Bloodshift

by Garfield Reeves-Stevens

  “What did happen the next night?” Perhaps by going back to the story, the personal side would surface again. A key to understanding her.

  “I’m not sure. I think I stayed in the cellar for several nights, I was very weak. Human blood does not sustain us if it has been dead for more than a few hours. But I didn’t know that then.”

  “Did you know what had happened to you?”

  “Oh yes. Most certainly. I was a vampire. I had heard the stories. Stories for children and make-believe, but I knew them. It was quite obvious. I had had my blood drunk by a thing with fangs that couldn’t be killed by bullets. I was a vampire. Or I was insane.”

  “You don’t feel insane now?”

  “Not for a long time, Granger.” Finally she smiled at him. “This is my life.” Helman could not share in what she thought was the humour of the statement.

  “How did you meet with the Conclave? You said they wanted to get rid of you.”

  “Long after I left the cellar. In the beginning, we are protected from our ignorance by a set of strong new urges and drives. We become sluggish as morning approaches. Our minds fill with thoughts of darkness and refuge from the light. Our self-protection is like a new set of instincts. We follow them blindly. Later, as we mature, the drives lessen. But our intellect has taken over for us by then. Anyway, I roamed the front lines looking for bodies of the newly dead. I sickened myself many times feeding from blood gone bad, but I could not bring myself to feed from the living.

  “I tried the blood of animals, also. For a time, it worked. But the nutrient composition is different. After a month or so, human blood is necessary or starvation will follow.

  “On one foray, months afterward, I met another yber. He was experienced in the Ways and knew another had been hunting in his territory. He said later he was prepared to kill me to defend it. But he followed me for several nights and decided I was infringing by ignorance and not design. He became my mentor, as the yber in the farmhouse should have been.”

  “Mentor. The yber who would teach you in the Ways?”

  “That’s right. He helped me develop my new senses, my new powers. Taught me to be undetectable by humans and identify other yber at great distances.

  “He took me to Geneva as the war was ending. That was where the Conclave based itself, until the reconstruction. They were alarmed that there were so many like me; the Unbidden, they called us. Many yber were created without agreement from a governing group or Meeting during the war years. Many were given the Final Death. I was protected because I had a mentor. He saved me more than once.” Her voice sounded wistful, caught up in pleasant memories.

  “Were you in love with him?” Helman was at the point where he did not think it odd to ask this creature who could not be killed if she could love.

  “Yes, I was in love with him. I do love, Granger. That’s the whole conflict. The Conclave says we are the children of demons. Devil’s spawn. They rule the yber with the old superstitions of damnation and the fight against God and the Church. And they’re wrong! I am yber, yes. But I am also human. There is nothing evil about me. I am not cursed by Heaven.” She leaned forward, staring intently into Helman’s eyes. “Granger, all that is different about me is that I have a disease.”

  Immediately everything became acceptable for Helman. What he had witnessed had been presented to him in terms of the supernatural. Vampires. Night creatures. Things that his rational mind could not accept, even though the evidence had played itself out before his eyes. But a disease. That was rational. No matter that the evidence presented was the same. A disease spoke of medicine, of science. A disease he could accept. Science was his modern superstition, and when the proper words were said, Granger Helman could believe.

  “A rare disease,” Adrienne continued. “Communicable only by ingesting the living blood of one who is infected and only then when your body is in a state of massive shock. A disease that alters the nutritive needs of the body, speeds the metabolism incredibly, and does away with the side effects of aging. I’ve studied it for years. Chris Leung was going to help me. Had helped already in letters and research he’d conducted on his own. Vampirism is a disease. It can be controlled.”

  “And that’s why the Conclave want you dead. Because if it is a disease, their supernatural hold over the yber is without basis. They lose all their power.”

  “Exactly, Granger, exactly. They knew I thought these things long ago. Because I wasn’t chosen as the others had been? Because I had had medical training in my first life? Who knows? But I was warned not to discuss those things. I was a heretic they said. I risked the Final Death if I continued.”

  “But you do continue.”

  “I must continue.” She looked away. “For Jeffery’s sake. As well as my own.”

  Helman looked puzzled at the mention of Jeffery.

  “He was my mentor, Granger. The man I loved.”

  “What happened to him?”

  He saw the answer in her eyes before she spoke.

  “Six months ago, they came for me. Emissaries from the Conclave. Jeffery protected me. Just as he had helped me in my research.” Her voice became tight and strained. “To teach me a lesson, they took him instead. They chained him to an outcropping of rock near the villa which held our sanctuary.” She whispered, her voice barely audible. Helman could see tears. “They faced him to the east. To the sunrise…”

  Helman reached out and this time did not hesitate. He took her hands in his to try and comfort her. They were like ice, like death. But the cold air through the broken glass door had chilled his fingers and he did not notice.

  Adrienne took a deep breath and sat up. She squeezed Helman’s hands a moment, as if to thank him, then moved them from him.

  “That night I went to the outcropping. The chains were loose around the rocks. His clothes scattered around the ground, blown by the wind, like Jeffery. The ring I had given him lay buried beneath the chains. Can you know what it’s like, Granger? Humans may fall in love and have decades at most. Death takes mere years away from you. But for yber, the Final Death takes centuries, eternity away. Not even his body to kiss goodbye…”

  Memories of love lost, decades stolen, rose up in Helman. Is this what it comes to? he thought. Roselynne Delvecchio was dead from the moment she met Helman in the parking lot, so long ago. In her last moments, he had given her new life. A mistake had been made, he had told her. And life had flowed into her seconds before Helman took it all away forever. It had cost him, that final closing. And now he was faced with the same situation. The woman before him was already dead, a vampire, an yber, but Helman once again could act and give her new life. He could offer her protection. Perhaps it could be a way to make up for the past? But there was no making up for the past. It was gone. His rational mind had no superstition of godly retribution for past sins. He had only the superstition of science, and the far more powerful one of conscience. When she first had made her offer to him, that he be her familiar, he knew he would accept, if only to prevent his immediate death; to preserve himself so that he might still save Miriam and her children. But now he knew he would accept Adrienne’s offer for a new reason, a stronger reason. Finally, he would act. He would accept her offer because he wanted to. For Helman, the difference was enormous.

  “Adrienne, I will help you, be your familiar, whatever you need. I’ll do it.”

  “The Conclave will do everything they can to stop us.”

  “They’d do that anyway.”

  Adrienne checked the sky again through the fluttering drapes. It was growing lighter. How was her knowledge of the Ways going to serve her if she found herself talking like this? Of things best hidden away from her heart.

  “What should we do first?” Helman asked. She was the one with the experience. He would trust the opening moves to her.

  “First I must get to my sanctuary. It is almost dawn. The sun is deadly.” Helman nodded, thinking of Jeffery.

  “But you can’t go back to the townhou
se, your people didn’t defend it from the priests, it’s not—”

  Adrienne’s face went rigid. “What do you mean, ‘my people’? My last familiars were butchered by the Conclave at Heathrow. I have no ‘people’. And what do you mean by ‘priests’?”

  “The Jesuits with crossbows. Your people with guns. It was a bloodbath. It started at the lab after the explosion and by the time I got to your townhouse, it was all up and down the street. The leader of the people fighting the priests was ‘Maker One’.”

  “Jesuits of the Seventh Grade.” Her eyes were wide, her nostrils flared. “I thought I had eluded them long before I reached England. Their sources are better than I had thought.”

  “Why are they after you?”

  “They’re after all yber. They’re as caught up in superstition as the Conclave. Who knows why they’re after me.”

  “But the people who fought the Jesuits…” Helman suddenly realised what he had said. “Jesuits? How can Jesuits do those things? Killing? It’s ridiculous.”

  “They’re Jesuits of the Seventh Grade, Granger. I don’t have time to explain. The sky is getting lighter. I don’t know who it could be who was fighting with them. The Conclave has skirmishes with them from time to time but I don’t see why they’d be trying to protect me from the Jesuits. Find out for me before this evening.” Adrienne got up and moved to the balcony door.

  “But what if the Conclave contact me? What about my sister and her kids? What should I tell them?” Helman reached out to touch her arm. She pulled away.

  “Tell them what happened to my first mentor, in the cellar, happened to me. They’ll accept that for now. As long as they believe it, your family will be safe. I must go, Granger. This evening I’ll come back. Be ready to travel.”

  She walked out to the balcony. He came after her. “Where will you go? Wouldn’t you be safer in a closet or something here?”

  The wind pushed at their hair. Helman saw that when he spoke, his breath condensed and swirled away. Nothing swirled away from Adrienne.

  “I have other sanctuaries they won’t know about. I’ll be safer at one of them than here. NOW go inside. Rest for this evening.”

  She turned from him and slid over the balcony railing, headfirst.

  Helman gasped her name and ran to reach after her. His hand held empty air. He leaned over and saw nothing. Her voice came to him through the cold air.

  “Go inside. Rest.”

  He peered in the direction of the voice. Perhaps there was a shadow moving down by the pool. Perhaps it was the wind rustling the tarpaulin, Adrienne was gone.

  Helman stepped back into the room. He straightened up the evidence of the initial fight and then phoned the front desk to tell them that a sheet of ice, or something, had just shattered his balcony door. There was glass all over the inside of his room and he wanted to be moved.

  When he was in his new room, a duplicate of the first, but without a balcony and sliding doors, Helman collapsed on the bed. He would sleep through the morning. This time by choice and not by accident as he had the day Max had been killed by the Jesuits. Oh God, had they killed Max because of his connection with Helman? Then the Jesuits must have known about Helman’s contract on Adrienne days ago. And who had said “Nothing to worry about on this end?” Were familiars of the Conclave told to kill Max disguised as priests? Then dispose of witnesses? To ensure Helman could work for them?

  No, the Jesuit on the driveway by the townhouse had recognised Helman. That’s why the dying priest had tired to strangle him. But for what purpose? Because he was working for the Conclave, trying to Kill the woman?

  Circles wheeled within circles, none would interconnect. There was not enough information for him to follow it any longer. He must sleep. He must be rested for the first part of the bargain with Adrienne.

  Who were the people who had tried to protect her from the Jesuits? And who was Marker One?

  That morning, as Helman slept, there were no dreams. The basement was far from empty, but it was well lit.

  Chapter Four

  IT WAS AN abomination.

  The doctor had dealt with the bodies of those who had died by fire and violent car crashes. He had performed autopsies on bodies of the drowned which had been recovered days afterward, swollen with the gases of decay, flesh puffed and stretched from bones no longer held by cartilage and tendons. He had cut into those bodies, explored the unrecognisable dark masses of rotted organs, felt the liquids which were not blood ooze up around the hands as his knife delved deeper, and he had not been as affected as he was now. The body before him had not achieved this form by chance and the inevitable corruption of nature. This body had been made this way; a will and conscious thought were behind its destruction. And his scalpel trembled in his hands as he contemplated such a will, and the creature who would exercise it thus.

  New York, January 18

  Outside the doctor’s surgery, Father Clement sat and brooded in the darkness. The outrage that had seared through him earlier was now subdued. Once before, long ago in the time of the suppression, the officers of the Society had felt such outrage, and had decided that there was a time when prayer and Holy guidance were not enough. At such times there must be actions. Those officers, tricked by the Enemy into the near destruction of their order, had taken the Fifth Vow of the Society of Jesus. And action had been taken. A Pope lay dead. Another learned the lesson. The Society was restored.

  Since that time, the Fifth Vow, unknown to the world, save by rumour, unknown to all but the very select of the Society itself, had existed. Those who professed it were those who took action. Action that was necessary in extraordinary times. Such as now. When the Realm of Darkness and the power of America were to join as an unholy prelude to the End Days. When ten feet away from him a doctor probed the last remains of what had been his brother in the Holy Cause: Father Benedict.

  The phone call had come late that evening; the whispered voice had been explicit. A message from Helman could be found in the garden of the Holy Father’s house. The Society was to see the price of interference with the woman, St. Clair.

  It was a challenge, and it would be met. Father Clement sat in the darkness and planned action.

  When the doctor emerged from his surgery into the waiting room where Clement planned, he was pale and still shaken by what he had seen. The Jesuits had told him of such things when he had made his vow of personal obedience to Father Clement, but his rational mind had not truly accepted it.

  At first there had been hints that the Enemy he swore to fight for the Society of Jesus was literal and existing on this earth. Then the hints had become stories, and the stories became training. Still he had not believe it. Until tonight, when the ruined body of Father Benedict had been brought to his office, long after hours, and that body had been drained entirely of blood. The wound that the blood had been drawn from had been made in the left carotid artery. It had been made with a human mouth. The horror of that knowledge far outweighed any consolation held by the knowledge that most of the other atrocities had been committed after death. Any torture would have been preferable to that first hideous wound.

  Father Clement waited patiently for the doctor to compose himself and give his report. There would be no more mistakes like Heathrow. The battle had been enjoined, and the victory would be the Society’s. So it was written.

  The doctor spoke.

  “Cause of death was shock brought on by massive haemorrhage. The blood was removed from the wound in the neck. The presence of capillary damage, skin indentations, and … and saliva traces indicate that the method of removal was … was as you … suggested.” Sweat rolled down the doctor’s forehead. A detached part of him wondered if he would faint.

  “His blood was sucked by vampires, Doctor Biller.” Father Clement’s voice was cold and flat. “We must not hide from the Enemy. Use the words that must be used.”

  “B … by vampires.” Twenty years of medical discipline, twenty years of faith in science, di
sappeared from him as he said that word. The apprehension of it clutched at him like an icy hand brushing his shoulder in an empty, unlit room. The detached part of him wondered about heart attacks.

  He must continue. Reduce it to the known, the manageable. “Aside from the superficial mutilations of the face, apparently caused by … claws, and the traumatic excision of the left eye, the other mutilations occurred after the subject … after Father Benedict had died.”

  “Detail them, Doctor Biller. Come to know the Enemy.”

  His heart raced. Far away he heard his voice speak, but he clearly heard his heartbeat pounding in his ears. How fast can it go? How much can it stand? “The most apparent mutilation is the massive destruction of the chest caused by a large wooden crucifix which has been thrust through the sternum, cracking the lower ribs on each side, destroying the heart, and exiting through the spinal column between the seventeenth and twentieth vertebrae. The tongue has been split along the medial axis, again, it would appear, by claws. Also, the septum appears to have been removed in the same fashion.” The room spun. He prayed he would faint before his heart had reached the limits of stress. Father Clement listened impassively.

  “Go on, Doctor. All of it.”

  “The massive destruction of tissue makes it impossible to tell if his genitals have been excised or just shredded unrecognisably.” Sweet Jesus, take those images from his mind. “The mutilation has been caused by sharp imple … by teeth and claws, oh God, Father—” The doctor’s mind broke before his body. He collapsed into a sobbing, quaking form, unintelligible words bubbling from his mouth: deep, resonating sounds of unbearable anguish.

  Father Clement went to him and held him; rocking the man back and forth to comfort him. The doctor was one of the lay brothers of the Society who had kept their vows a secret from the world. Such agents of influence were necessary to the Society’s work when unobtrusive access was needed to the secular seats of power. Such agents within the Washington bureaucracy had first alerted the Society to the initial contact between the Americans and the woman, and had discovered the link between the assassin and the death merchant in Miami. Occasionally these brothers were chosen by the professed of the Five Vows—the Jesuits of the Seventh Grade—and, bound by their oaths, the lay brothers would join in the necessary actions. But always, when faced with the horrible shadow reality that lay under the façade of the modern world, the reaction was the same. The people of the middle ages, the savages of the world today, none would question the truth, that had reduced this doctor to hysteria. Humanity had set its task to isolate itself from horror, and it had succeeded too well. Unknown, unwatched, ignored, the real horrors grew until their slightest touch could devastate. Centuries of progress and enlightenment vanished in that awesome moment of recognition when humans looked into the darkness and saw that the half-seen things that scuttled within it were real.