Chapter Seven
Carly couldn't tell how much time had passed. Eric Northman hadn't made a sound, there weren't any clocks in the room, and the suite was insulated from the rest of the world by metal shutters that kept out traffic noise as well as they kept out light.
No one ever pushed her to reveal her secrets, perhaps because no one, besides Dr. Crump, was willing to admit something otherworldly about her skills. Everyone assumed that she was odd—she knew that some quietly debated whether she was "on the spectrum" when they thought she was out of earshot. The other students in the anthropology and art programs in New Mexico all assumed that she'd been sent west to keep her out of sight, as if she shamed her mother somehow with her strangeness.
Only one or two of her fellow students knew that her mother rented a lovely house for her, with thick adobe walls that kept out the sounds of the neighborhood, with a guestroom that was always ready for Edna's arrival, or that she'd racked up enough frequent flier miles to circumnavigate the globe three times during Carly's college career. Shame had never been in her mother's heart or mind.
Yet here Carly was, in an isolated room with a thousand year old vampire, at one o'clock in the morning, and she was about to tell him everything.
Carly finally looked up, unsurprised to find Eric still the same triumphant position.
"What do you want to know?"
"Everything."
"Everything has no starting point."
He reached into the pouch of drawings and brought them out. He fanned them across the artifact case, which had gone largely undiscussed since she'd strung the Mjolnir for him.
"Perhaps we can start with these."
Carly hadn't really looked at many of the drawings she'd done while she slept in the trailer, although those that she did examine carefully were nothing like these. The drawings that she kept in the front of her files were portraiture, or life-sketches, interactions between people. If they looked like anything, they looked like the sketches that might be done in a courtroom. They were quick, evocative, and light. She'd avoided looking at the sketches that were blackened, dark around the edges, the sketches she knew were heavy with terror, or that had been done with broken pencils.
These drawings had few faces in them-at least human faces. They seemed to have an order to them like panels in a cartoon. They captured movement, the contortion of a wolf's neck as it roared to one side—probably having just cast a baby away to its death. There were open jaws, the stuff of horror movies, lunging out of the paper at the viewer, and then there was a bloodied head and trunk, hanging off the edges of the paper—a man, appearing from nowhere, suddenly and horrifically dead.
The last sketch was drenched in blood. Some of the drawing was more blood than pencil. She realized that she must have stabbed herself in the neck when she dreamed of Astrid tearing away at the wolf's throat with her mother's knife.
Carly looked across at Eric Northman, who had taken on the posture of a therapist, or a compassionate guidance counselor interested in some violent story an eighth grader had written. Intent to know the story, but detached enough to protect himself, Eric sat unmoving and unrelenting.
She was not going to leave this room without telling him what she saw and how she saw it.
So she started at the beginning.
"When you reconstruct a face, you build from the bone out. Every time your muscles move, they tug a little at the bone, and the bone changes. The tendons attach the muscles to the bone almost the same way that lichen attach to stone. I know that's not scientifically right, but you know how lichen are?"
"Yes."
"It's kind of that way with bone. It's not perfectly smooth. So when you learn to reconstruct a face, you handle the skull, feel the way that the bone changed over time because of the muscles that moved it. Once you know how muscles work, and how much work they've done, you know where the muscles are thick and robust and where they're thin or atrophied."
He was being patient again, listening intently, and Carly was grateful that he let her give him this anatomy lesson.
"Some people do the reconstruction mathematically, figuring out the depth of all the tissues through averages calculated for different regions and ethnic groups. My teachers were more 'touchy-feely.' They thought you needed to feel how the bones had changed. You can tell how fat someone was by the way their bones thicken, and what kind of diet they had by the condition of their teeth. You can tell what diseases they had, or injuries, and so you can figure out the texture of their skin. Do you understand?"
"Yes. I do."
"So, when I was little, I found out that if I handled a bone, I would dream about the person it belonged to. And the more times I handled the bone, the more times I would dream about them."
"Were these dreams lucid?"
"I don't know if that's the right word. Vivid, maybe? I don't see the person, like you would if you were watching television, or a play. It's like my mind is their mind, like my eyes are their eyes."
All the times it happened when she was a kid came back to her. Charlie. Audrey, whose left cuboid bone washed up on the shore when Carly spent the summer in the Hamptons. The poor girl had drowned. Carly didn't know exactly how Audrey's foot bone wound up on the southern side of Long Island until she did a project on "learning to use the New York Times Index" in sixth grade. Carly kept the bone in her box of seashells, since that's what she'd initially thought it was. Once she'd figured out that Audrey had her tenth birthday in the spring of 1989, the year Carly found the bone, she knew that was the year the girl must have died, since the boat trip was her tenth birthday present. After looking for drownings that year, Carly found the article.
"Audrey DaVinci, 10 year old resident of Red Bank, NJ, drowned in an Atlantic Ocean boating accident, along with her mother, Margaret DaVinci, and her aunt, Jessica Marvici, also of Red Bank. The child fell off the front of the boat. Her mother and aunt dove in to recover her, but all were overcome by the current. None of the three were wearing life jackets. Her father, Edward DaVinci, has been arrested for manslaughter resulting from drunken boating and is under observation in the psychiatric unit at Monmouth County General Hospital. The bodies of the three victims were recovered, although sharks had consumed portions of each of them."
"So how can you tell what they look like?"
"I have to keep handling their bone and keep dreaming. The more I dream of them, the more of their life I live. Usually I see some reflection of them. The first time I saw a person he was admiring a shave his lover had given him. He was dying, in the hospital, so he had a hand mirror."
Eric looked down at the artifact case, and then stroked the inscription on his pendant.
"Your parents didn't take that much dreaming. I could see them through each other's eyes."
He looked up at her and held her in a penetrating gaze. "And that's where you saw me?"
"Yes."
"But how did you know about Byzantium?"
She was moving into elements of her ability beyond what she'd shared with Dr. Crump. Carly hadn't admitted that she had access to the deads' thoughts, or memories, or that she could understand what they were saying, no matter the language they were speaking.
Carly closed her eyes, taking comfort in her recollection of Astrid's love for her son. "Your mother thought of it when she was with you."
"You knew her thoughts." Eric didn't question her. He just stated the obvious conclusion he drew from her admission.
"Yes."
"Could you understand what they were talking about when you were dreaming?"
"Yes."
Quiet fell over the two of them again.
"You heard them talking."
"Yes. I did." She could give this to him. "They were talking about you."
The proverbial tables were turned, and he looked like the therapist's client, grappling with some unspeakable pain.
"They wanted you to get married."
He shook his head. "I remember. I told them I couldn't... I don't remember why...but I couldn't marry. Is that why she thought about Byzantium? Did she think I was going back there?"
"No, she thought of all the women you'd probably slept with while you were there before."
He laughed. "I'm a little embarrassed."
"She knew you weren't a little boy any more." Carly wondered if Eric would remember the buxom red-head who seemed to have his attention all those years ago. "What else can I tell you?"
"You've told me a great deal. And I'm starting to remember the events." Eric looked at his feet. "My desire for one of the serving women took me away from them." He looked to Carly for confirmation. "Yes? Isn't that what happened."
She could only presume he felt some guilt. "To be honest, I don't know. You told them that you had 'business to attend to.' And then you were gone." Talking about the experience made her realize that she wasn't entirely sure how time worked within the dream-scape.
Eric stood up and walked back into his room. Within moments he was back again.
"I'm sorry. I need another cup of blood. I hope you don't mind?"
"No, that's fine. I don't know if I can even imagine what this must be like for you." One advantage of the work that Carly did was that she never dealt with survivors. If she worked on a recent case, with someone unidentified, a coroner or a medical examiner walked the family through the process of identification. She always remained anonymous, a crafts-person behind the scenes. She rarely even received explicit credit on museum displays. Without any familiarity with the ancient Swedish conventions of grieving, she fumbled through it as best as she could.
"Tell me what you need, and I'll try to do it."
Eric smiled for a moment, and then turned his head away. "The direct approach failed, as I recall."
Carly leaned back, compassion condensing into anger. "To ease your grief, Eric."
"I'm sure sleeping with you would ease my grief." His tone was light, flirtatious, not demanding.
She looked at him and thought about it. She had no idea what sex did for anyone; she'd never done it. Not only had she not had sex with anyone, she'd never even masturbated to any satisfying end. She had some kind of release from it, but it was nothing like the spine-twisting, soul-clearing ecstasy the few romance novels she'd read suggested orgasm would be. Once or twice, during the very brief time she'd spent in boarding school, she'd stayed very still while her roommate went at it with the vibrator she'd smuggled into the dormitory. Carly knew it was gross and voyeuristic, dipping into her roommate's mind, but she genuinely wanted to know what other people felt, and it felt good, like she was being tickled by a hundred feathers between her ribs and her knees, but it wasn't different from what Carly experienced on those rare occasions she'd done it herself. Whenever Carly strayed across someone's fantasy, she flinched away from it instinctively. Sex with someone who knew how to do it might ease his grief, but then Eric Northman wouldn't be sleeping with Carly Michael.
"I doubt it, Eric."
"And if I tried to convince you, I'm sure you'd call out the hounds again, wouldn't you?"
He'd reminded her of the "convincing" he'd tried earlier. "I've told you something about what I do, so you owe me an explanation. What on earth was it you tried to do to me earlier?"
Eric didn't move, or smirk, so she realized she needed to take a more direct approach.
"Is that the kind of language you use when you want to seduce someone? I can't believe even you are so pretty that all you have to do is tell a woman to go pee and wash up and she'll have sex with you?"
"No. It's not. That wasn't seduction. I'm sorry."
"Then what was it. It felt strange."
"I've never thought about it from the human perspective. What was it like?" Eric seemed genuinely interested again. He looked almost ready to take notes.
"Like a wave hit me. I'm sure you swim."
"Of course." He made a tiny motion with his hands, almost sweeping away the silly suggestion that he didn't.
"You know when a wave hits you and knocks you over and the water rolls over your head."
"Yes, I learned how to swim in the sea."
"That's how it felt." She struggled for words to describe it. "I could breathe, and I wasn't panicked, but the world was muffled. Like my head was under water, and I was pressed against a cliff and held there."
"That's very interesting." He looked at her with admiration. "You describe emotions and sensations very clearly."
"Thank you." She paused. "What did you do to me to make me feel that way?"
"I made my will your own, or tried to." He grinned. "It's called a glamour, although it isn't a spell."
"I don't understand."
He smiled again. "I haven't had a chance to explain this in about a hundred years, You already know the secret of my age, so what's one more secret between friends? You have to understand the only reason I'm telling you is that it doesn't seem to work on you."
"What? Underwater, against a cliff means it didn't work?" Carly was frightened again. Eric could lift a hundred pounds without blinking, could move so fast she could barely see him. What the hell can vampires do?
"If it had worked, we'd be basking in the afterglow of our first love-making, and I would be teaching you how to please me while I licked away at your wounds." He smiled widely again, and Carly felt herself blush red.
It was too much for her. "I need another drink. Excuse me."
Eric started laughing gently, "Carly, please don't make any phone-calls. I'm just offering you the simplest explanation."
When she got to the door of her room, she turned, pivoting around 180 degrees to face him, only she couldn't meet his eyes. "I'm not. I'm just not used to talking about things like this. Dr. Crump told you I was awkward."
Despite her frustration with her situation, Carly was excited that she was actually talking about sex with a man. And whenever her eyes took in the sight of him, she realized that she was talking about sex with the most extraordinary looking man that she'd ever seen in the flesh. Men like Eric Northman appeared in museums, carved in marble, or on magazine covers. Carly had met some gorgeous, and generally pompous men when she lived with her mom. The only exception to the pompous rule that she'd ever met was JFK, Jr., whom she met at a New York fundraiser when she was sixteen. She still kept his funeral card in her jewelry box.
When she opened the refrigerator to get her drink she called into the living room, "Don't you have a bottle of blood you need to get?"
"Thank you for reminding me."
Carly returned moments later to the living room with another can of club soda to find that Eric was already there, sipping away at his commuter cup full of blood. Carly sat and slurped down her club soda as quickly as possible, hoping to extinguish the fire in her chest. Even though his astonishing speed raised more questions for her, she said "Tell me more about the glamour."
"Certainly. First the name." Eric took a sip of blood and put down the cup, so he could use both hands as he talked. "It's a misunderstanding. The word 'grammar' meant a spell or an incantation, and the few who survived seeing vampires bend others to their will presumed they'd done it with a spell."
"I took linguistics—so it's just r/l dissimilation." Carly was happy to be back on familiar territory.
"I didn't take that course." Eric smiled. "But I'm glad the phenomenon has a name. I've learned many languages, so I've seen 'r's and 'l's do peculiar things."
"How many do you know?" Carly's amazement at having a "native informant" awoke again.
"I don't think I could put a number on how many I've known. I only still use ten or twelve regularly. And it's hard for me to tell the difference between different periods of languages. Chaucer seems only little different from Melville." He wrinkled his nose at her, a little like the way an old professor of hers would, "Does that make sense?"
For the first time that evening, Carly smiled broadly and sincerely. "Yes, it does."
They looked at each other for a few seconds, relaxed and content. Eric took another drink.
"But vampires don't use a spell. There are no magic words. We simply say a person's name and stare at her. The Latin name I learned for it was a deceptio visus." He looked seriously at her again, "Carly, are you paying attention."
And the wave hit her again and held her at the cliff, then released her.
Eric never blinked or shifted his gaze. "Carly, you will sleep with me and realize what a beautiful, desirable woman you are."
This time she laughed vigorously, "No, Eric Northman, I will not."
"Not tonight." He smiled at her and then slipped back into his professorial tone. "We now know that you feel a vampire's attempt to glamour you, but that the action has no effect. I've never heard of anyone with that ability." He stood up and paced back and forth in front of the suite's door.
"Is anything wrong?" His sudden watchfulness upset her.
"No, but I've lost focus." He kept pacing. "I'm distracted." He winked at her.
The flush happened again and she thought she might need to pace around herself. She wasn't regretting the choices she'd made earlier, and she didn't intend to change her mind, but she knew that he might press the issue if she didn't help him regain his bearings. "Did you want to discuss the other artifacts?"
He jumped over the cushions and sat down across from her again. "Yes. That might help me."
Eric moved the drawings away and rotated the case slightly so that Carly could have a better view.
"They're not arranged in any specific order, although their numbers correspond to notes." She pointed to the thick packet of field notes. Carly picked out the reproduction of the shield boss.
"This was the first bit of gold we found. That was a big moment" She handed it to Eric. "It's from a shield, right."
"That's what it looks like." He weighed the reproduction in his hand. "I don't recognize it. Where did you find it?"
"Um..." This is so hard. "It was about four centimeters above the center of your father's torso."
Eric looked at her, and his fingers folded over the boss. "Yes. My father's shield." Eric put the piece back in its foam casing. He plucked out a spear tip. "Nothing special. We had a hundred at any point." He snorted at his unintended pun and smiled at Carly. His fingertips stroked across a sequence of coins, stopping over a Byzantine coin. "It represents Constantine VII."
"Yes, it's a rare coin."
Eric Northman sank into the chair, as if his weight had suddenly tripled, and stared at the coin that perched at the tips of his right hand's first two fingers. He looked away, a thousand miles, or a thousand years away. Without looking at his hands, he started walking the coin back and forth between his fingers.
Carly finished her the last sip of her club soda and sat patiently. She decided that she couldn't sleep with him to ease his grief, but she could bear witness to it. She would sit until he spoke again.
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