24. The New Cult #2
Tomasz gives a nod and whispers something to the human, who steps aside without making eye contact.
Is he coerced? I try to stare into his gaze, to find the blank look of those who’ve been compelled, but he avoids me. Is this a human they’ve paid for silence, or do they know the gift?
I will not ask. I do not wish to travel that road again.
The heavy wooden door creaks and threatens to fall off the frame as Tomasz pushes it open and climbs the narrow stone steps. There is no foyer, there is no grand entrance, there are only stairs leading to a room.
And within that room is the salon.
The room would be pitch black for a human.
Heavy blue curtains cover the windows, the fabric ceiling-to-floor.
The carpet is a similar color, though there are many stains with no obvious attempts to clean them.
The furniture is opulent and comfortable—chaise lounges, sofas, chairs, even a daybed.
There is a bookcase against the far wall, and several smaller tables in between the seating.
And there are four vampyrs, all staring at me with open curiosity.
“You’ve found the stray,” says a woman with a thick French accent. She is thin, dressed in the fashion of the women mocked in the pamphlets. Her dark purple eyes sweep over me, cold and contemplative.
“Her name is Melinoe,” Tomasz says by way of introduction.
“A Greek,” says another, an older man with deep lines around his magenta eyes, which stand out brightly against his dark brown skin. His voice is quiet, kind even.
“Ah, another of a fallen empire,” says another woman with the same electric blue eyes as Tomasz. Her German accent punches the French words, but there is something older about the way she rounds her words. “I am of the Holy Roman,” she adds, by way of explanation.
“How old are you? Do you remember the time of the Greeks?” asks the last woman, her speech half in Italian, half in French. Her eyes gleam yellow like a cat in the dark, tracing my every step.
“It is unkind to ask after a lady’s age, Caterina,” says the French woman.
“It is unkind to speak without introduction,” Tomasz winces. “Eloise Fournier,” he says, nodding to the French woman with the dark purple eyes.
“Caterina Bellini,” he says of the Italian woman.
“Yusuf al-Kindi,” to the magenta-eyed man.
“Margarethe Weiss,” to the German with the same eyes as his. “And I—Tomasz Wójcik. Margarethe and I are siblings of a sort, though she predates me by a century.”
“And I predate you all,” Yusuf chimes in.
“Melinoe,” I say, as though I have not already been introduced.
“Just Melinoe?” Caterina asks with a tilt of her head.
“Yes, we did not have surnames in my time,” I say, though I don’t know if it’s true. I did not have a surname, but I was a temple rat. Perhaps I had one once, one that disappeared with all my other memories. Lost to the turn of time, replaced by you.
But you are not here.
“Your time?” Caterina presses.
“I believe you would call it…” I look up, thinking. “It was a hundred years or so avant Jesus-Christ.” There are many ways to describe my age over the centuries.
They are silent, each staring at me with an intensity that borders on hunger.
Is this how you felt when the acolytes realized you were an Elder? Did they picture the civilization that bore you, now little more than a memory in tattered paper? I am a relic over a thousand years old.
And what do I have to show for it? I understand now Theon’s drive for scholarly acclaim. If his name was written somewhere, he would live on. If he made another vampyr they would have only his eyes, but not his name. What legacy do I have except one of devout worship?
“Another fallen empire,” Margarethe says softly, patting the chair next to her. “Another about to fall, we think.”
I take the seat that is offered, my skin hot with the eyes locked to it. “Another?” I ask.
“Enlightenment,” Yusuf says with a wide sweep of his hand. “The cure to the ills of the poor.”
“Laugh all you want,” Eloise snaps. “You’ve never known hunger as these streets do.”
I wait for the cycle to repeat, for one to defend humans, the other to tear them down.
I wait for Alexandria to appear, reborn, in a dingy salon in Paris.
I wait for a reason for me to leave, to escape the confines of this space, to settle my soul elsewhere.
I cannot listen to this stupid discussion yet again, even centuries later.
“What would the world look like without God at its center?” Margarethe asks, her voice a whisper.
“The churches provide for the poor,” Eloise says.
“They claim to, yes. But not all. We open our grand doors to the stricken, but close them when it is deemed too full. Why are there gold-crusted plates while the parishioners starve?” Margarethe asks.
We, she says. As though she is of the cloth and not a vampyr who would feast on the poor to survive.
“Melinoe, what do you think of Enlightenment?” Tomasz asks. They all turn to me.
Two images overlap.
One—the first meeting of the group in Alexandria, the house with the handprint on the door. A question posed, all eyes turning to you for an answer.
Two—where I am now, seated on a plush cushion, five sets of eyes turned to me.
Do I follow your footsteps, or run in the opposite direction?
“I do not concern myself with the affairs of humans,” I admit.
“But you must! They are our food, they run the world as it is. We must exist within their framework if we wish to live on,” Tomasz argues.
I wait for the opposing view, for the call of the superiority of race. For Ardashir reborn to step forward, demand the humans fall at our feet. For us to lead, to dictate, to wage wars.
No one does.
“Their lives are…” I trail off.
“Short?” Eloise supplies.
Meaningless is what I meant to say, but I nod anyway. “I’ve watched greatness crumble, knowledge burn, mistakes repeated and never learned from. Another great rises, just to fall. What is the use of tracking this? The ending is inevitable,” I say.
“You can know a story’s ending, and still enjoy reading it,” Caterina says.
I consider this, tilting my head just as you do when you think.
“So what is it you do here? Ponder over Enlightenment?” I ask, deferring my answer.
“Yes, and no,” Tomasz says. “Sometimes we hunt together, sometimes we enjoy a play or two, sometimes we read a pamphlet and discuss it. Sometimes we do not appear for months on end. We are a group of friends, above all.”
Friends. Had I ever had that? Surely I did in the temple, when I was just another rat scurrying along. Since then? It is only you; there is only space for you.
To make space for them would mean pushing you aside. Perhaps I could do it, a centimeter at a time. Little by little displacing you with their silly jibes and someone else to attend a play with.
Someone to hunt with.
Friends. I test the word in my mind, considering it.
“It is nice to have another for safety,” Eloise says, shuddering.
“Safety?” I ask. Other vampyrs are the only things I had to fear, and the sun. Humans were nothing, easily controlled, easily killed. What safety did they mean?
“From the hunters,” Yusuf said blankly, blinking at me in concern.
“Just keep your head down and you’ll avoid them,” Margarethe says with a wave of her hands. “They are transients anyway. They will lose interest in us and move on, as they always do.”
“I am sorry—hunters of what?” I clarify. Is he speaking of the whispers from Germany, of the humans who claim to know of us?
“Us,” Yusuf says, his frown deepening. “Vampyr hunters.”
I want to laugh at the ridiculousness of it.
The room is silent, their gazes everywhere but on me.
A memory tugs at me, another evasive conversation where my questions rotted and fell to the floor at your feet.
But something breaks through, phrases you’ve said in passing.
“If humans knew our true nature, they would exploit it. They need only find where we rest.” And “A wrong that brought our numbers from hundreds to less than ten.”
Is this what you spoke of? A time where humans knew of us, hunted us? Is this something to fear, or something to mock like the pamphlets?
How dangerous could these humans really be?