CHAPTER 14. SHADOWS AND LIGHT
“They say when trouble comes close ranks,” Professor Clerval told the class. “And that’s what the vampires did. Once solitary creatures, they began collecting into covens, for protection and to maintain some kind of order, to put limits on the indiscriminate killing that was calling too much attention their way.”
“Protection from what?” asked a voice Leesa recognized. She had chosen the back row, as always, in case Rave showed up again. A few rows down to her right, she spotted the questioner’s familiar red hair. Stanley. The guy asked at least one question every class, usually a good one. She wished she were as confident.
“From us,” the professor replied. “And whatever else hunts them.”
“You’re not saying vampires are afraid of us, are you?” asked another guy, the disbelief evident in his voice.
“Individually, no, of course not. Vampires are much too powerful. But when people gather in an armed mob, even a vampire can be threatened. By limiting the number of victims they take, they remain in the shadows, living near us, around us, unseen and unsuspected. But you can bet that some of the thousands of people who are killed or who disappear in this country every year were taken by vampires.”
Leesa was fascinated. Ever since Rave told her vampires were real, she had viewed this class in a whole new way, no longer thinking the professor might only be pretending vampires existed. Instead, she felt he was talking with genuine authority. How he had come by all his knowledge she had no idea, but she was eager to learn everything she could.
“Speaking of shadows,” said a voice to her left, “do vampires come out only at night?”
Leesa turned and saw it was one of the goth guys, clumped with his fellows in their usual place near the back. She gasped when she saw Stefan sitting next to them. What was he doing here? He was dressed all in black again, this time a black T-shirt instead of the button shirt he’d worn at the party. He blended in with the goths, but she could tell he was not really with them. Using them for camouflage, she guessed. His dark eyes caught hers, and he smiled. Reflexively, she returned his smile, then remembered Rave’s warning and looked away.
“Of course,” replied a guy on the other side of the room. “Sunlight burns ’em up.”
“No, it doesn’t,” a girl countered. “But sunlight makes their skin glitter, which gives them away.”
“I believe the truth is somewhere in between,” Professor Clerval said. “The idea of vampires burning or disintegrating in the sunlight provides a nice dramatic angle, allowing bits like having them sleep in coffins and creating great visual effects for the movies.” He moved out from behind the lectern to the front of the stage. “According to the most authoritative sources I’ve been able to find, vampires don’t like the sun because it hurts their skin. So they prefer the night, or overcast days like today. And they will certainly keep to the shadows as much as possible.”
Leesa thought of her mother, avoiding the sun because it burned her skin.
“But they can handle the sun if necessary,” Professor Clerval continued. “And they definitely don’t glitter, in spite of what Twilight tells us. So you could be talking to a vampire and never know it.”
“Then how can you tell if someone is a vampire?” goth guy asked.
“Well, since they avoid the sun,” Professor Clerval replied, “they’re usually quite pale.” He grinned. “But then again, so are you.”
Leesa joined her classmates in laughter. The professor waited until the room quieted. “If you can get one in front of a mirror, you’ll know by the absence of a reflection,” he said. “Otherwise, you have no way to tell.”
“Until the fangs come out,” a guy in front remarked, drawing more laughter.
Professor Clerval chuckled. “Well, there is that. But it’s probably a bit late at that point.”
The talk of fangs presented Leesa with the opening she’d been waiting for, but dreading. She’d hoped to catch the professor after class one day to ask him privately, but he always had a cluster of students around him when class ended. Taking a deep breath to muster her courage, she raised her hand, hoping she wasn’t going to sound stupid.
Professor Clerval pointed a bony finger at her. “Yes?”
“Have you ever heard of a one-fanged vampire?” she asked.
Professor Clerval moved across the stage to a spot directly in front of Leesa and looked up at her silently, as if studying her. “You would be Ms. Nyland?” he said finally.
Leesa sucked in a startled breath. How had he known her name? Her cheeks grew warm as she found herself looking down onto a sea of upraised faces. Whether everyone was looking at her because she’d asked a stupid question or because the professor knew her name, she had no idea. Her fingers began dancing in her hair. She wished she had an invisibility cloak or a magic ring to make herself disappear. “Yes,” she managed to reply. “Leesa.”
“Well, Leesa, it turns out I have heard of one-fanged vampires. And not just because another student asked me that same question a couple of years ago. Interestingly, that student had the same last name as yours.”
Leesa’s heart jumped. Bradley! Yes, her brother certainly would have asked about it. And he probably didn’t wait until the sixth class to do it, either.
“My brother,” she said.
“I thought as much when I saw your name on my roster. I was wondering when you’d get around to asking.” Professor Clerval smiled. “Your brother was a lot less shy.”
Don’t I know it, Leesa thought, feeling as if she might melt under all the eyes still staring up at her. She wished she and Dr. Clerval could talk about this alone. That would be sooo much easier.
“Might you and I have a word after class?” Professor Clerval asked.
“Yes, of course,” Leesa said, breathing a sigh of relief. Someone had heard her prayers!
The professor ambled back to the lectern. “Vampires are thought to be models of physical perfection,” he said to the class. “Fast, strong, handsome or beautiful. And by and large, much of that seems to be true. But there are stories that every now and then, something goes awry in the transmission process when a victim is bitten. The result of such an occurrence is a flawed creature, without the powers of a true vampire. Vampires have a name for such a creature—grafhym. The chief marker for a grafhym, it is said, is one fang instead of two.”
Leesa’s head was spinning. She thought back to her mom’s tale, to all her strange behavior. Was it possible there was some truth behind it after all, as incredible as it seemed? She was suddenly aware that Stefan was now seated beside her. She’d been so distracted she hadn’t even noticed his arrival, which was hard to believe, looking at him now and feeling his raw sensuality.
“Stefan!” It was all she could do to keep her voice quiet.
Stefan smiled at her. “Hi, Leesa. Nice to see you again.”
His accent only heightened his sensuality. “What are you doing here?” she whispered. “You’re not in this class, are you?”
“No, but sometimes I hang out with my ‘friends’ over there.” He nodded toward the goth group. “I don’t stand out quite so much that way. Besides, I like hearing about vampires. They’re fascinating creatures.”
Leesa thought back to Rave’s warning that Stefan was a vampire. He certainly looked the part—as if she had any idea what a real vampire looked like, she reminded herself—but sitting here next to him in class, the idea seemed ridiculous. Now, if he’d popped up at midnight in some dark place…
“And it gives me a chance to say hi to you,” he continued, making no effort to hide the flirtation in his voice.
She couldn’t tell whether he meant he was here because she was, or simply that once he’d seen her, he wanted to say hello. She wasn’t sure which she preferred, and she was too embarrassed and afraid to ask. “It’s nice to see you again,” she managed to say, hating how lame she sounded.
“I see you have a special interest in vampires,” Stefan said, his eyes b
eginning to take on that same bottomless look Leesa remembered from the party. She felt herself being drawn into them. “I’m curious,” he continued. “Where did you hear about the one-fanged kind?”
“Oh, just some stories my mom told me when I was little,” Leesa said, trying to make it seem of little importance.
There was a general shuffling in the room, the sound of notebooks closing and students getting to their feet and filing out of the lecture hall. She hadn’t even heard Dr. Clerval end the class.
“I know you need to talk with Professor Clerval,” Stefan said. “It was good to see you again, Leesa.”
They stood up. “You too,” Leesa replied.
“Maybe next time we’ll have a chance to discuss our mutual interest in vampires,” Stefan said as they began edging toward the end of the aisle.
The flirtation, or whatever it was, was stronger in his tone now. His magnetism was undeniable. “Maybe,” Leesa replied, trying to keep her voice noncommittal. She turned and began descending the stairs. “Bye, Stefan.”
When she reached the stage, she found Dr. Clerval and Randolph surrounded as usual by a cluster of students. As Leesa limped closer, the professor smiled at her.
“Okay, everyone,” he said. “Further questions will have to wait. Or feel free to pepper young Renfield with your queries for as long as you want. I wish to spend a bit of time with Ms. Nyland.”
A couple of the students drifted away, one girl fixing Leesa with an envious stare. Two stayed behind, talking to Randolph while Dr. Clerval shuffled over to Leesa. Close up, he looked even older than he did from the back of the room. His skin hung loosely from his face and was lined with thin red capillaries and mottled with age spots. In contrast to his aged appearance, his gray eyes were bright and alive.
“Will you join me in my office?” he asked. “It’s right upstairs.”
Leesa didn’t hesitate—the more privacy, the better. “Of course, Professor. I’d love to.”
Professor Clerval led her through a doorway behind the stage and into a musty stairwell, showing no effects from his age as they climbed to the third floor. At the top of the stairs, they stepped out into a silent, deserted hallway. Light spilled from an open doorway near the far end of the corridor, but otherwise, the place appeared empty. Their footsteps echoed lightly off brown plaster walls badly in need of a fresh coat of paint.
The professor stopped in front of an old wooden door about halfway down the hall. A brass nameplate, darkened with age in testimony to his tenure here, was affixed to the middle of the door. He inserted a long cylindrical key into the old-fashioned lock and pushed the door open. After flipping the switch to turn on a dim overhead light, he stepped aside in a gentlemanly manner and let Leesa enter first.
She was surprised by how small his office was, smaller even than her dorm room. She’d expected a full professor to have a much bigger space. Tall bookcases crammed with books lined every wall, making the room feel even smaller. Cut into the far wall was an arched window similar to the one in her room, though lead strips divided this one into small diamond-shaped sections. Beneath the window was a beautiful antique roll top desk, cluttered with papers. She detected the lingering aroma of old smoke—not at all unpleasant—so she guessed pipe, not cigarettes. Looking closer at the bookcases, she saw the shelves were filled with vampire books. She recognized some of the titles, but there were many she’d never heard of. A glass-fronted bookcase housed what looked to be very old, leather-bound manuscripts.
“Please, have a seat,” the professor invited, indicating an old wooden chair with a dark burgundy cushioned seat similar to some she remembered from her grandmother’s house. He switched on a red and gold glass Tiffany lamp on the corner of the desk to give them a bit more light.
Leesa lowered herself gingerly onto the chair, not really sure how strong it was, but found it quite solid. Professor Clerval pulled a wheeled desk chair from under the desk and spun it around to face her. He sat down and took a curved black pipe and a pouch of tobacco from the top desk drawer.
“Do you mind?” he asked as he tamped a pinch of tobacco into the bowl.
“No, of course not,” Leesa replied, happy it wasn’t a cigarette, or even worse, a stinky cigar.
“As we get older, we tend to relish the simple pleasures.” He lit a wooden match and held it above the bowl, sucking in through the pipe repeatedly until the tobacco was lit. The smoke had a pleasant, fruity scent—cherry, Leesa thought.
The professor leaned back into his chair and puffed on his pipe. Leesa could see his aged features begin to soften as he relaxed. After a moment, he reached into another drawer and pulled out a brass key. He held the key out to Leesa.
“Open that bookcase,” he said, indicating the glass-fronted case. “Take out the third volume from the left on the second shelf. Be careful—it’s very old.”
Leesa took the key and opened the glass front of the case. Using two hands, she gently lifted out the leather-bound volume. The feel of the dried leather reminded her of the dry, crinkly hide of a stuffed iguana she’d once handled in high school biology.
“Here, let me have it,” the professor said.
Leesa handed him the old book. “What is it?”
Professor Clerval rested the book on his lap. “It’s an original manuscript from the early nineteenth century, said to be the memoirs of a female vampire.” He put his pipe into a brass ashtray atop the desk and carefully opened the book. Leesa could hear the leather binding crinkle. She scraped her chair closer.
“Whether it is in fact that, or the work of someone’s imagination, I’m not sure. But it contains a small section about the matter of such interest to the Nyland family—one-fanged vampires.” He thumbed slowly through the pages, stopping about halfway through. “Ahhh, here it is.” He looked up at Leesa. “I don’t expect you read Italian?”
Leesa shook her head. “No, just English.”
“I’ll summarize it for you, then. She writes of a man she wanted to take for her consort, to make him vampire and live by her side. She says she knew something was wrong the instant she began drinking his blood. Some feeling she’d never before experienced. The word she uses does not translate well, but a sourness would be a good approximation. When she finished, she failed to see the expected change in his eyes, the look she normally saw when ushering a human into the realm of the undead.”
Professor Clerval carefully turned the page. “At first, the man didn’t know anything was wrong.” He looked up at Leesa. She was sitting on the edge of her chair, her attention riveted upon him.
“How could he know?” he asked. “After all, a person only gets bitten once. But the vampire knew.” The professor returned to the book. “She writes that he smiled at her and reached out his hands for hers, but was taken by surprise when she faltered back. I’ll quote her now: ‘I recoiled in horror as he opened his mouth, for it revealed a thing of which I’d only heard stories, had never seen, and hope never to see again. Just one lone fang dropped from his upper jaw—the mark of a grafhym. The man I wanted for my consort was damaged, imperfect.’ She goes on to say he was banished from the tribe immediately, forced out into the forest to live his life alone.”
He turned another page. “The final section talks about the phenomenon of grafhym in general. How their powers are sorely limited. And most importantly, how they cannot turn a victim vampire, can at best turn them into weaker versions of themselves.”
He closed the book and looked up, smiling. “Kind of like making a copy of a copy, I guess. So tell me, Leesa, why the family interest in something so out of the ordinary as one-fanged vampires? Your brother never said.”
Leesa debated briefly how much to tell him, but decided to give him the full story, sensing she might need his help in the future. She began with her mother’s “accident” and her claim about being bitten by a one-fanged vampire, and then detailed the bizarre behavioral changes her mom had suffered over the years and how they had shaped her family.
Professor Clerval listened carefully, puffing absently on his pipe as Leesa talked. He didn’t interrupt with a single question.
“So whether your mother’s story is true or not,” he said when she finished, “doesn’t really matter. Its effect on your family has been quite powerful.”
“Do you think it could be true?” Leesa knew it wouldn’t really make any difference—the past is past—but there would be some small comfort in knowing her mom wasn’t crazy.
Professor Clerval shrugged. “I don’t know. But nothing your mother said contradicts anything of what we just read. And at least some of her behaviors are consistent with grafhym. I’d love to meet her, talk to her.”
“She’s still in San Diego. I doubt I could convince her to come back here.” Leesa thought about the idea for a few seconds. “But I guess I could try. Maybe on a red-eye,” she mused.
“Please try,” the professor said. “Because there’s one very important thing we must consider regarding your mother.”
Leesa was struck by the seriousness of his tone. “What’s that?” she asked.
Professor Clerval looked at her solemnly. “If your mother simply made up her tale, where would she have heard of a one-fanged vampire? Awareness of the existence of grafhym is exceedingly uncommon.”
The professor’s words struck Leesa like a slap. Since she had not known one-fanged vampires existed, she’d always assumed the story was a creation of her mom’s imagination. But how likely was her mom’s imagination to have hit so close to what Dr. Clerval had just read from the old manuscript? One fang, maybe—there would have to be only one fang to explain the single puncture in her neck. But the idea of a flawed transfer of power? That was too close to the mark. Leesa breathed deeply. Not since she was a very young child had she found herself believing her mom’s story like this.
“I’d love to talk to you and your brother together,” Professor Clerval said, pulling Leesa from her musings.
“I wish you could,” Leesa replied sadly. “But Bradley’s gone.”
“Gone?”
“Over a year now. He sent me an email, telling me he was going away and not to try finding him.”
Professor Clerval leaned forward. “Uh-oh,” he murmured.
Leesa popped out of her chair. “What is it? Do you know something?”
“No. Sorry. Nothing specific, at least. Please, sit.” He waited until Leesa sat back down. “I’m betting it had something to do with the girl.”
“Edwina?”
“Was that her name? I never formally met her. Bradley brought her to class a couple of times. There was enough room, so I permitted it. They usually sat near the front.”
“Why do you think Edwina had anything to do with Bradley’s disappearance?” Leesa had guessed it probably did, but she never had any concrete reason to support the belief.
“Something about the way she looked, the way she moved,” Professor Clerval said. “But it was more than that. It was the way she looked at you. Arrogant, challenging. Especially whenever I said something out of the mainstream about vampires. Like, who was I, some old man, to try to reveal the mysteries of the undead? As if she possessed a secret knowledge no one else had. Afterward, when I had time to think about it, to put some pieces together, I began to wonder if maybe she was a vampire. And now to learn Bradley is gone. If Edwina is a vampire, God help him.”
Leesa’s mouth went dry. First her mom, and now Bradley. She stood up and began to pace the tiny office. Even if the stories were all nonsense, the idea of vampires continued to wreck her family. And if they were real, that was even worse. She looked at the professor. He seemed to have aged in the last few minutes. “You don’t really think Edwina was a vampire, do you?”
“I have no way of knowing, but she certainly looked the part. And with what you just told me about your family, she could have used that to ensnare your brother.” Dr. Clerval picked up his pipe and took a long puff. “If Edwina hinted at forbidden knowledge, Bradley would not have resisted.”
Nor would she, Leesa knew. She would have to follow this trail. “Was Edwina a student here?”
“Not to my knowledge. I could look back through the school’s databases, I suppose.”
“I’ve already checked the yearbooks. But go ahead, please, in case there’s something in your listings.” She sat back down. There was a question she had to ask, but she dreaded the answer. “Professor, if she really was a vampire, what does that mean for Bradley?”
The professor’s countenance darkened. “If he’s been gone as long as you say,” he said, “then one of two things, I’m afraid. Either Bradley is a vampire now, or she’s made him into a feeder.”
Leesa did not at all like the way the professor said that. “What’s a feeder?”
“A feeder is a human captive kept as a continuous source of blood. The host drinks the feeder’s blood regularly, never biting deeply enough or taking enough blood to turn the victim vampire. The blood is allowed to replenish itself before the vampire drinks again, giving him or her a personal, never-ending well of blood. I would think it a nightmarish existence, caught between the world of the living and the world of the undead.”
Leesa shivered. The thought chilled her own blood.