by Amy Cross
“But what about...”
She slumped forward, with the hooks still embedded in her neck and blood still flowing from her wrists.
“What about... my...”
“Oh Izzy,” he replied with a faint sigh, “there's still a chance to get your mother back. Clearly John didn't raise you very well, but don't worry. Once this is over, you'll stay with me and I'll teach you everything you need to know. Your mother's dead and that's terrible. Believe me, I miss her every day, and I very much hope that I can bring her back and forgive her for betraying me. She died thinking she loved John, and that was a terrible mistake on her part. She loved me, and only me.” He smiled. “I'll get her for you. If it's at all possible, I'll bring her back.”
“Please,” Izzy gasped, trying but failing to crawl forward, “you have to try...”
“Of course,” he told her, stepping further and further along the library's vast main aisle. “Just keep the gateway open a little longer, Izzy, and you'll see that this is the right choice. I just need to pick the right place to start.”
“Wait,” she whispered, slumping down against the rocky ground. Bloody tears were streaming down her face, but no matter how hard she tried to reach up and pull the hooks from her neck, her body was too weak. Sobbing, she closed her eyes and rested her face against the ground. “I want to come with you,” she stammered, her voice already fading to nothing. “I want to be...”
“Izzy!”
Barely even noticing the voice calling to her from behind, she focused instead on trying to reach up and pull the first hook from her neck. Her hand was trembling so much, she could barely control it at all, but finally she felt her fingers brushing against the spot where the hook had been gouged into her jugular. The pain was intense as she tried to take hold of the hook and pull it out, but a moment later she felt something bumping against her arm.
“Izzy, it's me!” a familiar voice said. “Izzy, what the hell has he done to you?”
“The light,” she gasped, looking straight ahead at the gateway, watching the spot where Gaal had vanished just a moment earlier. “He went in... He promised... He...”
“We have to unhook her,” another voice muttered. A woman this time.
“How do we know it's safe?” the first voice asked.
“We don't, but it's better than leaving her linked up to this thing!”
She felt someone tugging slightly on one of the hooks.
“Izzy,” the female voice continued, “this is going to hurt, but it should be over very quickly, okay? Brace yourself.”
“Wait...”
Before she could finish, she felt the hook being lifted from her neck. She cried out, feeling an intense, overpowering agony rippling through her body, but a moment later she realized the tip of the hook was now clear. Shivering and barely able to keep her thoughts together, she felt the same thing happening to the other hook, and finally she slumped down, only to land in the arms of someone who quickly held her tight.
“Izzy, I'm here!” the male voice told her. “Izzy, you're going to be okay!”
Rolling onto her back, she looked up and saw a face. She blinked a couple of times, struggling to remember where she'd seen the man before, and finally she recognized John.
“What the hell is this thing?” he asked, looking over at the tubes and wires, before turning and shielding his eyes as he stared at the vast, bright gateway. “Where does that lead?”
“He's opened a route into the great library of the vampires,” Natalie whispered, her eyes filled with awe. “No-one's ever managed to gain unauthorized access before.”
“Izzy,” John said firmly, adjusting his grip on her body, “I'm getting you out of here!”
“Wait!” Rolling away, she winced as she slowly began to clamber up from the floor. “He went in there,” she stammered, staring wide-eyed at the brightness. “He said he was going to go back and change things, he said he was going to make it so that...”
Her voice trailed off as she saw the faintest hint of a set of shelves in the heart of the burning white gateway, as if she was getting a glimpse of another world.
“He lied to you,” Natalie said, stepping past her. “He didn't go to the past, Izzy. He couldn't possibly have done that.”
“A library,” Izzy told her. “He said it was a library with all the knowledge of the vampire race and...” She paused, still staring at the gateway. “There has to be a way to get her back,” she whispered finally. “He wasn't lying about it all. He can't have been...”
“Izzy, he's lying,” Natalie said firmly. “Don't let him fool you like this! You're a smart girl, you must know that no-one can change the past. The vampire race memory isn't some magical doorway that allows people to flit around in time. It's a way of seeing what happened, but you can't reach through and physically change anything.”
“He can wipe away every record of his crimes once he's in the library,” John pointed out. “He can make it so that people forget the terrible atrocities he committed. The fires at the mansion, the slaughter-fields, everything... He's trying to wipe the race memory clean so that he can pretend to be a good man again.”
“The gateway won't stay open for much longer,” Natalie replied. “There's no time to fetch help, I have to...” She took a deep breath. “Damn it, I hate getting mixed up in the affairs of your miserable species, but it looks like I have no choice. I have to find a way through.”
“You can't,” John told her, looking down at the bloodied bowl. “You don't have the right blood. You'd be fried before you got anywhere close to the other side.”
“I have to try!”
“It's suicide!”
“Maybe not,” she continued, although there was a hint of uncertainty in her eyes. “It'll take a while, but maybe I can find a way to reset the gateway.”
“He wasn't lying,” Izzy whispered, with sweat pouring down her bloodied face as she watched the burning white gateway. “He can't have been. He really will get my mother back, if I just...”
As John and Natalie continued to argue, Izzy began limping toward the gateway.
“I have to help him,” she stammered. A crazed look had reached her eyes, and she paid no attention to the blood that continued to dribble from her wrists and mouth. “I still can. I have to go with him. My blood... I can still go through.”
“Izzy,” Natalie said, having suddenly noticed what she was doing. “Why are you -”
Before anyone could stop her, Izzy ran forward, screaming as she leaped into the burning gateway and disappeared through to the other side.
“Izzy!” John shouted. “Come back!”
Chapter Fifty-Four
The scream was so loud, some of the nearby wooden shelves actually shuddered a little.
Landing on her knees, Izzy slumped forward, still crying out. Finally she felt her face pressing against a patch of partially-dry mud, and she let out a faint gasp as she realized the air was suddenly so much thinner and colder.
As if she was truly in another world.
Forcing herself up, despite the immense pain in her chest, she looked straight ahead and saw a bookshelf-lined corridor spreading to the horizon. Almost in a daze, she glanced toward the sky and saw dark red clouds high above, and a moment later she noticed a bird wheeling through the sky far away. Whatever it was, the bird seemed huge, but after a few seconds Izzy's attention was caught by a thumping sound nearby. She turned and looked along another muddy aisle, but there was no sign of anyone.
Behind her, the gateway continued to burn, sending crackling arcs of white energy into the air and already starting to shrink.
“Where are you?” she shouted, stepping forward. “I'm here to help, I'm here to get Mom back! Where are you?”
She waited, and after a moment she spotted a figure far away, limping along one of the aisles.
“Wait for me,” she stammered, hurrying after him. “I'm coming! You have to wait for me!”
Stumbling against one of the shelves, she r
eached a junction and paused for a moment, before realizing she could detect Gaal's scent nearby. Limping slightly but determined to push through the pain, she made her way along another aisle, and then another, before finally stopping as she saw him up ahead, in the center of a clearing with bookshelves running all around the edges.
To her surprise, she saw that he was accompanied by a stooped, elderly man leaning on a cane, who seemed to be showing him where to find certain titles on the shelves.
“I came to help,” she said breathlessly, struggling to make her way closer. “John almost stopped me, but it's okay. I don't think he can follow us through the gateway.”
“As weak as ever, then,” Gaal muttered, flicking through the pages of a large, leather-bound book. “I thought you might follow me through, Izzy. In your impulsiveness and your refusal to hold back, you remind me of myself. Don't worry, that's a very good sign.”
“And who did you say you were again?” the old man asked him, before turning to Izzy. “It's most irregular for anyone to visit this part of the library. I should at least be warned if there is to be a breach, although...” He paused, clearly a little confused. “There was no indication that the defenses had been attacked.”
“Spot inspection,” Gaal told him, with a faint smile. “How else are we to ensure that you're doing a good job in your position as librarian?”
“I suppose that makes sense,” the old man replied, although he still seemed a little uncertain. “There haven't... No-one's been saying anything about my work, have they? I haven't seen another living soul for centuries, I've just been pottering around here, keeping things tidy, but... Did someone complain?”
“Absolutely not,” Gaal assured him, patting him on the back. “This is simply the great bureaucracy of the vampire race in action. Tell me, are there no other defenses here?”
“Oh no,” the old man said. “Why would there be? It's impossible for anybody to breach the library.”
“Of course it is,” Gaal muttered, glancing at Izzy with a smile.
“What are we doing here?” she asked, as the old man limped along the aisle, seemingly looking for something on one of the other shelves. “What is this place?”
“An annex of the greatest library in all of existence,” Gaal explained. “This place is the source of our race memory. Remove a book from this place, and that little item of knowledge will be lost.” He looked up at the vast red sky. “This place is one of the most heavily-defended locations in the universe. In their infinite wisdom, the vampires placed unimaginable monstrosities all around this annex, to keep people out. And in their infinite arrogance, they left the inner library undefended, because they assumed no-one would ever get through.” He turned back to her. “And I beat their system.”
“But...”
“And now we've bypassed all the defenses,” he continued, placing a hand on her shoulder, “we're quite free to wander the aisles and do what we wish. Destroy the pages of these books, and you essentially destroy the knowledge that they contain. By controlling this place, one can control history itself.”
“So how do we get my mother back?” Izzy asked, trying to ignore the sense of panic in her chest. “You said we could actually change the past.”
“Have a little patience.”
“But we're still going to do that, right?” Desperation was creeping into her voice now. “You promised...”
“And now you doubt me?”
She hesitated, before forcing a smile. “No. Of course not.”
“What did you say you were after again?” the old man asked, shuffling closer. “My memory isn't what it once was, I'm afraid. I don't quite recall...” He paused, before leaning closer to Gaal and squinting. “You don't look like an official? I thought officials were all supposed to carry sealed orders from the council.”
As Gaal continued to lie to the old man, Izzy made her way across the clearing and took a look at one of the shelves. Old leather-bound books – most of them covered in dust – presented titles that in some cases she couldn't translate. Others, however, displayed their titles in English.
“The Travesties of Abdingon,” she whispered, tilting her head slightly to read the names of some of the books. “A Biography of the Second Elder Phaseman of Gothos. The Law of Ghosts.” Stepping past the shelf, she reached a junction and looked along another corridor, seeing more shelves spreading toward the horizon. “This place is huge,” she said after a moment, feeling awed by the sight of millions, maybe hundreds of millions, of books.
For a moment, she thought back to some of her earlier nightmares. She'd dreamed of a vast mansion, and of a battlefield, and now she realized that these had been actual memories of events in vampire history. Tapping into the vampire race memory, she'd been able to witness events from the past.
“He's coming!” several people had screamed in those dreams, terrified by the pending arrival of... someone.
But who?
“He'll kill us all!” she remembered a woman shouting, and then she thought back to the figure she'd seen walking through the flames. She hadn't seen the figure's face, but she'd felt a sense of great power, as if vast and evil had been getting closer.
Suddenly hearing a cry of pain, Izzy turned and saw to her shock that Gaal was kneeling, holding the old man's body in his arms and drinking from his throat.
“What are you doing?” she stammered.
Instead of answering, Gaal continued to drink, even as the old man's hands twitched slightly. A faint gasp rose from the man's lips, but he was already becoming pale and after just a few more seconds, Gaal tossed his corpse aside and got to his feet. A piece of broken wood had been driven into the old man's chest, staking his heart.
“I needed to feed,” he told Izzy, sounding faintly irritated by the distraction. “Don't worry, the doddering old fool had told me all he could. I simply needed some information about the rest of the library's defenses. I don't believe he told me everything, but that doesn't matter. We have time to complete our task and get out of here.”
“You killed him?” Izzy asked, stepping closer and then stopping as soon as she saw the old man's glassy dead eyes.
“He was old anyway,” Gaal muttered, heading to a nearby shelf and taking out a book. “In a way, you could argue that I have given his blood a greater purpose. Here's a lesson for you, Izzy. When one vampire feeds upon the blood of another, the richness is unlike any other sensation in all of existence. Vampire blood is to be prized and cherished.”
“But he didn't do anything to you,” she replied, feeling a shiver pass through her chest. “He was just trying to help and -”
“Stay focused,” Gaal told her, frowning as he examined the book, but then tearing it in half down the spine and tossing the pieces to the ground. “The book I require is close. I must find it as soon as possible.”
“What about my mother?” she asked, staring at the old man's body for a moment longer before turning to watch as Gaal examined another shelf. She waited for a response, but after a few seconds she realized Gaal seemed completely occupied by his search for one particular book. “I thought we were coming here to change history? To get my mother back?”
“Have a little patience, child,” he replied, stopping and taking a large book from one of the shelves. Examining the cover for a moment, he allowed himself a faint smile. “I've found it,” he whispered finally. “This is what we came for, Izzy. This is the book that will allow me to change my reputation forever.”
Chapter Fifty-Five
“There's no way through,” Natalie said darkly, watching as the flickering white gateway began to shrink slightly. “The blood-link only lets Gaal and Izzy through.”
“I'll find a way,” John replied, stepping closer to the gateway.
“You can't,” she told him. “You don't have the right blood. That's their link, and theirs alone. There's nothing else we can do.” She paused for a moment. “Izzy's trapped there with Gaal, and there's no way we can help her.”
&n
bsp; Chapter Fifty-Six
“I must say,” Gaal replied, turning to another page in the book that he'd finally located on one of the shelves, “this is meticulously researched. Someone went back and interviewed the few survivors I left behind after my various massacres. The slaughter of Gothos is covered in truly exquisite detail. Even if I hadn't been there, I'd really appreciate the choice of words.” He paused, before closing the book and examining the cover for a moment. “This is the primary history of my exploits. This book is the main source of the race memory's information about me.”
He held the book out, and suddenly flames rippled across the cover.
“It's fascinating to read an account of one's life,” he continued, watching as the book burned. “Everyone, vampire or otherwise, should have this opportunity some day. Reading someone else's well-researched version of one's own story is... rather illuminating. I knew I was despised and feared, but I honestly had no idea how far my infamy had spread.” His smile broadened. “Whole cities trembled at the mention of my name.
“What are you doing?” Izzy asked, limping closer. “Where's my...”
She paused, worried that she might sound foolish and scared, too, that she might not like the answer.
“Where's my...”
Still, she couldn't get the words out. Instead, she watched as the remains of the book burned away, leaving nothing more than ashes in the mud.
“Now,” Gaal said with a smile, “there will be a certain gap in the records. I shall miss my fame, but at least now I can go about my business without all those pesky vampires trying to track me down and make me pay for my past mistakes. I can begin to live up to my potential again.”
“But that doesn't actually change what happened,” Izzy pointed out. “I thought you wanted to actually change history?”
“This is basically the same thing,” he replied. “The race memory of the vampires will re-order itself, and I shall no longer be demonized. Of course, a few lingering memories might persist, but given time I shall be rehabilitated in the minds of even my gravest enemies. People will trust me again.”