28. Creatures of the Night
Creatures of the Night
You are never there when I leave at night.
Sometimes I feel you in our home, which has grown in size because of the distance between us. I trace your path before I leave for the evening, wondering if ours will cross.
You are either gone or you’ve hidden, reclusive even from me.
I have my own grave now, in a room I no longer call ours. I can’t remember when it was made—whether it was your doing or mine. At some point you became a ghost haunting the corners of our home while I did everything I could to escape.
Zora was not a distraction. Le Sang Bleu was, one that clawed its way under my skin and festered. I went from avoidance to loathing. I explored areas of Palais and Paris I knew the others would not venture to. I didn’t catch Tomasz’s eye in a cafe, nor did I acknowledge Eloise when she waved to me.
They were creatures of my past who wanted to be part of my present, part of my future. I could not stand the way they looked at me, the questions they asked. They were invasive, a way of dissecting me like I didn’t exist. They spoke of me like I wasn’t there.
“There must be an original, the one that made us all,” Yusuf says one evening. It is the last evening I attend one of these meetings, but I have no plans to announce it. I’ll simply stop coming.
“A first, a supreme father,” he continues.
“Mother,” I correct. Their necks snap as they look to me, mouth full of questions I will not answer.
I understand you now in this moment, how Alexandria would tire you so.
At first the reverence was wanted—I’ve always been so dull next to your shine.
But without you? At last I am seen, but not as I wish to be seen.
They put me on a pedestal and ignore me simultaneously.
Perhaps I will burn Le Sang Bleu with them in it to get away from it all. Without a rival cult to dispose of them, I will have to do it myself.
“Mother?” Margarethe says, sitting up straighter.
“Mother?” Tomasz says at the same time, dismissive.
“Do not act so shocked. We are all borne of a woman. Why should creation not be from one?” Margarethe says.
“Yet God is a man,” Eloise clarifies. “And He created all.”
“I do not think He created us,” Margarethe says. “We violate the commandments he placed forth. We may not be explicitly mentioned in the Bible, but we are of sin.”
“Did your original Bible creatures not live several hundred years?” asks Yusuf.
“They did not die by sunlight, and they did not drink blood to live,” Margarethe says with a wave of her hand. “And how do you explain Melinoe? She is thousands of years old.”
I am here, but I am not. They take my words and twist them around, placing them where they’d like.
I am a centerpiece for their conversations, which grow tedious and repetitive.
When you live so long, you run out of things to do, to see, to speak of.
Soon they will find another topic to drain the life from.
“Do you know this mother?” Margarethe asks me. Her melancholy silence is at last broken by the premise of a female creator. It’s something she can use against her old god, proof he isn’t real.
“No, she was before my time.”
“But you know she existed? Truly?” Margarethe presses.
“Did your creator tell you?” Yusuf asks.
They tiptoe around the mention of you, not wanting to face your existence directly lest it scare me off. I am already a bird set to fly, I don’t need much of a push. They must sense it, because they want so deeply to know of you, but they will not ask.
Perhaps they think it is rude. Perhaps they think it will lead to my leaving.
“Yes,” I say simply, turning my attention to the clock. I am set to meet Zora in twenty minutes. “I’ve somewhere to be,” I say, and I leave. No one stops me. I’m sure the conversation switches to me once I am gone, but I do not care. I will not return to this salon ever again.
Zora stands under an arcade, her gaze eternally sweeping the grounds before us. She tracks the movement of every human, waiting for her next catch. This is how she survives—stealing, blending into the night, remaining unknown and unseen. We are kindred spirits in this.
“I approve,” she says, regarding my clothing. She’s shown me what the common human wears to help me blend in more. My red eyes still draw attention, but I am watched less than before.
I hold up a book, unable to hide my smile. Zora takes it and looks it over, whistling under her breath.
“Very old, probably worth something,” she says, handing it back to me and tapping the cover. “What language is this?”
“Latin,” I say. “It’s Odes, by Horace. Four books of poems.” I turn to a page and recite—
May the goddess, queen of Cyprus,
and Helen’s brothers, the brightest of stars,
and father of the winds, Aeolus,
confining all except Iapyga, guide you,
ship, that owes us Virgil, given
to your care, guide you to Attica’s shores,
bring him safely there I beg you,
and there watch over half of my spirit.
“Ugh, how droll,” Zora interrupts, holding up her hand to stop me.
“At the time, it was gripping,” I say.
“Is that what you were taught? That during…when was it?”
“23 BCE, and then the fourth in 13 BCE.”
“…Right. Scholars act as though they can possibly know this? That it wasn’t a false acclaim penned by the author himself, and everyone else read the poems and rolled their eyes at them?”
“I suppose you’re right,” I admit. She is mostly wrong—Odes was not the sort of text everyone read and knew of.
It was not made into plays, it was not sung.
I learned of it only when I began my scholarly pursuits, memorizing bits of text.
Odes was academic, another part of my existence so separate from the human I once was.
No longer a temple mouse that couldn’t read, but someone who spoke multiple languages.
“This book is eighteen hundred years old?” Zora asks.
“No, of course not. It wasn’t until the 1450s that books were produced in such a quantity. This is perhaps…two hundred years old? The originals were papyrus.”
“You speak as though you were there. Such an old soul,” Zora mocks, and I bite my lip to keep from talking more.
She laughs like it’s a joke. I laugh with her like I’m not telling the truth.
It is hard to stay quiet about things I should keep to myself around her.
Her interest in me is that of a friend, not of a lover or an acolyte.
“It is well known amongst scholars,” I say instead.
“You are so young for such knowledge. Tell me, how do you have room to store new facts?”
I laugh. “I often wonder if every new experience removes an older one.” Our interlude shows this, that there are pieces in time that run together, muddied with age.
If not for catastrophes, I would not remember where we were at what time.
The falling of empires, the rising of a new church and religion—these are moments that I cannot pick specific memories from. They are mundane.
Yet these walks and talks with Zora are also mundane, but I remember them well.
I can tell you that Zora smelled of dirt and sweat, that her cheeks were hollow with hunger.
I can tell you that she favored dark browns, as they were harder to see dirt and mess on them.
I can tell you that after a week of our thievery, those hollows lessened, and I was happy to be part of why.
“Where did you get this?” she asks.
“A salon, one I do not wish to show my face in again.”
“You learn quickly. I hope what I teach you is not replaced in your brain too soon,” she says.
I did learn quickly. Within three weeks I could pocket things without a vendor knowing.
I practiced removing my bracelet from Zora, then tried to do it when she wasn’t paying attention.
Zora was good at blocking my attempts, so I began to practice elsewhere.
Cafes, on the street, anywhere I could find an unsuspecting victim.
I stole pocket watches, bracelets, rings. I laid them out in my room, sorting through them with unabashed glee. I could pay for them, you and I were rich. I could compel the wearer and never risk being caught.
I didn’t want that. This was a rare thrill, something new I did not expect to have wanted.
I know that what you do to secure our homes was technically theft, and I wondered if you got the same rush from it.
I never asked how you found the homes we lived in, or who was displaced to live in them, or how you found them in the first place.
Perhaps that is the hunt you prefer to engage in.
I needed something more tactile, something I could lay out on a desk and examine and catalogue.
“Where do you keep your items?” I ask Zora one night. She had a small satchel she wore at all times, secured tightly to her person to prevent theft. It looked heavy, I suspect with stolen treasures.
“In my bag,” she says, patting it.
“Yes, but at night? Have you a home? How do you secure it?”
“Why? Are you worried someone might steal from you?” she asks.
She did not evade personal questions unless they were about where she lived or slept.
She would tell me all about her journey from Serbia to Paris, how she came with a group of relatives, how some of them were dead or missing.
“Some people vanish and no one looks for them,” she said ominously.
But the topic of her lodging, of where she went during the day, was not something she ever answered. I understood, because I too maneuvered around her questions. It was easy to forget that she did not know I was a vampyr and let truth slip.
I consider following her, but I do not want to be stuck somewhere until the sun sets once more. I’d learned to resist the call of the sun for several hours, nearly until it sets again, but I do not trust I would be safe.
So Zora’s home remained a mystery, while she became more and more of a friend to me.
I don’t recall having a friend. I’m sure I did as a human, it is a very human thing to want.
Perhaps that is why it is always the very young that create cults and groups, while I stray further and further from my desire for connection as I age.
What did another vampyr have to say to me that I do not already know?
What experiences did they have that I did not?
Short of crossing the ocean, I had been on every continent.
In the morning I return to our home, listening for you, sensing you.
You are already in your grave. I have an ache for you, a hope that enough time had passed since I threw those vases that I could return to your grave.
Even if it were just for a night, and we went back to our solitary existence…
I miss you. Maybe I would make it up to you, bring you some of the things I’d stolen, tell you about the fun I was having. Show you my sleight of hand.
Speak to you again. Zora is a friend, but you know me as an intimate.
The door to your room is locked. I knock, waiting for you to allow me in. I know you are in there, I can feel your cold silence through the door.
But you never answer the door. I linger in front of it for several minutes, hoping you’ll change your mind. Hoping I’d had enough of your punishment, of your rejection.
I suppose I had not. Anger replaces my longing.
I break the knob off the door and shove it open. Your room is as I remember it, because it was once our room. You sit in a chair, brushing your hair, not looking to me.
“Why was the door locked?” I ask.
“It’s been locked for months, did you just now notice?” You’d locked me out that long? Waiting for me to notice? My anger grows, because it is like that evening with the piano. You do not look at me, too entranced with your own reflection, with your own movements.
“Why is it locked?”
“To prevent you from disrupting me like this,” you say, the brush continuing its rhythmic motion through your hair.
“Is that what I am doing? Intruding? Disrupting?”
You don’t answer. Now you’re applying some cream to your face, as though you need it. As though we can age or get acne or discoloration. It is a ridiculous show.
“Will you ever give me an answer?” My anger melts to desperation, my hands clenched at my side.
“Are you going to destroy more things?”
“As if I am the only one capable of destruction,” I hiss.
“If only you knew,” you say softly, and that is enough for me. I am sick of your words, filled with double meaning. I am sick of being ignored by you. I am sick of all of it, of your distance, of the space you’ve created.
Above all, though, I fear I am sick of you.
The realization has me spinning on my heels and marching to my room, the door slamming behind me.
I bury myself deep in my grave, press my mouth to the dirt, and scream.
I scream and scream until the sun is well up in the sky and sleep takes me.
There is dirt in my lungs, dirt in my mouth, and the weight of my denial pressed tight against my skin.