The Journal of Vincent Du Maurier (Book 1) (10 page)

I raced along the side of the cabin,
following the trail of the man’s scent. When I got to the rear, he had
disappeared into an opening in the wall. With the taste of the woman’s blood
still fresh on my tongue, I slipped in through the hole after him. I not only
smelled him, but could see the large trace of heat his body gave off in the
dark. The opening had led us in to the small nook where Evelina slept. Foolishly,
the man grabbed the girl from the cot and pulled her to him. She shrieked,
woken with fright. He put a small pistol to her head and held her in his arms as
though she were his hostage. He could not see me in the dark—and she barely
saw him. When Evelina called my name, Elizabeth’s anguish met her cry. “Nooo!” She
screamed.

Elizabeth’s entrance startled the man and he
turned to face her, loosening his grip on Evelina. The girl dropped to the
floor and I lunged to catch her. Elizabeth dug her talons into the man’s neck, causing
him to fire off a shot. Luckily, I had the girl tucked in my arms and the bullet
bounced off my shoulder and hit a wooden dresser full of clothes. When
Elizabeth finished her drink, we exchanged bounties and she took Evelina in her
arms. I gorged on the man’s blood, tearing him open with my irons and sucking
every last pittance of serum from his veins. The satisfaction is indescribable,
greater than a scratch relieving an itch.

Our stay in the cabin was short-lived. The
bullet exploded in the drawer and set fire to the linens inside. As the
curtains rose up in flames, we stole into the night with the girl, feeling high
and satiated for the rest of the road.

20 October.
—
Byron and I
moved into the catacombs at LaDenza in the spring of 1901. He had only been mine
a short while, though he took to the vampiric lifestyle straightaway.

When I first found him in the foggy hillside
of Scotland, an assistant professor of biology at a small university north of
Glasgow, I was crossing his family’s estate. He was at home for a visit, and I
was only there by chance, having made an unexpected stop in the highlands. The
serendipity of our meeting is too perfect for the banality of words—and
so I will refrain, leaving the mysterious circumstances unexplained. Byron never
thought he would leave Scotland but changed his mind when he became immortal—ah!
trite and goading word. “I do not want to hunt my own people,” he had said. “I cannot
be satiated by the same blood that once coursed through my veins.” His
ancestors had lived in the highlands for centuries.

Byron fell in love with Italy, and so it was here
that we spent most of our time. We had been cruising through the countryside,
visiting each village as it came up on the road, when on a whim we found the
catacombs at LaDenza. They sat below an abandoned cemetery in a pasture
somewhere between one town and the next. Overgrown with ivy and moss, the entrance
carries the inscription “Memento Mori.”
Remember
your mortality.

He laughed at the epigraph when he saw it, insisting
we had arrived.

“Arrived?” I asked.

“This is where we shall spend our days.” He
meant it literally since he could only venture out at night then. “Let us
explore,” he said. “Shall we?”

We went down into the depths of the wasted
chambers. The tombs were filled with the brave Latini soldiers who fought in
the early fourth century. The surroundings were all but dust and stone, though
inside some of the sarcophagi were hidden gems. We spent hours lurking in the
darkness, surrounded by the rich history of Roman death, not realizing until the
plague the tombs also housed more recent burials.

It did not take much to set up a place for
him to work. We cleaned out several of the large tombs making enough space for
his laboratory. We turned most of the catacombs into habitable living space but
still maintained a residence in the nearest village. We made sure to keep up
appearances with the locals. By day Byron did his research down in the tombs,
by night we explored the outside world—together.

“It is home,” Byron had said. And for over a
century, it was.

But one hundred and fifty years after we
moved into LaDenza, we were forced out. When the outbreak reached its peak,
those recently buried in the cemetery rose and wrangled the bloodless to our
nest. One afternoon, as Byron worked on a body, another attacked him. I heard
his yell echo through the chambers. I ran to his laboratory to find him cornered
behind his autopsy table. The bloodless that lay on the slab was strapped down,
but five or six frighteningly decayed corpses were upright and closing in on
him where he stood. They were mostly skeletal, deformed and awkward, but strong,
as they clawed at him. He had been pinned up against the entryway by their
efforts to escape. I grabbed the cattle prod that lay on the counter and smashed
the bones to pieces. The shards flew in all directions, the broken bits still moving
across the stone floor. I took hold of Byron and rose with him to safety.

“My notes,” he cried. “My work.”

I promised him we would return, though we
never did. Things escalated overnight and the village that housed our apartment
was overrun with bloodless. When we fled LaDenza, I never thought I would return
again—at least not without him. As I stared at the moss covered engraving
this afternoon, I did not recall mortality, just Byron.

I had Elizabeth wait with the girl, so I
could go down into the depths alone to make sure the bloodless were gone. The field
was empty, though the route between the tombs and the vineyard had not been. We
passed several swarms, as we stole our way around them with the stealth we had
newly acquired from our feast. The blood of the two humans had been an
excellent source of vitality for Elizabeth and me, and for the moment, we have enough
strength to outrun, outwit and outlast anything.

The tombs were dark and empty and wet. A
flood had washed through and our history was drowned beneath several feet of rainwater.
I had hoped we could stay here, but the pools on the ground dampened that idea.
I hurried to get what I came for, not wanting to leave the other two alone for
longer than I had to.

In the depths of the catacombs, I found the
tomb where Byron had spent most of his life. I felt him there among his work,
his diagrams and notes pasted up on the walls, his elements and samples lining
the counters as though trapped in a still life. Our existence was captured before
me like a study on canvas. The bloodless he had strapped to his slab had
somehow freed itself from the manacles, and I wondered if its limbs had not simply
rotted away. I took a large duffel bag from the cabinet and headed to the
compartment in the back. The cryostat blood samples were housed there in a small
trough-shape container, its temperature gauge assuring me its battery had been
preserved. I placed the container in the bag and headed back through the
laboratory.

As I made my way to the entrance, I noticed
Byron’s lab coat hanging on the rack by the door. I went to it and ran my
fingers down the length of its arm. I recalled how comforting it was to do the
same when he was in it. A slight touch down his arm would always send him into
spells; he had been receptive to all of my affections once upon a time. When I
reached the pocket on the side of the lab coat, I touched the small journal
tucked inside. I stole the book from the pocket and slipped it into my own, knowing
it contained more of the mysteries my Byron had solved. I was so caught up in my
memories I did not hear the howl until it was too late and I felt the pressure
of a wolframlike clamp on my shoulder, though the teeth could not gain a grip, slipping
off my stone flesh.

The fiend came at me again and I whacked it
in the face with the duffel bag. It fell back into the water and then leapt up
as though the baptism reinvigorated it. I tried to grab it by the throat but only
got my hand caught in its open mouth. It snapped its teeth at me, and was met
with a jaw full of hard flesh. I used my foot to dislodge my hand from the maw
and sliced its throat with my talons. I turned around and made my escape. But I
flew through the water only to find myself confronted by several more bloodless,
waiting for me near the entrance. The water on the floor of the catacombs had
awakened them and they formed a swarm, frenzied by the blood substitute in the
duffel bag on my shoulder. They clawed their bony fingers and snapped their
jaws but I was unwilling to surrender the one thing for which I had come. I renewed
my efforts, slashing my talons and plowing my body into their deformed figures,
as I made my way to the stairs that would bring me to the surface. I could not
let them escape with me and so I called out for Elizabeth, as I charged through
the fray. “Ready the gate,” I said.

I hoped she was not under attack too, as I
flew up the steps of the catacombs. When I slipped through the portal, she was
ready at the gate and slammed it shut as soon as I escaped. I could hear the
bones of the bloodless get wracked, as they crashed against the large stone
slab rolled into place at the gate’s front.

“Well done.” The vampire’s voice took me by
surprise. It was not Elizabeth’s, but the low register of Rangu. The godlike
Hindu had caught the scent of the girl, coming upon the two of them, as I went
down into the catacombs. Luckily for me, Elizabeth was able to distract him
until I returned.

He is not a villainous vampire—as I
said, he believes he is a god incarnate. He was willing to hear my reasons for not
feeding on the girl. “Byron believes she’s the key to saving humanity,” he
said, sounding unconvinced.

“We both do,” I said. “She is our hope there
will be others.”

“And how do you plan on keeping her safe?” He
has lived through as many plagues as I and realizes how dire this one is in
comparison.

“I will stay by her side until I cannot any
longer,” I said.

He laughed with a deep, guttural chortle that
was both jovial and frightening. “This problem holds no solution,” he said. “You
are better off accepting our fate.”

“Which is what?” I asked.

“Our time has come to its end.”

I did not believe that, though I would not argue
with one who thought he was the harbinger of the final days. “Where is
Wallach?” I asked.

“Searching for his scion,” he said.

“Veronica?”

He nodded reluctantly. Rangu did not like
competition.

“Does he know where she is?” I asked.

“I think he’s looking somewhere about these
parts,” he said. “He doesn’t know she’s not long for this world.”

“How do you know?”

“None of us are.”

Rangu was like that, a prophet without prophecy,
just presumptions. He assumed Wallach’s punishment for leaving him was never to
see Veronica again.

“And Stephen?” I asked.

Because Wallach was Veronica’s maker, he
would sense her whereabouts, and if he was in the vicinity, it meant she and
Stephen were too. My hope that our paths would cross again was renewed.

“When did you last feed?” Rangu asked.

“We have had some good fortune in the
vineyards.”

“Hmm,” he muttered. “You look satisfied.” He glanced
over at Evelina and I readied myself. I could tell he itched for her, but not if
he felt brave enough to face the consequences. “Every now and then I catch one up
in my fangs too,” he said, concentrating on the girl. “I thought I had stumbled
upon a pretty prize when I found Byron’s little miracle here.” He smiled at her
with a closed mouth, trying to hide the fangs that had most certainly dropped
by now. “When Elizabeth told me she was waiting for you, I was more than
willing to wait for you too. I thought we might feast together.”

Despite his agitated state, Rangu looked
sullen. It had been a while since he fed.

“I have something that will help,” I said. “Byron
made a blood substi—”

He cut me off, insisting he would rather
starve than drink synthetic blood. He assured me he was in no position to stoop
to such extremes. “If it’s time for me to part with this body, I shall abide Vishnu’s
will.” His resignation made me think of Byron. “I’m sorry for your companion,”
he said, as if reading my mind.

“How did you know?”

“I always do.”

Rangu took my hand in his and I shuddered at his
fragile skin. Our hands remained clasped for a moment, and then he turned to Elizabeth.
“Be well bhagini,” he said. “May Vishnu watch over you.” He leaned in and
kissed her on the forehead, and then he faced Evelina, gazing at her for a
moment before speaking. “May I?” His voice had fallen into its deepest and darkest
register.

She glanced over at me but lifted her hand to
Rangu. He took it in his and turned it over. He brought the inside of her wrist
up to his nose, sniffing in deeply. He let the smell of her blood wash over
him, holding it in his nostrils as though savoring it for later. That is when I
realized my mistake. His composure shifted and I saw his mind turn. Who can
resist the smell of a fetus? His fangs erupted and he snapped open his jaw, but
before he could take his bite, I threw myself between teeth and skin. The look I
gave him was enough to set him straight, for he quickly retracted his fangs and
feigned a smile before backing away. “I see,” he said. “Now I see.”