by Aya DeAniege
When she climbed into my bed and demanded it, I don’t recall her exact age, but she was more than appropriately an adult. Until that point, I had loved her just as deeply, but sex had not been involved. She was my lover, you understand, sex and love hadn’t ever mixed for me before. The two are separate actions.
I, of course, refused to turn her.
Looking at her, I knew that she would have difficulty being a vampire. She was a short woman too, even for that era.
They used to call her a little doll because she looked like a larger version of a doll. Or perhaps her name came to mean little doll as time changed
It’s sometimes difficult to recall what you’ve worked for centuries to forget.
I don’t recall anything between when I refused and about three days later when I woke with a great difficulty. She had ripped out my canines, de-fanged me, as it were.
“You won’t be needing these anymore,” she said, tossing them into the fire.
Teeth grow back, I should add for those humans who might consider that an option.
Then she cut me and cut herself, and tried to mash the cuts together. I had never told her how to make a fledgling, so she had no idea.
After that, she fancied herself a vampire, even though the cut remained. The woman was mad. Certifiably insane, she honestly believed she was one of us.
For a few days, I had respite. Then she came to me with questions. She had tried feeding and ended up throwing it back up again.
Because, I’d just like to be clear, she wasn’t a fledgling. She was even sick. An infection was spreading because she had cut herself with a dirty blade. I tried to talk her into seeing someone about the wound, she refused.
She said that it was like that because she was still in the middle of the change.
“Obviously if it were that easy, everyone would turn themselves,” She said.
Then she cut me deep and bled me until it healed. She drank that, then did it again. She claimed to feel more powerful.
Out she went, leaving me too weak to defend myself. She returned just before dawn with some poor soul. In front of me, she fed on him.
Sloppily I should add.
She did let me feed on him, to which I bit him as best I could. My fangs had yet to return, so I couldn’t turn him, but I could mangle what was left enough that word got out.
She swooped the body away and then tucked herself lovingly against me, saying that we would be together forever and ever.
That was about the time that I got pissed off.
Lucrecia can change or sway people, but she can also read the minds of vampires. We just need to think loudly. Sasha and I, at least.
We built a bond with Lucrecia. Sasha because Lucrecia was her Maker, and myself through centuries of work. Margaret joined that connection later, I’m sure.
That’s all I did. Send out a help and instructions on how to find me.
Lucrecia probably started shouting and screaming again, like she does whenever I get involved with Lu. Then she would have recalled that I had just visited him, that Lu was headed to the new world for a bit of relaxation and slaughter.
She would have sent word to Sasha.
While Sasha was stationary at the time, she was several weeks away from Lucrecia.
Margaret and Lucrecia do not get along, not even after all these centuries. So, Sasha had to live separate from Lucrecia, and far enough away that the two wouldn’t end up stumbling upon one another. Otherwise, blood would flow.
And, of course, I was several months travel away.
Lucrecia says it’s because I’m stupid. The modern world is fantastic.
We can just call and fly.
At the time, however, we were very patient creatures. All things would come to us, and we knew it. The worst that could have happened was that I waited out her natural life and then be burned at the stake and escape from a shallow grave.
Given her behaviour, it would not be long before the local authorities found her and took matters into their own hands.
Six months later there was a knock on the door. She made me answer it.
Margaret stepped in with Sasha behind her acting in a servant role.
“Quin, dear and lovely Quin,” Margaret said loudly. “The Council has sent me to call you back. You, Mr. Fedora, are in a lot of trouble.”
Except she used a pet name that doesn’t translate well. That pet name was about the same, though.
Margaret in the lead, Sasha in behind. I cast Sasha a desperate look, and she just arched an eyebrow at me.
In comes Lover.
“Who is it, Quintillus?” she all but shouted in a squeal.
Like a child that had just been introduced to new friends.
“Yes, Quintillus,” Margaret said with all the gravitas of a fledgling let off the leash. “Who is this person?”
“This is Lover,” I said.
“He turned me, but won’t teach me to be a vampire!” Lover protested.
“Well,” Margaret said. “We’ll have to fix that, won’t we? Tell my mortal servant where to take her bags. And, Lover? We don’t eat the help. You lay a single finger on her, and I’ll break every bone in your psychotic little body.”
Lover laughed and waved me forward.
I moved woodenly, taking the bag from Sasha. She followed me away as I heard Margaret tell Lover the most outrageous things about being a vampire. Absolute falsehoods, things that even explained why Lover continued with all the other parts of living.
Setting them up in a guest room, I turned to Sasha.
“What is going on?” we both demanded of the other.
“I thought you only got this way around Lu,” she said. “Now some mortal has you under her heel?”
“It just sort of happened,” I protested. “She’s a very nice person.”
“Was, maybe,” Sasha said. “Obviously, she isn’t a nice person still. Nice people don’t hold other people hostage or think they’re vampires. Or start a mess so big that the Council has extended their reach to the city to reign in the moron who is hunting here.”
“I haven’t been hunting. She won’t let me. Brings me blood in cups and buckets, says it’s undignified of a master to drink from a mortal.”
“And she sold your paintings?”
“She wanted a new comb for her hair.”
“So, she sold all the paintings?”
“It was an elaborate comb, with precious jewels.”
“No comb is worth that much,” Sasha snapped. “We are looting this place and burning it to the ground. If anyone tries to stop us, we are robbing them, and burning them to the ground.”
“It’s not advisable to burn mortals,” I said. “I believe the Council frowns upon it.”
“Either they send the Devils—or worse, Death—or we do this. Your choice, Quin.”
“Why is Margaret in the lead? She is the Progeny, you the Maker.”
“I wasn’t feeling particularly bitey until I saw you. Lucrecia said we should take advantage of Margaret’s sadistic side while we can. Most who are sadistic in mortality grow bored of it quickly in immortality.”
“How’s this to go, then?” I asked.
“Margaret is going to find out who knows about the pair of you, or about Lover. We’re going to visit each of them. Rob them, and burn it to the ground. I’m going to incite violence among the lower classes against your lady love.”
And you did just that?
No, Lover had ‘turned’ several servants. They were spying on us. Sasha and I were still young in the ways of subterfuge. We simply killed whoever bothered us. We were also young enough that we slept like the dead for about half of the day, and Lover knew that.
When we woke the next morning, we were bound in iron chains, in another room. The room had been converted to Lover’s play place.
Basically, it was a dungeon set exactly in the middle of the home. During daylight hours, when I was still fast asleep, she used it to entertain guests and kill mortals.<
br />
Sasha was visibly upset. Margaret thought it was vast amounts of fun until Sasha told Margaret to give me her wrist.
When it comes down to it, most of us are still of the same strength and agility as mortals. Our predictive skills help us a great deal. Experience as well.
Always learn escaping skills above all else.
And languages, we’ve let a few die off to have the ability to speak freely. Communication in the proper form would have prevented the incident from ever happening.
I drank from Margaret, though not greedily. Then I drank from Sasha. I would not be better for some time, but their blood reawakened my appetite.
And I was pissed.
“There he is,” Sasha exclaimed. “My wonderful baby brother. Margaret, get them to open the door.”
Sasha broke all our chains then. There are always weak links and places where the iron is thinnest. It was one of those such places she found on each of the chains and snapped in both her hands.
Margaret walked to the door, clearing her throat as she did so.
“I am done, open the door.”
Her pitch, her tone, everything about her voice was exactly how Lover sounded. Even to an immortal ear.
A confused voice came from the other side, and Margaret put on her best pout. After a few hours of speaking with Lover, she knew the behaviour of my woman.
Again, there was a confused response. After a long moment, the door open.
Margaret threw the first mortal at me, grabbing the second. She held the second as I dispatched the first. Then she tossed me the second.
I ate them all.
The servants fed my hunger, but not the brutal rage. I had been kept on the point of starvation for six months.
As Sasha would say, I let the devil out.
Sasha found Lover, still abed, sleeping peacefully with a whore at her side. When I came upon them, Lover was little more than bits and pieces scattered across the room. The whore fared no better.
I was grief stricken by the sight.
“We are not done, little brother,” Sasha snapped.
Whenever she called me little brother or baby brother, I became quite upset. She had been turned at an earlier age than I had. As you must have seen, she looks younger than I do.
She uses the term to tease me, and I don’t like it.
From there, we collected any valuables we could. Margaret already had a list of others whom Lover supposedly turned.
We lit the place on fire and slipped out the back. Sasha went one way, to stir trouble among the poor, and Margaret and I went another.
We cleared out several more homes that night, lighting each on fire. By the time Sasha caught up with us, a small riot had started. She had paid off some local riffraff to cause as much trouble and damage as they could.
They were only too happy to oblige when she told them whose deaths we were collecting.
As the sun rose, the city burned. The gates had been taken over by citizens, so we left with a small bribe to the new guards.
That day, we stayed awake. It hurt something terrible, but we had all gorged on blood. We stayed on our feet until the next night was almost gone. Then we found some caves and slipped inside, sleeping the whole night away.
It’s a painful time in my life. I chose the wrong partner and was hurt by it. I chose to trust her with my most intimate secret, and she used it against me. Then went mad with power.
Mortals can be stupid, fragile creatures. You can also be dangerous to immortals.
You can’t kill me, Helen. I can’t even kill myself. But you can torment, torture and abuse me. You can beat my body until it’s black and blue, break my bones, experiment on my flesh.
But mummy and sister will find you. And what Sasha and Lucrecia do to those who mistreat their turned family is a mercy compared to what the other vampire families will do to a mortal who would take one of theirs and abuse them.
“Wait, there are families? Like, named families?”
“Our turned families have adopted names, yes. I’ve been talking about them all along,” Quin said, sounding startled. “You aren’t the least bit disturbed by the story?”
“I am, but humans are assholes, always have been.”
“I meant the obvious threat.”
“I thought you were only saying that for this,” I said, tapping the tablet.
For a moment, I felt awkward. Like he had been threatening me on purpose. I forced myself to relax, however, because I wasn’t capable of doing those kinds of things. There wasn’t a violent bone in my body, and I had never been able to figure out manipulation.
“You, my dear, are a strange mortal.”
He picked up his wine glass and sipped the warm wine. There was no grimace, but I didn’t imagine that it tasted very good while warm.
“Outside of Council controlled lands, a vampire could do whatever they wanted?”
“As long as they had no intention of returning. Humanity has been all over the world, for centuries and even millennia before you realize. We could come and go as we please.
“There’s a rumour that an Elder still exists in the Americas. One that is not Bau. This Elder has been in hiding almost four thousand years, to avoid the cull they say. However, there is a long list of crimes the Elder is said to have committed that the Council fully intends to try them for once they are found.”
“Bau is still alive?”
“Yes.”
Which meant that the cull wasn’t complete, or she was left out of it for a reason. There were only two explanations I could come up with.
“Death is the one who culled the Elders.”
“Yes,” Quin said quietly. “He effectively wiped out ten thousand years of vampire history. The Progeny he left behind tell tales of their Makers much like mortals tell of vampires. They were not like us. They were a creature apart.”
“Do the others know about that?”
“They will, soon enough,” Quin murmured. “If I didn’t want it to be public knowledge, I wouldn’t have told you. I’ve kept the secret long enough. It is one that I shouldn’t have to carry any longer.”
“And Bau, they know there’s a rumour about her.”
“For whatever reason, the Elders were unable to kill their Makers. Even Death, for all his might, could not take Bau down.”
“Does that mean Wraith can’t kill Death, then?”
“He came close once,” Quin said, his voice sounding like it was centuries away. “So close. Someone interrupted, though. All he’d need are the right circumstances and that weapon. A full belly, which he can get from Death with a few drops of blood, and a perfect distraction.” He seemed to start out of his cloud. “Death has a great deal more experience, you see. Unless he’s gone soft, that would be in our favour.”
The more I talked to Quin, the more I realized that he didn’t like Death. Or, at the very least, he seemed to sway back and forth on the issue. There was anger and annoyance in his voice, a tension in the air as we sat there in a drawn-out silence.
“I suppose I should let you sleep,” Quin said suddenly.
“What about families, or your line of work?” I asked as he stood. “Are you still working for women, or just art now?”
“Hm? Oh, the artwork. I started collecting what I thought were beautiful pieces. As I set up my base, I began to pay patronage to certain artists. Only a few became master painters, but I keep their work and have sold a few as well. Ever since the Hagia Sophia, I have been obsessed with art.
“Even my father’s little carved toy, I kept that as best I could. It was eventually lost, and that broke my heart, but I had it for centuries. It was Lover, who cast the toy into the fire in a fit of rage. I should have thrown her in after it.”
“And the families?” I asked.
“We can talk about them tomorrow,” Quin said, pulling out his phone.
He frowned at the screen, then went deathly pale. Without a word, he left the room, bringing the phone to his ear as he beg
an speaking in another language.
I reached down and scratched Fluffy between the ears.
“I think daddy’s calling,” I said with a sigh.
Fluffy meowed and flopped over to have her belly rubbed. I complied, but it was an idle sort of motion.
My insides had turned to jelly. A cold was creeping into my limbs as it dawned on me what I had just said.
Lu was on the phone, talking to Quin. The two hadn’t spoken in four hundred years, and for a good reason. Lu didn’t sound like the type of man one wanted to be visited by, even if I only believed half of what I had been told.
There was also the nagging worry about whether or not I would be safe. If Lu visited Quin’s home, I had no way out. I’d be caught between a sociopath and the guy who had no moral qualms about eating babies.
And I had kissed him, of course, I had.
Men who were clearly wrong for me was very much my type. Like I thought I could save them or something. My poor choice in men probably made me the perfect target.
That and the fact that I had no family or friends. Just two cats, who were with me.
My heart skipped a beat as I considered the dangerous position in which I had placed myself. As it had happened, I hadn’t thought twice about it. That was simply how the evening had gone.
It wasn’t like I could arm myself with garlic and drape silver around my neck. I didn’t have paint on latex, though I considered the effects of that hearsay until proven otherwise.
Of all the things to hurt vampires, latex was the one?
Did they also have a sensitivity to certain chemicals and fabricated substances? There were those who reacted to perfumes or even preservatives in food.
Vampires were born during a time when those sorts of things simply didn’t exist. Perhaps that was why makeup had to be organic, and perfumes weren’t allowed for the interviewers.
Quin walked back into the room, looking thoroughly disturbed.
“Can I use you as bait?” he asked.
“Didn’t Sasha say that you aren’t allowed to use mortals as bait?”
“Without their permission. I’m not allowed to use you as bait without your permission. It’s not quite bait, either.”
“What’s Lu want?” I asked, wondering if the price would be too high.
