Chapter 15: Chapter Fifteen – New Moon

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Chapter 15

"There's only one bed." I say, standing in the door of the room Lina has been using at the mosque. My belly groans, full from the Imam's delicious chickpea and vegetable rechta. The room is simple, with four white walls, a small twin sized bed with a thick wool blanket, a wood bedside table, and a tiny attached bathroom.

Lina barely registers what I said as she undresses and prepares for bed. "Yea sorry. You don't snore, do you?" 

"What, no, of course not, shouldn't you know that? You just slept next to me on the beach last week, and we've been roommates for years." I finished defending myself with a huff only to feel in Lina's emotions that she was teasing me. 

Lina looks up from her bag with a big grin. "Don't worry, I won't bite." She winks as she passes me to walk into the small attached bathroom, toothbrush in hand. "Unless you want me too!" She shouts. 

I stand in the middle of the room, mouth open, too flustered to process the world around me, until Lina returns. 

"Aren't you going to get ready for bed?" She asks, snapping me out of my dazed state. 

"Oh, um, yea. Right." I awkwardly shuffle over to my bag and retrieve my own toothbrush.

"It's going to be so weird sleeping at night for once." I say as I make my way to the bathroom for my own teeth brushing. 

"Yea, I'm not sure I'll be able to." Lina calls out to me. 

"Me either!" I shout, my voice muffled by my mouthful of toothpaste. 

I return to the small bedroom to see Lina sitting on the bed in her tank top and leggings, her muscles stretching the fabric of the tight clothing. 

"You want to stay up and talk then?" She asks. 

"Yes, definitely. We really need to talk about that story Dihya told us before she put me out for a week." I say, sitting down next to her. 

Lina places a hand on my shoulder and gives me a comforting smile. "I'm sorry you had to hear that. I'm sure I have a lot of explaining to do." 

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"Yea, no shit!" 

"Whoa, ok. What do you want to know first?" Lina asks, throwing her hands up defensively. 

"Sorry, that was too much. I'm just very…disturbed by what Dihya told us." I say. 

"I know, c'mere." Lina scoots closer to me and wraps me in a brief hug. 

"Ok, less hugging, more explaining." I say, pushing Lina off me. "First of all, that was a vampire, right? The French soldier from Dihya's story?" I ask. 

Lina nods solemnly. "Yea, one of the worst ones too. I believe Dihya had the misfortune of meeting Marie-Madeleine d'Aubray. She's lucky to have survived the encounter. Most don't, from what I've heard." 

"Who is she?"

Lina frowns. "Well, I don't know for sure really. Fortunately I've never met her, but every vampire knows who she is. At least all the members of the Consortium do. She definitely has a reputation." 

"What, for war crimes?" I ask.

"Among plenty of other horrible things, yes. At least, that's what people say. From what I hear, she’s a fervent French nationalist, and a lifetime soldier. She’s fought in every French war from the First Crusade in the army of Raymona the IVth, Countess of Toulouse, to the Persian Gulf War in the Division Daguet. She hasn’t changed her name since adopting a French identity, calling herself Marie-Madeleine d'Aubray in every life she’s lived.” Lina sighs and shakes her head.

“It’s ironic really, because she isn’t even from France. I don’t know her, because she didn't fight in the vampire civil war. She was the chieftess of a tribe of Corsi people in the mountains of eastern Sardinia. She didn’t hide her immortality from them, and they worshiped her like a demigod. Together they resisted foreign invaders for thousands of years. I remember the phoenicians sending ships from Tyre and Byblos to try and colonize the island, but all of them disappeared. I didn’t find out until my ‘rehabilitation’ that she was the cause. Eventually Phoenicians did manage to settle the coast of Sardinia, long after I was put in silver, but Marie held out in the mountains. Then she held out against the Carthaginians. Then the Romans. Then the Vandals. Then the Romans again. Then the Vandals again. Then the Byzantians. All of them claimed the island, but never conquered it fully. The rugged mountains of the interior, and its people led by Marie resisted them all.”

“So why did she leave the island? Why did she adopt a French identity?” I ask.

Lina shrugs. “Maybe the rapidly modernizing world of the time made her lifestyle too difficult to maintain in Sardinia. Maybe she just got bored. Either way, she eventually reappeared in France. I don’t really know why she chose France, but the rumor is that her nationalism is just an act, an excuse to fight. They say that she chose France because France has been at war for almost all of their history, and that she fights for her pure love of violence, not for love of France. 

"She’s most known for her brutality. She tortures and mutilates her victims. War is just a game for her. It’s her hunting grounds. From the way I hear Dihya describe it, Marie probably only chased that girl in Algiers so publicly, so that she could draw in a mob to tear her apart. If her reputation is to be believed, she loves violence so much that she even loves receiving it too. I think she let Dihya see what she saw, including her regeneration, just to torment the poor woman, knowing that nobody would believe her, that it would eat away at her for the rest of her life.”

“Can vampires really do that? Just shape your body back together every time it gets damaged?” I ask.

“Only Marie can, as far as I know. She is able to because she is a lunar vampire. Lunar magic primarily covers divination. Lunar channellers have served as seers and oracles throughout history, deriving meaning from the moon to make predictions about the future. But it also has other abilities. Lunar magic is the healing aspect of dark magic, but unlike earth magic, lunar healing isn’t about curing diseases, or alleviating pain. It’s more about…reassembly. See, vampires don’t typically get sick, but we do sometimes lose a limb or two. That’s where lunar magic comes in. Nice lunar channellers like you can patch us back up again.”

“Please tell me I won’t be doing anything like Marie did, reforming my own body like that.” I say, very worried.

Lina grabs both my shoulders and looks me in the eyes. “No, you will never have to do anything like that. I’ll never let anything happen to you where you would ever need too. Besides, you’re nothing like Marie. You’re the opposite of Marie. I know you’ll use your Lunar magic to help people, not torment them. Marie took extreme measures to make her self regeneration  possible. She embedded lunar channeling artifacts into her bones, and implanted them into her organs. They must be extremely powerful artifacts to be charged with a spell that strong and to automatically fire it if she gets injured, but she did it somehow. The legend is that she embedded actual moon stones into her body. Some say that those are the only artifacts strong enough to do it, but that must be impossible. As far as I know the bronze age Corsi didn't have a space program. But regardless of what she used, that’s how she was able to terrorize Dihya like that.

“That’s horrible! I know Dihya seems mean, but she’s a good person at heart. She just wants to help people, to heal people. She didn’t deserve that!” I huff.

Lina pulls me into a hug. “I know. Nobody deserves to see something like that.”

“So why couldn’t you just tell her the truth? Like she said, she’s an old woman, and nobody would believe her anyway. Why not just give her some closure?” I ask, frustrated.

“Because the Consortium would know. They have ways of knowing when someone breaks that secret, and when and where they did it. So that they can hunt down who was told, and make sure the secret doesn’t spread. Telling her would put all of us in danger, me, you, Dihya, and everyone else in this mosque.” Lina says, with a sad look in her eye. I can feel her sincere regret.

I’m still confused though. “Ok that’s fine, but if the Consortium cares so much about keeping vampires a secret, and not meddling in human affairs, then why don’t they stop Marie from terrorizing people? Didn’t you say they stopped you from getting involved in the war here?”

Lina nods. “Right, but I was trying to take out entire cargo ships. What Marie does is on a much smaller scale. Marie doesn’t care about actually winning wars, she just wants to hurt people. She never tries to accumulate power. She just enlists in the French army at the lowest rank, then goes to fight in whatever war is happening, then gets herself killed and buried, then reforms her body, rises from her grave, and goes to enlist again. Except for some poisoning business in 1670, the Consortium has never needed to intervene in her life. She’s also just very difficult to control. The Consortium doesn’t mess with her, because generally speaking, they can’t mess with her.”

“Wow, what a terrible woman.”

“Indeed. Although I guess the Consortium can’t do anything at all anymore. I imagine she renounced her membership recently. They banned hunting humans in 2005. It just got too difficult and risky to do in the age of the internet and cell phone cameras. I imagine Marie probably left, rather than give up her violent ways.”

I shake my head. “Wait, so is the Consortium like some kind of secret vampire government that passes laws and stuff?”

Lina grimices. “Uhhh, they’re more like a subscription based membership club than a government. But they have certain rules and benefits for membership. Like not hunting humans, and in exchange, you get access to the Consortium’s social programs. Like the Consortium blood supply network, run by vampires and thralls embedded in blood donation services around the world.”

“Oh ok, well that’s weird. What’s the ‘subscription’ fee though?”

“Money or services. You can contribute to the Consortium’s financial reserves, used to preserve the secret of Vampires, and our collective lifestyles. That's what I do. Or you can contribute service, like the blood bank workers, or what my ‘parents’ were doing when they were monitoring me.”

“Wow, ok. I guess I see the use in that. I still think someone should do something about Marie. It’s really not right.” I say.

Lina touches my shoulder. “I know, it’s not right. Someone is going to have to stop her some day. But that’s enough talk. We have to get on a train to Tunis in the morning. Do you want to get some sleep?”

I yawn, and turn to look at the very inviting bed. “Yea, we probably should. Although I don’t know if I want to after hearing about Marie.”

Lina laughs. “Yea, sorry about that. That isn’t a great bedtime story. I’ll keep you safe though. How can you have nightmares when you have me protecting you?” Lina exaggerates a flex of her bicep at me.

I giggle. “Ok my strong vampire, protect me then. But no biting!”

Lina giggles with me as she pulls the blankets over us and tucks Tiamat in next to me. “No promises!”

---

My head barely touches the pillow, and next thing I know Lina is gently shaking me awake. I open my eyes to the soft early morning rays of sunlight streaming through the window.

“Ugh, it’s morning already?” I grumble.

Lina cheerfully shakes me even harder. “Yup, we slept a solid six hours! C’mon, get up! Let’s hurry and get ready so we can eat some breakfast and say goodbye to everyone.”

Lina is already fully dressed by the time I grumpily roll out of bed. She practically shoves me through the motions of getting ready to travel. A quick ten minutes later and I’m fully clothed with my full bag on my shoulder.

“Let’s go!” Lina joyfully shouts as she flings our door open, nearly knocking over a nicely dressed Nadia waiting right on the other side.

Wait, why is she here?

The young air channeller stands in a short white dress, with a stern expression on her face, her hair in a high bun, and her hands on her hips.

“So, you’re a vampire.”

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