Chapter 21 #2
“There was an infestation around the millennium. A lot of people were killed, found with puncture wounds in their necks, but it was before vampires went mainstream, and so nobody outside of the town believed vampires were to blame. Nobody helped.”
Bastian’s eyebrows rose in surprise. He’d had no idea. Then again, he wasn’t exactly paying attention to the news twenty years ago. He was busy stalking and killing, held captive by his rage. Even if news of vampire activity in Vernazza had made headlines, he wouldn’t have known it.
“Zappa said that Vernazza has been vampire-free for almost twenty years,” Bastian said, recalling what the commissario had revealed during their interrogation. “What happened?”
A mixture of pride and sadness strained De Luca’s voice as he said, “My father banded together with his colleagues—Zappa and a couple of others—plus some locals. Together, they tracked and exiled a dozen vampires, made sure they didn’t return. They freed Vernazza from vampires.”
“Was your father commissario then?”
“No. He would have been the age I am now. I was only a baby.”
“So, Zappa helped exile killer vampires over twenty years ago,” Bastian said, thinking out loud, “and then suddenly here I am, and people are being killed again. I hate to admit it, but it actually explains Zappa’s foolhardy summoning of the vampire council.”
“He was worried about history repeating itself,” De Luca said. “He’s not as strong as he used to be. People talk about vampires like they’re monsters; I grew up being told as much by my father.” He paused, took a breath, and met Bastian’s gaze. “But you…You’re not like that. Not at all.”
“Go on, dear,” Bastian said, fluttering his eyelashes as he sucked the dregs of blood from the flask. “Tell me I’m special. I shan’t be offended.”
De Luca smiled and lowered his gaze. “You’re kind and thoughtful and you care about people. You showed me that whatever we are, it doesn’t have to define us. You’ve been nothing but open and honest with me, and I’m grateful for that.”
Bastian felt a pinch in his chest at De Luca’s words. He considered the flask in his hand as he said, “That’s not entirely true. I may have fudged a couple of specifics. I’m afraid I wasn’t turned at Stonehenge like I said. That’s just a story I tell people to make it sound grander than it was.”
“What happened?” De Luca asked.
Bastian set down the flask. “The truth is, I did meet a gorgeous man, but I wasn’t in Wiltshire.
I was out clubbing in London, dancing the night away.
A man approached me and asked if I wanted to go back to his place.
Of course, I said yes. We started walking, but we got sidetracked in an alleyway.
You know how it is. We couldn’t keep our hands off each other. And then I felt his teeth on my neck.”
The memory closed its arms around him, and for a moment he was back there in the alley, cold fingers at his wrists, teeth needling flesh, drawing blood. He pushed the memory away and flashed a bashful smile at De Luca.
“I was sired behind a fried chicken shop, not Stonehenge.”
There was a note of sadness in De Luca’s eyes. He didn’t seem to know how to process the confession.
“The thing is,” Bastian said, “I’m not ashamed of the truth.
Sometimes life comes at you in big swings—change can be grand and self-important and sparkly, like a showstopping musical number with a full cast in costume.
Other times, big change happens in tiny increments.
Tiny moments. A solo under a spotlight. It doesn’t mean they’re any less important. ”
De Luca’s gaze gleamed at him across the kitchen, hesitant and inquisitive. “You said you wouldn’t change it; that becoming a vampire helped you to become your true self. Was that a lie, too?”
Bastian’s eyes narrowed in thought. “No. It has taken me a long time to embrace my true self, and being a vampire played a part in that, but I was angry for years before I found peace. I didn’t consent to being turned.
My life was taken from me, my body forever altered.
I was turned into something I didn’t want to be, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. ”
He looked at the floor, the hurt still there, a bruise just beneath the surface of his skin.
“The thing is, I had already been othered in life, and then I was being othered in death. After I was turned, a whole new group of people hated me, and it hurt more than anything ever had, because they were my people. That beautiful queer community I found in London—the ones who embraced me and celebrated me for who I was, whom I loved utterly and completely—they were afraid of me. Of what I had become. Knowing that nearly killed me a second time. I watched my friends through bar windows as they laughed and danced and lived, carrying on with their lives as if I had never existed, and something inside of me broke.”
He gritted his teeth at the memory. “So I let the anger take over, because being angry felt better than despairing. Better than loneliness. I had been alone before, and I could do it again. If people considered me a monster, I would be one. Eventually, though, I had to make a choice: be angry forever or try to move past it. That’s where Whitby came in. ”
De Luca had paled and he was looking at Bastian with a rigid kind of anguish.
“I’m sorry you went through that. I can’t even begin to imagine…”
“Probably best if you don’t,” Bastian said, raising a weak smile.
De Luca looked at the croissant again, but his mind appeared to be elsewhere.
“I’ve never had anything like that,” he said. “Queer friends, I mean.”
“You haven’t?”
De Luca shook his head. “At first, I was too shy. I was scared to come out because of what my parents would think. I didn’t want to rock the boat. Then Dad died, and I joined the police, and people sort of kept their distance.”
“Because you were police?”
“They weren’t unfriendly,” De Luca explained. “It’s not that people were unkind to me, but they always saw me in my uniform, and they treated me with professional courtesy, even when I was off duty. And the people who remembered my father made it clear I didn’t measure up.”
Bastian frowned. “They said that?”
De Luca scratched his arm, looking uncomfortable. “They didn’t have to. I could see it in the way they looked at me.”