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

Leis, Part 10 - The Origin of All Things

In those three months the house had become familiar. Its dark did not scare me. I knocked upon his door and it opened under my touch, unlocked. I half-expected for him not to be there, Laurent, but he was of course, asleep on top of his coverlet, white blond hair a cloud. He was like a painting of sleeping beauty, his lips parted and limbs forgotten on the coverlet of olive silk damask.

I crouched by his bed and said, "Laurent, we're going."

He opened the foreign blue eyes in his face, which gaze were gentle though they were bloodshot.

"I wanted to say goodbye."

He closed his eyes again. I was not self aware enough then to know that he was playing me like a lyre. He knew all of my strings intimately, and had known them since I was truly an innocent.

"Please, say goodbye to me," I said, softer, more gently.

He didn't speak, pretending to sleep.

I produced the pocket watch Dasius had given me and put it on the bed. It ticked like a heart. "This one is too old and precious. I give it back."

That made him open his eyes. "Give it back?" he said, startled. "Did you take it? Are you stealing from me?"

I sputtered and stood, "I thought you knew."

He sat up then, timing his movements with mine, and opened his arms to embrace me and drag me down. I moved into them without thinking, the way a baby walks to its mother. He had me then and pushed me gently to the bed, touching me with his teeth to tease me, smiling and giggling. "Take it. I don't care about it. What else did he give you? No, you won't leave me, no you won't. I know you won't. You came back to me for good. Yes I know that. You wouldn't go and split me in half. No, because you love me."

I stayed silent a moment, eyes shut and heart beating for him, for him, whose fingers were so tender, master, the origin of all things. It is so easy to let him love me.

"No, you're not going," he said. "He'll stay with me, will Leis. My child. My blood. I will keep him."

"But I'm going, good head," I told him.

"Why does he say it? To prick us and make us bleed?" he asked, stroking my collarbones with the back of his hand. "Even we will let him keep his lover and have sport with us both. We will let him drive us mad, just not to leave us ever again."

I reached up and took his familiar hand, put it over my heart. His face softened with relief that alarmed me. I scrutinized his features to memorize them more clearly. In the years we had been apart his image had grown hazy in my mind, his high cheekbones, long but nearly transparent eyelashes, the shape of his eyes and fine straight nose. He does look a bit like a fox. Compared with Quinn he is more boyish of body, having been made younger. As I gazed on him he raised his eyebrows, parted his lips. Looking upon him so closely, I saw that the mole beneath his lip was in fact not a mole at all. I scrutinized it and found instead that it was a tiny F. I reached to touch it and he caught my hand. He caught it and dragged me up gently, taking me out of bed and to his closet.

"No, no, you won't go," he said. He took out a wide-brimmed hat and gave it to me. I held onto the brim. "Give this to your paramour. The air will do him good. Go north to Rouen and have time alone. Then come back and we will mend things. It has been a shock, that's all. We will mend it."

"No, good head," I whispered. "It cannot be mended."

"Please, at least we must try it."

"It cannot be mended, Laurent. I mean it. We are going this evening."

It stopped him. He turned to me and said, "This evening?"

"We are going this evening on a steamer to America. It is all planned. Dasius sent Julien this morning at first light to inquire about it."

"Dasius helped you plan it? But why would he want you away?"

The tone of his voice made me take his hands. He sounded utterly lost. He did not squeeze my fingers or try to hold onto me, instead beginning to gasp, saying, "Oh, oh, oh," trying not to give into tears and to hold himself up. "Please don't do this to me. You are everything I have," I heard him say, so quietly that I could no be sure he wanted a response, realizing only very much later that he had not said it to me at all, but that I had heard it in the way that Darkling hears private things, which made me cry and retch in a time too far removed to comfort him.

He asked me to leave him and so I did, and he covered his cheeks with the backs of his hands so that I could not kiss him goodbye. He covered himself everywhere I tried to place my lips until I left him alone. Instead, that evening, it was Dasius who emerged to wave us off, and to check our parcels.

"You will write me if you need help again," he said, not in the form of a question.

Quinny had Laurent's hat on his head and made fuss of straightening the brim in the hall mirror, marveling at himself in fine things. It made me smile though I felt a deep dread, relieved wholly when came Laurent from the stairs. I put my hands at Quinny's waist and held him by the pockets of his new, black, skirted coat.

I think that we all expected there to be a scene. I do not know why both Dasius and myself expect scenes from him. Truly, at his core Laurent is not dramatic. He plays at it. He took Dasius's elbow solemnly and said, "Good bye, pet." He held out his hand for me to kiss, and I let go of Quinny's waist to go kiss it. And when I had done so, taking him by his fine fingers and kissing the back of his hand, above his gold signet ring, the hand remained there.

"Darling?" I said. His eyes were hard.

"Tch," he clicked, eyes on Darkling, who looked back.

For too long, the hand remained upraised, waiting, and then without a word needed, Quinny went himself and took it. I held my breath but there was no need, and he kissed my master's hand, who withdrew it coolly. And we left without fuss.

It would be many long years before I learned that, after we left, Dasius found that Laurent had already eaten several large doses of opium in an attempt to die, the first real attempt that I know of. But not the last. We had all betrayed him as deeply as we could do.

In the years following, Quinny fared better in America, in the South with its cleaner air. With the money we acquired a small former plantation, and remained largely ignorant of other vampires for half a century. On occasion, I wrote to Dasius in order to talk of investments or paperwork we needed, and he left Laurent out of his letters. The investments resultant from the money and jewelry he gave me support many of us still, though we lost the diamond necklace in order to bribe our way into America without papers. In the late 1940s, when Quinny's constitution was much upset, he demanded a child, which confused me utterly. I protested. He said that a child would protect us in ways I didn't understand, that there were darker forces at work than I knew.

I don't win those sorts of fights.