Best New Vampire Tales: Vol 1 Part 16

The female Gorgon, her hair ending in arrow-like points, laughed. "Hey, the man's walking his meat."

The other one moved a step forward. "Don't be greedy. There's plenty to share."

And then they were upon us. It happened as fast as lightning, and I managed one stab at the male before Gamaliel kicked him flat, then slashed through the throat of the woman. He bent over the man whose chest he'd crushed. The Gorgon wheezed and moaned. The smell of charred flesh and metallic blood tainted the air.

Gamaliel turned back to me, his lips drawn back from his fangs. He growled, "Turn away. You won't want to watch."

"But, whataa"

"Turn away," he snapped, and I did. But I wanted to watch, like a moth drawn to the deadly flame. Saliva filled my mouth; I felt like vomiting at the thought of him sucking up the warm lifeblood. There was a part of me that said, this is taboo, and another part that said, you can watch; you're not doing it. I resisted the urge to look.

I jumped when Gamaliel touched my shoulder. He urged me on, saying nothing.

Just before we entered the green I turned to Gamaliel and said, "Did you have toaa"

"Look, you knew what I was. They would have killed us. How do you suppose I feed?" He was angry, but I was scared.

"I saw you drink Brosia."

The anger left him and he sighed. "Yes, I can drink and eat regular food but my nutrition must be from blood. Oh." He stopped. "I see. Agate," he touched my face softly. "I swear I will never harm you. I only take from those who would do others harm; the evil ones, the flesh packs. Please, trust me."

"Yes, I do," and realized I meant it.

We stopped in front of the door to my cube. Trying to hide the lingering dread of the Gorgon encounter, I bravely invited him in. He declined, saying, "No, it is late and I would rather that you're totally comfortable with my presence. But I would like to talk to you again, if I may."

We agreed to meet at the quieter Schroedinger's Box the following night. I slept deep, and dreamt of walking through tombs, searching, searching, and always behind me someone wailing, "Come back, come back."

It wasn't until our third time together that Gamaliel revealed the extent of his sense of humor. We were sitting on the steps of the old gallery, talking.

"Oh, I brought something for you that I got last night." He dug through his pockets and pulled something out and dropped it in my lap. A red tongue and an eyeball lay shiningly on my coat.

I squeaked and jumped up, realizing at the same moment that they were very obvious rubber toys. Gamaliel laughed so hard he nearly rolled down the steps. I slapped him. "Idiot," and had to laugh too. It dispelled my last visions of contemptuous vampyrs.

"You're a very undignified vampyr, you know that?"

He just smirked. I touched his shoulder. "Gama? Would you show me where you live?"

He tilted his head, thought for a moment, and said, "All right."

We walked along crumbling streets, and Gamaliel clasped my hand. I didn't say anything but looked up at him. He looked straight ahead, his head tilted as if listening. I bit my lip but continued to hold his hand. It was warm, not as warm as a living person's, but not the cold of the crypt that I had been expecting.

"What ... "

"Shh." He continued to listen.

I looked at the stunted, gnarled trees that lined these streets. Their leaves were few, warped like heated plastic. There had to be strong magic going down to keep them even this alive. I realized we were in Shaughnessy; large houses sprawled across crisp brown gra.s.s. Some homes were of stone and others, weather-stripped wood. The ritz used to live here in the twentieth century and it made sense that any ritz left would still live in the s.p.a.cious homes.

We walked up the cobblestone steps to a house with a turret. The windows were still intact and the door was reinforced with embellished steel. Gamaliel opened the door and let me enter first. If I was expecting tomblike colors and velvet drapes, I was completely surprised. The place was furnished with soft couches, paintings and very little else. Everything numbed my eyes with bright shades of green and yellow.

"Ugh, it's bright in here."

Gamaliel smiled and bolted the door. "It's too depressing otherwise. But the whole place isn't done in these colors. Here, I'll show you." He led me up a dark wooden staircase. The second floor was more subdued but not somber; the colors ranged through red, green and brown, like a twentieth century forest in fall.

I shivered, imagining Gamaliel dragging victims into his home and keeping them chained in the bas.e.m.e.nt. There was no evidence, but still I quivered, mortal jelly, at what he may have done here. "Very impressive," I said.

He stared down the hall and said, "I am not very old but I was able to find this place before the collapse destroyed too many homes. Except for fortifying, I've had little to repair." Then he turned suddenly and kissed me, holding my shoulders.

Surprised, I looked at him and he stopped, confused.

He dropped his hands. "I'm sorry, Agate. I thought ... I hoped. I'm sorry. I wanted you to like me."

"Wait, Gama, I do." I touched his face and dropped my hand. "I do. Why do you think I've spent this time with you?" Why indeed? The lies we tell ourselves. My heart poundedaafear moved like a moist worm into my throat. I swallowed and said, "I do care, very much." Then I kissed him back. The kiss blossomed, grew to many more and then into gentle caresses. He picked me up and carried me to his bedroom. My body responded to his and I clung to him.

We lay, heated by dozens and dozens of candles in his room, but the heat we gave off dimmed them in comparison. Light glittered back from mirrors and windows like thousands of knowing eyes. Tears of sweat flecked our skin.

Gamaliel's flesh shone like a bank of snow against my brown flank. He licked warmly at my neck, my arms, my b.r.e.a.s.t.s. I vibrated from his caresses, expecting at any moment to feel the thin sharp bite of his teeth. It made my pa.s.sion hotter, stronger, thinking that this might be my last act. And I wanted it, I didn't care, to be pulled down and taken at the height of intimacy. What more could I want, taken body and soul?

It was a feeling, not a conscious thought, and it wasn't until years later that I understood what I had wanted.

Later, much later, we lay curled into one another. Gamaliel murmured into my hair. "It is the worst part of this sort of life; the loneliness. So many people fear to be near me and can never relax. There are so many old world legends, and everyone has preconceived ideas that mold all their views. And my own kind," he laughed bitterly. "They are the worst; egotistical, compet.i.tive, jealous. They're happy to perpetrate the image of fear; they love the power, but I don't. I want to love a person."

I turned and looked at him. "Oh, Gama, I don't fear you." I feared myself, my lack of control, and his temptation.

We continued to see each other. Something was happening to me inside that I didn't like: a distorted pearl growing bigger, malignant. Something weighed me down, fought me, changed me. I brooded and provoked fights with Gamaliel, daring him to strike me, to lash out and drain my life. But he wouldn't. He looked at me, hurt.

"Why are you doing this, Agate? Why do you want to fight?"

I snarled, "Do you think it just takes one to fight?"

"No," he said calmly. "No, I don't." And he had turned away.

One night at his place we made love and I finally lay subdued beside him. My mind still roiled and I had grown temperamental over the weeks, afraid of what I wanted and didn't want. The big problem; I didn't know what I wanted, nor why I was angry.

I lay thinking of Gamaliel's long life and my relatively short one. I was more than a universe away from him. He murmured something, kissed my eyes, my mouth and nipped lightly at the flesh of my neck.

I gasped and returned to myself. Trembling, I felt a yearning to bare my neckaaabandon soul and flesh to his caresses. In that moment, quicker than light, I murmured a Rom incantation against vampyrs. He yelped as light arced from my skin to his. An acrid smell filled my nostrils.

Pulling back, Gamaliel hissed, fangs flashing deadly. "How dare you! Have you no trust?" he bellowed. He turned and slashed the stuffed chair beside the bed and kicked it across the floor. It crashed into the wall and gla.s.s tinkled from the broken window.

I sat up trembling, afraid that I would die now.

Anguish cracked his voice. "I love you, I would never, never drain your blood! Don't you know that by now?"

Shaken, I knelt where I was, knocking a candle over as I reached for him in haste. "I know, I'm sorry. I w ... wasn't thinking. Gama." I tried to reach beneath the red-r.i.m.m.i.n.g of his eyes. "I'm sorry. I was scared of my own reactions. I wanted to die. I ... I wanted you to take me."

I heard him mumble something about mortals and I flashed resentment. He reached, hesitated, then grabbed my arm. I had eliminated the warding.

"Agate, I could make you vampyr. I can give you the kiss of eternal life. Won't you take it; be eternal with me? You need never fear again and we could be together."

"No, I can't, I can't." I shook my head, trying to escape the black pit that threatened to swallow and mold me into something dark, too powerful. "I ... my people, we had strong taboos against the undead. Now I know why. I'm sorry. I'm too afraid. I don't think I would be like you, so n.o.ble. There is so much power. The Rom knew this, knew it could get out of hand and I never understood it, until now. I don't think I want eternal life."

"Why? Isn't it just a lesser of two evils? We would be eternally together. And there are ways to kill us. You can end it when you want."

I clasped my arms, cold in spite of the candle flames. I wanted it so badly. To live forever, to wield such power. I shook my head, crying, "I ... I can't, Gama." I realized then, right to my frozen marrow, that I could never love him properly, for there was another to love.

There were tears in his eyes. He sensed that it was more than his offer that I denied. "Don't you see?" I whispered. "It is death I court, that I am infatuated with. I've used you to get close to death. To be kissed by you, to be loved by you was like loving ... embracing it. I'm so sorry ... so sorry." I hugged him tightly now. "I do care for you, Gama, but every time I'd be with you I would see my death and be tempted by it. But the power, the power is too much."

"No!" He tore himself away from me and fled into the night. I didn't wait for his return. I dressed and left. I had gone for the darker lover while Gamaliel had tried to lead the life of the living, not the undead.

We remained friends, albeit distantly. I could not stand to be around Gamaliel and see the hurt in his eyes. Respect the dead and they won't come back to haunt you. He walked as if wounded, and I knew I had dealt the most deadly blow to a dead man trying to live.

Endless Night.

BARBARA RODEN.

'Thank you so much for speaking with me. And for these journals, which have never seen the light of day. I'm honored that you'd entrust them to me.'

'That's quite all right.' Emily Edwards smiled, a delighted smile, like a child surveying an unexpected and particularly wonderful present. 'I don't receive very many visitors; and old people do like speaking about the past. No'-she held up a hand to stop him-'I am old; not elderly, not "getting on", nor any of the other euphemisms people use these days. When one has pa.s.sed one's centenary, "old" is the only word which applies.'

'Well, your stories were fascinating, Miss Edwards. As I said, there are so few people alive now who remember these men.'

Another smile, gentle this time. 'One of the unfortunate things about living to my age is that all the people I once knew in any meaningful or intimate way have died; there is no one left with whom I can share these things. Perhaps that is why I have so enjoyed this talk. It brings them all back to me. Sir Ernest; such a charismatic man, even when he was obviously in ill-health and worried about money. I used to thrill to his stories; to hear him talk of that desperate crossing of South Georgia Island to Stromness, of how they heard the whistle at the whaling station and knew that they were so very close to being saved, and then deciding to take a treacherous route down the slope to save themselves a five-mile hike when they were near exhaustion. He would drop his voice then, and say to me "Miss Emily"-he always called me Miss Emily, which was the name of his wife, as you know; it made me feel very grown-up, even though I was only eleven-"Miss Emily, I do not know how we did it. Yet afterwards we all said the same thing, those three of us who made that crossing: that there had been another with us, a secret one, who guided our steps and brought us to safety." I used to think it a very comforting story, when I was a child, but now-I am not as sure.'

'Why not?'

For a moment he thought she had not heard. Her eyes, which until that moment had been sharp and blue as Antarctic ice, dimmed, reflecting each of her hundred-and-one years as she gazed at her father's photograph on the wall opposite. He had an idea that she was not even with him in her comfortable room, that she was instead back in the parlor of her parents' home in north London, ninety years earlier, listening to Ernest Shackleton talk of his miraculous escape after the sinking of the Endurance, or her father's no less amazing tales of his own Antarctic travels. He was about to get up and start putting away his recording equipment when she spoke.

'As I told you, my father would gladly speak about his time in Antarctica with the Mawson and Shackleton expeditions, but of the James Wentworth expedition aboard the Fort.i.tude in 1910 he rarely talked. He used to become quite angry with me if I mentioned it, and I learned not to raise the subject. I will always remember one thing he did say of it: "It was hard to know how many people were there. I sometimes felt that there were too many of us." And it would be frightening to think, in that place where so few people are, that there was another with you who should not be.'

The statement did not appear to require an answer, for which the thin man in jeans and rumpled sweater was glad. Instead he said, 'If you remember anything else, or if, by chance, you should come across those journals from the 1910 expedition, please do contact me, Miss Edwards.'

'Yes, I have your card.' Emily nodded towards the small table beside her, where a crisp white card lay beside a small ceramic tabby cat, crouched as if eyeing a mouse in its hole. Her gaze rested on it for a moment before she picked it up.

'I had this when I was a child; I carried it with me everywhere. It is really a wonder that it has survived this long.' She gazed at it for a moment, a half-smile on her lips. 'Sir Ernest said it put him in mind of Mrs. Chippy, the ship's cat.' Her smile faded. 'He was always very sorry, you know, about what he had to do, and sorry that it caused an estrangement between him and Mr. McNish; he felt that the carpenter never forgave him for having Mrs. Chippy and the pups shot before they embarked on their journey in the boats.'

'It was rather cruel, though, wasn't it? A cat, after all; what harm could there have been in taking it with them?'

'Ah, well.' Emily set it carefully back down on the table. 'I thought that, too, when I was young; but now I see that Sir Ernest was quite right. There was no room for sentimentality, or personal feeling; his task was to ensure that his men survived. Sometimes, to achieve that, hard decisions must be made. One must put one's own feelings and inclinations aside, and act for the greater good.'

He sensed a closing, as if there was something else she might have said but had decided against. No matter, it had been a most productive afternoon. At the door Emily smiled as she shook his hand.

'I look forward to reading your book when it comes out.'

'Well'-he paused, somewhat embarra.s.sed-'it won't be out for a couple of years yet. These things take time, and I'm still at an early stage in my researches.'

Emily laughed, a lovely sound, like bells chiming. 'Oh, I do not plan on going anywhere just yet. You must bring me a copy when it is published, and let me read again about those long ago days. The past, where everything has already happened and there can be no surprises, can be a very comforting place when one is old.'

It was past six o'clock when the writer left, but Emily was not hungry. She made a pot of tea, then took her cup and saucer into the main room and placed it on the table by her chair, beside the ceramic cat. She looked at it for a moment, and ran a finger down its back as if stroking it; then she picked up the card and considered it for a few moments.

'I think that I was right not to show him,' she said, as if speaking to someone else present in the room. 'I doubt that he would have understood. It is for the best.'

Thus reminded, however, she could not easily forget. She crossed the room to a small rosewood writing desk in one corner, unlocked it, and pulled down the front panel, revealing tidily arranged cubbyholes and drawers of various sizes. With another key she unlocked the largest of the drawers, and withdrew from it a notebook bound in leather, much battered and weathered, as with long use in difficult conditions. She returned with it to her armchair, but it was some minutes before she opened it, and when she did it was with an air almost of sadness. She ran her fingers over the faded ink of the words on the first page.

QUOTE.

Robert James Edwards Science Officer H.M.S. Fort.i.tude 1910a11 END.

'No,' she said aloud, as if continuing her last conversation, 'there can be no surprises about the past; everything there has happened. One would like to think it happened for the best, but we can never be sure. And that is not comforting at all.' Then she opened the journal and began to read from it, even though the story was an old one which she knew by heart.

20 November 1910: A relief to be here in Hobart, on the brink of starting the final leg of our sea voyage. The endless days of fundraising, organization, and meetings in London, are well behind us, and the Guvnor is in high spirits, and as usual has infected everyone with his enthusiasm. He called us all together this morning, and said that of the hundreds upon hundreds of men who had applied to take part in the expedition when it was announced in England, we had been hand-picked, and that everything he has seen on the journey thus far has reinforced the rightness of his choices; but that the true test is still to come-in the journey across the great Southern Ocean and along the uncharted coast of Antarctica. We will be seeing sights that no human has yet viewed and will, if all goes to plan, be in a position to furnish exact information which will be of inestimable value to those who come after us. Chief among this information will be noting locations where future parties can establish camps, so that they might use these as bases for exploring the great heart of this unknown land, and perhaps even establishing a preliminary base for Mawson's push, rumored to be taking place in a year's time. We are not tasked with doing much in the way of exploring ourselves, save in the vicinity of any base we do establish, but we have the dogs and sledges to enable us at least to make brief sorties into that mysterious continent, and I think that all the men are as eager as I to set foot where no man has ever trodden.

Of course, we all realize the dangers inherent in this voyage; none more so than the Guvnor, who today enjoined anyone who had the least doubt to say so now, while there was still an opportunity to leave. Needless to say, no one spoke, until Richards gave a cry of 'Three cheers for the Fort.i.tude, and all who sail in her!' A cheer echoed to the very skies and set the dogs barking on the deck so furiously that the Guvnor singled out Castleton and called good-naturedly, 'Castleton, quiet your dogs down, there's a good chap, or we shall have the neighbors complaining!' which elicited a hearty laugh from all.

22 November: Such a tumultuous forty-eight hours we have not seen on this voyage, and I earnestly hope that the worst is now behind us. Two days ago the Guvnor was praising his hand-picked crew, and I, too, was thinking how our party had pulled together on the trip from Plymouth, which boded well, I thought, for the trials which surely face us; and now we have said farewell to one of our number, and made room for another. Chadwick, whose excellent meals brightened the early part of our voyage, is to be left in Hobart following a freakish accident which none could have foreseen, he having been knocked down in the street by a runaway horse and cart. His injuries are not, thank Heaven, life threatening, but are sufficient to make it impossible for him to continue as part of the expedition.

It is undoubtedly a very serious blow to the fabric of our party; but help has arrived in the form of Charles De Vere, who was actually present when the accident occurred, and was apparently instrumental in moving the injured man to a place of safety following the incident. He came by the ship the next day to enquire after Chadwick, and was invited aboard; upon a meeting with the Guvnor he disclosed that he has, himself, worked as a ship's cook, having reached Hobart in that capacity. The long and the short of it is, after a long discussion the Guvnor has offered him Chadwick's place on the expedition, and De Vere has accepted.

'Needs must when the devil drives,' the Guvnor said to me, somewhat ruefully, when De Vere left to collect his things. 'We can't do without a cook. Ah well, we have a few days more here in Hobart, and shall see how this De Vere works out.'

What the Guvnor did not add-but was, I know, uppermost in his mind-is that a few days...o...b..ard a ship at dockside is a very different proposition to what we shall be facing once we depart. We must all hope for the best.

28 November: We are set to leave tomorrow; the last of the supplies have been loaded, the last visiting dignitary has toured the ship and departed-glad, no doubt, to be going home safe to down pillows and a comfortable bed-and the men have written their last letters home, to be posted when the Fort.i.tude has left. They are the final words we shall be able to send our loved ones before our return, whenever that will be, and a thin thread of melancholy pervades the ship tonight. I have written to Mary, and enclosed a message for sweet little Emily; by the time I return home she will have changed greatly from the little girl-scarcely more than a babe in arms-whom I left. She will not remember her father; but she and Mary are never a far from my mind, and their photographs gaze down at me from the tiny shelf in my cabin, keeping watch over me as I sleep.

I said that the men had written their last letters home; but there was one exception. De Vere had no letters to give me, and while I made no comment he obviously noted my surprise, for he gave a wintry smile. 'I said my goodbyes long ago,' was all he said, and I did not press him, for there is something about his manner that discourages chatter. Not that he is standoffish, or unfriendly; rather, there is an air about him, as of a person who has spent a good deal of time alone, and has thus become a solitude unto himself. The Guvnor is pleased with him, though, and I must say that the man's cooking is superb. He spends most of his time in the tiny galley; to acquaint himself with his new domain, he told me. The results coming from it indicate that he is putting his time to good use, although I hope he will not have many occasions to favor us with seal consomme or Penguin a la Emperor.

Castleton had the largest batch of letters to send. I found him on the deck as usual, near the kennels of his charges. He is as protective of his dogs as a mother is of her children, and with good cause, for on these half-wild creatures the sledge teams shall depend. His control over them is quite wonderful. Some of the men are inclined to distrust the animals, which seem as akin to the domesticated dogs we all know as tigers are to tabby cats; none more so than De Vere who, I notice, gives them a wide berth on the rare occasions when he is on the deck. This wariness appears to be mutual; Castleton says that it is because the dogs scent food on De Vere's clothing.

29 November: At last we are under way, and all crowded to the ship's rail as the Fort.i.tude departed from Hobart, to take a last look at civilization. Even De Vere emerged into the sunlight, sheltering his sage eyes with his hand as we watched the sh.o.r.e recede into the distance. I think it fair to say that despite the mingled wonder and excitement we all share about the expedition, the feelings of the men at thus seeing the known world slip away from us were mixed; all save De Vere, whose expression was one of relief before he retreated once more to his sanctum. I know that the Guvnor-whose judgment of character is second to none-is satisfied with the man, and with what he was able to find out about him at such short notice, but I cannot help but wonder if there is something which makes De Vere anxious to be away from Hobart.

20 December: The Southern Ocean has not been kind to us; the storms of the last three weeks have left us longing for the occasional glimpse of blue sky. We had some idea of what to expect, but as the Guvnor reminds us, we are charting new territory every day and must be prepared for any eventuality. We have repaired most of the damage done to the bridge and superstructure by the heavy seas of a fortnight ago, taking advantage of a rare spell of relative calm yesterday to accomplish the task and working well into the night, so as to be ready should the wind and water resume their attack.

The strain is showing on all the men, and I am thankful that the cessation of the tumultuous seas has enabled De Vere to provide hot food once more; the days of cold rations, when the pitching of the ship made the galley unusable, told on all of us. The cook's complexion, which has always been pale, has a.s.sumed a truly startling pallor, and his face looks lined and haggard. He spent most of yesterday supplying hot food and a seemingly endless stream of strong coffee for all of us, and then came and helped with the work on deck, which continued well into the long Antarctic summer night. I had wondered if he was in a fit state to do such heavy labor, but he set to with a will, and proved he was the equal of any aboard.

22 December: Yet another accident has claimed one of our party, but this one with graver consequences than the one which injured Chadwick. The spell of calmer weather which enabled us to carry out the much needed repairs to the ship was all too short, and it was not long after we had completed our work that the storm resumed with even more fury than before, and there was a very real possibility that the sea waves would breach our supply of fresh water, which would very seriously endanger the fate of the expedition. As it was, those of us who had managed to drop off into some kind of sleep awoke to find several inches of icy water around our feet; and the dogs were in a general state of uproar, having been deluged by waves. I stumbled on to the deck and began helping Castleton and one or two others who were removing the dogs to a more sheltered location-a difficult task given the rolling of the ship and the state of the frantic animals. I was busy concentrating on the task at hand, and thus did not see one of the kennels come loose from its moorings on the deck; but we all heard the terrible cry of agony which followed.

When we rushed to investigate we found young Walker crushed between the heavy wooden kennel and the rail. De Vere had reached the spot before us and, in a fit of energy which can only be described as superhuman, managed single-handedly to shift the kennel out of the way and free Walker, who was writhing and moaning in pain. Beddoes was instantly summoned, and a quick look at the doctor's face showed the gravity of the situation. Walker was taken below, and it was some time before Beddoes emerged, looking graver than before, an equally grim-faced Guvnor with him. The report is that Walker's leg is badly broken, and there is a possibility of internal injuries. The best that can be done is to make the injured man as comfortable as possible, and hope that the injuries are not as severe as they appear.