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

6. [Nicky] - 2003-2013, The Years to Come

[note: I know that I said the next time I would upload would be when I finished the book, but it is happening so slowly due to unforeseen personal circumstances that I have decided to return to the old schedule to put pressure on the production of the work. Thank you for your patience and understanding.]

I think of the years to come. When I imagine what they will be, what can I know? I write from the perspective of he who is ignorant, but I write also with "a hopefulness that buoys me queerly," as has been written to me by my brother. Here I find myself, at this moment, certain that for the first time, that I do not know what is happening.

In former years, it was always the case that if some intelligence were available, Laurent knew about it. At this time, without him, I know barely anything. When I go home, no one knows what to say.

Because of this, life is quiet here. And it is quiet everywhere. Everywhere I go, what more can be in the back of my mind? Whatever I do, what do I do?

When I arrived in California, on Tuesday, I came through the window on the upper floor. Dasius had sent me a wire that I had picked up at Western Union, and I had taken a light rail to the airport, with a stiff card in my pocket stating that I was to be delivered into the hands of a Mr. D. W. Harrison and his wife in Boston, Massachusetts. There were all kinds of stories we had in those days, to cover our movements, but this one was true. Daniel Harrison, my brother's business associate met me at the airport and flew with me across the country. He kept his lips closed the entire time, and delivered me to the house, a drive of multiple hours. So delivered, he faded back into the woodwork, and departed again. A man of use. Upstairs, it did not take long to find Dasius at all, who, at the hour of 6 'o'clock in the evening, was sitting on the edge of the smallest guest room's bed, tying the short, fiddly laces on his wingtip shoes. 

"Ta," I said, softly, coming into the room. The lighting was very low watt bulbs, like most places where there is the expectation of sensitive eyes.

"Ta," he said, as softly.

He seemed somber, but it is likely that he always did. 

"Are you tired?" he asked, as I climbed the bed to sit beside him. 

I said, "I want to touch your face," to Dasius, and he let me touch it. 

"It's nothing," he said, de rien. 

"What happened to your nose?" I said. "Do you need help to fix it?" I could not see that it had been shattered before, but it seemed crooked. A blunt force. The work of an instant. I know his face well. He submitted to inspection. "It makes you look the part of the rogue."

"Rebreak it today, rebreak it tomorrow," he murmured to me. "I have had it since Saturday."

"Where is my sharp little arrow point?" I asked him, meaning the man between us, our Laurent.

Together, we sat in the room he had set up for him there. The duvet was put back, the bed unmade, and I saw a blond hair shimmering on the burgundy sheet. I reached for the hair but Dasius's hand stopped my wrist. He lifted me onto his lap.

"Whose hair is that?" I asked, because it was so yellow. My arrow's hair is platinum, and its strands spring into little corkscrews when broken. Never his paramour's either, Marcellus's, too long and too much curl.

"Nicky, listen to me," he said.

"Your fingers are all out of joint. Why has Laurent been hitting you?" I asked, taking his hand and looking at his joints. "Why haven't you fixed this? How did he do it?" Violence between them had been a frequent but private affair. Violence of this caliber, that could not be whispered out of memory by a sweet word, far rarer, never spoken of. I held his crooked hand in mine.