Above me Leticia swooped in the air, surveying me from all angles, her intrigue as to why I would give up so easily compelling her to try to figure me out. In her robes she seemed a ghoul as she floated above, swishing to and fro to get a good look at me from all angles.
“I never wanted this, never, but you will not learn,” she said, her eyes shining blood-red, oozing false tears, “and now, finally, I have my revenge.”
With the flick of her foot behind me, she shoved the knife just an inch more into my back and said, “Poof.”
I blinked, and then, blackness.
FABIEN
I REMEMBERED THE place. I had been here before. It was a vacuum, a place of nowhere, but still a gap between worlds. I still existed even though this time, I knew I was dead and not dying.
“Why am I here, why not send me straight to Hell?”
The voice laughed (it was one I’d heard before), a voice with no gender or race or colour or personality. It was just a thing, out there, in this space of nothingness.
“So willing to give up?”
“So ready to face my jury. My punishment.”
“We have something to show you, dear Fabien.”
“We?”
It laughed again. “One voice for many, yes.”
“Show me, then,” I asked, confused.
An image flickered to life in front of me, shining light in the darkness. When I looked down at myself, I was nothing more than a silver, swirling mass without a body.
I watched on the screen as Leticia wailed in her chamber, calling my name, asking I return to Earth so she could make repairs for everything she’d done to me.
The ‘film’ sped up and fast-forwarded to a time later, when Leticia was sat on her throne, the blonde hair she’d stolen from Juniper grey, her body and soul withered to nothing. Her servants asked questions never answered and her rule began to diminish, the American Ramos starting to dish out orders to the vampires who needed direction.
She refused to feed, refused to engage, her sadness overwhelming her to the point that she no longer cared to live or die. She was surrounded by her deathly malaise, the pain of grief her only companion as she refused to admit the one thing she’d loved was dead because of her. Madness became her and insanity was her only comfort, an escape from who she was and what she’d done and couldn’t undo.
“She wastes now and will die of grief,” the voice told me, “the rest of the vampires will slowly die out too because without her, they will grow clumsy and make errors, get shot and killed, or die of hunger. Humans are more patient and don’t have the blind, bloodthirsty greed vampires are enslaved by. One might imagine Fabien the vampire only survived so long because in his human life, he was very great, and this carried into his next life. Few have your greatness amongst that kind.”
“What does this mean?”
“You brought an end to what was long a burden on us, what was long a problem. Leticia’s powers were incomparable, her dual powers all-encompassing. We had no way to defeat her, except… you did. Sadly, her death will come soon. Vampires had their time and it is coming to an end. Only a rare few will survive and they will know to segregate themselves from society or risk destruction.”
“Ramos… is that one, is… was… he…?” I didn’t want to say the words.
“In life, he was very great. He will outlast many and live long, yet.”
“I knew there was something about him.”
“Of course, you are an instinctive creature.”
“So… what now?” I asked, sensing there was a reason they had me here.
“A reward, for helping us, for unwittingly doing what we never could.”
“A reward? I’m dead! What reward could I want?”
“A second chance at life?”
“No, I don’t want to go back! I’ve had enough. I welcomed death… I welcomed it!” I growled, my voice warbling and vibrating the gap my spirit was imprisoned by, the sounds hard to escape.
Both me and the other voice moaned as my exclamations refused to stop bouncing from one side of the vacuum to the other.
“Hush, now, and listen,” commanded the voice, “what if, you weren’t sent back as a vampire, but were given your old life back, Fabron’s life?”
“My wife and children are dead.” In the vacuum, I remembered everything of my former life. I was knighted by King Charles VII and lived my life by a Christian, chivalric code. My wife and two daughters must’ve thought me dead when I didn’t come home, knowing I would never have willingly left their side. “They died centuries ago! I was cruelly ripped from that life and given another. I never wanted the existence of a vampire.”
“Stop shouting,” the voice warned.
“I am no longer he or Fabron. I’m neither. Please, let me have my end, I’ve had just enough of the world. I want something else now.”
“For so long you thought Juniper was your true love. I think you survived the centuries because you believed that. Because you have always believed in love. Not everyone does.” The voice had a slight tone for the first time. Perhaps they pitied me.
“What are you saying?”
“Maybe she wasn’t your one, true love.”
“Juniper wasn’t my one, true love? I wasted three centuries, you mean?” I guarded my feelings because I’d already begun to doubt my love for Juniper, too. I just didn’t want this spirit to use my doubt against me in some way. I desperately wanted to leave the vacuum and be properly dead, never resurrected, never reborn, never to think or feel again. Just to be blank. To be free. To be unburdened by this long-broken heart of mine.
“The path to true love is never smooth. Never easy. Maybe all this time you’ve been on this path, but you just didn’t know it. There is life and what you do with it but there is also fate. Two people, destined to be together. And when it works, you have to make it count. When you finally find the right partner it is as simple as that. Making it count. Making it worthwhile.”
“I don’t want life,” I screamed as I felt my spirit being carried out of the vacuum, “no! Stop! I don’t want this… I don’t want—”
“You have no say, Fabien, formerly Fabron. When you wake, don’t panic, act natural, and make it count. Always make it count.”
JOHN
“I DIDN’T SPOT you there mate, what can I get ya?” a man with an Australian accent asked me.
My hands on the wooden bar before me, I opened my eyes, looking up at him.
How did I get here? I asked myself, Where am I?
He waited impatiently and I looked all around me, wondering how the hell I got here.
The episode in the in-between came back to me and I remembered certain words. They were repeating on a loop inside my mind: Make it count. Make it worthwhile.
“Be back in a moment. Bathroom?” I asked, trying not to show I was cautious of everything.
He pointed behind me. “To the right, up the stairs. First drink’s on the house mate, shall I rack one up?”
I nodded slightly. “Of course.”
I didn’t sound French or European anymore. I sounded very English for some reason. Was this witchcraft? Had Leticia never really died and now this was my punishment. Maybe…
I walked through what I assumed was a fashionable watering hole, over shiny floors and past high tables with high stools. I made for the bathroom and once inside the large mirrored room, I blinked at a reflection staring back at me.
“Holy—”
I was changed, back, like the old me. I no longer had black hair, but the soft, light-brown tones of my former life, a life spent relentlessly beneath the sun. My skin was tanned and my eyes, dark-blue. I looked healthy and taller, slimmer, less muscle but still toned. I was handsome, no longer dead-looking nor with fangs or an urge to puncture every human in sight. I smelt piss with hatred whereas before, it made me think of hunger and human contact. A man exited a stall and slapped my back. “You all right mate, look like you seen a ghost!”
He was
hed his hands at the sink and looked at me in the mirror. “I think yes, I just saw a ghost. Must be too much to drink.”
“A limey, eh? Want some company? Me and the lads just got off the rigs today. Gonna be a long night.”
I shook my head. “What is this city?”
He laughed, thinking me inebriated. “Sydney, Australia, and you won’t ever forget it.”
He left the room laughing and I looked down at my clothes. I looked like I’d been dressed by my mother, my shirt buttoned all the way and my sleeves, too. None of the men in this environ dressed like this! I quickly unbuttoned three at the top and unbuttoned my sleeves, rolling them to my elbows, mimicking the men outside the bathroom.
In my pocket, an object sat, bulky. I reached in and pulled out a phone. Okay. I reached into my other pocket and there was a wallet. Inside was a driving licence registered to a John Salisbury and he had my face! I was apparently born in 1975 which would make me 40 years old! I was more than 540!
I also had credit cards and an address. In the back pockets of the wallet I found a stash of dollars and a business card, which read something like this:
Your Life
Starts Now
Make It Count
(emergency line not available)
Funny. The creatures of the in-between really did have a sense of humour. I looked at the phone and realised it connected to the internet, that thing humans were always talking about. The year was 2017! Not 2014. I’d missed three years? So, I was actually a good-looking fucking forty-three year old. I didn’t look it. I looked thirty-five.
I’d missed two years of human history, but how, why? Three men entered the bathroom and I knew I was spending too long in there so I left. I went back to the bar, shoving the phone and wallet in my pockets as I went.
The barman was waiting, a drink on the counter for me.
“Flaming Sambuca,” he told me, “though the flame died a minute or so ago. It just seemed like you needed this.”
“You’re right.” I nodded, and threw it back.
Oh, to be able to drink again! Something from my old life—as a soldier, I liked to drink liquor and mead.
“Another.” I grimaced, and the barman smiled.
He poured one more and I threw that one back too, a heat fanning inside my belly, my throat on fire.
“Something lighter now?”
He chuckled. “Lightweight!” Then he passed me a bottle of beer.
“What’s your name then, Englishman? Haven’t seen you round ’ere before. Normally only regulars.”
“John Salisbury.” Apparently!
“What do you do?”
“Not sure!”
He gave me a strange smile. “Right.”
“No, I… really…” The liquor was making me loose and I was almost about to open up to him when a group of attractive women poured through the bar doors.
“Catch ya later mate. These’ll keep me on my toes all night feller!”
The barman laughed and joked with the females while I got to brooding over my beer, wondering whether I should leave and find this address I was meant to live at. Sat on the stool, an ache began to hurt my ass and I reached beneath me, pulling a set of jagged keys from my back pocket. I had a set of keys with a fob bearing the word Toyota. So, I had a car, too.
I finished my beer and picked a twenty from my wallet, shouting over the squawking women at the barman, “That cover it?”
“Double it mate!” he chuckled, obviously thinking me unaccustomed to the cost of things in this city.
I reached for another twenty and moved down the bar, reaching over to stuff the notes in his top pocket. I slapped his cheek fondly and winked. “Cheers.”
“See ya!” He gawped, wondering at my manner, obviously.
I left the bar and outside, many people were smoking. Oh yes, oh yes, smoke! I stopped and asked a woman, “Can I…?” She nodded and held out her packet, offering a whole smoke. I only wanted a draw.
I lit up and I’d never tasted anything so foul but so good. I coughed my lungs out after drawing it right back, unaware modern cigarettes contained all manner of vile chemicals. Everyone on the smoking terrace laughed and I stubbed the evil stick out, placing it immediately inside a silver receptacle nearby I was sure was for disposing of this tragic, miniature pipe.
I took the keys out of my back pocket and studied the fob, looking for a car in the car park at the back that had a Toyota symbol on it. Looking around, most of the vehicles were Toyotas and with huge back trunks.
“Merde!”
How was I meant to find mine?
“Don’t you think you should cool off before you drink and drive?” a female voice called out behind me.
I swung round and there she was, Jaimie. She looked breathtaking. My eyes slid from her long legs to her chest, and to her face. She wore jeans and a small, white top, barely concealing her breasts.
Did she know me?
“Pardon?”
“I watched you. Shots and a beer. Now you’re going to drive?”
“What do you care?” I asked, annoyed.
“I don’t know.” She folded her arms. “I just… noticed you, I guess.”
She stood guarded, her heart in pieces still, I could tell.
When I squeezed the keys in my hands, we both heard a beep nearby. My car unlocked and the lights flickered. There is my car!
“You remind me of someone,” she admitted as I walked to the vehicle, not sure what I was doing.
I reached the car and stood beside it. This is my car! I have a car! I’d never had one before.
“Who?” I held my hand on the bonnet, feeling the hot metal, warm from sitting in the sun.
The sun! It was hot but didn’t melt me away!
“Someone,” she sneered.
“I’m not that someone. Even I barely know who I am.” Her bag in her hand, I asked, “You out with those women?”
She raised an eyebrow, shaking her head. “No, I was on another disastrous date actually. I almost knuckle-dusted him.”
“Knuckle-what?”
“Yeah, something happened to me… in the past. I already knew self-defence but after a certain episode in my life, I started to carry weapons.” She peered at me, like she knew it was me, but still wasn’t sure.
“Bad man?”
“Yeah.”
“Listen,” I began to suggest, “do you happen to be sober? If so, could you drive me home? I don’t know if—”
She held out her hand. “Give me the keys, then. I need cab fare home from yours, however.”
She jumped in the driving seat and I jumped in alongside her.
“Nice,” she said, “new?”
“I expect so,” I replied.
Somewhere, I could hear those blasted voices sniggering.
She made the engine growl and swung us out of the parking lot. “Where do you live?”
I took out my driving licence and reeled off the address. She arched a brow and shook her head, obviously worried I had just escaped an asylum of some sort, or a monastery where nothing modern was allowed.
“What’s your name?” she asked as we cruised down a highway.
“John Salisbury,” I said, trying to sound firm in my response.
John Salisbury, because… that is my name. My name. John Salisbury.
God I was a bit of nerd now, wasn’t I? Unsure of myself. No longer Fabien. No. He was all gone.
“Bullshit,” she said, laughing.
She saw right through me, but I argued, “No, honestly. Check my licence, my cards.”
She snickered. “It’s a bit fucking likely!”
I laughed, too. “What’s your name?”
“Jaimie. I’m from England, also.”
“Where?”
“That would be telling. What about you?”
“That would be telling.”
She smiled to herself and continued navigating the vehicle admirably. “You sound like you’re from Buckinghamshire but g
ot lost on the way to Essex.”
“What?” I asked, confused.
“Posh one minute, rough the next.”
“I’ve been around,” I said, and touched my throat, wishing the accent they’d given me would fucking well work.
We slipped off the highway and entered a green suburb. She drove carefully as kids played in the streets, fighting each other with water-filled balloons. It was November but in this part of the world, that meant sun and hot days, holidays.
“Here you go,” she said, pulling us into a drive big enough to fit three vehicles on.
We were at a three-storey house with glass fronts, a large garage, square lawn, cute little post box. I watched her visibly gulp and I did the same.
Okay, so, I live here?
“Nice, real nice.”
“Want to come in? For refreshment?”
She turned and glared. “I don’t want to have two failed dates behind me tonight.”
“This is no way a date. If this were a date, you wouldn’t be wearing jeans. You’d be wearing a dress and we’d eat somewhere nice, you’d be the one getting driven, looked after and taken care of. Not a date. A date would involve dancing, too, not propping up a bar for endless, mindless rounds of Sambuca.”
Fabien Page 19