Escaping Exile Read online

  I hold my hands out in front of me. “I’m not your enemy.”

  He chuckles and searches for words. “Damn it, what are you, Andrew?”

  “Something very old.”

  “Christ, crocodiles are old!” He holds the small knife out in front of him. “Tell me.”

  I sit on the edge of my bed. “My people called me upiór. In your modern English, I suppose the word would be vampire.”

  He laughs and stares at me. It’s not long before he stops laughing and says, “Loogaroo.”

  “How do you know that word?”

  He has the audacity to roll his eyes. “I’ve been around the world. You think I don’t pick things up? In South America, they hung aloe vera plants to ward her off, keep her from…” He reaches for his neck.

  “I haven’t.”

  “But you want to drink my blood.”

  “Yes.”

  He drops his arm and the knife with it. “Then get it over with.”

  “No.”

  “If you’re hoping to fatten me up first, it’s not gonna happen, mate. Why don’t you go after one of those well-fed cannibals?”

  I shake my head as the room pulsates with his near hysteria. “I refuse to become a thing hunted.”

  “Like me?” he croaks.

  I close my eyes.

  “Bollocks.” His footsteps move toward the door. “I’m catching a fish and setting traps.”

  I look up at him in the doorway. “Traps?”

  “Yeah, traps.” He picks up his net and holds the knife. “The natives won’t be getting close again without us knowing. And I’d rather you kill me anyway. Fuck.” He shakes his head and leaves.

  I WAS ONLY on the island a few days when I first came upon a cannibal. Ever since those damnable sailors dropped me at my paltry shack, I had been wandering, seeking a village or human contact—seeking a way back to civilization. After two days, I’d found no sign of intelligent life until I came upon her.

  I smelled her before I saw her: decay. I half expected to stumble upon a long-dead corpse, but then, there she stood, setting what looked to be a trap. A man of the city, I knew nothing of surviving on an island. I still don’t really.

  She stood up straight when she saw me, her skin painted in blue-white mud. Her breasts hung heavy, evidence of child rearing. Most of her tattered hair sat coiled on the top of her head, held there by what looked like tiny bones. She bared her teeth at me, so I returned the gesture in kind.

  We circled each other. With a knife in her hand, she sniffed at me. She studied my once-fine clothes, now hardly rags, and I studied the pulse point on the side of her long neck.

  I was starving, true, but something about this terrible creature made my stomach turn. I could imagine it: the sourness of her blood—not dead but close. Her soul would be rotten too. I suppose she thought the same of me as she sniffed again and shook her head as if to clear the area of my undead reek.

  She snarled like a mad beast, and I hissed in return. I did not hide my fangs from her, no, because I wanted to live. If I could scare her enough, send her running, hopefully the rest of her tribe would leave me alone. Because of course, she was not alone. No, I sensed the others on her, layer upon layer of darkness and death. True, I was an evil thing, but so was she. So were the children she had birthed. These were murderers.

  I’ve often wondered if evil sours the blood. In New Orleans, I killed all sorts before my exile, but my favorite meals were innocents like Azrael. The tainted blood of street thugs and drunken thieves never tasted as good as that of a young manservant in a fine house or a male whore, new to the streets.

  The creature on the island, she was evil.

  I stank of evil too. I must have, what with all the killing I’d done over the centuries. Add to that my status as a walking corpse, and the female cannibal wanted nothing to do with me. We slowly backed away from each other that day, focus never shaking.

  I bowed to her before she disappeared into thick foliage as if to say, I shall not pass here again. She ignored my gesture and ran off, silent. And so I knew of them, and they knew of me—and we left each other well enough alone.

  Now, Edmund has changed everything.

  I’m not sure if he knows I’m watching him, but I linger close by as he hunts, eats, and then gets to work. With the cannibals moving so bravely into my territory, I won’t let Edmund out of my sight. I don’t know what he’s doing, but then I’ve never hunted in the jungle. When I was human, I hunted high plains and mostly in snow. This humid land of leathery leaves and fertile black soil is beyond me.

  Halfway through the day, he removes his shirt. His skin glistens, soaking wet, as he weaves reeds into what resembles a rope. His bruises are getting better, but at one point, he winces and bends over with his hands on his knees. He’s in pain and tiring easily; I see it in the laborious way he moves, but I won’t offer help. I don’t expect it would be welcome anyway.

  He works into late afternoon. He hangs his makeshift rope and large leaves all around the house. I think he’s built foot snares, which I never used myself but have heard about. When he collapses, I move quickly enough to catch him. I hold him close and whisper his name.

  “I knew you were there,” he says, eyes half-shut.

  I’ve forgotten so much about being human, but I do remember one thing. “You haven’t had water all day.”

  “Water?” he mutters. “What’s that?”

  I carry him back to my house and stand him next to the washbasin.

  He weaves but steadies himself by grabbing its edge. “Shit. I couldn’t fight you off if I wanted to.”

  “You will not need to fight me off.” As soon as I say it, I wonder if it’s true. I don’t think I’ll accept no from him—not with the way his skin feels, the way he looks and laughs in the face of a murdering beast. He is a beguiling amalgam of brave and frightened, brilliant and insane.

  Several times, I fill the pitcher. He drinks from it first, and then I fill the basin. I soak a soft cloth and squeeze it over his head. Clear droplets move from his scalp, down the dark edges of his hair.

  “Do you need to sit?”

  “More,” he says.

  I pour water over his shoulders this time. The water at his feet runs brown with dirt and old blood from the wound on his head.

  He slumps to the floor and rests his arms on his bent knees. “I wasn’t trying to kill myself, honestly.” He pushes wet hair out of his face. A single droplet hangs from the tip of his nose, and I want to lick it off. “It felt good to work. My African friend, Samuel, he taught me how to lay traps. Not that I ever needed to. He caught all of our food while I wandered around, ‘playing with my animals,’ he used to say. He, um, he didn’t understand my fascination. He thought the animals of interest were the ones that could kill you, and they were only interesting because you needed to know to avoid them.” He smiles. “Funny, that. I’m not avoiding you. I’m sleeping in your bed. How long do you think I have anyway, before you kill me?”

  “I won’t kill you, Edmund.”

  He still has that little smile on his lips. “I have an idea.”

  I sit on the floor a couple feet from him. “Should I be pleased or concerned?”

  His voice is tired when he speaks, drunk on exhaustion. “I almost died a couple years ago in Brazil. I accidentally touched a blue poison dart frog. A witch doctor saved my life, but the whole time I was in my fever, I kept thinking, But it was so beautiful. Once I recovered, we stayed there for months, because I couldn’t get enough of studying those deadly little things. Now, I’m trapped here with you.” That gray-blue gaze of his finds me. “Let me study your species.”

  “What?”

  “I want to learn everything about you. Let me, or I fear I might go mad, waiting to die.”

  I think of Michelle. When she comes to check on this exiled villain, will she be Edmund’s rescuer or destroyer?

  “But I am a scientist,” he continues. “Maybe if I fill my days with the subje
ct I love, I will survive longer. With your permission, of course.”

  “How will you study me?”

  “Talk. A lot of talking. Something I can’t usually do with frogs.”

  “Usually implies you have spoken to frogs, though.”

  “It can be very quiet alone in the jungle.”

  “I know.”

  He tips his head in acknowledgment.

  “What else? How else will you study me?”

  “Physical examination. A few pokes and prods.”

  “I don’t bleed.”

  His eyebrows shoot up.

  “Did I just make your day?”

  He grins, wide and wicked. “More like my bloody year.” He leans forward, kneeling right in front of me, and puts the palm of his hand flat against my chest. “How are you put together?” He’s talking to himself now. “No heartbeat. How has your brain not rotted out of your head?”

  Despite the morning he had, he’s willing to be close to me. I think of that poison dart frog that almost took his life and realize Edmund might be perfect.

  Chapter Seven

  MY SAILOR IS not just a scientist but also a survivor. First thing in the morning, after a night spent sleeping side by side, he starts asking questions—but not the questions I expected. I thought he would immediately want to know when I was born, my age, my diet, and whatever other scientific details he might need to properly categorize my “species.”

  Instead, after he eats yet another fish caught with ease, he says, “Have you ever tried to leave the island?” He pauses. “Christ, do we even know if we’re on an island?”

  “We are on an island.” I walked all the way around it once, careful to avoid my neighbors, who long ago decided they wanted nothing to do with me. “And yes, I’ve tried to leave. The current is too strong.”

  He pauses midchew. “You tried swimming?”

  I shrug.

  “Madman,” he says. “Wait, are you amphibious?”

  “I don’t need to breathe.”

  His mouth hangs open for a moment before he shakes his head. “What about making some kind of raft? If we got past the reef, maybe we could make it to the mainland.”

  I shrug again. Edmund is the sailor. I don’t know a thing about water.

  Once he’s done eating, he starts talking about a regular food source. He says “for both of us” and eyes me meaningfully. I furrow my brow, but he must notice how I look at him. How could he not? He observes the world around him and undoubtedly has since childhood when he was a precocious little boy with bright eyes; the image is so vivid, I can almost picture him running down tall, grassy hills in England. I picture him other ways, as well—adult Edmund, muscular and grown, panting beneath me. God, do I ever picture him.

  He sets up more traps, for animals this time. I’ve fed on all manner of wild beast during my exile, but I don’t want him to watch. I assume he’s going to want to watch as part of his study of me, but I don’t want him to see me with my teeth in some lizard’s throat. There are strange-looking deer creatures here, too, and my mouth waters at the thought of catching one. Although I can go weeks without feeding, I’m hungry, and Edmund’s proximity is making it worse.

  “We’re going back to the beach,” he says. No question. He takes charge of his situation.

  I follow him to the water, and there are more remnants washed up today. Apparently, the sea did not swallow everything. I help him drag a few boxes farther up the beach, away from the crashing waves. Another storm is coming. I sense it in the way the wind blows cool in my face, the way the air hangs heavy with moisture.

  He manages to open the first box and immediately hoots like a very large owl. He turns around and hugs me, laughing. It’s a quick hug, only long enough for me to pat him once on the back.

  “What are you so happy about?”

  “Rum!”

  “What?”

  “Twenty bottles of rum! Miraculous that they survived the storm. God must be feeling guilty,” he shouts to the sky. His happiness is thicker than the wet air and tastes to me of honey.

  In the other boxes, he finds some useless, wet charcoal and salted pork. He smiles so hard, I imagine his face must hurt. Then, in the next moment, his knees go out from under him, and he ends up sprawled in the sand.

  My instinct is to run to him, make sure my Edmund is all right, but he mutters to himself, “I’m not going to die here. I’m not going to die here,” and stares at the ever-darkening sky over the deep-blue sea. I leave him be.

  I THINK, NO man is more content in this moment than my Edmund, which is when I finally think to ask his surname.

  “Baines,” he says. Edmund Baines is the happiest man I’ve ever seen.

  The rum helps, as does the full belly of salted pork. Although I could join him in drinking—vampires are rather fond of alcohol, really—I don’t. I’m enjoying watching him too much. He sits with me by the fire, sipping from his bottle, as the rain falls like small pebbles on the roof. Thunder rumbles occasionally, but it’s nothing like the night of the wreck. That storm was a shout, while this is a quiet murmur.

  “Is Andrew even your real name?”

  “Think I’d give you a pseudonym?”

  He snorts. “I don’t know.”

  “Andrew is not actually my real name.”

  Now he laughs, and oh, how darling. I have to stop myself from leaning forward and tasting the rum on his tongue.

  “My name was Andreas, but I brought it up to date when I moved to America.”

  “And when was that? Wait!” He looks around our little house. “Paper? Pencil?”

  “You want to record all this?”

  “It’s what I do.”

  I have both of the items he requests—gifts from Michelle on one of her visits. Perhaps she wanted me to write about my guilt, but I don’t remember guilt right now. My entire lengthy memory has been wiped clean by the face of this man who looks so young when he laughs.

  He balances the paper on his knee and writes something as I sit across from him. “When were you born?”

  “The year was 1036.”

  I expect him to write, but he doesn’t. He just stares at me.

  “I don’t think there’s a wrong answer to that question.”

  He stares a bit longer before writing. “No, I guess not.” He clears his throat and drinks more rum. “Where were you born?”

  “Norway. I was a Viking, and I died in battle in 1066, fighting the British actually.”

  Wind rushes against the side of the house as rain splatters across the roof. The fire dims for but a moment before rushing back to life, and Edmund blinks at me.

  “Edmund?”

  “You…died?”

  “Well. Not for very long. An Elder brought me back.”

  The paper is forgotten. He tosses both his hurried notes and pencil to the ground and leans his elbows on his knees. “What’s an Elder?”

  I mimic his pose. We’re little more than six inches apart, and it would be so easy to finally kiss him, but I don’t want to scare him away—not when he’s so happy right now.

  My silence is apparently annoying, because he repeats, “Andrew, what’s an Elder?”

  “A very, very old vampire, born possibly before time itself. There used to be many. Now, there are only rumors. A new vampire hasn’t been born for centuries.”

  “Well, how did this Elder—” He smirks. “—birth you?”

  “Not sure really. I remember the sounds of battle, a sudden shove forward into the mud, and nothing. When I awoke, a wrinkled old man stood in front of me and said that he had given me eternal life in exchange for my service.”

  “But you need blood to stay alive.”

  I nod. “I was ravenous for it at first. I don’t know how many I killed. There were stories about me in villages. They called me Red Death.”

  Edmund leans back suddenly.

  “I’m not like that anymore. I barely need to eat to stay alive now, but I am much weaker without human b
lood.”

  He remains leaned away from me. “Human blood is better for some reason?”

  “For some reason.” I look down at my hands. “I think it’s to do with the soul. When I drink human blood, I drink not only the blood but also the life. The intellect. The passion. Maybe even the memories. Not very scientific, I know, but it feels accurate. There’s an intimacy with human prey that I don’t get with, say, a rabbit.”

  “Intimacy?”

  I can’t help but look at him. “Very much so.”

  He jumps at the flash of lightning outside and smiles before sipping rum and rubbing his eyes. “The Elder, the one you were meant to serve, where is he now?”

  “Oh. Sadly, he killed himself ages ago.”

  “I think you might kill me,” he says.

  “I will not.”

  “A part of you wants to. I see it sometimes.”

  Yes, the dark creature. Its sharp claws tap against my skull whenever Edmund gets too close, but I won’t let that part of myself touch him. Not unless he asks—and he might, if he’s out here long enough. If it’s years before Michelle comes back, Edmund might go mad from the loneliness. Or, when the time comes that my fantasies fly free, when I have him pinned to my bed, he might prefer death to the pleasures of sin.

  I wonder how many of these thoughts play across my face when he says, “There it is. The part of you that wants to hurt me.”

  I shake my head as he misinterprets. I don’t want to hurt him—again, unless he asks. I want him mindless with desire. I want his skin against mine. I want him whispering my name, moaning, groaning. He’ll forget every woman who ever touched him as I use my fingers and mouth to take him apart until he begs for things he never knew he wanted.

  “Christ, Andrew,” he whispers. He stands and turns his back to me.

  I think, fleetingly, how stupid that is—to turn his back on a predator. Then, I remember he trusts me. “Ask me more questions,” I say, because I can’t think of anything else.