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

4. [Leis] 2003 - The End

He came into the room, so slowly, so quietly, that I noticed him in a way I would not have if he had moved more quickly. I saw him the way that a predator sees a wounded animal. I looked away and I covered my face with my hand, so that he could not see me so against him. I did this because he had so often done it for me, turning away his anger and his pain so that he could love me. 

I looked away.

His frailty. His voice was so quiet. The way he touched me, how he brushed my skin as if it were me who would fall apart, like a transparent corn husk or a butterfly's dry wings. He drew my hand from my face and held it with both of his, without a word. Silence between us.

"Why are you asking D to put me in a hotel?" I demanded, unable to hold myself back.

The way he tenderly touched my hair, tried to pull me towards himself, to rest my head against his belly. I resisted. He didn't have strength, or he wanted to be weak for me, I do not know. He was himself. The one I loved, touching me.

"Do not cry, ma moitie," my half, he said, softly, gently. "You are so sensitive."

"Tell me why. Is it because there is someone else? I do not care if there is someone else," I told him. "If they lie between us in our bed, I do not care. I will caress them. I will not crumble."

"I thought it would upset you to be here."

"You are calling me and telling me, 'come it is dangerous, press your head to my breast. If you do not come I will go mad with desperation,' but I am an hour away and you tell me to away from you? What have I done? Is there not danger? Why are there so many here?" 

"A threat has been made that could not be ignored."

"I will tell you that I am confused," I said, beginning to gesture.

He took both my hands so that I could not gesture. He took them and when I looked up, he was looking for my eyes. I wanted to seem defiant, but I could tell by the way he was gazing at me, with the patient love of the angel's face he had, that my expression was honest.

"You feel betrayed."

"Une voyante!" a psychic, I said, still trying to be belligerent.

He held me fast by the wrists. I hung my head, ashamed to have yelled at him. 

"No, look at me," he hissed. "I trust you to be tolerant. That is not the matter. We are speaking of different things. We are talking past each other. You must look at me."

"I refuse." 

"My Leis of Pont Marie," the bridge I had haunted while living, he hummed. "My little nameless waif. My Marie. Do not make me leave you so pouting," he said, a mischief-seeking curl in his voice. Sweet to the ear.

When I did not say anything, he said, "I thought that you are safer in a hotel."

"That is a lie," I hummed to him, still tearful in a way I could not stop. "I am only safe with you."

"You will stay in the room beside mine?"

"Is this a question?" I asked, exasperated with him, turning my head away again.

"Stop playing," he said, suddenly serious. "Look at me."

"I don't know why you are so serious," I told him, genuinely distressed. "What is this?"

He shook me by the wrists a little violently, causing me to look back, to part my lips, to feel so uncertain, and when he could have spoken, instead he dropped my hands, and he made a sound, too loud to be a put on, an "Oh!"