Revelations

“You’re insane,” Eliza said with a shake of her head.

“Are you saying you don’t believe me?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“Do I seem like the kind of person who goes around claiming they met an Ancient when they didn’t?”

“I don’t know. I’ve known you for less than 24 hours.”

Zachary sighed and frosty air expelled from his mouth. “I wouldn’t lie about this. I’m not stupid, okay?”

“Okay.” Eliza drew in a breath and looked him in the eyes. “Fine. Tell me all about your little experience with the oldest, most invincible race on the planet. Oh, and explain how you didn’t die.”

He smiled at her and a spark of amusement lit in his eyes. “It was almost five years ago, now, but I remember it well. People were still living in Sydney, well aware of the dangers, but still determined to hold their ground. I had just arrived six months beforehand, sent from England as a liaison. British Secret Service. I suppose there isn’t any point in keeping that a secret now.”

“So you’re like, James Bond, or something?” Eliza asked.

“You’ve seen the movies?”

“Some of them, as a kid.”

“Well, there I am in my 007 glory. I was young for the mission, but I was willing. It was a foray into the unknown, to come here upon a refugee ship with a hundred other souls. It turned out that there was a vampire aboard. No, not the Ancient whose existence you are so ready to disprove but a young girl. She claimed to have sea-sickness and stayed below deck for the entire journey. No one thought much of it, but when our numbers dwindled... I staked her, in the end, along with several others who had been turned.

“When we arrived in Sydney it was dusk, and beneath the remaining rays of sunlight we unloaded from the boat and headed toward a nearby shelter that was set up for refugees. I was intercepted on the way, of course, by a nondescript man claiming to be sent by the director of ASIS.” At Eliza’s blank stare, he elaborated. “The Australian Secret Intelligence Service. It was night, by then, so we went through some routine checks to ensure our humanity. He escorted me to their base of operations beneath the city. One of them, anyway. The main base is in Canberra.”

“What’s with the detective badge on your belt if you’re secret service?” Eliza wanted to know.

“It’s a cover. Vampires don’t like the intelligence agencies. They’re more ready to capture us or turn us rather than kill us outright. Their main opponents in Australia are ASIO and ASIS, which have recently banded together for the sake of safety in numbers and all that. So, if you’re poking around where you have no business poking around having a badge will give you more of a reason and explanation than if you’re a plain vigilante without a good reason.”

“Fair enough.”

“So, back to my story. Their base was beneath the city, and they were headed by this guy named Mandela.”

“Nelson Mandela?”

“No, Apollo Mandella. Stop interrupting.”

Eliza put her hands up in a defence gesture. “Sorry, sheesh.”

“Anyway, that’s when I first heard about the Ancients. Well, more about them than the usual myths and horror stories. These guys believed that Sydney was headed by an Ancient. A damn powerful one, in fact, with roots in the Czech Republic. They had this theory that each Ancient had a territory, you know. Like, one particular Ancient was given North America to govern, and there were vampires or sometimes Ancients in charge of different states or territories. Mandela thought that our Ancient was given Australia, but he’d settled down in Sydney because it’s the biggest city.

“But I was sceptical, like you. I had just come across the normal kinds of vampires. Some of them were tougher than others, because they’d been around longer, but most of them were newbies. I mean, with three quarters of the world’s population turning into vampires, they’re the ones you are most likely to find. They can be pretty easy to kill, too. Unless they’ve been turned by an Ancient. Those ones are tough.

“Everyone there knew how ambivalent I was to the Ancients. Many of them hadn’t even come across one, but a few had. I just thought they were crazy, or had just come up against an especially tough bloodsucker and told people it was an Ancient to make themselves look better. Until this one day, when I was sent up above on a retrieval mission. A group of humans were holed up in a basement somewhere and we were supposed to help them and relocate them to one of the safe houses in the city. But what we didn’t know was that it was vampire central near their hiding place. It was right at the heart of the city, where the vampires gathered every night for their feeding frenzy, so most vamps lived on George Street. We got there during the day, but it was harder than we thought to locate the humans. We had been in contact with them through the radio, but the bloody vampires had been listening too. We underestimated them, just like before the Takeover.”

“The humans died, didn’t they?” Eliza asked.

Zachary inclined his head. “We couldn’t get there in time. When we got there, we had a welcome party. In the lead was this... this one vampire that looked different to all the others. He looked stronger, more powerful. His eyes were red, and if you stared too close at them he’d start the hypnosis. I watched as he hypnotised one of the men and slit his throat.

“But you’re probably wondering how I knew he was an Ancient. It wasn’t just the reaction from the other men, but it was the way the other vampires bowed to him and spoke to him with reverence and respect. It was the very strength that this vampire possessed. He ripped a man’s head clean off his neck. He acted... I don’t know, more human. He wasn’t just overcome with thirst, like most other vampires. He was so casual, almost lazy, in the way he slaughtered us. This vampire... he wasn’t a human with a monster inside him. He was the monster.”

“How did you survive, then?” Eliza asked. “If this vampire was so badass, then why are you still alive?”

“I don’t really know myself. I know that I ran the hell out of there. I was one of the ones at the back, which made me lucky, I guess. But I couldn’t escape. This Ancient had incredible speed and there was no way I could compare. He caught me in seconds. He swung me around and I tried my best to avoid his eyes because I knew what would happen if I looked into them. He bit me, then,” Zachary said, touching a scar on his neck where two incisors had bitten into the flesh. “But he didn’t drain me. He said, ‘I’m not going to kill you. I’m going to give you a message.’”

“What was the message?”

“I was so out of it by then. I had lost so much blood that I was on the brink of collapsing. But I remember, clear as day, what he said to me. ‘Devanik has something of yours.’ And I asked, ‘who’s Devanik?’ and he replied, ‘that would be me.’”