by Gwynn White
Lila slid the pizza on top of a thick wooden block in the center of the table meant for hot dishes, then smacked Marcus’s hand when he immediately reached for the pizza. Handing him a plate from the stack on the counter, she said, “I read that about you and made this up before we woke you. No cheese, no meat, nothing like that.”
He peered at the surface of the pie, then pointed. “Are those mushrooms safe? That wench from Germania used to try to poison me with those all the time.”
“Perfectly safe. They’re farmed.”
“Excellent!” He again reached for the pizza and looked at both of them. “Where is your food? Because if you try to touch this, I’ll bite your hand off.”
Girard only shook his head and got up to get a yogurt.
15
Marcus had demolished the pizza, exclaiming enthusiastically over the size of the pepper slices and the sweetness of the tomatoes. He’d missed all of the recent vegetable breeding they took for granted now. He’d also downed three more vials between slices and was feeling good.
He also knew he was awake for a reason now, getting much of the story while he relentlessly chewed his way through enough food for all three of them, emitting enormous belches that sounded like foghorns as punctuation.
“So, let me be sure I understand you properly. You want information and that’s all? If I give it, then I can get the rest of my sentence commuted?”
Lila said, “Well, yes. We’d like it if you could offer help as well, but the deal is for information only. We’re in a bind. There’s only one member of the council older than Girard and the New World isn’t exactly a hotbed for ancients. Some, like yourself, came over when it was exciting, but over the years have either gone back to wherever they came from or disappeared. Most Guardians here are fairly young…at least in a relative sense.”
Marcus nodded his understanding and toyed with the final piece of crust on his plate while he thought about the offer on the table. “You could always call for aid from another area, but if your Council has called for secrecy, then that would be a problem. For a secretive people, we spread gossip very quickly.” He sighed, flicked the crust with a fingertip, then stopped to examine his hand. “This is a bold choice. Beautiful.”
The memories of the person taken would have already let Marcus know what he looked like and all the details of his appearance, even back into childhood. Girard was pleased that Marcus seemed happy with his new body, but really, simply having a body was the important part. All the rest was gravy.
Clearing his throat, Marcus narrowed his eyes a little and said, “And I intend to keep this body. I’ll take your deal.”
Everyone who could know what was going on had gathered in their briefing room. The council members populated the screens—which fascinated Marcus—with the addition of Professor Doran on another screen. Physically present were Borona, Lila, Girard, and Marcus. It was a very small group for such a large problem.
They were called to order and Marcus again required the Council to promise he was free after only giving information. Once that was given, he sat at the table and said, “You’re going to lose if you go against Thalia without a solid plan. She’s a mean one and she hates us almost as much as she hates humans. She’s powerful, but even more than that, she knows how to dominate others and make them do her will. She always has. You won’t be going against Thalia alone. She’ll drag in others, including humans.”
It felt like all the air got sucked out of the room with his words. Girard had hoped for information, but this flat pronouncement of doom was not what he’d imagined. The various council members on the screens stared with disbelief or flinched. It struck Girard that vampires had become more like a country club than a group of ruthless parasitical killers. Pradish was even wearing golf clothes, with a baby pink shirt and his collar up like a resurrected preppie from a few decades in the past. No, they were not remotely vicious unless their prey was a good bottle of chardonnay or a coveted first edition of a favorite book up for auction. Were they even up for the kind of conflict that might be required? He wasn’t sure, not at all. Lila looked at Doran and in that look, she conveyed how much she wanted to live and see where things might go between them. There was no way to miss all the meaning in that shared gaze.
It was that, more than anything else, that made Girard’s hackles rise. “No, that’s no way to start anything. Tell us what you know about her and we’ll decide what’s next.”
If he hadn’t been an ancient, Girard would have sworn that Marcus rolled his eyes. But he was an ancient and surely they were past that. Then he remembered Thalia and her pout. Okay, Marcus had definitely rolled his eyes.
Lila interrupted his eye-rolling and asked, “You know Thalia? Specifically and personally?”
“Of course, I do. She’s a terror and an embarrassment to our kind. I was glad when I heard that they buried her alive. No one even mentioned her name in case she might hear it. There’s never been one like her and she’s more animal than human, but crafty and sly all the same. She reminds me of a hyena.”
The memory of Thalia walking with those high steps, and the unnatural way she’d turned her head flashed through Girard’s mind. Even at that moment, she’d seemed inhuman to him, a thing beyond vampire. He’d put it down to her being an ancient. Perhaps it wasn’t only that. Marcus was an ancient and he didn’t act like that.
“How old is she?” Girard asked.
Marcus shrugged. “No one knows that I’m aware of. She was ancient when I was young, but we didn’t measure time the way you do now. When a vampire went to rest, they never knew how much time had passed when they woke unless someone was keeping track of it for them. And that didn’t happen often. Like humans, our lives were often much shorter than they are now. Accidents were more common. It was the reason we were so mad for astronomy in the past, just so that we could look in the sky and know things like how long we had slept.”
They were silent for a moment, probably all wondering the same thing, Girard figured. Should they tell Marcus what they knew?
Doran decided for them, and said, “Based on the records, we’re guessing she’s at least ten thousand years old. But she could be older, much older.”
Now even Marcus was surprised. “So old!” He tilted his head and his mouth twisted a little, then he added, “I’d believe that.”
“How do you capture an ancient like that?” Lila asked, cutting right to the heart of the matter.
Marcus laughed at the question. “Are you kidding? You don’t. You couldn’t get near her. She can probably hear for miles.”
“The Guardians caught you,” Girard countered.
“Only because I let them, but also they were very sneaky. They built a pond below the inn I favored and rigged the floor. I fell right in. It was filled with boggy water and they poured in buckets of rosemary as soon as I fell. I could have left, I think, but I was tired. I don’t mind the pools so much. Most ancients don’t if you want to know the truth. It gives us peace of a sort, a pause in the struggle of living.” He ended with a shrug, clearly unable to put more precise words to what he meant.
Lila sighed. “Well, she’s not going to go willingly, I don’t think. Not if she’s got others with her.”
Marcus shifted in his seat, tension tightening his shoulders like he’d been electrocuted. “What do you mean by others? Who?”
Borona answered, speaking for the first time aside from an introduction before the meeting started. He was still nervous around the Council and he’d never spoken with a true ancient. “Analysis of the fire that started this whole thing is how we know. Unless she’s got some power we don’t know about, the fires indicated that she had at least two others with her, but possibly as many as five. All with equivalent power to her, or close enough.”
Marcus slouched in the chair like he’d been punched, his face paling a little. “Then maybe it’s begun.”
A lot of people asked the same thing at once. “What’s begun?”
It
took him a moment to collect himself and the hand he used to wipe his brow trembled. It was obvious that Marcus—a vampire who had fought wars and run the Roman Empire—was afraid.
“A myth,” he whispered. He swallowed loudly, then looked at the assembled faces. “A myth come to life. At least, that’s my first thought. She tried it long ago, and she almost succeeded. The Antonine plague was hers, you know. Killed off a fifth of the entire Roman empire before we contained it.”
Pradish, the only dissenter for the previous vote, said, “Explain please.”
Before Marcus could answer, Lila asked, “You mean the Cave of Creation? The return?”
Marcus’s eyebrow twitched upward and he nodded. “Good guess, Historian.” To the rest of them, he said, “You all know the story, though you probably don’t put much stock in it. Even when I was young we dismissed it as blather by old ones. Basically, the story goes that we emerged from the Cave of Creation to bring intelligence to humans so that we might use them, but we will one day remove ourselves from the humans and make the world into the garden it once was. Then we will return to the Cave of Creation.”
Lila spluttered, “But that’s stupid! It doesn’t even make sense. Why go back to being mindless animals!”
Marcus smiled, but it was a smile of pity. “Because, like the punishment pools, it will be a rest. The oldest of us used to say that we are the head of the circle of life, but also its tail. It is our duty to bring the light of intelligence, but also our duty to snuff it out. Then it will begin again, only better the next time. It’s the great circle, the cycle of life and death, of creation and destruction.”
Doran broke the silence that followed. “Frigging evolution. That’s what you mean. Capping off an undesirable species so that another can rise, but only if we get to be at the top of their hierarchy.”
Marcus seemed confused for a moment, then his expression cleared and he said, “Yes, something like that. This body knows only a little of that concept, but yes.”
Girard didn’t care about the reasons. What he cared about was the specifics. His job involved enforcing their laws and punishing wrong-doers. If Thalia had something catastrophic planned, then she was the ultimate criminal and he only needed to figure out how to stop her.
Disorder had descended as questions peppered Lila and Marcus from the Council. Most of them were ones she could answer only vaguely and Marcus little better. Girard slapped a hand on the conference table and bellowed, “Silence!”
The Chairwoman narrowed her eyes at his presumption, but let it pass. He inclined his head a little to acknowledge the pass, then turned his attention back to Marcus and Lila. “What about those with her? Who would they be?”
Marcus answered first. “The story has changed quite a lot since I was young, but the earliest memories I have came from my family. It was said that the oldest of us would awaken, that they were gods that slept and listened to all that we did in their slumber and judged us in their sleep. They would listen until the balance between good and evil shifted and there was more evil than good in the world. When they rose, they would drain the blood of the world, leaving an army of dead in their wake to nourish and replenish the land. They would transform all those that followed them into gods. It goes on like that for quite a while and it’s excessively boring and dreadful. Mostly, it’s a bedtime story for child vampires to tell them they have to behave or else. I know I was terrified by it, constantly convinced some sleeping monster was going to rip my heart out if I was bad. I never told that story to my children…too violent and nasty.”
Lila added, “We have several transcriptions of the tale from the viewpoint of vampires all over the world. It changes quite a lot depending on who tells it, when they told it, and where they live. It sort of varies based on the culture, if you know what I mean. And it’s a lot less dreadful in its current form.”
Pradish asked, “How is it that we know so little of ourselves? I mean, this seems important.”
Lila gave him a look and said, “We do our best. You try rebuilding a cogent picture of history when most of that history forced us to hide. Until recently we’ve been specifically forbidden from talking about the deep past, and any evidence left behind has always been burned to avoid exposure. Add in that an unknown percentage of us remain hidden from the Guardians, and you’ve got a lot of blank pages. Let me ask you the same question. You’re on the Council. Why don’t you know all this?”
Pradish looked vaguely offended at the challenging tone, but in the end, he only pursed his lips and said, “I specialize in accounting and budgets. I’m not an Historian.” It was a weak defense and he knew it.
With an impatient noise and a snap of his fingers, Marcus stopped the bickering. “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t even matter if we know the exact tale from its beginning. What matters is that Thalia is awake and has others with her who probably share her beliefs. Thalia is not a god, no matter what she might believe. She was awake until I was…oh, let me think…at least until I was about six hundred years old, so she’s not a god. She’s just a cranky, old vampire with a chip on her shoulder the size of a mountain. Even if she is ten thousand years old, it wouldn’t matter. There’s only so much a human body can do and she’s inside a human if she’s awake and out in the world. That limits her. Yes, she has great power when it comes to influencing others, born of long experience, but she herself is not a god.”
His words worked to calm the room a little, the voice of reason breaking through the fear. Girard was comforted by them because they were true. Thalia was in a child’s body, not some magical being risen from the sea. A child. And she went to her daughter for protection, which meant she wasn’t as confident as she might appear. Creepy? Yes. Omniscient? Definitely not.
Marcus’s color had returned and his hands were still on the arms of the chair, but Girard had seen his fear. He asked, “Then why were you so afraid when you mentioned this?”
The old man that he had once been appeared behind the youthful mask Marcus now wore for a brief second. “Have you ever seen a vampire war? Of course you haven’t. Or at least you probably didn’t know what it was. Vampire wars are unholy, wars of poison and blood and death. We do not fight our wars in the open. We fight them using humans. I know your age and where you’re from, so you must have seen the Crusades. You think that was a human war? No. It was started by a vampire simply because he wanted to punish vampires who lived openly in another land. The purges? The plagues? All vampire wars.
“If Thalia believes this tale and that she is the god from that story, then she will use every single evil thing done since mankind first did evil to each other. She will use it all without mercy. No one will be safe. She will send minions into the bodies of politicians, of scientists, of weapons makers…of anyone who can create terror and war. You didn’t hear me properly, young Guardian. When I said Thalia hates vampires almost as much as she hates humans, I was not telling a pretty tale. Thalia hates all the world because all the world grew to hate her. She is poison and she will rain terror down upon us all. That is something to fear.”
16
Girard was tired almost to the point of being awake again. For days they had been plotting and planning while Borona sought evidence of Thalia or any others. A brief phone call to Yadikira— under the guise of asking if she was making progress with her mother—revealed that Thalia had not returned after one of her long walks. She had left no word and not said goodbye, only disappeared from the house, leaving the front door wide open.
Girard could hear the pain in Yadikira’s voice at the abandonment and had to bite his tongue to keep from telling her how lucky she was. It was equally clear that Yadikira was not one of those following Thalia. Given her gentle nature, her withdrawal from society, and her frail body…it seemed unlikely that Thalia had revealed anything important to her only living child. Girard had the feeling that Thalia genuinely cared for little in this world. She may have thought her daughter would be of use to her. Clearly she’d been mist
aken and had scampered off to be with those who shared her ideals.
He hated to admit that he was gladder than he probably should be that this was the case. Yadikira would be safer the further she remained from her mother. She didn’t need the stress in her current situation either. He’d had to force himself not to call her every day, if only to hear her voice and see if she was well. He was also curious if Yadikira was like her mother in a physical sense. Could she go into animals? Create fire that melted plastic? He couldn’t ask her, given their current restricted communications protocols, but he wanted to, of that there was no doubt.
Thalia’s disappearance presented problems of another kind. She had not appeared on any of their feeds, at least not in the guise of the girl’s body he’d last seen her in. The Guardians had long since hijacked the feeds from CCTV cameras that ran through any number of government agencies. It wasn’t noticeable and took nothing from official channels. It merely gave the Guardians access to them as well. Their own facial recognition and thermal signature programs ran on all feeds, yet no sightings of Thalia had been confirmed.
Perhaps she’d changed bodies. Perhaps she understood cameras already, or understood them even better than the Guardians did, given the age of her body. Perhaps she simply had a driver and didn’t walk around. There was no way to know which, if any, of those options she might have decided to use.
What they did know was that the fires were spreading. Suspicious fires at factories, warehouses, and industrial sites. Even a concert hall filled with people had been burned, the tragedy so great that the story plastered news screens around the world. Yet the fires were not clumped together or close together geographically. Each one was in a place far from any other, leaving no connection between events. And these fires were not limited to North America.