by Gwynn White
The Council sent word that during the Inter-Council meeting, suspicious fires were noted and reported in China, Russia, and Africa. Only Western Europe had been spared so far, though it may be simply that suspicions had not been raised. All Guardian Complexes monitored fires and each reported new and suspicious fires that matched vampire tendencies.
Though it was a hard decision, the North American Council maintained that secrecy was still a necessary evil and chose not to share their knowledge with the other Councils. Marcus was entirely correct in his pronouncement that gossip traveled fast in the vampire world. If Thalia and her crew—or followers—knew they were being sought, they would disappear or change bodies. It would make the Guardians’ duty all the more difficult if they were forced to chase prey who knew they were being chased. It was best to behave like real hunters: learn where their prey might be, lie in wait, then take them before they knew the hunter was present.
Rolling out of his bed, Girard shook his arms and jogged in place for a few seconds to get his blood moving. This night was turning out exactly like the last three, almost entirely sleepless. He might as well get up if sleep wasn’t going to come. He could go for longer without sleep than a human, but his body was what it was, and even vampires riding inside humans needed sleep. The air was chilly, even for him, so he put on a robe over his old-fashioned flannel pajamas and scuffed his feet into slippers.
The dormitory hallway was quiet, everyone in residence either sleeping or on duty somewhere. No light shone from under Lila’s door, so he kept walking toward the kitchen. Maybe some warm milk would help. He hoped Lila had managed to drop off tonight. The dark bruises under her eyes during dinner spoke eloquently of her own lack of sleep. Plus, she was turning cranky.
The sound of explosions leaked from behind the lounge door as he passed. The volume on the TV was turned down, but he could hear it well enough. With a sigh, Girard opened the door, knowing who he would find.
Marcus was sprawled out on the couch wearing nothing except a pair of boxer shorts. He had one foot on each of the two big footstools and on his lap rested a huge bowl of popcorn. Fluffy, white kernels lay scattered around him and the flicker of the TV lit him in flashes of color.
“Having fun?” Girard asked.
The ancient started at the interruption and his bowl of popcorn let out another drift of kernels to litter the couch and floor. When he saw who it was, he made a face and said, “Itching balls of Jupiter! You scared the shit out of me!”
The way he mixed the profanity of his youth with the memories of his new body never got old. Girard had to grin. “Jupiter should probably get that checked out. Jock itch can be treated these days, you know.”
Marcus let out a bark of a laugh, then patted the couch and bounced over a bit to make room. “Come. Sit. This movie is marvelously bad! And why didn’t you tell me about this popcorn? It’s delicious, like salty sponges of savory goodness.”
Whether it was simply that Marcus was so singularly upbeat or that he had amazing stories to share of times Girard could only imagine, being around him lifted the gloomy mood he found himself sinking into when he thought about their predicament. And their predicament was dire, but for humans even more than vampires. While vampires were technically predators, it wasn’t like that in practice. It wasn’t something anyone talked about, but the truth was that Girard thought of himself as human. He felt exactly as Doran had described that day on a bench. Human, entirely. He’d be willing to be that most vampires who lived full lives did.
Even if a vampire fed in the wild and didn’t register with the Council, it wouldn’t be a deadly event. It wouldn’t even harm the human unless it made them late for an appointment. In many ways, it was as good for them as it was for the vampire. Though not as complete as a true healing—which involved the vampire extending a healing arm into the human to sample the human’s disease and release the right chemicals into the body—a feeding sent some of that vampire’s unique self back into the human.
Blood was filtered through the feeding arms and returned. Girard had never met a human that remembered the event, the initial drug injection at connection inducing a feel-good slumber that put a smile on the human’s sleepy face. Afterwards, they awoke energized, feeling better than they had before. Many vampires thought that there was some healing involved, though no one would dare test that theory now in the age of the internet.
Whether by evolution or by creation, no such system would develop if harm or pain were the intended result of a feeding. It had evolved into a gentle process that provided something to both parties. Humans might be prey, but not in any traditional sense.
Except that Thalia was using them as prey in the most final sense. She was discarding humans and killing them for no reason.
“You’re moping again. You look like a dog denied the last bone.”
Girard could only chuckle. “I think too much.”
“You do! I’ll admit you have much to think about. What bothers you now?”
“Can I ask you a question? About feeding?” Girard asked.
“Of course you can ask, but I may not answer.”
“When Thalia feeds, she kills them. At least that’s what we think because there is evidence that the humans inside places were dead before the fires. Or maybe she just kills them. We’re not sure. What I don’t understand is how she can feed like that, if that’s what she’s doing. How does she get what she needs that way? We’re no different from humans in one way. Actually drinking blood would poison us, make us ill. Enough of it would kill us, or rather the human we live inside. So how does she feed so quickly?”
Marcus shoveled popcorn into his mouth while Girard talked, but swallowed it when he finished. At least, he mostly swallowed it. He talked around the squishy white bits left in his mouth when he answered. “She might be something we used to call a dumper. I’ve heard of those, but not for a long time. My mother said her mother’s mother’s mother—or something like that far in the past—was a dumper, so I believe they existed at one time.”
“What’s a dumper?”
Marcus set aside the bowl and wiped his fingers on his boxer shorts, leaving darker smears of imitation butter. “Well, from what I know, they’re a bit like siphons or something. I can’t imagine it myself, but the story goes that they have two large pipe-like vessels that come out of their body somewhere. My mother said it came from their belly, but another tale I heard said it came from their back. One said it attached to their butts, like an extra place to poop from or whatever. Anyway, supposedly their feeding arms are large and more numerous, but less efficient. Instead of sending the blood back into the human, the arms send it to the vessels and those dump it out of their bodies, not filtering it as well in the process and killing the human. It means they have to eat a great deal more, but they eat faster.”
Girard tried to imagine it, but couldn’t picture it. Perhaps that’s where the vampire legends of humans really came from. Two vessels…like teeth…death and so on. It would make a vampire very hard to hide as well. Death amongst loved ones wasn’t something humans put up with for long.
“I can see why that would have gone away in favor of what we do now. We probably wouldn’t be so many in number if we were like that.”
Marcus nodded, clearly in thought. “I guess so. I hadn’t really thought of that. It’s mostly just disgusting to think about, if you ask me. Imagine the smell. You think Thalia might be one of these?”
“You tell me. I mean, you knew her.”
“I did, but not well, and I never saw her naked…thank all the gods. Political associations primarily. She was their shadow queen, the living goddess kept in a temple. I didn’t watch her feed. I snuck down there while on a long campaign once. It wouldn’t do to let it be known the emperor was running off to Egypt to have an argument with their shadow queen, but that’s what I did. Vampire squabbles happened even then, but when it involved grain shipments needed to feed my people, I took it seriously. I met her. She was all gilded up like a s
tatue with a crown on her head, sitting that way they do. Like you say she is now, she was in a young girl’s body. I think she only takes young ones, then has a child when she grows big enough, then discards the body. Once we were alone—well, alone except for her vampires and mine—she threw down the crown and started railing at me! She set the documents we brought on fire with just a touch and said she would eat all of my people if I came back into her lands.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, wow. Crazy as Juno on a bender. She screamed so hard she shit herself. I’m not kidding…she really did, right there on the floor. Then my ship’s crew died in the middle of our return passage. That raving bitch put plague rats on my ship! Good thing I’m a decent sailor.”
“She really thinks she’s a goddess,” Girard murmured, almost to himself.
“Oh, that she does. Whatever she did to piss off her people and get herself entombed happened not long after that. I can’t imagine how they did it, though I heard the story. You know, she wasn’t really their queen by then since Egypt was really a Roman territory, but they had their traditions and she lived in a temple. It was useful for a while, until it wasn’t. Them burying her might have even been related to her messing with Rome, which put their entire country at risk. Putting her in the river was a smart move, if that’s what they did. I wouldn’t go near their river, even coming close made my head hurt and my mind foggy.”
“How would someone stay alive while sleeping for two thousand years?”
“Don’t exaggerate. It’s not even 1900 years since then. Don’t make me older than I am.”
Girard had to laugh at the aggrieved look on Marcus’s face. It was amazing to know—even now, sitting beside him in the middle of a minefield made of spilled popcorn—that he was sitting next to Marcus the Roman, who one day became Marcus Aurelius. The man who wrote the Meditations, who left Rome to a madman, who had seen so much. It would take years to hear his story.
But that was for later. If there was a later.
“Even so. How can that happen? When we hibernate deeply, the human clock in our body slows, but we have to gorge before we can rest at all, let alone rest for a few decades. I helped someone who woke after a hundred years not too long ago. He woke shriveled and old and was almost immobile. He looked like an old raisin and I’m surprised he survived. How can a vampire hibernate for as long as she did?”
Marcus shrugged. “That I don’t know. I had assumed she died, like everyone else did once she didn’t rise. The only thing I can think of is that she fed between times, perhaps taking new bodies.”
“So not hibernating all that time after all? She said as much, but I got the impression she was in that tomb the entire time. And she was alone for hundreds of years, so how could she survive that long of a sleep except by not sleeping?”
Marcus shrugged, then hit pause on the remote to stop his movie. “Even a hibernating animal will get up and move around, yet they do so in a state that isn’t full wakefulness. It’s almost like sleep walking. I’ve never done it myself, but I can imagine such a thing being done. Secrets can be kept, even with humans. If she was entombed, it’s likely that she was either tended by religious adherents or her tomb was breached by raiders. She’s probably telling the truth about that. In either case, a living mummy would inspire a great deal of awe in a people who believed eternal life could be gained by being mummified after death. It’s entirely possible that she was given food or humans or both at intervals. It is perhaps true that when those offerings stopped, she woke.”
Girard could almost see it. Tending tombs was something the Egyptians had done many times in their past, so it was possible. Their secretive sects, slowly overtaken by the changing face of religion in that area, would persist for longer if they were devout. It was possible. Entirely.
Which also meant that Thalia would have had knowledge of the changes in their world. Not all of the changes, because there was no doubt that no one educated would act as a sacrifice, but enough for her to get an idea of the world around her. Her sly looks and claims of ignorance took on a new dimension with this information.
And that dimension was an ominous one.
17
While Girard thought, Marcus went back to watching his movie. He let out a sudden guffaw and slapped his hand in the bowl of popcorn, scattering more around the floor and couch. He pointed to the screen and asked, “Are they all like this?”
He looked at the screen, but Girard didn’t quite understand the question. He could mean anything from the poor acting to the overly loud and large explosions. “Like what?”
“Tactically unsound. No one would plan anything like they do in these movies.” He leaned forward to pick up a handful of the discs he’d been spending way too much time watching. It was lucky they got next day delivery here, because Marcus had already broken two remotes in frustration when he tried to access the digital library of movies. They decided discs were safer. He could push the play button well enough. He held them out for Girard to take and added, “They’re all like that, even the ones supposed to be telling tales from my time. No one would have done it like they show it. Is it purposeful?”
Girard didn’t quite know how to explain the Hollywood entertainment engine. He shrugged and put the discs down between them on the couch. “It’s not supposed to be sound in a real sense. The people watching just want to see big things, so they make everything bigger or more amazing.”
“So it’s not done to keep the people from knowing things? That’s all I could think of as a cause. Anyone watching these would get tremendously stupid ideas about battle or fighting.” He paused and pointed at the screen with urgent pokes at the air. A man was running up a wall and doing one of those flying punches that immediately knocked out his opponent. “Like that! How stupid! Such a blow would break a man’s arm even if he could do it. And why didn’t the other man shoot him while he was running up that wall?”
“It’s entertainment, Marcus. That’s all.”
He snorted and reached for another handful of popcorn. Luckily, this time he didn’t stuff it into his mouth before talking. “I know a little about entertainment and this is one thing I know, so pay attention. The things that give a person delight in their youth will inform their adulthood long after the delight is gone.” He gave Girard a firm nod, then stuffed the entire handful of popcorn into his mouth.
How did he do that? How did he combine such effortless wisdom with an absolute lack of self-consciousness? Perhaps it was merely age that did it, but then again, Thalia might lack any shame, but she certainly didn’t share Marcus’s wisdom.
“Well, if entertainment is going to guide the futures of all the kids watching them, then they’re going to be very bad at planning their gang wars or revenge sprees with multinational drug organizations,” Girard said, then watched as the hero of the movie spun horizontally in the air a full two turns only to spin-kick several of the enemy henchmen into death or unconsciousness.
Marcus grunted, then kicked both footstools away while jerking upright. “That’s it! Lila tells me that all your young people watch these. Is this true?”
“Well, I think a lot of parents try to stop them from watching most of it, but with phones and tablets and so on, I think they watch pretty much what they want. Why?”
Marcus grabbed his upper arm in an excited—and very tight—grip, then bounced him up and down on the couch while he grinned. “Find out what the girl watched before Thalia took her. Find out what she liked and what she thought. Even if Thalia did get visits and sacrifices and the occasional new body—which we don’t know she did—she hasn’t been in the modern world. She took the form she was most used to, the same kind she always took, a young girl. A girl who had little experience of real life and certainly no battle experience. Yet that girl’s memories will be primary in Thalia’s mind.”
His initial confusion clearing, Girard understood suddenly what Marcus meant. It was the body that mattered! Marcus was under the sway of his. He sat aro
und in boxer shorts, ate large quantities of food, spouted vulgarities at inappropriate times, and ordered an excessively large number of dirty magazines for overnight shipment. He’d even snagged Girard’s credit card and used it to buy membership on a dozen or more porn and gaming sites, which was very much something a young man who’d spent most of his teen years too sick to chase girls might do after suddenly becoming hearty again. And Thalia would be filled with the things that a dying girl dreamed or thought or watched, made all the more powerful because she knew she was dying.
“You see?” Marcus prodded, finally letting go of his arm. “Thalia the ancient may harbor beliefs and anger, but it is her child’s body and experience that will inform her actions. She lived in a temple in Egypt for a thousand years or more before she was entombed. The last time Thalia could have possibly fought a real war would have been when weapons weren’t even made of iron!”
“And that’s why her targets are so random, so poorly thought out. Do you think her followers are the same?”
“Could be. It could simply be that she’s encouraging them to take targets, but without proper military guidance, they would target what they themselves disliked or hated. Figure out what the girl Thalia took hated and you’ll find Thalia.”
Girard hopped up from the couch, fully energized and ready to work. He needed Borona. Another tech had been brought on to search the feeds so that Borona could sleep, but that tech only knew he was searching, not why he was searching. Glancing at the clock on the wall, Girard muttered a curse. Borona had probably only been in bed a few hours, after days of little sleep.
Marcus reached up to slap him on the backside, a blow much muffled by the robe and pajamas, but it make him jump all the same. What kind of man not on a football field slapped another man’s behind? Looking behind him with a scowl, he saw Marcus grinning up at him. He said, “Don’t dwell. Wake him up. He’ll be glad you did if this proves helpful.”