With nothing else to do I went up to the National Cathedral. I hadn’t started believing in God all of a sudden but if there was a deity upstairs I figured that the cathedral would be the place to get in touch with it. If anything, I thought I might be able to get my mom some credit into heaven even if I didn’t stand a chance getting in.
The cathedral was even larger that I had imagined. It was at least twenty stories high and built out of big, grey blocks that would have made St. Peter proud. At first glance I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me because on the northeast corner one of the gargoyles was Darth Vader’s head, but there he was in all of his galactic splendor. I went over to the huge front doors of the church and looked way up to the steeple at the top. Even with my strength, I was pretty sure that I wouldn’t be able to jump to the first roof level that was more than ten stories up. I wanted to try so that I could pose like a superhero in a movie, but there was too much light on the building. I didn’t need the extra attention anyway.
One of the sisters from the abbey approached me. She looked to be in her mid-30s. Her light green eyes and well-defined cheekbones stood in sharp contrast to the black and white blandness of her habit.
“Do you think you could jump up there?” she asked me. I was still looking up but when she asked me that I turned my focus on her. My look caused her to flinched a little.
“I was thinking about it, and probably not,” I answered honestly. I was a little surprised that she knew what I was, but if the pastor knew how to kick me out of his church then a long-standing religion like Catholicism probably had my kind dialed in pretty well. I assumed that she knew more about my people than I did.
“No?” she said with a little surprise. “You must be fairly new then.” Then she smiled at me. “Would you like to come in?”
“Sure.” I wondered if she had some trick up her sleeve. I was concerned that something awful was going to happen to me when I entered the church, but if you can’t trust a nun then who can you trust.
“Wait here please.” She went inside and came out with another nun who was in her 60s or 70s.
“Hello,” said the older woman. She had a stern voice and looked like a mean grandma. “You aren’t here for mischief are you?”
“No ma’am.” To this day I don’t know why I called her ma’am. That was the first time I had ever called anyone ma’am.
She turned and led me inside with the younger nun walking behind me. If the church was designed to put the parishioners in awe of its size and therefore in awe of God, it worked on me. The front part of the church was at least as big as a football field and filled with rows and rows of dark stained wooden chairs. There were large flat screen TVs spaced from front to back so that no matter where you were you would be able to see the ceremony. On both sides of the entrance running the length of the church were big marble columns and stained glass. It disappointed me that I wouldn’t ever be able to see the sunlight shine through them.
I sat in the back row, flanked on both sides by my escorts.
“So what brings you to our church?” the elder nun asked.
“The same thing as everyone else, I guess, a crisis of faith.” I was surprised by my honesty for the second time.
“I didn’t know that people with your condition had faith as us mortals understand it,” said the younger nun earning herself a glare from the older nun.
“I’m still trying to figure it all out,” I said. “I’m pretty new at this.” Towards the front of the church there were some confessionals. Without thinking about my actions I focused on them and I heard someone say, “Forgive me father, for I have sinned. It has been six weeks since my last confession…” Then I felt a hand softly land on my hand. It was the older sister.
“Please respect the privacy of the people in the confessionals.” She said it sternly enough to let me know that she was serious while maintaining her grace.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to. I didn’t…” then my voice trailed off. The first part of the sentence was a lie and I didn’t see the need to keep going with it. “I’m here because my mom is going to die and there isn’t anything I can do about it. I’m immortal, she isn’t.”
The elder nun put her hand on the back of the chair in front of her and helped herself up. “Let’s walk a little.” She said already starting to walk towards the far wall.
I got up because I didn’t have a choice in the matter. The elder nun waited at the end of the pew and walked next to me while the younger one walked behind us.
“You must be very young for your people if your mother is alive,” She said looking at me out of the corner of her eye.
I nodded. She kept walking and then looked at me again.
“I’m here because everyone is going to die before me.” I said it louder than I had intended to.
“Yes, that must be a great burden for you to bear.” For a moment, I felt like she understood me. In a lot of ways, both of us were destined to lead solitary lives.
“Yeah, it is. But there is nothing I can do about it.”
“It sounds like you have part of your answer right there.” We walked for a little while longer and she led me to the front of the church and out the doors. “I regret having to say this, but you aren’t invited into the church any more. If you would like to return, we will let you in again, we can’t let you come and go as you please. I hope you understand.”
“I do and thank you.”
She smiled and nodded.
CHapter 15
I was sitting on my couch watching TV with the dog when my phone rang. I was tired of my phone ringing. Either it was bad news from my mom or people making me do shit. For someone who didn’t have a job and drank people’s blood I was more popular than I should have been.
I pressed talk and before I could say hello, I heard, “This is Simon. Please meet me at Café Park by Lincoln Park in 10 minutes.” Then he hung up. I remember thinking to myself that vampires never ask me if I want to meet them or at least how I’m doing. I put my clothes on as fast as I could. I was annoyed but wasn’t going to make Simon wait. I put on pair of shorts and a polo shirt with some sneakers, because flip-flops weren’t cut out for vampire fun.
The moon was so big that night that I howled at it under my breath. I was half a block from the restaurant when a black Lincoln Town Car rolled down its window. Simon looked out and told me to get in. I got in the back and all of a sudden I felt under dressed. Simon was dressed in a suit and so was the driver, a middle-aged looking white guy. Freaking vamps dressed up for everything.
“Good morning,” he said, even though it was about an hour after sunset. “This is Roger.” He nodded at the driver. “We have a few things to discuss with you.”
The automatic doors locked and Roger looked at me in the rearview mirror. I didn’t doubt for a moment that I could be out the window and down the street in less than a second or two at the most, but I was also sure that both of them were much faster than I was so escaping would be impossible. I stayed put.
The windows were so tinted that it was hard for me to see out them even with my vamptastic eyesight.
“Where are we going?” I said.
“There are some people that would like to talk to you. Don’t worry, you aren’t in any sort of trouble.”
“Okay,” I sighed. I didn’t bother asking any more questions because the sound of his voice told me that I wasn’t going to get anywhere. I understood the need for secrecy against mortals but I was one of them. They still didn’t consider me as an equal.
We drove northwest, between Union Station and the capitol. Even though Simon told me that I wasn’t in trouble, I wondered if it would be the last time that I would see either of them. We stopped in Chinatown and parked in an alley. Simon got out. When I pulled the handle to get out the door was locked by the child safety feature.
“We’re staying,” Roger told me flatly.
“Yeah, I guess we are,” I said.
Then I saw Charlie come out of one
of the doors down the side street. She saw Simon coming for her and turned to run. He was too fast for her and slammed her against the ground. While she was recovering he pulled on the head of his cane and a silver chain came out of it. He held on to the top of the cane and the bottom wooden part of the cane while he hogtied her hands and feet with the chain. She tried to squirm, but each time the chain would cut her skin she would moan in pain. Her fangs were out and she was snapping at Simon but he didn’t care. Simon reached into his pocket and put on a set of leather gloves. He picked up Charlie by the chain and started walking to the car. I was sitting near the side he was approaching and I scooted over but it was for nothing. Roger popped the trunk and Simon unceremoniously dropped her in and shut it. Simon got back in the car.
“I wish it didn’t come to this,” he said to no one in particular.
We pulled out and headed northwest on Massachusetts Avenue. A few minutes into the drive, Simon handed me a soft bag that was covered in black silk on the inside and outside.
“Please put the bag on your head,” he said. “I know it is a little undignified but it is necessary.”
I tried to pay attention to where were going from under the depths of my hood by counting the lefts and the rights but after a few of each I lost track and gave up.
They pulled me out of the car and Roger (I think) guided me down a long chilly hallway. I wasn’t around when they pulled Charlie out of the trunk but it would have been fun to watch. At the beginning of the ride she yelled at us to let her out but after a few minutes she stopped.
When they took the bag off of my head I was in a big circular room with marble columns around the wall. The ceiling was at least 40 feet high and it was painted like St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome if Michelangelo had been using drugs and reading too much Bram Stoker. Part of the painting was a mural of the capitol at night with vampires sitting on the roof and lurking in the background. Carved into the floor in a circle that was smaller circle that said, “In Dubio Pro Reo”. Inside the circle was a map of DC, Virginia, and Maryland. I couldn’t remember my Latin from college very well but I think the saying on the floor meant “In Doubt For” the something. I didn’t know the last word.
The room was bright and reflective because of the shine off of the white marble. The marble was the same color as the bottom ring of the Washington Monument. It took me a minute to get my bearings because it was the first time I had been in a room so bright since I had turned.
When I was able to focus, I saw three vampires sitting at a marble judge’s bench. They looked at me with some curiosity. Simon pointed me to a single chair that had a table in front of it and told me to sit down so I sat. The room was dead quiet.
“What is your name?” said a lady in an all black robe with her hood up. She had black hair and blue eyes and was strikingly beautiful in the same way that a peacock is with all of its feathers up. She was sitting in the middle with a man to her left and another female to her right. All of them were wearing black robes but she was the only one with the hood up.
“Steve. Um, Stephen. Brooks. Stephen Brooks,” I said. I wanted to mock myself and tell them that my mom drank a lot when she was pregnant but they didn’t seem like the jokey types. Add to the fact that I was scared shitless and, well, witless.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m sure.”
“Do you know why you are here?”
“No ma’am. Simon didn’t say anything about where I was going or why.”
“Did you ask?”
“I don’t remember. I don’t think so. I figured that I would find out soon enough.”
“You are here because we want to talk to you about Chantal-Genevieve Leglise. I think you know her as Charlie.”
I nodded.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said a little too loudly. “Okay.” I hated showing how nervous they made me but I couldn’t control myself.
“Please bring her out.” And there was Charlie. A man in a black robe pushed her out to face the judges on a rolling cart. She was hanging by the silver handcuffs on her wrist and ankles. There was a chain connected to the bar above her head that looped down to a silver collar around her neck. She was in shorts and a tee shirt and wasn’t moving at all. She had been gorgeous before and now she looked disheveled and wild. There were burn marks around the places where the silver had been touching her.
“Did you know her before she turned you?”
“No. I mean I knew her for a few hours I guess. I don’t really remember meeting her or anything. I was pretty drunk.”
“Please tell us what you can remember.”
So I did, with as much detail as I could remember. They didn’t stop me for clarification or ask me any questions. I had a hard time concentrating because that was the first time that I had three sets of vampire eyes staring at me at the same time. The intensity of them looking at me was a physical weight that I felt on my forehead and in my eyes. At one point I had to shut my eyes so that I could concentrate. I’m glad that I didn’t have anything to lie about because I have no doubt that they would have known. Not because they have super mind reading power but because they read every facial twitch and heard my heartbeat. The three of them had been around long enough to know when someone was lying. They didn’t twitch a muscle the whole time. When I was finished speaking, the two people flanking the main judge handed her pieces of paper. They looked at each other for a few moments, communicating with their eyes.
“Tell us about Leanne Washington.”
“It was my first time feeding,” I said. “I’m sorry if I caused trouble. I kept drinking as she was dying and I think that is why I got sick but maybe not. I don’t know why. I honestly don’t remember much about what happened. My body took over. I’ve learned to be more discreet now.”
“How have you been exercising your new-found discretion?”
“I’ve been going to this hospice every once in a while to feed on some people who are dying because I figured that if they are dying, no one will notice when they die because that is what they are supposed to do.”
The other lady judge smiled a little bit with one side of her mouth and then caught herself and stopped.
“Did you ask Charlie to change you?” The judge burrowed down even deeper with her stare when she asked me.
“No. I woke up and I was changed.”
“Did you meet anyone else that she had changed?”
“Yeah, some guy but I don’t remember his name.”
“Thank you,” she said. “That is all.” I got up and Simon directed me to a solitary chair on the side of the room.
Then she said, “Please put forward the accused.”
For the first time I was able to get a good look at Charlie without the distracting questions. Charlie was rolled out, chained and inside of a silver cage that glistened in the bright lights of the room. She looked fearless. Our eyes met for only a moment and then I looked away.
“Do you wish to be called Charlie or Chantal?” The head judge asked her.
“Charlie is fine,” she said. “We both know that it isn’t going to matter soon.”
“Okay,” said the judge and then she sighed. “Let’s proceed then. We warned you several times that it is illegal by our district code to create another without our consent but you continued to do it anyway. What do you have to say for yourself?”
“Nothing really,” Charlie responded. She sounded small inside the cage. I wanted to free her and promise them that she wouldn’t ever do it again. “I was bored. Living forever with the same people isn’t living at all. Once you have heard someone’s opinions and personal history over the past 100 years, they don’t matter any more. The mortals I created were more fun to talk to than all of you combined. I wanted to add someone new to my life. I like meeting people who can give me another perspective that I haven’t thought of before. Why would I want to keep my life static? This life we live is boring. It is no wonder that old people don’t mind dying. After a while it is
time to call it the end. I’m sick of this life.”
“Is that why you continued to make others? So that you could have fun with them, hunt and then kill them?”
“No. Some of them were too big of risks. They were killing people on sidewalks or they would go insane so I had to put them down like a rabid dog. I have to admit, putting them down was fun. Hunting humans is so easy but hunting vampires, even new ones, gave me a thrill.”
“And lastly, how do you respond to the accusation that you gave mortals information about Stephen’s domicile?”
I sat up straight. I had wondered how those guys had found out where I lived.
“Yeah,” Charlie said, “That was me.” For the first time, she actually looked like she felt bad about her actions. She looked at me and then looked away.
“No one poses a bigger risk to our way of life than you do, and for that you must be punished.” The judge slid a piece of paper to the other woman judge and then to the male who then handed it back to her. She looked down at the paper. “By vinculum juris, when the sun rises tomorrow morning, you shall be there to greet it.” Then the judges got up and left through a door to the right of room.
The guy, who had wheeled Charlie out, came back out and took her away. She didn’t even flinch. I wanted to tell her that I forgave her and that I knew what it was like to be lonely but I don’t think it would’ve mattered.
I started to get up and Simon told me to stay seated. Then he told me that I was made illegally and that the judges had left the room to decide my fate. I felt sick to my stomach.
They came back a few minutes later and told me that I was allowed to remain in the district as long as I abided by their rules. I was given one chance. Then they left the room.
I got back in the car with Roger and Simon. I wanted to ask about Charlie’s fate but I knew that once I learned, I wouldn’t be able to unlearn it, so I kept my mouth shut.
After Sunset Page 11