by Heather Knox
I look to the woman for answers, but she appears as if in trance, the color drained from her eyes as if she’s becoming the light from her blade. A raven now perches on her shoulder. Everything is black and white.
The woman continues: “Lo, they do call to me. They bid me take my place among them, in the halls of Valhalla where the brave may live forever.”
I feel it then, the sting. I do not see her move—indeed, still she stands, eyes open but not seeing, hands clasped around the hilt of her glowing sword, a trail like stardust joining it and my heart. A curious feeling, crumbling to ash, dying, becoming nothing but memory, becoming nothing.
In my Final Moment I think of her, of my beloved—and it all seems so black and white.
“LOOKS BETTER, MUCH BETTER,” THE DOCTOR CONgratulates himself as he leads Logan through a series of movements testing range of motion. “You won’t be running a marathon this month, but you heal quite quickly, my boy. Quite quickly.”
He offers Logan a hand off the examining table. As Logan’s feet make contact with the stark white tile floor, a woman in a white coat like Doctor Larkin’s comes in from an adjoining room. Separating the two, a large observation window which has been darkened to allow for privacy.
“The girl is all ready to be moved. She looks great, but I’ve recommended she take it easy for a while as her body adjusts to—” she stops herself short as she notices Logan.
Doctor Larkin waves as if to give her permission to continue. “We’re surrounded by vampires, Doctor Amel. Details about our gun-slinging medical marvel won’t startle the boy. And I’d say she’s fit to run that marathon that this one can’t,” he jokes, slapping Logan on the back. “Besides, I know you like to hear your own voice.”
The woman eyes Logan a moment before continuing, seemingly unaware of Doctor Larkin’s jab. “We don’t know the long-term ramifications of the partial blood transfusion. She appears quite healthy, but we haven’t yet done adequate research into the genetic makeup of vampires, nor into what changes the body undergoes when made into one. Her arrival threw our research timeline out the window since her case was critical and required immediate attention.”
“Partial blood transfusion? I thought you guys were just giving her a taste of the stuff to help her heal?” Logan asks.
“That was our intention, yes—but when she started hemorrhaging we had no choice but to act quickly,” the woman explains, grinning as though she’d won the lottery. “Obviously we didn’t have her blood on hand, so the transfusion needed to be allogeneic—blood from another donor. Processing the supply from the tanks takes too long and the only blood we had readily available and prepped was that which we were already giving her—vampire blood.”
“Why did she hemorrhage?”
The woman shrugs. “Perhaps a reaction to the blood, perhaps a consequence of surgery. In any major surgery it’s a possibility, so that’s not entirely surprising.”
“But something was?”
She looks again to Doctor Larkin, who shrugs and returns to scribbling on Logan’s chart.
“How should I explain this? Without getting technical, as soon as the transfusion hit ‘critical mass’—as soon as the amount of donor blood exceeded the patient’s—her body began repairing itself so quickly that we weren’t even able to remove the catheters or stitch her up. Her body ejected all foreign objects and within moments her surgical wounds were healed. Charlotte doesn’t have a single scar from the procedure, only from the initial injury where we were treating her with smaller quantities of donor blood.” She smiles at Logan. “My daughter is about her age and very sick. What we’ve done here could really help a lot of people,” she offers, looking on Charlotte with pride. “I think your friend—girlfriend?” She pauses expectantly.
“Uh, friend,” Logan lies about the girl he’s never even met, surprised the doctor doesn’t know more about the circumstances surrounding their arrival at the ranch, that they didn’t know one another prior to arriving and that Charlotte, for all intents and purposes, was just a stranger on a surgical table to him, Kiley, and Hunter—though they did all seem to feel a certain attachment to or protectiveness towards both her and one another as a result of their unconventional situation. They may be the blind leading the blind, but no way were they were going to be the dead leading the dead.
“Well, I think she’s going to be fine—better than fine, actually. But just in case, we’ll check in on her regularly,” the woman promises.
“Check in? She won’t be staying here anymore?”
“I see no reason to keep her under such close monitoring. You can access the medical staff via the tablet twenty-four-seven should something happen and we’re just minutes away, faster than an ambulance were we on the outside. If you and your friends don’t mind helping her take it easy, I see no reason you can’t be reunited.”
“We will! It’ll be nice to, uh, have her back,” he promises.
“A bunch of thugs, that pack,” the woman offers apologetically. “Most of them here aren’t like that, or aren’t for long. Victor never intended them to hurt her—or any of you—but some vampires find it difficult to overcome their more, shall we say, violent urges. With that pack dealt with, I think I can finally bring my daughter in for her first treatment. If Doctor Larkin thinks we’re ready?” She casts this last question his direction and it’s met with his trademark shrug.
“What happened to them?” Logan explores, dodging the question he really wants to ask: who would bring someone they love here? Does Doctor Amel really think her daughter would be better off here, amongst monsters, than in treatment on the outside?
“Victor had them escorted to the tanks to become involuntary donors. Has he given you the spiel on Project Harvest?”
Logan shakes his head no.
“I’m surprised. This is his baby—actually, all of us involved feel passionately about the cause. You see, most of the donors are just people, like you and me, who volunteered, but a few are other Praedari he’s made an example of. I won’t ruin his sales pitch, but you asked about that pack. This punishment won’t kill them, of course—that’s not Victor’s leadership style—but while they’re left to contemplate the error of their ways, they can at least be useful to the cause,” she smiles. “It might be hard to see it now, but he’s an innovator, not a monster.”
The jury’s still out on that one, Logan thinks. He offers a nod of understanding to appease the woman who then busies herself with Charlotte’s chart and preparations for her release.
“You’re smart,” Doctor Larkin says, jarring Logan from his thoughts.
“Huh?”
“You got a lot of information out of her just now, but what are you going to do with it?”
Logan shrugs. “I’m curious, that’s all.”
“You act as if covert interrogation is the only way to get the answers that you seek. Have you tried just talking to Victor? Or the others? He’s not lying when he says that you’re guests here. Most of the security measures and isolation are for your own safety.”
Logan blinks hard at the doctor, unaccustomed to such a moment of clarity in his few interactions with him. His fondness for Victor might be touching were the circumstances different. A sharp knock on the glass interrupts their chat. Made two-way again, a perky girl on a hospital bed waves at Logan and Doctor Larkin through the glass while Doctor Amel talks to her. She’s dressed in jeans and an autumn-hued flannel with the sleeves rolled part of the way up, the scar Doctor Amel spoke of probably hidden underneath. Most people look small and frail and helpless after such an ordeal, dwarfed by a hospital gown and decorated in bandages, but Charlotte looks to Logan as rested as if she just returned from a beach retreat far away from this place. How much does she remember about what happened the night she was brought here?
Maybe more importantly, what does she remember about being here?
“I MUST SAY, I’M SURPRISED YOU WANTED A TOUR,” Victor says with a smile.
Hunter shrugs. �
�I’m getting a little stir-crazy.”
“Logan said something to that same effect—I do apologize for the close quarters. I considered rooming you each separately but I thought that, given the sudden unique set of circumstances, you’d want some company. And it’s easier to keep a single pack on patrol in this sector than it would be to spread out their security detail to include multiple living quarters,” he offers.
“Why are you explaining this to me?” Hunter challenges. “Logan said the doctor told him lots of stuff, too.”
Victor chuckles. “As I’ve said, you’re guests here. We don’t intend to hide the work we’re doing here, we’re just not ready to go public quite yet.” He pauses. “And, if I’m quite honest, you’re four kids surrounded by dozens of vampires. Forgive my confidence in saying that it would take more than your combined talents to bring down a facility that the Keepers haven’t even figured out exists.”
“Fair,” Hunter reflects.
Victor leads him back through the facility much the same way they were brought through that first night, Hunter’s mental inventory of gleaming and seamless stainless steel doors reinforced. The halls smell sterile, the white of the walls and the tile nearly blinding. Victor prattles on about the cost of the facility and the benefits package for the salaried mortal staff as though he’s giving a tour to investors rather than a captive.
“We are still in the beta phase for the more interesting parts of the facility, I’m afraid, so I can’t give tours of that yet. I suppose I could show you the stables and grounds—the parts of the ranch we’ve kept mostly as a ranch, if you’re interested.”
“Which parts are still in the beta phase?” Hunter probes, finding little use in a tour of the outdoors and more in a tour that might give him a way outdoors.
“Like the Research and Development Sector.”
“What’s this facility for, exactly?”
“Officially it’s a medical research facility.”
“And unofficially?”
“Unofficially it’s . . . a lot like a blood bank. We subsist on blood and not all of us relish hunting, which requires us to hide our existence from the mortal world. This facility exists to process and store blood provided by donors—the goal is a symbiotic relationship between us and you,” he explains with the rehearsed pride of a parent watching a T-ball game. “No more hiding, officially or unofficially.”
Hunter’s mouth opens and closes a couple times as words fail him. Donors—is that what they’re calling us?
“Not quite what you expected from a bunch of vampires, huh?” Victor beams. “Of course, we aren’t without our limitations—as the beta phase has proven. Nor is any large-scale project like this without its political or moral battles.”
“Are these the living quarters you mentioned?” Hunter asks, still at a loss for useful follow-up questions that won’t betray snark. He gestures to a set of doors Victor hasn’t mentioned.
“Some, though mostly unfinished in this sector. We’ve had to move up our project timeline, so some comforts have fallen to the wayside—like decorating. Others are refrigerated storage for blood. That one’s a laundry room.” He gestures to a door on the right. “That reminds me, just use the tablet to request laundry services—or anything else you need. Don’t be shy.”
As if on cue a rather burly-built man pushing a large metal-framed ivory-and-crimson mottled laundry cart, much like the ones hotels use, rounds the corner coming towards them, trailed by a shorter, plumper woman who takes short, quick steps to keep up. She wears bright white Keds that squeak with each step; both wear hospital scrubs. In the cart, sheets, by the looks of it—though the way the man pushes it, his biceps tensed, Hunter suspects there’s more than just linens taking up room. Though he barely has time to survey its contents when they shuffle quickly by, both avoiding eye contact, he swears he sees toes poking up from between folds of white before the woman reaches in to adjust the heaping linens.
“Shouldn’t they be heading to the laundry room?” Hunter whispers after the two have passed by them a few yards, struggling to keep his voice steady.
“It’s burning day; I think they’re heading to the incinerator. The thing’s a beast, so we don’t run it daily. Come on, I’ll show you the infirmary—it really is state-of-the-art—then the kitchen, other finished visitor’s quarters, and the visitor’s parlor, which are in the original ranch house. We dubbed this part the Home Sector,” Victor says with a smile, placing a hand firmly on Hunter’s shoulder to guide him.
THE RAGE THAT SINGS IN MY BLOOD—AND IN MY Usher’s, and my Usher’s Usher’s—serves as both a gift and a curse, the might of our lineage both owed to it and, sometimes, compromised because of it. Not just rage, but passion, too, though many never see this. Still, passion feeds rage just as hunting feeds our predator within: the latter cannot survive without the former and neglect can lead to a dangerous loss of control.
This loss of control may be the thing my lineage has earned the most infamy for, starting with the legend of Ismae the Bloody—though it is likely even her Usher and her Usher’s Usher were followed by similar tales of carnage, now lost to time.
Once upon a time—as Zeke would often tell this story to me just before daybreak, after a long night of enduring the traditional ritual torture of our lineage at his hand—once upon a time lived a woman whose beauty rivaled that of Helen of Troy and, in some stories, she was indeed mistaken for her. But this woman lived long before The Face that Launched a Thousand Ships, long before stories could be committed to paper and kept sacred in their detail, long before the Keepers and the Praedari existed as the Keepers and the Praedari.
She lived alone in her immortality, the only Everlasting in her kingdom, betrothed to a wicked man who loved her, truly and desperately, because of what he misunderstood as her own streak of cruelty. He was renowned for his tactical acumen and in time he learned that her own did not disappoint. Together they ruled, though he mostly spoke the echoes of what, because of societal norms, her voice could not, taking her direction on all matters. They allowed no visitors of the Blood, hosted no diplomatic envoys from neighboring kingdoms, and considered the militaristic advances of their neighbors on other domains to be reason enough to remain ever-vigilant, responding to even the slightest misstep with unflinching brute force.
In one story, a woman and her two young children fled the castle walls of a neighboring domain, wherein they had lived as comfortably as could be expected as the family of a well-loved blacksmith, when their home was taken hostage by a neighboring king’s soldiers and their depravity. Under the cover of night they fled, and, after many nights, came lost and stumbling—half-starved and sleep deprived—into the kingdom of Ismae (not yet Ismae the Bloody) and her husband-to-be. They were picked up by a guard patrol and brought to the castle.
It was her husband who suggested they put the family to work in their castle forge, being no stranger to hard work, assisting their own blacksmith in exchange for meager room and board. Ismae scoffed at her husband’s uncharacteristic softness, rose from her seat beside him and crossed to the center of the chamber to stand behind the kneeling and trembling mother and her two children. In front of their court and guard she bent low near the mother’s throat and willed her fangs to slide down, visible to all who paid attention—and all paid rapt attention when the king’s lady moved or spoke or even breathed, such was the power of her station and her person—whispering something in her ear.
The woman’s eyes grew wide as Ismae sank her fangs into her neck—and wider still when Ismae tore through muscle and flesh and spat a chunk of her to the ground in disgust. The woman clutched her opened throat and slumped to the floor, her own dark blood pooling around her as her children and the rest of the court looked on in horror. She could neither scream nor breath, and no one else dared scream or breathe against the backdrop of soft gurgling and the muffled hysteric weeping of the children.
Ismae took her seat calmly again beside her husband and wiped her mout
h with the back of her hand.
“Keep them if you must,” she said with voice unwavering, gesturing to the children. “But the woman dies.”
Here I would ask Zeke why. Why would she kill the mother—and only the mother? What was she proving? To whom? Why waste the woman’s blood? What happened to the children? Of course, this was long ago and how reliable is a story whispered in the dark for thousands of years?
Her husband finally passed, some say with her help, and each of his brothers met their end by Ismae’s cunning as they tried to claim what was, as they saw, rightfully theirs: their brother’s wife and kingdom. Very few outside the arrogance of these men cared what happened to their kingdom for it maintained its isolation for so long that most relegated it to either inferior real estate with an ugly secret or a population so inbred and steeped in backwards customs that they should merely be waited out. Regardless of the reason given, the motivation for their non-involvement was clear: fear.
Neither, of course, were true—and not all dismissed her domain as a blight on the country, though she would have preferred this. Some stories cannot be silenced so easily, however, and Ismae knew it only a matter of time before another Everlasting caught wind of the real reason she endured her tiresome husband as long as she did and protected this kingdom as fiercely as she had.
And a few centuries passed with minimal turmoil, a war here or there, but no true threat to her once-modest kingdom which had now grown to an empire and which she ruled from the shadows, claiming the names of children she never bore—but who would challenge her when none dared enter in the first place? She kept her people happy enough, safe enough, fed enough, and so, few found reason to dissent or leave. Most owned a small parcel of land which was theirs to maintain as they saw fit. Complacency, she had learned, could keep her subjects both loyal and oblivious. From within, Ismae became known as fair, but merciless—if, at the more dire of times, cruel. In reality, few cared how she ruled so long as they could feed their families with the relative freedom her disinterest allotted. Her rules were simple to follow and she mandated no religion above another, allowing most to live unhindered by her existence.