Chapter 15 – Valtu
Valtu
There’s nothing I like more than Venice on the cusp of winter.
That sweet spot near November, when the rains haven’t started yet in earnest, so there’s no worry about flooding or acqua alta , but the tourists are gone and the fog settles in with the early darkness.
It makes me feel at peace, like everything in life is just a little bit easier.
But despite winter just around the corner, and the quietness that has befallen this beautiful moody city, my life has only gotten more complicated.
I’ve been having my dalliances with Dahlia over the last couple of weeks and I’ve grown closer to her than I ever thought I would be with anyone ever again.
She’s brought me her darkness, but in doing so has made my world so much brighter.
There’s this perverse understanding between us, this rare and precious way that we give ourselves to each other, not just in our bodies but with something deeper.
I often question if I have a soul, as vampires will proudly claim they do not, but she does have one and I feel as if when I’m with her, she lets me borrow her soul and wear it for a while.
She feels good on me.
But as it is in my life, everything good that happens is swiftly followed by something bad. In this case, it’s nothing to do with Dahlia, but with Aleksi and Saara, who seem to be complications in my life ever since they arrived.
Seems I’ve made enemies of them since Aleksi’s stupid stint in the Red Room.
Normally it wouldn’t matter if a vampire got kicked out because everyone knows that it only exists for them as long as they follow the rules.
But because those siblings have such a strange hold on this town, I’m in a position where I have to make nice with them.
As such, tonight me and Bitrus have to take a boat out to the island of Poveglia to have a meeting with Saara and Aleksi.
They asked me specifically to go so that we could settle our differences.
I may be a vampire, but I’m no fool. They may be wanting to kill me, I wouldn’t put it past them.
So I asked Bitrus to come with me, just in case.
It doesn’t hurt to have another witness.
“Could they have picked a spookier night?” Bitrus says.
I turn to see him coming toward me out of the mist, the collar of his black coat spiked up high, his hands in his pockets. All he needs is a fedora covering his bald head and he’d be straight out of a film noir.
“You know how dramatic vampires are,” I say.
I’m standing on a dock along the south side of the city, just behind the famous silhouette of the Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute.
The siblings said they would send a boat for me at eleven p.m. and even though it’s late, many boats and vaporettos are still cruising through the canal that separates us from the island of Giudecca, their lights barely visible through the fog.
“So they live on Poveglia, huh,” Bitrus muses as he stands beside me. “That’s all sorts of fucked up.”
I sigh. “Yeah, well, if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck…”
Poveglia is a small island that’s grand with infamy, reported to be the most haunted place in the world and for good reason, too.
During the plague it was used as a lazaretto to confine the dying.
Rumors have it that there were so many plague-ridden bodies burned on the island that the soil is comprised mostly of human ash.
I don’t think that’s a rumor though, I’ve been there once just passing through on a boat, and I didn’t even have to step on the island to smell how deep the stench of death goes.
After the plague, it was used as a quarantine station for those entering Venice, then it was turned into an insane asylum, naturally, then a hospital and care home for the elderly to spend their last days, until it was finally closed in the 1960s.
Now it’s completely abandoned, though the hospital and watchtower remain.
And apparently not fully abandoned since the siblings have taken up residence there. I’m assuming they’ve converted some secret part of the hospital into their dwelling, since the last I heard everything was left to rot.
“So, how is it going with Dahlia?” Bitrus asks as I search the fog for any boats that might be ours. “Are you any closer to introducing me to her?”
I give him a wry look. “Not yet.”
I’ve wanted her to meet Bitrus but I’m worried that introducing her to other vampires might trigger her fight-or-flight instincts.
Humans are pretty good at ignoring vampires for what we are, but only one at a time.
If she met Bitrus she might start picking up on the fact that there is something very wrong with me.
Though who am I kidding?
She already thinks there’s something wrong with me.
And she likes it.
“I’ve introduced you to Bash,” Bitrus goes on, running his fingers over his clean-shaven jaw.
“Yes. The Bash that you’re still just casually fucking,” I comment with a laugh. “How about I’ll let you meet Dahlia when you vamp-up and realize that you’re in a god damn relationship with him?”
He just grunts dismissively at that, pulling his collar up higher as if he’s cold and faces the sea. Then he frowns. “This must be for us.”
I follow his gaze to see a small motorboat coming our way, a man in black at the back piloting the prop. At least I think it’s a man, the closer he gets the more that I can’t make heads or tails of his face. It’s like he’s the Elephant Man come to life.
“What the…?” Bitrus whispers as the boat comes to the dock.
The man at the helm is disarmingly tall, cloaked with such dark and chaotic energy that it feels repellant, and on his head is a plague doctor mask.
I exchange a wide-eyed look with Bitrus. He raises his brows.
They can’t be serious? he says inside my head. This is our ride?
I look back to the plague doctor, seeing only black fathomless holes for eyes, the long beak for a nose. “Did Saara and Aleksi send you for us?” I ask, as if there’s some other explanation.
The man in the mask just stares at us.
I guess that’s our answer.
“Guess we should be on our way, then,” I say with a weary sigh, heading toward the boat, which the plague doctor holds to the dock with one very large leather gloved hand, a hand far too large to be human.
“Boy am I regretting coming along with you,” Bitrus says under his breath, following me as we step onto the boat.
The minute we sit down, the boat pulls away from the dark and we head into the mist. I keep looking over my shoulder at the plague doctor piloting the boat, wondering who could be under that mask.
If it’s a vampire I can’t tell, and usually my vampire radar would be going off.
If it’s a human, well, he’s a giant, and I don’t know what the hell that weird energy around them is since that’s akin to witchcraft.
Maybe it’s a witch. I think back to when I saw one recently.
I was walking with Dahlia, that night we first had drinks and I kissed her.
The witch looked of Middle-Eastern blood, fairly young and pretty, and she didn’t seem to notice me but I sure as hell noticed her.
I could smell her. Venice is said to have more than a few witches hanging around but for whatever reason I don’t run into them very often.
If this masked person driving the boat is a witch though, I should be able to smell them and I’m getting nothing.
Do you ever wonder if there are more ways to kill a vampire than what we’ve been told? Bitrus asks in my head. Maybe it’s not just fire, decapitation, or being stabbed in the heart by a witch’s blade. Maybe it’s being scared to death by ghosts of plague doctors?
Not helpful, I tell him.
Especially not helpful as the boat goes deeper into the mist, the lights of the city and Giudecca being swallowed up.
All sound is swallowed up too, leaving only the whir of the motor and the beating of my own heart inside my head.
I don’t spook easily but I’m feeling more and more unsettled the longer the boat ride is.
I’m thinking back to the creature in the water, to what Bitrus had told me about something being in his room, I’m thinking about how these last few weeks I could have sworn something was following me in the dark, something insidious and rancid that never appeared to my eye, forever in shadows.
And now, as the island appears before us, the belltower rising above the mist which is clearing just enough to show the dilapidated hospital, the crumbling bricks and overgrown weeds, I have that feeling again, the one of being watched by something that doesn’t belong in this world.
As someone who doesn’t belong in this world myself, it’s a most unsettling feeling.
There isn’t a single light on the island and I only now just realize the boat must have turned off its light too. Because we can see quite well in the dark, it makes it easy to live undetected in the shadows.
“Shit!” Bitrus suddenly cries out, pulling back from the edge of the boat where he was staring down into the surface. “I just saw faces in the water.”
Completely fucking normal.
I look over my shoulder at the plague doctor, as if the man in the mask has a rational explanation for Bitrus seeing faces under the surface, but the doctor is pointing straight ahead with a rigid arm.
I turn around to see Saara and Aleksi standing on the end of the dock.
They sure as hell weren’t there a second ago.
As usual, the two of them are dressed to the nines, Saara in a long white slinky gown, Aleksi in a white suit.
They look like they’re going to some vampire prom, except they both have bare feet.
“Welcome, Professor Aminoff,” Saara says. She smiles sweetly at Bitrus as the boat bumps the dock. “I see you’ve brought a friend.”
“Can’t be too careful,” I tell her, getting to my feet. “Saara, Aleksi, I’m sure you’ve met Bitrus before.”