by Shadow Soft
When I listened closely I could almost discern words among the high pitches of their ultrasonic voices. Not words like you are reading right now. Not words with letters you can spell out on a page. But words nonetheless. Words my mind understood.
They wanted me to follow them. Curious and perhaps not as cautious as I should have been, given my muddled state, I did as they wanted. Once I had taken two steps the bats ceased their gyring and fluttered off down the gorge. Led by their echolocation, I followed.
They guided me through the canyon and mist and darkness. I trailed curiously after the streaks their glowing eyes left in the darkness. Ten minutes passed, then fifteen, then twenty. My feet began to grow cold, and I shivered. How much longer till dawn?
After twenty minutes the bats led me to the side of the ravine, where there was a narrow trail cut into the rock wall. When I say cut, I mean by no human hand. This was a natural path, riddled with gaps and loose rocks and sharp edges. I suppose, by the same token, when I say trail I mean the word in its roughest sense. It was trail enough for me to scramble my way up, but not the sort of walk-along-whistling-with-hands-in-pockets sort of trail.
It was another twenty minutes before I made it to the top, and that was with only one rest halfway up. It’s surprising how long it can take to climb something that took all of two seconds to fall down.
When at last I clambered out onto level ground, I was panting and sweating. The bats flickered toward the forest, bidding me follow with proddings of their ultrasonic voices. After catching my breath, I hurried after them. Darkness lurked beneath the trees, and no moonlight. Branches cluttered thickly above me, a net holding away the shimmering stars.
Knowing you cannot be hurt gives you some measure of comfort at at times like this, but fear can exist separate from pain. I still felt fear as I stepped softly beneath the trees, weaving through dark trunks and evading knobby roots where crickets chirruped mournfully. I feared imprisonment and vampires and scientists with handcuffs. But there wasn't anything else to do, so I ignored my fear and kept walking.
This walk was not as long. It was ten, maybe twelve minutes before the bats whirred into a small clearing up ahead and disappeared into shadows, their echolocation fading from my ears. Uneasy, I hesitated at the edge of the trees. I squinted to peer into the gloom at the far side of the clearing. I could see shapes, but not make out any features. Blurs of darkness rustled and grew, and I had the impression of changing. The bats . . . . they were changing. Changing form, growing, wings stretching into arms and . . . .
I shook myself, and for the first time in over an hour came truly to my senses. Of course. They weren’t bats at all. They were vampires in bat form. I sighed, and a small, deep-down part of me collapsed into hopelessness. I was tired of running and hiding. I was tired of living in fear, terror of being caught. I wanted to rest. So badly I wanted it, so badly I could have cried as I stood there, dreaming of peace and happiness, free from the curse of my invincible body.
I did not run as the shapes of people materialized from the gloom at the far side of the clearing, preceded by the glowing of their eyes. I was too tired to run, too empty of hope. One of the figures detached from the rest and darted across the moonlit clearing. Vales. Her eyes were ruby, glowing. I closed my eyes. What’s she going to do? What’s she going to do? I imagined her leaping on me and bearing me to the ground. Thirsty for my blood. Unable to keep herself away from such power any longer . . . .
“Valx!” Vales leapt to hug me, squeezing me tighter and tighter until I had no more breath left in me.
Unsure what to do, I just stood there with my arms hanging at my sides. Emotions and memories clashed inside of me. Her lies. Her smiles. Her long canines so close to my neck as she hugged me and whispered my name. What was I to do? She had betrayed me, but I still knew her better than anyone else in the world.
“Valx.” Vales pulled back but did not let go of my arms. “I’m so glad you came!”
I still wasn’t sure I shouldn’t have. Staring at her, I did not say anything. I was vaguely aware of the others hovering in the background—Blake, Valerie and Victor, their cousins, Erika and Nathan. Their eyes glowed in the darkness. So it really is true, I thought, the innermost parts of me accepting it wholly for the first time. They are vampires. All of them.
Vales hugged me again, just as tight as before. “We did what was best for you, you know,” she murmured into my ear. “It was all for you.”
I still wasn’t sure. Her lie still stung.
Pulling back, Vales slapped me hard on the cheek.
“Ow!” I blurted, stepping back and putting a hand to my face. “What was that for?”
“For running away and jumping off that cliff!” she cried. “Don’t ever do something like that again! I know you won’t die, but I nearly died of worry!”
“Sorry,” I snapped, “I was being chased by vampires.”
“Valx, listen.” It was Victor’s voice. He crossed the clearing—slowly, as if I were a feral animal he might startle—with his hands raised placatingly. I flinched away despite myself. It was hard to not run with six vampires closing in on me.
“You lied to me!” I said harshly. “You all lied. You made me believe you were my friends!”
“We are, Valx,” Valerie said in a soothing tone. “We did what was necessary to keep you safe.”
“Lying to me?” I spat. “Was that necessary?”
Victor folded his arms across his chest. “If we had told you the truth you would have run, and if you had run either LDV or the humans would have caught you.”
“And you know where that would put you?” Blake said softly. “In prison, again.”
“We couldn’t let that happen.” Valerie’s hand twitched, as if she were thinking of tousling my hair like she had always done so fondly.
I stepped away. “You still lied to me.”
“We had to,” Vales said with quiet earnestness. She caught my hand before I could stop her. “Please, Valx. Be honest with yourself—would you have stayed if we had told you who—what—we are from the very beginning?”
No. I knew I wouldn’t have. But . . . . It hurt too deeply. To believe one thing for three years, then . . . .
“And be honest—what have we done to show ill-will to you?”
You’ve taken my blood, I wanted to say. I looked at Victor. My eyes were hard. “Did you really run tests on my blood. Did you really look for a way to fix me.”
“Yes.” If my eyes were hard, his were doubly honest. “I did, Valx. I want you to have the life you want.” He shrugged. “I couldn’t do it. The tests didn’t help. I couldn’t find a solution.”
I chuckled mirthlessly. “So you drank it.”
“Don’t be mad, Valx!” Vales pleaded. “We didn’t mean to offend you.”
“And the best way to do that,” I said scathingly, “is to drink my blood without telling me.”
“Yes.” Vales lifted her chin. “It was working, too, until you found out.”
“We want you to come with us,” Victor said.
I laughed brittlely. “I don’t think so.”
“We know of a safe haven that will take you in, Valx.”
“Oh really? Another one like your family? Another one that’s secretly just using me?”
“Valx.” The reproach in Blake’s tone actually had its intended effect. I flushed, abashed, and looked down. “We have really cared for you.”
“And this place will be safe for sure,” Valerie added. “The LDV won’t be able to hurt you there.”
“I don’t think such a place exists,” I replied with a little tartness in my tone.
“It does.” Victor glanced up at the sky, where the first blush of dawn was lightening the horizon to the east. “But the LDV are still out there, and they’re hunting for you. We’ll have to leave quickly.”
With you. The ones who betrayed me . . . . No, betrayed wasn’t the right word. LDV had found me on their own. The Nightfalls had only lied to
me. “Tell me about this place,” I said evenly, not budging. “I won’t move until you tell me more.”
Victor’s eyes flickered uneasily into the shadows of the forest. For the first time I noticed a bruise coloring his right temple. “It’s a village up in the mountains,” he began in a low, serious voice. “Switzerland. Small village. Humans and vampires coexist there.”
I stilled, not knowing what to think or believe. Humans and vampires coexisting? It was nonsensical. “How . . . . does that work?” I asked hesitantly. “Humans write a contract saying ‘Vampires will politely agree to not drink our blood’, and the vampires smile and say, ‘Sure, why not? We’re big into being nice to humans’.” I scowled. “I don’t think so.”
“There is an agreement in place,” Vales said, “but it’s not quite like that.”
“It’s a sort of . . . . symbiont circle,” Victor explained. “Vampires agree to help humans with their daily tasks—they work for them, effectively. In payment—you could say as their wages—the humans donate blood to the vampires.”
I was incredulous. “They donate blood? What is it—a morbid walk-in clinic? ‘Next in line! Come lay on this table and let us anesthetize you so you don’t feel the fangs going into your neck.’”
Blake rolled his eyes. “If you’re interested in not being caught by LDV, I suggest you cut the smart-aleck comments. It’s done much more humanely than that. They’ve developed blood pills, so there’s actually no physical contact between the humans and vampires at all.”
“Blood pills?” It sounded disgusting. Which probably made sense, since I wasn’t a vampire.
“The human residents of the village donate blood once a month,” Valerie explained. “Their blood is processed and put into pills, which are stored in vaults. Each vampire receives his allotment of pills at the beginning of the month in exchange for the last month’s work he did for the humans. It’s an experimental system. So far it’s been working smoothly, aside from a couple mishaps early on.”
I folded my arms across my chest, mirroring Victor’s pose. “What stops the vampires from rebelling and killing all the humans?” I asked.
Blake shrugged. “That’s a no-brainer. You kill a human you get to gorge for what? Two days, while the blood’s still fresh. After that you starve. If you keep the humans alive, their bodies produce blood perpetually.” He grinned. “A far more appealing concept, don’t you think? Endless sustenance in exchange for a few hours’ daily labor? It’s practically the economic system of the entire world, just with blood as payment instead of money.”
I narrowed my eyes, still not convinced. “And what stops the vampires from chaining up all the humans, throwing them in prison, and visiting everyday for their fix?”
At that Blake scowled. He wasn’t the only one, either; all their faces evinced some degree of disgust. “Not all vampires are wicked to the core, you know,” he said stiffly. “That seems to be a recurring misconception of yours.”
I wanted to believe it. So badly I wanted it. If humans and vampires could coexist peacefully . . . . it meant everything. It meant there was hope for a world stricken by fear, danger, and prejudice. But . . . . I shook my head. In my experience people—humans and vampires alike—simply weren’t that thoughtful. They were selfish. They put their own concerns above the concerns of others, and existence became one furious, scrambling battle between rats trying to claw their way to the top of the heap. It was beyond me to think that a place could exist where interdependence and understanding fostered community between age-old rivals.
If it did exist, it was a place I had to see. “Alright,” I said, “I’ll go with you.”
Vales’ face burst into a radiant smile. “You will?”
I smiled despite myself, if even just a little. No matter what had transpired over the last day, I wasn’t immune to the contagious joy of Vales’ smile. “If you promise to never lie to me again,” I said.
She snorted, perhaps ungracefully. “There’s nothing more to lie about.”
“Let’s go now,” Victor muttered, “before LDV comes along and kills us all—except for you, Valx, since you can’t very well die.”
When Victor said deep in the mountains, he meant deep in the mountains. To be honest, the route in made me a bit nervous. I couldn’t die, but all it would take for one of the Nightfalls to plummet to their death was one misstep or a treacherous piece of shale slipping out from under them. See, the village was really deep in the mountains. The sort of deep where there are no roads to get there. So our journey over the next several days involved incrementally more primitive modes of transportation.
We didn’t take a plane. As a rule, I never flew on planes. That was plain stupid. Lock myself in an air-tight prison hurtling thousands of feet above the earth? I don’t think so. That’s pretty much handing myself to my enemies—LDV and scientists alike—wrapped neatly in a package with a bow on top.
Instead we drove, taking the backroads and byways where we were least likely to be intercepted by the LDV, who were hard on our tail. We lost them somewhere in Austria, which is where the scientists picked up my scent. I don’t know why it always happens that way. As soon as one danger ends another begins. It’s as if the fates are determined to make my life as challenging as possible.
Sure, they never caught us. We made it safely. But challenging can come in any manner of ways. For me, challenging was learning to live with the constant dread of being kidnapped. See, there are physical difficulties—fleeing from the LDV, fleeing from vampires in the woods, fighting Virgil and Stefan and Gabriella. Physical. They aren’t fun.
But then there are other difficulties, too. For me, this is the greatest difficulty: learning to have joy in the midst of the fear. Because it’s easy to be joyful when you’re on top of the world. Look at a man with everything he could possibly desire: he’s a millionaire, recently engaged, with a promising future in business and a family who adores him. It would be bizarre for him to not be joyful.
And then look at me: an orphan, for all relevant purposes, who’s being hunted by nearly everyone in the world. Some want to study me. The word study sounds sterile—even, perhaps, constructive—but in my case study involves lots and lots of torture. Others want to drink my blood so they can conquer the world. Then there’s the family who adopted me—the ones who I grew to love, who just revealed that everything they had told me was a lie.
Look at me, and there isn’t much reason for joy. I’m a fugitive for life. I realized this. So when I took a step back and looked at my life, I realized with dire conviction that having joy in this life was up to me. Nobody else was going to make it for me. I would never be the one with a million dollars and a laughing fiancee.
This was the challenge. The fact that we made it safely to Symbiosia—that’s the village; trust vampire-scientists to come up with a name for their experiment and that’s what you get—is irrelevant. The point is that every step of the journey was an internal struggle between fear and joy. It was natural to be afraid—but if I acquiesced to the natural every day of my life, that is all I would feel: fear. It would never end.
So instead I rose up to the challenge. I sought joy in the midst of fear. True, I did not banish the fear. Did not, could not—I don’t know. Perhaps a stronger person would be able to do that—dispel fear completely. I couldn’t. But what I did manage to do was find reason for joy despite it. I still smiled and laughed. I found solace in the quite, alone moments and in the simple beauty of simple things. I admired the dew on a bowed blade of grass. I watched the sunsets and the sunlight through the birds’ wings. I took the time—when we weren’t driving, which, admittedly, was rare—to close my eyes and breathe deeply of the cool, undulant breeze.
These things may sound trite to you. ‘Don’t forget to stop and smell the roses’ rubbish. But it’s true. Don’t forget. Have you ever looked at them? They’re beautiful. Beyond beautiful. Beautiful is a word shaped by letters and human intelligence. But roses are beyond those things—
beyond ink and paper and literacy, beyond the workings of the human mind. Have you seen how the dewdrops nestle like purest diamonds in their centers, where all their spiraling petals meet in velvet softness? Have you seen the veins of gold that streak where the petals curl open and kiss the air? Like memories of sunlight they are.
These are the things I learned to find joy in. Maybe tomorrow SCHNUET would catch me and I would spend the rest of my life strapped to a table in a lab. But for today, I could kneel on green grass and inhale the elusive fragrance of a budding rose. For today I could have joy. Joy. Learn it, please.
SCHNUET stands for the Scientific Community of Human Nations United on European Territory, in case you’d forgotten about them. They represented the scientists who wanted so ravenously to reclaim me. I know—the acronym is singularly cumbersome. It sounds like some clumsy pronunciation of a turbid Dutch-German liquor no one has ever heard about. But they are, horrifying acronyms aside, one of my two greatest fears, so they remain rather important.
As I was saying before philosophy distracted me, SCHNUET found my trail in Austria, right after LDV lost it. We spent the next two weeks running circles in the Swiss wilderness, until we were confident they too had lost our scent. Then, while SCHNUET followed a false trail—supposedly of LFX’s devising—to the Horn of Africa, we crept our way with bated breaths to Victor’s much-anticipated Swiss village.
Symbiosia. It was buried so deeply in the Alps I wondered if more than a dozen people had ever tread the paths leading in. As I mentioned before, paved roads led only so far. Eventually they gave way to dirt roads; then we were forced to abandon the vehicle altogether. The remainder of the journey was made on foot. We wound our way up precarious mountain passes. Walls of rock rose on one side and cliffs fell away to gasping emptiness on the other. Single-file we walked, Victor in front and Valerie in the back, keeping an eagle eye on all of us children lest we slip.
We crossed over several ridges and circumvented several valleys. It didn’t take long for my sense of direction to get all mixed up. It grew cold and we grew grim. Nathan and Erika kept whispering that we were lost; Vales kept shaking her head and reprimanding them in a tone made severe by the frosty air and biting wind.