I gaped at his retreating body. Where is he going? I didn’t give him permission to leave. With the choice of yodeling after him like some fisherwife or scurrying after him like a peon, I chose neither. He was here to examine me. He’d have to come back.
I draped myself on a couch and had little time to ponder my strange reaction to him and his lack thereof to me. He returned almost immediately-his gait smooth and unlike the shuffle I’d expected of a man who spent days in labs. A thick briefcase dangled from one of his hands and a laptop case from the other. He set them both down and opened the fat one. He rummaged for a moment and pulled out a notepad. He immediately jotted some notes. His head bent over his task, he said not a word to me.
Curiosity burned me, but I refused to give in and ask what he noted. I’d find out later when he slept and I snooped through his things. Privacy was for stupid people who didn’t have enemies. Me, I trusted no one.
The scratching of his pen stopped and he raised his eyes to meet mine. “Sorry, but I wanted to write down my first observations.”
“And they are?” I asked before I could curb my tongue.
I could have sworn mirth flashed in eyes, but he dropped his gaze too quickly for me to be sure. “Um, I wrote that you are an attractive woman appearing to be in her mid to late twenties.”
I preened at attractive-maybe not as immune as I’d surmised. “I was forty when my human side died,” I supplied.
“Really?” his eyes rose to meet mine again and I pushed a little power at him, a little hey, don’t you think I’m hot mojo. Instead of drooling, he looked away.
I frowned.
He scribbled again.
I tapped my nails on the wooden armrest of the couch, the rat-tatting sound loud in the almost silent room.
He stopped writing and looked up again. “Sorry, just writing down your age at the time you were turned.”
“You could have looked that up on the internet,” I replied, wondering at the fact he didn’t even know such a basic fact about me.
“I didn’t want to taint my findings by doing research on you beforehand,” he explained. “So, I hope you’ll excuse me if I take a lot of notes or ask a lot of questions.”
As answers went, his made sense. “I’ve been told to cooperate, so ask away.”
“If you don’t mind me asking, you said you were forty when you died yet you look much younger. Is this common for older humans who are changed into vampires?”
I almost bristled at his calling me old; however, I reminded myself he’d guessed my exterior age as much younger. “Oh, I had to work at regaining the beauty of my youth. I bathed in the warm blood of several hundred virgins before I was able to reverse the telltale signs of aging.”
My response startled him and he peered at me with his mouth rounded in an ‘O’ of surprise. “Seriously?”
I smiled with a lot of teeth. “Totally. It’s why I was arrested and convicted.”
He knelt in front of me scribbling. “Tell me more.”
“How about I start from when I was turned?” A day I still remembered vividly.
“Can you just briefly summarize your life up to that point starting with what year you were born?”
I leaned back and remembered back to a time when I was still so ignorant… so human. “I was born in Hungary on August seventh, 1560. I had a normal childhood. As was usual for the time, I was married by the time I was fifteen to Ferenc Nádasdy. We had several children together.” Precious darlings whose faces I could still clearly see in my mind. I skimmed over them. “Some of them lived, some died as was common for the time.” The grief I’d suffered at their early demise still stung hundreds of years later. Unbeknownst to all but my queen, I kept a watchful eye over my few remaining descendants who’d changed their names to escape my legacy of murder and blood. Too bad for them, they still carried my genes.
“Did they know of your change?”
I shook my head vehemently. “No. Once I was turned, I prohibited my children from visiting me.” Not out of shame for my newfound status, but because I feared losing control and eating them.
“So how were you changed? Who did it?”
“It happened in the year of 1600. My husband was away at war, again.” He’d spent most of our marriage elsewhere, the ideal situation for an arranged marriage like ours. “I was in charge of the castle and the defense of our lands. The last night of my humanity, a storm was brewing and the household had just settled itself for the night when a knock sounded.” It was so easy to slip back in my memories to the moment that changed me forever. I could still hear the echoing, ominous thud as someone braved the wicked weather to knock at my door.
My servants huddle in the common room, their fearful eyes trained on the main door to the hall. Dressed in my sleep wrap, I chide them for being foolish and superstitious. I open the door, the coolness of the night and the dampness of the pouring rain making me shiver. At first I see nothing, but a crack of lightning illuminates the courtyard. I let out a small scream at the sudden looming figure of a stranger dressed in a heavy cloak.
His low voice emerges from the depth of his hood. “I apologize for the lateness, fair mistress; however, my carriage has broken down. If I might humbly request a bed for the night, in the morn I shall depart, seeking aide in repairing my carriage.”
Raised to be charitable to others of my caste, something evidenced by the cut of his cloak and the richness of the fabric, I hasten to invite him in. “Enter and warm yourself by the fire.” How little do I know I invite my doom.
My servants know. They cling to each other, cringing and staying as far as they can get from the gentleman. When kind tones do not move them, I resort to harsher words. My servants scuttle to wake the slumbering coals in the fireplaces and set a kettle to boil. The stranger warms his pale hands in front of the fire and turns as I approach. He removes his cloak and I am struck by his handsome features. Darkly attractive, his pale skin is offset by his ebony hair. I find myself lost in his eyes and for the first time in my life, I feel desire.
My heart races and I can only watch as he approaches me. He strokes a slender finger down the column of my throat. I swallow and tremble, caught like a fly in the web, except, unlike the fly, I am not sure if I want to escape his sultry promise.
“Such beauty, slowly caving to the demands of age,” he says, shaking his head almost sadly.
“Such is the way of life,” I answer breathlessly.
“And if you could have your youth returned, and walk the earth forever?”
“A fantasy,” I scoff. “And even if possible, at what price?”
“Your humanity.”
I want to step back from him at his frightening words. I suddenly wonder if I should have heeded my servants. But hindsight cannot save me. I remain frozen as the stranger leans down and brushes his lips over the edge of my jaw and down my neck. His cold embrace chills me and fear sweeps through me.
“Please don’t,” I whisper.
“Oh, but I think I shall,” he murmurs. Then he sinks his teeth into me. The pain makes me whimper, but a prisoner under his spell, I cannot run or cry for help. Instead, I stand there as he sucks at my skin, the sound of his swallowing loud in the room.
His arms come around me and support me when I slump to the floor. He draws me back up, and still he drinks even as my vision blurs and my thoughts float hazily.
I wake the next day in my bed, heartily believing I’ve had a nightmare. My mirror, though, tells me otherwise as I see the vivid red punctures in my throat.