The Journal of Vincent Du Maurier Trilogy (Books 1, 2, 3) (72 page)

“What?” I called to
the empty air.

“The reason she was
made.”

The walls of the cell
peeled away to reveal the smooth vault of the underground facility. The change
happened instantly, as shifts happen in dreams, as we move in our minds from
one sphere to the next without effort.

“Taste her,” he said.

With that, the
infant’s wail rose up and she was no longer in my arms, but in a basket paces
away.

“Go to her. Taste
her.”

The smell of her
blood had not wracked me until that moment, an intoxication reminding me of
those who had come before.

“She is you,” he
said. “The crux of the matter, your desiring you.”

I touched my face and
covered my nose, breathing in my own smell to quell the hunger building up
inside.

“Do not resist,” he
said. “She is made for you.”

I stepped forward, as
though my legs had a will of their own, reaching her in a single stride.

“Total abstinence is
easier than perfect moderation,” he said.

“Mendel?” I looked up
at the low ceiling.

The voice huffed and
said, “The road to immortality is paved with blood.”

The child squealed
from the crib in which she lay, ogling me as though she made sense of my shape.
She had given up fussing, and stared at me with a concentrated look. I did not see
my features in her face, nor did I see those of her mother, but I saw the
resemblance she bore to Youlan, and I stepped back.

“Man braves the
beautiful so that he may reproduce it,” the voice said. “For ages, you carry it
inside you until one day opportunity knocks and you let it out.”

“My child?” I
whispered.

“Your conception,
creation, and seed,” he said. “In common with him, he nurtures the newborn. Such
people have much more to share than the parents of human children. The children
in whom they have a share are more beautiful and more immortal.”

The infant gazed up
at me, unafraid of my hunger. Her small chest rose and fell, beating to its own
rhythm.

“Pick her up,” he said.
“Taste her.”

I cannot say how I
broke the spell, but I ripped myself from her and faced away. “Show yourself,”
I said to the empty walls of the cell.

“I am that I am.”

“You cannot be,” I
mumbled. The voice was no longer the same, but had become the voice I had once
trusted more than any other.

“Remember why you
came,” Byron said as clearly as if he were standing beside me.

“This is my doing,” I
said.

“You believed the
child would save us all,” Byron said. “You envisioned a new race, a healthy human
population to rise up and prosper, outlive the plague.”

“But the fight was to
be long and difficult,” I said.

“So it will be.” His
speech was made ages ago in the cathedral, when he spoke into my mind, into my
thoughts. “You must protect the child,” he said. “Leave before it is too late
and you can’t undo what you have done.”

Though I desired the
blood of my kin, my subtle fangs had not dropped, and I would not touch the
infant’s turtle flesh with my hard points.

“To save her,” Byron said,
“you must walk away.”

The simulation fooled
me, wreaking havoc on my logic. The infant was not really there, but had been
built in my mind, a composite from memory. Her smell was real enough, and I was
flooded with thoughts of Evelina, drowning me in a wretched sorrow I had given
up when she became me. Could I find the taste of her blood anew in the heart of
our daughter? Could I become a kinblood?

“No,” Evelina said,
her voice rising up to replace Byron’s. “No,” she said again. “Not like this.”

“How did you find
me?” I asked the empty air.

“I am coming for you.”

“Take me from here,”
I said.

I
am coming
, she whispered into my mind.
Stay sane in the meantime.

I closed my eyes and
pictured her face, a glow around it like a burst of light to consume her head. I
cannot say I lost my mind, but she was my witness.

To Feed

“What did she
witness?” I asked, as Vincent fell silent once again.

The colonists didn’t
bend to religion, they worshipped no gods, but my guardian had instilled a
spiritual fervor in me that had me believing in some form of god.

“I must feed,”
Vincent said.

His dark timber
stirred me from the pool of light into which I had fallen, thinking about my
guardian’s worship.

I must have gasped
without realizing because he rushed to my side and said, “It is natural for you
and me. For this, you were made.”

He caressed my arm,
lifting it to his mouth. “I give thanks to Evelina,” he whispered before
parting his lips and taking my flesh between them. He waved his other hand
across my eyes and put me to sleep. I don’t recall the pain, the piercing of my
flesh, the withdrawal of blood. I woke on my cot with my forearm bent toward
me, his hand holding mine in a fist. “Are you lightheaded?” He asked.

“No,” I whispered.

“Then sit.” He pulled
me up with a swift gesture, and examined my face. “You must eat,” he said.

The smell of meat
made my stomach rumble. I could not recall if I had broken my fast in the early
morning hours before studying Björg’s bones. I kept no food in my studio at the
top of the tower, but ate with the other settlers at the hearth.

“Eat,” he said,
putting a braised leg into my hand. “Fox,” he said. “From Freyit.”

“When did he come?”
My voice sounded as gravelly as Gerenios’s.

“I went to him.”

“Are they all right?”
The urgency of the nimrod’s arrival returned. “Are they safe?”

“Everything is as it
should be.”

“What is happening? Please
tell me the truth.”

“You know the truth,
Dagur.” He stood up and gestured for me to return to my drafting table. “We
must continue.”

I took the braised
leg with me, my hunger having torn it in half. I had never been so ravenous,
and my sore arm proved the culprit, though he’d taken minimal blood, a taste he
couldn’t do without. I was being saved for the others, when the real feasting
would begin.

“Evelina’s voice died,”
he said.

“Was the infant there
with you?” I asked.

“The magic of the
quicksilver incited most of the things I experienced in the facility. Do you
understand?”

I had never been
exposed to any kind of mind play in my young life. The colonists forbade mood
altering drugs, painkillers, even some herbs were illicit.

“It works as an
hallucinogen, playing tricks on the brain’s currents. Everything I saw in the
facility was taken from my past.”

“Was Youlan real?”

“Absolutely,” he
said. “All of it was real, but also constructed for me.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The memory of Johann
Mendel was real,” he said. “Youlan’s admission was real, though I did not
believe her until it was too late.”

“She is your
daughter, like Lucia?”

He nodded.

“She is gone, isn’t
she?”

He looked away and a
muted sigh escaped his lips. “We must get back to it,” he said. “Darkness
approaches.”

I put the braised leg
aside and wiped my hands on my pants before picking up the pen.

“I stood alone in the
room,” he said. “The child had evaporated with the memories, and I was left
with few answers.”

Meeting Laszlo Arros

I spoke to Evelina in
my mind, closing the space between us. She would heed my call, but not at that
moment. Then and there, I was to stay, to learn more about my past, and occupy
my future.

“Evelina is elsewhere,”
a new voice said, a woman I did not recognize. “She will make her way to you if
you choose.”

“Choose what?”

“To awake.”

“What?”

“Wake.”

“What?”

“Wake—now.”

In a blink, everything
around me changed. The cell in which I had witnessed the child vanished, and a gray
laboratory stood in its stead. This time, I woke strapped to a slab with bodies
dangling overhead.

“Awake!” The shout
came from outside me, from the figure who stood at my side looking down on me.
With blueberry eyes that seemed purple against her pale skin, she examined me, the
bottom half of her face covered with a surgical mask.

“Welcome back,” she said.

I reached for her and
found my wrists in restraints.

“Adamantine bracelets,”
she said. “One for each hand.”

“Set me free.” My
throat stung, my urge for mortal blood piqued by the imagined child.

“No centaur is here
to die in your place.”

I reached for her,
the manacles tearing into my flesh.

“They are
unbreakable,” she said.

“Set me free.”

“I can’t.”

She drew a long
syringe from her side and forced it into my arm, the needle piercing my skin, softened
from blood deprivation.

“How long have I been
here?”

My ire mushroomed
when her needle pricked me a second time, as she adjusted the intravenous drip.
I ripped at the restraints again, reaching for her with my neck, my irons poised
to tear the surgical mask from her face. “Set me free.”

“This will give you
strength,” she said, holding up a bag of crimson gore.

“Blood,” I mumbled.

“It is blood.”

“Bad blood.”

“Of course not,” she
said. “My master is not a sadist.”

“Laszlo Arros?”

“You.”

“Who are you?”

She leaned in and
whispered in my ear. “You should be asking yourself that question.” She shot up
and tossed her head back before hanging the blood bag on a rack above me.

The high hit me firm,
and I dissolved into the slab as though molten lava.

“Do I know you?” I mumbled.

“Not in this body,”
she said. “But the one burnt on the bed of redwoods, yes.”

Her blueberry eyes
grew black and stormy and she straightened the mask on her face.

“Take it,” my tongue
grew thick, “off.”

“No.”

“Show me,” I said.

“No.”

“Shifter.” I garbled
the word.

“Shush,” she said.

“Who—hoo?”

“This body is
borrowed.”

“Mitéra?”

“Yes.” She leaned
forward and pulled the mask down around her neck. Her face was too close to
recognize.

“Set me free,” I
whispered.

“I cannot.”

“Why?”

“I am not here as
myself.”

“Who, then?”

“As you.”

The blood infused
with opiates continued to distract me, as I struggled to hold on to reality.
“Obey me,” I said. “Free me from these chains.”

“The physical cannot
hold you,” she said. “Breach the metaphysical to break yourself out.”

I reached up again,
but the manacles restrained me anew. “I cannot.”

“Consider time a wave
that reoccurs, breaking on the same shore again and again,” she said. “We remain
stagnant, floating through the wave that carries us nowhere but in the same
circle.”

She fiddled with the
drip, and then yanked it out. The needle had gotten stuck, my choler hardening around
it, and it broke off at the tip. When she bent down to examine it, I grabbed
her hair, contorting my wrist despite the manacle, and held on to her mane,
curling my claws about her tendrils. “Set me free,” I said.

She pulled up against
my grasp, struggling to get away. When she finally gained ground, she snapped her
neck, and stumbled backward, losing a chunk of hair.

“That was cruel,” she
said, feeling the bald spot on the side of her head.

I let the strands
fall to the ground and unleashed a roar that put fear in her blueberry eyes.

“No,” she said. “I
obey my master.”

“Take me to your
master?”

The spirit of my
mother had fled when I grabbed her, and I was left with the soulless drone. She
smiled and said, “I am sworn to follow your orders.”

“Take me to Laszlo
Arros.”

She glanced off to
the side, to where I could not see.

“Set me free,” I
said. “Take me to your master.”

“I cannot.”

“If I am your master,
I demand you to obey me.”

“Your original orders
trump all others.”

“I am that I am,” I said. “Can you not see that?”

“I see you,” she said. “But you said you would say
that.”

“When?”

“A moment ago.”

She leaned in and gasped. “Oh.”

“Look more closely,” I whispered.

She leaned in even closer, close enough for me to
touch her skin with my lips. She shivered at the kiss I planted on her cheek.
“Oh,” she said again.

“Free me.”

This time she obeyed and unlocked the manacles with
a slip of her key.

“Go,” she whispered. “He awaits you.”

I sprang to my feet, knocking the cadavers hanging
on hooks overhead. The first one I touched awoke, moving its limbs with a jolt.
The bare midsection evinced its gender. It opened its eyes wide, bearing its
genetic similarity to the drone who held me prisoner. Blueberry eyes. I went
down the line looking at the bodies, different faces on each, different shades
of skin color, but all male in gender.

As I passed by, my energy awoke the bodies, and they
struggled to get down off their hooks. I made it to the other side of the
laboratory on wobbly legs, but when I reached the only door at the end, it was
locked. I turned to the scraping sound rising up behind me, the drones had
freed themselves from their hooks and dragged themselves toward me. Set after
set of blueberry eyes pinned on me, as the drones got closer with each step. I
slammed my body up against the door to make it open, until the idea came to me
as a hot flash, and I pressed my hand on the wall pad next to it. The door
hissed as it opened, and I slipped through the smallest gap, slapping my hand on
the pad on the other side of the wall to close it. The sound of the drones
died, though the image of them coming at me stayed.

“What do you think?” Youlan said with a grin.

“Of what?” I asked, concealing both my inebriation
and how much the drones had shaken me.

“Your awakening,” she said.

“To what?”

“The future.”

“None of this is real,” I said. “You have bent my
mind somehow and I am still asleep.”

She huffed and said, “If only.”

“Where am I now?”

“You don’t know,” she said, taunting me as she
dragged a talon along the counter beside her. The squeak sounded like a nail on
a chalkboard. “This is where you two shall meet.”

“I am ready,” I said. “I look forward to meeting
this great enemy.”

I had decided either Johann Mendel would appear, or
some other form Thetis had taken. I believed then that Laszlo Arros was an
invention they had concocted together. I moved toward Youlan but she glanced
sideways.

“Not you,” she said. “Hush now.”

I reached for her with claws out, but she dodged my
hand and slapped it away. The effects of the enhanced blood made me feel
stronger than I was, and I flung my body into hers, pressing her into the
countertop behind her. She laughed at my effort and pushed me off her with a
force I could not match. “Pathetic,” she scoffed. “You’re weakest here.” She
gestured to the side of her head.

I launched my pointer claw at her neck, attempting
to put a prick in her as she had done to me. My talon cracked up against her skin
and a flash of cold ran up my arm. I roared and smacked my lips, biting at the
anger corroding me. “I am done with you.”

“You will never harm me,” she said. “He wouldn’t let
you.”

“Who?”

“You.”

I redoubled my effort, dropping my shoulder and
plowing into her again. She absorbed the hit like a load-bearing wall and
turned it back on me, sending me flying several feet.

“Enough!” The voice was not hers, or mine.

“Show yourself,” I said.

“I am here,” he said. “Show him.”

“It cannot be,” I whispered.

Youlan stepped to the wall and drew back a curtain, revealing
a window that may as well have been a looking glass, for my twin stood on the
other side, identical in every
 
way.

“Meet Laszlo Arros,” she said.

I caught my breath, entranced by the image behind
the glass. My face, my hair, my shoulders, arms, hands, my member, legs and
feet. He was me to a tee, and when he spoke, he used my voice. Chills skipped
down my spine, as he studied me too. He smiled and said, “Do not be confused.
Our plan has unfolded most perfectly.”

I got to my feet and rushed to the glass. How
different this was from staring at Evelina from behind the window. My desire
for her was not as fierce as the one I had when I saw Laszlo Arros. To see
oneself in the flesh is—well, there is simply nothing like it.

“Shall we greet each other properly?”

“How are you possible?” I touched the glass and he
raised his hand to meet mine, mirroring me.

“It is not I who have defied possibility,” Laszlo
Arros said. “You have gone above and beyond our wildest expectations.”

Anyone watching us from the outside would think we
were each a reflection of the other, our voices an exact match, though mine slightly
more gruff from the blood.

“Come,” he said. “Youlan will bring you.” He looked
over at her and she stepped forward, as the curtain closed.

“Come, father,” she said. “Let me take you to him.”

Danger had not occurred to me then, but a kernel,
especially if invisible, may grow quickly when given proper nourishment. Memory
is a tricky thing. I did not recall my fate and yet I recognized Laszlo Arros when
I saw him. I do not mean his physical features, which were mine, but rather how
he fit in my story—who he really was. But with him as me, I questioned
little. Since, my mind has sought nothing but answers.

“He wanted to go to the ship to greet you,” Youlan
said, “but has yet to leave the facility.”

She turned to me with a quizzical look.

“The plague is not the thing,” she said. “It was
merely a decoy, a necessity to destroy the race of men, to end the iron age.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t you going to ask?”

I refused to speak to her now that I had met Laszlo
Arros.

“He’ll tell you everything,” she said. “As you
wish.”

She brought me to another room. The facility was
larger than I had time to explore in my stay there. I barely saw most of it.
Whether I was in the womb where Muriel had been, or the core where the drones
were made, the facility proved an underground labyrinth, each cell similar to
the next.

Laszlo Arros greeted me in a room built to emulate
my home in Italy, not LaDenza where Byron and I had spent most of our time but
the modest villa we kept in town. I recognized tokens from my life strategically
placed about the room to recall my past, but one artifact drew my attention.

“Go to it,” Youlan said.

I stepped forward, and tore my spear from the wall. My
dory came into harmony with my hand as I held it again, memorizing every nick
in its spine. It weighed exactly as it had, and bore the same grooves on the
ash-wood handle, showing its age. When I brought the leaf-shaped spearhead up
to examine it, I witnessed the rust on its iron and the decaying bronze butt at
its other end.

“The poets sang of your massive battle pike, too
heavy for another to wield.”

“Where did you get this?”

Youlan admired me from across the room. “Chiron had
it brought down from Mount Pelion as a gift for your father to give to you when
you came of age.”

“How is it here?”

“It claimed the death of many heroes, did it not?”

“Is this a trick, too?” I tightened my grip about
the ash, willing it to vanish.