The Journal of Vincent Du Maurier (Book 1) (16 page)

“None of those will do,” I said. “She needs
protein.” Byron had told me the girl would require plenty of animal flesh to
enrich the growth of the baby. He suggested I hunt small game for her, feeding
her the livers and hearts if she would suffer them. I had neglected his command
since we had enough canned food at the villa. “I will have to get her something
fresh,” I said. “I will be back.”

I
instructed Helgado to mark a perimeter around them with some of his powder.

“I only have a few seeds left—”

I stopped him with my scowl. His frugality
made me livid. “If I am not here to defend her—”

“Okay, okay,” he said.

I waited until he rolled the seed in his
hands and spread the powder around them before taking off through the
grapevines. When I disappeared from his line of sight, I sped up, flying
through the rows of flowering vines, picking up animal scents as I went. I
reached all the way across the vineyard to the neighboring fencerow. The scent
was strong in the brush, where game hid in the thickets. The shaded foliage
marked the hunter’s hour, late in the afternoon when the gregarious
plant-eaters escaped from their burrows to pick the sweetest berries on the
briar. I scoured the overgrown patch for the dark eyes of the rabbit. The smell
of the cottontail was getting stronger.

As I awaited him in stillness, my mind
strayed to human times, to the ephebic prince I stalked much the same. Troilus
became my game too, as I sought his bright eyes in the somber temple. When I
found him crouched by the altar, I almost did not kill him. He seemed worthy of
my sympathy. The boy could not even fake an aggressive countenance. Lithe and
elegant, he was a vision of femininity. He was surely a male adolescent but
everything about him was unmanly. When he spoke, falsetto notes relayed his
message. It was the whine that caused me to do it, his aggravating whimper made
up my mind. I decapitated him with my sword, placing his torso upon the altar
and his head in a bowl at his feet. I rode away from the temple with his blood
still dripping from my sword. Wrath owned me then—they were warring
times.

It was not long before the rabbit came out to
greet me. I caught him up in one hand, and cracked his neck with the other. As
I flew through the rows back to Evelina with the kill on my belt, I sensed the
other. The vampire’s presence crashed into me and I could only hope he did not reach
them before I did. When Evelina’s scream roared through the vines, I redoubled
my pace. When I reached her, she was alone.

“Helgado,” she cried.

“Where?” The vampire was close—I could
feel him. Though he had not gone far with the boy, I was torn. I did not want
to leave the girl alone.

“That way—go,” she said. “Please go!”

I swept her up in my arms and carried her
with me, as I followed Helgado’s scent. We had gone maybe half a mile when I
found Rangu feeding on the boy. He was limp in the arms of the old vampire,
bent over him and sucking the blood from his healthy limb. He was on his second
puncture; the first was in Helgado’s clavicle. The boy was still alive, if just
barely. I put Evelina down and rushed Rangu, knocking the vampire clear off his
feet and several yards into a row of grapevines. Helgado flew from his arms and
landed somewhere on the soft ground. Rangu resisted me, as I held him to the dirt—he
was recharged with the blood-high settling in. He pushed back against me,
hissing and giggling, and threw me off, sending me several feet into the air. “Not
this-s-s-s time, Du Maurier!”

He stole through the vines back to his prize.
I jumped up and over the rows, planning to cut him off at the pass. When I caught
up with him, he had reached Evelina. She was trying to stop the boy’s bleeding,
protecting him with her body, her hands covered in blood. She screamed for me,
as I leapt on Rangu before he lunged for the girl. His iron fangs clamped down
on my wrist instead of her flesh, as I pulled his head back with my arm.

We wrestled through the row of grapevines,
twirling and spinning, until I had my arms around his neck and lifted him up
off the ground. When he finally loosed himself from my grip, it was he who got
me down, slamming me on my back, showing me the sky above, as he crashed down on
top of me. Buried beneath the weight of his body, I kept my chin down to hide
my neck. He attempted to take off my head, as he burrowed his honed talons into
my jawline. His formidable fingers clawed their way into my skin, as his
murderous eyes grew yellow with rage. Whether fate or luck, I do not know, but
a chorus of howls broke our concentration when a swarm swooped in and yanked Rangu
off me. As if dropping from the sky, ten, maybe twenty bloodless surrounded Rangu
and ripped into him with their wolframlike jaws. They must have smelled
Helgado’s blood on the vampire and wanted it for themselves. I had just enough
time to roll out from under him and into the next row of vines. Rangu called
out to Brahma and Shiva before his voice drowned in a cacophony of trills. I
could not save my old friend and rushed back to Evelina.

Though the swarm was distracted, it would not
be long before they headed in our direction. I could only hope no others closed
in already. When I reached the girl, I saw that Helgado was in bad shape. Evelina
had done what she could to stop the bleeding, but he needed to be stitched up
if we were to save him. I had to get them to safety first and so I picked up Helgado,
balancing him on my back, and then took Evelina in my arms and ran to the place
between the powdered vines. Once we reached the coat, I laid Helgado down and
directed Evelina to pass me the medical supplies.

“Can you save him?” She was hysterical and sobbed
ceaselessly.

“You have to calm down,” I said. “I need you
to do this.” Unable to get a grip on herself, I was forced to comfort her. I
put my arms around her and pulled her to me. Between her smell and the boy’s open
wounds, I grew dizzy. “You will have to do this,” I said in my most serene
voice. “I do not have the strength to stitch him.”

I had used up so much energy in the last hour
I was almost depleted again. The bloody wound on Helgado’s clavicle had
coagulated, but the bleeding from his arm was another matter. I held pressure on
the opening and instructed Evelina how to stitch the skin. I eventually covered
my nose with my free hand until the wounds were sealed and the blood had
stopped. By the time Evelina had finished, she was calm and I coaxed her to eat
a little of the rabbit I had caught for her. She ate the liver before falling
asleep between me and the boy. He is still unconscious and if he pulls through
the night, it will be a small miracle.

20 November.
— We spent the night
outside. The powder from the Dilo seed acted as our safe house, repelling the
bloodless that wandered the vineyard. Helgado regained consciousness shortly before
sunrise. He did not remember any of it and believed me when I told him he had
been dragged off by a beast.

“A wolf?”

“They are known to roam these parts,” I said.
“So close to the mountain border.”

“It came out of nowhere,” he said. “I
couldn’t even protect—”

“How do you feel?” I hoped to evade any
details about my saving him. I was relieved he had not seen Rangu.

“Tired I guess,” he said. “Sore like hell
too.”

“You have lost some blood,” I said. “Drink
this.” I handed him the mixture of grapes I had crushed into the canteen of
water. I thought the sugar would help get him moving. He took a little swig and
lay back down on the coat.

“I’m queasy,” he said.

Evelina was awake and gently wrapped herself
around him, caressing his forehead. “Just rest now,” she said. He drifted off
to sleep again, and I thought she had too until I heard her small voice. “He’s
not going to die, is he?”

“No,” I said.

“Why did your friend do that?”

I could not answer her question in a satisfactory
manner. There was no reason—and every reason. It is our nature to feed on
them, nothing else. I recalled the horror of Rangu’s face, as the swarm yanked
him from me. He would suffer their bites just as Maxine and Jean had and would
lose himself to a punishment no one deserves, if he had not already.

The low rumble of thunder pulled me from my
thoughts. Sheltered from the wind in our little enclosure between the vines, I had
not thought to look up at the sky. The storm clouds had already rolled in,
making the sky dark as ink. Water would be the death of us. I quickly packed up
our things, waking Helgado and easing Evelina’s fright. “We have to find
shelter,” I said.

Helgado was groggy when he woke and could not
stand, let alone walk.

“You have to carry him,” Evelina said. I did
not have the strength to carry them both and the bags—she knew this and offered
to walk. “I can keep up,” she said. “I promise.”

Before we left, I tore some of the branches
from the vines and gave them to her. “They still have powder on them,” I said.
“They will act as a deterrent.”

I tossed the bags over one shoulder and
carried Helgado on the other. Evelina walked in front of me, waving her vines
back and forth. I was annoyed I had to carry the boy and the girl was left on
foot. I clung to her, as she set the pace. The rain had not yet begun, but the
sun was nowhere and flashes of lightning menaced the sky. Each time thunder
broke, Evelina stopped.

“We have to keep moving,” I said. “Quickly.”

When I hunted the rabbit the day before, I
spotted a winery. I had planned on bringing Evelina there last night before the
attack on Helgado, but his injuries held us up. When we got close enough to the
building, I could see the large open doors. I did not hear any frequencies, or smell
any humans, and so we proceeded carefully, stopping on the threshold before
entering. I listened for movement, for howls, and when I did not hear anything,
I guided her in.

The dark warehouse smelled like rotted
fruit—and death. Evelina held onto the cuff of my sleeve, as I steered
her through the blackness. An enormous vat sat in the center of the room and we
disturbed the bed of flies that had settled on the spoiled pith, as we moved
past it. The gnats surrounded us in another sort of swarm. “Close your mouth
and eyes,” I said.

We rushed through the infestation to the only
door at the other end. I suppose I should have thought before throwing it open,
but I was eager to get us out of the pests and into fresh air. As soon as I
slammed the door behind us, I realized we were not outside. The howls pitched with
the smell of the humans. Evelina screamed and clutched me tighter. I dropped
the bags, and pushed Helgado and her up against the door, covering them with my
body. The small swarm at the other end of the storeroom kept their distance,
and I had enough time to formulate a plan. I lunged forward, kicking the beam
that held several large keg shelves in place. When the shelves came down, so
did the wooden barrels. They rolled onto the swarm of bloodless, toppling them
over like a ball hitting pins.

With the bloodless distracted, I made for the
roof. Using what strength I had left, I grabbed Evelina and Helgado together
and scaled the shelf anchors up to a hatch in the ceiling. When I got to the
top, I threw it open and climbed outside where the wind was fierce and raindrops
ran down like strings without a break. I looked for a shelter for the two of
them but could only find a small ledge near an exhaust vent. I put them down under
the mantle, telling Evelina I would be right back. “Don’t leave us,” she said.

I had no time to console her and tore back
down the hatch to get the bags. I landed on the shelf I had knocked on a slant.
I slid down to its end and peered over the ledge. The bloodless were scattered,
clawing at the wall opposite the door. They climbed on top of one another to get
away from the potent seeds, sitting in the pocket of the rucksack. I slipped
down to the floor and retrieved the bags, scaling my way back up the wall
anchors and out onto the roof again. It was only a matter of time before
frenetic, able-bodied bloodless would be clambering up to the humans. I needed
to get us back inside.

I rifled through the rucksack and felt for the
last three seeds. I took one and headed down the hatch again. I rested on the slanted
shelf and rolled the seed in my hands just as I had seen Helgado do. But I could
not make it into powder. As much as I clapped it between my hands and tried to
break it, the ball would not dissolve. Finally, I realized my nature prevented the
seed from breaking down. My skin was not skin but a casing that resisted heat
and the seed would never soften in my hands.

I rushed back up to the roof. The rain pelted
harder now, as electricity fired up the sky. A quick glance out to the fields
alerted me to the coming bloodless. The human scent, no longer masked by
incense oil, drew them to the winery. I pulled Evelina from Helgado. “I need
you,” I said.

“What?”

“You have to break the seed.”

“I won’t leave him.”

“You have no choice,” I said.

“No!”

I picked her up with two hands and ripped her
from Helgado’s side. She cried out but I carried her to the hatch despite her
protest. I set her down hard—I was enraged. She had triggered something
in me with her refusal and I wanted to expose my fangs. It took an incredible
amount of strength to keep them drawn up. My voice was not my own when I
scolded her and threatened to throw Helgado in the pit of bloodless if she did
not make the powder. I ignored her cries, as I pulled her down onto the
shelving with me and forced the seed into her hand. Frightened, she obeyed her
master and rubbed her hands together, rolling the seed between her palms. Like
magic, the ball softened into powder.