Vampire High Sophomore Year

12



Turk and I drove out to our homestead in the empty wastes of Crossfield.

The mill looked different now that we almost sort of owned it. Those three floors of red brick looked exciting, like anything might happen there. And I was noticing details. The tall windows—those that were still there—had twenty-four panes of glass in them and were higher than a man, even a jenti. The main entrance had an arch with a flagpole hanging over it. And wrapped around the pole, all along its length, were two big brass rattlesnakes.

Turk noticed them, too.

“My kind of place,” she said.

“Where are we going to put our cabin?” I asked.

“Wigwam,” Turk said. “We’re making a wigwam. It’ll be my first art installation.”

“So, our work but your art?” I said.

“Exactly,” Turk smiled. “You can be my assistant. All the great artists have them.”

I think it was the first time I’d ever seen her smile.

I was not smiling.

“Guess what, Turk?” I said. “You still don’t have an assistant. You have a partner.”

“Come on, Cuz,” Turk said. “Get real. You can’t do this. You don’t even know what an arts center is supposed to look like. Without me, this is never going to happen.”

“How many arts centers have you founded?” I asked.

“Almost one.” Turk grinned. “But this stuff is my life. I know things. You don’t.”

I almost walked off. Turk’s ego had found something bigger than Turk, just like Ileana had said, and it was my idea. Swell.

“Well, come on. Let’s check out the inside,” Turk said.

“I’m thinking,” I said, turning away from her and back toward the river.

If I walked away, would that be the right thing? Wrong thing, I decided. In fact, I’d be damned if I’d quit. I’d had about all of Turk’s ego I could take. This was my idea, and she couldn’t have it. I’d hang in, fight her when I had to, and make this thing happen. I’d do it for Mercy, and for everybody in New Sodom like her.

The Act for the Tenure of Empty Wastes seemed like a clue that I was on the right track. I’d just have to deal with Turk, and make sure things went the way I wanted them to while she got her studio. I wouldn’t get tied up in a tree house this time.

“Okay, partner. Let’s take a look,” I said.

We went in.

The floor was dark and dirty, and had holes where the big machines had been taken out. There were long lines of pillars running from wall to wall. And the smell of damp old dust was everywhere.

“Home sweet home,” Turk said.

“It’s going to take us a year just to get the floors swept,” I said.

“Then it’ll take a year,” Turk said. “Only I’ll bet it won’t. I’ll bet once we get the lights on and the windows replaced, people will be showing up to help. This is just waiting to happen. You can feel it.”

I didn’t feel anything except the dank cold, and maybe a kind of loneliness seeping out of the walls. Like the building missed the old days and wanted to be filled with people again. Or maybe I was just getting hungry.

Turk kept a flashlight in her car. Using it, we wandered through all the floors and found the bathrooms, some of which had very artistic vines growing in them. We found the old cafeteria, which had a good-sized kitchen attached to it. There was an old walk-in freezer and a couple of old-fashioned iron ranges. We went into the dispensary, which still had its red cross on the door, though nothing was left on the other side of it. Down in the basement, we found the old furnace, the generator, and a pair of big old turbines.

“I knew this place would have its own electricity,” Turk said. “Turbines. When we get those working again, we can do anything.”

More and more, I was getting the feeling that the Simmons Mill had been a world all its own. And that it could be again.

I wanted to do everything at once. Sweep, fix the windows, get the lights back on and the furnace working, then go to Ileana and say, “It’s yours.”

I must have been imagining it really hard, because just then a voice started singing in jenti. It was a powerful, dark voice, and it came from somewhere above us.

“Damn,” Turk said. “What is that noise?”

“Jenti music,” I said.

“Come on,” Turk said. “Let’s find out who’s in our place.”

We climbed up the metal stairs that led to the second floor, then to the third. The sounds of the music got louder and louder. I was almost sure I knew who was making them. But what would he be doing here?

At one end of the third floor was a big wooden door. It probably led to offices. On it, handwritten on a long sheet of paper, was this:

I fly.

High above this small, smug place which I hate. Where the streetlights shine down on the bland roofs of Cape Cod cottages and ranch houses, I fly at night.

I fly.

I fly under the sun, daring it to roast me, casting my shadow on the streets. I swoop low over the trees, over the small yards that contain the small lives.

They pretend not to see me, the gadje. But I span twenty meters. My shadow falls on them and they tremble.

Sometimes I shriek my war cry.

We are not supposed to do any of this here in New Sodom. There are civic codes against flying without a license. They look like they were written for airplanes. But they were written for us.

We are supposed to behave ourselves here, we of the jenti. It is an old tradition that we do not upset the gadje.

I no longer care.

Gadje, jenti, they are all alike to me.

And I cannot love this place. I will not love it.

I fly because it is the one thing left to me.

When I can find one, I fly into a thunderhead. The winds in the tall tower of cloud tear at me, send me climbing high on a blast of air fast as the coming of a new hate. I struggle just to keep flying. To keep from being torn apart. The air rushes me up, up, until ice forms on my wings. Until the air becomes too thin to breathe, and a black shroud drops over my mind.

Then I plummet. Thrown by the wind, blinded by the clouds and my own oxygen-starved brain, I fall through the maelstrom, through the lightning. The thunder shakes my bones.

Then at last I fall out of the storm. I may be anywhere by then. The storm moves, and takes me where it wills. No, not where it wills. It wills nothing for me. It does not even know I am there.

In rain or hail, in wind and shadows, I try to figure out where I am. Then I fly in the direction I came from.

No matter how tired and beaten I am, I never stop until I return to New Sodom. That is my game. I will not allow myself to rest.

If the day comes when I fall exhausted from the sky and lie on some patch of stranger ground, gasping out my last breath, slowly changing back into my human form, let it be. If I never find that last flight, let that be. I do not seek the storm because I want to die.

I seek the storm because it is my only home.

“Oooh. A tortured soul,” Turk said.

I tried the door. It swung open without a sound.

The singing stopped.

There were a couple of old couches, a ratty carpet, a few chairs, a low table, and a few other things. On one wall was a huge poster that showed an old castle and said LANGUEDOC. Another showed a deep river valley and said RHEINFELLS.

“None of this is left over from the 1930s,” I said. “It’s too new.”

“Some homeless guy’s place, I’ll bet,” Turk said.

“That’s a very good description,” a voice behind us said.

We turned and saw Gregor glaring at us. He had come in from the next room. Behind him, I could see a music stand.

He looked embarrassed. Anyway, his pale skin was dark. On the other hand, his fangs were out. Maybe he was just blushing.

“What are you doing here?” he said.

“Taking over,” said Turk.

“This is my place,” Gregor said. “You are taking nothing over here.”

“Wrong,” Turk said. “We’re the new homesteaders.”

“Whatever that means, it means nothing,” Gregor said. “These rooms are mine.”

“The hell they are,” Turk said. “We own this.”

“You lie,” Gregor said. “No one owns this.”

“They do now,” Turk said.

Gregor and Turk were glaring at each other like they were ready to start punching.

“Hold on,” I said. “Look, Gregor. Turk and I did some research on this place. It turns out that nobody owns it. And according to an old New Sodom law, anybody who does certain things can claim it. That’s what Turk’s talking about.”

“There are others of these old buildings,” Gregor said. “Take one of them and leave me in peace.”

“Sorry, Gregor, it’s ours,” I said.

“Just a couple of old Yankee homesteaders,” Turk added.

The way Turk and Gregor were looking at each other was scary. Hatred was too weak a word for it.

Gregor walked over to a window and forced it open. The wood screeched in the frame, and a breath of fresh air blew into the room. “Out there is everything,” he said. “I give it to you. Why do you want this pile of dirty bricks anyway? What good is it to anyone but me?”

“I’m going to turn it into an arts center,” Turk said. “And a studio for me. Deal with it.”

“That is such a stupid idea in so many ways that I cannot begin to scorn it,” Gregor said.

“Try,” Turk said. “I’m fascinated by stupid arguments.”

“In the first place, this building would need millions of dollars to renovate,” Gregor said. “Do you have millions of dollars? In the second, it is not intended for such a purpose and will never work well. In the third, no one in New Sodom wants such a thing. Hardly anyone. No one but you, really. So who would fill this art center, and with what? Those are the first of my stupid arguments. Now let me hear your brilliant explanation of why I am wrong.”

“The money’s a problem,” Turk said. “But the big cost is the purchase price. And there isn’t one. All we have to do is get to work. And we don’t have to do it all at once. Once we get lights and heat on in here, and get the place cleaned out, we’ll be ready for some shows. And when people see what we’ve got, and what’s going on, they’ll go home thinking about what they can do here.”

“Yes. I can understand why you would entertain this fantasy,” Gregor said. “You think you are an artist and intellectual. But you, Cody Elliot, I do not understand. You are no more interested in the arts than a duck is in baseball. So why are you doing this?”

I didn’t see any reason to mention Mercy Warrener. Even to Gregor, doing something for a woman who died in 1820 would probably seem a little weird. So I said, “Ileana.”

“Ah. Of course,” Gregor said. “What does she think of your idea?”

“She says it’ll never work,” I said. “She says the jenti won’t want anything to do with it. Because of what happened here.”

“And still you go ahead,” Gregor said. “Why?”

“Because I think she’ll love it when it’s real,” I said.

“You think it would be Illyria for her,” Gregor said.

“You know about Illyria?” I said.

“I have known Ileana Antonescu much longer than you, gadje,” Gregor said. “She has told me about Illyria.”

He shook his head. “Gadje, you are in so much deeper than you know. If the princess does not want you to do this, it is not only because of what is buried here in Crossfield. I think she is also trying to protect you.”

“From what?” Turk said.

“This is an old town by American standards,” Gregor said. “It has secrets within its secrets. And you are a fool if you think those who keep them wish them to be revealed.”

“Ooh, I’m getting chills,” Turk said. “But you’re going to have to come up with a better story than that to scare me off.”

But I knew Gregor could be telling the truth. This place was all about old secrets and hidden connections. Sometimes, I thought New Sodom should have been built underground.

“If that is what you think, I will enjoy watching you find out how wrong you are,” Gregor said. “It will be amusing to watch you fail.”

He opened the door and tore down the poem that had hung there. He rolled it up and stuffed it in his jacket.

“I want only my posters and my music,” he said. “The rest of these things you can deal with. Brilliantly, I am sure.”

“Gregor, you don’t have to leave,” I said all of a sudden.

“Yes, he does,” Turk said.

“No, he doesn’t,” I said. “This is supposed to be an arts center for everybody. Well, he’s somebody and he’s doing art. There’s room for him.”

Gregor looked at me like I’d sprouted a pair of leathery wings.

“Why?” He said it like I’d said something really stupid.

“Because it’s the right thing to do,” I said.

“No,” Turk said.

“Yes,” I said. “He was here first. Deal with it.”

“He doesn’t even want to stay,” Turk said.

But Gregor ignored her.

“If I help you, I must keep this room,” he said.

“That’s the point,” I said.

“Two minutes ago, you said my idea was stupid,” Turk said.

“It is stupid,” Gregor agreed. “But I know Cody Elliot. His stupid ideas have been known to work. I must reluctantly deal with that possibility. And what do I stand to lose? If, even with my help, you fail, I keep my place here. If, because of my help, you succeed, I still keep it.”

“And all of a sudden the Crossfield thing doesn’t bother you?” Turk said.

“Of course it bothers me,” Gregor said. “He bothers me. You bother me worst of all. But losing this place bothers me more. So you have your first supporter.”

Turk looked furious with Gregor and with me. Finally, she said, “Just as long as you remember who’s in charge.”

“As if you would let anyone forget,” Gregor said.

“Damn right,” Turk said.

“It’s not about who’s in charge,” I said.

Gregor didn’t answer. Or maybe he did.

He went and stood backward on the sill of the open window, and threw out his arms. Behind them, his big, dark wings spread out and blocked out the sun. The rest of his body tightened up, ready for flying. His chest stretched against his shirt and his dark eyes glittered. He spread his lips and showed his fangs.

“Shall we begin Saturday?” he said in the same deep voice he sang in.

Turk didn’t answer. She crossed her arms and tried to look cool, but she was staring at those big, powerful wings on the other side of the glass. I think she was fascinated.

“Nine o’clock,” I said.

“Do not be late, gadje,” Gregor replied, and threw himself off the sill.

He hung there, framed by the window, then flapped once and was carried up out of sight.

Turk couldn’t help it. She went to the window and stared up, following Gregor’s path.

There was a tall cloud that looked like it might flatten out into a thunderhead off to the north. I saw a flash of Gregor as he headed toward it.

“Damn,” Turk said. “I wish I could do that.”