I pulled my body out of the water. It seemed as though I had lost hours, transfixed by the smell and memory of the sibyl. The sun barely reached the opening, as I made my way along the rock shelf to the flowers, guided by their scent. They were just out of reach and I had to drop into the water to get to them. My body was as heavy for me as a slab of granite is for a human, and I was forced to propel myself up and out of the water with little leaps to prevent from going under again.
I picked the largest plants, the ones with the most blooms. I used the rucksack as a vessel for the flowers, keeping them immersed in the saltwater like the sibyl warned. I used the second bag for the seeds at the base of the tubers. I spent some time pulling up the smaller plants and stripping them of their seeds. By the end of the pruning, my body was tired from the constant thrashing of the waves in the grotto. I tried to leave by scaling the inside wall again, but I could not balance the bags and use my talons at the same time, so I had to tread through the water, holding the bags above my head, hoping to avoid the undertow a second time.
When I finally reached the opening, I was able to carry the bags in one hand and use the other to grab hold of the outer edge of the hollow and pull myself out of the water. I was relieved to be in the air again—a much easier element for us to move through. With the bags on my back, I scaled the rock, noticing the onset of dusk. When I reached the top of the bluff, I tossed the bags onto the landing in front of me, and then climbed up. But as I was about to swing my legs over the top, I received a blow to my chest and throat that sent me back down. I thought I saw the boy peer over the edge, as I fell through the air.
I slammed into the raging water and sank straight down in the sea. The blow at the top of the bluff had not been as bad as the thrash my body received breaking through the water’s surface. It took me a moment to reverse the direction of my descent and torpedo out of the water. When I finally came crashing up from the sea, I flew higher than the most determined mullet, leaping onto the rock and scaling the bluff and over its edge in time to see the boy making off with the bags and the girl. He pulled her across the clearing and toward the opening in the rock on the other side of the greenscape. I approached them undetected, as I caught up in one leap. When I tore the girl from his hand, she screamed in horror, and he stopped, seeing me catch her up in my arms.
“Evelina,” he said, dropping the bags to reach for the machete at his side.
“No,” she screamed at him. “Don’t!”
I put her on the ground and faced the boy. She clutched my boots, sobbing and begging me not to kill him. “The traitor must be punished,” I said, my voice booming through the clearing, rebounding off the rock face. I stepped away from the girl, taking one long stride toward the boy. I wrapped my hand about his neck and squeezed until his face turned red and I released him again to the ground. The girl sobbed and moaned and her distress got the better of me, keeping me from taking his life for the moment.
He caught his breath and did not relent. “You’re the devil,” he said. “A demon!”
“Is that so?” I found his little tirade amusing since I was a bit of a devil, one who was going to steal his life.
“You’re going to kill Evie’s baby,” he said.
The humor in his accusation was slightly greater than the rage I felt for him in that instant, and I released a belly laugh.
“I saw you … you … and Evie.”
I leaned down and looked him in the eyes, smiling with an open mouth. He cowered and turned away. “Saw what?” I asked.
“I saw you b-b-b-b…”
“Bite?” He could not say it out loud, and kept his eyes on the ground. I turned back to Evelina, toppled over and clutching her stomach. I flew to her side and dropped down beside her. “The baby?” I asked softly.
“I didn’t tell him,” she said through her sobs. “I promise I didn’t tell him—he—he—he saw them.” She reached up and touched the two small points on her neck. I knew she had not betrayed me. She never would—she is as much me, as I am.
“No,” she said, looking past me. As though in slow motion, her cry warned me the foolish boy had raised his machete and was dropping it on my head. The metal blade hit my stone skull and bounced off without making a chink. My turn was so swift it happened outside of time and I caught his blade up in my hand, ripping it from him before he could regain his grip on its rebound. I launched his machete clear across the greenscape and out to the sea. “This ends now,” I said.
“No,” she cried. “Please don’t kill him.”
“Stay out of this Evie,” he said. “Do your worst, asshole.”
I grabbed him by the hair and dragged him across the clearing all the way to the edge of the bluff. I ignored his wails until he suggested he knew my plan. “I know … what … you’re going to … do,” he said.
“Is that so?” I made him look at me, wanting him to see the face of his death. I unleashed my iron fangs, and opened my mouth wide. I have been told this look is the most frightening my face can wear. For him, I did not hold back.
“Please,” he said almost breathless. “Pleeeeease—don’t kill—”
“It is too late to beg for your life, boy.”
Wrath seized me and would not let go. I had not felt this kind of rage since that foolish Agamemnon stole my booty. I wanted to rip off his head too, and drain him dry.
“Ev—” I choked his words, yanking his head back to admire the gleam of his brown skin in the twilight. I closed my eyes, letting everything drop away, and the rush of anticipation for his blood, satiating my insides, drowned out the girl’s cries. My throat tingled in its preemptive hesitation, as it awaited pure pleasure. But as I was about to sink my iron fangs into his flesh and tear into his skin with abandon, her hands covered my mouth—her stone cold hands. “Please,” she said, “release my son.”
When I opened my eyes, I saw the face of a vampire I did not know, though I recognized her. She was the new mother from Helgado’s photograph, but her eyes were empty now and her skin and lips drained of color.
“Please,” she said.
Though I did not release the boy, I drew my fangs back up, dissatisfied and dry. This was the benign presence I had felt since Helgado’s arrival. His vampire mother had followed him, kept him safe, yanked him through the fence, and rung the bell in the tower to call the bloodless away from the shed. She had stalked us since leaving the villa and now begged me to spare his life.
She stepped back from me and held out her open palms. She would not fight, knowing I would relent with her surrender. I dropped the boy on the edge of the bluff and stepped away from his mother. She was different, like no other vampire I had seen. Her eyes were bloodshot, her irises purple, her skin white like chalk, not smooth and silky like most. The boy pulled himself up from the ground and stared at his changed mother. “No,” he said. “No … you can’t be …”
“I am,” she said softly.
By now Evelina had made her way to us with her face red and swollen and streaked with tears. I looked down at the boy and smiled. He received a punishment worse than the death I had promised him. He would suffer the humiliation of knowing his mother was not only a vampire, but cloned with artificial venom.
26 November. — I am transcribing Alessandra Tarlati’s abduction and transformation as it was told to me.
“I was twenty-three when Peder Karlsson took me from the garden of my home. My baby was sleeping in the shade of the lemon tree and I was pulling up the weeds from between the patio stones. The prick in my neck felt like a bee sting. Everything went dark—almost immediately.
When I woke, I couldn’t move my arms and legs. I couldn’t even tell if I was alive or dead. I was in complete darkness. Then I heard the girl’s voice—she asked me my name. Hers was Berenice. We whispered in the dark, lying side by side as we were. When I finally felt the numbness leaving me, I reached over and touched her. We held hands, as we suffered the burns. Our throats were on fire. She was the first to say the wor
d blood. She wanted blood. I didn’t know it was what I wanted until she said it. I could smell everything around me—wet snow, bark, smoke, cedar, mulberries, cocoa, mint, basil. Everything, every scent, was right there in the darkness with me. But the desire for blood became impossible to ignore. I was tortured, desperate to feed. I tried to bite Berenice, but I could not move close enough to her in the dark. I tried to catch her hand up in my mouth, but I only ever got my own.
I lost all track of time in the darkness. I prayed for death, not realizing it was impossible. Then one day, I began to see through the darkness. I started to make out shapes and that’s when I saw Berenice for the first time. She was more dead than I, a corpse in full rigor mortis. I snapped her hand off when I pried mine from it. We were locked in some sort of crate together, no longer human—but animals. My scream blew the lid off the crate and I flew out of my prison, destroying the shackles that held me down.
I was not alone. Fifteen other women had been taken with me—all of us made into this. Peder had wanted a harem of vampires, but ended up with a brood of vipers instead. He constantly pitted us against each another, forcing us to fight for blood. A fang match, he called it. Several of the girls hadn’t reached their full potential and suffered the effects of the artificial venom—some couldn’t digest the blood and starved from the inside out. I was one of the luckier ones. I am full vampire.
We eventually freed ourselves after the outbreak. He got weaker—he couldn’t find enough blood to feed himself and we took off his head. We escaped and I abandoned the others, heading to the last place I was human. The trek from the north was easy until I reached Poland—that’s when I ran into more and more of them. Blood was hard to come by, but I don’t need much to survive. That’s one of the perks of being a cloned vampire. I can survive on very little blood. But now I’m hungry.”
Later. — Alessandra was actually starving by the time she revealed herself to me on the bluff. She had planned on going back to a hill town several miles north of where we were, but was afraid to leave her son alone with me.
“The town is well protected,” she said. “It’s abandoned but populated with rabbits. They gave me a good boost when I needed it.” Like Wallach, she feeds on animal blood to survive. “It’s just as tasty as human blood—sort of,” she said. “I can probably digest it better than you.” I did not argue since animal blood is something to which I will never resort.
She has a nice smile. Her fangs are always down, and though she does not have a set of iron teeth and her claws are duller than mine, she has something about her that tells me she can fight if she has to. I like her, despite her petulant offspring. Evelina urged the boy to feed his mother, but he refused. He did not take his mother’s change well, and if he had not become so attached to the girl, he would have left. As it is, his mother convinced me to seek out the abandoned hill town since it was much closer than the villa.
“It’s enclosed with walls,” she said. “It’ll be safe for the girl, and for all of us.”
We left the bluff at sunrise and walked most of the day. We are spending the night en route to the hill town. I am willing to trust Alessandra. I do not care whether I am led to follow her by instinct or desperation, but she is harmless and will serve as an ally for now and certainly keep me from killing her son, a decision upon which I am still deliberating.
27 November. — We reached the hill town at dusk. It sits on a precipice overlooking the sea. Three sides of it are enclosed with a wall that is twenty-feet of stone. The front entrance to the town is marked with enormous wooden gates, one of which is almost off its hinges.
I carried Evelina over the threshold, but she had rewarded my efforts before we reached the town’s outer limits. The high from her blood made me euphoric, as the sight of the medieval town made me nostalgic for better days.
“I am going to inspect the perimeter,” I said.
I had the boy surround Evelina with powder in the town’s inner courtyard, where I left them to wait for me and Alessandra, as we swept the outer walls, checking for a breach.
A large forest, whose trees hug the stone wall, some even hanging over it, sits on one side of the town while on the other, a vast slope heads down toward a grouping of trees several yards away. A drop-off leads down to the sea, protecting the town’s rear, while the interior court and laneways are just as scenic. Cherry and lemon trees line the inside walls, reviving the eleven stone dwellings and utility hovels that have been abandoned for centuries. With the proximity clear, as neither vampire nor bloodless nor human are close, the hill town feels safe and peaceful, unlike any other hideout since the cathedral, and I have decided to call this home for now.
28 November. — This is as good a place as any to make a haven for the girl. She can have her baby here. It would be reckless and serve little purpose to return to the villa despite its comforts. We are in the wilderness, and this abandoned town has not seen people, let alone bloodless, for decades. Here we can build our future, little by little. Here we can sustain human life. The girl is resolved to making this her new home. I told her we would set her up in one of the hovels and give her some privacy and, if she is lucky, things will start to seem normal.
I know what I must do with the plants. When I saw the cherry trees, the sibyl’s message was clear. I will make saltwater beds at the base of them and plant Thetis’s salvation there. The plants will bloom and eventually form a natural barrier to keep out the bloodless. The solution seems too easy, but the hill town is more fitting for us because of it. And that is what I need to believe right now.
We used the powder to make a natural perimeter outside the walls. The boy and his mother did the work. We had seeds in abundance with the plants I had plucked. With almost as many pips as a pomegranate, the bulbs carry a myriad of seeds in each.
I have not forgotten that we are limited in amenities here—she will be without hot water for a time, but not much else. I plan on making various hunts to scavenge for necessities. With the forest on our border and the sea at our feet, I can amass the natural resources we need, and will raid the nearest town for the rest.
The buildings here will give Alessandra plenty of shade in the daytime. She is still unable to face natural light. Only eighteen years vampire, she is susceptible to the sun—a vulnerability I hope will not hinder us.
Later. — Alessandra and I went out after the sun set to hunt small game for her and the humans. The herd of rabbits were scared off when we arrived at the hill town, but the clone has an amazing gift for tracking and she caught the scent of a family of badgers before I had even gotten a whiff of them.
“How did you do that?” I asked.
“I could feel them on the tip of my tongue,” she said. “It tingles when I smell living things.” She closed her eyes and rubbed her tongue across the bottom edge of her teeth. “There,” she said. “There’s a cluster of grubs beneath a rock over there.” She pointed fifty meters behind us to a boulder the size of a melon. We stole through the forest to the site, and sure enough when I reached down and picked it up, its underside was crawling with larvae.
“Can you smell other vampires?” She shook her head. “You can pick up frequencies though, right?” I asked. It did not occur to me she would be unable to do so. It is one of our best features. I found it curious she had not heard my frequency at the villa, especially since I am the oldest, the one from whom all others come—cloned or not.
“I only knew you by sight,” she said. “When I saw you in the village, I knew you weren’t human.”
I should say not, I thought, I am a god.
“You were so agile and strong,” she said. “And you have a quality—a presence like no other.” She smiled, bearing her fangs like a thirsty creature. She was captivated by me, if only a little. “I can’t smell the bloodless either,” she said.
“How do you avoid them if you cannot detect them?”
That is when she showed me her second incredible talent. She crouched down and launched herself
at least forty feet in the air from her standing position.
She is an anomaly, a vampire like none I have ever seen. Byron would have thought so too. He would have loved to have known a clone. We had heard rumors, but never any success stories. Alessandra proves both a threat to our way of life and a boon. I can only hope her venom’s fate proves more lasting than that of the synthetic blood.
2 December. — We have been busy building the nest while the girl rests. She actually looks well, and more maternal than I have seen her yet. Alessandra is teaching her the things she recalls from her own pregnancy, detailing the process of birth and what she will need to do to take care of the child. The boy is working hard too, obeying my commands and doing my bidding. We have planted the bulbs and repaired the roof of the girl’s hovel.
In just these few days, the plants have taken root and are beginning to sprout already. It would make Byron proud that I have not forgotten my days of living off the land several thousand years ago. My beloved was never much of a horticulturalist despite his heritage.
“Your people were farmers,” I had said to him once. “How do you think your first century Druids made their cures? I am certain they plucked them from the very same highlands you ran through as a child.”
We had been discussing his frustration at growing Centaury for his Scottish herbal kidney tonic.
“Yes, yes,” he had said. “I would have made a wretched Druid.”
Yes, Byron, but I would have loved you all the same.
I wonder if we would have met in that first century of the Common Era when I rode into the northeastern region of Scotland to lay siege to the Caledonians. If Byron had been one of the many on that battlefield, would I have slaughtered him too? Would I have recognized my beloved?
I recall what he said then that seems so pertinent now. “The Romans made sure to demolish that Scottish way of life. I am certain my bloodline is more theirs than anything.”
The Journal of Vincent Du Maurier Trilogy (Books 1, 2, 3) Page 15