Humanity
From the private journal of Catherine De Volanges
We are all being used and so, it is only in that pile of remorseless excrement that our own ability to use others grows out of, stronger, thanks to the very fertilizer that fed it. And if your elders are of the Tremere, you best cultivate your interests out of their own, allowing the roots of your treachery to curl around their ankles and eventually drop them back into the shit they slung your way.
I am nothing else but a survivor able to weave my wants through their demands. And that is everything.
My world is not simple. It is fraught with unseen malice which floats just below the surface of one’s happiness. It collides not only with ones hopes but rips a hole through the hull of strongest soul to drown one in the coldest gush of reality-theirs. I do not crave power for the sake of power. I actually never have. I crave it for the freedom it promises. Even then I must adapt my definition of freedom for not one of us can ever truly be free. That is simply a fact. Unless you are one of us, you cannot understand the full extent of that assertion, that simple not exaggerated truth.
Those of us who have accepted that thread of knowledge have spun a world within it for ourselves. The rest, perish.
I have survived what would have ended most. And I will continue to do so. I will flourish from the decay of their souls, the waste of their ignorance and the light of their cold indifference.
And when it is too late, when they are lost, they will see…my roots were stronger then theirs.
“Que faisons-nous ici?” What are we doing here? I demanded, pulling the collar of my Burberry trench coat closer to my neck as the snowflakes fell between the lapel of my shirt and my skin.
“We are sitting, Catherine.” He replies in a cold patronizing tone as if he were speaking to a child while gazing over the Tuileries. “I would have thought that much was obvious.” He wasn’t trying to be amusing either. After a few moments he added, “I thought that you would have been more perceptive than that my dear.” Marc did crack a smile then, it was like ice breaking across a lake, but it did nothing to soften his frigid eyes. “Do you recall when you first joined us? I used to find you here all the time. At first you sat in this very spot staring at the ghosts you projected from your mind.” Marc gazed over the garden as if searching for something, his voice pawing at confusion. “Actually, Catherine, where…where was the guillotine you kept staring at for hours?” He feigned forgetting to torment me. “Do you remember?”
Do I remember? My eyes were already glued to that spot where it stood and later, where I stared at an empty spot after it was taken down. There was no reminder to that monument of blood. No reminder to the night that changed the course of my very existence. It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention. “There.” My voice was more strained than I wanted it to be. More ammunition for the firing squad.
“Where?” Bastard.
“There.” It only came out a whisper louder.
“There.” He reaffirmed. “Ah, yes.”
“All wounds heal.” I lied, my voice trailing off lightly as if it made no never mind to me.
“Not all wounds.” Double entente. He made it sound as if I had harmed him. And maybe, once, I had. It is easy to offend those like Marc. All you had to do was disagree with their views. Or had loved an outsider. I shivered when he glanced at me from the corner of his eyes. If he was searching my face than he found nothing. Saw nothing. He always made me so cold. “And then,” he began, bemused, “decades later, particularly in the summer, you started coming here again.” It almost sounded like an inquisition. Yes, your honor. Yet he made it sound like he was recanting a story that was fond to him. “You had finally gained Aidan’s trust. But the things you saw, unearthed…Well, they made you come here when he was unaware, to…what?…what would you say that you were doing?”
My mouth drew in a straight tight line. The crystalline bell of her laugh haunted my mind. There was no breath available to me in theory and yet it felt as if I was holding mine. Another part was simply bored of playing the game. But one does not refuse what one can lose.
“Reminding myself.”
He nodded, sticking his hands deeper into his coat pockets as he casually leaned back into the bench. It was too quiet, but for a long time we watched people come and go. Some played with the snow, others huddled together walking quickly to their next dinner appointments as they hid behind their hats, hoods and scarves. I held my breath, knowing what was coming.
“What were you reminding yourself of, Catherine?”
“I do not remember.” I replied curtly, with thinly veiled patience.
He smacked away my words without even a wave of his hand. “Come now, of course you do.”
“This is annoying me.”
“Indulge me anyway.”
“I am not that person anymore.” I snapped out angrily. “If you think that you wi-“
“Indulge. Me. Anyway. Katerina.”
My neck nearly snapped twisting as fast as it did to catch him in my shock. I was stunned. Such a simple alteration and change in accent left me feeling naked despite the layers I was wearing. Indeed, I even pulled my coat tighter around me.
I was about to tell him to go to hell, but he was not Aidan. No. Not Aidan. But. How dare he? I realized that my mouth was still open but that no sound was coming out. And he waited for a response, that simple intentional slip making it so clear that he meant business and the next thing he would alter is my attitude. At least. However, it also reminded me that Marc, above all else, knew things about me, knew me better than anyone else. Our mutual scheming demanded it. Our secrets. And lies. But why did he want me to remember that now? To call me that, out loud, was…dangerous.
“I was-“ My mind still reeled with the occurrence as I searched his face to see if I hadn’t hallucinated it in the first place. Then I simply went on with the story. “I…was reminding myself of my roots. If I could remember who I had been, who I was and that something had survived within me from my mortality, I could balance myself against the way his methods grated on my…soul.” It was such a silly word. Especially when it came from me. But it had been worse to say it in Aidan’s presence. I had never been a “good” person, I suppose. But back then I hadn’t been this either. “So I came here. Every evening during the summer, when it was warm and they could stand to be out longer, she would come here to play. Then, when she was older, to picnic.”
I knew he was waiting for me to say it. It was not as hard as he thought it should be.
“My daughter. I thought Germaine had killed her like he had the rest. I am sure that he had tried. But you found out that one survived even before I was made Tremere. And after I was initiated into the clan you took me to see her from afar. Always from afar. But I watched and listened, learning of what had become of her life. Every week she came. Tell me, “ I asked. “Did you compel her to come? Did you use your tricks?”
Marc’s lips pressed down in a ‘what does it matter’ gesture. It was answer enough.
“Every time that I felt that I was losing myself, I could find my anchor through who she was then. Her life hadn’t been easy. Like me, she was a prostitute. But unlike me, she did not have the will to improve her circumstances.”
“You helped her once.”
He wasn’t supposed to have known that. But of course he did.
“Yes. I went against your wishes and went to her. I never told her who I was but I tried to get her to understand that she could change her life. Instead, she tried to change mine. She grounded me. Her humanity in her situation.” I had a faraway look in my eyes as the memories assaulted me. “It was uncanny… if not entirely foolish and disappointing. She had a son. And her son had a daughter-Christine. I watched them through the years and kept a record of my blood relations. It kept me focused. It kept me yours. But that was precisely why you did that in the first place. You knew.” It was the only other family I had. And when the Tremere are your family, you frantically seek others out to fill the void that the Tremere create. At least until you find your place within it. But not everything works out the way one plans.
“But you are wrong on one account.”
“Hm?” He looked at me quizzically now, one brow raising in curiosity. .
“Aidan was aware.” I recalled grimly. He knew something was wrong. Something was keeping me from becoming great in his eyes. “He found out. One night during a ritual under the dark moon, he presented me with her eyes. He told me rather plainly that, ‘if I wanted to keep my humanity, I best keep only the parts that I could use.’ And so ended my mortal bloodline.”
He took away my attachments so that nothing could every really hurt me again. So no one could ever truly bind me again. It had been a silly infatuation anyway. How ridiculous I had been.
Marc scoffed under his breath. “Aidan, did not kill her.”
I cringed. I had not expected it to have been Marc, but it did not surprise me. It would have stung only briefly in all the hurts we have all committed against one another.
“She lived. Aidan only thought that he killed her.” Marc sounded amused. “He still thinks that.” Now I was not only surprised, but shocked. Again, I sat in muted silence, trying to comprehend what he was telling me, but more importantly, why? And then it hit me. He thought that I was in need of saving. Of balance. I was an asset. I wore many faces, lived many lives in one night. Was I losing myself? It was preposterous to think so, but if Marc felt concerned, than shouldn’t I be concerned too? But I wasn't.
“Christine,” He began counting off on a finger, “got married and had two children, one died shortly therefore from TB. David, survived. David had Margaret, Margaret had Catherine, Catherine had Lucilla and Louis. Lucilla had Rebecca so and so forth until we come to Daniel and Louise…Louise had,” His index finger pointed down a path, “Coraly.”
What? “Wh-” I followed his gaze down the path through the gardens, shifting back and forth on the bench, twisting this way and that to see past the people who were obstructing my view.
There. A little girl. Long lost was my ability to guess a child’s age, if I had ever had it. “She’s six.” Marc answered for me before he got up and started to walk away. Her hands gloved in black mittens were stretched toward the sky, trying to catch snowflakes. Brunette curls spilled out of a red beret that lolled more to the right. She had eyes that were opened with wonder as she explored something new in her world. To remember what that feels like one has to look through the eyes of a child.
For some time I looked at her with some confusion on my face. It was difficult to comprehend what I was thinking, feeling. I was grateful for the bench supporting me. For a moment, I was not alone in the world. I was linked to something greater than me again. Linked by blood. A connection. There was something genuine and untainted that I could see. I shifted in my seat, impatiently, like a dog who spied its master in the distance and wanted to greet him but was told to sit.
But when our gazes met, it was like magnets drawing one another in. I ripped my gaze away and looked into the distance only to have my gaze steal away to Coraly again. The little girl stopped swinging her arms in the sky and slowly walked down the path toward us. Her little arm was hugged into her as if protectively, no, shyly, but her feet did not stop or hesitate as they walked slowly to what she should be running from. She was drawn to me. I drew her in.
“Hello.” She said timidly. Her eyes were thoughtful. And they shone a bright blue green. Like mine. They positively glowed. Their color showed depths that would remain too deep and dark for others to be brave enough to truly explore. I knew the truth of that. I looked all the way into them and found the faintest feeling of being reflected back from within them. It was like looking into an Abyss, but an Abyss of the untainted. Of innocence.
I could not help myself. My eyes were rimmed with slightly tainted crystalline tears. “Hello.” I replied hoarsely with a shaky forced smile. I had killed many children in my unlife. It never mattered. It wouldn’t. But this girl…mattered already.
The little girl looked down to the ground swaying slightly to comfort herself as her shoe lightly dug into the snow.
“You’re pretty.” The girl offered.
I nodded in thanks, pressing my shaky fingers to my lips. It was my voice that I did not trust. After a moment, I felt confident enough to try a sentence.
“So are you. You have such beautiful eyes.” I gushed.
“I know.” Such innocent in those words. Not like a spoiled child but one who simply knew that her eyes were pretty and wasn’t marred by society to think less of herself. I chuckled under my breath and nodded.
“Good. Don’t ever forget what you know to be true.”
The little girl cantered her head to the side, looking at me with genuine interest. “Why are you so sad?” Her own voice sounded sad now as she spied the tainted tears in my eyes. She did not quite understand what she was seeing either. The color.
But how to answer that? I swallowed thickly, tacking on what I believed to be a comforting smile and shook my head, wrinkles crinkling the bridge of my nose like paper as I tried holding back future tears.
“You’re not supposed to exist.” Ah, but she did exist. As did her mother who was frantically searching for her daughter. They existed outside a world that I could not explain nor show them, but that world knew of them. Marc knew of them. The Tremere…knew of them.
The little girl was silent. She didn’t understand.
“My puppy ran away once. I was sad then too.”
I took her hand in mine and we walked. There was no resistance. It does not take much imagination as to why. We walked along the paths that twirled and twisted with tall shrubs that were blanketed by snow. We spoke of puppies, snow and pretty mittens, which apparently were warm even when the snow was soaking through them when making snowballs to throw, never at people, but up in the air. I picked her up when she got tired of walking. People. Human people smiled at us. I wanted to kill them all. I wanted to wipe the warm glazed looks off their faces. I stopped in my tracks. For a moment I was hit by a pang of something I hadn’t felt in centuries. All these people around me, they had something so simple that I did not. The world seemed to stop, the colors smearing together as I moved my head to look around. Everyone moved as if through molasses and then, just like that, it was gone. As was that feeling. But in it’s place was something else. Something stronger. Determined.
Whatever look I had upon my face when I looked back at Coraly must have frightened her very badly. I felt a shiver light its way up the wick of her spine.
“Where is my mama?”
“Looking for you.” And she beside herself with fear. But I did not say that.
“Are we going to her?” She asked as she buried her head in my neck to rest.
I walked down the path, the snow turning muddy as we crossed the threshold onto the busy street.
“No, ma petite ange. No, we are not.”
__________________
The next evening at the office of Monsieur De Vaubernier
“Monsieur?” Called in Monsieur De Vaubernier’s servant, poking his head through the door to see the Lord eying some blank pages of paper, which, he knew were not actually blank at all. Indeed, his master’s eyes even moved along the page in consideration as he took in the information. Marc did not look up from his memo. “Yes?”
“Package has just arrived for you by courier. One of our own.”
Well, that at least promised it would be something useful. However, as his lips tweaked up, his servant came to the understanding that his master was expecting this package and likely knew what he would find.
Setting his hands on the table, he folded them neatly, a gesture that seem more measured then it needed to be. Nervous, the servant suddenly felt like he was in front of a school master. “Well, then. Do come in.”
With a curt nod of his head, the servant, Daniel, made haste and quickly set the small package on Monsieur De Vaubernier’s desk. With an air of courtesy he stepped a back a pace, hand neatly over hand as perfectly manicured as his suit. He looked at his master, his master looked at him like he was a right idiot.
“Open it.”
“Oh, oui, of course.” And so his nimble fingers pulled at the simple twine rope, that held together a brown recycled paper bag. In that was a small wooden box, stained at the corner and wet through with something. Sliding the cover open, he cringed. Only a little, after all, the Tremere often received odd things. With some hesitation, he lowered the box and put it on the desk in front of Marc. Digging through the bag, he pulled out a small card and glanced at the name on the front before getting a nod from his master to read the contents.
“It is from Madame De Volanges.” The servant paused, confused. “It says, ‘through the eyes of a child, everything seems so clear.” The servant looked up at his master.
“I do not understand, what is this?”
Marc glanced down and gazed at a pair of eyes that looked up to him and were filmed over by death, but were still a beautiful green blue azure color.
“It’s her humanity.”
We are all being used and so, it is only in that pile of remorseless excrement that our own ability to use others grows out of, stronger, thanks to the very fertilizer that fed it. And if your elders are of the Tremere, you best cultivate your interests out of their own, allowing the roots of your treachery to curl around their ankles and eventually drop them back into the shit they slung your way.
I am nothing else but a survivor able to weave my wants through their demands. And that is everything.
My world is not simple. It is fraught with unseen malice which floats just below the surface of one’s happiness. It collides not only with ones hopes but rips a hole through the hull of strongest soul to drown one in the coldest gush of reality-theirs. I do not crave power for the sake of power. I actually never have. I crave it for the freedom it promises. Even then I must adapt my definition of freedom for not one of us can ever truly be free. That is simply a fact. Unless you are one of us, you cannot understand the full extent of that assertion, that simple not exaggerated truth.
Those of us who have accepted that thread of knowledge have spun a world within it for ourselves. The rest, perish.
I have survived what would have ended most. And I will continue to do so. I will flourish from the decay of their souls, the waste of their ignorance and the light of their cold indifference.
And when it is too late, when they are lost, they will see…my roots were stronger then theirs.
“Que faisons-nous ici?” What are we doing here? I demanded, pulling the collar of my Burberry trench coat closer to my neck as the snowflakes fell between the lapel of my shirt and my skin.
“We are sitting, Catherine.” He replies in a cold patronizing tone as if he were speaking to a child while gazing over the Tuileries. “I would have thought that much was obvious.” He wasn’t trying to be amusing either. After a few moments he added, “I thought that you would have been more perceptive than that my dear.” Marc did crack a smile then, it was like ice breaking across a lake, but it did nothing to soften his frigid eyes. “Do you recall when you first joined us? I used to find you here all the time. At first you sat in this very spot staring at the ghosts you projected from your mind.” Marc gazed over the garden as if searching for something, his voice pawing at confusion. “Actually, Catherine, where…where was the guillotine you kept staring at for hours?” He feigned forgetting to torment me. “Do you remember?”
Do I remember? My eyes were already glued to that spot where it stood and later, where I stared at an empty spot after it was taken down. There was no reminder to that monument of blood. No reminder to the night that changed the course of my very existence. It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention. “There.” My voice was more strained than I wanted it to be. More ammunition for the firing squad.
“Where?” Bastard.
“There.” It only came out a whisper louder.
“There.” He reaffirmed. “Ah, yes.”
“All wounds heal.” I lied, my voice trailing off lightly as if it made no never mind to me.
“Not all wounds.” Double entente. He made it sound as if I had harmed him. And maybe, once, I had. It is easy to offend those like Marc. All you had to do was disagree with their views. Or had loved an outsider. I shivered when he glanced at me from the corner of his eyes. If he was searching my face than he found nothing. Saw nothing. He always made me so cold. “And then,” he began, bemused, “decades later, particularly in the summer, you started coming here again.” It almost sounded like an inquisition. Yes, your honor. Yet he made it sound like he was recanting a story that was fond to him. “You had finally gained Aidan’s trust. But the things you saw, unearthed…Well, they made you come here when he was unaware, to…what?…what would you say that you were doing?”
My mouth drew in a straight tight line. The crystalline bell of her laugh haunted my mind. There was no breath available to me in theory and yet it felt as if I was holding mine. Another part was simply bored of playing the game. But one does not refuse what one can lose.
“Reminding myself.”
He nodded, sticking his hands deeper into his coat pockets as he casually leaned back into the bench. It was too quiet, but for a long time we watched people come and go. Some played with the snow, others huddled together walking quickly to their next dinner appointments as they hid behind their hats, hoods and scarves. I held my breath, knowing what was coming.
“What were you reminding yourself of, Catherine?”
“I do not remember.” I replied curtly, with thinly veiled patience.
He smacked away my words without even a wave of his hand. “Come now, of course you do.”
“This is annoying me.”
“Indulge me anyway.”
“I am not that person anymore.” I snapped out angrily. “If you think that you wi-“
“Indulge. Me. Anyway. Katerina.”
My neck nearly snapped twisting as fast as it did to catch him in my shock. I was stunned. Such a simple alteration and change in accent left me feeling naked despite the layers I was wearing. Indeed, I even pulled my coat tighter around me.
I was about to tell him to go to hell, but he was not Aidan. No. Not Aidan. But. How dare he? I realized that my mouth was still open but that no sound was coming out. And he waited for a response, that simple intentional slip making it so clear that he meant business and the next thing he would alter is my attitude. At least. However, it also reminded me that Marc, above all else, knew things about me, knew me better than anyone else. Our mutual scheming demanded it. Our secrets. And lies. But why did he want me to remember that now? To call me that, out loud, was…dangerous.
“I was-“ My mind still reeled with the occurrence as I searched his face to see if I hadn’t hallucinated it in the first place. Then I simply went on with the story. “I…was reminding myself of my roots. If I could remember who I had been, who I was and that something had survived within me from my mortality, I could balance myself against the way his methods grated on my…soul.” It was such a silly word. Especially when it came from me. But it had been worse to say it in Aidan’s presence. I had never been a “good” person, I suppose. But back then I hadn’t been this either. “So I came here. Every evening during the summer, when it was warm and they could stand to be out longer, she would come here to play. Then, when she was older, to picnic.”
I knew he was waiting for me to say it. It was not as hard as he thought it should be.
“My daughter. I thought Germaine had killed her like he had the rest. I am sure that he had tried. But you found out that one survived even before I was made Tremere. And after I was initiated into the clan you took me to see her from afar. Always from afar. But I watched and listened, learning of what had become of her life. Every week she came. Tell me, “ I asked. “Did you compel her to come? Did you use your tricks?”
Marc’s lips pressed down in a ‘what does it matter’ gesture. It was answer enough.
“Every time that I felt that I was losing myself, I could find my anchor through who she was then. Her life hadn’t been easy. Like me, she was a prostitute. But unlike me, she did not have the will to improve her circumstances.”
“You helped her once.”
He wasn’t supposed to have known that. But of course he did.
“Yes. I went against your wishes and went to her. I never told her who I was but I tried to get her to understand that she could change her life. Instead, she tried to change mine. She grounded me. Her humanity in her situation.” I had a faraway look in my eyes as the memories assaulted me. “It was uncanny… if not entirely foolish and disappointing. She had a son. And her son had a daughter-Christine. I watched them through the years and kept a record of my blood relations. It kept me focused. It kept me yours. But that was precisely why you did that in the first place. You knew.” It was the only other family I had. And when the Tremere are your family, you frantically seek others out to fill the void that the Tremere create. At least until you find your place within it. But not everything works out the way one plans.
“But you are wrong on one account.”
“Hm?” He looked at me quizzically now, one brow raising in curiosity. .
“Aidan was aware.” I recalled grimly. He knew something was wrong. Something was keeping me from becoming great in his eyes. “He found out. One night during a ritual under the dark moon, he presented me with her eyes. He told me rather plainly that, ‘if I wanted to keep my humanity, I best keep only the parts that I could use.’ And so ended my mortal bloodline.”
He took away my attachments so that nothing could every really hurt me again. So no one could ever truly bind me again. It had been a silly infatuation anyway. How ridiculous I had been.
Marc scoffed under his breath. “Aidan, did not kill her.”
I cringed. I had not expected it to have been Marc, but it did not surprise me. It would have stung only briefly in all the hurts we have all committed against one another.
“She lived. Aidan only thought that he killed her.” Marc sounded amused. “He still thinks that.” Now I was not only surprised, but shocked. Again, I sat in muted silence, trying to comprehend what he was telling me, but more importantly, why? And then it hit me. He thought that I was in need of saving. Of balance. I was an asset. I wore many faces, lived many lives in one night. Was I losing myself? It was preposterous to think so, but if Marc felt concerned, than shouldn’t I be concerned too? But I wasn't.
“Christine,” He began counting off on a finger, “got married and had two children, one died shortly therefore from TB. David, survived. David had Margaret, Margaret had Catherine, Catherine had Lucilla and Louis. Lucilla had Rebecca so and so forth until we come to Daniel and Louise…Louise had,” His index finger pointed down a path, “Coraly.”
What? “Wh-” I followed his gaze down the path through the gardens, shifting back and forth on the bench, twisting this way and that to see past the people who were obstructing my view.
There. A little girl. Long lost was my ability to guess a child’s age, if I had ever had it. “She’s six.” Marc answered for me before he got up and started to walk away. Her hands gloved in black mittens were stretched toward the sky, trying to catch snowflakes. Brunette curls spilled out of a red beret that lolled more to the right. She had eyes that were opened with wonder as she explored something new in her world. To remember what that feels like one has to look through the eyes of a child.
For some time I looked at her with some confusion on my face. It was difficult to comprehend what I was thinking, feeling. I was grateful for the bench supporting me. For a moment, I was not alone in the world. I was linked to something greater than me again. Linked by blood. A connection. There was something genuine and untainted that I could see. I shifted in my seat, impatiently, like a dog who spied its master in the distance and wanted to greet him but was told to sit.
But when our gazes met, it was like magnets drawing one another in. I ripped my gaze away and looked into the distance only to have my gaze steal away to Coraly again. The little girl stopped swinging her arms in the sky and slowly walked down the path toward us. Her little arm was hugged into her as if protectively, no, shyly, but her feet did not stop or hesitate as they walked slowly to what she should be running from. She was drawn to me. I drew her in.
“Hello.” She said timidly. Her eyes were thoughtful. And they shone a bright blue green. Like mine. They positively glowed. Their color showed depths that would remain too deep and dark for others to be brave enough to truly explore. I knew the truth of that. I looked all the way into them and found the faintest feeling of being reflected back from within them. It was like looking into an Abyss, but an Abyss of the untainted. Of innocence.
I could not help myself. My eyes were rimmed with slightly tainted crystalline tears. “Hello.” I replied hoarsely with a shaky forced smile. I had killed many children in my unlife. It never mattered. It wouldn’t. But this girl…mattered already.
The little girl looked down to the ground swaying slightly to comfort herself as her shoe lightly dug into the snow.
“You’re pretty.” The girl offered.
I nodded in thanks, pressing my shaky fingers to my lips. It was my voice that I did not trust. After a moment, I felt confident enough to try a sentence.
“So are you. You have such beautiful eyes.” I gushed.
“I know.” Such innocent in those words. Not like a spoiled child but one who simply knew that her eyes were pretty and wasn’t marred by society to think less of herself. I chuckled under my breath and nodded.
“Good. Don’t ever forget what you know to be true.”
The little girl cantered her head to the side, looking at me with genuine interest. “Why are you so sad?” Her own voice sounded sad now as she spied the tainted tears in my eyes. She did not quite understand what she was seeing either. The color.
But how to answer that? I swallowed thickly, tacking on what I believed to be a comforting smile and shook my head, wrinkles crinkling the bridge of my nose like paper as I tried holding back future tears.
“You’re not supposed to exist.” Ah, but she did exist. As did her mother who was frantically searching for her daughter. They existed outside a world that I could not explain nor show them, but that world knew of them. Marc knew of them. The Tremere…knew of them.
The little girl was silent. She didn’t understand.
“My puppy ran away once. I was sad then too.”
I took her hand in mine and we walked. There was no resistance. It does not take much imagination as to why. We walked along the paths that twirled and twisted with tall shrubs that were blanketed by snow. We spoke of puppies, snow and pretty mittens, which apparently were warm even when the snow was soaking through them when making snowballs to throw, never at people, but up in the air. I picked her up when she got tired of walking. People. Human people smiled at us. I wanted to kill them all. I wanted to wipe the warm glazed looks off their faces. I stopped in my tracks. For a moment I was hit by a pang of something I hadn’t felt in centuries. All these people around me, they had something so simple that I did not. The world seemed to stop, the colors smearing together as I moved my head to look around. Everyone moved as if through molasses and then, just like that, it was gone. As was that feeling. But in it’s place was something else. Something stronger. Determined.
Whatever look I had upon my face when I looked back at Coraly must have frightened her very badly. I felt a shiver light its way up the wick of her spine.
“Where is my mama?”
“Looking for you.” And she beside herself with fear. But I did not say that.
“Are we going to her?” She asked as she buried her head in my neck to rest.
I walked down the path, the snow turning muddy as we crossed the threshold onto the busy street.
“No, ma petite ange. No, we are not.”
__________________
The next evening at the office of Monsieur De Vaubernier
“Monsieur?” Called in Monsieur De Vaubernier’s servant, poking his head through the door to see the Lord eying some blank pages of paper, which, he knew were not actually blank at all. Indeed, his master’s eyes even moved along the page in consideration as he took in the information. Marc did not look up from his memo. “Yes?”
“Package has just arrived for you by courier. One of our own.”
Well, that at least promised it would be something useful. However, as his lips tweaked up, his servant came to the understanding that his master was expecting this package and likely knew what he would find.
Setting his hands on the table, he folded them neatly, a gesture that seem more measured then it needed to be. Nervous, the servant suddenly felt like he was in front of a school master. “Well, then. Do come in.”
With a curt nod of his head, the servant, Daniel, made haste and quickly set the small package on Monsieur De Vaubernier’s desk. With an air of courtesy he stepped a back a pace, hand neatly over hand as perfectly manicured as his suit. He looked at his master, his master looked at him like he was a right idiot.
“Open it.”
“Oh, oui, of course.” And so his nimble fingers pulled at the simple twine rope, that held together a brown recycled paper bag. In that was a small wooden box, stained at the corner and wet through with something. Sliding the cover open, he cringed. Only a little, after all, the Tremere often received odd things. With some hesitation, he lowered the box and put it on the desk in front of Marc. Digging through the bag, he pulled out a small card and glanced at the name on the front before getting a nod from his master to read the contents.
“It is from Madame De Volanges.” The servant paused, confused. “It says, ‘through the eyes of a child, everything seems so clear.” The servant looked up at his master.
“I do not understand, what is this?”
Marc glanced down and gazed at a pair of eyes that looked up to him and were filmed over by death, but were still a beautiful green blue azure color.
“It’s her humanity.”