Chapter 5: Eli’s Vengeance

Oskar and the professor faced each other across the table. They had just finished dinner, and Eli was sitting on the couch, an intense look on her face as she rapidly turned the cube in her hands, rotated one side, and without pausing, flipped it over and rotated a different side.

“I have much more information about Eli right now than I ever expected to have, and this, of course, changes everything from a scientific point of view. But we’ll get to that interesting problem later. I need to know more about you. I am assuming you are normal in the usual meaning of the word?” Dawson smiled.

“…Yes, I guess. I’m not an Eli if that’s what you mean.”

He leaned forward. “Why are you with Eli? I know you love her, but why did you choose to go away with her? Why did you leave your family, and why did you both come here?” He saw a flicker of fear on Eli’s face as she looked up from the cube. There’s more that I don’t know? Of course! There has to be a compelling reason they left home – or at least why Oskar left home.

Oskar stammered, “I’m with her because I want to be with her. I love her. She came here, so I came here.”

Eli stood up quickly, “I’ll tell you! It wasn’t Oskar’s fault. They were going to kill him and I couldn’t let that happen. I killed them both! And then we left together and came here! Because I was so lonely without him, and he had nothing to keep him there.”

Oskar stepped up behind her, and put his arms around her.

“Where? When? Why haven’t I heard about it?”

“You have heard about it. Everyone has. That’s why we dyed Oskar’s hair brown. It happened in Blackeberg, last November, at the Pool.”

He remembered. Two children had been killed, one was missing, feared dead. The two boys had been decapitated, and their heads thrown in the pool. Blood stains on the ceiling and walls, suddenly it all fit. He looked at Eli, “That…was you?” Her killing had, of course, continued right up into the present, or at least until she came here. For some reason, that hadn’t registered before. He hadn’t yet made that connection between her past and her present. This gave him new issues to deal with.

She nodded. “I was very frightened. They were trying to drown Oskar. All I could think about was saving him; getting him out of the water.”

Dawson felt a tightening in his chest. “You threw yourself through a reinforced-glass window? And you flew? You tore their heads off with your bare hands?” The wild stories about an angel, dismissed by the police, were true then. She certainly was, and is, Oskar’s angel.

“Please, don’t be angry. I had to do it! I couldn’t let them…they beat him, they cut his face, they tried to throw him in front of the train. They made fun of him, and no one did anything to stop it. They were killing him! I was so angry!!”

“I know! You were angry and frightened, and you did the only thing you could think of to do. I understand. But the strength it must have taken to do that. I can’t get that out of my head. Are you always that strong? Or is it only when you are … that way?”

“I can do it anytime, but there’s more when I’ve Changed.”

So! Besides being able to drink my blood and then kill me, she could have snapped me in two like a twig. Nice! How could I have missed that? It was suddenly funny to him. Here is this innocent-looking, beautiful child, who could, at the drop of a hat, wring my neck like a plucked chicken --- after she had plucked me herself! I’ll never be able to look at her the same way again. He found himself smiling at the thought. I should be afraid, but I’m not. I actually trust her with my life – and for good reason. She has already given it back to me --- in more ways than one.

Eli cocked her head and looked at him, puzzled, “Why are you smiling?”

“It’s just that you are so full of surprises! And I so enjoy surprises,” he said, grabbing her and spinning her around in his arms.

Eli felt a sense of relief – and a warmth that only she and Oskar had shared before. He really seems to understand! He really loves us.

Dawson felt happier than he had in years. He reached over and tousled Oskar’s hair and grabbed him around the waist and spun them both around, faster and faster until they were poking him in the ribs, laughing and trying to get him to stop. He felt as though he was being given a second chance, a chance to make things right somehow.

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Dawson had been doing a great deal of thinking since Monday. He was still trying to reinterpret his findings since Eli had revealed her past to him so vividly. He had only seen a small part of her life. There were many missing pieces, and what he had seen was disjointed. After many discussions with her, he now knew she was about 220 years old or so, therefore her condition was extremely stable. The amount of energy she expended just by living an essentially immortal life meant that she was able to draw much more energy from the blood she drank than would be obtained by normal digestion. Would she be able to utilize it the same way if she was transfused? No way of knowing at the present. The fact that her great strength had to be available for use at all times meant that a great deal of stored, or potential, energy was available to her at all times. In other words, it took huge amounts of energy to sustain her on a daily basis. And all this on a liter of blood every two weeks? This seemed unlikely to him on the face of it. He was beginning to wonder what she would be like if he regularly provided her with two, or even four liters of blood a week for an extended length of time. He needed to find out what her optimum food intake was before he could work out her true energy needs and usage. Her hard life and small size over the 220 year period made it likely that she had seldom taken in the ideal amount of blood. How much energy did it take to grow and retract wings? Claws? Talons? Fangs? And god knows what else? Were there any limits? Could she grow a second pair of arms? Could she regrow an arm if it was cut off? Could she be killed at all, other than by being exposed to sunlight? She had told him that she could be killed by being pierced through an area just above her heart, but he wasn’t convinced. X-rays would have to be taken to verify this possibility.

One aspect of her condition that concerned him was her insistence that she couldn’t enter a residence or man-made structure without being invited. If Oskar hadn’t verified it with a vivid description of the consequences, he still might not have believed it. There might be some connection between this and her obvious ESP sensitivity, but for the life of him, he couldn’t think of a logical reason or a positive survival advantage that could begin to explain it --other than a better survival rate for the victims, which of course, gave no evolutionary advantage from a vampire’s point of view.

He found that the consequence of Eli’s power that bewildered him the most, was that she had somehow still remained a child, and a basically decent one, in spite of it. Why wasn’t he deathly afraid of her? She’s a vampire in every sense of the word. A highly-intelligent predator that lives on human blood, and is elegantly equipped with all the tools necessary to obtain it, with or without permission. And she never grows old. She has near super-human strength and agility, and has the physically immature mind of a 12-year-old child. Would we allow a 12-year old child, even with the best of intentions, to wander the streets with an automatic rifle, grenades, and wearing a bullet-proof vest? Of course not! We don’t even allow adults to do this. A child doesn’t have the maturity to recognize the consequences if these weapons are used carelessly or as a result of a child’s anger. Everything in him told him that he shouldn’t be able to trust her, yet he did.

He suddenly realized that he WOULD trust Eli to wander the streets with assorted weaponry. Why? What makes her so different? He went over again in his mind everything he had seen when he was in her nightmares. Suddenly he realized what it was! He had been thinking so much about the loneliness and hopelessness of her life and sympathizing with her, that he had ignored the rest of Eli’s life experiences, and the more important things she had unconsciously learned.

She is like a battle-scarred veteran of countless wars. She knows the power of her weapons, but has seen the consequences of using them so often, that their power no longer holds any fascination for her; indeed, all she can see is the endless trail of death and sorrow she has caused by using them. They are a constant reminder of all her failures to live up to her perceived responsibility -- to end her own life. They paradoxically remind her of her weakness. And being an eternal child, she can’t put these feeling into words, and will never be capable of doing so. Many times, when she thought he wasn’t looking, he had observed a somehow familiar, hollow and haunting look in her eyes that he couldn’t quite place. Now he remembered. In old black-and-white documentaries, he had seen the same look in the eyes of men returning from World War II. He had never forgotten it. But why hadn’t she become bitter, angry and reclusive as so many of those men had?

Because she has had to live through experiences that most adults could not survive without incurring serious mental problems, at the same time she is an eternal child. However, even as a child, these things have given her a quiet wisdom and directness, less the overpowering bitterness and anger that an adult ego would use to defend itself with -- emotions a pre-pubescent child cannot possibly avail herself of. In other words, she is STILL an Innocent. A defenseless Innocent, whose very life experiences are at constant odds with a normally sweet, child-like view of the world.

Dawson knew then, why he loved her so much. Her untenable situation and her 12-year-old perception of reality emphasizes the difference between what we wish the world were like, and what it actually is, seen through adult eyes. How can you not love someone who is cursed with this crystal-clear, pure vision of reality?

And Oskar! Sweet, kind, unassuming Oskar! The only person who, in over 220 years, was, with amazing unpretentious ease, able to break through all the barriers she had built up so effectively. Oskar, who after delivering a well-deserved defensive blow to a nasty little monster, who had been tormenting him for years, took off his own sock and offered it to him to hold against his bleeding head. As hard as he tried, he didn’t have it in him to be a monster. No wonder Eli fell in love with him – and he with her. Perfect soulmates.

He looked at his watch. He had a stop to make at the University Museum before he headed over to their apartment. It was time to come back down to earth and be practical for a change. Their future lives may depend on it and he absolutely was not going to fail them.

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Dawson parked in front of the apartment, knocked twice, and opened their door with his own key. He went up the stars slowly, thinking about the best way to approach the issue. He had no idea how either of them felt about the egg; it seemed as though it was just another puzzle to Eli, and Oskar seemed completely indifferent.

When he stepped into the living room, Oskar was in the kitchen getting himself something to drink. He looked up at the professor as he entered the room.

“Hi! Can I get you something?”

“No thanks. Could I talk to you and Eli about something?”

Eli looked up from her book. He seems serious today. I hope nothing’s wrong. “Are your daughter and her family OK?”

“No, no, its nothing like that. But I’d like the two of you to sit down on the couch while I talk to you.” He slid a small end-table away from the wall and moved it in front of the couch as they sat down next to each other. He took a chair from the table, picked up the egg and placed it carefully on the table between them, and sat down facing the couch. Eli and Oskar looked at each other.

Dawson opened his briefcase and placed a three-ringed notebook on the small table, next to the egg. “First, I need to ask you a few questions, Eli. Is that ok?”

She looked at the egg and nodded.

“First, in your own words, could you tell me where you got the egg?”

The corners of her mouth turned up subtly, her eyes sparkled mischievously, “Once upon a time, in a great castle in the Fjällen on the border of northern Sweden…

“Eli! He’s serious!” Oskar whispered.

She stopped, composed herself and began again. “At the beginning of my life after He bit me and left me for dead -- you saw parts of that --” She looked down for a moment,. “I was hungry all the time, but I was afraid to go too far from home. I watched my house every night, but no one ever saw me. I was too ashamed of what I was to let them see me. I could see my mother crying on the porch, but I knew it would be much worse for her if she new what I was. I was so ashamed! During the day, I slept in a cave that only my brother and I knew of. I knew I was safe because he was too old to want to come there any more. At night I went … hunting along the two or three roads that led to and from His estate, finding people traveling alone. I left soon after my mother died and never saw my family again.

About 100 years later, I’d had a much harder time than usual finding … food and, for some reason, went back home -- I don’t know why. Nothing was the same. No one knew where what was left of my family had gone. I moved back into the cave and slept for four or five months; I’m not exactly sure how long. If I haven’t eaten well for a long time, I sort of hibernate, and when I wake up I am even smaller and weaker than usual. When I first arrived, I had seen that He was still at the Estate, so I knew I could find food along the same routes as before.

The first night after I woke up, I followed two men on horses, who were moving slowly along the road toward the Estate. I had already passed four others who were about five minutes ahead of them, who looked like they were part of the same group. One horse had a large, heavy load on its back, and was led by one of the men. The other man was on the other horse, bent over as though he was sick, or weak. I smelled blood, and realized that he was probably wounded.” She looked at Dawson guiltily, “I became so…excited that I couldn’t control myself and went through the Change. I flew into the man on the horse, knocking him over and then quickly attacked the other one. I ….” She put her face in her hands.

Oskar put his arms around her and held her tightly. “Please, don’t make her go on!”

The professor reached over and took one of her hands. “You don’t have to go any further. I’m so sorry! I should have realized…”

“No! I’m ok. I know you wouldn’t ask without having a good reason. I don’t know why it’s so difficult for me to talk about it. I did it for over 200 years…” She sat quietly for a few moments, took a deep breath, and continued.

“The man I knocked off the horse got up, screamed and shot at me. I knocked him down and threw his rifle in a ditch “Then I …After I … finished, I quickly went through the stuff on the back of the other horse, but the ropes broke and everything fell in a pile at my feet. I went through some bags, took some money and was looking through another bundle when I heard men shouting and saw four horses racing down the road toward me. I grabbed one of the bundles and ran off into the woods before they reached me. I don’t think they saw me, but I’m not sure. When I got back to the cave, I opened the bundle and found the egg inside. I knew it must be valuable, but once I saw that it was a puzzle, I kept it.” She grinned wryly at him. “There’s not much to do when you live in a cave, and I got bored. I’ve probably put the egg together over a hundred times.” She looked up at him and placed her hands in her lap.

Dawson looked at her for a moment to make sure she was ok, then picked up the binder and opened it in his lap.

“Now it’s my turn. I’m going to tell YOU an interesting story. Once upon a time in Denmark, there was a beautiful princess named Maria, who had an aunt that she loved dearly. She often visited this aunt, and especially loved to play with a beautiful egg she owned called the ‘Hen egg’. It was crafted from gold, and had an opaque white enameled ‘shell.’ Inside, it contained a yellow gold yolk. When this yolk was opened, it revealed a multi-colored gold hen, which also opened. Inside the hen was a minute diamond replica of the Danish Imperial Crown from which a small ruby pendant was suspended. Maria loved it dearly.

“When the princess grew up, she was betrothed to Nicholas Alexandrovich, heir to the throne of Russia. She loved him dearly and was devastated by his death from cerebro-spinal meningitis before they could be married.

“Before his death however, Nicholas, knowing of Maria’s love for the Hen Egg, secretly commissioned two special eggs to be made for her by the same Danish artisan. One of these eggs was crafted from black jade and fashioned into an intricate puzzle comprising thousands of tiny pieces delineated by delicate gold threads in complex patterns over the entire surface. Inside was a gold yolk containing miniature gold replicas of the Danish Imperial Crown and The Crown of the Russian Emperor, or Tsar; in complete detail, but intertwined. The Second egg was identical to the first, except it was crafted from pure white jade and the crowns were mirror images of the others, but in platinum. It is also thought that all of the thousands of unique puzzle pieces were mirror images of those composing the first egg.” He looked at Eli. “It seems that you are in possession of the first of these two eggs.”

He continued, “An expedition set out from Denmark heading for northern Russia, but, in southern Sweden, it was set upon by bandits who killed the artist and most of the guards accompanying the treasures to the heir apparent. The few that escaped brought the news to him.
“His younger brother, Alexander III was so angry, he immediately led an army to recover the eggs, defend the future Tsar’s honor, and avenge the deaths of the artisan and his royal guard. The details get a bit murky at this point, but Alexander’s men eventually caught one of the thieves, who, in turn led them to a huge Estate and serfdom ruled by an eccentric Lord Törnkvist, who’s ruthlessness was know throughout that part of Sweden. Alexander’s men surrounded the estate and demanded the return of the treasure, but Törnkvist denied having them. There were several skirmishes, resulting in the capture of one of the Lord’s generals, who under torture, confessed that they had indeed stolen the eggs. He told Alexander that they had only one egg, which they would gladly return to him – the other had been stolen before the thieves reached the Estate. Alexander refused to believe him, and sent him back to Törnkvist, demanding both eggs be produced at once. When two days passed without a reply, his patience had run out. Early one morning, without warning, he attacked, and in the ensuing battle, the entire estate was burned to the ground. The only survivors were tortured and killed, but the fate of the eggs was unknown. Törnkvist’s burned body, or what was left of it, was discovered by Alexander’s men who identified it by the rings on his fingers and the sword still strapped to his waist. His mission a failure, Alexander returned to Nicholas, dejected.

“On his death bed, Nicholas expressed his desire that Maria marry his brother, Alexander who was now to succeed him on the throne. The late Heir Apparent’s family had become very fond of her, and welcomed her with open arms. Their marriage was a happy one and lasted until his death in 1894. During their very happy marriage, still stinging from his inability to recover the eggs, he commissioned many more beautiful eggs for her from the House of Faberge, all famous and now in museums and private collections all over the world. The white egg was recovered about 75 years ago, without the intertwined crowns in the yolk, and now resides in a private collection in Denmark. Obviously, the black one was never recovered.” He winked at Eli.

He turned the page in the notebook, and looked at Eli. “Now, I want you to look at a picture, a copy of the only one known to have ever been painted of the estate’s Lord Törnkvist. The odd thing about the painting is that it appears to have been painted over 100 years before his reported death. Art experts have concluded that it was probably dated improperly.”

He passed the notebook to Eli, who held it in her lap for a moment, held her breath and looked down. She saw a familiar castle-like structure in the background, the full moon rising over the right side of the roof, and in the center of the picture, smiling directly at her, was….HIM! She leaped up, dropped the notebook on the floor and ran into the bedroom, her hands over her eyes. Oskar was right behind her. Dawson listened for a moment, then got up slowly and quietly looked into their room. Eli was curled up in a ball on the bed, her head in Oskar’s lap. He was stroking her face and gently running his fingers through her hair, as she lay sobbing. Dawson quietly sat on the edge of the bed and gently put his arms around the both of them.

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Dawson had already put away the notebook and was examining the egg when Eli and Oskar returned to the living room.

“Eli, there are a couple of things that I don’t believe you realize yet about the history of your egg. I think you will want to know about them.”

Eli looked at him solemnly, and nodded.

“The pair of eggs had been stolen by the Lord’s henchmen, who murdered their creator and many other innocent men in the process. In other words, you not only stole from the man who tore you from your family and has caused you over 200 years of misery and loneliness, but you were the direct cause of his death. You and you alone – Caused – His -- Death.”

She looked up at him and smiled, gratefully, I’m glad he’s dead, but I don’t feel any joy in it. It just leaves an empty feeling where the fear was before.

“The second matter will require the two of you to make a decision. Much of this information, including the picture, was obtained through the University Museum’s curator, from that collector in Denmark who owns the white egg. He assured the curator, that, if the black egg were ever found intact, it would be worth over 22 million kronor. He also assured the curator that he would pay that price for the egg himself if it were ever found, no questions asked.”

He leaned forward, “I have a proposal for you both. I know that I can take care of you while I’m still alive, but both of you, and especially Eli, are most assuredly going to outlive me. If we sell the egg, I can set up a blind trust for you through a bank in Switzerland, which should guarantee you an income for a long time – I won’t say forever, but long enough for a cure for Eli’s ‘disease’ to be found, if I am unable to do it myself.” Which, at this time, seems extremely unlikely.

“And, with Oskar in your life now, I’m sure you don’t need the egg for entertainment any longer.” He smiled at her.

“I don’t know about that,” she said solemnly, “He IS a bit young for me … by about 200 years. Perhaps I’ve outgrown him. He IS getting a bit boring,” she yawned.

Oskar punched her hard on the arm, “You need me around to remind you to wear clothes when you go outside – and to wash them occasionally, and to brush your….fangs. And to keep you from trying to buy things with gold doubloons instead of kroner.”

Eli grabbed him in a headlock and scrubbed the top of his head with her knuckles. “You can’t talk to your elders that way. Have a little respect!” she turned to Dawson, “Honestly! I just don’t understand children’s behavior these days.”

Dawson laughed, “Well, at least neither of you is the least bit boring to me.
Now! Tell me more about this ‘hibernation’ thing. I don’t recall finding any Grizzly Bear genes in your DNA, but if I do, I won’t be a bit surprised.”