by Gwynn White
“Here’s the first reference I was talking about,” Lila said. She glanced at him, then smirked a little at his stiff posture and tossed him a pair of spotless, cotton gloves. “Don’t worry. This one is only a few hundred years old. It’s perfectly safe.”
The book in question was so large that any modern person would wonder at its existence. About three feet tall and two wide, it was bound in heavy leather darkened by hands and age. The pages were stiff and yellowing at the edges. The sight of it made Girard think of times long past. This was a ledger, and one that had been in common usage amongst the Guardians. It was strange to think that a book now requiring gloved hands even to touch might have once been carried with no more care than a bag of potatoes by someone who probably never washed their hands.
Girard leaned over to get a better look at the ornate writing on the page, then asked, “This is one of the transcriptions?”
The transcriptions—an awkward word, but accurate—had been started by a vampire Guardian almost a thousand years ago, but the practice hadn’t caught on as useful until the 1700s. That’s when book manufacturing made the keeping of records like this easier. Before that point in history, vampires were almost pathological about not recording history in any way. Discovery was too risky. That Guardian, who was now known as the first Historian, had spent a few hundred years without a body as punishment for the crime of recording so much vampire lore. His earliest volumes had been burned. Even talking about those losses could make modern Guardian Historians groan.
Eventually, as the venerable and ancient began to disappear, the loss of so much history and experience was deemed too great and the transcriptions began again in earnest. Even Girard had been interviewed once before he became a Guardian, back when he had little to add. His entry had been a short one.
Lila nodded. “Yes. You’ve seen plenty of these. This one is from Northern Europe.” She pointed to a section of writing and then read aloud, translating the language as she did, “And then there was Thalia. I heard tales of her, but these are only tales and I do not know if they are true. It’s said that she was from—and here he uses an old word for Crete, so I’ll simply say Crete—and was a daughter of Zeus.” Here Lila paused and let out a low laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
“Um, well, let’s just say this elder wasn’t too fond of the Greek gods. He calls Zeus a nasty, unbathed beast with bad teeth.”
Girard laughed with her. Those ancient vampires definitely had opinions about things. “We can skip the character assassinations.”
“Right.” Her finger moved a rather long distance down the writing. Clearly there was a lot of bad blood between whoever this was and Zeus. “Ah, here we are. This Thalia took the body of a young girl who was very beautiful, then was given in marriage to one of those savages down in Egypt who think they are gods. There was some sort of exchange. She would be made their only queen and the Egyptians would get the secret to some sort of math. It was a very stupid exchange if you ask me. Didn’t they have gold? I would have taken gold…” Lila paused again, glancing over at Girard. “I’ll skip that too. He goes on for quite a while.”
Girard nodded, trying not to smile. The transcriptions were accurate, if nothing else. Whatever the interviewee said, no matter how trivial, was faithfully recorded onto paper. “As you like,” he said, nodding at the book for her to go on.
“The next part is rather interesting and that’s what made me think of your Thalia.” Once again her finger skipped along a few lines. “I don’t know if it’s true, but the story I heard is that the Egyptians turned her into a goddess because she lived so long. They sacrificed to her or something, hoping she would take the body of one of the offerings. Eventually, they got tired of her and walled her up under a pyramid or in a tomb or something else terrible. And that was the end of her. These things never work out. They should have just taken gold.”
Girard laughed aloud. Hearing this transcription reminded him so much of those days in his youth, listening to elders as they came through his village. They weren’t all like this, and he’d never heard this tale, but the tone came through. He could almost feel the cool night, see the flickering fire, hear the rumble of an elder’s voice as they spoke of fantastical pasts that seemed impossible to a boy like Girard, living as he did in a village and tending sheep each changeless day.
“That’s all the bits that might be relevant,” Lila said, straightening up and running a gloved hand down the page. It was almost a fond gesture.
“Whose transcription is this?” he asked, genuinely curious.
“A vampire named Ivar. The one they called the Boneless. It was taken just before he went into the sea. It seems such a shame that he’s gone.”
Girard grunted softly at the name. “I met him once. He was no longer Ivar then, really. He was in the body of a priest when I saw him. He was on the run from something, I think.”
“Like so many of the old ones, he had his time in the sun, his time of fame. Like many, he also never seemed satisfied once that time passed.”
Rather than get lost in the past, imagining the life of one who was gone forever, Girard shifted back to the business at hand. It took effort though. “But this was a tale told to him, not his own experience?”
“No, but most references we have in the transcriptions are like that. You know how it is. The hope was that with many recounting all the tales they’d heard, we could form a more cohesive whole and track each tale down to the original source. This one was rather obscure though, and not mentioned by anyone else. Whoever told him the tale was long dead by the time we began our transcriptions.”
“Or hiding.”
“Or that,” Lila confirmed.
That was another difficulty with vampires. They were notoriously suspicious. Whether it came from their biology or the legitimate fear they held about their safety should they be discovered, Girard wasn’t sure. Whatever the reason, it did make anything like a census of vampires impossible. Just as there were humans who lived their entire lives without being registered—such as undocumented immigrants—there were vampires who managed to never be counted by the Council. The fact that they changed bodies only confused the system further, since one couldn’t simply track a single physical body.
Girard sighed, then asked, “And the second reference?”
“Ah, yes! Well, this one is a little trickier and I’m pretty sure it’s only a story. Come with me.” Lila took off her gloves in two quick pulls, dropped them next to the book, then strode toward a door at the other end of the room marked, Scanning - Restricted Entry. “This is a new piece actually. Only since we got the phase scanner are we able to start on these old scrolls. It’s been a delight.”
The heavy metal door opened with a slight suctioning noise and closed behind them with a rubbery whoosh. This part of the library looked more like a medical testing facility than anything to do with books. A large glass partition separated the two areas and only the nearest part of the machinery used to peer into formerly unreadable scrolls was visible beyond the glass. It all looked rather intimidating.
“These scrolls were from the Vesuvius incident as well as from the Alexandria library. What a criminal shame that was! But never mind that for now. Since humans figured out how to read through the scrolls they’ve collected from Herculaneum, we immediately copied their technique and set up here. So far, we’ve gotten a peek into nine scrolls, but a full scan takes time. We can’t unroll them, so it’s a matter of detail work. We’re sampling so we can focus on anything we find that’s new. I think it’s rather interesting that one of the first scrolls reminds me of your case.”
Girard followed Lila as she passed through this work area and nodded to the two vampire technicians on duty. The screens in front of them flashed through images so quickly he had difficulty discerning what they were doing. The techs touched a key with each image, so it must be related to the translations and deciphering.
Lila pushed through another door and they ent
ered her office. It was piled everywhere with reference books—modern ones—on languages, customs, and another dozen subjects important to an historian. Waving toward the two chairs set opposite her desk for him to sit, she reached over the piles and grabbed her laptop. “Here, pull your chair closer so you can see.”
He did, then waited while she brought up whatever it was she wanted to show him.
“So, here’s the scroll translation. We’ve only got the first twenty rotations of this scroll done. The image is on the left, the translation on the right. I’ve brought up the English for you.”
Girard looked at the image of the scroll’s interior. It didn’t look like the surface of a scroll anymore, but it was clear enough to read. Except that he couldn’t read it. “That’s not Greek or Latin, but it sort of reminds me of both. What language?”
Lila grinned at him. “Precursor language. That’s how we know a very old vampire owned these scrolls. Old languages were used almost like a secret code by them since no one knew the language anymore.”
“I’m fascinated, but that’s for later. What makes you think of Thalia in this?”
She flipped through screens so quickly that Girard couldn’t even begin to follow, then stopped and gave him the laptop so he could see. “Here it is. Now, I admit that it might be my eagerness to find things in these old scrolls influencing my perceptions, but you read it and tell me what you think. It goes on for a few screens. The part before it is still unreadable and we’re still working on the next rotation of the scroll, so we’re missing a lot of the tale. There’s probably thirty feet of scroll to get through, so it’s going to take time.”
Girard put the computer on his lap and read.
And it came to pass that she took on the countenance of a hippopotamus and made the river run with the blood of all who would flee her reign. The sons of her sons until a hundred generations rose up and trapped her with nets spun from silver and gold. She shed her animal form and rose from the water in the form of a girl. She cried tears piteous to behold and used a voice sweet with youth to cry mercy. In shame, the sons sent her a handmaiden to wipe her tears and bring her wine. When the maiden touched the girl’s face, a snake slithered forth from her mouth and entered the handmaiden, though none saw the serpent.
When the handmaiden showed the sons the body of the girl, limp in death and bloodied about the mouth, they shouted and wailed that they had killed the goddess and were taken with great regret. The handmaiden did sooth the sons with gentle touches and they made ready to leave the river, bringing with them the body of the goddess so that she might be prepared and given rites. It was then that the sons saw the stars in the handmaiden’s eyes and knew the goddess was not dead.
Reminded of their peril, they bound the handmaiden with chains and covered her mouth with a golden mask. The handmaiden who was a goddess was then laid with all ceremony in the tomb and many sacrifices made in her honor.
Chills ran up Girard’s spine as he read. It was a story, no different from any other fantastical time before science and reason pushed aside superstition, but this one rang true. It felt right.
“This is her, or if not, then someone just like her,” he said, then thought back to the tale Thalia had told him in that room filled with treasures and mementos. “No, that’s her. No question,” he added, handing the laptop back.
Lila nodded slowly. “I think so too. The hippopotamus from the rivers in Egypt doesn’t make sense, but the hundred generations, the golden mask…it all fits a little too perfectly.”
“And the stars in her eyes.”
“And the snake,” Lila added, her voice low.
Girard made a face at that. No one liked to be compared to a snake, but they were often described as just that. It was always that or a leech, which was probably closer to what vampires actually looked like.
“I think you’ve found your Thalia,” Lila said after they were silent for a while, both thinking of what this might mean.
“You mean I found a goddess. A crazy and dangerous one.”
“That too.”
8
Girard was looking for just the right body and not having a great deal of luck. A vampire from Cincinnati was in need of a change and it was Girard’s turn to help with the transition. Since there was nothing more he could do on the Thalia case until Borona gave him a verdict on the fire, he couldn’t put off this task any further. The request was for a male, preferably adult, young, and good looking according to the standards of the day.
Those were all doable requests, but not when all the other things had to be taken into account. Picking a human meant finding one that either didn’t have family or at least not a close family, one that didn’t have an extensive criminal record, and one that could believably fall into the life of the vampire that would take the body. And it had to be dying, but still have an intact brain. Or at least mostly intact. Vampires could repair and rebuild much, but not everything. The basics needed to be in place.
All of that made it difficult to find the right body in the connected world of this day and age. And it really didn’t help that Girard was hungry…and not for a sandwich.
He shot his cuffs and adjusted his sunglasses as he walked from the hospital parking lot to the side entrance. His contact would be meeting him there, which was good, because Girard didn’t have any fake identification for this hospital. And like everything else in the modern era, simply putting on a white coat and saying that he was a doctor wasn’t enough anymore. They needed badges, ID cards, names on lists. It was a huge pain in the behind.
The day was bright, completely cloudless, the sky a breathtaking blue. A vague headache settled behind his eyes by the time he reached the entrance overhang. Vampires didn’t go up in flames with the sun—another myth that helped them to remain hidden—but their eyes were sensitive to bright light. And the hungrier they got, the worse that sensitivity would become.
A man with thinning hair and the under-eye shadows of the chronically overworked opened the glass door for him and smiled in welcome. Once inside, he held out his hand and said, “Greg Peters. Nice to meet you, Guardian.”
“Just call me Girard.”
“Of course.”
“Greg Peters, eh? Nice switch.”
The man chuckled a little and said, “People here in America used to be suspicious of names like Gregory Petrovich. It’s simpler.”
“You have a candidate for me?” Girard asked. Out of habit, he scanned the wide hallway where they stood, examining all the busy people walking to and fro for threats. There were none to be seen. It was the normal business of people very engaged in the work of modern medical treatment.
Holding a hand out for Girard to walk with him, Greg led him toward a bank of elevators. “Yes, I reported him a few days ago, but he’s fading quickly and if he’s going to be used, it will need to be soon.”
“That’s good, because I need a candidate and I’m not having a lot of luck.”
Greg shook his head and punched the elevator button. “Such is life now.”
“That it is.”
A few others joined them while they waited, so they remained silent until they arrived at the proper floor. Once the elevator doors slid shut behind them, Greg said, “I’ve told them I’m bringing in a colleague for consultation, so there should be no problem.”
A hush descended as they entered the Intensive Care Unit. There were plenty of people about, but they went about their work quietly, with that same reluctance to make noise humans always had around those facing imminent death. No one challenged his entrance and Greg simply nodded at the nurse behind the main desk. She went back to her computer screen after recognizing the doctor.
Like many modern ICUs, this one didn’t afford much in the way of patient privacy. The walls were glass so that the patient was in full view of the work floor at all times. This one, however, also sported hospital curtains that could be drawn across the entire front of each room. That would be useful later if this young man turne
d out to be the right one.
Closing the door behind them, Greg put a finger to his lips and then said aloud, “I’m switching off the intercom while we consult.”
A woman’s voice answered, “Understood, Dr. Peters.”
Greg flipped the switch near the bed, then said, “We’re fine to talk now. She can’t turn it on from out there with the switch off in here. Patient privacy for last wills and confessions and such.”
Girard nodded and approached the bed to look at the patient. He was young, just entering the first flush of adulthood. Though wasted from whatever sickness he had, his bones and joints had the look of a big man, one normally well-muscled. A grayish pallor tarnished the deep amber tones of his skin, but there was no question he was good looking as such things were judged today.
“What’s wrong with him?” Girard asked, touching the young man’s exposed wrist to feel the life inside him. It felt weak, thready and barely present. He was most certainly near death.
“Hodgkin's Lymphoma.”
“That’s surprising. Treatment didn’t work for him?”
Greg sighed a little sadly. “It was complicated by Sickle Cell Anemia. Those two conditions do not go well together sometimes. Treatment success rates are not as high in such situations. He was stable for a time, but he’s presented with increased crises and is no longer responding to treatment.”
The way Greg looked down at the young man went beyond sympathy. “You aren’t thinking of helping him, are you?”
“No, of course not,” he answered, but the way he answered told Girard he most certainly had been thinking exactly that. Greg must have understood how much he’d telegraphed, because he continued talking. “Really. I mean, of course I think about it. I’m a doctor. I’ve been a doctor for most of my life. I’m also not stupid. If this were a tiny place in the middle of nowhere, then maybe I would help, but not here. Here, they would do everything they could to figure out why he got well and something of me would be left in him for them to find. I assure you, Guardian, I wouldn’t do that.”