The One We Feed (28 page)

“So what you’re
saying is that the pope was just resentful of your success at being a
bloodthirsty, murderous asshat?”  

I expected him
to rage at me, but he had steeled himself to my tactics and was staring
absently at the quickly changing board.

“My father was
deposed by the Turks. I was imprisoned by them. I took my country back with a
scant army and my own intelligence. I hated them more than anyone on earth ever
could. Who better to fight the battle?”

“I see your
point. But you realize that because you believed, you were the last person who
should have fought?”

“Hind sight is
twenty-twenty.”

“Would you go
back and change it, if you could?”

“What a
ridiculous question,” he commented in a dry tone. “The man sitting before you
arises from the decisions made. He cannot conceive of a time without those
decisions. So the answer is no. I did what I had to do and I regret nothing.”

I shook my
head. “No wonder you’re immortal.”

Arthur moved
almost as Devlin dropped a piece. The vamp was left to gaze at the board in
mild dismay, a consciousness divided.

“It’s no
secret, Ms. Pierce, that you are a psychic,” he said in annoyance. “I’d prefer
it if you came out and asked me questions directly, instead of swatting at me
like a mouse tied to a stake.”

He reached for
a piece, then for another, then back to the first. As soon as he had moved,
Arthur deposited a white piece on one of his squares and removed a pawn from
the board.

“I’m the cat
in this metaphor?” I questioned, looking at the perfect, shiny nails I’d been
manicuring with a mental file for the last few minutes.

“You seem to
be enjoying yourself.”

“You’re kind
of a jerk. I like being a bully to jerks. Payback’s a bitch, didn’t you know?”

“Ha!” he said
without delight, and watched as Arthur lay another of his carefully positioned maneuvers
to waste with a swift and decisive move. “You sound like a believer.”

I leaned
forward, the voice of rage growling in my thoughts. “So tell me how you became
immortal, really?”

“It happened
exactly as I said it did. I wanted the infidels dead for deeply personal
reasons, but in a world where God trumps all, I believed my personal reasons
were but symptoms of a greater
worldly
reason, that is to say, that God
was so displeased with them, that even the earth wanted them gone. I believed
that God had charged me with a mission I alone was uniquely disposed to
accomplish. I believed it was my duty to slay every last Turk.”

I sat back and
looked at Jinx, wondering if that was enough motivation to provide a human
brain with the focus it took to ignore the decay of natural biology. He
shrugged and sat down, leaning his chin on the back of the desk chair.

“And you
became so fixated on accomplishing that one goal that you ended up forgetting
to die?”

Arthur knocked
down a rook and swept it into the margins. Devlin was beginning to look
unnerved. He thought out his next move over the course of several tense
minutes, but it wasn’t good enough. Arthur responded in a single thrust of his
arm.

“I….” Devlin
tilted his head and shifted slightly in his seat as though uncomfortable. “Yes.
I suppose so, but the writings didn’t help.”

“Writings?” Jinx
was already spinning in his chair, fingers at the ready.

“‘He who
eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood dwelleth in me, and I in him.’ The book
of John, chapter six, verse fifty six,” Devlin said helpfully. “I believed
that, perhaps more strenuously than did any person before or after me.”

“Don’t know
about that,” Jinx whispered, “lots of fucking human sacrifice, the world over.”

The black army
was dwindling in record time, and slowly Devlin’s expression was changing. He
looked as if he might just leap up and toss the whole table in Arthur’s face if
he didn’t suspect that being a living God had its unseen advantages.

Nature will
rise up in defense of him, crap-head,
I thought with a smile.

“When you find
that you cannot die, everything seems plausible,” Devlin said in a flat voice. “I
drank blood because for a brief instant, I was sure they were not dead but
passing their knowledge on to me. In those whirlwind days, it was easy to
think. I did not know that soon everything would be duller, pointless, a
struggle I no longer had any stake in. My fervor was a death rattle for my
short humanity.”

“I get it,” I
said, even though I could not see how a person could celebrate a divine gift by
inventing a recipe for blood bread. “Not sure I’d have gone that route, but I
get it.”

“Those were
dark days,” he commented in disinterest. Arthur slew a bishop. Devlin seemed to
have lost hope.

Jinx raised a
finger, “In the Dark Ages, incidentally.”

“It’s your
contention, then, that Christianity made you a vampire.”

“What else
could it have been?” Devlin mumbled through his fingers. “What other idea is
infectious, invasive, and virulent enough to halt the natural life cycle in its
tracks?”

I glanced at
Arthur’s perfect back.

“Oh no, my
dear, sadly you have made an error in deduction.”

I raised an
eyebrow at our host as he made one last attempt to save his King. “Have I?”

“Oh yes.” He
smiled.

The Queen was
shifted. Arthur swooped in. The game would quickly be over, and yet Devlin
appeared to have come to terms with it.

“What error?”

His smile grew
until it was a mean-spirited grin. “The ailment of the saints is just an
adaptation of the one your friend here began more than two thousand years ago.”

I blinked.

“You didn’t
realize?”  

I had read the
Bible enough times to note how divergent the two Testaments were but had
assumed that the benevolent Father of the New was simply a profound cultural
revolution. The sudden reversal of Jewish tradition and law had been so severe,
however, that it caused the Jews themselves to condemn Jesus. If Jinx was right
about different groups of ideas having defense mechanisms to keep out invading
thoughts, perhaps the crucifixion had been one such case. The Jews wanted
salvation from their persecutors, but Jesus’ ideas had been too merciful. So
merciful, in fact, that they might have come from somewhere else...like Tibet? What
if the miracles too, had been the product of a greater concentration, a
knowledge of the flexibility of reality? What if Jesus had not been the son of
god, but an Arhat?

I locked eyes
with the Boy Wonder.

Under his
breath, he strung the words, “Fuck me,” onto a strand of Gallic expletives so
rounded that they would have convinced a nun swearing was romantic.

“I’m afraid it
is true,” Devlin smirked. “Of course, I did not realize it until much later. It
diminished my faith somewhat.”

He rose
slightly from his chair, and, in a bow, swept his arm over the table. The
pieces tumbled in defeat, but Devlin was ecstatic. It seemed the loss had
clarified something for him, some cloudy possibility that Arthur was the
cornerstone of his own genius.

“Well done,
Grandfather. You have won!” The auburn head shook in mock shame. “Forgive me, I
should have asked for the privilege.”

Arthur’s voice
was nonchalant, almost amused. “You may call me whatever you want, but, you
should know, I cheated.”

To someone
like Devlin, cheating was but one more possible series of moves that he would
have accounted for. No one could out-play him or out-cheat him. Except someone
like Arthur, who made it his life’s work to undo every expectation or indeed
the need for expectations.

The scowl was
almost imperceptible, it was so brief. “I watched closely. I can assure you
that you obeyed the rules.”

“Did I?”

“Yes.”

Ananda began
reorganizing the board from the arm of Devlin’s chair. “Perhaps, then, not all
the rules are known,” he murmured.

Devlin stared
between the two of them for several minutes, looking about as nonplussed as I
felt whenever they spouted one of their koans at me. Soon his eyes unfocused,
and I knew he’d had some sort of profound realization that only made sense to
him, probably something along the lines that the Set of All of Our Meager
Earthly Laws was but a small part of the larger Set of All Arthur’s
Comprehensions. In other words, it was possible for him to appear to be
governing himself by our rules, even as he worked outside them.

Join the club.

I huffed on
one of my nails and polished it for the fiftieth time; the pattern was becoming
old news.

When Devlin at
last stepped away from the table and let Ananda finish resetting it, he was
looking at Arthur in a different, much more corrosively interested way, as if
melting the flesh off would clue him in on some of his suspicions.

“Don’t bother,
Dev,” I muttered in sympathy. “Won’t work.”

His eyes
flicked in my direction furtively.

“Yeah, the
worst ones are when they work together. Like a tag team match,” Jinx added
helpfully, putting an invisible brain in a choke hold. “Can’t think. Mind feels
like it suddenly turned into a grapefruit.”

“Why a
grapefruit?” I chuckled.

“Why not?”

“Yup, good
point.”

Chapter
21

Lifeblood

While Devlin spent hours trying
to dissect how Arthur had won their little competition, I explored. It turned
out that the Circle was much bigger than it seemed. Opposite Devlin’s corridor,
there was another behind the bar. Branches struck out at all angles and were
all built out like cubicles. No beds, no possessions. An occasional closet or
gathering place, but all in all, the barren, little doorless alcoves looked
more like monastic cells than private spaces.

Very little
light found its way in those recesses. Occasionally a drop of water would
collide with stone and make the close air ring, but otherwise, it was silent. I
walked deeper and deeper into the mountainside, until a dim glow of candlelight
behind an escarpment caught my eye.

A gathering
had formed. They crouched on the slanted cave floor or wedged themselves into
ledges. A conversation had been going on in voices so low that I had not heard
them. With their painted faces and black clothes, they looked like ghouls, and
I was alone with them. I hid behind a stalagmite, preparing to book it when the
shimmer of the candles moved the shadows just so, but it seemed that one of
them had spotted me.

“Won’t you
join us?” a voice said, but somehow it sounded more malevolent than gracious to
me.

I stepped out
and found the speaker. She was sitting on a little wooden stool, looking like a
macabre princess, complete with black Swarovski tiara. I was under-dressed in
my stretch denim and militant button up, but at least if there was a cave in, I’d
be most likely to get out.

“I was just
looking around,” I explained.

Her smile was
cool, but her brown bedroom eyes remained fixed on me. “You are more than
welcome.”

“Yeah, so
Devlin says.” The others were staring too, and in the minds of the younger ones
I could clearly read the traces of unguarded thoughts. They had been talking
about me.

Speak of the
Devil.

“I’ll just
leave you to your...whatever.” But as I turned, the little angry personality
that so often possessed me spun me back around and gave the woman a dirty look.
“You know, it’s not polite to talk about people behind their backs.”

“I apologize,”
she said with a little bow. “We would prefer, of course, to speak directly to
you, but Devlin seemed to desire that all of you be sequestered. It is so often
the case.” She cast a woeful glance at the others, who smiled and nodded in
laconic agreement. “He likes to assess risks before he exposes us to them.”

“Makes you
easier to control, I’ll wager.”

To my
surprise, she shrugged, one shoulder displacing the lace shawl draped over it. “Someone
ought to. We are very...precocious.”

Creeped out, I
crossed my arms and wondered how many of them I could take before I was
overpowered. “Well, a man’s gotta relax.”

She giggled
and it sounded like a bird warbling. Like a virus, it spread around their
little circle until it struck the wall of my stoicism and died into a whisper. She
watched me for the span of a few measured breaths and then got to her feet.

By her graceful
and precise movements, I could tell she was very old, perhaps even older than
Devlin. Frowning, I scanned her for thoughts, but her mind was blank. She
anticipated nothing, formed no words in her head. She seemed to be observing me
with one hundred percent of her faculties – a psychic feat only someone of high
caliber could manage. I tried to gauge her talents but found that I could not.

“You don’t
like us,” she said suddenly, the phrase forming in her mouth just as her brain
pulled it from the abyss.

“No, I don’t.”

She stepped
toward me so quickly, it was as if she’d always been that close.

I stepped
back. “It’s not you. I’m sure you’re lovely. Just not a fan of ritual human
blood-letting. Not my thing. Personal bias.”

Their
snickering bounced softly around the room.

She stretched
out a beautiful hand. “We are just sampling.”

“Except when
they end up dead.”

Her eyes
narrowed. “Hardly ever happens. What do you resent more, that we wish to do it
or that they let us?”

“Not sure,
really.” I gave up trying to anticipate her. Her mind moved too quickly, like
her neurons were on greased ball bearings. “I suppose I’ve always been curious
about that.”

She clasped
her hands in front of her and bowed her head. “To be honest, I have never
understood it myself. The church tells us...but that is all just metaphor,
perhaps.”

“It doesn’t
keep you alive.”

“No.” There
was a smile on her downcast mouth. “It is more complicated than nourishment. It
feels like a search that does not end.”

I tilted my
head and heard the truth resonating through words. “A search for what?”

“Would that I
could tell you, but sadly, I am confounded by it. Perhaps there is something
there, in blood, after all, that we lack. Every immortal race I have
encountered eventually falls into it. Perhaps it is...inevitable.”

I thought of
mythology, of some legends moving forward and others moving backward, and
suddenly, their hobbies seemed less like a decision and more like a curse. As
far as we knew, Mara was the oldest. Perhaps his origins were far enough in the
past that he avoided such a fate.

“And the
people you...sample?”

She shrugged
again. “Without us, none of them would be able to thrive. Among their own,
complexity is forgotten. Here every man is unique. We can see that. We see them
as they wish to be seen.”

“So you’re
just letting repressed people...express themselves?”

She took
another step forward. This time, I didn’t move. Trepidation was quickly turning
to understanding.

“If we did
not, it would be far worse, you understand.”

“I don’t.”

She seemed
mildly surprised. “They, too, face their own degradation. They, too, fixate,
and worry. They are just like us. It is a mutually beneficial relationship.”

“Or mutually
harmful.”

“There exists
nothing that might make it otherwise.”

Except me.

The thought
surprised me; I wasn’t sure where it came from.

“They say you
can...see things.”

“They
being . . .?”

Her head
dipped. Dark ringlets dragged across a pale neck. “The Sangha.”

“Shouldn’t
believe everything you hear.” I unfolded my arms and shoved them into my
pockets. “We’re not exactly close.”

“And yet they
admire you.”

I looked
around for a closer exit and shook my head. “Since when? Last time I checked,
they were trying to kill me.”

“That is
admiration,” she said with a smile, “and not all of them wish you ill.”

I looked at
her and could picture Ursula among them, playing her piano with unerring
precision and lackluster polish. “Oh? How do you know?”

“We have had
close ties to them for a great many years.”

The others
began to adjust their positions as if to get a better view of me. One got up
and walked a slow arc around my right flank. Unnerved, but in no way
intimidated, I watched him from the corner of my eye as he ran his gaze up my
arm.

“And they told
you that I am psychic?”

“Actually,”
she said, “they told us to stay away from you. They said there was no telling
what might happen.”

I found the
man as he came around my other side and glared. “Good advice.”

“Which begs
the question,” she chuckled. It had a sinister hiss to it that set my teeth on
edge. “What are you?”

I mimicked her
shrug, a little less prettily. “Couldn’t tell you. If you ask them, I’m death
on roller skates. Ask Jinx and he’ll tell you I’m the solution to all your
problems. Don’t want to guess what Devlin’s thinking, but it’s probably a
variation on said theme.”

The curious
skulker finished his examination and took up a place at Elvira’s right hand. I
realized in that moment that he’d been exercising some kind of gift on me, when
he leaned in and whispered something into her ear. She nodded.

“You have no
opinion on the subject? It
is
happening to you.”

I cracked my
knuckles in a moment of weakness. “Since I’ve acquired this talent, I’ve killed
people. Can’t say I’m excited about it.”

“Typhoons kill
people. Floods levels countries. The earth crumbles away.” She took a step with
each sentence, until she was within arm’s length and backlit by the candle. “Nature
cannot be restrained.”

“Nature doesn’t
have a conscience.”

“An obvious
dilemma, but conscience is a self-serving apparatus of the mind. A safety to
make certain we can all coexist, by assuring that we amend trespasses or avoid
them altogether. There is no coexistence for the immortals and if we have
learned anything, it is that trespass is the only certain mechanism for
progress.”

“So I shouldn’t
care.” I shook my head and looked down at my hiking boots. “Sorry, can’t accept
that.”

“Conscience is
not the same as caring. Conscience is hindsight, not vision. With a gift like
yours, it is unnecessary.”

“How do you
know what gifts I have?”

She tilted her
head. “Everyone knows. Word spreads quickly when half of your race reads
thoughts.” She moved slowly past me then, the others close behind. The candle
flickered dizzily as they moved out of the chamber. Unable to see in the dark,
I followed along mutely. “Your appearance was like a stone dropped into still
water. Waves are spreading outward. You will be hard-pressed to meet anyone who
does not know of you and the things you can do.”

When we came
out in the main cavern again, to its silent dance floor and vacant bar, she
stopped and turned to face me, her little clique of vamps gathered around her.

“This life had
become tedious,” she said. “But nothing is forever. I am glad you have finally
appeared, Lilith. I only hope you do not let your affection for humans color
your decisions on their behalf.”

“Meaning?”

“I think you
know.”

“Who are you?”
 

She shrugged. “Flora.
Patron Saint of the Abandoned, but then again, that was another life.” I didn’t
have time to register surprise at this revelation, nor to recover from it and
accept what she’d said. She executed a curtsy and floated out to the reception
area. Soon after, her band of succubi had scattered to a round of soft chuckles
at my expense, and I was left alone.

I took out my
phone and was surprised to note that I had reception. Devlin must have
installed some kind of signal booster. I dialed Karl. He answered almost
immediately, as if he’d been expecting me. He probably had been. Since I’d
learned he could find me, I hadn’t exactly had negative feelings about it. Though
it did make me wonder if he was watching me in the shower.

“Lilith.”

“Tell me you
didn’t call Devlin and talk about me?”

He cleared his
throat hesitantly. “I did. I’m sorry. It’s difficult to keep things from him,
especially since I needed as much information as possible.”

“For what
purpose?”

I heard
another voice in the background on his end. He replied to it in muffled words
then returned to me. “Hal made it here in one piece. I tested him.”

“And you didn’t
think to call
me?”
I let out a sigh. “What is it with everyone?”

“I called
Jinx. He has the knowledge. He said not to bother you, that he’d explain
everything when the time came.”

“Fine, thanks,
I’ll go ask him.” I hung up.

Hadn’t I
proven myself? Hadn’t I gone out of my way to demonstrate how level-headed and
self-aware I was? I ran my fingers through my hair and realized that by
thinking that, I was in fact proving I was not over being a simple human. Arthur
and Ananda had gone into the river and to the other side. So how come I was a
superhuman knee-deep in stupidity?

If Jinx knew
something he wasn’t telling me, it was because he didn’t want me to be upset. I
was the one who gave him the impression I might get upset. After all, I had
crushed a man’s heart while sporting some serious red eye.

I wandered
down the hall to Devlin’s room and found that Arthur had again consented to
play. Rather than being frustrated by continued losses, Devlin seemed amused
and intrigued.

“Refreshing,”
he muttered to himself as I entered. “I’d forgotten how to lose.”

“Like falling
on your ass,” Jinx shot back, “while trying to remember how to ride a damn
bike.”

“Jinx, we need
to talk.” I gave him my serious, you’ve-been-a-bad-boy face. He froze like a
mouse in the open. “Karl said the results on Hal came back. You were supposed
to tell me.”