Epilogue
VALTU
A Few Years Later
“S ignor Aminoff ,” Maria says to me, clapping her hands together. “ Rose é entrata in travaglio !”
A wave of nausea comes over me. “Already?”
“What did she say?” Amethyst cries out grabbing my thigh and digging her nails in as she looks between me and the vampire doula.
“She’s gone into labor,” I tell her. “Please unhook your claws from my leg.”
Amethyst lets go of me and leaps to her feet, pleading to Maria. “Can I see her?”
I translate to Maria, who has been helping Rose ever since we found out she was pregnant, who also happens to know very little English. Apparently, Maria hasn’t been a vampire that long, so her lack of languages is forgivable.
Maria tells me in Italian that it is up to Rose if she wants to see anyone and she disappears back upstairs.
“It’s up to your daughter,” I tell Amethyst. “I’m sure she’ll want you in there.”
“She’s never going to want me in there! She’s going to curse me for giving birth to her in the first place,” Amethyst says just as Wolf walks back in the room.
“What did I miss?” he asks eagerly. Then he looks at me. “You okay, Valtu? You look a little pale.”
I just raise my hand and nod, trying to breathe through it.
The truth is, I’m not okay. I’m so nervous that it’s making me sick. I was better earlier in the day, when Rose told me she was having contractions and I called the doula and the doctor over, but now that the contractions have turned into labor, I’m about to have a complete panic attack.
I have a reason to be nervous too. For the last few years, ever since I reunited with Rose, we’ve been trying for a baby.
I had my vasectomy reversed pretty much right away and I think we both assumed she would get pregnant immediately.
After all, vampires are incredibly fertile, especially the young women right after they turn, and it had happened that way for us in the past.
But no matter what, she never got pregnant. It wasn’t for lack of trying, obviously. Every day, often multiple times a day, I was screwing her brains out and yet it just wouldn’t take. Her body remained in status quo.
Rose had faith, though. Unwavering faith. She said it would happen in due time.
But in the back of my mind, I started to think that maybe there was a reason for this.
Maybe it was a good thing that she couldn’t carry my child.
We were very aware that both of her prior pregnancies ended in her death, as well as the child’s death.
What if this was sparing her life this time around?
I made peace with it. I wasn’t about to do anything that would jeopardize the love that we had. I went to the ends of the earth to make her happy and keep her safe and I wasn’t going to throw any of that away, even if having a child was something that I really wanted.
At least, I thought I made peace with it. But nine months ago, Rose came to me with a smile so big it nearly split her face, her eyes dancing with delight, and I knew what she was going to say.
“I’m pregnant,” she had said, and the joy and pride in her voice made me realize how badly she had wanted this.
And the way my heart swelled at the news, like it had become too big for my chest, made me realize that I hadn’t really made peace.
I know we would have been fine without children, but knowing she was pregnant cemented how badly I’d wanted them with her.
We had another chance.
And so I wasn’t about to take any chances.
At the time we were jet-setting around the world.
Rose wanted to travel and I was happy to indulge her.
We spent months on a yacht in the Mediterranean, just the two of us, eating fish we’d caught off the boat, drinking retsina in tiny white-washed bars in Crete.
We climbed Mount Kilimanjaro and spent weeks on the beaches of Madagascar.
We studied art in Argentina and lived in a penthouse in New York City.
We did whatever Rose wanted to, whatever would keep her happy.
I just wanted to be with her, it didn’t matter where.
We were in Tenerife when she got the news and I knew we had to settle down for good, find a place to raise a family for at least the next ten years.
We decided on Italy.
We decided on Venice.
It was an easy choice to make. There was no other place we’d rather put down roots again.
It had been long enough that keeping a low profile in the city would be easy.
I couldn’t get my job back at the conservatory without raising suspicion, so I changed my name from Valtu Aminoff to Vlad Harper.
Seemed fitting enough. Cut my hair a little, grew a beard, then I started offering private music lessons.
Most of my students are vampires, but there’s a few unknowing humans in there as well.
I also took over the Red Room again, with Rose by my side as a business partner.
Bitrus was more than happy to hand over the responsibility and he immediately absconded to the Rocky Mountains of all places, to go live on a ranch, about as far away from a vampire sex dungeon in Venice as you can get.
Luckily Rose has really taken to running the room, and most of the vampires call her Madame, which I find amusing.
Van Helsing still lives the scientist life in Oxford, working his life away, though he visits often and has opened another lab in Barcelona, so at least the Doctor gets a little bit of fun in his life. At the moment he’s upstairs with Rose and Maria, ensuring a healthy delivery.
Lenore and Solon are back in San Francisco and Wolf and Amethyst have a place around the corner from them, though of course they’re here in Venice now for Rose’s delivery.
Dylan lives in Portland, and probably would have come, but the kid is stoned out of his gourd most days so his parents will probably do a video call with him later.
And then there’s Leif. Leif the wild card. Leif the tortured soul.
Leif has a lot of shit to work through, even still.
It’s going to take some time before the trauma of his childhood gets resolved, if it ever will.
With Bellamy, Atlas, and Celina gone, there’s no one left to tie him to that world, but even so, he behaves more like a human than a vampire. Sometimes more like a witch too.
He was living with Wolf and Amethyst until recently, until he decided he’d had enough and needed time away, then he took off back to Europe.
Van Helsing said that he wanted to help Leif further, so the last that everyone heard, Leif was living in Barcelona and having sessions with Van Helsing whenever he’s in town.
I think everyone is relieved that Leif isn’t completely on his own, that the Doctor is keeping a good eye on him.
We just don’t know what his future holds.
I know it weighs on Rose a lot to not have the kind of relationship with Leif that she has with Dylan, but I tell her it will come in time.
Everything always does.
“Just breathe,” Wolf says, putting his hand on my back, trying to reassure me. “Rose is a toughie. She’s going to be okay.”
I inhale sharply through my nose and attempt to loosen the vice in my chest. “At the moment, I don’t know if I’m going to be okay.”
He laughs. “Maybe we should smoke the cigars I bought now. Or do we have to wait? I think it would calm you.”
“He just needs a drink,” Amethyst says. “And so do I.”
She goes over to the bar beside my piano and unscrews a bottle of Scotch, drinking it directly from the bottle.
I groan. “That’s like two hundred years old,” I protest. “I was saving that.”
She shrugs. “And is there a better special occasion than the birth of your child? Which, by the way, I think it’s insane that we don’t know the sex yet.”
Now it’s my time to shrug but I hold out my hand for the bottle. “What’s the point? It’s a baby. Boy, girl, neither—doesn’t really matter to us.”
“You’re still a little too human sometimes,” Wolf tells her. “Always liking to put everything in a neat compartment.”
She has another swallow and then hands me the bottle. “Neat? You know me. I’m not neat. Boy, girl, I don’t care, I just want to know what name the baby will have.”
“We’ve already told you as much,” I remind her. “Constantine.”
Amethyst groans. “You can’t name my grandchild Constantine.”
I take a swig of the Scotch. “Oh yes I can. Constantine Aminoff. What’s wrong with that? I think it’s beautiful for any child.”
“It’s Constantine Harper ,” Wolf says, taking the bottle from me now. At this rate we’ll be finished with the Scotch in no time.
“It’s Harper only when we’re in Venice,” I remind him. “My passport says otherwise.”
“Your passport also says you were born thirty-five years ago,” Wolf points out.
“ Signor Aminoff !” Maria’s sing-song voice comes out from upstairs.
I give Wolf a look that says, see, it’s Aminoff .
“ Vuole vederti ,” Maria says. “ Sta succedendo !”
My gut twists.
“What?” Amethyst cries out. “What did she say?”
“She said she wants to see me,” I say, trying to straighten up and fight the nausea. The fear is so great but I need to work my way through it for Rose. I can’t be losing my damn mind, I’m supposed to be the calm supportive one while she’s trying to deliver a baby vampire.
I swallow hard and look at the two of them. “It’s happening.”
“Oh,” Amethyst says, clapping her hands together quickly, while Wolf puts his arm around her, giving her an affectionate squeeze. “Oh, it’s happening, it’s happening.”
“Here comes baby Constantine,” I announce, and I quickly head up the stairs before I lose my nerve.