Chapter 51. William
william
William knows dawn is only a couple of hours away, and the vampires could be here any moment.
And yet, he cannot stop himself from seeing Lorena one last time.
He leaps over Huntington’s iron gates and sprints across the lawns toward the manor. He peers in through her window, and from their rhythmic breathing, he knows her roommates are slumbering.
As if sensing him, Lorena rolls over in the top bunk, her eyes already wide open, like she has yet to sleep.
She sits bolt upright, and he gestures with his head toward the door. Then he bounds to the first tower and climbs in through his window. As he darts through the manor in her direction, his senses are alert for any signs of danger.
They meet in the common area at the foot of the third tower, and when she rushes into his arms, William captures Lorena’s mouth with his own.
“What are you doing here?” she asks between kisses.
“I needed to see you again,” he says, pressing his lips to her jaw, her neck, her collarbone. “Was there a fire?” he asks, sniffing the smoke in her sweater and curls. It is also in the air of the manor.
“We made s’mores tonight,” she says, and her tone has an air of spontaneity, like she just thought of the idea. “Any sign of the vampires?” Her voice drops to a low whisper when she says the word.
He shakes his head. “Fabiana thinks they will be here before sunup.”
“That’s really soon! How are you going to be able to cut them off before they get here?”
“We sprung a trap,” he says. “Fabiana dug up Nate and Cisco’s bodies so the others will pick up their scent.
Lenny has shown himself to be a patient vampire, and he likes to gather intel before acting.
We think he will want to go find Nate and Cisco first. Especially when he picks up on Fabiana’s and my scent, too. I am heading there now.”
Lorena clings tighter to his sweater. “I don’t want this to be goodbye.”
“Nor do I.” He still gets the sense that she is not being entirely forthcoming. “Has everything been all right here?”
“You mean aside from Trevor escorting me to and from classes and carrying around a hidden flamethrower?”
“Good,” says William, pleased that the boy is taking his assignment seriously.
“I still don’t understand why him,” she says.
“The only way I could avoid compelling him was to give him something he wanted more than my destruction.”
“A purpose?”
“A chance at redemption,” says William, thinking of the way Trevor’s father talked to him.
William’s parents became vampires when he was ten, and even though their affection and warmth waned in some amount with the transformation, they were always proud and supportive.
He cannot imagine how it would be to grow up with parents armed with the capacity to love intensely and yet produce in them only derision and disdain.
“Lore, I must go.”
The sadness on her face combines with fear and concern, and she says, “Time Period Day is tomorrow. Minaro and the other teachers haven’t asked about you, so I guess you compelled them well.”
He nods and asks, “What about before break? Did Minaro ask about me then?”
“She said you had a family emergency. When did you have time to compel her?”
“Before going with Nate and Cisco.” He lies as casually as he can, then he takes her hands in his. “It is getting late, and I must beat the dawn.”
“It’s only the nightingale you hear,” she whispers.
His lips curve into a mournful smile, and he loves her all the more for the Romeo and Juliet reference. He brings her hands to his lips and kisses her skin in a final farewell.
“I am afraid it is the lark.”
ONCE LORENA is safely in her room, William has a final stop to make. And he must hurry.
He did not compel Minaro, nor give her any excuses for his absence. Not this time nor the last. In fact, the director has been the furthest thing from his mind. And as he follows her scent to her bedroom, he realizes how great a mistake that was.
He has been remiss to ignore his instincts.
There has been a strange quality about Minaro that he has been dancing around since meeting her.
There are physical distinctions like her unique height and unnatural speech and the pupilless pure blackness of her eyes.
Yet something else has been swimming at the edges of his thoughts, only becoming clear to him now.
The second time he compelled the director, she resisted.
He ordered her to organize a field trip to Harvard. And before agreeing, she said it was too short notice. That should not happen in a compulsion.
She is not human.
The realization hits him so hard that he bursts through her door without warning, and it does not surprise him to find her fully dressed and seated in an armchair, waiting for him.
“Please,” she says, gesturing to the sofa. “Have a seat, Mr. Stoker.”
She calls him by his real name. “You are not human.”
He shuts the door behind him, and being in this enclosed space where her scent fills every air particle, he discerns a few subtleties he had not caught before. Notes of an ancient musk mixed with a familiar aroma.
“I am not,” she confirms.
“Yet you are no vampire.”
“That is correct.”
He still has not budged from the room’s entrance. “What are you?”
“I am the guardian of Grandsire’s spell.”
William finds himself staring at her so hard that his legs bring him closer, then deposit him on the couch. As if his body could not carry the weight of her words.
“I am a being made of Stoker blood,” she says. “More specifically, the blood spilled by one hundred of your forebears, including Grandsire, two hundred and fifty years ago. I exist only because you stayed behind.”
William does not understand, so he keeps listening.
“I have been watching over you. As the sole Stoker vampire still physically inhabiting this planet, you are the magic’s anchor, and if not for your presence, the displaced vampires could never hope to return.”
William feels himself pressing harder into the couch, as if even gravity were growing weightier. “What does that mean?”
“The witch who created this spell for him never told Grandsire that one Stoker would have to stay behind. It was his instincts that led him to make that call … and also love.”
As he processes her words, a single truth dawns on him: “But if you are here, then that means … the spell worked.”
The vampires they left behind are not gone for good.
Hope is not yet lost for his kind.
“Why did you not say anything to me before now?” he demands.
“Blood magic is imbued with its caster’s intentions,” answers Minaro.
“When he sacrificed himself, Grandsire regretted above all that he had never given you a true choice. As a result, your free will is inwoven with the spell’s conditions.
Bound by this, I could only observe as you pieced everything together on your own.
I had to wait for you to come to me, and only once you had proven yourself worthy could I explain your choices. ”
“So, you judge me worthy then?” asks William.
“I am not the one judging you,” she says. “It is your own acceptance you have always sought.”
William never thought of himself as his own enemy. “If you have been watching over my coffin all this time, why let me awaken now?”
“Because the spell’s conditions have been met. Humans no longer believe in vampires. It is time for the enchantment to end and the others to come home.”
“How?” he asks, perching at the edge of the couch cushion.
“All fifty-four of you must make your way to the room where you first awoke and return to a state of death-sleep. If you do not all do this together, the others will never make it back.”
Death-sleep.
This was not even in the realm of possibilities for what he thought would happen next. “For how long?” he asks, wondering how much of Lorena’s life he would miss. One year? Twenty-five? Her whole life?
“It is impossible to say. The spell could end in one minute or another two hundred and fifty years.”
William’s mind is reeling. How can these be his only options?
“Are you the one who told Nate and Cisco I was here? Is that how they found me in Hanover?”
“I planted a story in a tabloid about an empty coffin being found not far from here.” William cannot believe his luck that he came up with a similar enough excuse. That means Nate was not lying about how they found him.
“Why open a school at all?” asks William, growing angrier the more he thinks about it. “Why endanger so many young humans in this way?”
“These are not just any humans,” says Minaro, a sly smile on her lips. “Can you not tell?”
William thinks of Lenny for some reason, and the blood in the barrels.
“Lorena and Salma were admitted for business reasons,” says the director when William stays quiet, “yet the only real criteria for admission was—”
“Stoker blood,” William realizes suddenly.
That was why it was hard for him to pick up anything strange in Minaro’s blood—he has been surrounded by Stokers this whole time. Except for Lorena, whose blood had started to stand out to him from the others’.
“When the Legion began hunting Stoker humans,” Minaro explains, “many branches of that family changed their last name to avoid persecution. That is why they are hard to locate. Even Trevor’s family descends from Stokers, though they do not know it.”
“Why … why would you lure Stokers here?” asks William, struggling to figure out how all these puzzle pieces fit together.
“They were lured here by their blood because they form a part of your choice.” She looks at him grimly and rises to her feet, like they have arrived at the crux of their meeting.
William stands, too.
“You can lead the other survivors to death-sleep and bring back your brethren,” she says, “or you can stay with Lorena and turn your classmates into the first new generation of Stoker vampires.”
William feels like sitting down again. Like he has inherited the weight of the world.