He dragged me deeper, it seemed, into the hull, further into the bowels of the ship. When we reached the ring, I recognized it. The railings above, allowing vampires to hang and sit as they watched their peers vie for glory on the metal deck, stained with gore and blood. But it seemed less frightening, empty as it was. Where are they all? I thought.
“The ash has been washed away,” Vincent said. “Nothing left but metal.”
I understood, and wept inwardly, though I don’t know why I felt sorrowful.
“No cause for that,” he said. “You are here because they are not.”
My hands tightened into fists and my sides spasmed violently, as pressure rose in my chest and burned my lungs. I passed out in agony and woke to a euphoric sense of relief from physical pain. I had been moved from the stool to my cot, and Vincent sat on the edge of my mattress, looking down on me. I touched the side of my left arm first to feel for wetness, but I was perfectly dry.
“How did you do that?” I whispered.
“We shall continue,” he said.
“What was that?” I asked, groggily.
“The present,” he said.
“The ship is sunk?”
He nodded. “We must continue.”
“The Toltec?”
“I have much to narrate and Time’s arrow will not be suspended forever.”
“Did the blood turn Huitzilli to stone?” I hadn’t grown bolder, but the weight of my question begged an answer.
“They all turned to stone,” he said.
“He is unbreakable.”
“It seems he is.”
“Is he alive?”
“Perhaps he is in stasis, I cannot say for sure,” he said, with a sigh. “The salt water has worked to preserve his body—a trick of the Aztec.”
“Will he wake?”
Vincent smiled. “Why? Would you like to meet him?”
I shook my head, as I sat up. “He’s as frightening as Evelina’s account.”
“Then return to your seat at the table,” he said. “We have to finish.”
He retreated to his chair in the corner, and I to my drafting table. Before beginning, I noticed the clean sheet he’d prepared for me and my pens arranged in the order I liked. My urgency to know about the Hummingbird cooled, as I prepared to record a bit more of history, the one I was charged with salvaging.
“We arrived in the Nortrak fifteen days after leaving the ashy docks of Genoa,” he said. “By then, I had made a plan.”
Veor, the Viking
Dawn stretched her rosy fingertips across the sky and painted it pink, the color of beginning, birth, and renewal. I had seen an incalculable number of sunrises in my years, but that one marked me. The world—my world—was about to change, and I witnessed its transformation in the sparkle of an early ray of light.
I went up on deck to scan the horizon when Captain Jem announced our arrival. He had been a recluse most of the trip, but was not forgotten. I had no doubt about the fate of the drunkard. He would make a fine bishop to slide across my chessboard once the time was right.
The northern tract was transformed completely from its early layout in the first few decades of the second millennium. We passed an island that had once belonged to a territory, still standing but covered in ice caps. Even its firs and pines were glazed with ice. Man had abandoned the frozen isle long ago. After the ruptures and the floods, the new world gave up housing nations, and became a quilt of arable land. The remaining population, small as it was, no longer fought over terrain but gathered in enclaves and settlements with vast wastelands in-between. From what I could tell, territory was not claimed but easily acquired.
The facility bordered the shore, not far from the marine base set up on the coast, built on a destroyed petrol plant, a new Ilium set upon an old. No one cared the abandoned land was deemed uninhabitable due to petroleum leaks and unusable soil since the entire facility was subterranean, an underground hideout for dastardly deeds.
My introduction to it came from Veor, who sat alongside me on the platform at the top of the radio tower, as we surveyed the shore.
“It will be difficult,” he said, as he pointed to the cutout of land in the distance. “The trek between here and there is covered in snow.”
I smiled inwardly. If you wonder at my fear of the nuisance ahead of me, I had none.
“My people speak of a legend about a Norse god, a great god who will return after Ragnarök,” he said. “Today we are living the days of Ragnarök. Floods, destruction of land, people, all mean a war is coming.”
“What kind of war?”
“Völva prophesies the apocalypse, which sates itself on the lifeblood of fated men, and paints red the powers’ homes with crimson gore. The sun’s beams become ink in the summers that follow treacherous weather.”
“In your legend, does the Norse god save the world from this?”
“There will only be rebirth after an eternal winter,” he said. “One man, one woman shall remake the earth with the guidance of those who return from the dead. Baldr, the gleaming Norse god, will be the greatest of them.”
“What does this god do if he does not salvage the wreckage?”
“Our gods cannot save man from the war he brings upon himself,” he said. “They may guide him if he goes astray, though. With Baldr, it is not about what he does, but about what he represents.”
We sat in silence for a time, as I imagined the yarn he could spin. I had acquired an encyclopedia of mythology over the years and knew most everything. Time and again each story proved the same, with similar elements. Only the nuances and names differed. Veor lived as though his Viking days were not a thousand years behind him, and I wondered how he had existed day to day in the vampire’s modern world, thriving on a dwindling human population.
“Baldr, son of Odin, and his mother Frigg dreamed of his death. They believed it was prophecy and she decided to do what she could to protect her son, making everything in the realm swear an oath to keep Baldr from harm. But there was one who was too young to swear—mistletoe—who became Baldr’s downfall.”
He paused, perhaps for effect or to recall the story exactly as it was told to him.
“Loki is the father of Hel, who receives a portion of the dead where she reigns in a place named for her. Loki is known to stir the pot, and I believe his desire to feed portions to his daughter is what makes him a rabble rouser. Loki took mistletoe and made an arrow, sending it into Baldr, who had easily shirked every other dart sent his way. But worse still is that before Loki directed the arrow at Baldr, he placed it in the hands of Höðr, Baldr’s blind brother, who did not know he held the point that would slay his kin. Baldr died then, and Höðr followed soon after.”
“Why would the gods throw spears and arrows at Baldr if Frigg had begged the oath,” I said.
“To test the strength of a god is to live,” he said. “Baldr became a target because he was made invincible, or at least able to resist all harm.”
“Except for the mistletoe,” I said.
“Yes,” Veor said with a smile. “We all have one Achilles’s heel, don’t we?”
As I sat in the plum light of dawn, I wondered if I could be defeated. I had overcome every weakness, and was equivalent to a god.
“Baldr is special because he was so loved,” Veor said. “Others would die for him—with him.”
I sensed Veor’s telling me the story for my sake, as though I were Baldr.
“Like in all funerals,” he said, “Baldr’s body was placed on a great Viking ship, Hringhorni, and set afire to burn as it drifted out to sea, catching the wave that would direct its course to the underworld. But as Baldr lay on his pyre, Odin whispered a secret in his ear—this secret remains untold and is known as the famous riddle Odin would ask those he visited in disguise: ‘What did I whisper in Baldr’s ear?’”
“Baldr’s return brings the answer to the riddle, then?” I asked.
Veor smiled and said, “It is the one thing we have wa
ited for. My people, the Vikings are gone, but our hearts, our souls live on in our kin. Muriel will be saved by the answer to Odin’s riddle, and only Baldr can bring it.”
I hid my disdain for his superstition, though I cannot say why it made me uncomfortable. Veor’s way of speaking about his history and his legendary future with Muriel made me uneasy.
“Do you know how Frigg bargained for Baldr’s release from the underworld?”
I shrugged.
“She begged and begged and begged until Hel finally promised his release on the condition that every single thing, dead and alive, weep for Baldr’s death. Already his pyre did not burn alone, for Thor had kicked Litr the dwarf into the fire with him, and his wife Nanna threw herself into the flames too, and even his horse was tossed in with all its trimmings and frills. But as hard as Frigg tried, she could not get everyone to weep for him. One giantess, Þökk, refused him her tears. Some say it was Loki in disguise, but I think it is far worse. Loki swayed the giantess to his side instead, manipulating her.”
“Manipulation is a far greater talent than imitation,” I said.
“I agree.” Veor leaned over the ledge and looked down at the sea. “So now we are in Ragnarök, and Baldr will rise again with Höðr and the sons of Thor to wrestle the new world into submission, tilling and plowing her field until it is safe for man again.”
“Will you be there with them?” I asked.
“I already am,” he said, raising a single fist to the sky. “And so I am with you, too.”
“Are you on my side?”
“Of course,” he said. “But Muriel’s safety is most important to me.”
I flashed him a subtle fang, though I cannot say if it was intended. His mention of my donor had done the trick. “How did you discover she was inside the facility?”
Veor smiled and I recalled how much he reminded me of Alessandra Tarlati. Though a brief spark in the night, she would not fade too soon from my memory.
“I have fed on her family for years,” he said. “My last succor was from her father, and Patty Lem, his mother, and Cyrus Lem before that.”
“She tells me you got her out?”
He gave me a hard stare. “She saved me.”
“How?”
“Once the colonel was gone, I had no other.”
“Would it be so bad to feed on blood that is not yours?”
“Yes.”
“What is it about the blood of your kin that makes you long for it so?” I had never asked that of any kinblood I had encountered, and though I could have guessed the answer I wanted to hear his.
“It dulls the burden,” he said, surprising me.
“What burden?”
“The burden to feed on blood,” he said. “I may be a vampire, but first and foremost I am Viking. We are bound to family for all succor, our kin is our life source, and for that I can’t resist my own. The desire is inherent.”
“Who is your maker?”
The little bit of color that livened his porcelain face drained with my question. But fear had not wracked him, just remembrance.
“I don’t recall my maker,” he said. “But I remember the day my fate changed.”
I encouraged him to share his story.
“We were on a raid, a Christian settlement on the island of Iona. We took the ancient monastery of St. Columba, and stowed its relics on our ships. But after the slaughter, we stayed on shore, our vessels moored just off the coast. We fêted and feasted on the flesh of those we slayed, too tired to hunt. Man’s meat is less satisfying than a goat’s, but we filled our bellies and fell asleep before the long haul home.
“Some time before the others woke, I came to, unsettled and aroused. Loki tempted me, or I simply longed to walk the darkened isle with my gut filled with its people. I rose and followed my bliss, hiking up to a cliff where I found a single light burning deep inside a cavern. I entered it, of course, with my ax drawn. As I crept toward the light, I saw her shape, the lone survivor sleeping on her side like a child in a womb.
“I mistook her for a wood maiden at first, her shape barely the size of a woman’s. Her slowed breathing, her warmth called to me and I fell down beside her, tucking myself about her little frame. She woke and turned her small body toward me, pulling me in with her dainty fingers and hands. Her eyes were soft, and she whispered lustful things to me. It was not long before I gave in, and made her a part of me.
“I took her home with me, cleaving to her after that single bewitching night we spent in her cavern beside a low fire. She lived with me for many years before her kin came for her. I can’t say how her father found her, though he was surely a god in disguise. He stole into our homestead in the middle of our slumber and took back what was his.”
Veor held out his hands, palms facing upward. “He left me with a severed heart and a taste for blood,” he said. “Parting gifts for the hospitality I showed his daughter.”
“Did you feed on your people once awakened to blood?”
He looked away, defeated. “I took off, ashamed at the desires that rocked my core. The day burned my skin, and the night brought on new pains, hunger and loneliness. I kept to the solitary path for many winters before I discovered my own bloodline was the only I could stomach.”
He scratched the side of his jaw as though itching a beard.
“What will you do when Muriel is gone?” I asked.
“I suppose I’ll have to be flexible.” He forced a smile.
“Tell me about the facility,” I said. “Why were you there?”
“Colonel Heath told me it’s where I could find his daughter.”
“How did he die?”
“I lost him to the plague,” he said. “Once he turned, I had to find Muriel.”
“How did you gain access to her?”
“I met Youlan inside and she told me where to find her. Once she booked passage on Cixi’s ship, she told me to come with her and bring the girl.”
Peter had told me Youlan could not speak, but she was cunning and capable of convincing anyone of anything she pleased.
“Did she tell you about the letters?”
“How do you know—oh, Muriel told you.”
I shook my head, assuring him I had made the discovery on my own.
“That was Youlan’s doing,” he said. “Our payment for Muriel’s escape.”
“Did you ever meet Laszlo Arros?”
He looked down at the water, and I could not read him when he said, “It’s him, isn’t it?”
“Who?”
“The one who’s come to end it all.”
“So you have met him.”
He turned to look at me, and the pain behind his eyes ran deep. “No,” he said. “But if he is who Youlan says he is, Baldr will rise up and save one man and one woman.”
“Why just one man and one woman? Why not all of civilization?”
“One man and one woman is civilization.”
I could not sense the depth of his words at the time, his suggestion that the human population was doomed unless two remain. Despite the plague, and the predatory creatures aiming to change their fellow man into counterparts, one man and one woman could begin civilization anew.
Veor turned away and scowled at the land.
“Muriel is precious to me,” I said. “She will not come to harm.” I tapped my finger along the side of the tower, making a ping sound like a metronome on metal. I had not considered the beat could travel along the sea to the shore like a beacon.
“Do you trust me?” I asked.
“More than any other.”
“What about the Empress?”
“She is nothing to me.”
“She gave you safe haven aboard the ship, kept Muriel from harm. Have you not wondered why? She is not one to do favors for others.”
“Muriel spoke for me,” he said. “I barely saw her once I boarded.”
“And the den?”
He looked at me and dropped his subtle fangs. “My pledge is to Muri
el, and hers is to you and Evelina and the child, which means I don’t mind sharing my kin.”
I nodded and silence fell between us before I asked if it was difficult getting into the facility.
“No,” he said. “I came with a message from Colonel Heath.”
“Which was?”
Veor shrugged. “The settlement was overrun.”
“Which settlement?”
“He was tasked with escorting a group of two-hundred settlers to a land in the upper region of the Nortrak. The colony was barely a month old before it fell under attack.”
I nodded, “I see.”
“Once the colonel was gone,” he said. “I left in search of her.”
“And the settlers?”
He shrugged. “I couldn’t say.”
I looked at the frothy sea, the ship cutting through the water at a fair pace. The foam on the waves made the water seem as though it were soil being turned over, and I understood Veor’s metaphor. His gods would rise up on the sea and cultivate it for humanity once again just as they did for Noah, the Judeo-Viking.
“We are no longer alone,” I said, as I sensed Evelina’s approach.
Cloaked from head to toe, she climbed the radio tower with her hood up to block the morning sun. Veor called down to offer her a hand since she had something tucked under one arm. She scoffed, and I smiled, whispering to him, “Help is hers to give, not receive.”
When she reached the top, she threw the object she carried on the platform and then pulled herself up to sit beside me. I sheltered her from the light and she nestled into my shade. You must not stay up long, I spoke into her mind.
The space was tight for the three of us, but that was not my first thought. Rather the head she had placed between us garnered all my attention.
“The Empress,” Veor said. “How did you manage that?”
“It was her due,” she said.
“How did you fare?” I asked. “Besides coming out successfully, which I can clearly see by her face—and yours.”
She smiled, her metal blades gleaming with vampire ichor. Her eyes were wild and ever present. “She’s learned her lesson.”
“Is there a story to tell?” Veor asked.
Evelina looked out to the shore, another smirk rising on her face. “I’ll tell it to all of you at once.” Then without looking at Veor she commanded his attention and said, “Gather every vampire in the pit. Tell them their new commander wishes to greet them.”
The Journal of Vincent Du Maurier Trilogy (Books 1, 2, 3) Page 53