Blood Rites (11 page)

Then the two women sat, their minds merged and separated from their bodies, following Stephen’s progress north from the bay. An hour after dark, they broke with him and drove to the rendezvous in Stephen’s car. No one had seen it so no one missed it.

Minutes after they’d turned onto the main road, the Coast Guard received a frantic Mayday from the Stoddard yacht. The crew of their cutter saw the explosion four miles out.

The bodies were never found.

The deaths of Stephen Austra, one of the foremost glass artists of the twentieth century, and Helen Wells, a promising young painter from Ohio, made news across the world. No pictures ran with the stories because there were none to print. Their obituaries even made the front page in the Cleveland morning paper. That afternoon, it was moved to page two to make way for a second auspicious death. Vincent Carrera had died of a cerebral hemorrhage a few hours after returning to Cleveland from his meetings in New York.

His last act had been to hang the Helen Wells painting in his office on the wall facing his desk. “The sand and the sky remind me of the hills in Sardinia,” he told his son. “A man should always remember where he comes from.”

II

Carol Wells cried at her cousin’s service and later, harder, after she heard a workman had come from AustraGlass to repair last summer’s damage to the windows in St. John’s Church. She had gone to St. John’s, not certain what she was expecting, but definitely not the old Portuguese worker who only stared at her with a puzzled expression while she looked at the window, numb and grieving for everything she had lost.

Not caring who saw her, she turned and fled, riding her bicycle home, dropping it in the front yard, running inside the house, closing the door to her room behind her. She lay stretched across the bed, sobbing, when her brother came in and put his hand on her back. “It isn’t true,” he said. “They’re not dead. I know.”

Carol looked up at him, wide-eyed in disbelief. How could he say such a thing now?

“It’s a lie,” he repeated.

Carol wanted to hit him, to lash out and make him feel some kind of pain. He was so stupid! She started to turn over, intending to grab his wrist and push him away when a sudden and seemingly adult insight came to her. Alan was too young to understand this tragedy so he simply denied it. If Carol had never seen her mother’s body in the casket, maybe she would have made up the same kind of story as Alan’s.

She relaxed and pulled her brother down on the bed beside her. “They’re somewhere together,” she agreed, drying her eyes, struggling to keep them dry, thinking that at least what she’d just said wasn’t really a lie.

Alan knew for certain that his cousin and Stephen weren’t dead because he dreamed of them almost every night. Although he often tried to speak to them, he always failed. But after he’d shared brief vivid pieces of their life together, he knew they were hiding somewhere far away, somewhere only his mind could take him.

He didn’t know why they were hiding or how he was able to see so vividly the places where they lived. He didn’t question their truth or tell anyone because nobody would believe him.

III

Telling Hillary Dutiel that her father had died was difficult for Rachel Austra. Telling her how he had died was even harder. But, to Rachel’s surprise, explaining where Stephen and Helen had gone, and why, was simple because Hillary already knew most of the important facts.

“My mother told me that Senhor Austra was a young man when she met him. When I came here he was still a young man. I was curious. I listened to stories the glassworkers tell. I thought that if they were true, then perhaps Helen was the same sort of creature as him.”

Rachel smiled, closemouthed. She had only told Hillary that Stephen and Helen did not age like normal people. She had not explained why, at least not yet. Now Hillary was explaining for her.

Hillary continued, “One night when Helen . . . had sex with my father, I pretended to be asleep and then I tiptoed to his door and I watched. I saw her cut him on the shoulder and swallow the blood.”

“Did you tell anyone?” Rachel asked, alarmed.

Hillary shook her head. “I wouldn’t. Senhor Austra has always been kind to me, and Helen too.”

So the girl had simply known she must keep her knowledge a secret! Rachel was stunned by Hillary’s intelligence. “And so you think they are vampires?” Rachel asked.

“No! Those things are evil,” Hillary insisted.

Convinced the girl was ready to hear it, Rachel told her the rest of the Austra story—how they lived forever, why blood and the emotions carried in it sustained them, even the family’s own conjecture that they originated someplace other than earth.

“Where do you come from?” the girl asked without the slightest trace of fear.

“We don’t know. Francis—the oldest of our race—has no memory of a time before earth.”

“Why are you so much like us?”

“We aren’t. Not inside.”

“But Helen is.”

“Helen is different from me as well as from you.”

“Where did she come from?”

Rachel could tell the girl the details of Helen’s strange creation but that wasn’t what the girl had asked. Rachel, who could give her no answer, shook her head and said nothing.

Hillary timidly reached for Rachel’s hand and studied it, the long fingers, the hard, pointed nails, the soft, unmarred skin. Hillary began to cry and Rachel hugged her. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Papa’s dead,” the girl replied, holding Rachel tighter.

“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you, I promise.”

“You don’t understand. I always took care of him.”

As Rachel helped the girl unpack her clothes in the guest bedroom, she understood that she was the worst possible choice to be Hillary’s guardian. The girl needed responsibility rather than security. Rachel, the family caretaker, couldn’t offer it, and with so much to do now that Stephen had gone, she hardly had time to think of who might.

There were so many problems occupying her mind. Michael, assigned for the first time to Alpha in Ireland, was having a difficult time adjusting to the conservative Irish culture. Ann and Laurie had settled into their roles perfectly but still needed assistance understanding the responsibilities that accompanied them.

And Rachel, the only one of the family who stayed in one place as long as she was needed, was the only one with the knowledge to help. At least she didn’t have to worry about makeup anymore. No, the shapeless spinster Rachel Austra who had guided the glass house through Denys’s term as director had died a decade ago, and a younger cousin of the same name moved into her house. A change of hairstyle, of accent and mannerisms, and no one but those who knew would associate the new Rachel with the old.

The ruse was hard, harder even than exile, but Rachel never wanted to be anyplace but where she was needed.

No, Hillary did not belong with her. They were too much alike.

I

French-Canadian Stephen Audet and his American bride crossed the border near Niagara Falls following an extended honeymoon. They rented a single room in a small town on the St. Laurence near Montreal. Though Stephen always dreaded the loneliness he felt when he was away from his family, Helen’s presence was a comfort and the children growing inside her gave him hope.

But she would no longer touch human life.

Even when they hunted game in the hills north of town, she would pull away at the end, letting him devour the full strength of the death agony, afraid to feel even a hint of the attraction she had felt when Philippe died.

But death was a part of what she had become, she had to accept it, had to understand. Stephen did not want her to know how concerned he became when he considered the passivity with which she faced her future. Though she ate solid foods voraciously, she grew thinner and, Stephen noted with alarm, her skin took on a ruddy hue, a sign of stress in his kind.

He thought of the other Austra women, conceiving, letting the life growing in them drain their own, then dying before they ever felt their infants in their arms. Denys had been a child when the last half-human woman had been bonded to the family. That had been over two thousand years ago. Perhaps Denys had misunderstood the process—even Austra children made mistakes. Perhaps Helen was different, closer to the family than the other woman had been. Stephen could only hope that Denys’s memory would prove true. If it didn’t, then Helen could die. To lose her now, when he was isolated from his own, was something Stephen could not endure.

He thought that if he revealed even a hint of his doubts to Helen, they would magnify through her into real fear. Their lives seemed to have merged completely, their minds and bodies bound by the children growing inside her.

So Stephen revealed nothing, gave no advice though he knew he had to force her to accept her needs. He began taking her places where she would be tempted—nighttime cafe’s, dances, walks through the crowded streets. And wherever they went, he would break down the wall she built around her, heightening the desire of those around them, making her feel it, want them.

Without a word of reproach, she stopped going out altogether. And she did not question where he went on the nights he left her alone.

Finally, more bored than curious, she followed him, trailing him to a dim and quiet block. There, he waited in the dark passageway between two buildings. When a man walking a dog reached the center of the block, Stephen stepped into the light. Helen heard the exchange, the mechanical greetings of two strangers, saw the man’s hands flutter nervously as he followed Stephen into the shadows of the passage while the small dog stretched to the end of its leash, standing guard in the empty street.

Human eyes could not see what she saw now—the man, frozen by her lover’s mind, his head tilted back, waiting. And a human mind could not sense the desire she felt flowing into Stephen from that young, anxious man and through Stephen into her.

An invitation! He wanted her to join him! Helen turned and fled.

When Stephen came home, he found Helen standing on the balcony of their second-floor room, gripping its decorative iron railing, watching people walking the dark streets, fighting her need, despising what she had become.

“I took nothing but his desire for me,” Stephen said. He hung his dark jacket on the back of a chair and stretched out on the bed.

She ignored him, feeling the dark, inhaling its scents, listening to the sounds magnified in the quiet of night. She felt his mind brush her body, insistent as hands. She pushed it away but only with effort. She needed what he offered now. The life in her . . .

She would not think about her children, not now.

“I knew my mother,” he said.

She turned and looked at him, confused. “She died when you were born,” she said.

“I knew her for months before that. I knew her voice—the way she spoke, the way she sang. I knew her thoughts. Near the end, I even saw her face. And as I was born, I felt her die. Every death I ever caused, every love I ever lost was easier than that first loss.”

As he had spoken, Helen had walked into the room, moving closer to him. Now she sat beside him. “But did you accept them?” she asked.

“Some people are old or weak or in pain. Others deserve to die. Those I could accept. Some I have killed and those I have learned to justify. The others, the ones who have been my friends or lovers”—he rested a hand on the side of her face—“not really. But you can bury the grief beneath happier thoughts. The time for regret is over, yes?”

She nodded once, slowly.

“And if healing takes times, use me,” he said. “Let me share my strength.”

Though she did not want him to think of her as a child, she was no match for him physically, especially not now. Her body, weakened by abstinence, refused to obey her when he raised the black teardrop pendant, used the point to make a deep gouge in his neck, and pulled her to him.

The scent, the taste, so much like those nights in Ohio when she had first begun to change into his perfect eternal lover.

But she wasn’t perfect. She thought of it as she drank, then kissed him, as she felt her gratitude shift into lust. She wasn’t what she wanted to be—confident, assured, ruthless as any Austra woman.

—I was wrong to push you so hard in Chaves— he confessed. —I thought that I would lose you if I did not force you to change completely. The human part of you made me uneasy, Helen. I confess that it still does but I would not change it, not too quickly. You have so many years to reach the end, yes?—

He meant it. His words consoled her but they were the last ones she wanted to hear.

The next afternoon, he drove her to Quebec City, to a tiny century-old chapel in the center of town. Austra windows-Helen felt their soothing touch as soon as she stepped into their light. This was Holy Thursday, the start of the Easter celebration, and though she had not been in a church since her changing, she knelt with the others, her eyes devoutly fixed on the monstrance and the sacred bread within its golden halo.

And when the priest shuffled from the sacristy to the confessional, Helen went inside.

Though Stephen was curious, traditions were too strong. Helen’s confession would be between her and this priest and God. Even so, after the priest gave her absolution, Stephen stood outside and wiped his mind clean of everything Helen had told him. Most sins were so alike that the old priest never noticed the gap.

But Helen felt cleansed, forgiven, freed finally from the past.

And though she was surrounded by accents that reminded her of Philippe, she slowly conquered her grief. Forgetting was impossible. The memory would stay as clear as the moment Philippe died. But she could bury her pain.

And force herself to be happy.

At night, they walked the cobblestone streets hand in hand, inviting smiles from old men and young girls. They rarely spoke to each other, rarely exchanged even a thought, yet they were always physically touching, reassuring each other that the future could, indeed, be everything they expected.

II

They waited in the town until the high Rocky Mountain roads opened, then flew to Edmonton and bought a four-wheel drive truck and trailer. Stephen’s furniture had been shipped to Edmonton earlier and they loaded the pieces and drove north and west into the highest reaches of the Rockies. Stephen turned off the main highway onto a road that soon changed from asphalt to gravel and a mile later turned onto a private dirt drive winding through thick trees.