From Slate to Crimson (11 page)

“You’re worried,” she said as she crawled up behind me.

“I have a lot on my mind,” I replied with slight chagrin. She might not have possessed our powers of telepathy, but she was quite intuitive. “I always have a lot on my mind.”

“How much of it is me?” She had snaked her arms around my waist, and was caressing my chest, “Or my blood?”

I could not help but smile at her well-placed words. “More than you know.” I turned to face her, and caressed her soft cheek. The scent of her blood suffused my senses. Already the concerns of a moment ago were fading in that sweet perfume.

“Is it safe to feed from me?” she asked. The scents changed, and along with her thoughts, I could detect her reawakening desire, and the scent of her need.

“You may be weak afterwards,” I said. “You haven’t eaten in awhile.”

She craned her neck, baring her carotid artery, and her gray eyes became as pleading as they had been that first night, when I had denied her. But now, she was changed. She would replenish her blood quickly, keeping up with my thirst.

“Please, Talante…?” She spoke once again in that needful, almost plaintive tone. My fangs responded before I could, extending with the aching pang of my desire, which flowed from my veins, and, quite visibly, to my loins.

“Gladly,” I breathed, and held her to me as I pierced her skin and fed, drowning us again in hot, sweet bliss. She pressed me hard against her as we fell into the sheets and her legs moved to wrap around my waist. We made love again, and I was grateful for her. I had helped her to forget about her troubles earlier; she had returned the favor.

“Are they all this eccentric?” Amelia asked as I brought her to the main sitting room. She spoke of my lieutenants when I had introduced them to us in the hall that led to the main sitting room of the Lair. Justin had been polite, but curt, having been wary; I figured he would be slow to develop a liking for Amelia. Aiko was nowhere to be found, though Roland had later informed me of her having left to gather the remnants of our main thaumaturgists. Roland, ever gallant, was the most comfortable with Amelia, and greeted her with more charm than I had ever mustered, sending a slight blush to her cheeks.

“You’ve only seen Elisa for a brief moment,” I answered with a sly chuckle as I opened the door that lay at the end of the maze of hallways.

“Elisa?” Amelia asked. Who’s—”

As I expected, her words were stolen at the sight of the vast banquet of human food. The entire spread took up nearly a third of the space in the large antechamber. I glanced at Amelia, and quickly turned away, stifling the laugh that threatened to bubble up from my throat as I saw the way her gray eyes widened.

“God!” she exclaimed, and her grip upon my arm tightened once she eyed the vast amount of food available. “Have you ever seen so much food in your life?”

It was a typical reaction which humans who were new to us normally showed to our banquet spread, but was no less amusing no matter how many times I saw it. I kept the table constantly supplied with food day or night, as over the years, the sitting room had evolved into a place where some of our human hosts would congregate, either for relaxation or the benefit of those of my kind who had never had found a consummate host of their own.

Scattered about the vast room were many plush, high-backed chairs. Some were arranged in a neat circle, where people conversed as they ate, and others were arranged in discreet corners where my children fed from their choice host for the night. Occasional soft moans of pleasure echoed in the room above the din of conversation. Amelia seemed to adjust more quickly to this unusual sight than most human newcomers, and had begun eating generously from the food table.

“Compliments to the chef?” I asked, “Well, that is, if you could talk.”

Amelia laughed around a mouthful of grape leaves from the Greek-Lebanese portion of the table spread. “It’s really good!” she said in a food-muffled voice.

“Have as much as you like.” I could not help but smile back at her. “It’s free to all.”

“Oh, I will,” Amelia said as she happily piled spaghetti with garlic and herb seasoning onto her plate, and stole a bite of another grape leaf. I had been about to suggest the spring rolls when I noticed that she had become oddly still. In the midst of her feast, Amelia had stopped, standing as immobile as a statue. The plate slipped from her hand, and I caught it.

“Amelia?”

My alarm subsided when her thoughts betrayed no sensations of illness. Nevertheless, her mind was as frozen as her face, her thoughts numbed with the shock that was evident in her expression. I placed the plate upon the table’s edge and looked into Amelia’s eyes, and then followed her wide-eyed gaze towards a nearby chair near the wall opposite the table.

Elisa was kneeling on the armrest, feeding from a nondescript middle-aged man in a green business suit, his eyes closed in the throes of the euphoria of the drink. I had been about to change my mind as to how well Amelia had taken the sight of so many being fed from, but then realized her shock was towards him alone.

The man sighed and opened his eyes slightly. His gaze shifted our way…and then his eyes went completely wide. He gave a start, which nearly bucked Elisa off of him. It did jar her from her feeding, however, and hurriedly, she licked away the blood from his wounds and sealed them. The reproachful look she cast at her host soon melted into confusion as she noticed his expression.

His voice quavered in stupefied horror as words finally came from his lips. “M…Miss Grayson?”

“Wally…?” His question had at last evoked a response from Amelia.

As Elisa shifted her now-blank gaze from her host to mine, Wally’s face quickly became as white as my daughter’s. And then his thoughts came clear: a torrential rain of surprise, confusion, and shame. For several seconds, he sat unmoving. At last, he leaped from his seat and fled in panic, knocking Elisa soundly to the floor on her backside. The front door opened and slammed shut in the background.

Elisa, having nothing but her dignity hurt, righted herself and winced at the brief pain her fall had caused. Licking away the excess blood from the side of her mouth, she gave Amelia a withering look. “Bugger all! And I was enjoying him, too.”

“Now you know it wasn’t her fault,” I said, having now grasped the connection between Amelia and Elisa’s host of preference.

“I know,” Elisa said, my words having stripped her of most of her short-lived anger. “It was just damn inconvenient, not to mention unhealthy for my bum.”

I stifled a laugh, and turned towards Amelia, whose shock had abated only somewhat. “You know him, don’t you,” I said.

“Bradley Wallace,” Amelia said with a vague nod. Her thoughts, still mostly nonplussed, were a war between confusion and outright disgust. “We call him Wally; he teaches fifth grade at my school. He was always a bit of a oddball, but…children?” She shook her head ruefully.

“I’m not a child,” Elisa retorted. She strode boldly towards Amelia and sized her up with a cursory gaze. “In fact, I’m quite possibly old enough to be your great-great-great-gram, you know.”

“Amelia, this is my daughter, Elisa,” I said, gesturing cordially between them both.

“Your
daughter?
” Amelia gasped, even more shocked than she had been a moment before. She pointed at Elisa, who sighed with saintly patience. And then, recognition awoke in her eyes. “Oh, wait. I remember you now! You were in the room when I woke up that first night. I knew there was something strange about you! So you were a child when you were turned?”

“Yes, I was,” Elisa said, having had to endure the same inquisition from all newcomer humans. “But I don’t remember it. And no one knows who did it. Not even Father. He found me.”

“So he took you in,” Amelia concluded, and looked my way, her emotions draining into exhausted understanding. Clumsily, she reached for her tray of food that she located on the table, her attention shifting back to me afterwards. A new welter of love came forth from her heart and I smiled despite my refusal to reciprocate her feelings earlier. I knew she was still hurt from that. “I’m sorry, Talante. I didn’t know.”

“It’s all right,” I said, waving dismissively. “You’re still new here. You’ll learn all of our ways and means before long.”

“I’d better go find Wally and calm him down,” Elisa said as she started for the door. “That was a right scare you put on him, you know.”

“Well, I mean, you were…feeding from him,” Amelia said falteringly, “and I know how it feels when you do. I…you know, couldn’t help thinking something wrong.”

“Actually, it feels different for every person and every vampire,” Elisa said, taking the initiative to explain before I could. “Sometimes it’s sexual; other times, it just feels very good, like eating your favorite food, or getting a massage.”

“Oh.”

“You intend to stay with us, I gather?” Elisa said.

“I…I think so.”

Elisa glanced at me, giving a sly smile, and then shifted her gaze back towards Amelia. “Then try to keep Father in line.”

“What?” I said.

Elisa giggled, and then curtsied before vanishing. The front door slammed just as loudly as before in her departure.

“Vampires sure are weird,” Amelia mused. “Was she always like that?”

I chuckled good-naturedly. “Would you believe that she has actually mellowed over the centuries?”

“
Centuries?
” Again, her reaction was something that was not unexpected.

“Well, she did say that she was old enough to be your grandmother three times over,” I said.

“So exactly how old is she, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Around two hundred.”

“I’m sorry,” Amelia said, shaking her head and blinking. “I wouldn’t have guessed.”

“Your reaction is no different from anyone else’s,” I assured her, “and she’s quite used to it. There is no need to be embarrassed.”

“So…do you know how she came to be that way,” she asked, “seeing how you’re the leader and all?”

It was a question that I hoped she would never ask, but I had been foolish in my hope. Amelia would have most certainly asked it, having seen my adopted daughter. My long silence unnerved her slightly, and when I at last spoke, I instantly regretted my words. But I knew that there was no other way to say them mildly.

“Amelia, know that I would do anything for you, and would do whatever you ask of me…all but
that
. I beg of you, please, do not ask again.”

So many emotions roiled within her: confusion, hurt, compassion, and love. My heart nearly burst from the assault of it all, and the desire to confess my true emotions raged within me stronger than my thirst. But like a rider desperate to subdue a rampant bull, I kept my emotions in check.

“All right,” Amelia said in a small voice. Unbidden, my hand went to her soft cheek.

“I’m sorry,” I said, holding back the tears along with my emotions. I had told no one of Elisa’s origins, and would never do so. Nothing would force me to divulge that dark page in my history. Desperate to change the subject, I resumed speaking of her colleague.

“He’ll be back, you know,” I said. “Your Wally was just surprised, and certain that you had gotten the wrong idea about him and Elisa.”

“Well, I
kinda did,” Amelia said, recovering from her disappointment. It seemed she respected my silence about Elisa, but I could still feel her curiosity. “But I’m guessing that not everything is as it seems with vampires?”

“Exactly.” My smile had returned.

* * * *

I punished Roland by forbidding him from seeing Aiko for a year. She had been away on business in our Osaka village, and so I sent word to extend her stay while I arranged for Roland to arrange for temporary room and board in another hidden village near Chicago. Roland wanted to hate me; I felt it as I pronounced the sentence, but he could not bring himself to do it. He was dearer to my heart than all my children, and I was just as dear to him. Despite his chafing at my orders, he knew his punishment was deserved. I had only hoped he would now learn to be more discreet amongst humans.

Amelia was never without questions for me when I brought her to the village, and I answered as many as I dared. Nevertheless, I could not help but feel some reservations about revealing so much to her. She had hoped I was unaware of her vague sense of uncertainty, but in vain. I had bonded so deeply with her, and so quickly, that her mind was an open book to me. What I saw in her deepest fears unsettled me.

The ensuing three nights ranged from uneventful to news of sporadic attacks upon the members of my clan who chose remote, monastic lives over the safety of our villages. They came quickly, as either messages sent via courier, or new arrivals to our villages who just barely escaped the carnage. Unnerved by the goings-on, my clan began to evolve a palpable tension in our ranks.

The fact that my relationship with Amelia was now known to all did not help matters between me, Elisa, and Justin. The closest to me among my advisors, they became the most concerned over my actions, and had indirectly made their disapproval known. Justin was the first, coming to me one night as I sat beside the hearth in my sitting room. Amelia had been sleeping in my bedroom after we had made love.

“This is a crucial time for us all, Master.” he reminded me. “We’ll need your guidance more than ever.”

“I know this well,” I replied.

“Ought we not to purge ourselves of concerns for possessions and relationships?” Justin asked. “As I see it, these will only create emotional baggage, should we lose what we love.”

“You and I have both lost what we love,” I said pointedly. I knew this would sting us both, but I held my emotions in check. “Many times over, in fact.”

“But this is different,” Elisa entreated, appearing at my side. Her small hands clung to my frock. “I’ve never felt such feelings from you, Father. I’m happy for you; I truly am, but what will happen if Amelia is lost to us? What will happen to you? If this truly turns out to be a time of attrition, what will you do?”

“Enough, both of you,” I said. Despite my understanding of their concerns, I could not help but feel a seething frustration. “I will keep my own council on whom I choose to start a relationship with. And how can I not know the dangerous time we are in? I’ve fought this war for longer than both of you have lived–-and survived. This will be no different.”

Justin and Elisa were marginally pacified by my words, but were no less concerned. And I must admit that at this time, I began to doubt my own convictions. After all, the few others with whom I had shared my bed throughout my long existence had merely been trysts and divergences to ease the monotony and hardship of my life.

My relationship with Amelia, however, had progressed quickly, but for the short amount of time we spent together, our rapport was deeper and our bond stronger than even mine and Nandi’s had ever been.