by White, Gwynn
There was only one thing to do and that was to find out what the hell she was talking about. He said, “I’m no slaver and I have zero idea what you’re talking about.” Looking at Marcus, he added, “But I can tell you know and you’re going to tell me right now.”
Before Marcus could do more than look guilty, Thalia hissed, “Yes, Emperor. Tell him about your wife. Tell him about your son. Tell him about your slave-catchers and how many of my children they stole away.”
31
When Marcus met Girard’s gaze, the cocky young man was gone. His eyes were pleading for understanding. “It wasn’t like that. I swear it.” He shifted to look at Thalia and he was earnest when he said, “Yes, my wife did that. She paid for it with her life. So did every single person who knew about it.”
Girard was confused. Clearly, Thalia was talking about the period when Marcus was called Aurelius given that she’d sneered the word, Emperor. But wife?
“Wait, your wife from Germania? The one that tried to kill you all the time?” he asked, trying to keep up.
Even Thalia wrinkled her brow at that one, but Marcus shook his head. “No, she means Faustina, my human wife at the time.”
Girard tried to get it straight. He’d obviously done a little reading on the internet after waking Marcus, but he’d paid little attention to Faustina. He’d assumed it was a political marriage, one that meant they had little to do with each other.
“I’m completely confused, Thalia,” Girard admitted. He was supposed to be here to rescue Yadikira and either get Thalia to give up and come to the Guardian compound or knock her out and bring her there. This was not on the menu. “Can someone please just explain what’s going on? Right now, we’ve got injured people to tend to and I need to get you to safety.”
Her face smoothed when he said that. Perhaps the simple truth of it got through to her, the plain way it was said communicating more than all the other promises might. “Safe? I won’t be punished? Buried?”
Girard shook his head. “No, Thalia. We don’t do that either. Right now, we just need to understand you and understand Christina. We want to help, but we can’t let you harm humans like you have. That’s wrong. The world is different now and you put all of us in danger.” Calculating the odds that Christina might be able to hear—and influence—any actions that Thalia might take, he added, “And Christina must be saved as well. She doesn’t deserve any of this.”
“And the slaver?” she asked, nodding toward Marcus.
Girard took a risk and put his hands down to his sides, doing it as casually as he could. “Marcus,” he prodded. “Explain.”
“After the whole plague thing started going, I got sick. Faustina was my wife and she tended me—”
Girard interrupted him with, “She was truly your wife?”
Marcus nodded. “Yes, you can’t run an empire alone. I didn’t bargain for any of what happened. She knew what I was.”
Girard was rocked back by the revelation. No vampire was ever truly married to a human. Not really. A body they wore might be married and they might be forced to carry on for a short time before detaching from the situation, but a true marriage? No, that never happened.
“After I got better the first time and she hadn’t done anything crazy from knowing about me, I shared things with her. She understood better what I was and all the rest.” He paused and gave Thalia a grim look. “But that plague you sent was too strong. It worked even on vampires. I kept getting sick, and that body was never truly whole again. The second time, Faustina thought I might die and I’d already told her about Thalia. She went there to find a cure, but instead, she found the ones we used to call the Mindless.”
Thalia growled at the word and gave Marcus a dark look. “Be careful what you say.”
“Those were your children, weren’t they?”
She nodded, her lips tight.
A pained expression crossed his face at that nod, but he pushed on. “Afterward, she decided to overthrow me, and that’s how history remembers it, but in truth, she’d taken a…well…one of your children. You have to understand. She’d watched the plague kill so many and she was afraid. The others involved in the plot took them too. As soon as I found out, they were all killed, even my wife, the mother of my children.”
Thalia wasn’t satisfied apparently, because she hissed, “And your son? Your human son?”
Marcus shook his head, the denial in that shake a firm one. “He never knew anything about me.”
All of these revelations were coming too fast and were far too mind-numbingly bizarre. Mindless? Human son? Girard couldn’t stay silent. “What do you mean, his human son? You mean with a human wife or a failed implantation?”
While it was true that a vampire might have a human child every occasionally, it was always due to a failed implantation of a vampire into the egg as it fertilized. And it was always…or almost always…born of two vampires. It was rare to the point of near impossibility for a vampire to create a human child with a human. They were simply incompatible.
“No, I had one living son with Faustina,” Marcus answered. “Commodus. We had a daughter that survived as well, but all the rest died young.”
“With a human?” Girard had to confirm it, because he was having a hard time wrapping his head around it. Like everyone else at the compound, he had assumed Marcus’s children with Faustina were fathered by some other human.
“Yes, I’m one of the few that can do that. Well, in most bodies I can.” He shrugged. “I don’t know why. But Commodus didn’t know about me, about what I was. Faustina and I agreed it wouldn’t be good for the boy. And after the plague got my body for the last time, I was in a pool, too weak to take a body for almost a century.”
Thalia dripped another drop of acid onto the floor, like a punctuation mark on his story. “He came, you know. He knew what you were. His guard wore masks on their mouths made of metal. They knew. They came for my children. Hundreds died. Hundreds. Commodus took one of my children, but it made him insane. He deserved his death, but my child did not. I went into the ground and all those who knew where I lay died to keep the secret.”
Suddenly, she put the hand not near Yadikira near her throat and said, “I’ll burn myself alive before I let you take any more of my children.” She licked her lips nervously and glanced at the human girl still lying on the floor when she made a small noise. “My kind are not slaves.”
The way her eyes moved and darted so quickly, the tremble in her hands, the way her toes curled on her bare feet all spoke one thing to Girard. Panic. Whatever headway they had made had been reversed. Her memories of fear and loss were too real, too immediate.
And she had zero reason to trust what he said.
Girard held his hands out a little to the side again and then motioned for calm with one hand. “I’m not doing anything bad, just getting something from my pocket. Yadikira needs it.”
The hand she held above Yadikira stiffened and she said, “Carefully, Guardian.”
He withdrew the little glass ball from his pocket and held it up in his hand so she could see it. Given Thalia’s hand hovering over Yadikira, Girard couldn’t possibly use the sound weapon. It wouldn’t be fast enough to stop her from dropping acid. This was his only choice. With all his might, Girard hoped that Borona was somewhere nearby and either using those glasses or listening to what he said. He was counting on him.
“What is it?” she asked, eyeing the little decorative ball.
“It’s a tool we use during extractions or transfers. It will help a vampire live longer if the body dies. If her body dies…and she is very close…you need to open this and pour it into her mouth. It will give her more time.” He held the ball out gingerly, as if offering a treasure.
She glanced warily from him to the ball, measuring the truth in his words. She sniffed the air, probably testing for any hint of marsh water or rosemary, but the ball was sealed entirely and no hint of the contents could be detected. Finally, she nodded at him and sa
id, “Roll it over to me.”
He did so carefully, bending to make sure it didn’t burst. The lines etched into the surface made an almost musical pattern as it rolled. Yadikira’s breathing had grown more labored, but she lowered her lids a little and gave him a wan smile, as if she knew what he was doing and approved. Then she closed her eyes.
In the silent moment between the ball ceasing its roll against Thalia’s foot and her bending to pick it up, Girard sensed Borona somewhere behind him, somewhere inside the depths of the house. Only the echoes in this room made his presence undetectable until this moment.
Knowing what would happen next, he waited for Thalia to bend and pick up the ball, then said, “Be careful with that, Thalia. It’s precious.”
That signal should tell Borona that she had it, that it was time.
And then the ball burst into shards of glass and the smell of it overwhelmed Girard even from ten feet away. The other balls in Marcus’s pockets blew as well, the smell overpowering everyone. The last thing he saw was the look of hurt betrayal on Thalia’s face.
32
I got you, Boss. I got you.”
It was Borona, holding his head up as gently as if he were made of spun sugar. The mask that covered the lower half of his face did nothing to hide the concern in his eyes. Girard brought his hand to his face, the intensely groggy feeling fading under the powerful scent of tamarind, lemon, and a dozen other scents. The plastic cover of the mask felt cool under his fingers as he pressed it to his mouth and nose. Borona pushed his fingers away from the little grill of metal and cloth that let in air, then said, “I heard most of it, so I didn’t wake Marcus, but Yadikira needs you right now. Lila and Doran are minutes away. You need to hurry.”
Girard tried to get up, but needed Borona’s help just to get into a sitting position. The weakness was still there. How long had it been since he’d been knocked out like that? Not long enough. He glanced at the human, but she was still unconscious. That wasn’t good. Humans didn’t stay knocked out for so long without a whole lot of damage. Thalia lay trussed up like a turkey, her hands behind her back and her face almost in a puddle of the vaguely purple liquid. Another of the balls lay near her head, which was smart. Borona must have opened one of the six that weren’t attached to the remote he’d used and dumped it out so Thalia would have to keep smelling it. Yadikira lay just as she was, but now she had the same kind of mask over her face. The hand she used to keep it in place trembled.
Gripping Borona’s hand, he said, “There’s an oxygen tank in her bedroom. Go get it. Hurry!”
Without hesitation, Borona loped off in the direction of the staircase, while Girard did his best to crawl toward Yadikira. He felt like he’d drunk a vat of wine and then spun like a top for good measure. The whole room kept trying to swim in his vision.
He managed to lean on his elbows so that he could see her. He lifted her free hand. “I’m here Yadikira. Hang on.”
Her eyes fluttered open, drops of the liquid from the ball dotting the skin of her face, making it hard for the mask to do its work. Girard let go of her hand and pulled the strap on his own mask tighter so that he could safely use two hands, then used his sleeve to wipe away as much as he could. He did his best to be gentle and not hurt her.
“Favor,” she whispered, then wrapped her hand in his shirt, pulling him closer.
Given the swimmy nature of the room, it didn’t take much effort to bring him back to the floor. With him on his belly and her on her back, they were face to face, their masks nearly touching.
“I’m here,” he soothed.
“Favor,” she breathed again.
“Anything. You know that.”
“Take care of her.”
Girard almost couldn’t believe it. Was she really asking him to take care of Thalia, the mother that abandoned her and then threatened to burn her alive?
“The Council will take care of Thalia,” he said, hoping that would be enough.
Her head lifted a little and she turned her face toward the unconscious girl, then back to him. “No, her, my daughter.”
Girard couldn’t remove the mask to sniff the air, but he didn’t need to. Vampires could always tell when another human body had a vampire in it. There was a scent to each one of them. Humans couldn’t smell it, but then again, humans were creatures of vision while vampires were sightless in their natural form. They differentiated each other by scent, a chemical signature as unique as a face.
And that girl had smelled human.
“She’s a human,” he said, wondering how many more surprises he would encounter today.
He could see the smile even with her mask in the way her eyes lifted. “No,” she whispered.
“She’s not vampire.”
“Not that either. She’s both.”
Face to face like this, Girard could see her eyes and in them, the thousands of years she had lived. The points of light were fading already, but the experience of ages shown out even so. And she wasn’t delusional, he could tell that too. Whatever that girl was, she was Yadikira’s daughter.
“I promise,” he said simply.
She took in a shaky breath and closed her eyes, but opened them again, the hand she’d had wrapped into the fabric of his shirt lifting to stroke his cheek where the mask didn’t cover it. “My husband never knew of her, he went to his rest before I knew. She was different right from the start. I’ve protected her, stayed alive for her. Josette came to help me and I had hoped she could care for and protect her after I was gone, but the world isn’t kind to those that are different. The Council would have feared her, feared her differences. But then there you were…”
“And you thought I could keep her safe,” he said.
“Yes.”
He glanced at the girl with her cloud of hair. She was wearing a sundress, the kind that carefree young women wore on beautiful summer days. Her feet were bare and her toenails painted bright yellow. He couldn’t see her face, but he could tell by her skin that she was young. How could that be? Yadikira’s husband died in the twenties or thirties of the last century, which would make this human—or whatever—older than most humans ever reached.
He looked back at Yadikira and asked, “What is she?”
Yadikira’s face grew solemn again and she nodded behind them, toward Thalia. “I think she is more like the children my mother was talking about, but something more too. She was born with a vampire inside her, but it is another voice, another being. They share the body. She is human, but also not.”
He understood then. He understood why Thalia had looked at the girl the way she did. She hadn’t been afraid of her, but rather, feared for her. He also understood why Yadikira might feel such a need to protect her daughter. If humans had at any time in the past attempted to take vampires like those Thalia bore as slaves, then this girl would be in the same danger. The vampire inside her would be something any human would kill to take, particularly if she was almost a century old and looked like a girl in the first flush of adulthood.
“I’ll protect her,” he said more firmly, lifting his hand to cover hers where it rested on his cheek. Her skin was cool, far too cool.
“Good. I’ve left you a gift. It’s hidden behind the painting in my bedroom. Don’t forget it. It’s important.” She said it like all other matters were settled and there was only this left to say.
Borona skidded across the room as they looked at each other, then unhooked the oxygen mask to try and put it over the scented one on her face. She made as if to push it away and there was something new in her eyes then; fear.
“Boss, help me put it on her.”
Instead, he pushed the mask away and smiled at her. He never wanted to see fear in her eyes again. “Are you sure?” he asked.
She nodded a little, her lips now bluer than before.
“What’s her name, your daughter?”
“Miracle,” she breathed. After another long moment her eyes lost their focus and she breathed no more.
/> 33
After the long briefing, complete with charts, scans, and an array of medical terms that Girard didn’t fully comprehend, there was a long pause while everyone finished absorbing all that they had heard. Or, absorbed it as much as was possible anyway.
The brief was jointly given by Doran and Greg—that young vampire doctor who was now the Council’s Medical Consultant. Despite all that weighed on Girard, and had been since that terrible day in Yadikira’s house, there were a couple of times when he almost smiled at how excited they were. Now that heresy was officially no longer a crime—or even a thing that existed—those who had been curious about their vampire nature were in hog heaven, so to speak. That especially included Doran and Greg.
It didn’t take long for the questions to start, but Girard let his mind wander. Here inside the Guardian compound, he and Lila and all the rest had asked all those questions during the two weeks that had passed since that terrible day. None of this was new to him. He only had to look attentive and half-listen for anything out of the ordinary.
Yes, there were more kinds of vampires than we had previously known about. Yes, that might explain why so few older vampires responded to census requests or kept off the radar entirely. No, they weren’t common. Yes, it did appear that some evidence of their existence had come into government hands and couldn’t be explained away. Yes, it appeared that the mysterious disease that sent so many vampires to their deaths during hibernation might actually be simply the loss of control in a body brought on by advanced age. No, it wasn’t dementia, but something different, something that would need study.
And equipment. And money to buy the equipment. Girard noted the expected groan from Pradish, the vampire in charge of budgeting.
When the subject changed to Thalia/Christina, Girard focused once more on the session. So far, the only one “in charge” of Christina’s body was Christina. Thalia had made no further appearances. It might have to do with the miasma of marshy water that filtered in with the air to her room below the compound, but every day Girard went and chatted with her through the observation window and every day it was Christina who spoke with him.