by Anne Malcom
“Stay cool.” I winked at him, clinking my glass with his before wading through the sea of assholes.
Luckily, the balcony leading off the French doors of the ballroom was deserted, which meant I could have a moment to myself and shake off the filth that came with attending such things.
The estate was outside New York, sprawled on acres of manicured gardens. It was dark, but that didn’t mean much to me; heightened eyesight and hearing were one of the things setting us apart from the human race.
Oh, and immortality and the fact that we sucked the blood of the aforementioned human race to stay undead.
Small things.
I leaned against the railing, resisting the urge to vault over it and run from this godforsaken party. It wasn’t just the damage to my outfit that stopped me. It was Mother’s words.
“If you do not come, your brothers will deliver you the bodies of three dead children to your apartment at dawn.”
It wasn’t an idle threat. I’d learned that the hard way.
I’d never been the prodigal daughter my parents had wanted, even before I turned. I spent my childhood reading human literature instead of the vampire gospel, which of course wasn’t something you found in Barnes and Noble, or its sixteenth-century equivalent.
I cried when I was six and saw my father and mother kill a human. Something a vampire, even before they’d fully matured, should never have done.
From then, my family made it their mission to hide my habits of humanity from the rest of the society. All done through force, obviously. If I didn’t act how they wanted me to, they’d kill children, entire families, in front of me. And then made me sleep in the same room as their corpses.
It had worked for a while. Their methods were grisly and designed to make even the most devout saint into a sinner. Since I hadn’t been devout, nor a saint, I turned dark, sinning enough to make even Ted Bundy blush. I’d turned after they killed the life I’d made for myself and after, I escaped the cold and unfeeling atmosphere of Russia.
When I turned twenty-three and the chance presented itself, I ran. Didn’t look back. I had planned on going as far away from the motherland as possible, chasing the sunshine while I could live in its warm rays, before I was sentenced to a life in the shadows.
I arrived in post-war Paris at the end of the 1600s, when Louis was crowned and the city was blooming with their newly grasped peace. Both the Parisians and I were blissfully ignorant of how fragile that peace would become. How it would shatter and be replaced with blood, death and anguish.
I was quickly besotted with the growing city and the pulsating life that emanated from its streets. Despite goals to travel to the edge of the world to escape my family and try in vain to hold onto my humanity, I stayed. Made friends with aristocrats, thanks to my mystique, Russian accent, and apparent lack of family.
A young, attractive and wealthy woman in those times did not travel alone.
Times were delicate, as was life. Women in such a time were considered the most delicate of all. I wasn’t concerned about the horrors or dangers the human world offered me; it was nothing compared to my childhood.
I was naive and somehow thought I was invincible, although I was at the most fragile stage in my immortal life. Many vampires died when their life force was the closest to a human’s as we ever got.
I didn’t worry myself with such things at that time, I worried about sunshine, dresses, champagne and parties. And it was at one of the parties at the newly constructed Versailles that I met him.
I floated around the grass, my skirts trailing on the ground as I smiled up into the sunlight, basking in its glow and in the slight fuzz at the edge of my thoughts thanks to the excellent champagne.
The hum of conversations calmed me, the lack of murders and screams I’d grown used to jarring yet comforting.
An electricity snaked up my skin with the telltale sign of a stare landing on my back. I glanced across the garden to see the owner of that stare sidling through the crowds, nodding at men and bowing at ladies as he approached.
His caramel eyes never left me as he came closer. I did little but gape at the young man with skin kissed by the sun. His auburn hair curled around his face in shiny waves, setting him apart from the other men I’d met. His attire was less unusual, the stark white ruff snaking up his neck, contrasting with the intricately designed leather jerkin worn over the matching doublet. His paned hose matched and added to the crisp and opulent look. I wasn’t impressed by his tailoring, nor his resources which made him able to procure the finest fabrics. It was the warmth that seemed to travel with him, the eyes focused on mine which were two tiny balls of light, comforting me with their heat.
He made it to me, bowing low and eating me up with his gaze.
The heat of my blush crept up my cheeks. It wasn’t unusual to be the subject of male attention. I had had my experience with it since my arrival in the strange and vibrant city and though it had excited me, nothing had curled in my stomach at a mere gaze like it had right then.
I forgot my manners momentarily and scurried to curtsey as was proper.
A shadow of a grin lit up his boyish face as I rose.
“Mademoiselle,” he greeted.
I dipped my head, if only to escape the pull of his gaze. Immediately I yearned for it. “Monsieur,” I returned. I feared my greeting was not as smooth as his. The way his tongue rolled over the single word betrayed him as a native and me as a foreigner.
He glanced around me, as if expecting someone to come and snatch me from his very presence.
“You do not have a family, a chaperone to protect your honor?” he asked, as if he expected to have to unsheathe the dagger at his belt to take up the post.
I laughed. “Protect my honor? No,” I replied softly. Damn it, maybe.
“Your family, they’re dead?” His eyes searched mine, warm with concern.
I nodded, sipping my champagne. “Dead,” I agreed.
It wasn’t a lie. They just happened to be walking, talking and murdering without a heartbeat. Hence my voluntary seclusion in Paris. I’d been there almost a month and they hadn’t come to fetch me. I was surprised, figuring the wayward Rominskitoff daughter who mingled with humans would be the scandal of the century.
They weren’t quite ready to turn me themselves; I’d bet they were hoping this dirty and death-filled mortal world might snuff my existence from the planet before I had the chance to permanently besmirch their legacy as an immortal. Or they were hoping my rejection of cold-blooded murder and sadism was just a phase. Humanity a nasty rebellion, instead of a way of life, or undeath.
Whatever it was, I was glad to be without them, and I felt confident enough to manage life in Paris alone. Even this stuffy society party was somewhat enjoyable, especially with this sharp-jawed gentleman with riveting eyes and a lean body under his attire.
He stepped forward. “It is a crime that a young lady such as yourself is in society without protection. I’m honor bound to provide my services.”
I quirked my brow, mostly to hide the strange feeling his lack of hesitation had brought. The way his proximity, slightly closer than was proper, made my heart flutter like a sparrow.
Made me forget that I could turn at any time into a bloodsucking monster that he would need protecting from.
“It’s not exactly a position that needs to be filled,” I argued. “I’m quite capable of taking care of myself, Monsieur.”
His eyelashes fluttered. “I disagree. You, in society, beautiful as a rose in spring? I would not let anyone pluck you and tarnish that beauty.”
I swallowed. I should politely excuse myself, pick up my skirts and run from those whiskey eyes and his endearing scent. But it was as if those eyes had lassoed me and I couldn’t leave his presence.
I didn’t want to.
“You flatter me, sir,” I murmured.
His eyes twinkled. “No, I tell the truth my heart commands me to tell. Otherwise, I shall drop dead, right here at
your feet. And since I have renewed motivation not to do that, namely to spend more time in your presence and learn your name, I must tell my heart’s truth.”
My blush crept up my neck, my whole body humming with a reaction that would have been impossible if I had turned. But I hadn’t. Which meant my body was controlled by whatever human impulses lingered before we turned and they were all extinguished.
“I would hardly wish for you to drop dead at my feet, especially here,” I remarked, looking around the garden. “It would be most improper at such a party, and a dreadful way to go. Wouldn’t you much rather have an interesting story of your demise? Perhaps a duel?” I grinned at him.
His returning grin was blinding. “Yes, perhaps a duel. That is, if there’s another suitor I must face for your affections. In that case, it will be to the death. Otherwise, my demise is most suited to be winning the affections of the most breathtaking creature I’ve laid eyes on.”
I sucked in a haggard breath. “Monsieur, I’m afraid you must stop saying such things, for your barely know me and I do not deserve such heartfelt declarations.”
He stepped forward, closer than was socially acceptable and I didn’t find it in me to care. I didn’t care about what the entire vampire race thought about me, so why should I care about French aristocrats murmuring about me standing close to a handsome man unchaperoned.
“I disagree. I know you, for I have watched you glide around this entire wretched party, lighting it up with your presence. You laughed with the children other ladies shoo away, even hitching up your skirts in order to play with them. You bespelled Lord Durand, even made the old man laugh when it is known that Louis himself cried in his presence. Finally, the moment your eyes met mine, my heart stopped and started, for I laid my eyes on the woman I intend to marry.”
His declaration, which my twenty-first-century self might have scoffed at and ran from, instead set my whole world aflame with warmth of true, genuine human affection, something that had been entirely absent from my existence.
We married a mere month after the party.
My family murdered him one week after our wedding.
Five weeks. That’s what I got. Five weeks of happiness, of the truest and purest form of love that humans live and die for, wrote poems for, and breathed for.
I lived for almost five hundred years, and five weeks of those I had in a box in the bottom of my shriveled heart, a shadow of what humans stayed breathing for.
What I would most likely die to avoid.
Because I couldn’t live with having something like that taken from me. Not again. Forever was a long time to live with heartbreak. Humans had it for a blink of an eye, but I had it always.
Four hundred years of the ever-present hole in my heart because I’d spent five weeks in ignorance of true love, thinking it would conquer all.
Then I came home to that house we’d talked about raising children in to see him, and every single person we’d been connected to, lying on the floor. Their throats ripped out.
My mother was wiping her mouth demurely when I walked in, dropping to my knees beside Jonathan’s corpse.
“I should hope you now understand,” she said evenly, “what will and will not be tolerated in this family.” The skirts of her dress bristled as she made her way to me. “And what will happen should you decide to shame our name and your entire race again.”
On that note, she’d walked out of the room, leaving me cradling the man who had been the center of my fantasy. The center of my world.
Then I turned. Right then and there. Amidst the blood and remains of what had been my human life.
Every vampire was different when they came into their full selves. Their true selves. Extensive research had gone into the study of how our bodies underwent a natural death in order to bring forward an unnatural afterlife. There were many theories about evolution and Darwinism, but I didn’t trouble myself with much of that. It was a fact of our undeath and it was never consistent. You didn’t turn twenty-one and have the ability to buy your first drink, grow your fangs and live forever. Some vampires turned when they were teenagers, some middle-aged. Most were early twenties.
Various scientists of our race had tried to pinpoint the reasons behind turning and what the catalyst was.
Well, the catalyst for us all was death.
Our hearts literally stopped beating.
Mine shriveled up and exploded.
I went dark after that. The darkest. Much to my family’s delight. I left a blood trail throughout half of Europe. Ironically, my blood spree came at a time of unrest in the continent, when horrors committed by the human race far outweighed the sins a single vampire could accomplish. But that didn’t mean my soul wasn’t stained forever with the blood of those I killed.
I decided that if I died that day, I would try and kill every part of me that I thought was me. Because if I killed all of it, the humanity, the mortality, maybe I’d kill the pain. Since I couldn’t kill myself without great effort, I decided to kill everyone else.
Fifty years I was notorious, respected in my community. Not that I cared. I didn’t mingle with any of them. My life was blood, nothing else. My family didn’t bother me then. I was towing the family line, so there was no need.
Then it changed. Like I’d been in some kind of nightmare, I’d woken up. Stopped.
I didn’t stop killing; I just realized that I was turning right into what my family wanted. I had dishonored Jonathan’s memory.
So I changed my life. Or my death.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
Just not the history taught in human schools.
“Thinking of jumping?” a gravelly voice interrupted my journey down memory lane.
Good thing too. That lane was littered with corpses I tried to forget, yet I carried them with me for eternity. Or until someone finally succeeded in killing me.
The source of the interruption brought me out of the frying pan of my memories and into the icy depths of his presence. His voice was flat and cold, yet able to singe my skin with its edge. I didn’t turn, just continued contemplating the grounds.
“As tempting as it is, I don’t want grass stains on my dress,” I replied.
He leaned beside me, regarding the night much like I was, holding a glass of what smelled like well-aged whiskey in his large hands.
He wasn’t indulging in the world’s finest blood. Curious.
“And that would be a crime that I would have to punish you for,” the king said, his voice drenched with double entendre.
I glanced at his profile. He was making me uneasy. No one made me uneasy. “I don’t do well with punishments,” I replied truthfully, hiding my unease behind my well-practiced bravado.
He turned his head to lock eyes with me. “You would if I was the one administering them.”
Well, fuck. Was the notoriously ruthless, callous and coldest king of all vampires flirting with me?
“I’ve heard a lot about you,” he continued.
I kept his eyes. “All bad, I hope.”
He tilted his head, his gaze speculative, as if he were figuring out a particularly hard puzzle. “No. None bad. All good, in fact.” He twirled his crystal tumbler between his hands. “The way I understand it, you only kill a certain kind of human.”
I stayed silent, figuring it was my best bet.
“The kind who have committed depravities against the human race,” he continued. “You don’t kill innocents.” He regarded me, no judgment either way, which was surprising. Or maybe he just had a really good poker face. You didn’t rule a society of sociopaths for two hundred years and stay undead if you didn’t perfect a mask of indifference.
I sipped my champagne. “What can I say? I prefer my meat bitter.”
He kept staring. My uneasiness was like a snake slithering in my belly, and I didn’t like it. Or maybe I did. Which was why I didn’t. I abhorred my entire race. Getting all weak-kneed over the king of them all was a tad hypocritical.
>
“Stop doing that,” I snapped, unable to take any more.
Surprise flickered across his face, his mask cracking. “Doing what?”
“Staring,” I clarified. “It’s unnerving. And also makes you look like you’re a few candlesticks short of the entire box.”
Shit. Did I just insinuate that the king of vampires was mentally impaired?
Yes. Yes I did.
Fuck.
“Okay, if you’re gonna kill me, can you at least wait until I’ve touched up my lipstick?” I asked, trying to charm my way out of this.
Respect was big in certain circles. Interestingly, the ones who were the cruelest of us all, the vipers at this party, revered manners, in person at least. All the backstabbing was done in accordance with well-established laws, ones which forbade anyone from spilling another vampire’s blood at a gathering where human blood was shared.
I guessed the king could find a loophole if some red-haired idiot decided to let her mouth run away from her and suggest he was mentally handicapped.
He tilted his head so his curtain of hair fell like silk across his shoulder. “Kill you?” he repeated, then downed the last of his liquid. “Now why would I do that? You’re much too interesting.” He gave me a pensive look before pushing off the balcony and sauntering back into the party.
I watched him walk away, admiring the cut of his suit and the fluidity of his gait.
Then I turned back to regard the midnight air. I so needed to find a way to get out of these things before I was the first person to break a rule that had been in place for thousands of years.
No vampire shall spill immortal blood when Theoxenia has been granted or Zeus shall feast on their flesh.
I scoffed, feeling the premonition of death curl around me like the wind.
