Chapter 11 – Valtu
Valtu
It has been painful to remember those days, to keep writing them down in this journal.
There was so much joy in them at the time, so much hope for the future.
In so many ways I was young, because we are all younger before love shapes us and changes us.
I was na?ve in thinking that finding Mina again would make all my problems go away. All it did was make things worse.
But at the time it was heaven. I didn’t think that far ahead, about the fact that she didn’t know I was a vampire, and that if I were to marry her, that she would be doomed to live a mortal life.
That she would one day die and I would keep on living.
I didn’t let myself think that far because the present tasted far too sweet.
Now, though, all these memories taste like death.
THE VICTORIAN AGE
London – 1888
“I probably shouldn’t come in,” Lucy said to me in a small, apprehensive voice as we approached my front door in Marylebone, the gas lamps outside my house flickering.
“And why is that?” I asked, letting go of her elbow.
She dipped her chin, staring at me demurely. “Because I’ve never been alone with you. Not in your house.”
“And?” I wanted to hear her say it, for her to tell me my intentions.
“And I know what you want, Count Aminoff.” I stared at her to go on. She took in a deep breath. “A lady never gives her body to a man before marriage.”
“And who told you that?” I asked, taking off my hat and holding it under my arm as I peered at her, trying to hide a smile. “Your parents? Your friends? God himself?”
I had been courting Lucy for about two months.
Back in those days, you took your time in getting to know one another, and in this case, it was all for her benefit.
After all, I already knew Lucy. I knew her as Mina.
And even though she seemed to have zero recollection about her past life, at that moment in time it didn’t really matter.
I knew that one day she would have to remember. One day I would make her remember.
I figured sex would be the way to do it.
That does seem to be my solution for all things.
I thought that the moment I came inside her would be the moment she’d really recognize me.
All of me. But ravishing Mina in the fields of seventeenth century Finland proved to be a lot easier than trying to get Lucy naked in my bed in Victorian England.
That said, tonight I could tell she was waning.
Months of innocent dates to museum exhibits and plays and walks in the many gardens and parks of London, and she was starting to bend to my whim.
I did my best not to compel her, as I wanted her to want me on her own accord, but I admit there were a few times I managed to push the logic out of her head and let her sensual nature come forward.
Unfortunately even when logic was gone, there was good old fashioned guilt over being a lady and what society and God would think and all of that baggage that was thrust upon women the moment they were born.
Tonight, though, I was going to show her the stars. I was going to show her who the God was in her life, not some unseen creator, but me, an immortal being with far more mercy. When she came so hard that she yelled my name, that’s when she’d discover the real religion, the religion of sex.
Van Helsing thought I was nuts, though. He had met Lucy often after that first time in the British Museum; the three of us would often go to the opera together.
He liked Lucy a lot but the whole idea of her being my past love reincarnated didn’t sit right with him.
Despite being a vampire, the doctor was another person who was awfully fond of science and logic.
To him, it didn’t make sense and so it couldn’t be true. Reincarnation just wasn’t believable.
But none of that really mattered to me. Van Helsing may have looked at Lucy and saw a beautiful young girl and assumed I was just projecting the trauma of losing Mina onto her.
“After all,” he had said once, “there is no photographic evidence from those days. You never had a painting of Mina. I am sure you just think they are the same person when they aren’t.
If you could pull up Mina from the grave right now, I am sure you’d see that they merely look the same.
She reminds you of her, that’s all, and you want it to be her so badly that you’ll believe anything. ”
I humored the doctor. I let him believe that if it made him feel better.
But I knew. I knew this was Mina, my long-lost love, and I was going to do whatever it took to make her remember who I am and what we were to each other.
I knew I was no slouch in the looks department, I knew I had status as a count, lots of money at my disposal, a gorgeous house in the city, rare artifacts and art I’d collected over the years.
I knew there were many reasons why Lucy would be interested in me anyway, but I chose to believe that the main reason was because she felt something for me that she couldn’t explain.
She felt something for me that would make her trust me because deep down in her subconscious she knew who I was. She knew what we had lost.
But that night, I was yearning to take the next step. I needed her trust in order to do the things I had been dying to do with her, to bring my body together with hers in an unholy union.
To make her finally see.
At the time, Lucy lived with her parents at an estate on the outskirts of the city.
Though her family was wealthy and they had drivers themselves, I always had my driver bring her home and at a reasonable hour.
Tonight’s play, however, had been cancelled just as we got to the theatre, so I thought it was the perfect time to bring her back to my place and, well, deflower her, for lack of a better word.
I guess, fuck her like a dog in heat would also get the point across.
“What makes you think that stepping inside my house would lead to your defilement?” I asked her.
She giggled coyly, playing the game. “My intuition, I suppose,” she said. “I am a woman after all, Count Aminoff.”
“I can always take you home if you’d like,” I say, gesturing to the carriage that was out of view. “I am at your disposal. The choice is yours.”
I could see a real war waging behind those pretty green eyes of hers.
“I think I’d like to come inside,” she eventually said.
God, those words made me hard immediately. She would be coming all right.
“Good choice,” I told her. I unlocked the door and we stepped inside. It was barely lit, a few paraffin lamps in the grand hall and the sitting room that my servants had kept going while I was out, while the gas lights on the ceiling had been turned off.
Lucy looked around, impressed. It wasn’t as large as her parents’ house in the country, but my wealth was displayed in different ways.
I took her by the hand and led her to the velvet sofa in the sitting room, then quickly went into the back of the house where the servants’ quarters were.
One of them was a German named Han who was a vampire who was down on his luck and dealing with depression.
At the time I just saw him as a poor soul who needed help.
In those days vampires didn’t even think they could get depressed as they believed they were immune to physical impairments, aging and disease, and though that’s the case, the mind doesn’t work that way.
I saw Han and told him that I was home for the evening and I had company and wasn’t to be disturbed. He was used to the women I would bring home into this house, the things I would do to them, so I knew he wouldn’t dare interrupt.
Then I went back into the kitchen, grabbed a bottle of red wine I had gotten from this small but mighty vineyard in Bordeaux a few years back, and joined Lucy in the sitting room.
She was standing up, marvelling over the instruments I had in the corner beside the fireplace: a violin, a cello, and a piano.
“Do you play?” she asked.
I nodded. “I do.”
Her eyes sparkled. She loved music. “I didn’t know this about you.”
“You should have come into my home sooner then,” I said. I strolled over to the bar and set down the bottle, opening it with a corkscrew and pouring us both a glass. “To us,” I said to her, staring deep into her eyes.
“To us,” she said. She had a sip of wine, her gaze growing intense, and it was that moment that I could smell her. A gorgeous scent that signalled she was ready for me. Fuck, I had missed that.
“To tonight,” she added, having a larger gulp this time.
I slammed back the glass, perhaps a waste for a wine so rare and as she said, “Maybe you could play me some music,” I was grabbing her by her face, my hand behind her back and her wine glass dropped to the floor, bouncing on the soft rugs, wine spilling like a bloodstain.
She let out a faint cry and I kissed her roughly.
Until that moment our physical contact was on the chaste side, which was torture considering how deeply and intimately I knew Mina’s body.
With Lucy I had to behave, I had to hold back, and even though I knew she was a virgin and had never been with a man like this before, I knew I couldn’t be too delicate with her. I could only hope she liked it rough.
“Valtu,” she whispered as my mouth went to her neck and I inhaled the scent of her, tasted her skin, heard the singing of her blood in her veins, begging for me to bite.
In that moment I remembered what Van Helsing had said about how I had never been a vampire around Mina, I had only been a guileless human.
It was enough to stop me from sinking my teeth in, from finally tasting her blood. All these centuries and I only dreamed of what her blood would taste like, if it would taste as sweet as her cunt.
Now, though, her cunt would have to do.