The Journal of Vincent Du Maurier Trilogy (Books 1, 2, 3) (44 page)

It didn’t surprise me there was a rank among the
humans. If I’d learned anything about my maker, it was that she ran a tight
ship.

Veor knocked on the door a second time, asking if
she was all right. “I’m fine,” she said. “I must go, Evelina. But I’ll send
Monica right away.”

When the girl showed up only moments later, I didn’t
doubt Muriel’s loyalty.

Monica’s skin was as rich as honey and her hair as
frizzy as a sponge. She smiled wide, showcasing the lovely gap between her two
front teeth. Veor, who stood a few paces back and refused to greet me a second
time, accompanied her.

“Evelina,” the girl said. “Muriel sent me with
this.”

I took the small package from her and thanked her
without ceremony and closed my door again.

Sealed in the solitude of my compartment, I
unwrapped the razor from the linen and pulled it out. It was a silver straight
edge with an opal handle. The blade was shiny and sharp. I filled the small
washbasin with cold water and then dropped my head over the pool and wet my
hair. I began midway and worked my way up, slicing into my strands with the
straight edge. I avoided looking in the broken mirror hanging above the basin.
If I relied on the cracked shards to guide me, they’d only slow me down. I used
my fingers instead, shearing off my strands one handful at a time. I ran my
fingers over my head until I’d reached the desired length, about an inch all
around. My hair straddled the basin and lay in heaps on the deck, but I didn’t
mourn it. I wouldn’t let it be used against me and though I’d always coveted my
girlish tresses, I was no longer a girl and the mane was unbefitting the
warrior I wanted to become.

The Empress was the first to admire my new cut. She
sent for me to visit her in her cabin, where she announced my challenge in the
ring.

“It suits you, Ei wai lina,” she said. She was happy
I’d learned Mandarin, and spoke rapidly, testing my new skill set—a test
which I passed with ease. “I didn’t doubt your ability,” she said. “Xing Fu’s
venom is potent.”

She was a completely changed vampire, sweet and
attentive to me. She sat me on the daybed with her and offered me a cigarette
from her case. I took it, not wanting to seem impolite, but never lit it and
left it poised between two fingers. When she noticed I wasn’t actually smoking
the stick, she took my hand and held it up to her mouth, lighting the cigarette
with one powerful pull on the filter. Once lit, she gestured for me to put it
in my mouth and waited while I took a drag. I didn’t choke on it, but suffered
the shock of the nicotine to my heart. The Empress laughed.

“First time?” She asked.

“I don’t smoke,” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “I can see that. You will,
however.”

I wasn’t sure about that but didn’t want to disrupt
what seemed like a pleasant visit. The Empress was in a fine mood, though I
knew that could change like the weather out at sea. My heart beat rapidly in my
chest, almost drumming on my ribs, as we smoked cigarettes together like a
couple of schoolgirls under the bleachers. I finished three before she
addressed me. The crystal ashtray on the side table was filled with butts and
ash. The Empress started a sixth when I politely refused a fourth.

“I have decided how you will prove your worth,” she
said. “How you will make Xing Fu proud.”

She stood up and paced the cabin with her hands
tucked in the sleeves of her robe and her cigarette holder poised in her taut
mouth.

“Do you know why I must be hard on you, Ei wai
lina?” She looked at me when she spoke, but only through the large mirror that
hung on the bulkhead across from the daybed. I shook my head to show her I
didn’t know. “Humph,” she said.

There was a pedestal in one corner of her
compartment that held a small ivory box. She went over to the box and pulled a
key from her sleeve to unlock it. Once she lifted the lid, the inside of the
box glowed. I thought I’d imagined the light coming from the box, but once she
pulled something out and closed it again, I definitely saw a light go out.

“Xing Fu, my maker,” she said, “gave me this box
when I was awakened to blood. It’s filled with treasures given over the years
for my diligence and loyalty. Today, I pass one of them on to you as a show of
my commitment.”

She turned to face me with something small clasped
in her hand. I couldn’t see the gift she wanted to bestow on me, but I didn’t
doubt it was opulent. She moved toward me, and I stayed perfectly still, though
I moved slightly back when she reached for my hand.

“Are you frightened?” She asked through clenched
teeth.

I renewed my effort to be brave and sat up taller on
the daybed, leaning toward her and holding my hand up for her. “Of course not,”
I said with a smile.

“Good,” she said. “Fear can be a motivator, but it
can also destroy every part of you and burn you like the sunlight. Fear is like
a disease that will eat away at your insides and corrupt you from within. You
cannot hide fear, nor can you run from it. If you invite fear in, it will never
leave. All fear must be destroyed, Ei wai lina. You cannot carry fear with you.
It’s too heavy and will suffocate you the first chance it gets.” She sounded
like she was reading from the strips of wisdom hidden in the folds of fortune
cookies.

She stared at me with her dragoness eyes and I
suppressed the fear that rumbled in my belly. I encouraged anger instead and
stoked its flames.

“Good,” she said again, as she caressed the back of
my hand with her claws. “You have fine fingers but your talons are slow to
come, and that, my novice, tells me that you’re still fearful.”

I braced inwardly, waiting for her to slap me across
the face with her talons just to show me what I was missing. But the abuse
didn’t come. Instead, she produced the gold signet ring she’d taken from the
ivory box and placed it on the index finger of my left hand.

“Perfect fit,” she said. “We have similar hands, you
and I.” She held up her hands to show me, her decorative claws covering several
of her fingers. I thought our hands looked nothing alike, but who was I to
break our bonding moment. If I’d learned anything so far, it was that I had to
befriend my maker, at least for the time being, until my beloved took me from
my hell and we began the life he’d promised me.

“What do you think of Vincent?” The Empress asked,
as if she could read my mind. I suddenly recalled Peter’s warning to be
diplomatic of thought, as well as speech, since he wasn’t sure if she had the
gift to read me.

“As you know, he saved my life,” I said.

“Did he really, though?” She smiled and stroked my
hand again. She hadn’t let it go since placing the ring on my finger. “Didn’t I
save you?”

“Yes,” I said. “Of course, you’ve given me a better
life than any I could’ve imagined.” I was disgusted by my faux flattery but
played the required role. I would be the devoted progeny, the exemplary novice,
the loyal subject, anything to get away unscathed.

The Empress studied my face, having pulled her gaze
away from the signet ring. “I really do like this look for you,” she said. “It
suits your round face better, makes you look more fierce, less girlish.” She
reached out and drew her finger across my hairline, and down to my chin. “You
are still beautiful, though,” she said. “What does Vincent think?”

He hadn’t seen it yet, and I told her so.

“We’ll have to ask him when he arrives, then,” she
said. “Another cigarette?”

I shook my head and thanked her.

“I think you should,” she said, and pulled the case
from her sleeve, clicking it open and sticking it in my face before I had the
chance to refuse a second time. I took the cigarette but before I could bring
it to my mouth, she leaned in, her taut lips red and dry, offering to light it
for me. That’s when I noticed her tongue, which was fittingly pointed like a
dragon’s. She lit the stick and I smoked my fifth cigarette within minutes. I
hated the taste and couldn’t wait to wash it away with Muriel’s blood.

“So you’ll tell him, then?” She asked.

“Tell him?” I was confused. The Empress would jump
from thought to thought as seamlessly as she’d jumped from bulkhead to bulkhead
during her attack on me. She was difficult to follow in conversation and
battle.

“You’ll tell Vincent that you’re grateful I saved
your life,” she said. “He should know the truth. I’m sure he still believes you
are his in some way. But we should clear that up when he comes.”

She tested me to see if I’d have the courage to tell
him I wasn’t his. I disliked the Empress more than ever, but would never show
her, let alone think it. I smiled at her and assured her I would clear that up
the minute I saw him.

“He should be here promptly,” she said. “He told
Youlan he’d finish feeding and come at once.”

I pictured Vincent feeding on Gia. I knew Muriel
would be too depleted from feeding me, and he’d be sucking on the neck of the
other
donor. My fangs dropped, though I
held my jaw still as stone. Empress Cixi smiled when she noticed my reaction.
It had been subtle, but I couldn’t hide it. She held her cigarette case open
and forced me to take another.

I got up from the daybed once she’d lit it for me,
and I paced the deck, as I inhaled the whole cigarette with one ambitious drag.
The sooner I was done with it, the better. I stamped the butt out in the
crystal ashtray, relieved she didn’t offer me another.

“Do you remember your human life?” She asked.

I felt entranced, as if lightheaded from all the
smoke. She waved her hand and assured me the dizziness would pass.

“I recall some things,” I said. “But they seem
almost like a dream.”

“Do you know Vincent has recorded much of your time
together in a book he keeps with him?”

She was referring to his journal—I didn’t know
our life was recorded in its pages. It didn’t occur to me she could be lying
and that she’d never seen the contents of his notebook. I assumed he carried it
on him.

“I know he keeps a journal,” I said. “But I’ve never
read it.”

“You should,” she said. “It’s gripping.” She lied
with ease, that grand manipulator. “I want you to get it for me,” she said. “I
want you to know what he thinks of you.”

“If you’ve read it,” I said, “why don’t you just
tell me.”

That didn’t sit well with the Empress and she got up
from the daybed with fiery eyes, as though poised to wipe the impudence from my
lips, with fingers flexed and hardened talons. The cigarette dangling from her
mouth tilted on the slightest angle when her lips parted. Balanced on the
precipice between kindness and wrath, my maker drew in a breath and smiled, her
hands releasing their tension, her eyes softening. “You really should read it
for yourself, Ei wai lina.” There was a knock on the door and before she gave
the visitor leave to enter, she whispered, “Think on it.”

I expected my beloved to come into the cabin, and my
nerves rattled my core, as I brought my hand up to cover my head. I suddenly
felt self-conscious of my haircut. But it was a false alarm, for a young boy,
perhaps only ten, came in, wearing a traditional Chinese suit, black silk with
a green dragon on the left pectoral. He was a cute boy with a blond crew cut,
and his colors were more magnificent than Hal’s. His skin gave off an electric
blue color like the morphos I’d seen in my childhood nature books. The shade of
blue shifted, as though undecided on which electric tint to settle.

The Empress addressed the boy in a language I’d not
learned yet, but it sounded Scandinavian, though it could’ve been Portuguese.
The two exchanged words before the young boy sat on the daybed and opened his
shirt. Despite the beautiful colors of his skin, I was put off by his age. He
seemed young—too young—to be a donor.

“Ei wai lina,” she said. “Please.” She gestured for
me to sit beside the boy, and taste his blood. “Jörvi is a new addition, but
he’s rather tasty.”

Jörvi, like Hal, also seemed one-dimensional,
robotic, as he awaited my bite. He was unaffected by his situation and, for a
child, I found him self-possessed. I would’ve liked to refuse but something
told me that if I did, I’d suffer the wrath of my maker. She’d been on her best
behavior until then, despite her struggle to do so, and I didn’t want to see
that change, especially since Vincent was coming. I’d be doubly humiliated if
he came in as she batted me around the cabin for refusing her offering.

I sat beside Jörvi and leaned into him. When my
fangs dropped, he didn’t flinch or draw back but moved a bit closer. My teeth
found the vein and pierced the boy’s delicate skin. His blood was extra sweet
and I indulged myself, drinking him long past the point I should’ve, though he
never wilted to indicate my stopping. I only pulled my fangs from the boy when
I felt a yank on my shoulder. Lost in the pleasure of the sweet blood, I didn’t
notice Vincent enter. He stood over me with a scowl and I quickly wiped Jörvi’s
blood from my lips. A glance around the cabin alerted me to my abandonment. The
Empress had left me while I fed.

“She will be back,” Vincent said. “Get up.”