CVU1

Chapter 20: Scale of Hardness

Thoroughly creeped out, I was tempted to focus only on getting south. I left Pont Rouge with my ill-gotten gains, not hungry after the diamond and not in an exploratory or exercising mood. Only when I returned to the ribbon farms in sight of the St. Lawrence's northern shore, about three hours before dawn, did I regain enough of my senses and nerve to remember what else I should be doing. In a small copse with a dark center I was able to relax and think, and finally experiment with my groceries.

The first order of business was a kind of 'Mohs scale of hardness' for the repellent items. Instead of scratching materials to rank them from talc to diamond, I'd be poking at these items with a finger on the left and right hand and seeing which one hurt the most as I inched nearer. I carefully handled the items with spare plastic bags I had also stolen, kneeling in the dirt and noticing the first birds chirping, soon to be a chorus. I noted that the rose hurt even through the plastic.

Between the garlic clove and a lemon, garlic was stronger. A square of vark silverleaf seemed about as bad as the garlic. The holly in the teabags was weaker than garlic, stronger than lemon. Maple syrup in just a tiny vial was stronger than garlic. The salty soup and potato chips were identical to each other and indistinguishable from the holly in the tea. Only the rose was stronger than all: so it would be the 'diamond' on my hardness scale (which was a personal scale) for now. It seemed that it would be more difficult for me to conduct feedings around Valentine's Day.

After this first bit of rudimentary 'science', I found myself aching all over, my fingertips numb. I held them up and thought that they were a little blackened as well, and the very edge of the nails seemed to have super-fine cracks through which there might have been the slightest shimmer of ghostly, electrical fire.

"Next order of business?" I mumbled, lying back on the dirt and guessing that this place would be mostly free of the sun come the day – a great birch was at my back, and the ground here was stony and uninviting for man and beast alike. The farmers had collected all their field's rocks here long ago and let these isolated piles become grown over, making copses and holts all over the place. A mossy rock was my pillow, and I would try to sleep, here on the southern edge of the land of the 'windeego'.

Thoughts swirled, fighting sleep, fear mixed with wondering and my usual nerdy deconstruction of things leading me astray. I had the vague idea of concentrating or compressing small samples of the repellent items like a candy bar packed with different layers of toxic ingredients, tapped or glued together. This melange of anti-vampiric flim-flam would then serve me as a dumbbell for my 'true body', a weight that could bring up more of that St. Elmo's fire, injuring (and then strengthening) more than throwing around an ordinary weight. It would weaken me in the short term, and if I was caught unawares in the short term I'd be several levels of screwed – but every step west and south would mean more people, more guardians, and eventually more of my fellow vampires. I had to be ready for them.

And come winter, I'd much rather be south of the St. Lawrence Seaway. I was taking no chances with wendigos.

My mind kept chasing itself, trying to come up with flimsy proposals. The crews of guardians I had bumped into had been rather inexperienced with vampires, so down where I had started was already about the northern edge of their territory. Maybe they couldn't go too far west into Arizona or Nevada because of skinwalkers, and maybe there were chupacabras down south ...

Finally, my body crashed.