Judas and the Vampires (55 page)

That first full night in the castle turned out to be one of our most enjoyable overall. Since it was new to us, we spent the night exploring the various buildings that weren’t off limits. Only the center building, which contained Huangtian Dadi’s personal ‘living space’, was inaccessible. Two quartets of stern-faced vampires vigilantly guarded both entrances to his abode. Despite the security measures, I overheard Armando discuss a plan with Garvan to breach this fortress and find out what made our host so reclusively protective of his pad.

“Maybe he has a stable of little boys and girls to keep him privately amused,” said Armando, after he and Garvan rejoined us after a brief reconnaissance of the rest of the palace. I doubt seriously that he realized the careless disdain in his remark until Chanson pointed it out. He shrugged his shoulders with a ‘what the fuck?’ expression on his face when Chanson rebuked him.

That happened while all of them waited for me to finish my supper, which was prepared for me in the same reception area where we spoke with Xuanxang when we first arrived at the palace. Something that tasted like sesame chicken with a small bowl of rice, and a cup of tea were waiting on a small teakwood table in front of a blazing fire in the fireplace. Oddly, there wasn’t anyone around—human or vampire. Yet, my food and drink were steaming hot when we arrived. Five flasks of warm, human blood lined the mantel. Each one was labeled with the blood type and the corresponding vampire it had been prepared for.

Someone must’ve known we were on our way downstairs…at least that’s my assumption. But even my vampire companions with their superior senses didn’t detect any activity happening on the main floor, and they shared my surprise.

Once I had finished eating and the flasks were drained empty, we set out in earnest to explore what we could. While the guys obsessed with finding a way into Huangtian Dadi-land and disappeared several times, we girls had a ball going through the ‘art floor’ in the adjacent palace building to the left of ours. Most of the pottery, sculptures, and paintings we saw predated the onset of every Chinese dynasty on record—some items by at least a thousand years, according to Chanson. Thankfully, the subject matter for these works was random, without a single dragon in a single image or motif. Other aspects from Chinese folklore dominated the ancient artwork instead. Things like warriors, fairies, and detailed depictions of paradise.

The only downside was we pretty much saw everything the palace had to offer that night. I had hoped to visit the archives, where ancient Dao and Confucian texts were carefully preserved. But we never made it past the main library. Interestingly, it was in the library that we saw our first non-vampire adult. An old man with a long, Fu Manchu moustache labored over a scroll, and impatiently shooed us away.

“We’ll see if we can find ways to keep you entertained during the day, Txema, since, for your safety, you should sleep while we’re awake and can watch over you,” said Chanson, after I grew weary and we returned to my bedchamber. It was just after three o’clock that morning.

“Maybe some naughty videos would be nice, if we can find an old enough VCR to match the birth of this obsolete piece of shit,” said Armando. He pointed to the little TV set with a Wayne Brady gesture and exaggerated smile. Garvan snickered.

At least they shared my view of what I could realistically look forward to while waiting for my baby’s birth. Unless I somehow stumbled across a collection of paperback books in English, or a video game console of some sort, I’d be bored out of my mind very soon. Tyreen suggested the word association games we sometimes played in college while seeing who got tipsiest during a weekend liquor binge. Even Raquel responded to that idea with some enthusiasm. But like anything else, it would surely grow old before long.

Following Chanson’s advice, I began retiring earlier and earlier each night, until I was sound asleep by midnight. That allowed me enough rest to where I was up by 7:00 a.m. At first, I hated the shortened visiting time with her and everyone else. The palace often felt like a mausoleum. The thing that got me up and rolling each morning was the incredible view just outside my bedchamber. The immense wall of glass framed an incredible, breathtaking view of the highest peaks in the Himalayas.

I could see part of Mount Everest from the hallway, and the morning view was always spectacular. On the rare occasion of a clear blue sky, what I beheld was almost indescribable. It changed how I felt about the primitive accommodations as compared to what I had grown up with.

But it was also quite lonely.

I often thought about my Papa and Momma, as well as my grandmother and brothers. My heart ached for them, and I worried that I might never see any of them again.

You might wonder if I ever thought about Racco or Peter at such times. Yes, I thought of them, too. But, I guess since, in my mind, Racco had willingly left my side to return to his life in France, and Peter had returned to the States with only a slight protest, I considered them both deserters. They heard the word ‘baby’ and took off.

My Papa especially would love the view, since he always sought to explore the highest peaks in America. He was the reason I learned to ski—and ski well enough to receive a scholarship offer at the University of Colorado during my junior year in high school.

At least the view stirred something in my soul each day. It made the dull routine of going downstairs to a limited menu of fish, poultry, and vegetables to go with a small bowl of rice and a cup of steaming tea somewhat bearable. Every night I’d return to the reception area with my vampire companions, and again it would be the same rice and whatever P.F. Chang’s frozen entrée for me to eat. All kidding aside, I think the only thing that kept me from bitching too much about this arrangement was the fact my vampire friends had to drink the same warm blood set out for them in carafes.

Tyreen was the only exception. Chanson made an arrangement with Xuanxang for the nubile vampire in our group to feed on ‘volunteer’ adolescents secluded in a section of the palace that was another ‘off limits’ place for me.

The only time I saw Xuanxang was when he came to escort Tyreen each night, and I never saw Huangtian Dadi. I ran into Gustav a few times, but rarely anyone else from Europe or for that matter any of the other Chinese vampires. If not for an occasional ‘drive by’ greeting from Nora and Kazikli, I would’ve thought the damned place was as deserted as the Overlook Hotel in Stephen King’s novel,
The Shining
.

As December wore on, I became more and more lonely for my family and my home in America. That’s where I wanted to be, and it was truly where I belonged. I began to resent what had happened to me—despite the wonderful tiny life growing within me each day.

By Christmas Eve, my intuitions told me that I no longer carried a primitive fetus. My daughter’s gills would be gone soon, and she would begin her transformation into a viable human being. That was pretty cool to think about, and it made me smile. I believe this is where fate stepped in and began to shape my future in a way that even the smartest vampires could not predict or control.

Since it was Christmas Eve, I decided to get an early start on the day, and for a change lingered longer than usual in front of the immense window outside my room. Taking in the grandeur of a fabulous morning following a night of blustering snow, I let my gaze linger on the drifted snow banks below the window. I hadn’t done it much before, since surveying anything connected to the palace provided an instant reminder that I was a glorified prisoner on house arrest. Better to focus on the eternal freedom the mountains enjoyed—or even the eagles and lamagiers that glided effortlessly, and then dove beyond where my vision could follow them. That was ultimate freedom.

But, December twenty-fourth was different from all previous mornings in the palace, and I felt the urge to study the ice-cycles and snowdrifts instead. That’s when I saw the tracks.

The three-toed imprints were large—bigger than any human footprint I’d ever seen. The tracks moved along the side of the main building to the palace and curved along the snow bank as the path moved beyond the back of the building. Intrigued, I studied the tracks again, and visually followed their course until I suddenly noticed something else.

The gray tail of an enormous lizard whipped back and forth for a moment, and then disappeared beyond where I could see. That got me going. Since it was quite cold outside, I gathered my snowsuit from the closet in my bedchamber and hurriedly put it on. Then I set out in earnest to find whatever it was I just saw.

Moving quickly downstairs, I picked up my pace as I followed the corridor back to the rear entrance to my building. I barely glanced at the tiresome entrees laid out for me in the reception area, but did take a look at the clock. The time was 8:36 a.m.

I mentioned that I rarely saw anyone, but encountered nearly a dozen children on my way to the back entrance. They smiled curiously at me, and I politely returned their smiles. But I was on a mission—a fact finding one where I simply had to confirm if I actually saw what I thought I saw, or if my bored mind and overactive imagination had gotten the better of me.

Bundled up, I stepped outside into the frigid air. The sun was out, but the temperature felt as if it hung around zero degrees Fahrenheit. I didn’t see a thermometer, and God only knows what the temperature was in Celsius…roughly a twenty degrees difference when it got down to zero, right? Or something like that. All I knew was my nostrils were sticking, which used to happen to me as a little girl in Richmond, Virginia when the temperature sometimes hovered in the single digits—above or below zero degrees Fahrenheit.

That hardly mattered once I saw the tracks. They moved across stone sculptures and a dormant marble fountain covered in ice and snow, as if the maker of the footprints was in too big of a hurry to step around the damned things. I was okay up until then, as far as honoring Chanson’s instructions to me. I could make it back to safety if it became necessary to flee danger. But then the tracks kept going, angling next to Huangtian Dadi’s sacred compound.

“Ah, shit!” I hissed, pausing to consider the possible consequences I’d face for deviating from my cousin’s specific admonishment. The voice in my head reminded me that I had more than my own skin to look out for. By then, Chanson and Gustav had confirmed that my baby would be a girl. My daughter was utterly helpless and needed me to defer to her safety one hundred percent—my insatiable curiosity be damned!

I reluctantly turned around and began to trudge back to the palace’s main building. But that’s when I heard voices. Children’s voices, and from my guess at least two of them…and they were whimpering.

I stopped, concentrating harder while my heart raced.

Then all at once, one of the voices started screaming.

Call it stupidity if you must, or maybe a new mom’s instinct to protect someone young, as if the child were my own. Regardless, I ran to where the screams came from. It was just to the side of Huangtian Dadi’s secluded estate—his royalty’s splendid abode. As I approached, I saw a child. A little boy held a younger child that appeared to be a three-year old girl. They were both sobbing uncontrollably in the frigid sunlight while facing something thrashing around in a shadowed open pavilion.

At first, all I saw were streams of crimson soaking into the snow. Then I saw the terribly mutilated body of a young woman, whose limbs and head had been torn viciously from her torso. They laid haphazardly upon the snow—some beneath the pavilion’s roof, and an arm and leg partially in the sunlight.

I could only assume that this woman must be these poor children’s mother, and I felt profound despair for their loss. This whole scene was beyond horrible. My knees began to buckle, and my body felt drained of every ounce of energy and strength I had. But that was not the worst…the worst was the hungry demon feeding on the woman’s open torso, making terrible sucking sounds as it fed on her bloody flesh and entrails.

At first the monster didn’t see me, but when it did it snarled at me. I’m not talking about some lizard, as this monster was once a man, and now surely a vampire. A raging lunatic with gleaming red eyes and long fangs, the vampire could’ve passed for a brother of Xuanxang if not for the eye color. Holding the bleeding torso as if it were a mere pillow, he eyed me predatorily. I had somehow trespassed into a sacred realm…like a Yellowstone tourist stumbling upon a grizzly bear killing a deer for its cubs.

He dropped the woman’s torso and roared at me, and I stumbled, nearly falling to the ground. The children shrieked in terror, clutching each other tightly. Meanwhile, the vampire stepped into the sunlight, but then howled in pain and shrunk back as if he had just stepped into a fiery furnace. Smoke rose from the seared flesh on his naked and bloodstained body.

That gave me hope…maybe I could rescue the kids and get us all back inside the palace safely. What happened next, however, obliterated that notion completely.

The vampire began to mutate. His powerful muscles expanded while sharp fins tore through his back and a pair of black horns grew from each side of his head. His skin began to peel away, revealing the gray scales I had witnessed earlier. But I had been too far away to distinguish the intricate snake-like patterns along the creature’s arms, legs, and the tail that dropped toward the ground from this monster’s backside. Not to mention the elongated snout that was forming along with an ever-widening mouth filled with razor-sharp teeth.

I was so fucked.

My feet felt like lead, as if secured to the icy ground I stood upon. But in the few moments before this thing finished its transformation, something inside me came to life. A voice that I heard so distinctly, and so powerfully, called to me. Perhaps the soul of my child to be? All I know is it told me to run!