The Journal of Vincent Du Maurier (Book 1) (12 page)

“Like bats?”

I hated to admit it, but it was similar to
the biological sonar used by certain animals.

“Bats send out a signal and listen for its
echo to locate objects and guide them in flight,” I said. “The signals we send
out are not in our control. We are stimulated by others and automatically emit
a call—a unique frequency undetectable to any but us.”

Mortals will never comprehend our nature,
despite an attempt to understand it. We are collective creatures, not solitary,
and though we do not seek one another out, we know when we are near.

“So you can tell when another vampire is
around?”

“More often than not,” I said.

“Not always?”

“As I said, some of us may be too weak to
emit.”

Though I am extremely skilled at controlling
my own frequency, something I did not bother to explain to the girl, on a few
occasions a vampire has caught me off guard. Some wield their nature with
greater precision than others.

“Is Veronica dead?”

“We cannot die,” I said. “We can only move into
a state of nonexistence.” It seems like semantics, but to me there is a grave
distinction. “Veronica may be gone, but she is not dead.”

She thought about the difference for a
moment. I could see her mind working it out. “Do you believe in heaven?” She
asked.

“Is one life on earth not enough for you?” My
question cut and her look of embarrassment shamed me. “Veronica cannot continue
to exist without proper nourishment.”

“She can’t survive without human blood,
right?”

I smiled, though I have no idea why. “Yes,” I
said. “None of us can.”

“Will you consume mine after the baby is
born?” She was stoic, disturbingly deadpan, and I hesitated before reassuring
her I would not. “And my baby’s blood?” She asked. “Will you consume it?”

The girl believes she is kept alive to restore
the vampiric race. It is as if she does not realize the human one hangs in the
balance too.

“Are you frightened of me?” I asked. She did
not flinch. “You should be,” I said. “I am not your friend.”

Her cheeks flushed, as if her blood wanted to
tempt me. “But you were human once too, weren’t you?”

“Many lifetimes ago—too many to recall,”
I said.

My lie was somewhat the truth—I no
longer entertain human sentiment, but I will never forget the mortal I was.

Later.
— My genesis is primal.
I am the first of our kind, though my mortal origin may be more compelling
since I am a legend. A great-grandson of Zeus, I was born to a warrior father
and nereid mother. My Thessalian name is Achilles and though my history has been
spun in epic tales, the truth is my mother is in fact only part human, a sea
goddess with a gift for shifting her shape. My father worshipped Thetis from
the moment he trapped her in his nets and her father Nereus offered her up to
him as a gift. When King Peleus married his water-born bride, she promised to
forego shifting while she remained his wife, but only if he gave her a son. She
was a mere woman for years, until his death, but I was born into my full
inheritance—I was a demigod.

My mother, known for her volatile moods,
probably an offshoot of her denying her true nature, began plotting shortly
after I was born. She was determined to make me immortal like her, though my
father could not understand—he was a brutish man. I was just a baby at
the time, but I recall my mother’s attempts as if I had witnessed them as an
observer, not the sufferer. Each time she botched my deification, she made me
more sacred.

Her last attempt had me submerged in the Aegean Sea.
Nereus was present, and my mother’s nereid sisters too. When she dunked me beneath
the foam and held me under,
I floated in the water as though in the
womb, hearing the beat of her heart pulsing in tandem with mine. Sealed in the
warmth of the liquid around me, as if ensconced in the vessel of my incubation,
I heard the melodies of the nereids’ lullabies, sung to me before I had hands
and feet with which to crawl. I smelled the sweet blood of my creator, the
substance on which I fed before I had fangs to subdue. I could see the portal
from where I came into being, the light that beckoned me forth and promised me
an eternal existence. I floated in the abyss forever, as I shaped my own creation,
watching the genes of my father envelop those of my mother, the nature of my
being taking root in the darkness of the immortal’s womb, shifting in form as
though becoming were an undecided and fickle state of existence. I knew the
love that embraced me, her love, the eternal mother who relinquished me to the
gods for the promise of immortality. Consumed by the maternal, devoured by the
creator greater than us all, I heeded to the profundity of life, the ephemeral
and fleeting essence of the flesh, the everlasting nature of the soul. I was
just about to see the One when a force yanked my infant body up and out of the
water. Peleus had found me, having come upon the shifters in their perverted
ceremony of induction.

“Thetis!” His voice shook
the rocks that surrounded the bay. Nereus and his daughters fled beneath the
waves, but my mother was pulled up and tossed onto the deck of my father’s
ship.

A shifter’s demeanor is
as malleable as her physical form and thus Thetis eventually pacified her
husband, making him forgo his anger.
King Peleus did not forget, however, and as soon as
I was old enough to speak, he sent me away to be raised by another. I did not
see my father again, for he died in the jaws of an Aegean fish. They say
nothing was left of him but the macerated stump of his right arm and the hand
that bore the great king’s Myrmidon signet ring, the only circlet he ever wore.
When I was stolen from my mother, she went into a toxic rage and pined away,
but within hours of Peleus’s death, she shifted and disappeared into the sea.

I saw Thetis again years later when the pinch of the
deadly arrow sent poison into my veins, but she fled as quickly as the life of
the Amazonian queen I killed at the battle of Ilium—ah, Penthesilea! I
still recall the ichor of that raging beauty—it was dried and stuck to my
sword when the arrow’s toxin bit into me. I remember the touch of her frizzy strands
against my cheek, as I sent my blade into the side of her neck. Her savage
blood sprung from her throat like the arched water of a fountain in Chios and she
dropped her spear to stifle the wound with her delicate fingers. The blood
gushed from between them, and I longed for it when I woke with a vampire’s
thirst.

When the poison reached my heart, Hades
rushed up to meet me. I do not remember the numbness, the acute sting of death,
but recall the sublimity of resurrection. Three days after they mourned for me
on the shores of Ilium, I rose from the ground and stood transfigured beneath the
light of the moon. My rugged helmet, blazoned shield and bronze sword were gone,
but I no longer needed them, for
I knew what I was—I
always had—though I could not embrace my true nature until I abandoned my
citizenry among the living.
From that first day of my rebirth, I saw the world in black and white until
I only saw red.

3 November.
— The taste of the
girl’s blood haunts me still, and I now know withdrawal’s burdensome ache, that
for which my beloved had warned me.

“If you consume her blood once,” he had said,
“you will never stop.”

“I have tasted pregnant women before,” I had said.
“Besides, she does not appeal to me.”

“This girl is different.”

“You find her that potent?” I had hoped my
voice would not betray my jealousy.

“Yes,” he had said. “Even for the strongest
of us.”

It had not gone unnoticed that he meant me
specifically.

“It is simply blood, my darling,” I had said.
“Have I not yet proved my resolve with our rations?”

“I am not questioning your ability to resist
her, Vincent.” Our conversation frustrated him.

“Then what are you questioning?”

“Her ability to deny you.”

“I did not realize you found me so
irresistible.”

“I am not joking,” he had said. “Your appeal
to humans is unlike anything I have ever seen.”

He referred to my superior state of
immortality. For the past hundred years or so, I have experienced a heightened
communion with my victims—my aura is now divine and draws them to me. No
other vampire enjoys this kind of magnetism. It is reserved for me, the
progenitor. My allure is irresistible, for its cardinal nature, but the
attraction is never sexual. More enlightened individuals will sense my gnosis,
and sometimes take me for the Deity. I had not explained this to my beloved,
for he was too inexperienced to understand and I could just barely comprehend
it myself. But also I had not wanted him to think it was the reason he desired
me so. I wanted him to believe he loved me freely.

“She is ignorant of my station, and too young,”
I had said.

“She may only be a child, Vincent, but she is
also alone and frightened and will cling to any olive branch you offer.”

4 November.
— The bloodless have
made their way up to us. The howls draw closer every hour. Something has
aroused them. We are quiet, living mostly in the dark, and Evelina sleeps
despite the time of day. I told her the baby makes her tired, but her wounds have
also taken their toll. I fear they may be infected since she is forced to cover
them with incense to mask the bloody scent and the oil irritates her lesions.

I have considered our options, but the thought
of leaving is unpleasant. My energy-infused high has long since faded and I
cannot do battle without another feeding. Our situation is bleak and—

Later.
— This evening in the
pitch black of the villa, as Evelina slept in the bedroom at the back, I caught
the whiff of another. The scent of fresh blood was unmistakable. I anticipated a
man’s arrival, as the pungent odor of ichor grew with each passing moment. When
he reached our door, he used a key to unlock it. I waited in the shadows for
his entrance.

I know you wonder if I hallucinated, if I
imagined him into being with my bloodstarved mind, but if you had been there
you would have been as surprised as I to see the young man fall through the entryway
of the villa, wielding a machete and carrying a large rucksack. He kicked the
door shut as fast as he had opened it, slamming it closed with his back. I
watched him, undetected in the dark, ready to pounce. The door thumped behind
him, as the bloodless clawed at him from the other side of it. Their howls rose
to a fevered pitch like a cacophony of crickets in thick springtime air. The
man’s expression was more determined than frightened, as he pushed his whole
body up against the door.

“Shit,” he mumbled.

Sweat dripped from his brow and I could
practically taste the salty stench of his skin on my tongue. He would not
appeal to me if I was in a position to choose, but like this he would do. I
waited a little longer to see what would happen since I did not think the door
would give way, though I was prepared to intervene if it did. When the howls
lulled, he smiled. “That’s it bastards,” he said. “Suck it in.”

When the cries of the bloodless ceased, I did
not think it was because they had dropped to the ground one by one like stones
falling on concrete. I assumed something drove them away, and the mystery
aroused me.

When all was silent outside, the labored
breathing of my guest drew my attention. The young man let his body slide down
the door until his bottom hit the floor. He tossed his head back with a sigh,
and rested it on his rucksack. He dropped his machete to his side, and reached over
his body with his free hand to pull his other arm up and across him. When his
head slumped to the side, I knew he was no longer conscious. I held off my
attack, though he would have been easy to take—his machete is no match
for my speed. His ability to skirt the bloodless intrigued me and thus granted
him a stay of execution. He had obviously used something to make his way
through the swarm and into the villa. There had been no gunshots or explosions,
and he had not arrived in a vehicle. It was as if he came through the swarm
with some kind of immunity.

After watching him in his stillness for several
minutes, I was surprised when he moved again. Finally revived, he slipped his good
arm from the strap of his rucksack and pulled the injured one out slowly. He
winced and cursed, as he freed himself from the bag. With one hand, he placed the
sack in front of him and threw his legs around it. He rifled through it,
pulling out a round canteen. He brought the jug to his mouth and dug his teeth
into the cap, turning it three times before yanking it off. He spat it from his
mouth and raised the jug to drink, downing it in one long swig then placing it
on the floor before reaching into the bag again. He rummaged through before
finding the item he sought.

When he pulled out the flashlight, I slid
behind the drapes. He threw his light on the room, spotlighting the ceiling,
furniture, floor and windows, but missing me entirely. When he left his light
on the bookcase in the corner of the room, I knew he searched for something
specific. He struggled to stand, his lame arm dangling at his side. He looked unsteady
but regained his balance when he took his first step to cross to the bookshelves.
Once there, he stuck the flashlight’s end in his mouth and sifted through the books.
“Shit,” he mumbled.