“What girl?” I asked.
He pointed in the distance where the firelight met the creeping darkness. There approached the dull outline of a wavering black dress. The cover of shadow hid everything else but the subtle aroma of lavender and linseed oil wafting over the fire.
“She helped you find this?” I pulled the amulet from my pocket, fingering the cold stone.
“It is time. If she is here now it is because they are coming!” He leaned forward, grabbed onto my waist and whispered into my ear, “Trust me and keep it close, no matter what happens.”
I whispered, “Good-bye my love,” as I sunk my teeth into his hardened veins. His skin was leather to my fangs as they pierced the flesh, the cool liquid unlike mortal blood that gushed warm and freely into my mouth. Aksel went limp in my arms as I drained the old blood from his body. I choked each ounce down my throat as his arms, clinging to their last bits of strength, grabbed at my sides. His nails dug into my clothing, ripping my shirt.
“Bree,” he coughed, “it is a weapon.”
“Aksel,” I pulled away, gazing into his motionless face. “Aksel!” But his body started breaking, turning to dust, pieces disintegrating beneath my touch, mingling with the wind and riding out on the waves and into the obsidian sky. Speechless, I watched as he scattered away from me for all eternity. Then he was gone and the scent of linseed oil and lavender remained to comfort me, once again.
THIRTY
The crystalline orbs stalk me, taunting me from their inky prison. Their starlight is already fading as I lament the passing of this night. Each orb cries with me, pleading for its release from this world, from its own immortality.
The feel of Aksel’s skin – the iciness of his breath against my cheek – I can still sense him there. The hell in his eyes – the cold, isolated glare. How he stared at me with his haunted, desperate gaze, begging me to keep the amulet safe. Hidden. Close.
That amulet. So secret and mysterious. I had more questions now than I did before I spoke with Aksel. Now he was gone.
He was gone.
Once again, the image of his essence scattering out to sea was there before me – a never-ending nightmare. As the wind now carried me home, the stars tormenting me with their joyous vibrancy, I could not erase his face from my mind. I closed my eyes and all I saw was his face breaking into a million fragments and scattering into the void, spreading beyond my reach.
The image – now scorched into my corneas – was a wicked reminder that I had murdered the man I loved to protect an amulet I knew too little about. That thought sickened me.
Chicago traffic was but a muddied puddle of reds and whites weaving across the asphalt below as I landed on my balcony. My body shook, his blood ashes staining my clothes. The damp Norwegian sand coated my ecru slacks and tan boots. My windswept hair clung to my tear stained face, knotted from the tumultuous Norse currents.
The fire already raged within as I stepped off the balcony and entered the study. I moved to the heat, watching the glowing orange and red flames dance off the logs. The white ash cascaded from their woody home, revealing a seething hotness below, waiting to refuel the fire. My hands, weary from their travels – from their devilish deeds – licked at the flames for warmth.
“Mother?” Aleksandra whispered, entering the room. Eagerly, I wiped the blood tears from my cheeks and turned. “What happened?” She rushed to my side and began smoothing the knots from my hair, and tracing the tears in my shirt with her fingers. “Where have you been?” Her fingers glazed over my tear-stained face, then down again to the blood splattering my shirt. “What have you done?”
I pulled the amulet from my pocket and held it to the firelight. “I need to know what this is,” I said, my voice hoarse. As I spoke, the taste of his blood’s potency grew in my mouth. The remnants still coated my tongue, its spiciness reminding me of him. My body convulsed from the memory of my lips upon his neck.
“Mother, what happened tonight?” She led me to the settee. I sat there with the amulet in the palm of my hand, stroking it, hoping it would tell me its secret. “Mother, please tell me,” she urged. Her hand reached up, loosening the knots.
“Aksel has gone into the shadow.” I closed my eyes hoping that would make reality hurt less. However, it did not.
“What?” She rose from the settee. “How?” She moved to the window, averting her eyes. Her hand moved, wiping the tears from her face. The sound of sirens screeched in the distance as a full onslaught of emergency personnel flew down State Street. “Where did it happen?”
“Norway,” I told her.
“I am so sorry, mother.” Aleksandra walked to the desk and grabbed a tissue. She blotted at the tears. “Did you,” she began but hesitated, “did you try and stop it,” she asked.
My eyes remained on the amulet. “No,” I admitted.
“How could you not?” She rushed at me stopping in front of me. Her hand grabbed a hold of my chin, pulling my face toward hers. Her eyes met mine until she saw the pain residing within. Then she released my face and backed away. “Tell me you did not.”
“Aleksandra,” I began, “he wanted it.”
“Mother! What happened?”
Rising from the settee, I walked toward her. “Do you think it was easy for me to help Aksel? He was my first, Aleksandra. My first! My beloved! He didn’t really want to end his existence, Aleksandra; he needed me to end it. I will never understand why. And I do not need to! No one needs to!”
I turned away from her. My eyes burned with him telling me good-bye. The rawness of the moment crushed me now as I stood in my posh high-rise, surrounded in opulence. The rawness of his sacrifice stung as the amulet’s hardness creased my palm, the jewels cutting into my flesh because I held it too tightly. Reality, in itself, was raw.
“He needed me to do this for him,” I told her. “And when you love someone, you show them mercy, my daughter— you grant them that.”
“Aksel’s gone,” she whispered in disbelief. “I cannot fathom this.”
“He was running because of this amulet.” I opened my palm, the flesh now branded with the jewel’s imprint. “Whatever curse surrounds it continues on.”
“What does it all mean?” she asked. “Peter, Colin, Aksel, how many must martyr themselves for that? Why is it so important?”
“He said it was a weapon, Aleksandra. What kind of weapon can an amulet be? Aksel and the Vatican may be convinced of such, but I am not sure,” I admitted. “But I know one more person who can tell me the truth,” I assured her, tossing the trinket into my pocket.
“Well, I sincerely hope you get those answers. And soon. Colin is not going to make it; Judith is pulling his life support tomorrow night. If Aksel and her father’s deaths were in vain, she is going to make this a personal crusade. If Francisco wanted a war, mother, he is about to get one.” “I am not about to bring a war down on this city,” I told her, “Or anywhere for that matter.” Chicago bustled with life, its inhabitants – infectious, soul-filled ants – scurrying about oblivious to the detrimental drama unfolding before them.
“Go to Judith and Colin tonight, please. She should not be alone,” I told her. “Go and calm her. We have lost one of our own. We could lose another before dawn approaches. But we must, nonetheless, say farewell to him at nightfall. So let them not talk of war tonight. Tell them, Aleksandra. For his sake, tell them. Tonight, we shall have peace.”
“I will,” she said. “Wesley is already there. Come with me,” she urged. “You should not be alone.”
“Please leave me to my sorrow tonight.” I rose, kissing away the soft plum blush dusting her cheek. “Let me mourn him, just for tonight. The reality is now eating me. I have slept so long without him, but now knowing that I will always be sleeping without him…”
“Find comfort in the darkness, in the silence, if you must,” she said, hugging me, “But do not let it swallow you whole. Do not go into the shadows yourself because of this. The others, they will understand as I und
erstand. You will see. Say good-bye to him tonight and I will see you tomorrow.”
Aleksandra walked onto the balcony and ascended into the chilly October night. I walked to the desk, opened the laptop, and found myself cloaked in the computer’s brilliant green glow.
Two hours had passed since Aleksandra left while I sat penning this account. Laptop keys crunched eagerly beneath my fingers as I feverishly typed. Dawn would soon approach.
Each page trickled from my memory, the images as clear as if I were seeing them in front of me. I could touch them. I could violate these points in time as the blood had violated me. There I was in the convent. My throat throbbed as Wesley’s teeth sunk into my virginal, mortal flesh.
There was Aksel: alive, his body glistened beneath the cascading moonlight as he walked along the shoreline, his barefoot toes skimming the frigid water. The wet sand was mushy as it invaded the crevices between my toes when we walked the Norwegian shore. His mortality seduced me as the moonlight danced off his tanned flesh.
Swiftly, the pages multiplied as my immortal existence spilled across in black and white boldness. Viktor. The twins. Mavra. It pained me remembering how mortal he had been. How mortal they had all once been. So alive. So precious.
Viktor’s mortality energized and completed me. He was everything to me.
It seems as if those priceless nights spent listening to his heartbeat were a thousand years ago, not hundreds. And I ache to hear that heartbeat again, to close my eyes and hear its rhythmic cadence in my ear. I long to feel his lips press upon mine. To feel his bold Russian arms about my waist, reassuring me that mortality and immortality have a purpose. Writing about him brought him to life on the page. For a brief second I saw him before me. Yet when I reached out to hold him, he faded into the shadows.
Everything must die as he died.
The night wore on, the stars constant in their brilliance as the Chicago traffic slimmed. The pages caught up to the previous night, to that last fateful night with Aksel. In agony, my body quivered. I had murdered him. I had confessed my sin.
The Moonlight Sonata’s haunting first movement began as Beethoven’s piece queued on the Internet radio. The music turned to the past while I turned to the present. The pages piled on the computer screen, filling with ghosts and demons. The amulet rested near me on the desk, its image staring blindly.
Picking it up, I rubbed my thumb across the portrait. “Who are you?” I asked the smiling face. Its agelessness haunted me.
“You know who that is,” a voice replied from behind. The air in the study morphed as the fire finally died out. A mist blew in from the cracked balcony door replacing the musty smell of ash with a subtle, but unmistakable, aroma: lavender and linseed oil.
“Or do you remember her?” Sister Veronica’s words sliced through the sonata’s flowery second movement. “The girl painted on that amulet, her face drove away the black petulance. As its poison annihilated those we loved, she persevered. She cared for the sick, the dying, and the homeless. Her merciful hand was ever ready to steady those in need.”
“People change,” I hissed. The song ended. I slammed the laptop shut and rose, pressing toward her. “The blood has a way of doing that.”
“Being a vampire changed you, Bree,” she remarked.
“The blood… being a vampire… the two are one.” I sauntered to the window and placed my hand on the glass. Despite the October chill, the window felt warm to my unnaturally cold hand.
“I am a monster, Veronica. You can sing me to sleep, keep me there for a thousand years, but it will never change that.”
“You are not a monster, Bree,” she whispered. “The blood does not control you, not like it does others. Aksel knew that.” Her eyes moved to the desk. “That is why he gave you the amulet.”
The room spun as Veronica moved to the desk and grabbed the trinket. Her prayer beads swung as she walked back to me. The amulet caught the moonlight as it sat in her palm, her outstretched hand coming closer.
“It is a useless token, right?” I spat, taking the amulet from her. “Vatican hocus pocus. Just because one man believes it has powers, does not make it so.”
“True.” She turned, the blackness of the habit blending with the shadows as she moved to the couch. Sister Veronica smoothed her scapula as she sat. Her fingers twirled the prayer beads and she glared past me. The wood beads clanked together beneath her fingertips. “But it is powerful, Bree. To those who have faith, it is a weapon.”
“Faith?” I asked her. “Faith in what?”
“Aksel had faith in the magic that made that amulet. Francisco has faith in how he can exploit that magic – turn it into a weapon. Giving the amulet to you was the only way Aksel could stop him. Now you must have faith. I cannot tell you in whom or what, but you must find that out for yourself.”
“Great sacrifices have been made because of this amulet, and you come to me speaking of faith!” I growled. “What does it do? This trinket, what is it for?”
Sister Veronica’s face grew ashen and her eyelids fell. “It protects you.”
“I am a vampire! I have no need for protection!”
Sister Veronica rose from the couch, walked toward me, and stood glaring into my eyes. “Yes, my friend, you have always needed protection.”
“From whom?” I laughed. “Francisco? Not even the archivist… or the Pope wants me dead. The archivist wants my help! If the archivist finds that coward first, he may fair a worse fate than if I had found him.”
“Not a person,” her cold voice whispered breaking my laugh. “A thing.”
Her feet moved to the balcony door, opened it, and beckoned for me. “Come with me my old friend. We have much to discuss.”
THIRTY-ONE
We are all stories in the end. When found wanting and desperate as we lay dying, it all comes down to moments lived. Sad moments. Happy moments. Indescribable moments. They are all just that – all too fleeting. When that final moment comes, we reach out, hungrily, struggling to hold on to the last second, to remain. Yet we cannot stay. We must not. That is not how stories end.
Inbound traffic was already backing up on the Dan Ryan as I flew over the pre-dawn city. The people of Chicago were beginning to wake, eager to face the new day. These mortals below labored under the false pretenses that they were safe in their gated homes. They believed their doormen, bodyguards and handguns offered protection. When all along monsters flew above – walked amongst them – threatening their mortality. Their alarm systems and steel doors – their weapons – were no match for our kind. There were but a few stragglers in the hospital lobby at that hour of night. Only three hapless, hung-over souls remained near the hospital’s cab-call desk – a deserted area this time of night. Two women – in their mid-twenties – hunched over armchairs in various states of despair, their vomit-covered sequined club wear clinging to their wasted bodies. Their driver, a solitary man sat beside them, covering his face with his coat as I walked in. His body slumped with the weight of a night’s indecisions and cheap liquor. He reeked of beer and stale chips, of cigarettes and drug store perfume.
I walked past the trio – their thoughts still focused on their drunken exploits – and headed to the elevator. The ICU was on the sixth floor and the elevator nervously hummed and clanked as it snaked its way up the shaft. A fluorescent, disinfectant glow greeted me as I stepped off and into the isolated ICU floor.
The specialized ward, with its glass rooms fashioned in a semi-circle pod, had an octagonal nursing station in the middle; the nurses pressed behind computer screens like sardines in a tin can, diligently monitoring life signs. The gentle hum of ventilators within the ICU bubble vibrated the glass, but only my ears could detect it.
As I reached for the buzzer, my other hand felt the amulet in my right pocket. Its coolness reminding of Sister Veronica’s defiant stare as the October wind whipped at her veil. Those comforting talks from our youth – sitting near the fountain, our toes dipped in the lake – had come full
circle. She had returned to me, my friend, my confidant. Somehow, Aksel had brought her to me. Through the expanses of time and space and death and life, she was here. My guardian angel, through an amulet she came. Now I knew what I had to do. And why.
The buzzer’s sudden sting pierced the stillness pervading that hospital hallway. Inside the glass walls, the ICU machines beeped and ventilators purred. Yet outside, the only noise was of the nurse’s, “Can I help you?”
“I am here to see the patient in room 149, please.”
The door opened with a click and I walked through, the aroma of sterile alcohol and hospital grade tubing violating my nose with its eye-stinging potency. Colin’s room was the second on the left. Dimmed fluorescent lighting bled through thin, patterned drapes, now drawn over the sliding glass doors. A place card taped near his room number signified he was terminal – not going to make it – left for dead.
The door swooshed as I opened it, yet the others did not turn their glance from Colin’s motionless body. Judith clung to her father’s side, her hand entwined in his; ruby tears adorning her cheeks. Wesley and Aleksandra stood near the window watching the city wake. Death was nothing new to them. I walked to Colin’s side, looked into his near-lifeless face and then beheld Judith’s innocence. Despite the blood and its power, she was far too young to know this pain – to feel the raw ache this death would bring into her life.
“Wesley, Aleksandra,” I said as they turned, “take Judith away.”
“No!” She looked up, startled. “I am not leaving my dad!”
“Wesley, do it.” As Wesley came closer to the bed, Judith held her father tighter. “Judith, go with them; do not fight me.”
“Mother, please; do not deprive her,” Aleksandra begged. “You do not have to do this! He will be dead before morning. Just let him pass naturally. For her sake, please.”
Wesley met my stare and then lowered his glare, diverting his eyes instead in Aleksandra’s direction. “Trust your mother,” Wesley whispered. “She knows what she is doing.” He moved to Judith’s side and placed his hands on her own.
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