The Journal of Vincent Du Maurier (Book 1) (2 page)

“Stephen!” Her call tore through him and
though he had already reached the bottom step, he threw the man down and bolted
back up to help his beloved. I had placed the girl down as well and was about
to run up to give them help when she tugged at the cuff of my pant.

“Don’t go,” she whispered.

I barely gave her a glance, shaking her hand
loose. I rushed up the steps to find six or seven bloodless swarming, their
howls escalating so they were soon baying at the moon. Stephen had freed his
beloved from the grip of the first and planted his dagger deep in its jowl.
Veronica tore the mandible of another with her bare hands. The fresh blood had
renewed our fangs and talons and made them worthy opponents for bony fingers
and rancid mouths. The bloodless could not break skin, for the texture of ours
had become as solid as marble again.

I let my talons loose and sliced the necks of
two that came forward while Veronica and Stephen dropped the last three, as a
few newcomers darted across the field, catching the human whiff that hung in
the air. We flew down the steps and I slammed the hatch, locking us in with the
iron bar and metal chains before howls of a second swarm reached our threshold.
As we headed down the tunnel to safety, the baying of the bloodless faded.

20 September.
—
When
I realized we could run out of people to feed on, my fangs ached for want of a
fresh bite. Three months in and I knew the gravity of the threat—the
plague was quickly robbing us of our precious resource. It was then that Byron
suggested we stockpile as much blood as we could find, foraging clinics, blood
banks, hospitals, med vacs, even military facilities for every last drop. We
subsisted on the reserves for a fair amount of time, longer in fact than I
expected, but feeding on portioned blood is no way for a vampire to live. Our
rations are all depleted now and I am desperate again. Byron has taken a turn
for the worse, and I fear this is his end. But Maxine’s discovery gave me hope.
I did not know if the information she had gathered was worth her life but if it
proved true, we would stave off the hunger for a little while longer.

It pains me now to
recall Jean’s face, as he watched his beloved consort change before his very
eyes, her beauty fleeting as instantly as the gasp of a dead man. When she had returned
from that fateful jaunt, she had whispered to her maker in their tongue, her
French betraying her fear. “Je me suis fait mordre par les monstres.”
I was bitten by the monsters.

“Mais comment?” Jean’s disbelief hung in the air long after his voice echoed
through the cathedral.

I asked her where she had been. I was in a foul mood, starving as I was.

“I went to ze trattoria,” she said, “where we found zat boy.”

“Foolish,” I said under my breath.

The boy had already been infected and was on the verge of his
transformation. His insides sat atop his outsides and he smelled rancid. He was
unconscious, just barely breathing, and my clan was furious with me for
refusing to feed on him. It took some convincing to assure them his blood,
should it not poison us, would taste putrid.

“I ’oped zere would be others,” Maxine said, “’iding zere.” She choked a
little.

“Reposes-toi, ma douce.”
Rest, my
sweet.

Jean took her by the hand and led her to a pew.
He
wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into him. She could no longer see
the look of horror on his face, the same one the rest of us will never forget.
“But
I was careful,” she whispered to him, as they sat.

“Obviously not careful enough,” I said since it was beneath me to cloak
my scorn. I expressed my anger at her reckless behavior openly, though I admit scolding
her then is something I regret now.

“I made my way to ze alley at ze side,” she said. “Zere was nobody zere,
but I smelled eet.” Her eyes betrayed what
eet
was. “I smelled zat peppery sweetness and I knew it was fresh so I headed for ze
trattoria when suddenly I ’eard zem.”

“The bloodless?” I asked.

“No, ze ’umans.”

“Where?”

“Inside,” she said.

“You heard voices?”

“Yes,” she said. “I’m sure of it. I went to ze door and sniffed ze air.
Zat’s when I knew I smelled eet and zen I ’eard whispers, a single voice, and zen
… zen … I was captured.”

Maxine looked at each of us, the sting on our faces making her tremble.
She had been caught up in a swarm of infected people we had come to call the bloodless.
The plague consumed the humans and robbed them of that delectable ichor we were
wont to devour. Losing our precious resource was a reality we still denied.

“Zey surrounded me and I could not escape. Zey pinched me with zeir teeth
and dug zeir dirty bones into my skin.” She held out her arms to show us the
wounds she had suffered. I was horrified by the sight of her torn limbs. Mangled
teeth and bony fingers had punctured her marble skin and ripped out chunks of
vampiric flesh. Her body would not recover without fresh blood. “I barely
got—” She slumped forward and grabbed her stomach, as she let out a shriek.

More compassionate than I, Byron insisted on examining her. He wanted to
inspect the wounds that would prove fatal. Jean held Maxine in his arms while
Byron studied her limbs. Her flesh blistered, macerated as it was from lack of human
blood.

“Comment est-ce possible?” Jean’s eyes were wide.

“She went out alone,” I said.

I was callous in my treatment of her but I could have never known what
was coming.
I believed it was as simple as Maxine having
flown too close to the sun, her wings now melting. I was angry with her for
daring to go out unaccompanied, and though I am not her keeper, I am somewhat
responsible for her. I am the one who led them here, I am the one who promised
to keep them safe. But if I am being totally honest, it is more than that. Her
vulnerability frightened me. It meant this plague could strike me down too.

We stood around waiting to see what would happen next. I had never seen
a vampire succumb to human frailty. We had never been infected by disease; no
reports of vampires contracting HIV, Hepatitis, influenza, bubonic plagues,
black plagues, green plagues, or any plagues for that matter. We had assumed
this virus like all the others could only infect a mortal.
But
we were wrong.

Maxine writhed in the pain of her torn flesh, as she clung to her existence
in the arms of her maker. “It burns,” she said. “It burns.”

It was not until her body heated that we knew she was infected. My sweet
Byron tended to her all the while, as weak as he was. He tried to quell her
pain with ointments and a sugar serum he had concocted in his chambers but even
with all his scientific brilliance, he could not heal Maxine.

“Nom de Dieu,” Jean said. “What should we do?”

“We wait,” Byron said. He insisted we watch Maxine with diligence in
case she changed.

“C’est pas possible?” Jean said, numb with disbelief.

None of us were ready to accept the reality that Maxine could morph into
one of them, transform just like the humans do when they are infected.

“But she cannot,” Elizabeth said. She was Maxine’s dearest friend and
her only progeny. Maxine had made Elizabeth so that she would have an eternal
playmate—she was only a child when Jean made her his vampire. For some
three hundred years the two girlish vampires had spent a childhood together,
both made from the same eccentric venomline. She clung to Maxine, holding her
maker’s hand in hers, trembling at the thought of losing her. “You can’t change,”
Elizabeth said. “I won’t let you.” She turned to Jean and pleaded for him to
help his beloved. “You must stop this or she’ll be lost to us forever.”

I do not think Maxine’s panic set in completely until then. When she
heard her playmate’s plea, she cursed and screamed. “I don’t want to be one of
zem. ’Elp me! Arrêter cette folie! Arrêter ma douleur! Jean, je t’en prie.”

I pulled Byron aside and asked him what he thought would happen to her.

“I cannot know for sure,” he said. “But her transformation, should it come,
will come quickly.”

And so it did. One moment she thrashed in Jean’s arms, screaming at the
top of her lungs, the next she was as rigid as stone.

“Jean,” Byron said. “Step away.”

Lost in the horror of the moment, Jean had to be pried from his demoiselle,
too distraught to let her go.
“Quelle horreur!” His cry
echoed up through the spire of the cathedral.

“What should we do?” I asked.

Byron shook his head as if to say there was nothing we could do,
but
when Maxine opened her eyes, it was decided. She was reanimated, but
would never live again.

It is difficult to describe what I witnessed in the chancel, for I still
deny its truth. Maxine’s metamorphosis was quick, though the actual
transformation seemed in slow motion. First her visage contorted into an
expression of permanent horror, like Frankenstein’s might have looked when he
first reanimated his patchwork. But Maxine’s contortions escalated and soon her
nose and mouth began to fuse into what looked like a pointed beak; her skin
twisted and became taut around her lips, which swelled like her eyes, bulging
more greatly than those of a pop-eye fish. I looked away when her neck
stretched wide with the tearing of her tendons and when her talons ripped
through the tips of her toes, her newly clawed feet breaking the soles of her
boots. She seethed and released a trill before she lunged at me, snapping her fangs.
I did not hesitate to defend myself or my clan. I have no remorse for doing what
I was forced to do, but the image of what I have done—what I had to
do—is seared in my brain, too wretched to recount in full. I wonder if some
things are not better left abandoned on the shores of Lethe.

Later.
—
Soon after we returned with
the humans, they became a source of contention. Jean wanted the man, Elizabeth
the girl, but Byron decided for all of us. He insisted the man and the girl be locked
in a chamber while we made our plans. He was always the coolest head when vital
matters were at hand. “They will be rationed,” he said.

“I agree,” I said. “But how long will two
humans last with six hungry vampires?”

“We will take small sips.” He smiled, though
I did not. He knew a sip would not suffice. The only way for him to recover was
to drink three, four, maybe five men at a time. His diet was deficient, he was
malnourished and fading rapidly. “Cull their blood,” he said.

“What?”

“Draw from the man first.” He handed me a
syringe from one of his medical bags.

“You want me to extract his blood with this?”

“I am too weak,” he said. “Jean and Elizabeth
are too hungry, and the other two are … well, you know.”

“As you wish.”

When I visited our captives, they were both
conscious and aware of their new surroundings; they seemed to know we were not exactly
the cavalry come to save the day.

“What happened to Salvatore?” The man played it
tough, though it was obvious he just wanted to cry.

I ignored him and busied myself with
attaching the syringe to the vial. I was in fact just biding my time. I had to work
up the courage to draw the man’s blood. I do not like needles and the thought
of poking him with one made me queasy. I reminded myself it was for Byron and
that meant everything—there is nothing I will not do for him.

“Sir?” The girl spoke softly. She seemed braver
than the man—if at all possible. “Thank you for saving us,” she said.

I looked at her, studying her for the first
time in the light. She was ragged looking, dirty and disheveled. Her hair was
matted and tangled, her clothes torn and she had no shoes on her feet. Oh my,
she was a sight! I was repulsed to the point of not even desiring her blood.
That was a first.

“Marco is hurt bad,” she said.

I looked at the man, he was in rough shape
too. He had scars on his arms and legs from battling to survive, no doubt. His
shirt was sleeveless and his pants were torn and shredded. He wore boots and a silly
looking bandana around his neck. I decided I would not speak to them since it
would only make matters uncomfortable.

I summoned Stephen to the room and had him steady
the man, as I drew the blood. The needle missed several times, though it was
not the man’s fault. Stephen held him down, planting his two hands on his
dislocated arm, but I was clumsy with the tool—fangs are much more
efficient. When I finally pierced the vein with the point of the needle, I
whispered for Stephen to look away. I wished I could have too. I felt desperate
to taste the blood, as it gushed up the syringe into the vial. It was thick and
dark, that serum of the gods. How I miss those days!

I took four vials, two for Byron and one for
each of the others. Veronica and Stephen would have to wait for their next fix,
though I let Stephen lick off the blood that had dripped onto my finger in the
clean up.

“Enough,” I said, as I pushed his head away; he
would have devoured my whole hand had I let him. I ordered him to keep guard at
the locked door with our captives safely tucked inside. “No one gets in or out,”
I said. He obeyed, standing at attention as though a centurion saluting his general.
The lick of blood had made him playful.