Chapter 25
Maxim kept having to reread the same sentence over and over. It wasn’t the book’s fault by any means. The gray aliens and the mind reading, the openly psychopathic cop paired with the empath—it all made for a decent story.
But Maxim’s awareness was on Raven while his thoughts kept going in circles around the two men in the cells downstairs. That they are as they are and behave as they do should offend anyone with kindness in their heart. It offends me, and I have no kindness at all for them. None.
“Did you…read Jules Verne?” Raven asked out of nowhere.
Maxim looked up from the page he’d been staring at for about a minute now.
“Jules Verne? Certainly. Why do you ask?”
Raven hid behind his cup of blood. “Just because…that’s what you’re reading. Science fiction. And I was wondering, did you read his books when they first came out?”
“Not right when they came out.” Maxim closed his alien and empath novel. “We lived in England at the time. The bloody War of Revolution was still fresh in everyone’s mind, and I scarcely went to France. I don’t believe I made it out of Brittany more than twice during that time.”
Maxim, despite the echoes of that dark children’s song from the basement still ghosting through his mind, saw something wonderful then. Raven’s eyes lit up. It was like a wick brightening a dark room with a single flame. Finally. Thank my parents’ gods for this.
“I didn’t even—you were there then? Didn’t that whole thing scare everyone else in Europe? The war in France, I mean.”
Maxim crossed his legs. “Some more, some less. It prompted many Forums to reconsider how they’d interact with the rulership of whatever shifting border they found themselves in.
There was squabbling among the very oldest and most influential packs about the conduct of vampires, and vice versa.
At the end of the day, the Forums decided to exchange information more regularly, and hunters who were naturally drawn to a nomadic life no longer had to register with one particular Forum, and were instead valued for their independence and willingness to go where needed. ”
Umeboshi, possibly because he sensed Raven’s attention, rolled on his side and offered his belly, effectively demanding it be scratched. When Raven didn’t immediately get the message, the dog let out a Shiba whine that got him exactly what he’d so desired.
“Hold on.” Raven swallowed. “I have questions. Can I ask?”
“Of course.”
“Okay. When we did the War of Revolution in school, they mostly said it was royalty who’d paid small fortunes to become immortal vampire rulers on the one side, against the vampire leaders and the French people on the other. And there were guillotines. That is what happened, right?”
Maxim shrugged. “More or less, though the guillotines only came in near the end. Human rulers who sought a path to power through being turned into vampires was nothing very new, so in that sense, it wasn’t unusual from our point of view.
In France, they just made new vampires quite quickly, thinking power lay in numbers.
For us, this is not true, but in the case of the French royalty, they failed to consider the fact that the people outnumbered them, vampires or not.
The scale and way in which the royalty chose to bleed their own people—both literally and figuratively—was quite a level up from what most of us had seen before. ”
Ume was enjoying his belly rub but had to use his paw to keep Raven’s focus. He twisted and gave Maxim an accusatory stare, making it clear that a claim had been staked.
“I remember my teacher saying that France might’ve become the first vampire-ruled state if they’d succeeded. Do you think that could’ve happened?”
Maxim tapped the cover of his book with a finger. “No, I don’t. They did say it though, tried to use it to get any royalists to rally around them. Obviously, they didn’t plan for a state but rather an empire. It wouldn’t have worked out for them.”
Raven took a sip of his blood before speaking again. “Because of you? I mean, hunters like you?”
Raven was still interested in this story of the past in the way people who thought they’d just happened upon a grand secret were, but thoughtfulness was creeping into his voice again.
The realization that he’s a vampire now, that he’s different from what he was before, perhaps.
Such things tend to readjust one’s viewpoint.
“That, yes. Ultimately, we’d have stepped in to take them down.
But consider that it wasn’t just the ruling family who decided to be turned entirely, children and all.
It was many families, some being turned mere minutes apart.
New vampires have always needed guidance, for their own sake and that of those around them.
After turning so many so quickly, there were soon not enough experienced vampires around to offer that guidance.
Chaos, violence, and strife ultimately ensued. ”
Maxim had not seen it, but he’d read the reports as they’d come to them.
The children. It was the children that had sickened him the most. They would’ve suffered through the change much like Raven had, and then they would have woken to a new way of perceiving the world and to a thirst they’d not be able to control.
You could spot the royal nests by the fields of bloodless corpses around them, that was what the reports had said.
One witness, a werewolf hunter, spoke of a child in a nightgown stalking her and calling, “I am thirsty, Mama, I am so thirsty.” Her report said she had killed that child, and Maxim had been glad for it.
Raven took a deep breath, then he met Maxim’s gaze. “Is that what you’re doing with me? Guiding me?”
No. I turned you even though the rules forbade it. I turned you because I was charged to find you alive and couldn’t bear the thought of returning you dead. I turned you because I’m selfish. Making sure you go on living soothes my selfishness. “Yes.”
Raven nodded. He said nothing for about a minute, just drank more blood. Then a faint smile bloomed on his face before it vanished again.
“You read Jules Verne’s books late, then?”
“Oh. Yes, I’d say so. I wanted Heath to be fluent in French, so I read them to him until he was able to read by himself.”
Another pause, then Raven breathed out heavily as if something Maxim had said had come as a disappointment. He’s lost in his own thoughts, clearly. Yet, I wonder what it was he didn’t like to hear me say.
“I just… There were so many new genres at the time. The big romances. Science fiction.” Raven opened his mouth, then closed it again, no doubt thinking about the Sherlock Holmes stories that had lured him. “Penny dreadfuls.”
“I suppose you could say many classics were written around the time, though it took a few decades. There was beautiful writing before then, too.”
Raven bobbed his head. “Yeah, I know that.”
Silence was threatening to descend on them again. Maxim wouldn’t have minded that. That light he’d seen in Raven’s eyes though, he wanted to keep it aflame. He put the book on the coffee table and straightened.
“How about we check whether I kept some of the copies?”
“What copies?”
Maxim forced himself to show Raven a toothy grin. “Of the books. The Vernes and the Austens. I did read Jane Austen, of course. And Dickens. I bet there are some still in the traveling trunks.”
“In the what?”
Maxim folded his hands in his lap. “Heath hired you, did he not? Well, I’d like to show you what your job might be, should you choose to accept it.”
“What do you mean, should I choose to accept it? I already did.”
Maxim rolled his eyes. “Oh, youth.” He stood. “Follow me, then. I’ll show you the trunks. I’ll have you know that I did travel in one once, but it was more or less an accident. I cannot recommend it at all. Mind the traveling trunks, Raven. They’re all mimics.”
“You traveled…in a trunk?”
Maxim smoothed his braid over his shoulder. “Yes. Like the vampires of human myths. Unlike them, I didn’t enjoy it.”
Raven gave Maxim a skeptical look. “What kind of trunk are we talking about?”
“Come along. I’ll show you.”
It didn’t take long for Raven to abandon his blood next to Maxim’s novel and follow him toward the elevator. And he looks excited. That’s good. Looking excited suits him. Umeboshi, roused from his relaxing nap and feel-good treatment, followed along as well.
The elevator opened for them, and Bryan made it go right to Maxim’s secret floor.
Maxim cleared his throat. “Please keep in mind that everything you’re about to see is a little bit like the pretty pens we talked about, in that it’s probably better to not mention it to Heath.”
Raven’s forehead wrinkled in confusion. “Doesn’t he know you have traveling trunks?”
Maxim laughed dryly just when the doors opened. “Oh, he knows. He’d just prefer I throw out all of the old things or burn them. He might not be aware of how full some of them are either, and there is absolutely no reason to tell him.”
The elevator came to a halt and the doors opened. Raven didn’t respond. He was taking in the single floor Maxim had claimed for things that had traveled with him, for things that had lived in the house but become obsolete over the years. Things he’d not seen a need to part with.
The sight of all the stuff had clearly dazzled Raven into open-mouthed speechlessness. Ah, now that’s rewarding.