Page 18

Here is a body, here is a soul.

Take it, do as you will.

I walk towards the oily , black disc hovering the air before me. I have Little Baby by the wrist so she comes too. She’s writhing, and resisting, and screaming as she attempts to plant her feet into the rough, rocky ground, trying to pull free from my grip. But when I am this close to the Darkness, I lose any sense of everything around me. So my world has gone mute.

I have a good hold of her though. She’s not getting away. Even if she did, there’s nowhere to go. We are in the Dark House now. We are in the Dark World. The only way out is up and the only way up is with wings.

My fingertip comes up and makes a mark on the slick surface of the Dark disc. I scratch out my name—not in a human language, but in the symbols of my maker. To it, I am not Josep. I am a circle—all vampires are represented by circles—with a line right down the center that oversteps its bounds on either end. Then, along the line encompassed inside the circle, I scratch many more circles. Nine, to be exact. Attached to the circles are other designs, ancient letters that no one remembers. But when we are born, when the transformation is truly complete, there is a name carved on our black hearts.

And if someone were to open me up, they would see it. A vein of gold in this exact design.

This is the name the Darkness gave me.

I make the sign for me, pushing the tip of my now-clawed finger into the oil slick, parting it as I draw. When I’m done I make the sign for Paul too, because I’m not even here for me. None of this is about me. It was always Paul’s idea and the Darkness needs to know that. It has forsaken him. That happened hundreds of years ago now. But whenever I come down here, I remind it that Paul exists and this gift is really from him. I make the Darkness remember Paul.

Once that is done, I turn back to Little Baby, unmuting her.

“Please! Please!” She’s screaming and begging. “No! No!” Saying very little, but her message is being conveyed just fine. She does not want to be here. And while I haven’t told her anything about what comes next, obviously, she knows. I mean, at this point, there are only two ways this ends.

With her staying here and with her leaving.

She absolutely knows she’s not leaving here.

At least not yet.

I yank her arm, pulling it hard enough to slip her shoulder out of the joint. Which wasn’t my intention, obviously, since I’m trying to quiet her and this just makes her scream louder. “I’m sorry.” I say this as I pop her shoulder back in. “I don’t often live in this form, so I forget how strong I am. I just need you to be quiet, Little Baby. This is a solemn experience you’re about to go through. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Take it all in, girl. Don’t miss a moment. Because it will never happen again.”

She went quiet the moment I started talking. And now she’s just staring at me. She blinks. “What?”

“Lie down on the ground.”

“Why? What are you gonna do?” She’s calmer now, but it’s not a true calm. Just a state of shock.

“You’re going to the Darkness, Little Baby.” I nod my head at the undulating oil slick hovering in the air behind me. “You’re a gift. An offering. A sacrifice.” I’ve got her locked now, her eyes on mine. Entranced. I take a step forward, pressing my monstrous body right up against hers as I continue to look down, bewitching her with my eyes. Then I kiss her and with that kiss I make a promise, whispering, “You have not been forsaken,” before pulling back.

She falls limp now and I catch her in my arms so I can carefully lay her down on the ground. I position her body. Legs spread, arms wide, back straight. Then I take off the remains of the tattered threads that used to be her clothes.

I pause here—it’s been a long time since Paul and I made an offering like this. So I take a moment to reflect on what I have set out to accomplish here.

Then I suck in a breath and start carving. I trace my claw through Little Baby’s skin, marking my name on her first—a big symbol, right over her chest. Then I mark Paul’s name just below that, on her belly. All the other carvings are nothing more than artistic embellishments. To add power, or direct it, or whatever. Paul didn’t care. Didn’t have any opinions on this part. He’s never been much of an artist when it comes to the Dark Death. But he’s only done it once and that was the source of all his problems back in the Old World.

Let’s just say his artistic vision doesn’t match up with mine.

I like to take my time with the symbols I carve into the skin. The Darkness, after all, doesn’t care about time. If you take ten seconds to mark your offering or ten years, it wouldn’t notice. It’s not alive, you see. Not really. Not the way humans are. Not the way I am. It’s just… an interdimensional medium. A metaphor for God, or the opposite, if that’s your preference.

But it does have desires. If one can call them that. It desires creativity and ideas. Because it has none of its own. It’s merely existing without us. The vampire gives the Darkness meaning, and in return the Darkness makes the vampire a creator. A god. It gives us the power to bring our imaginations to life.

Again, Paul and I differ here. He is inclined to make monsters. Hideous, ugly, evil things.

While I am inclined to make beauty. I like refined symmetry and graceful elegance. Though my creations, in the eyes of everyone but me, are horrible as well.

I lie down on my side next to Little Baby, propping myself up on my left elbow so I can use the razor-sharp claw on my right fingertip to make symbols. I make some ritualistic ones that have magical meanings. Sigils I have come up with over the years to focus and convey energy, and strength, and courage. Then I just draw pictures. A sun, a moon, stick people. Me, and Paul, and Lucia—even though she’s gone. I never disliked her. She wasn’t a friend, but she was useful and always there. Part of the plan, but separate as well. Still, I use Little Baby’s body to say my goodbyes. Then I carve two more figures—Ryet and Syrsee. We lost one, but we gained two.

One step back, two steps forward. It worked out.

I draw a house. A house that will be our house. A place, finally, to settle and start the dynasty of the American Vampire. I can’t make it very grand—there is only so much skin I can carve up on this girl’s body. I could turn her over, carve up the back too, but it would be unnecessary. So I make a simple house because our dreams are rather simple.

We want a family and a place of our own.

Isn’t that what everyone wants?

Once I’m done with the major ideas, I fill the remaining skin with stars. Simple crisscross stars. And then, finally, Little Baby’s body is nothing but lashes. Blood seeps out, mostly obscuring my drawings. But it doesn’t matter. The Darkness doesn’t see. Not the way we do. It senses the blood and the way it seeps through her skin. And anyway, it can read my intentions.

I look up at the oil slick, still hovering in the air where it was when I started the ritual.

Then all that’s left to do is invite it in.

There are many ways to do this. With my mind, with a beckoning finger, with words.

This might be the last time I ever see the Darkness—one can’t ever predict the future, after all—so I make it a formal request using careful words in the ancient language of the Obscurati. It roughly translates to:

Here is a body, here is a soul.

Take it, do as you will.

The Darkness begins to move forward towards us and I stay right where I am, ready to receive my gift. The room glows purple now—a color so lavender and soft, not even a princess in a fairy tale could imagine such beauty. And this beauty is reflected off the slick surface of the entity that hovers over top of me.

It knows what we’re doing and it approves.

It wants Syrsee’s baby even more than we do.

This is true, but it doesn’t think like that. There is no biological brain inside the oil slick. But at the same time, it is nothing but brain. Finally, the outside world has caught up with what is happening deep under the earth. Paul told me once, a couple years back, that he knew what the Darkness is.

Nanotech.

Billions, maybe even trillions, of nanoparticles. Where it came from, I have no idea. What it wants, I do not know.

But it likes me. I know this because when it descends down onto Little Baby’s body—seeping into the blood weeping out of her—it covers me too. Caresses me too. Touches me too.

It has always favored me. Why?

Because I’m beautiful?

Paul is beautiful too, but he makes hideous things with the power of the Darkness.

So it’s something more than beauty. It’s the gentleness of a spirit, maybe? Or, more likely—since I am not particularly gentle—the spirit’s artistic vision?

Creativity is what it longs for, after all.

Suddenly, Little Baby screams and every muscle in her body locks tight. Her back comes up in an arch and I watch as the last of the Darkness disappears inside her.

I was holding my breath, so I let it out. Smiling.

Now the glow starts. The purple. It begins very light—even lighter than the pretty lavender mist all around us. So light, it’s nearly white.

But as the moments tick off, and as Little Baby’s blood mixes with the lavender, it turns dark. This is how to make Black blood, after all. Which was never black in the first place. It was always just purple.

And now, the magic begins.

Little Baby goes limp again. But as I watch, the Darkness is crawling under her skin. Like she is filled with wriggling worms. The first time I saw this—thousands of years ago—I was terrified. I really thought it was worms. Or something worse. Botflies, fruit flies, eye worms, mites.

I shudder just thinking about the horror.

Finally, the Darkness settles inside her. Of course, there are no textbooks to explain the process to me. That’s why I had to write my own. So what I think is happening now is just a guess. An educated one. The Darkness doesn’t just get inside the blood, it gets inside the cells. And once in the cells, it gets inside the nucleus. And once inside the nucleus, it gets inside the DNA.

Deoxyribonucleic acid. Base pairs, and hydrogen bonds, and helixes. A very specific structure with very specific instructions on what this body looks like, and sounds like, and how it behaves.

From here, it’s a simple act of rearranging.

Well, it’s not really simple. It’s very complicated and I doubt there is much of anything in the human tech world that can rewrite the DNA of a living organism and then keep it alive as it morphs.

Only the Darkness can do that.

That’s how vampires are made.

And that’s why it’s so difficult to make new ones. You must have the blessing of this dark god. You must have a vessel with the Black blood, and you must have a partner to help you. Not a human. Not a witch—she is the vessel, not the partner.

So you need two vampires and a witch.

That is how we make the babies.

But… if you have three vampires—oh, that’s when things get very, very special.

Little Baby is a gift. Something I’m using to entice the Darkness to take part in what comes next.

She is pale now—nearly silver in this light. Dead. Very, very dead. But we’re just getting started with this little ritual.

It’s my turn now.

I lean back on the ground, spreading my legs and arms. Little Baby is kind of in my way, but I just flop a leg and an arm over her, pretending she’s not there. Her body begins to shake—another seizure as the Darkness works magic inside her cells. And then there is a long gasp from her. A breath of life.

I have seen this done many times. So even though my eyes are closed and my mouth open in anticipation of what comes next, I know the Darkness—in all its purple glory—is leaving her body with that breath. And just as I have this thought, it enters me. Filling my mouth with oily, slick nanoparticles. Choking me, forcing itself down my throat.

I make myself lie as still as I can.

In the early times I would fight this, the instinct to cough and pull it out so overwhelming, I’d usually pass out from the fear. Which was a good thing, since choking is no fun.

But I have learned to control the instinct to expel the alien invader. My mouth is open wide and so is my mind.

Give it to me, I tell the Darkness.

Give me everything you have.

Give me all the magic, give me all the darkness, give me all the power.

Make me the creator.

Give me the blood.

My body swells with it. All of Little Baby’s blood is put inside me. And when I can take no more, I turn over, positioning myself on top of her lifeless body, and then I kiss her, expelling the darkness out of me and back into her. A moment later, she gasps too, expelling the Darkness again. My mouth is right over hers, so it comes back into me.

We do this—a special version of the long drink—many more times. Hundreds of times. Enough times so that the Darkness can enter my cells too, change my DNA too, and give me its power.

It’s not for me, though. I am but a vessel. A delivery mechanism.

This blood of mine will be shared when Paul, Ryet, and I help Syrsee make a baby.

She will get some, they will get some—and they will give it back to me. And then we’ll do that again, and again, and again until a new Darkness is growing inside her.

When I wake up the Darkness is gone.

There is no trace of purple mist, just the dampness that exists everywhere under the earth.

Little Baby’s body is beside me. She is not dead. It won’t let her die, not yet. It will play with her for a while. Use her to make things, I suppose. Experiment a little. She’s a lab rat now.

And I am ever so thankful. So I turn on my side and caress her sliced-up cheek as I gaze into her traumatized eyes. I think they were originally green? Or blue? I can’t remember. Then they turned gold but they are pink now. It looks good on her.

I lean down and press my lips to hers. Then I bite my tongue and give her a little parting gift. Just a few drops to get her through the pain. After that I whisper, “Be a good little baby. I’ve got to run.”

I don’t want to leave. I rather like it down here. Love the smell. Love it so much. And the mist, even though it’s just a regular mist of humidity now that the Darkness has retreated.

But big things are happening topside and I must participate.

So I get to my feet, lift my arms up above my head as I arch my back, stretching. And then I let out a sigh.

“Until next time, my Darkness.”

Then I take my leave.

Unfurling my wings and gliding back up to the outside world.