”
“There are many ways to be stunning,” Vlad said. “You humans often accuse us of being superficial and abiding by unrealistic beauty standards. In fact, we are hardly the worst offenders.”
“What are you implying?” Myra asked.
He sighed. “You must know nothing of the Old World to ask me that. It was insane. At one point, a lighter complexion was considered a sign of beauty and wealth, since only noble ladies and gentlemen could afford to stay at home and not work the fields and get a suntan. The next thing you know, wealthy people start taking holidays on tropical beaches, and all of a sudden being too pale is sickly and unattractive.”
His hand flew to the gear stick, and he accelerated the car, letting go of the wheel once again. His fingers tapped against the window like raindrops on a roof. “People in Europe subjected themselves to solariums,” he continued, “while those in Asia and Africa applied all sorts of dubious bleaching cosmetics all over their skin. And not just complexion—body sizes, facial shapes. The ideals humans imposed upon themselves kept changing every century and in every land. It gave me a headache just to watch them. One of the many reasons I wished to put that world out of its misery.”
“How noble,” Myra said. “I’m certain living in a world of ever-changing and unreasonable beauty standards must have been so much worse than getting eaten. So, you decided to conquer humans to save us from ourselves? Do you realize you’re copying the plot of numerous science fiction novels?”
He tore his eyes from the clouded road to look at her. “You mean the type of books in which benevolent aliens, robots, or whatnot decide humans are harming themselves and find a way to control them to prevent further pain?”
“Exactly,” she said. “And the moral of these stories is always the same—you’re not helping humans if you control them. You should let people make their own mistakes.”
He snorted. “And you never wondered why every book reaches the same conclusion? Who wrote all those stories? Humans. Would a human write a tale in which aliens controlling you is something good for you? If a robot had written such a book, it would have been very different.”
“Yes, but robots can’t write fiction, can they?” Myra said. “And neither can you.”
“First,” he said, “your attempts at hurting my feelings are laughable. And second, my reasons for the Nightfall didn’t include saving humans from themselves.” He slowed down and stopped the car. “We are close to your place now. You can find your own way from here, right?”
“You’re not coming with us?” Sissi asked, frowning.
“I doubt your friends will be eager to see me again so soon,” he said, “and I need to return to the Palace, anyway. You can brief your General about what happened today, and I will pay you a few visits in the next couple of days to discuss what comes next and what I need from you.”
The girls stepped out of the car, but Sissi turned back around.
“Your Highness, before you leave, would you permit me to ask you a personal question?” She turned bright red. “I fear I’ve been too intrusive today.”
“Not at all, dear,” he said. “I am a vampire. I love talking about myself.”
Myra raised an eyebrow. Did he, indeed? While Tristan had been happy enough to blurt out his entire life story with little prodding, Vlad had always been cagey and managed to talk for hours and yet reveal nothing.
“I noticed Ila looked at you when she said she didn’t feel comfortable choosing her own name,” Sissi said. “And from what Myra has told me, it sounds like Vladimir isn’t the name you were born with. Did you choose it for yourself? Did you want to turn your back on your past?”
“Quite the opposite,” he said. “Turning my back on my past was the last thing I wanted. Vladimir was the name of my true khan. I adopted it so it would never be forgotten, and I have borne it for many centuries since.”
“Your true… khan?” Myra blurted out. “Khan like the ruler title? As in Genghis Khan?”
The Prince placed his hand on the door handle. “Yes, khan precisely as in Genghis Khan. What is so surprising about that?”
Myra frowned. “The name doesn’t sound very khan-ish. When I hear khan, I think Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan, Timur Khan, perhaps Attila the Hun, but I most definitely don’t think of Vladimir Khan.”
“Perhaps this is because you are not as well versed in history as you think you are,” Vlad said as he slammed the door shut and stepped on the gas.
Myra watched after the speeding car until it was nothing more than a little red dot in the distance. She looked away, reluctant to take the first step leading back towards the Headquarters. Today she had faced the Prince of Darkness and his alleged archnemesis, but now came the greatest test of all. Now, she had to face Zack.
Chapter Twenty-Four
A Bookworm’s Nightmare
Myra stopped before the entrance to the Headquarters. She looked at Sissi, who gave her a nod and a small, encouraging smile. Myra took a deep breath, opened the door, and stepped inside.
Zack sat in his chair at the head of the table, drumming his fingers against the armrest. Most Warriors were there as well—Thomas and Lidia, Estella, and even Franka and Grandma Pia. She heard Sissi step behind her.
“I’m glad to see you both unharmed,” Zack said.
Myra sighed in relief—perhaps there would be no fight after all. “Zack, I didn’t mean to turn my back on you.”
“You don’t need to explain.” He rubbed his temples. “You did what you believed was right. We all want to see the Wizard destroyed, and we must decide how to go about it. I’ve gathered council members that can offer different perspectives.”
Myra’s eyes swept the room. The light of two torches on the walls and three candles on the table could not reach everyone, and many faces were cast in shadow. “I want to help.”
Zack nodded. “You know the Prince better than any of us. Can he be trusted?”
Myra bit her lower lip, afraid she would laugh. Vlad? Trusted? “I wouldn’t say so. But I think he does want the Wizard destroyed.”
Zack stood up and walked to her. “Do you know what drives him? What he wants?”
Myra intertwined her fingers and looked away. She felt all eyes on her but had no idea what to say. What made Vlad happy? She had lived with him for two months, and still her guess was as good as anyone’s.
“He seeks excitement,” she said. “Adventure, knowledge, intellectual challenge. He’s always in the pursuit of pleasures for all senses, be it good food and drink, or an intriguing play, or beautiful music. But he doesn’t like his rewards served to him on a silver platter. He likes to fight for them. He hates routine and always wants change.” She paused and look Zack in the eyes. “And I believe, above all else, he wants his loved ones to be well.”
“His loved ones?” Lidia echoed.
Myra nodded. “His family died centuries ago, and he can’t have any more children. Armida and Tristan are his family now. He’d turn the world upside down to make them happy.”
Thomas
snorted. “He’s already turned the world upside down.”
“Don’t get me wrong,” Myra said. “The Prince wouldn’t do evil for the sake of doing evil. He always has a reason. He doesn’t want you to suffer, he simply doesn’t care if you suffer or not. He’d let all humans and vampires burn in hell for all eternity if it would make Tristan smile for a second, but he wouldn’t hurt a fly unless he had a reason to do it.” She hesitated. “Of course, the reason can be something as trivial as ‘I find it amusing.’”
“I see,” Zack said. “We’re supposed to believe he wants to destroy the Wizard because he’s bored with his current life. All right, he’s bored, I buy that. He seeks entertainment, sure.” He leaned against the table and tapped the surface with his fingers. “Then what better way to amuse himself than to play a game with a bunch of naïve, desperate humans? Instead of straightforwardly wiping us out, he sets up this elaborate game and plays with us as if we’re his toys. Why? Because it would be amusing.” He straightened up and looked at Myra. “Isn’t that consistent with the personality you just described?”
Myra’s heart clenched. Zack’s words made a lot of sense—much more than she cared to admit. “What do you propose?”
“I propose we stick to the only goal we know is our own,” said Zack. “We keep a careful eye on the Prince and work with him for as long as he’s useful. The moment we’ve gotten the most out of him, or the moment we start suspecting he’s a threat, we go back to the original plan.”
“The original plan?” Sissi repeated. She turned to face Zack, and the torchlight caught her fiery hair, making it shine like fresh blood.
Zack nodded. “The plan we’ve had since before I was born. Kill the Prince.”
Breakfast the following morning was quick and silent. Myra caught Sissi throwing glances at her multiple times, but she kept her eyes on her plate of hard, dry biscuit and canned tuna. If Sissi wanted to speak to her, she could at least try to draw less attention.
After everyone dispersed to attend to their tasks, Myra waited for a short while and then walked to the cellar that currently served as Sissi’s room. The door was open, and the red-haired girl was leaning against the frame, grinning.
“I was waiting for you.”
Myra grabbed her by the arm and pulled her inside, closing the door behind them. “What’s so urgent? Everyone suspects I’m doing something dodgy, and they’ll suspect you too if you’re not careful.”
Sissi’s face beamed. “I wanted to show you something.” She started lighting candles all around them. Candles are scarce, Myra was about to say, but she bit her tongue. She had no right to chide others.
Sissi pulled her backpack from underneath the bedcovers and started rummaging through her clothes. She paused and smiled, pulling out a roll of paper. She laid it on the bed and unrolled it.
“Wow…” was all Myra could say.
She stared at the painting. A forest fire. The flames—twisting tongues of red and gold, fighting for domination. A starry sky, deep purple mixed with black. The stars—bleeding wounds of light. The Prince emerging from the desolation, the flames themselves framing a whirling cape around him.
Myra shuddered. “It’s… moving.”
Sissi seemed to shine with an internal light. “I painted it last night, after we returned. It looks like him, doesn’t it?”
“It does.” Myra frowned. “But did you call me here just to show me this? I mean, it’s beautiful, but we need to be careful about meeting in secret.”
Myra had thought this impossible, but Sissi’s smile grew even wider. “Not at all! I found something else.” She reached inside the backpack and pulled out another item.
Myra’s blood drained from her face. Her stomach twisted into a knot, sending a wave of nausea through her. A cold shiver ran down her spine, spreading to her arms and legs.
She had seen many horrors in the vampires’ palace. Cold-blooded torture. Feasts of blood and pain. A child drunk to death. But what now lay on the bed was a different horror altogether.
“You tore books?” she whispered, staring through a red haze at the jagged pages. “You tore books?”
“That way I could read the pages all night,” Sissi said, her grin never faltering. “And I didn’t want to remove the whole book from your library.”
“Our library?” The haze before Myra’s eyes thickened. “Do you have any idea how few books we have? How precious each one is?”
“Apparently not precious enough for you to read it,” Sissi said, her voice cheerful. “I see you might have gone through the fiction multiple times, but you have neglected some encyclopedias.”
Myra fisted her hands to stop herself from grabbing Sissi’s neck and choking her to death. “And just because I haven’t read some book, that gives you the right to destroy it? What is wrong with you?”
Sissi sighed dramatically. “Perhaps if you’d stop shouting at me and look at what I found, you’d—”
Myra’s throat felt raw. “I don’t want to look at anything. I don’t care…”
She looked at the torn page Sissi was holding up.
Text, text, and a picture in the upper right corner. A Y-shaped symbol, with two parallel lines running alongside the base. She blinked. “It’s Vlad’s tattoo.”
Sissi nodded, her head bobbing up and down as a grin spread across her face. “Yes, this is—”
“I don’t care if it’s the answer to life and the universe,” Myra cried. “You can’t ruin books.”
“Okay, so you don’t care,” Sissi said and returned the pages to her backpack.
Myra sighed. Very few things in this world justified destroying books, and learning Vlad’s history was definitely not one of them.
On second thought…
“What is it?”
Sissi tied the strings over her backpack. “It’s the symbol of Tengri.” She placed the backpack on her bed and covered it with a blanket.
Myra rolled her eyes. “Would you elaborate?” Sissi shrugged and Myra crossed her arms across her chest. “I’m not going to apologize. You could have easily learned the same thing by staying longer at the library, or even taking the book—it’s not that suspicious. But I see you’re about to explode with the desire to share, so go ahead.”
Sissi squealed and clapped her hands. She pulled her backpack once again from underneath the covers and opened it. Myra’s heart bled anew as she saw the ripped pages, but she took a deep breath and forced herself to keep quiet.
“After I finished my painting, I went to the library to continue reading that encyclopedia on world religions I told you about. I pieced together all clues we had and everything His Highness told us in the car, and now I know it for certain. The Prince worships Tengri—the sky-father.”
“Fascinating,” Myra said dryly. “Definitely justifies destroying books.”
“That’s why I tore out the pages,” Sissi said. “To learn more.” She tapped on the torn paper with her finger. “Apparently, Tengriism was mostly a Central Asian religion. It was the main religion of many ancient Turkic states, including the Gok-Turk Empire and the Great Mongol Empire. In some parts of the Altay mountains, active practice persisted up until the twenty-third century.”
“So, Vlad was some kind of a Hun,” Myra said. “That explains a lot.”
Sissi frowned. “He could have come from any of the numerous nomadic tribes in the region. And if you don’t want me to continue, I’ll stop.”
“Fine, go on,” Myra said with a sigh. “What is this religion like?”
“It’s monotheistic, which gave me one of the clues,” said Sissi. “There is Tengri, father of the Eternal Blue Sky, who decides the fates of all, the spirit of the mother earth, and the khan, whose rule is divine and granted by Tengri. As for practices, it combined elements of animism, shamanism, and some other stuff. I don’t remember it all, but it’s in here.” She raised the torn pages.
Myra stomach turned at the sight, and she held up her palms. “That won’t be necess
ary. Just give me the main idea.”
Sissi stared at the page in front of her. “It was an extremely tolerant religion and held nothing against any other. You could be Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, or whatever you liked. You could change your tribal affiliations or turn your back on your traditions if you disliked them. Tengri wouldn’t judge. The only thing he would judge was whether you lived a righteous life.”
“A righteous life?” said Myra. “Sounds like every religion ever. But the definition of ‘righteous’ often gets convoluted.”
“Surprisingly, this definition isn’t unreasonable,” Sissi said. “As Tengri was tolerant to other religious practices, he was also understanding about humans’ weaknesses and failings. A nomad’s life was difficult enough, so shortcomings were to be accepted, and not condemned. This is why Genghis Khan said…” She flipped through the pages. “Wait, I’ll find the quote. I underlined it; it’s hilarious.”
Bile rose in Myra’s throat. “You underlined it? You not only tore out pages, you made marks?”
“Here it is,” said Sissi, her voice calm. She brought the page closer to the candle, and Myra’s head spun as she looked at the underlined text.
“If there is no means to prevent drunkenness, a man may become drunk thrice a month,” Sissi read in a solemn voice. “If he oversteps this limit, he makes himself guilty of a punishable offense. If he is drunk only twice a month, that is better—if only once, that is more praiseworthy. What could be better than that he should not drink at all? But where shall we find a man who never drinks? If, however, such a man is found, he deserves every respect.”
“Amazing quote.” Myra rolled her eyes. “Definitely justifies underlying text.”
Sissi pouted. “You have to admit, it sounds reasonable.”
Myra tore her glance from the violated page. “Honestly, this religion sounds too good to be true. I bet they had human sacrifices or something.”
“Can’t you be more positive?” Sissi said. “We can use this to figure out who the Prince was as a human.”