The Journal of Vincent Du Maurier Trilogy (Books 1, 2, 3) (33 page)

“How do you remember who you were?” I asked.

“The memory of my pain lives in me still, despite
the healed scars,” he said. “The relief I gained upon my redemption was so
great I can never forget it.” He smiled. “You see, when my maker found me, I
was a few breaths away from death and thought she was one of the Lord’s angels
come to bring me home.” Peter paused, as if still in the grips of that
emotional wave, and then smiled again. “My change was a happy one, Evelina,” he
said. “The vampire goddess was the most generous creature I’ve ever known and
when she kissed my forehead, the coolness of her touch was like a balm from the
Tree of Life. I begged her to take me.”

“Is she on the ship?”

His smile faded and I regretted my question. “Ah,”
he said. “I see what I’ve done. I led you to believe my maker is with us, but
unfortunately she’s not.”

I didn’t ask where she was, knowing he’d tell me
that part of his story if he wanted. “Do you remember your transformation?” I
asked, hoping to change the subject.

“Do you?” He asked in return. “Impossible, isn’t
it?” I conceded it was. “But you reminisce about your awakening, don’t you?”

I recalled the bliss of waking in Vincent’s arms.

“I see,” he said. “Yours is a good memory too. But
who actually remembers their birth? Can you recall swimming in your mother’s
womb or sliding out from between her legs into the frigid air?”

His questions made me think of my child, though her
birth seemed a lifetime ago.

“She is no longer yours,” he said. “But she is
healthy and well. The donors have taken a shine to her, and the Empress will
cherish her, despite her lack of indulgence.”

“Why do we forget our human life?”

“Some of us don’t,” he said. “I’m forced to remember
everything I lived before my awakening.”

“Why?”

“I think it’s because I have a penance due,” he
said. “God needs me to remember.” He smiled again. “Ah, Evelina,” he said. “I
see you know who I’m talking about. You’ve met the one true God to whom our
return is delayed.”

“You believe in heaven, even for vampires?”

“Why not?” He said. “I’m still a living creature,
and though I may seem immortal, my existence could end tomorrow just as it can
for any other freethinking agent. We live longer than most, but do you know how
many years Methuselah lived?”

“Was he a vampire?”

Peter reached out and touched my hand. “You are
pure, Evelina,” he said. “Don’t ever change.”

I’ll admit I liked Peter from the start. He was easy
to talk to and kind and reminded me of Elizabeth.

We didn’t stay in the compartment for long because
he soon realized I needed to feed. He led me back through the engine room, past
the solitaire player, and up the ladder to the deck above. I listened for
Vincent’s frequency, but couldn’t hear it despite the barrage of sounds. I only
struggled to distinguish between the signals for a moment, and then was able to
order them in rapid succession, counting and organizing them as if they each
had a place of their own. Soon I had a full orchestra playing in harmony, and
it was easy to add frequencies, as they popped into my head.

“That’s amazing,” Peter said, turning to me. “How do
you do that?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t really think about
it. It just sort of happens.”

“Can you read every signal onboard?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “How many vampires are
onboard?”

“Good point,” he said. “I have no idea.”

When we reached the line of vampires, waiting to
enter the den to feed, my orchestra fell apart and a chaos of sound erupted. I
tried to reorganize the band, but lost control over it, as the sounds ran wild
in my head. “Tune them out for now,” Peter said. “We’ll train you to ignore
them eventually.”

“How?”

“Ah,” he said. “We’ll have to work on it.”

The forty or so vampires, waiting in line, paid no
attention to us, as we passed them and headed straight to the front. “Shoshinshaga
yashinautame ni kokoniaru,” Peter said to the vampire guarding the entrance.

“Hido,” the guard said, as he stepped aside to let
us enter.

“You know Mandarin?” I whispered.

“It’s Japanese,” he said. “But, yes, I’m fluent in
all languages.”

One of the vampires at the front of the line
protested, but the guard hissed at him and he shrank back into his place.

“Are you ready?” Peter asked.

“Ready for wh—oh my.” I hadn’t expected what
happened next. When the strawberry blond came to my compartment, I didn’t
experience her color. Her smell was vibrant, and the sound of her pulse drew me
in, but her color was dull. She may as well have been a figure of black and
white, for the only red I saw was in her hair, a color that barely registered.
When I entered the den with Peter, however, I experienced true color. Like
nothing I’d seen before, the hue of each donor was electric and popped out at
me as if humans were made up of tiny sparks of color. Neon and vibrant shades
spun around the room, dancing to the rhythm of their pulsing hearts. Vincent
never explained color—it was always my smell, my taste, my skin that
enraptured him—oh, my beloved Vincent, what was my color …

“This is where you’ll need to concentrate, Evelina,”
Peter said. “Evelina?”

His voice was lost amidst the throbbing den. I heard
his dovelike coo, but his words escaped me. I let him lead me to a man who lay
on the daybed nearest us. He was shirtless, but all I saw was the sheen of his
olive skin, as if bronzed in the sun only moments ago. Peter addressed the man
and he moved toward me, taking me by the hand and sitting me beside him. I
don’t know whether I floated gracefully or dropped sloppily at his side since I
was perfectly lost in the colors. When the man tilted his head to the side and
offered me his neck, my points ripped my gums, sending a shot of terror through
me.

“Ow,” I said with barely a whisper.

Just as I’d been taught, I let my fangs find the
spot and prick the neon skin. When I felt the heat of the man’s blood in my
mouth, every color faded, except for the crimson draft—dark as
ink—which my lips summoned to my hardened body. I closed my eyes and
pictured my beloved’s face, as darkness consumed me.

I woke up from my stupor, craving the man’s blood.
Peter had brought me back to my compartment, though I don’t remember our walk
through the passageways. The last thing he said to me was, “Vincent insists
you—” Peter’s words faded and when my mind came alive again, I couldn’t
recall them. The blood high wore off eventually, but the desire raged on, as it
does now, leaving me hollow throughout. I’m hungry—starved—broken
again …

Entry 3

I was snatched from the shed and brought out to a
tree. The leader came for me and I barely had time to tuck the book and pencil
in the waist of my pants. Agile and cunning, he flew into the shed with two
henchmen at his side, commanding one of them to unlock my shackles. I inhaled
the foul-smelling breath, as the beast leaned close enough to twist off the
manacles. I wasn’t frightened—they couldn’t harm me. I calculated whether
it was wise to abuse the one closest, but decided against it when I realized
I’d have to battle all three at once. I wasn’t certain I could defeat them all.

“Time hang,” he said, hissing his garbled words. He
reeked of vomit and fish, and the black tar he spewed when he spoke hit the
slats of the shed. “Hang,” he said again.

His signal was low and I thought it reflected his
mood. He didn’t seem aggressive, despite the circumstances. I was still bait, I
was certain of it, and he could only get Vincent to come if I was alive. He was
too shrewd to waste his hostage.

I followed him out from the shed, where the bright
sky prodded my healing flesh. Until the sun sank, I’d suffer its fire. My fangs
dropped, as I bit my lip to bind my anger, bottling my rage, though I wanted to
tear into my captors’ necks and shred them limb from limb. I was wise to my
disadvantage, and when the fiend turned midstride and belted me across the
face, knocking me to the ground, I kissed the grass, as it scorched my cheek.

When I woke, the world was upside down. I hung by my
feet high up in a tree. The low drum of the bloodless howling in swarms greater
than I’d seen yet deadened the signals in the air. I called out, as I continued
to gain my senses and reap the punishment of a scorching sun. My flesh bubbled
on the homemade pyre, and I passed out before I could tell if the sound of the
sparrow was only in my head.

I came to in some kind of trench with nothing but
branches to shade me overhead. The sun was still up, but the darkness of the
natural canopy saved my skin from worsening. I’m alone again, held prisoner by
the daylight, but he’ll return before dusk to chain me down and feed me with
his acrid succor.

I’ve no idea when I fed last—the pain in my gut
is possibly worse than the burns.

…

Peter’s frequency alerted me to his arrival the
second time he came for me. I concentrated on it, as I followed it through the
ship’s passageways. The sound intensified, as he drew closer to my cabin, and
peaked before he knocked on the door. By my estimate, I’d tracked him all the
way from down in the bowels of the engine room, and I wanted to ask him if I
was on target, but he wasn’t alone.

“This is Zhi,” he said. “Zhi is going to show you a
few things.”

I recognized Zhi as the one who’d tossed me onto his
boat and ferried me to my doom. I was frightened of him then, but now that I
could hear his signal I was impervious to his sinister mien.

“Shingwen,” Zhi said. “Yungwo man ly cancan
shamanitz tso.”

“Zhi would like to bring you to the ring,” Peter
said. “It’s an honor for a novice to be shown this kind of attention, Evelina.
It’s a privilege to have a maker as powerful as yours.”

I didn’t quite see it that way but complied and
followed the ferryman to the place they call the ring. An entire section of the
ship was devoted to the vampires under Cixi’s command. No fool, my maker
squelched mutinous aspirations by allowing her vampires to indulge in their
brutal nature when they were called to do so, which, as it happened, was often.
The crew onboard was satiated with blood, but also brutality. In the depths of
their steerage quarters, out of sight from their Empress, the vampires engaged
in ritual battles, grueling duels between two unequally paired vampires. If the
weaker can fend off the stronger, he proves victorious.

As we approached steerage, I not only heard the
frequencies but also the foreign obscenities to which there seemed no end.
“They’re in the throes of a match now,” Peter said. “Stay close.”

I clung to Peter, as he followed Zhi and I followed
him. The dank and rusty underbelly of the ship couldn’t have been more averse
to the passageways above, but this pit of hell was like a scene from Dante’s
furnace. We entered the compartment on a mezzanine, looking down on the ring.
Vampires hung from the rafters and railings, catcalling and cursing at the two
in the pit.

Zhi motioned for me to look over the balcony where
we stood. “Jo hung kwy sho ishini shingwen,” he said.

“What did he say?” I turned to Peter, but he had
already moved to the railings, engrossed in the spectacle.

The crowd of vampires raved and hissed, and their
chaos rattled in my head. I had never been one for brutal violence, having
turned away when running from the bloodless, but the ring roused a newly
starved desire. I joined Peter at the rails and hung over to watch the match.

My concentration on the action helped me pull the
frequencies into one lone buzz, like the synchronized hum of hornets in a hive,
until the vampires’ growls and jeers, egging on the two warriors in the ring,
faded, and all I heard was the drone of the sizzling air. I leaned closer to
the deck below, letting the hum fall away to the background, and focused my
attention on the lanky vampire, struggling beneath the grip of the other. The
hulking mass, an ugly bearish figure, had the lanky one by the neck and
squeezed him like a lemon wedge. The big one’s signal sounded off with a lone
scream, like the whistle of a boiling kettle, but the signal of the lanky
vampire, caught in the grip of the other, drew me in. Like the peal of a solemn
drum, the vampire called to me, as though begging for help.

Mesmerized by the call, I watched him struggle to
free himself from the other. The bearish fiend laughed, as the crowd cheered
for him to finish off his victim. The lanky fellow reached for his opponent’s
chest without success, and his eyes gave a look of defeat so sincere that his
end seemed near. The bearish vampire, hungry for victory chants, held his other
arm out and baited the crowd like a maestro directing his orchestra’s tempo to
rise and swell. He grinned, which didn’t add to his charm since he wore a metal
grill that made all his teeth look like razor sharp fangs. Any reasoned
creature would’ve turned away from the brute.

The drum of the lanky vampire, having almost
succumbed to his fate, stepped up its appeal and thumped with fervor. I
couldn’t tune him out, and his wave of sound carried me away. Unaware of my
body’s flux, I floated over the balcony down into the fray of the fighting
vampires. Like in a dream, disoriented and out of control, I flew to the aid of
the one who called. I touched down on the deck below, right in the center of
the pit, dismissing the vibrations that shot through my stony legs with my slam
into the cold metal. Peter called to me but his voice was lost among the jeers
of the others. The crowd of vampires raged when they saw me in the pit and
their frequencies crashed into one another, making the drone of hornets sound
like a rush of static in both my ears. I dismissed them and concentrated on the
lone drumbeat that begged for me.