Unbearable Read online

  “I’m using Latin. Everyone else is speaking English, which didn’t exist when you were alive, before,” I said. “You should listen to them. You will need to learn it.”

  “It sounds ugly.”

  “Latin isn’t very pretty either,” I assured him. “Now, I’m going to trim your beard. You can’t walk around outside with it down to your belly like that.”

  He looked affronted. “I can do that.” He bent and picked up the ceremonial knife he had used to slaughter Valdeg and looked down at his chest. He patted the end of the beard there, tracing it up to his chin. “Remarkable,” he murmured, then scraped at the growth with the side of the knife. As that was how men shaved in his day, when they shaved at all, he was more practiced at it than I, who had not had to bother with such grooming for centuries, unless I was willing to pay the price in more frequent feedings and a constantly racing heart in order to grow one.

  I suspected we, Nick and I, would also have to explain energy conservation and feeding protocols to him. In this far more crowded earth he had woken to, he could not hunt down the nearest human and feed as he pleased.

  He ended up with a roughly trimmed beard that would not have looked out of place at a music festival. It went with the hair and would have to do for now.

  Then we trekked him out of the caverns. At first he kept trying to walk in front of us, fascinated by the light shed by the flashlights and wanting to examine them.

  It was fully dark when we reached the fissure entrance and Nick and Tally made us wait while they checked the area before we emerged fully.

  Nyanther stepped out into the fresh air and breathed deeply. Then his breath caught and he grew still.

  I looked around, to see what had alerted him.

  He was staring to the east, long and steadily.

  I moved to his side and looked out at the night-dark land visible from the top of Craigencallie. A few miles almost directly east was New Galloway, which was a smaller town, yet the lights clustered thickly there and more brightly. Just to the north of Galloway was Balmaclellan and Dairy, which were both bigger. Then I realized that a man who had never seen mass electric lights glowing in the dark of a night before would notice every single glowing spot on the landscape and there were thousands. Farmhouses, tiny villages, bigger towns. On the horizon was the glow of Dumfries, a good-sized market town. I was used to this mark of civilization, but Nyanther was seeing it for the first time.

  “Every light you see is where people live,” I told him.

  “So many….” He breathed heavily once more. “I have walked into a strange land.”

  “It’s going to get stranger,” I warned him.

  He looked at me. He was the same height as me. “You slept until this time, too?”

  “I lived through it,” I told him. “Only, I was made long before you. The time when I was human was before the Romans ruled the known world. I remember that time and when I do, things like light and cloth and much more can seem just as odd to me.”

  He hunched inside the coat. “It must be borne. I cannot go back.”

  “Nor can I.” I leaned closer to him. “Yet I would not want to. You might feel that way in a while, too.”

  “When?” he said bluntly.

  “In time,” I said carefully. “Time works miracles, if you give it room to do so.”

  We climbed down to the valley floor, with Mairead picking up the pitons and carabiners as she went, coming last in the file. We moved by moonlight, because we needed both hands. Nyanther was no more clumsy than any of us. His bare feet helped.

  The parking lot was not a well-lit place and Mairead’s Land Rover was the only vehicle sitting on the gravel. She threw her climbing pack into the back while Nick and Tally opened their doors and climbed in.

  Nyanther didn’t move. He studied the car intently.

  Mairead got in behind the steering wheel and started it and even though the car started without backfiring or noisy belching, Nyanther jumped. Then he looked at me.

  “There is no word in Latin for this thing,” I told him.

  “English?” He had picked up that word already.

  “Car. A horseless….” Only, there was no word for carriage in Latin, either. Carriages were in the Roman Republic’s future. “A horseless chariot,” I said finally.

  “Car,” he repeated. “It moves a person like a chariot,” he added.

  “Except you must be inside it to be moved,” I pointed out.

  He pushed his hands into the coat pockets, I suspect to hide the fists he was making. I opened the door and he eased himself onto the high seat, copying the others, while turning his head to take in every inch of the interior. He pummeled the cushioning on the seat, fascinated, until Mairead put the Rover into gear and drove out of the parking lot onto the road to New Galloway.

  Then he gripped my arm in a painful pinch, staring ahead through the two front seats and the windscreen as the land rushed by at a frightening twenty miles an hour.

  It was going to be a long night.

  May, 1983

  In fact, it ended up being a long three weeks we stayed in the charming little inn in New Galloway, consulting daily with Mairead and the local hunters. Nick and Tally wanted to make sure that Lirgon had fled the area before returning to America, which meant checking likely nests at night and waiting for news of missing humans during the day. It was tedious work, but had to be done.

  There were more than enough hunters to help Tally and Nick with that chore. I took care of Riley during the day, along with my new ward, Nyanther. Because I remained behind and because I was the only one fluent in Latin, it naturally fell to me to ease Nyanther’s orientation.

  Even in the 1980s, hunters had become more practiced at passing among humans undetected, which meant learning how to acquire false IDs and documentation as needed. The three weeks we stayed in Scotland were also the time we needed to acquire a set of American IDs for Nyanther, so we could return with him to New York.

  That also meant putting him through a crash course of basic English. He would have to be able to read it and write it well enough to pass casual inspection. Mairead’s mother happened to be a local school teacher and supplied text books and teaching aids and that was how I spent my days, while Nyanther listened and watched me with his pale, almost colorless blue eyes, often while holding Riley in one big, muscled arm.

  He picked up English at a prodigious rate. He understood how critical it was that he pass as normal among humans. He also took an oddly innocent delight in just about everything he heard or saw or could pick up. Clothes were endlessly fascinating. The TV was even more so. It took a few days for me to realize that he did not understand that the moving images were of real people. That was nearly a full day’s discussion, history lesson and basic technology primer just by itself.

  I arranged for a hairdresser to visit the inn and cut his hair and trim his beard. With Nyanther wearing my jeans and Nick’s shirt and shoes, we took him shopping for more suitable clothing. The shoe store kept him occupied for an hour and I suspect he would be there, still, if we had not dragged him away wearing his first set of sneakers, which he kept looking down upon and bouncing up and down to test the ingenious idea of cushioned mid-soles.

  It would have been amusing, except that we were under a deadline that couldn’t stretch indefinitely. Nick insisted on bringing him with us when we returned home.

  “He lived when the gargoyles first worked with humans,” he pointed out. “He knows more about gargoyles than we’ve ever been able to put together since they re-emerged in the thirteenth century,” he argued.

  “He can barely speak English,” I pointed out. “You’re going to have a hard time consulting with him. He would be better here among the descendants of his tribes.”

  Nick turned to look at me. At the time, we were sitting at one of the tiny tables in the public bar, at the end of another fruitless day of searching for him and Tally and a day of diapers and middle school teaching for me. Even th
ough we don’t get tired, I think we really were tired. Tired of the draining uselessness we felt.

  “He comes back with us,” Nick said flatly, using the tone that told me that even I would not be able to talk him out of it.

  I just looked at him. It had been a long while since that toned worked on me.

  Nick relented. He leaned closer and dropped his voice. “Nyanther might be critical to our success,” he said. “Think about it, Damian. He was bitten by a gargoyle and survived.”

  “If you call a coma that lasts for two thousand years surviving,” I said dryly.

  Nick shook his head. “He’d still be there now if Valdeg had not scratched him. A tiny bit of toxin entered his blood steam and stirred whatever antibodies his own body had developed to fight off the effects of the first bite. It took two thousand years, but he did it. He cured himself. Whatever is in his blood, if we can somehow…I don’t know, distill it, or bottle it…it might work for us, too.”

  I almost laughed. “All you have to do is kill Lirgon, Nick. Kill him and there won’t be need for antivenin ever again.”

  Oh, how wrong I was about that!

  Nick sat back. He didn’t cross his arms, yet I could almost feel his defense shields go up. “Carson died because I underestimated Lirgon. Don’t try to talk me out of this, Damian. I’m going back to the States, I’m going to track Lirgon down and I’m going to use every advantage I can pull together. I’ll ship Nyanther back there in another casket if I have to.”

  I shook my head. “Fine. Take him back. While you’re busy totting up your tactical advantages, don’t forget Nyanther is one of us, not just a pawn on your chessboard. He’s entitled to build whatever life he can out of this new era he has found himself in. Or would you deny him even that much?”

  Nick’s face darkened. “Of course I don’t deny him that! Only this is happening now. Today. He can have his life once Lirgon is gravel.”

  Seven days later, Nyanther experienced flight for the first time in his life. He broke my hand, which was trapped under his frantic grip of the armrest, as he watched out the oval window as the ground dropped away, all while trying to look like he was a seasoned, modern traveler, just as we had coached him.

  I barely noticed. I was too busy laughing while trying to pretend that I was as urbane as him.

  Nyanther had a way of making me experience life as if for the first time. It was hard to take anything for granted when in his company. Heavier-than-air flying machines were worthy of a moment or two of sheer terror in appreciation of their power.

  Then I saw Nick was watching us from across the aisle. He was scowling.

  My amusement evaporated.

  December, 1983

  Nyanther spent the rest of the year learning how to be a modern human. His English improved radically, because when he was not having his blood tapped for anti-venin experiments, or actively training with the axe and long knife he forged himself, he watched television. Anything. Everything. It was all useful to him and expanded his education in American culture.

  He also read whenever he was left alone for a few minutes. He started off reading with a dictionary next to him, consulting it whenever he reached a word he did not recognize. Gradually, though, he left the dictionary sitting on the bookshelf as he needed it less and less. He worked his way through every book in the apartment, then we helped him arrange a library card for himself. His first social solo outings were to the local library.

  Nick and Tally spent the year combing the news for odd reports about wild predators and checking out the few they uncovered. In 1980, news did not zip around the globe at the speed of an electron the way it does now. They mostly relied upon hunters in the far-flung corners of the country and around the globe reporting back to them on anything that might be traces of Lirgon.

  However, Lirgon had gone to ground. It was possible that he might be nesting in some remote location like the Outer Hebrides or Inner Mongolia, a possibility that Nick and Tally and even Nyanther discussed more than once.

  “If he is the last and if he is not in your country, eating your humans, what do you care?” Nyanther asked in his deep baritone. “Let him chip and shatter in his lonely cave, wherever he is.”

  “Except that he exists because of us, Ny,” Tally explained. “The demon, Azazel, made the six of them purely to hunt down my father and the hunters who worked with him. We’ve taken care of Azazel and all but Lirgon. We have to find him and destroy him because he’s not supposed to be alive at all. He shouldn’t be alive and he wouldn’t be if not for my father’s enemies conspiring.”

  “Is that the same way I am not supposed to be here?” Nyanther asked curiously.

  “You don’t know that,” I said sharply. “You might well have lived through the last two millennium if you hadn’t been bitten. I did.”

  “I was not the only vampire in my clan,” Nyanther said gravely. “None of them exist anymore.” It had been one of the first things he had researched at the library, looking for vampires who had lived freely and openly among humans back then. He had not found any of them, although both Nick and I had pointed out that even if his clan still existed, they would be passing as human now and untraceable. “I do not intend to open up that discussion once more,” he added swiftly. “I only point out that both Lirgon and I are strangers to this time. He might be content to cling to the life he has been given once more and stay away from anything that might remove it again.”

  “I don’t believe that,” Tally said firmly. “He is vengeful and he hates me and Nick in particular because we’ve hunted his clan into extinction one more time. He’ll come back just because he can’t help himself.”

  So Nick and Tally kept monitoring every source of news they had gradually acquired.

  Riley spent the year growing into a sun-shiny toddler who laughed a lot. She had three substitute fathers and a mother who loved her to pieces…it was impossible for her to be anything other than completely content and happy. Except that every now and again I saw the frown appear between her brows when she wanted something she couldn’t have and it reminded me strongly of Carson.

  Riley had more than her father’s eyes. She had his stubborn streak, too.

  We were rapidly approaching Riley’s first birthday. The date advanced toward us with the speed and relentlessness of a steam train in a tunnel, with nowhere for us to run.

  On Boxing Day, we got a surprise visitor. Donna Pascel arrived bearing gifts of a sort. She looked as though the year had not been kind to her. There were lines around her eyes and mouth that no amount of makeup could hide. She had put on weight and there was gray in her hair. She walked slowly, as if someone had beaten her up quite badly and she wasn’t yet fully recovered.

  I didn’t know how right I was until Tally had her sitting on the sofa with rum and eggnog in her hands, while the fire popped cheerily next to her.

  Donna clenched the glass. “I’m out of the business,” she told us. “I mean, really out. No playing around hunting demons to keep my hand in.”

  We all stared at her.

  Her hands were shaking and she gripped the glass harder. “Oscar…Oscar died three weeks ago. Pancreatic cancer,” she added. “I think he’s probably had it for a long while. We only found out during the summer, though. He went very fast. Only, it wasn’t fast enough. I sat there and watched him writhing in agony….” She took a big slug of the rum and eggnog and looked down at the creamy liquid. “If I thought I might have been able to get away with it, I would have finished it. But….” She sighed.

  I didn’t say anything. No one did. Donna wasn’t looking for sympathy or empty platitudes. She was here on a mission. It radiated from every stiff line of her body.

  She kept her gaze down on the glass. “Oscar told me something before he died. He said that he was the one who planted the map in Jimmy’s trailer, the day Jimmy died. It was Oscar who helped the gargoyles.”

  I glanced at Nick and Tally. They did not look surprised. Perhaps, like me, they
had guessed a while ago.

  Nyanther studied Donna, too. “The gargoyles threatened his family, didn’t they?” he asked.

  She looked up at him, surprised. “Yes,” she said at last. “That just explains it, though. It doesn’t excuse it. Especially not because Carson….” She hesitated, looking at Tally. “I know it probably doesn’t help, but Oscar paid, Tally. Over and over, he paid. He screamed, sometimes, it was so bad.” She swallowed and looked down at the glass again.

  Then she pushed the wrapped gift along the sofa, closer to Nick. “I brought these. You might need them one day. I know I won’t. They’re house wards, strong ones. I think they would stop Azazel himself.”

  Nick didn’t reach for the box. So I did. I unwrapped it quickly. “Thank you, Donna,” I told her. “We appreciate your gesture.”

  There was a shoebox beneath the gilt paper and inside were a dozen plain stones, smooth like river stones. Despite their plainness, I could feel their power, like a magnetic field. They were indeed strong.

  Everyone was sitting and watching Donna with harsh expressions. They were reliving the memories that she had provoked. The express train we had been hoping to avoid was upon us, after all. Nyanther had lost his own people, too. His expression was brooding as he considered her.

  So I got up and picked up one of the two last bottles of gargoyle anti-venom that we had left from this batch, that had been sitting on the bookshelf. We had distributed the rest to key contacts across the country and even more to Alasdair and Mairead in Scotland.

  I held out one of the two bottles to Donna. “Here. A small gift from us.” I told her what it was.

  She clenched the bottle in her fist, her knuckles white. “Thank you. I hope I never need it.”

  “What will you do now?” Tally asked, her voice at least kind, even though her face was drawn.

  “Me and the girls moved back to Manhattan,” she said. “Oscar wanted to live in California to get away from it all. I never did get around to liking it. I have a job in a diner. It’s not much, but it pays the bills. That’s something, I suppose.” She drank the last of the eggnog and put the glass aside firmly. “I gotta go. The babysitter would only stay until seven.” She looked at her watch and got up.