Calling for a Miracle [The Order of Vampyres 2] (Siren Publishing Classic) (6 page)

As Silus returned to his seat, he did look their way. Jonas was not intimidated. His son was as loyal to those he loved, as Jonas was himself. No one would speak ill of Larissa and get away unscathed. Not even her husband.

Chapter 3

The stale stench of human waste mingled with ethnic seasonings being heated over electric stoves. It was the time of evening when most mortals had supper and settled into their homes for the night. Eleazar would not be settling into his home however, because he was
still
tracking the Hartzler female.

He was utterly disgusted. In all of his five hundred and twenty-six years, he had never seen such a display of waste, rudeness, and utter disregard for morality. The human race was a withering species. Repulsed by the ideals held by what was assumed to be one of the most intelligent species of the animal kingdom, Eleazar was loath to spend another moment in this godforsaken place. The women ran around with little to no clothing covering their flesh. The men swilled their minds with alcohol and drugs. Babes were transferred from mothers’ breasts to strangers’ arms so that the females could run amuck in the overzealously industrialized rat race. Identities were not defined by character attributes, but rather by possessions and money. Elders were ignored and disrespected. Children were arrogant and vulgar. And the noise! When would it all quiet down? There was never a moment of silence among the English.

It had been eight weeks and Eleazar was prepared to return home empty-handed. He should have never volunteered for such a task. Larissa Hartzler was a sour brat from what he knew of her. Why he ever forbade Silus to track his own wife was beyond him.

Eleazar reached for his overcooked meat sandwich and thought better of it. Pushing the paper-wrapped meal, away he stood to leave the establishment he had come to find something resembling nourishment in. A female smiled at him. Her thoughts were unclean. What had happened to the world since he last entered it? The female stood.

“Hey.”

Without altering his expression he picked through the mortal’s mind. Twenty years old. Disgraceful.

“You want to go grab a drink and talk?”

While her mouth suggested they talk, her mind held a lewd image of the two of them so inappropriate for a girl of her age. Eleazar was insulted to even be included in her thoughts.

“No,” he said with little inflection in his voice. “I want you to go home and dispose of all your clothing that does not cover your skin in a way your great-great-grandmother would find proper. Then I want you to wash that makeup off of your face and pray for God’s mercy after you have so blatantly entertained such impure thoughts about a stranger.”

The child blinked at him, a little confused, but under his compulsion nonetheless. She quickly abandoned her meal and left to do as he suggested. As if he had time to save all the souls of this English nightmare, Eleazar mentally scoffed. He had one soul he needed to save and that was Larissa Hartzler’s. If he didn’t find her soon, he wasn’t sure if he would ever forgive her for sending him on such a chase.

Had it really been over two hundred and seventy years since he had ventured this far from the farm? The river upon which their ship had docked in Philadelphia was unrecognizable. The picture in his mind was nothing like what presently occupied the area he and the sixteen other immortals, debarking from
The Charming Nancy
, had walked through. Their pilgrimage from Philadelphia to the untried, open land of Lancaster County had been one of quiet reflection invoked by the serene beauty of America. By the way things appeared now, he wondered if he and his people would have been better off staying in Europe. The world outside of their Amish order was pulsating with evil.

Dirt roads were now paved and pocked with sinkholes and grates that reeked of sewage. Buildings covered what was once open space, crammed so tightly together they reminded him of an overcrowded mouth filled with jagged teeth. Where the Delaware River was once an exciting port of call, it now hibernated, litter tickling its surface like a fly tickles the rotting flesh of a corpse. How had a town, built by such visionaries, fallen into such disrepair? It amazed him when he recognized buildings dating back more than two centuries. The restoration of historic properties did not seem congruent with the disregard the English held for other assets. He would pass a beautiful building one moment and in the next come across mortals cooking drugs on a street corner vandalized with paint and covered in garbage. Did no one care about preserving this place?

It reminded him of Europe during the age of the plague. Although the streets were not filled with rotting bodies, they were crawling with mortals whose ethics had died long ago. Every mind he touched seemed to be scheming, one way or another. Rarely did he pick up a thought about God and when he did, it was usually followed by a silent request for some frivolous favor, like winning the Pick 6, whatever that was. He thought about the called mates he had seen brought to their farm over the past century. How was it that those mates, who were for the most part of good moral fiber, had come from such a grim place? It was a wonder mortals were not breaking into the Amish communities in droves, trying to escape this evil.

Perhaps he was simply getting old and had long ago become set in his ways. What was it Adam Hartzler’s mate had called him? Crotchety? He did not think of himself as overly cantankerous. Sure, he had a way of doing things he saw no need in adjusting, but it wasn’t as if he had grown into an unbendable grump. He could be a bit pious, but he was the bishop. It was his duty to maintain a level of religious honor amongst The Order.

Who was he kidding? He was turning into an old man. Every dawn he faced with more and more cynical views. Five hundred years was a long time. Perhaps he should step down as bishop and allow one of the others to fill his seat on the council’s bench. He could perhaps return to his birthplace in Spain, or Switzerland, what he truly considered his homeland. Would the Spain of today be anything like it was in the late fourteen hundreds? Most likely not.

He had traveled all over the face of Europe and no place felt more like home to him than Lancaster. He did not want to leave, but perhaps it was his time to go. When he had approached the others in seventeen thirty-seven about traveling to the New World in search of a new beginning, he had followed a dream. It made him proud to see what his devotion to a peaceful existence had wrought. At first he had not been so sure his plan was what God had intended.

They had lost several of their group on the voyage. While the plague offered a safe cover for rogue vampires running wild throughout Europe, their kind was not immune. Slow-occurring illnesses of the blood would not affect their kind, but illnesses that took hold of a body rapidly proved different. If a sickness progressed before an immortal could regenerate cells and expel the virus, a sort of mutation took hold of the nervous system and could quickly drain the life from even the strongest immortal. On a ship of twenty families, with almost half of the passengers being vampyre, there were only eleven mortal families to feed from. The mortals faded fast once smallpox broke out among the ship. Even the rats, scuttling below deck, seemed diseased. It wasn’t long before every child had a trace of measles on their green face. Eleazar did not favor the memories of so many families forced to bury their young without dignity at sea. It was a sad and heart-wrenching beginning to a life he had promised so many would be better.

In such close quarters disease spread like wildfire. He had warned against feeding from families with even just one member that had taken ill. However, not all disease is visible in the early stages. While a boy would appear healthy one morning, the next day his illness would show and by that evening he would be nothing more than a swollen and lifeless body. Mothers would weep over their children, thus infecting themselves and their families further. The children died first and, once one child passed, no vampyre would take blood from the deceased’s kin. A childless mother survived on borrowed time.

As they drew closer to America, the passenger list dwindled. The saddest days were the days that the children died. It was not so sad to see a parent follow their child into the dark, cloaking waters of the sea. Eleazar, although never having been a father, learned during those days that to see one’s child breathe his or her last breath was to lose one’s life in some irretrievable way. It was as if the loss of a child also marked the loss of a spirit in the guardian.

The children were not the only tragedy however. He had watched three of his friends bury their called mates at sea. Much like losing a child, the loss of a true called mate is an ache that can never be healed. A mate is to be the other half of one’s soul, one female designed by God only for one male. Losing a true mate is to be ripped in half and never put back together again. The agony of those withering immortal widows and widowers was something Eleazar prayed he never had to witness again. Living with the loss of a child over the span of a mortal’s life would be torture. Living an eternity with half of your soul taken from you is another agony entirely.

It made Eleazar grateful he had never been called. Although those immortals tried to outmaneuver the illness running rampant on the decks of
The Charming Nancy
, there was nothing to be done once one drank from the vein of a dying mortal. The risk of death became so frightening they were all half-starved to death by the time the ship docked on the banks of Philadelphia. Untrusting of other immigrants’ health, they found it safest to drink from only the wild animals of the land. Throughout their pilgrimage north, they slowly rejuvenated their bodies, but their hearts and minds would never be the same.

Eleazar smiled sadly as he thought of Council Elder Nicodamus and Caleb. Each boy had lost his family, leaving them the last surviving members of their line. Nico had been only seven while Caleb had been a brave but young fourteen years himself. In the wake of losing everyone they had ever loved, they had found a brother in one another. Eleazar remembered how Caleb would carry the young Nico when his legs were too weak to take another step. They had always looked out for each other, Caleb more of a fatherly figure than a brother at times. It was only fitting, one hundred and fifty years after their arrival in America, as Nico first held Caleb’s daughter, Mary, that he should feel the calling to his friend’s child.

Caleb had been furious when Nico told him what was happening. He had cut ties with the male who had been his only family before he created his own. It had taken fifteen years for Caleb to come to terms with his daughter’s fate. Eleazar supposed it was somewhere around time of Mary’s adolescence that he realized Nico would be able to look after his daughter’s virtue better than any father. He had approached Nico and asked if he still believed he was called to Mary. Not only did Nico admit the truth that yes, he was called to his friend’s daughter, he admitted to having shared dreams with the girl since she was a child. Caleb surrendered his daughter to God’s will on Mary’s eighteenth birthday. Almost one hundred years later now, and Mary and Nico are one of the happiest mated couples Eleazar had ever seen and Caleb and Nico are still as close as any two brothers could be.

It was a blessing, being called. Eleazar had never dreamed a single night of his life that he could recall. At this point in his existence, he doubted he ever would. He would not know how to care for a mate, having lived too long on his own. He was set in his ways. Perhaps he was crotchety. Life just seemed exhausting the longer it went on.

He worked his way away from the city and into a deeply wooded forest. Even the forests were not natural. There was not an acre of land left untouched by the English. As Eleazar hunted in the woods, he passed small kiosks and podiums that declared the woods to be a state park.

Standing very still, he shut his eyes and felt the breath of life all around him. His mind locked on that of a deer, its quick-leaping instincts giving its variety away. Yes, a white tail. Eleazar latched onto the animal’s cognitive process and compelled it to find him. Seconds later the doe was licking his fingertips. He soothed the animal as he fed, not wanting to pay the animal any harm. When he finished, his body was somewhat satisfied, yet his mind was not.

Recently it seemed that the blood of animals was not enough to sustain him. He felt depleted for most of the day, lethargic, and more tired than he had ever been in his life. He could not remember the last time he had awakened refreshed. His nights seemed interrupted by something, but he had no idea what. It was most likely the noise that came with being away from the farm.

A few miles away he found a neighborhood with spaced-out houses all of the same style. He left the woods to meander along the walks lit by electric lamp posts. Letting down his guard, he allowed the voices of the mortals to seep into his mind. He had traveled over forty miles in the past two hours. Men and women were now settling in for the night, the normally intolerable roar of English citizens quieting to a low hum. And still no sign of Larissa Hartzler.