Sanctifying Grace (Resurrection) (23 page)

I choked back a sob at the unfairness of life. The irony of not really understanding just how precious life is until it is cut short; the injustice of finding that deep, once-in-a-lifetime love when happy-ever-after was out of reach. The awareness of what would, could
, or might have been, if circumstances had been different.

And then there was the uncertainty and the fear of what was to come. I didn’t fear the moment of death itself: it would be no different, I thought, t
han going to sleep – the morphine would see to that. It was what was beyond death which terrified me: the unknown, the unknowable. But what scared me even more was the sneaking suspicion that there wasn’t anything, no ‘other side’, no life after death, no heaven, no hell, just nothing. Was this truly all there was?

‘Shush, Eryres. I am here. I will be here for as long as you need me.’

He held me as I wept, letting out all the grief and despair I so assiduously held in check to spare my family. They didn’t need to see me like this. Then, I marvelled at the wetness I felt on Roman’s own face. I didn’t know vampires could cry.

I think it was only then
that I truly realised how deep his love for me was. Roman had never appeared so human as he did then and I loved him even more for it.

He stayed with me all that night and we talked the hours away. Actually, he talked and I listened. Talking was beyond me now, but Roman spoke enough for the both of us. I had a break at some point when the pain became too bad, and I let the morphine send me into oblivion for a while, yet even
when unconscious I was still aware of the agony in my head, dragging me to the surface before another shot sent me back down.

In one of my more lucid moments
, Roman told me about his work.

‘I, we, are still searching for the link between vampire and human. We know vampires have evolved from the same genetic stock as mankind, back when there were several races of human, not just
Homo sapiens
, and we can see this from the footprint the mitochondrial DNA left behind. It is not magic or evil that transforms humans into vampire, but a process not unlike that which sees a caterpillar become a butterfly, though obviously not as drastic because our form is essentially the same. The difference is all on the inside and very, very subtle.

We already know
human blood replaces the need for any other kind of sustenance, this is obvious, but that does not explain why we have no need to breathe, or why we have to ingest more blood if we are ‘awake’ during the hours of daylight.

We
have isolated several genes vampires have and you humans do not, and these are passed down via the process of resurrection. They are present in vampire blood and in sufficient quantities and given the correct circumstances, they can transform human blood into vampire blood, and a new vampire is born.’

He knew what I was thinking and he hitched a deep sigh, even though technically he had no need to breathe. Vampires need air across their vocal chords to speak, so perhaps that’s why all the vampires I had known had adhered to the habit of breathing, during their waking hours at least. I couldn’t see his face
, but I could feel the tension thrumming through him as he shook his head.

‘I am so sorry, Eryres, but I am no closer to discovering the secret of resurrection. I need more time!’ he cried i
n anguish, but we both knew time had run out for me.

He was silent for a while and I waite
d patiently for him to find his vampire calm. Eventually he did.

‘The ratio of enthralled to unethrallable is somewhere in the region of one to five hundred. I believe this is Mother Nature’s way of ensuring vampires do not overwhelm the human population, a kind of natural check on our numbers. There
can
only be a certain percentage of my kind in relation to yours.’ He barked out a sarcastic laugh. ‘Although I don’t think Ma Nature anticipated the billions of humans alive today and the respective number of vampires.’ He rubbed a hand across his face, another very human gesture of weariness and despair.

The more time he spent out of the shadows, the more like us he became. He was
, at times, so human I struggled to see the vampire in him and forgot he was so very different from me.

‘It is there in the genes, hidden and I will find it
,’ he vowed, but underneath his promise was the unspoken acknowledgment that whatever he discovered would be too late for me. I would be nothing but bones long before he uncovered the secret of why some humans can be resurrected and the majority not.

I smiled ruefully at him; lips lopsided and crooked, but a smile nonetheless.

‘You are wondering why I bother with this quest,’ he stated. I wasn’t actually – I knew why. Even though it wouldn’t benefit me, it might mean someone, somewhere, would be spared the finality of death; that a remarkable mind would not be lost to the Grim Reaper before it had fulfilled its potential. Imagine if Einstein, or Da Vinci, or Newton were still amongst us, hidden from view but still carrying out their work. How much better the world might have been.

I shook my head, a tiny movement, all I could manage.  He didn’t need to explain.

‘You understand me so well,’ he sighed, pulling me even closer to him. ‘Our work is, of necessity, secret. Only a handful of vampires know of this research. Viktor and Leticia, obviously, then there are the three others you met previously, plus a handful more. We all have our specialities and our roles to play. I run the company, though admittedly through several layers of management, all of them human. My CEO is very talented. He thinks I am an eccentric billionaire.’

‘Are you?’ I managed to get out.

‘Eccentric or billionaire? Both, I suppose.’

He gently eased me back onto the bed.

‘I must leave you for a short while.’ He kissed my forehead. ‘I will be back at dusk. Or sooner, if needed. Leticia will check on you throughout the coming day.’

Ah yes, Leticia, my favourite female vampire. If I lived to be one hundred I don’t think she would ever be best friend material. And why was she walking in daylight when my lover wasn’t?

‘It will only be a brief visit and she will need to feed copiously both before and after,’ Roman explained.

He saw my horrified expression and added hurriedly, ‘Don’t fret, she has never touched Ianto. And she has a ready supply of blood, remember? It is not ideal, but will suffice.’

I relaxed as much as the raging torment in my head would allow. Now that Roman was leaving, I could feel the full force of my pain. He could see it on my face and adjusted the dose of morphine without being asked. Even that small action was beyond me.

He stroked my cheek and through half-closed lids I saw the weariness in every line of his body.

Then he was gone.

Leticia woke me by the simple method of reducing the morphine and waiting for the drug to wear off. And wear off it did
, as the pain escalated until it propelled me back to consciousness.

‘Roman asked me to check on you. So here I am,’ she announced.

I glowered at her.

There had been no need for
her to wake me. I honestly didn’t want to sleep the remainder of my hours away, but the drug-induced sleep was better than the agony I endured when I was awake, and if Roman wasn’t here, then there was no point in my being sentient.

I groaned and Leticia took pity on me and upped the dose: not enough to send me sinking back down into blessed unconsciousness, but enough to take the edge off a little. Unfortunately
, it took the edge off my wits as well, but I found it hard to concentrate anyway when I was in so much pain. Swings and roundabouts, Grace, swings and roundabouts.

As the morphine flooded my system
, my taut muscles relaxed and I heaved a sigh. The pain was always there, my constant companion, but, at this level, it was bearable. Just.

Leticia leaned in close for a good look at me.

‘I’ve seen better,’ she announced.

Gee, thanks. I glared back, defiantly. She was still one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen and I disliked her for it. Irrational? Shallow? Unfair? Definitely, but I couldn’t help it. She was everything I wasn’t, and everything I could never be.

Her eyes were huge, and I never noticed the several different shades of green within them. There was the overwhelming emerald colour, but if you looked closer you could see flecks of a darker hue, the colour that leaves have in the height of summer, when their first brilliance has deepened –

The bitch was enthralling me!

I pulled back mentally, but before I could say anything, I realised something extraordinary; the pain had gone. Totally gone.

‘How
?’

She shrugged, offhand, but I could tell she was pleased with herself. ‘I thought I would try a little experiment,’ she replied modestly. ‘It appears to have worked.’

My limbs were still unresponsive, my speech hadn’t improved, but for the first time in weeks, perhaps months, I was free of the terrible pressure in my head.

‘I don’t…’ I mumbled through numb lips.

‘Neither do I,’ Leticia admitted. ‘None of us knows how enthrallment works. It just does. On most people, at least. I told you that you would feel no pain, therefore you feel no pain.’

I smiled at her.
Now
she could be my best friend.

‘You’re lucky it works on you,’ she said, then she saw my smile fade and realised what she had said. ‘Do you really wish to be vampire so much? Or do you just wish you could live out a normal human life span?’

Tact was not Leticia’s strong point, was it? I turned my head away, unwilling to let her read my eyes and the entirely different pain which I knew would be visible there.

‘I suppose you are unique,’ she admitted, ‘No ot
her human alive knows of us who has not been resurrected. Those that know and either choose not to become vampire, or cannot be changed, are disposed of. You would be resurrected if you had that choice, wouldn’t you?’

I nodded slowly, still refusing to look at her. ‘It is unfortunate our research has not revealed why some humans are immune to our ‘charms’. I am sorry, Grace.’

She sounded genuine. Leticia was, for the most part, totally unemotional, like Viktor. I had become so used to Roman’s forays into humanity that talking with another vampire was a bit of a culture shock. I took it as a compliment that she didn’t feel the need to play human when she was with me. It would have been a different story if my mother or Ianto had been in here (I could hear clattering in the kitchen – my mother. Ianto and dad were probably out): she would have become more human than they were.

Roman was a whole different ball game. His humanity, the little
bits he allowed me to see, wasn’t forced. It wasn’t playacting with him. I wondered if humanity, for vampires, was a bit like a muscle: if you didn’t use it, it would atrophy. Roman, probably through this extended contact and relationship with me, used his humanity muscle more than most, and, as a result, he appeared more human than most. At least he did when he was with me. It had been a while since I had seen him with his own kind.

Leticia had a strange look on her face. She was studying me with all the concentration of a cat watching a mouse, and a frown line creased her brow. Deep in thought she said, ‘There is something –’ then stopped.

‘What?’

She wrinkled her nose and her frow
n deepened. Even that was cute – she looked like a confused kitten. ‘Something has occurred to me, something Roman mentioned once…’ Without seeming to move, she was at the door. ‘I have to speak to Roman,’ she declared and disappeared faster than I could blink.

‘Did I hear voices? I could have sworn there was someone here.’ My mother poked her head around the door and I goggled at her. She must have been inches away from Leticia; she must have passed her in the hall. She
must
have.

I waggled my eyes from side to side.

She glanced around the room, checking to make sure there wasn’t someone hiding in a corner. ‘I was sure…’ she repeated; then she looked properly at me. ‘You’re looking brighter.’

I felt brighter. It was amazing what the absence of pain could do for a person, but I didn’t want to give my mother false hope. Brighter or not, the end was still tragically close. I could almost feel it, like a shadow across the sun. My world was getting dimmer and darker and would soon fade altogether. And this waiting was slowly killing my mother.

Now that the pain wasn’t occupying most of my consciousness, I could think clearly and saw what my lingering in this life was doing to my family. My father was haggard and smaller than I remembered him being: it was as if all the joy had been sucked out of him. Ianto appeared older than his twenty-four years: twenty-five, actually – I’d forgotten he’d recently had a birthday. At his age he shouldn’t have to think about mortality. At his age he should be thinking that being fifty was ancient and he would live forever. Instead, his face told me that he well knew the tenuous hold we all had on life, and how fragile and unfair it was.