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“I shall keep my distance. Believe me.”
I turn into crimson smoke, spread along the stones, dissolve between the rocks in the cursed ravine of Tesham Mutna. I merge with the cracked, crumbling earth, as dry as my heart that has suddenly aged hundreds of years in this single night.
“What have we done?” Regis’s distressed voice sounds behind me.
I’d smirk at that if I could. “We.” As though anyone doesn't know that a higher vampire can only be killed by another higher vampire.
I drift farther away, without looking back at the friend I’ve abandoned, without pity for the witcher who sacrificed his freedom for my sake, and certainly without any regret for the traitress, whose body I’m leaving behind. No. How could I regret the death of such a... such... I can’t bring myself to call her anything but a beast. A dark, pitch-black soul. A filthy, depraved whore. My sweet, beloved Rhena...
I don’t know what hurts more – my wounded pride or my broken heart. Vengeance dulls the ache for a while, but only until the memories rise again, each worse than the last. They scatter before my mind’s eye like cards from a children’s game, and I can’t focus on any one of them. Though perhaps that’s for the best.
A bat appears beside me: Regis again. He stays a little behind, keeping his distance, but never letting me out of his sight. Does he want to make sure I truly disappear for good? Or has he decided to tear my throat out after all, just to ensure that nothing ever threatens his beloved humans again? Strangely, I no longer care. If he forced me to turn into my physical form right now and sank his teeth into my neck, I probably wouldn’t even resist. With the witcher, I might’ve still struggled a little, but with him – what would be the point? He knows me better than anyone: both my true strength and my weaknesses. My blood runs in his veins – a great deal of it – but even without that, no one knows a higher vampire like another higher vampire.
We fly together for a while: me, a crimson knot of irritation and rage, and him, an elegant little creature with bead-like black eyes and glossy leathery wings. Gradually the sky begins to lighten; pink streaks of dawn appear on the horizon. Well then, it’s time to find a safe shelter where no one will disturb me: I’d rather not pile any more corpses on my conscience. And I’m not saying this out of pity or sentimental virtue – if it were up to me, I’d slaughter their entire lying human race and drown this rotten Continent in blood. But right now, I’m simply tired. Truth be told, very tired.
There – there’s a suitable cave ahead. Its entrance is no larger than a cat flap, but I can sense vast hollows inside. I transform into a bat, squeeze carefully through the ferns, and fly up to the ceiling, hooking my claws onto a stone ledge. The darkness and silence here are absolute; only, somewhere in the distance, there is a faint sound of water dripping into an underground lake. Regis settles beside me; I can hear reproach in his silence, or perhaps it’s sympathy. To be honest, I’m glad he doesn’t say anything. At least for now.
I close my eyes and finally sink into blessed, dark, deafening oblivion.
***
Hours pass, then days, perhaps even weeks. It is difficult to tell – time moves differently in the body of a bat.
Even here, I can’t find peace from the emotions overwhelming me. Anger, rage, fury – as strong as they were back in Dun Tynne. Shame – for how desperately I worried about my “beloved.” Regret – for what would happen now to the boys in Beauclair. Who would make toys for them? And a suffocating guilt that crushes me second by second, like a grain between millstones. That one comes when I remember Louis de la Croix’s slightly surprised face in the last moment of his life.
At first, I seriously consider suicide – or, more precisely, prolonged hibernation. But unfortunately, Geralt sliced off that sorcerer’s head, and besides him there’s hardly anyone capable of melting me into a stone pillar.
Regis senses my mood. He always sees straight through me when he wants to.
“Dettlaff,” he says, hanging upside down next to me. “I won’t try to convince you that life is beautiful. I agree – right now it looks rather wretched. But before you make such a final decision, I ask you to remember one small detail.”
“And what might that be?” I ask reluctantly.
“A higher vampire can only be revived by another higher vampire. Given your build, it’d take at least four buckets of blood to bring you back to life. And since I simply don’t have that much, you would then have to do the same to resurrect me. And then again. And again. Surely you must admit: that would no longer be a tragedy, but a farce.”
“I don’t need anyone to pour any blood into me,” I growl. “Can’t you just leave me alone? Is that really so difficult?”
“Alas, my friend,” Regis sighs, “even higher vampires are powerless against some things.”
And so it goes back and forth for some time. Eventually I give in and calm down.
I have all kinds of dreams – good and bad. In one I dance around bonfires with my brothers and sisters; in another I fly over an endless sea towards the sunset. Sometimes I bleed out after a failed hunt or lie dead drunk after yet another quarrel with yet another lover. Now it’s almost amusing to remember those petty passions and worries of mine – they have nothing in common with the scorched desert that my soul has become.
Worst of all are the dreams of her. In those moments I clench my teeth and scream soundlessly, desperate to escape the web of my own poisoned mind. Regis senses it, and I wake up from a gentle bite on my wing. Everything around remains the same: it’s still dark, and the water continues its monotonous dripping. Nothing changes. Nothing new will ever happen in my life again – only a slow, shameful fading away. Because after the brightest flare that sends golden sparks scattering into the night, only dull, gray, cold ash remains.
Perhaps I’ll become like the Unseen Elder? Gray, impassive, having buried his power deep underground, living only for the memories of the past?
No. Not yet. It’s still too soon. And I close my eyes again – to feel alive at least once more, while I still can.
***
One day Regis disappears. I don’t know for how long, but I wake once, then again, and he’s still not there. At last, he returns, but something about him is different. Even through the cave wall, I can sense his approach and how strangely agitated he is. He flies into the cave hastily, sideways.
“Dettlaff,” he says, shaking me awake. “Wake up, my friend. We need to talk. Properly.”
By ‘properly’ he means in human form. Bat ultrasound allows us to communicate and convey thoughts, but ordinary speech, using lips and tongue, is far more convenient when the matter is serious. I don’t like my human form and had hoped never to take it again, because the last thing I did in it, back in Tesham Mutna, is something I’d like to forget entirely someday – even if it takes three hundred years.
But Regis asks, and I cannot refuse him. He clearly needs to speak, and only a higher vampire can properly listen to another higher vampire.
“My friend,” he says when we sit on the cave floor facing each other. He offers me a flask of sharply scented liquid. “You won’t believe what happened to me.”
“Why not?” I take a sip – it’s his famous mandrake moonshine, the kind that makes you both laugh and cry at the same time. “After Dun Tynne, I would believe anything. Is Geralt not a witcher after all, but a katakan?”
“No, Geralt is quite all right. They released him from prison only the day before yesterday. And do you know what we discovered?”
“I have no idea, and I don’t want to know,” I reply. And I mean it – I want nothing more to do with humans. In four hundred years, all I have received from them are a few stakes through my chest and a spit in my soul.
“We found out that Syanna had one more victim – Anna Henrietta herself…”
“Splendid,” I murmur, taking another sip. In this, at least, Regis has no equal on the Continent. The liquor is bittersweet, smelling of fresh grass and a hint of flowers. “And? Did they award him a medal? Or do they want to give one to me? ‘To the Beast of Beauclair for saving the city from the Duchess’s sister’?”
“Enough with the sarcasm, that is not the point,” Regis stands and starts pacing excitedly along the wall of our small cave, carefully stepping over a small stream on the floor despite the pitch darkness. “The point is, the duchess nearly took his head off, and after that we both desperately needed a little rest. So we went…”
“To Mere-Lachaise?”
“Exactly,” Regis nods. “And afterwards, when we finally parted ways, I went for a walk. And I found something in one of the crypts.”
He stops and looks at me, catching his breath.
“I found the Gate there, Dettlaff.”
“A gate?” I stare at him blankly. “In a crypt? Never seen one before?”
“Not a gate!” he snaps irritably. “The Gate! Aen Gaeth!”
The mandrake moonshine catches in my throat.
“W… what Gate? Where to?” I barely force out. Regis moves closer and crouches beside me.
“To our world,” he says, cupping my face in his hands. “To where it all began.”
Truly, a higher vampire can only be surprised by another higher vampire.
***
The Gate proves to be astonishingly unremarkable: merely a narrow crack in the wall, edged with a little moss. Nothing like the cave of Hen Gaidth that our Unseen Elder cherishes so carefully – no grand entrance, no paintings on the walls, no ancient artifacts. Just a fissure in the crypt of some utterly forgettable human, apparently a haberdasher. The ceiling is adorned with a hideously tasteless plaster wreath of roses intertwined with ribbons, and the gravestone is inscribed with sentimental nonsense such as “A life well lived, a soul well loved,” and “Sunsets fade, but love endures,” and so on. A few withered daisies rest on a dusty table beside a burnt-out, melted candle. No wonder even the Unseen Elder never found this place – it’s so completely, overwhelmingly human, and totally in plain sight, not even underground. Through the barred window one can clearly see Beauclair’s deep velvet sky, scattered with shimmering stars.
Yet the smells, the sounds, the currents of air coming from the crack…
“Regis,” I stare at my friend with wide eyes. “Have you told anyone else about this?”
“No one,” he replies, running his fingers along the edges of the opening. “Only you. Besides, I’m not sure these Gates would work for anyone but higher vampires.”
After thinking it over, I have to agree with him: the crack is so narrow that not even a beetle could squeeze through. Only incorporeal smoke could pass.
“Well?” Regis says quietly. “Shall we see what’s on the other side?”
I cast one last glance outside and nod. Regis takes my hand, and we dissolve into the wall.
***
To my surprise, the other side is neither another world nor even the back alley behind the crypt – which would’ve been entirely possible, though it seems unlikely that both Regis and I could have miscalculated so badly. Instead, it’s some kind of in-between place, resembling one of the many caves I’ve seen before. Strange bluish flowers grow downward from above, while a small waterfall flows upward from below, emptying into a lake on the ceiling. The stalagmites grow perpendicular to the walls – though I'm not entirely sure whether those are even walls or the floor.
The smells and sounds that had struck us earlier are far stronger here than I have ever experienced. Even during that one unfortunate time I went to visit the Unseen Elder, nothing in his cave felt like this. I lift my head: the lake ripples gently with small waves, like smoke on the other side of a mirror.
“Dettlaff,” Regis’s voice reaches me as if from far away. “My friend.”
I turn to look at him and understand everything without words. Because a higher vampire can only be instantly understood by another higher vampire.
“Well,” I say hoarsely. “Perhaps it’s for the best.”
His face shows both sympathy and joy, sorrow and acceptance – and something else I’ve never seen before, or perhaps simply never noticed. As though he is proud of me, though that cannot possibly be true – not after everything I have done.
I close my eyes and stand motionless for several seconds, trying to focus. Neither Regis nor I have ever been to our home realm; we both came into existence here, many hundreds of years after the Conjunction. But the legends are passed down throughout the vampire tribes. Legends of how freely one lives there, and how pure of soul our kin remained there – unmarred by centuries of living side by side with humans. Perhaps that’s exactly what I need. As the recent events have shown, apparently, I’m not particularly good at coexisting with humans.
Then again, for all I know, it could be boiling lava beyond that lake, and those who have passed through these Gates – if any ever have – never returned for a much simpler reason.
“Dettlaff,” Regis’s quiet voice pulls me from my grim thoughts. He takes my hands in his, and when I open my eyes, I see his gentle smile.
“Don't be afraid,” he says. “Everything will be all right. I’ve always felt that you belong more to that place than to this one. You’ll be happier there.”
I sway slightly and touch my forehead to his.
“And you?” I whisper. “Won’t you come to our home world? Don’t you want to...”
I already know the answer. He won’t come with me – he has Geralt here, Dandelion, Anna Henrietta. Friends among both humans and vampires. But knowing that doesn’t make it easier in the slightest.
Regis senses it and squeezes my hands, stroking them with his thumbs.
“If you ever wish to return or simply visit, I will always be waiting for you here,” he says softly. “I promise. Just appear, and I’ll find you immediately. At once.”
At these words, the iron band around my throat – the one that has kept me from breathing ever since Tesham Mutna – seems to loosen a bit. I step back and release his hands, turning toward the waterfall.
“Good luck, Regis,” I say without looking at him, stepping closer to the edge. “Perhaps we’ll meet again.”
He doesn’t answer – and I am grateful for that. There is no point in endlessly delaying what is meant to happen. Yet, at the last moment I can’t resist and turn around.
His bottomless black eyes gaze at me warmly and calmly, comforting and encouraging, with only a faint trace of bitterness deep within. Everything about him – his posture, his smile, his old black coat – is so familiar, so painfully him, so unmistakably Regis, that something tightens inside me. How could I have never noticed how much I need him? How could I have ever taken him for granted, blinded by my own pride?
One final thought pierces my mind: perhaps, a higher vampire can only be truly loved by a…
But I never get to finish it, because the white current has already seized me and is carrying me up, up and forward.