Another boy joined him at the window. He also followed the girl’s progress up the sidewalk.
“Is that her?” the second boy asked.
“I think so.”
“What do you think?”
“She’s pretty.” Silence. “I can’t read her.”
The second boy looked at him. “So she’s trained?”
“No, it doesn’t feel like it. We’ll know more when we make contact.”
“It should be soon, we don’t know how long we have,” the second boy reminded him as he walked away.
“You betcha,” the boy at the window murmured.
***
Rosalie let herself in, and closed the door. She then held the curtain on the front window a little to the side in order to get a better look at the house. There were no signs of life, at least in front. Rosalie walked into the study where her mother could usually be found at this time of the day.
The woman who sat behind the desktop computer was enough like Rosalie to be startling. They could easily have been mistaken for twins if Moira Morningside wore her hair loose instead of in a careless bun and did not have a fuller figure. Her skin was the same warm tone, smooth and unlined but her eyes were warmer and more inclined to twinkle than her solemn daughter. She looked up from her LED screen and flashed Rosalie a smile.
“Hello, darling. How was school today?”
Rosalie came into the room, and sat on the easy chair to the side of the small office table her mother used. Moira worked as an online copyeditor and seldom left the house except to do groceries and the occasional movie. “Okay. Have you seen the new neighbors?” Rosalie asked.
Moira’s attention had already returned to her screen. “Uhm.”
“Are they okay?”
“I’m not sure, honey. Why?” Moira asked a little more sharply. Rosalie shrugged.
“Nothing, really. Just a feeling.”
“A bad feeling?” Moira prodded.
Rosalie hesitated. Did she have a bad feeling? Not really. But there was something….
“I’m not sure yet,” Rosalie finally said. “Better keep an eye on them, mom.”
Moira regarded her daughter for a long moment. Her parents take it very seriously when she expresses concern. Or feelings.
“Are you okay?” Moira asked, suddenly convinced that Rosalie was upset. Teenagers, she knew, could be moody, but Rosalie was not a typical teenager. Moira had come to believe that her daughter had been born old, and she felt sad about that. Not that she wanted to deal with temper tantrums and wildness, but Rosalie was more apt to mother her than the other way around. Much more laid back than either her daughter or husband, Moira didn’t really mind but felt sorry for Rosalie for what she was missing. It does work out for the best, overall, but still….
Rosalie looked surprised, and a little annoyed. She didn’t like being so easily read. “Yes, I’m fine,” she answered a little stiffly, getting up and walking towards the door.
“There’s some chicken in the fridge if you want something,” Moira called at the retreating back. Rosalie raised a hand in acknowledgement but went to the stairs to go to her room instead of going straight through to the kitchen. She wasn’t really feeling hungry.
Rosalie sat at her desk , doing nothing for a long while. She was thinking about the day she found out she was a vampire.
She had been 7 years old, and had happily set off for her first day in the big school. She had come home visibly upset that afternoon, and Moira had asked what the matter was.
“How come I can’t have a sandwich and apple for school?” Rosalie had demanded.
Moira had prepared her a large lunch box full of chicken breast, neatly sliced into bite-sized pieces. She had not thought about the possible consequences of such a preparation, and mentally slapped her forehead.
“I’m sorry, honey, but you can’t eat stuff like bread or apples,” she had said gently, wishing her husband Frank was at home to do the explaining. “It’ll make you sick.”
“But why?” Rosalie had wailed. “The other kids said I was weird because I was eating raw meat!”
So Moira had told her that she was a little different from her friends. She explained that there were two kinds of people: those who had stayed in one place, grown plants to eat and cooked their meat, and those who were nomads who had eaten their meat raw. Moira said that they came from the second type of people.
“Our bodies just work differently from them,” Moira said. “That’s also the reason we’re just a bit stronger and faster than they are.”
“Like lions?” Rosalie asked, forgetting her tears. Moira nodded her head. “Yes, that’s right.” She hesitated, then said with some care, “But you shouldn’t tell anyone about it.”
“Why, Mommy?” the little girl asked, wide-eyed.
“They might not understand.”
It was Frank who had later told her that people were afraid of those who were different from them. Back in the day, people like them were hunted down and killed.
“People were superstitious back then, believing that evil spirits and monsters lurked in the dark,” Frank had explained in a mild tone. “Not everybody believed the stories, but enough so that many of the strong people had to leave the town people. They learned to hide what they were and try to act like other people so they could stay in the towns.”
“But some people continued to believe the tales and fear us. They even had a name for them. Vampires.”
Rosalie’s eyes had grown round at this. She’s heard of vampires from television and stories told at the playground. “But don’t vampires have long teeth and suck the blood of people?”
Moira had smiled contemptuously, “That’s what people say. We did use to drink the blood of a freshly-killed animal because it’s full of good things, and maybe someone suggested it was human blood. And because we didn’t ever seem to get sick, they said it was because we were already dead.”
Rosalie had found such ideas unfathomable, but other concerns clamored for expression. In her seven-year-old mind, the inference was clear but hard to believe. She was a vampire? Her father had taken the words from her mouth.
“As far as most people are concerned, we are vampires. Of course, we don’t kill humans to drink their blood, and we don’t make other vampires by biting them. We do that the old-fashioned way,” he had grinned a little.
“Do we live forever?” Rosalie had asked.
“Oh, no. Back in the day, when people were dying off at 35 years old or so, we lived to about 100. At that time, people thought we never die. Now, of course, it’s not such a big deal. Ordinary people live to be about 80 or so because now there are medicines and hospitals and doctors. We don’t really need those, and we pretty much still live to about a hundred or so,” Frank had explained.
“But even now, the old beliefs continue, and that’s fine as long as they don’t really believe we exist outside books and movies. We have to be careful about too many people knowing about us, or where we came from,” Moira had said.
“But…” Rosalie had struggled to put her thoughts into words. She had been thinking about how nice the parents of her friends were, and about Simone, who was her best friend. “Is it so bad if we’re a little different? Why can’t we just tell them? We don’t bite people.”
Frank had looked helplessly at Moira. “It’s hard to explain, darling. There are still some people who think we shouldn’t be around other people,” she said. “Because we could be dangerous.” She seemed about to say more, then decided against it. She smiled comfortingly at Rosalie, and left it at that.
It had altered Rosalie’s perception of the world, and little by little she learned to build walls around herself. She became more introspective, although she remained outwardly friendly. She felt that there was chasm between her and other people that she couldn’t cross, and wondered if she would ever feel that she belonged again.
She knew her father, an insurance salesman, had buddies with whom he played poker and went bowling with
. Her mother swapped recipes with other mothers in the playground and babysat for some of them at times. She realized that her parents did lead normal lives, at least on the surface. She could, too…on the surface.
She shook her head, as if she could shake off the burdensome thought, and turned on her laptop to begin working on her English assignment.
About half an hour into her book report, she became vaguely aware of a low humming sound. She noted it without really paying attention, thinking it was due to some mysterious inner workings of her laptop.
“Rosalie.”
Her head snapped up at her name. It was no louder than whisper, but it seemed to be coming from inside her head. It wasn’t repeated, but she was now definitely on the alert.
Her room was on the second floor, facing the street, and she had a clear view of all the houses down the length of it. She saw a figure standing at the end of the driveway of one of the houses, about 50 meters away.
It was boy, roughly her age. He was tall and slim, dressed in a white collarless shirt and jeans. He was wearing a baseball cap which hid his hair and the upper part of his face, but he was clearly looking straight at her.
Rosalie didn’t know how long she stared at the boy, but it seemed a long time to her. It was in fact just a few seconds. The contact was broken when someone called out to the boy, who turned his head in a reluctant way. Rosalie clearly heard the calling voice; it was male, and older, probably his father.
“Justin,” was all the man said, and the next instant, the boy was gone.
It’s the new people, Rosalie thought, with some dismay. She thought about the slight feelings of alarm she had felt when she passed by the house, and hoped it didn’t mean trouble. She hoped Justin wasn’t going to be trouble.
Rosalie mentioned the encounter to her parents as they sat down to dinner. She used her knife and fork to slice the meat off the bone, but she could just as easily rip it off with her teeth. Lifelong training to act normal was hard to break.
Moira gave her a thoughtful glance. “What do you think, Rosalie? Should we be worried?” They had talked about how there were people who made it their business to find vampires, who called themselves “vampire hunters.” Which was funny since they only hunting they really did nowadays was to search the databases for anomalous records such as a 50-year-old man with just 5 years of social security or tax payments.
When they did find something like that, they tracked that person down and tried to kill them. “Tried” was a good word as most “vampires” often saw them before they saw their target and melted into the woodwork. But they could be annoying, because it entailed a change of identity and moving to a new location. On some occasions, the unfortunate target just happened to be a recent migrant and was not a vampire at all.
Genuine identifications happened rarely, as many of the strong people descendants had established bona fide identities stretching back 50 years or more, such as Rosalie’s family. But it has happened, usually when a long-established family was revealed to be of vampire origins through their own carelessness or bad luck and had to abandon their original identities.
Rosalie shrugged, chewing thoughtfully. “There was this low hum, and I think it was coming from him. It was weird, but it seemed like he was calling to me.”
Frank put down his own knife and fork, wiping off some of the juice that clung to his lips. “What did he look like?”
“The sun was behind him, so he wasn’t more than a shadow,” Rosalie explained. “He was tall, though, about 6 feet or so.”
“How about the father?”
Rosalie shook her head. “Never saw him, just heard him calling. May not be the father, maybe an older brother.”
“Think they’re part of the coven?” Moira asked Frank, and Rosalie made a grimace.
“Coven? Seriously?”
Moira laughed, blushing slightly. “They come up with the most charming terms, why make up new ones? There’s a certain panache to it, don’t you think?”
“Do they have headquarters in dark caverns lighted by torches?” Rosalie asked sarcastically.
“Don’t forget the hooded cowls,” Moira smirked, eyes crinkling engagingly.
“No headquarters, no caverns,” Frank said mock seriously. “The elders meet once a year in a Holiday Inn to catch up on news, exchange recipes, that sort of thing.”
Rosalie rolled her eyes at this, but couldn’t suppress a grin.
“Seriously,” Frank said. “We don’t all go, of course, your great-grandparents fill us in. Last year it was a Tupperware convention. If you find out their names, I’ll give them a ring and ask.”
“Don’t tell me they have a roster?” Rosalie asked, aghast, thinking what a bummer that would be if such a list fell into the wrong hands. Frank looked at her pityingly.
“Of course not. We all have eidetic and echoic memories, we only have to see or hear a name once to remember them. No need for lists.”
Moira sighed as she gathered up the plates. “I guess it’s time for the fluttery, nosy neighbor routine with a plate of homemade cookies.” She tipped her daughter a wink. She couldn’t bake a thing, of course, but Moira knew a great little bakery that made artlessly crooked cookies.
Perfect.
When she was twelve, Rosalie began to feel an interest in boys. She asked her mom if vampires married the other kind of people.
“Well,’ Moira hesitated, choosing the words she would say to this solemn 12-year-old. “There’s nothing wrong with it, but it’s hard. For one thing, you’ll have to tell what you are, and very few people react well to something like that. Unless you’re very sure he won’t betray you, it’s a risk.”
Rosalie saw the force of the argument, and nixed the idea of any future boy-girl relationships. It was a depressing thought.
Chapter Four – Justin
Halfway through English class the next day, the door opened, and the boy who had stood on her street the previous night entered and handed a slip of paper to Mr. McCarthy. Mr. McCarthy glanced at it briefly then gave the boy a smiling nod. He turned to the class. The boy glanced briefly at Rosalie, who stared back at him unblinkingly.
“We have a new addition to our class. Please tell us a little about yourself, Mr. Brannigan.”
“My name is Justin Brannigan. I just moved here with my dad and older brother. My dad is a carpenter and works at the new building project downtown,” he nodded with finality, and glanced at Mr. McCarthy.
Mr. McCarthy nodded at an empty place near the back of the room about two rows behind Rosalie. Justin gave her another glance as he passed her seat, but Rosalie was looking down at her book. Nevertheless, she felt the weight of the glance and felt a twinge of alarm at her own sudden need to meet his eyes. She resisted but spent the rest of the period ignoring an impulse to look behind her. A quick look at Ben, who was right next to her but he seemed oblivious to the undercurrents between Rosalie and the newcomer.
When English period was over, Rosalie took her time gathering up her things, certain that Justin would take the opportunity to speak to her. Ben had gone ahead with a couple of guys who were in his next period with him. But when she looked around, Justin was gone.
It was as she was walking home that day that he caught up with her.
“Hi,” he said as he settled his backpack more securely on one shoulder. Rosalie looked up at him but said nothing. Her heart was racing, and she had an uncomfortable feeling from his small smile that he could hear it.
“I wanted to get you alone.”
“Why?” she asked, and he gave her an amused glance.
“Don’t you know?” he asked and then added with emphasis, “Rosalie.”
She looked at him more fully. “No,” she said, looking away. She was very conscious of a scent that was emanating from him. It wasn’t aftershave or cologne; it was much more subtle and human. It seemed to tug at her being with a light but persistent force, making her thrill with response. She quelled it grimly.
He gave
a laugh, but said nothing else. After a while, Rosalie risked another glance, and at the same moment he turned to her and she was looking fully into eyes as dark as her own.
Images filled her head, confusing, blurred and somewhat frightening. It had the suggestion of flight, but there was no sense of panic. It was purposeful and deliberate. She clearly saw feet shod in black rubber shoes running on pavement, the perspective that of the runner watching its own feet from above. Then the scene swirled to show streetlights and an overturned garbage can. She also heard low laughter, as of pure enjoyment. It gave her with a sense of exhilaration, but also an underlying frisson of danger.
Rosalie pulled back and the contact was broken. She looked away and shook her head slightly, as if to get rid of the lingering images from her thoughts. She felt off-balanced, unsure.
Justin said nothing, as if he knew exactly what she was feeling and thinking. Rosalie didn’t like it, but at the same time found it intriguing. She glanced at his feet but he was wearing brown loafers. It didn’t mean anything. You don’t always have to wear the same shoes. Rosalie was sure she was seeing through Justin’s eyes as he looked down at his running feet. Was he running away? No, Rosalie thought. Not away. He was in pusuit. Of what? She didn’t know, and wasn’t sure she wanted to find out.
She was on the verge of something, and this boy was about push her over the edge. She was sure of it, and it wasn’t an unwelcome thought.
***
Gerard Cole thoughtfully swiveled in his chair as his CFO closed the office door behind him. Steve was being a good boy, dutifully keeping the thoughts Cole had implanted in the front of his mind, and those thoughts had shown signs of being probed. The most prominent image he had retrieved was of a young woman with black hair, enticingly naked under silken sheets. Maybe not such a good boy, after all, Cole thought, amused.
The woman may be a Seeker, but he had no way of knowing for sure. But the fact that his CFO’s mind was being probed meant that there was a Seeker in the picture. He knew what he should do. Absolutely nothing.
Vampire Warfare Page 2