The Journal of Vincent Du Maurier Trilogy (Books 1, 2, 3) (59 page)

Vincent paused a moment and I’m almost certain he expressed
another groan. When he began to read again, his voice sounded with a new resolve.

“One of the greatest living artifacts, he is history
incarnate. He, more than any other, can tell you what you would like to know. The
samples I sent have been tested, but as I wrote last time, molecular replication
is difficult, and I admire the work your team has already done. Man is
meticulous in his mode of reproduction, as you know; limitations are set to
protect the species. You may balk at my choice of words, but our kind is not
excluded from Darwin’s principles. Our desire to reproduce is human in some
ways, but immortality is subject to survival of the fittest.

“I wish you the best of luck with the project, and
of course my findings are at your disposal. I have included them on the chip,
which I have cushioned between my penned letter (a habit I cannot break after
years of living without a keyboard). Yours, etc, etc, Byron Darrow.”

Vincent commanded my pen as though I were outside of
myself, my hand hostage to his words, as I transcribed the parts he read for me.
With a slight shift in his voice, he turned me into a dictation machine, and I
would spend the rest of our time that way, taking down the record he needed to
leave behind.

“That letter is dated two years before the plague,”
he said. “Seven hundred and twenty-eight days before the bloodless rose to
infect the world.”

He prevented me from turning to look at him, but I
longed to see in his face the sorrow I heard in his voice—just once, I
wanted to gaze upon the aspect the young Italian girl had loved.

My mistake at that moment was letting her into my
mind. I didn’t know he tracked each of my thoughts, sifted through my mental pictures,
and recognized my mosaic of Evelina.

My spine clenched, as it contorted backward and he
drew me off my stool, raising me in the air. My throat closed and the room went
dark, as the air clashed with his rage, and he smashed his fist into the wall,
burrowing a hole in the stony tower. Pebbles rained on the ground as I slipped
into silence.

***

When I woke I lay on my cot in the darkened corner
and he sat at my side, looking down on me. On the precipice of consciousness,
between blurred sight and imagination, I saw his godly aspect, the one she
would’ve loved. But it was gone by the time I gained my senses, and he chilled
me with a painted smile.

“I assume you have learned your lesson,” he said.
“We must continue.”

He stood up and motioned for me to return to my
stool at the drafting table. A fresh sheet of paper had replaced the previous one
and I looked around for the record I’d already begun.

“It is safe,” he said, tapping the left pocket of
his long length, double-breasted coat.

The pen rose on the surface and floated before me,
waiting for me to take it. No magic trick, no wires, it was all him.

“Let us begin again with Shenmé, shall we?”

I seized the pen but he waited until it no longer
shook in my hand.
Shenmé
, I scrawled
in the margin as subtitle. I remembered her most vividly, resurrected as she
was in those last few pages of his journal. She had been on the ship the entire
time, waiting for him, wanting her master to come to her, readied for something.

“As you will recall, Shenmé was my first,” he said.
“For centuries I had lived alone, the only of my kind, and then one night, this
young girl changed my world, as though she recognized my power, and could draw
it out of me. Shenmé was a child but awoke to womanhood—a bloodlusting
queen among mortals. Her aura spoke to my power, and I embraced my creation.”

He sighed and let out a grumble before recounting everything
he needed me to record, as he paced the small nook, his capelike coat
flourishing with every turn. He began his dictation with, “I visited Shenmé
after I read Byron’s letters.”

Shenmé, the
Great Xing Fu

“Master,” my progeny said, “I wanted you brought to
me.”

“Why?”

“I no longer rule,” she said. “None of the others
know I am here. My progeny is their commander now, as it must be. Cixi’s ways
are barbaric, but she has won their respect, and her failure to do so would have
been mine, too. She has some good qualities, believe me when I tell you I
tried.”

She spoke as any honest maker would. Shenmé held her
hand out to me and asked me to sit with her. I did not refuse my first, for she
was on the cusp of darkness. Her skin, flaked and shredded, showed signs of the
interior combustion to come. The hardening would begin in the spleen and spread
to the abdomen, burning every cell in-between before turning her outer shell to
ash. It happened to Byron, and it would happen to Shenmé. This time, I would
witness it with my own eyes.

“What am I to know?” I asked.

“Byron was loyal, first and foremost,” she said. “No
matter what you’ve read in those letters, master.”

“Who is Laszlo Arros?”

“The one to whom you must go,” she said.

“Why?”

“He awaits you.”

His name as addressee to all of Byron’s letters was
the first time I had seen it.

“I heard of him in the Nortrak,” Shenmé said. “The
Empress met her connection there. She’d made a plan early on, seizing the opportunity
to harvest blood of her own.”

“Plague profiteer,” I mumbled.

“Her intent was never charitable, it is true.” Her
fragile hand slipped from mine and she pulled it into her lap. “It eventually caught
up with her, though. She has traded with a dubious character. The facility is a
poisonous hive.”

“How so?”

“All manner of experiments, breeding, and plenty of
blood.”

She cringed, and showed me how loose her teeth had
gotten.

“Rot,” she said. “I’m rotting from the inside.”

“Tell me everything you know.”

Byron’s letters left me with holes to fill.

“I don’t know how she made the connection with
Youlan,” she said. “But she is from the facility and helped my Cixi acquire the
donors. I suppose she brokered the deal, and the loyal horde of vampires
followed.”

“And Laszlo Arros?”

“As I said, I heard of him, but I never met him. I
don’t even think Cixi knows him. He is the one, though. The one you must see.”

“How can you know that?”

Shenmé forced a smile. “My donor escaped his prison.”

“Muriel?”

“Yes,” she said. “The only true donor onboard.”

“She has been good to my Evelina.”

She looked away and grit her teeth. The pain seeped
through the stony face she braved.

“Muriel’s arrival has done little to slow my illness.
Even her blood can’t quell my starvation.”

“What is happening to you?”

She clasped my hand in hers and brought my fingers
to her lips, indulging in a caress. I allowed her the indulgence, submitting to
her praise since it would be her last chance to show me the respect she owed.

“I’ve been poisoned,” she said.

“By what?” I did not doubt it was something like
Byron’s substitute, the one that killed both him and Elizabeth.

She looked away again and said, “I don’t know what,
exactly.”

“Muriel’s blood has not restored you?”

She shook her head. “I can’t recover,” she said.
“The poison rots me from the inside.”

“How can you not know the source of your own
poisoning?”

She looked away and winced, her face bearing a
grimace. “Muriel has been inside the place,” she said. “She knows it.”

“Is it run by a military faction?”

“It’s non-governmental,” she said. “Private industry
from Korea, I think. It moved to the Nortrak before the Second Great Flood.”

“Is the Nortrak as it was?”

“Nothing is, master.”

Her eyes were deep black, blacker than currents, eyes
in which a man could rightly lose his bearings.

“Tell me about Muriel,” I said.

“Youlan brought her onboard—she was part of a
deal.” She struggled with her words. They would become muddled, as the pain snatched
her ability to think. “She knows the Viking.”

“Veor is a kinblood,” I said.

Shenmé smiled. “You see so much, master.”

The edges of her mind fizzled. I could see it in her
eyes just as I had in Byron’s. The fire was lit and the anguish had begun. As I
sat with her, she held onto me with a steady hand, never expressing the horror,
a nightmare I could recall with the memory of my own short-lived poisoning.

“Laszlorosesmutation.” Her words were smashed together,
though I understood her meaning.

“His mutation?” I asked.

“A new race,” she said.

“Is Laszlo Arros cloning vampires?”

Shenmé nodded and looked away. “Cixi’s supply,” she
said.

“Are you speaking of Youlan—is she a clone?”

“The letters …” She slumped forward and I propped
her up beside me.

I thought of Byron’s final letter, the words he
used,
I never should have trusted you
with his venom – You have dishonored our kind – He will come for
you – His wrath is epic – He will find you, I promise.

“Muriel … the letters,” Shenmé said.

“Did she bring the letters?”

“Bought her passage,” she said.

“I do not understand.”

“Viking,” she said.

“Did Veor come with Muriel? Was he at the facility,
too?”

She shook her head and mumbled, “Youlan … together.”

If Veor and Muriel were kinblood, it was not by
chance. He would have known who she was, where she came from. Though the ties
are strong, it would surprise me if her scent alone revealed her relation. Those
bonds proved more inviolable than I once deemed possible.

“Some,” Shenmé whispered.

“Some?”

“Replicas.” Frail as she was, she barely moved her
head to gesture. “Not real.”

“Who? Youlan?”

“Don’t vie for loyalty.”

“To Cixi?” I said.

She dropped her head. “To you.” Her gray skin turned
plum, as she choked back the pain. “Muriel—yours—” Vague and
truncated, her words tumbled from her lips disjointed. “Laszloroses—bloodless,”
she said.

“Tell me about the donors,” I said. “Why the colors?
Their blood is—are they the replicas you speak of?”

“Authentic, master.”

“Authentic and inauthentic, you had said that before.”
She pushed away and I pulled her to me. “What do you mean?”

“The taste,” she said. “You taste?” She clutched at
me and her eyes grew wide. “Don’t taste.”

“Is the blood contaminated?”

She closed her eyes and I tapped her cheek, the skin
chipping as Elizabeth’s had.

“The pain,” she hissed. “Unbearable.”

“Why the colors?” I urged. “Is it something in their
blood? Something given to them in the facility?”

“Gene … engine …”

She fell unconscious, and I tried the one thing
Byron had not allowed me to do. I bit into her crumbling flesh and shot my
venom beneath her skin. The relief was temporary but she revived enough to speak
again.

“Cixi’s donors,” she said, “are from there.”

“And they are poisoning the vampires onboard this
ship? Does Cixi know?”

“My progeny is oblivious.” I held Shenmé more
tightly, as she seemed to slip again. “Foolish … venom for blood.”

“She traded venom for blood?”

She shook her head and said, “She bought venom with
blood.”

“Whose venom?”

“Yours.”

The thought of my venom as a source of trade swelled
like a balloon in my stomach, filling with my spleen’s black bile, as I
succumbed to a wrath like none I had before. I pulled myself away from my
progeny and paced the cabin. “Why did Cixi broker a deal for my venom?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “She used the sample.”

I flew to my precious Shenmé and pulled her broken
body up from the berth, drawing her eyes to mine. “On whom?”

She bowed and nodded her head, unable to hold my
stare. “Evelina Caro,” she said, the name a meaningless set of syllables stumbling
from her mouth. She yelped when I let her slip and her body touched the cold
metal of the deck. She lay her head at my feet, clasping my boots with her
hands. “Please,” she whimpered. “Please.”

The deck fell away, and my rage reached down and
hung me up as though by a hook. It carried me up and up and up, my eruption
breaking through the bulkhead above me. The Empress had flouted the greatest
rule. Full circle, it had all come. My beloved Byron had started it, managing
to purloin my venom without my notice, sending it to a nemesis, and setting the
wheels of my extinction in motion. But the cunning Empress brokered a deal for
my sample to make my counterpart. How she could know Evelina’s power over me was
impossible. The irony was not dramatic, for no audience had witnessed the first
theft, the grandest larceny that became my boon. Despite the violation to make Evelina
so, she became the missing piece.

“The novice,” Shenmé said, “is the anchor.” She
looked up at me from the deck, attempting to gain my favor once more.

“Your progeny has violated everything sacred to my kind,”
I said.

“Evelina was always yours, master.”

I have cut off heads for lesser reasons, but I
listened to my ailing progeny as she insisted I hear what I had not known
before. I never doubted whether Evelina had forced Cixi’s hand, inflicting the
wound to her own neck, but the past was newly revived in Shenmé’s cabin, and
the question hung in the air unanswered. Had Cixi taken Evelina’s life to awaken
her?

“You must hear this,” Shenmé said. “It’s crucial,
master.”

“What?” I pulled my leg away, as she tugged at my
cuff.

“Evelina must feed on the blood of her own,” she
said. “Her constitution is fragile.”

“If she was made with my venom, she may feed on any
blood she pleases.” The hackles on my neck rose, as pride pricked at me.

Shenmé reached for me again, desperate for me to
hear her. I cringed at her dying energy, pulling me down into her vortex. “Evelina
is like me, like Byron.” She faced upward and whispered as though into my ear,
“Master,” she called me, “you must see the pattern.”

I did not until she said it. Byron, Shenmé, and
Evelina, all made from my venom, the purest source, and I was the target, my
line the one being destroyed by sullied blood.

“She has fed on the den donors,” I said, yanking
Shenmé up from the deck. “Has she been poisoned too?”

“All of them drink bad blood.”

“No. No.” I steadied my hand, and returned her to
the berth, letting my rage diffuse itself. “She will not suffer for this.”

“She must drink from her own.” Shenmé said the words
with clenched teeth. My outrage had shaken her and increased the pain.

“Every vampire here will suffer the same fate.”

“Why have there been no signs? Others who have begun
to suffer, too?”

She shook her head. “It’s the venom.”

“What do you mean?”

“Our venom—it’s made for our venom.”

“They all have traces of my venom in them.”

“Yes.”

Time, quantity, and purity of venom determined the
rate at which a vampire would collapse from the poisoned blood, and eventually
be incapable of feeding.

“Why do you say she must drink of her own?”

“It’s the only way to know—” Shenmé toppled
over and I rushed to her. She whispered, her voice a ghost beneath a small heap
of clothing, “He has destroyed both races and created his own.”

“Who?”

“The god of doom.”

She meant my nemesis. I questioned how one could
acquire such power, only to learn it was inherent. Shenmé’s broken frame said
it all. The ancient one had returned for the shade I had denied him all those
years ago. The dark soil of Elysium awaited me, my having slipped through the
fields of asphodel once, and Hades sent the goddess of vengeance to repossess what
was still his.

“Nemesis is a bitter goddess,” I said.

I had underestimated her reach, spreading across
generations of time and faith. I abandoned my pantheon long ago since none had
been my equal. But now the ancient goddess reminded me of the havoc she could
wreak. Narcissus had seen nothing compared to what she had planned for the son
of Peleus. She was the figure of divine retribution, seeking payment from those
who had succumbed to hubris, but she had become more wrathful with time, with
technology, having lain dormant for so long. She lusted for vengeance now, for
revenge was not enough, and Laszlo Arros was her weapon of choice.