by A. L. Mengel
“Your friend Delia came by to see me, as I had said. She had mentioned that your kind needs help from the Church.”
Antoine’s turned his head to the side, and looked at the priest. “Help from the Church? Why would we need your help?”
Father Bauman raised his eyebrows and leaned forward. “Certainly she has explained this to you? You know about the one who is pursuing your kind, do you not?”
Antoine nodded. “Yes, of course. I just returned from Rome. We discussed it in detail.”
“Well then. We are very experienced in these matters, Antoine. Demonic possession. Spiritual force.” He got up and walked over to some bookshelves on the other end of the room. “In fact,” he continued, “Darius was coming to me on a regular basis because he thought he was possessed by a demon.”
Antoine stopped for a moment as thoughts permeated his mind.
Asmodai.
Claret.
He remembered them both all too well.
There were still days when he would walk down Washington Avenue and look behind his shoulder – wondering if he would catch a glimpse of Claret sitting at a café across the street, her red hair catching the wind, a magazine open on the table, and always she would be wearing dark sunglasses. But her eyes would not be scanning the articles in the magazine.
They would be focused on him.
Antoine shivered, and rubbed his arms. “It got cold in here, Father.”
Father Bauman nodded and brought two glasses over to the sofa with a dash of amber in each of them. “A little whiskey won’t hurt,” he said. “In fact, it’ll help warm you up.”
The priest sat down next to Antoine and handed him the whiskey. They both took a sip when Father Bauman leaned back, set his glass down, and crossed his arms behind his neck. “How long have you been running from demons, Antoine?”
“Too long.”
“How long is too long, my son?”
Antoine paused for a moment and remembered Les Enfantes. The cemetery that had been closest to the Chateau. And the easiest for Antoine to bury Darius in. And in those days, the days when Darius had first died, in the days when the world was not the same cornucopia of communication that it grew into – Les Enfantes had been the best burial choice.
He could still picture himself, walking amongst the gravestones, as the night time mist swirled around his feet. And then Father Bauman touched his knee.
“Centuries,” Antoine said. “This has been going on for hundreds of years.”
Father Bauman leaned in closer and looked at Antoine directly in the eyes. “Well maybe it’s time the running has stopped.”
*****
Antoine felt the need to bury Darius close to home.
While Darius died in Lyon, Antoine felt that it would be best to have the Chateau closed up for a while and fly Darius back to Miami, have him buried in the family plot in Coral Gables, and consider resurrecting him there. He felt it would always help to have him close by. And, he also considered closing up the Chateau outside of Lyon, or possibly listing the property on the real estate market and selling it.
But, after considerable deliberation with himself, Antoine wound up burying Darius right there, in his homeland.
And Antoine opted to travel the way Darius had when burying his own ashes, and bought a train ticket to travel from Lyon to Frankfurt to have Darius’ body prepared by Ned McCracken – who Darius knew and could be trusted. Antoine also bought a ticket from Frankfurt to Miami, as he had not tested his powers since returning from the grave, and did not know if he had the fortitude to complete the long journey across the Atlantic Ocean once Darius had been put to rest.
For Darius, it had been somewhat simpler.
When Antoine was gone, Darius opted to fly to Frankfurt, with Antoine’s urn, and to make his way back to the Chateau to bury him there.
Antoine had been burned to ashes, and his remains were contained in the urn which Darius had tucked under his arm and held on his lap the entire flight.
For Antoine, it was not so easy of a transition with Darius’ remains.
Darius died in full, mortal human form, and would shortly start to decompose. Right after Darius passed, Antoine immediately called the mortician he knew personally – Ned McCracken.
There would be no embalming.
For if there were, Darius would not be able to be resurrected. He must be in full, organic form.
Ned, of course, worked out of Miami, but flew immediately to Frankfurt to meet him and the body at Antoine’s insistence.
And although Antoine had originally opted to have Darius casketed and placed in the belly of the plane, to make the long journey across the Atlantic, back to the burial site, back to wait or wait for Antoine to resurrect him, and to bring him back to immortality, Antoine changed his mind. Ned still agreed to fly to Frankfurt to prepare the body for burial in Lyon. Because it was Darius.
FRANKFURT
There was a loud hiss as the hydraulics on the coroner’s van lowered the casket onto the gurney for transport to the hearse. Antoine stood by and watched the two men load the casket and close the door.
He recalled the same harsh winter weather when he went to raise Darius for the first time; but now, as the exhaust from the hearse permeated the wintry air, he stood, huddled in a heavy, wool coat, shivering and noticing the harsh bite of the air snap against his neck during the harsh Frankfurt winter.
The drive took several hours, through the German countryside, driving along the autobahn, cutting through blankets of white, under a cold, barren, sky, through snow and sleet.
Antoine slept in the back seat, as he leaned his head against the window, and felt the purr of the engine, the rumble of the road, and the occasional breaks in the pavement until the car finally stopped.
And then the car started moving again. They were no longer cruising on the autobahn. He felt that the roads were smaller; the car was moving at a much slower speed, and they were getting closer.
He opened his eyes and looked out the window, and saw the same familiar chateau that he had been in so recently. But now, Darius was gone. He had gone to the astral plane, now in a different state of existence, but Antoine could still feel his presence.
Wake up, Antoine. Do you remember me? Do you see me remembering you?
Antoine opened his eyes. “Wha…” He looked around the back of the limousine, and out the window. The same grey clouds blanket the sky as snow fell across the barren, white rolling hills. Tiny houses rose out of the snow like small blocks, but as they approached France, the rolling hills gave way to muted land grades, and countryside, still white with snow, with the same clouds above, the same storm churning above the car, and Antoine broke his trance.
He studied the horizon.
And for a moment, he thought he saw the eyes. The blue, inviting eyes that he always had remembered, somehow looking down on him from up in the clouds, like they were smiling, as if a father watching his child.
And then Antoine started to remember.
He remembered Darius like he were still alive. Like he was still standing in the foyer with wide eyes, directly across from where Antoine himself had been standing, looking on and over at Antoine, holding the shiny dagger, ready to drive his chest through it.
The same blue eyes.
Yes, they were his eyes.
Darius.
The one who loved and created him, who sought to destroy him, who would not beckon his will or admonish him for abandoning his own.
And then Antoine plunged his key into the front door and opened the lock, and with the click and the creak of the door, he looked inwards at the same foyer. He smelled the same mustiness that he had each and every time he had returned to the Chateau; the same dust greeted him on the table in the center of the foyer, but the flowers were fresh on this occasion.
Yet it seemed so cold and lifeless as he stood there, searching for a light switch. But despite the uninviting feel, he remembered the day Darius first died, right on the Pers
ian rug in the center of the hardwood. He remembered kneeling over Darius and looking down at his chest, watching the blood gush from his mouth, looking at his eyes; he still remembered their glassy stare; they had a deadness about them.
He could still feel the cold steel in his hand, he remembered clenching the dagger, so hard that his skin whitened at the knuckles. But the memory that permeated his mind the most was when he knew that Darius was dead.
He looked down at Darius, and Darius lay on the floor with open, unseeing eyes. Antoine reached down and gripped his shoulder, and shook. Nothing. He then picked up his arm, and it fell back to the floor with a thump! And Antoine’s mouth dropped open.
He scooted back away from Darius as the vision faded.
And then Antoine opened his eyes.
He looked down at the rug, and then back up and around the foyer.
He scanned the area, the same, large marble table was the centerpiece that it had been for hundreds of years. The same chairs with the same red upholstery lined the walls, and the same winding staircase curved around the edge, raising upwards towards a vast, expansive ceiling, into the darkness of the second story.
“Giovanni?” Antoine took a few steps forward and called into the silence. He stopped at the threshold of a hallway, and paused, looking down the hallway into darkness. “Giovanni, are you here?”
Antoine noticed a small circle of light towards the end of the first floor hallway, which initially hovered in the darkness like a firefly, the movement harsh and erratic. “Giovanni?” Antoine took a few steps down the hallway, his heels clicking against the hardwood.
And then he saw Giovanni, but the shell of the man who was before him was not the immortal that he had remembered. The man before him was old, bedraggled, his hair stringy, silvery and vastly overgrown. “Yes, Antoine,” Giovanni managed to croak. “Welcome home.”
Antoine rushed over the Giovanni’s side, and took the flaming lantern from him. He paused for a moment, gently caressing the old man’s cheek. “What has happened to you? Giovanni?”
Antoine looked around the hallway as he helped the old man towards the kitchen. “And what has happened here? The power does not work?”
Giovanni leaned against Antoine. “There has not been power for years…Darius was gone…and then you were gone…and then she came…”
Antoine set the lantern on the kitchen table. It cast a warm, flickering glow in the room. “What do you mean she came?”
As Giovanni sat in the chair it gave a creak. He leaned over a wooden table and exhaled. “She came, Antoine. She came after you were gone, and turned me into this.”
Antoine shook his head. “I wasn’t even gone for that long.”
Giovanni looked over at Antoine with unseeing eyes. Antoine noticed that his eyes were gone, that now there was just dried blood, gaping holes where his eyes once were. Antoine looked down at the table.
“She took my sight,” Giovanni said, after a few minutes of silence.
“And your life force,” Antoine added. “How much time do you have left?”
“Oh, I am still immortal, dear Antoine. That is the curse she placed on me. I am cursed to live old and blind. I am damned to spend eternity as an old, haggard leper!” Giovanni banged his fist on the table.
Antoine sat back. “So you are cursed now, the same way that Darius was? And Stephen?”
Giovanni shook his head. “No, Antoine. My curse is different. You already know Darius became mortal again. For me, I am damned to spend eternity a decrepit, blind old invalid!”
Antoine looked at Giovanni as the old man spoke to him. There was something different about him, despite the obvious physical changes. There was something changed about Giovanni.
Had he drank from the decanter?
And then, later in the evening, as Antoine helped Giovanni to his casket, he thought about the first days that they had met, after Darius had died for the first time – the time that he had died in the foyer of the chateau – and he saw that moment. The moment just after Darius had died.
“I understand that your maker has died,” Giovanni said, as he stood on the expansive front porch of the chateau. “I understand that you must bury him, correct?”
Antoine had stood over Darius’ body, still holding the dagger, his long, dark locks hanging low, covering his face. His chest heaved with every breath. “Who are you? How have you found me?”
Giovanni smiled, a gleaming white smile, his face pointed, chiseled and framed against dusty blonde hair. “I knew Darius very well,” he said, stepping across the threshold. “And I knew the precise moment that you took his life.”
Antoine looked over at Giovanni, noticing the man was quite young. “He told me to do it.”
Giovanni looked down at Darius. “And I knew that as well.”
Shed your skin.
Antoine set the dagger down on small table near the front door, and wiped his sleeve on his forehead. “How did you know? How did you know Darius?”
Giovanni walked across the foyer, carefully avoiding Darius’ body, and into the adjoining parlor. There was a fire in the fireplace, flickering against the darkness in the windowpanes, lending a warm glow to the room. He took a seat in a high-backed, plush chair, and looked back at Antoine, who stood in the foyer, watching Giovanni.
Antoine hung his head down low, and closed his eyes. “What do we have to do?”
Giovanni sat back in the chair and crossed his legs. “First, you have to transform me. Darius never would do that for me. Then, we will bury Darius together, once I have transformed, and then you will need to go to Miami.”
Antoine looked over at Giovanni, who was looking back at him. He noticed the whites of Giovanni’s eyes, stark against the muted warm and flickering light in the parlor. He walked closer to Giovanni, and stooped down in front of the man, who look down at him. “How do you know all of this?” Antoine asked, sitting on the floor, holding his knees close to his chest. “How can you possibly know all of this?”
Giovanni sat back, and looked around the room. “Darius had promised that he would transform me. He had made me that promise before you killed him. And when he was meeting with me, through the months, he had informed me about your stature and organization amongst you immortals. I already knew that he had plans to send you to Miami.”
Antoine closed his eyes and shook his head. “This doesn’t make any sense, Giovanni. Darius shared every aspect of his life with me. He would have told me if he had a mortal suitor that he was considering for the blood gift.”
“Well, he didn’t share this particular aspect with you.”
Antoine stood and walked over to the fire. He fished a poker from the fire tools and stoked the logs; they flamed up and the flames reignited, bathing the room in warmth and light. “So then, I must get to know you, Mr. Giovanni. I must communicate with Darius. I must verify what you are saying to me. And then, when I have been able to do that, if everything is verified and true, then I will give you the blood gift and we will bury Darius together. Until then, I will have a room made for you upstairs, and you will not leave until you have been properly vetted.”
Giovanni nodded.
“Good then,” Antoine said. “Until then, we will leave the body right as it is in the foyer.”
And then Antoine was carried back into room, back into the present, where he sat with the decrepit Giovanni. A light rain started to fall against the windowpanes. “Yes, I remember that night very well,” Antoine said, rising from the floor. He looked down at Giovanni, who started straight ahead with a blank, sullen stare. “And you…shall I help you retire?”
Giovanni waved his hand. “No Antoine, I am going to stay up for a bit, my mind is deep in thought.”
“Yes, I would imagine it would be.”
*****
As Antoine walked through the foyer, preparing to retire, there was a knock on the door. He paused for a moment, standing just in front of the expansive, round marble table in the center of the entryway, and
looked over towards the door.
And then the knock came again.
Giovanni called in, asking Antoine who would be calling at this hour. And as Antoine opened the door, there she was. The tiny woman he once knew, now looking frail and aged. The lights on the porch made her near-white hair seem glowing and brilliant.
Delia Arnette.
His eyebrows raised, and his mouth opened just for a moment, as the two stood in a temporary silence.
“Who is it?” Giovanni called from the other room.
Delia smiled. “May I come in, Antoine?”
“I…yes, sure.”
Antoine watched Delia enter the foyer slowly, and with the same elegant determination that he had remembered her possessing so many years ago. Delia certainly had not changed. She was dressed differently now; her stage costumes and bright red lipstick had been traded for a long, flowing dress, with much more natural and muted tones of makeup on her face. But what he could not get over was the gray, stringy hair she now had.
“Are you going to stare a hole in my face, Antoine?”
She smiled.
Antoine let out a quiet chuckle. “I’m sorry, Delia. How long has it been? Decades? Or centuries?”
“It’s been quite a while, Antoine. And as you can see, I am in the same predicament as your Giovanni over there.”
Antoine ushered Delia in and over to the parlor. He guided her to the sofa opposite Giovanni, and the two exchanged pleasantries. It was after a few minutes of silence that Antoine spoke. “So Delia, to what do we owe this pleasure of your visit?”
She sat back in her chair and stirred some sugar into her cup of tea. “Well, let me start from the beginning. I worked with Darius very closely while you were gone, Antoine, to try to beat his death. But, as you know, the ending was inevitable.”