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

Part 9 - The Terrible Thing

If I had been a gentler hand, I would have spent that day with Valentin, but I do not think that I am much of that sort of person even now. Perhaps it would have comforted him, not to be so alone, but I did not see him as my responsibility, or a part of my life. He said, "I do not want a priest," and before I left him for the day, he gestured for me to come close. "Won't you give him my signet? Tell him he may wear it however he likes. Won't you do it?" I took it without a word. 

I can't remember what I did. I went to the chemist's, and picked through the many creams and colors. Someone asked me, what are you looking for? I told them arsenic, and I was told that I was looking in the wrong place. But I had Valentin's gold signet on my pinkie finger, turned inward, and I scratched my nose with this finger, and suddenly these things were much more forthcoming. 

"I will emphasize to you to watch for signs of overindulgence in this," I was told, and when I said nothing, "Of course. Of course."

I knew little about medicine at that time, and had not undertaken any training, but as anyone, I knew how to kill a man. A sweet young, vampire, and as weak as kitten was, surely it would not be terribly different. After all of my confusion, and the sense that some creature in me were waiting to emerge, I felt only a numb floatiness, a lightness in my limbs and in my head. I wore low white heels, and at the end of the day, they were clean still, as if my feet had never touched the dirt at all. A boy delivered the letter, the invitation. I never saw him at all.

Late that evening, it was a small matter to see Valentin into a hackney coach, and return home, and still at the time I felt nothing. 

"Dark one, where are we going?" he asked me, voice as airy as I felt. His light fingers massaged my arm, the rocking of the coach giving him excuse to lean against me.

"When the spirit moves you will drink this," I told him.

Valentin took the glass bottle. "Oh, I am glad to do this," he said, very softly. He did not seem at all concerned that kitten would not want him. 

"Be quiet now."

It was as simple as that. And it was not lucky at all that Laurent chose to go to that fete. I knew that he would go. Cold, calculated. They call me this these days. The young ones, they are afraid of me. Do you think there is truth in it? Maybe you think so because of this story. It is true that I knew precisely what I was doing. Maybe you will think me as cold as they say if I tell you I was very curious to watch Leis die. How strange he was, with his illness. How would it take him?  Would it be neat? 

I helped Valentin from the coach, and he fell against me, and laughed. 

"Don't look put out so," he laughed. "I look a drunken idiot. Pay the coachmen."

As I slid my key into the heavy lock, I caught a glimpse of Valentin's arm, as he reached out to lean against the door. I said, "Oh," involuntarily, because the place where Leis had bitten him looked like a black star, snaking its way up his yellowing flesh. Though it was already deep twilight, and cooling off, sweat had beaded in the little hairs of his arm, and I could hear him panting thickly with the effort to stay upright. He had not taken any care with his hair or his clothes, and he smelled of snuff. I turned the key and heard the tumblers in the lock roll back, and let him lean his weight upon me again. 

In the house it was very dark; perhaps as dark as any hayloft or similar place uninhabited by humans. And quiet, and still. I quieted Valentin with a finger, closed the door behind me, and locked it. Becoming used to the labored beating of his heart in the silken darkness, I listened, and soon heard that other breath, the softest rasping, and yet so close to me, like a ghost whispering in my ear from opposite the veil, and I whispered, as if shocked, "Valentin, he has gone. To the fete."