by J. Thorn
Voldare wanted to believe it was more than the locket that drew him to Samantha. He changed for her and that was the first time he’d done so in at least thirty years. Then again, this was the first time the past was within reach. It lay on the chest of the woman he had shackled to the wall beneath the store.
He stood and walked to the window of his one-room command center. Without the full brunt of the sun and the human biological need for sleep, the room served more as a place of solitude than a residence. All of the Bloodline, and the Vampire Independents as well, no longer conformed to the habits that governed them prior to the turn.
“There has to be more to her than the locket. I will choose to believe so,” he said to himself.
Voldare struggled to recall the last time he felt any inkling of anything except survival. He stared at the sun until the memories crawled out of their grave to greet him once again.
In the spring of 1948, the winter held on longer than it should have. Voldare was still Sean, still a man with desire and hope in his heart. He had been courting Mary Savenski, a Slovak on Hunky Hill east of Pittsburgh. Although only a shallow river separated the Slovaks on the other side of the river from the Irish in Homestead, it may as well have been the Atlantic Ocean.
Sean first saw Mary when she visited her cousins in Braddock. She was window shopping, looking at the new line of spring dresses while still bundled in her tattered winter garments. He remembered the way the cold air framed her face, her rosy cheeks and red lips sparkling more than the cut glass of the display window. She had her long, brown hair tucked up beneath a hat, but curls escaped and danced about her high cheekbones. He took a chance, approached her and spoke, despite the Irish brogue that pegged him as a “mill Mc.”
“Ello,” he said, the one word being all he could muster when she looked at him.
“Hi.”
Sean stood still, his hands in his pockets and his fingers poking through the holes in them as he ramped up the courage to continue.
“Tis cold, still, is it not?”
“Yes. Seems as though spring doesn’t want to show up this year.”
Mary’s friends giggled as the two young folks stumbled through the conversation.
“I work in the mill.”
“I know,” Mary said.
“Right.” Sean rocked back and forth from his heels to his toes. “Might I buy you a coffee at Pushka’s Bakery?”
Mary looked at her friends and covered her mouth with a gloved hand.
“I’d like that very much, but I…”
“Right, right,” he said. “I understand. You ladies must stick together. They say Braddock be goin’ to the dogs.”
“Where do you go to church?” Mary asked.
Sean faltered, knowing the correct answer was St. Michael’s and his parish was St. Anne’s.
“The good Lord shall welcome me anywhere, I would think.”
Mary winked and it chased the chill from Sean’s chest.
“Then I guess I’ll see you at the next parish coffee, you know, the one they have after noon Mass.”
Sean pretended he knew, played along for the sake of Mary’s friends.
“Yes. See you at the next one.”
“I’ll be looking for you.”
Voldare shook his head, remembering the last words he ever heard from Mary Savenski. To be fair, they weren’t the last words, but they were the last words spoken to him. After his turn he visited her house several times, even looked through her bedroom window once at night. He had so many things he wanted to say to her and yet, he’d never have the chance. He decided it was best to cut and run than to tease himself with something he could never have.
“I’ll be looking for you.”
Voldare listened to those words as he spoke them, all these years after Mary said them to Sean. He couldn’t shake the familiar timbre and cadence, the same one he now heard in the cell beneath the shop.
Is it possible? He thought. Could the essence of Mary and the essence of Samantha be the same?
He closed his eyes and tried to picture Mary’s face, but it eluded him. She died as a young woman, many years ago. The only smile he saw now was Samantha’s.
Voldare let his intuition run with the possibilities, his emotions hardened after so many years in this dead world. There was a chance another could thaw his emotions, but then what? He had been so focused, so determined since the pandemic had sealed his fate. He had to find the locket, go back and erase the past.
Now, the locket was here, delivered by the spirit of Mary, on a vamp with no knowledge of it. She arrived by pure happenstance, and yet, the locket hung from the chain around her neck and not on the one Voldare clasped in his hands.
8
Like the Ark of the Covenant or the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Locket of Lir lived as much in myth as it did in history. Its origin story became lost to history after the pandemic and although some vampires, such as Voldare and Silven, knew the legend, many others did not.
The earliest mention of vampires first appeared in the texts of the ancient Greeks, but they did not become pervasive in culture until the Middle Ages. The mountainous regions of Eastern Europe, what would eventually become Romania, became the fabled spawning grounds for the creatures. The history books cited Vlad the Impaler as the first real figure to be branded as a vampire, although most of those claims went unsubstantiated. A mention of the Locket of Lir first appeared in the 1200s, as a fabulous story told by gypsies.
Fabled to have been poured into a mold cast by the Dark Lords, the locket was crafted by an alchemist and mathematician by the name of Lir. Lir lived in the mountains of Romania, in the village of Sibiu. Like most esoteric men of his time, Lir embraced the occult and the unseen powers of the world. He experimented with charms and talismans, all devised to fulfill a single purpose—time travel. Where the early experiments failed, the ones at the end of his life did not. Some said a chance meeting with an old crone of the forest led to the embedding of magical powers into Lir’s locket.
While huddled over a burning hearth, heating the gold so he could inscribe it, an old woman from the village came to Lir. She claimed to have the ability to imbue powers into the locket. Lir cared but for one power. He wanted to see the future. He experimented and tested many handmade items but could not successfully time travel. The old woman promised him the ability, that she would turn his locket into a powerful object. But he had to make a promise. In exchange for her service, Lir was to travel into the future and never return, as it was the only way the crone could protect her spoken charms.
Having no family or friends, Lir immediately agreed and waited for weeks until the moon and stars aligned to the woman’s specifications. When it came time, Lir packed a satchel with a few meager items and hiked into the valley to the woman’s lair. She lived in a cave away from the village, a cave rumored to be haunted by all the ghosts of the past.
When Lir arrived, he found an elaborate system of tunnels and rooms. The woman had lit torches that guided him into the underground cathedral. He arrived to find her standing behind a stone altar, her hand on a bronze box and strange glyphs painted around the cavern.
Taken aback by the sophistication of the old woman’s cave and mesmerized by the writings, Lir had second thoughts. He started to believe the woman had wanted to trick him and steal the locket for herself. When he stepped toward the altar, the woman spoke.
“I ask nothing of you but that you do not return, that you remain in the future for all eternity.”
“Why?” he asked. “Why can I not return?”
The woman sighed and shook her head.
“I only offered to you because you wanted to see the future. Had you asked to travel back in time, I would have never complied because there are too many complications that can arise from going back. One simple movement, one action, could have an amplified effect on the future. We could be gone entirely.”
Lir protested, “But I have no desire to go backward. I want to see the won
ders of the future.”
“I know,” she said. “And the price will be the grimoire you have in your hut. I have coveted it for a long time, hoping to gain access to one particular spell that will make me young and beautiful again. That is the cost of your future travel, the grimoire in your hut.”
Lir considered the deal and gladly accepted. The book of spells contained nothing of significance to him and many of the incantations inside were well known.
“I accept,” he said.
The woman nodded and whispered over the locket. She placed it on his head and before she gave him the power to depart, she provided a warning.
“Shall you return to me, I will strip your soul from your body and you will be forever trapped within the bronze box, on this altar, in this cave. You will become the locket and cease to exist as a sentient being. I warn you, do not return.”
Of course, Lir agreed to never return. But of course, he did so.
Lir discovered the secret to wealth that would reveal itself in a matter of decades and he decided to return and stockpile that mineral so as to become a rich man when he reached the future he saw with the locket.
When he returned, the crone was waiting for him and she fulfilled her promise, pushing him into the soft gold and locking the charm in the bronze box. She cast a spell on the altar, using the glyphs painted on the walls. The spell prevented the same person from using the locket more than a few times and it would move the altar from one cave to another on each winter solstice.
Lir would indeed visit his future, which turned out to be a prison cell made of a few ounces of gold.
***
Tun left the Council and climbed down into the subterranean tunnels the Bloodline left untouched, the remnants of a society that dug black rock from the ground to fuel civilization. He walked down the steel rails where miners once loaded trucks of coal while blackening their lungs from the inside out. He passed the crossroads and plunged deeper into the earth. Tun submerged himself in the inky, blackness, letting it rise above his head and envelop him.
He followed the tunnel down until he felt the frigid touch of water on his feet. Tun inhaled, allowing the cold to creep up his legs. The tunnel leveled out and he walked further into it. The earth groaned and he thought of the dead souls trapped down here, victims of cave-ins and other mining accidents. They were still here. He didn’t see them, but he felt them.
Tun continued until the water receded and his feet landed back on dry dirt. The tunnel sloped upward now, still bathed in midnight black. The darkness comforted Tun as it would any vampire. He savored it like a stroll through a park on a sunny afternoon. The tunnel twisted and the unseen ceiling dropped lower. A slow, ambient light appeared at the end and the vampire chuckled, thinking about all of the souls who believed in the proverbial “light at the end of the tunnel.” He knew better. Tun understood that the only thing on the other side of death was more death.
He’d grown tired of the battles, the violence. Not because he sympathized with the V.I. or because he was physically drained. Tun wanted to break free of it all. He wanted to sleep as he had when his flesh was warm, when he loved and lost. Tun wanted to close his eyes and drift into the nether. Only the gods deserved the curse of immortality. But he knew that until the final death beckoned to him, he would have to choose a side. Tun tired of the primal existence proposed by Voldare, the miserable existence of human farming. After the leader of the Bloodline had insulted him in front of the Council, Tun had no reason to stay. If he had to be a vampire, why not live here where the V.I. promised the luxury items and community Voldare couldn’t, the lifestyle unavailable to them before the pandemic? Tun left the Bloodline camp knowing he could not return, and so he died yet another death of sorts, only to be reborn in the V.I. and make the best of what the future inevitably handed him.
“State your name.”
He stopped, snapped from his thoughts by the voice coming from the other end of the tunnel. Tun didn’t realize how far he had walked.
“Tun. First Lieutenant of Voldare, leader of the Bloodline.”
A vampire stepped into the tunnel to face Tun, his shape a silhouette against the external light. A long, black cape swung behind him and his hair fell down his shoulders. He drew a long sword, pointing the end at Tun.
“What are you doing here, Tun?”
Tun recognized the vampire’s voice now, a friend he’d spent a decade with on the road, before the factions formed and their paths had diverged.
“Hefron, my old friend. You look dashing in your cape and polished boots.”
The vampire before Tun dropped his sword lower, but kept both hands on the hilt.
“If this is some kind of trickery, some play—”
“I am alone,” Tun said, interrupting. “I need to speak with Silven.”
Hefron laughed, the sound of broken glass shaking in his chest. “Sure, brother. Let me walk with you back to his lair.”
“I have information about the locket.”
Hefron gasped and turned his head sideways.
“The Locket of Lir,” Tun said.
Hefron sighed, sheathed his sword and turned sideways. He extended his hand to his old friend. Tun nodded and stepped over the threshold of the cave before grasping Hefron’s hand in a firm grip.
“It has been too long, Jason.”
“Hefron, Tun. I buried Jason back on the road. You know that.”
Tun grinned, his fangs dripping saliva and his red eyes glowing in the unnatural dusk. The two vampires stood upon a ridge, the main camp of the V.I. spread out in the valley below. A dark swath cut through the floor of the valley, once a busy highway and now nothing but an echo of the past.
“I need to speak with Silven.”
“You are Voldare’s right hand. You don’t expect me to walk you to him, do you?”
“No, I don’t. But after you hear what I have to say about the locket, you’ll accompany me there.”
Hefron sat on a boulder perched upon the ridge, one eye on Tun and the other on the black eye of the cave. He waved at another boulder across the path. Tun sat down, his wings twitching on his back.
“It is so much easier to have a conversation without the ugly reality staring you in the face.”
“I won’t shape-shift, Hefron. Especially not for you. If you want to look at vampire beauty when you talk with another, go back there,” he said, spreading his arms out to the V.I. camps in the valley below.
“Go on,” Hefron said.
“Voldare has the locket.”
“You’re certain of this?”
“Well, he has a prisoner who has the locket. It is as good as his.”
“No,” Hefron said, wagging his finger back and forth. “Possession is meaningless without the power to use it. Does Voldare know how to activate its energy?”
“He will. Soon.”
Hefron shook his head, glanced at the camp below and turned back to his old friend.
“Explain to me why I’m going to take you to Silven.”
“Because Voldare plans to use the locket to destroy the V.I., to make his claim on this world. It does more than cross time barriers. It can be wielded as a weapon.” Tun waited, unrolling the lie as naturally as he could. Hefron would be dead in a matter of minutes, so Tun did not have to be dishonest. He just wanted to be.
“And you’ve had a change of heart, walking into your enemy’s camp with knowledge that would destroy your own king. Do you take me for a fool?”
Tun believed he would gain some semblance of pleasure from the conversation. He had planned to slaughter whoever stood in his path, but when he’d recognized Hefron, Tun had indulged the shred of humanity that was left inside him. But now, he tired of the conversation and tired of Hefron.
“I’ll go myself. Absolve you of everything. Tell me which hut is his.”
Hefron looked to the valley and then back at Tun. Tun followed his gaze, waiting for and then seizing the flutter in Hefron’s eyes.
“I c
annot.”
“You just did.”
Hefron rocked back, placing his hand on the hilt of his sword. Tun leapt up and drove his talons across Hefron’s neck, dropping his head to the ground. The vampire’s body wavered back and forth before tumbling sideways into the weeds and down the hill.
Tun licked Hefron’s blood from his talons and started down the path into the valley.
9
Samantha heard the footsteps on the stairs and knew it was Voldare. She saw his boots first as he turned the corner on the landing and came down the last flight of stairs. She sensed a day, maybe two, had passed since they had last spoken and no other vampires had visited her in the meantime. The cup of blood he’d given her had left her hungry for more and she hoped Voldare had brought another on his way. When she saw his hands were empty, Sam frowned and leaned her head back against the wall, disappointed.
“Tonight. We’ll serve you again tonight.”
“I’m hungry,” she said.
“There are many things in play right now, but I promise we’ll take care of you.”
Sam waited as Voldare entered the cell. For the first time, he left the door open and unlocked. He sat on the floor and pulled his knees up.
“I’ve met with my Council.”
Samantha shrugged.
“I told them I needed you. And the locket.”
“In that order?”
“I explained how the locket would allow us to go back, alter the past and eliminate our future in this rotting world. I did not disclose my feelings for you. I did not want to show that weakness.”
Sam smiled and sat forward. She thought of Danny and the way he’d cheated on her, how he’d banished her from her house, her children.
“What feelings?” she asked.
Voldare came to her, his hand caressing the side of Samantha’s face. He looked at her and shook his head.
“It doesn’t matter. What we have here cannot last and when you go back, it will have never existed at all.”