The Journal of Vincent Du Maurier (Book 1) Read Free Page A

wrong.
    Maxine writhed in the pain of her torn flesh, as she clung to her existence
in the arms of her maker. “It burns,” she said. “It burns.”
    It was not until her body heated that we knew she was infected. My sweet
Byron tended to her all the while, as weak as he was. He tried to quell her
pain with ointments and a sugar serum he had concocted in his chambers but even
with all his scientific brilliance, he could not heal Maxine.
    “Nom de Dieu,” Jean said. “What should we do?”
    “We wait,” Byron said. He insisted we watch Maxine with diligence in
case she changed.
    “C’est pas possible?” Jean said, numb with disbelief.
    None of us were ready to accept the reality that Maxine could morph into
one of them, transform just like the humans do when they are infected.
    “But she cannot,” Elizabeth said. She was Maxine’s dearest friend and
her only progeny. Maxine had made Elizabeth so that she would have an eternal
playmate—she was only a child when Jean made her his vampire. For some
three hundred years the two girlish vampires had spent a childhood together,
both made from the same eccentric venomline. She clung to Maxine, holding her
maker’s hand in hers, trembling at the thought of losing her. “You can’t change,”
Elizabeth said. “I won’t let you.” She turned to Jean and pleaded for him to
help his beloved. “You must stop this or she’ll be lost to us forever.”
    I do not think Maxine’s panic set in completely until then. When she
heard her playmate’s plea, she cursed and screamed. “I don’t want to be one of
zem. ’Elp me! Arrêter cette folie! Arrêter ma douleur! Jean, je t’en prie.”
    I pulled Byron aside and asked him what he thought would happen to her.
    “I cannot know for sure,” he said. “But her transformation, should it come,
will come quickly.”
    And so it did. One moment she thrashed in Jean’s arms, screaming at the
top of her lungs, the next she was as rigid as stone.
    “Jean,” Byron said. “Step away.”
    Lost in the horror of the moment, Jean had to be pried from his demoiselle,
too distraught to let her go. “Quelle horreur!” His cry
echoed up through the spire of the cathedral.
    “What should we do?” I asked.
    Byron shook his head as if to say there was nothing we could do, but when Maxine opened her eyes, it was decided. She was reanimated, but
would never live again.
    It is difficult to describe what I witnessed in the chancel, for I still
deny its truth. Maxine’s metamorphosis was quick, though the actual
transformation seemed in slow motion. First her visage contorted into an
expression of permanent horror, like Frankenstein’s might have looked when he
first reanimated his patchwork. But Maxine’s contortions escalated and soon her
nose and mouth began to fuse into what looked like a pointed beak; her skin
twisted and became taut around her lips, which swelled like her eyes, bulging
more greatly than those of a pop-eye fish. I looked away when her neck
stretched wide with the tearing of her tendons and when her talons ripped
through the tips of her toes, her newly clawed feet breaking the soles of her
boots. She seethed and released a trill before she lunged at me, snapping her fangs.
I did not hesitate to defend myself or my clan. I have no remorse for doing what
I was forced to do, but the image of what I have done—what I had to
do—is seared in my brain, too wretched to recount in full. I wonder if some
things are not better left abandoned on the shores of Lethe.
     
    Later. — Soon after we returned with
the humans, they became a source of contention. Jean wanted the man, Elizabeth
the girl, but Byron decided for all of us. He insisted the man and the girl be locked
in a chamber while we made our plans. He was always the coolest head when vital
matters were at hand. “They will be rationed,” he said.
    “I agree,” I said. “But how long will two
humans last with six hungry vampires?”
    “We will take small