Page 63 of We Were Eternal Once

“Just Melinoë?” Caterina asks with a tilt of her head.

“Yes, we did not have surnames in my time,” I say, though I don’t know if it’s true. I did not have a surname, but I was a temple rat. Perhaps I had one once, one that disappeared with all my other memories. Lost to the turn of time, replaced by you.

But you are not here.

“Your time?” Caterina presses.

“I believe you would call it…” I look up, thinking. “It was a hundred years or so avant Jesus-Christ.” There are many ways to describe my age over the centuries.

They are silent, each staring at me with an intensity that borders on hunger.

Is this how you felt when the acolytes realized you were an Elder? Did they picture the civilization that bore you, now little more than a memory in tattered paper? I am a relic over a thousand years old.

And what do I have to show for it? I understand now Theon’s drive for scholarly acclaim. If his name was written somewhere, he would live on. If he made another vampyr they would have only his eyes, but not his name. What legacy do I have except one of devout worship?

“Another fallen empire,” Margarethe says softly, patting the chair next to her. “Another about to fall, we think.”

I take the seat that is offered, my skin hot with the eyes locked to it. “Another?” I ask.

“Enlightenment,” Yusuf says with a wide sweep of his hand. “The cure to the ills of the poor.”

“Laugh all you want,” Eloise snaps. “You’ve never known hunger as these streets do.”

I wait for the cycle to repeat, for one to defend humans, the other to tear them down. I wait for Alexandria to appear, reborn, in a dingy salon in Paris. I wait for a reason for me to leave, to escape the confines of this space, to settle my soul elsewhere. I cannot listen to this stupid discussion yet again, even centuries later.

“What would the world look like without God at its center?” Margarethe asks, her voice a whisper.

“The churches provide for the poor,” Eloise says.

“They claim to, yes. But not all. We open our grand doors to the stricken, but close them when it is deemed too full. Why are there gold-crusted plates while the parishioners starve?” Margarethe asks.

We, she says. As though she is of the cloth and not a vampyr who would feast on the poor to survive.

“Melinoë, what do you think of Enlightenment?” Tomasz asks. They all turn to me.

Two images overlap.

One—the first meeting of the group in Alexandria, the house with the handprint on the door. A question posed, all eyes turning to you for an answer.

Two—where I am now, seated on a plush cushion, five sets of eyes turned to me.

Do I follow your footsteps, or run in the opposite direction?

“I do not concern myself with the affairs of humans,” I admit.

“But you must! They are our food, they run the world as it is. We must exist within their framework if we wish to live on,” Tomasz argues.

I wait for the opposing view, for the call of the superiority of race. For Ardashir reborn to step forward, demand the humans fall at our feet. For us to lead, to dictate, to wage wars.

No one does.

“Their lives are…” I trail off.

“Short?” Eloise supplies.

Meaningless is what I meant to say, but I nod anyway. “I’ve watched greatness crumble, knowledge burn, mistakes repeated and never learned from. Another great rises, just to fall. What is the use of tracking this? The ending is inevitable,” I say.

“You can know a story’s ending, and still enjoy reading it,” Caterina says.