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

Quinn, Part 9 - He, Himself

When finally I pulled him up again he could not speak, eyes shut and bawling. I said, "Is that what you like? Violence? Is that what you want? To play at violence?"

He closed his lips against sobbing and shook his head, no, no, no, no.

I pushed him again, against his face, and the copper lip slit him again, and he cried out, struggling with me while I tried to push him under the water, screaming like a terrorized pig, trying even as we fought to remove me without hurting me and failing to do it, his hands going to my mine as I grabbed him by the hair that he had so innocently unpinned for me, and I pushed him under again. Forcing him down like that, my index finger brushed against his neck and I could feel his heart racing. I'm not sure what I was shouting, but one can be certain it was about how he did not love me, and that I would kill us both. And I didn't notice Dasius run in, or see how he looked until he was pulling me up and off of Leis, who as soon as he could breathe again began to scream hysterically, helplessly, as if he were the only person in the room, trapped very deeply within his own head, in hell.

Dasius pulled me out of the bath, and I struggled naked and furious against him, who threw a towel at me and spat. 

"It's our own affair," I shouted at him, "how dare you? What are you? Do you want him? Take him. What I don't care at all if you take that pretty idiot. I'll have Death."

Dasius didn't speak to me, white shirt bloodied from struggling with me, hair smartly pulled back. He always pulls it back so that no one can grab him by it, even now. Isn't he right? 

My heart beat so hard that I couldn't help but breathe, resigned that the physical fight was over and dripping. Dasius knelt at the tub and reached to touch Leis, who shrank from his hand. "Please, medicin, don't touch me," I heard him whisper, in English, throat raw.

"I cannot bear to see you so abused," Dasius whispered privately. "Say one word and we will have him tamed, I promise you. If you must have him, I will break him for you a little. Say one word."

"Do you not see that he has spirit I have never possessed?" came little voice. "Oh God, in this world we must protect ourselves. We," but Dasius interrupted him.

"Stay and we will protect you. Stay and," he swallowed, "Leis let me stitch your face."

"Face!" I said, "Is that all you care about in France? He shrinks from you. Even a whore doesn't want you. Have sense."

Dasius stood then, gathering himself to his full height, back straight. He leveled me with his gaze, who shook with the chill in the room. Even as we had struggled, Leis's body had kept mine warm.

"What?" I spat.

"It makes me sick that he loves you as he loves the world. You are more like Laurent than you can possibly know. What he sees in either of you when you are like this I cannot understand."

Rather than incense me these words made me tired, made me realized the fatigue in my limbs, how without blood I was from Dasius's hands, and I heard, "Please God, Dasius he is going, catch him!" from Leis, but I think that Dasius did not move to catch me at all, and let me hit my head on his metal surgery table.

Upon waking I found myself in bed, and gentle hands upon me, which made me turn my face and cry. Cooing, cooing, from Leis, who had me against him. What can I say about what I deserve? We did not deserve to be made into this world, either of us. "There's blood in my hair, beauty," I said, startling him.

"No, darling. No blood. No blood."

"I am covered in blood. All through me. I am drowning."

"It's the madness, Quinny. That's all it is," he said, voice sweet and velvety.

He let me push him back gently, in our bed, and sit astride his hips, and press my face against his neck. He held me securely, tightly, yielding to me whenever I moved. He patted my back and rubbed me, and hummed. "I want to go," I said. "I don't care where we go."

"I know it. I have already got a little money. We'll go tomorrow. There's a boat."

"Not back to England."

"No."

He knew that I was going to bite him, because a vampire is an animal, and an animal has patterns. He felt the gentle circles of my nose against his neck, and lifted his chin.

"Will you kiss me?" he asked me, which I knew had more to do with safety than with seduction.

"It disgusts me that you equate blood with sensuality. It always has," I said, tongue tipped with acid.

He made the sound again of a frightened puppy, high and deep in the back of his throat. He never pleads with me on account of love. He has told me that he would never dirty our love by using it to appeal to me. I think that he knows in his heart that madness is no excuse for what I have done to him, and that there is some part of it that is only misery, and that suffering is not his fault. I am bound to him. 

He has protested sometimes that there is indeed sensuality in blood, and I will not lie and say I have not tasted of pleasure at his throat, but for me there is far more in the touch of his lips to my skin and in lying with him in the dark, the graze of his fingernails or whisper of his warm breath. I think that vampires are far simpler when it comes to pleasure than men are, that what men find too subtle in the pursuit of a fuck we find everything there is. It is all there can be for us, but when we speak of penetration, there are teeth. But is that not making vulgar what is life itself? Not to exalt it above its baseness, for like anything it may be used as a tool, and I used it then to degrade him, biting him without a word, which makes him an animal and that's all, without dignity. He didn't move to stop me. He never defends himself unless he thinks himself in mortal peril.

I think that we share a certain rent in our mortal souls. I think that he thinks that he deserves whatever is given to him, good or bad, which is why his spirit seems so easy, and why it seems he never struggles against the life he has been dealt. But truly, he is struggling always, constantly.

When I lifted my face he was crying like a lost choir boy, sniffling and delicate, he met my eyes, swallowing tears and trying to appear calm, for my sake, holding his breath. When I pressed the palm of my hand against the bite to stop the bleeding he couldn't hold it anymore, and burst into full naked sobbing, terribly shamed.

"I'm sorry," I whispered.

"No, Quinny. It's only that I understand it," he wept, struggling to breathe against the slow-beating of his heart. "I truly understand it all, and only wish I were as brave as you are. How I would fight to save myself as you do. God give me strength, we are going tomorrow."

I gave him my hand to hold and he took it, and he held it tightly even as he slept.