I made to step back, but couldn’t move. He released the settler and I recognized Björg’s body once it hit the ground.
“I have you now,” the figure said, revealing himself to be Vincent.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
He smiled and pounced, or perhaps I lunged backward, but I shut my eyes as his figure expanded before me.
Then, as though I hadn’t moved from my spot on the top of the tower, I was still standing on the platform with the wind on my face, watching the cloaked figure exit the lean-to and disappear out of sight. My heart sunk as I pictured Björg lying there, drained as he’d been that morning.
“Is it you, Vincent?” I whispered.
That is me, and I am you.
When I shifted again, falling out of him, a terrible pain tore up my gut, and forced me to the ground. I lay like a child in a womb, my legs pulled up, begging the pain to go away. I couldn’t look at the sky, cobalt blue once again. I shut my eyes tightly and lapped up the pain with every ounce of courage I had. Death felt close, as the agony seemed to increase. I didn’t forget that I was abandoned on the tower’s top, and couldn’t imagine how I would get down until my thoughts seemed to make the tower floor drop away and I plummeted, landing on my cot with a jolt.
I opened my eyes wide to familiar surroundings. The pain had left me and Vincent was at my side. The threat he’d posed in the lean-to had dissolved, as I intuited the truth.
“You took me into your mind again,” I said.
“I wanted you to see my other half.”
“That was this morning.” My voice was gruff, and my throat almost too dry to speak. “You were there.”
He dropped his chin and sneered at the floor beside the bed. “The want of blood makes you thirsty,” he said. “Being inside is a trick of the mind, but the hunger it leaves you with is real.”
“You saw Björg killed and did nothing about it.”
“Everything in its time,” he said.
“Why couldn’t you save him?” I sat up, and he leaned back.
“You have understood nothing,” he said, smacking the side of my cot. “I am not the one who kills the settlers.”
“But it was you in the lean-to,” I said.
“I told you he is an imitator. You saw me because that is who he wanted you to see.”
Just when I thought I understood, I lost the thread. “Who is he?”
“Laszlo Arros,” he said. “The most important character of my story.”
“I was there with you,” I said. “Seeing him through your eyes. Another mind trick.”
Vincent gestured with a slight nod. “It has all been one sleight of hand.” He smiled and seemed to hold his breath. “His Resurrection is cyclical, born again from a second pile of ash.”
“Born again?”
“Shall I tell you how he died?”
A Spear for One
I came to in the room that was a shrine to my former villa, with Lucia cradled in my arms. I looked down on her, her eyes closed, her little nostrils flaring as she breathed in the oxygenated atmosphere.
“What is Lucia to you?” Youlan asked. She stood across the room, clinging to the opposite wall.
“You would not understand,” I said.
“Perhaps you are right. Much of what you do confuses me.”
“Bull,” I said. “You do not know me.”
She moved away from the portico. “Her blood smells good,” she said.
Her manner had changed, her shoulders raised, her back arched as though fit for a fight. She licked her lips, and I flexed my fingers. My strength had returned with the child in my arms. Her blood perfumed the air, but I was certain I had no desire to drink it.
“She was made for you,” Youlan said, creeping to my side, ready to pounce.
“No,” I said. “She was made from me.”
“How is that true?”
“She is meant to right the wrong.”
“It is too late.”
“Where is Laszlo Arros?” I shot her a look and she backed down, having moved closer to me and the sleeping child.
“The blood substitute,” she said. “That was your idea, too.”
The infant lay as dead weight in my arms.
“You suggested it,” she said. “Gave the formula to Byron.”
“Of what madness do you speak now?”
“You were jealous, father,” she said. “You wanted him to suffer.”
“I would never.”
“He took away your chance at deity,” she said. “He made you love him too much. He robbed you of your union with the god. The child was his doing, he made the seed and planted the tree.”
“What tree?”
“The tree of life, father.”
She stepped close again, and I sneered at her. “Keep your distance,” I said.
“Why do you hate me?”
“I do not know you,” I said.
“I come from you.”
Lucia stirred and I sensed the foolishness of my posture, my choice to sit with a child in my arms. I suppose I was swept up in thought, for I did not see the spear move as Youlan tried to pick it up.
She seethed in the corner of the room, looking out of joint and out of breath. “She will perish at the hands of her creator,” she said. “The rest of them, each one will wither away in a painful torment. Your plan has already succeeded.”
My head bellowed with a piercing cry that came from deep within me. I continued to hold the child in my arms, but crossed the room with her to pick up the ash pike myself. Youlan could not threaten me with the weapon, for only I could wield it. She backed away as I approached, leaving me free to bend down and pick it up. With my hand on the dory, I struggled to lift it, its weight immeasurable.
“It is too heavy for you,” Youlan said. “Can’t you see that?”
She was correct, for I could barely steady it in my one hand as I held the child in the other.
“You’ll have to put her down,” she said.
“Where is Laszlo Arros?”
She made a squee sound and clapped her hands. “You didn’t notice the sleight of hand.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You are Laszlo Arros,” she said. “You are him.”
I struggled against logic, looking for something to ground me. Lucia was the greatest clue, for she did not tempt me, even as she was close enough to taste.
“Maybe this is part of the plan,” she said.
“What is?”
“You no longer see yourself as separate. Lázoros doesn’t need Laszlo Arros anymore since you have Vincent.” She glanced casually at the child, watching her intently with downcast eyes. “May I have the child like you promised?”
I pulled the infant up to me and stepped away. “What do you mean Laszlo Arros has Vincent? I am Vincent.”
“You aren’t, though.”
“Of course I am.”
“Pick up the spear and throw it at me, then.”
I looked down at my dory, lying on the ground at my feet. It looked unfamiliar, and I wondered if I had ever wielded such a weapon.
“You promised me her blood,” Youlan said. “Kinblood.”
“You will not take this child from me.”
“Greedy,” she said. “You never desired blood. You said it repulsed you. Why do you mean to keep her?”
I drew in a breath, forcing my irons out, but nothing happened.
“Has your union given you his desire?” She asked. “Have you become hungry for blood like us?”
I attempted to bare my fangs again, enraged at her interrogation. She paced in front of me as though rallying her bravery.
“They’re gone,” she said. “Your fangs are gone.”
“What has happened to me?”
“You are him.”
“No,” I said. “I am not.”
“Then come,” she said. “Try to stop me.”
“Shall I?”
She gestured with an uptur
ned hand. “Please, father. I’ve been waiting to taste your wrath since we met one another on the ship.”
I held her with a hard stare.
“You don’t have the strength, do you?”
“I have everything I need.”
The corners of her mouth turned upward. “Everything?” She winked at me, and said, “And her?”
I turned to the bureau closest to me, and pulled open the widest drawer, tucking Lucia inside for safe keeping.
“I can see her, you know,” Youlan said. “When I have put you down, father, I am going to wet my fangs with her blood, as promised.”
Lucia squealed, and I turned to adjust her position. Youlan stepped behind me then and laid her hand flat on my back, as Apollo had done to Patroclus when he sent his helmet sailing through the air, stripping him of his armor on the battlefield.
The touch forced me into darkness and I blacked out, collapsing on the ground.
“Let us get this over with.” I heard the words of Laszlo Arros as though in my own head. “This shall be our last dance, my darling girl.”
I cannot say how long I was absent from my right mind, but when I woke, I was in the room with the incubator. The glass was still smashed and the child gone. I shook the cobwebs from my head, as I imagined I had somehow traveled back in time. I jumped up, my physical weakness newly returned with the absence of my kin.
I followed the sound in my head, a pounding that would not quit. Once I reached the place where I had first met Laszlo Arros, the room that was a replica of my former villa, I found the source of the noise. I crept up to the open doorway, and stood on its threshold, spying on Youlan and the figure that looked so much like my own, as they tossed one another about the room.
When Laszlo Arros had pinned Youlan to the wall, his back to the doorway, she reached for something I could not see, though I noticed the bureau’s open drawer. She smirked in triumph and said to Laszlo Arros, “I shall spear you, father, with the ash pike.”
He pressed into her with a rage I had not seen him show yet. “You do not have enough of the warrior in you,” he said.
I spied the spear near my feet, and slipped into the room, unnoticed by him. She continued to hold his attention, making him press away from her fangs, as she attempted to stab him with them.
My proximity to Lucia breathed energy into me as a savior fills a drowned man’s lungs with air. With a renewed and fevered strength, greater than any blood high, I picked up my dory and held the weapon in my hand like a dart, the ash pike warming to me like a limb. I raised the spear and launched it at my target, sending it through the center of Laszlo Arros, pinning him to Youlan.
Her shriek rattled the walls, but his hiss was more frightening. Lucia was the third to wail, her cry erupting from the cubby in which she was hidden.
“What have you done?” Laszlo Arros’s voice was weak, as if the spear drained him of his energy.
“I must be off,” I said.
Laszlo Arros strained his neck to see me where I stood a few feet from the two of them. “No,” he said. “You cannot go. We are too close. You felt it. You were with me. This is our destiny. Join me.” He held his hand out to me, reaching backward, as the dory kept him pinned to Youlan.
“You are cleaved to another, one made for you,” I said. “Youlan is yours, now and forever.”
She gazed on Laszlo Arros, still in the form of her biological father. She had simply wanted to be mine, but I denied her and gave her to him instead.
“A sleight of hand,” she whispered. “I shall take you with me, so we both shall return.”
She lurched forward and bit Laszlo Arros’s neck with a vengeance befitting my own. Then she shot her venom into him, and he withered.
The spear’s ancient energy ran through its ashy shaft, and Laszlo Arros reached for its power, calling it up into himself, making it do more than I ever could. Soaked in the blood of countless soldiers, from near and far, on battlefields across tracts of land, the weapon heeded his godly will, burning up with a fever fit for death, seeping into the one who claimed it for himself.
And like an oak uprooted, struck by lightning, the two creatures, creator and his creation, fell to the floor in a pile of ash.
One More Fragment
“I know you are confused, Dagur,” Vincent said. “I can see a million questions arising in your mind, yet only one needs to be answered.” He reached out and drew his fingers up my forearm. “I will miss this,” he said.
His aspect softened with the candlelight, and I felt drawn to him more than ever.
“It is because I have given you up,” he said. “That is why your desire is strongest now.”
He was correct in thinking I had a million things to ask, a thousand words to speak, but I remained silent, as he finished what he had come to tell me.
He sighed, and rolled his shoulders forward. “Give your desire to them,” he said. “Their survival relies on you, and the children you shall bear. Do you understand?”
I swallowed hard and felt a scowl erupt on my brow as I mirrored his concern.
Then the slightest grin broke across his face and he said, “I will return one day for you, but I cannot promise whether I shall be friend or foe. Our resurrection is unpredictable.”
He glanced off to the side, and I recalled the sunken look on Björg’s face when Vincent showed me what the resurrected Laszlo Arros had done to the settler’s body.
I leaned forward on the drafting table, and touched the transcription he seemed bent on my finishing. “You will never be like this again,” I said.
“I do not believe so,” he said. “Though I hope I shall not despise those who are.”
He rocked back and forth on his heels. “I shall miss her most of all,” he said. “To her, you must be extra good.”
I knew he meant Evelina because he flinched when her mosaic flashed before me.
“I would not abandon her,” he said, “my chosen one, if it were not necessary to save her.”
He reached for the lapels of his long length, double-breasted coat and turned up his collar.
“Laszlo Arros will not stop until I have joined him,” he said. “He will drain every last settler, and then you as he did with our last donor.”
“Béa?” The answer was on the tip of my tongue, though I could have said “my mother.”
“You know of whom I speak,” he said. “Gerenios suffers more greatly than you ever will, and so he understands the importance of bringing the last woman to the colony safely.”
I stood up from the stool and leaned on my drafting table. A collapse came over me and I put my weight on my hands to steady myself. The truth was like a rock hung about my neck, weighting me down and down.
“Take a breath,” he said. “Your future will be joyful, no doubt.”
“How can I alone remake an entire race?” I pushed my knuckles into the angled surface of the table. “I’m one man.”
“The first shall be last and the last shall be first.”
Heat rose to my chest, as I said, “Who is she?”
“Rest assured,” he said, “she will be more than you could ever hope.”
“Am I to meet the others soon,” I said.
“They are near,” he said. “This is for her.” He pointed to the sheets on my drafting table, and then pulled the earlier ones from his pocket. “And these,” he said. “I leave the design of the project to you. When and how you share my story with her.”
“Doesn’t she know all of this?”
He smiled and said, “When she led the troop of vampires to my rescue, they did not reach the facility, but found me in a hollowed out structure, sitting by a fire to warm the sleeping child in my arms.”
“But how did you escape the facility?”
“You were not paying close enough attention,” he said. “It is not about how I escaped as much as how I got inside in the first place. The mind is a many-layered organ with scapes and voids that often go unexplored, until necessary.”<
br />
I looked back through the sheets I had in front of me, but would not know what he meant until I read the pages again, and put them together in a narrative.
“Shall I give you one more piece,” he said. “You must wonder about the things I know, those that it seems I should not. I have shown you how I may manipulate the mind, and pull myself into another’s. But also I have shown you that I may bring another into mine, which is a more recent gift, one I developed after meeting Laszlo Arros.”
He sat on the window ledge for the final time, as dawn broke up the plum sky and scattered the clouds over the ridges of Esja.
“Recall I told Laszlo Arros I had not been to the East for centuries,” he said. “But that was not the truth. I had visited with Byron many years before the Red Death to see a scientist handpicked by him. While Byron went off to purchase samples of stem cells, I returned to see a man …”
South Korea, 2032
The geneticist held the specimen up to the light, insisting the markers were invisible to the naked eye.
“Put them under the scope,” I said.
“But you will not see the alter.” He stumbled over the language, his handle on Mandarin rudimentary. Neither Italian nor Korean would suit our meeting.
“I am not interested in seeing the change,” I said. “I want to know it is there.”
“How can you tell if it invisible?” He shuffled where he stood, leaning against the metal counter littered with petri dishes and slides.
I moved close to him and he cowered. He had not grown used to the gleam of hunger in my eye.
“Please,” he said. “I do my best. I slave for this. The alter is made, I swear.”
“Let me see.”
His hand shook as he put a new slide beneath the microscope and bowed, gesturing for me to take a look. I pulled the optical instrument toward me and bent over to gaze at the mutation the Fates had set in my path. As the geneticist said, there was nothing to see. The slice of frozen embryo looked as ordinary as the other five hundred before it, but I confirmed the change had succeeded when I took his pulse, as he confessed it had.
“The alter make a hematope, it heamatopoetic,” the geneticist said.
The Journal of Vincent Du Maurier Trilogy (Books 1, 2, 3) Page 65