The Journal of Vincent Du Maurier (Book 1) (6 page)

“She—what—I …” His flushed
expression evinced his guilt. He sat down on the bed and put his head in his
free hand. “Oh my God.”

“He will not help you,” I said. “But I can.”

He resigned himself to staying, knowing he
could not escape with her in that condition.

“Do you know what happened to your friend
Salvatore?” I asked.

“He—he—he,” he stammered.

“Yes,” I said. “He what?”

“The creepers—they attacked him in—the—the—the
trattoria.”

“I see,” I said. “Do you need anything,
Marco?” I wanted him to think our intentions were good and that we were concerned
for their well-being—which we were, essentially.

“Uh,” he said. “No, thank you.” He cleared
his throat. “But can I see Evie?”

“Not now,” I said. “She rests most of the day.”
I turned to go but he stopped me.

“What’s your name?”

I offered him the most troubling smile, fangs
and all, and extended my hand to shake his. “Vincent Du Maurier.”

He looked down at the floor, as his hand shot
out to meet mine. He trembled when we touched. “Will there be much more blood
drawn?”

He knew the answer, but I humored him. “As
much as we need,” I said.

I flew out of the room before he registered
the door open and close again, and passed Jean in the hall with his readied
syringe, as I headed back to my chamber.

Later.
— I pored over Byron’s
most recent notes. Nothing in them made much sense. I found in the midst of them,
however, some kind of chart he had drawn. It had arrows and lines pointing away
from one central source—Evelina. She liked to be called Evie, but he was
a stickler for formalities. She was at the heart of most of his diagrams. He
had outlined the process of delivery very nicely for me, delegating each of us
a task when the baby comes. He had given me a list of things she would need
between now and then, and even drew up a list of things the baby would have to
have as soon as it was born. On almost every page, he had jotted in the
margins:
We must keep her alive!
She must not be tasted
, and I assumed he
had intended the directives for both the bloodless and us.

4 October.
— Before we headed out
to hunt for human food, we fed on our ration of Marco’s blood—a meager
portion, I might add, that is now used up. We needed to find sustenance for
ourselves, as much as we needed food for the humans. We planned on going to an
area of town we had stayed away from for some time, an antiquated section that
housed spice markets and butcher shops, apothecaries and fruit stands. I
thought if there was food tucked away somewhere, it could be in that area since
the market had plenty of underground nooks and storage spaces. It was easy
enough to get to, as we flew through the fields practically unnoticed. Only one
straggler crossed our path, but we traveled so fast Stephen knocked him over,
as we passed him by.

The entrance to the market was once barred
but now the gates were toppled over, trampled by a swarm no doubt. I was
surprised to see the main street marked with piles of ash, as if a fire had
ravaged the place and burned everything in its path.

“Who could’ve done this?” Veronica asked.

“Must have been humans, right?” Stephen said.

They both hoped we would stumble on some poor
fools hiding out, as I had until then, but the smell of burned flesh was thick
and my optimism was swept up in it. I motioned for the two to stay close, as we
went through the market stand by stand. The spice shelf whose sweet aroma once
wafted through the streets was now in embers; its herbs and dried fruits turned
to char. The rotting apple stands and lettuce carts were toppled over and
burned, while singed rugs and baskets clung to rusted hooks from the awnings, just
barely buoyed up in midair. The scene was a postcard from a city struck by the ash
of a volcanic eruption, the scorched wares a shadow of a world we had known.

“It smolders still,” Stephen said. “They may
be here, whoever did this.”

It had been set to flame not all that long
ago, though I believed no human had done it despite Stephen’s hoping so. “Not
they,” I said. “He.”

“Who?” Veronica asked.

“Vlad is here,” I said.

The ruler of the House of Dracul had arrived,
no doubt to rob and pilfer what blood was left on our coast. I knew he would
eventually pay us a visit, I had just thought it would be under better
circumstances. Jean is one of Vlad’s descendants; made from the venom of the famed
impaler, he is his first progeny. He grew dispirited with the Romanian boar and
defected soon after we met in France. I taught Jean that the life of the
vampire need not be as base and brutal as the one Vlad had offered him and he
embraced my customs, striving to be a cultivated creature like me. Though most
vampires are bound to the one for whom their transfiguration is owed, they are
free beings nevertheless. When Jean decided to leave his boorish maker, Vlad
could do nothing but give his progeny his blessing, if only reluctantly. The
originator’s venomline, however, will always retain some sway, and so since
Vlad made Jean and Jean made Maxine and Maxine made Elizabeth, he has influence
over all three of my clan members. The head of the House of Dracul has never
recovered from the loss of his oldest progeny and since we are all desperate for
blood now, he seeks out his descendants both for comfort and as his army to
overtake the deserted world.

I had sensed his coming for days, though I
tucked my suspicions aside to mourn the loss of my beloved. It was clear at the
market that I could avoid him no longer since he would come for Jean, and
perhaps the girl. “We have to go,” I said.

“Is he dangerous?” Veronica asked.

“He could be if he realizes we have fresh
blood,” I said.

Neither of them knew how savage Vlad could be
or the threat his presence posed to our captives, though I did not doubt Jean
and Maxine had told them stories. Reports of Vlad’s conduct perpetuated his
frightening reputation for centuries; he came from a long line of agitators. During
the Black Death, in fact, an ancestor of the Houses of Dracul and Bazaraab
decelerated the recovery of the masses. Toktomer was a banished prince of the
Mongol Empire and became a vampire out of sheer necessity, for he saw it as his
only way to rule. I was not aware of his turning until later, when its myth spread
far and wide among us. A female vampire bit him, a slave he had captured. He
had been at war for years, leading his army as a Mongolian exile in Crimea, and
as the story goes, he found a girl wandering along the pass one evening near
his camp. She was only eight or nine, but seduced him still, and he took her
in, calling her his child bride, teaching her to fight alongside him. She had
been one of mine for a thousand years, and fed on his troops one by one until
he realized something was amiss.

One night, he left his tent to find his child
bride, who had disappeared in the shadows. He told his men of his search and went
on foot into the wilderness, lost amidst the darkness of a starless sky. He
still had not returned by the following morning, but two nights later, in the
light of the full moon, he came back to his troops, changed and more vicious
and as white as a ghost. He resisted the blood of his men, for he needed them
for battle, but his enemies saw no mercy. And though no one knows what happened
to him in the wilderness, some believe he saw his child bride feed on another
and went mad, forcing her to turn him out of jealousy. That he would become unconquerable
was an afterthought. The myth claims that once he was transfigured he destroyed
his child bride since she was never seen again. But this I know to be a lie for
reasons not worth explaining here.

Some claim that the high numbers of death
during the black plague can be attributed to Toktomer’s family of vampires. He
had rallied the Houses of Dracul and Bazaraab to feast on the blood of the
healthy in droves, as they ransacked towns and villages, fields and tracks
across Europe, targeting children and men, intending to amass greater power. Many
of us steered clear of their destructive path, though our livelihood was never
threatened since it was impossible for them to consume our entire source of
sustenance. In the end, man rose strong to outlive that plague, and though the
record books estimate the Black Death wiped out a third of the population, I
presume Toktomer and the Houses of Dracul and Bazaraab killed at least a
quarter of those.

We left the smell of the burned flesh and
stole through the fields where the scent of the bloodless masked all others.
“Wait,” Veronica said. “I hear something.”

We turned our ears to the wind to better hear
the faint hum of frequency that rippled on the air. I recognized the tune of
the impaler and assumed he too would be warned of our approach. We doubled our
pace and when we reached the cathedral, I sent Stephen and Veronica down
through the passageway to safety. “I won’t leave you,” Stephen said.

“You must lock the hatch,” I said. “I will be
in soon.”

“How?”

“I will find another way.” I had no time to
dispute and pushed him down into the opening. I sealed the door myself from the
outside and waited to hear him lock it. From there, I crept the quarter mile to
the rear of the cathedral. The swarms were gone but a shadowy figure was
perched on the roof and disappeared when I approached. Vlad’s frequency
vibrated with a dull hum until it faded and I was alone again.

As I clung to the brick of the rear wall, I
made my way to the east side of the cathedral, peeking around the corner to
find an empty yard. Not even one lone bloodless wandered past the walls. I
clawed my way along the side, beneath the stained glass windows, to the front
courtyard, where again I spied nothing. But the air was no longer silent, for
the low rumble of feeding bloodless echoed in the darkness. As I rounded the
corner, I anticipated the swarm, one much greater than I had ever seen, feasting
on a carcass. The flesh hypnotized them, as they tore it apart and pulverized
everything including the bones. I did not need to see what caused their frenzy,
for I knew it was the newly drained body of Marco.

Later.
— Jean was forced to
give up Marco when Vlad found his way into the cathedral. “Je n’ai rien pu
faire,” he said.

“And the girl?”

“À l’abri.”

She was safe. He sent Vlad on his way,
satisfied with the man. Jean heard the frequency too, knowing his maker was
here. For several nights, he had anticipated his arrival, sensing its coming as
I had. “I would not have left if you had confirmed my suspicions,” I said.

“Forgive me,” he said. “I zought zat I could
’andle ’im on my own. It was more important for you to go.”

“Are you sure he is gone?”

“’E took all zat ’e zought we ’ad.”

“Our only donor,” I said.

Vlad had come in through a hatch in one of
the spires on the roof. We had left them unlocked, thinking the bloodless could
never climb up. He came alone, telling Jean he had witnessed most of his clan succumb
to blood starvation. Toktomer was gone, he said. Like Byron, he had given in to
malnutrition, and given up. Often the case with vampires who consumed gluttonously,
they suffered greatest with a scarcity of blood. Jean pitied Vlad, waning as he
was under the fast. He told his progeny he had scoured high and low for food
but had little success securing human blood. Jean appeased his maker, inviting
him to stay for a little nourishment. I had taught him the importance of hospitality,
but regret it now. He tried to satisfy his maker with a small vial of Marco’s
blood, but when the impaler tasted it, he went mad.

“I didn’t know,” Jean said. “I couldn’t let
’im suffer.”

“No,” I said. “Instead we shall all suffer.”

Vlad’s appeal was a ruse. He hid his true
strength from Jean, for he had more than enough force to throw his progeny out
of the way and seize Marco. Elizabeth could not help since she had rushed to
the girl’s side to keep her hidden while the villain robbed our store. Vlad tore
the chamber door off its hinges and threw himself on our donor, sucking him dry
in record time. Jean watched in horror, as his maker drained the source we had
held so dear.

“Why did he leave?” I asked.

“Il n’a rien dit.”
He did not say.

He took Marco’s body with him when he made
his escape through the hatch in the spire, flashing his bloody fangs at Jean
before greeting the darkness awaiting him.

“He used the body as a diversion,” I said.

I knew why Vlad left; he was no match for me
and a confrontation would surely finish him. My strength will outmatch his any
day, starving or not. I am older than he, older than Toktomer and the Houses of
Dracul and Bazaraab, and such primacy counts for something in our world. We
hold to no hierarchy or seniority, but the sanctity of one as old as I is undeniable.
It may sound foolish that we keep tradition, even as we face the possibility of
extinction, but we cannot be faulted for our sentimentality. We are fiercely
nostalgic creatures, though never to be taken for mawkish ones.