The Journal of Vincent Du Maurier Trilogy (Books 1, 2, 3)

by K. P. Ambroziak

  “Take me to Lucia or I will take out your spleen and feed it to you.”

  Her expression shifted, a sting rising to her eyes as she bit the corner of her cherry-red lip. “That’s hurtful,” she said. “Laszlo Arros would never say such a thing.”

  “Take me to him.” I rushed to sever her head as I had done with Kaysu, but she held the camera out and pointed it at me. My joints and muscles stiffened as if settling on rigor mortis.

  “Now,” she said. “We have time.”

  My body seized up despite my fight to dodge the paralytic. I thought her psychic magic far stronger than mine, and she proved me right, reading my thoughts. “My strength is yours,” she said. “We are bound by Laszlo Arros.” She smiled. “Shall I tell you my story.”

  Peter Vaudès, the Guardian

  Another pounding at my door didn’t interrupt Vincent as he’d sensed the visitor coming up the stairs of the tower. Gerenios hadn’t returned, but a mystery guest had found his way up, and I was frightened.

  “Who is it?” I whispered, my voice box tightening once again.

  Vincent raised a finger to his lips and gestured for me to hush. The pounding ceased, and all I heard was the sound of my own heartbeat thumping in my throat. I didn’t know what I had to fear with Vincent as my personal bodyguard, but his expression didn’t incite confidence.

  He moved to the door and pressed it with his two hands, as though feeling for what was on the other side. The visitor pounded again, three times. Then a throaty growl arose on the other side of the door, and I jumped from my stool, rushing to the window ledge, the farthest spot from the entrance. I looked out to see what I could, but the sun had grown dim, gray like the moon, as it set in the distance. The sky was darkening.

  I thought of Gerenios, Freyit and the others. Were they under attack? Had they been killed by the nimrod who came for Björg only hours before? The morning at the bier, inspecting his bones, seemed ages ago. The electric purple of his marrow confirmed something I had suspected for a while. The colonists were similar to the donors on the ship. Men and women made with blood unfit for the vampire.

  I hadn’t had the courage to ask Vincent about the truth, but since Gerenios confessed to being as old as he was, I had to wonder. My guardian had explained the age to which a man might live. He said a natural human being could live for as long as ninety to a hundred years. He claimed I would live that long if I was fortunate. But also he told me there were those who could live far longer, forever he said. I didn’t understand what he meant until I discovered the truth in the journals, that the vampire’s life was endless.

  “Peter Vaudès,” Vincent said. I had fallen so engrossed in thought, I didn’t realize the pounding had stopped, the danger passed. “I am not your guardian. Peter is.”

  “Peter, the priest?”

  He nodded.

  “Why?”

  “He was the best one for the job, and it was his plan.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “Why did I need a guardian?”

  “You needed a skilled teacher more.”

  Vincent stepped forward with his hands extended. I didn’t flinch as he placed his palms on either side of my face and leaned his forehead against mine. The cold of his touch ripped through me until I sensed nothing but warmth. I don’t know if my eyes were closed or open but I saw the brilliant sky again, lit up with the constellations that were barely visible now.

  “We must find a girl.” I recognized my guardian’s voice, though he wasn’t speaking to me. Vincent responded in turn. “Where will we find a human girl, if any have survived?”

  “We have heard the rumors,” he said. “Others have survived.”

  “But are they healthy enough to reproduce?”

  “There’s got to be one fertile girl on this wide earth somewhere,” Peter said. “This is God’s plan, not mine. He will provide.”

  “A Christian god’s plan identical to the theme of Viking poetry,” Vincent said.

  “Perhaps,” Peter said. “But we have one man, why not one woman?”

  “We do not live in a garden.”

  “I grant you that, but why not make one?”

  “The colony.”

  “The second colony is vibrant and promising,” he said. “Historic man just may thrive in a world with hematopes.”

  “Impossible,” Vincent said. “The arrival of a boy means this is the end.”

  “But what if—” Peter paused, as he looked up at the constellations twinkling above him. “There must be an Eve.”

  The memory passed from Vincent to me, as we reconvened in the studio at the top of the tower in the second colony of the resurrected.

  “What are hematopes?” I asked.

  “You know,” Vincent said.

  “Gerenios,” I said.

  “Every colonist, but one.”

  “I am the last historic man?” The words fell heavy from my lips. “What does that mean?”

  “You see the truth,” Vincent said.

  “I do,” I said. “But the woman?”

  Vincent shook his head, a loaded gesture.

  “Peter was wrong about his God?”

  “He was wrong about a lot of things.”

  “I am the last source of blood,” I said, “and the nimrod has come to take me from you—why?”

  “He wants me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “We must reach the end first.”

  “Are Gerenios and the others safe?”

  “As safe as they can be.”

  “But he will die,” I said, “before he knows the truth.”

  “What truth?”

  “He is not like me.”

  Vincent smiled. “He knows what he is.”

  “He is like the donors on the ship, isn’t he—all of them are?”

  “Yes.”

  “But how.”

  “He is a part of a new race,” Vincent said. “Gen H have made up the population since well before you came about. The last of the healthy blood has come from our line.”

  “Your kin?”

  “Yes,” he said. “You were not born from an artificial womb.”

  “Béa was like me,” I said. “Who was my father, then?”

  “He is irrelevant, but your mother was a great source of happiness to all of us.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “She was left unguarded,” he said.

  “She is dead, isn’t she?”

  “She is.”

  “Did the nimrod kill her?”

  He nodded and said, “To get to me.”

  “Why doesn’t he just come for you?”

  “He does,” he said, “using my kin.”

  “But so far he’s killed three settlers.”

  “My donor cannot thrive without a colony.”

  “Why?”

  “Peter taught you this,” he said, “when he explained the necessity of a village. Man cannot live without a civilization, especially historic man.”

  “Because a community thrives, but a man alone doesn’t.”

  “The colony is your home,” he said. “The place I had hoped you could begin a family of your own.”

  “A family?”

  “Children, Dagur. I would like to see you continue the line of men.”

  “Bloodline,” I said.

  His aspect remained still as he said, “You need a partner, of course, a woman of child bearing age who is not a Gen H.”

  “Why can’t I be with a colonist?”

  I hadn’t spoken to my guardian so directly, for he explained chastity and procreation in little detail. Vincent’s hard stare told me I could be out of luck with him too. “You may,” he said, “but such a union would not serve our purpose.”

  “My children wouldn’t have compatible blood.”

  “It may be possible for your union with a hematope to yield offspring, but you have more than blood as difference.”

  “What else?”

  “How many pr
egnant settlers have you seen in your time here?”

  I hadn’t seen many. “I don’t know,” I mumbled.

  “They live a long life,” he said. “But one must have something to live for.”

  I had not thought about the colonists as separate from me, as needing something to live for. They scouted, hunted and fished, erected structures, made pathways and set up facilities, and they fêted and feasted regularly. They made homes with one another, joining in couplehood and small family units, elected a leader and sat on committees, and lived in communion in every other way. I had never witnessed death before the nimrod arrived, but they even mourned like other civilizations. They seemed to be as normal as any other, and thrived in community.

  “For them, procreation is not without its complications.”

  I’d witnessed the arrival of two newborns in the settlement, though the two female colonists had delivered their children before joining us.

  “Are you saying their race will die off eventually?”

  “They are not immortal,” he said. “But they want for something greater, and you are that promise.”

  “How?”

  He avoided my eyes and looked up at the window. “Night will be here soon, and we must continue.”

  “I don’t see why we have to record your story if there’s danger. If that thing is coming for me, shouldn’t I be hiding?”

  “It may come to that.” He gestured for me to return to my table.

  “What good is it if there’s no one left to read it?”

  “History always finds a place.”

  “But if I am the last.”

  “You may also be the first,” he said.

  I inhaled deeply and asked the question I had been biting to say, “Are you my father?”

  “I am father to one child,” he said.

  “Only Lucia?”

  “Yes, Evelina’s child.”

  The weight of the world sat on my shoulders, as he pressed me into the stool, seeming to hold me in place until I took to the flow of his dictation again. He picked up where he left off with Youlan.

  “I told her I cared little for her story,” he said. “I wanted to see my child.”

  Youlan’s Trick

  “You will taste from your own spleen if you do not bring me to Lucia.” I fought against the hardening of my muscles and joints.

  “She isn’t your only daughter,” Youlan said. “I’m yours, too.” She flirted with fate, opening her mouth wide, baring her metal fangs, and snapping it shut again. “I am her sister.”

  “You are no daughter of mine.”

  She looked up to the left and grinned. “I’m one-hundred and eighty-four—no, eighty-five years old.”

  “You are not mine.”

  “How could you know?” She scoffed. “You said you would deny me three times.” She looked at her watch again. “Ten minutes ago, in your chamber, you said you would say that very thing, exactly like that.”

  “I have never spoken to you outside of this corridor.”

  “That too!” She blushed. “You said you’d say that, exactly that way, too.”

  “You are delusional.”

  “I was your favorite until she came.”

  “Take me to Lucia now,” I said, straining to move my neck.

  “Oh my, you are smarter than this.”

  I used every ounce of energy I had to flex my hand, but her magic overpowered me, and left me to my paralysis.

  “Johann Mendel,” she said.

  The name touched my head about as lightly as a cleave driven down on it. I could picture the man’s face. “Who is that?”

  “You must remember him,” she said. “Don’t you see him in your mind?”

  “No.”

  “Can you see my inheritance?” She leaned forward and looked into my eyes. “Don’t you recognize me?”

  “You are not mine,” I said.

  “That’s twice.” She kissed my lips and I did nothing, her mouth warm on mine. She pinched my bottom lip with her subtle fangs, and when she pulled away, she drew close to my ear and whispered, “Next time I use my irons.”

  She held the camera still, pointed at me, but when she leaned her forehead against mine, I made her drop it. My body may have been paralyzed, but my mind functioned as efficiently as ever.

  Once knocked from her hand, the camera smashed on the floor and she jumped back with a gasp. I grabbed her by the hair as she screeched. She reached for my hands, but I deflected her shot. “Not this time,” I said.

  She chuckled and said, “Heredity is a funny thing. I knew you’d best me, father.”

  “I am not your father.”

  “There’s the third,” she said. “He should be on his way now.”

  “Laszlo Arros?”

  “Lucia won’t be with him, though.” A storm raged in her violet eyes, her bottom lip quivering as she said, “Tell me you remember Johann Mendel.”

  She struggled to free herself, but could only get her hands overtop mine, sending her franticness into my flesh. “Take me to Lucia,” I said, “and I will tell you anything you want to hear.”

  She rolled her shoulders forward, defeated. “The Czech lands? The industrial powerhouse of the Bohemian Kingdom?”

  My memory of Johann Mendel had been revived at her first mention of his name, though I denied her the truth. The setting, too, was vivid. The sweet air of an unpolluted farming region, untouched by the industrial cancer that ate away the rest of the Slavic plains. He was an Augustinian friar, a highly intelligent creature with whom one could not trifle.

  “My otec,” she whispered.

  Youlan had adopted him as her father, a man of plants and pea pods and early genetic science. She may have been telling the truth, but I had nothing to do with him after we parted ways.

  “Agáta was the surrogate’s name,” she said.

  Mention of that particular woman confirmed my original belief I had nothing to do with her beginning.

  Youlan sneered at me. “He comes.” She shifted to a shorter stance, her body straightening with eagerness.

  “Take me to Lucia,” I said.

  “Why do you give your love to them?”

  I tugged on her hair, raising her off the ground. She gripped my hands more tightly, and squeezed. “Do it,” she said. “Take off my head.”

  “I will as soon as you bring me to my real daughter.”

  She pouted. “I am real.”

  “You have piqued my interest,” I said. “If I attempt to fillet your corse after peeling away your skin, will Laszlo Arros come to save you?”

  “You wouldn’t,” she said. “I know everything.” She gasped, “He’s here.”

  I released her again, my blood poached, stewing in the possibility of a physical battle with an equal.

  “Why are you grinning?” She asked.

  My ire had reacted in kind, envisioning the blood eagle I would give Laszlo Arros.

  “He is here.” She smiled and held up her middle finger.

  “Is that what you are made of?” I asked.

  “There’s more,” she said.

  A talon shot out of its tip and she plucked it with her other hand like a pin from a cushion. She held up the dart admiring it, and then, as though freezing time, she whipped it at my neck, its point stabbing my hardened skin. My hand went up too late to block it. Mightier than a dart from a pipe, the point burrowed itself into my neck, and I dropped backward onto the floor.

  “He is here, father.” The rest of the world disappeared as she said, “He is risen.”

  A Maker of Destiny

  “You wonder if she was the enemy,” Vincent said. “I see your mind tossing in chaos. I have mentioned so many names, too many characters to keep track, my poor Dagur, but you must consider only one of them important, Laszlo Arros.”

  Vincent had moved to the ledge to admire the cobalt blue sky. When he evoked the muddling in my mind, I put down the pen and turned to gaze on him. Our time together had softened his feat
ures, or perhaps it was a trick, but I could see how Evelina might desire him.

  “Your sentimentality reeks,” he said. “Put it away.”

  I discarded her image, and asked the question foremost on my mind. “Was Youlan your daughter?”

  He grinned, and I imagined a blush brightening his cheeks. “In a manner of speaking,” he said. “She was made from me too, though she was nothing like Lucia.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Lucia is a gift,” he said. “Youlan a perversion.”

  “Did you know Johann Mendel,” I said, after searching for the family name on my sheet.

  “Johann Mendel was a genius,” he said. “Great men of science are hard to forget.”

  “Why did you tell her—”

  “I did not know if she spoke the truth.”

  “How did she know him?”

  “You have a lot of questions, Dagur.” He rose and moved back into the shade of the room. “I am narrating the story as I see fit. Your interrogation is unwarranted—and unwelcome.”

  I waited, as he stewed in the darkness. “I will die here,” I whispered.

  “It is a test.”

  “What is?”

  He ignored me, and I turned back to the sheets to re-read the last I had written. The seat sounded with a creak in the corner, as Vincent gave himself to it. He released a low groan, and then a growl, as though he were the nimrod on the fringe of the colony.

  “Johann Mendel, Agáta, and Youlan,” he said.

  I bit my tongue, refusing to question him anymore.

  “Agáta is the surrogate.”

  The chair creaked again, this time with relief, as he rushed forward out of the darkness. My heart jumped into my throat. He was steely, and prepossessing, and I grew warm.

  “I am the maker of my own destiny, Dagur,” he said, dragging the second syllable. “I am the maker of yours, too.”

  A tingle rose up my spine, as he caressed my cheek with an outstretched hand, the tips of his nails gently brushing past my nose. “You may be my last,” he said. “I plan on keeping you to the end.”

  Vincent pulled me in with his gaze, and danger melted away. There was no nimrod, no vampire, no plague, no settlers, no colony, just me and him. He smiled, and brought his face close to mine. I must have shut my eyes because I don’t remember his gaze so near. His lips brushed against my mouth and I tasted his salty breath, his blood-soaked tongue, and the air from his lungs fused with the scent of his last supper.