Eternal Night

(II) Chapter 2: I Don't Want To Talk About It

For the last several months, Frankie had found herself practically living in her office at the VNN building. Sure, she understood the risks of a key alliance member spending so much time in the north district of Budapest, but it was the only place in the city where she could exist in her private misery undisturbed. Since that fateful evening in the subway when she had insisted Vlad Leinhart – or rather, Dracula – keep his distance, being in any of her old haunts had proven painful beyond belief.

It seemed like every corner of the city was saturated in his memory, a stark reminder of what could never be. Staying at Carmen's was clearly out of the question, and the walls of her flat seemed to be haunted by him as well, for every time she closed her eyes to rest during the day, his face was there, waiting for her. Her subconscious had only grown crueler with every week that passed, visions of being in his arms, his hands on her body, his lips on her skin – it had virtually become a nightly occurrence, one that made waking up alone borderline unbearable.

While her office had proven marked by his memory as well, it was the only place where the dreams seemed to keep away. That, and the environment made it much easier to bury her complicated emotions in a twisted form of solitary confinement.

Here, she didn't have to endure her brother's open disapproval of "Leinhart's" extended absence, or Carmen's questions, or Lyra's suspicious looks, or Vesper's silent scrutiny. Within these four walls, she could exist in peace – or at the very least in silence – and so it had been, this mundane existence of little else than whiskey and work.

It didn't take long to fall into the old routine of researching and writing exposés on the current administration and their affiliates. Frankie had proven more productive in the last eight months than she ever had been prior to Vlad Leinhart, but these projects were in actuality a ruse for what she had truly been up to: researching the man known as Vladislaus Drăculea.

His history, his connections, his association with this city and its people, what Budapest and the surrounding region had been intended for – whatever she could dig up. Her main objective here and now was to learn and hopefully, with time, come to better understand the king of the undead in order to determine who he truly was.

She had come to the conclusion rather quickly after his departure that she could no longer in good conscience hold to those pre-conceived notions of what others said he was. She needed to know and decide for herself. It was the least she could do for him – even if they were doomed to be apart, she could still give him the benefit of the doubt.

This naturally had Frankie returning to her old notes and recordings of her interviews with four of the five surviving Dracul Sânge members, drawing up one massive timeline and connecting the dots, one section at a time until it gradually started to come together. She also had developed a list of questions she was trying to answer.

Queries like – were the dragon and his alias, Vlad Leinhart, two completely different personas, or were they actually one in the same with little to no distinction? What was the true state of his nature, his character? Who was he at his core? What drove him? What did he care about?

Although there were certainly unsavory aspects of his person and history that could not be excused, the intimate perspective provided by the Dracul Sânge had granted her with a kind of insight she had previously lacked. And with time, through the first-hand accounts and words of his sirelings, Frankie was given the rare opportunity to better comprehend his motives, his story, what had influenced him – all of the things that had helped to shape the man he had been and the man he was now.

One thing she knew for certain was that the assumed loss of his children had profoundly softened his character.

It was as though his entire personality had been altered by the experience – not that she could blame him. She understood firsthand just how powerful trauma could be, what it could do to a person.