“Y’all make y’selves comfortable, now, pardners.”
“You can feel free to ignore him,” said a pale woman with red hair. Her accent sounded like a cross between Eadwyn’s English intonation and Stephen’s normal inflection. “That’s what the rest of us do.”
“Heartache!” Eadwyn cried, removing his feet from the table. “You wound me, Marian. I am aggrieved!”
“And you bore me, Eadwyn,” Marian said, but Two thought that she saw the slightest hint of a smile on the elder vampire’s face.
This is not what I expected, she thought.
Marian glanced at her and said, “You expected a bunch of powdered wigs and black robes, I imagine.”
Two jerked, surprised, and asked, “Can … can you all read my mind?”
“No, just me. Eadwyn sometimes gets flashes.”
“The rest of us are not so blessed,” the other male vampire said, “which is why Marian usually avoids responding to people’s thoughts.”
“I usually avoid reading them in the first place, as Gaius well knows,” Marian said.
“It’s easier for the rest of us if the conversation is held out loud,” Gaius said. He was smiling slightly, and appeared relaxed and largely uninterested in the goings-on about him.
Two was almost put off by this display. She was here to plead her case on a matter which was, for her, of great importance. To these vampires though, she was nothing more than a minor speck in a world full of humans to whom they were superior in virtually every way. She had done them a favor, perhaps, by removing Abraham from the planet, but they seemed not in the least concerned with her fate. Two bit her lip and looked away for a moment.
“Is something wrong, child?” the Indian vampire, Safeed, asked her.
Two shook her head. “No ma’am.”
“Not a good idea to lie to us, dear,” Eadwyn told her. “Make a note of it.”
Two shrugged, kept herself from sighing, said, “This is important to me.”
“Would you have preferred the solemn formality of the American council, Miss Majors?” Marian asked her. There was no malice in her voice, but Two could find no sympathy there either.
“I don’t—” Two began, but Safeed cut her off, frowning.
“Even Eadwyn is capable of being as serious as you would like.”
“No, I—”
“We can be grim and grumbling ghouls if it gratifies you,” Eadwyn said.
Two felt like throwing her hands in the air and screaming. Here she had said nothing, done nothing, and she was already offending these people and losing her chance at immortality. Naomi placed a hand on her shoulder and Two felt a calming warmth rush through her.
“Harrowing,” the vampire girl murmured, and Two nodded, took a breath, looked up at Marian.
“You can run your council however you like, ma’am,” she said. “I just want to tell you my story and see what you think.”
“That seems reasonable,” Gaius said. “If we’re done intimidating the human, can we move on with this, please?”
Two had wondered if there was an official leader among this group, the way Malik lead the American council, but it seemed that was not the case. The vampires merely glanced at each other, seeming to confer without speaking. Two sat, trying to be patient, waiting to begin. It was not that she wanted to tell her story again. If anything, she was dreading it, but the sooner it was done, the sooner all of this could end.
It was Safeed who leaned forward in her chair, tapped her fingers on the table once, and said, “Very well. We know of you, Eresh-Chen, but we’ve not heard the full story. Would you prefer it if we asked questions, or would you rather tell us your tale in full?”
“It’s … it’s your call,” Two said.
“No, no, no,” Eadwyn said. “That won’t do. Don’t defer duty. Make a choice.”
Two looked over at him and felt a sudden anger burning within her, not focused at any individual before her but rather encompassing the entire situation. This anger took her nerves away and replaced them with something resembling strength. Eadwyn seemed to notice this change, and one side of his mouth rose in a smirk that was without malice.
“Just choose,” he said.
“Fine,” Two said. “I’ll tell the story. It’s easier, and I’ve got it down to a science at this point anyway. Everything I’m going to say is true … but you know that. It’s not like I can lie to you.”
Marian smiled a little at this, and she nodded.
“I just wanna say … I’m sorry, but I hate being here. I hate wasting your time, and Naomi’s time, and Stephen’s time.”
“And your time,” Gaius said pointedly. Two resisted the urge to roll her eyes at him.
“Yes,” she said. “My time, too. The rest of you … you have time. I have none, not compared to you, but even so, I feel bad about wasting your time on this … this crap. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. It wasn’t supposed to go this way.”
Two sat back, flexing her fingers in frustration, and repeated herself. “It wasn’t supposed to go this way.”
The black woman, who Two remembered from her earlier conversations with Naomi was named N’debe, spoke for the first time. Her voice was low and musical, the words rolling off her tongue in a rich accent. She radiated an aura of supreme calm, and Two had no doubt that this vampire was, like Eadwyn, an Ashayt.
“Things rarely go as they are supposed to, child. I am curious to hear the details, and I am sure my fellow council members feel the same. Please tell us your story.”
“OK. Thank you,” Two said. She sat back in her chair and put her head down for a moment, folding her hands and pressing the pads of her thumbs against her eyebrows. Finally, she spoke.
“I don’t know when it was that Theroen first saw me, or how long he spent watching me before he decided to do what he did. I only know that when it happened, I was nineteen, addicted to heroin, and spending my days waiting to die.”
She told them the story as she had told the American council, leaving out no detail, no matter how unseemly. How could it matter? These vampires would judge her in ways she would never understand. They might place no importance on her past, her addiction and the things she had done to support it, or they might find it the most important part of her story. It could matter to them that an Eresh-Chen had chosen her, or perhaps they would judge that fact meaningless.
Two had no idea what they would think, and by the time she was finished telling her story, she wasn’t sure she cared. Here again was the pain, shoved to the back of her mind these past months, pulled forward again, bright and new. She fought against tears, fought against despair, and finally sat back in her chair with her eyes closed.
“That’s it,” she said, not opening her eyes. “That’s all there is. We came to this country and spent a year in London while Naomi worked on setting up this meeting, and now we’re here.”
Naomi spoke up for the first time since they had entered the room. “If you have any questions for me, or for Stephen, we will be happy to answer them.”
“Noted,” Safeed said. She glanced around at the others, her expression still dark, still serious. Two wondered if the woman had ever smiled in her centuries of existence.
“We are quite, quite satisfied,” Eadwyn said. “Such a stupendous story! Chair legs and machetes … there is simply not enough excitement in our lives.”
“You’re welcome to some of mine,” Two muttered, and Eadwyn grinned.
“You’re not being very sympathetic,” Marian said to her fellow council member, and Eadwyn shrugged.
“She’s not here for sympathy,” Gaius said, with an air of distaste that Two didn’t understand. He seemed bored and frustrated, as if he had long since made up his mind.
Safeed glanced at Naomi. “You were able to taste the difference in her blood?”
Naomi sat forward, her body straightening, and took a deep breath. “Yes,” she said. “I was, yes. It was faint, but I knew immediately that there was some
thing wrong with her blood … something not human. It took me a few more seconds to understand what I was tasting. I have to admit that in my surprise and haste to stop drinking, I dropped her on the ground.”
“Precipitate, perhaps, pickpocket,” Eadwyn said. “Leaping from on high to attack without speaking?”
Naomi blushed again at Eadwyn’s words and lowered her eyes for a moment. “I have only known a few humans who came looking for vampires, and in all of those cases, they were hunting, not looking to speak. It was a mistake to act so rashly.”
“She’s not the only one,” Stephen said. “As Two mentioned, I tried to feed from her too, the next evening.”
“We’re not planning any disciplinary action for either of you,” Marian said. “Regardless of your initial actions, you’ve both gone out of your way to help get Two to this point.”
Naomi looked relieved. She glanced around at the council members and said, “The American council felt that you would have the authority to make a final ruling on interpreting the scrolls and determining how they should apply in this case.”
“Of course we can,” Safeed said.
“A few more questions first,” Marian, the red-haired Eresh, said. “If you don’t mind, Two.”
“No problem,” Two said. As far as she was concerned, they could ask questions of her all night if they needed to.
“I understand that much of the answer to this question is obvious, but indulge me: what is it that you want? Why do you seek to return to this life? Is it the power? The strength? The euphoria of the blood itself?”
Two considered this for a time before answering, trying to put her feelings into words. Finally, she spoke. “All of the above, and more. What I want is … the blood made me something better than what I am now. I didn’t totally realize that until I lost it, but while I was with Theroen, I was complete. I was the best that I could be. When it was taken away from me, I felt broken, like parts of me had been removed and all that was left was a shell.”
“Could that have been simply an illusion brought on by the blood ecstasy?” Safeed asked.
“I know what empty euphoria feels like,” Two said. She looked down for a moment, then back up at the council members. “It feels really good while it’s happening, the way drinking blood feels to a vampire, more or less … but when it’s gone, it’s gone. Heroin never helped me understand poetry. It never made me run faster or see in the dark. It never made me able to sense someone’s emotions, or hear someone’s thoughts, or connect with anyone the way I did with Theroen. His blood fixed me. Heroin just made me forget that I was broken.”
“Are all human beings broken?” N’debe asked in her soft, low voice.
“I don’t know. If they are, I don’t think most of them know it. I think people like my friends have no idea what they’re missing, so it doesn’t bother them.”
“Would you try to convert your friends?” Eadwyn asked her.
Two shook her head. “No. They … I don’t think they would want it, and besides, I won’t be ready to make a fledgling for a hundred years or more, right? They’ll be … I mean …”
“Mort. Tot. Guasto. Inoperante. Muerto. Cacked off. Bit the bucket. Taking a dirt nap.” Eadwyn was smiling at her, but there was a harsh note to his voice, a malicious glint in his eye. He spoke the last word with finality. “Dead.”
“I know what I’m giving up,” Two said. “Is that what you’re trying to test? Do you want to know if I’ve thought this through? I know that Rhes and Sarah and Molly will be dust before I could ever offer them the blood. Even their kids and grandkids will probably be gone before I’m ready for that. Are you trying to make me feel bad, testing my resolve?”
“I’m not testing anything, child. I am merely stating the truth,” Eadwyn said, and now the dark light was gone from his eyes. He smiled, spread his hands, leaned back in his chair. “I am without subtlety.”
Two raised an eyebrow at this, but said nothing. Eadwyn smirked.
Marian turned to the others. “Is there anything else we need?”
“I have enough,” Safeed said.
“Quite,” Gaius agreed. N’debe nodded.
“Eadwyn?” Marian asked.
“Oh, I have everything I could possibly need,” Eadwyn said. He stood, and the others followed suit.
“There is a small waiting room with couches, down the hall,” Safeed said. “The three of you should relax there, and we will come for you shortly.”
Two, Naomi, and Stephen shook hands with the council members and began to make their way toward the room’s exit. Two got there first and stopped by the door, one hand on the heavy wooden frame. She turned and looked back at the European council.
“Thank you for listening,” she said. “I hope … I hope you understand why it is that I did what I did, and why I’m here today.”
The council members nodded in acknowledgement, and N’debe smiled at her. Two waited a moment longer, then turned and made her way down the hall with her friends not far behind.
* * *
“What do you think?” Naomi asked.
Two glanced away from the window in front of her, looked over her shoulder at Naomi.
“Man,” she said. “I have no fucking idea.”
Stephen made a snorting, laughing noise from behind them both. He was sitting on a couch near the back of the room, watching a soccer game on a small television with the volume turned so far down that Two supposed only vampire ears could make out the announcer’s words.
“Honesty. Good. They say it’s the best policy,” he said.
Naomi glanced over at him. “And you, Stephen? What do you think?”
Without taking his eyes from the television, Stephen said, “I think it’s a swing vote. Three to two. Now ask me which direction I think the vote swings.”
Naomi’s hands twitched, as if she might be fighting off the urge to throttle her friend. “Which?”
“Man,” Stephen said, now looking over at her and grinning, “I have no fucking idea.”
“You’re useless,” Naomi growled. She was pacing back and forth near a set of shelves that held an orderly collection of leather-bound tomes.
“Yet you keep me around because I’m so good-looking,” Stephen said, and he turned back to his game.
“Gaius doesn’t like me,” Two said. “He was bored the whole time, and he probably thinks I’m just some pain in the ass who should’ve died in the alley behind L’Obscurité. There’s no way he votes for me.”
“Agreed,” Naomi said, “but his opinion is the only one of the group that I’m at all comfortable guessing about. Safeed is always so dire that she’s impossible to read. N’debe rarely speaks and when she does, she is always very pleasant, but she wouldn’t be on the council if she couldn’t make hard choices. Marian is too … too …”
“Too Eresh,” Stephen said.
“What does that mean?” Two asked.
“Eresh blood does things to the brain. You’ve experienced it yourself, you said so: you were able to understand poetry that eluded you as a human being. That doesn’t happen to Ashayt or Ay’Araf or Burilgi. Poetry remains as dull and boring to me as it did three centuries ago.”
“I like poetry,” Naomi commented.
“You’re a namby-pamby Ashayt,” Stephen said. “Of course you like poetry. That’s not the point. What I’m saying is, you liked and understood poetry as a human. The blood in you didn’t change your brain, at least not like it did for Two. That’s why Marian is hard to predict. Gaius had made his decision before he even got here, most likely. Marian has probably changed her mind fifteen times during the course of the evening.”
“Long as she ends up on my side, she can change her mind as much as she wants,” Two said.
Stephen shrugged, still watching his game. “Who knows? You might as well ask me to predict Eadwyn’s response.”
“I think he likes Two,” Naomi said, and Two could hear the hope in the vampire girl’s voice. It was touching. Two
sometimes forgot that the council’s decision was very important to Naomi as well.
“I hope he likes me. I think mostly he just likes being weird and confusing,” Two said.
“It won’t matter whether he likes you or not,” Stephen said. “Eadwyn may be weird and confusing, but he is also as calculating as any vampire you can name. He will weigh many factors that we are not even aware of when making his decision.”
“Doesn’t mean it’ll be the right decision,” Two said.
“You don’t need to convert me,” Stephen told her. “I’m already on your side. As far as I can see, there is absolutely no question about the proper course of action. It’s not my fault the American council members cannot – present company accepted – pull their heads from their arses.”
Naomi frowned. “What you so often fail to realize is that people’s actions may have unintended consequences.”
“Those tend to follow me around,” Two said. Stephen laughed.
“The problem with unintended consequences is that they happen no matter how hard you try to prevent them. That’s life.”
“So then we should all just give in to chaos and anarchy, right, Stephen?” Naomi asked. “Just do whatever we choose and to hell with what happens after that?”
“You have to admit that things would be interesting,” Stephen replied.
Naomi sat down on a couch and rested her head in her hands. “Sometimes I have no idea why I spend time with you.”
Eadwyn’s voice startled them all as he spoke from the doorway. “A little contrast enhances one’s life, we find. Now, we trust you three have dwelled long enough in this drab and dreary place?”
“You’re finished?” Two asked.
“We’re finished,” Eadwyn replied.
“That was fast.”
Eadwyn said nothing, merely smirked, stepped back into the hall, and beckoned with his hand. Two took a breath, turned from the window, and made her way toward the door.
The vampire council was seated once again around the table, and if anything was to be determined by their appearance, it was beyond Two’s abilities to do so. They looked, to her, exactly the same as they had seemed to be before her story and their subsequent discussion. She felt some of the worry that she had experienced while standing before the American council but less outright fear. Her life, at least, was not in jeopardy this time.
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