Chapter Five #5
“Your maker,” Silvio had no patience for tales, let alone those involving Dulior. He gestured for the man to come and take a seat. “You said you were looking for your maker.”
Startled by the interruption and the look on Silvio’s face, Elay sat down.
He moved—a little too fast and too rigid for the way humans carried themselves.
His gestures and facial expressions were unnatural, somewhere between the comic and the grotesque.
Like a puppet. Or someone who had spent too much time in solitude and had forgotten how their voice sounded with no one to talk to.
He picked up a crystal glass from the tray the servants had brought in earlier and examined it between his fingers in the light before he poured himself wine out of the carafe, without his hosts’ leave.
“Sweet,” he uttered to himself after taking a whiff of the liquid, a sad little smile touching his lips. He started to lift the glass to his lips, until he remembered, belatedly, that he could not stomach the wine.
Emerick and Silvio had tried pretending to eat and drink, approving bills of fare with the head cook and ordering supplies for the larder.
They quickly grew tired of it, of the waste and mimicry.
There was no point in trying to pass as humans in this household, and Emerick had exhausted himself with writing and rewriting a maid’s memory or scrubbing an entire afternoon from the mind of the stable-master—he still regretted having done that, the damage to the man’s mind was irreversible.
By taking a small memory away, Emerick had opened a gap; erosion took root in the brain, all the mortal’s memories on the verge of erasing themselves overnight, the grip on reality lost.
No, it was easier to be vampires than vampires pretending to be humans. Let the servants see their masters for what they were and decide for themselves if they wished to serve in the house of the devil.
“His name is Rorgon.” Elay’s mind was blooming with images of his master—a tall, imposing man with ashen hair and eyes the colour of gold.
“I must confess, he disappeared the very night he made me. Centuries ago. I thought he might be with my sister. He did come to me from her house. The di Flaviari estate—the count there was good to my father… a kind man. My sister must have loved him dearly. She still keeps his name. But Rorgon…” the name sounded strange on his tongue, as if it hurt.
“I was told you cannot read or hear the mind of the vampire who made you. And the master cannot hear his fledgling. Hence my failure in finding him. But you have this coven, this haven for those like us. Has my master come through here? Or have others mentioned him?”
The name did not ring a bell. Neither did the face which kept flashing in Elay’s mind.
The longer Emerick studied the spectre in the vampire’s memories, the more he understood the infatuation.
Those golden eyes did captivate, and the echo of the voice—Mon ami…
—a memory of Rorgon by the door on his way out.
You would make an excellent groom, mon ami.
How Elay wanted him, the need burned and itched.
Like the itching patches of skin around his throat where Rorgon’s teeth had left their mark as a pledge.
The ring on Elay’s little finger had been a gift, the only physical thing left of his maker.
“We have not met your master. This is the first we have ever heard of him.” Silvio sounded unimpressed. He turned in his chair and looked up at Emerick, who shrugged in echo of the words.
“Did Dulior not talk about him?”
“No.”
The hurt that crossed Elay’s face was astonishing, almost pitiful.
He placed the glass on the table, and stared at it for a moment longer, chewing his lower lip.
Slowly his eyes moved, scrutinising the room, the painted glass windows, the beautiful wallpaper and potted plants.
He licked his lips; his tongue peeping between the fangs.
“What is she like, my sister?”
“She was wedded to her delusions—enamoured of them.”
The finality in Silvio’s words would have made anyone abandon the conversation, but not Elay. He appeared impervious to the Marquis’ hostility and to how much the topic displeased him.
“My master is like that. He is a difficult man to love. He has his vices. His ambitions.”
There it was again, the ghost of a memory, snaking through Elay’s mind. It was so loud Emerick had to push himself out of the man’s head and block it.
What would this broken fledgling do if he knew how the only man his sister ever cared about was the man sitting before him now?
How she had dug her nails into him and demanded fealty, to the point of obsession.
They said madness ran in the blood, and Rorgon’s lineage appeared rife with mania.
From Dulior, who was set on possessing Silvio, to this orphan sitting at their table.
“She is not aware of your existence, is she?” Emerick asked and his hand gripped the back of Silvio’s chair, leaning in a little.
Elay looked up at him, his face motionless, his thoughts suddenly still.
He was silent for a moment, the realisation hit him as it had Emerick.
Dulior did not know she had a brother, nor would she care to have one.
The Dame Vermilion was not going to grace him with her presence, no matter her bloodlust. Elay and his maker were of no worth to her.
“No…” Elay muttered and shook his head.
“You are welcome to stay,” Silvio said, satisfied by the answer. Suddenly, Elay’s presence was tolerable. “If your master is out there and wishes to visit my coven, you may wait for him here.”
The Marquis rose from his chair, thus signalling the end of the audience. He reached forward, picked up the wine glass, and poured its untouched contents back into the carafe.
One of the maids was feeding a stray cat, a striped tabby that kept finding its way inside the house and up the stairs.
Sometimes Emerick heard a sorrowful yowl, the little creature stuck somewhere, impossible to find.
He would watch the maid, Margot, searching room after room with a small saucer of paté in her hand.
He tried to help find the thing, attuning his senses to the sound of the tiniest of heartbeats, but soon gave up.
As long as the cat did not cause trouble, it could stay.
The tower was meant to harbour strays, and a cat was better company than the vampires who sent them letters.
Recently, members of the Berlin Council had expressed interest in visiting.
While attending to the Comte, René told him of the cat’s escapades.
How it climbed on the top of the kitchen dresser and swatted at anyone who passed beneath, barely missing their heads.
The cat regarded them from above, its tail swishing back and forth in challenge.
Other times they saw paw-prints in the entrance-hall, a tell-tale sign that the cat had found its way into the thermae, and was hiding somewhere in an angry wet ball.
Emerick took to roaming during the day. The nights bored him.
He wandered through the house in the daylight hours, startling the staff, who were unaccustomed to his presence, even crossing paths with Monsieur Corbin.
As a mortal, Emerick had been fond of watching candles burn and flicker, of how the shadows danced across walls, bouncing off mirrors and windows.
Fireplaces too, they felt like home even when they were in rooms he used to share with Dulior.
He felt drawn to the light and warmth; it made him want to stretch himself full length on the bed or on the floor, and look at the flames crackle and crinkle. Like a moth drawn to flame.
Oh, how he missed the sun. To be caressed by its warmth rather than the moon’s pale, hollow glow.
He liked how pieces of the furniture had patches faded from the sun.
Cushions and rugs warmed by the colourful rays of light streaming through the windows.
Perhaps it was the sundial in the garden that had made him melancholy.
He could not even see it through the library window, it was too far into the yard and hidden under all the greenery.
The clock on the wall marked the hour as two in the afternoon.
The air in the entryway heavy and dry, stirred only by the barest sign of a breeze from further down the hall. Summer had begun.
With a sweeping gesture, Emerick drew the library curtains aside and cast the room into a protective gloom.
He liked to push the limits of his immortal body.
To see how well he might endure during the day, but he had to be cautious.
Leaving only a single beam of light to pass between the heavy drapes, he walked into the room.
Kicking off his slippers, Emerick reclined on the chaise and unfolded the gazette.
Napoleon’s troops had disembarked on the coast of Egypt, proclaiming the commencement of another campaign.
The French newspapers were becoming tiresome; Emerick had no interest in following a mortal’s military career.
Perhaps he should try and find some Prussian papers.
He glanced towards the window, squinting against the bright light.
If he focused, he could barely make out the glimmer of a spider’s web on the sill, up in a corner.
The web was long and appeared golden in the light, spinning out of nothing and disappearing into nothing.
It reminded him of the lifeline on his own palm.
The air in the library lay warm and still, somnolent.
The paper in his fingers felt strange, weightless, its letters blurred and indistinct.
“You are growing reckless.”