“So how exactly does this whole thing work?” I ask Jörn as I am well at the point of having exhausted the subject to be nearly desensitized of it.
Or I am actually just over tired so the sense of horror has dulled, as it occurs to me now that vampires suddenly have become a normal pattern of my thinking process, as if it was always already there. No, not exactly. I’d almost say ‘woken up to,’ but that’s not exactly how it feels either
It is more of a sense of remoteness. Like being outside of events watching. Like a stunned bystander scratching her head and I am just an observer examining all the characters and trying to connect with …. a time line?
“How does what work?” Jörn asks me
Even as …. I know …. we both know ….he can read my thoughts
I’m looking up at his eyes thinking this —as I see a spark alight within the shadows of kryptonite and without moving a muscle on his face, I can see he is almost laughing at me but concealing it well even as —I see the humor in his eyes
He sighs and shrugs and then paces twice back and forth across the room with —it feels almost— like lightning speed ….he leaves trails; like traces ….when he moves —little flares of blue lights evaporate as he —as if, hydroplanes in motion
I realize he does not mean for me to notice this. He is more distracted with the new level of himself as the-whole of himself is now exposed to me. In fact, if I didn’t know better, I would think he is unsure of ….me? Now that I know.
Jörn suddenly looks at me sharply from where he stands by the window
“It isn’t that I am letting my guard down,” Jörn says, proving he is still reading my thoughts and then after a pause he continues on to say, “to us it is not reading thoughts. It amazes us how loudly mortal humans scream their thoughts. ‘Shifters’ communicate with their thoughts—do you see?”
I find there’s a lot to unwrap in that last part —and the first part —and maybe all of it together as a whole as much as in pieces
“‘Shifters’? You call yourself ‘shifters’?” as it is the only easy part I can think of where to start
“There are so many names. But there are many variations of —it’s complicated ….just like how there are many species of animals and —many races of humans ….that may be a vague way to help you understand.”
“Like—vampires, werewolves—“
He is beside me in a flash,
“—don’t do that,” he says in such a way that it seems some repulsive aversion causes him to almost physically stop my words.
I realize as I rewind in my head what I just said how maybe I might have caused insult
He says,
“While I can understand how the blood sucking thing came about as some characteristic, it is not exactly the defining feature or even the norm. That is more the extreme when —it’s gone rabid; but that rarely happens and only did during the black plague, so….”
But then, he stops and paces some more. He stands by the windows in a spot in between the two so that they flank him, giving him almost the look of having great wings as the sun descends orange behind him
“Most are not able to see the ‘traces’,” he tells me with air-quotations and then after another disjointed pause he peers sidelong at me as if with a guilty expression. He looks back out the window but walks towards me as he walks like a habit from years —centuries?—of watching out for spies. He sits beside me but still is looking outside.
He says,
“you are starting to notice details most people will never notice about us.”
His remark stuns me. I stare at his profile,
“How? From being around you? am I catching it—picking it up—is it like contagious or ?!—what?”
“No…. years ago we ….slowed your biological time line,” but he says this in such a low voice. I almost don’t hear him
“What did you just say?” I almost choke on the words
“There comes a point where it’s harder for the transition if ….” but here he stops and seems to leave the thought. “Did you never notice how often people have made Dorian Grey jokes to you? Remarks about —had you had any cosmetic procedures? Things like that?”
I jump to my feet and stand up and for a startled frozen moment I am like in a cartoon when the character stands frozen and its eye balls drop out in shock with its jaw dropped gaping wide.
“‘We’?” I ask from the window with my hands on my hips, like one ready to charge into battle shooting from the holster …. but then ….I think more about what he just said about seeing more details of things about them. While mostly Jörn as it has only been —or mostly only been Jörn whom I’ve been around since all this materialized for me.
The shock takes awhile to adjust to. So—he’s a vampire. Or not a vampire—a ‘shifter’ whatever that means
“The bats?” I ask
Again, of all things, I grasp onto these superfluous details because the bigger thing is too insurmountable
“I….” again a guilty smile at me, “there’s —they have a unique cellular make up in their dna that when (we extract a drop of their plasma) injected into a ‘shifted’ is able to rebuild—it stimulates the metamorphose and works as a healing agent. The ancients discovered this by accident. Hence the legendary myths came about,” Jörn shrugs simply
“So—you mean it’s the bat’s blood you drink, not the human’s?”
Jörn shakes his head,
“neither. And we don’t kill bats. Never—“ he laughs with a sinister tone,”they are like the sacred cow to shifters. And you need to forget all the movie versions. The only thing they do have close to being credible is where it is believed to have come from—at least on this side of the planet; because that is the way knowledge of this reached our seidr —the one I said my mother went to when she told me it was to bring Elan back….it all goes back to this—I cannot tell you without going back to then— duva…. the last time it happened when you died it was on a battlefield— I was away fighting another battle and to save face and represent for me, you decided to stand in my place— it was against Lisa’s army—it was the end of the blood feud but you paid it and it wasn’t for you to pay, do you see?”
“No—Lisa? But why would your mother ….whose blood feud?”
“My mother is Lisa’s aunt—it was a blood feud with her brother Ivar and she had never revealed the nature of what that was—I never cared to know after what happened there ….”
“Ok—then, tell about how …. Redbad…. really? —and you have been slowing down my —what? Bio—logical— ? —timeline? —And when did this happen?”
“It was when —that day—Willem was sure it was you—he didn’t tell us but the day at the Wassenaar bar—“
“My rum and coke?” I blurt out as it hits me—as the memory of him that day has always been so sharp
Jörn smiles,
“did it make you batty?”
I don’t laugh at his joke. I’m back at the Dugout that day in Wassenaar remembering my drink with a Dutchman named Redbad not Willem
“Holy shit, wait, that makes sense—because —wasn’t he fighting against the take over of the Christians….? like fighting in battle against—like, as in —the actual Charlemagne?” I start to laugh because I’m expecting Jörn to correct me but when the odd silence hangs there, that note of truth belches loudly, “Redbad was a pagan ….” I stare at Jörn and into the bright of kryptonite and his eyes do not look away. Willem fought ….Charlemagne?
After a moment Jörn says,
“you think you got all that so far?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Would you like to hazard a guess who the pagan Viking seidr is that my mother went to to resurrect you?”
My mind goes back to something Jörn said recently. And along with it, I think suddenly again of that day at the penthouse when everyone filed out of Ethan Rhys Jones office years ago….the first time I ever laid eyes on ….
“Stina….?”
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