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

Part 4 - A Love Story

"How old are you now?" asked the blond in my father's bed.

"Twelve," I told him. "It's my birthday."

"Your name?" he asked me, curling a finger over the curve of my chin.

"Jackie. Can you help me?"

"What with, divine face?" 

"Father cut himself. He's trying to kill himself. I think he's dying. Help me," I whispered, unused to asking for anything, barely able to breathe the words.

"He can't die that way," Laurent said, gazing on me. Leis had brought him back. The previous night a call had come in on the phone that I'd overheard, heralding a return. Leis had been gone two months, and in the interim Dasius had stayed only one night, and then the house had been only me and Father again for weeks. Father had been wary of the telephone, treating it like an untrustworthy wild animal, and now I saw why. "Come into bed with me, pretty one."

"No, thank you," I said, though I must confess that it interested me. "Help me tend to him, Laurent."

"Laurie," he said, smiling at me.

"No," I told him.

"Oh you've been poisoned against me. Find Leis. He'll care for the matter more. It's not my business."

"You want him dead."

"Oh not at all. But you wouldn't see my side, and your father has made sure of that with this. It's not my business."

I remembered Laurent well of course, from that day when I was six. It was still one of the most exciting days of my life, and not only for the blow up that had occurred afterwards. I still wanted to play swords and involve myself in a great romance, as did Clark Gable and Lana Turner, but I had been loathe to broach either subject with Father, whose reaction I couldn't predict and therefore whose confidence I couldn't be sure of. I was, I'll admit, a very young twelve, but in most things my life had been thus far very sheltered, and I do now believe and understand that Quinn did not want me to grow up, and that it was during this visit, after cutting his wrists on the kitchen floor in protest of Laurent's presence, that he began to beg Leis for another child.  For the purposes of distraction and as an object toward which to direct an innocent and pure love, of unquestioning devotion, he sensed that I was fast removing myself from his purpose. Laurent being near only exasperated that. 

"I'm afraid," I told him, which was true, and not only because of all the blood I had seen. I think I must have sensed a certain disappointment from Father, and a coldness. Both of these were temporary, passing, but I could not have known that Quinn was trying his best to push me away because it hurt him to think about what might happen to me once I was grown. And so I felt I could confide a little in the enemy, my fairy, whose presence might comfort me in the moment.

"Oh will you come into bed with me," he said, gently, "and speak on it awhile. I so want to know you, little bird."

"Come out of bed, so that we can find Leis and help Father."

"I cannot go, darling. You will not understand that at this moment I am delicate," and my eyes found his hand at his cheek, which gestured just a little to his neck, and the little punctures I had not known to look for. "It is only that I've fallen here, in your parents' bed. You will tell your Father that if he asks you, just that I have fallen here, and not that the matter happened here at all." It. I did not know anything about what when on between immortals, or anything about matters of blood.

"My father cannot die from cutting himself?" I asked, cautious but willing to believe.

"No. Do not worry yourself. Perhaps he does not know it, but it is true."