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

by Danann, Victoria

  Lefrik tired of Briton once again, and was ready to set out for Paris. In perfect ambivalence, Baka agreed. They hired a boat for a night time channel crossing and returned to the Continent. After outfitting themselves in the latest fashion finery for men of means, Baka and Lefrik spent several months availing themselves of a variety of succulent forms of entertainment.

  They found Paris much changed architecturally. The city center had been renovated with grand buildings during the Age of Absolutism and a renaissance was occurring in other ways as well.

  The Marquise de Rambouilet, Catherine de Vivonne, had set out to create an outlet for an exchange of ideas between educated commoners and the French nobility who were encouraged to refine their manners and patronize the arts. Everyone in Paris was talking about the Marquise's salon.

  Not to be left out, Baka and Lefrik decided they would visit the salon that everyone found so popular and either be entertained or fed, whichever seemed more appealing at the time. They were on their way to the French-woman's townhouse on a most pleasant night, when not one thing was out of sorts, by way of a side street intended as a short cut. There, on a block not lit by street lamps, four men fell upon them in an attack so vicious they could only conclude two things: that the attackers were utterly intent on the demise of two vampire causing trouble for no one, at the moment. He was sure they must have mistaken Baka and Lefrik for someone else.

  Baka had no idea that humans could move so fast. Lefrik showed them his fangs and hissed at them, but instead of being terrified and running away as they should have, the attackers calmly replied, "Yes, devil. We know what you are. You have no right to live among us nor shall you after this night. The Order of the Black Swan demands your execution on behalf of humanity."

  Without the need to consult with one another, Baka and Lefrik ran in opposite directions causing the knights to split into two pairs of pursuers. Baka heard Lefrik call his name as he fled, but he did not pause because there were murderers in determined pursuit.

  As he ran away, he heard his long time companion cry out and he remembered thinking, "Poor Lefrik has been staked through the heart." As Baka undoubtedly would have been had he not managed to escape. Barely.

  It seemed to him that he alternately ran and hid through half the night. These men who were relentless in their quest could not be human. He, a vampire far superior to humans in so many ways, was flagging. And still they followed. Who were they? More to the point, what were they, these knights of Black Swan? And, why couldn't they just mind their own business as the Creator intended humans to do?

  Just before dawn he believed he had finally lost them. He hid in the corner of a cafe wine cellar and had never felt so wretched. His purple velvet coat was a mess, the lace at his wrists smudged and threatening to tatter. He sat on the ground with his back to a corner, but dared not sleep in case the monsters of Black Swan were still out there. When he did doze, he had nightmares about them.

  The worst part of it was that there was no way to distinguish them from anyone else. They simply looked human. There was no uniform, no insignia, nothing to indicate they were not like anyone else. What was a poor vampire to do?

  The only logical thing was to escape Paris. Quickly. While he could.

  Later in the day the proprietor and various employees made repeated trips to the wine cellar so that there was an almost constant traffic pattern, but no one noticed him crouching in a dark corner. When evening came, he cautiously emerged and stole a horse capable of getting him far away from the city.

  Heaven sat on the carpeted floor of the Chronicles section of The Order's Library reading a large, bound and cataloged volume of copies. The original documents, known as primary source, were kept in fireproof vaults where light and humidity could be controlled for maximum preservation.

  The first time the name Istvan Baka appeared in The Order's records was in the year 1618.

  A team of knights reported encountering a pair of vampire who fled in different directions causing the hunters to divide into two pairs in the interest of pursuit.

  One of the vampire was stabbed with a wooden stake while his companion led chase through the streets of Paris for hours before finally being lost to the night. The knights were reported to have clearly heard one of the demons call out to the other using the name, Istvan Baka. That was logically assumed to be the name of the one who escaped unscathed. It was also assumed that the pair was probably responsible for the epidemic of missing young women that occurred that year and for two bloody massacres that took place at the orgies regularly held in the Greco/Roman section of the museum.

  Together the knights recalled enough about his features for the artist in The Order's employ to create a likeness. Heaven turned the page to stare at a drawing that was quite good in the sense that it was unmistakably Istvan Baka. His hair was shoulder length with more wave than she would have guessed and she didn't care for the goatee at all. That aside, it captured the face of a man whose looks had not changed in four hundred years.

  Except for one thing.

  The Istvan Baka that Heaven knew had eyes that were alive, eyes that danced with humor and light and indeed formed windows into a soul. Baka's eyes sparked a merry twinkle when he interacted with members of B Team. They also conveyed hurt feelings, something incongruent with the idea of being vampire. The look in his eyes the night before, when he'd asked why she hated him, had pricked at her, left her unsettled, and even interfered with a sound night's sleep. That was the Istvan Baka she knew.

  The face on the page of the book in her lap had eyes that were as dead as a shark's. She looked hard, but could not see him there. It was as if a ghoul had stolen his body and worn the features of his face like a mask, but could not make it come alive.

  Heaven sucked in a breath when she realized the full implication of her mistake. She'd been told that the vampire Baka was cured, but she hadn't believed or accepted it. He was a victim of a virus, the nastiest virus that had ever evolved from muck and mire, and she had punished him every day as if he'd deliberately chosen to be a vampire.

  Sweet Anemone. She owed him more than hurriedly arranged bouquets of daisies. She owed him apologies and amends.

  Baka recognized the scene playing out on the screen of his mind. He had drifted aimlessly through France and Italy, feeding half-heartedly and only when necessary. The joie de vive had gone out of being a vampire until he arrived in Venice. Life there was colorful and full of contradiction. The juxtaposition between revering the pagan and observing the Christian was obscene enough to amuse even the most calloused vampire. He took full advantage of the reputation of Venice's courtesans who were highly educated in sexual depravity. He enjoyed what they offered and allowed them to teach him new tricks before indulging in the ultimate intimacy - taking the blood of another into your body while bearing witness to extinguishing their life. The power and rush of that simply never got old.

  It ended all too soon. The Plague reached Venice in 1630 and the carnival city became depressing, even to a vampire not easily given to depression. He wasn't in danger of contracting the disease, of course, but it was impossible to spot in its earliest stages without biting; it wasn't detectable by sight or smell. So far as the biting test went, infected blood had such a disgusting, metallic taint that he was forced to spit it out. After weeks without enjoying a satisfying meal, he knew it was time to go. So he headed in a northerly direction.

  As he traveled, he continued to seek new ways to be entertained. His preferences ran toward more blood than was needed to sate him and screaming, on the part of victims, was usually a plus; unless it was a very high pitched soprano in which case she would meet her end without the opportunity to extend his pleasure. Sometimes he would pair up with another vampire for short periods of time. He liked to watch torture while feeding and, of course, that required a partner. He wasn't interested in forming a bond like the one he'd had with Lefrik, but he always parted friends with vampire who had shown him a good time.

&nb
sp; Most importantly, he became skilled at evading the knights of the Black Swan. Now and then on his travels he would spot a group of four gentlemen who had a certain look about them - arrogance and competence - and occasionally he would hear things from other vampire that reinforced his belief that he did not want to tangle with Swan. Little did he know that captured vampire were eager to talk about Baka and his habits in exchange for blood. All such reports were recorded and classified in the annals of The Order - even if they might technically be hearsay from a questionable source.

  One such report placed Baka in Germany in the mid eighteenth century. Baka had risen to the top of Black Swan's most wanted list. While there were many reports of sightings of him, most were not factual. That particular report of seeing him in Germany in 1748 was true. There were no mass murders to log. In fact, the occasion was an event of importance only to Baka. No one else would ever know what had transpired.

  He was passing through Leipzig, walking past the Thomaskirche after the dinner hour had passed, when he heard sounds that were unlike anything else on the earth. Inside the church a twenty-five-year-old genius was practicing a new composition by candlelight.

  Slipping into the back of the church unnoticed, he blended into the shadows of an alcove where he could watch and listen without being seen. The music was enthralling. The complexity and precision of the organ masterpiece could never be forgotten. It was methodical. It was mathematical. It was not of the Earth.

  As the memory replayed in his mind, Baka laughed softly at the irony of that encounter. The composition Bach was playing would eventually, in the 1940's and 1950's become a musical signal associated with horror movies, usually vampire movies.

  He had been a vampire for two centuries at the time and gained enough control to know that he didn't want to approach the musician. He didn't want harm to come to someone so singularly gifted. Nor did he want to see fear in the composer's eyes, which was unusual in itself. Normally the vampire enjoyed inspiring fear. It was tantamount to foreplay. But, even in the haze of his muddled thoughts, he knew he wanted the man to live. So he remained hidden in the shadows until Bach had pulled the velvet cover over the organ and marched purposefully down the church aisle on the way home to his wife and daughters.

  After he had gone, Baka moved slowly through the alcoves toward the front of the church. When he reached the organ, he looked around to be doubly sure he was alone, although it was uncertain what dread would cause a vampire to hesitate. He pulled the velvet covering away to expose the keys, the light color of which seemed to glow against the dark surroundings. The musician had left the sheet music behind. Toccata and Fugue in D minor. He reached out and touched the keyboard reverently with his fingertips. The keys were cool, hard, and smooth. He liked the sensation and was, on some level, in love with the idea that this thing, this instrument, could make sounds that mimicked transcendence. He stored that information away in some compartment of his mind for safekeeping and left the way he came.

  More and more of his pre-infection memories were coming back to him in tiny pieces. They were objective facts, distant events that might as well have happened to someone else. All he knew was that he was bored and had seen what there was to see. So, looking for something to break up the monotony, he set out to follow the ancient spice and silk trade route which took him southeast through the remains of the Ottoman Empire through Persia and the Mughal Empire then south to India by way of the Khyber Pass. There was no shortage of new and exotic sights, sounds, and smells. Being a vampire, he was on a highly restrictive diet, but he had a vague appreciation for the change in scenery and culture that included strange foods even if he could not digest them.

  The conflict between France and Angland over who would colonize India ended in 1772. Angland won and India was settling into a passive, if uneasy, occupation.

  Baka liked India as much as he was capable of liking anything. There were plenty of bare necks and there was little to fear outside the jungles. He would probably have been content to stay for some time were it not for the untimely occurrence of a famine that was killing more people than the Plague and affecting everyone. A single non-anemic body could not be found in the whole of the country except for the Raj, who were always well-fed, but also well-guarded. More trouble than they were worth.

  So it seemed the time was right to venture toward the New World that everyone in Europe was so excited about. He booked first class passage on a modern clipper owned by the Briton East India Company that was both fast and well-armed with luxurious accommodation for passengers. It took four and a half months to get to London and, even feeding once a week, he had cleared the passenger manifest of the twenty women on board. They had simply and mysteriously disappeared from the ship. When they docked, Baka blithely disembarked leaving behind a collective of surviving passengers in a state of shock and grief, confident in the knowledge that they had booked passage on a cursed vessel occupied by evil, and invisible, forces.

  One of the passengers who did not live to see Angland was the niece of the sitting Prime Minister. Among a superstitious population, it was not difficult to raise an outcry in backlash to the fateful voyage of The Star of India that resulted in the burning of the ship. The total loss of such a ship forced the Briton East India Company into bankruptcy a few months later. Because so many of the gentry were invested, the dissolvent created a domino effect which meant that Baka's ocean-going carnage had long-lasting consequences for the entire Briton economy.

  While awaiting suitable passage to the Americas, Baka saw an opportunity in this. He approached one of the partners of the Briton East India Company and suggested they form a new partnership. Since money was of little meaning to Baka, and since he had more than he could spend, he bought out the financial interest of one of the men and agreed to finance the venture in exchange for the other fellow's practical acumen on the subject and his time spent managing. The former BEIC partners were both delighted.

  The first order of business was to buy a merchant ship for the purpose of transporting both trade goods and the hordes of Irish hoping to immigrate.

  With the help of a broker, they located a suitable schooner, twelve-hundred tons with sufficient guns to protect them from piracy. The cargo area was reconfigured to carry minimum fare passengers in a single large compartment with closely confined, bunk-style beds. To Baka, everything on the lower decks was cargo and that included the passengers. He stipulated that he would personally approve passengers from the waitlist who were hoping for a space on the final manifest. Naturally his agenda was to assure himself that there would be a sufficient feminine food supply to sustain the sailing comfortably.

  In 1773 the ship, Dame Wind, set sail for Boston. The trip took two months. Baka had not even been ashore long enough to get his 'land legs' before the damn colonists started a revolt by dumping shiploads of tea into the bay harbor. Tea owned by, of all things, the Briton East India Company, the proceeds of which were needed to restore the investment. It seemed the BEIC was going out of business for the second time in half a year.

  Baka had an innate aversion to war, as does any sensible organism with a healthy survival instinct. In light of impending, inevitable conflict, he set his sights on Philadelphia and hoped it would be a better representation of what the New World had to offer.

  He hired an enclosed wagon suitable for sleeping during the day and bought two nice Percherons to pull it. He was informed that the roads between Boston and Philadelphia were well-traveled, safe from attack by natives - probably but the possibility of highwaymen was ever present.

  He left armed with several loaded muskets and a set of very impressive, but usually concealed, fangs. He passed through the settlement of New York, which had grown to twenty-five hundred people, stopping long enough for refreshment and to hear the locals' favorite story about the Dutch and their wall.

  He arrived in Philadelphia in the fall of 1774, but stayed only long enough to find out that, again, political unrest was in the air. He c
ontinued southward. So long as he hugged the coast line there was enough to eat and little danger from Black Swan, who were much more likely to be encountered in cities, or from aboriginals who were much more likely to be encountered away from cities.

  Of course it was easier to be a vampire in a city, but easy doesn't mean much to a dead vampire.

  Seven hundred miles later he reached Charleston. He'd eaten along the way, of course, but often thought that vampire can't live by blood alone. He wasn't starving, but he was irritable because of a deprivation of amusements.

  Near the slave market he found a building much like a stable with padlocked doors. He pulled the lock off one and grinned broadly at what he found inside. Eighteen slaves, all female, all unclothed, all bound. If anyone heard their screams in the middle of the night, they wouldn't have thought much of it. It wasn't that unusual for slave traders to whip or otherwise abuse the merchandise. It was, in fact, the main reason why many were attracted to that line of work.

  When the owner of the women arrived the next day to prepare them for the auction block, he found the lock torn from its hinge. The room was a grisly scene indeed, covered in blood, body parts and entrails.

  Baka had fed on two or three then killed the others just to keep them from spreading rumors about vampire. That would be the fastest way to garner Black Swan's attention.