Creatures of Forever (The Last Vampire #6)

The collage of colors and shapes that I now see is my life. Yet the different scenes from it are not arranged in a linear fashion, more in the form of a hologram, a pictorial dimension of time that encircles me like a living sphere. I have only to focus my attention on a particular event and I am there. But perhaps because my mind is used to dealing with sequential events, I take myself back in order. This is my deliberate choice, not the choice of the creation. To the creation, I realize, everything is happening in the same eternal moment.

I am with my daughter, Kalika, holding her as she bleeds from devastating chest wounds. Her smile is gentle and I am crying. She tells me she loves me. Then I cry over Seymour, beside his funeral pyre, because Kalika has killed him. Yet a few drops of the divine child's blood and he is alive again. Then I am laughing. Tears are connected to laughter in my life. One seems to bring the other, and that in itself is a great mystery to me. Blood, also, is everywhere. I see the night my daughter was born, in pain and love. The opposites of all life fly before my expanded vision, yet they now seem to be in harmony with one another.

Arturo and Joel are beside me. They tell me they love me. There is a flash of blinding light. They die, their love kills them, I destroy them. But a moment later I am saving Joel by making him a vampire, and a moment before that I am reviving Ray by the same process. Then I take a leap and I am sitting beside Ray's father as he dies from a ferocious blow I have struck to his chest. He perishes with the fear that I will harm his son, the son I love. Again and again, my love brings danger and death.

The hologram of my life seems to spin. In quick succession I see Hitler screaming at his troops, Lin?coln ordering General Grant to take up the Union's moral cause. Then I am in a castle in the highlands of Scotland, defending it from an evil duke. Once more my lover dies, and in the next instant I stand before the Inquisition, condemning Arturo to death. Arturo, who has meant more to me than practically anyone I have ever known. I see his eyes as I curse him, but I do not see his heart, do not know that he has already tricked me. I ensure his death but he does not die.

Finally I am walking in the dry hills of Sicily outside Messina, eating a bunch of purple grapes and wondering where I am heading. It is the ninth century and even the evening air is hot. This is my first visit to Sicily; the previous day I took a sailboat across the straits from Italy. Something about the land has drawn me to this spot in particular, but as of yet I don't know what. My long blond hair is pulled up under a cap, and I wear gray hose and a short linen tunic. I could be a pretty young boy, with my baggy white shirt and long steel knife tucked in my belt. The sun is in the sky, but it bothers me just a little.

Then I am not watching this other self.

I am her, and it isn't easy for either of us.

There is a moment of duality. She does not know me.

I feel as if I bump heads with a shadow, and yet my shadow thinks she is the real one, and that I am the ghost. It takes me a moment to explain, and the moment almost cracks open into an insane fissure of delusion. This Sita does not have a volume of my memories, and certainly does not know about flying saucers and the possibility of mental time travel. I am forced to impress these possibilities on her through a wall of internal resistance that threatens to explode both our minds. Then I realize it is hopeless, that I cannot force myself on myself. I relax, and back off, and then suddenly she is curious about me. She knows me even when she doesn't know all of me. I was always one for a new experience, and meeting myself along an empty road is about as weird an experience as I have ever had. My younger self calls to me.

"Ritorna da me," she says. Come back to me.

"Fa bene," I  reply, aloud. All right.

Sita is startled. Who is talking to whom?

Her curiosity is greater than her fear.

I am able to get inside and there I stay.

Finally she understands. The duality ceases. I am Alisa Perne of the twentieth century, in the ninth century, here in Sicily to defeat a monster. There is only me but I am now of firm resolve. Landulf had better beware.

Around the bend of the next hill, I hear cries. Dante.

Before I had not known I would meet him, but now it is as if he is calling my name. Tossing aside my grapes, I run to an appointment I have with the past. Yet already I am not thinking of myself as from the future. Perhaps the other Sita is there as much as I. Yet I do notice that I am not nearly so fast as I was before. This body has not had the last infusions of powerful blood. I am just an ordinary vampire--I can't even read minds. All that I have, that I didn't have before, are memories of things that have not yet happened. They are my only new weapons against Landulf.

As I come around a hill, I find Dante naked and bleeding, strung up to a skeleton of a tree by a rope tied to his right arm and right foot. Gathered around him are two men and a woman, the two men holding swords and poking at poor Dante, encouraging him to sing. There is another rope around Dante's neck. The meaning is clear--if Dante stops singing, they will cut the other ropes and he will be hung.

Dante is not in good shape. At a glance I realize he has severe leprosy of his left arm and leg. The disease has actually eaten away portions of his bones, and I know he must live in terrible pain. He has also been castrated, but by the sweetness in his voice I recognize that he is no ordinary eunuch. He is a castrato, perhaps of the Holy Father in Rome, whom I despise. The castrati make up the greatest choirs in the Catho?lic Church. Their manhood is sacrificed to maintain their magical voices in a preadolescent range. There are few things the Church will not do, I realized long ago, to petition the angels in heaven. Dante cannot be more than twenty years old.

"Ciao!" I call as I stride up. "Che cosa fai?" What are you doing?

The men hardly look over, they are having so much fun. But the dark-haired woman with the cleft palate eyes me suspiciously. "Stai zitta!" she calls. Shut up. "He is a leper. He is to be killed."

"Penso di no." I don't think so. I slowly draw my knife as I move near. "Release him now, and I will spare your lives."

Dante stops singing and the two men with swords now give me their attention. One is a clumsy brute, dark featured, the other, the fair young one, appears quick on his feet. They eye my long narrow knife and chuckle to themselves. But the young man spreads his feet slightly, readying himself for combat. He is an experienced swordsman, although he is not sure yet if I am a boy or a woman. My skin is darker than usual from the sun, the gloss of my red lips partially hidden by my tan. Hanging half upside down, Dante stares at me in wonder, his face a mess of blood and tears. Incredibly, he has hope that I will be able to set him free. Naturally I will, in a few minutes. The brute gestures with his sword.

"Vattene dia," he says. Get away. "Or it will be you we string from the tree."

"It won't happen," I reply, and in a fast move I step forward and cut the top of the woman's left arm. The wound is not serious, it will heal, in time, but I want it to serve as a warning that I am skilled with a blade. Blood springs from her flesh and soaks her peasant clothes. The three hardly saw me move. Yet I know they will need more persuasion than this to back off. Of course I have been here before. A part of me knows that even though it is becoming easier to forget that I have. Surely I will kill them all, for the sake of poor Dante.

The woman screams in pain. "She has cut me! Kill her!"

"You foul creature!" the brute shouts as he dashes forward and tries to run me through. But I have sidestepped his lunge, and tripped him. As he tries to raise his head from the ground, I kneel beside him and pull his head back by the hair. My blade rests across his exposed throat, and I speak to the ugly woman and the fair man, who at least has had the wits to wait to see what I can do.

"If you leave now," I say. "I will let this man live."

"He is no friend of mine," the fair man says. "Do with him what you wish."

"No!" the woman cries. "He is my husband!"

"Then you agree to leave?" I say.

The brute, my knife scratching his trembling throat, is agreeable. "We will be gone," he says.

"Bene." Good. I smash his face in the dirt and then release him. But he is no sooner back on his feet than his dull eyes flash with anger and he makes another try for me. Once again I sidestep the thrust of his sword, but this time I sink my blade deep into his heart and withdraw it before he can take it with him to the bloody ground. His wife cries as he lands facedown. She jumps toward me, her arms flailing, and I kill her as I killed her mate. Now there is only the fair-haired man left. Dante is muttering prayers to heaven and drooling all over his wretched face. Wip?ing off my knife on the sand, I stand and pull off my cap, letting my blond hair fall. It shines in the last rays of the evening sun. Fair head smiles and nods in appreciation.

"My compliments," he says.

But since he now knows I am a woman, he cannot walk away. Sicilian pride--he finally draws his sword and points it in my direction.

"I have been trained by the Vatican guards," he says. "You may submit to me now, or I will have your head."

Pointing my knife at him, I laugh. "I have been trained by far more experienced teachers. Leave here this instant or I will cut you badly."

He takes a step closer. "My name is Pino. I would take no pleasure in killing such a beautiful woman as you. Drop your knife, and let us take pleasure in each other."

"No," I say. "I would rather kill you."

He moves closer still. The tip of his blade dangles three feet from my face--I could almost reach out, without moving my feet, and take it from him. But I am too much the good sport, and I don't want Dante to see me as a supernatural being. Then I might have to kill him as well. It is funny, how I know Dante, without even being introduced to him.

"You are young," Pino says. "Why make such a rash decision?"

"You are proud," I say. "You have seen my skills. Why not withdraw? Your death will prove nothing here."

He smiles but I have angered him. He takes a swipe at me with his blade, trying to cut my left shoulder. But he misses, and another smooth swipe also fails to draw blood. He appears more puzzled than worried.

"You move well," he says.

"Last chance," I say. "Leave or die."

"All right, cold woman," he says as he turns to leave. "I am no match for you." But he has hardly turned his back on me when he spins and tries to take off my head with his sword. Ducking, I thrust forward and plant my blade in his abdomen. There I leave it as I back off a few steps. He is still regaining his balance from his failed attack. He stares down at my knife in amazement. I don't know if he understands yet that his wound is fatal.

"What have you done?" he gasps as blood begins to show around my knife. Dropping his sword, he reaches down and pulls out the knife with both hands. Bad move--now the blood spurts out, over his hands and onto the ground. He still cannot comprehend that I have defeated him. "You witch!"

"I am not a witch," I say casually. "I am a good Samaritan. This man you torture has done nothing to hurt you."

Pino drops to his knees, bleeding over everything. "But he is a leper," he gasps.

"That is better than a corpse." I come closer so that I stand above him. I stick out my hand. "May I have my knife back please?"

He stares at me, incredulous. But he hands me back my knife, as if I might now help him because he is cooperating. But he is beyond a cure. I take a step toward Dante, whose head bobbles like that of a puppy dog.

"Oh, my lady," he gushes. "God has sent you."

I begin to cut him down. "Somebody did," I say.

Pino cries out to me as he slumps to the ground. There is great sorrow in his words, but I have heard it all before over the centuries. "Non voglio morire." I don't want to die.

Dante answers for me, giving me a future favorite line.

"Then you should never have been born," he says.