11. Valtu
Valtu
I close the door to the girl’s room and the wards come alive, their magic sealing the redhead inside.
Normally I don’t have to worry about humans breaking down the doors or busting through the locks in this place, but since this girl is a vampire, I’m not about to take any chances.
I don’t want her wandering through my house unaccompanied, and I’m not na?ve enough to think she might not run.
It’s happened before, the human having changed their mind and gotten scared, trying to escape the mountain.
They never get far, though. If the mountain wolves don’t get them, the demon will. Sometimes the demon is feeling especially generous and wants to share the human with me. I feed then let the demon do what it wants with them. Less messy that way and keeps my hands clean, for the most part.
The humans are always innocuous. That’s one of the reasons I like them, especially the ones that Abe selects for me.
He picks ones that are obsessed with vampires and feeding, that mourn the invention of the blood pills as much as I do.
They scour the earth looking for the infamous feeding cages and Red Rooms of the glory days.
When they’re eventually brought here, they’re ready to submit to me in any way I see fit, especially when they learn who I am and my history.
Everyone wants to suck Dracula’s dick.
But vampires? Vampires have always had disdain for me.
A century ago I would have said it was all Bram Stoker’s fault.
Vampires were jealous that I was the one who inspired the most famous bloodsucker of all time.
Later, if they got a chance to know me, they then thought I was a joke, not worthy enough to be written about.
Now, though, it feels different. Not that I have a lot of interaction with vampires these days, but when I do I sense their animosity.
Rumors had spread long ago that I was the one who let Bellamy and the coven on the loose, that I was the one who let Saara go (you can’t blame me for thinking she was dead, that fire should have killed her) and that I was the one who had an infamous book of black magic that I kept hidden away.
I get the impression that they think the book belongs to all vampires.
Well, it’s a shame for them that I don’t share their ideals.
So the fact that Van Helsing brought a vampire here is very unusual indeed.
Even more unusual is the fact that I detect zero resentment or animosity in her.
Instead…I feel, well, something like love, if not infatuation. I can’t explain it but when I look into her eyes, green eyes the color of faded moss in late summer, I see someone who has intense feelings of adoration for me.
Van Helsing did say she was an admirer of mine, and I have to believe him on that, it’s just strange to be so openly adored by another vampire.
Hence why I need her to be sequestered away while I talk to him. Though she’ll never get her hands on the book even if she tries, that could be the reason why she’s here.
I head down the hallway and back to the music parlor where Van Helsing is standing at the window, looking out into the great beyond.
“Well?” I say to him, and he jerks around to face me, looking startled. He’s a little jumpy today. Sometimes that happens after the journey here.
He clears his throat, composing himself. “Do you like her?”
I think that over, rubbing my lips. “I find her strange and peculiar.”
“In a good way?”
“I’m not sure. Shall we have a drink? When’s the last time you had real blood, Doctor?”
He laughs as we head down the stairs to the lower level. “I may have invented the pills, but I’m not a saint, Valtu. You of all people should know that.”
“People change,” I counter. “And you of all people should know that .”
He takes a seat at the large chestnut table in the dining room.
It’s long and solid, the kind of table you would see used for dinner parties at royal palaces in the days of yore.
Now it has a lonely existence, save for the occasional friend I may have over every other year or so.
I haven’t even fucked on it, which suddenly seems like a real waste of craftsmanship.
I bring him a bottle of red from the rack and then a bottle of blood from the fridge, along with two glasses and place them down in front of him.
“Which would you like first? Shot or chaser?”
“Blood before wine, as they say.”
I pour us a glass of blood and clink mine against his.
“To your new gift,” I tell him.
He stares at me blankly for a moment then smiles. “To your new gift. I hope you enjoy her.”
“And I hope you enjoy this,” I tell him, tapping the side of my glass with my finger before finishing the blood in one go. I’ve never been one for restraint and this blood is impossible to resist.
Van Helsing takes a sniff and then a tepid sip and I nearly laugh.
I’ve had blood with the good doctor before, so I know he still partakes in it, but it still amuses me to see how much he fights his natural instinct to want blood.
The pills only do so much. There’s a real thirst inside of all of us vampires, one that can only really be quenched by the blood of a living human.
Those that stick only to pills look gaunt and ashy, and deep down inside they know they’re denying the most primal and basic part of themselves by abstaining from the fresh stuff.
Like Van Helsing here. The moment the blood hits his lips there’s a chemical change.
I smell it on him, I see it on him. His eyes light right up like fireworks.
He has another sip, a little bigger now, his hands starting to shake, and then suddenly he’s gulping the rest of the glass down.
When he’s done, red is running down his chin and he looks ravenous.
“There’s the doctor I know,” I exclaim, pouring us both another glass. “That’s the one they called Jack the Ripper. Do you remember those days, old boy?”
He gives me a steady look before wiping the blood off his chin with his finger and then licking it clean. “ I do,” he says carefully, implying that I don’t.
Memory is a funny subject for us. There’s a lot of things that we’ve experienced together that I don’t remember.
I’m guessing that when I had my memory wiped of the woman from my past, Dahlia, that a lot of events that involved the both of them disappeared.
For example, once he talked about a play we had seen in London’s West End, but I had no memory of it.
Later he said that the woman was there with us, going by the name of Lucy at the time, which made me realize that by erasing her I had erased countless other things.
Sometimes I fear they were important things.
But we don’t talk about what I went to such lengths to forget.
I know her name was Dahlia and she had been reincarnated over and over.
I know her other names from her other lives are Mina and Lucy, only because of Bram Stoker.
I know I had loved her so much, and that too much death led to too much pain.
At this point in my life I don’t feel pain, so I can’t even fathom it, but I know that I had to have been suffering in order to do something so drastic.
Which is why it’s not a subject I ever talk about, let alone think about.
It doesn’t matter anyway. What’s done is done.
She’s dead, whoever she was, and I have moved on in the only way I knew how.
They say that grief is a thief of time because the pain of loss not only steals so much from the heart but so much from life .
People lose months, years, decades of their lives to mourning.
It is utterly unfair and I am grateful I don’t have to lose anymore.
“So where did you get this blood from? Dare I ask?” Van Helsing says, reaching for the bottle.
“If I told you, you wouldn’t like it.”
He grimaces and puts the bottle back down. “Oh please. Don’t say this belongs to a child or something.”
“I’m not sure,” I admit with a shrug. “I doubt it. But what I do know is that I’m only brought the blood of the most, shall we say, succulent humans.”
He stares at me for a moment then shakes his head.
“Right. Brought. By your little friend. You’re right, I didn’t want to know that.
” He pours us both another glass and licks his lips appreciatively before he catches himself, looking guilty.
He clears his throat. “Let me guess, you’ve got it trained like a dog now? ”
Oh, how I wish , I think, and I don’t dare say that out loud in case the demon is near. Even with vampire senses, the creature is invisible to me when it wants to be, and yet it seems to hear and see everything I do.
“Let’s just say that sometimes it offers me a gift, much like you’re doing tonight,” I explain. “A way to make amends, or perhaps a way to get closer, to make me let my guard down. A way to take advantage with a little buttering up.”
I squint at him as he swallows his drink, wondering if that’s actually what he’s doing here. The years have made my mind always jump to the worst conclusions, paranoid of even my dearest of friends. It’s a potentially fatal flaw I can’t seem to shake.
He raises his empty glass as a plea for more. “Well if you feel like buttering me up...”
I pour us both another glass and we toast before finishing the blood.
Every cell inside me feels nourished and alive and I relish it.
It’s really the only time that I feel much of anything.
I have my fits of rage and bitterness, but the blood soothes and calms like nothing else can. Except for a good fuck or two.
“So, tell me about this Rose,” I ask him, feeling satisfied enough to move onto the wine. “Why did you really bring her?”
“I thought you could use a vampire for once,” he says as I uncork the bottle of vintage red and pour him a glass, the burgundy swirling with the bright tinge of the leftover blood in the glass.
“And why is that?”