Chapter 1
"What hurts you,blesses you. Darkness is yourcandle."
Rumi
My mothernever lied to me about the existence of monsters. When I'd awaken with nightmares and dreams of shadows that moved in the darkness, she'd stay with me until my terrorpassed.
"I'm here," she'd say, stroking my hair. "I'm faster than them and I'll protect you. One day, I'll kill the monstersforever."
My great tragedy was that she couldn't protect herself. A decade after her death when I was only eleven, finding her killer and discovering a way to eradicate all vampires is the only thing that keeps me going. Today I take up the work that ended herlife.
* * *
The late springevening is rainy and cold so I bring my umbrella and stand at the bus stop outside my building. A professor of linguistics offered to translate an ancient illuminated manuscript I found in my mother's files. My mother started to translate it but never finished, dying the week she received it. The murder was never solvedand I need to know if the manuscript had anything to do with herdeath.
The evening bus isn't crowded because classes and finals are over. I take out my mother's notebook and read it over once more for her notes from the week before her death describe the document that I have tucked in a large manila envelope in mybackpack.
By the hand of Julien de Cernay, former Knight, identical twin brother to Michel, former Bishop of Carcassonne, bastard sons of Guillaume, Vicomte de Clarmont. Written 1224 – 1229 A.D. Interviewed on 22 December at BostonUniversity.
Included in the file is a card with a hand-written note to my mother, the script bold,masculine.
Natalia,
I've enclosed this manuscript as promised. It documents my making and that of my twin brother, Michel. I hope it provides you with insight into our existence at a time when life was very different than it istoday.
Bestregards,
J.
My mother knew thisvampire?
That shocks me. She was a vampire hunter, dedicated to killing them off. As a geneticist working for the Council of Clairveaux, she studied genetic diseases, searching for the cause of vampirism – ostensibly so she could find a cure, but I know it was really so she could find a magic bullet and destroy them all. Her files describe the Council – a joint Human-Vampire group appointed by the ruling families involved in its creation. Dedicated to ensuring that the fragile peace between the two species remains in place, the Council ensures that both vampires and humans follow the terms of the Treaty of Clairveaux, signed almost seven centuriesearlier.
From what I can gather, the Treaty was created to stop the bloodshed between the two species that had been a constant state since, well. Forever. The Inquisition and the Church's concerted effort to hunt down and kill all vampires under the claim it was after 'witches' and 'warlocks' sparked a desire on the part of vampires to find a compromise. Humans were gaining ground on vampires, beginning to beat them, developing new weapons, and vampires felt under threat. The Treaty was a compromise between extinction of vampires or enslavement of humans. Vampires could continue to exist, but they could no longer kill humans for their blood unless under very specific circumstances. Humans couldn't hunt and kill vampires unless they broke the terms of the Treaty. And above all, like Fight Club, those who knew the truth about vampires and the existence of the secret Treaty of Clairveaux were not allowed to speak of it upon pain ofdeath.
This fragile peace persisted for almost seven hundred years until genetic technology evolved far enough so that it became possible to eradicate all vampires once and for all. Faced with the growing threat to their species, some vampires decided on their own path to ascension - Dominion. Vampirerule.
So, while vampires are still firmly in the closet, some of them don't want to stay there and I think that's why my mother died. The vampire who wrote the manuscript, Sir Julien de Cernay, gave the manuscript to her for a reason and I'm hoping if I can translate it, I'll learnwhy.
She managed to translate the first paragraph, but then stopped, and it'stantalizing.
"A full moon rises" her hand-written translation starts, "stained red from fires in the village square where five heretics burned at the stake. The Crusades broke my family, estranged me from my brother and now killed me. I died, not on the battlefield as befitting a knight protecting my father's estate, but in a bed in an abandoned castle at the hands of an ancient vampire who bewitchedme…"
I can't imagine what it must be like to live eight centuries and despite my hatred of vampires, there's a part of me that wants to meet the writer, Sir Julien, just to see what he'slike.
The bus drops me off and I enter the linguistics building's unusually empty corridors, the sound of my boots echoing off the walls. I take the stairs to the third floor, shaking the late spring rain off my umbrella. A tag on room 304 reads Steve Cormier, PhD. I knock and hear papers shuffling inside. The door opens and I'm face to face with perhaps the palest man I've ever seen and for a moment, I'm filled withdread.
Is he a vampire? His skin is sowhite.
He smiles, holding a mug of coffee in his hands as if to warm them. I stand open mouthed, debating whether to run. I've only seen one vampire before that I know of – the one who killed my mother – but he's just a vague memory of a bloody mouth and white skin. I was only eleven, and I don't even know what he really looked like due to shock, my memory lost into some kind of psychological black hole. I was there when she was murdered, but I have no memory of him or the events. My psychiatrist says I have PTSD-induced amnesia and that one day I will remember. All I know is that I found her lying on the floor, her neck ripped open, blood foaming at hermouth.
That image I can't escape, no matter how Itry.
If Professor Cormier is a vampire, he doesn't look like the un-dead of my imagination. Whatever he is, he's wearing an ornate gold crucifix around his neck and now I wish I'd read more of my mother's research. Do vampires really hate religious symbols like crucifixes and holywater?
His skin doesn't look like a corpse, but like he's ill, his skin white like some 17thcentury nobleman with a powdered face. It's beautiful in a strange way — the way I imagine Keats would have looked before his tragicdeath.
He's younger than I expected. Thirty atmost.