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

Part 6 - Jealousy

 For many days after I drank from that young man, I remained in bed. I was a complete naif, an innocent, and felt that something important had happened to me, and wanted the time to consider it. Even now, I am driven to quiet rooms on my own, to consider how things are with myself, and enjoy sequesterment. These days there are recordings I can listen to, and little videos which sometimes mon enfant wants for me to watch, but in those days it was only looking out the window and doing things with the hands.

After returning home, I protested against being locked in my bedroom again, and so Laurent changed the bedclothes in Dasius's room, and opened the windows, and let me stay there. In comparison to the other, it was a very small bedroom, but it had a view of the water far distant, where I could watch merchant vessels and small pleasurecraft blowing on the wind. Sometimes, at the height of the day, the smell from the Seine was too foul, and I shut the windows then, but at other times, I enjoyed the breezes very much. There were many papers and metal implements for writing on the secretary desk in that room, which made pleasant music in the wind.

Occasionally, Dasius would come, and I would cover my eyes with my arm, because I could not stand to look on him. Still, I felt very strongly a sense of dread, of instinctive alarm at his presence, which I could not overcome. Once, he tried to sit down beside me, and to ask me if I wanted to learn to read and write, and it was as if some imp had come and shut my lungs, strangling me, so that I could not speak to him at all.

On the fourth day, Laurent came in quietly and shut the door. Until then, I had never seen him dressed in any way except in frock coat and stockings, tied up in cravat, hair pinned back, wearing low heels embroidered with seed pearls. That day, he came in a silken dressing gown, with heavy hems. Beneath, he wore a long cotton tunic. He had left his pale blond hair wild, and there were dark circles under his eyes. He came to me in bed and pressed the book of copper plate prints I was looking at out of my hands. He pushed his face against my bare neck like a cat until I put my arms around him. "Pet," he said, "hold me. I am so tired. I am so cold."

"What's gone wrong?" I asked, so much the naif.

"Nothing at all," he said, rien du tout, puffing air on my neck dismissively. "Do not be concerned."

"Where have you been?" I asked.

"Taking the air in the north," he said. "I see that you have been well-looked after in my absence. But I hear that you will not learn to write."

I opened my mouth to ask with whom, but he caught me before the words could get out.

"If you ask me, what answer would you like? Alone? With that boy from the salon? With some stranger you have never met? Have I not done enough for you?" he snapped. "I am devoted to you, pet. What more do you want from me?" His hands were at my neck, and then they were at my knees, spreading my thighs so that he could sit back against me between them. 

I was unused to such a greeting, but I am not normally quick to anger. I held him securely as he had held me after my convulsions in the salon, puzzled and hurt by his coolness. 

"Oh, but you are warm still," he hummed. "Hold me tightly. Please God, roast me. I have such a chill."

"Is it because you haven't drunk?" I asked, arms locked around his chest, knees knocked over his petit body. 

"Bien sur," he said. "Of course. What else? I cannot get warm."

I held my breath against a dry cough tickling my insides. 

"Let it out, pet. It does you no good to keep it in."

"I wish that I could have just a drink of water, for my throat," I said, without breathing.