The Journal of Vincent Du Maurier (Book 1)

by Ambroziak, K. P.

He itched to tell me his secret, from where he had snatched his Pisano. I could see it in his bloodshot eyes. “Was it difficult to lift?” I asked.

  He looked from left to right and then shook his head with a self-sufficient air. He leaned in and revealed his secret. “I tricked him,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “The curator.” His eyes narrowed and he looked past me. “You don’t know him, man,” he said. “Keep it that way—he’s the devil.”

  The frequencies pitched, synching harshly when the ferryman launched his skiff from the cargo ship and headed toward the dock. The promise of blood agitated the vampires.

  “If you do get in,” he said. “Let me suggest trying the newest they’ve tapped—Zhi told me she just gave birth.”

  I do not think I heard another thing, though he kept babbling. My throat tightened and I saw red, as they say. I unleashed my iron fangs and dug them into his jugular, tearing it out with one bite. He dropped the sculpture when he reached for his wound but I caught it up before it hit the deck. His head fell back and I cut it clear off with a swipe of my talons. His body crumbled and I kicked it into the water, tossing his head in after it. The vampire who stood with his back to us turned and looked at the sinking body. “Thanks,” he said. “He never stopped talking.”

  I waited impatiently for the ferryman to reach us, that transporter to paradise, though Zhi is nothing like Charon in his knotted rags and wiry white beard. The Empress’s boatman is a rather elegant vampire, dressed in a traditional changshan with its Mandarin collar and low hanging sleeves, wearing his sleek black hair in braids tucked beneath a hat that matches the red silk brocade of his jacket. He is never without his slender opium pipe dangling from his mouth like a blade of hay.

  “Hup, hup,” he yelled, as he approached. He tossed his rope to the vampire at the front of the line. When it was wrapped around the dock tie, Zhi motioned for him to step forward. “Liwù!” The ferryman called.

  The first in line was a wretched looking creature turned late in his life. He stumbled, as he bent down to offer his gift and landed on his knees barely saving himself from falling into the ferryman. He regained his composure and reached into his pocket, pulling out a heart-shaped locket. “It is from the Stuart reign,” he said in a thick English accent. “See the portrait?” He pointed to the small gold façade on its front. “That is King Charles the first,” he said.

  “Hmm.” Zhi expressed his approval with sounds more often than words.

  The vampire handed his prize to the ferryman. “The image was inspired by his execution in 1649,” he said. “Inside there’s a small piece of material that’s soaked in the blood of the executed king.”

  The other vampires perked up when they heard the piece was drenched in royal blood. The ferryman opened the locket and brought it to his lips. His fangs dropped, as he touched his tongue to the ancient trace of blood.

  “He was a martyr,” the English vampire said. “His blood is sacred.”

  Zhi smiled at that and slipped the locket into a purse that lay at his feet. He motioned for the vampire to come aboard and called the next one forward. One by one, the vampires auctioned off their relics and pieces of art for a seat aboard the skiff to the blood den. I realized early on that the ferryman expected us to sell our piece with a bit of flair, detailing the history of the token. He would not be fooled, shrewd as he was.

  “It’s a Da Vinci,” one of the more desperate vampires said. “A rare, lost diary.” The ferryman refused the leather-bound journal. “It’s one of his notebooks,” the vampire said. “Look!” He opened the book and frantically turned its pages, showing the crude pencil drawings of circulatory systems and aircrafts.

  “Jiǎ,” the ferryman said. “A fake—fake—a fake.”

  He waved the vampire away with his opium pipe, and the swindler slumped, defeated by his failure. He tossed the book into the water, not afraid to admit his fraud.

  “Piàn,” the ferryman said under his breath. He knew a cheat when he saw one.

  When it was my turn, I handed him the stone sculpture. “It is called Madonna and Child,” I said.

  The ferryman examined the piece and then pointed to its broken base. “Pò.”

  “Giovanni Pisano,” I said. “The great Italian sculpture whose—”

  “Pò. Pò.” He waved me away with his opium pipe, and then pointed to the dock tie. “Shìfàng,” he said, wanting me to untie the line.

  When he refused to let me board the skiff, I considered jumping on it and tossing all the vampires overboard, though the ferryman would prove a sturdy contender. He was not one of the starved ones, his red lips giving him away. But nothing was to say that if I got to the cargo ship, I would be allowed into the den after killing the Empress’s boatman.

  “Please, brother,” I said in my best Mandarin. “I have traveled far to taste the blood in the den of the Great Empress Cixi.” My accent was rough and my dialect even worse—the ferryman could not understand me.

  “Zhi,” the English vampire said. “Our friend was kind enough to relieve us of the fool.” He pointed to the head of the other, floating now at the end of the dock.

  Zhi looked over at the wandering head and took several quick tokes on his pipe, blowing the smoke out in figure eights. He narrowed his eyes and sized me up, inspecting my boots, coat, hands, and face. I was well-kept and anything but starving.

  “Hup, hup,” he said, motioning for me to board his skiff.

  I untied the line and pushed us off before jumping in the boat. I left the broken sculpture of the Madonna and child on the dock, watching for my return. The English vampire introduced himself as Quinn, speaking in perfect Italian. “Smell that,” he said. “That’s lovely, isn’t it?”

  I assumed he referred to the human scent that got stronger as we got closer. Zhi piloted the skiff over the waves, holding it steady, as we bounded across the inlet.

  “I’ve been a vampire since the fourth year of the Common Era,” he said. Quinn could read minds without reading facial expressions, a rarity among us. “You are the ancient one,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “How fortunate,” he said. “I am honored to meet you.” I was certain he could see my reasons for going to the den. “I am a friend,” he said. “Not a foe.”

  “You suffer,” I said.

  “Who among us doesn’t?” He snorted the air and stuck out his tongue. “It’s really a burden, you know, more than a gift.” Quinn had a charming smile. “But sometimes it helps,” he said, tilting his head back to indicate the ferryman. “The weasel annoyed him,” he said. “And I knew he hadn’t made up his mind about you yet. You scare him a little.”

  As I should, I thought.

  “Yes,” he said. “As you should.” I was in no mood to make friends but I had questions I wanted answered and he knew it. “She is a collector,” he said. “Of fine art. Her ship is filled with the greatest works of art ever made.” I assumed she amassed most of them after the plague. “Yes,” he said, reading my mind. “She’s been raiding museums since before it started.” She trades blood for art. “I don’t know how she keeps finding the humans,” he said. “She just does.”

  We were getting close—the scent of human was all around us.

  “Her ship will be in port until one of us conquers the curator.” The weasel had also mentioned a curator. “He’s staked a claim on the Museum of Oriental Art,” he said. “He loathes the Empress.”

  “Natural rivals,” I said.

  “Aren’t we all,” he said.

  I wondered what had become of my line—my descendants, as it were. Graceless and cruel immortals roamed the earth now, natural enemies, power-hungry despots. Too many young ones, too few great ones. But I am still and always will be the forebear—our origin.

  “Being in your presence is quite something,” he whispered. “I am somewhat awed.”

  I was untouched by his sentimentality, and thought of my girl.

  “She must be extraordinary,”
he said.

  I cringed at the thought of others feeding off her. I would destroy them all.

  “Your rage will not serve you here, Achilles,” he said. “The Empress has an army of vampires and each one more ruthless than the next.”

  The skiff pulled alongside the cargo ship, and the vampires stood in anticipation. Zhi tsk-tsked. “Zuòxià,” he said.

  They sat down again but like addicts they could not subdue their desire. They licked their lips and played with their fangs, contemplating the upcoming ecstasy.

  The cargo ship looked tightly sealed, almost impossible to breach. I did not see an opening, except for the one entrance up on the quarterdeck. The structure stood at least twelve meters above the waterline and the only way onto it was the ladderlike gangway in its middle. There were small portholes lining the trim of the ship near the railing of its weather deck but the smooth and slick hull would be difficult to scale.

  When the ferryman stopped his skiff beside the gangway, the guards on deck unlocked the metal hatch. A female vampire, wearing a traditional costume similar to Zhi’s, awaited us at the top. One by one we climbed up to her and she ushered us inside. The outward appearance of the rusty cargo ship could not prepare one for its opulent interior. The Empress’s vessel abounded with luxury. The bulkheads were lined with elegant tapestries and rich patterns made of the finest silk. The décor was lit by sconces hung every few feet along the passageway and one could see the works of art in detail. Sophisticated pieces of furniture marked the passageways, slim end tables and benches reminiscent of Louis XIII.

  We followed the female vampire through several of these corridors and more hatches before finding ourselves in the Empress’s famed blood den. The compartment was quaint but lush, containing a series of mahogany boxes with small gridlike vents that hung on the bulkheads. Long wooden pipes ran through the bottom of each box and down to the deck where they disappeared beneath it. A slim divan on which the vampire could recline, as he fed, sat at the foot of each box.

  “Choose wisely,” the female vampire said.

  She gestured to the boxes, offering us her selection. The vampires rushed to them, sniffing each vent like a hound searching for truffles through piles of mud. Quinn was more discerning and chose to sniff only one. Before he placed his nose to it, he touched it with the tip of his fingers.

  “May I taste, Youlan?” He asked.

  Youlan was the Empress’s attendant and the keeper of the blood den. She moved to the box like a nail to a magnet and pulled a pass key from beneath the hem of her cheongsam gown. She slipped it into the side of the box and opened a flap, reaching in for the tube. She motioned for Quinn to approach and hold up his index finger, and then she squeezed the tiniest drop of blood onto its tip. The other vampires flocked to Quinn’s box, their hungry eyes watching him dip his tongue into the miniature pool of blood. Youlan was distracted when Zhi came into the compartment and stood at the den’s entrance. He gave her a look and she locked up the box again, shooing away the hungry vampires.

  “Choose,” she said firmly.

  I was disturbed by the monopoly of sustenance—it is barbaric, even for the cruelest of us. It is like a human bottling the air and selling it for no reason other than sheer power. We are sophisticated beings, far more evolved than human, but this scene made me wonder. We do not consume blood because we are addicted to it, we drink it to survive.

  I had smelled the human blood when we boarded the ship—I had tasted every single slave on the tip of my tongue, as I climbed the gangway. None belonged to Evelina. “The one I seek is not here,” I said.

  Youlan ignored me and shrieked at Zhi. “Zhànshì!”

  Zhi leaned into the passageway and whistled, calling six able-bodied soldiers to the compartment. The blood-depraved cowered near their chosen boxes, as the Empress’s vampires rushed in, wielding deer horn knives. I suppose I was not surprised when they surrounded me. Youlan and Zhi had both assessed the threat, guessing I had come aboard for reasons other than the den. Their fear confirmed my girl was here, even if I could not smell her.

  I was put in irons I might have freed myself from had I not also been suited with a flying guillotine. The vampires had placed a collar about my neck attached to a chain rigged to my wrist clamps. If I broke the irons, the chain would release the Damascus steel blade and decapitate me. I was led down into the bowels of the ship where the décor was even more opulent than it had been above. I passed the Mona Lisa, most certainly not a fake, several of Van Gogh’s starry nightscapes and Cézanne’s card players. I recognized the blue-and-white porcelain of the David Vases—the cameo-glass vessel of the Portland with its mysterious ketos and love scenes, and the infamous Savoy inspired by the dress of a Sami woman. The Empress’s collection was staggering and extensive.

  They put me in a small compartment, a cabin with nothing but a berth and washstand with the most beautiful Roman jorum. “Empress Cixi has requested to see you,” Youlan said. My clamps and headgear were no punishment, just precaution. The soldiers retreated but Youlan hesitated. “Why have you come?” She asked. Her Mandarin accent was thick, though she addressed me in Italian.

  “For blood,” I said.

  Youlan emitted a unique frequency, it fluctuated rapidly like a stilted heartbeat.

  “No proper offering?”

  “Your ferryman rejected mine,” I said.

  She snapped her tongue against her teeth while sucking air in through her mouth, as she paced the small compartment, back and forth, gliding over the metal deck with her arms crossed and hands tucked into her sleeves. “He brought you here anyhow,” she said. “Lucky you.”

  Lucky me.

  “Sit tight,” she said. “I’ll be back for you soon. Try not to behead yourself in the meantime.”

  She slammed the hatch shut when she left, but I thought I heard a baby’s cry, though it was ridiculous to trust my senses. I did not know Evelina was only two compartments away from me, as I sat there waiting for the Empress. I could not—she evaded me even then. Believe me when I say I tried to smell her, tried to feel her, hear her, see her, but the girl had vanished from my insides.

  When Youlan returned, she was with only two soldiers. They flanked me, as we walked through another maze of passageways. We climbed several sets of steps and eventually landed topside at the stern of the ship. I faced the open sea and embraced the air. “Come,” Youlan said.

  She guided me along the deck to a hatch with a hand-painted dragon across it. The slender green dragon in a field of cadmium yellow bayed at a scarlet sun. The lizardlike tongue and fangs of the monster were stark white but dripping with blood. It marked the Qing dynasty—I had reached the Empress.

  “Jìnrù. Jìnrù,” Zhi said, as he opened the hatch to greet us. He was more hospitable than Youlan. “Shénme.” He wanted my guillotine removed. Youlan bowed to him slightly and took off my collar before unlocking the shackles. “Bèn, bèn,” he said, punctuating with a tsk-tsk.

  Once inside the deckhouse, I was left alone again. The Empress would be in shortly they told me. I was struck by the clutter of the compartment. Statues and porcelain figurines sit on every possible surface, a plethora of oil paintings and watercolors occupy every inch of the bulkheads, and the most imposing piece in the cabin is the life-sized canvas set in an oversized wooden frame in the center of all the others, a portrait of the Empress Dowager Cixi. The image is flat, lifeless without shadow or perspective. Her face is drained of all color and one cannot tell if it was painted before or after she became a vampire. She sits in front of a hand-painted dragon that looks at her as if he too reveres her power. She faces straight out to meet her viewer head-on, unshaken by the dragon’s leering eyes. A fan lies in her lap, its blooming chrysanthemum blurred by the shadow of her hands. Covered by decorative claws, her fingernails forebode the talons she now wields as a vampire.

  I felt her imperial presence when she came in. Her frequency is garish, unmistakable. When I turned to greet her, I was not surpri
sed to be looking at the very same visage I had studied in the portrait—flat and pale. She gestured for me to join her on the wooden daybed. I bowed slightly and extended my hand but she kept both of hers hidden beneath the loose sleeves of her ruqun. “I know you,” she said.

  She speaks Italian with only the slightest accent. She is fluent in many Western languages.

  “Then you know why I am here,” I said.

  “You have boarded under a false pretense,” she said. “And come into my den with thieving intentions.” She kept her eyes on the mirror across from the daybed, admiring her reflection.

  “I am simply here to reclaim what is mine,” I said.

  “Your face tells a different story.” She studied me, almost disturbingly. “I have nothing of yours.”

  “The girl is mine,” I said.

  “Maybe she was once. However, I paid a fair price for her and never renounce a work of art once I have acquired it.”

  I thought it odd she considered my girl a work of art. “Is she not one of your blood slaves?” I asked.

  “Slave? None of my humans are enslaved. They are donors giving freely.”

  “In exchange for what?”

  “Their survival,” she said.

  I could not argue with that. Her humans were safe on the ship, as long as they were not drained past the point of living.

  “My humans are valuable.” She mimicked a frown. “I am sorry to disappoint but we are not the horror show you expected.”

  “Where is the girl?” I said.

  “Which girl?” She said. “I have several, as you can imagine.”

  Force would get me nowhere, and a ship full of loyal vampires could be difficult to take if any harm came to her. I still had no idea how to get to Evelina. “My girl,” I said calmly.

  “I told you,” she said. “I never relinquish a work of art once it’s in my possession.”

  “You consider her a piece for your collection?” My tolerance waned, as it tortured me to know I was so close to the girl but unable to claim her.

  “You don’t?” She asked with a grin.