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

Leis, part 2 - Relief

He said, "Wherefore, if we go, do you know that he might help me?" and he is still these days saying his "wherefore"s and "hitherto"s. 

I said, "Because it is his work that did preserve my own body, when I faced the veil."

Here now he comes. Quinny. Come and let me sit beneath your arm. There is room enough. There and we are whole again. Will I tell the story in French, and it will be all right because you will not know what I say, darling? To tell it truly. I am better in French. And see, he is doing all right again, and how fine he is. Aren't you? He is doing fine now. I am as happy as I have ever been, hearing it.

I paid a man with my mouth to take us across the Channel. We did not have money in those days. It felt nothing at all to do that, for I have never been ashamed of what I must do for us. He gave me a little money in addition to providing us safe passage across the water, and called after us that they wanted good whores in England, and why should we abandon the country for France? But it is France that I have always thought of, though I live very far from her. I used that money to buy a hackney mare, barely good for knackering, but she was fit for holding up my darling, who laid across her back, and I walked beside her to Paris, two weeks. I set her loose at the mouth of the Seine, where she lay down and died. Quinny climbed onto my back then, and I took him up the hill, whispering to him that it would be all right. That day's light grew pale.

I did think it would be all right. I had that sense of peace that accompanies one who is returning home. For surely, there could be no hell like the loneliness of being on one's own, but when I knocked there came no response, though Quinny's fingers tightened upon my neck and he whispered, "Oh God, oh God, what is it? What is it? Satan breathes, we must flee from this place, pray us get from here, I feel his lips by my ear. It is our death!" as if he were being strangled. I knew better than not to heed him, for he knows things from the beyond, and I let him down so that we could go down the hill again. I could not know then what he had sniffed there. 

We stayed beneath a bridge that night, tucked up out of the rain. I wanted to wash his clothes in the river, but the water was as a stinking pustule, even worse than when I had fondly looked upon it as a young man. I did not think of finding other clothes, the way others of us might have. I have never much at all had a taste for killing. My lover suffered from travelling, his lips parted, breathing in the thick air through lips he could not close. Quinny stared out on my city through unseeing, glassy eyes. I thought, please God, where are they? for the devil received my letters, and told me to come. How could they have gone elsewhere? Did I wait too long? I ached for familiar voices. I did not even think of the touch of a familiar hand. 

That night I did not dream at all, continuously waking up in a feeling of fright and panic. Upon waking, always, there were Quinny's fluttering fingers, and his whispering in English, which is even now a language I only half understand. "Peace, peace. We left it behind. A bad spirit. We are safe." But those words were as part of the nightmare. What did it mean? What bad spirit? I would lower my face again, under his cooing, and rest my head by his collarbones, so that I could listen to the strong muscle of his heart. I fell asleep over and over to the pressing of his fingers to my cheeks. In the morning, he said, "Dear sweet frog, find blood for me. I am desperate for relief," very frank, and I promised that I would. I have always promised him everything. I asked him in the morning to kiss me, and he said, "After you bring it to me, the blood, I will let you do anything you want, but only then," which excited me devilishly, and tightened my resolve that even in this place, he would continue to rule me completely.

We were cossetted in beggar's rags, both of us. I knew that if I were to search out those two who were familiar to me, it would not do to look like that. I am averse very much to highway robbery, but as I have said, matters of the body have been of no concern to me. I left Darkling to sleep in the daylight, which has bothered him more than it is has me, and I went to Montmarte, where a quick tug or four might mean hot water and just enough money to spirit myself into the appearance of at least the middle class, though not well, because I am tall and require the services of a tailor to seem well-dressed. I have good hair however, which one may always sell, and am lucky to have a face that has always been considered attractive in the centuries I have lived across. So having told you all of this, you will know that when I wandered into the cafe in Montmarte, only to sit down awhile, dizzy from having drunk quickly and secretly during the long afternoon of prostituting my body, my hair was relatively short and my clothes were mostly new. I had scrubbed my face and washed myself hastily in an escort's red room, who, when she was not looking, I had stolen a little eau de toilette from.

So, he said, having crept up upon me, "You smell like a whore's toilette," near my neck, after I had closed my eyes to drowse in the sunlight.

"Laurent?" I whispered, eyes shut and limbs warm, draped over a hard cafe chair.

"I have a boy with me. We are going into the alley so that I may have my way. He will agree that you are very beautiful, though you smell like a cheap fuck on dirty sheets. Won't you come with us? I will give you it all?" He sounded very casual, though I could hear the quick beating of his heart in his voice, gasping and desperate. 

I muttered something, soft epithets of relief, but he stopped me, always a very strong hand.

"There isn't time for it now, my darling. Afterward I will take you home, and I promise you it will be just as it was, and you will sleep it off where I can keep you safe. And we will not even ever speak of where you have gone or what you have been doing. We will live together as if there has been no time at all apart."

And you see I did not have time to tell him about Quinn, because when I opened my eyes he was already going, holding a boy lightly by the hand, platinum blond hair lit white by the high afternoon sun, whether I might choose to follow him or not. I could not lose him. I followed. 

I caught glimpses of his face in the alley, in the low light, his lips flushed dark from the blood and from kissing very hard, which he has always kissed very hard. It was not until afterward, after the boy had kissed us both on the forehead, and told us we were very perfect, that I was able to look upon Laurent's face, which he did not want me to do, thrashing and trying to protect me from it. And I saw then what had happened to his eyes, how blue the new ones were, and cry. I forgot what I had come to do. I said, "But God, my God, if I had not left you," and wept.

"Chouchou, I knew that you would come back. It has sustained me."

"Praise heaven, I will never leave you again. Never," I told him. I told him that.

Because he is Laurent, and because he must always have what he wants, he used me to his vicious purpose then, piercing my neck with his teeth and pushing me against the wall. He smelled sweet, of oranges. 

And my Darkling slept by the water, unknowing.