Chapter 6. William
william
William did not anticipate the effect drinking blood would have on him after such a prolonged death-sleep.
At first, the substance seemed to be replenishing him, fortifying his body and sharpening his thoughts—then it turned on him, like poison, collapsing his strength.
He should have savored the girl’s taste, let his body acclimate. But he got greedy.
His punishment was spending all night on the stone floor, his bones rigid and mind reeling. Lying there, awaiting his fate, he tried to summon his last memories.
He had been in the Old World, traveling among a network of immortals. They were teaching him how to shed his human ways and navigate his new life as a vampire.
His last concrete recollection was of February 13, 1769. He was in London, and if he had still been a man, he would have been celebrating his twentieth birthday.
Except six months earlier, he became nineteen forever.
THE GIRL’S blood is slow to travel through him, but eventually enough of his strength returns that he is able to leave the basement.
It is daytime, and as he slinks through the halls of the manor, the scent of blood grows so overwhelming that he has to shut off his sense of smell.
Breathing is a leftover impulse from being human, and it is the last thing a vampire gives up. It can take years to break the habit.
Yet without inhaling, he cannot locate her.
When he finally finds the girl, she is in a room with nine others her age, listening to a woman speak.
Gazing through the narrow window in the door, he observes the strange garments she and the others wear.
Yet what is most striking to him is that she does not appear altered by last night’s encounter.
There are bags under her eyes, and she stares at the wall instead of taking notes like her peers, yet she does not look ill or traumatized. Clearly, she felt well enough to come to this lecture.
Her neighbor nudges her arm, and the girl jumps a little, as if the touch startles her. “Lore, you okay?”
The girl—Lore—nods and redirects her gaze to the instructor.
“The Revolutionary War gave way to the birth of this nation. Who can tell me what year it started? Bonus points if you can also tell me why.”
“1775,” says the girl’s friend, the only one dressed in all-black. “Britain overstepped. They were too controlling with the colonists and wanted to tax them without representation in parliament.”
“Excellent, Salma,” says the instructor.
“Spoiler alert: The colonists won, and that’s what led to the founding of a little country known as the United States of America.
Now, turn to page nineteen in the textbook, and let’s examine the Constitution, which remains to this day one of the most powerful governing documents in the world. ”
William finds himself glued to the woman’s words. This is all new information to him.
Lore stiffens suddenly. As if she can sense his presence, her gaze snaps to the door—
Yet William is already climbing down the stairs. He returns to the basement, where he yanks books off shelves and flips through their pages. Only they are all blank.
In a fit of frustration, he knocks a whole shelf over, spilling its contents across the floor. Then he stalks off in search of more texts, leading him to a multistory library on the third level of the manor.
There must be hundreds of thousands of books here. Maybe even a million.
He locates the section labeled HISTORY and chooses a text with a timeline that predates him. He skims chapters about the conquests of Viking warriors, the rise and fall of the Roman empire, the devastation of Native American cultures—yet he comes across no mention of vampires.
How could that be?
Immortals have witnessed every epoch of man. For a while, they ran rampant on this planet, killing so many humans that by the mid-1300s, they had eaten their way through half the European population. And yet, the book William is reading blames those deaths on something called the bubonic plague.
More and more hearts beat in his ears as the library fills with students.
William zigzags through the stacks, pinpointing people’s locations by their pulse and carefully avoiding them.
Once he is back in the basement, after righting the bookshelf he knocked over and replacing the texts, he looks at the portraits on the wall.
He only glanced at them earlier, but now he stares hard.
The first is of Grandsire. He is said to be the most ancient creature in the world. Some claim he was born in a time when witches still roamed the Earth. He is the closest thing the vampires have to a leader.
The next portrait is of Leonardo the Bloody—the second-most immortal being and the Legion’s most hunted vampire. He never agreed with Grandsire on the Treaty, believing immortals should go back to eating humans, not living among them.
The third face is … William’s. Only he does not remember ever sitting for that portrait.
He removes all three frames from the wall, just in case those students come back—or, worse, Legion hunters.
He still does not understand why no one came for him overnight. As soon as the girl escaped, he was certain the Legion of Fire would storm the basement. Given that he was too weak to run or hide, he was forced to await his inevitable doom.
Yet she sent no one after him. She even attended lectures as if she had nothing to fear. Why would she keep his existence to herself?
Footsteps interrupt his thoughts.
As the sounds grow closer, William identifies multiple people. The girl must have contacted the Legion after all. Unfortunately for them, they have miscalculated their timing.
Last night, he was weak.
Now he will kill them all.