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

Chapter 3, Part 1 - Dasius, 1921

"Yes. I'm sorry. Please forgive me."

I went to a tray of instruments on the end of the room opposite from him, to see if they were sterile. They were.

"David, I mean, sir. I will do it this time. I'll keep notes twice as good. Sir, I'll do anything just as you ask. Please."

"I have heard you."

"Oh good, perfect, I mean, yes, I promise."

When I turned, clean lancet in hand, I saw that he had half gotten up from his chair, as if to come to me, to touch me.

"Do you have ice, Doctor Wright?"

"What do you want? What can I get you? Let me do it." He paused, licked his lips nervously. "Please."

The last time I had needed eyes in England, Evan had given me two out of a fresh cadaver he was working an autopsy on. It had been a young corpse with exceptionally pretty jewel-tone irises, but I had seen how that worked out. They had lasted barely the year. I needed better.

"Yes. Ice. I will need to transport something."

"Right away. Wait here if you please."

His constitution seemed so fragile. He had noted the accumulating failures of his body himself in the time he kept up the diary, that he felt himself growing weaker, and more brittle, even as he felt stronger in spirit and more resilient against sleep. I wondered if he might live long without regular treatment. It seemed a shame not to know. I wondered, if in his state, he still felt pain, or if all of him was a hollow, pulsating need for blood.

He returned with a small leather case, which opened so that I could check that all looked well inside.

"Yes that is sufficient, Evan. Now, I would like to propose another trade."

"Another trade?" he asked, waiting for my motion for him to resume his seat. "May I sit, sir?"

"It pleases me that you stand. Evan, I have known you now for some time. It comes time now for me to move on to another place, and I see you as you are, grown weak, and it causes me pain. For this reason, I have come to give you what you have asked me for."

"I want to be like you."

"But first I need something from you, because nothing comes freely in this life, and you know that well."

"Yes, sir, fair is fair," he said, sounding steady for the first time.

I told him what I wanted, and his eyes widened, but he did not hesitate, taking the lancet. Because it was necessary that he do it himself, so that none but he could be implicated. And how funny people are, who have been made sick shells of themselves by the blood, for he made no sound when he took those lovely eyes out of his pretty head, and no sound either when his heart stopped with my mouth so near his tortured flesh. He was dead before I could even kiss his gasping throat. Poor doctor, whose colleagues had long decided that he had quite gone mad.

On the train back to London, Nicky questioned me more about that French lover who had come to visit Paris in 1872, and I did not speak of Evan Wright. It was almost as if he had never existed at all, and it filled me with a strange sadness, which at that time, I did not recognize as regret.

It was nine in the evening when we returned. I heard the hall clock chime the hours as I searched for L, and I found him, asleep in the dry, claw-footed bathtub.

His hand found my shirt collar and he dragged me down, and pressed his soft lips to mine, and whispered words.

"L, I have brought you something," I said.

" 'Elle' n'est pas ici," he whispered, smiling against my mouth. "Dites-moi mon nom." 'She' is not here. Tell me my name.

I pressed my forehead to his forehead, half standing, half kneeling. "Will you let me do what needs doing? Why didn't you tell me you couldn't see?"

He was kissing my neck. I could feel his eyelashes at my throat. I kept still while he closed his lips at a soft, sweet place, my heart thumping in my head. I knew better than to tell him no, or not here, or stop, because he loved "Stop, don't, you're hurting me"and to feel protesting fingers on his face and pulling on his hair. He pushed me away. "Ennuyeux." Annoying. He let me lift him out of the bathtub then. He was wearing nothing but a cotton slip, and I tried not to think of how light he felt in my arms.

"Let me walk to my doom," he purred, scratching at me. So I set him down, and we walked together to my study, arm in arm. I could feel on my neck where his lips had been.

Nicky was there with the slim leather case, and when Laurent lay down on the metal table, I helped Nicky up. He sat at his beloved's head, holding it steady between his hands. He murmured things to L, in our old French, comforting words a child would say, and L cackled quietly, privately.

I took a small glass jar out from a drawer under the table, and a sterile syringe, filled it.

"What's that?" Nicky demanded, suddenly sharp.

"Opiate," I said, not paying him any mind.

"Poison?"

"He will be fine. You wouldn't want it the other way."

Laurent tapped Nicky's arm gently and turned his head from side to side. It's alright, don't worry. I pressed the needle into his waiting forearm and he tried to take one of Nicky's hands, but Nicky wouldn't take it. "I'm holding your head."

When Laurent began to lick his lips, I knew that he was ready. He winked at me lazily.

"It doesn't hurt him?" Nicky asked.

"Not anymore," I said, carefully slipping two long steel probes into either eye socket. It was a simple matter to pop them out then. Over so long a time, it was muscle memory. Nicky made a popping noise with his mouth.

When it was everything done, and Laurent was blinking at his Nicky, he murmured, "Oh, it's you. Wonderful you," and he said, "Heaven preserve us. I knew he would not harm a hair on your head."

So I knew that what Nicky had said of a master was true.