The Journal of Vincent Du Maurier Trilogy (Books 1, 2, 3) (10 page)

I raced along the side of the cabin,
following the trail of the man’s scent. When I got to the rear, he had
disappeared into an opening in the wall. With the taste of the woman’s blood
still fresh on my tongue, I slipped in through the hole after him. I not only
smelled him, but could see the large trace of heat his body gave off in the
dark. The opening had led us in to the small nook where Evelina slept.
Foolishly, the man grabbed the girl from the cot and pulled her to him. She
shrieked, woken with fright. He put a small pistol to her head and held her in
his arms as though she were his hostage. He could not see me in the
dark—and she barely saw him. When Evelina called my name, Elizabeth’s
anguish met her cry. “Nooo!” She screamed.

Elizabeth’s entrance startled the man and he
turned to face her, loosening his grip on Evelina. The girl dropped to the
floor and I lunged to catch her. Elizabeth dug her talons into the man’s neck,
causing him to fire off a shot. Luckily, I had the girl tucked in my arms and
the bullet bounced off my shoulder and hit a wooden dresser full of clothes.
When Elizabeth finished her drink, we exchanged bounties and she took Evelina
in her arms. I gorged on the man’s blood, tearing him open with my irons and
sucking every last pittance of serum from his veins. The satisfaction is indescribable,
greater than a scratch relieving an itch.

Our stay in the cabin was short-lived. The
bullet exploded in the drawer and set fire to the linens inside. As the
curtains rose up in flames, we stole into the night with the girl, feeling high
and satiated for the rest of the road.

20 October.
—
Byron and I
moved into the catacombs at LaDenza in the spring of 1901. He had only been
mine a short while, though he took to the vampiric lifestyle straightaway.

When I first found him in the foggy hillside
of Scotland, an assistant professor of biology at a small university north of
Glasgow, I was crossing his family’s estate. He was at home for a visit, and I
was only there by chance, having made an unexpected stop in the highlands. The
serendipity of our meeting is too perfect for the banality of words—and
so I will refrain, leaving the mysterious circumstances unexplained. Byron
never thought he would leave Scotland but changed his mind when he became
immortal—ah! trite and goading word. “I do not want to hunt my own
people,” he had said. “I cannot be satiated by the same blood that once coursed
through my veins.” His ancestors had lived in the highlands for centuries.

Byron fell in love with Italy, and so it was
here that we spent most of our time. We had been cruising through the
countryside, visiting each village as it came up on the road, when on a whim we
found the catacombs at LaDenza. They sat below an abandoned cemetery in a
pasture somewhere between one town and the next. Overgrown with ivy and moss,
the entrance carries the inscription “Memento Mori.”
Remember your mortality.

He laughed at the epigraph when he saw it,
insisting we had arrived.

“Arrived?” I asked.

“This is where we shall spend our days.” He
meant it literally since he could only venture out at night then. “Let us
explore,” he said. “Shall we?”

We went down into the depths of the wasted
chambers. The tombs were filled with the brave Latini soldiers who fought in
the early fourth century. The surroundings were all but dust and stone, though
inside some of the sarcophagi were hidden gems. We spent hours lurking in the
darkness, surrounded by the rich history of Roman death, not realizing until
the plague the tombs also housed more recent burials.

It did not take much to set up a place for
him to work. We cleaned out several of the large tombs making enough space for
his laboratory. We turned most of the catacombs into habitable living space but
still maintained a residence in the nearest village. We made sure to keep up
appearances with the locals. By day Byron did his research down in the tombs,
by night we explored the outside world—together.

“It is home,” Byron had said. And for over a
century, it was.

But one hundred and fifty years after we
moved into LaDenza, we were forced out. When the outbreak reached its peak,
those recently buried in the cemetery rose and wrangled the bloodless to our
nest. One afternoon, as Byron worked on a body, another attacked him. I heard
his yell echo through the chambers. I ran to his laboratory to find him
cornered behind his autopsy table. The bloodless that lay on the slab was
strapped down, but five or six frighteningly decayed corpses were upright and
closing in on him where he stood. They were mostly skeletal, deformed and
awkward, but strong, as they clawed at him. He had been pinned up against the
entryway by their efforts to escape. I grabbed the cattle prod that lay on the
counter and smashed the bones to pieces. The shards flew in all directions, the
broken bits still moving across the stone floor. I took hold of Byron and rose
with him to safety.

“My notes,” he cried. “My work.”

I promised him we would return, though we
never did. Things escalated overnight and the village that housed our apartment
was overrun with bloodless. When we fled LaDenza, I never thought I would
return again—at least not without him. As I stared at the moss covered
engraving this afternoon, I did not recall mortality, just Byron.

I had Elizabeth wait with the girl, so I
could go down into the depths alone to make sure the bloodless were gone. The
field was empty, though the route between the tombs and the vineyard had not
been. We passed several swarms, as we stole our way around them with the
stealth we had newly acquired from our feast. The blood of the two humans had
been an excellent source of vitality for Elizabeth and me, and for the moment,
we have enough strength to outrun, outwit and outlast anything.

The tombs were dark and empty and wet. A
flood had washed through and our history was drowned beneath several feet of
rainwater. I had hoped we could stay here, but the pools on the ground dampened
that idea. I hurried to get what I came for, not wanting to leave the other two
alone for longer than I had to.

In the depths of the catacombs, I found the
tomb where Byron had spent most of his life. I felt him there among his work,
his diagrams and notes pasted up on the walls, his elements and samples lining
the counters as though trapped in a still life. Our existence was captured
before me like a study on canvas. The bloodless he had strapped to his slab had
somehow freed itself from the manacles, and I wondered if its limbs had not
simply rotted away. I took a large duffel bag from the cabinet and headed to
the compartment in the back. The cryostat blood samples were housed there in a
small trough-shape container, its temperature gauge assuring me its battery had
been preserved. I placed the container in the bag and headed back through the
laboratory.

As I made my way to the entrance, I noticed
Byron’s lab coat hanging on the rack by the door. I went to it and ran my
fingers down the length of its arm. I recalled how comforting it was to do the
same when he was in it. A slight touch down his arm would always send him into
spells; he had been receptive to all of my affections once upon a time. When I
reached the pocket on the side of the lab coat, I touched the small journal
tucked inside. I stole the book from the pocket and slipped it into my own,
knowing it contained more of the mysteries my Byron had solved. I was so caught
up in my memories I did not hear the howl until it was too late and I felt the
pressure of a wolframlike clamp on my shoulder, though the teeth could not gain
a grip, slipping off my stone flesh.

The fiend came at me again and I whacked it
in the face with the duffel bag. It fell back into the water and then leapt up
as though the baptism reinvigorated it. I tried to grab it by the throat but
only got my hand caught in its open mouth. It snapped its teeth at me, and was
met with a jaw full of hard flesh. I used my foot to dislodge my hand from the
maw and sliced its throat with my talons. I turned around and made my escape.
But I flew through the water only to find myself confronted by several more
bloodless, waiting for me near the entrance. The water on the floor of the
catacombs had awakened them and they formed a swarm, frenzied by the blood
substitute in the duffel bag on my shoulder. They clawed their bony fingers and
snapped their jaws but I was unwilling to surrender the one thing for which I
had come. I renewed my efforts, slashing my talons and plowing my body into
their deformed figures, as I made my way to the stairs that would bring me to
the surface. I could not let them escape with me and so I called out for
Elizabeth, as I charged through the fray. “Ready the gate,” I said.

I hoped she was not under attack too, as I
flew up the steps of the catacombs. When I slipped through the portal, she was
ready at the gate and slammed it shut as soon as I escaped. I could hear the
bones of the bloodless get wracked, as they crashed against the large stone
slab rolled into place at the gate’s front.

“Well done.” The vampire’s voice took me by
surprise. It was not Elizabeth’s, but the low register of Rangu. The godlike
Hindu had caught the scent of the girl, coming upon the two of them, as I went
down into the catacombs. Luckily for me, Elizabeth was able to distract him
until I returned.

He is not a villainous vampire—as I
said, he believes he is a god incarnate. He was willing to hear my reasons for
not feeding on the girl. “Byron believes she’s the key to saving humanity,” he
said, sounding unconvinced.

“We both do,” I said. “She is our hope there
will be others.”

“And how do you plan on keeping her safe?” He
has lived through as many plagues as I and realizes how dire this one is in
comparison.

“I will stay by her side until I cannot any
longer,” I said.

He laughed with a deep, guttural chortle that
was both jovial and frightening. “This problem holds no solution,” he said.
“You are better off accepting our fate.”

“Which is what?” I asked.

“Our time has come to its end.”

I did not believe that, though I would not
argue with one who thought he was the harbinger of the final days. “Where is
Wallach?” I asked.

“Searching for his scion,” he said.

“Veronica?”

He nodded reluctantly. Rangu did not like
competition.

“Does he know where she is?” I asked.

“I think he’s looking somewhere about these
parts,” he said. “He doesn’t know she’s not long for this world.”

“How do you know?”

“None of us are.”

Rangu was like that, a prophet without
prophecy, just presumptions. He assumed Wallach’s punishment for leaving him
was never to see Veronica again.

“And Stephen?” I asked.

Because Wallach was Veronica’s maker, he
would sense her whereabouts, and if he was in the vicinity, it meant she and
Stephen were too. My hope that our paths would cross again was renewed.

“When did you last feed?” Rangu asked.

“We have had some good fortune in the
vineyards.”

“Hmm,” he muttered. “You look satisfied.” He
glanced over at Evelina and I readied myself. I could tell he itched for her,
but not if he felt brave enough to face the consequences. “Every now and then I
catch one up in my fangs too,” he said, concentrating on the girl. “I thought I
had stumbled upon a pretty prize when I found Byron’s little miracle here.” He
smiled at her with a closed mouth, trying to hide the fangs that had most
certainly dropped by now. “When Elizabeth told me she was waiting for you, I
was more than willing to wait for you too. I thought we might feast together.”

Despite his agitated state, Rangu looked
sullen. It had been a while since he fed.

“I have something that will help,” I said.
“Byron made a blood substi—”

He cut me off, insisting he would rather
starve than drink synthetic blood. He assured me he was in no position to stoop
to such extremes. “If it’s time for me to part with this body, I shall abide
Vishnu’s will.” His resignation made me think of Byron. “I’m sorry for your
companion,” he said, as if reading my mind.

“How did you know?”

“I always do.”

Rangu took my hand in his and I shuddered at
his fragile skin. Our hands remained clasped for a moment, and then he turned
to Elizabeth. “Be well bhagini,” he said. “May Vishnu watch over you.” He
leaned in and kissed her on the forehead, and then he faced Evelina, gazing at
her for a moment before speaking. “May I?” His voice had fallen into its
deepest and darkest register.

She glanced over at me but lifted her hand to
Rangu. He took it in his and turned it over. He brought the inside of her wrist
up to his nose, sniffing in deeply. He let the smell of her blood wash over
him, holding it in his nostrils as though savoring it for later. That is when I
realized my mistake. His composure shifted and I saw his mind turn. Who can
resist the smell of a fetus? His fangs erupted and he snapped open his jaw, but
before he could take his bite, I threw myself between teeth and skin. The look
I gave him was enough to set him straight, for he quickly retracted his fangs
and feigned a smile before backing away. “I see,” he said. “Now I see.”