by Emma Glass
“Stay low,” I commanded over my shoulder.
“Okay,” she nodded.
When I decided that it was close enough, I lunged straight up a story and grabbed onto the bottom edge of the windowsill. One small grunt later, I lunged us up and straight into the room, landing on my feet in the center rug and letting her slide down off of my back.
“That was a punishment?”
It was true that the castle-wide jaunt had all but completely undone my earlier irritation with her. When I turned back to rattle off a sarcastic barb, one glance at the girl was all that it took for me to burst into hysterical laughter.
Clara looked at me funnily.
Absentmindedly, her hand lightly brushed against her hair. With a look of realization, Clara darted over to the mirror and gasped in horror.
“My hair! I look like a beast!”
“You aren’t a very intimidating beast,” I noted dryly as I walked past her back. “I’ve seen loads of creatures far more vicious than you, even just in that forest outside.”
She was quiet for a moment.
“Afraid of forests, are we?” I asked.
Her words came out detached and lost, like she was barely aware she even spoke them. The girl looked like she was suddenly somewhere else. Wherever she was, it was clearly somewhere that she feared. “Only when I’m asleep.”
“Asleep?” I asked questioningly.
Clara blinked, snapping back to reality with a tired groan. “It’s nothing.”
“You are a terrible liar,” I observed.
“Just a little overwhelmed, is all.”
“Now that, I believe,” I replied calmly. I pulled a chair over to her and sat her down in it, letting her process the entire experience.
I had a lot to think about as well.
This extrasensory insight only lasted while she was near. It was incredible; the ability to read every soul in a room with me was a power that I’d never heard of, let alone known for myself.
It had given me a quick glimpse at unrest among my castle subjects. It was easy to write off the annoyance of my staff as a small grievance, or even just irritation at my childish antics with her.
But I’d have been lying to myself.
I had felt it stem from a place much deeper in their hearts than that. I sensed that this was just the latest example of their frustration, the most recent way in which they felt disappointed or bothered by my presence and choices…
While the inwardly selfish part of me merely sneered, the other pieces inside that wanted to be a deserving ruler felt moved and ashamed. I had overlooked all of this, and it took being near her to realize it. Things need to change soon.
Her arrival was already making an impact.
Clara,” I acknowledged the human.
“Yes, Elliot?” Lost deep in thought, she looked up at me with disoriented eyes.
I closed the distance between us. Sensing a need for tenderness, I quietly placed my hands on her shoulders. “I want you to know that I’m…”
The girl looked innocently into my eyes with a smile that could destroy the coldest of hearts.
But that smile set off warning bells for me. Feeling how I reacted to it – knowing how much I suddenly wanted to take her under my wing and keep her always near, always safe, always secure – it felt like an internal betrayal.
What I had wanted to say didn’t really matter now. The tenderness I felt towards her was a flaw, and it would only skew my priorities against my own people. It was foolish of me to think any differently, or to treat her as anything more than what she was. Clara was a mythical creature, yes – the first of her kind, and a herald from another Earth. She was also the most dangerous risk to my kingdom’s safety that walked my world.
I shook these thoughts from my head.
“For now, you should be kept safe. You cannot stay here. I’ll make some arrangements to have you given your own private room in the castle.”
I felt a sting as she nodded acceptingly.
This is naïve. I chastised myself.
Neither of us understood how this young, stray human had arrived in my guarded castle. As troubling as it was to admit, there was absolutely nothing to say she couldn’t disappear away again.
No matter my conflicted emotions, I had a duty to my people – and that included finding the source of their frustrations, and redeeming myself in their eyes. I could not let this wanderer from elsewhere be anything more of a distraction than she already was.
My eyes narrowed; my heart darkened.
Clara Blackwell is far worse than a distraction. She’s a threat to the entire world.
13
Clara
Elliott was distant, right up until the royal guards came to escort me away. He and I barely spoke a word as the two knights tried to not awkwardly glance at each other.
I forced up a parting smile.
“Well… thanks for everything.”
The vampire lord only gave a silent nod.
When we were out of earshot, one of the two guards lowered his head to whisper with a smile. “Lord Elliott is a little bad with goodbyes.”
“You don’t say,” I muttered despondently.
The other guard chuckled.
“Anyway, shame on me.” He peered closely at me in a studying gaze. “I’m being a tad rude. Call me Wilhelm. What’s your name, human?”
I almost froze in my tracks.
“You know that I’m a human?”
“Well, duh.”
“But… I don’t…”
“Don’t what?” Wilhelm laughed. “Don’t have a name? What an awfully strange civilization you must come from. I could only hazard a guess how you possibly keep track of anybody…”
“Of course I have a name!”
Wilhelm watched expectantly.
“Fine. My name is Clara.”
“Is that so?” Wilhelm chuckled kindly. “Now, there’s a fun one. Clara! I quite like it, personally.”
I wrinkled my nose. “I’ve got to say, you’re awfully peculiar for a vampire.”
“You’re peculiar for a human,” he smirked.
“Wilhelm,” the other guard sighed, “you’ve never even met a human.”
“True…” He thought aloud, musingly tapping his chin with a fingertip. “But I’ll just have both of you know that I’ve always told myself, hand on me mum’s tombstone: ‘Willie, if you ever find yourself meeting a peculiar human, you’ll know ‘em when you see ‘em.” His glance rolled back to me. “And you’re a peculiar human, Clara.”
“What makes you say that?”
He laughed merrily. “Generally speaking – and again, maybe it’s all different in your awfully strange civilization – food does not try to have fun little chats with its predators.”
My heart nearly jumped in its chest.
“No worries!” He looked proud of himself. “Oh, we’re not going to feed on you.”
I shifted my gaze over to the other guard. He remained silent as we walked down the stairs.
“We includes Viktor here,” Wilhelm noted.
I scowled. “How can I trust you?”
“Lord Elliott trusts us,” he reasoned.
“So? I shrugged. “What if it turns out that he’s a terrible judge of character?”
“The more time I spend with you, the more I think I quite like you,” Wilhelm chuckled. “You’re a feisty little one, aren’t you?”
This did nothing to dampen my fear.
Viktor cleared his throat. “Intense discipline is how you can trust us,” he answered. “To join the royal guard is a much more intricate process than learning a handful of marching formations and basic weapons training. In everything from strict military protocols to mastering a wide variety of weapons, we are honed into powerful, attentive killing machines.”
“And that includes doing away with the two biggest threats to the usefulness of a soldier,” Wilhelm noted casually. “Boredom and hunger.”
I frowned. “I don�
�t understand.”
“Oh, being a member of the royal guard can get awfully dull. Think about it: you are always standing at attention, always alert and cautious. You can imagine how, say, three hundred years of that can get a tad… droll.”
“Not to mention the hunger,” Viktor added.
“A starving vampire, especially one made to stand watch, is a incompetent vampire,” Wilhelm nonchalantly replied. “You see, my new human friend, the need to feed can get awfully strong. The compulsion overwhelms the mind.”
“So, what then?” I asked curiously. “You two are just… somehow not affected by it?”
“Of course not!” Wilhelm grinned.
“But how?”
Viktor sighed. “It is not rare for the difficult, harsh training to kill unworthy vampires. There is more to it than a rigorous education and a textbook memory of soldier warfare. The process involves an element of mental manipulation.”
“Like meditation?” I asked.
“Meditation? Now there’s an idea!” Wilhelm gave a laugh. “Why don’t we convince them to just give old meditation a swing?” The mirth left his voice as he lowered his tone. “Sadly, no. The truth is a lot more… invasive than that.”
“Brain surgery,” Viktor clarified.
Now I really did freeze in my steps. “You’re telling me that they operate on your brains? But that’s… that’s barbaric!”
Wilhelm and Viktor shared a look.
“It’s really not all that bad, honestly,” the former shrugged. “Beats standing around all day, senselessly bored out of my bloody mind… nah, I prefer it like this. I can shut off the old brain-box at will and stand there like a good little puppet.”
Viktor nodded in agreement. “If I must, I can go nearly a week without drinking blood. It’s easy to keep track of when I must have sustenance, but the overpowering desire is forever gone.”
“Oh, sure,” the more talkative guard added. “From what the old stories say about humans, just being this close to you would be excruciating. Who needs that malarchy?”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“Elliott… did this to you?”
“What? No! Of course not!” Wilhelm replied. “It’s a fact of the training. Sure, maybe it sounds a tad rough, but it’s the simple reality of things. The procedure predates Lord Elliott and Lady Lorelei, perhaps even those before them. These protocols have been in place for well over a thousand years. Maybe even longer.”
“And the royal family is okay with this?”
Viktor shrugged. “As far as I’m aware. Makes sense, though. The alternative would be chaos.”
“Chaos, or brain surgery?” I grumbled. “I don’t have to even think about which option is better…”
Wilhelm politely nudged me forward.
“Regardless,” he continued, “I’m fairly certain that plenty of people in your civilization do some fairly wacky things, too.”
“My civilization…” I pondered.
I thought back to the cruel, shameful things that had come from the infancy of mental health: endless involuntary experimentation, strict and maddening isolation, the rise of lobotomies…
“Wait,” I paused. “You never told me how you knew that I was a human!”
“Well, that should be fairly obvious,” Wilhelm widely grinned. “Just look at you! Besides, even if we don’t care to drink it right now, blood should never smell that good!”
The royal guards escorted me deep within the castle to a quiet, peaceful room. It had a private bathroom with a claw-foot tub, a large window in a seated alcove, a small table with a pair of chairs, and what looked like a fairly comfortable bed.
The room was small, and the walls were made from the same cold, hard stone as everywhere else in this castle. But the room felt welcoming. Even better, it had everything I needed.
“You’ve got fresh towels in the closet here,” Wilhelm politely pointed out, opening a door in the bathroom. He indicated a section of wall near the bottom with his boot. “This panel slides back for easy access to the laundry chute – feel free to just toss any old thing down there that you need washed…”
I looked down at my school uniform.
“Didn’t come with much...” I smiled bleakly.
“Oh,” Viktor noticed. “Do you need clothes?”
“Yeah. Apparently I’m a light packer.”
“See?” Wilhelm looked over at his companion. “I like her. She’s funny.” He turned to me. “Don’t worry, we’re going to be bringing you supplies to get you settled in. New clothes will be on the list.”
“Don’t you need my measurements?”
Wilhelm shrugged. “Don’t ask me.”
“We’ll have that detail taken care of.” Viktor dryly looked over at Wilhelm. “Until then, just make yourself right at home.”
“Right,” I nodded glumly. “Right at home…”
They shared a look, but neither asked.
Instead, they bid me goodbye and left me to the room. Faintly, I heard the clicking of a lock.
Great. So, I’m a prisoner after all…
Roughly an hour later, Viktor returned. Under his arm was a featureless crate, just small enough to be carried around.
At my inquisitive glance, he explained.
“A gift from Lord Elliott.”
I held the door open for him as he brought the wooden box inside. Effortlessly, he pulled it open and revealed the contents to be…
“Books?” He tilted his head. “Wait. Novels?”
A small smile lit up my face.
Viktor helped me carefully remove the array of books, both hardback and paperback. Once I was knelt on the rug and surrounded by tomes, he scooped up the crate and prepared to get on with his night.
I thanked him, and he took it away with him.
Pleased, I began filling the couple of available cabinets and shelves with books. The overhead light in the center of the chamber beamed down with dim lighting as I set aside a few particularly interesting looking ones.
I’ll have to thank him for sending me these. I tucked that away in my head to mention to him, the next time I saw Elliott.
My spirits fell.
If I ever do...
I didn’t understand what changed his mind. One moment, I was clinging for my life when he flung us both out a window and took me on a whirlwind race around the castle...
The next, we were strangers in a room.
Sitting on the rug, I looked over at the locked door from my small pile of leftover books. Surely his change of heart couldn’t have been over him catching me at his closet, especially since that was from before he dragged me out a window…
What happened, Elliott?
What did I do wrong?
I expected silence from the door. To my quick astonishment, the sound of an iron key pressing into the lock hit my ears.
“E-Elliott?”
The door clicked open.
Instead of the dark, intimidating silhouette of the vampire lord in the doorway, there stood a quiet, timid older man in servant’s clothes. He let himself in and pulled the door shut, then hobbled over towards me.
I slowly crept backwards.
“W-who are you?”
“A tailor,” he sighed impatiently.
My apprehension remained, and I glanced around the room for anything that might help me defend myself from him. Nothing. So this is how I’m gonna die, then. Trapped in a castle room with a deadly vampire servant?
But then I noticed that this man didn’t look like he was at the edge of tearing me to shreds and drinking my blood.
He took a few steps towards me and removed a coil of measurement tape.
“Stand up straight,” he ordered me.
Confused, I followed his command.
“Right arm out.”
After I held up my arm, I was surprised when he bumped his hand into my ribs before tracing his knuckles along to the edge of my hand. As he uncoiled the tape and began to measure my ar
m, I looked into his eyes.
His retinas were milky white.
“You’re… you’re blind.”
The tailor gave a single laugh, continuing on with his work. “How very astute of you.”
“But... how can you…?”
“Don’t act surprised.” The tailor withdrew a pocket notepad and flipped through the pages, his fingers catching on a small fold in the last one used. He jotted down the measurement with a pen from behind his ear, keeping his empty white eyes faintly over my shoulder. “My other senses were greatly strengthened. Including touch…”
His fingertips purposefully traced along the paper, and he gave a small smile before returning to his work.
“Stand still.”
The entire thing was surreal. How am I not being murdered right now? Is it because he’s blind? Is that really all it takes for defense against vampires?
It was while he was taking my waist-hip-ratio that I felt the need to question him further. “I have to say, it’s not often that I meet someone who can read handwriting without sight.”
“Bah,” he muttered. “You clearly haven’t met a lot of blind people, then.”
“Not vampires, no.”
I froze when I realized what I’d said.
“What was that?”
“…Nothing.”
The tailor smiled. “You’re lying.”
“I’m not lying.”
“Yes you are. I can feel it in your…”
The tailor’s fingertips paused as they brushed along my wrist. I felt them subtly twitch against my pulse, and his milky eyes turned to me.
“You… what are you?”
“I… I’m j-just…”
His face broke into a grin.
I’d have been more relieved at the change in tone, if not for the very prominent fangs. I felt something catch in my throat, forcing my silence as his entire demeanor changed.
“Should have realized,” he muttered happily. “It’s the smell. Thought it was something else in the room, but it’s you. Gives you right away, child. Wondered why I was so… so very… hungry…”
Involuntarily, I shrunk away.
“No, no, no-no-no no…” He tsk-tsked. “It’ll all be over in a few minutes… just stay still, be quiet, and let me have just a small, tender bite of that…” The tailor took a deep whiff from the air, “…that delicious throat….”
