Redlisted (14 page)

Soon after we met
I learned her husband was dying of brain cancer. I took it upon
myself to do whatever I could to help Elena through it all. I offered
her that—whatever I could give. I’d like to be able to
say that I wasn’t hoping for the arrangement to become what it
did, or that we waited at least until her husband was dead, but I did
and we didn’t.

Six months later I
dropped out of the program. I hoped that would somehow allow us to
stop hiding from everyone we knew. It didn’t work out. She
broke up with me when I told her what I’d done.

It was hard not to
think about her now. She was only four hours away by car in Atlanta.
But I was positive she had no desire to see me. I’d tried
calling her—more than daily, in fact—but no one ever
answered. I could only assume she’d blocked my number. Worse, I
hadn’t learned how to control my violent impulses towards
humans. Every time I passed a servant or visitor in the hallways, I
would have the same reaction I’d had on that first night: my
teeth would sharpen and my mind would be flooded with the desire to
rip their throats open. The idea that Elena would provoke the same
reaction was anathema. I couldn’t go see her. I couldn’t
think of anything more terrible.

Part of me wanted
to do it anyway.

Of course, it
wasn’t really an option. Julian and Aya had me on a schedule
like clockwork. Every day was the same. Minutes after sundown, Aya
would come and retrieve me from my quarters, delivering me to Julian.
Julian would then lecture me for hours on the revenant condition. At
some time during each visit, I’d drink his blood from the
amphora and have a private breakdown in the study. Aya would
eventually come to release me, and then we’d spend the
remaining hours before sunrise walking around outside. She’d
talk about things I had no interest in, and I’d ask her
questions she didn’t want to answer. And then back to the
suite.

One night,
however, Aya came to my suite, but not to bring me to Julian.

“I’m
afraid Master Julian is traveling at the moment,” she informed
me as I stepped out into the hall.

“Oh?”

She looked through
the doorway into the sitting room. “May I come in?”

“Sure.”
I stepped aside.

She sat down on
the lounge, leaned on the armrest and stacked her legs neatly on top
of one another, pointing her toes. She was barefoot, which was
strange.

“How have
you been?” she asked as I sat down on one of the couches.

“It’s
been all of twelve hours—“

“I mean, how
are you? How are you feeling?”

She was wondering
whether or not I was planning any more suicide attempts. “Right.
Well, I guess I’m feeling better.”

“You guess?”

“I still
feel bizarre. Like I’m dead. Although I guess that’s
normal...”

A little wrinkle
of concern appeared between her eyebrows. “Dead? How so?”

“Except for
right after I drink blood, I don’t feel fear, or anger, or
anxiety, or... you know, anything. Not like before, at least.”

She nodded, her
lips parting slightly.

“Is it
always going to be like this?” I asked.

“No, no, not
at all. Master Julian hasn’t spoken to you about this?”

“I haven’t
mentioned it.”

“You’re
probably not getting enough blood. You’re really not eating as
much as you should.”

“What do you
mean?”

She fluttered her
eyelashes, preparing to say something precocious. “The physical
sensation of emotion comes from the endocrine system, is that
correct?”

“More or
less, yes, but—“

“Well, you
see, you’re a bit malnourished. Several of your body’s
systems must be shut down.”

“Wait.”
I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees. “So if I just
eat more, I’ll stop feeling this way?”

“Probably.”

I frowned. How
could it possibly be that simple?

She stared into
the empty fireplace. The image of the amphora in Julian’s study
flashed into my mind.

“Dr.
Fletcher...” She took a breath. “Do you mind if I ask you
a personal question?”

My jaw tensed. “Go
ahead.”

“All of your
meals thus far—they’ve been from a glass, haven’t
they?”

“I know
where you’re going with this. I just don’t know if I
can—Jesus Christ. I can’t just assault someone like that.
I don’t believe Julian when he says it doesn’t hurt.”

She stood up,
walked over and sat down next to me on the couch, leaving only a
narrow margin between us. “Let me ask you another question,
then,” she said. “You feel pain, right? If you run into
something, it hurts, even though it doesn’t leave a bruise.”

“Well,
yes...”

“You’d
believe me if I told you I feel pain, too, wouldn’t you?”
Her blue eyes were wide, her eyebrows furrowed earnestly. “And
I do, of course.”

I nodded,
swallowing hard.

She pulled her
hair over one shoulder and leaned her head to the side, exposing the
gentle curve of her neck. “You’ll know if you’re
hurting me,” she said. “If you’re careful, you
won’t—“

“Aya,”
I began to protest, but then something about her presence changed. I
could hear the faint sound of her heart beating in her chest, and
when she placed her fingertips against my lips, her skin was warm.
Her jugular artery throbbed gently.

“It’s
okay.”

It was already
happening. There was nothing I could do to stop it. I could summon
only enough restraint to prevent myself from tearing at her flesh
with complete abandon. I brushed her hand away from my lips as I felt
my teeth sharpen, then placed my mouth as delicately as I could
against her neck, right under the line of her jaw. For a split
second, it was almost like a chaste kiss. Then I pulled my lips apart
and bit into her.

She flinched as my
teeth penetrated her flesh. I could feel her pain as if it were my
own, sharp and clear. It quickly subsided into a dull burning, warm
and almost pleasant.

She smiled and
relaxed as her blood flooded my mouth, pleased with herself.

///

Aya made the same
offer again the following night, which surprised me. She was even
willing to continue the practice after Julian returned a week later.
I accepted this as I accepted all the other alterations to my life:
with a lot of angst and protest at the outset, followed by the queasy
realization that it had already become comfortable for me.

Soon I no longer
felt compelled to assault every human I ran into upon hearing their
first heartbeat. I even managed to conduct a few short conversations
with some of Julian’s staff. He had an army of people in his
employ: accountants, mechanics, housecleaners, landscapers, even
artists and musicians, in addition to what amounted to a harem of
attractive, anemic-looking individuals—men and women both—whom
I gathered were handsomely paid for their single, very specific
function.

I slowly began to
feel faint glimpses of emotion wavering in my chest as well. I found
that if I forced myself to recall what a specific emotion felt like
before I died, I could summon the ghost of it. I meditated on this in
my free time, reflecting on my most potent memories until I could
summon their echoes.

Despite my
constant seeking, I still couldn’t remember what had happened
with Alison, how we had died. I started to wonder if I’d
sustained a head injury in the crash.

///

The evening after
Julian returned from his trip, Aya led me up a flight of stairs and
through a long hallway on the first floor to an immense, neatly
maintained library. We found Julian there, standing with his back to
us in the center rotunda. He seemed unsure where to look or where to
place his limbs. Hearing us approach, he turned to face us, clasping
his hands behind his back.

“You both
look well,” he said. “Please, come in.”

I took a step
forward. Aya turned to leave.

“No, Aya, I
mean you as well. I’d like to talk to you both about something
important.”

She turned around.
“Oh. Of course.”

He walked towards
a staircase at the far end of the room. “I just returned from
Chicago, from a meeting of the Watchers of the Americas,” he
said, gesturing for us to follow. “I had to request clearance
from them to discuss what I plan to tell you tonight. I’m going
to need to ask you both to keep this information confidential.”

Aya nodded
fervently.

“Sure,”
I said, apathetic.

“Thank you.”

He climbed a
narrow staircase to the balcony level above. Aya and I followed
closely behind. We crossed to a bank of windows that looked out over
the gardens.

Julian sat down in
one of three chairs around a table. “I need to apologize,
Aya—much of what I’m about to say will be old news for
you.”

“Oh, no, not
at all, sir. I’m sure I’ve forgotten most of it anyway,”
she insisted, sitting down in the chair next to his.

I sat down and
waited for him to continue.

“Let’s
see... where should I begin? There’s so much to explain...”

“Sir, is
everything all right?” Aya asked.

“Yes. Of
course.” He shook his head. “Let me start from the
beginning. I will do my best to be concise.

“We have
always defined our epochs based on which sanguine house has dominated
our political landscape at a given time. Our current age has seen the
ascendancy of the House of Wardens, with their policy of
noninterference in mortal affairs. We call it the Sanguine Consensus,
or simply the Consensus—although the name implies some sort of
sweeping agreement among us, and the reality of the situation is far
more complex than that. The majority of revenants don’t abide
by most of the rules the Wardens have established.” He
shrugged. “But I digress.

“Before the
age of Wardens there was a long, protracted conflict that decimated
our population. And, before that, our own House, the House of
Mnemosyne, was ascendant.

“Our House
was ruled utterly and completely by its immortal matriarch. After the
fall of the Roman Empire, she turned her attention to Europe, where
she cultivated the relationships that enabled her to oversee their
monarchies for generations.

“None within
our ranks would ever think to question her authority. To be frank,
she rendered us incapable of insubordination. And for centuries, none
of the other sanguine houses made any significant attempts to
challenge her.

“Mnemosyne’s
primacy went unchecked for nearly a millennium, until the House of
Wardens began their campaign some five hundred years ago.

I turned and
looked out the window, barely listening to him.

“Mnemosyne
most decidedly did not agree with the idea of the Consensus,”
Julian continued. “The concept that humans could manage
themselves without her guidance was inconceivable to her. She
believed that their mortal lives were too short and their
perspectives too narrow for them to merit real autonomy.” He
shrugged. “I suppose time will tell whether she was correct.”

Julian pushed his
chair away from the table and stood up. A question was on the tip of
my tongue—
that’s
all very interesting, but what does it have to do with us?
—but
he continued before I could ask.

“I myself
was initiated after the war with the Wardens was already under way.
The Wardens had used the increase in naval activity in the mercantile
age to their advantage, and had established bases of operation all
throughout the New World and much of Africa and Asia.”

His gaze drifted
away from us, out the window into the darkness beyond.

“My
initiation was a bid on our mother’s part to regain some lost
leverage in the Indian subcontinent. Before my own death, you see, I
was the bastard son of the third Earl of Cumberland, Sir George
Clifford.”

“Who?”