A Vampyre's Daughter

by Jeff Schanz

  Brandt stopped for a moment to catch his breath before the steepest part of the climb. Lia turned and apologized for her speed.

  “I’m sorry, I know this is a steep grade and difficult pace for a human,” she said.

  Oh no, she didn’t. “Sweetheart, I did this every day in the Army in Afghanistan. I'm just getting my legs again.”

  Lia’s brows went up. “Forgive me, Mr. Dekker. Perhaps you would like to lead?”

  “The map’s in your head. I’ll be right on your tail. Go as fast as you want.”

  So Lia did. And Brandt kept up. Mostly. The climb was steep enough to need both hands and feet, and at times there was not enough room for both feet to be side by side, which slowed him more than her. There was a sheer drop off to the right that they had to skirt, and that path wound around a ways. The last ten feet he could barely breathe and had to force himself to act natural. He knew Lia could sense his struggle, but he wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of listening to him wheeze. When they reached her ledge, she turned to give him a hand, which he ignored and gamely vaulted up. Though she didn’t say anything, she had been unsuccessful at hiding her feelings before, and it was no different now. Brandt knew she was impressed. She better be. I’m spent.

  The ledge, or perch, was wider than he expected. It kind of reminded him of a mini version of the Lion King rock. There was an overhang above which looked fairly solid, made from dirt and rocks that had compressed over the years. Some kind of hearty bush had grown on the side of the overhang and stuck its branches out like a canopy. With the combination of the overhang and the bush, there was almost enough shade for Lia not to need to be fully covered. Of course, there was the climb back down in the sun to consider, and there was no reason to risk the chance of burning by removing anything. There was a good size boulder that had a level top which was a decent height to sit on. It was wide enough to seat at least two, maybe three people. All in all, Brandt could see why Lia loved to come here. It was like a kid’s secret fort. And the view was spectacular.

  Brandt brought out his binoculars, but he almost didn’t need them. He could see so far, he was expecting to see Hawaii. The air that day was less hazy than normal and the edge of the earth was a crisp blue line. There was a pod of Dolphins that were cruising about a half-mile offshore and Brandt could see them clearly.

  “Wow,” he said.

  Lia snickered. “You like that word.”

  He shrugged. “It fits.”

  She nodded. “It does.”

  He looked around the mountain peak. There was a group of seagulls squawking above them. The isolation of the peak afforded them safety, which they apparently sought out regularly as indicated by the sheet of white guano that had been painted onto the rock’s surface. They pipped and jabbered away, uncaring that two people were invading their space. Their bird brethren’s proximity was more important as they pecked and sniped at each other.

  Lia sat on the flat boulder and Brandt sat down with her. They said nothing for a little while, just staring out at the blue expanse. Brandt did his due diligence by mentally recording everything he saw through his binoculars, everything that might be a vessel.

  There were three. One was a tanker far off and heading toward Hawaii. One was a fishing vessel close enough to make out the rigging, but was very obviously busy doing its job. And the third was a large pleasure yacht. It was almost stationary, just moving very slowly across the horizon. Of the three, that was the only one that held any possibility of trouble.

  Brandt knew The Russian had a yacht. That was what Brandt had been heading out to sea to destroy when things went awry and he had to blow up his boat. But he also figured The Russian wouldn't be stupid enough to hang around any area more than a day or two at most. The Coast Guard weren't fools, and The Russian's floating domicile would be packed with weaponry for his protection since everybody both good and bad was gunning for him. So, since his yacht would be stocked with surface-to-air missiles, automatic rifles, and the like, it wouldn't be a good idea to keep loitering around in California waters. And, if The Russian was assembling an army to overrun Makal Island, again it would be best to keep said army out of California waters until it was time to initiate the raid. This yacht was just casually lingering. So it probably wasn't The Russian. But Brandt would keep his eye on it anyway.

  Brandt took a swig of water from a bottle in his backpack. He had carried a bottle of water, a couple of MREs, and a coil of rope. His knife and pistol stayed on his belt. The sun was still behind the mountain, so Lia kept her veil pulled back. She wore her hair down, and her long Nordic-esque blond hair writhed and swayed in the breeze. Brandt offered her the water, but she politely declined and he put it back in his bag.

  She gave him a look like she was considering something important. He scrunched up his brows and asked, “What?”

  She shook her head. “I am very happy you came here.”

  “Well, I wanted to get a good view of the ocean.”

  “No, I mean to this island.”

  “Oh. Well, it would’ve been nicer if it were under better circumstances. But I’m glad I came too.”

  She patted his knee and seemed to have decided whatever it was that she was considering. “I was looking forward to your stories, but you seem to like them, too.”

  His idea of stories was data and information. He craved all information. Information was king and usually was the difference between winning and losing, life and death. But “stories” was another way to put it.

  She turned her body to face him a little better.

  “How old do you think I am?” she asked.

  That question is never fair when asked by a woman.

  “Honestly, if I didn’t know what – who you were, I’d guess twenty-one,” he said, truthfully.

  She seemed happy with that answer. “I was twenty-one when I fully turned. It is the usual time of a born vampyre child to lose the remaining human body functions and the blood fully takes over. When that happens, the body remains the way it looked when it turned. At least for a while.” She paused and looked like whatever she was about to reveal, it was a big deal to her. “I am one hundred years older than I appear to be.”

  Brandt would have been surprised if he hadn’t already accepted that she was a vampyre from an earlier time period. It was still amazing. But in his usual fashion, he cracked a joke.

  “Well, you don’t look a day over eighty.”

  She reared back and raised her arm threateningly as he pretended to cower. She dropped her hand and just gave him a gentle backhand to the arm.

  “I was born in Russia, but spent most of my childhood in an area that bordered Finland,” she said. “As long as I can remember, my family was in hiding. Father was a titled landowner and we were related to the Romanovs, but many people were. And when the revolutionaries began to form, Father understood what was coming. He and my mother were both living vampyres back then, and although we didn’t feed on any of the townsfolk, the people would hear stories and we were shunned and avoided. No one had proof, but the rumors were enough for them. We kept moving and would find new places that were further and further away from our original home, finding people that didn’t know us. By the time the Russian Revolution came around, Father was representing himself as a simple wealthy Finnish businessman, hoping no one would be looking for us because of our aristocratic status, as well as our vampyrism.

  “We felt safe for a while next to Finland, but there were other people that were looking for us. Father had enemies. There were many factions that were fighting each other in Russia, a lot of it had to do with aristocracy. My father had fought against another family’s claim for many years, and the war was very bloody and cost many lives. He was well known as a terrifying and formidable adversary, and had done horrific things to his enemies.”

  Brandt had no problem believing that. Although, Viktor would not have been in his bat guise if he was still living at that time, the idea
of Viktor as a vicious fighter was not surprising.

  Lia continued. “There was another family that fought against us for years and they were cruel to their enemies as well. The war went on a long time, until there was finally an attempt to stop it. A marriage was arranged between one of my female cousins, who was a closer relation to the Czar, and a young man from the other family. My cousin was a living vampyre, but her husband was not. He knew that she had the affliction and he wanted to be turned as well. He was a very vain man and liked the idea of living forever young.”

  Brandt cocked his head. “But you said it doesn’t work like that.”

  She nodded. “He did not have the benefit of my current knowledge. He was twenty when he turned. My cousin was sixteen. She hadn't been born a vampyre, and she had turned immediately when she was afflicted. It was forced upon her, but that is another story. After two decades together, and an acceptable peace, my cousin still looked like a teenager. But her husband got older. Not much older. He looked like he was in his mid-twenties perhaps. But he panicked. He thought he was being cheated of his promised immortality. Many members of his family were liars and murderers, so it is not surprising that he was not given the truth. He was irate. His wife remained young, so why didn't he? He hired alchemists and doctors and scientists to figure this out, but none had the right answer. Finally, he tortured an elderly vampyre from my family to tell him what he knew. The old vampyre told him that the women of our family, and only our family, had a special gene in their bodies that when combined with the vampyre affliction, made the blood so efficient that it kept their bodies in their youngest form for many more years than normal vampyres. It gave the perception of immortality.”

  “I’m assuming that your family’s women are not immortal though, right?”

  Lia looked hesitant. “We don’t think so, but we have no real way of knowing. None of the women in my family were left to live out their natural lives.” She took a deep breath. “They were all murdered.”

  “Murdered?”

  “None of my family is left alive, except for my father and myself. So we have no way of knowing how long a – I will live.”

  Brandt wanted to say, “Wow,” but decided against it.

  “His name was Mikhail Orlov when I knew him, but he changed his name several times since. He murdered his wife, my cousin, believing that transfusing himself with her blood would give him immortality. But that was not a permanent solution. He summoned men to him to try and figure out how to use the gene in her blood to make him live longer. In the meantime, the war was rekindled because of my cousin’s death. Keep in mind, when she died she became an Undead vampyre. She went into hiding, but Mikhail found her and destroyed her. Then Mikhail systematically searched for, found, drained, and murdered every woman that was related to us. Including my mother. When he took all of her blood, she became Undead as well. My Father killed Mikhail, but couldn’t destroy him, only succeeding in making Mikhail Undead, and in the end, we went into hiding once again to protect us from Mikhail’s terrible agenda. Even without living vampyre blood, my mother’s gene still existed in her body, and Mikhail would hunt her to get it. Father was desperate. I had just recently turned and Father was determined that we would be safe, and he believed the abilities of an Undead vampyre would be needed to protect us. So he killed himself to become Undead.

  “The war lasted for many more years, and both families were decimated. Mikhail hired men to fight for him promising them he would make them immortal if they found me or my mother. It was an empty promise of course, but they believed him. It was a very cold day late in winter, and very dark outside when he found us. My mother was taken, although she fought well. She killed several of his men, and my father killed many more, but Mikhail managed to escape with my mother as the others were occupied fighting. She knew the day may come when he found her and she was prepared. Before he could get her to his laboratory, she destroyed herself. I was told how, I never saw it. My father searched for Mikhail for days and finally found him. Together with three other men, they destroyed Mikhail. Or thought they had. We later found out he survived, apparently with the aid of a formula he had devised that involved our blood, which rendered him much harder to destroy. He went into hiding, though, and we never found him again.

  “Father and I lived in many places for short times until we finally wound up here. He would go on journeys to gather information about Mikhail, hearing many rumors about his destruction at someone else’s hand, but nothing that could be confirmed. My father and I were the last of the Zakharyin family. We didn’t know how many Orlovs might be left, or if they would also seek vengeance. To be safe, we have stayed quiet and hidden here ever since.”

  She was either done or was at a moment that she needed to pause. She sighed and stared out at the horizon.

  “I'm so sorry Lia,” said Brandt. He rested a reassuring palm on her knee. “My mother died in a car wreck when I was very young. I was raised by my father until I was sixteen when he died of cancer. My brother and I took care of each other after that. Our nearest relatives were on the opposite coast, and none of them cared. We only had each other.”

  She nodded. “My father and I only have each other, too.”

  “Did you ever find out for certain if Mikhail was dead?”

  “There was an obituary printed in a newspaper. Mikhail was a noble, and a noble’s death is a significant thing. His land and possessions were officially passed down to his closest relatives, but the revolutionaries took everything immediately afterward. His obituary might have been a ploy, but we could never know for certain.”

  “I can understand why you and your father have isolated yourself here with a potential price on your head. If it were me, I’d probably go on the offensive. It’s the exact kind of bad decision I tend to make that almost got me killed. I’ve tried to move on and start a new life, but… I did a pretty crappy job of it. All I did was try to throw it away on a vendetta. You’re a better person than me.”

  She smiled. “It’s been a very long time, and although the memory is difficult, I have tried to get past it. Like you, I have sought to live a new life. I am not the same Natalia that I was before.”

  Brandt had almost forgotten her real name, he was so used to calling her Lia. “Well, of course. You’re Lia now, not Natalia.” He meant it in jest, but Lia reacted in a manner he wasn’t expecting.

  She looked deeply into his eyes, to the point of his unease, then she said, “Only for you. Perhaps I am two people. I am my father’s Natalia. And I am your Lia.”

  It was an odd way to put it, but Brandt had been two people before and understood what he thought she meant.

  To diffuse the awkwardness, Brandt said, “Maybe you should get a fancier alias, a spy name like Red Hawk, or White Tiger, or something. Lia isn’t cool enough.”

  She rubbed a gloved knuckle into her eye. She shook her head. “I like Lia.”

  Brandt wasn't sure if she was about to tear up, or if there was something in the air that was bothering her. There were little tufts of feather down or something that was floating around the peak. The birds were nipping at each other and seemed to pull out little strands of down. Several times he flipped fingers near his own eye to guard against the airborne irritants and thought the reason may be the same for Lia.

  He felt a little hungry and snatched one of the MREs out of his backpack. He peeled open the wrapper and only then thought to check the label. “Cheese and Veggie Omelet.” Oh, for the love of God, what kind of idiots were those assassins? There was no more reviled MRE among his squad than the Cheese and Veggie Omelet package. They kept a bucket in their barracks that was a community dump for MREs that soldiers didn’t like, so other soldiers who did like them could take it and perhaps exchange. The Cheese and Veggie ones piled up the most. He put the opened MRE on the rock in between them.

  “What is that?” asked Lia.

  “It’s an instant, ready-to-eat meal that we carry with us in the
Army. None of them are good, but sometimes they’re terrible.”

  She raised her brows. “May I try it?”

  “Have it. I hate this one.”

  She slipped off one glove, picked up the package, and dug a little blob of it out with her naked fingers. She slipped the fingers into her mouth and her eyes widened.

  “That’s incredible,” she said.

  “I’ve never heard it described that way, but to each their own.”

  She shrugged and licked her lips.

  Brandt was a little tired of sitting and decided he wanted to have a look around the peak.

  “Well, I feel like exploring a little,” he said. “Hold down the fort, Madam Romanov.”