It is unsettling to look in a mirror and see a stranger's face staring back at you. I imagine that is how it must feel for you mortals, as the years etch ever deeper lines into your faces, as you gray, as the weight creeps on and gravity stretches everything south, turning plump cheeks to jiggling jowls, a taut belly to a bowlful of jelly. Or perhaps the changes are too gradual to alarm you.
It was quite startling for me.
Though the Living Blood remade Lukas's body after my original form, the transformation was not total. My physical appearance remains a fusion of our two bodies. I am shorter and stockier now, no longer the tall, stately figure I had been before. I am more muscular, my hands larger and more crudely formed. My hair is shorter, darker, not nearly as curly. Most startling of all is my face. My eyes are larger and darker, my chin and brow more pronounced. My mouth is wider and my lips fuller. Very sensual now, my mouth. Even my fangs have changed. They are shorter and blunter, made to rip and tear, where before they were cat-sharp and elegant. It is not a terrible change, I have decided. Much of the original man still gazes back at me from the mirror. But I still jump a little when I chance by my reflection. I have to stop and stare, wondering how much of the original me remains in this new form.
But I do not want you to think that I am so self-centered, that my physical appearance is all that concerns me. It was several days before I permitted myself to contemplate this transformation. The battle of Bad Wildbach had claimed two of our number. Poor Miriam! Gone less than a week after becoming an immortal. And Sam Coleridge, Nora's fiery anarchist, outlived by the cultural institutions he reviled so passionately. And my wild, beautiful, brilliant Justus, blinded by the creature I unleashed upon the world.
So much suffering, so much loss, and it was all my fault!
Sydney was inconsolable. He didn't hate me, thank the ancestors. Could never hate me, he claimed. But we all knew my lapse in judgment was the cause of his fledgling's demise. He was remote, couldn't look me in the eyes. He departed for America shortly after we descended the mountain. I begged him to stay, to give me a chance to make amends, but he only laughed.
"And how you going to make amends for this?" he asked. "Miriam is dead and you're still kickin'. But maybe that's your punishment. To live and live and live while everyone around you dies. For the rest of time. To be honest, I can't think of a worse punishment than that."
I wept bitterly at his words. In shame. In horror at what I had done.
But he was wrong.
I am no longer an Eternal.
Strong, yes. Long lived, for certain. But this new body is nowhere near as invincible as my original form. Even though Lukas absorbed much of my power when he devoured my Living Blood, this body—his body-- is not quite as indestructible as my previous one had been. The old me. The real me.
I will die.
Someday.
Not, I think, for a very long time. But I will die.
We buried Sam on the mountain beside Miriam, not far from the remains of my lost mortal loved ones. He was not so old that his body flew immediately to dust. Only the truly ancient do that. What we buried looked like an Egyptian mummy, flesh black and shriveled to the bones, limbs drawn insect-like to his chest. Nora removed his vampire fangs should some mortal hunter stumble across his grave, as we did to Miranda, and then we retired to the room I had rented in town.
The sun was peeking over the horizon by then, making the snow twinkle like faerie dust. The streets were full of automobiles farting white puffs of carbon dioxide. Nora, stoic as always, took the suite next door to mine. She did not comment on the death of her fledgling, though I could tell that her heart was heavy with her loss. She departed that evening with her surviving companion, the bookseller John Worthy. John shook my hand, paid his respects to Zenzele, then went down to pull their car around. Nora kissed me chastely on the cheek, telling me not to be too hard on myself.
"Can you see the shame that's inscribed on my heart?" I asked.
"I do not have to read your mind," she replied, smiling at me sympathetically. She turned to Zenzele and Apollonius then. They had roomed with me that day. They stood now in the corridor to see her off, Zenzele in a deep red khanga and beaded headdress, Paulo in white linen. "Look after him, mother, Paulo. You know how he likes to wallow in guilt."
Zenzele inclined her head in acknowledgment while Paulo smirked and looked sidelong at me.
It had already been decided that the three of us-- Zenzele, Paulo and I—were going to Karpathos, and that I was to live there with Paulo's family until this dangerous melancholy passed.
If it passed.
"Yes, we know how he gets," Zenzele said.
"We'll keep him out of trouble," Paulo chipped in.
I didn't know whether to feel grateful or insulted. They were treating me like a senile old fool. But I didn't object. They were much too forgiving, and I was just selfish enough to allow it.
Nora glanced uneasily at Zenzele, then said in a low rush, "It is him, mother. I swear. I looked deep into his soul. Somehow his essence was passed through the Blood." She glanced at me apologetically, then turned and hurried away.
Justus, at least, could be restored.
I had looked after him that morning in my room, tending to his injuries as Agnes fretted and Zenzele sat and stared at me with thinly concealed suspicion. "Do not worry, my friend," I comforted him. "I can make you whole again. I will restore your sight. I promise you." There is nothing more powerful than the blood of a true immortal, and if my blood was no longer powerful enough to do the trick, I had Zenzele and Agnes to help me with that.
Justus chuckled, taking his mutilation in stride. "When it comes to you, Gyozo, I always seem to come out a little worse for wear. Perhaps that is my penance for loving you." He caressed my face with his fingertips, then folded his hands on his chest. "Do what you will. I trust you."
"You have foreseen it?" I asked. I could not imagine how he could trust me after all I had done.
He shook his head, a faint smile quirking his lips. "The visions are gone," he said. "I am as blind to the future as I am to your new face. It is… a great relief."
"Your visions, or my new face?" I asked, leaning down and kissing his brow.
"Both," he teased me.
"Perhaps, when we have restored your sight, your Future Sight will be restored to you as well," I said.
"I hope not," Justus said. "Life becomes an exercise in tedium when you always know what happens next. Every moment of every day, laid out for you beforehand. It is maddening."
I searched his maimed face for the truth of it. He meant what he was saying, though it was hard to be certain without seeing his eyes. They were just two empty sockets now staring back at me. But he was still beautiful.
"I will make you whole again," I promised.
After Nora departed, Zenzele and I went out to hunt. The air was cold and moist, the clouds like sodden laundry piled in the sky. I tried to make conversation as we skipped along the rooftops but my soulmate was uncharacteristically silent.
"You do not trust that I am still me," I finally said. "You look at me and see a stranger's face, a stranger's form. But I am still me. The soul is the same."
She continued on for a little while without speaking, then finally she stopped. "It is difficult," she said. She stood at the edge of the roof, her back to me. Behind her, red lights blinked steadily on a metal tower, like a heartbeat. "I hear your voice and it is the same, but the lips that speak the words are not the lips that I remember."
"Which is more important?" I asked. "The words or the lips?"
She did not answer, just fetched a sigh and continued on.
I was forlorn.
We found the house I had pointed out to Lukas earlier, the one with the corpse buried in the back yard. It was a two-story dwelling in the German style, with half-timbered walls and small shuttered windows. The house had fallen into disrepair, its roof slumped, windows cataract with grime. We slipped in through the back door, passed through a small kitchen that smelled of rotten food and mouse urine, and made our way silently to the stairs. There were bloodstains at the foot of the stairs, and several smaller splashes on the risers near the bottom. They had been scrubbed thoroughly with bleach many years before, would be invisible to mortal eyes, but they were quite distinct to our enhanced vampire senses. It was not hard to imagine how the murder was committed.
Upstairs, snoring loudly in his bed, was a grossly obese man of late middle age. He was so large his body took up more than half the saggy mattress. The room smelled of unwashed flesh and corruption. In the corner on a dresser, a pornographic movie played unheeded on a small color television. A pair of men in leather hoods copulating with a terribly young-looking female. There were chains and whips and grotesque sexual devices. The man had fallen asleep while watching, both hands stuffed in his filthy boxer shorts.
Lips curled in distaste, Zenzele slipped around to the opposite side of the bed. She crouched over the man, fingers poised to strike. The light of the television jittered over her smooth, dark skin. On the wall behind her: framed photos of a young married couple, decades old and faded now. The man, slimmer, almost handsome, grinning alongside the curly headed woman he would someday push down the stairs.
"Rise, murderer!" I cried.
The mortal's eyelids flew up in surprise. "Was--?" he snorted. He stared at me in bewilderment, mouth agape, eyes bulging. An instant later, Zenzele snatched those eyes neatly from their sockets.
I was at his throat before he could scream.
Before we left I picked up his cigarettes. They were sitting on his bedside table next to an overflowing ashtray and a half-empty bottle of personal lubricant. Zenzele watched with grim approval as I took out a cigarette, lit it with a match, puffed the cherry bright and hot and then dropped it onto the blanket beside the dead man's body. His house was not near enough to his neighbor's homes to pose them any danger.
We returned to the hotel and gently pressed the purloined eyes into Justus's eye sockets.
"Will this really work?" Agnes asked, anxiously observing the procedure.
"If our luck is good," I said.
I gestured to Zenzele. I did not trust my hybrid blood to do the trick. She looked at me strangely and then bit into her wrist. Several drops of her Eternal blood spattered down onto his eyes. I rubbed her blood into his new eyes with the pads of my thumbs and prayed to my ancestors. After a few moments, the irises took on a jewel-like gleam. The pupils twitched and contracted. Justus groaned as the Living Blood joined the severed optic nerves, and then he blinked around at us.
"Did it work?" I asked. "Can you see again?"
"Dimly," he said, sitting up in the bed. "As through smoked glass. But it is growing clearer by the moment." He peered around the room, smiling appreciatively, and then he looked at me. He reached out and cupped my cheek. "Gyozo! You look so strange!"
I took his hand and squeezed it in mine. "It does not matter. I'm glad you are whole. You've suffered too greatly on my behalf." I looked at Agnes. "Both of you."
"To live is to suffer," Justus said. "The only choice we have is whether to forgive those who've wounded us or not."
"And do you forgive me?" I asked. "Once more?"
"Of course, I do," Justus said without hesitation.
Paulo returned then, looking flushed and animated. He had fed. Good. We waved him over to the bed to look at Justus's new eyes.
"They're two different colors," he observed.
"They are!" I said in surprise. "Green and brown. I didn't notice that before."
Justus and Agnes departed for Engel Abbey the following night, promising to visit us in Karpathos. And I had a feeling he meant to keep that promise. He was unusually exuberant. His Future Sight still had not returned, even with the new eyes. "Every moment is a revelation!" he exclaimed.
He embraced Apollonius on the street outside the hotel.
"Look after my Gyozo," he said to his brother. "You know how he gets."
Paulo laughed.
Agnes slid gracefully into the car they had hired to take them home. She was really quite lovely with her flowing white hair and white voluminous garments. Justus nodded to Zenzele, then swept me into his arms, whispering ardently in my ear, "Would that we were alone together for a few days, Gyozo. We would not leave the bed!"
I kissed him, closing my eyes and relishing the taste of his lips, the feel of his body pressed to mine. But Zenzele was with me again. He knew the rule!
Rules be damned, he pinched my arse and then retreated into the limo, new eyes twinkling gleefully. The shiny black vehicle rolled away, leaving a faint cloud of exhaust hanging in the air.
It had begun to snow again, the sky lowering and starless.
"I don't know about you two," Apollonius said, after the car had turned from sight, "but I'm famished. You should feed tonight if you still plan to come with me. Karpathos is a beautiful island but there's not much of a criminal element."
And so we did, the three of us.
There was not much of a criminal element in Bad Wildbach either, but we managed to sniff out a villain or two.