The Ruby Tear (22 page)

“I’m not old enough to know an answer to that,” the dresser said haughtily.

* * *

In the cab on the way home from the after-opening party and late night buffet at Tony’s All-Night Italian, Nick held Jess against his side as she dozed, the beginning of the inevitable collapse. The high of performance made it impossible to sleep, until food and company eased you down and left you poleaxed by exhaustion.

He studied her face in the light of passing vehicles—not many of them, this early in the morning—and of streetlights at the corners of the blocks as they whizzed by. She was so far from the delicious ingénue he had met on the stage that summer and fallen for so hard.

But this woman with the intriguing asymmetry to her face and its sweet gravity in repose, this woman was more than he had imagined she might become. He only hoped that he, too, had grown—enough, at any rate, to let the past lie quiet. There were questions he should never ask, and secrets he must let her keep, if they were to stay together for good.

Well, he didn’t need her secrets; he had her. His was the body she leaned into with sleepy trust, his was the life she had chosen to link with her own. Thanks to her help, in time there might be children who could take the Griffin name with no fear of mysterious enemies. Actors, he thought; between them they could surely produce an actor or two. They would have to talk about that, but now now. Later, after “The Jewel” had closed.

He smiled in the leathery gloom of the cab. He’d lost the family “treasure” and found a future that felt true. He had literally won a woman more precious than rubies.

With a small groan of mixed longing and contentment, he gathered her closer against him.

“I ate too much,” she murmured drowsily. “Why didn’t you stop me? We should have saved some and brought it home for the dogs.”

* * *

Baron Ivo Dedrick Maria von Craggen ordered Evian in the first-class lounge. He sat looking out at the airport bustle of moving lights and shapes. Beyond, in the cold night sky, he thought he saw movement, darkness on blackness, and the old dialogue resumed in his head.

What now, Baron? With the Ruby Tear lost, so is your occupation.

Yes,
he answered readily, without speaking.
I am at your service, Lady, as always.

The task lies uncompleted. What of your vaunted vengeance on the family of Griffin the thief, Griffin the murderer?

I have already had it, generations of it, as you well know,
he replied composedly.
It is a nasty dish at best. Lately I have fed on such generosity and joy that the taste of ashes no longer appeals.

You mean that if the actress is to be part of that family, then you will no longer harry them for the payment you are owed.

He smiled slightly, watching himself in the reflection in the lounge window mirror.
You always know my mind better than I do myself, Lady.

So I thought
, came the reply.

But I have not known your mind
.
The balance has been uneven, to say the least.

Silence. He felt the sweat chill on his face; that was fear, no matter how bold his thoughts. He couldn’t remember when he had been so afraid.
Why did you never tell me that the ruby had been destroyed?

Why did you never ask?
A distant answer, not an answer at all.

All this time, all those deaths—

All that blood
, she murmured languorously.

But why?

Oh, you are a fool, my young baron!
Her voice lashed him, paralyzing him where he sat so that he could hardly draw breath.

Blood is everything. A family is bound by blood, a tribe knows its members by blood, a nation draws its boundaries in blood. Without divisions of blood—pagan against Christian, Christian against Muslim, Croat against Serb, region against region, village against village, you against himit all sinks back into a formless mass, there is no shape, no spirit, no direction.

There are only little animals scurrying here and there like mice, forgetting who they are, forgetting each who the other is an instant after meeting. Blood defines; the shedding of blood affirms those definitions, and feeds the spirit of the people which holds them together and tells them who they are.

You, you vampire! Drinking the blood of whole peoples—

Because they wish it, Baron,
purred the voice.
And they need it. Without these divisions and enmities they are confused, they flounder and fail. And so I am called into being. And how can I protect my many children, how can I inspire them to protect each other, without the bonds of blood, the taste of blood, the debts of blood?

It will not always be that way
, he protested.
Things change. Already, it is not that way everywhere. Are you sure you are immortal, Lady?

Silence again.

He opened his eyes and saw in the seats near him in the lounge a jowly businessman methodically folding a newspaper, a young woman hunched over a laptop keyboard, an older man dozing with big-knuckled hands hanging empty between his knees.

He gathered himself to concentrate only on the black dialogue inside his mind:
What now? Do you summon me home? If so, you find me ready to embark.

Summon you? Not I. What use would I have for you, Baron von Craggen?

He sat up straighter, impelled by a thrill of fear.
I—What?

After all this time and effort, when the ultimate moment came you threw it away. You have forgiven your enemy his debt and shown tenderness to him and his. Your bond with me is broken by the weakness of your own hand, Baron. Your blood quest is ended. Without blood, you have nothing to offer me.

“No, wait!" he cried aloud in his own language, starting up out of his seat. “Where can I go, what shall I do?”

Where and what you wish, but never set foot in my domain again. You are banished from this day on.

In a dizzy, nauseous panic he begged, “Lady, don’t leave me!”

There was no reply, only a sudden drawing sensation throughout his body, as if some scorching internal wind blew through all his cells, sucking up every drop of moisture in one endless instant.

Like this,
he thought,
it’s like this, to have all your blood drained by a hungry vampire. It’s just like this that the body of the thirsty undead dries to powder in a flash before the amazed eyes of his executioners. It feels like this, from the inside. How horrible,
he thought, with distant compassion for his own physical self.

And now what—judgment? Extinction? What was he—murderer, avenger, demon hound of the house of Griffin? What angel or devil waited, poised to snatch his flying soul from the desiccated body after all those years of error and deception?

He hung blind, deaf, and helpless in the grip of a merciless furnace, while high walls of blackness closed in.

Come, Devil
, he thought, groping in chaos for some weapon, some defense.
Come fight me, come make your claim!

“
Sir? Are you all right, sir?” A young woman in a Flight Attendant uniform knelt by his chair, peering anxiously at his face.

“Am I?” he croaked, astonished to see her, to hear her, and most of all to speak in reply. His throat felt dry as paper.

“Do you want a doctor?”

Craggen shook his head, then turned to look out of the plate glass window again. There was no denser dark against the sky. There was no observant companion in his mind. He was alone, cut off, and abandoned in the place and time he had come to, after his long years of hunting.

Oh, I am free
, he thought with wonder. And then,
I will regret this, bye and bye. I will live to regret it, when my hair and my teeth drop out with age. If I live that long—this too is a dangerous world, and I exist in it now with only my human will and my human strength.

But for the present, it seems, I will live.

Look at those lights, fairy lights, like in an enchanted wood, into which the young prince pursues the magical white doe (oh beautiful one, I will never forget you!) and finds himself turned into—into what?

He looked down at his spatulate hands, at the broad band of the expensive watch on his wrist, the lustrous fall of fine woolen cloth over his knees, the glowing leather of the carry-on bag on the floor between his feet in their well-made shoes.

Turned into what? What a marvelous question, its answers so brilliantly transparent as to be undetectable. Turned into a dragon, a kobold, an angel?

“
What’s your flight number, sir?” the concerned young woman was saying. “Let me see your ticket, please.”

“No,” he said thickly, suddenly having trouble locating the right words in this language that was not his. “Thank you. I’m all right, I have just a—a small reaction, an allergy. It’s nothing, it will pass. Let me sit here a moment; I’ll be fine.”

She finally left him. Other passengers in the lounge looked away and pretended they hadn’t been watching.

Giddy with elation, he peered again at his own face in the window glass: broad-cheeked, strong-looking, the face of an intelligent and resourceful young man of action. (A tear-stained, shock-blank face; how odd). Surely such a man could get along anywhere, in any age, even without comment and advice from ancient entities of brutal appetite? Surely he could find ways to live as other men lived, until his days came to a natural end?

Perhaps he could find good things to do with this life, after having done so much ill. Perhaps not, perhaps what he was could never be “good" in this world of the future. He was little different at base than the Lady herself—primitive, violent, single-minded, or so he had proven himself through several centuries of time.

But he had not killed Nicolas Griffin. His final enemy had offered his throat, his blood, and the last Baron von Craggen had not struck him down. As if breaking free from some heavy, evil dream, he had found another way, with a woman’s help.

A woman who only played stories of vengeance on the stage, old stories that perhaps one could learn real lessons from without the spilling of real blood. She was brave, though. He might learn to be brave in that way.

Who could tell what he might learn or come to be, with the long hunt over at last, the iron claws of the Lady’s demand released from his neck? How had he never noticed till now, in his sudden freedom, how tight, how bitter that controlling grip had been?

God, what a thirst he had! What a raging, cracking, driving thirst, unslaked for centuries while that other need was fed in its place. He got up with an effort, walked unsteadily to the drinking fountain by the wall, and joyfully gulped the cold, cold water until his need was quenched.

Then he folded his dark wool coat over his arm, and carrying his one bag in his hand he went to find the monitors where he could read the names of all the destinations to choose from in the wide, whirling, pulsing world of life.

The End