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

Part 3 - Never

Let me take a moment to collect my thoughts. Oh, I ache a little. How do I look? Is my face flushed? I feel cold. Where do I hurt? Just here, from my belly to my clavicle bones. If I lie down, would you mind? I will just lie down awhile while I talk to you. No, it is a common pain, often with me, even since I was living. I suppose it has something to do with those white masses tuberculosis makes, or the ruination of my lungs in general. I will just close my eyes. If I fall asleep, wake me.

What should I say next? Oh, yes. In those days, I was often hot and feverish, moaning in my sleep, and he would sleep near me, cool against my skin and would press his hand against my chest if I woke wheezing. But then there came an evening when though I called him, he would not come. And the other one, Dasius, after some time, came to my doorway instead, covering his face with his arm so that he couldn't look on me. I could see, through hazy eyes, florid bruises spread across his face and under his chin where I had grabbed at him during our struggle. His hair was swept back and looped in a black ribbon, seeming neat. His neck was covered by a high linen collar, so I couldn't see if there was a gash, but his voice was rumbly and strained. "Pardon me, darling," he said. "Laurent is not here."

I turned away from him. He stayed in the doorway, a step away from the threshhold.

"He should be back by morning. I apologize for bothering you, but I can't stand to hear your crying. Let me do for you whatever I can."

I clutched the silk damask of my pillows and squeezed my eyes shut.

"I guess that he has gone to haunt court and kiss the necks of the bourgeoisie. Don't grudge him it. He must restore himself."

"He wouldn't kiss any other," I said.

"You have blood and love all tangled up," he whispered, in a despairing croak.

I didn't speak because what he said was so ridiculous to me, and after awhile, I heard the gentle sound of his heels on the wooden floor, going away. But he was right, and Laurent was back before morning, shutting my curtains against the eventual dawn, which sound woke me. And when he climbed my yellow coverlet, and pressed his forehead to my neck, making soft, relieved sounds, his skin was hot. His hair, which tickled my nose, was mussed as if it had been pulled by strange hands. I shuddered away, shivering with a deep sense of betrayal. He sat up then, on his knees, and bent to kiss my head, but I covered myself with my hands.

He went away and came back with a lit white paper wick, and touched it to the candle at my bedside. I watched him shake the wick out, seeing its smoky end double and triple through my cloudy eyes. I felt choked, to think that he had been close to someone else, in the way that only a young man suffering from first love can. He tried walking his fingers up my collarbones, tried opening my shirt and breathing hot breath on my willing skin. He said, "I know that you have spoken with Dasius, but know that I only love you. Little pea, you are so young. You need the blood and I have brought it for you. Take me roughly, if it will heal your feelings. Take me as I would be taken, my blond." Take me as I would be taken, oh, how many times did I repeat it to him in his last years? When he was weaker than I was, and pleaded for me to stay with him? I have brought the blood for you, take me as I would be taken. And that wolf woke in me again, hearing those words for the first time, and I pushed him down, taking a possesive place atop his narrow hips.

He made a false struggle under me, laughing lightly, like a caught dryad. I untied his cotton cravat, unwinding it from his neck, and opened his shirt so that I might smell him, rather than the eau de toilette of the stranger I could smell on his clothes. Oh do you see how he taught me that blood is subject to passion? How he has taught it to all his lovers that blood is a sensual matter of flesh? For him, the two were the same. How could I not be jealous of all the other young men he had tasted when all that I wanted then was him, and for him to want only me? I have been told by others that to view a sustaining act such as that through eyes fogged by love is an unnecessary torture, but all my life I have been unable to separate them. It is too delicious to view the bite as an act of love.

So I let the wolf guide me, kissing him roughly, which he adored, smearing the red tincture on his lips across his left cheek. I rubbed away a little spot he had made with a kohl pencil beneath his right eye, and he relaxed under the tender gesture, going lose. I slipped my hands into the worsted wool pockets of his bespoke frock coat and came up with a slip of paper. Tracing the black embroidery on the burgundy fabric of his coat, I asked him to read the paper to me, because I could not read. He took it from my hands as if to obey orders, but ripped it instead. I slapped him, and he opened his mouth and narrowed his eyes.

"Don't dare," he purred. "Terrible, jealous thing." His cheek flushed where I had struck him.

"Don't leave me again," I pleaded, desperate, surprising him. "Ma moitie, can't you see that I am in love with you?"

He gave me the softest look then, and brushed my hair back from my forehead, brown eyes searching my face. Then he wound my hair around his fist and made me kiss him, and clutched me at the small of my back. "Alright, never," he said. "Never." I kissed him from his jawbone to the soft skin of his throat, and found a pulsing place between his collar and shoulder, kissed a dimple there, and bit, and while he pressed his head back against the pillow, I heard him whisper again, "Never."

I had no idea of what I had done, or how brutal the consequences would be.