It never occurred to me to think of love as something that could heal.
Even once I wore a Signet I told myself over and over that Pairhood was something I’d be fine without. I’d seen what it was like to love someone so deeply you lose yourself. Never again. And surely that’s what having a Queen would be like? That was what people were supposed to want, right? There couldn’t possibly be anything more than that.
Yes, technically I am a genius. Technically.
Then came this woman, the one who’s already got her sword drawn, whose canines are just a little sharp as we finally overtake the rabbit. This woman I stared at like a crazy person in the grocery store, then found in an alley bleeding and wailing, something in her endless grief calling out to the parts of me that were still grieving. She needed shelter, a place to heal, someone to show her a few basic skills for her gift. That was all I thought I could offer her.
She was never my damsel in distress, though I’m pretty sure I was hers.
Now, she isn’t just healthy, she’s magnificent. Two years of constant fight-training and growing into her true place in the world has rendered her an hourglass full of gunpowder.
Once she had walked as if her spine was a winter tree whose branches were so heavy with snow it was about to collapse beneath the weight. Now, she towers, a live oak, less than five and a half feet of woman taking up an entire city.
It’s a pleasure to watch. So is the moment she launches herself forward, wrapping both ankles around the rabbit’s neck and throwing him over her to the ground; she lands effortlessly on her feet and, without even a nanosecond’s hesitation, swings her sword through the moonlight and that, as they say, is that.
That’s my wife. May I endeavor to deserve her.
She gives me a wry look. “I probably shouldn’t find it cute that you get all moony-eyed when I kill people.”
All the rest of the Elite arrive, emerging from the darkness on all sides; as ordered, they’ve apprehended the other two, our rabbit’s cronies.
Upon seeing the fate that awaits them, one of them starts to struggle. The Elite who has him by the arms throws him to the ground, and I silently step forward and place my foot firmly on his neck.
She addresses the third. “Give us the information we’ve come for, and you may live to see midnight,” she says. “Refuse, and:”
I step back, letting her decapitate the second rabbit. The third makes a mewling sound of terror and drops to his knees, eyes on the ground, offering unmistakable submission.
She inclines her head toward the DFW regional lieutenant, Ranier. Ranier hauls the rabbit to his feet and hands him off to her interrogator; another nod, and Ranier dismisses the assembled Elite, who bow to us as one, and fade back into the shadows.
I can still feel eyes on us. We both move aside so the clean-up team can take care of the bodies; I offer my arm, and together we walk back the way we came, taking the long and highly visible route back to the car.
“You know technically we could make it back to Austin tonight,” she observes, looking up at the city that towers over us, yet another place we never have time to visit as often as we should. The South is huge, and it has a lot of big cities with a dense vampire population; I get out as often as I can, but the threat of violence is always present. Luckily I have great faith in my people. I set the whole territory up to run as hands-off as it can, chose my regional officers carefully—strength, cunning, but not too much ambition.
“Is that what you want to do?” I ask. “The thought of sleeping in our own bed has merit.”
“Or,” she says, “We could lock ourselves into the Presidential Suite of the Hilton and I could…”
An image flashes briefly in my mind—a memory, I think, but its intent is quite clear, and I admit it, my knees wobble slightly. I shoot her a dirty look, and she giggles.
I pause, clear my throat, and try to maintain my dignity while drawing my coat closed in front. “By the time we finish debriefing with Ranier and the others it would be wiser to stay the day here and start fresh at sunset. I know I could use the rest.”
“You’re absolutely right,” she replies, nodding. “In fact the sooner we get the meeting over with the sooner we can have our own debriefing.”
I sigh. “You had to go there, didn’t you.”
“Impish” is the only word for the look on her face. She stops walking, turns toward me, slides a hand up into my hair and grips it tightly. “Aren’t you glad I do?” she asks quietly and kisses me hard.
Damn it people are watching oh fuck it—
I melt.
Well, most of me does.
I really do try not to turn into a hormonal teenager whenever she puts her hands on me, for the sake of my reputation if nothing else, but then her soft mouth is on my neck and those lovely hands—strong and capable from years of piano and guitar and quite capable of playing every inch of me with just as much skill—slide around my hips, and to hell with everything, whatever she wants she’ll get, even if it’s right here in the middle of Deep Ellum when we really ought to be—
“Um…Sire?”
I swear Faith does this on purpose. “What?” I half-snarl, forcing myself to breathe.
“Ranier just reported that the rabbit confessed—do you want a minute with him before they’re done?”
“That won’t be necessary, Second. I trust Ranier got everything we need.”
With a frustrated growl, she lets go of me and steps back. “Remember, Faith, I told him he’d live past midnight.”
“Yes my Lady—ten more minutes.”
She’s laughing at me again, this time at my aggrieved expression at being interrupted with something as silly as our jobs. “Come on,” she says. “Let’s finish up for the night.” She starts to walk away, throwing a wink back over her shoulder.
Smiling—unable to stop—I bow, savoring the delightful agony of a moment put on hold, and follow her into the dark, as I know I always will.
Belief
I lost God in 1945 and found Him again in 1954.
What you have to understand about human wars is that we don’t share the same boundaries. The Shadow World is separate, existing within but apart. Napolitano, for example, rules Germany, Italy, France, the UK…how was he supposed to take sides?
Well, I told him exactly how he should take sides. But I can’t really blame him for not listening. Did you know there were vampire Nazis? Oh yes, hundreds of them. If Napolitano ejected them, where would they go? Here? I’d have every last one executed. Napolitano’s people would expect him to retaliate, and he wouldn’t, which would cause unrest in his territory; meanwhile I’d have unrest in mine. At the time, at least, it didn’t seem worth it. For most of the war its effect on the Shadow World was minimal—in fact human wars are often good for us, as they lead to displaced people and hordes of wounded that make easy pickings for blood.
We have to be very careful how involved we get in human affairs…even when those affairs end up involving atomic bombs.
Tanaka was pissed off.
Back then, the Southern US was under Auren’s control and of course Auren couldn’t give less of a damn about humanity. Rumor was that he knew about the bomb in advance, but didn’t bother informing the Council.
Luckily someone did.
There were only about 80 vampires in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, but mysteriously, Tanaka had them all evacuated 24 hours before the bombs fell. How did he know? He refused to divulge.
I had my theories, of course. The primary theory involved the first letter of the Greek alphabet.
Now, of course, I know that I was right, and I know the extent of how far the Alpha was willing to go to impress upon the Council how serious things were. He actually revealed his own identity to Tanaka, who took one look at him, read the report, and got on the phone with Hiroshima garrison to clear out every last vampire in the region, including those in Kokura. As I understand it, though Deven refuses to admit it, he tried to get Tanaka to clear out humans
as well, but the logistics would have been impossible on such short notice without the assistance of the Japanese government, and at the time, Tanaka wasn’t exactly on their good side.
But I’m getting ahead of myself—that wasn’t until August.
January. It was a terrible winter throughout the territory, and the stories coming from all directions weren’t helping. Our Haven lives quite beautifully up to its name; as you’ve seen, in the worst years half the vampires of Prague end up staying here all winter, and we open up the satellite bases to anyone in the Shadow World who needs a place to stay. As long as they abide by the house rules they can pass the worst weeks in comfort and safety.
Of course you know why vampires don’t like cold—freezing to “death” is one of our greatest fears. We’re frozen, awake, forever, until we thaw out. If you get lost someplace it never thaws, you could be there for decades, trapped, until at last your brain uses all the electrical energy it can drag out of your body and you shut down…but you’re never 100% unaware. They could thaw you out in 100 years and still be alive, but you’d be mad as a hatter. Just the thought of that sends most of us south.
Thus, our region has never been highly populated, and there are practically no vampires north of me, so it’s easy for us to feel like we’re removed from the world, like Dzhamgerchinov believes he is. Russia was neck deep in the war, but he and his people ignored it completely. I’m not even sure he’d know who Hitler was if you asked him now.
But that would require speaking to Dzhamgerchinov and no one should ever, ever do that.
Earlier that winter we got a couple of new recruits from Budapest who fled to Prague as if the devil himself were at their heels…which is what they claimed was happening, but their stories were so outlandish I had trouble believing them.
“My Lord, please, you must send aid to our people,” one of them begged. “They are rounding us up…hundreds on a train. They vanish in the night.”
“From Hungary,” I said.
“From the Earth, my Lord. They are killing us. All of us.”
“But why would they do that?” I asked. I couldn’t seem to stop staring at the yellow triangles on their sleeves. Vampire Jews are mostly insular; they stay far closer to their human counterparts than most of us do. Before the war we hardly ever got any in the Elite; they just weren’t terribly warlike, and preferred to keep peace with their own. What must have happened to drive them away like this? What could make them run? “And how? We’re talking about a civilized country—this is the 20th century. You can’t just make an entire people disappear without anyone seeing.”
“They have factories…slaughterhouses. They herd people in like cattle and murder them by the thousands day in, day out. I swear to you, my Lord.”
I sighed. “Have you seen any of this happening? Has anyone you know actually seen it?”
“No…”
And so I turned a blind eye. We all did.
God forgive us all.
I look back now and want to despise the entire Council for their blindness. How many could we have saved if we had sent a few dozen Elite into Poland for even a few days? It would have taken so little effort on our part.
But then, the American military could have listened, too. No one wanted to hear. No one wanted to believe the gates of hell had opened and the devils were here, and the baby shoes and shorn hair were piling up day after day after day.
So life went on, in the Shadow World, without my really noticing much had changed—we all ignored the areas where towns stood empty, entire neighborhoods turned to ghost towns with food still on tables and pets still in the yards. I had to field a lot of complaints from the ghettos—cadres of vampires would set up there and feed on the prisoners with abandon until they were emptied, then move on to the next, enjoying the bounty even though the conditions there were subhuman. What did they care? Blood flowed hot and cold.
Believe it or not a lot of vampires—even some Signets—still insist the reports were overblown. There have been fights about it in Council. Napolitano got into it with one of the Americans last time, then shoved a census report in his face…or, rather, punched him in the face and then forced him to look at the paper. He said “Look at these numbers, you ignorant jackass. Millions just missing at the next census. Gone. Where did they all go? Did you eat them?”
One night, toward the end of January, I was holed up in my suite, drinking wine and reading before a cozy fire. Outside the world was suffocating in snow, but in the Haven all was calm and all was warm.
I had a human newspaper—it was a few days old, since things ran a little behind schedule in those days. Russia had captured Warsaw. I could sense the end of it was coming, and it was a relief; I tried to hold myself apart like the others, but even locked away in the Haven there were so many stories, so much deprivation and loss out there. I’m not an empath, at least not that I know of, but who can hear of such things and not be touched, even if untouchable? And there were the whispers…a phrase that I kept hearing, one that for some reason sent chills through me even though I steadfastly refused to ask why:
Final Solution.
A knock.
“Yes?”
One of the Haven guards appeared. “Sire…I am sorry to disturb you, but…Lieutenant Weiss is here to see you.”
I sat up. “What? He’s here?”
“Yes, Sire. He’s in quite a state…he says he traveled all night and will speak only to you.”
Weiss was stationed in Warsaw; there was absolutely no reason for him to be in Prague.
I thank the Lord I am not a Consort and don’t have precognitive abilities—even without it, my heart was pounding with fear. I knew whatever Weiss was going to tell me was beyond my capacity to understand. Yet, I knew I must listen. Whatever it was…my mind immediately flashed back to the Hungarians. One of them had vanished a few weeks after joining; the other was still working for me, in a remote outpost far from any semblance of humanity, and when last I saw him, there was no vitality in his eyes, only a void.
“All right,” I said, rising slowly, taking a deep breath. “I’m ready to hear him.”
I come from a religious family, as you know—Catholic to the bone, reaching back centuries. I always believed, but I can’t really say I cared. It was all just part of the ritual of living. I never had much use for all of that once I left humanity behind, but once you’ve spent a significant part of your life kneeling and praying and blessing everything around you, it’s difficult to forget. Your knees want to bend, your hands want to form the Sign of the Cross, even if your soul is full of dust…
Or, as mine was two days later, full of ashes.
I cannot do justice to what I saw when I finally followed the pull of my conscience and made the journey to Poland. One of my contacts in the Russian army led me on a tour of what they’d found, and though it was by this time a full week after they had marched through the gates and found themselves in a place that never should have existed, that never should have been dreamed of in the darkest heart of the deepest evil, there was no mistaking what I was looking at. I feel that to try and describe it with any accuracy would be such a failure it would only cheapen the enormity of this machine, this massive beast, that devoured so many lives. I stared up at the words over the gate, not sure if they were supposed to be an outright lie or just a cruel joke, or both.
Work Makes You Free.
One of the prisoners—a free man, now, but still there, because where would he go? His entire family had been swallowed by this place, his entire community wiped from the earth while, safe in our castles and our modern lives, we remained ignorant at best and indifferent at worst—walked with us around the camp, speaking in slow and sometimes vague Russian, describing to me what he had shown the military who had rolled in to find 7500 nearly dead human beings staring at them through sunken eyes, behind barbed wire, neither side entirely able to believe what they were looking at.
I don’t think either the freed prisoner or the Russi
an captain I was with really understood who I was or why I was there, but they had doubtless given this same tour a dozen times already to a variety of authority figures, and I made no demands, just listened, just witnessed.
But I remember, as we were standing before the mountains of clothing and empty suitcases, piles and piles of eyeglasses, all sorted and ready to ship back to Germany for the war effort, something on my face must have intrigued the freed man; he looked from me to the piles of shoes, and said, “It is no use to ask. I have asked many times.”
I looked at him. “You mean to ask why?”
“This. Or perhaps to ask, ‘where was God?’” He gestured with a shaking, bone-skinny arm at the ruin of what I had been informed was Crematorium IV. I caught sight of a number etched in black on his forearm. “God went up that chimney and left us here to die. God is scattered over the fields, fine and white. God is in a box of gold teeth being melted down. We say we are God’s chosen people. God was not here. Chosen people, not chosen, Russians, Gypsies, queers, we all go up the chimney just the same.”
I swallowed a scream that had been threatening to claw its way from my chest for hours. What right did I have to mourn here? None. “What is your name, sir?” I asked.
“Bastichev,” he replied quietly. “Teofil Bastichev.”
I shook his hand. “It’s an honor.”
“I hope none of your family were here,” he said. “You will tell people out there about this place? The only thing that would make it worse would be if they forget. Then we all die twice.”
All I could do was nod.
I gave him money to help him find his way somewhere peaceful to heal, but he died that night. A great many of the survivors died mere days after liberation. They were simply too far gone…or perhaps realizing the war was over and they were free, they were forced to confront the loss, shame, and shock, and couldn’t. The human heart is strong but there are still so many things that will stop it.
Met by Midnight: Shadow World Stories and Scenes, Vol. 1 (The Shadow World) Page 16