Redlisted (10 page)

“How much
else did you tell her?”

“I explained
the basics of the situation.”

“What’s
that supposed to mean?”

“I told her
about our mission. How we reclaimed the head from Mirabel.”

“Jesus
Christ.” Haruko brings a hand to her forehead. “Well...
what’s done is done.”

Why
is the head so powerful?
I
wonder.

“The head...
well... all right. It’s a long story,” Adam says. “First
of all, let me give you some background. Beheading doesn’t
actually kill a vampire.”

Haruko snorts.
“We’re using the v-word now?”

“A revenant.
Whatever. We can’t generate our limbs or heads, but we can have
them re-attached.”

So
how
do
you
kill a vampire?

“You have to
go for the heart.”

Like with a
stake?

“Or
whatever. It doesn’t matter. You just have to destroy the
heart.”

“Why are you
telling her how to kill us?!” Aya asks, alarmed.

“It’s
not like she’s in any shape to attack you, so why would you
care?”

“Well...”
She shifts in her seat. “I don’t know.”

So the head is
still... conscious?

“Essentially.”

I open a package
of Pop Tarts.
Where’s
the rest of her body? With Julian?

“Well, it
was, but it isn’t any more. We... don’t know where it
is.” He pauses for several seconds. “It went missing
about a year ago, at the same time her head did. We thought Mirabel
had stolen both, er, halves, but the more we find out about the
situation, the less likely that seems.”

I nod again,
nibbling around the edges of the first pastry.

“Our current
theory is that a third party stole both parts and then sold the head
to Mirabel or gave it to her as a gift,” Adam continues.

Doesn’t
the head belong to Julian? Why aren’t we bringing it to him?

“There
are... protocols we need to follow,” is all Adam says.

I stare down into
my lap. I’m too confused to ask any further questions, so I
finish the rest of my pastry in silence.

The three of them
go quiet. I lean my head against the window and try to keep myself
awake, but the hum of the engine and tires on asphalt soon make me
unbearably drowsy, and so I close my eyes, hoping for just a moment’s
dreamless rest.

Despite myself, I
dream.

{Adam}

I woke up on a
couch in an unfamiliar bedroom, alone. I sat up, reached for my
glasses, surprised to be awake or even alive.

The couch was
surrounded by books of all shapes and sizes, their covers heavy with
dust. One volume halfway down a pile caught my eye. Careful not to
topple the rest of the stack, I pulled it out from underneath the
others.

Exploring the
Human Memory
by Dr. Elena Ortiz, Ph. D.

The door to the
bedroom opened. I looked up with a start.

It was Julian.
“You’re awake,” he said. “How do you feel?”

I shrugged. I had
no intention of talking to him about that.

“You might
be a bit groggy for a few hours. It will pass.”

“What
happened to me?”

“Aya put you
into a state of sensory deprivation. We refer to it as a whiteout.”

“Oh.”

“I should
have warned you, Adam. It’s all but fatal to expose yourself to
sunlight.”

“I see,”
I said, pretending I hadn’t deduced that already. “All
but fatal? So... what would happen, exactly?”

“Any contact
with sunlight would untether your soul from your body,” he
explained in a level tone, “but the blood would keep your body
alive. Well, alive in the sense you are now. You’d become a
ghoul. Your entire existence would be the search for blood.”

I grimaced.

“You will
find an almanac in your desk. It lists sunrise and sunset times for
the coming year. Please be careful.”

“Right.”

“Adam...”

“Yes?”

“We have a
theory.” He clasped his hands behind his back. “We
believe that no one who has accepted their mortality can be
reawakened. That is to say, no one who is at peace with their death
can be initiated. We are all, every one of us, desperate to continue
living.”

“That’s
funny,” I said, “given I’m pretty sure I just tried
to kill myself.”

///

I spent most of
the next three days alone in the suite. It seemed to get smaller and
more confining with every passing minute. I tried to distract myself
by reading, but I had no interest in my textbooks, nor in any of the
other books they’d provided. Yet there was nothing else to do,
except to sit and think and get more and more agitated.

Nothing else but
to wander the halls. I made several attempts at that. Each time I
left the suite, the configuration of passages had shifted. Their
permutations seemed endless; they were never the same way twice.
Still I wandered, but it was never long before Aya caught up with me
and insisted in guiding me back to my suite.

I didn’t
have to feel emotional to be angry. The two of them—Julian and
his submissive girlfriend, or whatever she was to him—were
holding me against my will. Why? What did they hope to get out of me?
I couldn’t surmise what they wanted. Something to do with
curing amnesia, perhaps. Why couldn’t they just tell me? I
would do it. I would do almost anything for the freedom to leave.

What bothered me
most was the flashback I’d channeled, Aya’s memory of
Markus. I thought of it every time I glanced at the four-poster bed.
If I could trust what Julian had said about the sun, Aya must have
forced Markus to become a ghoul. She’d exposed him to the sun,
severed the link between his soul and his body and turned him into a
blood-sucking zombie.

As much as I hated
to admit it, Aya frightened me. Part of me still wanted to die, but
none of me wanted to become a ghoul.

///

One of the few
diversions I was allowed were my daily trips to Julian’s
office. They always came complete with a lecture. The first two were
meandering diatribes about some secret vampire society he called the
Watchers of the Americas. He peppered these monologues with seemingly
irrelevant asides and personal accounts, talking for hours just to
talk.

His lecture on the
third day, however, was short.

“Have you
had any interesting dreams lately?” he asked from behind a
bookshelf. “Since you’ve come here, that is?”

This was his
habit. He would start speaking as soon as he heard the doors to his
office open, before he emerged from the mess. Sometimes he wouldn’t
even bother to come out. He’d leave it up to me to follow the
sound of his voice and find him. I hated it.

“I haven’t
been sleeping,” I replied—neither a lie nor the truth.

“Really?”
He stepped out into view. “Why not?”

“I haven’t
felt tired.”

“What have
you been doing all day long, then?”

“Reading.
Thinking about what’s happened.” Trying to figure out how
to escape.

“I only ask
because dreams of peculiar insight are one of our family traits. It’s
not a gift I possess, sadly, but it’s one that often
accompanies telepathy.”

“I see.”

He walked towards
the study. “Oftentimes, members of our line dream the memories
of other people. Especially those whose blood they’ve
consumed.”

“If you’re
asking me if I’ve dreamed anything about you, I haven’t.”

“That’s
a shame.”

“Why? What
could I tell you that you don’t already know?”

He opened the
doors to the study and gestured for me to step inside. “Someone
of my advanced age must expect to suffer a few holes in their
memory,” he said, smiling.

“Wait. Is
that why you’re so interested in retrograde amnesia? Because
you’re senile?”

He laughed. “Well,
no, not exactly.”

I sat down and
folded my arms across my chest. “Why don’t you just tell
me what it is that you want from me?”

“I suppose
that’s fair.” He reached for a glass. “If it’s
not too much trouble, perhaps you can have something to drink... and
if you happen to have any strange dreams, do tell me about them, will
you?”

He filled the
glass from the amphora and placed it in front of me.

“Julian...”

“Yes?”

“Who was
Markus?”

He blinked twice.
“Markus?”

“I had a
vision. About Aya and someone named Markus,” I said.

“Interesting,”
he said. “Markus was another of my initiates. He passed away
not long ago.”

“Aya turned
him into a ghoul, didn’t she?”

Julian cast his
eyes downward. “Adam, Markus did something very cruel to her.”

“Oh. I see.”

“I’d
prefer not to speak further about it, if you don’t mind,”
Julian said.

“I
apologize.”

He shook his head.
“You couldn’t have known.”

I didn’t
know what to say. I stared into my glass, embarrassed.

“I will
leave you now,” he said, and then he slipped out of the study.

The visits to
Julian’s office always involved drinking blood from the
amphora. It was always his blood. Every time I drank, I got that same
initial rush of blissful pleasure, but it was always short. Next a
wrecking ball of emotional agony would hit. For two or three minutes
after swallowing the last drop, twenty-four hours’ worth of
rage and grief would burn through my system. There was no way to hide
how distraught I was. The best I could do was to ask Julian to leave
the study, to give me some time alone. I only had to ask once; after
that he knew when to leave.

At least he gave
me that.

///

“What time
is it?” I asked Aya as she pulled the door to Julian’s
office closed on the third day.

“It’s
a little after two A.M.,” she said, her eyes fixed on her
shoes.

Normally at this
time she’d chauffeur me back to the suite. The idea of
returning there was enough to make me feel like killing myself again.

“Could we go
outside?” I asked. “I’m starting to feel
claustrophobic down here.”

“Of course!
I’ll show you the grounds.” She gave me a bright smile
full of white teeth.

We walked through
the halls to a wide, sweeping staircase, larger at the base than at
the top. In front of the highest stair were two doors inlaid with
stained glass, each depicting an androgynous figure holding a goblet.
The two figures faced each other, smiling.

Aya produced a key
ring from a hidden pocket in the side seam of her skirt and unlocked
the right-side door. Outside, the night air smelled of roses and
fresh earth. We walked down a gravel path into a garden. Past the
garden there was a pond, and beyond the pond rolling hills dotted
with trees; beyond that, the trees thickened into a forest. The
scenery was lush, even gorgeous, but something about it filled me
with a troubling sense of déjà vu. After a moment, I
realized why it was so familiar: I recalled it from Aya’s
memory.

“It’s
beautiful, isn’t it?” Aya said. “This is my
favorite part of the estate.”

“We’re
in Georgia, right? This doesn’t look like a plantation...”
I scanned the horizon, looking for potential routes to the outside
world. I couldn’t see any roads in any direction, only
footpaths.