by Ramy Vance
I looked down at him with an understanding smile, waiting for his answer, but the strange Other just groaned in response. OK—so be it. I took a mental picture of the guy, determined to figure out what he did eat, and said, “I’ll be back tomorrow. With real food. I promise.”
His eyes glistened with gratitude.
I looked at my watch and saw that it was quarter past one. My next class started in fifteen minutes—no real chance to go to the library now. Especially because I had no idea where my next class was. I was really, really, really starting to regret not going to the orientation meet-up, but it was at eight in the morning—and I hadn’t seen that ungodly hour in over three hundred years.
My map was a mess—I didn’t know where I was and there was no convenient “You are here” mark, no conveniently labeled “Oak Tree Quad.” Just when I was resigning myself to missing my second class on my first day, a hand snatched the map out of my hands.
“Hey,” I said, getting ready to kick someone in the shins … until I saw who the perpetrator was. My demeanor immediately changed and I tried not to swoon too hard. “Hey, Justin.”
“That was pretty amazing of you,” he said.
“What was?”
“How you kicked those guys’ asses. Total jerks, by the way.”
“Oh, that. They were being bullies. I hate bullies.”
“Me, too.”
Oh, great. Something we have in common, I meant to think—but wound up saying out loud. Girl, get a grip!
“Yeah, we do, I suppose,” he said, eyeing me curiously. “I take it that outside of being scared of light, you’re also a bit quirky, too.”
“You could say that.” I blushed. “Is that a bad thing?”
“No,” he said, “I like quirky. And I like cats … so we’re good here.”
I felt my blush darken three shades.
“So—where are you going?”
“Going?” I said in an absentminded tone.
He held up the map.
“Oh, yeah—class. I’ve got Literary Theory in Alternative Cultures now, but I have no idea where I’m going.”
“That will be over here.” He pointed at a building on the map. “Here—I’ll walk you.” He held out his arm like gentlemen used to do when inviting dames to dance in the 1800s. How retro of him.
Cute and helpless—works every time.
He looked at me, his eyebrow doing that dance again. “Excuse me?”
“Oh, nothing.”
I took his arm, and as I did, his O3 Bros sang out from the top of the hill: “Justin and Weird Girl sitting in a tree!” Neither of us said anything, but we both looked up and smiled. This would have been a perfect moment … had it not been for the kid from West Africa staring down at me from behind the others on the hill.
That guy was really starting to give me the creeps.
Libraries Don’t Just Have Books, You Know
My second class went a lot smoother than my first. No mishaps with cute football players, no speaking my thoughts aloud and drawing the whole class’s attention to me. And no jumping at the sight of light. I’m particularly proud of that last one.
With class over, I checked my schedule: no more classes today. In fact, my next class wasn’t until 3:00 p.m. the next day. Sheesh … university life. I had fifteen hours of lectures and that was it. What was a girl supposed to do with all this free time?
I hefted the monstrosity my professor called a textbook, considered all the articles that were supplemental material (plus, let’s not forget the five essays in this class alone) and realized that if I wanted to do well here, I knew exactly how I was supposed to use the rest of my time.
Reading, writing … and not sleeping.
It was day one and already I knew that all the parties, boys and fun that Animal House, the Van Wilder series and Revenge of the Nerds promised were lies.
As they say in my native Scotland: nae bother. I wanted to do well. I needed to do well.
I will do well here, I told myself, even if it kills me.
Time to hit the books. After, that was, I kept my promise to that pale white Other and figured out what he ate.
Either way, it was off to the library for me.
Finding the library was a lot easier than finding my last class. For one thing, it was the biggest building on campus, and for another, you could see all those books through the windows. No map necessary.
I walked inside and approached the directory. In the old days—and mind you, by “old days” I mean five years ago, just before the Others came—you couldn’t find an entire library section dedicated solely to mythical creatures. That stuff was usually distributed between sections: the Classics housed information about the Greeks and Romans; the Asian Studies section had all the stuff about Japanese, Chinese, Indian and other Asian countries and religions; and if your library had a children’s section (this university, surprisingly, did not), that’s where you’d find most other fairy tales.
But these days, all those books were collected into one department, aptly called Other Studies.
Bingo, I thought. Or did I say it out loud?
The Other Studies Library was so big that it had its own building. An old converted church that sat on the main campus right next to the Arts Building. It was easily half a football field in size, three floors high, the upper levels had wraparound balconies looking out into the center of the library, where all the study tables were located. Dozens of bookshelves lined both sides of the study area and, from my angle, I could see that the upper level held several dozen more sets of shelves.
I’d never seen so many books in one place.
I didn’t know what Heaven was like—and now that it’s closed, I guess I never will. But I imagined it to be this place.
When I was a vampire, I spent a lot of time in libraries. This was before television, remember, and I was really into reading, devouring every book I could get my hands on. I did also eat the occasional bookworm—I don’t know what it was, but humans who were into reading tasted sweet, like sucking on a mango.
So, walking into the place, my heels lightly tapping on old, worn marble, its soft tones echoing off wooden shelves that housed well-loved books—well, for the first time since I’d become a university student, I felt at home. I closed my eyes, lifted my hands from my side and spread out my fingers so I could absorb this place all the more.
Of course, I thought, I’m not really absorbing anything, but it still feels good to try to soak it all in and—
“Ahem.”
I opened my eyes to see several people sitting at the study tables staring at me. A few were suppressing giggles, but most just gawked at me, like I was a freak or something. And they were right—I was talking out loud again, and, according to TV and movies, only freaks and the criminally insane talked to themselves.
There was a second “Ahem” and I turned to see an old man standing near an old oak desk. He was staring at me over the rim of his reading glasses, his bald head reflecting the lights overhead. He did up the top button of his jacket and pointed a weathered finger at a sign.
Please be respectful of those studying.
“Sorry,” I whispered, and walked to the back of the room, now very conscious of the tapping my heels made with every step.
When I made it to the back of the library, I saw that books weren’t the only things this massive library housed. Toward the back of the main floor were numerous rows of display cases. I walked over and found that they housed hundreds of artifacts. Some of them I recognized: an old Bleeder vampires pricked their victims with when they wanted to slowly drain them overnight; a spiked silver collar mages used to control their pet werewolves; an obsidian ceremonial blade once used for human sacrifice; a Horn of Abundance that the desert-wandering nasnas blew to summon their nightly feasts.
There were even several of King Solomon’s rings, each of their rubies trapping a protective spirit that would do the wearer’s bidding. I wondered if the rings still possessed the
trapped spirits … not that it mattered. It would take powerful magic to release them—and powerful magic was in short supply these days.
But the artifacts and rings were just the tip of the mythical-artifacts iceberg. Most of this stuff I had no idea about, but this much was clear—a lot of Others donated a lot of their stuff to this place.
I walked among the artifacts—some impossibly old, others once supremely magical in nature—in awe until I wove my way to the back display, where I saw something I had never expected to see again in my life. Right there in a display case that hung on the back wall was a full Scottish uniform from the late 1800s, complete with tartan, ghillie brogues, sporran, kilt pin and dirk. I don’t think it would have stood out so much if it wasn’t for the fact that it was my clan’s tartan—when I had a clan to call my own.
But it was more than just recognizing the old crisscrossed bands of color that made up my clan’s pattern. You see, at the foot of the display sat a faceplate I hadn’t seen in centuries. The faceplate facade was designed to cover the wearer’s face from hairline to chin, and because it was made of iron, it also protected the wearer from attacks. That thing was built for battle. Not that you would assume so by looking at it. It was fashioned to look like a baby’s face, complete with rosy cheeks and an innocent smile that a fool would interpret as friendly. I recognized the mask immediately. It was my father’s … and it was what he wore the night he hunted me down in the Grey Friar’s abbey.
The night I killed him.
As I took a step closer to the display case, still lost in thought, I suddenly sensed a presence behind me. What the—?
“Can I help you with anything?”
I turned. It was just the old librarian, standing directly behind me. Either the guy had the prowess of a cat or I had been too distracted to sense him there—probably the latter, from the look of him. Either way, he scared the bejesus out of me.
“What?” I yelped.
He lifted a finger over his lips, then in a whisper repeated, “Can I help you with anything?”
He was so close I could smell the mint coolness of a lozenge still on his breath. He also had that old-man smell to him, but not an I’m overmedicated, sick and waiting to die kind of smell. This smell said, This body has seen and done a lot in its years, and those experiences have been soaked into my bones. Hey, don’t judge me—as a vampire, smell was very important to me. Like a wine connoisseur’s nose, mine told me a lot about the person I was about to eat.
Old habits, and all that.
“No talking, remember?” I mouthed, giving him a serious look.
At this, he let out a muted laugh, and a warm smile overtook his features. “There are degrees to which a rule can be bent without breaking it. If we are respectful, no one will mind our whispers.”
“Oh, OK,” I mouthed, and turned back to the display.
He walked up to the hanging uniform and adjusted his glasses as he took a closer look. “Ahh … this is an old tartan, old, indeed. It was donated to the library by the Divine Cherubs—an ancient order of vampire hunters. It belongs to their founder, one Eoghan McMahon from the clan—”
“Blane.”
He lifted a curious eyebrow. “Correct. But that is not a common clan, and the crest had been modified to represent his mission to vanquish demons. How did you …?”
“I’m half-Scottish. My dad was really into our clan’s history. I grew up learning all the patterns.”
“I see,” he said, still wearing a skeptical look. “Well, then you have heard of the great Eoghan McMahon … It is believed he was the first Scottish vampire hunter, and the man who ultimately created the Order of the Divine Cherub.” He walked up to the display and pointed at the mask. “A baby’s face. Or, more to the point—a cherub’s face. Hence the order’s name. Legend has it they wore masks like this when hunting. Angels to exorcise demons, you see.”
I sighed in grief, but the old librarian must have interpreted my exhalation as that of a bored teenager. “Don’t dismiss them too quickly,” he said. “After all, we now know that vampires and demons are real. The Order of the Divine Cherub fought them in the shadows for centuries.” The old man tapped the glass, then gave a low chuckle. “Of course, now they mostly meet in log cabins, drink whiskey and talk about the good old days. But make no mistake—back in said good old days, they were a force to be reckoned with.”
I know that better than most, I thought—and did not speak aloud, thankfully.
The old librarian pointed at my father’s tartan. “Eoghan McMahon,” he said, reverence in his voice. “Legend has it his daughter was turned and—”
“And in his grief and rage, he dedicated his life to eliminating the vampire kind from the Earth. Yep—I know all about it,” I said with a sad familiarity. “A lifetime spent avenging his daughter, only to be taken down by her in Edinburgh on the night of Hogmanay.”
The librarian nodded, his look of skepticism returned. “Scotland’s New Year’s. He did disappear then, never to be seen or heard from again … but there is no record of what happened that night. As far as the historians know, he simply vanished. Of course, rumors abounded, but …” He took a step forward so he could get a good look at me. “Is there something you can contribute to his history? Something his descendants know but has not necessarily been adopted into canon?”
“Ahh, no,” I lied. “It was just what my dad said happened. You know—a romantic ending to the vampire hunter. That kind of stuff.”
“Your father sounds like a poet.”
“You have no idea,” I said, looking at the tartan. When I was a vampire, the sight of his mask had stirred no emotion in me. But now that I was human again … I had to fight to hold in the tears. I don’t think I would have been able to do it, except for the old librarian. I couldn’t risk him suspecting what I was.
So I took in a deep breath and, summoning all the cold-hearted steel I could find in my soul, asked, “How did you get this?”
“It was donated, just as all the artifacts here were,” the old librarian said. “Most of this came from Others who now live among us—little keepsakes that were on their person when the gods left. And some of it had been passed down generation to generation, humans who had brushes with the creatures behind the veil. But now that the veil is gone, I guess they no longer felt the need to hold on to these artifacts and donated them to this display. Perhaps it helped them move on with their new lives.”
“I see. But you don’t know who donated this particular tartan, do you? So I can tell my father,” I quickly added. The truth was, I was curious—I had no siblings, and as for my mom … when I turned and my father insisted on hunting me, I did the most passive-aggressive thing I could do to him—I turned my mother, too. It was one thing losing me, but losing the love of his life to his only daughter, that must have hurt him very deeply. Exactly what vampire Katrina McMahon was trying to do.
The old librarian looked at the display’s accompanying plaque. “It doesn’t say. I can look it up for you, but I’ll have to dig into the archives. I would be willing to do that for you later tonight.”
“That would be grand,” I said.
“Grand? That word was antiquated when I was a child.”
I blushed. “What can I say? I watch a lot of old movies.”
“I see,” he said. “Now that we have had our little chat, perhaps you can answer my original question.”
“What’s that?”
“Is there anything I can help you with?”
I told the old librarian about the strange, pale Other—what he looked like, what he wore—and as I spoke, the elderly man picked up book after book, leafing through them as he tried to find the creature I described. After he’d pulled down several books from their shelves, the old librarian put his finger on a page from an old leather-bound tome and asked, “Pale white, you said?”
“Yep—I’ve seen ghosts with more color.”
“You said that he had a cane with him?”
“Not a very good one. It looked like it would crack under his weight—even if he only weighs sixty pounds soaking wet.”
“So it might not be a cane at all.”
“Possibly, but he holds on to it like it’s the only thing he has left in this world. Whatever it is, he values it.”
The librarian turned his book around and showed me a picture of a pale white Other riding a pale white horse, bow in hand. “Is it possible that the staff isn’t a staff at all, but rather an unstrung bow?”
I took the book from him to study the image more closely. The creature on the horse was white, but unlike the creature I’d helped, this being was proud, strong and slightly overweight. “I guess,” I said uncertainly.
Coming around to look at the book with me, the librarian said, “Mergen. A Turkish being of wisdom. I believe we’ve found your Other.”
“But it says here that Mergen was a god.”
“So?”
“So the gods are gone.”
“Ahh. Therein lies the rub—the gods are gone. But not all their avatars are.”
“Excuse me?”
“Avatars—Earthly representations of the gods. Most gods did not have avatars, but the ones that did often left theirs behind. After all, why would they need an Earthly representative when there was no guarantee that where they were going would have an Earth?”
“I know what an avatar is, I’ve seen the movie. So these avatars, are they like the gods’ Seconds?”
“Now it is my turn to say, ‘Excuse me?’ ”
I laughed softly. I was starting to like this old guy. “In a duel, when you were either too scared or too busy to participate yourself, you sent in your Second. This guy is the god Mergen’s Second.”
“Exactly. A Second—that term is quite archaic, especially in this context.”
“Ahh, my dad—”
“The romantic.”
“Yeah, him. He was also a history buff. You know, one of those guys who’d dress up like a knight on the weekends and go …”
The librarian nodded, smiling. “LARPing. Live action role-playing. I know the type.”