"How old are you now?" asked the blond in my father's bed.
"Twelve," I told him. "It's my birthday."
"Your name?" he asked me, curling a finger over the curve of my chin.
"Jackie. Can you help me?"
"What with, divine face?"
"Father cut himself. He's trying to kill himself. I think he's dying. Help me," I whispered, unused to asking for anything, barely able to breathe the words.
"He can't die that way," Laurent said, gazing on me. Leis had brought him back. The previous night a call had come in on the phone that I'd overheard, heralding a return. Leis had been gone two months, and in the interim Dasius had stayed only one night, and then the house had been only me and Father again for weeks. Father had been wary of the telephone, treating it like an untrustworthy wild animal, and now I saw why. "Come into bed with me, pretty one."
"No, thank you," I said, though I must confess that it interested me. "Help me tend to him, Laurent."
"Laurie," he said, smiling at me.
"No," I told him.
"Oh you've been poisoned against me. Find Leis. He'll care for the matter more. It's not my business."
"You want him dead."
"Oh not at all. But you wouldn't see my side, and your father has made sure of that with this. It's not my business."
I remembered Laurent well of course, from that day when I was six. It was still one of the most exciting days of my life, and not only for the blow up that had occurred afterwards. I still wanted to play swords and involve myself in a great romance, as did Clark Gable and Lana Turner, but I had been loathe to broach either subject with Father, whose reaction I couldn't predict and therefore whose confidence I couldn't be sure of. I was, I'll admit, a very young twelve, but in most things my life had been thus far very sheltered, and I do now believe and understand that Quinn did not want me to grow up, and that it was during this visit, after cutting his wrists on the kitchen floor in protest of Laurent's presence, that he began to beg Leis for another child. For the purposes of distraction and as an object toward which to direct an innocent and pure love, of unquestioning devotion, he sensed that I was fast removing myself from his purpose. Laurent being near only exasperated that.
"I'm afraid," I told him, which was true, and not only because of all the blood I had seen. I think I must have sensed a certain disappointment from Father, and a coldness. Both of these were temporary, passing, but I could not have known that Quinn was trying his best to push me away because it hurt him to think about what might happen to me once I was grown. And so I felt I could confide a little in the enemy, my fairy, whose presence might comfort me in the moment.
"Oh will you come into bed with me," he said, gently, "and speak on it awhile. I so want to know you, little bird."
"Come out of bed, so that we can find Leis and help Father."
"I cannot go, darling. You will not understand that at this moment I am delicate," and my eyes found his hand at his cheek, which gestured just a little to his neck, and the little punctures I had not known to look for. "It is only that I've fallen here, in your parents' bed. You will tell your Father that if he asks you, just that I have fallen here, and not that the matter happened here at all." It. I did not know anything about what when on between immortals, or anything about matters of blood.
"My father cannot die from cutting himself?" I asked, cautious but willing to believe.
"No. Do not worry yourself. Perhaps he does not know it, but it is true."
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?"
I had only recently begun to dream of anything. I confessed to him, without breath, "I do like it. I do like men like that."
"Well that is very fine," he told me, imitating my breathlessness without mockery. "I tell you I would have had him away, and I told him as much when he had been a younger man, but he told me that he had a responsibility to his wife, and his children, and his title, and his King, and by the time the King passed, and he had such uncertainty of the regency and its strictures, it was too late. He was growing old then, and his temples gray. He said, stay with me until I die, weakly, without the sword, would you? And I told him that I would. Darling boy, understand that if a body is too fragile, becoming like us is dangerous. It is very easy for the living to die, don't you think so?"
I nodded and he kissed my temple.
"By then I had loved him forty years as you now know, and he had grown very old. I had come to know him through liaisons at court who knew about my thirst for blood and for money. How could I have known what I would get myself into with this young man who when I met him I thought, oh he is a man, and he will not like me. I thought surely he had his own thirsts I could not satisfy, but he was satisfied. He told me that I was beautiful, and made me believe it as if hearing it for the first time. Some men, they can do that. I saw how he had risen at court with only his charm. He would have made a handsome and successful courtier in any age. He wanted me in every place, and I gave myself to him at his pleasure. I did not feel used. Does it make you uncomfortable to hear this?"
"No," I whispered.
"My darling, I encourage you to use your body before you lose its pleasures. Your Leis will entreat you to be chaste when you mature for the love of God, but do not listen to him for foolish things. But do not fear, for I will tell you that when you are like us, you will find that there are finer things than what you can imagine now. These things are far subtler but do not be afraid. You will not be without pleasure of your body. I will teach you when you are ready, but that is far in future. And in any case, my lover remained ignorant of them. He did not let me prick him with my teeth when he was young, though he knew me for bloodthirsty. He kept me well in house and in silver, and for many years, I slept most nights with him in secret. I painted myself for him and wore what he liked, and felt almost as if I were alive and as if I were a man again which then I longed for, and not the sexless creature that I am. When I met your Leis, I was Marie's, but I want to explain to you without making excuses, that your Leis changed me with a look and a word, and made me want the dark again, and to run rivers of blood for him, and be together wards of the evening. You cannot understand his pull. At that time he was an innocent new to darkness, and I found it so thrilling that I felt driven mad."
"Is it because he's handsome?" I asked. I only knew about love from stories.
"My dear, there are things far more interesting than bodies, but yes he is the most beautiful boy I have ever seen."
"You," I told him, "are the most beautiful man or woman that I have ever seen."
"Oh, dear heart," he said, "you will be long-lived. There is time. So your Leis, who was so new, and did not know anything of what he had become, asked me to stay with him and no others, not even for my life, and because I felt so intoxicated of him," and he whispered on that word intoxicated as if it were illicit, "I lied to him and said that I would."
"Why did you lie to him?"
"Because it was impossible, because I had interest in living. Because I had made a promise to many others and to Marie that I would watch after them. You must understand that under me my lovers felt protected, and that we creatures need blood to live. You will need it. I loved your Leis but in the beginning, I wouldn't die for him or suffer."
"What changed you?" I asked, hearing that now he would.
"He revealed himself to me as innocent by nature. I had thought him naive and that he would quickly change and grow hard towards me once he knew about the life he would be made to lead. But he did not change, and I found in his character many sweet and interesting things, and I thought that God had made him perfectly suited to my proclivities, and that I would defend him with my life. My dear, you cannot understand yet how well it may convince you to sacrifice yourself for one who completes your spirit in ways you could never have anticipated. Your Leis suits me like no other, and I will fight for it. The way he looks on me, as if I were an innocent like him, it is worth dying over. It is worth anything."
"But what about Marie?" I asked.
"God in heaven, he is smart. I could not stop seeing Marie, no, or some of the others. It is my evil, I know that. I must have many little treasures and many little voices wanting me, and singing to me about my vanity. But Marie I loved, and for so long, and he had drawn ill of late. I tried to avoid him, but he sent boys to me to drink of, sweet, soft things with bodies never touched. Oh you are innocent of that, of wanting to corrupt things pure. He sent them to me with begging lips. 'Kiss me,' they said, 'touch me,' they said, 'if you will keep your promise to the Marquess, take of me anything.' He knew me inside and outside, and how I thirsted for many things besides blood."
"How old were they?" I asked him.
"Old enough," he said. "So I would go in the early morning, before the sun came up, to sleep in Marie's bed. By then his children were flown and his wife passed. Oh he had grown so old. How could I abandon him at that age when he had loved me so well of his entire life? My dear, do not be cruel to the living or abuse them. Their lives are short and one life is all they will ever know. You must be delicate towards them and never forget that they suffer of fear of old age, and that they shiver, and feel pain in a way that you will forget. That summer was long and hot, and he shivered as if he were cold because of the way the heat worked upon his body, and so often I took him naked, who no longer thought of the pleasures of the flesh, who had been so diminished and weakened by time, and held him against me because I am cold. It was only then that he could sleep peacefully, and in those times my heart swelled for him even though he was no longer the handsome young man I had known. I could not abandon him. I am not a monster. I kept away as best I could for love of your Leis, but in the beginning, before I knew I wanted to keep your Leis for the rest of my own life, I tested his patience. He is a Godly thing, and believes in the sanctity of bonds, and I did not."
"Did he find out? Is that why he left you for my father?"
"No my darling. I am certain that even now he has no idea of Marie. He knew about some of the others, that is true, but they were nothing to me really. No, my dear. There is another whom you know, my Dasius, who felt very jealous of your Leis's devotion to me, and that I did not deserve it, and that it disturbed our balance to have him there. He poisoned your Leis, which is why he suffers of his body still. Be angry with Dasius for it if you like, but it was long ago. He did it while I was at a fete at Marie's, which he knew I would not be able to resist. He conspired with another lover who I had been neglecting, and who wanted me to pay for that neglect. Learn from that if you will not to spread yourself in the way that I have, but I think that you are not like me. Perhaps it is too early to know."
"I'm not. I want only one great love," I said.
"Hush," he whispered. "After he was much improved, your Leis left me because he saw how it hurt me, hurt us, to love each other. He left for our mutual benefit, and it made me very sad, but I was much occupied with Marie's illness, because he had only grown more ill over Lent. By Easter, he wanted me by his bedside always, because he felt the breath of Death upon his throat, and I would not have denied him anything in those times. I could not feel devastated by your Leis's leaving yet because I labored to keep my sanity. With Marie, I had five more years, and by then he had lived far longer than anyone could have expected in those times. By then he had begun to whisper me that he felt out of time. The young king did not even send him a missive of good humor, so far had he fallen out of favor at court. I told him I understood that feeling, that it was no longer his world, that I knew it intimately, and have peace, dear heart. Peace. And yet, when one evening I woke and he was not breathing beside me, what could I do? What could I do? I had been orphaned. I had been cleaved. I did not know anymore whether I wanted to be living or to be of darkness or anything at all. Until then, I had been spurning Dasius as petty punishment for what he had done, but my Dasius saved me then, and cared for me. He did not know about Marie, and thought I had only gone mad, finally. He tucked me into bed at night as if I were a child, and kissed my forehead, and told me it would look better by morning. He did it every day. He is a silly thing, but he is honest, as you know."
"And then what did you do?" I asked, almost silently.
"I swore off the living," he whispered, "except to eat them. No, no longer do I love the living, only you, darling boy. I only tear their flesh and drink their blood, and on them I will be young forever until I die."
I think, as I have said, that the only lie he told me that day was that he still wanted to live. There had been something in his voice while he told me that story that I think he knew I heard there, that something in him was as a clock ticking. He felt out of his own time and had felt that for too long, and it held me fast to him as much as anything else. When I turned over to face him, to nap in the lazy sunlight, I saw that his eyes were hazel, eyes that studied me, and I had been so certain as a child that they were blue.
When I woke, I found myself in my dozing father's arms, and wondered who had put me there.