Julien, however, just stared at Rene, who said, “Your hypnotic expertise won’t work with me. You see, not only am I familiar with the latest techniques, but I’m consciously unreceptive to your powers of suggestion.”
Julien smiled a little smile that Carol did not perceive as pleasant. “I suggest we invite Ms. Collins in, as one does when a vampire wishes to enter a private dwelling.”
Rene laughed, but Carol felt really uncomfortable.
They sat in the living room, all of them forming a semicircle around Rene, who was directed to a chair in the middle of the room facing them; the doorway was behind them. No means of escape, Carol thought. Rene has no idea what she’d gotten herself into. Carol suddenly worried about what would happen when André returned.
Morianna joined them and stood across the room from Julien. The two elders interrogated Rene.
Rene turned to her left. “I don’t believe I know you.”
Morianna didn’t introduce herself. “Please disclose your hidden agendas.”
“Hardly hidden. My main purpose is to ensure that Carol has a future.”
“And that you yourself have one,” Julien said.
Rene smiled. “The future is important to all of us, isn’t it, Julien.”
“Why are you here?” Morianna demanded. Her face was composed, as if she already knew the answer to that question. Carol noticed the same look on Julien’s face.
“To find out what’s happening with Carol.” Rene turned to her. “Well, what is happening?”
Carol glanced around the room, not knowing how much she was at liberty to say, afraid to tell her anything, afraid not to tell her. No one gave any indication as to what Carol should do.
She decided it didn’t matter at this point; they weren’t about to let Rene leave, she was convinced of that.
“I’m taking part in a ritual this weekend. André is going to transform me. I’ll be like them.” If I’m not dead, she thought.
“I see.” Rene paused. “Is this something you’ve agreed to, Carol, or is it being foisted upon you?”
“I... I’ve agreed to it, yes.”
“Carol, you don’t seem very sure of your decision.”
“I want to be with my son. And with André.”
“After all he’s done to you? You sound like a typical battered wife fighting her rescuer to return to her batterer. Have they brain-washed you into thinking you’re safe here?”
Carol felt confused. Having Rene here complicated things, reopened issues she’d made peace about, made her question things that had already been decided.
“Rene, I think you should go home. This is not a good time.”
“I won’t leave you in the lurch, Carol. Someone has to protect you from falling into their clutches again. I’m staying.”
“Not if I can help it,” Gerlinde said.
“Unfortunately for you, you can’t help it. I’ve left two audio cassettes with a friend. By now she’s handed one over to a friend of hers, a person even I don’t know the identity of. You see,” she turned back to Julien, “even if your hypnosis had worked, there’s no way you can forestall what will come to pass.”
Carol felt horrified. “And just what will come to pass, Rene?”
“If I fail to phone my friend Monday morning, and every morning after that until I arrive home safely, that tape will be sent to the media. The second one as well.”
“Rene, for God’s sake, why are you doing this?”
“To protect you, Carol.”
“To protect yourself,” Julien said. “You do have an ulterior motive, do you not Ms. Curtis?”
“A negative way of framing it.”
“Ms. Curtis would like to join our ranks.”
“What?” Carol yelled.
“What is this, national Give-yourself-to-a-vampire-for-lunch week?” Gerlinde said.
Carol stared at Rene, dumbfounded. She watched her therapist open her purse, remove a silver flask and unscrew the top. She raised the flask, toast style, and drank long and deep from it, then returned it to her bag. “Julien, you’re better than I thought. With my training added to the powers acquired when I’ve changed—”
“Nobody here will change you,” Karl said flatly.
“Then you will all be hounded. There are sketches Carol did over the years, many very well executed, including a likeness of you, Karl. Close enough that each of you can be identified. Although I haven’t met you,” she said to Morianna. “And I dubbed Carol’s more descriptive statements onto the tapes, as well as information on the residences in Bordeaux and Austria, the number of your corporation and so on. I’m highly respected in my field—my reputation should go a long way towards legitimizing the information although, of course, the media will run with it anyway.”
“Rene, this is a breach of trust,” Carol said. “I told you those things in strict confidentiality.”
“And normally they would have been kept confidential, but the circumstances here are not normal. Tell me, Carol, if you change your mind, will they let you go?”
Carol hesitated. She looked around the room. “I... I’m not sure.”
“I fail to see how this concerns you,” Chloe told Rene.
“Of course you don’t. You’re concerned only about what’s best for you and your group. I doubt anyone here has Carol’s interests at heart, except me.”
“You have your own interests at heart,” Julien said harshly.
“And Carol’s. And surely Carol deserves someone to be present who cares about her. For that reason alone I will stay for the ritual.”
“Out of the question,” Karl said.
“Rene, please, it’s not what you’re thinking. Things have, I don’t know, evolved. I’m ready to undergo this; I don’t have much to lose. And I want to. I don’t know what you hope to get out of thinking they’ll change you, but—”
“Alone? You want to go through what amounts to having the blood drained from your body alone? With only these... beings present? Wouldn’t you prefer that I be here with you? Someone you know and trust? A human being?”
Instantly Carol knew Rene had touched on some truth. “She is like a mother to me,” she tried to tell the others. “My own mother wasn’t there, when I was going through all this, Rene was. I would like her to be here.”
Suddenly the door opened and André came into the room. His eyes narrowed. He glared first at Rene then Carol and when he looked at Carol she saw ‘betrayal’ scrawled across his face.
“You are, of course, the child’s father,” Rene said coldly. “You’ve been described to me in great detail. You and your violent acts.”
Carol jumped to her feet. This roller coaster ride, fighting to win André’s trust, then seeing it crushed, over and over again, and now the complication of Rene and her multiple agendas, all of it was too much. “I can’t take this!” she shouted. To Rene, “I’m going through with the ritual. It has nothing to do with you. It’s my life, or my death. If you want to stay fine, if you want to leave fine. If you want to change that has nothing to do with me either. I just want to be left alone. All of you, leave me alone!”
She ran out of the room and upstairs to Gerlinde’s studio where she sat on the floor and cried, unable to stop herself. Her head throbbed from the stress. The tears released some tension but at the same time let her realize the extent of her terror. There was no way to know what would happen, no way to control any of it. Her life hung on a thin thread of trust between herself and André, a thread that kept breaking. Could she keep retying it endlessly? What if it snapped at a crucial moment? What if she snapped?
She was on overload, and the ritual hadn’t even begun yet.
And now André’s distrust had returned, making everything harder than it already was. Maybe Rene was right. Maybe she had talked herself into wanting this because she knew she had no choice. She was petrified by the thought of being André’s third failure.
Suddenly she felt a hand on her shoulder and jumped. Jeanette crouc
hed in front of her. “They’re ready.”
“I’m not. I don’t know if I ever will be.”
Jeanette sat on the floor next to Carol. Her pale skin was impossibly smooth, like cool, flawless alabaster. Her eyes, pale green oceans, glinted in the light. Her hair, so blonde it was almost white, glowed. Carol wondered what Jeanette had looked like before, and if she herself would appear as stunning to mortals. If she would be as mesmerizing. Mesmerizing enough that they would give her their blood!
“You know,” Jeanette said, “I’m not as old as some of the others here—if I were still mortal I’d be close to seventy now. That’s only one lifetime, but I think I’ve learned a few things, one of which is that no one’s ever ready for life.”
“Or death,” Carol said.
“Mortal or immortal, most of us aren’t truly prepared for the really big moments. They’re like pearls on a necklace we string as time passes. No one knows how many pearls there will be, how long the chain will become with precious experiences. We resist them with as much energy as we crave them. I know you feel out of control. And in some ways you are. But Carol, like everyone else here who’s gone through this, you just have to do the best you can. That’s all you can do. At some point you just have to trust that it will be enough.”
Carol looked into Jeanette’s eyes. There was a promise there, a prescription for the pain, something that would take it away forever. She felt a longing to just accept that palliative.
But imbedded within those green pools lay a familiarity that held its own comfort. “I don’t know why, but I’ve always felt as if you, more than all the others, knew what I was experiencing.”
“I’ve been in a similar position, but I was alone. You have friends.” Jeanette took her hand.
Carol shook her head. “Friends to bury me.”
“We have to go.”
The vampiress led her down to the second floor where they joined Gerlinde who was waiting in the hallway. The three entered the guest room. Chloe was in the adjoining bathroom preparing a bath. Morianna sat near the window watching the darkening sky. Rene perched on the bed—they were letting her stay.
“What can I do to help?” Rene asked.
“Nothing,” Jeanette said.
Gerlinde and Jeanette undressed Carol and led her to the tub. “What’s that?” Carol asked, wondering what Chloe was putting in the water.
“Rosewater and rose petals.” She sprinkled another handful of white petals across the surface. The bath was as cleverly disguised with roses as a pond in autumn is with layers of fallen leaves. She poured in the contents of a bottle of clear liquid.
“Why roses?”
“They’re a sacred flower and have traditionally been the symbol of love, joy, elegance, pleasure and also of the seventh son.” Chloe looked up at Carol. The older woman’s hair was damp from the heat of the water, strands sticking to her scalp.
“André is a seventh son, and so was his father,” she added.
Jeanette laughed from the doorway. “Well, that’s interesting. Finally, a seventh son of a seventh son who’s a vampire. I guess the legends have to be right sometimes.”
The women helped Carol into the tub. The water was hot but she managed finally to sit in it. Soon the steam made her skin pucker and left her drowsy.
“The bath is a symbolic cleansing,” Chloe said, pouring pitchers of water over Carol’s head, shoulders and neck. “It’s a way of saying you’re washing away the old life in order to embrace the new.”
Carol leaned her head back against the tiles and closed her eyes. She inhaled the rosy fragrance deeply. The lovely scent spoke of beauty and tenderness, reminding her of all the nicest moments of her life: A garden at her grandmother’s when she was little, her high school prom, her wedding, a rose André had given her one night, Michael’s birth. Suddenly worried thoughts cramped her peaceful, relaxed state. She opened her eyes and saw Rene through the doorway watching Morianna and, in the bathroom, Gerlinde sitting on the lid of the toilet seat.
“Gerlinde, you didn’t do any of this, did you?”
“Nope. But with Karl and me it’s different.”
“Yeah, I know. You both wanted it. Well, I’m not sure, but I think I might want this... change. I don’t know.”
Gerlinde laughed, her chocolate eyes shining. “Kiddo, that is the least definite thing I’ve ever heard you say.”
Carol sighed and closed her eyes again. “Well, it’s not easy, giving up my blood. Especially when André’s not even sure he won’t bite my entire head off.”
A voice that seemed to swirl through her soul spoke. “It is never a male’s weakness but a female’s strength which determines the outcome in any liaison between the genders.”
Carol opened her eyes. Morianna stood in the doorway, wearing white, black and grey again, yet this was an entirely different outfit. Layered, the style looked like a Medieval costume. Her eyes sparkled their violet color and a soft smile played on her lips which Carol now realized were very full. She looked like someone caught in a time-warp. Like a Shakespearean actor. Or Eleanor of Aquitaine in The Lion in Winter.
“I’m not sure what that means,” Carol told the ancient vampiress. Gerlinde, you may attend from in here.”
Gerlinde followed Morianna out, closing the door, leaving Carol alone with her thoughts and the steamy rosewater bath.
She felt very, very unsure. If it wasn’t for Michael, and also the fact that, she had to face it, her health was seriously declining, and too, because as Gerlinde had said, they weren’t giving her a choice anymore, Carol knew she wouldn’t go through with this.
Rene might be gung ho, but Carol found the idea of becoming a killer, dependent on human sacrifices, almost beyond her realm of understanding. Of course, most of them didn’t kill. But André had. And close as she now felt to him, she also did not trust him to take her blood without destroying her. She cared for him. In a way she loved him. No, she had to admit it, she did love him now, despite what he was. She was at a complete loss to explain to herself how her feelings could have shifted so dramatically and so frequently. But she did love him. And she believed that he loved her. But she wasn’t sure he could control himself. She wasn’t convinced she would survive this.
André had told her details about the other times. Both women pleaded for their lives; that seemed to be the weak link.
And André’s father had killed his mother in the same way and apparently for the same reason; her pleas had triggered his rage. But could it be that simple? Carol knew she wouldn’t beg for her life no matter what happened, at least she hoped she wouldn’t.
But there had to be more to it. What was Morianna trying to tell her? Or was she saying anything except that Carol had to be strong, persevere, all the things they were always telling her?
How come all of this has to come from me? she suddenly thought, feeling petulant. Why can’t André do more? Maybe he’s already doing the lion’s share by trying to master this urge that seems to send him so out of control. The worse thing for Carol was knowing that Michael was going to be present. And on his birthday. How would the outcome of this ritual affect his own decision? If André kills me, she thought, in front of our son... The image that flashed before her made the idea too gruesome to pursue.
Chloe, Gerlinde and Jeanette appeared in the doorway holding large towels. Carol laughed. “You look like the Three Graces.”
She lifted herself out of the tub and was immediately surrounded with soft white terry cloth. They patted her skin, soaking up the sweet-scented drops until she was completely dry. Gerlinde led her, naked, to the vanity and toweled her hair dry. Sitting on the floor beside Morianna’s feet, her sunny blonde hair being stroked by the older woman, was Jeanette’s daughter. Rene watched everything, unusually quiet, concentrating intensely. Carol wondered if she’d been hypnotized.
“Susan and Claude were in Vancouver for a few days and just returned,” Jeanette explained. “Julien and I thought they should be here. And the
y want to be.”
Like the other night, Jeanette fixed her nails and Gerlinde worked on her hair. But Gerlinde didn’t cut this time.
Instead she massaged a white cream into the dark strands, making them shine, then wove chains of rose petals in and out, letting them stick to the thick cream. They left her face free of makeup.
While they worked, Morianna spoke.
“Tonight the moon is waxing. Tomorrow Luna will be full, complete. Sunday she will wane. The moon represents the stages of a woman’s life, the stages you will pass through as you transform. Tonight Kore, the young girl, open to the world, pure in body and spirit like Persephone in her innocence and beauty, blissfully picking flowers in a meadow. Or Artemis, the virgin huntress.”
Carol watched Morianna in the mirror stroking Susan’s hair. The young girl had a look of absolute trust on her face, a look of total innocence.
“Persephone. You will be Queen of the Shades, Goddess of the Underworld, a Funerary Princess. She who takes the soul through the dark spaces of non-being. The one who has experienced life, pain, sadness, joy, madness and death. The wise old woman. The witch. It is her wisdom you require in order to transform.”
Carol stared at Morianna in the mirror, enraptured by what was being said. Chloe, Gerlinde and Jeanette rubbed the same white oily cream into every pore. The cream smelled strongly of roses. The soft fingers of six hands moved in slow circles clockwise and Carol felt sensual and drowsy again as she listened to Morianna.
“You will fast, eating nothing tonight but for the six pomegranate seeds which symbolize the commitment to the dark that the virgin undertakes. That is all for three days, other than the blood.”
The mention of drinking blood woke Carol right up. Apparently it had a similar effect on Rene. “Are you telling her she’ll be drinking blood? Has it been sterilized? It’s not human, is it?”
Morianna ignored her. “There will be nine present, nine gifts, nine to transfer the life. From each you must receive what is offered. And to each you must return something of yourself. Nine is the number of completion, the final stage before the end, the one that decrees that change is now inevitable.”
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