Bloodshift

by Garfield Reeves-Stevens

  She felt the tenseness sweep through him like a roaring wave. His face paled. But he couldn’t speak to her about Weston.

  “I don’t believe he’ll consider me an enemy,” Helman said. “They’re going to have to check to see if you really did escape. You could have left your clothes with the steel rod as I described in an attempt to fool us all. If I were them, I’d check on that, I’d keep the human assassin in reserve in case we need him again.” His head was pounding. Their blood is far sweeter. Dear God, he felt sick. “I can serve my family best, save them perhaps, by helping you. You said prepare to travel. I hope that means you have some sort of plan because I don’t know what to do.” Far sweeter, he thought, far sweeter.

  Adrienne saw Helman was close to tears. She drew near to him, looking up at him. “They’ll be fine, Granger. You’re right. Diego won’t do a thing until he is certain I’m dead or alive. As long as I stay hidden, they’ll all be fine.”

  She held him, feeling awkward. Not sure how hard she should squeeze a human. Not sure if it was the right thing to do to calm him. But he had been through so much. So much that was not part of the world he knew. She held him, but she could tell his mind was spinning. He didn’t seem to know she was there.

  “Granger, did you find out about the bodyguards? The men you said were fighting the Jesuits. Did you learn anything more about them?”

  In his confusion, the desire to survive still struggled to remain clear. He must lie to her. He must not tell about Weston. He must lie.

  “I caught up with one of them. I questioned him. Rice confirmed his answers. He seemed amused. The Conclave hired other assassins for you. He wouldn’t tell me how many. I kept running into them wherever you went.” He realised she had wrapped her arms around him. For a moment he accepted it, like closing his eyes for the last ten seconds before the alarm goes off, pretending it will never ring and disturb him. But then the situation won out and he pulled back from her; She released him immediately, embarrassed. She didn’t know what thoughts were going through him. Or her. Images of Jeffery came to her.

  “Why would they fight back at the Jesuits?”

  Helman lied well. “The one I questioned today said he was worried the Jesuits would capture you. He said he had to keep that from happening so he would be able to get at you himself. Decapitate you.”

  Something in his story, or his answer, didn’t ring true to her. But for now she had to accept whatever he said. He was the only one who could get her to the ultimate sanctuary. Perhaps it was the pressure he was under, the tension she had felt in him as she had held him. That was it. Nothing more.

  “You do have a plan, don’t you?” he asked.

  There was almost desperation in his voice. What human had had to face the Conclave before? And lasted this long? She felt sorry for him. He was caught up in things he might never understand. But he was so important to their resolution, and willing to help her cause. At first, she was sure it was because she had put him under the pain of death. But now, she felt, there was something else driving him. She couldn’t express it.

  “Yes, Granger, I do have a plan.” A plan of desperation, she thought. Few other yber had achieved it.

  “We shall go to the Father for help,” she said.

  “The Father?” asked Helman. “An yber father? Hell be able to help us? He’s had experience with this type of thing before?”

  Adrienne nodded. She felt tenseness inside in a different way from the way the humans felt it; the way she had felt it in her first life. But still she felt it now, crawling through her like a ravaging beast, digging into every part of her. yber had control over their bodies. They didn’t tremble: But in her mind, she shook.

  “He is the oldest living yber.”

  The question hung silent and unspoken between them.

  “More than nine hundred years,” she said. “He has experience in everything.”

  Chapter Eight

  THE GIRL WAS dying. In minutes, the stress created by the shock of blood loss would strain her young heart beyond its capacity. On his bed, Lord Diego lay beside her, watching in fascination.

  The girl was no more than twelve, her pale, naked body just beginning to show signs of maturity; a maturity that would never come. Diego had consumed her; drawing from her her childhood, her womanhood, and her blood. Now he watched as her life itself passed from her body.

  New fork, January 18

  Within Diego was the power to bring her back. By sharing the Communion of his blood she could be born again into the world of yber. He was the taker and the giver of life, and, using that power, he toyed with her.

  Delicately he ran his razor-sharp talon across the vein of his wrist. White liquid, the blood of the yber welled out from the separated flesh. He gathered it on his outstretched finger like sap. In the time it took for his finger to be coated, the wound had healed without trace.

  Diego dangled his finger over the face of the dying child. Her eyes had rolled back and the unseeing whites stared uselessly from her half-closed lids. Her mouth was open, parched from laboured breathing. Into it Diego dripped the blood of life. The girl’s reaction was instantaneous.

  Her eyes clenched shut as the first shock of the substance burned its way into her. Her mouth stretched open like a fish struggling out of water, desperate for more of what her body somehow knew was its only chance at survival. Groans rose from her. Her body arched as though in passion. Diego moved his hand away from her, slowly twisting it back and forth to keep the white fluid from dripping off. He waited until the reaction diminished, the child once again slipping close to oblivion. Then he held his finger above her mouth again. The blood of the yber entered her. Her body convulsed, desperate for life.

  She is so strong, he thought. The children were always the ones who would last the longest. He marvelled at it. Once he had kept a boy child on the brink of extinction and rebirth for an entire evening. Eventually, he had relented and decided such hunger for life should be rewarded. He had bared his neck to the boy, to let him share in Communion. But it had been too late. The child had died his first and only death. Since then, Diego had never relented, all his children had but one destination once he had taken them to his bed. He held his finger back from the girl, wiping it clean on the blood-stained sheets. She shuddered once, and was still. Her destination had been reached.

  Diego pushed her useless body from the bed. It lay upon the floor like a broken doll. In the daytime, his familiars would remove it. The human who had provided her for the honoured guest of the Eastern Meeting would demand more payment, no doubt. The girl would not be returned in usable condition. But the Conclave had more than enough wealth to reimburse him a billion times over, if they chose. Perhaps this close to the fruition of their Final Plan, they could simply dispose of him as well. Soon the order would be changed, and Diego could have whomever he wanted, whenever he chose. The feeling that thought gave him was good. Almost as good as the feeling of the child’s blood in what now served as his belly.

  He liked the feeling. He had spent his first two hundred years as an yber sleeping in rotting coffins and mausoleums. Each dawn he had passed into dreamless unconsciousness fearing the stake and the axe. Too many times he had returned to his sanctuary to find the accursed priests and the burning garlic blocking his way. But he had survived. Two hundred years of living like an animal, and he had survived.

  The next two hundred years had been far better. He had met others. Not just others of his kind, but others like him. yber who had not lost their sanity in nights of hunting and being hunted. Yber who had not totally turned themselves into the demons of Hell most believed they were. Some yber had maintained their intellect. With them he had formed the Conclave and struck back at the maddening Society of Jesus.

  Soon there had been wealth and property. Dry, secure sanctuaries to spend the long days in safety. Travel and gatherings at night. And familiars. Always there, were familiars. Yber no longer had had to hunt for survival. There were always enough
humans who would give themselves willingly—for a chance at Communion and the immortality it promised. And if the nights were too easy, the humans always had wars. The homelands, Korea, Vietnam. Today Africa and South America both offered the opportunity of the hunt, the drinking of fear-charged blood. The savaged bodies, drained of blood, were never questioned. The yber roamed free. And soon they would be freer still. The Final Plan was almost complete. Only Adrienne St. Clair had the power to alter its inevitable outcome. But she could not last long against him.

  Diego stretched out on the bed like a cat. The girl’s blood was being metabolised within him, restoring him. He felt at peace.

  In a sense, he supposed he should be thankful to the woman. He had felt attracted to her when she had been presented to him for the first time in Geneva at the end of the last war in the homelands. At the time she had been with Jeffery, and Diego had kept his feelings to himself. He had lived for four hundred years and knew that nothing remained the same. Despite their love for each other, Diego could see that within a century at most, Jeffery and Adrienne would drive themselves apart. And then, Diego had thought, I will have her. Immortality tended to make the yber very patient.

  To keep her near, he had vouched for her during the time of the slaying of the Unbidden. He had offered her and her mentor the use of his Spanish villa. He had supported their initial investigations into the nature of yber. Those investigations had made possible the Final Plan the Conclave was now embarked on. Those investigations had also threatened the Conclave’s existence.

  To himself only, Diego thought Adrienne was right. Whatever explanation there was for the existence of the yber, it lay in observable, understandable nature, not within the fire and brimstone of the Pit. But the Conclave ruled by fire and brimstone. The yber were content with their place within the supernatural realm the Conclave had created for them. The only disadvantage was dealing with the Jesuits, who also ruled themselves with knowledge of Hell. Some things of the human world Diego would miss when the order changed. But he would not miss the Jesuits. He would see to it that they were among the first to be consumed. He liked the feeling that thought gave him, too. He sprawled upon the bed for a long time, thinking thoughts about the coming destruction of the humans. The centuries of struggle would soon bear fruit. Beside him on the floor, the body of the girl was unmoving.

  Eventually, Diego sensed the presence of another yber beyond the bedroom door. There was no knock. There didn’t have to be.

  “Come,” he said aloud.

  Mr. King entered, still in the make-up and clothing of his human disguise. His refined yber senses told him immediately that the child on the floor was dead; he completely ignored her. He did not feel jealous over this display of Diego’s privileges. He preferred his prey older.

  “We have received a message from Toronto,” he said.

  “She is dead?” Diego asked.

  “It appears so, but Rice says the conditions are such that we cannot be sure.”

  Diego sat up on the bed. Dried blood had crusted on the corners of his mouth. “Explain,” he said.

  King told the story Helman had told Rice.

  “So,” he concluded, “either she was impaled by debris in the explosion and her body dissolved or, she simply left that pile of clothing as an attempt to deceive us.”

  “What is your conclusion, Mr. King?”

  “In the confusion of the explosion, I don’t believe she would have had time to create so elaborate a ruse, especially down to the detail of leaving a thick white fluid intermingled with the remains of her clothing. I believe she has been dissolved. The threat is ended. The human may be killed.”

  Diego ran his fingers around his mouth, removing the caked blood. “I agree with you, Mr. King. She wouldn’t have enough time to prepare her clothes in that manner. But there is a third possibility.”

  “Which is?”

  “She and the human may be working together.”

  “Impossible!”

  “Don’t be so quick, Mr. King. Do you know how the woman came by her Communion?”

  “She was one of the Unbidden during the second major war in the homelands.”

  “Do you know what happened to her original mentor?”

  “I have not heard the full story.”

  “He was dissolved by debris in an explosion exactly at the moment of transition from the first life to the second. Apparently the woman was literally drenched in the blood of life. It was enough for her to survive Communion.”

  King understood immediately. “Dissolved in the debris from an explosion,” he repeated.

  “Precisely, Mr. King. It’s too convenient a story the second time around. She would not have had time to prepare her clothes, but she would have time to tell the human the story so he would tell us.”

  “But why would she work with the human who tried to kill her?”

  “He is, it would seem quite resourceful. She has no familiars, no contacts in North America. I think she has made a wise decision.”

  “If your conclusion is true, my Lord, what are we to do?”

  “We are to win, Mr. King. We are to win.”

  King stayed silent. He knew better than to question a Lord of the Conclave.

  “Of first importance,” Diego continued, “is keeping the woman from contacting Washington—”

  “You believe the claims of the Jesuit?”

  “That the woman and Washington are somehow conspiring to enter into some form of alliance, yes. About Armageddon and all the other nonsense the Jesuits are fond of spouting, no. Our second goal, of course, is to kill her. Whom do we have in California?”

  “Matheson, my Lord. But why California?”

  “The woman is young, Mr. King. Still predictable. She has run out of options. She knows, despite her assassin human, that it is just a matter of time before the Conclave prevails. Her Final Death cannot be far away. In such a position, what would you do?”

  King paused a moment. He could think of nothing.

  “Pretend to repent,” he offered, weakly. “Give myself to the Jesuits in return for forgiveness and sanctuary.” “Not even the Jesuits are so stupid, Mr. King. Where in the world is there a place safe from the influence of the Conclave?”

  King had no reply.

  “You have heard of the birthplace, have you not?”

  “Nacimiento?”

  Diego smiled, his fangs brilliantly white, devastatingly sharp. “Nacimiento,” he agreed. “The fortress of the Father. Alone among all yber, he is free of the Conclave.”

  King was shaken. He had never thought of the Father as a possible refuge for the woman because it was unthinkable. The woman would not live a single night if she dared to intrude upon the Father’s domain. Likewise, the Conclave could not survive the dissension if Diego advised the yber to move against him. He was the Father, Mentor to hundreds who still lived as yber. It was impossible.

  “Surely, My Lord, you must—”

  Diego spat at King. “Watch your tongue or you may be watching the next sunrise.”

  King checked his comment. He wouldn’t risk it.

  Diego resumed in a more natural, for yber, voice.

  “Does Rice have watchers at all the points of exit for Toronto?”

  “Yes, my Lord.”

  “You will tell him to remove them.”

  “Should we not maintain our watch on the human?”

  “Why? If he returns to his sister, we shall have him. If he travels with the woman to Nacimiento, again we shall have him. He has only two destinations. We shall be at each, yes?”

  “Yes, my Lord.”

  “You will contact Matheson in California. In the end the woman will arrive there. Rice must do nothing to prevent it. We dare not risk another failed operation. It will take her at least two nights of travel to arrive. We will be prepared for her this time. And this time, I will be there to deal with her myself.”

  “Yes, my Lord.”

  “When you have reached Matheson, put
him through to me in the meeting room. Then you will travel to New Hampshire. West Heparton, I believe you called it.”

  The human assassin was to be punished, King thought. “The sister, my Lord?”

  Diego nodded. “And the children, Mr. King. After you have killed the sister, bring the children to me. I wish this human to see what happens to those who defy the Conclave.”

  “Yes, my Lord.”

  “And take this thing with you as you leave,” Diego waved his claws at the crumpled form of the girl beside the bed.

  King stooped to pick her up. Her body sprawled lightly in his arms. He would take her to the furnace like the others.

  Diego watched him leave impassively. Already his mind had moved on to the nights ahead. How perfectly events were transpiring. The woman and her human would run straight to the only protection she believed still existed for her. And it would be Diego’s trap. What’s more, in that trap, the Father could finally be given the Final Death. Not out of revenge or maliciousness, but as a signal to the rest of the yber that the old times were coming to an end. The order would be reversed. And when it was, so would the Conclave change. In a world where humans were in the total control of the yber, a world after the Final Plan had taken hold, there would be much more to be gained by standing against the old ways of the Conclave. Diego planned to gain it all.

  But first there would be the last battle at the birth-place. The woman would die, the last hope of the humans would the, and of course the human who had caused all of this trouble would die, after he had seen his beloved sister’s children taken to the bed of Diego and consumed.

  He left the bedroom and walked naked to the meeting room. He must arrange the conditions with Matheson. And he must send another message to the Jesuits. Not only could the yber rid themselves of many of the priests there, but the blame for the Father’s death could be placed on them, too. Yes, it was all arranging itself perfectly he thought. This victory will be sweet.