I couldn’t shake the feeling that something in Matthias’s account struck a false note, though the others seemed blind to it.“There’s something we’re all missing here.”
They all turned to me, waiting.
“Why was Matthias in such a horrible condition if he’d only come to help us?”I pressed on.“Those wounds weren’t just from travel.Who had he fought?Who had he killed on the way here?”I paused, letting the implications settle.“Something happened to him before he arrived.”
I looked at each of their faces in turn.“There’s too much we don’t know to risk this.We could be walking into a trap, or worse, into a situation where we end up doing the Order’s work for them.”
Another passage in St.Teresa’s book echoed in my mind, one Father O’Malley had marked: “Let nothing disturb thee, nothing affright thee.”But everything disturbed me now.Everything affrighted me.The hunger was a living thing, coiling through my insides like a serpent.
Desiderius broke his silence.“A weapon that destroys our kind en masse cannot be ignored.”His eyes locked onto mine.“Inaction in the face of such danger is not wisdom, Alice.It’s cowardice.”
“It’s not cowardice, it’s prudence!”
“How is letting the Order do whatever they want prudent?”Desiderius asked.
I rubbed my brow.“If there’s a building on fire, and you rush in to save people, and survive and bring someone out alive, they hail you as a hero.They say you’re courageous.If you rush into the same building, and find everyone has already evacuated and but die in the flames, no one praises your courage.They call you a fool.”
Desiderius’s expression softened unexpectedly.“Your caution has merit, Alice.But we cannot discern truth from falsehood while hiding here.The only way to know if this weapon truly exists—if the threat is real—is to go to New York and investigate.”
“I...”The word emerged as barely a whisper.I wanted to argue further, to find the flaw in their reasoning, but the part of me that could construct such arguments was drowning in need.I was hungry, and Desiderius had a valid point.I wanted to do what Father O’Malley said, but he thought the greatest threat we faced came from within, from our hunger.He didn’t know that the Order was preparing a weapon that might destroy all of us.
“Very well.”I winced a little.“But we’re in no condition to investigate anything, much less fight.”
“Perhaps if we find Father O’Malley he’ll allow us to partake,” Desiderius suggested.“At least so long as he can muster what remains of his strength to help us see this through.”
Chapter 5
Thedyinglightbledthrough the pines as I followed Desiderius from the shelter’s darkness, my legs trembling with the effort of simple movement.Four days without blood had hollowed me into something barely animate—a husk pretending at life.I clung to St.Theresa’s book like a lifeline, I’d hardly set it down since Father O’Malley gave it to me.
The sun had set a couple hours ago, just before Matthias arrived.I half-expected him to be lurking outside, waiting for our answer to his offer to join the Order’s mission to immolate us out of existence.
“Matthias is moving toward New York,” he blurted.“I can feel him moving that way.The pull grows fainter with distance, but it remains.”
I tilted my head.“You can truly sense him?Even now, from so far away?”
“The bond between sire and progeny is not easily severed.”He tilted his head slightly, as though listening to something beyond my perception.“He moves with purpose.No doubt reporting to his masters about his failure to recruit us.”
I pursed my lips.“I don’t get it.If you feel him now, why didn’t you sense his approach?”
“It’s too subtle.Imagine yourself in a crowded room.There are a thousand conversations all around, and you can hear them all.But you can’tlistento any of them unless you incline your ear, unless you focus on one and allow the others to retreat into the background.”
I deadpanned.“We’re in the middle of a field, surrounded by forests.Not exactly a crowded room.”
“You’re still new.”Desiderius suppressed the urge to smile.“But you’re already experiencing a heightening of all your senses.You smell things more intensely than before.You can see more clearly.You can move more quickly.The longer you are a vampire, the more acute all these things become.The sense I have with Matthias, and you will develop with your progenies, is a very subtle sensation.Even if there aren’t any humans, or vampires, in a hundred miles there’s still something like the murmur of a crowded room—thousands of crickets, the birds flying above, the wind rustling through the trees, and a thousand odors all blending into one.Even for me, and I’ve been a vampire for more than a century, I cannot actively sense Matthias unless I silence everything else and focus on his existence.”
“Matthias wants us to follow,” I said.“You could do that, right?Figure out exactly where he’s gone?New York is a large city.”
Desiderius nodded.“Of course.”
“But should we?”I took a deep breath.“I get the need to investigate, but—“
Desiderius narrowed his eyes.“You’re having second thoughts.”
I clutched St.Teresa’s book tighter.“This suffering we endure—what if it’s meant to be?What if this is our purgation, our trial by fire?”
“Didn’t you hear what I said before?”Desiderius asked.“I told you how hunters had once starved a vampire, hoping your premise was true, believing that if they starved a vampire long enough, they might transcend their hunger.The opposite happened.The Calvinist vampire I was speaking of didn’t become more human as he starved; he became less.He became an animal.”
I pursed my lips.I’d been raised a Calvinist, a Puritan.Since I’d met Father O’Malley I discovered a depth to the faith that my former congregation never wholly understood, never embraced.“St.Teresa writes of the necessary surrender of the will,” I pressed on, needing him to understand.“She says, ‘This is the last thing that is subdued; and therefore, until the will is delivered up to God, the soul cannot be perfectly united with him.’Perhaps our hunger is—“
