Page 176 of The Last Vampire
He nods and asks, “What about before break? Did Minaro ask about me then?”
“She said you had a family emergency. When did you have time to compel her?”
“Before going with Nate and Cisco.” He lies as casually as he can, then he takes her hands in his. “It is getting late, and I must beat the dawn.”
“It’s only the nightingale you hear,” she whispers.
His lips curve into a mournful smile, and he loves her all the more for theRomeo and Julietreference. He brings her hands to his lips and kisses her skin in a final farewell.
“I am afraid it is the lark.”
ONCE LORENAis safely in her room, William has a final stop to make. And he must hurry.
He did not compel Minaro, nor give her any excuses for his absence. Not this time nor the last. In fact, the director has been the furthest thing from his mind. And as he follows her scent to her bedroom, he realizes how great a mistake that was.
He has been remiss to ignore his instincts. There has been a strange quality about Minaro that he has been dancing around since meeting her. There are physical distinctions like her unique height and unnatural speech and the pupilless pure blackness of her eyes. Yet something else has been swimming at the edges of his thoughts, only becoming clear to him now.
The second time he compelled the director,she resisted.
He ordered her to organize a field trip to Harvard. And before agreeing, she said it was too short notice. That should not happen in a compulsion.
She is not human.
The realization hits him so hard that he bursts through her door without warning, and it does not surprise him to find her fully dressed and seated in an armchair, waiting for him.
“Please,” she says, gesturing to the sofa. “Have a seat, Mr. Stoker.”
She calls him by his real name. “You are not human.”
He shuts the door behind him, and being in this enclosed space where her scent fills every air particle, he discerns a few subtleties he had not caught before. Notes of an ancient musk mixed with a familiar aroma.
“I am not,” she confirms.
“Yet you are no vampire.”
“That is correct.”
He still has not budged from the room’s entrance. “What are you?”
“I am the guardian of Grandsire’s spell.”
William finds himself staring at her so hard that his legs bring him closer, then deposit him on the couch. As if his body could not carry the weight of her words.
“I am a being made of Stoker blood,” she says. “More specifically, the blood spilled by one hundred of your forebears, including Grandsire, two hundred and fifty years ago. I exist only because you stayed behind.”
William does not understand, so he keeps listening.
“I have been watching over you. As the sole Stoker vampire still physically inhabiting this planet, you are the magic’s anchor, and if not for your presence, the displaced vampires could never hope to return.”
William feels himself pressing harder into the couch, as if even gravity were growing weightier. “What does that mean?”
“The witch who created this spell for him never told Grandsire that one Stoker would have to stay behind. It was his instincts that led him to make that call… and alsolove.”
As he processes her words, a single truth dawns on him: “But if you are here, then that means… the spell worked.”
The vampires they left behind are not gone for good.
Hope is not yet lost for his kind.
