The Shadows

She stayed where she arrived for quite some time, fearing that if she moved, she might trigger the expression of her disease. But eventually, she went upon a wander. The temperature of the still air was perfect, neither too hot nor too cold, and the sky overhead glowed a blue that was the color of a cornflower sapphire, and the baths gleamed under the strange ambient light . . . and she felt as though she were alone in a dark alley in downtown Caldwell.

How much time? she wondered. How many more promenades did she have left?

Shivering, she pulled her robing closer to her body as a familiar sense of sadness and impotence barged into her, crushing her chest, making it difficult to breathe. But she did not give in to tears. She had cried them all out some time ago, the why-me’s, what-if’s, and need-more-time’s over now—proof that even boiling water could be gotten used to if you stayed within it long enough.

She had come to terms with the reality that not only had she not been granted a full life, she had not really lived much a’tall—and so, yes, of course she must tender a good-bye to Trez. He was the closest she had gotten to something that was hers, something private rather than prescribed, attained, for however briefly, rather than assigned.

In saying farewell to him, she was acknowledging that part of her life that had been her own.

She would approach him on the morrow.

To hell with pride . . .

After a while, she discovered that her feet had taken her to the cemetery, and given the direction of her thoughts, she was not surprised.

Chosen were essentially immortal, brought into existence long ago as part of the Scribe Virgin’s breeding program where the strongest males were mated to the most intelligent females to ensure the survival of the species. In the beginning, the female breeding stock were quarantined up here, with the Primale serving as the sole male for insemination. As millennia passed, however, the role of the Chosen evolved such that they served the Scribe Virgin spiritually as well, recording the history of the Race as it unfolded upon the Earth, worshiping the Mother of the species, and serving as blood sources for unmated members of the Brotherhood—for whom some broke rank, and accepted mortality in exchange for love, freedom, the chance to bear young who would not be condemned to rigid roles.

And then the current Primale had come along and relaxed even further the roles.

Selena looked in through the graveyard’s arched trellis; the marble statues of her sisters managed to loom o’er her in spite of the fact that they were quite some distance away and sequestered within their verdant bordering.

For all the good the ancient breeding program had done, there had been one treacherous result from it, one prison that, however modern-thinking this Primale was, he could not exempt Selena and her sisters from.

Deep in the cells of the Chosen, there lay dormant a critical weakness, a defect that came about precisely because of the limited pool of breeding that was supposed to make vampires invincible.

A sacrifice to the intention of strength. Proof that the Mother of the Race could, and would, be curtailed by Mother Nature.

The statues beyond filled her with terror. The elegant figures within the encircled acre were not actually made of stone—not in the sense that they had been carved from blocks. They were the frozen bodies of those who suffered from the same disease she had.

These were dead bodies of her sisters who had walked the path her own feet trod upon, frozen in poses that they had chosen, sealed in a fine mineral plaster that, coupled with the strange atmospheric properties of the Sanctuary, preserved them for eternity.

The trembling came over her anew as a wave—

—and once again, the quaking did not last.

This time, however, the cessation did not usher in a return to normalcy.

As if the sight of those frozen in the final stage had been some kind of inspiration for what ailed her, the large joints in her lower body locked tight, and then so did her spine, her elbows, her neck, her wrists. She became utterly fixed in place, immobile whilst fully aware, her heart continuing to beat, her eyes undimmed, her panicked mind hyper-aware.

With a shout, she attempted to shake herself free of it all, tried to pull her legs up, fought to move her feet, her arms, anything.

There was but a slight give on the left side, and that rendered her off balance. Upon a pitch and spin, she landed face-first on the ground, the fine filaments of grass getting into her nose, her mouth, her eyes.

Knowing she was in danger of suffocating, she put all the strength she had into wrenching her head to the side so that her air passages were clear.

And that would prove to be the last move she made.

From her vantage point, she was a camera overturned, the odd-angle view of the Sanctuary like something projected upon a screen: blades of grass close-up and big as trees, with the Reflecting Pool’s temple far in the distance, nothing but the roof showing.