Mirrors & Shadows

𝕮𝖍𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖊𝖗 𝐗𝐈𝐕

յօ 𝔪𝔬𝔫𝔱𝔥𝔰 𝔭𝔯𝔦𝔬𝔯~𝔇𝔦𝔰𝔠𝔲𝔰𝔰𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔪𝔞𝔱𝔱𝔢𝔯𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔰𝔬𝔲𝔩

Two days later, on a Saturday morning, she stood alone on the bridge Alexandre III debating whether it was judicious to have listened to the instructions given by a stranger. But she couldn't help her curiosity. It all began the day before when Henry came over for a while and her vampire coworkers decided to take a break to watch Henry beat Arthur at chess for the third time in a row. This wasn't unusual up til then. However, Henry looked at her — or turned his eyes on her. It had always been unsettling how he knew exactly where she stood even without her making a sound.
    "Do you play chess?" Her heart thudded as she felt all of the vampires staring at her. Henry had never really spoken to her. She met Edmond's gaze who gave her a reassuring smile.
    "Yes." She answered shyly, sitting nervously in the chair opposite the blind vampire. Henry always let his opponent have the white pieces. A few paces away, Edmond had taken to making silent hand gestures to advise her in her moves. When Henry caught her knight with his rook, Edmond made a sympathetic grimace and she had to repress a small snort of laughter.
    "I know you're communicating." Henry chuckled. Edmond glanced at the ceiling guiltily which made her smile. She returned to the game, trying to remember all the tactics she used to practice with her portable chess board during recess in middle school. When Henry lost his knight to her rook, she looked up at Edmond to see the beginning of a grin on his face. She grinned back. Henry's sightless eyes stared into hers and he too grinned as though he knew. At the end of the game, she was certain that her last move would put him into a definitive check mate yet, she hesitated. Henry knew what he was doing. He stared at her patiently, his amber eyes locking on her. Henry was too smart. This couldn't be the end. And yet, when she made her final move, Henry reached up toward his king and lay it on the board in defeat.
    "You won." He said simply. Maybe it was the way he said it. Maybe it was the plainness in his voice or the way his amber eyes didn't leave hers for a blink. Henry was too smart. She hadn't won. He had let her win as if reminding her that he had the upper hand despite appearances.

But things got weirder yet. Later that evening, once again she felt a presence behind her front door and was unable to shake off the paranoia of being watched and the thought that someone may be waiting for her out there. However, as she looked through the peephole this time, she didn't wake up. Instead, an amber gaze stared back at her from the other side of the door. She jumped in fright. What was Henry doing here? The doorbell rang. She opened the door.
    "Mr. Ferrow? What's happening? How do you even know where I live?"
   "That's not important... I must tell you something urgent."
    "Not important? I think I ought to know how a blind guy manages to find out where I live without the address."
    "Hear me out. You're in danger. I need to warn you... not here though..."
    "What do you mean? You've been telling me I'm in danger ever since I started working at the lab."
    "Yes. This is different. You have no idea..."
    "No idea of what? You're not making any sense."
    "Meet me tomorrow at 6am, Pont Alexandre III."
    "Wait. If it's so urgent why not just tell me now?"
    "I can't. Not here..." He fidgeted nervously. "See you tomorrow."

***

The bridge Alexandre III was deserted. The morning fog swirled like ominous curtains around her. As she progressed, lampposts along the bridge would emerge out of the gloom as if lighting a ghostly scenery while those behind her faded in the same circumstances. Below, the water was as cloudy looking as the sky. An empty boat drifted slowly.
    "Mr. Ferrow." Luna whispered, knowing that if he was around,he would hear her thanks to his vampiric hearing. There was no answer. She continued walking.
    "Mr. Ferrow?" she called again. A shadow took shape in the distance. The silhouette of a tall man stood at the ledge of the bridge. Luna approached him. He was muttering to himself. Most of what he was saying was inaudible but some sentences and words stood out.
    "300...300 days prior to the blood moon's rising..."
The muttering stopped. He turned toward her. Though he was taller than Edmond, his shoulders were slumped which reduced his height. He wore only a maroon blazer despite the cold weather. Typical for a vampire.
    "How do you get about the city like that?" She wondered aloud. He smiled faintly.
    "After centuries living here I've got a lot of streets memorized. The farthest arrondissements are a bit more of a trouble but I manage."
    "Why did you want to see me?"
His gaze became dazed and vague.
    "I... I can't tell you." he stuttered.
    "What do you mean you can't tell me? Why did you want to meet me here?" Fear flickered and faltered in his sightless eyes.
     "Have I ever told you how I became a vampire?"
Without waiting for her to reply he continued. "She was very seducing. My maker. I was young and in love. I gave her my heart and she took my soul instead." His voice was bitter. Luna did not know what he hoped by sharing this with her. "I was one of the only ones to refuse being part of her clan. I joined Edmond's. See Luna." His serious amber gaze bore into hers. Though how he gave the impression he could see her clearly was a mystery to Luna. "At first, you're a victim, you've fallen in love with a monster, then you become a perpetrator yourself. You become what you abhor. The more you wait for something, the more you want it. Blood is like wine, Luna." He thrust his palm at her, his fingers joined to his thumb to mark his point. Though she noticed how his hand trembled as he did so. "While with wine," he continued, "time leads to fermentation and better taste, with blood time leads to desire and eventually, better taste. He is going at great lengths, revealing what we are. Not to mention he expects total respect from us not to feed on you." Although this was said non-aggressively, the suggestion sent shivers up her spine. "He puts our sense of honor and our instincts in a close battle. He wants something from you, Luna and I mean other than your blood or your soul." Henry pressed on severely. "These might be just the prices to pay in order for his larger scheme to unravel. So, what exactly have you to offer?" He paused, observing her. She took a step back. "Why else do you think he's studying the immortality of our cells?"
His gaze divagated.
    "What do you mean by 'soul'?" She inquired, frowning. Henry chuckled unpleasantly.
     "It is said that when you become a vampire, your body stays alive forever but your soul is poisoned by the blood you drink." He replied somberly. Though he hadn't answered her question. What did he mean by 'soul'? Never if someone had told her a few weeks ago that she would be discussing, as a physicist, notions of the soul with a blind vampire on the pont Alexandre III, would she have believed them. Yet, here she was.
    "I've known him for centuries..." he pursued, "after changing into a vampire, vampires never change. Time does not mold us. We are still the same creatures that take delight in playing with our prey before we strike. Understand this, we like to deserve our prey. Thus, we wait, wait until the prey accepts us, comes to be fond of us, we wait until your trust has gone so far that you will willingly throw yourself, as the French would say 'dans la gueule du loup', submitting yourself deliberately to the predator's fangs."
Her curiosity pushed away her fear.
    "Do you know..." she dared, "how Edmond was changed?"
He looked at her as if deciding what to say and not to say.
   "Yes." he began slowly. "Edmond's rebirth is much different from mine. All my maker wanted when she changed me was to extend her pack. Edmond's maker had in some ways a more noble reason to change him. He fell off a cliff. He survived the fall but his legs were paralyzed. He lay for about three days at the bottom of the cliff unable to move. Scavenger birds mistook him for a corpse. The birds left his eyes hollow and blinder than even myself therefore he did not see who his maker was. For a week, an unknown vampire gave Edmond his or her blood and nurtured him as son. The unknown vampire granted a dying man immortality while leaving him clanless, on his own to discover his new thirst for blood."
    "That's awful." Luna gasped. She now felt guilty having asked something so personal about Edmond behind his back.
    "It's a vampire story." Henry explained. "A story that holds no happy endings. No real ending at all, in fact... only eternal tragedies."
When sensing Luna's guilt however, he added. "But you mustn't pity the man he was for he will not pity you today. Now, he's a monster like the rest of us, a cold-blooded monster, a drinker of souls, a vampire. Do you want to be the next tragedy in his story?" He grasped her wrist tightly and his coldness made her shiver.
    "Run, I say, run while it is not too late."
He let go of her and looked around them nervously even though the fog was too thick for them to see much.
    "He has seen you... he is coming... he is coming..." she heard him murmur. "They're watching us."
    "Who's watching us?" She asked.
It seemed as though he didn't hear her.
    "I must leave now. Remember what I said."
Without a last glance, he disappeared into the mist.
She thought back at Edmond's soft concerned gaze and pushed away Henry's warnings. Though, something deep down told her he might be right, she was being drawn further into the mist, mesmerized by what she could not see only to find herself drowning in that thick foggy gaze.

A/N
Word count: 1759
Does anything I write sound a little weird sometimes? If so please tell me, though I'll blame it on being bilingual x)

Salut! :))
Shivers by Ed Sheeran in Paris!!