Chapter 2, part 1 - Nicky, 1870

Chapter 2 - Nicky, 1869-70


When I came back to them in 1869, it was the second time. The first time I returned home was in 1720, before fleeing again in 1741.  At that time, Laurent had been involved with a poor, sad thing dying of the white death and it had been so macabre I couldn't take it.I left the continent and travelled to Morocco, where it was hot and quiet and I could sleep in cool subterranean places without having to argue with fools who wanted more out of life.


After Morocco it was Venice, but I was still young enough to fear ones older than myself. I decided that was no longer an acceptable condition. So I made myself perfectly sweet and beautiful. Oh, it will shock them to know what I did. How blood-drinkers started whispering about me in dark corners, about the little horror with soft hair and sharp teeth. I had learned to act the vulnerable petit from Laurent by then, and knew of the lax stupidity of love and the desperation isolation brings, and I needed to feel powerful.


To be honest with you, that is what I have always needed. I will not pretend I wasn't angry then. I was. I am angry now. I am angry at Dasius for being boring. I am angry at needing Laurent for his love and for his blood. I am angry at the things I've done. I am angry at the sloe-eyed fool recording this for posterity, who is also, I will add, another former paramour of Laurent's I could kill with a flick of my wrist. Let it be known.


I went into the dark corners of the world and found old guard vampires of other covens, insinuated myself into their lives, drank from the great bloodlines of our kind. I powdered them and brushed their hair and promised to take them out into the world. I learned burning and stabbing vampires dead in their bedrooms.  You are all always talking about that perfect feeling of love and virtue and making good. What about the feeling of pushing a blade through the neck of the enemy? I know that you love it. The seperation of flesh and vertebrae under a remorseless knife? The glory of sleeping in the soaking bed of the one you've done for? Because we are all enemies to each other who are not of the same blood, make no mistake. And when I went back in 1869, it was because I was tired, and wanted what was mine, and because I had discovered to my horror that I had need of feeling at home myself.


It had turned fall already that year. When I went in through Laurent's window, Dasius was gone, and there he was, sitting at his vanity, powdering his neck. And I thought, oh he has not changed. Look at his blond hair tied up as if around some jealous lover's fist. Look at his delicate jaw, waiting for a rough kiss and the rouged cheek aching to be slapped. I let myself sit on his bed and watch him, and after a time, he saw me there, in his mirror and turned around.


"Is the love affair ended?" I asked him.


"Yes, little one," he said. "Long ago. Very long. Come and stay awhile."


"Will you not leave me if he comes back? Don't make yourself a liar."


He gestured for me with his hands. When I went to him he bundled me up in his arms and kissed the top of my head the way old ladies kiss small dogs. "You smell different, little pea," he said, smelling my head.


And I thought that he was too clever by half for remembering the way I had smelled. Then I looked into his eyes, he whose arms I had longed for, and the state of his face drew a wail from me which startled him. I took him by the chin so I could see what Dasius had done to his face. His eyes opened wider in surprise, and they were shot through with red and crusted with blood, and so pale blue it was like he had no iris at all behind the gore.


"I will kill him, Laurent, I promise you. I will kill him for what he has done to your face. Can you see? Do you see my knife?"


For all my life, I had known his eyes to be soft and brown and warm, and the loss made me so vulnerable after so long that I wanted to die. And he kissed my forehead and stroked his fingers through my hair and whispered, but he could not keep me from my work.


"Where have you been, my darling?" he murmured. "Your brother will be home soon."


I could not speak, eaten by anger.


"Why would he hurt me, Nicky?" he asked, smiling, cheek resting on my hair. "Oh darling, you are still too emotional by half." 

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