The Journal of Vincent Du Maurier (Book 1) (28 page)

When Youlan returned, she was with only two soldiers.
They flanked me, as we walked through another maze of passageways. We climbed several
sets of steps and eventually landed topside at the stern of the ship. I faced the
open sea and embraced the air. “Come,” Youlan said.

She guided me along the deck to a hatch with
a hand-painted dragon across it. The slender green dragon in a field of cadmium
yellow bayed at a scarlet sun. The lizardlike tongue and fangs of the monster were
stark white but dripping with blood. It marked the Qing dynasty—I had
reached the Empress.

“
Jìnrù. Jìnrù,” Zhi said,
as he opened the hatch to greet us. He was more hospitable than Youlan.
“
Shénme.”
He wanted my guillotine removed. Youlan bowed to him slightly and took off my
collar before unlocking the shackles. “Bèn, bèn,” he said, punctuating with a
tsk-tsk.

Once inside the
deckhouse, I was left alone again. The Empress would be in shortly they told
me. I was struck by the clutter of the compartment. Statues and porcelain
figurines sit on every possible surface, a plethora of oil paintings and
watercolors occupy every inch of the bulkheads, and the
most imposing piece in the
cabin is the life-sized canvas set in an oversized wooden frame in the center
of all the others, a portrait of the Empress Dowager Cixi. The image is flat,
lifeless without shadow or perspective. Her face is drained of all color and
one cannot tell if it was painted before or after she became a vampire. She sits
in front of a hand-painted dragon that looks at her as if he too reveres her
power. She faces straight out to meet her viewer head-on, unshaken by the
dragon’s leering eyes. A fan lies in her lap, its blooming chrysanthemum blurred
by the shadow of her hands. Covered by decorative claws, her fingernails
forebode the talons she now wields as a vampire.

I felt her imperial presence when she came
in. Her frequency is garish, unmistakable. When I turned to greet her, I was
not surprised to be looking at the very same visage I had studied in the
portrait—flat and pale. She gestured for me to join her on the wooden daybed.
I bowed slightly and extended my hand but she kept both of hers hidden beneath
the loose sleeves of her ruqun. “I know you,” she said.

She speaks Italian with only the slightest
accent. She is fluent in many Western languages.

“Then you know why I am here,” I said.

“You have boarded under a false pretense,”
she said. “And come into my den with thieving intentions.” She kept her eyes on
the mirror across from the daybed, admiring her reflection.

“I am simply here to reclaim what is mine,” I
said.

“Your face tells a different story.” She studied
me, almost disturbingly. “I have nothing of yours.”

“The girl is mine,” I said.

“Maybe she was once. However, I paid a fair
price for her and never renounce a work of art once I have acquired it.”

I thought it odd she considered my girl a
work of art. “Is she not one of your blood slaves?” I asked.

“Slave? None of my humans are enslaved. They
are donors giving freely.”

“In exchange for what?”

“Their survival,” she said.

I could not argue with that. Her humans were
safe on the ship, as long as they were not drained past the point of living.

“My humans are valuable.” She mimicked a
frown. “I am sorry to disappoint but we are not the horror show you expected.”

“Where is the girl?” I said.

“Which girl?” She said. “I have several, as you
can imagine.”

Force would get me nowhere, and a ship full
of loyal vampires could be difficult to take if any harm came to her. I still
had no idea how to get to Evelina. “My girl,” I said calmly.

“I told you,” she said. “I never relinquish a
work of art once it’s in my possession.”

“You consider her a piece for your
collection?” My tolerance waned, as it tortured me to know I was so close to the
girl but unable to claim her.

“You don’t?” She asked with a grin.

I considered Evelina one thing, and one thing
only—mine.

She pulled a
silver cigarette case from her sleeve, revealing her hands. She wore the same
decorative finger claws I had seen in the portrait. Her pinky and ring fingers
were covered on both—their tips as sharp as talons. She opened the cigarette
case, keeping her ornamented fingers extended. “Cigarette?” She said.

When I declined,
she took one out for herself and placed it in the whalebone holder she pulled
from her other sleeve. She tucked the case back into the folds of her ruqun and
stuck the cigarette holder between her slim lips. She sucked on it until the
tip of the cigarette combusted, erupting into a small flame.
“I may be willing to make a
trade,” she said.

I smiled. “Anything.”

“How about
Edoardo
Chiossone’s collection in the Museum of Oriental Art?”
The Empress got up from the
daybed and paced the compartment as she took long drags from her cigarette,
sucking in the stale weed. “And the curator,” she said. “Bring me his head.”

“Of course.” I did not stutter.

“Get me the collection and his head,” she
said, “and I will give up the girl.”

Her cigarette had burned down to its ash and
she had already placed a fresh one in its stead.

“Let me see her,” I said. “In good
faith.”

She hesitated and took an extended drag
on her second cigarette. “You may look,” she said, “but you will not speak with
her.”

“But how will she know I have come—”

“Tut,” she said. “Not negotiable.”

The Empress left me then and Youlan returned
to take me to the girl. My venom heated with the thought of seeing her skin,
her neck, her face, her soul. The vampire brought me back to where I had waited
for my meeting with the Empress. She led me further down the passageway and
into another compartment, nothing like the one before. This one was empty,
except for a small bamboo stool placed in front of a glass window. Youlan told me
to sit on the stool and then slipped out of the compartment, closing the hatch
behind her. The window was covered with a velvet brocade curtain decorated with
Asian elephants. I sat and faced the window, waiting for the elephants to move.

I suppose I should have expected the
vision I was given. She was a work of art, a living portrait of my girl. Posed
like the painting in the deckhouse, Evelina was a mimic of the sitting Empress.
The girl sat on a throne with her head poised and her hands placed in her lap,
tucked into her loose sleeves. She wore the imperial costume of the Qing dynasty,
a red and gold diyi embroidered with long-tail pheasants and round flowers. A
crown graced her head, the exquisite headgear adorned with gold dragons and
phoenixes made with kingfisher feathers, beaded pheasants, pearls and
gemstones. My girl’s dark brown hair was pulled back off her shoulders and away
from her face. I could not tell if it was the harsh light that made it so, but
her visage was paler than I remembered.

Evelina looked through me, unable to see
me on the other side of the one-way mirror. The image of sorrow could not be
more perfect when a single tear rolled down her cheek, the only sign she was not
merely an effigy. I faltered, as I stood to approach the glass. I could feel
her now, her blood flowing through my veins. The longing I felt for her taste
was crushing. And then the curtain was drawn and she was gone. I still recall
that image now—it is one I will never forget.

Youlan returned. “The Empress would like
you to have this,” she said.

It was a steel forged in an Iranian
crucible and honed to a sharpness only rivaled by our talons. “My claws will suffice,”
I said.

“At least feed before you go,” she said.

She led me back to the blood den where
the other vampires had made their selections. They had been taken back to shore
promptly after feeding. She did not go to one of the boxes, but poured my blood
from a decanter on a side table. The smell was unmistakable. When she handed me
the silver chalice filled with Evelina’s blood, I brought it to my nose before
letting it kiss my lips. I drained the cup, as my subtle fangs dropped. I
relished the ecstasy despite its ephemerality.

On my way back to the pier I was left
alone to indulge in the perfection of my last blood high. I faced the dark city,
as the ferry cut through the white caps of the waves. The sky was graying with
night coming again. Gulls screeched above our heads, circling the sea for their
supper. They hovered in the air as though dangling from a tether before spiraling
into the sea below, their bodies striking the water like bullets from a gun.

“
Tíhú,” Zhi said.

He laughed and
pointed to a family of pelicans fishing by the retaining wall of the harbor. The
gregarious birds dunked their beaks into the sea then out again as though
rocked off balance. He navigated the skiff as close to the waterbirds as he
could without frightening them away, and with the swiftness of light and the
quiet of silence, he dove into the sea and rose up among the fishing flock. He
snatched one of their beaks, slicing the snout off the pelican’s visage before
jumping back into the skiff. The carcass of the waterbird sank, as the others
took off bellowing. He opened the bird’s bill and reached into its pouch for
the fish it had caught. He consumed the sardines without offering me a single
one. The Empress and her crew were well fed, for only a vampire consuming
enough blood would desire human food.

When the skiff pulled
up to the pier, I hopped out and onto the dock. Zhi did not toss me the line to
tie up the boat but instead offered me the Damascus steel I had refused to take
from Youlan. The silver sword was tucked into an embossed sheath with the
insignia of the slender dragon. “
Jiè cǐ
,”
Zhi said.

He ignored my
refusals and held the sword out until I took it. I obliged him only because it
seemed as if he would chase me down the dock if I did not, and I had wanted to
be on my way. As I stole up the abandoned streets, the sword hung from my belt,
its hilt sticking out from under my coat like a pirate.

The vampires were
all gone, and the bloodless too. The city was apocalyptic, its destruction
greater than I had seen in the countryside. The whole of Genoa had been lit up
and was still smoldering beneath its ash. I did not need to hear his frequency
to know he was there, that he was the one I came for. Vlad had taken over the
city—he was the curator they all feared.

I approached
the museum from the street of palaces where tapering mansions narrowed my
perspective and the groves of orange trees and blushing oleander would only
bloom again in memories.
The landscape of the Villeta Di Negro was
still green and the water cascading from the gazebo still gushed out, Vlad
having preserved his plot of paradise among the rubble. The entrance gates were
closed but easy to scale, though they gave fair warning to all who braved passing
them. The vampire had impaled heads on the spikes of the fence, the bloodless
still howling despite their missing bodies. I barely noticed the head of the
vampire added to the mix, an extended warning to his kind.

Vlad was
alone—his sole frequency guided me, as I climbed the park to the museum. The
building was barricaded, its front doors boarded up, but he came and went
somehow, and when I recalled the vampire head on the spike, I knew its dampness
was my clue.

I ran toward
the gazebo and launched myself down onto the rock that touched the edge of the
waterfall. I found his entrance above the pool on the first level of the
cascade. I stepped through the curtain of water and discovered the tunnel he
had bulldozed through the rock. I smiled when I heard the howls from deep
within the chamber—of course he had set a trap for his visitors.

I went into the darkness, greeting the
swarm of bloodless with nothing but my steel and a handful of seeds. Three came
at me first and I tossed one of the seeds at them, but the bloodless were wet
from the cascade’s spray and the water agitated them, making their retreat a
temporary one. Five of them pushed forward, howling and gnashing their teeth. They
clawed at me with their bony fingers and I reached for the Damascus steel,
using it to tear into them with its edge. I sliced my way through the tunnel, severing
heads from bodies, amputating hands and arms, as they clawed at me. I realized by
the end the impaler had shackled them to each other like a chain gang, keeping
them from making an escape.

When I reached the metal portal to the
museum, I smashed it open with my boot. The girl’s blood pumped me up, tripling
my force. The promise of another taste drove me to finish my task, though I lingered
at the doorway to bask in the pleasure of my rage. The darkness was peaceful
and I could see the hulking figures and bodiless heads of the sculptures
standing in the large gallery. Above me were several balconies that overlooked
the main foyer and behind their black metal railings were glass cases that held
the costumes of ancient Japanese warriors and samurai, suits of armor from
Shang to Han. The bodiless panoply stood at attention for its vampiric
overlord. The museum was still, his frequency steady.