Ascension (31 page)

EPILOGUE

That night, while Michel sleeps, I sit at
his
computer and check my
web
mail, looking for one from the university that I'm expecting about my postponing returning to school until after Christmas due to my injuries. It's then I get an email from one of my other webmail addresses. It's one I don’t even remember creating. I click on it and read the message.

Hello, Me,

If you're reading this, it means you haven’t made an entry in your journal for two months. This is an automated reminder to keep up your journal. Remember how important you thought it would be to keep a record of everything's that happened since you met Michel.

You set this up just in case something happens and you forget your password or worse. You figure mom and dad will have access to your
Boston
U account and will find this just in case some vampire kills you.

You can find all the entries on what's happened since mom's files were released by clicking on the link below. It’s all in a web journal and kept secure in the cloud.

Love, Me.

I click on the link and start reading.

MY MOTHER NEVER LIED TO ME about the existence of monsters. When I'd awaken with nightmares, and dreams of shadows that moved in the darkness, she'd stay with me until my terror passed.

"I'm here," she'd say, stroking my hair. "I'm faster than them and I'll protect you. One day, I'll kill the monsters forever."

My great tragedy was that she couldn’t protect herself.

Today, I take up the work that ended her life. The floor in my tiny one-bedroom flat is littered with her files finally released a decade after her death and after a long battle with the university archivist. As I sit sifting through the box containing her research, one file in particular draws my attention – an illuminated manuscript written eight hundred years earlier in archaic French, the script ornate, the ink faded.

Inside the file is my mother’s typewritten note describing the document:

By the hand of Julien de Cernay, former Knight, identical twin brother to Michel, former Bishop of Clarmont, bastard sons of Guillaume, Vicomte de Clarmont. Written 1224 - 1229 A.D. Interviewed on 22 December 2004 at
Boston
University
.

I turn back to the manuscript, but although I've studied French, I can barely read it due to the ancient dialect and difficult script. My mother began to translate but only got so far.

"A full moon rises"
her hand-written translation starts,
"stained red from fires in the village square where five heretics burn at the stake. The Crusades broke my family, estranged me from my brother and now have killed me. I died, not on the battlefield as befitting a knight protecting my father's estate, but in a bed in an abandoned castle at the hands of an ancient vampire who bewitched me... "

She stopped there and I realize that I need a translator for her notes were made barely a week before her death. Maybe this manuscript is important and will lead me to the vampire who killed her.

A search online turns up several websites that offer translation services, but I want one in the
Boston
area. I post a message on a Boston U message board for students of linguistics at my own university as a first start.

Hello:

I have come into possession of an ancient illuminated manuscript and need a translator with knowledge of Old French, 13
th
. Century. Please respond with fees and availability to [email protected]

Eve H.

I don't expect to hear back very quickly – there isn't much activity in the forum and the last comment was months earlier in response to a question about pronunciation.

I go back to my mother's files and sort through them, separating the papers into piles. Some are historical research on the
Languedoc
region of
France
, some are more recent studies on blood-borne pathogens and retroviruses. My mother was a hematologist in addition to her work for the Council. Still others are accounts of the Inquisition in medieval
France
,
Italy
and
Germany
and the burning of witches. Finally, I have a pile on the Cathar Crusade in which the Cathars, a heretical Catholic sect, were persecuted in what is now southern
France
.

The hours pass quickly and I'm absorbed reading about the Cathars when my inbox chimes. I put down the research paper and go over to my desk, sitting on my chair and clicking on the email icon that has popped up on my screen.

It's from a Professor Cormier:

Eve,

I can provide translation services. How old is the manuscript? Do you know which decade of the 13th C? What is its condition? I won't be able to provide you with an estimate of the cost until I see it and can judge the difficulty involved. I'm on sabbatical this semester and have some time. My interest in such manuscripts means I'll be willing to do this for a very reasonable rate. I'm a scholar of that era and have studied the languages of that region. I'm quite familiar with such manuscripts.

Yours,

Steve Cormier, PhD

I text back to him, avoiding chatspeak, since he is a professor:

Thanks Professor Cormier. According to records, written in 1224 and writer from
Carcassonne
. Eve

He responds immediately:

Very likely written in the dialect known as Old Provençal. Do you know who wrote it? S.

No. I think it's an old legend or something fictional. E.

Most surviving works are religious in nature. There are few works of fiction & most are poems or songs. Will be very interested in reading. S.

How do you want to do this? E.

You have BU email so student? Will be in office tonight. Bring it over so I can take a look. I'm in
Linguistics
Building
on Commonwealth. Rm 304. 7:30? I have appt with colleague at 8 so it wd be gd for me. S.

"Sounds fine. See you then. E.

I shut my phone off and go back to my desk. I'm so glad I posted that message. The first thing I’ll do is get the manuscript translated. I hope Professor Cormier can do it quickly so I can get this whole process started and I can do what my mother failed to do before me – become a vampire hunter and eradicate vampires from the face of the earth.

~~~

I read for hours, each
journal entry
making me more and more upset. I stare at the computer screen, my mind numb. My mother was a vampire hunter? I was one as well? I wanted to kill all vampires? I hear something and turn to the bedroom door and see Michel standing there wearing only his boxer briefs.

“What are you doing up so late?” he asks. I click the email closed and turn to him.

“Nothing.” I try to keep my face impassive, but I never was a good liar.

 
“
Eve
…” He comes to me and looks over my shoulder at the computer screen. On it is a picture of a cat with huge eyes, asking for a cheeseburger.

“Just watching funny cat videos.”

He brushes the backs of his fingers against my cheek and I hear his indrawn breath.

“Oh, Eve,
no
…”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

S. E. Lund is a writer and full-time policy wonk living with her family of humans and animals in a small western city in
Canada
in a century-old house on a quiet tree-lined street. She read Dracula when she was ten years old and has been warped ever since.