16. Hudson
She led me back to the room that she'd pointed out as Hudson's office. She paused outside the door for an instant.
"Come in," Hudson's voice invited.
Marceline opened the door to a high-ceilinged room with tall, west-facing windows. The walls were paneled again, in a darker wood — where they were visible. Most of the wall space was taken up by towering bookshelves that reached high above my head and held more books than I'd ever seen outside a library.
Hudson sat behind a huge mahogany desk in a leather chair. He was just placing a bookmark in the pages of the thick volume he held. The room was how I'd always imagined a college dean's would look — only Hudson looked too young to fit the part.
"What can I do for you?" he asked us pleasantly, rising from his seat.
"I wanted to show Bonnie some of our history," Marceline said. "Well, your history, actually."
"We didn't mean to disturb you," I apologized.
"Not at all. Where are you going to start?"
"The Waggoner," Marceline replied, placing one hand lightly on my shoulder and spinning me around to look back toward the door we'd just come through. Every time she touched me, in even the most casual way, my heart had an audible reaction. It was more embarrassing with Hudson there.
The wall we faced now was different from the others. Instead of bookshelves, this wall was crowded with framed pictures of all sizes, some in vibrant colors, others dull monochromes. I searched for some logic, some binding motif the collection had in common, but I found nothing in my hasty examination.
Marceline pulled me toward the far left side, standing me in front of a small square oil painting in a plain wooden frame. This one did not stand out among the bigger and brighter pieces; painted in varying tones of sepia, it depicted a miniature city full of steeply slanted roofs, with thin spires atop a few scattered towers. A wide river filled the foreground, crossed by a bridge covered with structures that looked like tiny cathedrals.
"London in the sixteen-fifties," Marceline said.
"The London of my youth," Hudson added, from a few feet behind us. I flinched; I hadn't heard him approach. Marceline squeezed my hand.
"Will you tell the story?" Marceline asked. I twisted a little to see Hudson's reaction.
He met my glance and smiled. "I would," he replied. "But I'm actually running a bit late. The hospital called this morning — Dr. Snow is taking a sick day. Besides, you know the stories as well as I do," he added, grinning at Marceline now.
It was a strange combination to absorb — the everyday concerns of the town doctor stuck in the middle of a discussion of his early days in seventeenth-century London.
It was also unsettling to know that he spoke aloud only for my benefit.
After another warm smile for me, Hudson left the room.
I stared at the little picture of Hudson's hometown for a long moment.
"What happened then?" I finally asked, staring up at Marceline, who was watching me. "When he realized what had happened to him?"
She glanced back to the paintings, and I looked to see which image caught her interest now. It was a larger landscape in dull fall colors — an empty, shadowed meadow in a forest, with a craggy peak in the distance.
"When he knew what he had become," Marceline said quietly, "he rebelled against it. He tried to destroy himself. But that's not easily done."
"How?" I didn't mean to say it aloud, but the word broke through my shock.
"He jumped from great heights," Marceline told me, her voice impassive. "He tried to drown himself in the ocean… but he was young to the new life, and very strong. It is amazing that he was able to resist… feeding… while he was still so new. The instinct is more powerful then, it takes over everything. But he was so repelled by himself that he had the strength to try to kill himself with starvation."
"Is that possible?" My voice was faint.
"No, there are very few ways we can be killed."
I opened my mouth to ask, but she spoke before I could.
"So he grew very hungry, and eventually weak. He strayed as far as he could from the human populace, recognizing that his willpower was weakening, too. For months he wandered by night, seeking the loneliest places, loathing himself. "One night, a herd of deer passed his hiding place. He was so wild with thirst that he attacked without a thought. His strength returned and he realized there was an alternative to being the vile monster he feared. Had he not eaten venison in his former life? Over the next months his new Philosophy was born. He could exist without being a demon. He found himself again.
"He began to make better use of his time. He'd always been intelligent, eager to learn. Now he had unlimited time before him. He studied by night, planned by day. He swam to France and —"
"He swam to France?"
"People swim the Channel all the time, Bonnie," she reminded me patiently.
"That's true, I guess. It just sounded funny in that context. Go on."
"Swimming is easy for us —"
"Everything is easy for you," I griped.
She waited, her expression amused.
"I won't interrupt again, I promise."
She chuckled darkly, and finished her sentence. "Because, technically, we don't need to breathe."
"You —"
"No, no, you promised." She laughed, putting her cold finger lightly to my lips. "Do you want to hear the story or not?"
"You can't spring something like that on me, and then expect me not to say anything," I mumbled against her finger.
She lifted her hand, moving it to rest against my neck. The speed of my heart reacted to that, but I persisted.
"You don't have to breathe?" I demanded.
"No, it's not necessary. Just a habit." She shrugged.
"How long can you go… without breathing?"
"Indefinitely, I suppose; I don't know. It gets a bit uncomfortable — being without a sense of smell."
"A bit uncomfortable," I echoed.
I wasn't paying attention to my own expression, but something in it made her grow somber. Her hand dropped to her side and she stood very still, her eyes intent on my face. The silence lengthened. Her features were immobile as stone.
"What is it?" I whispered, touching her frozen face. Her face softened under my hand, and she sighed. "I keep waiting for it to happen."
"For what to happen?"
"I know that at some point, something I tell you or something you see is going to be too much. And then you'll run away from me, screaming as you go." She smiled half a smile, but her eyes were serious. "I won't stop you. I want this to happen, because I want you to be safe. And yet, I want to be with you. The two desires are impossible to reconcile…" She trailed off, staring at my face. Waiting.
"I'm not running anywhere," I promised.
"We'll see," she said, smiling again.
I frowned at her. "So, go on — Hudson was swimming to France."
She paused, getting back into her story. Reflexively, her eyes flickered to another picture — the most colorful of them all, the most ornately framed, and the largest; it was twice as wide as the door it hung next to. The canvas overflowed with bright figures in swirling robes, writhing around long pillars and off marbled balconies. I couldn't tell if it represented Greek mythology, or if the characters floating in the clouds above were meant to be biblical.
"Hudson swam to France, and continued on through Europe, to the universities there. By night he studied music, science, medicine — and found his calling, his penance, in that, in saving human lives." Her expression became awed, almost reverent. "I can't adequately describe the struggle; it took Hudson two centuries of torturous effort to perfect his self-control. Now he is all but immune to the scent of human blood, and he is able to do the work he loves without agony. He finds a great deal of peace there, at the hospital…" Marceline stared off into space for a long moment. Suddenly she seemed to recall her purpose. She tapped her finger against the huge painting in front of us.
"He was studying in Italy when he discovered the others there. They were much more civilized and educated than the wraiths of the London sewers."
She touched a comparatively sedate quartet of figures painted on the highest balcony, looking down calmly on the mayhem below them. I examined the grouping carefully and realized, with a startled laugh, that I recognized the golden-haired man.
"Solimena was greatly inspired by Hudson's friends. He often painted them as gods," Marceline chuckled. "Aro, Marcus, Caius," she said, indicating the other three, two black-haired, one snowy-white. "Nighttime patrons of the arts."
"What happened to them?" I wondered aloud, my fingertip hovering a centimeter from the figures on the canvas.
"They're still there." She shrugged. "As they have been for who knows how many millennia. Hudson stayed with them only for a short time, just a few decades. He greatly admired their civility, their refinement, but they persisted in trying to cure his aversion to 'his natural food source,' as they called it. They tried to persuade him, and he tried to persuade them, to no avail. At that point, Hudson decided to try the New World. He dreamed of finding others like himself. He was very lonely, you see.
"He didn't find anyone for a long time. But, as monsters became the stuff of fairy tales, he found he could interact with unsuspecting humans as if he were one of them. He began practicing medicine. But the companionship he craved evaded him; he couldn't risk familiarity.
"When the influenza epidemic hit, he was working nights in a hospital in Chicago. He'd been turning over an idea in his mind for several years, and he had almost decided to act — since he couldn't find a companion, he would create one. He wasn't absolutely sure how his own transformation had occurred, so he was hesitant. And he was loath to steal anyone's life the way his had been stolen. It was in that frame of mind that he found me. There was no hope for me; I was left in a ward with the dying. He had nursed my parents, and knew I was alone. He decided to try…"
Her voice, nearly a whisper now, trailed off. She stared unseeingly through the west windows. I wondered which images filled her mind now, Hudson's memories or her own. I waited quietly.
When she turned back to me, a gentle angel's smile lit her expression.
"And so we've come full circle," she concluded.
"Have you always stayed with Hudson, then?" I wondered.
"Almost always." She put her hand lightly on my waist and pulled me with her as she walked through the door. I stared back at the wall of pictures, wondering if I would ever get to hear the other stories.
Marceline didn't say any more as we walked down the hall, so I asked, "Almost?"
She sighed, seeming reluctant to answer. "Well, I had a typical bout of rebellious adolescence — about ten years after I was… born…created, whatever you want to call it. I wasn't sold on his life of abstinence, and I resented him for curbing my appetite. So I went off on my own for a time."
"Really?" I was intrigued, rather than frightened, as I perhaps should have been.
She could tell. I vaguely realized that we were headed up the next flight of stairs, but I wasn't paying much attention to my surroundings.
"That doesn't repulse you?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"I guess… it sounds reasonable."
She barked a laugh, more loudly than before. We were at the top of the stairs now, in another paneled hallway.
"From the time of my new birth," she murmured, "I had the advantage of knowing what everyone around me was thinking, both human and non-human alike. That's why it took me ten years to defy Hudson — I could read his perfect sincerity, understand exactly why he lived the way he did.
"It took me only a few years to return to Hudson and recommit to his vision. I thought I would be exempt from the… depression… that accompanies a conscience. Because I knew the thoughts of my prey, I could pass over the innocent and pursue only the evil. If I followed a murderer down a dark alley where he stalked a young girl — if I saved her, then surely I wasn't so terrible."
I shivered, imagining only too clearly what she described — the alley at night, the frightened girl, the dark man behind her. And Marceline, Marceline as she hunted, terrible and glorious as a young god, unstoppable. Would she have been grateful, that girl, or more frightened than before?
"But as time went on, I began to see the monster in my eyes. I couldn't escape the debt of so much human life taken, no matter how justified. And I went back to Hudson and Madalyn. They welcomed me back like the prodigal. It was more than I deserved."
We'd come to a stop in front of the last door in the hall.
"My room," she informed me, opening it and pulling me through.
Her room faced south, with a wall-sized window like the great room below. The whole back side of the house must be glass. Her view looked down on the winding Sol Duc River, across the untouched forest to the Olympic Mountain range. The mountains were much closer than I would have believed.
The western wall was completely covered with shelf after shelf of CDs. Her room was better stocked than a music store. In the corner was a sophisticated-looking sound system, the kind I was afraid to touch because I'd be sure to break something. There was no bed, only a wide and inviting black leather sofa. The floor was covered with a thick golden carpet, and the walls were hung with heavy fabric in a slightly darker shade.
"Good acoustics?" I guessed.
She chuckled and nodded.
She picked up a remote and turned the stereo on. It was quiet, but the soft jazz number sounded like the band was in the room with us. I went to look at her mind-boggling music collection.
"How do you have these organized?" I asked, unable to find any rhyme or reason to the titles.
She wasn't paying attention.
"Ummm, by year, and then by personal preference within that frame," she said absently.
I turned, and she was looking at me with a peculiar expression in her eyes.
"What?"
"I was prepared to feel… relieved. Having you know about everything, not needing to keep secrets from you. But I didn't expect to feel more than that. I like it. It makes me… happy." She shrugged, smiling slightly.
"I'm glad," I said, smiling back. I'd worried that she might regret telling me these things. It was good to know that wasn't the case.
But then, as her eyes dissected my expression, her smile faded and her forehead creased. "You're still waiting for the running and the screaming, aren't you?" I guessed.
A faint smile touched her lips, and she nodded.
"I hate to burst your bubble, but you're really not as scary as you think you are. I don't find you scary at all, actually," I lied casually.
She stopped, raising her eyebrows in blatant disbelief. Then she flashed a wide, wicked smile.
"You really shouldn't have said that," she chuckled.
She growled, a low sound in the back of her throat; her lips curled back over her perfect teeth. Her body shifted suddenly, half-crouched, tensed like a lion about to pounce.
I backed away from her, glaring. "You wouldn't."
I didn't see her leap at me — it was much too fast. I only found myself suddenly airborne, and then we crashed onto the sofa, knocking it into the wall. All the while, her arms formed an iron cage of protection around me — I was barely jostled. But I still was gasping as I tried to right myself.
She wasn't having that. She curled me into a ball against her, holding me more securely than iron chains. I glared at her in alarm, but she seemed well in control, her jaw relaxed as she grinned, her eyes bright only with humor.
"You were saying?" she growled playfully.
"That you are a very, very terrifying monster," I said, my sarcasm marred a bit by my breathless voice.
"Much better," she approved.
"Um." I struggled. "Can I get up now?"
She just laughed.
"Can we come in?" a soft voice sounded from the hall.
I struggled to free myself, but Marceline merely readjusted me so that I was somewhat more conventionally seated on her lap. I could see it was Flame, then, and Finn behind her in the doorway. My cheeks burned, but Marceline seemed at ease.
"Go ahead." Marceline was still chuckling quietly.
Flame seemed to find nothing unusual in our embrace; she walked — almost danced, her movements were so graceful — to the center of the room, where she folded herself sinuously onto the floor. Finn, however, paused at the door, his expression a trifle shocked. He stared at Marceline's face, and I wondered if he was tasting the atmosphere with his unusual sensitivity.
"It sounded like you were having Bonnie for lunch, and we came to see if you would share" Flame announced. I stiffened for an instant, until I realized Marceline was grinning — whether at her comment or my response, I couldn't tell.
"Sorry, I don't believe I have enough to spare," she replied, her arms holding me recklessly close.
"Actually" Finn said, smiling despite himself as he walked into the room, "Flame says there's going to be a real storm tonight, and Jake wants to play ball. Are you game?"
The words were all common enough, but the context confused me. I gathered that Flame was a bit more reliable than the weatherman, though.
Marceline's eyes lit up, but she hesitated.
"Of course you should bring Bonnie," Flame chirped. I thought I saw Finn throw a quick glance at her.
"Do you want to go?" Marceline asked me, excited, her expression vivid.
"Sure." I couldn't disappoint such a face. "Um, where are we going?"
"We have to wait for thunder to play ball — you'll see why," she promised.
"Will I need an umbrella?"
They all three laughed aloud.
"Will she?" Finn asked Flame.
"No." She was positive. "The storm will hit over town. It should be dry enough in the clearing."
"Good, then." The enthusiasm in Finn's voice was catching, naturally. I found myself eager, rather than scared stiff.
"Let's go see if Hudson will come." Flame bounded up and to the door in a fashion that would break any ballerina's heart.
"Like you don't know," Finn teased, and they were swiftly on their way. Finn managed to inconspicuously close the door behind them.
"What will we be playing?" I demanded.
"You will be watching," Marceline clarified. "We will be playing baseball."
I rolled my eyes. "Vampires like baseball?"
"It's the American pastime," she said with mock solemnity.