A Summoner's Tale - The Vampire's Confessor (Black Swan 3)

by Danann, Victoria

  If it is possible for wolves to be amazed, that would describe the funny look on Stalkson's face when the day came that Luna trotted straight to Elora like a house pet, gingerly took the treat from her outstretched fingertips, and trotted away as if it was no big deal. In response, Flame's neck stretched so far upward that it was comical. She didn't make a hostile move on Luna, but she was clearly miffed nonetheless. Elora brought out another treat and held it out for Flame who had decided she no longer needed to be asked twice. She hurried toward Elora, snagged the treat and retreated, but she did so without fear.

  Point Wolf was interested, but not as much of a dare devil as the girls. When Flame went by him he stopped her and sniffed her muzzle to find out what sort of treat she had gotten.

  The next day when Elora and Blackie arrived to sit down on the rise, both Flame and Luna came forward for treats. The day after that, Elora and Blackie took up their position on the same rise where the dolmen was located, twenty feet closer than before. While the wolves exhibited a high level of interest in the change of location, they didn't seem to be threatened and exhibited no threatening behaviors. After a couple of days sitting close by, almost every wolf in the pack had tasted chicken treat and was beginning to associate their presence with something wonderful. Stalkson was holding out.

  Blackie hated having the wolves come close to Elora. He growled low and deep in his throat on every single approach. When Point Wolf came forward the hair between his shoulder blades ruffed up, but he held it together and didn't make any overtly hostile move.

  "Hey," she told him as she stroked his head between his ears, "you signed on to be the Black Swan mascot. What did you expect? It's not a purse dog position."

  He was settling into the routine and starting to be halfway okay with it all when, one day Elora stood up and told him to stay. He looked at her with ears straight up, mouth closed, a worried expression that said, "Oh, hell no," but he did as he was told. At least for the time being.

  She spent a full hour on her approach of the dolmen, a distance of only ten feet. She reached out painfully slowly and put a chicken treat on the end of the stone slab that Stalkson used for a perch or maybe a throne. He lifted his head and stared into her face, but unlike the real Stalkson, she didn't aggravate him by challenging his gaze.

  Depositing the treat with fingers intact felt like a real victory. She began backing away almost as slowly as she had come. Luna leapt onto Stalkson's flat top stone and headed for the treat. He snarled at her and snapped so suddenly she lost her balance and fell off the side, landing on the ground with a yelp.

  He sneezed and looked like he was a little embarrassed about shoving the female off the slab, but he decided he would deign to accept the offering before some other wolf beat him to it. He looked at Elora, then sniffed the chicken bit, looked at Elora, then licked at the chicken bit, gobbled it with one swallow, looked at Elora, then turned his back to her and lay down facing the other way. She smiled. The nonchalance was a show of trust. Since wolves don't use word symbols, actions are everything.

  A few days later, Blackie broke away from Elora and ran toward the dolmen pack once they got within a hundred yards. She jogged after him, concerned that something might be wrong. As she was running through the forest she thought she caught sight of something off to her right in her peripheral vision that was moving through the brush and was far too large to be a wolf. She didn't stop to investigate, not that it would have been a great idea even if she hadn't been in a hurry, but she made a mental note to ask Ram to catalog the New Forest creatures for her.

  When she got closer to the lair clearing she heard the unmistakable sounds of fighting and kicked up her pace so that she was there in seconds. Clearing the top of the rise she found the source of the disturbance. Blackie was fighting two of the mid level males.

  Elora looked for Stalkson, but he was nowhere to be seen. When one of the two wolves circled around to take out Blackie's hindquarters while he was occupied with the other, Elora rushed in and tried to estimate just how much pressure to apply to a kick in the ribs to send a clear message without breaking bones. She gave the brown wolf a modified version of a roundhouse kick. He yelped like he'd been shocked with an electric prod and slunk away.

  The mottled wolf Blackie was fighting threw himself on the ground and presented his belly. Blackie stood over him in a pose of victory with his tail raised for a few minutes, then huffed and let the other wolf crawl away with his body close to the ground. He stared after his opponent for a couple of seconds before trotting over to initiate mating behavior with Luna who had been quietly watching, waiting to present herself to whomever might emerge victorious.

  Well, that explains that. Brown Wolf gave Elora a nasty look over his shoulder. Grudge holder, hmmm?

  "Sorry, boy, but I need those puppies more than you do."

  So Elora sat down cross-legged on the ground and waited with the other mammalian voyeurs. Of the possible scenarios she had run in her head of how she might introduce wolf DNA into the dog breed she was going to develop, this wasn't one she'd anticipated. Not one to turn down a turn of good fortune, she smiled to herself and mused about a large litter of pups from the coupling. They could negotiate a joint custody agreement. Stalkson wouldn't mind if the father - and she - took responsibility for one or two.

  After a while Flame edged up next to Elora to lie down where Blackie would normally be situated on her left side. Elora reached out and let Flame smell the back of her hand. The wolf took her time sniffing as if the human's hand was the most fascinating thing in the universe then settled down with her head on her paws.

  The wolves had grown comfortable with her presence. That didn't mean that she and Blackie were accepted as pack, more like kitchen door visitors; the kind of company who were so familiar they're welcome to come to the side door and knock, but not given a key.

  ***

  CHAPTER_8

  As Baka sat alone in the darkness he used every trick he could think of to keep the ghosts and memories at bay, but they were relentless and just kept coming. Monq had theorized that the "conscience" returns after centuries of existence as a vampire because eventually the levels of active virus recede enough to allow the brain to partially resume natural function and chemistry. He wished his memory had been inhibited as well as his conscience.

  The torture of being alone in the still of the night, forced to confront his own thoughts, with no way to escape reliving the horror of who he had been, was surely tantamount to any punishment sentenced by hell to souls on their way to the forever nothingness of the abyss. At that moment he would have liked nothing more than to experience that nothingness.

  Baka had "awakened" one day to a torment the likes of which Dante could not have conceived. He recalled every abominable thing he saw, felt, said, and did as a vampire. Each evil act was stamped on his memory with perfect clarity, as real and detailed as if it was happening in the present. There was no escape. There was no reprieve.

  Ever since he regained his moral bearings, he had sought distractions and diversions to ward off the pain of reliving any part of that history. He wrote fiction, he played musical instruments, he painted, he studied science, mythology and its stepchild called theology by some.

  Of all the parade of excruciatingly painful scenes that played across the landscape of his mind, the one horror that never failed to break his heart all over again was the murder of his third wife, Helena, who had given him pleasure and sweetness he hadn't known existed.

  She had, apparently, been looking for him on the mountain and he had repaid her by taking her life in a gruesome way and making sure no one knew what became of her so that there would not even be a burial. He wondered what became of the two children she was helping him raise. He hoped they had lived happily to enjoy the sight of great grandchildren, but he would never know.

  When Baka emerged from his mountain hiding place, he discovered the sun was too bright. His new vampiric eyes allowed him to see in darkness t
hat rendered uninfected humans blind, but conversely were not well suited for the light of day. Traveling at night, hiding on sunny days, he made his way to Bucharest. In an alley near the inn where he had met Helena, he encountered a gentleman out walking after midnight. Thinking him an easy meal, Baka attempted to seize the man and feed. He was summarily slammed against a stone wall for his trouble. The intended victim had his forearm shoved against Baka's throat.

  "Hold, young one. You would find I am not the tasty treat I appear at first view. What is your name?"

  Baka hesitated, looking perplexed. "I don't know."

  "Well! You are young then!" He released Baka and smiled as he pulled on his sleeves to readjust them, then brushed off the arms of his coat. "Do not concern yourself. Memories of such things will come back to you and one day soon you will be able to tell me what to call you. Meanwhile, you look more like an overgrown street urchin than a proper vampire. We must do something about that."

  "That's what I am? A vampire. We are vampires?"

  Lefrik laughed. "No, indeed. We are not vampires. The plural of vampire is vampire."

  Lefrik snagged a real meal for Baka to restore his strength, and bought him an expensive suit of clothes the next evening when a tailor was persuaded to stay open late. Money means little to a vampire, who can just as easily pick a rich woman to relieve of life and a heavy purse. The suit was uncomfortable and made Baka feel silly, particularly the ruffed collar and sleeves that Lefrik claimed were fashionable.

  The next evening they visited the studio and smith of the sword maker who outfitted Lefrik's new project with a rapier. Baka pulled Lefrik aside. "Why would I want that? I have speed and strength and fangs."

  "Because, newling, it is the rapier that identifies you on sight as a gentleman. And, as such, no one will run from you," he said pointedly. "They will know by your clothes and weapon that you are not the sort to murder for a meager coin or steal for half a meat pie."

  Baka began to grasp the wisdom of this and slowly nodded his acquiescence. "No. I murder to eat."

  Lefrik laughed. "Just so."

  Later that night, when Lefrik suggested Baka begin training on how to actually use the rapier, the would-be student, who had demonstrated no aptitude or interest in weapons as a human, renewed his protests.

  "I understand why I am impersonating a gentleman, but why do I need to learn to use this?"

  "First, you will not be impersonating for long. One day you will be a gentleman. Second, you need to learn to use the rapier, simply because it can be entertaining as sport and you must fill the time spent between hunting and bleeding your prey."

  Baka had become a newly minted vampire at the beginning of the second rise of Western Civilization. Copernicus began circulating manuscripts proposing his theory of heliocentrism: that the earth and planets form a solar system that revolves around the sun. Naturally, those who didn't laugh at him, scorned and ridiculed him.

  Baka believed it was good fortune to have been taken under wing by an old vampire like Lefrik. The facts of Lefrik's origins were confused and murky, but apparently, by the time he became friends with Baka, he was already well over a hundred years old.

  Gradually Baka took on the affectations common to European aristocrats of the time. Eventually his manners would be indistinguishable from those of a man raised as a high-born courtier.

  Baka and Lefrik began to hear rumors from brief encounters with others of their kind, that vampire were being hunted by a collective known as The Order of the Black Swan. The organization was reputed to have been founded for the specific purpose of persecuting vampire. They employed slayers who were superhuman; men who were faster, stronger, and more lethal than their average counterparts, and they were succeeding in thinning the numbers of vampire.

  That being the case, Baka and Lefrik decided that the only sensible course of action would be to keep moving, never staying in one place long enough for these Black Swans to suspect they were there.

  So they marauded across Europe, leaving behind a trail of stories that could be used to scare children into submission for generations. Eventually Baka learned to speak German, Italian, French, Anglish, Spanish, and Russian. And, because he had a musician's ear, he learned to speak languages with very little trace of his native Romanian.

  As a carefree vampire, Baka was witness to history in the making, but as a vampire, current events couldn't have been less important.

  He spent time in Florence the year that Leonardo da Vinci began a commissioned portrait of the wife of a wealthy, silk merchant, that would someday be known as the Mona Lisa. That same year Michelangelo unveiled his masterpiece statue of David. The statue was placed in the public square and lit at night by torches. Because of some slight residue of the artist Baka had been, he might have felt a glimmer of admiration, but his priority was the bags of blood who came at night to view the masterpiece. He would merge with the shadows of the buildings that framed the square, choose his victim, wait until she departed and waylay her in one of the dark, labyrinth alleys of the Florentine night. Since the lady was sure to be accompanied by a man, Baka learned to make short work of nuisance escorts so that he could enjoy the woman of his choice at leisure.

  In 1517 Baka would have been a very old man for his time, but he was a very young vampire. On the last day of October, he and Lefrik were in Germany, passing through the town of Wittenberg, after having been in Bavaria for the throngs attracted to Oktoberfest. Vampire loved nothing more than festivals for two reasons. They promoted drunkenness late into the night which made life very easy for vampire.

  They loved university towns for the exact same reason, but not everyone at Wittenberg was there to drink and carouse. Baka passed by Martin Luther just as he was coming from having posted his Ninety-Five theses to the door of the Castle Church; that was the customary invitation for discourse and debate.

  Luther protested various clerical abuses, especially the sale of indulgences, which were the equivalent of a ticket out of purgatory for a deceased loved one, and the building of Saint Peter's Basilica with money from the poor while the coffers of the Church overflowed with treasure. Baka had passed by the birth of the Protestant Reformation, but wouldn't know or care for another five centuries, when he viewed the events through the eyes of a man.

  It was an eventful century even if Baka had no appreciation for the interesting aspects of it. He couldn't understand why anyone not on board the Victoria would care if Magellan had circumnavigated the globe.

  By the year 1616, Baka and Lefrik were visiting Briton as they were accustomed to doing every ten to twenty years. Though Baka did not know who he was at the time, he encountered Shakespeare in London. To the vampire, he was just another disposable escort to a passing fair, younger female companion. When Baka attempted to take the girl, Shakespeare objected. Baka snarled at him with long white fangs and ice pale eyes. Shakespeare, who thought he was encountering a monster from hell, died on the spot from a heart attack. He was still clutching a folio of plays not yet published when he drew his last breath.

  As the girl's life drained away, Baka stared at the folio clasped in the dying man's hands and almost couldn't wait to be sated so that he could drop the corpse on the cobblestone street and see what the dead man held so precious. He pried fingers away from the leather, pulled at the ribbon that tied it closed, then took the cache to the nearest lamp stand so that he could better see what it contained.

  He, himself, had been to dramatic performances, but had never paid attention because he was not there to see the plays. He was there for the food.

  He read the words, "A Season in Hell", by William Shakespeare. He retied the folio and carried it away to his rented room above the Knight's Bridge Inn. He ignored the innkeeper's good night and went straightaway to his accommodation which was adjoining Lefrik's. There he lit a candle and withdrew the document.

  For the rest of the night he sat transfixed by the words on the page. A corner of his tainted soul was touched by the d
arkness of the tale that unfolded. He finished by the time light showed around the heavy blanket he had draped over the window. Afterward he sat for a while doing nothing, considering perhaps, to the extent that a vampire was capable of considering.

  Even through his virus-induced haze, some part of him marveled that words on parchment had the power to arrest the reader and hold him spellbound. He could not remember the last time he had focused on one thing for many hours. His attention span was usually short and erratic.

  Baka slept through the day, although fitfully as his dreams were filled with disturbing images conjured by the strange little man and his folio of words.

  The next night he went on his way, leaving the scattered pages behind. When the innkeeper arrived to ready the room for another guest, he did as any illiterate man would do. He kept the leather folder to trade or sell and burned the pages as their only value was in the warmth they provided, however fleeting.

  As Baka sat on the cold sandstone floor of the Edinburgh underground, he cursed himself a thousand times for leaving Shakespeare's work behind. The fact that it had never surfaced was a shame. After all, how many playwrights had the power to give a vampire nightmares?