The Lightning Vampyre
Me: Sorry, long time no post, but here's the next chapter. Quite different to the last one, where we see Eliás lose his cool. What I'm trying to draw on here and definitely in later chapters is the contrast between what people portray and what they actually think and feel. Eliás portrays himself very differently to what's going on inside, and that last chapter and this one are two of the few occasions that what he acts like and what he feels correlate.
Thank you for the reviews guys, they mean a lot to me! Enjoy!
"I wonder if she's alright?"
It was six in the evening now. Rain was beating down on the castle hard, huge great raindrops hitting the windows so hard it was surprising they didn't shatter. It wasn't doing anything for the ringing in Eliás' ears, having got used to the roar of the car's engine as he took it in turns with Friedrich to drive the long journey back to Prague. Finally he was allowed to rest, his body collapsing onto the soft furniture of the teacher's lounge in exhaustion, but his mind unable to so much as drop its guard. He lay there motionless as Friedrich made them coffee.
The Horse Master sat down in the chair next to him and passed him a mug silently. Eliás raised his coffee to his lips, feeling disappointed when it didn't quite bring the relief he expected it to.
"She will be. The other two as well." Said Friedrich reassuringly, before putting his hand on the younger vampyre's shoulder. "My boy..." he said, "You need to trust them."
"I don't trust other people, not to do my job, not without knowing them or their credibility."
"I'm sorry Eliás." He said, his voice soothing the tension from the young man, just like a father's would.
Eliás snorted. "Friedrich!"
"And I wasn't meddling in your head, before you say it." he said, "I actually saw you through the shop window."
"I was going to ask you if it was that obvious."
"Even if I hadn't. I've walked this earth for the past four-hundred years Eliás, you can't fool me. Besides, I've never seen you so angry. You must be a natural redhead after all."
"You're a wise vampyre Friedrich."
"She was fond of you too." Friedrich added, tilting his head slightly so that he could see the shine appear in Eliás' grey eyes. When he didn't answer, Friedrich continued, "She didn't want to leave you either." He smirked playfully, "Why do you think I asked Mattias and Uwe to go and find a jack to change the wheel when the tyre wasn't even flat?"
"You sly fox, I wondered why they got out of the car as well."
Friedrich laughed. "I'm surprised you didn't clock it sooner. Don't worry, you have her name, you can look her up."
Eliás shook his head matter-of-factly. "Those drugs will completely wipe her memory of me Friedrich. Neither one of us speaks the other's language, we barely knew each other, in fact we didn't know each other at all! We live miles apart and neither of us are stupid enough to give up our lives for an almost-fling with a stranger. It's better." he stopped dead before he said 'if I don't do something stupid', stopping dead again before he thought 'fall in love with her', like even the very thought wave would condemn him somehow.
"My boy... I think you already have." Friedrich thought to himself as he watched Eliás' lithe body sigh and finally lie still. He could still remember him arriving in the Third Form, a gangly teenager who loved nothing more than to be discovering something new. Even from that point all those years ago, it had been obvious to anyone who spoke to him that they were talking to someone far cleverer than themselves. Friedrich had always found it amusing that Eliás was always so immersed in study or preoccupied with his own thoughts that he never noticed his own ability to turn female heads. That gangly teenager had fast become something to rival Anděl's good looks and physique and far exceeded him in wit. He had become a fine vampyre.
Both men heard light footsteps coming down the corridor outside, turning their heads up as the door opened. It was Adéla.
"Evening." She said. "I trust it was an eventful journey to the border."
"That's one way of putting it." said Friedrich, rolling his eyes and crossing his right ankle over his left knee.
Adéla took brisk steps to the sofa, her almost floor length hair flowing behind her, a massive grin on her face. "Wakey wakey sleepy head!" she said loudly, shaking Eliás on the shoulder.
"Need sleep..." Eliás murmured.
"Eliás, you're a vampyre!!!" she said, ridiculing him.
"And why are you up so early anyway?"
Adéla's eyes were alight with the cheek. "Wicked child, just because I'm old doesn't mean I can't be sprightly!!!"
"I meant..." Eliás began, before his eyelids drooped, "Never mind..."
"And you were always such a good student." She said with a playful sarcasm.
"Well we can't all be students forever."
She heard from his voice that he hadn't taken it in the way she intended and laughed. "Dr. Svboda I hadn't considered you a student in years. Now budge." She said, slapping him on the legs. He moved into an upright position, and she sat in the space his legs had occupied.
"And I'll have to leave you here." Said Friedrich, looking into his coffee cup with reluctance, just to check that it was actually empty and that now he had work to do. "Horse-feeding time."
"Thank you for driving again, Friedrich, it was very kind of you to offer." Said Adéla.
Friedrich gave a small bow. "Twas my pleasure." He said, before turning and heading in the direction of the stables.
Adéla suddenly pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and held it over her mouth, coughing into it. Eliás put his hand on her back. "Are you alright?" he asked.
She sniffed, before removing the handkerchief ad replacing it in her pocket. "Yes I'm fine my dear..." she said, "Just had a bit of a frog in my throat, really I'm as fit as a flea."
Eliás hoped so, maybe it was because of his preoccupation, but he hadn't noticed her coughing so much these days. Maybe it was because he didn't see her as much as usual at all there days.
"I was hoping I would catch you before you scurry off back to the Infirmary." She said once Friedrich had gone, "I have some issues to discuss."
"And scurrying off back to bed is out of the question? Besides, the last time someone said that to me it was to tell me that I had become even more of a freak than I was before."
"Well you are about to become even more of a freak so pay attention." Adéla crossed her legs, "In the last thirty years it has rather come to our attention that we really do need to know more about the science behind us, we need to have more medicines, we need to educate ourselves, we are falling behind the humans on this front, and it's a failing."
"I couldn't agree more." Said Eliás.
"I brought this up at the Vampyre Senate of the Allied Countries a few months ago, and High Priestess Marie of France suggested that we teach Vampyre Biology in our Houses of Night, but we agreed to wait until the war was over and we could spare our specialists."
"What specialists?"
"I thought so." She said, rolling her eyes, "We intend to begin a Vampyre Biology course here in the next academic year. Of course, we'll be needing another professor. I thought I would see if you were interested in the post."
Eliás blinked. "You want me to be a professor?"
"That is the general idea."
"I'm not qualified." He said, "I've no teaching experience. My qualifications aren't even in biology."
"But your research is." She said, "You think like a human. I don't want you to plan and write up every lesson, you can design the course if you like, it has to include things like the science of the Change, bloodlust, blood thirst, differences between human and vampyre anatomy, things that explain to the fledglings exactly why they are different, and then maybe the effects of various drugs, basic first aid might not be a bad idea."
"And of course, since this is an educational establishment, there may be research bursaries."
Eliás sighed. His mind flitted back to the telegram from the day the German vampyres were admitted. As they spoke, communist powers were now seizing control in Czechoslovakia, including the University of Prague that he was so fond of. He couldn't work there anymore. But could he teach? Eliás was, at best, an impatient man, he had never felt any particular calling to work with fledglings, indeed as a fledgling himself he had found fledglings tiresome, if he took the job and hated it he wouldn't be able to get out of it. He had always avoided teaching jobs, always anticipating loathing every minute. But then, he could teach people to save lives. He could even tell them how to stop an early rejected Change. And he could tell them why. What about the fledglings that were just like him? That wanted to learn how to do that too? And if he could carry on research too...
He smiled, his charm resurfacing. "So how much did you say you were going to pay me?"
Apparently, thank the Goddess, scurrying off back to bed had not been out of the question. Eliás didn't care that it was now actually time to get up. Quite frankly, he didn't think that he had ever been so tired in his life. It was only one day without sleep, he had gone far more without it during his doctorate studies, indeed there had been nothing quite like an all-nighter in a Chemistry lab, but this little night spent in a car, requiring no intellectual effort at all, had drained him beyond comparison.
If only vampyres could enjoy the benefits of a drink...
Eliás couldn't sleep. His mind buzzed, wondering in and out of today's events, the voices and sounds from one muffling into another, but it always came back to the same one. If she survived that then she really would be lucky. A bullet lodged in the spinal cord – hardly a good prognosis. Hadn't everyone had enough over these wars? The allies were now currently making plans to tie Germany's economy into that of the rest of Europe, so that for them to start another war without ruining themselves would be impossible. Something to do with coal and steel, he hadn't really been listening to what the car radio had been crackling on about on the way back to Prague. He wondered where she was now...
"You have to trust them, you know. What else can you do at the end of the day?"
Eliás blinked. It couldn't be...
"Antonie, is that you?" he whispered.
"It is."
He would know that voice anywhere, even after all this time. She sounded calm, wise. Her voice prodded at him and revealed a long-buried annoyance. "Why didn't you respond to me? I needed to talk to you, I tried to contact you so many times and you ignored me."
"I didn't want to ignore you Eliás! You're too damn funny to ignore. Why do you think I couldn't reply?"
She genuinely sounded pained. Her voice was quieter than it had been when he heard her the first time, before it had been prominent in his mind. How stupid could he be? How dare he act like he was the only person on the Earth that had lost someone? There were many more that had lost their entire families, their lives! None of them could talk to their lost loved ones. And he after two and a half years was still mourning a friend who, in comparison with some unfortunate souls, had had a reasonably pain-free death!
"Antonie..." he said quietly, so that he would not be overheard, "I am so sorry... It's my fault you're still stuck to me..."
"It's alright..." she said, "I'd rather be stuck to you than anyone."
"Then why now???"
It was like she was sighing. "This is the last time you'll hear me." She said.
"What?"
It felt like she was smiling. "You've moved on Eliás. You've discovered your purpose, why you need to live. Lenobia has taught you that." She said, feeling him jerk, "You're ready to let me go."
"What does this have to do with Lenobia?"
"She has reminded you how to fight. Amongst other things."
"What do you mean?"
She sighed. "You love her."
"I don't love her, I barely know her."
"That's why you kissed her and held her like she would shatter beneath your grasp, isn't it?"
He couldn't answer her.
"Friedrich thinks it too; I'm just the one who's saying it."
"Well good for you."
"Don't be a redhead."
"Forget it."
"Your personal feelings aside, you've found someone who is just as unusual in this world as you are, she has taught you a lot about determination. You need to look for the light at the end of the tunnel Eliás, not the darkness around it because trust me, you will get lost. It's taken a while for that to register in that huge brain of yours, but finally it has. You're ready to let me go."
"You realise I'll never truly let you go? You're still missing here."
"I know. But I am at peace now. It's okay you know, letting me go. It's not betraying me or my memory."
"Antonie..." he began, "I've been thinking..."
"Well that's never a good sign."
He ignored her. "I think I know why I've been clinging onto you for these past two years." He said.
"Well hallelujah."
"You represent a time of my life when things were simple. A time of my life that I miss. If I let you go..." he muttered, "That time is already gone forever. I don't want it to fade in my memory too."
"Eliás, letting go doesn't equate to forgetting."
"But it does for me. I haven't even been able to think about my father for years. In my head I see everything so vividly, every little thing, every happiness every sadness." He sighed, "It's the downside to my brain Antonie. I thought that studying, going as far as I could, would make a good life for me in this 'perfect' society." His hands slapped lifelessly into his lap, "And I was wrong. I just don't want to lose sight of what was good."
"Ah my friend, you have the power to ease other people's pain but not your own."
"Only physical pain remember."
"I'm not so sure..."
"I can recall almost everything you said to me over those four years in school. I could probably write it down for you. You're not just in my head you're in my heart."
"Well then I want you to remember me. Every happiness, every sadness, every success and every failure. Through you I can be remembered for what I truly was, not for an exaggerated image concocted through what I happened to do right. I feel honoured that someone can remember me that way." when Eliás was silent in return, his thoughts a jumbled mess, she carried on, "It has to be this way." She said, "And just because there's no telepathic connection anymore, doesn't mean I'm not there. It doesn't mean that you won't talk to me, and it doesn't mean that I won't listen."
"Deep." He commented.
"I wanted our last conversation to be a good one."
"I just have one question." He said, "It's been plaguing me for a while. You're a telepath, you must have known that they were going to kill you."
"Ah well, I could have screamed 'we're all going to die', and then I thought better." She replied, "Why do you think I even walked in there in the first place?"
"For the children."
"Yes. You already know that if we had tried to escape we would have failed. They would have dragged every last one of us back, and then everyone men women and children would know they were being dragged to their deaths. Would that have been better?"
Eliás wanted to kick himself for having been so stupid. "Of course." He said, "I'm sorry. I'm not thinking straight."
"You're talking to a dead woman."
He paused for a moment, gazing softly up into the ceiling. "I know." He said.
He could swear he could see her biting her lip. "Are you ready?"
He bit his own and let out an in-held breath. "Yes."
"Then..." she said, her voice calm and clear, "Until we meet again, my friend."
Eliás felt his heart shudder as her words echoed through him. It was no use now. She was already gone. Not even an inkling of her in his mind, except what she had left behind. To live on. Beneath his breath as he fell into a deep sleep, his lips uttered her last words.
"Until we meet again."
R&R!
