Vampirony

The nails in the board screeched in complaint as they were pried from the crate. She’d had to chip into the board to get enough clearance for the crowbar’s edge. Once she freed one end, she went to work on the other. It was slow work undertaken in the dark of her hotel room in her dubious mental state. With each board removed, she flung it aside and peeled back some of the protective canvas covering to reach the cloth underneath. A small flexible flashlight clipped to her shirt, she pushed up the cloth to reveal the surface underneath. A muscled calf.

“Not marble, “ she shook her head. Her fingers wandered up the lower part of leg only halting when she hit the limit of another board.

She picked up the crowbar again and worked on the next board, mumbling, “Not granite. Maybe if I can reach…”

Another fifteen minutes and a knee was visible. But she needed something to cut the pant leg away. She rummaged and found an utility knife in her trunk. She returned, carefully slashing at the fabric to free the leg.

She tilted the flashlight slightly away, the light indirectly shining off the deep red hued stone. Brick red. Some splotchiness in color with some grey, brown, and black hues. She took in a breath and tapped the metal blade against the leg. Nothing happened. She sighed, “Hardness, maybe a 7? So not howlite.” She stood and went back to her laptop, tapping furiously for a few minutes. She looked back to the crate and then returned, carrying the laptop. Kneeling again, she set the laptop aside, adjusted the flashlight again, and flicked the light over the leg. “Not translucent so not carnelian.”  

She tapped a few more keystrokes into her search engine to broader her results. Red stone.

She expelled a breath and sat back on her heels. She turned back to the crate. “It can’t be.” She took a few measured breaths. “Can it?”

As her eyes began to water, the resulting page seemed to mock her idiocy with a spectacular sense of the metaphysical:

Brecciated Jasper is known as a detoxifying stone because it can get rid of unhealthy energies or vibrations in your body, heart, mind, and spirit. It can support your body in recovering from a traumatic experience, and it can boost your sagging spirits so that you will feel optimistic again about life. And then: Brecciated Jasper is form of Jasper, which the multi-colored layers are enclosed together with a grey substance. It is a form of Jasper that consists of Haematite. Haematite is a grounding stone, which makes this stone an excellent gemstone for assisting you to make your feet on the ground and for endorsing feelings of stillness and wholeness, as well. Also, it has a stirring, revitalize energy that is said to support mental simplicity and profound happiness. It is also believed to take up off-putting energy, which allows you to expand a positive outlook on your life.

“Naw, just a scratch…or two. Oh, see. Already on the mend.” The memory crawled back into her head, as if she could reach out and brush her fingers against the stubbled chin.

She brushed the top of her hand against her eyes to expel the moisture and the vision. Tapped a few more keys to prove the hypothesis incorrect, met with immovable fact:

Jasper is a variety of quartz that may contain up to 20 percent foreign materials or inclusions, including organic material and mineral oxides, which determine the color, pattern and appearance of the stone. Brecciated jasper contains hematite, an iron compound, which gives it both its red tones and the dark bands. It is primarily deep red–veined or patterned with brown, black and beige–and sometimes has clear crystal inclusions.

She put her head in her hands. A stone specifically formulated of impurities. She had thought if she might identify an injury, a place where a foreign material like the glass of the cabling used to tie him up had been embedded, she might find an answer to his continued Rigor Dormitus. And might have a chance to fix it, to free him. The form was meant to help heal when she’d been allowed to see it.

But as it was, she had no idea if this was normal for him; she doubted he’d ever shown it to anyone.  She hadn’t known he could fly; had even challenged him when he’d reacted to the assertion that it was a myth.  The limits of her knowledge about his ability had multiplied tenfold last night and still left her stupefied as to who or what he was. It just showed in dry empiric relief that he was a stranger to her.  

“Shit.”

After a long stretch of time when all the logic of trying to puzzle a way for him to be freed had evaporated, she did the only thing that would give her any ease. She picked up the crowbar and worked another board free, fished under the canvas until she found it. His hand. She had piled up her pillows and a blanket and she laid back down, ignoring the odd angle of her shoulder and the splinters digging into her skin so she might squeeze his hand of brecciated jasper and hope against all hope that he’d find his own way back to her.

When sleep finally came, it was with the roar of a gaseous magnitude, a celestial glowing that set fire to all things and turned her hopes to ash and cinders that only a deluge of emerald fabric could salvage.

The text told Aubrey all he needed to know to keep his dim sense of hope alight. Emmerick had made contact and the hunter was now engaged. He stuffed his cellphone into his inside vest pocket knowing how much his master hated all manner of electronics. With the other hand carrying a tray of pine needle tea, he pushed open the door to Valerian’s chamber only to lean hard against the door and put a protective arm around the tray to avoid the intemperate figure in shiny black leather and silver chains blocking him on her way out.

“Galscythe, please, the histrionics do not suit you.”

The taunting words caused the imposing figure to pause at the threshold and flick her mane of midnight hair crowned with a helmet of curved bullhorns to toss an enraged look back towards what Aubrey couldn’t see.

To her unspoken response which only Valerian would’ve been able to sense, he replied, “I never lied to you. You just choose to ignore the truth.”

Aubrey saw her black kohl rimmed eyes widen and her head flick to the very expansive velvet mahogany chair just beside the fireplace. With a single silent exhale, the chair shot to the rear of the room and exploded into shards. She rocked forward as if she would follow her blast but then pivoted on her toe and crashed through the door, leaving Aubrey to juggle his ceramic wares until the air in the room settled.

As he sighed and fully entered the room, letting the door click close behind him, he was surprised that Valerian stood tied to the bedpost stark naked except for the steel chains that held him there and a barely contained smirk on his face. A cat o’ nine tails lay on the stone floor, likely where Galscythe had dropped it from some offence.

In the hundreds of years that Aubrey had served Lord Valerian, this wasn’t the most surprising scene he’d ever interrupted so he proceeded to set the tray on the side table which had served the now destroyed antique chair and turned back to the bed, producing a lockpick from somewhere within his vest pocket.

Just as he was stepping forward to free his master, Valerian flicked his wrists as easily as he blinked and the steel manacles popped open. Aubrey hadn’t been completely surprised that Valerian was returning to full strength as his body healed from carrying the burden of one hundred and twenty-three silver disks as his negotiated peace with Emmerick, the man that Aubrey had now embroiled himself with. But the speed and vigor with which Valerian’s powers returned as well as the, a-hum, appetite required to maintain the healing process was astounding.

“Perhaps not the smartest idea to burn through all of your alliances in these uncertain times.” Just yesterday, Xi had yet again been seen storming out from the council room after inquiring after efforts to locate Bellecroix.

Valerian dismissed the advice with a hand as he bent to retrieve the whip. As he straightened, he tossed the whip like a baby rattle, “Bah, Galyscythe knows her place. But some things needed closure before company arrives.”

“And what company might that be?” Aubrey asked.

Valerian shot an astounded look at his faithful servant. “Darcie, of course.” He gave a single laugh to punctuate the absurdity of Aubrey’s question then strode over to the tray and poured himself a tall goblet of liquid from the carafe. The smell of spruce filled the room.

“You mean Sophie.” The comment was half question.

Aubrey watched with a new sense of unease as Valerian drank the goblet down seemingly in one gulp and then, after considering a refill, lifted the carafe itself to his mouth and drank the whole thing down greedily without spilling a drop.

The effect was immediate as tremors moved all over his body, percolating under his pale skin, leaving him to grip the table for a moment, arcing his back and bending his head back as his fangs fully extended, his blue eyes lit up like neon. He let out a low roar until the effect subsided, leaving him somewhat diminished in appearance and bearing.

Panting for a few moments, he lifted his gaze up to Aubrey, a much calmer and contemplative mood settling upon him. “Is there any more?”

Aubrey nodded, stirring himself to retrieve the tray. He began to head for the door without further comment but was halted by Valerian’s words.

“If you could find a way to produce more, a lot more,” his voice trailed off, suddenly contrite.

Aubrey turned back to him but said nothing, recognizing this Valerian as the one that would never mistake the woman that he had lost all those years ago with this new woman they had conspired to protect and gently introduce to her lifetimes of selves as she had wished.

“I must look my best, be my best when she arrives.”

He then busied himself with dressing for dinner without asking for any assistance.

“Is there some plan to bring her here that I can assist with?”

Valerian shrugged, a stillness overtaking him. “The scribe will bring her.”

Aubrey felt fortunate that Valerian had his head bent, seeing to his pants so as not to see the shock on his own face. With all of the plans in motion, some of which he had carefully concealed from his lord, Aubrey had certainty in only one thing: Jesper would never bring his precious Sophie to this den of monsters. Whether this regenerated Valerian, who seemed to be teetering between euphoria and melancholy, was able to reconcile the last three years of meticulous planning to find her and save her with his sudden desire to bring her into the very heart of danger, Aubrey couldn’t tell.

“Forgive me, my lord, but is that the wisest path, all things considered?”

For over a hundred years, Valerian had been the balance point of many different worlds, many different factions, equilibrium maintained through his own pain and toil. He had rebuilt his line and ensured they had a safe and effective home and hunting grounds. He’d toured the world to address blood toxins and diseases of all types to lessen the impact on their food source. He negotiated with Southern and Eastern horrors, establishing cardinal rules that effectively led to their Conclave, the first global government any immortals had ever had. And he’d sought to recover the ill-conceived efforts to expand vampire ranks by recapturing the Taint. Well, most of it. He held together an empire through intelligence, tact, and above all, patience.

His answer to why a simple human woman who continued to repeat her past would be a prize worth risking all that struck more fear into Aubrey than anything he’d seen yet.

“I need her, Aubrey.”

“My lord,” Aubrey stated his understanding but in his own mind, he wondered at his master’s sudden frailty and what it might mean for his own longevity if all things fell apart all over again. He’d come to finally accept that Sophie Quinn nee Darcie Sherbourne would always be an instrument of influence on his lord, had even learned to find the benefits in old recipes of her tinctures and skillfully manipulated his lord with a mere whisper of her memory. But this Valerian, he realized finally, was failing. The penance gone, the threat to her lessened, at least in his mind, had sucked him dry of purpose except his one last folly.

Aubrey whispered a silent pray.

You had better hold onto her with both hands this time, Scribe. Or I’m afraid none of us will survive this lord’s fall.  

Standing in Penn Station, Emmerick found himself relatively underwhelmed by the stocky figure that stood politely waiting his turn at the Amtrak ticket office. He knew he shouldn’t judge; near-immortals came in every color, creed, height, weight, and disposition. He’d once been waylaid in Tokyo by what could be best described as a nymph. 4’8” and barely weighing seventy pounds soaking wet, he’d finally dragged her out of the bay like the night’s catch many hours after he’d begun his endeavor, with many scars to mark the encounter.

But this guy, this Elba, purported to be the original of the Wilklas, was 5’8” with his work boots, and while he had the build of a laborer and could probably handle his own in a bar fight, Emmerick had envisioned more boogey man than everyman when Aubry had described his quarry.

Emmerick rubbed his arm where his tattoo should be, sighing to himself. He wasn’t up for this and he knew it. His thoughts kept tumbling over the years he’d wasted holding a flame for a petulant child, years killing vampire spawn whenever and wherever he found them for what amounted to an insane mommy-daddy issue, years tracking and hunting based on a lie that he’d too easily believed.

He was ashamed and tired, so very tired. Not physically; whatever Aubry had shared with him had supercharged him like a battery to the point where his fingertips felt like they would spark. But without the glory of righteous purpose, the years of homelessness, the pressure of unremembered lifetimes, and the very weight of this modern world felt like a vice of iron around his chest constricting him slowly. He wasn’t blind to struggles of modern humanity. He just didn’t give a shit. What did it matter when a tide of undead could rise up like the Black Death and swallow society whole. He’d stood in the middle of it several times and fought it back, most recently following a bottle of wine in Seville.

But it never ended, always there was a struggle, a battle, and around him these sleeping humans who knew nothing, wanted to know nothing. Why should he continue to fight for them, the very same that banished him from his village for speaking his truth? He could recall the dead, lives long lost, stories from old, past down from their fathers and when they still didn’t believe, he showed them what remained below the surface: the well, the horde, and the bodies.  He had brought the shaman down, the holy man, for lying to his people, for trading their ancestral wealth for money in his pocket.  And they had then turned on him, blaming his witchery for leading to the shaman’s downfall.  

They had given him a choice at least: leave or they would stone his sisters and mother. He grimaced in memorial; there was never a choice at all. In a tribe that valued the spirits of the land, communicated with the spirits of the dead to know the way forward, he had still become a pariah. They didn’t want to hear the true voice of their elders: they wanted to speak in their name.

He shook his head and refocused on the Wiklas, as he stepped up to the ticket window. From his current vantage, he had a clear line of sight to lipread what the agent said and this particular one always repeated the destination and the time on the ticket she was issuing.

But he doubted what he read as the destination and had to do a search on his cell phone. The first word made no sense so he expected the search to work phonetically but the location came right up. It was in the middle of nowhere. Well, a helluva a long way short of Seattle. He glanced up at one of the route maps mounted on the wall beside him and had to suppress an urge to shake his head.

The Wiklas thanked the agent and turned just as Emmerick dropped his head into his book. While A Tale of Two Cities was a good read, it was the sketched notes from the thumb drive that interested Emmerick. The abridged life and times of one Sophie Quinn. He let the Wiklas continue to his gate while he scanned, knowing he would catch up before the train departed in 20 minutes.

Something about “Ohio” caught his attention. What he read set him to his feet, clamoring after the wolf and nearly knocking over a young Namibian woman in her long voluminous dress and headdress. He had to use his considerable agility to keep both of them on their feet, his hand on her upper arm steading them both.

She at first twisted away from him, a baby in her arms and two small children holding onto her dress. He was about to apologize when she looked up into his face. Her eyes widened and she reached out to him.

“Haiseb!”

Then she began to plead with him in a language he hadn’t heard in a very very long time. Her bus had been delayed, she and her children had missed their connection, and the agent would not refund her money to buy new tickets. Worse, she had very little English and no way to contact her husband. All the forces that had conspired to move her family halfway across the world for the hope of a better future had seemed to desert her.  They were causing quite the scene and even the Wiklas paused and turned an ear towards the drama.

Emmerick found himself answering her pleas, praising her strength and telling her all would be well. “My name is Baka. I will help you.”

He found himself leading her to the agent’s window, her clutching his arm where the flesh throbbed as if his tattoo had been awakened. He saw out of a corner of his eye the Wiklas shrug and continue towards his gate.

The black agent looked suspiciously from him to the traditionally dressed woman clutching his arm. He patted her hand, inquired about her destination, and told her it would all be alright before turning back to the ticket agent.

She let him talk for a minute before she called him out. “Sir, in English?”

He blinked. He hadn’t even realized he’d speaking another language. He cleared his throat. “Uh, sorry, yes.” Struggled to settle on an American accent, closer to this region. He proceeded to get the family tickets to Columbus where her husband had previously been studying before finding a way to get the whole family transplanted.

He waited with them, watching the time tick by on a large wall clock for an hour until it was time to board their train, even finding a traveling pastor that would keep an eye out for them once they got to Columbus.  The mother didn’t repeat her title for him but he saw it in her face and it fired something in his long-dead heart. She had seen right through him, to the man he was and the place he had come from. He wished them well and watched with a pang as the youngest daughter waved goodbye.

The Wiklas was long gone, his train departing half an hour before, as Emmerick strode out of the station, hand over his arm feeling the long-gone tattoo pulsing just below the white of his skin. He would rent a car and get there twice as fast. The last hour of his life had given him a jolt of the past familiar, a taste of a home he’d lost, and a resolution for what he now knew he raced to protection.

According to Aubrey’s intel, Ohio was where Sophie Quinn had grown up, married the quarterback of her high school’s football team, and started a family.  Sophie had apparently been attacked by unknown vampire assailants a year ago after miscarrying a child. Aubrey suspected at the time but now was certain that it had been Bellecroix taking her revenge. And now Bellecroix was sending the Wiklas to finish the job of ending Sophie’s human family, which consisted of an ex-husband and a little girl living on a farm, likely oblivious to the danger coming to end them.

As Emmerick finally cleared the city, setting his rental SUV at top legal speed, he tried to set aside the dread and focus on his quarry. But all he could manage to visualize was the face of the little African girl, waving goodbye, and her mother’s face as she gripped his arm and called to the ancient spirit within him. It was as if the mother feared in that moment not for herself or her family, but for another further away that needed his help even more.

A twelve-year-old daughter named Jasmine living in a town called Defiance. And Emmerick, with a resurgent sense of familial outrage and rediscovered purpose, couldn’t get there fast enough.

“You heard her crying all night?” 

It was more statement than question, echoed in still of their dark hermetic chamber. It had been a very long time since they had both lain here, side by side, her hand in his.

“I did.” He admitted it. He knew she wanted him to.

She didn’t bother to turn her head towards him when she knew his face was impassive. She was still surprised that he had come here this day after he had seen Sophie. She could tell he had fed, in no way was physically diminished, had not spoken of anything, had simply done that they used to do: strip down to his underclothes and climbed onto the comfortable queen mattress, hand taking hers as he settled, as if it hadn’t been decades since the last time. Outwardly, he was calm, days of his heightened anger and command completely given way to an impeccable peace.

He had kept the emotional link between them shut for as many years as he had avoided their shared resting space. But the subtle tension that told her of the effort was also absent, as if she could reach out and have access to the Maurice of old.

He had been with Sophie. He’d been perfumed with her scent, like he bathed in the essence. When he breathed, he exhaled the infinitesimal bouquet of her sweat, her saliva. He had been with Sophie and come back to her. Come back to her with resolve.  With calm. Perhaps whatever battle he had convinced himself to wage had worked itself out with their success over the vampire.

Ba, not really a vampire after all. A dangerous pretender, yes. But her irregulars had had little effort taking him out. In fact, Ritterreiter declared them ready for the next phase of their training. That is, in between swearing about their lack of discipline and general complaints about the youth these days.

She blinked hard. She was distracting herself. He’d been with Sophie.

“I did not lay with her.”

She turned her head towards him.

“I did kiss her. She needed healing.” He paused, searching for words. “I had to know.”

“And?” her concern was growing. She rolled to her side facing him.

The silence echoed. The words wouldn’t tumble out of his mouth. He clenched his eyes. He wanted to spare her but knew she would discover the truth on her own. She just didn’t know the question to ask.

She lay back flat again, frustrated.

He sighed. This was it. The last night like this. The last night it could just be the two of them, together, against the world. After years of rejecting it, fighting to find others, wanting someone for himself that could be more than a sister, all he wanted now was her. Her love, her trust, her eternal hand in his, together for all time.

But their paths diverged here. After he shared with his sister what he suspected when he first smelled this age’s Sophie Quinn as she revealed herself at the comic book shop. A truth that they had never sought and yet, she carried it with her completely unaware of the enormity of it.

He knew Lucy had always suspected he’d fancied Tante. Felt it was the reason for Caroline, an older companion to mirror the mother figure they’d both lost when their Tante had died. And maybe when he was a naïve youth, the comfort of her care, her love especially as he’d matured and etched into his youthful desires.

But no, that wasn’t why he’d kissed Sophie. While it was easier to heal her that way, he could’ve chosen any other number of forms and fashions to seep his essence deep into her wounds. Some even without touching her at all. Some that took nothing more than a breath. He’d perfected them over the years with the Irregulars that his sister insisted on taking on and trying to support them.

There was no way to spare her the shock and she hadn’t trusted his words for quite some time. And lately he’d been a brute to her and hadn’t known why, hadn’t been aware until his senses knitted together the puzzle that Sophie presented. But once he suspected, he had to disprove it. How could it possibly be so?

“Lucy, my heart, my beloved sister, I had to kiss this Sophie because….because she carries an essence with her, within her, one that, one that I had to understand.”

Lucy frowned but felt the blocked bond between them burst wide open and her eyes shot open.

“I don’t know how else for you to know that it is true.” He paused as he dispelled the wall between them so she could feel all the emotions underneath his calm. It wasn’t resolve at all. It was awareness. It was epiphany.

“The essence I first smelled on Sophie wasn’t this ange of hers frozen in marble. I met him and he….he is something entirely unlike Vampire.” He sighed, letting himself feel the incredulity of it all.

“Gods, you are horrible at confessions! What?” she demanded.

“Blood and light and magic. That’s how you described it.”

“That was Morena!”

“The light, yes. Her ange.”

“You keep calling him that–.”

“He is not the point! Blood and magic. That’s what you said.”

She felt a prick of foreboding. His emotions were so deep and unfamiliar to her after all this time; she could barely discern where they ended and her own began. It was as if all this time, he’d never really been separated from her. He’d kept her intact in his own being even as he blocked their active connection.

“Yes?”

“Lucy, the essence Sophie carries. It’s what saved her from that evil liquid the pretender made her drink. That essence,” It was his turn to shift towards her, holder her hand up to his chest. “It’s our Father.”

The strangest sensation of all for him was knowing that while he remained aware, knew he was in the hotel room, witnessed the comings and goings, wondered at them, it was unclear how he sensed these things. It was not a sound or smell and surely not sight; he simply felt these things, had been feeling them since the moment his body seized up and turned to stone.

He felt being moved, felt the small gang and all their debate on whether they should risk disobeying orders and jackhammering him into dust. The impression of a strong will with attributes much like his own taking over the debate, influence under it all, caught at him and he was at leisure to mull it over for what felt a few moments to him but realized had been hours. Interspersed were memories unfolding that dragged him away to different times and places like waves pulling him under.

When he’d surfaced again, he learned that Morena and Nick were safe, and she was there. If he’d had a beating heart, it would have thudded in relief that Sophie had survived as well. Instead, the stone warmed and glimmered within its box with no one to witness and wonder, least of all the object of its affections. Towards the beginning, he’d seen Sophie stumble in, injured. He’d struggled then, tried to force his body to change, only to be met with stinging sensations from all over. Then Morena and Nick had come in, voices had raised in discord and Nick had gone. Morena had fallen asleep and he’d spent time sensing her slowed heartbeat and the accelerated growth of her red blood cells.

Something was wrong with the transformation. As he inventoried his facts, he surmised it had now been several days and nights that his body refused to convert. Comfortable in the knowledge that Sophie was safe and that his incidental contact with Morena had ensured both her and Nick’s survival as well, he resigned himself to listening, to filling in the gaps and waiting to transfigure back. He learned from Sophie’s interrogation of Morena that there were some truths Morena would hold back. Nothing, however, had muted the anger Sophie felt from learning he’d shared blood with another human. Or his approach to confronting the tainted mistake.

It hurt him to not be able to explain. He worked out what he might say. And just as he found clarity, the story being told in the room expanded, revealing much about the other immortal hands at work in Bellevue that night. As he turned over all he knew, it made sense that if Sophie had a prior relationship with one vampire that still counted her as friend and mentor, there might be others. The sister and her brother.

There was nothing that Jesper could do when the brother came and called to her but still he’d fought again to transfigure, the stone heating in frustration. Sophie had said she was immune to vampire abilities and yet he witnessed her bidden by the power of Vox, causing even his stony form to vibrate. But his struggles had been in vain, for the better. She’d returned to Morena and Nick’s shock completely healed but adverse to conversation. She’d crawled back into bed, devoid of sleep, and silently wept.

This marble had become his prison and he struggled again, wanting to be with her, to shield her from this world of death and violence she so hated. But his body was not pure; it was the only thing that made sense. Chips of wood, glass fibers, maybe a cut from that accursed kukri, some debris had seeped in deep and prevented his return to her. It frustrated him, made him want to scream. As Morena moved to the adjoining room and Nick slinked off to secretive chores redoing the office, he bristled under the stony silence and tried to reach out to her. When he couldn’t sense anything but her presence, he tried to discern the impediment, walked through his injuries and tried to catalog what might have corrupted his slumber. With no way of removing it, he might be in here forever, like the true gargoyles of old myth, held fast to a silent penance. It made him burn from the inside, angry, afraid, desperate to get free and soar, to get to Conclave and tell them all she had risked and how she had saved them all.

Tension rippled through the stone. He couldn’t help it; he was screaming. With no mouth, no throat, no belly for breath, he seethed and spewed his mind forth, clenching his awareness until the stress threatened to fracture the marble.

Then, a sound, a lightness within the black, a scratching and then the shrill complaint of nails being displaced. A soft thump, a freshness, and then a silence. He felt her. She was close. Please, let me out. His anxiousness almost caused the crate to move.

Then her hand, soft, unsure, reached through the small gap in the wood planks she’d created with a crowbar. Her hand cupped his shoulder and she sighed. Relief moved through him, her touch warming him.

“I don’t know that you can hear me.” Her voice was breathy, tired.

I can.

“But I’d rather like to think you can.” Her voice tensing up with sobs. “I thought we’d have more time to talk. And I really really need to.”

Then talk to me. I’m in here. And I’m not going anywhere.

She took in a shuddery breath. “I never meant any of this to happen. But as I look around, all I see are my faults and failures. I thought I’d saved Maurice from this burden, enabled him to escape the violence that had taken his life. But I didn’t. I just kept it at bay. And now. Now he has become what he was meant to be. A vampire. Even though he no longer takes blood, he has the powers, all of them from whatever father spawned him.”

She sniffed in a sob. “And maybe that’s my fault too. I meddle where I shouldn’t. I had this vain thought that I could, through my teachings, hold back the tide. That I could save him. But that’s just it. He saved me. My injuries were…vast. And because we wanted to avoid too much scrutiny, I didn’t let the doctors help me. But Maurice, with his abilities, sensed it from so far away and came to make it better. Not my poor little Mo anymore.”

Her fingers moved across the stone, gently sliding down through the space where she’d removed the plank. He couldn’t reach out to her, but his emotions warmed the surface.

You need to sleep. You’re exhausted.

She pulled the blanket with her to the floor, laying on her side, resting her head on the arm that still stretched to touch him through the gap, now at his ankle. He felt her eyelids slow their blinking and sag.

“I wish I knew how to help you. But my help doesn’t seem to be worth anything.”

Things come around, as they do for you. Things come back for you. Like me. Just sleep.

Her eyelids closed and he felt her breathing soften.

I will be here when you wake.

“I was right. Jasmine is better off without me.”

Her touch, her breath, the sound of her heart, the name evoked a memory that his fear had pushed away. Maybe if he succumbed to the memory, she might remember too.

When he’d come out of the coma, he’d been wracked with pain, bandages oozing, septic. Wild for days, he’d shunned the light, growled at his captors from the darkest corner of the room, nearly killed a guard trying to bring him water. At the height of it were the blood curdling howls he let loose deep in the night, trying to call his wolves to him for help.

Confused, he knew such pain, like his bones were breaking in on themselves. But it was the rest of his senses that were on fire. He could smell everything, hear everything and the cacophony paralyzed his thinking. Once in a while, a voice spoke a familiar word or piece of a word and he found he could push all the rest away but then the remainder was unintelligible garble and the frustration pent up again until the rage took over.

He barricaded himself in the darkest corner, his breath ragged as he hadn’t let anyone tend to him since he’d awoken. The only reason he’d remained in the room at all was the light beyond suddenly terrified him. When he’d first jumped out of his bed, startled by some commotion in the hallway, women’s voices arguing, he’d stepped into a ray of light from the window which burnt his skin.

Ever since then, he shook with fear of the sun. The fear, coupled with the pain, drove his rage-filled panic. But nothing spurred the rage more than the awareness that below his waist where most of the pain emanated from, he felt much of what should have been there was missing. His gnarled hands with their jagged nails tried to rip at his bandages, only causing more cuts and his festering wounds to ooze dark fluids.

He crouched in the corner, unable to process his surroundings, his humanity buckling under the weight of sensory onslaught without a ground. He felt paralyzed and an old helplessness threatened to consume him. He’d been imprisoned before, a feast for dark creatures, and it had only been the kindness of a fellow prisoner that had saved his sanity.

It was slipping again. His mind. The doubt was debilitating and the fear crippled anything he might do. He whimpered in the corner, panting like the wild wounded creature he’d become. He waited for someone to release him from this misery. He could not endure it again.

For a day and a night, he heard the scuffles of people, light-footed woman, guards with clinking weapons, others indiscernible. He didn’t sleep. His body seemed to be destroying itself and he retched black mucus as he now shook with fever. And everywhere, he began to smell it. Thick, rich, metallic tinged, and pumping, all around, like the walls were filled with it. He knew it was what he needed now to survive. Against every care and caution, against gentle words spoken through rusty dungeon bars, he wanted it.

Blood. The thought of it became the only thing he could manage. It was helping him focus through the barrage of senses. He could hear a heart pounding as a terrified guard took over the night watch, smell his sweat and judged the guard’s weight and height from the sound of it coursing through his veins. Thinking of it brought him a measure of peace, uneasy, ruthless, painful but peace. And he latched on to it as he would any other savior put before him.

As day broke and he shuddered watching the light grow in the room, he vowed, this next night, he would break through the door, he would get what he required, and he would leave, embracing whatever hellish existence this was. He would not whimper in the corner and beg for death as he once had.

But the morning brought its own promises. He sensed her before he smelled her, before he heard her voice, sharp, angry, rapid. She flowed into his consciousness, washing aside his thirst as if a flood of pristine water. The guards, two of them now, tensed at her recriminations only to graduate to abject panic as another female approached.

She’d been here before, older, heavier but taller, with a slow rolling gait of one that had given birth, or at least been with child often.  The two females argued loudly, and it was if he felt the older woman grab the young one by the arm, he sensed her heart thud, blood vessels breaking in her fleshy arm as a bruise started.

Before he realized what he was doing, he flew across the room and slammed into the heavy wooden door, sending a shockwave through the entire wall. The wood was oak and he recognized the natural deterrent for what it was. He stopped only long enough to listen to the symphony of beating hearts out in the hallway and the continued pressure over the young woman’s arm. He beat his body against the door again, drawing shouts and clattering of weapons in the hallway. Again and again and again until he sensed his shoulder joint cracking, skin shredded and splintered but felt the door giving way. A few more assaults and he’d be through.

In the meantime, the arm was suddenly flush with blood as if snatched away and he heard the young woman’s voice, now plaintive. There was a longish pause before the older woman snapped orders and he sensed the guards move away from the door. He stepped back, unsure of himself. He was panting terribly and his natural inclination as the door slowly creaked open was to huddle backward into the corner.

Through the door she came, encased in yards of glittering green fabric but it was the jewels adorning her headdress refracting the light that he put his hand up to ward against, speeding his retreat to the far wall. He growled menacingly, turning his head away. But he heard the extra footfalls following behind her and he bellowed in rage as he launched himself at the door, slamming it back shut behind her. A warbled scream came from the hallway, bones crunched by the force.

In the flurry of action, he’d gotten too close to the light and it burned his skin again, his shoulder which he’d also torn against the wood of the door. He howled and leaped over the bed to his dank burrow in the corner, his labored breathing echoing off the tile walls. He wailed, bent over, the smell of burnt offal permeating the room.

She held her breath. Her heart pounded. Perhaps she would be merciful and slit his throat, an angel of mercy. He waited for it. He wanted it.

Her tiny feet made the softest sound as she approached him. It was the sound of blood pouring through her that he fixated on now. This was his chance to get out, wasn’t it? She would offer little resistance really. He turned his head to her just as she kneeled down to him, her hand brushing at his shoulder. He bared his teeth and prepared to strike when she gasped.

Her voice came out in a wonder of familiar words, “The sun has healed you.”

He paused as much from understanding her words as recognition that she was right. She drew his tattered sleeve away from this skin.

“See?”

As her fingers smoothed over the grimy skin, he saw that what had been gashed from his assault on the door had knitted and was perfectly smooth, unmarred with anything but the griminess of his existence. It took him only a moment for his fangs to ease away as she used a bit of her clothing to brush aside the filth. Then she ripped the sleeve completely apart and he yelped, jumping back, cowering, sniffing at his shoulder.

“Oh golden one, I would never hurt you. But what have you done to yourself?” 

He tossed her an angry glare. As if this were his fault.

“So you do understand me.” She stood. “Good. Now is not the time to feel sorry for yourself and cower in corners.” She walked to the shuttered window and called out loudly in another tongue he did not understand. There was a scuffling sound and then a creaking sound as light suddenly exploded into the room, dancing in colors refracted from the intricate stained glass.

He shuddered and raised his arm to shield himself. After a moment, he raised his head to see that she had turned and backed herself in front of the window, shadowing him from the light. He lowered his arm slowly, eyes stinging from the light still all around him.

She beckoned him forward with her dainty hands. “Come to me, golden one. You have nothing to fear.”

His instincts caused him to shuffle back on his heels. But he felt her allure, felt the promise of her words, felt bonded to her in ways he couldn’t comprehend. The light around her was blinding but it drew him. He looked at his shoulder which no longer hurt as well as looked perfectly healed.

“Please, golden one, you must trust me. You do not deserve to wallow in the dank shadows, a victim of fear. You belong in the sun, master of earth and light.”

If her words didn’t inspire him, the kaleidoscope around her intrigued him. And there was sense in her words; he was done cowering, tired of being the victim. He wanted his own release, whatever that may be.

He stretched out his arm and she spread her arms to her sides and approached, making sure no light reached him from around her. She took his hand in hers as he stayed crouched, his head even with her chest, his body protected by her broad shadow. It was then he recognized her kind green eyes, though the rest of her face was hidden behind a diaphanous veil. He scowled trying to look at her mouth. His hand reached out and pulled the fabric down along her cheek.

Her cheeks dimpled and tilted her head away from his pawing. “Ah yes, I forgot. You would not have seen me with my veil. Allow me.” Her hand pulled the fabric aside and suddenly her whole face, radiant in its own right, was there for him to see. And he did recognize her. And somewhere, something pulsed in his chest that had been dead.

It thudded hard and he put a hand to his chest, looking down. What was this now?

Her hand had followed him. When he looked back up at her with a questioning look, he was pressing her hand to his chest.

Her cheeks turned pink. “Why, yes, I feel it. It is your heart and it longs to feel the sun.”

He stared at her, discerning that her words were at odds with her own emotions. He was certain it beat because she was near. But he was aware enough to know it was no lie she told him; just a truth that she did not know, one he had not shared. If she could end his pain, he promised silently he would share all he was with her.

She began to draw him forward and the panic reared again but while he shut his eyes against it, he let her pull his crouched form forward until they were just inside the window. He was panting by then, the effort to keep trusting her warring with instincts honed from necessity.

She used one hand under his arm to pull him up and as he stood, his head cleared her height and prismatic light covered his face. He gasped, teeth bared, kept his eyes clenched shut but couldn’t help the reflex that brought his hands up to his face. She stared up in awe as the skin across his face, even his hair began to steam, even smoke. He clenched his fists, willing himself to stillness. If he was meant to burn, then he would burn. If this was the end she was to bring him to, then he was ready to accept it but there was no need for her to follow him to the end.

He opened his eyes to slits only and pushed her aside, toward the fountain in the corner. She stumbled and landed in a heap of green sparkling silk on the floor. He regretted having to be so brusque but he could feel the roar building and as soon as she was clear, he took a breath and his entire head caught fire. He heard her gasp but he gritted his teeth and tore at the remnants of his ruined clothing. If skin brought fire, then he would let it consume him all, every cursed morsel that had been food for wolves, revenge upon thieves, and a shield for the woman who lay frozen at his feet.

“No, it is too much, too soon!”

He barely heard her words through scorched ears as she scrambled away from him. He stepped back, stretched to full height, held his arms out, and embraced the light as his entire body went up in flame. So beyond caring and fear was he that he no longer felt tension of the pain, just the release of every nerve, every fiber, even bone, melting into liquid fuel, reshaping, reforming much like from the earth of the forest. He finally understood what he was and why he’d carried so much fear around with him and he would’ve released it all if not for her being so close.

He could not, would not cause her harm. But the strain of keeping the fire contained within was beginning to crackle and pop and ooze out of him. Fingers clenched in his fists became like cinders and he imagined them falling to the floor like ash, the rest of him soon to follow.

But suddenly there were shouts and a great deluge showered him, steam exploded around him, forcing him to the floor. His head ricocheted off the floor and through the fog that followed, he felt her cold, wet fingers as he was suddenly covered in an emerald sea, blotting out the light until it remained only as a dull ache behind his eyelids.

In the deepest recesses of the house with the lemon tree in the garden, hands panted in elaborated henna designs slipped yet another key in the padlock hanging from the cell. When it didn’t fit, she methodically moved to the next one on the huge iron ring with keys that ranged from elaborate ivory handled ones to ones that resembled handcuff keys.

A shudder rang through the house and the girl with henna painted hands dropped her veil looking down the hallway, frozen in place. The house creaked more now that the sun was creeping into darker, older spaces in the house causing rooms that had once been shut to come to life.

She looked back at the lock, picking the next key to try. As she did, a voice sang in a thick Parisian accent.

“Au clair de la lune,
L’aimable Lubin;
Frappe chez la brune,
Elle répond soudain :
–Qui frappe de la sorte ?
Il dit à son tour :
–Ouvrez votre porte,
Pour le Dieu d’Amour. »

By the light of the moon
Likeable Lubin
Knocks on the brunette’s door.
She suddenly responds:
– Who’s knocking like that?
He then replies:
– Open your door
for the God of Love!

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