The Journal of Vincent Du Maurier Trilogy (Books 1, 2, 3) (60 page)

“There’s no good blood,” Shenmé said.

From what I could tell, Muriel, Captain Jem, and
Lucia were the only uncontaminated sources of blood onboard a ship of poisonous
donors. And no vampire could learn that truth.

“The brood will sting, master.”

I believed that, for they were all headed toward the
same tortured fate. The infection had already taken hold of some of them,
though they showed no symptoms yet. Once the vampires onboard started getting
sick, suspicions would arise. I had to get off the ship with what was mine.

Shenmé gripped me with her brittle claws, cracked
and chipped, as she held on to something solid. “Take them and go,” she said.
“Save your descendants.” She looked up at me with her fiery eyes and I beheld
the pain beneath.

I cradled her in my arms, an act of tenderness Byron
had denied me. My anger had subsided at the sight of her demise.

“Toss me overboard,” she said. “Let my ashes find
their way along the Feng and back to you. I’ll get the chance to start again, sweet
master.” She closed her eyes and whispered her final words to me, “Save your
offspring.”

It is quite something to see a corpse crumble before
your eyes—Lot’s wife and the pillar of salt and all.

The Last Blood

Vincent paused in his dictation and tore the pen
from my hand, slamming it down on the drafting table without moving from his
spot in the corner. “Do you know why you have no offspring?”

My throat relaxed, as his force seemed to wane, his
hold on me loosening.

“Speak,” he said.

“Gerenios said I was to remain alone.”

“A monk in the high tower,” he scoffed.

“I’m not like the others.”

“Ah,” his voice grumbled as he rose from the chair.
“You think you have no match.” He tapped his feet along the planks, as he crossed
to reach me. He grabbed my chin before I could resist, and held my face up to
his.

“Look,” he said.

Terror seized me, as he opened his mouth to bare his
metal fangs. The words on the page had not done them justice. They would even frighten
Minos, the sinners’ counsel with the horrid curling tale. I shut my eyes, and
he tossed my head to the side.

“You have her eyes,” he said.

“Whose—,” my voice got caught in my throat.

“Do you wonder about your guardian?”

“How do you know about him?”

“There is nothing about you I do not know,” he said,
as he floated back to the nook, dragging a fingernail along the stone wall. He scarred
one whole side of the tower with a deep groove.

He was furthest from me now, but his black soul
drowned out my light.

“Can you see the line I’ve made?”

“Yes,” I said, freed from his paralysis.

“A lifeline,” he said. “Do you see the line that is
made by the cracks between the stones? The seam that runs the entire length of
the tower from bottom to top, into the earth below and through the parapet
above us into the endless sky?”

I imagined the invisible grid he drew for me and
nodded.

“Good,” he said. “Tell me, which line represents
your life?”

I swallowed and looked up at him as though to look
away were worse, desperate to see in him the creature Evelina had softened and
loved.

“The shorter one,” I said.

“Wrong.”

I didn’t understand how my lifeline could be the
longer, unless his wasn’t the other object of comparison.

“It is not a question of length,” he said. “It is a
matter of direction.”

He ran his hand along the groove he’d made, savoring
its tactility as if it were Braille meant to tell the tip of his finger a story.

“Mine sits along the horizon, endless and circular,”
he said. “Yours runs upward.” He looked up, and spread his arms wide.

I would’ve told him I didn’t understand if he hadn’t
terrified me so. He seemed engrossed in the groove of the line he’d etched, his
concentration pouring into the fissure like water through a duct.

He brought his head forward and stared at the groove,
as he moved to my side. He dropped his gaze from the wall to the text I’d begun,
and smiled. The scribbled language of the colony wasn’t as beautiful as his
tongue. He stood so close I could’ve touched him, though I kept my hands tucked
in the sleeves of my pullover, afraid to test his chimericality. He read my
thoughts as easily as if I’d spoken them aloud, and reached out to prove he was
no shadow.

“I am glad I frighten you, Dagur,” he said. “I have
been soft for too long.”

I knew you’d come
, I wanted to say, my tongue
tied up in knots.

“My final message held you in suspense, did it? What
was it I wrote, ‘I am coming for you, Dagur. Keep the blood warm.’ Was that
it?”

I shook my head, as my pulse quickened. The
throbbing in my temples showed in the veins of my neck.

“There was more, no?” With a swipe of his hand, he freed
my voice box. “Speak it.”

“I am the last of your kind,” I squeaked.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “You. You are the last.” He
pointed his sharpened finger at me. “You are so much more, too.” He backed away
again, a misshapen smile corrupting his looks, as he retreated to the chair in
the nook. “Your blood is dear to me.” He lingered over the word dear, repeating
it twice, and then said, “Caro, in Italian.”

As hard as I tried, I couldn’t stop thinking of the
novice, the young Italian girl, the pregnant waif who stole his heart and
became his counterpart by another’s hand. She rushed at me and I saw the face
of Evelina Caro as clearly as my own.

“I didn’t mean to,” I spat out the words before he
seized my larynx again and shut me up for good.

“Ready the pen,” he said with a growl.

I obeyed and turned back to the flat surface of my
drafting table, my only comfort. I was most calm when I worked, transcribed,
repaired, connected textual pieces. My role as his amanuensis suited me better
than blood donor.

“Shall we return to the ship to learn more about
Laszlo Arros?” He inhaled a great gust of air, and began again.

Muriel Heath

The light in Muriel’s compartment radiated with the
sheer amber veil placed over the single lamp burning on the bureau. The smell
of her ichor was so thick I could taste it in the creases of my tongue, but the
sight of my counterpart feeding bit at my heart more readily. I admired Evelina
as she indulged in a feeding as hearty as a banqueter. I smiled when she looked
up and wiped her chin. The sight of the pomegranate stain made my spine ache
for the days when veins bled like water in streams, days she had missed. She
would never know my world, I thought then, unaware several decades of pleasure
still lay ahead for us.

“Let me see to Vincent,” Muriel whispered to
Evelina.

“I must speak with Muriel in private,” I said.

To persuade Evelina to leave me was as difficult then
as pulling her from her donor. She had latched onto the soul we shared and
clung to it.

“I won’t leave you,” she whined.

“I will not be long.”

“Is she gone?”

“Xing Fu is no more.”

“I must see my maker, then.”

“No,” I said.

She looked up at me with the aspect I will always remember.

“Was it like Byron?” She asked softly.

I nodded. “Cixi will be mourning.”

“Not me,” she said.

“You have no reason to mourn.”

My venom coursed through her. She was mine—my
one, my only, my confidante—my counterpart—me. I planned to share
most things with her, even Byron’s correspondence, but I could not speak to
Muriel about the facility in Evelina’s presence. For both Muriel’s and Lucia’s safety,
my vampire could not learn the truth about the den. Peter could read her mind, but
I did not know who else had the gift.

“Go,” I said to my vampire.

She flew to me and kissed my mouth hard, pulling my
heart up through my throat, between my teeth, tasting it for herself. Our
embrace lasted for infinity, long past these mortal shells.

Muriel spoke freely once Evelina was gone, telling
me what she recalled about her time at the facility.

“Your father never returned?” I asked.

“He was the head of an American militia established
by the Nortrak’s alliance. They told me he was sent out to gather support and
died on the mission.”

“That is what they told you?”

She nodded.

“Was he infected?”

She shrugged and looked to the side, showing me her
neck. “I heard he died before it all started.”

“How did you escape the facility?”

“Veor helped me leave.” She wrung her hands and then
wiped a single tear from her cheek. “I just don’t remember much of—well, how
we got here.”

I waited as she gathered herself, though I longed to
feed. The blood from Evelina’s bite had already congealed, and I desired to
touch the girl’s neck where my counterpart’s lips had caressed her skin. The
bond between us maddened me—I blame it for my moments of distraction.

“Do you remember meeting the Empress?”

“Yes.”

“Did that happen on the ship or in the Nortrak?”

“I don’t recall, but I know I visited her cabin as
soon as I arrived.”

“How did you get the letters?”

“The letters?”

“Byron’s letters,” I said. “You used them to buy
your way onboard.”

Her eyes lost their sparkle. “I don’t recall any
letters.”

“Are you sure?”

She shook her head. “I don’t really know. Veor might
remember—should I call him in?”

I gestured no need. “I see your bond is strong.”

She smiled with a closed mouth. “He’s good to me.”

“So you have no idea how you came by the letters?”

“The letters—no, I have no idea.” She tossed
her head to the side and sighed. “I don’t remember everything, but some things still
haunt me.”

“May I?” I sat next to her on the berth. “I have a
gift for finding lost memories.”

“Oh,” she said.

I reached for her hands and held them in mine.

“Will it hurt?” She asked, sitting back.

I told her how important it was for me to learn the
truth, and that I could only do so with her help. “Okay,” she murmured.

“I am simply going to touch your head, right here.”
I used the tip of my finger to tap her temple gently. The pain would come
later, after I had poked about in her head and left my coldness behind. She
would have a headache fiercer than any she had ever known, though I did not
tell her.

She pulled her hair over her shoulder, freeing up
the right side of her head. My touch made her wince, though I had barely begun
to fish, sending my net into her mind’s abyss. I gently penetrated her skull
with my energy, like an electric pulse wandering between synapses, searching
for memory. To envision Byron’s letters, his hand, his stationery, was enough
to find my way, and I watched it as though it were a scene playing out on a movie
screen.

The gloomy setting did not come in as clearly as she
did, wearing a thin slip, her shoulders covered with the blanket she had pulled
off the cot. Muriel pulled her legs, leaden with their weight, out from under
the covers and over the side of the bed. She would have no visitors, and the
child would not stir. Now is the time, she thought.

She walked with a limp to the door, and pulled the
hairpin from her bun, slipping it into the lock, exactly as she had been
taught. The latch clicked and she slid the partitioned door open. She waited
and counted, as instructed. One – two – three, she thought. Her
mouth burned with the dryness peeling her throat. She looked both ways down the
corridor and took off to the left, just as she had been coached to do.

Her mind grew foggy, as she passed the pods that
held others like her, cells of vesselhood filled with surrogates. It was all
she knew for a long time, her brain having been scrubbed from the moment she
arrived, the severed synapses too damaged to be reconnected again. Muriel recalled
the smell of lilac blooms and honeybees on sweetclover and thistle, as she made
her way down the brightly lit corridor, the lights generating artificial
sunlight. She had been underground so long, her pupils could not handle daytime.
She pinched her eyes shut and ran her hand along the smooth wall beside her,
letting it guide her. Her feet were bare, and the little toe on her left foot
was still bandaged from a test she had endured at the hands of her doctor.

“Syster. Yar haër,” Veor said, meeting her in the
hallway.

When he appeared in front of her, her shoulders
dropped and she practically fell into his arms. He carried her for some time,
until they reached a chamber that looked nothing like the place from where she
had come. This room was dimly lit, its walls covered with artifacts, museum
pieces and precious keepsakes. Muriel did not waste time looking at them, but shuffled
through a stack of papers on the top of a metal desk. Then she pulled open the
side drawers and looked in each one.

“Drawtum, syster.”

“I am,” she whispered, as she tried the bottom
drawer. She rifled through the trinkets on the desktop for a sharp object and
then pulled another pin from her hair, tinkering with the drawer’s lock until
it gave in. She yanked it open and took out the books tucked inside.

“De ar under,” Veor said, pointing to the drawer.

She paused and looked inside more deeply, reaching
in and pulling up on a silk tongue that lay flat at the back. The wooden shelf
lifted, and she slid the cover off the secret compartment. She glanced at Veor,
standing erect by the door, his head looking one way and then the other.

Once Muriel had pulled off the cover, I saw what she
saw. The stack of letters for which I had been sifting through her mind. The
letters were bound with a twine, the top one showing Byron’s elegant hand as
plain as it did sitting in my own pocket.

“No gön comer,” Veor said.

Muriel gasped and grabbed the letters, tucking them
up under the blanket still wrapped around her shoulders.

 
He
rushed to her and swept her up, carrying her as if she had been pulled from a
house aflame. She let her head roll onto his chest and closed her eyes, cutting
off her sight, and mine. I snapped back to our reality as abruptly as if I had slammed
into an iron wall. I watched her, waiting for her to recover.

“There’s more,” she whispered. “Find the ship.”

I placed my hand on her temple again, letting it
sink into my skin as though it were clay and I its maker. I sought the ship,
and found the snowy shores of the Nortrak. The cold and ice ran through her, as
she stood beside Veor in her thin slip and blanket. The wind picked up and the
snow was tossed about, blinding her with her own hair. She pulled it away from
her eyes when Veor said, “Nestun dar, syster.”

He held her close, as a troop came forward through
the snow, walking above it as though it could not slow them down. I did not
recognize the vampires as they drew close, for Muriel shut her eyes again and
laid her head against Veor’s chest.

The next scene had her standing on the deck of the
ship, looking up at the mark of the Qing Dynasty, the slender green dragon
baying at the scarlet sun in a field of cadmium. She entered the Empress’s
cabin alone, and Cixi greeted her with a forced smile.

“Come my child,” she said. “Sit with me.”

Muriel hesitated, and stayed by the portal through
which she had entered.

“The Viking must remain outside for now,” Cixi said.

Muriel looked back at the metal bulkhead and swallowed
hard. Her body shuddered where she stood.

“Are you still cold?”

Muriel shook her head.

“Good,” the Empress said with a cigarette cocked
between her lips. “How did you know about the letters?”

“I didn’t.” Muriel’s voice squeaked against that of
the dragoness.

“Someone must have given them to you, no?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Did you meet him?”

“Who?”

The Empress looked away, keeping the fingers of one
hand up in the air, as she toyed with her ornamental claws. “Laszlo Arros.”

“I don’t know who that is,” Muriel said. “Doctor
Keng and Doctor Hwang, they took care of me mostly.”

“But he sent you,” she said. “Why would he choose
you?”

“I don’t know him,” she said. “Maybe he knew me.”

“Smart tongue. We’ll remedy that.”

Muriel grew weak standing there, her wires crossing,
as one moment she was with the Empress, and the next alone in her cabin. The
connection lost again, I pulled my hand from the side of her face. She snapped
awake as though poked with something hot.

“Ow.” She brought her hand up to her head, the
migraine yet to come.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Did you see it?” She smiled through tight lips.

“Not all of it,” I said. “Do you recall anything
about your first meeting with Empress Cixi?”

“She frightened me,” she said. “And she wouldn’t let
Veor stay with me.”

“Do you remember what she asked you?”

“She wanted to know why I was sent to her.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I escaped,” she said.

“Did she believe you?”

Her look grew tense and her green eyes sparkled
again. “I can’t say for sure. She’s not easy to read, but I never saw her much
once Xing Fu claimed me as hers.”

“You slipped into your donor life rather easily, no?”

“Nothing is worse than what I went through at the
facility,” she said.

“You gave me a different impression when we first
spoke about the Core.”

“Believe it or not, I was ashamed,” she said. “I
feel more comfortable with you now.”

“You trust me?”

She blushed.

“Tell me about the other donors?”

“I’m the only one who doesn’t work in the den, but
some of the girls help me with Lucia, like Nan, and Gia used to also.”

“Was Xing Fu always good to you?”

“Yes.”

“You were not afraid of her?”

She smiled. “Never.”

“What about me?” I asked, turning away. “Do I scare
you?”

“I’m not foolish, Vincent,” she said. “I realize how
valuable my blood is. I know it’s nothing like the other blood on the ship.”

“How so?”

“You favor it.”

I startled her, as I spun around and flew to her,
unable to resist a nip before we continued. The mention of blood—genuine
blood—titillated me and I would wait no longer. She dropped her head to
the side and let me penetrate the same spot my Evelina had chosen, between her
clavicle and shoulder top. The skin was tender, for she flinched, but braved
the pain, permitting me to indulge far longer than necessary.