The Dark Proposal (The Claire McCormick Trilogy)

by Megan Cashman

  Dashing to the door, she unlocked and threw open the door and flung herself around her friend, tears gushing down her face. “Oh, Monica! I’m so scared!”

  Monica held her tightly and she burst into tears as well. The two cried and did what they could to comfort each other. But they were crying and frightened for very different reasons.

  Monica guided Claire to the couch, where Claire started to tell her that Daniel called and left a few threatening messages on her phone. No, that wasn’t the exact truth, but she could not say he had turned into a mist and slipped through the cracks of the windows.

  But Monica was confused.

  “Don’t you remember me telling you that he hurt me? Physically hurt me?”

  “No,” Monica looked blank. “Since when did he hurt you? I thought you two were planning to move in together in December.”

  Claire was aghast. Not only had Daniel stopped her from calling her name, but he erased any memory Monica had of Claire telling her about the way he abusively treated her, as well as put other thoughts into her mind. Claire felt more isolated, like a young child abandoned in a strange place.

  That anxiety caused her to barely sleep during the night, and during the next day, she was lost in a fog, worry written all over her face. She could barely concentrate on her freelance work and twice split juice while pouring some into a glass. When her roommates questioned her behavior, she blamed Theresa’s murder.

  Later that evening, Claire was again on campus just before the night courses let out. It was cooler outside, so she sat in a small lounge in the building, again playing games on her phone. But her mind was elsewhere.

  Why was she doing this? She had to go tell someone about Daniel. She already tried the police and that failed. She figured if she tried contacting those online groups about him and his threats, they would help her. After all, since they had the photo of him from the late 19th century, they had to know he was a vampire. But what could those groups do for her? Not only were they scattered throughout the world, but if they contacted the authorities, they would be labeled insane and ignored. If they tried to hunt down and kill Daniel, he would be two steps ahead of them because he could read minds.

  So here she was meeting again with the man who threatened and beat her, who killed both her favorite professor and landlady, and who also manipulated the mind of one of her friends so much, she forgot everything Claire recently told her about Daniel. It was like fate was playing a cruel joke on her, after giving her the impression her life has been changing for the better before this nightmare began.

  Ten minutes after her arrival, classes began to let out. She chose to wait until Daniel came looking for her rather than go to his class herself.

  As the crowds thinned, he came down the hall and peeked into the lounge. When he saw her, she stood and watched as he came up to her. He wore a stern expression, the one he had while teaching.

  “I’m glad you came,” he said.

  She nodded and he continued. “I think it would be best if we went to that coffee shop down the road. We have a lot to talk about, and it would tough holding everything in while traveling into the city.” He put his hand at her lower back and guided her out of the building.

  They walked the five blocks to the café, quietly at first. Claire wasn’t sure what she should day, if anything. Finally she asked how his class had been tonight.

  “It’s winding down since we’ve got one more week left,” he told her. “The students I have are my survivors so I respect them. Most at least. How is your freelancing going?”

  “Fine,” she said. “How’s yours?”

  “Finished my most recent story, which is great. But I’ll be waiting until next year to do another story. There’s lots on my agenda from now until then.”

  She almost gulped hearing that.

  They arrived at the coffee shop, ordered their drinks and took a seat in a back corner, away from most of the patrons.

  Although it was a chilly night, and her hands were cold, Claire could barely drink her cappuccino; the lump in her throat was too big.

  There was silence for a few minutes before Daniel whispered, “A penny for your thoughts.”

  She wanted to smile, as this was like the good times, but her mouth couldn’t move. Finally she said, slowly, “I really don’t know what to say.”

  “Say anything.” His eyes weren’t cold or warm, but they were like laser beams, watching her ever so carefully.

  She hesitated before saying, “You did quite a number on Monica last night. She forgot everything I told her.”

  “Mm-hmm,” he nodded slightly. He waited again.

  “I’ve been wondering why you don’t sleep in coffins, or can get away with photographs and mirrors.”

  “That’s not what’s your mind.” He leaned forward a bit. “Come on. This place closes in a couple of hours.”

  She sighed heavily. “You’re torturing me,” she said through gritted teeth, looking away from him. “Why can’t you let me be?”

  “Because I like you, Claire. I enjoy your company and I want it for eternity. Why can’t you see that?”

  “You have an odd way of showing it. Hurting me, yelling at me. What does that seem like to you?”

  “Well.” He paused. “We see mortals differently. I mean, we are different creatures and the way we behave around your kind may seem odd, as you put it, but it’s just in our nature.”

  Claire nearly threw her cappuccino at him and ran out of the shop. What stopped her was the fact he might kill someone close to her again, and that could be anyone. A sole, hot tear slid down her cheek and she wiped it roughly away.

  “How did you find me? Why did you zero in on me?” she asked.

  “Me? I believe you and I crossed paths. It just so happened that we were in the right place at the right time. I needed to see the chairwoman, you needed help with freelancing. It was like destiny.” He narrowed his eyes slightly. “You can’t help certain things from happening.”

  She hung her head. He was right. She didn’t deliberately flirt with him, and neither did he with her. They had a major thing in common and it started from there. If only she had heeded Nancy’s warnings about Daniel not being a nice guy. But she needed help getting work, and he was the one who agreed to help her. Blinking back tears, she was in a maelstrom of regret and wondering what might have been.

  She took a big gulp of her cappuccino, wishing it was the wine she’d had Monday night when she had got so drunk she had said exactly what she wanted to him, abuse be damned. Letting out all of her anguish would feel so good.

  She glanced up at him. He was looking out the window, at nothing in particular. He was holding onto his cup lightly, knowing full well there was no need for him to drink it’s contents. He was a complete stranger to her; there was so much to him that she didn’t know. What else was he hiding?

  “Where did you come from?” she found herself asking. Part of it sounded like someone else had spoken, while the other part came from a far corner of her mind.

  He faced her and sat forward to begin his story.

  He was born Daniel Poncher in 1325 in Paris, the illegitimate son of a nobleman and his mistress, a peasant woman. Growing up, Daniel was both scorned and celebrated for his parentage. Although he was scorned for being a bastard, his father was willing to acknowledge him, which Daniel mentioned in a fond tone. Because of who his father was, he received an education many in those days could never envision. He attended lessons at the Parisian monasteries, where he excelled at Greek, Latin and literature. “No surprise with the literature,” he mused.

  Being an illegitimate child made Daniel an outcast in society. Even though he was accepted by his father, there were few willing to show Daniel respect. His peers were quick to alienate him and the monks who educated almost never let him forget his status. A mixture of the monks’ taunts and the medieval attitude towards illegitimate children convinced Daniel he would never go to heaven. He was born damned, and was destined for
hell.

  When he was seventeen, Daniel ceased studying to become a priest and married a young woman named Jeanne, the daughter of a soldier. Like so many in those days, that marriage was arranged to help Daniel gain more respect in society, rather than for love. There was little tenderness between the two. Jeanne was cold and haughty toward her husband, while he could never understand her. It took three years for their first child, a son named Renaud, to be born. He was followed by a girl named Louise two years later.

  During this time, Daniel became a celebrated poet in Paris, both with the clergy and the noble families. He also taught the children of nobles basic reading and writing before they were sent to the monastery schools.

  But being born illegitimate always haunted him. He never felt worthy to wander the halls of the holy and the powerful. Every person he met seemed to look at him with either pity or apathy toward his damnation. “I could still see the condemnation in their eyes,” he said to Claire in a faraway voice.

  But one person did have sympathy for him, and he fell in love with her. She worked at a tavern he frequented whenever he wanted to escape his pain. Her blue eyes were like sunshine to him, with no judgment in them. Daniel wanted deeply to give himself to her, but she made it difficult to spend time with. For one, she only seemed to exist during the night. Also, she was married, although her husband barely cared she was flirting with another man.

  Eventually, Daniel stopped trying to spend time with her; it was getting too tiresome to try to be alone with her. But he would soon spend plenty of time with her.

  A year and a half later, the Black Death arrived in Paris. Corpses covered with bloody sores piled up in the streets, whole neighborhoods were wiped out, and there was no hope, not even a prayer, to stop the death. Even Daniel’s family was not immune. Within weeks, his wife and two children were swept away by the disease.

  Watching the cart take away his family as the sun lowered made Daniel wonder if he was next. He hadn’t been around his family in days due to another spat with his wife. Instead, he had spent time in bed with a lady-in-waiting to a noble woman he worked for. He only came home after news of his family reached him.

  Locking himself in his small home, Daniel sat down by the fireplace and began to pray. This was it, he knew it. He was about to find out if heaven or hell awaited him. He had spent his whole life having his fate pounded into him, and he would soon find out what his destiny would be. He was muttering some prayers when he heard her voice.

  “You don’t have to go to either,” she said.

  Startled, he jumped up. It was the woman he had always longed for, the one who he stopped seeing months ago. How did she get into his house so easily? And what was she talking about?

  She took his hand and led him to her house, where her husband was waiting. They began to talk about eternal life and drinking blood, though not in the way the Church taught. They told him he could have that life, or find out where God would place him in the afterlife. Confused, Daniel began to ask questions and that was when the couple opened their mouths and bared their fangs.

  “I had a similar reaction to yours,” he told Claire. “I thought I was going mad.”

  Daniel began invoking God to strike down the two, but nothing happened. At a loss, he began inquiring about how this sort of life would be better than heaven or hell. What got deep into his heart was the promise of freedom: no one to condemn him, no one to answer to, no fear of paradise or torture in the end because there was no afterlife. He could live in a secret world that held so much power over the main one. This appealed to Daniel. Being an outcast of society caused him to silently curse the world he lived in. He harbored deep resentment toward everyone and everything around him, but there was nothing he could do about since he was a bastard. So, hearing about being someone of worth in a new life where the Church had little power over, made him get on his knees and beg to join the man and woman before him.

  “You can guess who they were,” Daniel told her.

  “Hilde and Michel,” Claire answered.

  From that night on, Daniel lived life with few limits. He was free from the world that cast him out, and he was free to be with Hilde. It took him a while, though, to adjust to the overt freedom of the vampire world, but he would soon shed the influence the mortal world placed on him.

  “You mean, there’s a lot of free love among your kind?” Claire asked.

  Daniel smiled faintly, as if her question was silly. “There’s all sorts of freedom among us. When everything you’ve been taught proves to be wrong and you live in your own dimension, there are no limits.”

  He would spend centuries with the couple. Hilde, who was born in what is now Germany, and Michel, who was only a century younger than she was, introduced him to the vampire leaders, the Five Brothers, who obtained eternal life five thousand years ago. He was accepted by them, and eventually earned their trust. Among the vampires, there was a hierarchy of trust from the Brothers. The more they trusted one, the more freedom was given. Among the freedoms was the permission to choose and create a new vampire.

  “So, you’re saying, the Brothers trust you so much, they’re willing to allow you to make your own?” Claire asked.

  “Indeed,” Daniel said. “It’s a real honor. Someday, if you agree to join me, you will meet one of them.”

  “Have you ever made a vampire before?”

  “No, I haven’t,” he said. “Shocking, isn’t it? That was because only a certain number of us are given that power.

  “See, its called the Defenders of the Blood, a sort of police force for the leaders. They’re all ranked second to the Brothers, and no one can ever be equal to them because they are the first of us. They made us possible, and someday you’ll find out how. Anyway, I’ve been a member for a very long time, but I always said I will create a vampire out of someone I think is worthy. It’s not easy to choose, it is like looking for a diamond in the rough.” He looked at her intently at those words.

  Claire had a lot of questions to ask and wasn’t so sure which one to go with. The world of vampires seemed large and confusing, its culture different from her own. Besides, she wasn’t thrilled to be learning all he was telling her, so she asked a simple question.

  “How are you able to kill without empathy or guilt?”

  “It becomes your nature. Might as well hate being a lion or a tiger. And you figure they would have died eventually. It’s the immortality that makes you not feel guilt. You’re the only being that lives forever, while the human is here for a short time and fades into nothing. In all my years, I’ve never seen or felt anything to tell me there is life after all this. So, being a vampire is a gift. We’re a tribe, we’re a large family. The exclusivity is wondrous.” He tilted his head back, smiling.

  Then he looked at her. “One of the reasons why I believe you’re fit for this existence is because of your skepticism.” She frowned. “You are not afraid, no heaven or hell to answer to. And yet, you love life. You try to live in the moment. Most humans do not. So why not give you eternity where you can love life for as long as…whoever knows?”

  Claire tried to smile, but she could not. He saw that and simply added, “When you are made like us, you’ll see the power we have and how we will always reign over humanity. Striking fear into mortals, exercising a power and strength they can only wish to have. Basically,” he leaned forward. “We are the Gods, and its a thrilling feeling.”

  Claire wasn’t satisfied with that answer. It sounded pompous, narcissistic and frightening. A thought crept into her subconscious, telling her she should have kept her lack-of-religious beliefs to herself during that first meeting in late August in TriBeCa. Maybe if she did, Daniel wouldn’t have been attracted to her.

  She traced a scratch on the table, before saying, “And you think of me as worthy for this life as she did of you?”

  “Yes, Claire. I do,” he said, drawing out each word carefully.

  She was silent, staring at the top of the table. He was watchin
g her.

  Then something else crept into her mind and she lifted her head. “Who was Henry?”

  At first, Daniel looked confused. Then his eyes lit up slightly with stun. He must have been amazed she remembered that name from when Hilde would take him aside to argue with him, back when she was known as Sarah.

  “He used to be one of us. But he died.”

  “How was that possible?”

  Daniel circled the brim of his empty cup, trying to figure out the correct words to speak.

  “He didn’t obey the rules laid down by the Brothers. He was a young vampire who was set free from his maker too soon. I don’t know who transformed him, but that one was definitely punished for not being strict enough with Henry.

  “Anyway,” he went on. “One of the rules is to not be so open about who you are. In Henry’s case, he would feed and sometimes kill people that he was not supposed to. Because of the increased security around the world, it is best that we vampires feed off of mortals who are not in everyday situations. Meaning, don’t go to bars, find someone to invite back to your place and then drink from them. What do you do with the body? We have to cover our tracks better, so we don’t hunt mortals like we used to; we have to be extra careful. I miss those days when we could have whomever we wanted.”

  “So Henry would take people back to his place and feed off of them?” Claire’s eyes were widening. “You said Colin Willis’ was killed by a vampire. Henry was the one?”

  Daniel nodded with a hint of empathy and he went on. “The police easily figured it out that it was him and they were preparing to arrest him. At the same time, the Brothers were going to arrest him for breaking their rules and give him harsh punishment. Facing arrest on both sides, he chose to end his life for good. On a summer day, he went to the rooftop of his apartment and exposed himself to the sun. He was only a 130 year old vampire, so he did not last long in the light. He turned to ash, and that was the end of him.”

  He cleared his throat and went on. “He haunts us all, because he could have had us arrested. And I mean every vampire. One connection could have led to another, and we all would have been doomed. Hilde knew him since she was living in New York during that time. She remembers how reckless he was, and that makes her nervous about any newcomer.”