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

Part 4 - A Love Story

And so I did climb into bed with him, because he seemed so knowledgeable, and it comforted me because lately things had seemed a little uncertain. I was not used to feeling unsteady in the eyes of those I loved. He took me against his body, and I was not yet of age where I might have felt it sexual in any real way, though it thrilled me a bit to be against him in a way I could not yet name, and for him to press his hand against my stomach through my clothes, and breathe of my hair. He sighed and spooned me safely, for which I am still grateful. I could not forget what was happening in the kitchen, though it helped me to find peace with it that I heard Leis's voice, and my father's voice. I thought that now it would be alright because Leis would help him, and it was for me to stay clear.

"Do you still love me?" Laurent asked, a question I had not anticipated.

"Yes," I told him, without thinking over it at all, because it was true. 

"I love you very much," he told me, quietly, though I could not ask it of him. He wet his lips and continued, "Because you are living, and because you are a good boy, and in my life both of those things are rare. I am curious and I want to know you. It has been some years since I have loved anything, and our love is new. I am glad that I am able to see you again before you are a man, so that you may understand me as you do."

I didn't say anything to that, because I didn't need to. It was not romantic love he spoke of. I thought of him as a relative, and yet more than that, as comfortable as part of my own body. I will tell you that he had a way of making people feel like that, but that, in my opinion, his charm and knowledge of his many lovers does not diminish what I felt at all. Perhaps you will think me a fool for saying so, but what we had was special, and he was willing to say so nearly until the day he died. He told me that he thought of me as his own child. He did not want me in any way to see him through eyes clouded by desire. I think that even by then he was in despair of his life.

"You are still afraid. Will I tell you a romantic story of swords and adventures to calm your beating heart?" he asked me.

"That is my favorite sort of story," I confessed to him.

"I know it," he said. His voice was so soft and so gentle, and it always was, no matter who he was speaking to. Even in anger, or reproach, he always cooed. "But you will promise me that you will try to understand that everything I tell you is true, and that what evidence that you hear of what I am and of what you will be you will not doubt. For this is not just stories, because it happened."

"I promise," I told him, my heart beating harder, for I have told you that what my parents were had been kept from me, and that I knew from a young age that I would be like them, and that I would not be allowed to live as I was much longer after I came of age. I knew also that my knowing was a thing my father did not want, which made me the keener and more breathless to hear.

So he told me of his last great love who had been living, and who he ached for even then. He said, softly, into my ear with breath that tickled me, "When I met your Leis, in 1741, I was already in love. I had already sworn not to take others except for my life. I had already consigned myself to existence with only one other, and he was a counselor of coin on the King's court of Louis XIV, who had come down a little during the regency of Louis XV. I was already in love. My Marquess, after twenty years together he had pressed the tip of a sword to my throat and made me swear, 'Creature of evening, love only me,' and I had done, would have without the thrill of his threatening me. Do you hear that? That he had made me swear twenty years before I met your Leis?" he asked me.

I nodded and pressed against him, my eyes opened to my Leis's age. Already my eyes were opened.

"I called him Marie, which was one of his secret names, so many long elegant names then. I chose it because he was not called by it by others, who called him by a title which did not matter to me. I tell you, I would have had him away, taken him from court. I would have. He was tall, and rugged, and handsome, thick of chest. Tell me, do you like men like this?" he asked. "What do you like? What do you dream of?"