The Interview

Francesco said Camazotz. I kept filming.

Ward kept the silver knife between them.

“The excavation,” I said.

Francesco glanced at me.

“What about it, Spielberg?”

“The wall relief. Human. Fanged. Winged.”

His eyebrows rose.

“Your archaeologists finally found a picture book?”

Lucy said, “My mother thinks it’s an initiation sequence.”

“Your mother is closer than most people have gotten in a few thousand years.”

Ward stepped between him and Lucy.

“You made her.”

“Yep.”

“Then you’re her sire.”

“Maker.”

“Same thing.”

Francesco’s smile vanished.

“No, Doc. That right there is your whole fucking problem.”

He looked over the silver ammunition, UV lamps, holy-water tank, and the stake he had pulled out of his own heart.

“You’re baby hunters.”

Rivas said, “What?”

“Baby. Hunters. Whole profession built around killing one developmental stage and congratulating yourselves for conquering the species.”

“I’ve killed vampires older than nations,” Ward said.

“Age isn’t development.”

Francesco pointed at Lucy.

“Blood-borne is a life phase. Stable one. Can stay that way for a very long time if nobody around knows how to finish it.”

“They make more vampires.”

“They pass the Blood-borne state. Babies making babies.”

I thought of the relief below the excavation: human, fanged, winged.

“Like eels,” I said.

Francesco turned to me.

“What?”

“Different stages. Same animal. People saw pieces of the life cycle for centuries without knowing they belonged together.”

His grin came back.

“Cameraman gets a cookie.”

Ward’s eyes stayed on Lucy.

“Then the weaknesses?”

“Unfinished systems. Sunlight. Blood. Hunger. Healing. None of it’s a curse.”

He looked at Rivas.

“Keep a toddler hungry for six hundred years, give it fangs and money, and apparently you get vampire aristocracy.”

Bell made a sound that might have been a laugh.

I said, “They don’t know.”

“Why would they? No adults left. No instruction manual. Everybody around you has the same problem long enough, eventually somebody writes scripture about it.”

Ward said, “The sire bond.”

“The baby looking for the adult?”

“You call it enthrallment.”

“Usually they’re infants, Doc. You ever call a six-month-old screaming for its mother enthralled?”

Lucy folded her arms.

“Do not compare me to an infant.”

“Right now? Biologically? Tough shit.”

She flipped him off.

He smiled.

“You knew I was coming.”

Francesco stopped smiling.

“Yeah, baby.”

“You left me.”

“I waited for you.”

“You stopped answering.”

“You had to find me.”

Lucy stepped toward him.

“I woke up bleeding. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t drink. I ate a fucking moth.”

Francesco winced.

“Okay, that’s disgusting.”

“YOU DID THIS TO ME.”

“I did not tell you to eat the moth.”

“I thought I was dying and you fucking left.”

“You were dying.”

“That is not better.”

“No.”

She swallowed.

“Why me? Because of my parents? Because they were digging up your people?”

He laughed once.

“That part was funny.”

“Then why?”

He looked at her like the answer should have been obvious.

“Because I fucking liked you.”

Lucy went still.

“That’s it?”

“Have you met you?”

Rivas muttered, “Unfortunately.”

Lucy snapped her head around.

“I heard that.”

Francesco pointed at her.

“See? Great ears already.”

For one second the ruined monastery felt stupidly ordinary.

Then Ward lifted the knife.

“The injections suppressed completion,” he said. “I’ve killed sires and watched patients reverse.”

Francesco nodded.

“I believe you.”

“Then why didn’t she?”

“Because those were Blood-borne makers. Killing one ends a Blood-borne dependency. You didn’t kill me, and I’m not one.”

Ward looked at the empty syringe case on his vest.

“I did everything right.”

“Yeah.”

Ward flinched harder at agreement than he would have at mockery.

“That should have worked.”

“Different sentence.”

Francesco’s eyes dropped to the empty case, then to Lucy.

“Those were yours? You kept her stable through the whole first transition?”

“That was my job.”

Ward said nothing.

“Doc, you did a fucking fantastic job.”

Ward’s jaw tightened.

Francesco opened one hand toward Lucy.

“You brought my girl home.”

Ward moved.

He drove the silver knife toward Francesco’s throat.

Lucy caught his wrist.

Rivas shouldered the shotgun.

“Ward, clear!”

Ward couldn’t. Lucy had him between herself and the muzzle.

“Hold fire!” Ward shouted.

Bell moved for an angle.

Francesco opened one damaged wing between Bell and Lucy.

Ward looked at Lucy’s hand around his wrist.

“Lucy.”

She looked terrified.

“I’m sorry.”

Then she fed.

Rivas yelled her name.

Ward’s last order came against her shoulder.

“Do not fire.”

Nobody did.

Lucy drank until Ward stopped moving.

When she lowered him, she caught his head before it struck the floor.

For a moment she only stared at him.

Then she pressed two fingers to his throat.

Nothing.

She tried again.

Her hand slid in his blood.

Lucy pulled the edge of her sleeve across his neck as if wiping it clean might change what had happened. It only spread the red farther across his collar.

Rivas raised the shotgun.

The muzzle settled on her.

Lucy saw it.

She did not move.

Bell whispered, “Rivas.”

Ward’s body lay between them.

Rivas’s finger tightened against the trigger guard.

Then he looked at Ward.

“Do not fire,” he said quietly.

The shotgun lowered an inch.

Lucy bent over Ward.

“He saved me.”

Francesco stayed where he was.

“Yeah.”

“Twice.”

This time he said nothing.

He took one step toward her.

“Don’t.”

Francesco stopped.

Lucy reached under Ward’s vest. His black field notebook was pressed against his ribs. White tape crossed the cover in his block handwriting.

MERCER, L.

Below it were six times.

She opened it.

Pages of pulse rates. Injection intervals. Food tolerance. Hearing. Light response. Every frightened thing she had done turned into careful handwriting.

The last page ended halfway down.

Lucy closed the notebook and tucked it against her chest.

Rivas watched her do it.

Bell backed toward the western door.

Francesco looked at the shotgun.

“You know your weapons don’t have a kill condition for me.”

Rivas said, “We can find one.”

“Probably.”

His eyes went to Ward.

“Not today.”

Rivas’s jaw worked.

Then he and Bell withdrew.

I stayed.

The camera was still running.

Lucy knelt beside Ward.

I asked, “Why blood?”

Francesco looked over.

“You said the diet is juvenile.”

He nodded toward Lucy.

“Milk.”

“Blood is milk?”

“For Blood-borne.”

“And you?”

Francesco smiled.

“I eat solid food.”

I stepped backward.

He looked into the lens.

“You still rolling?”

“Yes.”

“Professional.”

“Habit.”

“Bad one.”

I kept backing toward the door.

“What happens to Lucy now?”

He glanced at her.

“Now we start the next part.”

Lucy looked up from Ward.

“We start what?”

“Later. You just got born. Take five fucking minutes.”

“Am I like you now?”

“No, baby. Not yet.”

I asked, “What does she become?”

Francesco spread one battered wing.

“An adult.”

Then he looked at me.

“Speaking of solid food.”

I ran.

The image whips toward the western door. Francesco crosses the nave behind me while Lucy shouts something the microphone does not catch.

The camera hits the floor.

My boots leave frame.

Francesco says, almost conversationally, “Sorry, Spielberg. Long morning.”

The microphone catches the rest.

Twenty-three seconds later Lucy walks into frame with Ward’s notebook under one arm.

She looks down at the camera.

“Did you have to eat him?”

Francesco answers from above the lens.

“Solid food. We literally just covered this.”

“You’re disgusting.”

“You drank a doctor.”

Her face closes.

Francesco’s voice changes.

“Too soon?”

“Way too fucking soon.”

“Fair.”

She picks up the camera. Behind her, Francesco scratches one of the silver burns on his shoulder.

“My parents are going to lose their minds,” she says.

“Your parents spent half their lives looking for Camazotz.”

“They think you’re extinct.”

“Then this is going to be a fun fucking breakfast.”

Lucy’s mouth twitches. Her hand tightens around Ward’s notebook.

She sets the camera upright on the altar rail.

Francesco holds out a hand.

She looks at it, then at the notebook tucked against her ribs.

“You’re still an asshole.”

“Yeah.”

She takes his hand with her free one.

The recording continues after they leave until Rivas returns alone, kneels beside Ward, and picks up the camera.

The screen went black.

Nobody in the viewing room spoke.

Finally, a voice said, “Run the part where he says vampires are children again.”

The cursor moved backward across the timeline.

On the frozen frame Francesco was pointing at Lucy Mercer, daughter of the archaeologists whose monograph on Camazotz extinction sat open beside the monitor.

“How old is this?” the voice asked.

“Seventeen hours.”

“Ward’s field notes?”

“Mercer left with them.”

A pause.

“Who else has the file?”

“We don’t know.”

“Find both.”