“How did she know?”
The Empress shrugged. “I don’t know that she did.”
“What am I missing?”
I had already learned of Byron’s betrayal, but her crooked teeth and smile suggested something else—someone else.
“Who knew Laszlo Arros had a sample of my venom?” I asked.
“The letters tell you everything, don’t they? How your scientist was involved in the whole scheme.”
“How do you know?”
“You said it yourself,” she said. “I can trust Youlan.”
We faced off for a moment, each of us not knowing what the other was about to say, but she broke first. “She didn’t take her own life,” she said. “I stuck this claw in her, right here.” She gestured on her own neck to the spot where Evelina’s scar evinced her fate. “The blood gushed all down her pretty little cheongsam, and I let it go to waste. Ick.”
Cixi vied for my wrath, trying to harden me, as the fraudulent are wont to do. My hate for her ran deep, but the satisfaction of taking her head would not be mine. I reserved that for another.
“She convulsed, as the blood began to trickle, and she retched with her mouth open, desperate for air, reaching for sound. I thought she’d cry your name, but she didn’t even whisper it. Nothing. Silence. Her hero had abandoned her, and she knew it. She rushed headlong to death, not knowing I would bring her back.”
She smiled and the wrinkles of her flat, wretched pale skin disappeared, her face stretching with the tautness of her mouth. “I’m glad things worked out in the end,” she said.
I put my hand to her chest and lifted her off the ground, her slippers stroking the deck like a mop. “I will not ask you again,” I said. “Who knew about my sample?”
“Youlan.”
I released her and she covered her ire with a faux smile, itching to bounce me off the bulkheads. When the Empress bottled her rage, as she was forced to do in my presence, her edges frayed. She had three heads like Cerberus, and one at a time her triplets erupted with a yelp.
“And the priest, too,” she said.
“That lie is beneath you. Why stoop?”
She scoffed, “I never stoop. I own the priest, and my Youlan. All of them do my bidding.”
“You talk of ownership as if we live in a different time.
She smiled and her face grew uglier. “Bondage never goes out of fashion.”
“Why would they be loyal to you?”
“Power,” she said.
“Power?” I took a seat on Cixi’s throne, and the memory of Evelina’s pulse, as she sat there being upbraided by the Empress, ran through the armrest. My skin drank up her energy, and I grew feverish.
“Laszlo Arros is power,” she said.
“Is that so?”
“He holds it all in the palm of his hand.”
“All of what?”
“Everything,” she said. “Even you.”
I feigned a chuckle, but on the inside I was as hard as stone.
“Youlan can take you to him,” she said. “He’s expecting you.”
“So Shenmé said.”
Her mouth tightened at the mention of her maker. She never called her by that name. To Cixi, she was and would always be the Great Xing Fu.
I got up to leave, and she told me I was a mad vampire. “More mad than Satan over there,” she said. “He wanted you dead, too.” She glanced at Vlad’s head.
My ear was attuned to the lie and my heart to the liar, but the deceptive queen had mastered the quake in her voice.
“Death is not mine for the taking,” I said, pressing my body close to hers, sending my energy into her like a comet through space. She suffered the heat, the pain of my touch, the coldness of my heart. “The end is here, Cixi. Settle your accounts before it is too late.”
“I’m sacrificing Muriel in five days,” she said. “She’s yours until then.”
Her threat set me off, and I put my hand around her neck, squeezing life from her eyes, causing her pupils to roll up and into the back of her head. She stuck out her tongue, as both her shoulders and the corners of her mouth came up at once. “Ei wai lina,” she croaked. “She must be—” My hand choked her words, and they were lost.
Perhaps it was the haze of anger, the shades of a lingering past that had arisen in our conversation, or maybe the thrill of having just choked her that sent me into spins, but I unleashed my claws and grabbed the top of her head as though picking up a cantaloupe. My pointed tips sank into her hardened flesh, and she let out a shrill cry that had Youlan busting into the compartment, flying across the deck, attempting to take me out. She barely knocked me from my spot in front of her mistress, but she managed to loosen my grip on the crown. Several strands of Cixi’s hair hung from my claws, and I shook them to the deck, scattering them as I made my way out.
“You will pay for this,” Youlan shouted, as I left the two wallowing in the agony of defeat.
Janus or Bifrons
Vincent paused, and my hand trembled, as I waited for him to continue. I preferred it when he narrated his story, frightened to become the object of his attention. I don’t think I can explain the experience of being in his presence. Mere words won’t suffice, and I’m not equipped to create a lexicon. I’m a translator, not a poet. But he—his presence—commanded the air, the moon and her tides, even Helios bent to the melody of the vampire’s Nocturnes. The sunset halted in his presence, allowing him to indulge in his final night with me. The apricot sky lasted longer than any other eventide, trapping me in a vault of extremes. My body’s temperature flipped from hot to cold, as though a switch were turned on. One moment I’d need to prevent the drips of sweat from staining my page, and the next I was forced to move my hand, as it stiffened in the biting cold. His body, quite literally a furnace, made the atmosphere in the tower unbearable, but I wouldn’t speak about it, or think about it. I wouldn’t let my discomfort show.
From time to time when he’d pause in his narrative, he’d say something cryptic, not intended for the page. He’d speak directly to me. “I see through you,” he’d say, or “We are connected.” My name would roll off his tongue as though it were his namesake, as though he were the one who named me. Dagur—he would elongate the a and trill the r, as if tasting my name, savoring it on his tongue.
Once, he stopped mid-sentence and said, “You are the intersection where the axes meet, Dagur,” insisting I enter into conversation with him.
I didn’t try to understand his words, and I certainly didn’t ask him to explain, but I’ve since recorded the exchange from memory, the most important bits never leaving me. His words were like droplets of ink that spread on parchment, staining the sheet with a bigger blot than at first drop.
“I am forced to make a choice, as always,” he said. “Can you guess what it is?”
I shook my head but his release of my voice box was intended for me to respond with more than a gesture. I said, “Whether to kill me?”
His rich growl filled the tower and my spine clenched again, though this time my own muscles did the clutching.
“I see how you could think that,” he said. “That, however, is not the dilemma I face.”
I turned to him with this last part. It may have been his doing, but I suddenly desired to look at him again. A glance at his frightening aspect would, if I were lucky, relieve me of my senses and knock me out. I longed to wake from my nightmare.
“I am no dream,” he said. “Your reality has never been more pressing.”
“Why?” I asked with a small voice.
A scraping sound filled the studio as his stone fangs rubbed up against his metal tusks. He smiled in the darkness.
“You who always want to know the reason,” he said, “I should think you would have found it by now.”
“I’ve searched for the cause of the Red Death. For my people, for the colony—”
“Do not mistake these people for yours, Dagur.”
When he said that, I sensed I was o
n the edge of horror.
“You grab at your past, darkly,” he said, “and I am not surprised it remains undiscovered.”
“I am different,” I said with as much defiance as I could muster.
“Yes.”
“My guardian was different,” I said. “The colony welcomed him but only on condition.”
“Yes.”
“That’s all I know,” I said.
“How did your guardian serve you?”
“I don’t understand.”
“What did he give you?”
“He taught me everything I know—many languages, how to transcribe ancient texts, how to record, to save history. He taught me mathematics and chemistry, geology, nutrition, anatomy, and some facts about man’s religions.”
“He has served you well, as I knew he would,” he said. “Herodotus would be proud of you.”
“Was that his name?”
He chuckled and said, “You do you not recall him?”
“No.”
“Herodotus was one of the first historians—not your guardian.” His playful tone surprised me. “It is a shame my native tongue has fallen out of fashion, but perhaps it is just as well.”
“Is the language in the booklet yours?”
He rose from the chair and came forward out of the darkness. The apricot hue washed the studio with its soft light and when he passed the open window, it changed his aspect. His looked like an image I’d seen in a recovered file, a digital copy of a work of art that must have held sentimental value for someone at one time, enough to encrypt and save it at least. My expression changed or something caught his eye or maybe he just read the shock in my mind because he stepped back into the light and stood there for a moment, letting me gaze on his true face, the one Evelina loved—the one face.
“Your face,” I said aloud. The words slipped off my tongue with unwieldy boldness and I bit my lip as soon as they touched the air. My cheeks burned with shame, but I could not look away from him, beautified by the light, like the Christ figure my guardian had told me about. He’d shown me an ancient text, a thick tome they called the testament, which described a man of light who’d been reborn as a god. I pictured him when Vincent’s aspect caught the pastel light of the sinking sun.
“I was never crucified,” he said, “though I am a god.”
Distracted by his face, his words didn’t register until their second pass.
“The face of the one in the texts is an idea more than a man.”
“I didn’t mean to imply—I mean, I don’t know.” I dropped my eyes, despite my longing to admire his face until the end of time. The aspect beneath his mask of horror gave me comfort.
“It is that which drew her in,” he said. “Evelina only knows this face.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You would not,” he said. “I have said this before, but you have not taken it to heart. She is me. Evelina is me.”
“I can’t know, I don’t understand what that means.”
“Only those with my nature see this face,” he said. “The other one, the mask of horror, is for those who are lesser than me.”
“It’s monstrous, the other.”
“As am I.” He rushed at me then and drained me of the light he had offered, showing me the terrifying aspect I’d seen at his arrival. He sneered at me, and the gleam of his iron fangs stung my eyes. I closed them shut to avoid his face, and he in turn robbed me of my voice.
“Janus or Bifrons?” He rumbled and groaned. “Which is it?”
I squeezed my eyes more tightly and held my breath until I sensed his retreat. When he was across the room, I opened my left eye a sliver. He’d moved back into the light of the window and recovered the angelic aspect he’d hid beneath his veil of evil.
“Janus,” he said. “Or Bifrons?”
He rushed forward again and scowled at me with his demonic face, toying with me several more times before remaining in the light to explain his chameleon gift.
“Janus is a god of the ancient Roman world, a Latin kin,” he said. “Two-faced, and discerning, Janus oversees new beginnings and transitions, guarding the door of war. But Bifrons also has two faces, and Bifrons is a demon, the earl of Hell, with six legions of devils to do his bidding. So which two—or four faces—do you think suit me best?”
“Janus,” I said.
He smiled and proved more radiant. I wanted to cling to this figure, to kiss this face, to give this creature all the love and respect his aspect commanded. I’d forgotten the other at the sight of this one, and if he’d asked me to kneel before him and open my veins, I could have.
“No,” he said, his voice sounding defeated. “My faces are those of the devil, not those of the god.”
“But I see you now, your radiance and splendor. You are a god.”
He slumped forward, though keeping in the light, and dropped to the edge of the open window, balancing himself on its ledge. I didn’t see how fitting the gesture was then, but now I do.
“I was on the path to enlightenment,” he said. “And then the world changed and man got in the way.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will.”
He insisted we continue our project and turned to look at the sky, shifted to shades of saffron. I let my gaze linger on his aspect for as long as I could, admiring his profile, and the short-lived beauty he showed me. I believed I’d witnessed something out of the ordinary, a sight I’d never see again but would dream of forever.
“Let us get back to the ship,” he said, “and visit the priest.”
Peter Vaudès, the Confessor
A vampire of religious leaning, Peter proved faithful. Being vulnerable to love’s grip, however, made him susceptible to irrational behavior. The secret love child of a Huguenot spy and French Cardinal, Peter adopted his mother’s way of life, becoming a Calvinist among Catholics, and bastard to Paris. The times in which he lived were volatile and keen, and had a certain affect on his heart.
I do not mean the organ that pumps blood through the body, but rather the part of the mind that indulges in romantic love. As a young man, he was addicted to love, but once nocturnal, he pursued his soul’s pleasure to extremes. His maker was his first immortal love, but Galla did her best to teach him the true path, and the benefit of a solitary life.
This bit of exposition serves a purpose in my narrative. Peter cleaved to that mortal emotion never to be severed from it, meaning he held strong notions of love once awakened to blood. Love molded his nature, honed his drive and purpose, which is why he found religion a balm to his ever disappointed spirit.
Because of this, he discovered how to enter certain minds. Some would say he was a mind reader, but I prefer to call him sensitive, capable of penetrating the malleable part of the brain that acts as a doorway to one’s thoughts. Peter’s power was far more extensive than he realized. He could easily see a mind’s foremost musings as clear as text on a page, but also he could read the subconscious, the memories embedded deep in the brain’s limbic system, abandoned and forgotten. They appeared to him as vaporous apparitions, as chimerical traces and wisps on a landscape, but still he saw them.
Peter is no exception to love, he simply loved exceptionally. He loved Evelina from the moment he laid eyes on her, and slipped into her mind with ease, learning things about her that even I did not know. He used forgotten memories to plan for my arrival on the ship, assisting my salvation long before its necessity.
I had uncovered his attachment to Youlan early on, their secret language easy to read as I was the first to imagine private communication into being. I did not trust the Empress, and did not believe he knew about the sample. When I slipped into his compartment, he looked up from the text in his lap.
“I did not tell her,” he said, jumping up to greet me.
I asked to whom he referred and when he said Evelina, I hid my surprise.
“She has no idea,” he said. “But I see it.”
“Of what do
you speak?”
He said my name with an aspirated voice, and then, “She’s yours.”
“How can you know?”
He shook his head, and then cocked it to the side. “Ah, you think I knew beforehand, but I assure you I couldn’t. The Empress would never trust me with such a secret.” His pale skin grew hot.
I raised a lip and sneered. “Lies are never half-truths.”
“Have you ever known me to lie to you?”
“Never.”
“I didn’t know she would do it.”
“Kill Evelina or make her mine?”
“Ah,” he said. “She told you I knew about the sample.”
I moved toward him, searing him with a simple look. “Do you think I will permit you to read my mind?”
He cowered and stepped back, knocking into the berth. “No,” he whispered. “I would never, believe me, I can’t. I saw it in her.”
“Cixi?”
“No, Youlan.”
“What did you see?”
“The sample in the exchange, but I didn’t know it was yours until I realized Evelina wasn’t the Empress’s progeny.”
“What did you see?”
“Someone gave it to Youlan before she escaped the facility.”
“Who?”
“The figure is unclear, even to her,” he said.
“You told me you could not read Youlan.” I moved closer to him.
He tensed up, but smiled. “You must believe me,” he said. “I couldn’t read her in the beginning. It’s only recently that I’ve found a way to do it.”
“How is that?”
A crimson color rose to his cheeks, and he turned away from me when he said, “I have recently come to know Youlan.”
The insinuation was plain, and I raised a hand, assuring him I needed no details.
“I didn’t know it could work like that,” he said. “But our physical union cracked open the vault in her mind.”
I stepped back and he released a sigh. “Seems useful,” I said. “What else have you learned?”
“Youlan got it from someone at the facility,” he said. “I can’t see the one who gave it to her, though. He’s shadowed.”
The Journal of Vincent Du Maurier Trilogy (Books 1, 2, 3) Page 50