Deathless (24 page)

“
So what?” Edwina straightened her posture and pushed her shoulders back. She had to show him she would not be cowed. “I was careful, and I disposed of the body where it will never be found. No one will ever connect his disappearance to our kind. He is just another missing human.”

“
You said you were seeking a feeder,” Stefan said, continuing to press her. “Your permission to go out alone was for that purpose—not so you could hunt.”

“
I was not hunting,” Edwina lied. “But the opportunity was so perfect, I just could not resist.”

“
Exactly,” Stefan said. The satisfaction in his voice was clear. “That is why the rules were put in place, because
Destiratu
can make it impossible to resist the urge.”

“
That is not what I meant,” Edwina replied calmly. “I was never out of control, not even for a moment. The chance was just too good to pass up. Trust me.”

“
That is the problem, I’m afraid. I do not trust you. Not at all. I should rescind your permission to venture out by yourself right now.”

Edwina laid her hand gently on Stefan’s forearm. “No, please don’t,” she said, trying to sound as compliant as possible. “I need a feeder. I’ve grown used to having one.” It never hurt to remind him of that.

Stefan studied her closely. He didn’t trust her, but he did owe her. He cursed the
grafhym
blood that had somehow found its way into Leesa’s veins and kept him from being able to turn her. He had put himself into Edwina’s debt for no gain.

“
Very well,” he said finally. “You may go out one more time. But you had best come back with a feeder, or you will go hungry. My patience has its limits.”

Edwina breathed an inward sigh of relief. She didn’t know if Stefan would hold firm to his ultimatum, but there was a chance he might. She would need to plan her next trip out very carefully.

32. ANSWERS AND QUESTIONS

L
eesa trudged up a musty, dimly lit stairwell, heading for Dr. Clerval’s third floor office. This was one of the oldest buildings on campus and had no elevator. She was pretty sure someone with the professor’s tenure could have had a bigger and newer office somewhere else on campus if he wanted, but Dr. Clerval seemed comfortable here.

It was barely nine o’clock, but Leesa hoped the professor would be in his office. She had classes today from ten o’clock until one, so she was hoping to catch him before her first class. Pushing through a heavy fire door, she stepped into the third floor hallway. The corridor was silent and empty, and her footsteps echoed lightly off brown plaster walls badly in need of a fresh coat of paint.

She limped down the hallway until she reached an old wooden door about halfway down the hall. In contrast to the shiny nameplates affixed to the other doors she had passed, Professor Clerval’s brass nameplate was tarnished dark with age, testimony to his long tenure here. Leesa knocked softly on the door.

“
Just a minute,” came the professor’s voice from inside.

“
It’s Leesa Nyland,” Leesa said, letting him know there was no reason to put any of his secret stuff away. He had already shown her his most precious treasures, including one that only one other person had ever seen, his genuine vampire skull.

A moment later, she heard the lock click and the door swung open, revealing a smiling Dr. Clerval. As always, he was dressed in a dark, rumpled suit and black converse high top sneakers. Candlelight flickered behind him. Leesa was pretty sure she knew what the candles meant.

“
What a pleasant surprise,” Dr. Clerval said. “How’s my favorite student?”

Leesa knew the professor’s comment was sincere. They had experienced a lot together last semester, culminating with Dr. Clerval getting to meet a real vampire when she had chosen him to drive her to meet Stefan to fulfill her bargain. Until then, the professor had been absolutely convinced vampires existed, but had never actually seen one. The meeting with Stefan was enough to insure Leesa’s place as his favorite, but they had shared other experiences as well, including curing Leesa’s mom with the blood of a
grafhym
.

“
I’m fine,” she said. “At least, I hope I am.”

“
Where are my manners?” the professor said, stepping aside. “Come in, come in.”

Leesa limped into the dimly lit office, and Dr. Clerval closed the door behind her, clicking the lock back into place. As usual, the air inside his office was thick with the fruity scent of pipe tobacco, and Leesa saw his pipe smoldering in the old brass ashtray on the corner of his desk. A thin ribbon of smoke twisted up from the bowl in the candlelight, dissipating in the dimness above.

Even though she had been here several times, Leesa was still surprised by how small the office was, smaller even than her dorm room. Tall bookcases crammed with books—most of them dealing with vampires—lined every wall, making the room feel even smaller. A glass-fronted bookcase housed the professor’s oldest, most valuable manuscripts. Black curtains were drawn across an arched window similar to the one in Leesa’s room, and only the tiniest a bit of daylight leaked in around the edges. Beneath the window was a beautiful antique roll top desk, cluttered with papers. Sitting in the center of the desk was the reason for the closed curtains and candlelight—his vampire skull.

When Dr. Clerval had first shown her the skull, Leesa had been amazed and fascinated, especially by the twin fangs. That was back when she didn’t know vampires truly existed, before she had watched Rave destroy one, and before she had been bitten by Stefan. The ancient skull had been the first real evidence she had ever seen for the existence of vampires. It turned out vampire bone was even more sensitive to light than vampire skin, so the professor only examined it by candlelight.

Leesa still thought the skull was very cool, but it had lost its power to amaze her.

“
Sit down, sit down,” the professor invited.

Leesa sat down carefully on an old wooden chair with a dark burgundy cushioned seat. Dr. Clerval lowered himself gingerly onto his desk chair.

“
Let me put this thing away,” he said, indicating the skull. “And then you can tell me what’s troubling you.”

Professor Clerval carefully wrapped the skull in the black velvet cloth he always stored it in, clipping the top of the cloth closed with a brass clip. He carried it across the room to his old-fashioned metal safe and placed it gently inside, then pushed the heavy door closed and spun the combination lock. When he sat back down, he switched on the red and gold glass Tiffany table lamp on his desk and blew out the candles. He grabbed his pipe from the ashtray and took a deep puff.

“
So, what brings you here this morning?” he asked after he exhaled a cloud of smoke.

Leesa was not sure where to start. Zombies? Strange dreams that seemed to possibly be coming true? Objects moving for no apparent reason? Each time one of those things happened, it seemed critically important, but when she looked at them from a distance and got ready to talk about them, they all seemed almost silly. Still, she was certain they were not silly, and was pretty sure Dr. Clerval would not think so, either.

“
I’m not even sure where to begin,” she said.

“
You’ve been through a lot these last few months, Leesa. If something is troubling you, I’m sure it must be important. So start wherever you want.”

She decided to start with the dreams.

“
I’ve been having some really strange dreams the last month or so.”

“
Strange, how?”

“
Well, for starters, they’re totally realistic,” Leesa explained. “Much more real than my usual dreams, for sure. But that’s not what bothers me so much. What’s really strange is two of them apparently came true.”

She saw a tiny hint of surprise in Dr. Clerval’s eyes, but that was the extent of his reaction to her claim. She could only imagine how skeptically any of her science professors would have reacted to such a claim.

“
What do you mean by ‘came true?’” he asked.

She described the dreams, and then told him about the news stories and the YouTube video.

“
I remember hearing about that thing in Higganum,” Dr. Clerval said. “I didn’t pay too much attention to it—I just figured it was a prank of some sort, probably teenagers with too much time on their hands. Your dream certainly casts a different light on it, though.”

“
I might have chalked it up to coincidence,” Leesa said, “except for that tri-cornered hat. And then I had the dream about the dead girl at the window.”

Dr. Clerval took another long pull from his pipe and blew the smoke out through pursed lips. “Precognition,” he said.

“
Huh? What’s that?”

“
The ability to see future events. For some people it happens in dreams, others have visions. Have you experienced anything like this before?”

Leesa shook her head. “No, never. Not even close.”

“
So, if you
are
experiencing precognition,” Dr. Clerval said, “one question would be, why now?”

“
I’ve been wondering that same thing. I was hoping you could help. Do you think it could have anything to do with being bitten by Stefan? Do vampires have any of this precognition stuff?”

“
I’ve never seen it mentioned in any texts or histories,” the professor replied. “But just because it’s not a vampire power doesn’t mean it’s not related to Stefan’s bite. Perhaps the bite triggered something already inside you—unlocking it, if you will.”

“
Well, if that’s the case,” Leesa said glumly, “it might not be the only thing it triggered.

Dr. Clerval’s eyes widened with interest. “What do you mean?”

“
I’ll tell you in a minute,” Leesa replied. “But can we stick to the dreams just a bit longer? I can understand why the one dream has to do with a vampire, given everything that happened last semester. But zombies? I have no idea where that’s coming from. Why am I suddenly dreaming about dead people returning to life? And is it truly happening? Or is someone just digging up bodies as a prank? Even if it’s just a prank, why am I dreaming about it?” She smiled. “That’s a lot of questions, I know. Do you know anything about zombies?”

Dr. Clerval took a last puff from his pipe and placed it carefully back into the ashtray. “Reanimated corpses have been a theme of old folk tales for centuries,” he said, lapsing into his teaching voice. “They are especially connected to the voodoo practiced in places like the Caribbean and Africa. It’s usually a witch doctor or sorcerer who brings the person back to life with a spell. In the last hundred years, zombies have become increasingly common in literature, and a bit later, in film. In these modern stories, it’s usually some kind of plague or radiation that turns hordes of corpses into flesh-eating monsters.”

Leesa nodded. She had been right to come to Dr. Clerval. He knew at least a little bit about lots of supernatural stuff.

“
I know there’ve been lots of books and movies in the last few years,” she said. “Is there any chance some of it could be based on something real? Like the vampire stories are?”

The professor closed his eyes for a moment and stroked his chin with the fingers of one hand. It looked to Leesa like he was remembering something.

“
When I was a much younger man,” he said finally, “and far more energetic than I am now, I took a long trip to Eastern Europe in search of vampire lore. During my journey, I heard repeated stories of someone—or something—called the Necromancer. It’s a common term, used in many tales and legends about a person who can control the dead, but the stories I heard seemed to refer to a particular being. People spoke of grandparents or great grandparents who had lived through a scourge of walking dead. Since my main interest was vampires, I didn’t pay too much attention to these tales, but I still remember having the feeling there might be some germ of truth to them.”

“
So you think zombies could be real, then?”

“
I believe they might have existed at some time in the past, in very local situations,” Dr. Clerval replied. “But I haven’t come across anything in the last fifty years or so that carried the same quality of truth as those stories. Nowadays, every mention of the living dead is just popular fiction. It’s as if zombies disappeared, similar to the way werewolves also seem to have vanished.”