by Gwynn White
Genuinely curious, he asked, “What were we called before?”
Thalia’s head raised, her neck stretching and her shoulders lowering so that she looked more like a queen on a throne than a child on a sofa. “Gods. We are gods.”
The word crazy flitted unbidden through his mind again. Glancing again at Yadikira, she raised her eyebrows and came very close to rolling her eyes. What she meant to communicate was clear enough.
Old people. What can you do?
Yes, that made sense to Girard. In the primitive world when superstition held sway, it would be easy to classify something as strange as a vampire into the category of god. Well, a god of one sort or another. Then again, vampires shouldn’t believe their own hype. They knew their limitations too well to believe that. Didn’t they?
Thalia pushed out a hard breath and gave him an exasperated look. “We called ourselves people. What else would we call ourselves? Every people calls themselves the people. The difference is that for us it’s true.”
He wanted to delve into that, to hear all of it. Hearing foggy history laid bare and clear would be a prize beyond price. That was for some other time…he hoped it was anyway. Girard didn’t fail to notice that Thalia hadn’t answered his question.
“But why wake now? Why not before or later?” he asked again.
The young girl who wasn’t remotely young…or a girl…examined him, her eyes searching his face as if he were under a microscope. It wasn’t hostile, but impersonal. What she was looking for, Girard had no way to know, but after a long moment, her eyes softened with something that might be sadness and she said, “It would be better to ask how I could possibly stay asleep.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
She gave a little snort and looked away from him, her eyes traveling the many treasures in the room. Yes, she definitely looked sad.
“Thalia?” he prodded.
The sadness faded and her expression turned cold. “When you breathe, do you not taste the poison in the air? When you drink, do you not feel the taint of chemicals and death? When you eat, does the food not reek of decay and dissolution? The world has become a pit of poison so deep that there is no escape from it. I could sleep no longer. Humanity has destroyed the gift we gave them.”
That last bit pricked his ears and peaked his interest. A gift? It was rather the other way around. Without humans to inhabit, vampires were mere animals swimming in dark caves without light. Was it possible that Thalia didn’t understand that basic scientific fact?
Even pushing that aside for the moment, she was clearly romanticizing the past in exactly the same way she’d accused them of doing when they first entered the room. “Thalia, I understand what you’re saying, but I remember the world before. It smelled of wood smoke, filth, sickness, and sewage. Life was short and painful and hard. It still is for some…maybe for many…but progress is being made. Humans will pass this time of upheaval. Something better always comes.”
She listened to him, but Girard had the feeling she wasn’t really hearing him, not accepting the validity of his views. Her answer confirmed that. “No, they have destroyed much and they will destroy the rest. They have grown even more contentious and angry over time, not less. They were meant to become tame with the passing of ages, but that hasn’t happened. We have failed in our task to make the humans into perfect vessels.”
Rather than get into a philosophical fight about human nature—which was largely useless no matter who was doing the arguing—he decided to get back to the things that would matter to the Council. The details.
“If I can ask, how did you manage to sleep for so long? Physically, that shouldn’t be possible.”
“You want me to explain how I sleep? How can I know this? I was sleeping.”
Okay, that was logical and utterly reasonable. Girard couldn’t go back without anything though. “Why don’t you just tell me what you can? If you don’t mind, that is.”
Again, she gave that imperious, little wave. A queen humoring a subject. Yadikira was looking at her mother with the same curiosity that Girard felt. Was it possible she didn’t know the details either? Given her expression, he would guess yes.
“At first, I didn’t sleep for long. They came with offerings and Handmaidens, all the rituals observed as they should be. I woke then, but always I went to sleep again. I was so tired after so long.”
Girard held up a hand to pause her tale and she gave him a sour look. “Wait. Humans knew where you were sleeping? They tended you?”
She nodded as if that were obvious. “Of course, they did. All was done properly.”
“So, that was normal? For humans to tend hibernating vampires?”
She shrugged. “Humans have always tended the altars of the gods.”
Girard was old for a vampire. Seven hundred years was a long time to watch the world. Even so, not even he had ever seen anything like that. Gods? To his ears that smacked of arrogance, of primitive thoughts and emotions, of a past best left in the rearview mirror of the modern age.
He was also old enough to know better than to say that.
“Go on. I’ll try not to interrupt again.”
She gave him a little smile, an almost indulgent one, like he was an impetuous, but ultimately cute child pestering an adult for just one more piece of candy. “As I said, I slept…then woke…then slept again.” Her brow creased in memory, the echoes of her confusion returning. “But then things changed. The processions grew smaller, the people less dignified. Their offerings were base girls instead of proper Handmaidens. Even their words were changing, said by rote as if they didn’t understand what they meant. Eventually, they were furtive, dirty people who behaved as if they were sneaking in. And then they stopped coming.”
Girard waited for her to continue, but her eyes had gone unfocused, looking far into the past. Just as he was about to speak she narrowed her eyes at him and he closed his mouth on the question. It was enough to get her back on track.
“My chamber was properly prepared. The furnishings, the offerings, the decorations. Deep beneath the chamber was a pool fed by an underground river, just as required. It sustained me during those times I woke, the darkness soothing and good. And then one day a man came, the dust crumbling down through the passage to make ripples in my pool. He sought gold.” A small, vicious smile enlivened her features and she looked at him from under that innocent-looking brow. “He found much more than gold. And I found him.”
She paused again and Girard thought about what she said. To him, it sounded like a punishment pool; the vampire version of prison. Without a body and ensconced in a pool of properly prepared water, a vampire could linger forever in a half-animal state as long as enough nutrients were present. The tranquilizing effect of sulfurous water and the mind-numbing effect of rosemary took away all ambition, almost all sentient thought. Had that been what really happened to Thalia? Had she been in a punishment pool for two thousand years? A half-sleep filled with hunger and barely-formed desires? As he watched her, she grew still and silent, her eyes no longer focused on anything, her attention on nothing. Wherever her mind was now, it certainly wasn’t here.
Her story explained much.
This interview had gone on long enough. He had much to do if he was to clear this case…if it was even a case. The Guardians were thorough, sometimes beyond the point of usefulness. Even Girard had to admit that the title of bureaucrat often fit the Guardians a little too well. For every real case he investigated, he examined dozens that wound up not being cases at all. Some sub-paragraph of a sub-section in their many volumes of rules would—no doubt—cover such a situation as this.
In simple terms: shit happened. This might be such. This was particularly true now that he understood something of the nature of her long sleep.
Clapping his hands to his knees, he said, “Well, I’ve taken up too much of your time already and I have much to do.”
Thalia shook her head and returned to the present. With a sour look, she
flopped back to sprawl on the couch in attitudinal splendor. All she was missing was a phone to bury her nose in and the illusion of a modern adolescent would be complete. Yadikira looked embarrassed as she rose to her feet. Rudeness was often awkward.
“I’ll see you out,” she said and motioned him toward the door.
They walked in comfortable silence through the maze of empty rooms, both of them taking care not to create too much noise. He wondered about the female vampire he’d seen when he came in. She was unregistered here, but it was she whom he’d spoken with when he called ahead. She’d offered no name and he had incorrectly assumed she was Yadikira. By the time they reached that first giant room where he’d met Yadikira, he could contain his curiosity no longer.
“May I ask who answered the door?”
Yadikira offered him a fleeting smile and then looked away, but slowed her pace so that they would have more time. “That was Josette. She came from France to aid me when I started becoming…well…a little frail. An old friend.” She spread her arms as if to explain what she meant by frail, then seemed lost in memory for a moment. She started and quickly added, “She’s registered, of course.”
“Through the Western European Council, I assume.”
“Yes. Does she need to register here as well?” Yadikira asked. For someone who flew so far under the radar, she seemed very nervous of doing wrong. Perhaps that was the key to living a quiet life away from the council and their constant drama.
He shook his head and smiled. “We haven’t come down that far yet.”
Yadikira let out a tiny laugh, the quiet kind that vampires did almost by instinct. “Well, that’s a relief. I thought I might have missed a newsletter.”
As they approached the door, Girard paused and opened his mouth to ask about the strange outbursts. Yadikira seemed to know exactly what he was going to ask, because she held up her hand to stop him and shook her head. Moving carefully, as if even the rustle of her clothing might give away the meaning of her movements, she pointed toward the interior of the house then at her ear. The message was clear; she can hear you.
Girard shrugged a little and Yadikira glanced back inside a little nervously. Meeting his eyes, she said, “I see you looking at the ceiling. The frescoes are indeed beautiful here.” Under the cover of her words, she put her hand up in the modern sign meaning, I’ll call you.
Understanding, Girard said, “One rarely sees work like that in modern houses anymore. It’s a shame they’re fading, but I think they almost look more beautiful that way.” While he spoke, he dug one of his cards out of his pocket and handed it to her.
She looked at the fancy black card, ran a finger over the stylized logo of the foundation under which the Council worked, then smirked a little at the title under his name. Member Relations. Saying nothing more, she tucked the card into her sleeve and gave him a nod.
Josette was nowhere in evidence and Yadikira opened the door for him herself. In the light of the lowering sun, she looked far frailer than before. She was truly pushing her luck with this body. If it died suddenly and she had no new body nearby to switch into, she would die right along with it.
A sudden impulse made Girard hold out his hand in the human fashion. She started and looked at his extended hand for a moment, then reached out and slipped her soft hand into his. Her bones were close to the surface, the skin as thin as paper, yet her grip was firm.
He saw a flash of the beautiful woman she had once been when she smiled up at him. She had luminous eyes and a smile that must have made hearts beat faster when this body was young.
“I’m very happy to have met you, Yadikira. I hope to see you again.”
It may have been only the effect of so much natural light, but he thought he saw her eyes grow shiny with something other than the points of light that revealed a vampire’s age. The moment passed and her voice was soft when she said, “And I you, Girard the Guardian.”
He stepped out into the sunset and settled his hat on his head, but before the door could shut behind him, he said over his shoulder, “Don’t wait too much longer, Yadikira. If you need help with a new body, you need only call.”
The click of the door closing sounded behind him, but he heard the barest whisper of her voice anyway. “I will.”
As he got into his car, Girard wondered which of his statements she was answering. Did she mean that she would wait too long or that she would call for help? He hoped it would be the latter. There was something in her that spoke to him.
And that hadn’t happened in more than three hundred years.
5
What did you find?” Girard asked as he stirred his coffee and leaned over to see the computer screen.
Borona was on duty and was a crack worker when it came to visual clues. If you needed to find something invisible to anyone else, it was Borona you wanted to look for it. No matter how small or fleeting, Borona had an almost preternatural ability to detect changes or anything that didn’t belong. The big man had been born into the chaos of the American Revolutionary War and had lived in no other country but this one. He was a true child of the new world. Young he might be, but he was capable, and so perfectly fit for the life of a Guardian that he seemed made for it. In truth, two hundred and fifty years wasn’t young, but to Girard, it seemed so.
Borona wrinkled his nose at the smell wafting out of Girard’s cup and said, “That stuff is as old as your socks. Are you really going to drink it?”
Girard took a sip then made a face. It really was bad, like acid after it had been used to melt something plastic. “Is this the same pot I made before I left?”
With a shrug, Borona said, “I don’t drink it and no one else has been in here to make any. What do you think?”
He slid the cup onto the table behind him and rolled a chair up close behind Borona. The aftertaste of the coffee made him feel like he needed to brush his teeth. “Just give me what you found so I can make a new pot. If I don’t, I’ll be evil and you know it.”
Like most young ones, Borona didn’t yet have that sensitivity to noise that would come with time. His booming laugh was like shattering glass against Girard’s eardrums, but it would do no good to chide his fellow Guardian for it. It was Girard’s problem, not his.
Borona should feel free to enjoy his near humanity while it lasted. It would end eventually. It always did.
“Right, well, here’s what I’ve got. A big fat nothing.” On an overly large array of screens, images of the school flashed into life. Cobbled together from news reports and cell phone footage uploaded to social media, it covered a surprising range of time. Borona was as thorough as he was skilled.
“That’s not exactly enlightening me,” Girard muttered, looking from screen to screen.
Borona started from left to right, explaining as he pointed out features. “The fire started backstage of the assembly hall, which is also the theater and the gym. It looks accidental, but the fire marshals aren’t exactly superstars. As for bodies, there’s some question as to whether or not they’ll figure out who is who.”
“Show me.”
“See there, the empty space? That’s the reason it was so hard to put out. The building is old—as in turn of the last century old, not vampire old—and that space was built to be some kind of emergency shelter sometime in the fifties during all the bomb scares. So, you’ve got two strong, but standard, stone and masonry walls bracketed by a bomb shelter meant to last the end of the world by 1950s standards. It’s not a good mix. That wall collapsed inward and brought the back of the school on top of it. Like dominoes almost. The remains are all clustered near the stage, which would be here. It was probably like a crematorium in there. Eventually, they were reduced to letting the embers burn themselves out and keep the fire from spreading once they got the main blazes contained.”
Girard frowned as he looked from the image of the auditorium as it was during a school play in happier days to the charred mess it was after the fire. “And there’s no way to know i
f bodies are missing?”
Again the big man shrugged. “Well, we know one is missing. They don’t though. So far, they’re sifting ash and rubble. I’d say they’re going to eventually admit that some remains are burned away. They won’t know there’s one missing, I don’t think. Also, DNA doesn’t survive that kind of fire, so they’ll never parse out who is who that way.”
Shaking his head, Girard looked at Borona and said, “No, I want to know if there are more bodies gone.”
Clearly confused, Borona spun in his chair, forcing Girard to back his chair up or be uncomfortably close to Borona’s frowning face. Raising a finger as if to clarify a point, he asked, “Wait. So you think there are more like this Thalia? You think there’s more than one?”
“I wouldn’t go as far as that, but there’s something off here. She’s a sly one. If you’d met her you’d understand. I can’t describe it other than to say she’s off. And her story is too pat, too coincidental. And so many dying in a fire like that is almost unheard of in this day and age. There’s more here.”
The confusion cleared and Borona gave him a look. “Don’t look for bogeymen where there are none.”
His wide cheekbones made him look more serious than he usually was, but could also make him appear grim when he was merely serious. His long black hair was so straight it looked like he’d taken a steam iron to it and that reinforced the impression of seriousness. Only the man-bun ruined the image.
Of Native American descent, this body had been claimed by a much different looking Borona on a beach in Normandy in the midst of a battle that would go on to make history. The young man who’d originally owned this body had been a fellow soldier and friend to Borona. As both of them lay dying on that beach, poor Borona had been left with no option save one. Both men had been gravely injured, but Borona’s original body was missing both legs. Vampires could heal much, but they could not replace a limb that was gone. So he’d done something no vampire ever wanted to do: he’d taken the body of a human friend. It scarred him deep inside.