When he withdrew his fangs, he tossed his head back and took in a deep breath. Then he folded my arm up and held it in place for a moment before crossing the studio to the window sill. The moon shone more brightly than the sun had in the daytime, which seemed to bring him an inner peace, as the light beautified his face. Or maybe my blood had made him seem more lovely.
Once I recovered, I asked him what happened to Evelina in the facility.
“Laszlo Arros split time,” he said casually, as was befitting his posture.
“It was an illusion?”
He shook his head, entranced by the moonlight. “He is no trickster, but a god.”
“A god like you?”
“I am no god.”
He leaned back as though stretching out his spine, and then lifted the arm that had been injured, inspecting his shoulder. He chuckled to himself and said, “Evelina’s body was there, but it belonged to another timeline.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It was a replica,” he said. “A hematope made from her genetic information.”
“How could he do that with her?”
“She was mine from the beginning.”
I cringed at the thought of Evelina also being his daughter.
“I do not mean she is of my seed,” he said. “I mean, I chose her.”
“But I thought Byron found her in the hospital,” I said.
He smiled at the moon, and I pulled myself up from the cot, making my way to him.
“No,” he said, blocking me with his hand. “You must return to your table, scribe.” He gestured to the fresh parchment awaiting me, and my shoulders slumped. “You are the future, Dagur. The past must be carried forth with you.”
At the table, the pen hovered and I snapped it up before sitting on the stool.
“You are correct to think this a work of creative power,” he said. “It takes imagination to invent time.”
Once I sat, he said, “Shall we return to the facility?”
“I’m ready,” I said.
“Good.” He sat on the window ledge, still basking in the moon’s radiance. “Laszlo Arros burrowed his way into my mind because I gave him the opportunity to do so.”
One Single Truth May Seem the Greatest Lie
“You must understand it now,” Laszlo Arros said, after peeling the nude body of the replica off me. “You recall how she came to be here, do you not?”
“I would if you would give me leave to think,” I said.
My wasted strength dulled my mind, but I struggled to rise, leaving the body on the ground. He gave me a hard look and smiled. “So you do understand.”
“I do.”
“Your potency is mine, too,” he said. “You forced my hand. Do you recall how she came to be a part of it all?”
I smiled in return, bolstered by the things he did not know.
“What makes you smile, Vincent?”
“The memory of her.”
“Huh,” he scoffed, and turned away.
“I gave you the sample,” he said.
“You did not,” I said. “You have nothing to do with this one.”
He shook his head and sighed. “This is my doing, as much as the rest.”
“No,” I said. “You are trying to deceive me.”
“I sent her to you,” he said, “placed her on your path.”
“You lie.”
“Wrapped in Byron’s tidy little parcel,” he said, “I received my own DNA sample to do with it as I deemed fit. Her genetic code suits my artificial womb rather nicely. The results are perfect, would you not agree?”
“No,” I said. “I chose her, as she lay in the bed at Santo Padre Gio. You had nothing to do with it.”
“Hmm,” he said. “I thought Byron chose her?”
“For you?”
“Who else?” His voice quivered.
“Perhaps that is what I want you to believe.” I held up a finger and wagged it in the air. “Byron had the honor of discovering her exactly where I had placed her.”
“How could you?”
“I planted the idea of the child in his mind, too,” I said. “And supplied the means for him to do it.”
“His contact with me had nothing to do with you,” Laszlo Arros said. “But I suppose you will also claim that as your doing.”
I matched his stare with a fierce one of my own.
“But that would mean,” he bent down and picked up the body, making a tableau I knew well, “our fusing had begun before she came about.”
“I have known of your presence at my side for longer than you realize,” I said. “Right.” I let out a soft chuckle.
“What is so funny?”
“Never mind.”
“What?” He tossed the body across the room, Evelina’s double slumping on the floor.
“One’s own resurrection is impossible to witness,” I said.
He scoffed. “Are you really challenging what I have told you?”
“No,” I said. “There is no need.”
He looked over at the wasted replica, and stepped closer to it with a wrinkled brow that betrayed his confusion. “She was never real,” he said.
“Everything is as real as it will ever be,” I said.
“She will die once you make the choice.”
“She is immortal.”
“But she cannot shift,” he said. “She did not inherit that gift.”
“Becoming a god is no gift.”
“Do not be foolish enough to surrender your calling,” he said. “This is our time. The fusion has begun.”
I raised my pointer finger and tapped his shoulder. “The time is not yet come,” I said.
“If not now, when?”
“I shall take the lead,” I said.
“You must make the choice now.” He sneered at me, and a curt growl escaped his lips.
“I am that I am.”
“So you are,” he said, dropping his hand on my shoulder with the weight of an oak. He pressed down until I crumbled to the floor, and then he leaned forward, taking me in with his eyes, and said, “Here, I am king. You are the rook.”
With one swipe, he yanked me up by the collar, and held me dangling at his side like a fish poached from a lake.
“My anger fuels you,” I said.
“It is over for you. A drought has come and they will all suffer. Have you forgotten the plan? The few humans left will die off and the only serum remaining will be that which kills them all.”
“Let go,” I said.
“Not yet.”
“Drop me.”
He obeyed and I fell at his feet.
“The blood on which the Empress’s crew feeds will turn them to dust,” he said. “And there is nothing to stop it, for if you decide to save them, Lucia, Muriel, and even Captain Jem will be goners.” I could not forget the den, the poison already destroying my kind. “The next age,” he said, “is the age of ruin. Bloodless ring in the new day, and hematopes will see it out.”
“The race of men is resilient,” I said.
“It is too late, Vincent. You have already made the choice.”
“How do you know?”
“The fusion has begun.”
My head throbbed and my tongue swelled.
“Your tenure is over,” he said. “Our communion is nigh, I feel it. You are ready to choose and you shall choose me.”
“Evelina—”
“She would have perished either way,” he said. “You actually chose to awaken her despite not giving her the venom yourself.”
“She is made immortal.”
“Tsk, tsk,” he clucked with his tongue. “How sentimental. But she, as with all of them, will harden and die a painful death. She has tasted the blood of the others, yes?”
“No.”
“You look peaked, Vincent.” He squatted beside me and grabbed my chin, forcing my gaze to meet his. “At least she will not feed on her own child,” he said.
The shift in my body was so
slight he would have missed it, but I raged under my skin as lava roars beneath a bed of rock. “Lucia is still alive, then,” I said.
“You know she is,” he said with a smile. “She is the one you must resist.”
“Take me to her.”
He pushed me from him and stood up, showing me his back. “Come, then,” he said, as he made his way out of the room.
I had a difficult time, my legs having gone weak, but I crawled to standing, using the ledge of the wall for balance. Again we moved from room to room as though in a dream.
Lucia was nearby, for when we reached her, my energy peaked. I readily fed off her, the connection between us not something Laszlo Arros could anticipate. Just as a mother will intuit her child’s mood, or a twin will sense his sibling’s pain, I could draw on my kin to ground myself anew. It is automatic, and the reason a kinblood will cling to his own. My desire for Evelina’s blood had taken root while the child was in her womb. The power of the kinblood had escaped me until that moment, when it became my own.
Silence engulfed us as we admired Lucia, lying safely on a bed of blankets in an incubator. She seemed a child’s plaything tucked in a glass case, if it were not for the slow rise and fall of her chest.
Laszlo Arros studied my reaction, his eyes steady on my face as I stared at the sleeping child. But his goad failed, for the sight of her only brought me relief, and I denied him the satisfaction for which he longed, my running to her to break her free from the case in which she was held captive.
I turned to him and said, “We have matters to discuss.”
He reached out and touched my shoulder, his show of affection making my venom heat. I hid my resistance.
“What will be done with her?” I asked.
“She will tempt you, and you will give in,” he said. “And she will be dead, and you will join me.”
“Never.”
“The skag rules you,” he said. “Can you not see you are enslaved?”
“Give up blood,” I said. “It is my nature, like air to a man.”
“It does not have to be. Not if you join me.”
“How can I live without blood?”
“The fusion will eradicate that need.” His flesh tightened at the corners of his mouth. “You shall never want for blood again.”
“I shall never, or you shall not?”
“I never have.”
“How is that possible?”
“You still do not understand that I am you,” he said. “The future you, the godhead, the enlightened being you have been itching to become.”
“What would happen to you if I were to take Lucia now and abandon you to your empty life?”
“Empty life?” He opened his arms wide and said, “Look around you. I have created an entirely new race. How can my life be empty?”
“I shall be absent from it.”
The corners of his mouth rose. “There is no parting for us,” he said. “You cannot leave without me. I am you.”
“I am that I am.”
“We are.” His smile broke his stern aspect and I read on his face what was to come. “It is my turn now,” he said. “I have changed the course of nature and made us resilient to everything human and base. We no longer require man’s blood to survive, and the race of hematopes confirms that. Do you see how advanced genetics, the broken climate and atmosphere, and the vulnerability of men have all afforded us this opportunity?”
“Timing is everything,” I said. “But since I stand here, desiring the blood of my kin as though to forego it would drive me insane, how has my nature changed?”
“Join me, and evolve.”
“What god are we to become?”
“You never bothered to ask about my name.”
“Why would I?”
“My choice is most fitting.”
I shrugged and looked away, for seeing into my own eyes had become tiresome. I glanced at the single switch on the wall, a lever about ten inches long that toggled from left to right. The word AIR was scrawled above it.
“I have no idea,” I said.
“Say it.”
“Say what?”
“My name.”
“Laszlo.”
“All of it.”
I glanced upward, holding him in suspense.
“Laszlo Arros,” he said. “Say it quickly.”
“Laszlo Arros.”
He smiled and whispered my mother’s name. “The namesake of the shifter god.”
“Lázoros,” I said.
“Lázoros,” he repeated. “The final shift, the change into deity that may only come from the god of resurrection.”
“You are Lázoros?”
“I have come for you.”
“Laszlo Arros,” I said. “You are no god.”
“That is correct,” he said. “I am not until you join me.” He held out his open hand, leading me to take it.
I moved away from him and closer to the toggle switch. “That final state of enlightenment is promised to me alone,” I said.
“I am you.”
“No,” I said. “I am me.”
“What prevents you from joining me? Why are you suspicious of my power.”
“It is about the blood,” I said, reaching for the lever and pulling it toward me. “My blood is everything.”
“No!” He screeched too late to stop me from unsealing the casket that kept my sleeping child in an oxygenated tank. The subterranean facility was without air, and Lucia suffocated and choked, as I did nothing. Laszlo Arros tore across the room to smash the clasp with his fist, and free the baby from the casket. Her silent screams shook my soul, but still I did nothing.
“What have you done?” Laszlo Arros stole out of the room, cradling her small body against his chest.
“I have done nothing,” I said, as he disappeared into the labyrinth.
I shuddered where I stood, my legs giving way, as I fell to the ground, and my senses gave in to a bed of woe that carried me toward the darkness.
A Shift in Time
Vincent watched me, his voice trailing off. I turned to see his mouth curled up at the corners as if ready to answer my questions. Some pieces were starting to come together, but others were too jagged to fit.
“Shall I explain?” He asked.
“Is Laszlo Arros a shifter like your mother?”
“No,” he said, approaching me and setting his hands flat on my drafting table. More than ever, his proximity made my insides shudder. “He is more than a shifter. He has become a mimic.”
“What is that?”
“He may take any form he chooses, but also copy it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You might if I show you,” he said.
“Show me what—”
“You feel it, no?”
I shook my head.
“My presence?” He grinned.
“I don’t know—” My own voice shrank, as if trapped inside of me. He was near me, but stood miles away. I reached for him, but my arm stayed in place. I am in control, he said into my mind. Come. I stood and walked to the window ledge, though my legs moved on their own. I climbed up onto the window sill, balancing on its edge. The wind had settled and the outside world was darker than pitch, except for the harvest moon that dwarfed the sun.
I hopped up and grabbed the top of the window ledge, hanging from my fingertips with my legs dangling in the frame. When I looked up, I saw the top of the tower, way above me. We are going to scale it, he said without words.
I reached up with one hand to grab the highest stone, using my legs along the window frame for leverage. One stone after another, with single thrusts, I scaled the wall to the top. When I reached the highest point, I stood on the flat surface and turned to look in all directions. I saw the whole settlement, the northern fence, the ravine to the south, the birch forest to the east, and the rows of shanties and lean-tos where the work was done on the western edge of the colony. All lamps burned low, and Heorot was dark.
What do you see? I seemed to ask myself.
“How did I get up here?” I said aloud.
Tell me what you see.
“It’s cold,” I said. “The whole settlement, from border to border, but there’s no light.”
Look with more than your eyes.
“How,” I said to the cool breeze.
The landscape revealed itself, as the sun crept up and ate the darkness. Dawn was breaking in the east, but the settlement was still asleep. One lone figure moved in the dim light, and I squinted to make him out. He lumbered as he walked to the barrel of water several feet from his shelter. He dunked his hands in and splashed water on his face. I shivered at the gesture, imagining the cold frosting his skin. Then he seemed to perk up and look back at the lean-to, still bathed in darkness. He took a few steps toward it and stopped, mouthing something I couldn’t hear. When he advanced again, he ducked into the lean-to, disappearing from sight.
“I must see more,” I said.
My body lumbered to the edge and launched itself into the air, falling and landing with a thud. The ground shook beneath me, but I felt nothing in my bones. I flew through the main street, past the darkened hearth and the shelters along the west side of the colony. The hunter’s store was there, and I smelled the flesh, drying on the rack. My stomach rumbled with nothing short of a roar.
As soon as I reached the lean-to, I slowed and crept up on its opening. A hissing sound came from inside, much like the sound of logs sizzling on the hearth. The sound grew louder as I approached, and the sky seemed to lighten with each step. When I finally stood before the opening, I witnessed the cause of the sound. The settler was strung up, dangling by his neck with a large shadowy figure behind him.
The figure darted to the left when he saw me and said, “You have come.”
The Journal of Vincent Du Maurier Trilogy (Books 1, 2, 3) Page 64