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

Leis, part 2 - Relief

He is right to tell you that I betrayed his trust. I know that he is right to tell you it. We had been lovers a hundred years before I could not stand... do you know what I am speaking about? I began to write letters I did not think seriously of sending. I learned letters slowly. In those days, the emphasis had been on reading the bible, and reciting it, and memorizing it, and this was the purpose of learning reading. What was the purpose of learning writing? They did not teach it to me in church. Even now, I think, is it so important, what I have to say? So I do not ever learn it well, even if sometimes I think that I want to. Is it so useful, what is in my mind, in my heart? I cannot summon the conviction to believe that. I only ever learned to write so that I could write to my Laurent, and so I wrote him letters, maybe just to practice writing. But it was always in me that I would write to him, see that? But I did give the letters to a courier one evening after I fought heartily with Darkling. Over what? We were quarreling a lot, because even when he is not disturbed by noise he has a heat. 

But that heat is what I liked in the beginning, is that not the case? I saw him as he was when he was still living, and he was suffering, and yet he walked even then with a very straight back, and with narrowed eyes, and a sense of himself in the world. He had in him a judgment of things, and his own mind, and a talent, and I so wanted it, and for him to see me, and to judge me, and be of a mind about me. I wanted for him to look upon me with his eyes narrowed, like that, narrow, like this, and say "Good" and perhaps to kiss me in the way I had never seen him kiss a lover, and say "Good" and to say "Like" and like me. You will see that what I am saying now is not so romantic. He accuses me of Romanticism. I have heard that. But what I felt then, I know that it was selfish, but I thought that it was all right because I thought that I knew who he was, and that I saw him for himself, and that my love, or what I thought love, would be enough. And it was no more than that, or prettier than that, which is necessary to add beauty if one is a Romantic. I am not.

But it wasn't enough, and he is right to tell you that as well, though it is our private affair, and old hurts are made magnified by distance. It was not so bad. After that first year, when he suffered more than his share of suffering, he was like a newborn thing, and curious of me, and of his new place in the world, and gorgeous. I am meaning to tell you that I loved him so much, and that we were so happy, that he was my sun in the world, and warm to me, and all my light entire, and that he still is, and that when he is near I am warm and full inside my body, and contented. And when he suffers I suffer, and when he is angry with me, I squirm like a caterpillar trapped beneath the beak of a bird. But I am still living. Do not worry about my tears. You will know that I am emotional.

So how will I explain to you, though you know it well already, how I felt drawn to Laurent again, and wanted him, and wanted his fingers to drag across my flesh, and be slapped by him, and make him pull my hair, and tell me that I was not worth his regard, and how it thrilled me? But it is also true that Quinn had begun to suffer again as he had done as a youngling, and that it tried our souls, and shook me so deeply that I knew no other way but to ask for help, and to ask it from one that even now I fear and shudder in his presence? For I am speaking now of sending letters directly to that serpent who had collected my missives to his master, our master, instead of delivering them.

I said, "Help me in all things, for I do not know what I do," and he said, still living at the same address, "If you come I will make it right for you with him, with Laurent, and it will be all of a peace, and we will examine your lover, and his illness, and find it out, and help him." Because, as I have said before, though I have scorned him, and shivered, and find him in my nightmares when I dream, still, Dasius has had love and affection for me in his heart, and I know that, and so that when he said he would help me, I believed him.

And so there came an evening, when the screaming came so strongly and so long, that even biting upon a twisted cloth my Darkling could not stop the sound, and he bit so hard down that there was blood in his mouth. And he tore at himself, and I could not make myself tie him down, and I could not do it anymore. I could not do it anymore, and I thought that I will kill us both, and hearing this thought I thought that asking for help, it is better than killing him who I love. When he had quietened a little, I took him by his shaking hand, and I said, "Now come dear, we will go to the doctor," and still my accent is not good, so he could not understand. I said, "Go to the doctor," and he tried to get away from me, because he thought that it meant pain, because he is very simple and childish when the trembling comes upon him.