The Journal of Vincent Du Maurier Trilogy (Books 1, 2, 3) (6 page)

He was shocked—too shocked. He looked
at me in such a way that I wondered if he knew it was even possible. Perhaps
the child was not his after all. “Maybe your friend took liberties with the
girl,” I said.

He scratched his head with his free arm.
“That sonofabitch!”

“She seems to think you are the father though,”
I said.

“She—what—I …” His flushed
expression evinced his guilt. He sat down on the bed and put his head in his
free hand. “Oh my God.”

“He will not help you,” I said. “But I can.”

He resigned himself to staying, knowing he
could not escape with her in that condition.

“Do you know what happened to your friend
Salvatore?” I asked.

“He—he—he,” he stammered.

“Yes,” I said. “He what?”

“The creepers—they attacked him
in—the—the—the trattoria.”

“I see,” I said. “Do you need anything,
Marco?” I wanted him to think our intentions were good and that we were
concerned for their well-being—which we were, essentially.

“Uh,” he said. “No, thank you.” He cleared
his throat. “But can I see Evie?”

“Not now,” I said. “She rests most of the
day.” I turned to go but he stopped me.

“What’s your name?”

I offered him the most troubling smile, fangs
and all, and extended my hand to shake his. “Vincent Du Maurier.”

He looked down at the floor, as his hand shot
out to meet mine. He trembled when we touched. “Will there be much more blood
drawn?”

He knew the answer, but I humored him. “As
much as we need,” I said.

I flew out of the room before he registered
the door open and close again, and passed Jean in the hall with his readied
syringe, as I headed back to my chamber.

Later.
— I pored over Byron’s
most recent notes. Nothing in them made much sense. I found in the midst of
them, however, some kind of chart he had drawn. It had arrows and lines
pointing away from one central source—Evelina. She liked to be called Evie,
but he was a stickler for formalities. She was at the heart of most of his
diagrams. He had outlined the process of delivery very nicely for me,
delegating each of us a task when the baby comes. He had given me a list of
things she would need between now and then, and even drew up a list of things
the baby would have to have as soon as it was born. On almost every page, he
had jotted in the margins:
We must keep
her alive!
She must not be tasted
,
and I assumed he had intended the directives for both the bloodless and us.

4 October.
— Before we headed out
to hunt for human food, we fed on our ration of Marco’s blood—a meager
portion, I might add, that is now used up. We needed to find sustenance for
ourselves, as much as we needed food for the humans. We planned on going to an
area of town we had stayed away from for some time, an antiquated section that
housed spice markets and butcher shops, apothecaries and fruit stands. I
thought if there was food tucked away somewhere, it could be in that area since
the market had plenty of underground nooks and storage spaces. It was easy
enough to get to, as we flew through the fields practically unnoticed. Only one
straggler crossed our path, but we traveled so fast Stephen knocked him over,
as we passed him by.

The entrance to the market was once barred
but now the gates were toppled over, trampled by a swarm no doubt. I was
surprised to see the main street marked with piles of ash, as if a fire had
ravaged the place and burned everything in its path.

“Who could’ve done this?” Veronica asked.

“Must have been humans, right?” Stephen said.

They both hoped we would stumble on some poor
fools hiding out, as I had until then, but the smell of burned flesh was thick
and my optimism was swept up in it. I motioned for the two to stay close, as we
went through the market stand by stand. The spice shelf whose sweet aroma once
wafted through the streets was now in embers; its herbs and dried fruits turned
to char. The rotting apple stands and lettuce carts were toppled over and burned,
while singed rugs and baskets clung to rusted hooks from the awnings, just
barely buoyed up in midair. The scene was a postcard from a city struck by the
ash of a volcanic eruption, the scorched wares a shadow of a world we had
known.

“It smolders still,” Stephen said. “They may
be here, whoever did this.”

It had been set to flame not all that long
ago, though I believed no human had done it despite Stephen’s hoping so. “Not
they,” I said. “He.”

“Who?” Veronica asked.

“Vlad is here,” I said.

The ruler of the House of Dracul had arrived,
no doubt to rob and pilfer what blood was left on our coast. I knew he would
eventually pay us a visit, I had just thought it would be under better
circumstances. Jean is one of Vlad’s descendants; made from the venom of the
famed impaler, he is his first progeny. He grew dispirited with the Romanian
boar and defected soon after we met in France. I taught Jean that the life of
the vampire need not be as base and brutal as the one Vlad had offered him and
he embraced my customs, striving to be a cultivated creature like me. Though
most vampires are bound to the one for whom their transfiguration is owed, they
are free beings nevertheless. When Jean decided to leave his boorish maker,
Vlad could do nothing but give his progeny his blessing, if only reluctantly.
The originator’s venomline, however, will always retain some sway, and so since
Vlad made Jean and Jean made Maxine and Maxine made Elizabeth, he has influence
over all three of my clan members. The head of the House of Dracul has never
recovered from the loss of his oldest progeny and since we are all desperate
for blood now, he seeks out his descendants both for comfort and as his army to
overtake the deserted world.

I had sensed his coming for days, though I
tucked my suspicions aside to mourn the loss of my beloved. It was clear at the
market that I could avoid him no longer since he would come for Jean, and
perhaps the girl. “We have to go,” I said.

“Is he dangerous?” Veronica asked.

“He could be if he realizes we have fresh
blood,” I said.

Neither of them knew how savage Vlad could be
or the threat his presence posed to our captives, though I did not doubt Jean
and Maxine had told them stories. Reports of Vlad’s conduct perpetuated his
frightening reputation for centuries; he came from a long line of agitators.
During the Black Death, in fact, an ancestor of the Houses of Dracul and
Bazaraab decelerated the recovery of the masses. Toktomer was a banished prince
of the Mongol Empire and became a vampire out of sheer necessity, for he saw it
as his only way to rule. I was not aware of his turning until later, when its
myth spread far and wide among us. A female vampire bit him, a slave he had
captured. He had been at war for years, leading his army as a Mongolian exile
in Crimea, and as the story goes, he found a girl wandering along the pass one
evening near his camp. She was only eight or nine, but seduced him still, and
he took her in, calling her his child bride, teaching her to fight alongside
him. She had been one of mine for a thousand years, and fed on his troops one
by one until he realized something was amiss.

One night, he left his tent to find his child
bride, who had disappeared in the shadows. He told his men of his search and
went on foot into the wilderness, lost amidst the darkness of a starless sky.
He still had not returned by the following morning, but two nights later, in
the light of the full moon, he came back to his troops, changed and more
vicious and as white as a ghost. He resisted the blood of his men, for he
needed them for battle, but his enemies saw no mercy. And though no one knows
what happened to him in the wilderness, some believe he saw his child bride
feed on another and went mad, forcing her to turn him out of jealousy. That he
would become unconquerable was an afterthought. The myth claims that once he
was transfigured he destroyed his child bride since she was never seen again.
But this I know to be a lie for reasons not worth explaining here.

Some claim that the high numbers of death
during the black plague can be attributed to Toktomer’s family of vampires. He
had rallied the Houses of Dracul and Bazaraab to feast on the blood of the
healthy in droves, as they ransacked towns and villages, fields and tracks
across Europe, targeting children and men, intending to amass greater power.
Many of us steered clear of their destructive path, though our livelihood was
never threatened since it was impossible for them to consume our entire source
of sustenance. In the end, man rose strong to outlive that plague, and though
the record books estimate the Black Death wiped out a third of the population,
I presume Toktomer and the Houses of Dracul and Bazaraab killed at least a
quarter of those.

We left the smell of the burned flesh and stole
through the fields where the scent of the bloodless masked all others. “Wait,”
Veronica said. “I hear something.”

We turned our ears to the wind to better hear
the faint hum of frequency that rippled on the air. I recognized the tune of
the impaler and assumed he too would be warned of our approach. We doubled our
pace and when we reached the cathedral, I sent Stephen and Veronica down
through the passageway to safety. “I won’t leave you,” Stephen said.

“You must lock the hatch,” I said. “I will be
in soon.”

“How?”

“I will find another way.” I had no time to
dispute and pushed him down into the opening. I sealed the door myself from the
outside and waited to hear him lock it. From there, I crept the quarter mile to
the rear of the cathedral. The swarms were gone but a shadowy figure was
perched on the roof and disappeared when I approached. Vlad’s frequency
vibrated with a dull hum until it faded and I was alone again.

As I clung to the brick of the rear wall, I
made my way to the east side of the cathedral, peeking around the corner to
find an empty yard. Not even one lone bloodless wandered past the walls. I
clawed my way along the side, beneath the stained glass windows, to the front
courtyard, where again I spied nothing. But the air was no longer silent, for
the low rumble of feeding bloodless echoed in the darkness. As I rounded the
corner, I anticipated the swarm, one much greater than I had ever seen,
feasting on a carcass. The flesh hypnotized them, as they tore it apart and
pulverized everything including the bones. I did not need to see what caused
their frenzy, for I knew it was the newly drained body of Marco.

Later.
— Jean was forced to
give up Marco when Vlad found his way into the cathedral. “Je n’ai rien pu
faire,” he said.

“And the girl?”

“À l’abri.”

She was safe. He sent Vlad on his way,
satisfied with the man. Jean heard the frequency too, knowing his maker was
here. For several nights, he had anticipated his arrival, sensing its coming as
I had. “I would not have left if you had confirmed my suspicions,” I said.

“Forgive me,” he said. “I zought zat I could
’andle ’im on my own. It was more important for you to go.”

“Are you sure he is gone?”

“’E took all zat ’e zought we ’ad.”

“Our only donor,” I said.

Vlad had come in through a hatch in one of
the spires on the roof. We had left them unlocked, thinking the bloodless could
never climb up. He came alone, telling Jean he had witnessed most of his clan
succumb to blood starvation. Toktomer was gone, he said. Like Byron, he had
given in to malnutrition, and given up. Often the case with vampires who
consumed gluttonously, they suffered greatest with a scarcity of blood. Jean
pitied Vlad, waning as he was under the fast. He told his progeny he had
scoured high and low for food but had little success securing human blood. Jean
appeased his maker, inviting him to stay for a little nourishment. I had taught
him the importance of hospitality, but regret it now. He tried to satisfy his
maker with a small vial of Marco’s blood, but when the impaler tasted it, he
went mad.

“I didn’t know,” Jean said. “I couldn’t let
’im suffer.”

“No,” I said. “Instead we shall all suffer.”

Vlad’s appeal was a ruse. He hid his true
strength from Jean, for he had more than enough force to throw his progeny out
of the way and seize Marco. Elizabeth could not help since she had rushed to
the girl’s side to keep her hidden while the villain robbed our store. Vlad
tore the chamber door off its hinges and threw himself on our donor, sucking
him dry in record time. Jean watched in horror, as his maker drained the source
we had held so dear.

“Why did he leave?” I asked.

“Il n’a rien dit.”
He did not say.

He took Marco’s body with him when he made
his escape through the hatch in the spire, flashing his bloody fangs at Jean
before greeting the darkness awaiting him.

“He used the body as a diversion,” I said.

I knew why Vlad left; he was no match for me
and a confrontation would surely finish him. My strength will outmatch his any
day, starving or not. I am older than he, older than Toktomer and the Houses of
Dracul and Bazaraab, and such primacy counts for something in our world. We
hold to no hierarchy or seniority, but the sanctity of one as old as I is
undeniable. It may sound foolish that we keep tradition, even as we face the
possibility of extinction, but we cannot be faulted for our sentimentality. We
are fiercely nostalgic creatures, though never to be taken for mawkish ones.