The Story of the Vampire, L (Completed | Featured )

Part 10 - The Story of the Vampire, L

 "Should I tell you? I will," he gasped. "If that's what you want."

"Yes," I kissed his neck because I could, quietly, without sound.

I felt one of his hands come, one of those wicked hands that had stabbed my brother, touch me on the ear. Stop? Kiss me again? 

"I was raised in Herculaneum," he said, softly, whispering, only to me, to me, our secret in snowy Paris, near the Pigalle, where he wanted to go. "Maybe you don't know where this is. It's gone now. Gone."

I sighed against his skin, soothed by his voice, as I am soothed now, telling you his words, because I hear them in his voice. 

"That place is under the ground, near Naples. Do you know it now? It was warm then, too. I never needed much. A pair of shoes. A tunic. Maybe I would spend time running around the house with the others there. When I came to his house, I was six years old. I was older than you were. That old master, he loved me. The others were jealous. I slept near him, yes, he loved me."

I closed my mouth around the question, "Was he like us? Did you know?"

"I had heard rumors of creatures like him, notions of elderly things that ate hot-blooded young people. But I was not afraid. When it was too warm for me I would run in, find him, press myself to his cool skin in the dark, and he would whisper that I was a good and beautiful thing, sweet and brave, and I loved him. So simple, love is, for little unloved children." He shook his head slightly, eyes closed, as if seeing it.

"The house was marble and new stone, built by someone else. It was a villa older than I had conception of at that age, with a mosaic in the front hall in the Etruscan style. All I knew was that I loved the peristyle garden, with its open roof, where the sunlight could come in, and I could look out at night. So many nights I lay there, and sometimes, in the evening, I would go outside the villa, and sit in the dirt, where it was not as beautiful. I would sit in the great night alone, listening to wolves and watching the stars move. And sometimes, my master would come, and ask me what a little slave wants with the moon, and I would tell him I didn't know. He wore red silk then, an exotic even in our port city, which was familiar with so many lands and so many rich visitors. He bought and sold slaves. There were always so many, but I never saw anyone but him.

"Don't think that he abused me then, Nicky. It was a beautiful time to be alive. I had four brothers, like you have your brother. They were jealous but they were kind to me. I hope they are alive still, but I cannot imagine it. I hope their deaths were quick. I think of them all the time. They were not my blood but they were what I had." He was humming the words to me, as if half-asleep.

My hands had gone numb in his hair. He seemed to have forgotten that he was begging my forgiveness with his confession.

"I used to run away, even then. I wanted to go to the market. There was a man there who would give me things for free and talk to me as if I were anybody, just like him, someone equal. He would tell me about his God and give me oranges from his pocket. Sometimes I would stay in the temple at night alone, gazing up into the wide face of Hercules and dreaming against the hot marble. Marble is like flesh, Nicky, it takes the heat of your body. I dreamed against Hercules as if he were a man, and my master would come, knowing me, and take me in his arms home. He said, 'It is dangerous for creatures such as you, little boys with no thoughts in mind of the wide world,' but I had wanderlust even then, so young, and he knew. I wanted to taste all the glory of the world, all it had to give me, as if it were a great big bowl of burning soup, that I could drink until I was full.

"And it was like that, for two years. It was two years of my master washing my hair and holding me in the evening, and me wandering away, and oranges in the city, and him whispering 'Arantii, why do you go to market,' in his wondering tone. 'Arantii', do you know? It means little orange. And then he found that beautiful boy. I was seven. That boy had a kind face. Even now I remember. He had hair like red clay dirt, brown orange and thick. He had been a prostitute near the warehouses by the sea, used up, and he wanted nothing to do with my master, and I hated him. I was seven.