Author's Note: Hello lovelies! For those of you familiar with my stories, again, I want to thank you profusely for all your patience and generous criticism. I know you are waiting to finish Finding Eden, but I am still in the process of trying to get it published. Query letters have been sent out and I am just as eagerly waiting for a response from them as you all are probably waiting to hear from me. In the meantime, I've been working on a sort of "sequel" to Finding Eden. It essentially takes place right where Finding Eden will leave off (Yes, I realize I haven't posted the ending, but considering this is entirely its own novel, I think that's okay :3). Anyways, I just really want to let all of you old readers to know, I appreciate what you've done for me, and no, I'm not leaving you hanging, and no, I'm not going to keep the ending from you, and no, I don't intend to just drop off the face of the earth. You guys have been good to me, and so I want to keep you all as up to date as possible. Check my profile for (relatively) frequent updates. For new readers, well, enjoy the ride.
"I was born in Babylon when she was, in some ways, in a golden age culturally. But she was falling into a decline, and that… that is what is important. That is the frame of it all..." Shiva whispered, and then became silent.
Julia sat opposite from him in one of Antoine's plush, library armchairs. She held in her right hand a ballpoint pen—one of many she had purchased for this very purpose—and a plain, lined notebook. Those words stood stark at the top of the page, a promising beginning to what she imagined to be a tale of epic length and proportion.
But Shiva said nothing. His sharp chin bit into the curve of his lightly bronzed palm, and he stared off into the unwavering darkness that crouched in the library's far corners. They listened to his every breath, drawing closer in taut anticipation.
"Yes?" Julia prompted, leaning forward.
Shiva shifted his pensive, brown eyes to her. The black of his pupils, nearly indistinct next to the color of his irises, dilated, widening and then finally narrowing as the light from a nearby lamp hit them. There were few of these lamps in Antoine's library. Much like Matias, he preferred it that way; preferred the subtle glow to the invasive sheen of electric lights.
"You can't expect this to come as easily from me as it did from you," he said, his words long and drawn out, taking too much time—as far as immortal speech goes—to be born. "I told you, Julia, I am no poet. Immortal, yes, but no, no poet. I can only tell you the things I've endured, the things I've seen and had my hands in, as they make sense to me chronologically. I'm over two thousand years old, and it is no easy task to arrange all this information for you. So please, a little more patience on your part."
Julia's lips pursed, but she nodded. Again, Shiva paused, holding his breath as though he had already covered the expanse of time that separated him from his mortality.
"I was born, actually, in the city of Babylon herself. I was the youngest of four boys, though I had one sister younger than myself. I remember my mother as being too worn out by my other siblings to have any sort of patience or time for me. You see, my father died in battle shortly after I was two. I don't remember him as anything more than the foundation of my rebellion… he was a general, you see. One of the best. And my mother, now a widow, would have her sons be scholars, men who sat like fat toads at desks and let their spirit and flesh wither away like the fibers on their quills.
"From the time I was old enough to swing a sword, I knew I wanted to become a warrior. I had no interest in what my brothers were doing. Every night they came home with their precious scrolls and they'd sit near the central hearth and copy the its contents onto a flimsy tablet while our mother cooked. But not me. While my brothers labored over their studies, and my oldest sister helped my mother with dinner, I rampaged through the house, challenging all inanimate objects to a duel. I had a wooden sword after all, the only gift I had from my father save for the lonely scimitar that hung above his memorial in the main room. With every swing, I imagined I had that scimitar in my hand and that I was cutting through my country's enemies. I would do as my father had done, kill as he had, die has he had... at that age, I had a much more acute sense of "honor" than in my adulthood. I thought very highly of my father, perhaps because to me, he was only that sword on the wall. I had not known the man, the infallibility of flesh that I would later discover in my adulthood.
"And my poor mother, she could barely keep up with me. My older brothers had already sapped most of her strength, and by the time I started having my dreams of glory, she was more preoccupied with my infant sister and her needs. My brothers tried to control me instead. When we walked to our school, if you could call it that, they dragged me by the ear whenever I protested. On the way home, as we trudged down the crowded streets of Babylon, more dirt paths than paved roads, they lectured me every step of the way. They told me that I was wasting my time with this warrior business. The way of the sword meant sacrificing intelligence to become the mindless tool of someone else. At six years old, I thought I knew better than them. I thought they didn't understand what being a warrior was really all about. At six years old, I had the idea that warriors were strong men that upheld the law, protected the weak and innocent, and were always righteous. My brothers laughed at me and said that it was probably better that I went into a "profession" that didn't require me to use my head.
"I ignored them. When I could... well, when my eldest brother moved on to more official studies and my other two brothers couldn't be bothered to do anything but warn me my mother would beat my sense back into me if I didn't do what she said... that was when I began to really shirk my studies. On cooler days, I didn't go to my studies at all. I spent those days dashing down the narrow back-streets of Babylon, playing with two boys my age that were just as unenthusiastic about studying as I was. We wanted to become soldiers. And so that's what we did. We met up in the back alleys in the early mornings, waged our wars in the shade of the stout, brick and mud houses that towered over us, and then when the midday sun overcame them, we moved our battlefield to the shade of the vendor stands that lined the main roads, which were paved with stones that bit into our feet and made them rough and unheeding of the ground beneath them. We dodged through the bustling crowds, past the impatient, soft-skinned women that pushed past moving carts and camels to get to the smelly stands so they could be the first to examine the fresh produce, past the men carting their goods from one stall to another, past the soldiers, the scholars, the laborers, both skilled and unskilled, and all the men in between. The streets were my battlefield; the men and women that pushed past me were my fellow soldiers, waging their own fights, and my friends were my enemies. I alone was Babylon's hero. That was until the city guards caught us, if they could catch us. We became skilled at dashing beneath moving carts and slipping through the alleys to avoid them. But, when we were caught, we were dragged back to our furious mothers. Mine was no exception. She'd thrash me so hard I'd barely be able to limp with my brothers to my studies. And there, I'd be thrashed some more if I couldn't sit still, if my raw thighs and buttocks couldn't endure the roughness of my clothes. And if I complained, or didn't press my wedged stylus into the soft beeswax of my tablet quickly enough, I'd be thrashed until I was black and blue and bleeding."
He paused and drank up Julia's disgusted expression, the empty gleam of her eyes and the tightness her lips produced in her cheeks. She gripped her ballpoint pen with bloodless fingertips; her fingernails became sharply iridescent in the low lamplight that cascaded over the open notebook on the library desk.
"Does that bother you?" he asked, his voice sincere.
"Yes. I think it's cruel."
Shiva lowered his head and smiled. The thin coat of saliva on his fangs glistened. "Then perhaps my tale is not for you to hear. There are worse things to come. Things I've done with my own hands," he said, lifting them up for her to see. They were no longer deeply bronzed by the sun. That color had faded into a dull caramel, making his eyes appear as dark as pitch in comparison.
"No. Go on. I told you that I would do this."
Shiva's face tightened as though he were restraining some deeper form of expression. He leaned forward and clasped his hands in front of him, and said, "Then know this: you will hear horrific things. What you've seen, even in your beloved's memories, are nothing. I have more blood on my hands alone than what he's drank in all his centuries walking this earth. Can you understand that?"
Removing her pen from the lined paper, Julia hesitated. She leaned back in her massive armchair and let it envelope her. Such things were beyond her imagining, and perhaps her endurance. It had been hard enough to drink through Matias' tortures or to endure the sound of Antoine's strangled voice as he confessed his own. But her curiosity was greater.
She put pen to paper.
"Why did you keep doing it then? If you kept getting in trouble—"
Shiva's booming laughter trampled her words.
"I was a warrior! I would endure any punishment to prove my dedication to my creed and fight anyone who wanted to stop me! And really, there was no one who could stop me. The more my mother punished me for neglecting my studies, the more resolved I was to become my father's son. I thought that my brothers were a disgrace to him, despite their overwhelming success. They didn't deserve to carry his family name, one that was so prestigious that even the foreign vendors in the market recognized it and showed my family favor. They were always giving my mother the freshest goods and the most immaculate of cooking and house wares. To my brothers, the best beer, to my sister, the finest linens.
"You see… my father had been more than a general in Babylon. He was a land owner, and that was important in Babylon. There were three kinds of people then. Those who owned land, those who did not, and slaves. Within those classes lay little distinction. And my father, in return for the military service he gave to our king, was given ample land on top of the Euphrates, and my father used this land to grow a variety of fruits and to home his honey bees. Honey was important to us in those days, used to sweeten our breads and make cakes, to season roasts and stews. It was a precious commodity, almost as precious as the rare silk from the far east, and even after my father passed away, my brothers did their best to manage in his stead…"
Shiva lowered his head, and a wry smirk crept over his face. "I suppose my brothers could have become merchants if they had too much spine for being scholars. And probably made more money too."
Julia rested her chin in the palm of her left hand. The black tip of the ink pen in her right hovered over the lined paper, trembling in anticipation.
"And what's wrong with being a scholar? Why do you hate it so much?"
He paused for a lengthy moment; his eyes moved over her slowly, drinking up the soft, burnt tones of her face, the bright emerald of her eyes that smoldered against the surrounding darkness. In the dim lighting, her face appeared sharper somehow, her lips more defined, more stern, and her cheeks were like sloping valleys beneath the bones of her face. A heavy weariness nested there already.
"You do find it hard to hate, don't you?" Shiva asked, his voice only a whisper.
Julia studied him with a few, brief flicks of her eyes, and then nodded.
"Even when it came to Claude? Did you even hate him?"
Julia's fingertips bit into her cheek. She turned her eyes to the floor.
"Of course I hated him," she said, not looking at Shiva. "But that's not what I asked. I asked why you hate scholars so much."
Had it been another question, Shiva would have laughed at Julia's habit of getting straight to the point. This question was different. It rooted itself in the center of his heart, a clump of spiny briar.
"Because they're nothing but a bunch of conniving bastards. I saw what my brothers became. I saw them use my father's status as a head general to their advantage, and what did they ever give back? Nothing. Just because I spent my life fighting, Julia, doesn't mean I didn't see other things too. I was around the royal court. I saw the administrators, the book keepers, the judges, the local authorities, the local councilmen, the priests, the entire goddamn hierarchy of learned men, and you know what I saw? Filth! I saw what these men tried to do, even to our king! They would plot amongst themselves. Cheat men and women where they could. They'd try to manipulate royal marriages in a way that would favor them. Not the king. Not the people. Themselves. Literacy was prized among my people, because not even the wealthy could always afford to have anyone but the eldest son be educated. And of course, my doting mother would send all four of hers to become cheats. We might as well have been sent off to marauder's school!"
Julia stared at him with wide eyes. Shiva had fallen into a fit of excited hand gestures, rapid speech, and a feral look had taken hold in his eyes. It was the same passion she had always seen in Antoine when he raged; it burned his eyes black. But she kept pen to paper, and as she watched him, she scratched out the words he spoke, letting them flow wildly across the page in nearly unintelligible scribbles.
When Shiva became aware of himself, he fell silent.
Then, after several calm, quiet moments of collection, he said, "I hated my brothers, hated scholars, because I was ridiculed for wanting to do something for the right reasons. In my heart, I wanted to protect the weak and innocent. I wanted to fight for honor. And I was mocked. Mocked because I didn't want to become a sniveling, cowardly man. Even becoming a merchant would have been better. But they didn't want that. They knew that because of my father's prestige, they wouldn't be doomed to the career of a lowly scribe. They wouldn't be locked in hot, humid rooms coping tablet after tablet onto new tablets or fresh, expensive papyrus. They could appeal to the king. Become his bookkeepers, his officials and administrators. They could become judges! You don't understand what this meant to them. It meant they didn't have to spend their extra time overseeing the slaves who toiled on my father's land. They wouldn't have to fuss over the quality of the honey that was produced. They could retire to a luxurious wing in the palace and only worry about when they'd become too sexually impotent to visit Ishtar's temple."
Again, he stopped. He rubbed his face with his hands. He had lost control of them again, even after having paused for so long to regain his collection. It thrilled Julia to see him this way. Shiva, the oldest of them all, was still prone to behaving in a mortal fashion, to waving his hands around furiously, throwing his arms back and forth like a lunatic, and his speech! He was lost in the moments of forever ago, and they still filled him with passion!
"Julia…" Shiva said, his voice low again. "I'm not like you. I can't ignore the wrongs others have committed. And I feel so strongly about everything. When I hate, when I love, when I hurt. I feel all of these things as if they are a physical torment. Ah, but I'm rambling. I should be telling you of more important things than my obvious dislike for my brothers. That can come later, I'm sure."
Although he promised to continue, Shiva simply sat in his chair across from Julia, and cradled one cheek in his hand as though nursing an injury. He was still for a very long time. All that flowed between him and Julia was stagnant air, and he gave her not even an upward glance to acknowledge her steadfast patience. Even his eyes were still, and his breaths were indistinct against the very low din of noise that was shut out in the halls. Eridani's uncontrollable laughter, accompanied by the pitter-patter of her little feet, were murmurs behind the closed library door. Matias was laughing too. They were going in circles, he chasing her and she screaming in giddy terror.
Shiva stirred, as if the noise roused him from a deep, immortal slumber.
Lazy, tiger-like eyes lifted themselves to Julia's face.
"I don't mean to get off my point again, but let me ask you a question."
Julia nodded and kept her pen pressed to the paper.
"You love your little girl, don't you? You want to care for her, give her what any parent would--unconditional love, everything that you could never have yourself, a chance for something greater... isn't that so?" he asked.
"Of course."
He nodded to himself, reassured of his initial assumptions. Rubbing his face, he sat back in his chair. It, too, enveloped him, because compared to Antoine and Lorraine, they were all diminutive. Eridani most of all. Even in her adulthood, she would be the smallest thing any of them had laid eyes on.
"And that means that you will usher her away from immortality at the first opportunity, doesn't it? You will raise her here, among vampires, and you will expect for her to never yearn for it, to never want to join you in immortality. You will push her right into the mundane and expect her to settle for it."
Julia slowly penned their conversation, but her stare didn't leave Shiva's face. The pitch of his eyes was all-consuming, and something malevolent was perched there. It rippled out through his posture, the casual way he draped one leg over the other at the knee, the way he nursed the cheek of his face in one hand, the smooth broadness of his shoulders that pressed against the leather casing of his jacket. Purpose. It tightened his muscles, strengthened his posture, gave his voice a frigid, musical pitch.
"Yes," she said warily. "If you have plans to interfere with that—"
"No, that's not my intention at all. I'm not quite so... conniving. But let me ask you this, then. You are a vampire, aren't you?" And when she nodded, he continued. "And so is Matias, and so am I. So was Antoine's sister. And yet, for all of our differences, we all have something in common. That is, we all met vampires at young ages or were in their company for a long time. Perhaps a bit of both. But you see, it is inevitable. If the young master de Reinhart does not become a vampire, I will be perhaps a little surprised. But Eridani on the other hand, well. I think she doesn't have his restraint."
"She will not become a vampire. Everyone here, including you, are forbidden from making her into one. I didn't want her to be in our company in the first place, but if that's how it must be, then that is the rule. She will not become one of us," Julia said firmly.
"I am only trying to prepare you for the inevitable. You must be prepared for that, Julia, because now that she is in our world, she will never be able to free herself from it. You met your first vampire when you were but a little girl, and Matias, when he was barely a young man, and Lorraine spent those many long nights with her brother, and I... I was but a boy, too. That's my point, Julia. Here we all are, immortals, even though you swore you'd never want to become one."
Julia shook her head and brought her hands to her ears though no amount of pressure would shut out the sound of Shiva's voice, or the sound of Matias chasing Eridani through the chateau. If she let her mind wander, she could hear the low hum of the television on the second story where Camille was presumably entranced by another foreign film. Antoine was there, quiet as the dead unless he had intentions of joining their permanent ranks. Only his thoughts occasionally slipped out, and Julia, even on her worse days, was too modest to dare listen to those. Then there was the noise of the various electric lights that outfitted the chateau, the creak of the house on its foundation, the banshee like howl of the winter winds and the snow that pummeled the chateau's hind side.
She pressed her hands to her ears until her head hurt, and until all the noise was systematically repressed and shoved into its respective corners. It was rare for her to let her mind wander where it wanted, sticking its nose into every crevice in hopes of finding something curious. When it did happen, however, it was unbearable. It was a crescendo of dissonance that bore down on her like a vicious jungle beast.
"Can we please get back to the point, whatever it was supposed to be?"
In a rare moment, Shiva softened entirely. The broad shoulders that were pressing anxiously against the leather of his jacket collapsed, and removing his hand from his face, he tilted his head at her as if he were seeing her for the first time, as if that brutal evening in Italy were but a dream to him, a dream that was dead and burning. His eyes softened, and that fierce, vampire mouth of his that seemed perpetually taut loosened to accommodate the predatory fangs that were recoiling in disgust.
He didn't apologize. He unfolded his legs, stretched them out, and then taking up a smooth, unruffled posture, he said:
"As I said, I met my first vampire as a boy. I was young, maybe ten years old, and it was in the early hours of the night that my fate was decided. I don't know where to begin with it. What is more important to tell? Most of the time it feels like a dream, like everything happened too quickly, but that's not entirely true. When I want to, I can remember it clearly for some reason. Against the rest of my life as a man, it is defined more acutely than anything else. Do you remember what it was like meeting Matias for the first time? That shadowy moment in the library where he sat only so far from you, but then it must have felt like eternity was parting you? And I don't mean remember it like a vampire would, that you do remember it. I mean, is it brighter, more vivid compared to the rest of your mortality?"
"Yes," Julia whispered. She scrawled down every word, filling up the page with a history not unlike what she had immersed herself in as a mortal. Her eyes lingered on the page, drinking up the words, how stark they stood against the white paper, as if they were soldiers themselves. Each little letter erect and proud, and horribly insignificant alone. She licked her lips. "It was like… the beginning of my life… of this life…and it seems so long ago."
"Ah, yes. Then, as you say it, that was the beginning of it all. Of my life, of this life, of even your life," he said with a sigh and an emphasizing fanning of his fingers.
"Imagine, if you will, a warm, dusky evening in the desert. The sun had quite nearly set at this point, leaving only the upper cusp exposed and that sliver of a star poured clouds of arigold light into the cooling, indigo sky. From the south came a cool, salty breeze that was only faintly detectable by the mortal nose, and that is what made it so delightful. And from all houses on the street came the unmistakable scent of burning wood and the pots of stew and small, brick ovens filled with rising bread. It was a tangle of scents that your freshly immortal nose would have died from the sheer pleasure of it all. Even now, I can recall that particular mixture of aromas, and I will admit... it makes me hunger for those days. They pass us all by so quickly, come and gone like the thrill of the blood hunt, the trill of heat that works your spine into a frenzy when you smell that heavy mist of fear..."
Shiva paused, and all the eagerness in his voice sputtered into thin air. He looked lost all of a sudden. As if his words had carried him somewhere that he no longer recognized, not with those comprehensive, immortal eyes that span the breadth of over two thousand years. Now they appeared childlike.
He recovered quickly, and continued on in his soft, unobtrusive voice.
"Everyone was inside that evening. My mother and eldest sister at the heart tending to the family meal, as was usual. And my brothers, attending to their studies. My eldest brother, after completing his education, did as I have said. He became a low ranking magistrate for the city. Nothing glorious, mind you, but it was sufficient enough to begin the slow, agonizing crawl upwards until he didn't simply oversee small, district issues, but could reign over the high court. Perhaps you could relate it to America's Supreme Court. Only an issue that could not be settled elsewhere was brought here, and well, it was here that corruption had rooted itself and was spreading outwards.
"And I, the ever disobedient and reckless son, was out playing in the streets with my baby sister. Three years younger than I, she was susceptible to my influence, my love of swords and combat. With any luck she'd spit in the faces of those who tried to rule her and be no less of an anarchical nuisance than myself. After all, I led her down my path for a much different reason than your Frenchman did with his sister. I did not care about her womanly rights or freedom. I was, after all, still raised a man. No. I wanted to watch her tip the world upside-down with me. More like an unwitting side-kick. She loved to fight with me, clashing with makeshift swords--wooden sticks, more like. If a little boy from the other side of the street bullied her and shoved her in the mud, she'd bruise his face with a brick fallen from the side of the dilapidated alley nearby. We were violent creatures, despite our wealth, and with no housing districts to separate the rich from the poor, we mingled with all sorts of other children.
"But not that night. Even with the light of the dying sun torching the leafy garden rooftops of all the houses, the streets were too dark to be bothered with. Men, women, and children huddled inside their hovels, if you could call them that, drunk on the roasting aromas, complacent. Only a few pigs and chickens roamed the rough streets, but they scattered quickly, easily, and were nowhere to be seen after my sister and I began our brawl.
"There was something about that night, the fragrance of the air, the stark loneliness of the disheveled streets, the way that the people seemed to flee from the night… there was something about it that was tangible. I wish I had the… the way of words that you have. You make it all so clear again, things that have since faded into that inky nothinginess. I cannot. I don't know how. But take my word that there was that presence. It touched everything that night, from the slant of the garden tops to the scattered stones that littered the chipped streets," Shiva whispered, almost sighing, and then he laughed. He brought a lightly bronzed hand to his forehead, rubbed, and then laughed some more, a deep rumbling noise like the engine of a sports car revving. "And that was the epitome of our golden age! Our beautiful civilization, little more than organized heaps of rubble surrounding one or two great architectural triumphs!"
He shook his head, but continued, "My sister took the first lunge when we ran out into the streets, me with my wooden sword and her with nothing more than a broken off tree branch from the back garden. It was a small, sturdy thing that didn't have the cutting power of my weapon. But she flew at me with brute force, shoving me into the street and driving my knees into the crumbling stones. Even as she grew older, she would maintain this penchant for strong, repetitive overhead blows opposed to the smooth, gliding dance of a real swordsman. Once she had me down, that was her way of finishing me off. Overhead blow after overhead blow, coming again and again, and me blocking her rain of brutal strength. But she didn't watch her legs, and the time between strikes was long, drawn out by the extended arc of movement that an overhead blow requires. The end of the stick would almost touch her back, be drawn through that long range of motion before coming down, and then it had to travel backwards.
"She let out a cry of surprise when I smacked her calves, hard and with the "sharp" end of the blade. She didn't fall, only crumple a little bit, stick clutched angrily in her small fist. It was only the first of a series of blows, some that hit her hard on her legs, on her sides, and some that she parried clumsily with her stick. She was better than my brothers in that aspect. She would groan and wince, but she'd come back at me with the same sort of fury again and again, no matter how much I beat on her, or how much beating on me must have wearied her arms. We fought like this for a very long time it seemed. In the cooling air our hot breath almost appeared to be smoke rising from the gaping jaws of a dragon. She huffed. Her legs were bruised, and so were her arms. I couldn't see her sides. She was good at protecting them. Her hand trembled a little bit, but it was stronger now. Stronger since I'd started bullying her and since she'd started fighting back. My brothers had complained, they had tried to simply disarm me, to force that shriveled complacency on me. You know it. You know that creeping death, Julia, the coldness that fills you when you are being forced to do nothing, and in that nothing, there is only the decay of what you are and how it is slowly being siphoned from you. That is what complacency is to me. I would rather have a world full of loneliness than have that."
"And so you have it," Julia whispered, feeling cold for the first time in months. She was reminded of Matias' first kiss, the one that had tried to force that sort of complacency on her. Only her struggle had saved her. Only that pain had enlivened the dying, recoiling soul inside.
Shiva started at her, half shock and half amusement. Only his eyes were wide, and his mouth parted just a sliver. The rest of his face was struggling against the expression, trying to reel it in where it was safe. The longer he stared, the looser his face became. His jaw became tight, and his eyes were smooth and glassy just as they had been before. Understanding was filling the pitch of his eyes, warming them in spite of the efforts made by the nearby desk lamp. The flame, soft and warm beneath the burnt orange shade, wavered only a breath. Then it was still, steady, burning on as if there would never be an end.
"We fought until we couldn't breathe anymore. We knelt on the dilapidated road, weapons in hand. We were ready for the other to recuperate faster. My sister stared at me, her eyes a much better shade of brown than mine. It was an unattractive quality, if only because of what it would mean for her in her bloom. Quietly, she muttered, 'I win. I win, you know.' It was one of the few times I hadn't sent her running inside crying. But she had never said this to me before, and I wish she had never said it. It spurred something dark and angry to form. And I was all violence again, lifting a sword with no strength and hitting her repeatedly until she was crumpled on the road, crying, the stick no longer in her hand, but discarded. Instead she held up her hand, a gesture begging for mercy, but I was furious. I was furious, and I hit her until she was crying and her hands were bruised and a little bloody. I stood there, thinking to myself, No, no, you haven't won. You can't ever win. You can't ever be better than me, who are you to think that? You're just a little girl. The only boys you can hurt are weaklings. They're not real boys.
"You can't understand my anger. It is not like those of your dearests, your Frenchman who even in his anger, has reason. He merely lacks patience. And your Matias reacts out of pain, out of defense. I doubt you could ever procure an ounce of anger from him without drawing a little blood first, so to speak. And ah, Camille. Profound, unknowable Camille. Camille will always act on reason, even if that reason is unknowable to you. Whether it is to protect, to punish, to manipulate. Ah yes, even to manipulate. If there is reason for it, Camille will employ anger like any other tool in order to move the world and the things in it. But no, not mine. I was hurt, yes, but not an emotional pain. I was not injured the way Matias is often injured by wayward words, but the only thing I truly had to distinguish myself from my siblings was my pride. My arrogance. I had a place in the world, and I knew it, treasured it, and with those few words, I felt as if my sister had toppled me from a throne, and I was all bitterness and hatred.
"When I was done with her, done with my anger, I dropped my sword on the street and heard it clatter. That sound traveled out forever, reverberating like the pounding of hooves that drew ever closer. It was like a church bell, perhaps like one in the Vatican, where its tolling can be heard forever outwards, especially on a crisp, cool morning when sound travels best. You cannot imagine the weight that sound carried, Julia, especially in the years that would follow. That sound is more distinct to me than anything else in this world, especially with how it mesh—ah, no, what is that word you like to use?"
He stared at Julia intently, a devious smile rising on his lips like a sun rising from behind the foundation of the earth. Purposeful.
"I don't know what you mean." She sounded weary. The words on the paper were scrawled out in elongated curves, and her hand rested at a slant. Shiva could feel it, but not the way Julia did. He felt it like one might feel the wind brushing down a narrow street. It was passing, fleeting, and insignificant. To Julia, however, it was a weight that was bearing down on her slowly, steadily, and soon she would need to escape it.
"You use a very poetic word, what is it?" Again, that smile.
It did not procure the sort of fondness from Julia that he had been hoping for. She studied him with her glassy green eyes, and with a solid flick, she had absorbed every facet of his posture and facial expression, right down to the slight forming of lines at the corner of his lips. Those lines were impossible for a mortal to see, and indeed, Julia only noticed them because she had been expecting them to be nested there, cackling to themselves behind a fan of cards.
"I'm not in the mood for games, Shiva. You know what the word is."
"But I would like to hear you say it. Humor me."
"Coalesced. The word is coalesced. Happy?"
Again, that smile, but the lines had faded. It was a smoother, easier transition for his lips to make, if only because it was practiced.
"Yes, that'll do. You don't realize how I envy your words. Perhaps, if only I were a little bit better with words, the entire course of things would be different. Infinitely and incomprehensibly different," he said, and his eyes withdrew into themselves. Dull now, and no longer glassy, the pupils were large and dreaming.
Julia did not share his dreaming. Her wounds were too fresh, and all that she felt was the salt that each syllable rubbed into the rends; into the eviscerated belly of her memories. She looked down at the scrawling on the page, how bleak and empty the words seemed now that she was examining them. What did they really mean when all of this history was lost amongst everything else? No one else in the world knew of Shiva, or perhaps had ever known of him. Even what had been left behind were but remnants of a greater age. All of these words would only satisfy her curiosity, and perhaps that of the few other immortals that would read it. And yet, she had been affected so profoundly by the chain of events that had started hundreds of years before she was even born.
"Yes, they would be different," she agreed, her voice nearly hollow now. "You and I wouldn't be sitting here. Perhaps you would never become immortal, and all your hardships would be replaced by different ones. Eridani would probably be dead, and who knows what Claude would have done to me had you never been there. Had your justice never been tempered to be so swift…"
A look altogether very different from Shiva's norm exploded over his face, a whitewash of something Julia hadn't seen before, and that's what stopped her in the middle of her thoughts. It was like a sunny day in England; almost as soon as it had settled in, it was gone, covered by a blanket of dreary clouds. All that was there for her to see was his warm, lightly bronzed face. The color of his skin added some warmth to it where otherwise there should have been none, or at best the remnants of his emotions.
"And that's what it comes down to, isn't it?" he asked softly, his voice suddenly unobtrusive, sheepish almost. There was no mistaking the lack of dominance that usually rode Shiva's voice, a few thousand years of strength and confidence and, as he had said himself, arrogance. It was strange for Shiva to reel all of that in and bury it beneath a downy softness. His eyes had softened as well, and though they were as black as pitch, there was none of the diamond hardness to them. None of the impenetrability. He sighed and continued, "Justice. Always justice with you, Julia, always. As if justice itself can liberate you of your wrongdoings, of your sins, your mistakes, and baptize them in a golden righteousness. Trust me when I say that justice can only carry you for so long, that when the world spins and changes, and your sense of righteousness is no longer the world's sense of righteousness, what then? What will you do to soothe yourself if all that you have to rely on is suddenly gone?"
No immediate answer came from Julia. At the least, Shiva had expected anger, or a few ruffled feathers. She stared at him now with cool, sea-green eyes that swayed and rippled beneath the breeze of her thoughts. She touched the end of the ballpoint pen to her lips, resisting the urge to chew on it.
"I know I've done wrong things, and nothing will be able to liberate me from them. But there are some things that will never change. Murder will always be murder. Rape, always rape. The standards for those things may change, but never the thing itself. No one can hold me accountable for what I've done but myself. But more and more, Shiva, you have to understand that things happen only as they were meant to happen, and couldn't have happened any other way. I've already tortured myself about all the what-ifs, and you can't do that. Especially not as old as you are."
"Then you believe in fate?"
She considered it for a moment. "A little bit, and not in the conventional sense. Like you said, there was something in the air that night. Your sister said those things for a reason, and you were there for a reason. Now please, keep talking. I am becoming so tired…"
"Of course. I'm sorry my thoughts meander. A silly tangent. You've only inspired so much thought in me, whereas before, I only had to answer to myself.
"As I said, there was the clattering of the sword on the street. It coalesced with the sound of distant hooves, and the two sounds resonated through the narrow street together, one fading and the other growing louder. Almost like a heartbeat. As you feed from your victim, what starts off as soft and rampant grows louder, louder, struggling, and then there is an almost abrupt silence. So, too, this moment. I had dropped that sword, angry at my sister, and angrier to see her cowering there, helpless and afraid like any other little girl. I stormed furiously away, back towards our house. There wasn't a front yard, not like they have with houses these days, but the patch of green that sprouted from behind it was immense. Ours was one of the few houses that had a back yard, and that was to house the garden of trees and shrubs and, most importantly, my father's honey bees. I wanted to run into that garden and become lost amongst the green, lost amongst that which is not civilization, that which has no real rules. There were no disappointments among creatures.
"But as I was walking, I heard the beating of hooves, and they grew dangerously nearer. Only the wealthy or the important rode horses, and that fact alone piqued my interest enough for me to stand on the narrow sidewalk, if you could really call it that, and peek over my shoulder to see. The road was straight, narrow, ineloquent, and coming towards us were seven horsemen. From the distance, I could see the highly polished armor that plated the bodies of both man and horse and long, violet cloaks whipped behind them. Thick leather armor, which at closer inspection would reveal finely embossed details, peeked out from gaps in between the plate. Even for the wealthy, it was not uncommon for the elite soldiers to wear leather in preference to plate. It was still expensive in those days, being a relatively and rapidly progressing technology, and wars, both civil and abroad, made trading to get all the necessary materials difficult. Then there was the issue of weight. With horses being more of a commodity for food than for transportation, it was not rare for even the elite to walk on the battlefield. But these men, and even their horses, they were not simply aristocrats, if you want to put it like that.
"I stopped. I was dazzled and intrigued by what I saw, having never been intimately acquainted with any form of military beyond the stories my brothers whispered to me at night, more relentless taunting than anything else. I watched them draw ever closer until I could begin to see the finer details, the embossed leather, the etching on the shoulder plates that held the cloak in place, the white, startled eyes of the horses and the ragged breath that caused steam to shoot from their flared nostrils. The men themselves looked alien almost, with their unusually pale skin, but darkly illuminated and fierce eyes. I knew these men only by name, and there is no way to put that ancient phrase into modern English except to say that they were Death's men. In my language, I assure you the phrase was more terrifying, more eloquent than what I can put into just a few words here. They were considered living death, the right hand men of chaos and destruction. They were the best soldiers that any king could want, and they worked solely for our king. When there was a battle that could not be won, a city that could not be successfully besieged, then these were the men that were called in.
"Admiration filled my heart. It was a sight I would have gladly given my life to see, to know, to experience. I had always dreamed of being a soldier, and to see these men, to catch a glimpse of what I could be. There just is nothing like it. I still had delusions of what being a man of war meant. As they drew near, hands clutching the black leather reins, I was blind to darkness that hung behind their eyes. I was blind except to my own ambitions. The color of their cloaks made my heart race, and as I stared, my eyes picked out the intricate etching that glowed in the last breath of sunlight. It wasn't until the last moment that I noticed that they made no attempt to slow or stop their mounts, though they must have clearly seen my sister crumpled in the middle of the road. They barreled forward. And even in the shadow of my hatred for her, my bitter, prideful anger, this was a trespass more grievous. What man could trample a child and feel no remorse? She was young and naive, and it was my hand that had put her in their path. My anger was reignited. My anger was all that I had, it was my strength, it was as a part of me as my blood. Perhaps some would say that what was in my veins was all fiery rage, and not blood.
"With a burning heart, I picked up my wooden sword and charged into the streets. This was my time, my time to prove my words were not the words of scholars, but true words backed by action.
"I tried to lift my sister onto her feet, but she was dead weight in my hands. She may have only been three years younger than I, but at nine years old, I wasn't strong enough to drag her out of the road. And that fateful, leaden sound marched forward like the roman legions would in a handful of centuries. The head horseman, a man whose cruelty would make your Claude seem a doting gentleman, gave us little heed. His eyes were the same pitch as mine are today, and as he looked at us from behind the security of his finely crafted helm, there was not a sliver of hesitance there. He would trample her, if she didn't move, and I with her.
"I pulled at her, and even though she struggled to her feet, we'd fought to exhaustion, and my beatings hadn't helped. There wasn't enough strength for her to get up. I let her drop against the road, crumpling in a small, bruised heap before turning to the horsemen. I drew that sword. I thought to myself, I must back my actions with words, I must act. I must act. I held my wooden sword up, pointed it at the man, and shouted, 'Stop! Stop where you are!' The horse drew nearer, and there was no sign of stopping, not until at the last moment when it was apparent that neither I nor her were moving, and that flimsy sword was pointed at its plated chest. It stopped right on top of me, a hair's length away from the tip, and reared. It cried out and kicked its front legs at me as it struggled to obey the impatient demands of its rider who jerked and whipped the black leather reins.
"'Out of our way!' one of the back riders spat. In the closing darkness, I could not see his face clearly. His was but a voice, low, almost too deep. He must have made to dismount, for the leader held up his hand as if to stop him. Up close, his eyes were deeper and more hollow than I had envisioned at a distance, and they watched me the way a wounded beast watches its prey, the way the hyena closes in on the lion and its kill.
"He actually smiled at me, the immortal smile, practiced, warm, benevolent even. The leather of his armor groaned as he readjusted himself on his mount, and then sighed as he leaned forward as if to get a better look at me. But that's not true. I only thought that then because I truly thought he was a man. A strange man, but a man nonetheless. I knew nothing of immortals then, and the stories spoke, perhaps, of curses or gifts, but not of what we have. His eyes bore into me, and as he smiled that practiced, tight-lipped smile, I heard him chuckle.
"'Never point your sword at a man that you do not intend to engage. Especially at Death's men. We... don't take challenges lightly, do we?' He said with a smirk, glancing back at his men. They cackled, elbowing each other in the ribs. One man shuddered and nearly fell off his horse.
"I wasn't afraid of them. If I was, I was too angry to notice. I shouted, 'Then be careful next time. You could have hurt my sister, and it shouldn't be hard to slow down. I know you saw us!'
"They were quieted. Silenced. The leader was watching me more intently now than before, boring into me with those eyes. Those black, black eyes. He glanced back to the others, but they gave him no audible response. He nodded anyways, and his armor groaned and clinked as he slowly dismounted. A sword was buckled to his waist, and it slapped the side of his left leg when he dismounted and then took a few steps forward. There was no sound in these steps, no sound from his armor either, and all I heard was the soft hiss of his voice, lower than what I think anyone should have been able to hear. Perhaps it had been in my head. Perhaps not. But I heard it all the same. 'You cannot hurt anyone with that. You'll need a new one if you dare think you can challenge me.' And with that, he unsheathed his sword, and the blade gleamed briefly in light coming from the other houses. He gripped the blade with his gloved hands and extended the sword's hilt towards me. 'Go ahead,' he said, nodding his head. 'Take it. If you can lift that blade, you can have it. You'll be able to fulfill all your dreams...'
"I dropped my sword and grabbed for the hilt. As soon as I touched it, the blade hit the ground with a clank and no matter how I strained, how I fought and struggled, I couldn't manage to lift it even an inch. It was a miracle to even keep it at a slant and not drop the entire thing on the ground. All the while, my sister sniffled from where she was crumpled, nursing her bruised flesh. Not even all my anger at her, or my brothers, or the laughter that erupted from these military elite was able to grant me enough strength to lift that blade. It was their mockery alone that fueled my desire to have that sword. I believed him when he said that the sword would allow me to fulfill my dreams. How couldn't it?
"At some point, I don't know how much time had passed, my mother came running out into the street. I hadn't come running for dinner, and I was long overdue. Her eyes were like those of the horses in fright: wide, with a large rim of white around the deep brow of her irises. She had me in her arms before I could protest, and was attempting to pry my hands from around the sword. Her fingers pried frantically at mine. Her hair was soft against my face, lightly scented, and I hated the feeling of her soft body behind me, holding me back from my ambitions.
"'Let him be, he meant nothing by whatever trespass he's committed! He's just a boy!' she declared, panic welling in her voice.
"The head horseman held up his hand, a command that silenced her. He motioned at her hands. 'Let it go. This is his trial.'
"When she spoke again, the panic had given way to outright fear, and she pled with him. 'He is just a boy. Please, forgive his offense. Can't you find it in yourself to forgive?'
"I'd never heard my mother speak this way before. She knew her place in those times, and was meek and polite to men, but this was not right. Even to a man of his status, she was almost too polite and at the same time, belligerent. When he had commanded her to stop, she had stopped, but her hands were hot and tight around mine. I could feel the sweat trickle between her fingers and slip in between mine."
Julia considered this for a moment, and Shiva watched the question that slowly formed behind her pale lips. She had fed that night. She had gone out into the dark with the Frenchman and together they had combed the countryside for a victim whose damnation was well deserved. Now, in the shadow of the dawn, she was looking considerably paler. The heat had fled from her, and the detachment she used to protect herself from the harshness of his words left her considerably colder.
"Yes, she knew," he whispered. "Perhaps not explicitly or intimately, but she knew what sort of men they were and that they were not at all the sort of men she wanted me acquainted with. I would come to hate her everything she did that night and the days that followed, how she kept me in the dark in hopes of protecting me. In the end... well. We know how that went.
"The head horseman smiled at her, revealing a little of his white teeth. Something amused him. He gestured towards me, and said, 'This boy was destined for greatness, the same greatness as his father. Can you deny him that? Deny what that little beating heart desires so fervently?'"
"My mother didn't answer, only tug at my hands more. But there was a weightlessness forming in them. The massive weight of that blade grew lighter in my grip, and gradually I felt my muscles knot and cord in my back as I heaved it off the ground, exerting every ounce of effort I had left in me. It was not possible, Julia, for me to lift that thing. Even a newly born vampire would marvel at the strength it requires to lift such a thing. I pity any man that found himself on the opposing end. It was not a weapon to be trifled with. Of course, considering its master, I'm not sure which of the two was more fearsome.
"The horseman seemed pleased with this outcome. He clapped his hands together. 'Marvelous,' he said and unstrapped the sheath that had been buckled around his waist. Without touching either of our hands, he managed to pry the hilt from my fingers. He slid it back into the sheath, wrapped the belt around the leather casing, and extended it to me. I lunged forward before my mother could try and stop me, and I wrapped both of arms around that precious object and clutched it to my chest as if it were my heart. I wouldn't let that thing go, Julia, if the devil himself and all his angels had come out of Hell to wring it from me. And the horseman simply smiled again, undoubtedly pleased with himself, and said to my mother, 'He will be a grand warrior some day. See to it that he gets there. It would be a shame for such a noble blood to simply... pitter out!' He fanned his gloved fingers at us, as if to mock an explosion. Then he turned on his heels and started back towards his horse. In desperation, my mother shouted back at him as he mounted, 'He will be no warrior! He will be a scholar as his brothers are scholars. You there are so great, so go, you protect our country! If the stories are half true, you should be able to conquer the world for us!'
"There were a few low, angry hisses from the men in the back, but they were silenced as soon as their leader spoke. 'Be careful with your words, woman. Your husband may have done great things for us, but that gives you no right to speak as you do. Especially to me. You best deliver an apology swiftly and sincerely, because you will need all of my benevolence in the near future. It would be best to relinquish your son to his desired... profession.' My mother gathered my little sister in her arms and locking one hand on my shoulder, she said, 'It's not your place to dictate my son's future. I have needed none of your help before, and I will not need it in the future.' She dragged me and my sword out of the street, and all the while, he watched us. As my mother made it to the door, he said, 'You cannot walk away from yourself. Even now, I see your soul bloom before me like the break of dawn, unfolding to illuminate a thousand dark holes and crevices. Tread carefully, woman, tread carefully indeed.'
"And then they were gone. As quickly as they had come, they were gone. Local legend would have it that they had died on the battlefield, great men all seven of them, and because the lord of the underworld had been so impressed with their courage and valor, he had granted them a second chance to come back and fight in his name. He had gifted them with increased speed and strength, and a lust for battle that could never be quenched. They would only know peace when they died and were allowed to rest among the grove of other souls that wound up in that nether place. That is all that I ever knew of them in my youth, and the only reminder I had of that incident was the sword that not even all my older brothers could wrench from my fingers. My younger sister, as fate would have it, would beat them off me with the wooden sword I had discarded in the street. No matter how many whippings she got for smacking their fingers with it, she did it again and again. Ironic that she didn't resent me for what I'd done. Then again, perhaps she would have done the same thing if I crossed her bad side."
Julia smiled fondly at him, and resting her cheek in the palm of one hand, she said, "It sounds like you and Antoine have a lot in common. Spurring your sisters to act like men. Being little imps."
"It's different than that, Julia, much different, you know that," Shiva said, sounding a little bit weary. He gripped the massive chair's armrests, nearly bruising the leather with his grip. "She was all I had to play with at home. My brothers were toads, all of them, and well, my other sister... she'd try and whip me if I ever even thought about hitting her. At home, when I wasn't skipping my classes, she was the only real companion I had, even though there were times when I despised her... for multiple reasons... but, well, there you have it. That is how I met my first vampire, and that is how I would start on the long road of immortality."
"So, he was right then. That sword would fulfill all your dreams, so to speak."
His lips reluctantly curled. "Yes, so to speak..."
They stared at each other for the longest time over Antoine's writing desk. Julia's hand had released the ballpoint pen; it lay discarded on top of her notebook, the shiny, metallic point smeared with black ink. Julia's eyes drifted down to that pen, slowly calculating the amount of effort it took to reconsider picking it up and resuming her task. When she returned her focus to Shiva, he was shaking his head.
"Don't torture yourself any more than you have to on my account. It's easy to forget, is all. You may be acutely aware of how old I am, and all the things that accompany that age, but I'm not. The sun doesn't weaken me the way it does you."
"I'll be down here early tomorrow night then. I didn't mean to get started so late tonight," she mumbled as she rose.
Shiva gave a dismissive wave of his hand and smiled. "Apologies are unnecessary, Julia. We are immortals, after all, and there will undoubtedly be many more nights after this one that we can continue this tale."
She nodded, stood, and exited unceremoniously through the large, library doors, leaving Shiva to marvel or indulge in Antoine's extensive collection of books, from novels to autobiographies to published research. One could become lost in that massive collection and spend probably the next fifty years trying to read everything in earnest.
Julia trudged up the wide, wooden staircase the way only a vampire can trudge. Each step was heavier and more pronounced than that of a human being, as if a small sun had been fasted to the soles of her white feet. More burdened those steps than the sole weight of the earth's fiery star; every step caused a reverberation of Shiva's words to echo through her thoughts. Like the coalesced clattering of sword and hooves, his spoken confession would ripple through her memories and dreams for years to come.
When she reached the hallway, it was empty and dark. A subtle glow of blue, like the premature kiss of early dawn, seeped out from beneath one of the doors. Matias was in there, and beneath the electric hum of the television, she heard the sound of his delicate breaths. Eridani was there too, and her heart was beat was subdued, as if drunk on a liquor.
She peeked into the living room. Usually Antoine and Camille would be perched on the sofa, his arm carefully drawn around her as they watched a new film she had been obsessing over. Camille couldn't get enough of those films. Despite some initial reluctance on Antoine's part, he had invested in modernizing a little bit, which meant purchasing a computer and an internet connection so that in Camille's spare time, she could scour the web for old films that were difficult for her to get her hands on in Bordeaux and have them delivered to the sanctuary of the chateau. If Julia ever teased or confronted him about this strange onset of modernization, Antoine always hid behind Eridani as a defense. She was advancing in her studies, he explained. She needed to be able to access study materials and the wealth of information that was more readily available online than in the local libraries. Julia could always count on Antoine to dodge around the matter at hand.
At present, neither were even in the chateau. The room was mostly quiet, except for the pleasant, slowly paced chirping of a French children's show. At Julia's request, Antoine had expanded the selection of channels on the television so that Eridani could watch British children shows as well. Though the little girl was rapidly progressing through her studies, her English was still a little bit awkward, and in her stubbornness there were times when she refused to speak it at all in preference for the smoothness of the French that had become as natural to her as her black curls.
Those black curls were spilled over Matias' chest like a blanket of volcanic rock hardened beneath cold sea waters, and he ran his fingers through her wild mane in long, soothing motions. In one small hand, Eridani clutched a handful of his downy soft, grey sweater, and the other hand's thumb was firmly pressed to her lips. Her head rested on his chest, ear hovering right over his quiet heart. Even in sleep, her heart raged on, resisting even the docile subjugation of sleep. That heart had resisted so much that it was difficult to believe it kept such a strong pace. Claude's marks still marred both sides of her neck, a dozen frozen pearl drops dappling her caramel skin, the only flaw on skin that was otherwise an icon of perfection. It made Julia shiver. They'd all been chosen for their perfection, regardless of what form it took.
"You can come in, you know. You won't disturb her," he said quietly, his eyes not leaving the television. He lay on his back, feet propped up on the sofa arm, and Eridani was curled up on top of him. Her eyes fretted beneath the shut lids.
"I can't. I need to go to sleep."
"You two do nothing but sleep." His teasing was gentle, light-hearted, but when she didn't respond to it, he craned his head to the side to look at her. His cobalt blue eyes were deep, like the ocean, but there was none of the usual frigidity there. He was all warmth, as if he'd swallowed the sun and was breathing it onto her cheeks. "What's wrong?"
"I'm just not very good at this," she said and raked a hand through her hair. "I'm not good at listening to bad things and not letting them affect me. Especially with everything that's happened, it just seems too hard. How have you lasted so long?"
The question drew nothing but softness from him—one of many changes to occur over the three, nearly four years that had passed since he nearly vanished from her life altogether. Before, perhaps a bit of bitterness, or otherwise he may have shut her out altogether.
"Honestly, I don't really know. Sometimes it was easier to not think about it. In the seclusion of the castle, days could pass by unnoticed. Years, too. With technology, there is a date everywhere. On watches, on clocks, on the computer. I think that haunts you a little. You're not human anymore, Julia, don't fret about what tomorrow is going to be or it'll be better than right now."
She stuffed her hands into the pocket of her jeans, and slumping forward, stared at the white toes of her trainers. "I'm just scared it's not going to last. None of this will."
"It won't," he admitted under his breath. He wanted to sit up, but Eridani was firmly perched where she was, and at this hour of the night, he doubted that she would simply go back to bed if tucked in. She would try and crawl into the coffin he shared with Julia. He sighed, "Julia, nothing will last. Even though Antoine's been here for nearly three hundred years, this place will crumble someday. What we see now won't be so in another three hundred years, if that. You have to let go of that fear."
"But I don't want it to end. Even with the castle, I didn't want that to end. I wanted all of us to stay there forever," she admitted, and rubbed her hands against the sides of her jeans. She looked up from the floor and into Matias' eyes. They confessed to her what he could not.
"It's late," she said when he didn't respond. "Good night."