No trace: Part Two of The Accidental Trilogy

Chapter Twenty

One evening, after a rough day of unable to answer so many direct questions from people searching for missing family members, I have a bad dream.

In it, I am leading a lost child through the crowds, one child becomes four before I can blink, then it is twenty. All too soon, the children all become separated, one by one, and I find myself calling out for them. Before I can find them, the mothers and the fathers all come after me, shouting and wailing after me.

'Where's my daughter?'
'Where are our sons?' Wailing women and men are screaming at me, and at the head of this massing crowd of people, is Rosa. Arms out, she walks forward as if for an embrace, then hits me across the face.

'You are a monster! Where is my daughter?'

'I rescued her!' Rosa shakes her head and continues to scream at me. Until I wake up, which is no respite, as I can still hear her screaming at me.

The people in the next tent watch, nonplussed as I sob as I haven't done for almost two hundred years and scream obscenities at myself.

I move that night, to the other end of town.

And stop volunteering. You can't reform the monster, I tell myself. All these good works, what a hypocrite I am. How many times have I shot people? Wounded them, in a time before medicine, when they would more than likely die from their injuries.

When 1943 arrives, I have left Switzerland, for Germany. Boredom has once arrived to make my volunteer duties seem like dust to the battles being waged. Berlin, that once proud city, is being almost reduced to rubble. I don't linger and instead, keep going north. My aim is Denmark and while stopping for a night in Neubrandenburg, scanning alert on, I hear something faintly familiar.

But instead of listening to three vampires, I now have eight in my hearing. Four of them are familiar to me, and I wonder if little Claire has grown up a little.

I soon discover that we are all heading in the same direction, Rostock, a small discreet port town.

With my meagre savings, running lower than usual, I resign myself to waiting out the war.

I pitch my tent, but it is a tenuous situation. Anything in my possession is valuable to people who have less and I wonder if I should just use my gift to finagle a way onto a boat.

Or just steal one.

It had to happen while getting supplies I am surrounded by a gang of boys, as ridiculous as that sounds.

'Give us your money!' Boys dressed in once fine clothes, boys who could have been a part of Hitler youth, had they been old enough to join up are surrounding me. For once, I'm not sure what to do. I could pull out one of my pistols, but that might aggravate the situation still further. I keep my hands steady, one fingers a dagger on my belt. I am almost itching to use it.

A familiar vampire approaches and fires his pistol in the air. The one next to him moves forward and the boys scatter. And the moment passes.

The last of them leave and I force a smile onto my face.

'Tristan. Alaric. Lovely to see you both.'

'Amy. Claire mentioned you might be joining us.' Tristan has something on his face that could possibly pass for a smile but is not there yet.

'She has a gift that one,' I reply, cordially.

'She does indeed.'

After he is out of earshot, Alaric turns back to me. 'It is good to see you. Walk with me?'