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

Part 7 - There Are Here Old Things

For those two weeks I had been largely left alone, and had been too honestly afraid to explore or anything else. Once I came upon the orange-haired one, Nataniellus, asleep in a chair in the great room, a central room with a large picture window, and it froze me such that I watched the passage of the sun across his tipped-back face for hours. In sleep he looked a boy almost of my age, with his lips parted, in the light of day. But as the light passed away, his eyes opened with such silence, and without other movement, that it unsettled me and frightened me so deeply that I had to flee and vomit. I have since learned and understood that Nataniellus had abandoned and hated humans, and had not associated with them except violently since there were still emperors in Rome. 

Leechtin found me on occasion, maybe four times in those weeks. He said, taking my arm, "Do not be afraid of him. It offends him," and went walking with me in the garden. 

"I'm trying," I told him.

"They are scrambling. They want you back. What say you to that?" he asked, on the Friday before Leis appeared. "They are calling me, all kinds. Did you know that you were so important? A young gentleman even called me from the Lebanon, telling me to let you out of my web and he will give me a hundred of you. I said, for what price? And he said, no price. Did you know that you are worth a hundred boys?"

"Do you want a hundred boys?"

"Oh no, foolish. What would I do with them? Sell them? Can we do that? I think we are not far enough below board in this country. I tell them that. But they do not listen. With you I can find my own place, because you will show me how to work this world. But they are saying, give him back, for the one who loves him despairs. How much is his despair worth? Is it worth the life I can give you? They have money and they have their love."

"What do you have?" I asked.

He smiled at that and fondled my ear, and I held him around the waist as we walked. "I can make you strong. Do you even know what that means? I can make you stronger than you have dreamed. You would be above reproach, untouchable. True strength comes from a hard hand, and I have that. If you stay with me you will live far longer. You will learn how to live."

But I had seen Nataniellus, who he claimed to love, and thought I understood what it meant to be strong, and was not ready to be like that. How could I know that though Nataniellus is hard-hearted, he is warm in other ways? I knew so little. When I needed a kind word the most, far later when I no longer felt afraid of anything, wasn't it Nataniellus who lay with me and kissed my temple? Where were any of you then?

But we won't talk about that yet. I will only tell you now that as far as I know, Leechtin still lays claim to my flesh, and when I see him, though I have not seen him in some years, he inspects my body to make sure that it is sound, as if I were a horse and not a man. He investigates me with tender fingers, and kisses my face, kisses between my shoulder blades, says, "Do not look so sad, face, there are other things in the world." I think he knows what it is to lose what I have lost. I think he knows how I want to be treated, how I would like to be an animal so that I can forget what has happened to me, and be loyal to a master who will tell me what I should do.

But yes, I have this one here, my Leis, is warm enough for both of us. Yes, darling? A kiss? Have one. On the lips? Have one. He still knows what love is, though he stood aside while everything was taken from me. Sh. Have another kiss, just one more. What happened then? Tell Mini. Did we go directly home? Did anyone try to stop us from going? No, they didn't try to stop us. Tell me what you traded, I still don't know. Ah, that makes the most sense. You traded Laurent, and it's true that from that time he often lived there. You put him back in the place he had been trying to escape for a hundred years, in reach of a mouth that wanted to bite him. I know it isn't your fault.

We went back to South Carolina and Father entreated me, "Did they hurt you?"

I lied and said, "No, not at all."

I did a lot of thinking in that year. I suppose I felt cooped up after the new things I had learned. I would sit next to my open bedroom window and try to read, but it was difficult to concentrate. Often the phone rang, and I would run down the stairs to get to it, hungry for news of the others. I began to harbor ideas about college, about studying abroad in Paris so that I could travel while I finished my education. In me, there had been planted a little fear, of pain and the unknown, which hadn't accompanied me much as a child. Sometimes I woke up gasping, as if I were being squeezed by unknown arms. 

One early morning, I woke up that way, wheezing and struggling to breathe, and pushed open the heavy window with my body, swinging it out. And there I saw Leis far off, walking in the field. It was that time of morning, just before the sun rises, when mist rises from the long grass. I thought that I should go and get him, and bring him back from the damp, because I had become familiar with his pattern of night wandering. Pulling on my robe, I stumbled down the stairs and out the already open front door. 

He had gotten far, but never moved quickly while he sleepwalked. I caught up to him, and took him by the shoulders. 

"Let me go," he said, eyes open but half-asleep. "He is calling me."

"Who, Leis?" I asked.

"The blood is calling after me. He is here. Let me go. He is here."

I said, "Who," but before it could leave my lips I saw Laurent, not ten feet away and very quiet. Even from that distance, I could see that in several places his skin was raw, as if he had been burned. How could I have recognized half-healed bites? I had never witnessed real violence.

"It is calling after me. I am in pain. Let me go," Leis whispered, sleeping. 

"Come back in, Leis," I whispered, frightened by Laurent's looking at me without warmth, so like the look Nataniellus had often given me.

"Let him go," Leis whispered. "This is not your business. Little bird, take care you do not make enemies of us who are lovers. Not at this moment above all moments." And I will swear even now that it was Laurent's cadence that came out of Leis's mouth.

I let go of him and he went to his Laurent, who looked at me without a word, and took Leis away beyond the gate where in the dark a car was waiting.

Back at the house, my father stood in the doorway, waiting for me with a coat in his hands. I have always wondered if he meant to warm me, or thought that I would take it and follow them. Instead I took him by the arm gently and up to bed, so that he could hold me and stroke my hair. Confrontations with the unknown made me a child again. Quinn rubbed my arms and body, held my cheek against the mink fur collar of his dressing gown to warm me, because I shivered.

It was a week before Leis was back again, and my first knowing that he had returned was his coming into my bed. What had they talked about, wherever they'd gone? My first knowing that Leis had returned was the touch of his teeth at my throat. I can only think that Leechtin had gone mad, and they thought to remove me from the equation, to resolve things. I wonder if it is the truth. No one would ever talk about it.

I can only tell you that my making was the most beautiful, delicate, and intimate thing that has ever happened to me, and it is to the credit of the one here sitting beside me that I did not suffer at all. And when he saw me well, and I opened my lips to speak to him, he only repeated, "I am responsible for you."