Sergeant Victor Bertrand was shot one night in a graveyard. He told the same stories at his trial as would Haigh and Haarman. It did no good. It never did. The investigations closed and the yber, once more, were safe.
“And I was to be like those men? A sacrifice? A cover-up for the murders you commit?”
“What murders?” St. Clair asked. “I don’t murder. You were to kill me: the Final Death for one who has already died. Quite possibly it would result in the deaths of humans close to me. As it did. Undoubtedly you would be killed yourself, afterward. The evidence would point to you. They would have you. And no one would look any further. The same as all the other times. The yber would be protected.”
Helman shifted his position on the edge of the bed, rubbing at his neck. The pain was dull and throbbing. “So I’m trapped in a plan set up over a hundred years ago, kept going by the same organisation.”
“Not the same organisation, human. The same individuals.”
“What do you mean the same people? The ones who set up the French Army sergeant are the same ones setting me up a hundred and thirty years later?”
The woman shouted at him. “You’re not listening. You’re not accepting any of this. We are yber. We are vampires. We drink blood to live. And as long as we keep drinking blood, we live forever. All the things you know about us, all your superstitions, their details are wrong. But their origin is in the truth. If you want to live, human, you must accept this.”
The woman was right. Helman had not accepted it. He had already begun convincing himself that the bullets had never hit her in the first place; that she had been protected by the refrigeration unit in the lab explosion. How could he accept that the things of nightmares, the things that lived only in the basements and cupboards of children’s homes, could actually be true? This was the world of space shuttles, heart transplants and television. Faced with the unknown, the sure knowledge of something that had no place in his view of the world, Helman had chosen to ignore it. What else could anyone do?
“How can I accept what you’re telling me? It’s ghost stories, old movies. Such things can’t be true!”
“Then you tell me how I survived the shrapnel of the explosion you caused in Chris’s lab. You tell me how I went out that window on the third floor, how I found you here, and how you shot me six times,” she held out her bullet-ripped sweater. “And then picked you up and held you against the wall. Tell me another way that could be possible.”
Helman spoke very slowly, very softly. “There is no way any of that could have happened.”
“Except my way. Listen to me, human. You are in great danger. So am I. The yber you met with in New York have great power, and great influence. One of them, the one Mr. King referred to as ‘My Lord’ is from the Conclave.”
Helman remembered the Jesuits. Their crossbows lying beside their steaming bodies. He dismissed her statement. “That’s something to do with the Pope in Rome.”
“It has nothing to do with Rome. It has everything to do with Rome. It is an insult. The Conclave is the name given the ruling council of yber. They have provided organisation and stability for us for more than two hundred and fifty years. Understand me, human; Europe was becoming civilised. There were newspapers, more education. Science was replacing superstition. The yber had to become civilised, too, or they would have been discovered, hunted down, and eradicated like the natives of other countries the Europeans invaded. The Conclave was formed and the yber became organised. Methods of hunting, of feeding undetected, of fully using our constantly growing powers had always been passed down through the generations of mentor and prey. The Conclave collected that knowledge. They imparted it to all. The Ways of the yber have enabled us to survive in the modern world. Without them, yber would be both a superstition and memory. Gone like dust in sunlight. Yet they demand a price.” And Adrienne St. Clair told Helman about the Conclave, and that price.
The early history of the yber was one of constant conflict with their only food supply, humans. The yber came at night to drink the blood of their victims. Sometimes the victims would succumb to the horrific condition and become yber themselves. All humans knew this to be true. All humans feared the night and the teeth and the unprotected throat. The stories made their way into the mythologies of all cultures.
As cities and civilisation expanded, the yber who moved with the new population invariably were discovered and put to the Final Death. The yber who stayed in the more rural and remote areas flourished. Knowledge of them passed from being a certainty to all people to being a story told by the backwater peasants of small forming communities. The yber were safe, protected by the superstitions of humans. Eventually they came to accept those superstitions and the Conclave perpetuated them by including them in the Ways.
The Ways said the yber were the spawn of Hell; minions of the Devil. Their enemy was God and the Kingdom of Light. All other things came from this; all yber acted on this.
Most of the organisation of the yber was taken from the Church to ridicule it. The Conclave, which ruled the yber, took their name from the gathering of Cardinals who selected the Pope, thus ruling the Church.
The Conclave provided identities for the yber who must move among humans. Thus Adrienne’s last name, St. Clair. Wherever possible the Church was mocked. Even the creation of a new yber was called Communion.
The drinking of blood by an yber did not automatically cause the victim to become one, too. If that were so, a single yber who needed one victim every night, would create more yber within five weeks than there were people in the world because each new yber would in turn require a victim of its own. Instead, yber could drink a small amount of blood from a number of victims who could survive unharmed. New yber could only be produced by the act of Communion.
The mentor yber would first drain the prey almost completely of blood. Shock from loss of blood had to set in. While the prey was in that condition, he or she had to be made to drink the white blood of the mentor. Only then was the condition passed. Only than was a new yber created.
The Conclave had seen to it that the yber had always a ready food supply by creating a special role for humans in the structure of yber affairs—the familiar.
Familiars were humans who were specifically chosen by yber to become yber themselves. But first, a period of servitude had to be undertaken. One yber might have five to ten familiars. Some higher ranking ones, like the Lords of the Conclave, might have dozens. The familiars tended the yber’s sanctuary from the sun, took care of the business and financial transactions that must be handled in the daylight and offered up their blood in small and regular amounts to their mentor. After a suitable time of such service, Familiars could be presented before a smaller gathering of yber and take part in Communion, becoming yber themselves.
The group in New York had been one of those smaller gatherings. A Meeting of yber bound as a geographical unit to pool their financial resources, keep their actions co-ordinated, and provide mutual protection. St. Clair was certain the New York group had been a high-ranking group of yber because of the cloth masks which hid their mouths.
Of the many changes which occurred when a human first became yber, one of the most immediate and apparent was the growth of fangs. The canine incisors fell out within hours of the transformation. During the next two nights, tertiary incisors erupted through the gums and grew rapidly to become inch-long, needle-tipped fangs. These fangs overlapped the lower lip and were impossible to hide.
“Yber who were protected and served by their familiars needed to do nothing about their fangs. They served as a symbol of their power and special nature. However, some vampires had to move among humans. For them, the incisors were filed and capped. Every few months, the continually growing fangs had to be altered, but in the meantime, there was nothing visible which could distinguish yber from human.”
Helman thought of King in New York and Rice in Toronto. Their teeth had been perfect, like St. Clair’s. He asked her about the two of the
m.
“Sometimes it’s hard for humans to tell the difference between some yber and their familiars because the familiars quickly adopt the manners and the appearance of their mentor. Since you never saw this Rice or King in the daytime, and their attacks on you were so fierce, it is fair to assume they were yber.”
There was a long silence as Helman stared out past the billowing drapes. The temperature was below freezing and he had put on his coat. St. Clair still stood in the same position, dressed only in her tattered sweater and black pants. She did not look the slightest bit cold or uncomfortable.
Helman shook his head violently. “No, no. It’s ridiculous. How can I believe this?”
St. Clair’s face reverted to the animalistic fury she had shown when she had burst through the glass doors. Her voice dropped to the chilling, sibilant whisper.
“How can you not?” she spat at him.
There was a brittle silence, primed to explode. Helman broke it softly.
“What is the decision you want me to make?”
At last St. Clair moved. She walked over and stood in front of him, staring down into his eyes. Seeing her face close up for the first time he was struck by its total lack of colour. An image of Rice came to mind: he had worn make-up. Even her lips lacked darker coloration; they were the same colour as her skin. The nipple of her exposed breast was just the same, pale white as the. skin of the rest of the breast.
“Do you know who it was you killed this evening in the lab?” she asked.
Helman forced himself to look her in the eyes and said, “Dr. Christopher Leung. The doctor you were staying with.”
St. Clair nodded, almost sadly. “He was a fine human. A fine man. He was also my familiar. My only familiar in North America. The last familiar I had in the world. The Conclave killed all the others at Heathrow airport when I escaped from England. My familiars pretended that I was being transported in a coffin after they had secured me in another container. They died trying to protect that empty coffin so the Conclave would be tricked by the diversion. All of them, dead.” She paused, letting the conclusion of what she would say slowly dawn on Helman on his own. “An yber cannot survive in this world without aid. Chris provided that aid and you took him from me. I am asking you to replace him. To become my new familiar.”
Helman felt his stomach contract. It was one thing to be able to admit that what St. Clair had told him was the truth. It was completely different to become a part of it himself. He remembered what she had said when she had started talking to him. It could mean your death. Whichever way you choose. He knew what would happen, immediately and painfully, if he refused her. Once again, the doors were closing all around him, only one path was open. Since the package had arrived in New Hampshire, he had been nothing but a pawn. First to the Conclave, and now to her. His anger and frustration grew with each decision he was forced to make. But what else could he do? Above all else, he knew he must live. At some time the moment would come when he could create his own options and make his own decision, striking back at the forces which controlled him. But it wasn’t now.
“Does that mean you will drink my blood?” It was insanity. Nightmares come true. What had happened to him? How could such questions even exist?
Adrienne St. Clair shook her head. “I’ve told you, human, I don’t murder. And I don’t feed on the living blood of humans.”
She looked out at the night sky. There was no change yet. The time of departure had not yet come. She turned back to Helman.
“There are better ways for yber to survive. And that is why the Conclave want me dead.”
Chapter Two
ADRIENNE ST. CLAIR paused as though considering what she should do next, then sat down on the bed opposite Helman.
“Somehow, human,” she began, then stopped. For the first time, Helman saw her expression soften. The rock hard intensity of her angry scowl faded for a moment. Perhaps she came close to a smile. “I’m sorry,” she said at last. “Sometimes I forget everything of my first life. What is your name?”
Helman told her; his real name. He did not want to face the consequence of her learning he had told her a false one.
“Somehow, Granger, you have been thrown into all of this unaware. The Conclave have chosen you, as they have chosen the others, because of your past. And whatever else is in that past, there is also ignorance. They counted on that. It made you easier to control. The lies about my tropical disease would explain my aversion to the sunlight and my association with Chris. The lies about my knowledge of martial arts would keep you from getting within my reach. The lies about wanting to make an example of me helped justify their demand that you decapitate me. In fact, that is one of the few ways to give me the Final Death. An instruction to drive the traditional stake through my heart might have been too obvious a clue.”
“They didn’t have to justify themselves to me. My sister’s life and the lives of her children are in their hands. I was in no position to question any of their demands.”
“They are clever, Granger. Most of them have had centuries to study the way the human mind works. Without the justification they provided, even if it were nothing more than one or two subconscious hints, you would have followed through with the physical actions they demanded of you, but your mind would be rebelling all the way, looking for a way out. With the stories they told you hidden in the back of your mind, those actions would be more acceptable to you. Your desire to rebel would be lessened. You would be more apt to simply complete the assignment just to get it out of the way.”
Helman realised she was right. Not only had he been manipulated overtly by the threat to his sister and her children, he had also been manipulated covertly by the false details they had fed him. He was impressed with her reasoning.
“How long have you had to study the way the human mind works?” he asked. Part of him feared the answer she might give.
“Not that long, Granger. I’m only 67. Barely a lifetime.”
He stared at her. Sixty-seven years old. She looked no more than thirty. She seemed to smile again, at his expression of shock.
“Keep telling yourself it is true.” Her voice had lost some of its harshness. It almost sounded reassuring. “We don’t age in the way that humans do, after our Communion. The infirmity of age never touches us. And we do live forever. Or at least we have, as far as any of us knows, the ability to do so if we wish.”
She was sixty-seven! She could be one hundred and sixty-seven. One thousand and sixty-seven? Immortality. The word eased into Helman’s mind and floated there, glowing. It was unbelievable. But if everything else she had told him were true, why not this also?
“How long is forever?” There was awe in his voice.
“There are legends among us of certain caves in Greece, where elders from our people’s dawn still live. Our dawn is thousands of years ago, Granger, thousands. But they are just legends, even to us. None of us knows for certain. What I do know is that my friends from my first life, before Communion, are now weakened and frail, if not dead. And I am still as I am; as I was at the moment of my First Death. And always will be.”
There are just the cold flapping of the curtains in the hotel room. There was nothing Helman could think to say. The things she was telling him filled his mind and froze it.
“I am also in this by accident, Granger. The Conclave has survived with exceptional stability because it has been able to choose its members with great care, observe their behaviour over the years of their servitude as familiars, and only then allow them into full blood membership. And the original leaders do not die to be replaced by new, younger ones, with new ideas. Immortality leads to stable government. But I am an exception. Years ago, I believe they wanted to put me to the Final Death because I was not chosen. But they relented. And now I suppose they regret their first decision.”
“If you weren’t chosen, how did it happen? How could it happen without another vampire—yber?”
“There was another yber. Granger.
But it was a time of war, and even the organised structure of the Conclave could not hold completely against it.”
And Adrienne St. Clair told Helman her story. The hotel room seemed to disappear from around him, and he felt he was there; a witness to the accident which had brought her into the nightmare world of the yber.
1944, and the current of victory flowed across Europe, sweeping against the Nazis on both fronts. In the west, in France, Adrienne St. Clair was there, part of the massed army, growing stronger each day past D-Day, pushing toward Berlin.
She was a nurse in a British field hospital, following behind the front lines; patching the wounded, cleaning the dead for their final journey. Her unit stayed close behind the fighting.
In the vicious counterattacks where positions would creep forward and back like the edge of an amoeba, she found herself unexpectedly in the front line more than once. And one day, the last day of her first life, a brutal shelling and savage attack destroyed the line and forced a retreat. In a Red Cross truck full mostly with dead and some of the living, she was cut-off from the rest of her retreating unit behind the enemy’s advance. To be a soldier, and captured, was bad enough. To be a woman, and captured, was more than she could bear to imagine. The terror began to mount in her. She realised the jerking green truck with the large Red Cross emblazoned on the side would be no protection against the forces which had created the misery she had tended in the weeks before. And then the truck was gone, twisted into shellholes on a fragmented road and lurching to its side in a gutter. She was thrown from the truck to the side of the road. When she had awakened from her blackout the few groans from the living cargo in the back had long stopped, replaced, instead, by the distant chest rumbling of panzers and the hollow pops of gunfire.
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