Stitched Up Hearts (Alucard X Fem! reader)

Certainly Not A Vampire

(six years prior)

Another set of footsteps joined the first. These likely belonged to a woman, based on the space and weight of their tread. "Are you alright?" she asked, tapping my shoulder lightly with her index finger. Her face was morphed into a look of mild concern, pale eyebrows knit together. She was easily the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen around Targoviste, everyone else around there looked as though they'd fallen off the back of a cart. What was a woman like that doing around somewhere like the streets of Wallachia?

I looked up at her, bright blue eyes looking innocently into my narrowed ones. This had to be a trick, nobody around here had such genuine eyes. "Why?"

Her eyes darted for a moment behind me, as if searching for the face of a man she could only hear, and see the shadowy figure of. "That man has been following you for as long as I've noticed.'' The man had been following me for the last ten minutes, waiting for me to go someplace there weren't any people around, an alley or a backstreet. Of course I knew he was following me, I wasn't a complete fool. It was dark outside, and nearly everyone was indoors due to the cold winter, so it was easy to pick out the long striding footsteps crunching in the newly fallen snow.

"Yes, I know." I shrugged, wanting desperately for the woman to leave me alone before she scared off my follower. Kind people could be such fools.

"Come with me." she whispered, casting a final glance behind me before yanking me by the arm along with her. I stared at the point where our skin met, horrified she'd notice the temperature of my skin, but she gave me no indication she noticed anything off about it. "I'm glad I found you, I hate to think of what would have happened if you'd been left alone. I've heard too many stories about what happen to girls your age."

Though the statement wasn't any less true, men had been known to pray on women of any age since practically the beginning of time. Still, I found it almost laughable. Firstly because it was probably she thought I was older than, in reality I was. I aged very rapidly, so I appeared to her much like a young adult woman, or maybe a girl in her late teens. Another reason her fear made me laugh was because she thought I would have been the victim of that situation.

"Where are you taking me?" I asked her, slightly annoyed that she was dragging me away from what would have been a perfectly good meal. If things had gone my way the business would have been over within ten minutes.

"Somewhere safe."

The "safe" place ended up being a small house, a bit outside of the main town. The inside was covered with bookshelves, and a large table covered with mechanical equipment and ingredients for who knows what. It looked like the type of thing that would get her accused of witchcraft, if it hadn't already.

"Who are you, and what is all of this?" I gestured to the cluttered table filled with salves and other mysterious substances. To the cluttered bookshelves stacked with loose papers and dust covered books.

"I am a healer, and these are simply the tools of my trade." She answered with a small smile. "The question is, who are you?"

"I don't know what you mean." I folded my arms across my chest, speaking the way I'd learned a long time ago, with only my bottom teeth showing.

"I can tell you aren't human, are you? You'd have to be dead to have skin so cold. You're a vampire, aren't you?"

"Keep your voice low!" I hissed. "I most certainly am not a vampire. Do you have any clue what kind of trouble I could get into- we could both get into- if someone heard you accusing me of such things? They'd have me killed."

"I don't intend to hurt you. I promise." her tone never once hardened or raised at me, her voice remaining permanently soft and maternal. Either she was truly a kind oil, or she was exceptionally good at pretending to be. "I think I can help you somehow if you need it. Where are your parents?"

"Dead." I said instantly. As far as I knew, they probably were. I knew my father was, though I had no clue where my mother was as far as I cared she could have been.

"Do you have anyone? Any sort of family?"

"No."

"I... I have something I could offer you, a way to help. An escape of sorts. I have no guarantee it will work out, are you willing to take that chance?"

"Answer my question. Who are you?"

"My name is Lisa Tepes, and as I said before I am a healer. I tell you this in confidence, and I trust you won't breathe a word of it, understand? I'm sure you all know the danger of rumors and scared humans."

I nodded my head, wondering what in the world this woman could be hiding that would get her sought after by the church, other than the obvious possible witchcraft. I still wasn't wholly sure I could trust her, in fact every part of my brain was telling me not to. I'd seen plenty of people who pretended to be perfect, only to stab me in the back later. After a couple of those people, I learned who could be trusted and who could not. But she had such kind eyes, truthful; eyes. Her voice never once faltered, her eye contact never once broke. She had to be telling the truth, or i'd just met the best liar in the world. "I promise."

"You know of Vlad Dracula, yes? Of his castle, those sorts of things. He is...my husband." She confessed.

I snorted, raising an eyebrow. "Yes, because the vampire lord would marry a human. How convincing."

"You don't have to believe me, but I feel i may be your best shot at this point. The castle isn't far from here, he might offer you some type of asylum. Our son Adrian, might like you, I hope. I'm afraid of what the solitude does to him."

"And you truly believe Dracula would offer a little peasant girl asylum just because some human woman told him to? Are you sure you're not just one of his little pets?" I sneered.

"Truthfully I'm not one hundred percent sure he'll even consider the idea. But he is my husband, and a good man."