When I woke up, the next evening, and went out into sitting room, there were those two standing in the middle, together, silently.
I stood and watched them without making a sound, and remember it clearly. I thought then that they were communicating, but know now that there was nothing but that silence between them. Dasius, who is taller than his master, holding Laurent closely, their faces a breath apart, small movements, as if in orbit of each other, in gravity. While I watched them, their faces did not touch, though Laurent's body hitched occasionally, from tears which had already dried.
The previous evening I had walked with him, and he had not spoken with me either. He had taken my arm and together we walked back over the fields someone else had rented. "Is it your land?" I had asked him, and he had touched my hand, which held his elbow. Far from the house, where there was a cliff, he sat beside me in the grass, and we listened to the water I could not see. Around us, sheep made low noise, reassuring each other about us. For the entirety of it, his hand touched the back of mine. As light crept up the coast, and he felt me begin to shudder in pain, he helped me go back, and hung rough curtains in my room, and kissed my temple very tenderly.
In the daylight hours I heard whispers, shouting hushed down to thin breath, desperate crying and pleas. "Find him, find him, you have to find him." I listened for as long as I could stay awake, but the weak light filtering around the edges of the curtain hurt me, and I shut my eyes and slept. That evening, when I found them in their silence, I went outside and walked around the edge of the house. There, there was a little milking stool, and I sat upon it. After a little while, Dasius came around, and startled, seeing me. He had a leather crop in his hands.
"Oh, I didn't see you," he said, retreating. "I didn't see you." He was barely visible in the dark, long black hair, eyes which caught the light.
I held my neck.
"It's quite dark," he whispered, as if in offering.
I asked him how old he was.
"No age, no," he said, in that same hesitant tone. "Can you see?"
"Not well."
"Well I will come back soon. I'm sorry. We keep our horse down the road a little. We board her. Laurent can't stand the sound, he says. Doesn't like horses. I don't know. I'll be back."
"What's your name?" I asked.
"You know it. I know Nicky told you," he said, shifting his weight to his left hip. The crop was forgotten at his side.
"Dasius isn't a real name. Where does it come from?"
"I," he started, then, "This is a sensitive issue, you see. It is sensitive, all right? I will come back soon."
"My head hurts," I said.
"Excuse me a moment. I will go, and when I come back, your head will be better."
"Were you sleeping by the hearth? Don't you have a place to sleep?"
"Please stop asking me questions. You don't understand. I have something to do now."
I sat awhile longer after he had gone.
It was very quiet there. All of the sounds were familiar ones. Wind blew a low whistle over the long grass of the fallow field. Sheep sought each other far off, making their soft sounds of wondering and greeting. In the darkness, they huddled together, growing back their long wool for winter. Crickets formed their continuous din, so well-known to my ears that I hardly heard them at all. When I looked up, there was no moon, which accounted for the dark, but many stars. I searched my legs for insects, and hummed.
At length, I went inside, and a form unfolded itself from the dimness, and took me by the arms. A face pushed itself to my neck like a cat's, and I rested my head against it without a thought.
"Will you touch me?" he asked me, Laurent, meekly.
"I am touching you," I whispered.
"Do you hear me?" he asked, voice very low, rough from tears.
"Very clearly," I said. "Like you are inside my head."
"Very good," he echoed.
"I hurt," I told him.
He said he thought that my body was still screaming, still shocked, that my mind was stunned.
"Maybe."
"He has not come yet. Dasius hasn't. I will talk to you then. Will you come to bed with me? And undress?"
I realized that this voice was inside my head, because he made no breath against my skin, as close as he was. "I'm afraid."
"That is all right."
"I don't want this. I'm not prepared."
"Do not protest too much. We none of us ask for what we are destined. You could not have known."
"Destined?"
"You are right. I apologize for saying it," he whispered, hushed, inside me.
My hands played with the embroidery on his robe, which I couldn't see, but felt complicated, expensive. I brushed my hand over his back and felt brocade, which quality I knew by touch. Feeling for the collar, I found that he was wearing nothing underneath, and he breathed out, a long, soft sigh.
He took me to bed by the wrist, and watched me undress, and wordlessly, opened his robe so that lying against him, I could slip my hands inside, and rest my palms upon his cool skin.
"It is sultry here, but you don't complain," he said. "These last few days of summer are the worst. I know. It is good that your mind seems somewhat taken with delirium, and you do not feel much. It is not always this way, but your countenance cracked a little under the new blood, and I don't wonder that you haven't yet recovered your wits completely. When they come back to you, I wonder how you will be, but for the present, I appreciate your respect and your silence."
I found a tendril of his hair, a curl, and played with it, cheek resting against his chest.
"Yours is not the sort I prefer, but there is no accounting for taste among children. What do they know? Children are inclined to seek sweetness, which is reassuring and nurturing. But perhaps I should trust his judgment. You have your own beauty, after all. Striking features. Your hair." He clutched it, pulling on my scalp a little, which made my lips part. "I came in with his brother in my arms. We walked that back field often, out of view in the road, the same I walked with you. When we came in, he was sat there at the table, head low on his arms. He had this red hair in his hand. He resisted me and wept when I took his hands and saw that he was blooded to the elbows. I sucked your blood from beneath his fingernails. His brother was very curious."
"Nicky."
"Yes, my little one. Nicky said, 'What has happened? What has happened?' and I thrust him away, and he bit me very hard, just here, where he bit you as well, and fled me. I demanded Dasius take me to you, because I felt his cool cheek, and he told me to leave off you, because he was in love, and you were better dead than one of mine. What do we say then? I did not think you would be like you were, ripped open. He said he would not watch me do to you what I had done to him. Isn't he hard?"
"You told him to go home."
"Yes." He kissed the top of my head, then, arched his back as my mouth found a small, pink nipple, and touched it with teeth.
"How old is he?"
"Younger than your years," he said.
"Why will you have me, if I am not your sort?"
He answered, without pausing, "Because I can. Because I want to."
"Where is Nicky?"
I felt him clutch my hair again, and gasped from the acuteness of the pain, almost exquisite, almost pleasure.
"Don't ask this. I will weep over it," he said, firmly, and held my hair that way long minutes, and when he relaxed, "Do you know how to kiss? Will I teach you?"
"I know how."
And I kissed him, but there was nothing of real passion in it, though his desperation and his heat were apparent to me, and there was something else to it entirely, in his needfulness, which ran my heart to beating, and a flooding of feeling in my limbs, which soothed me, and shut my eyes, and roughened my throat with tears.
"When you had a taste of my blood, you lay still a moment, there on the ground. I worried that you were dead. Sometimes they die, but then you lept upon me. You pushed me down and put your teeth in my throat and tore. This is hardly defensible," he said, hands gentle against my cheeks, holding my face.
"What should I do?"
"You cannot put me at ease. But it seems that it was only madness."
"Nicky said that I am violent like him. Does he do those things?"
"Rarely now. Do not talk about him."
I slipped my hands around his body, and sat atop his hips. He looked up at me, seeming sleepy and tired, blond hair spread over the pillow, and rich red robe open. In the meager light, I could see that the embroidery was gold thread, more expensive than I could have properly imagined. But I didn't wonder about him. My body was in ecstasy at the coolness of the evening and of his flesh. Relief for vampires, from pain, from suffering, from suspense, from care, holds terrible and infinite power. I thought, if he is corrupting me by making me want this, that is all right. My body seemed well attuned to his influence, even if he seemed somewhat nonchalant and tired. Then, I heard the door open, and voices in the sitting room, the cadence of a first and anxious meeting. "Who is it?" I asked.
He only smiled, cocking his head gently to the side against the pillow, and the door of that room opened, and Dasius entered with a young man I had never seen before.
"This is a Mr. Wyatt," Dasius said, holding him by the wrist as if introducing him at a fete. "That is what he calls himself. He has come to join us for a little fun, and I have promised not to disappoint him. He is one of those English who have been haunting France these past months, but he has no affection for them, he says."
"Soldier?" Laurent asked, quietly, smiling at me. Un soldat?
"The same. Deserter. He has no French."
"The swine," Laurent smiled, pushing me off his hips, gently. He held his arms out for this young man, and received him delicately. "But not unhandsome. Well-formed."
The soldier said something, softly, and Laurent shook his head.
"I do not understand this. Tell him not to speak," he said.
"No talk," I whispered, to the soldier, and he turned to me.
"Do you speak English?" he asked, and I reached to touch his unshaven chin, rough against my fingertips.
"A little. Trader," I said. "I understand. Speak, no."
"La bise. Le piqure. Ne parle pas. Piquez. Prelevez du sang," Laurent whispered. The kiss. The prick. Don't speak. Sting. Draw blood.
"What does he say?" Wyatt asked.
I pointed at Dasius, standing still just inside the doorway. "He says kiss him."
Dasius made a low noise of reproach.
"Que?" Laurent whispered. At Dasius's answer, he laughed low and gestured.
"I did not know you were this sort of person. Don't do like this to me in future," Dasius enjoined, grumbling at me as he approached.
"I do what I like," I whispered, as the soldier pushed me against the wall, bending me precariously, sucking on my neck. He whispered that he liked the color of my hair.
"Don't let him overpower you," came Dasius's voice.
The sucking sent waves of tingles through my head, rolling my eyes back, and I felt Laurent take my hand, and felt him pull Wyatt away, and then I heard Wyatt shout, and softly gasp, and he was in my arms, and Laurent had his fingers between his greedy lips. Dasius was there then, pushing that soldier's body against mine, and kissing his gasping lips, and whispering mean, rough things, at the lips, the throat, the collarbones, and when Dasius bit him, the soldier cried out.
The weight of the two of them was heavy against me, crushing my body against the wall. I breathed feebly, smelling the unwashed hair pressed against my neck, and desperately, wound Dasius's hair around my hand, and pulled it back, whipping his head back. "Qu'est-ce que t'as, toi?" he shouted, what's wrong with you?
I wrapped my arms around Wyatt's shuddering body, and tucked my nose down at the running wound.
"Don't be so angry," Laurent's low voice came, seeming dreamy, far away. "Childish."
"This is easy for you to say," Dasius hissed, much in color and rash. "You are satisfied as a whore. You are satisfied to be used as a whore is used. You have no control or dignity. You weep for beautiful boys like a sow over an empty slop trough."
I froze, expecting wrath, but after a fashion, heard that low laughter again.
"What's funny?" Dasius whispered.
"A whore. Like your mother?" the voice asked. "Is this all that you have for me?"
"I will see the end of you."
"Please try. Please try."
Wyatt had begun to shiver and whisper. I listened, uncomfortable and near tears. Dasius left the bed, and the sudden absence of his weight sent air into my lungs, making me gasp, and spilling the tears from my eyes. I felt Laurent's hand at my side.
"Poor young one, crying at a little fight. Bite him, darling. Do what you are meant to do. Go on."
I did as he asked without thinking, pressing my teeth to the young man's flesh, and he was more like a boy by then, shivering and begging to let him go home, which hit me hard, and made me cry afresh, because he was like me, and I wished that I couldn't understand English, and how when I couldn't stop, even when he started to thrash and plead that he could see angels.
When he was dead, and I was burning, at the sight of my continued tears, Laurent left me alone. I lay with the body until morning, when they took it away from me.