The Journal of Vincent Du Maurier Trilogy (Books 1, 2, 3) (51 page)

Entry 9

I left the trench and wandered out into the
wilderness. I wound my way down from the rocks, back out to the border of the
hills. I wanted so desperately to recognize my location, anything that would
lead me back to Vincent, but I saw nothing familiar. I caught the occasional
howl of a swarm of bloodless on the wind, though they were far from me. I
wasn’t afraid of them like I once was, and would gladly face a pack of them if
it would take me home—to Vincent.

Skulking around the mounds, I let my nose guide me,
for it was the only thing worth following. I smelled the foliage first, the
reek of wetted moss and dirt. The ground was alive and open, begging me to
taste it. Its scent is similar to blood—that’s why I desire to crawl into
the muddy earth. I scoured the brush for small game, sifting quietly through
the hills until I located a series of small holes in one. I am set up here,
parked outside the hole, awaiting the stoat’s second departure. When the
weaselly creature poked its head out before, I wasn’t swift enough to grab it.
I wait, as I write—I wait—I write—I wait—I write … I
must find cover before sunrise—

…

I heard a shuffle behind me, thinking it was my
abductor come back for me, but it was a nose-horned viper making off with a
field mouse. The viper’s venom is venomous—the viper’s venom is
venomous—the viper’s venom is venomous—vipers venom
venomous—venomoooooose …

…

I caught the snake, as it choked on the lump of
mouse in its throat. When I held the snake’s mouth open, and touched the tip of
its fang with my talon, the serpent went limp, its forked tongue rolling back
into its throat. It emitted its venomous venom, despite its paralysis, but I
won and bit off its head … the viper’s venom is venomous no more …

…

I was relieved when I picked up Peter’s signal,
following it from the den down to my cell, and even more grateful to see him
with a donor.

“You need to recover from your injuries,” he said.
“But you are not to indulge, so he can’t stay long.”

“What about Muriel?” I asked.

Peter shook his head, as if to say bringing her was
out of the question. “Your maker has claimed this one as your donor. She
insists you drink his blood.”

Jörvi offered me his arm through the bars of my cage
and my eyes ate up his neon skin before slurping his thick sweet liquid. My
injuries had almost healed at the sight of him, but the drink made me high and
I forgot all my woes. When I was finished, the boy stepped away from Peter, and
a guard near the entrance led him out. I could barely see the prison, the tombs
as my maker called them, from my slender cell, only triple my size. The deck of
the slim passageway, more like a crawl space, leading to me was wet.

“Get me out of here,” I said to Peter, kicking the
bars with my foot.

“Don’t make sudden movements,” he said. “Your choker
is tight enough. The contraption’s old, so it’s probably unreliable. They’ve
fitted it so the blade will release if your hands are freed, but you never
know. It could be faulty. No sudden movements.”

“Help me.” My voice sounded whiny and Jörvi’s blood
hardened in my stomach.

“I can’t stay, Evelina,” he said. “But know that
Vincent is working to have you freed.”

“He’s angry with me—”

“Don’t be foolish,” he said. “Everything he does is
for you.”

“He wasn’t in the ring—he wasn’t with me,” I
said. “She could’ve ripped out my heart but he didn’t come to see—”

“Stop it,” he said. “You know little of the truth,
blind as you are to the bigger picture.”

“Then tell me,” I said.

Peter sighed. “I can’t.”

I leaned my forehead against the bars and Peter
touched my cheek. His signal hummed softly. “Please send Vincent,” I said,
biting my lip, trying to regain some sense of myself, believing I was stronger
than my whiny voice allowed.

“You are strong,” Peter said. “You’re also more
brave than you know. You’ve conquered fear. Don’t forget that. You’ve defeated
a vampire who should’ve finished you. You were never meant to leave that ring,
Evelina.”

“What?” The question barely squeezed through my taut
mouth.

“Mindiss was far stronger. You were set up for
failure,” he said.

He could make out my confusion without reading my
mind.

“I think the Empress chose Mindiss for her venerable
nature—as I said, she thought she was supernatural and wouldn’t have
hesitated to finish you off,” he said. “Remember the match we witnessed?
Mindiss destroyed that vampire, once an ally, simply because she cursed her
gods.”

I clenched my fists behind my back and the
guillotine tightened, almost to the point of choking me. When I relaxed my
hands again, the choke didn’t abate.

Peter looked down at my feet and said, “The Empress
won’t admit it. It’s unnatural for a maker to want to destroy her progeny,
though abandonment is another thing entirely.”

I wondered why Vincent hadn’t just killed her for
me.

“Mindiss or your maker?” He asked, reading my mind.

“Both,” I said.

“You must win your own battles,” he said. “It’s a
rite of passage, important for you to gain a reputation as your maker’s
progeny. You remain vulnerable to the others if you can’t defend yourself.”

I thought of my immortality. I had seen Elizabeth,
Jean, Byron all perish, but I hadn’t questioned their deaths. “I thought we
lived forever.”

Peter smiled. “Ah, yes, well some of us like to
think so. But a vampire can truly only conquer old age, not death. For comfort,
think on God who knows the number of each hair on your head—He is greedy
to have you back—He must have a way to summon the pure ones, like you,
when it is your time.”

I didn’t understand what he meant by my purity since
I’d killed a living creature in cold blood only moments ago, and an innocent
human girl moments before that.

“I can’t speak to the donor’s innocence,” he said.
“But the Fangool deserves no sympathy. She didn’t know the one true God.
Fraudulent like a Catholic saint, she was nothing but a witch, a devil
worshipper who’s paid for her blasphemous service—” Peter stopped and
looked in the direction of the entrance, as though he’d heard something, and
said, “You remain pure.”

“But I don’t—”

“I can’t explain now,” he said, turning back to look
at me. He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a small notebook and
said, “Take this. It’s from Vincent. He wants you to have it. He said you’d
know what it was for.” He pulled me toward him and tucked it beneath the waist
of my pants. “I have to go, but remember not to move. Don’t try to break the
clamps despite your strength. The blade will surely cut off your head.” He
smiled with the genuine smile that warmed me. “Turn for me,” he said. “Let me
see your hands.” I obeyed and he reached through the bars and held my hands
with his, touching my signet ring and caressing it with his fingers. He read
all of my thoughts with one stroke, and my fear was abated. When I turned to
look at him again, I smiled. With Peter as an ally, I would be all right. I
knew it—I still do.

“I know,” he said. “Me too.”

He stepped away and made for the exit, but then
stopped again, turning back to me. “Listen,” he said. “No matter what happens,
don’t believe what any of them say—when they come for you. Don’t listen
to them.”

“Who?” I asked.

“The Empress will send for you, but don’t trust the
one who comes,” he said. “He’s going to lie to you, to tell you you’re going to
be hung out to dry.”

“What does—”

“Don’t believe it,” he said. “Nothing’s going to
happen to you. We won’t let it.” I found some comfort in his words, in his
royal
we
. I guessed he meant Vincent
and himself and perhaps Huitzilli too. “Don’t fight it when he comes, whoever
he is. Just trust in us.”

“How will I get out?” My faint voice reminded me of
the frightened girl who had once begged her savior to make her as strong as
him—Evie Caro, the weak.

“Trust in your fate—God has you in his hands,
Evelina,” he said. “I’ve prayed for you and he’ll not let you come to harm.
Believe it.” He reached through the bars and caressed my cheek again with his
open hand. His touch made my fangs drop and he smiled. “I wish,” he said. “I
wish you weren’t made for another.” With that, Peter slipped away and I haven’t
seen him since. I don’t know what has become of him, or any of them, but I
still hope …

Entry 10

As I sat on the metal planks of Empress Cixi’s ship,
in my small cell, waiting to be freed, a clash of sounds, unlike anything I’d
heard until then, rocked the bulkheads around me. Like metal hammered on an
anvil, the hull vibrated and rumbled, as water gushed through the narrow
passageway, making a stream across the leaky deck. At first I thought we’d been
rocked by an earthquake, but the shaking didn’t cease, and once I heard the
howls in the distance, I knew what it was. The bloodless had come and were
climbing the outer walls of the ship to get to the humans inside. The vampires’
shouts were unmistakable now, as the roar of chaos topside reached me all the
way down in the tombs.

Agitated in my prison, I was helpless, subjected to
an audible account of the attack until my release finally came in the midst of
the skirmish.

“Ozi buna,” the vampire said. “Ava dara tasosit.”

I recognized his horrid face with its long nose and
little teeth, his broken voice, the dry cadence of a language only he could
speak.

“Bine sate vada dino,” he said. “Tie skimbat.”

He slipped a key into the lock of my cell and swung
the door open, stepping forward to release my deathtrap. With ease, he snapped
the wrist manacles and removed the neck brace, getting close enough for me to
smell the rotten meat between his teeth, fur and tendons from his fetid animal
feast. I turned away and he was offended, for he sneered at me and said, “Nu
mul tumess.”

He slapped a bracelet around my wrist tied to a
chain linked to a similar clamp on his. He led me out of the tombs and up to
steerage, pulling me along with his leash. The passageways were abandoned, and
the buzzing of distant frequencies told me all hands were up on deck. Through
the engine room, up the ladderlike steps, down another passageway, we made our
way to the ship’s fore. Once there, we traveled up several more sets of steps
until we approached the top deck. I could hear the calls, as the vampires
warded off the onslaught. He forced me up on deck from a small hatch at the
ship’s bow, where I felt the sun’s heat before we reached the opening. When my
captor opened the hatch to greet the sun shining directly above us, I stopped and
tucked myself into his shadow. He looked back at me and sneered. “Nuva arda de
multa timp,” he said, yanking on the leash to hoist me up.

The sun blinded me, and I barely witnessed the fray,
let alone my hero amidst the ship’s madness. All sound dissolved into one when
the pain of my open-air pyre struck me. I’ve said that we don’t experience pain
as humans do since our suffering is dull, if short-lived. But the pain of my
premature flesh in the sunlight is ineffable—I swear I know the suffering
of Dante’s souls in the rivers of boiling blood.

My hardness tightened around me, and then cracked
into a million pieces, as the organs inside my body seemed to shrivel up,
taking my blood high with them. My bones felt crystallized, like they cracked
with each step, and when my body finally surrendered to the force of gravity, I
seemed to float up as I sailed through the burning air. A high-pitched squeal
severed my head, as the rays of the noon sun embraced me, reinforcing my
torture in the melted skin of my new body.

Some relief came when I hit the water and sunk down
to the bottom of the bay. I opened my mouth and sucked in the coldness,
desperate to put out the fire inside me. My abductor dragged me through algae
and seaweed, as I lay on my back with the torture. He walked quickly across the
bottom of the sea, but every now and then he’d pull me through a beam of
sunlight. At some point, I picked up the sparrow’s warble and concentrated on
it alone, thinking my rescue was afoot. But Vincent never caught up to us, and
when my abductor pulled me out of the water on the shore, the sunlight struck
me again and robbed me of the coldness I’d consumed underwater. Blinded still,
I stumbled as he towed me along behind him, only gaining relief when he pulled
me into the shade.

“Apropa colo,” he said, yanking on the leash. “Vefi
bine curand.”

My skin sizzled when he threw a hooded cloak over
me, recoiling from the weight of the wool. I lost consciousness then, for I
don’t remember feeding on his spoils, though I suffered the aftertaste of a
pika he’d plucked from the brush.

I was lost by the time we reached the shed, unable
to tag the landmarks or distinguish east from west, north from south.