At Death's Door (Wraith's Rebellion Book 1) Read online

  I felt small and insignificant for the first time in my life, though I didn’t have words for the terror that gripped me tight and refused to let go.

  I remember wondering if I were an ant. And if I were an ant, that would make God a man. Men have little care for the lives of ants, killing them out of boredom sometimes. I had watched other boys stomp on ants, tricking them, even lighting their hills on fire and laughing as the ants fled.

  Therefore, how could I be God blessed to have forever and ever, if God were a man and I was an ant?

  To a five-year-old, it was too much to handle. I began crying, silently mind you. My parents did not believe bad dreams were an excuse to wake the whole family.

  My father came over and tucked me in.

  “What’s wrong Quintillus?” he asked.

  I struggled for a moment to come up with an excuse. Then it came to me suddenly like a bolt of lightning across the sky.

  “I don’t want to get sick.”

  “Of course, you won’t get sick,” he said. “You take after your grandfather. Not even a sniffle yet and you’re almost a young man. Sleep, you will be healthy and hearty your whole life.”

  “Promise?” I asked.

  “I promise.”

  I should have come up with some other excuse.

  I slept deeply then, awaking at the usual time with my brothers. We sat to the morning meal with the man. We were served items which were unusual for our breakfast but were easy to slip into one’s pocket.

  Sure enough, the man seemed to make the food on his plate disappear. I took furtive glances but didn’t dare look for more than a moment.

  That morning, unlike the evening before, I was watching the stranger’s hands and not his face. I wanted to see if I could figure out how he pocketed the food. Was it magic?

  I was certain all things at that time were made up of magic and prayers and blessings from God.

  After the meal, my father picked up the scythe and walked the stranger back to the road. There the two shook hands and parted ways. The man no longer leaned on the tool of his trade.

  His pockets were full of our food. His back no doubt did not ache quite so much thanks to the warmth of the fire and a blanket. He was cleaner and wore slightly newer clothing.

  Surely, he must have felt welcomed into our home.

  My mother burned his old clothing once he had left. We had no use for such rags. Even cleaning them wouldn’t have been worth the effort.

  Then forever and ever returned. We finished the planting, did our daily chores, and thought nothing more of the stranger, or the tales he told.

  I’m sorry, I’ve read the preliminary interviews. No one else has started so far back. I kind of feel like you’re—

  Fucking with you? Trust me. I’m not.

  Ten days after the stranger visited, my father took ill. His throat swelled visibly. I understand now that he must have swelled at the armpits and groin as well, but I did not notice that so much as the swelling in his throat.

  Following the swelling was a fever.

  Wait, those are symptoms of bubonic plague.

  It struck many times over the course history, not just as the Black Death. No one has quite been able to settle what the disease was. It may have been related to the Black Death, or it may have been an entirely different creature.

  Though, I believe that the first led to the second. That the second was an heir, let’s say, to that first one.

  Though few mortals recall those symptoms off the top of their head.

  We were instructed on some things to help fill in the blanks.

  Ah, I see.

  I watched my father’s hands change over the course of a short span. Again, it’s difficult to recall just how long. It was probably in one day, possibly less than that.

  Things were moving so much around me then that I lost track of the exact time. The fingers turned red, then began to blacken.

  By the time the sun set that first day the blackness had come over him, my father passed into God’s Kingdom.

  As he took his dying breath, my brothers complained of not feeling well.

  The sickness was not just confined to my family either. Others took ill. First, a man who spoke to my father the morning the stranger left, then the smith. The women fared no better, but it’s hard to distinguish their involvement from patient and nurse.

  It was not long before more were dying.

  We buried the dead as quickly as we could and raised a banner to warn others, to keep it contained.

  One night, a woman saw a figure in the darkness. She said she saw a white face, then a robe fluttering across a torch across the way.

  The story spread quicker than the sickness. Soon everyone saw a robed figure. I thought it was nothing more than fearful people seeing the Reaper. It scared me, but I had little energy to think about it beyond listening with wide eyes and a closed mouth.

  How many died?

  All of them.

  The sickness had a mortality rate of approximately ninety-eight percent. Children and elders died first. Some adults languished on for days and days. A few in the village took their own lives rather than face the disease. It’s possible that some starved to death as they lay in recovery, for lack of healthy bodies to tend them.

  In the end, I woke beside my eldest sister, finding that she had passed while I slept. I was alone, at five years old, I hadn’t another soul around me, not for miles and miles.

  I knew I was supposed to bury my sister, but I couldn’t get the leverage to dig the grave. I was too small, too weak to do such a thing. As I struggled with the shallow grave, I happened to look up.

  There he was.

  The stranger.

  Yes, he was dressed the same, scythe in hand. He approached me, and his eyebrows raised almost to his hairline.

  “Everyone else?” he asked.

  “Dead.”

  “Not sick,” he grumbled.

  “No.”

  I had escaped completely unscathed. As everyone lay dying around me, I was whole and healthy.

  A carrier?

  Not quite.

  “Can’t stay here, boy.”

  He took me from the village then, stopping only long enough to allow me to collect a little wooden toy my father had carved.

  Then we left the place. He took me to another village, where they too had been struck by the sickness. Some were struggling to survive, despite obviously being ill.

  Not some of them, all of them. Dead or dying.

  The stranger walked up and selected one. He took the scythe and drove it into the man’s neck and then yanked it out. I watched in horror as he drank the bright red blood that spurt out. He latched his mouth over the wound and drank deeply.

  When he was finished, he allowed the body to drop to the ground.

  Then he took hold of me once more, even though I screamed and struggled and even bit at him, and he took me into the forest. Those first two nights we stayed in the forest. The third brought us to the city, where the man walked through the gates with me, his head held high.

  The guards stopped him, but only for a moment before letting him through. They did not ask about me. From what I recall, he did not pay them off, simply spoke his name and was allowed to go forward unmolested.

  I was exhausted by then. There had been no food to eat and little water. I no longer fought because I didn’t have the energy to do so.

  He took me to an estate, there his servants washed and fed me, then delivered me back to him.

  And then he raped me.

  I coughed, my throat, lungs, and nose all burning as I tried to rid myself of the cold coffee I that had been sipping as Quintillus had begun talking about the city.

  His last words were said in such a resoundingly bored fashion that it took a few seconds for my brain to catch up.

  Do I include that in the transcript?

  “Were you expecting a romanticized version of events? I was only five, after all. He barely said two words
to me the whole trip to the city.”

  The barista had listened to the entire tale.

  He had slowed in his cleaning duties and showed obvious interest in the vampire and the story he was telling. As the story ended, suddenly the barista ducked under the counter and produced a clipboard, looking very busy as Quintillus turned towards him.

  “I think I expected it to be like the others,” I said with a hand pressed against my chest. “Who stumbled upon their Makers and all seem to have slept with them, but it was voluntary.”

  The snippets I had read had all been origin stories. One vampire had gotten drunk on wine and woken up next to their Maker the next night. Another had found her Maker at the Library of Alexandria.

  The other stories had been very much what I had expected. Practically clean tales, no talk of rape or murder.

  Yet there he sat across from me, completely unapologetic. Though it had been done to him, not by him, so I didn’t believe that he had to apologize for that. Most danced around the point, though, made flowery words and prose.

  ‘Took me to his bed’ would have done the same thing without smashing me in the face with the truth.

  But we had been instructed not to alter their words in the least. Without him deciding, on his own, to change the wording, I had to leave it in the interview transcript.

  And it wasn’t like it was just a day in the park. I couldn’t edit it out or exclude it.

  Contact services about what I’m even supposed to do.

  “At five?” he asked, pulling my attention back to the present. “My, your view of children is odd.”

  “No, of course not. Just, if anything, waiting until you came of age. Or... or relate it like everyone else does.”

  “And then raping me? Is that really better? Whether I say he took me to bed, or make it more flowery and say he treated me as an adult, the fact remains. He raped me. I was raped. Repeatedly. And tortured, then raped some more. You want me to deny what was done to me, to make your life a little easier?”

  “That’s not what I meant!”

  “Now I am fucking with you. I’m not insulted by your delicate mortal sensibilities, but we will do this my way,” he said with the barest of smiles. “Excuse me. I need to take this.”

  He picked up his cell and walked off. I hadn’t heard the phone go off, but vampires were said to have super hearing and sight. Then again, that was rumor and fictional stories giving us the information. At the end of the day, none of us knew what vampires could and couldn’t do because they kept their secrets well.

  I watched him leave the cafe, catching a few words as he left.

  If language was caught, take it to Jerry.

  Jerry was a linguistics professor who had requested that we ask our interviewees if they’d be so kind as to speak their native languages. Some of those languages were dead, not spoken for a thousand years or more.

  While the vampire was outside having a conversation in a language I didn’t speak, I accessed my tablet’s data. Jumping online, I entered the century and then plague.

  The Justinian Plague hit the farmers and outlying area first, in the exact year that had been given. The very next year, it hit Constantinople, killing between twenty-five and forty percent of the population. It even struck Justinian himself, though he survived the illness.

  Constantinople was sometimes referred to as ‘the city’ by its citizens.

  The vampire sat across from me again.

  “No time to wait for you to finish your thought, I’ve been summoned to the Archives, along with every other vampire in the area. I’m to bring you with me, as a witness to the fact that I have been here talking to you, and not there causing trouble. You will be perfectly safe, though it is a thirty-minute drive.”

  “The vampire archive is here?”

  “Yes.”

  “In Canada?”

  “Yes.”

  If they chose the country, the area made sense. A large population, lots of buildings to hide things in, but not a major city either.

  What didn’t make sense was why they had chosen the country. Surely, they would have based it in one of the other ones?

  “Why?” I asked. Then I remembered that we had to be clear what we meant. We had been asked to speak in full sentences whenever possible, so I tried again. “Why are the Archives in Canada?”

  “We choose the nation which is least likely to see strife or war. To prevent the Archives from being destroyed. At the same time, we need to keep moving. It does not take long for mortals to discover them. When the Archives are found, myths crop up.”

  “Eldorado sort of myths, or the Lost City of Atlantis?”

  “Both.”

  The world did a giddy little spin.

  I tried to remain calm as I unplugged my tablet and tucked the cord away. They had given us cases to hang the tablet around our necks. I pulled that out and placed the tablet into it, then around my neck. The case would allow the microphone to pick up all the sounds while displaying it and keeping my hands free at the same time.

  Interviewers were granted special protection, to allow us to do our jobs relatively unhindered. Any vampire caught threatening, harming, or stopping an interviewer would be harmed themselves.

  There would, naturally, be things that we couldn’t do, but so far none of the interviewers seemed to have come to that line in the sand.

  Wearing the wrong thing, yes, but not behaving inappropriately.

  I grabbed my purse and followed him out of the cafe.

  “Do you have a preferred nickname at all, or just Quintillus?” I asked, looking up and down the street. “Which one is yours?”

  I hadn’t looked at the cars on my way in. I hadn’t thought about it until that moment. As a commuter, cars were only significant if they were moving towards me.

  “You may call me Quin, and guess.”

  A beater, a brand new shiny sports car, and a blood red Corvette from at least forty years earlier.

  “That one,” I said, motioning to the Corvette. “It’s older, reliable. My father had one when I was a child, which is how I know it’s old. But unless it’s on, it can pass for a more modern vehicle.”

  “Not the sports car?” he asked, an eyebrow raising.

  “Too flashy, and what you’d probably be expected to be driving because it’s new and rich. However, I’m betting you choose things based on the longevity more than the flash. You’ve probably had that Corvette since it came off the assembly line, and with the right care, you could have it another forty years. Still just a blip in your life, but better a blip than the blink of an eye.

  “Blood red, though?”

  I swear I saw him smile as he unlocked the passenger side of the Corvette with a key.

  “That’s not the colour of blood.”

  I stared at the colour, almost voicing my protest. The only way to settle the issue would have been to bleed on the car, however. I chose a safer route in questioning him.

  “You know what I meant,” I said.

  He walked around the vehicle to the driver side and this time definitely smiled. He made no comment as he slipped into the car. Rolling my eyes, I got into the passenger side.

  “Were you coached on vampires?” Quin asked after I had closed the door.

  “No,” I said. “But my grandmother has been buying items based on their longevity. She’s been getting things that will outlive her and has said as much. It only reasons that an immortal would do the same thing, though for a different reason.”

  “I have many vehicles, this is my favourite,” he said as he slipped the key into the ignition. “We’ve been allowed to have mortal lovers for the past century, and in that time, this colouring has served me wonderfully.”

  I glanced over the interior, aware that I would be required to include its description in my notes. Black leather on the inside. The interior was newer like it had be reupholstered in the past few years. Even leather could only last so long before it had to be replaced.

 
There was a faint smell of a leather cleaner or preservation agent. The entire inside of the vehicle was immaculately clean as if it were brand new. No clutter, nothing to give away that it was owned by anyone at all.

  Not even a scented car dangle.

  Look up what those are called.

  The radio was original. I couldn’t imagine it had very good reception, let alone sound, compared to its modern comparative products.

  As the vehicle rumbled to life, the radio remained silent. Quin glanced at me, then gave his head a little shake.

  “This is a really stupid idea, and you should know that.”

  I was floored by the statement. None of the others had given any insight into the politics of being a vampire.

  Suppose after thousands of years of dealing with the same people. You figured out how to get along. Those who had problems had settled their feuds one way or another, centuries before.

  “The interview?” I asked.

  “Taking you with me to the Archive,” Quin said. “The Council wanted to dismiss me from the call, but Margaret overruled them. As the newest member of the Council, she is supposed to help them to change our ways to adapt to the new world. Which gives her the ability to veto certain decisions.”

  There was something strange about how he pronounced ‘Margaret,’ and it wasn’t because he pronounced the last syllable as ‘eat.’

  Margaret accepted the English pronunciation of her name and had reportedly allowed a few world leaders to call her Marge.

  I had yet to see pictures of her, but knew the woman’s name and that she was the only Council member that any governing body could get a hold of. The other members remained hidden for their own safety. They had to make difficult decisions for the vampire race. Sometimes those decisions required mortals be put into harm’s way.

  “Right, because your Council isn’t based on who is oldest, or who has the highest title. They’re chosen at random, aren’t they?”

  “They are, by a little box. I’ll show it to you since we’ll be in the Archives anyhow. Shall we go through the list?”

  He pulled out of the parking spot finally. I noticed how carefully he did so and wondered if it was because he wanted to take care of the car, or because he was worried about little mortal me.