I fall silent and wait.
The vampire on the other side of the door is equally quiet, though his quietness is as heavy as it is foreboding.
I don’t know whether to feel proud of myself or apprehensive. I spun him a tale, like he asked, and one that contrary to the life I currently have, is interesting enough for someone like him to find it worth listening to. Now it’s his turn to reveal whether he’s about to honour our shoddily made bargain and remove himself from the premises, or turn me into dinner.
“Have your thoughts about turning changed ever since you left the Dark Country?” he asks.
I blink. It’s an unexpected question, so I don’t have an answer ready. I don’t know what to make of it, even. Is it regular curiosity or... a veiled offer?
Do I still want to become a vampire?
The truth is that I don’t know. What I have here in Britannia suits me just fine. I don’t put a particularly high price on my youthful appearance, at least not enough to make sacrifices to maintain it. I suspect it has something to do with the fact that the woman I picture, whenever I think about what I would prefer to grow into, is not young or classically beautiful.
She’s in her early fifties. She wears glasses and pencil-skirts and has her hair tied into a bun, and thin wrinkles grow around her eyes like cracks on fine china. Her air is strict, professorial, and no-nonsense. I usually picture her sitting in an office crammed full with books, sipping tea and scribbling tirelessly. She doesn’t need beauty because she is well-educated.
Granted, it would be convenient to exist forever. I have often wondered how the world would look like if the great geniuses and innovators from olden days had had more than a single human lifespan to know and create and discover. I don’t fancy myself that important, but there is something undeniably attractive about not having to fear that my work will be interrupted by something as fickle as my own mortality.
“I don’t want to return there,” I say. “I miss my parents, but they won’t be more inclined to respect my wishes now than they were then. They’d just take my choice away, and I wouldn’t be able to stop them.”
“I see.” I don’t like what I hear in his voice; the implication that whatever he sees is unlikely to benefit me hangs there like an angry storm cloud. “So you wish to avoid being turned.”
“Yes. For now.” I swallow and force myself to be brave. “I told you my story. That was all you wanted, right?”
“It’s something I wanted. But far from all.” I hear him get up. My heart soars, leaps, until it becomes clear that he isn’t moving from where he stands, and most definitely isn’t moving towards the front door. I brace myself for the impending break-in. “Your story only proved my point. You are an interesting girl, Susan. I enjoy interesting. So I want to offer you a deal.”
“Is it the kind of deal where I get out of this bathroom alive?”
“If your answer satisfies me, yes.”
I gulp.
“I’m listening.”
“I’d like to be a part of your life from now on.”
He sounds – pardon the pun – dead serious, which is about the only reason why I don’t immediately burst out laughing. Instead, his words make me feel queasy. He doesn’t go into detail about what he means, so I’ll inevitably have to ask for clarification, but I dread the prospect.
My mind busily paints the most uncomfortable possibilities it can come up with. Honestly, hoping that he means it in some warped romantic sense is the best case scenario.
“What would that involve?” I tread carefully. Being less evasive and demanding to know directly if he means to make me his unwilling blood-donor or, perish the thought, sex-slave, is far more likely to give him ideas than afford me a positive answer. “What would I have to do?”
“You? Nothing, apart from putting up with my presence.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
(Those are, incidentally, not words that come of my mouth often.)
“Let me put it a bit more clearly, then. I want to know how you go about your day, what you do and who you meet. I’ll live in your house –" There is a slight pause, which I can only imagine to be him looking around, getting some much-needed perspective on the sort of accommodations he’s proposing to inhabit, and silently rethinking that last bit. “I’ll follow you when you go out and keep track of every single move you make, but never interfere. All in all, I really just want to … observe.”
I stare at the faded yellow wall in front of me, silently counting the spots where the paint is starting to peel off. Ironically enough, what I'm doing is sure to be a lot more exciting that what he proposes to do.
“No offense,” I say, because if there is one thing life taught me, it’s that my personality is off-putting enough without me making an effort to be upsetting. “But I can’t imagine what the point of all that would be. Following me everywhere, as you say, is out of the question. I’m a daytime creature, and you have that fairly major handicap called sunlight to worry about. As for knowing what I do, I can simply tell you that upfront. On weekdays I get up at 7 AM, take a shower, eat breakfast, get dressed and clean up the house before leaving and catching the bus to the campus. I take whatever classes I have that morning, lunch at 12:30PM, take the afternoon classes and go to the library, usually at either 16:30 or 17:30PM, where I study until closing time and snack in between. When I get home I run around the block, have dinner, spend around two hours in the virtual classroom, spend another two typing articles and take another shower before going to bed. On Saturdays, I do some heavy-duty house cleaning, take care of the laundry and spend the rest of the day working on whatever project I have to finish that week or writing my thesis. On Sundays, I take a walk in the park, do some grocery shopping, catch up with whatever business I’ve left unfinished during the week and read a book or two. Rewind, start again. That’s it, that’s my life. Why anyone but me would like to be a part of it is beyond me.”
“The deal I’m offering is non-negotiable.”
“Are you even listening? I’m not trying to get out of it, I’m trying to tell you that Susan-watching is the less exciting pastime on earth. My past may be unusual, but my present is dull, dull, and dull.” Just the way I want it to be. Just the way I do my best to keep it as. “Stay around if you absolutely need to, but I can guarantee that you’ll get tired before the week is over.”
“Oh, I doubt that.” And just like that, a tentative understanding is struck. He moves away from the door. I exhale softly, letting the breath I’ve been holding fly free. “You can come out now.”
“No.”
“You have my word that I won’t harm you.”
“It’s not that, it’s … I’m not done dyeing my hair.”
I’d be hard-pressed to find a less embarrassing way to end the conversation, but it stops there nonetheless. He crosses the living room and, as far as I can judge going only by sound, installs himself on the couch and starts leafing through the pile of photocopied textbooks I left there.
I retreat into the shower, rinse my hair and apply the dye. I sit on the toilet for the next forty minutes, doing my best not to hyperventilate while I attempt to think my way out of the mess I’m in.
Considering my upbringing, it's probably not surprising that the first plan I weave involves his demise.
I wouldn't be the one to do the deed, of course - he's faster, stronger and likely a better fighter than I am, and now that my head has cooled down somewhat and I'm not running on adrenaline and fear, I'm back to accepting that I am only human and don't stand a chance.
However, there are other options available.
Humanity didn't take supernaturals popping up lightly, and even after the Third War ended, there were still organizations dedicated to hunting them hanging about. Some of them are active even today. Although Britannia's government doesn't officially endorse them, they are easy to find if you are determined or fearful enough.
If I were to call, say, the Paranormal Protection Police, they'd take care of Mr Crowe swiftly and definitively. I'd be left with nothing to worry about, besides a slimy streak of self-loathing. Thanks to my parents, I was exposed since an early age to far too many reverse horror stories about humans crying monster and getting innocent, hard-working vampires staked by radical groups like the PPP to be comfortable with calling them on anyone.
Still, he was the one who decided to harrass his way into my life. He is, in a sense, very much asking for it.
I rinse again, shower and finish blowing my hair dry. Usually I let it happen on its own, as electricity is too expensive to waste, but I want to stall my return to the living room for as long as I can. I brush my teeth too, and clean the sink, and spend a while organizing the towels in a pleasing colour scheme.
I put my clothes back on. Although that slightly defeats the point of showering, I’ll be damned if I’ll risk placing a foot outside the bathroom in a loosely-fitted robe or towel. The woollen pullover I’ve worn during the day has a nice high collar, which won’t deter him one bit if he goes for the neck, but gives me a sense of security nevertheless.
When all that I could invent to do is done, I finally take a deep breath and step out of the bathroom.
As I guessed, he’s lounging on the couch, and already he looks like he owns it. He doesn’t turn his head, despite that he must have heard me open the door.
I sneak a look to the side and start ambling towards my room. My hand is on the doorknob and all but done turning it when he speaks. His voice cracks like a whip, sharp and commanding.
“Stop.”
I obey, turning with the slowness of a dawning ice age.
He grins. His grin is effortlessly amiable, which tells me that despite his glaring lack of manners, he has spent enough time in the human world to learn how to do a proper smile. As a rule, vampires don’t possess that much of a range of expressions; some have it so bad that you can identify them at a glance going only by their blank, frozen faces. Since the majority of them live among each other, where a permanent look of ‘Oh, it’s Saturday’ is neither frowned upon nor considered socially unacceptable, they don’t feel it’s worth the effort of trying to relearn.
The vampire on my couch does not share that problem. So far I’ve seen his face go from annoyed to amused to pleased, but never bland.
He removes his legs from the arm of the couch, twists himself into a seated position with the powerful elasticity of a big jungle cat, and pats the space next to him.
“Sit.”
I do, although alarm bells ring loud in my head and nothing about obeying that particular order feels sane.
The overpowering closeness of his body is almost more daunting than my terror. His knee is inches away from mine, almost touching. I focus on that because I refuse to entertain the soon-to-be-unavoidable fact that the rest of him is leaning in, so that I’m left with no other option than to inch away and press myself against the pillows on the other end.
His mouth looms precariously over my shoulder, and rationally, that detail should be the one that worries me the most, but I can tell a bluff when I see one. He’s not going to bite me. He’s simply trying to make me as uncomfortable as humanly possible.
Well, achievement unlocked, I suppose.
“Good,” he says, still grinning the same infuriating grin. “Now stand up on one leg and cackle like a chicken.”
There is a thin, fragile pause. Then he throws back his head, laughing heartily at the look on my face, which is quick to turn from indignant to sour.
Wonderful. Brilliant. Not only have I acquired a vampiric stalker, it had to be one with the sense of humour of a naughty toddler.
“Hilarious,” I say dryly. “Is this what you do, then? Pick a random human to cling to and bother until they die?”
“Not until they die, no. Usually only for a year or so. It all depends on how interesting the human is. There was a young woman I stayed with for two years, until…” His voice drops lower, heavy with a wistful sadness that edges on theatrical. I’m aware that I’m being invited to pry, to ask further, but I’m less invested in whatever went down in his past than I am in knowing what my prospective future is shaped like.
I have my own questions to ask.
“So I’m not your first,” I mutter to myself. “Did you kill any of the others?”
“Of course not,” he replies, in a tone that suggests he considers it a stupid question. “I left them once I grew weary of them, and on rather good terms, I might add.”
“Oh. Well. That’s fine, then.”
“Then it’s settled,” he remarks, lifting himself off the couch with a quickness that would seem unnatural, eerie even, if I hadn’t witnessed it a million times before. He graces me with a wide, sharp smile. “I’ll see you tomorrow. You said you were usually up after seven in the morning?”
“Huh,” I mutter to myself. It surprises me that he listened to enough of my daily routine ramblings to memorize that detail. The way he had reacted, I’d expected them to have gone in through one ear and out through the other, with no neurons flaring up in the process. “Yes.”
“Then I’ll see you at 7:30.”
I nod. That should give me plenty of time to do a bit of research and make a call or two.
It's not that I don't have some reservations about calling the 3P, mind. If I take him at his word, he poses no threat to my safety, only to my patience. Even I can admit that that's a weak reason to want him dead - and the 3P would kill him, since they don't play around. They aren't called fanatics for nothing.
However, considering the circumstances of our meeting, I feel less than inclined to believe that he won't harm me at some point, his reassurances be damned.
Stereotyping all vampires as monsters incapable of coherent thought, who will turn around and attack anything out of mad instinct, is as prejudiced as it is inaccurate. Whenever a vampire kills, he or she is usually in perfect possession of his/her mental faculties. There is nothing errant or instinctive about it. In the rare occasions when one flips and goes on a non-premeditated rampage, it's either due to extreme hunger or an underlying history of mental illness that has nothing to do with species.
In Bryce's case, it's the latter that has me worried. Because he is mad, clearly.
What he is doing is not something that vampires do. Vampires care as much about humans as humans care about pigs and cows, which is to say, not much unless you happen to be a farmer. Granted, I have little to no experience with the vampire community outside the Dark Country, but I've never heard about one of them picking humans to follow around. That's the sort of thing that, as a vampire, you only go for if you've lost more than half your marbles.
Normally, I'd say he's entitled to being however strange he likes and feed his crazy as he sees fit. Still, since it threatens to affect me, I don't think it's too outlandish to take measures to protect myself.
"Susan?"
"Yes?" I reply automatically.
"If you are planning to contact anyone to... remove me, I would think twice about that."
I wipe off the guilty look on my face the best I can, and tell myself that it's not as if he can read my mind. None of them can. Unless they were something other than human before they changed - which happens, and tends to result in some mighty strange mixtures - vampires all get the same deal when it comes to added supernatural powers: enhanced speed, strength, hearing, sight and smell, plus hypnosis and a mild ability to communicate with animals and control them. Telepathy is not part of the package.
"Because you would kill me?" I ask, sounding much braver than I feel.
"Because then the life you have here would end." He says it like it's a correction. To me it sounds like elaborate paraphrasing. "If I suspect, if I get the smallest inkling that you are trying to get rid of me... I'm part of a clan with many contacts. I'm sure that it would take them no time at all to find Mr and Mrs Adelman and tell them their daughter's whereabouts."
"You..." My breath catches in my throat. And here I was, convinced that killing me would be the worst he could do. Killing me would have been expected, too. This, though? This new threat is a sly, convoluted strand of evil that I am altogether unfamiliar with. "You wouldn't do that."
"I would." His lips turn up, as if he's laughing at a joke I am not privy to. "You have carved a nice, comfortable life for yourself here, Susan. And as you said, you don't wish to become a vampire yet. If you do as you are told and let things happen without much fuss, you won't have to, either."
"I understand."
"Good. I'll see myself out, then."