by White, Gwynn
Lila sat back so abruptly she almost fell off the bench seat. “Holy shit.”
“Indeed,” Girard said.
12
With a night to kill before their return flight to upstate New York and the Guardian compound, Girard and Lila checked into a local hotel to catch some sleep. It was comfortable and clean, with soft sheets and a restaurant they both enjoyed, but once the lights were out, sleep wouldn’t come for either of them. Girard could hear it in the way Lila breathed on the other bed. She was churning all this information over the same way he was and it wasn’t going to let either of them go off into dreamland.
“Lila, we should just give up on the sleeping and talk.”
Her low laugh came from the darkness. “I can’t wrap my head around that number. Ten thousand years? I mean, who can live that long and stand it?”
“I know. It’s not logical.”
She paused before answering and her voice was softer, perhaps a little hesitant, like she was revealing a confidence she feared being judged for. “I’ve thought about it, you know. About how long I might live. I’d always imagined that I’d like to reach a thousand, but lately…”
She trailed off and Girard knew exactly what she meant in that silence. “Lately, you’ve wondered if you could really tolerate such a long existence?”
“Yeah.”
“Everyone does around your age. It’s sort of like that first time you take a new body. After that first shift, everyone wonders if they can bring themselves to do it again. It’s natural to question whether or not they have it in them to actually steal another human life. They also mourn, because really, it’s their body that’s died—the body they were born in anyway. It’s hard to calibrate the difference between bodies in their minds. It’s not so bad now, because we couch it in terms that make it almost a good thing, allowing a body to live that is bound to die, but emotionally, it’s a hard thing to accept. Most of us have that crisis at some point. We ask if so much life won’t get boring. We wonder if there will be too much heartbreak, too much pain in the world to keep seeing it. You’re not alone in that. I think it happens to everyone at least once. For some of us, it’s a regular thing.”
Again, Lila was silent. Then, “My parents didn’t make it past five hundred.”
“That was of their own choosing.”
“That’s what I mean, though. Will I make that choice? And what kind of vampire can go on for ten thousand years and not make that choice?”
Girard shook his head, the pillow rustling. “I can’t imagine. You would have to be entirely without pity or empathy, I think. Otherwise, the weight would be too much. Then again, maybe you just need an optimistic outlook, a firm belief that all things will work out well in the end.”
“Do you think that’s why Thalia rested for so long? Maybe she didn’t intend to wake up. No one who slept for that long could have possibly planned for such a long hibernation.”
Girard had already considered that. He’d also discarded it. If the evidence of multiple vampires at the scene of the fire was correct, then a plan tinged with malice might well be in play. “Perhaps,” he said, leaving it there.
“But not if there are more than one of them awake now,” Lila said, thwarting Girard’s hope that they wouldn’t have to talk about it.
“No. That would be unlikely. If there is at least one other ancient with Thalia, then there’s a reason and it can’t be a good one.”
“You’re going to have to go back to Yadikira’s, aren’t you? To find her if she’s not there.”
“Yes. Probably.” Girard couldn’t help the sigh that escaped with the word.
“Are you afraid of seeing Thalia again?”
“Scared shitless.”
* * *
The whirlwind of activity that started even before Girard’s return left him unable to dwell on the fear he felt at the idea of tangling with Thalia. The way she moved, the way she peered at him from the corners of her eyes with those calculating looks, the way she grinned—an almost feral grin—at exactly the wrong moment, all made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. In a way, it was good that there was so much activity around him. It gave him the space he needed to develop a more objective viewpoint and not dwell on how much Thalia unnerved him. Countering the ridiculous ideas of the Council also helped him to better refine his own notions regarding how he might deal with the current situation.
About some topics, everyone agreed. That was a rarity. Vampires were nothing if not opinionated. In this instance, there was no debate. From the Council, to the Guardians, to the Historians, everyone agreed on a total lockdown on information regarding Thalia and her possible age or motives. No one who didn’t already know the particulars would be brought in. There could be no chance for information to slip out. They must not allow anyone working with Thalia to know they were being investigated. Without any idea who exactly might be working with her—and it really could be any vampire or group of vampires—it was prudent to share nothing with anyone.
It was simply too dangerous to give potentially mad ancients advance notice.
If this Thalia was, in fact, the Thalia from the historical records and she was as old as it seemed she might be, then she was a complete unknown in terms of her power. Even the idea of a vampire so old that they could shift into any body—whether human or not—was horrifying. What other powers might such a vampire have? Fire was one, but what else?
Even more importantly, no one could come up with a satisfying explanation for the reason she should reappear now. There must be a reason, but what could it be? Was it simply that the old ones rested differently from everyone else or was there some other motive they couldn’t define? The fact that there might be others with her—unknown others who could also make fire—hinted that her appearance was no coincidence. There was simply no way to know without tipping their hand.
As Girard mulled over everything in the lounge, once again with a fire for company, Borona knocked on the doorframe and said, “Sorry to interrupt your pout, Boss, but you’ve got a delivery. I sent them to the pools.”
Girard sighed, but smiled at Borona anyway. It wasn’t his fault things were a hot mess. “Thanks. Can you get Lila out of the library for me? Ask her to meet me there?”
The big man twisted his lips, but there was good humor hidden in the look. “Sure, I’ll just be your personal paging system, because having no one else allowed to come home has definitely not left me with more work than I can possibly do.”
Raising an eyebrow, Girard had to appreciate the deadpan delivery combined with absolute sarcasm. How did he do that?
“And you love it. This is more excitement than you’ve had since you locked yourself in here like a hermit.”
Borona snorted, but whipped off a salute and disappeared down the hallway toward the library.
Weary from bad sleep—constantly interrupted by worry for the three days since he’d returned—Girard groaned and levered himself up from the deep couch. He might as well get this over with. The task ahead wouldn’t be made more palatable by waiting. Making his way to the ponds meant leaving the modern parts of the complex behind and entering the deep caverns hidden beneath. The Guardian complex had once been nothing more than an adjunct to that cave system, unremarkable in the wilds where civilization had not yet reached. At one point it was nothing more than a one-room cabin over the entrance to the first natural cave.
Officially purchased only when such lands were recognized as part of the new United States, the compound’s expansions had been slow to avoid interest. Now, the vast complex was officially a private trust, and well-taxed as such.
And it was huge.
The natural caverns had been expanded into a well-braced network of deep, cool caves. The original natural pool had grown into a complex of pools along the twisting passages from cave to cave. Even electric lights had been added once the Guardian complex built its own wind farm on a high spot where a portion of forest had been cleared. The above ground s
tructures of the complex looked more like an old-fashioned college or prestigious private school. Many, like Borona, found that they needed nothing beyond the gates of the complex. From biking and hiking trails to tennis courts lit up for night matches, everything was available. Given the nature of their professions, some amenities were needed to help work out the stress.
Even with all that loveliness above for the Guardians to enjoy, the caverns were like a constant reminder beneath their feet. This was Girard’s least favorite part of the complex, a part he’d rather not think about. The big metal door opened slowly on counterweights, and when it slammed behind him, Girard felt that same sense of claustrophobia he felt every time he ventured below. He blew out a long breath between pursed lips and pushed the uneasiness twisting his guts down and away. After all, Guardians needed to appear calm and collected at all times to do their jobs well. Claustrophobic freak-outs didn’t exactly inspire confidence.
Damp air laced with a hint of ripe marshlands hit his nostrils as he left the vestibule and entered the caverns proper. While vampires without human bodies were aquatic, they had to live in fresh water with very specific parameters. Not too cold, not too warm. Not too fresh or too stagnant. They were capable of withstanding some variation away from their origins in the Cave of Creation…or wherever they started…but not by much. And they were tamed, almost tranquilized, by changing the water chemistry very slightly.
That was why vampire guns held a type of marsh water with rosemary extract in it. Together, those additives would numb a vampire inside a body, forcing it to withdraw from the human so that it could be collected and brought to the pools. It also prevented a vampire from entering another human.
The trick was that it was the combination that worked. Hit a vampire with rosemary water and it would fall into a stupor, but not leave the body. Hit a vampire with marsh water and the same would happen, though with marsh water they would also retract their heat tentacles and their feeding arms couldn’t come out. Neither of those things alone would cause a vampire…well, most vampires…to leave the body. Only in combination did that occur. Vampires likened it to a death sentence, which only served to reinforce how tied they were to their human bodies, but it was nothing of the sort. The human body died when the vampire left it, but the vampire itself was fine, if not quite fully aware of what was happening due to the additives.
The only difference between leaving a body willingly to change bodies and being forced out was in the end result. A vampire leaving a human willingly released a powerful surge of heat and chemicals during the process. Many of their various tentacles broke off and stayed in the body, including some they called “acid arms.”
Those arms lodged inside the body were filled with a corrosive and flammable substance. In exactly the same way a stomach lining protected a human from the acid within that organ, a living vampire kept those corrosive arms intact and harmless. When they broke off during transition, the heat and acids burned the body into a pile of greasy ash and bone from the inside out. A forceful extraction didn’t create the heat surge, leaving a nasty mess behind that required careful disposal. The whole urban legend of spontaneous human combustion arose from the uncollected remnants of a human after a vampire left the body.
Now, vampires were much more cautious. Never leave home without your hefty bags was a common tease amongst vampires whose bodies were getting a bit long in the tooth.
Voices echoed toward him from the depths of the cavern system, the owners of the voices invisible in the low light, but not too far away. Girard passed through the puddles of illumination cast by lights fastened into uneven rock walls, knowing precisely where he would find his delivery. These pools—often called ponds as a leftover from times before such caverns were created, but were found instead—were vaguely Roman in design. Girard hadn’t been here when this complex was built. He’d transferred from the European Council during the Revolutionary War, when the North American Guardians suffered too many losses and needed replacements. The underground portion of this complex had been completed by that time.
Whoever had built this original part of the complex must have been old, possibly even an ancient. These pools wouldn’t look out of place in ancient Britain, resembling bath-house relics left there after the Roman invasion. Old fashioned or not, they were pleasant pools and not a bad place to wind up if you had to serve a sentence without a body. Top shelf, so to speak. Clean and tended with scrupulous care, the painted tiles inside were bright and free of scum. Stylized octopi—a little joke on their forms, no doubt—and starfish frolicked in bright colors along the un-faded tiles. The pools would be an archaeologist’s dream come true. The lights reflected off the water and cast bright swirls of light onto the uneven rock ceiling as the water surfaces were disturbed by the vampires swimming within the waters.
Most pools held only a few vampires to avoid fighting. Like some species of fish, they would savagely attack each other if the amount of space inside their pool was insufficient for their number. And like fish in tanks, they had to be fed a special diet. One of the hardest parts of the punishment was the lack of human feeding. That was denied them, leaving them in a state of dazed semi-consciousness, even while their actual, vampire bodies flourished due to excellent care.
Girard glanced over at a pool when a particularly sharp splash sounded out. A vampire darted about the pool, the whip-like tendrils trailing as the vampire pushed water out using a form of biological jet propulsion. Vampires were a bit like octopi in that respect and they were very quick in the water. They also lost many of their appendages when not in a human body, returning almost to their natural state. There was no need to grow and maintain all those tendrils meant to enmesh a vampire into a human body when swimming about for a century or two. The vampire splashing in the pool hadn’t yet lost all of its appendages.
“Hello Franklin,” Girard said, as he walked slowly past the pool. Even though the vampire couldn’t hear him, it would feel the vibrations. Perhaps it would understand. “I see you’re settling in nicely.”
The tails whipped about in a vicious arc and Girard smiled as he moved toward the next pool. Getting Franklin into that pool had not been fun. He had a feeling Franklin hadn’t yet entirely forgiven him for issuing his sentence and snatching him out of his body. The language he’d used before coming out had been shockingly salty.
Near the end of the row of pools, the group he was here to meet had already gathered for the upcoming event. Girard was surprised to see Greg—the doctor from the hospital he’d recently visited—as he approached. Next to him was an excessively large hospital gurney, hung with an abundant array of equipment and bagged fluids. Greg seemed nervous, which was totally understandable. His eyes were wide and a little frightened.
“Hello again, Doctor. I hadn’t expected to see you here.”
He shrugged, his eyes shifting rapidly between Girard and the activity in the pool next to him. He was as far as he could get from the water without actually climbing up on the gurney. He looked like he might do just that if he didn’t calm down.
“Apparently, I had the closest body that was ready. Your fellow from Cincinnati was really angry when I told him he couldn’t have it. He said he was going to lodge a complaint.”
“If he’s strong enough to complain, then he’s strong enough to wait for the next body. There’s always a new one eventually.”
Inside the pool, one of the four vampires present reacted to the vibrations of their voices and whipped around in a circle, making an excited sounding splash. Greg jerked away and actually eeped. Girard tried hard to stifle the laugh that bubbled up.
“You’ve never seen this?” he asked.
“No! I mean, I knew, but…ugh…this is what we look like? Naked, I mean? I’ve seen drawings but…”
There was no stifling his laugh this time and it echoed painfully around the cavern. Even Greg flinched at the volume of Girard’s laugh. “Naked! That is literally the first time I’ve heard that one. You’ve
really never seen one of our kind? I mean, you are one of us and you’ve been supplying bodies for years.”
Greg shook his head with a slight expression of distaste. “No, that sort of thing is private. I may provide the bodies, but I don’t watch them go inside. You Guardians always do that. I mean, I’ve seen the healing tendrils and feeding arms obviously, but not the whole thing.” He paused and peered at the fat, gray-brown body in the water. “We’re so gross.”
“That we are,” Girard agreed, good-naturedly. It was true, so why not admit it? “Just wait till you see what happens next.”
13
Once Lila joined them, there was nothing to do except get started. One of the pool attendants blocked off the vampire they sought and corralled it into one corner of the pool, which was then netted off. Greg’s job was to keep the donor body alive for long enough to complete the process, but that was getting more difficult every moment the boy was away from the supportive environment of the hospital. Greg did his best, adjusting things and avoiding looking too closely at what was going on in the pool.
The target vampire was scooped into a large ceramic bowl with clean water and it calmed down as soon as that transition was made. A vampire lost much of its reason while in the water, but this part they understood. Going from marshy water to fresh, clean water meant a body. The ends of its few tentacles made tiny, urgent looking twitches. The pool attendant smiled lovingly at the vampire, almost like a mother would as she washed the vampire free of any remaining marsh water.
Generally speaking, the pool attendants creeped Girard out. He kept that sentiment private, of course.