Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Alexandru
Isometimes fail to understand Ms. Renfield’s motivations.
Why she thinks we must now sit and listen to this female’s maudlin poem about a friendship bracelet and a picture in a locker is beyond me.
The girl weeps as she reads. She rambles about “the empty desk where you should be.” Several others begin to weep.
Humans are so sentimental. It really is a wonder they’ve managed to survive all these years.
And truly. The banners upon the far wall are preposterous, if not downright offensive. The meek shall inherit the earth? A remarkable delusion. I have walked this earth for a thousand years and the meek have inherited nothing but early graves.
There’s another that says, Humble yourself before God. Having spent three centuries in chains, I find this notion particularly grotesque.
True, humans are mere livestock, but surely even livestock do not voluntarily humble themselves.
The man who spoke earlier about a hit-and-run goes next.
He drones on about his meditation practice, about learning to “sit with his feelings” and to “breathe through the anger,” when a far better solution would be to hunt down the driver and put an ice pick through his eye.
But apparently that is frowned upon here at the crime victims support group.
Humans are so quick to settle for self-soothing, but then, they are a helpless lot.
Finally, the leader announces there will be a snacks break.
Ms. Renfield rests her small hand upon my arm and squeezes.
I’m startled by the contact, but then I realize that she wishes to communicate something.
I watch her stroll over to the leader. She has a fighter’s build, this Renfield—compact and sturdy.
So very capable, if not formidable. She tilts her head as she thanks Doreen for the meeting and makes excuses about the long drive back, striking, just the right tone. She can be a pleasing ally.
“What a waste of time,” I grumble as we speed down the dark highway. The headlights pierce the night, illuminating the nothingness of this American Ohio road.
“At least Elaine’s unreliability was obvious.” Ms. Renfield turns to me. “What did you get from her?”
Ms. Renfield, always so curious about my empathic abilities.
She would love nothing more than to chart them on one of her spreadsheets, to reduce centuries of hunting to columns and categories.
But what I perceive cannot be captured onto her electronic ledger.
It is not data; it is the way the shark senses blood.
I consider how to explain. “Elaine believes what she says, but she is a boat with no anchor. Drifting senselessly through her obsessions with the husband and the butcher.”
“Right. Well, we have seventeen days left. I’m confident that we’ll find a nice, tasty killer for you.” Ms. Renfield likes to project optimism, but she can’t hide the tension that she feels now.
At least not from me.
“I would highly suggest not taking each and every one of those seventeen days,” I say.
She nods, remembering, no doubt, the state I was in when last I went too long without feeding. When the world narrows to blood. Warmth. The drive to consume another’s life force.
“Things really are popping with your business in Brussels!” she says, maneuvering her old car expertly off the major highway onto the two-lane road that leads to Silverton Valley, where the village of Ashwood sits.
People say that Ashwood is “picturesque.”
I suppose it is pleasingly picturesque in the sense that it is full of well-fed, unwary villagers who would be easy to stalk and kill—or they would be, at any rate, if Ms. Renfield’s moral sensibilities had not taken them from my dinner menu.
It is full dark by the time we reach the gravel drive that leads to Kingston Manor, solemn and silent, its Gothic spire pointing up at the starless sky. It is nothing like my castle back in Karsovia, but after an evening spent among weeping humans, the sight of it is a balm.
I climb the steps and fling open the great carved door. Gregor’s head dips as we enter.
“Gregor! Tell me you haven’t been standing there the whole time waiting for us to return!” Ms. Renfield says, coming in after me.
I hand Gregor my coat. “The affairs of my household are not your concern, Ms. Renfield.”
She shoots me a withering glance—the kind that would wither a lesser man, at any rate—spins on her heel, and disappears down the corridor to her wing, radiating indignation with every step.
I climb the stairs to the library and select a volume at random—a treatise on siege warfare that I have read perhaps forty times. Gregor follows without being summoned and busies himself at the hearth, shuffling the embers back to life.
I have not needed warmth in many centuries, but I find I like the flicker and crackle of a fire. I like the shadows it casts. Perhaps it touches some human memory.
I settle into my chair, but I do not read so much as listen to her movements in the wing beyond. The faint slide of drawers, the creak of the bathroom door, the swish of curtains being closed.
I have grown accustomed to her presence.
It is…tolerable. Much more so than her father’s presence, with his fits of melancholy and his regrettable tendency to wander the halls weeping.
He so vexed me at times; I would be forced to send him to the dungeon to count grains of rice in the darkness until he collected himself.
And he was not the worst. Bartholomew James Renfield would bow and scrape so excessively I once locked him in a closet simply to be free of his fawning.
Jonas Renfield, once a noble, grew so obsessed with the ledgers that he became nearly useless at times.
Thaddeus Wilbur Renfield, whom I took from a monastery where he served as a recordkeeper, went about clawing at the walls until his fingers were pulpy stumps. He ruined many a business ledger.
It is the way of things that a Renfield serves me. They owe a debt that can never be discharged—not in any century. Not in any universe.
Harriet Renfield is even more organized than her predecessors, something I would not have thought possible.
And she works with newfangled tools. I have seen her command her electronic ledger with her voice alone.
A useful redundancy, should she begin to claw the walls as her great-great-great grandfather did.
I turn a page. The sounds from her wing have quieted. Perhaps she is asleep. I cannot hear her sleep breathing from up here, but if I were to go down to the foyer, perhaps I would.
The night passes quietly.
Around five, I hear her stir again. She pads to the kitchen. The familiar clatter of her morning ritual begins: the grinder, the kettle set onto the stove.
I can picture her bent over the kitchen island, scratching and tapping on her electronic ledger with her white pencil that has no lead, as is her way, raven curls wild from sleep, glasses perched on her nose, dressed only in undergarments, though she insists they are not undergarments but rather “T-shirt and leggings.”
I listen to the pouring of the coffee, the impatient tap of her spoon against the mug. Another tap on the ledger.
She brings her coffee to her office, where she conducts her morning communications with my European team—property managers in Brussels, solicitors in London, bankers in Zurich. There seems to be some problem with what Ms. Renfield terms as “red tape.”
I smile as I listen to her breach one barrier and then another, and then I focus back on my book. Her voice recedes into a muffled rhythm.
Until I hear a sound that freezes me: a sharp gasp.
I straighten.
Her heartbeat has quickened. Her chair scrapes.
“Something’s happened,” I murmur.
Gregor stirs in the corner, where he’s been slumped for some hours.
“Go to her office,” I tell him. “See what’s the matter.”
He turns to obey, but before he reaches the door, Ms. Renfield bursts in, wild-eyed and holding her ledger.
“There’s been a murder in town,” she says. “One of the Snag Tooth Riders—you know that motorcycle club? One of their members was killed with a crossbow.”
“A crossbow.” I close my book. “Exquisite.”
Ms. Renfield frowns. “A man is dead. That’s never exquisite.”
“Yes, fine. A tragedy of great proportion.” I rise from my chair. “And now we have something to investigate that does not involve weeping females reading maudlin poetry.”
She makes a sound of exasperation but does not argue further. Within minutes she is dressed and ready, and we convene in the foyer.
I settle my wide-brimmed hat atop my head. Contrary to myth, vampires do not perish in the daylight, but our skin is exceedingly sensitive to the sun, so I never go out uncovered.
Gregor hands me my day-walking gloves. I ease my fingers into the first glove, feeling the warm leather yield and then tighten around each knuckle as I press deeper.
Ms. Renfield’s eyes track every movement. I have noticed this before—this fascination with my hands as I don my gloves.
Curious.
I draw the glove fully on, flexing until the fit is absolute, and her pulse quickens.
I take up the second glove and repeat the process with the same unhurried care, working into the warmth of the leather. I adjust the cuffs, taking my time. Her breathing grows shallow.
She seems to enjoy the process, and I find myself oddly pleased by this.
Until I remind myself that she is a Renfield. What do I care of her pleasure?
“Get the car. Make haste, Renfield.”
Ms. Renfield guides her car down North Commerce Street, hands stay fixed at equidistant points on the wheel. Sunlight slides across her raven hair, limning her curls, one of which has escaped to caress her cheekbone.
I look away. That sun would pain me if not for the smoked tint Gregor applied to the windows.