Descent Into Madness (25 page)

              “That I am.” 

              A dusty snow fell the night I left for Union Station to retrieve the contents of Peter’s locker.

              D8: Dante’s 8
th
. It stood stacked on top of its partners, locked and abandoned. Heartbeats and mindless thoughts droned past as I slid the key into the lock. Three lockers down a slender man approached in a three-piece business suit, slightly wrinkled from a day’s train travel. His locker door swung open and he shoved in a laptop case before closing it. What should I do with a four-hour layover, he thought. He walked away, key in hand.

              Waiting until the crowd around me dispersed, I opened the locker to find a new moleskin journal. There were scribbles here and there, passwords for Peter’s emails, and the override for his home security system. Did he need me to sell his house? I stopped thumbing through the book and tossed it into my messenger bag. The snow was beginning to fall more heavily now. The city’s homeless would take to shelters soon and I would lose my chance for an easy feed.

              Outside the train station, I ascended and flew a few blocks before spotting a woman huddled under a filthy, flea ridden blanket. The stench of urine permeated the air while the soft whimpering came from the small child sleeping in her lap. As the duo slept, I fed from her and left behind one-thousand dollars tucked into the woman’s shirt. And another tucked into the child’s pajama top.

              The snow was a white blur by the time I got home. The scorching fire raged inside warming the study. I tossed the book onto the desk and rubbed my hands over the amber flames. The flakes outside stuck to the windows before melting and running down the glass.

              “What is in the journal?” Wesley asked. He had been reading the Tribune from his chair.

              “Passwords.”

              “To?” He put the newspaper down.

              “Random e-mails and the security system for Peter’s house on the North Shore,” I noted. The flames licked the granite fireplace, the wood crackling sending sparks into the darkness. “What does it mean?”

              “Maybe he needs you to cancel his newspaper subscription,” Wesley laughed. He stood and walked to the desk picking up the journal. He looked to me and waited for me to nod until he opened the soft, brown cover. His fingers thumbed through it, venturing farther than I had.               “They are watching,” he whispered.

              “Excuse me?”

              Wesley turned the book, his index fingers separating the pages, and showed me a page with the words
they are watching
scrawled near the top, with my name and a date and time written on the bottom.

              “July 10
th
, 8:30?” Wesley asked. “Does that mean anything to you?”

              “Not that I recall.” The main door opened and Aleksandra yelled into us; Wesley let her know we were in the study.

              Entering, she tossed her Gucci lab bag near the door, kicked off her black, last season Prada pumps and plopped onto the settee, tossing her auburn hair over the back and stretched out her legs. Wesley closed the book around his index finger, leaned down to place a genteel kiss on Aleksandra’s forehead, and then resumed his search for more clues.

              “If that lab’s alarm goes off one more time, I’m hiring a new security company,” Aleksandra remarked. “This is the third time this month I’ve been called to reset it because they’ve set it off!”

              “July 10
th
,” I tossed into the atmosphere along with a throw pillow aimed at her face. She caught it and sat up.

              “July 10
th
at 8:30 – where would I have been? Do you remember?”

              “July?” she asked. She moved to the desk and pressed the button on her laptop. A few seconds later, the screen lit up with her multi-colored DNA sequence wallpaper. Aleksandra opened a calendar document and flipped back to July. Her studious eyes roamed the spreadsheet, combing through the various engagements.               “I am not finding anything noted for that date,” she said.

              “Perhaps it was an appointment he planned on making,” I wondered aloud.

              “Wait,” she said. She was now looking at an Excel spreadsheet. Her fingers were gracing the arrow keys, moving frantically between the up and down keys. “On July 10
th
I have a check written from your account to The Field Endowment.”

              “The night of the Cranston Expedition Fundraiser,” Wesley realized. “They were watching that night.”

              “Who was watching?” Aleksandra asked. Her voice raised an octave as she turned from the computer.

              “The Vatican.”

              “The Vatican!” Wesley nearly dropped the book. Aleksandra sat down at the desk, her pale complexion somehow a shade paler. “Why is the Vatican watching someone?”

              “They were watching Peter. They wanted the amulet back and they did not believe his cover story – that it had gone missing en route.”

              “They must have been watching that night,” Aleksandra said. “That is why he left after he gave it to you. Now they’ll be watching you; they’ll be watching us!”

              “You must go to him now, Bree,” Wesley said calmly.

              “I have been trying to locate him, this whole time, but I do not know where to start!” I snatched the book from his hand and thumbed through the pages. “It is all in code!”

              “Let me see it, then,” she said. Aleksandra took the book from me and began turning pages, her fingers tracing the letters. Three days later, she came to me with a page marked. “How does this sound? ‘Booked a cruise to Norway. Will depart at 9 am – sharp – no luggage required. Passport – check?’”

              “You’re grasping, Aleksandra,” I said.

              “Grasping?” she said. “Perhaps, but what do you have to lose?”

TWENTY-FIVE

T
he Norwegian winds are icier in January. They whip off the water that laps and licks near the rocks of my abandoned cavern home. The overgrowth and mossy covering still shrouding the door, which had only been slightly disturbed not too long ago when I awoke. Now, nature once again concealed that which human hands had once built into the mountain.

              This had been my fortress in the fjord, my Norwegian paradise. This had led to two new beginnings and an end. Now ghosts from my past had reappeared to haunt me in trinkets and religion. Those ghosts lured me to the cobwebbed sanctuary where I had slumbered, bleeding into time until the future became the present.

              My hands held Peter’s journal, the page open to the entry Aleksandra found the night before. Scribbled in the corner in tiny, faded penciled letters, was a cryptic “Booked a cruise to Norway. Will depart at 9 am – sharp – no luggage required. Passport – check.?” Alone, rather in insignificant scribble, perhaps just a thought on a possible excursion, but then my eyes caught a faded word written across the page – “ekki” – and I knew the code was for me.

              Ekki. The first time he called me that I was in the Egyptian exhibit at the Field. There was a gala that evening, raising money for a children’s charity. This was shortly after I awoke and the world was new. As I walked amongst the artifacts, I felt part of them. Out of place and out of time, and strangely on display.

              He approached me from the shadows as I emerged from the Field’s replica pyramid, his scent betraying him as it always would. Aleksandra was behind him. She introduced the older man whose hair had silvered and whose suit had dust from the archives clinging to its lapel. He lived for his work and wore that fact proudly.

              “Ekki,” he remarked as he fearlessly took my hand in his, kissing it. “And with golden hair, as well, Aleksandra, it is enough to make the god’s jealous. The Sumerian’s would quake at the site of her, of any of you walking ekkimu.” Then he laughed as Aleksandra took his champagne glass away, handing it to a passing waiter.

              “I think you have had enough,” she whispered.

              “An ekkimu?” I asked him. “You think I am a vampire?”

              “I know you are a vampire,” he replied, his eyes darting about the deserted exhibit.

              “Vampires do not exist,” I told him, smiling.

              “Do not be silly,” the silver haired curator replied as he grabbed a lobster ball from a passing tray and stuffed it into his waiting mouth. He pointed to Aleksandra. “She told me,” he said between bites. He laughed again, this time a joyous laugh that drew eyes from the few others in the room. “And my antiquities professor said the Sumerian’s were full of it, that vampires did not exist. A plague, he said, wiped the buggers out! Guess who is a pompous blowhard now!”

              Ekkimu. The word for vampire in ancient Sumerian, which when shortened to Ekki, became his pet name for me. In the little time I knew him, I grew fond of Peter. He and Barbara threw elegant parties in their North Shore home, opening their beachfront veranda to a select few of which Aleksandra, Wesley and myself were always included. It was not long before I became as generous as my brother and Aleksandra, bestowing thousands on collections and funding expeditions.

              Peter had never asked me to turn him. Aleksandra admitted that he had asked her only once. She refused and he understood, and that was the last time he mentioned her peculiar state. 

              Neither Peter nor Aleksandra would tell me how the pair met. A dark secret hung between them, binding them in a bond tighter than blood. I would have never found out had it not been for him telling me, though. He thought I should know.

              “She was dying, Bree,” he told me. It was at a private dinner, celebrating his grandson’s graduation from Vassar. “Judith had acute lymphoblastic leukemia. They tried treatment, but her blood never responded and the cancer spread.”

              The pain dripped from his forehead with each droplet of sweat that beaded and rolled down, falling onto his linen suit. The May heat was unseasonably, warm that year. Wesley and Aleksandra were inside with Barbara. The three were talking with Colin, Peter’s only son and Judith’s father.

              Colin was a younger copy of his father, hair a darker brown, though, and a few less lines creasing his brow. But the resemblance was uncanny. The near loss of his only daughter wore heavily on him, and it played in his hazel eyes. Her face, solemn and fixed forever in time, imprinted on his pupils from that last moment he saw her lying in the hospital bed. You could see it when you glanced into his eyes. It was there with the memories of his father rushing him from the room, of Judith’s shallow breathing, her sunken cheeks, of her fever that spiked near dawn. There were too many memories haunting Colin from that night. Too many hurtful memories leaving an acrid taste in his mouth that the red wine could not drown.

              “Aleksandra’s a fixer, Peter.” The sky was clear; the stars were bright over the lake.

              A few sailboats were still out near the shore, their lights bobbing with the waves. The coastline cracked to life with Peter’s family and friends. Groups gathered, huddled near fire pits outside. For those not risking the mosquito bites, the living and dining rooms, lit by chandelier and opulent candlelight, served as recluse spaces for conversation between friends.

              “Fixed?” he asked. His gazed remained on the stars. “Can you really call it that?”

              “It was her choice.” I took his shoulders and turned his face until his eyes met mine. “Aleksandra gave her a choice, Peter. Would you rather have let her die?”

              He turned away, his eyes squinting back tears. He looked into the living room through the glass curtain wall and watched Colin engaged in conversation. “He knows,” Peter said, gesturing toward Colin.

              “That she is a vampire?” I asked.

              “No,” he explained. “He knows she is different. He knows she did not go into remission because of Aleksandra’s protocol drug! And he is right, Bree. She
is
different. She would have never missed her brother’s graduation party. She would not have missed his graduation! She’s no longer our Judith.”

              “Peter, Aleksandra knew what she was doing,” I said, lowering my voice to a whisper as a couple approached and exchanged a few pleasantries before making their way onto the beach. “Judith knew, too. Aleksandra prepared her as best she could. She had days, left, if that, you know this.”

              He was quiet for a while as we both gazed out onto the beach, the fires dying into soft halos of warmth. Car engines purred to life in the driveway, their lights blooming in the darkness. The party was dying down and Colin was moving his mother to her bed; she was tipsy.
              Finally, when the veranda was deserted he spoke, “That’s when I found out she was a vampire, Wesley too.” Silence fell once again.

              Colin and his son, David, could be heard escorting guests to the front door. David was on his cell phone, calling for a taxi.              

              “Aleksandra came to me the night Judith spiked her last fever, the night the doctors said she had, maybe, two days left. Everyone had left for Colin’s and I stayed behind, to hold my Judith’s hand, and when I went to check my work e-mail from the laptop, your sister had sent me a note. You know what it’s like when a good friend catches you at a vulnerable moment?” he asked. I smiled and nodded. “I think I replied with a novel! Every memory I could recount, from Judith’s first steps to graduating Oxford.”

              “I am sure she read every word, too.” A letter that personal would have demanded no less.

              “I hit send, got up to stretch and decided to walk down to the cafeteria for some coffee. I was gone thirty minutes, Bree. When I returned, Aleksandra was standing at Judith’s bed side,” he recalled.

              That night, Aleksandra revealed herself to a startled Peter, and nothing was ever the same between them. The family released Judith to hospice care and Aleksandra took over as her physician, coming from Northwestern with a new blood augmentation protocol that could save her life. That is what it did. Two nights later, instead of dying, Judith climbed out of her sick bed a new woman.

              The journal felt heavy in my hand as I stared at the overgrowth covering the entrance to my old sanctuary. Even though I could not hear his thoughts, I knew he was behind that clad iron wall. Behind that set of intricate locks and down the staircase, he was waiting for me. He would wait forever if he had to.

              A gust of wind stung at my eyes and I shielded them with my sleeve. The fleecy parka rubbed against my cheek, the ivory fabric washing against my skin. Snowflakes started falling against the wind as a storm set into the fjord. I walked with trepidation to the entrance and brushed away enough covering to open the lock. My fingers slid effortlessly over the combination with my eyes closed.

              The door creaked open, and heavy trails of dust flittered in the air as the light crept in. The main room was dark once the door shut behind me, except for the sliver of light skirting the panel leading to the inner sanctuary. I followed this light and fumbled with the heavy locks. The door was built into the floor and, when I lived there, was cleverly hidden by furniture. Now dust concealed its secret levers and switches, its locks and pulleys. Time had forgotten this place and there was no longer a need to hide the sanctuary.

              Managing the last lever, a cumbersome brass invention that unlocked the final lock, the panel clicked and slid open. A cascade of candlelight warmed my weary eyes as I descended the stone staircase.

              The flames licked at the walls, charring the stones as candle wax spilled from the narrow niches. The wax collected in cooled piles on the steps below and melted against my satin Gucci platform boots.

              My fingers felt the amulet in my pocket, the hardness heightened by the cold, Norwegian air. I turned it over in my palm, clutching it and tightening my grip upon the trinket. A musty odor rose from the inner sanctuary, and as I got closer, the amulet grew warmer with my touch. Slowly, I pulled the amulet from my pocket, glancing at my likeness staring back, and then I slid it tightly into the palm of my hand. I secured it there, and slid both back into my pocket.

              Candlelight engulfed the sanctuary, tiny flames saturating the ledges with their incandescent auras. His back was turned to me as I entered. My linens still graced the bed, the azure satins, and velvet cream pillows imported from England. They were relics sent from a long past time, buried and forgotten here. My hand reached out toward the bedspread as I crossed the room, my boots tapping at the floor as I walked.

              Dust and time tarnished the satins smoothness. My fingers ran along the rich embroidering, the faded flowers, the delicate stitching, and a thick smudge of dust clung to my fingertips as I lifted them away. As I looked down onto my fingertips, he turned and I felt his eyes bore heavily down on me.

              “They woke you,” he said, stepping toward me. He stretched his hand outward and brushed it against my cheek. My eyes followed his fingertips travel toward my lips. He ran his index finger over them until they parted.

              “You stopped writing,” I replied. “They did not know what else to do. And they did not know how to find you.”

              “And you did?” He sat down on the edge of the bed, his lanky Norse legs dangling over the platform edge.

              “Why did you stop writing?” I asked. “Was it because of this?” Pulling the amulet from my pocket, I handed the jewel to him and watched as he shrank back onto the bed in fear. “Aksel, what is this?”

              “Bree,” he began. “This is yours. Keep it and hide it. I cannot have it!” He threw it toward me, the amulet landing onto the bed with a soft thud. Billowing clouds of dust rose from where it landed.

              “The Vatican is after this! A good friend of mine had to leave his position at a museum because of this, Aksel! What is it?” I demanded. I retrieved the amulet, inspecting it as I sat down next to him on the bed. My face stared back at me, eerily smiling.

              “It is a good luck charm,” he said. “That is all. But the church believes the amulet is witchcraft.”

              “Witchcraft?” I turned the amulet over. The underside revealed the emerald beneath. “Even so, why does the church care? If they thought it was black magic, they would have destroyed it.”

              “This amulet belonged to Pope Julius II,” he explained. “In his journals, Pope Julius II wrote of a mysterious woman with golden hair, who roamed the papal temple at night. And when, one evening he spotted this woman, he called for guards and she rose into the air like an angel.”

              “That was me,” I said. “After I left you with Evelyn, in Hungary, I went to Rome.”

              “He wrote that you were the devil; that you had come that night to tempt him,” Aksel said as he eased toward me on the bed.