The Disciple and Other Stories of the Paranormal (18 page)

Finally, all the farewells were said. The
seven of us said our last good-bye to everything we’d ever known,
stepped onto the platform, and went back in time a thousand
years.

We landed in medieval France. Using
historical records, the scientists had been able to choose an area
that was scarcely populated. We arrived at night, and so were not
detected.

It was the best luck we’d have.

We were prepared for anything, we thought.
We’d spent months training, being outfitted, readying ourselves.
But we weren’t prepared for the smell.

Medieval Europe stank to high heaven,
especially to our twenty-fourth century noses. Vampires in our time
had a scent – old blood and minor decay, mostly – but they were an
aromatic treat compared to the average person in this time
period.

Luckily, we didn’t find any ’Pires for a
month, because it took us that long to adjust and begin to ignore
the aroma of filth. I would never have guessed that our first
challenge would be managing to breath without gagging, but it
was.

The Order had chosen this era for a variety
of reasons. Bubonic plague was raging across the land, so any dead
bodies we might leave behind or funeral pyres we might have to
light would be easily explained. We should be able to wear our
protective clothing without causing an issue. And though the
languages had changed over the centuries, they were close enough to
our native tongues and other languages we’d learned that we could
get by. We’d learned Latin as well, in hopes of being able to
convince any clergy we might meet to help us in our cause.

But our scientists had also chosen this era
because the ’Pire population was reasonably sparse and still
restricted to the Eurasian continent. They hadn’t needed to migrate
to the other continents – possibly hadn’t even traveled from Europe
into Asia yet. So this was our chance to stop them at the
source.

Clearing out an entire continent of vampires
sounds easy, when you’re looking at ancient maps. We only needed a
week to realize the land mass would have been a challenge for seven
hundred of us. It was laughable to think the seven of us would
manage to make a dent in the problem. Especially when we realized
if we wanted to eat, we had to make our meager gold last, which
meant we couldn’t buy horses.

“
Find the pattern,” David
said, whenever any of us mentioned the seeming futility. “There’s
always a pattern. We find it, we can trace it back to the source.
Find the source, stop the spread.”

“
What if the pattern leads
us thousands of miles?” Jonathan would ask in return.

“
Then we walk those
miles,” was always David’s reply.

Because bathing wasn’t commonly done, we had
to hide the fact we cleaned ourselves regularly from everyone we
encountered, and, despite our European heritages, we already stood
out more than we’d hoped. We took to dirtying our faces and kept
all our clothes on, including our gloves, even in warm weather.

Bathing made us stand out in other ways, and
one of those ways was we smelled different to the vampires, when we
finally found some.

In our time, the vampires were learning what
a blood-altered human smelled like, but here we were different
because we didn’t stink. It was an odd way to attract our prey, but
we didn’t argue with the results.

Our first few run-ins with ’Pires – solitary
and clans – were successful. Although many things weren’t working
as we’d expected, we persevered and had positive results to show
for our efforts. We got to thinking about what we’d do once we’d
eradicated the plague, as we called it in this time, about having
lives together that didn’t involve vampire hunting.

What none of us had taken into account was,
before our time, most people didn’t believe in vampires.

It’s one thing to tell a populace you’re
fighting an enemy they know and fear – they might assist you or at
least get out of your way. But when you’re fighting what they
consider a figment of your imagination, you don’t get support or
help – you get persecuted as crazy or evil.

We’d been prepared for the people to be
superstitious – we’d planned for it, assuming it would help us win
over anyone’s help we might need. Unfortunately, we were earning a
reputation that far outweighed the dangers of presumed vampires or
demons.

“
Should the women disguise
themselves more?” Jonathan asked, after a particularly unpleasant
journey through a small village.

“
I’m tempted to say yes,”
Liam said with a sigh.

“
You can’t seriously
believe we’re having problems only because of the three of us,”
Adrienne protested.

“
It’s not helping that the
people we meet can tell you’re women doing what’s considered a
man’s job,” David said carefully. “But I agree, I don’t believe the
three of you are our biggest issue.”

“
Let them notice us,” I
said. “Let them know who we are. We’re here to save all of
humanity, and they’re a part of that. Those who realize and
understand our purpose will join us, once they realize the virtue
of our ways.”

“
I agree,” Hannah said.
“We’ve given up everything else. I refuse to give up being who I
am.”

“
We need to wear the Stars
of David hidden, though,” Liam said firmly. “More people we meet
stare at those than our female team members.”

“
You mean they hate Jews
in this time even more than they hate women,” Marcus said under his
breath. “They don’t hate ’Pires, just people.”

“
They don’t know any
better,” David said. “We do. That’s why we’re here.”

“
Let’s hope they learn,
then,” Marcus replied.

“
We’ll teach them,” I
said. “We’ll show them the way. We’ll gather the few who can stand
up to the ’Pires and create our own army.”

“
Joan of Arc did the same
thing,” Liam said. “She was burned at the stake for her
efforts.”

“
But she won,” I reminded
him. “She may have died, but she saved her people.”

I wondered how Joan of Arc had felt when she
knew she was going to die. Her faith had been strong, so did that
mean she went without fear to her death? Or, at the end, was she
only alone and afraid, ready to die because everyone who mattered
had been lost to her?

I forced my thoughts onto something
else.