The Story of the Vampire, L (Completed | Featured )

He looked over at me in the dimness, fingers loose in my grip. "You are hurting me," he said, without interest. He had caked powder on his already pale skin, all of one shade except for points made by a hot pencil. Though it was no longer the mode at court, the new fashion more ostentatious and overdrawn, he still favored it, and as I did. My fingers crept up his wrist. I felt rough punctures, half healed and raw, a scattering of them, and I pulled. Laurent could not resist, weakened by the drawing of his blood.

My vocal cords had been severed by the younger one's teeth, and so I could not speak, but I pushed up his sleeve, the luxury of his white linen, and found his arm colored like a polluted river. I touched the bites with my fingertips, ten, fifteen, twenty.

"I have felt your judgment already," L whispered, trying to pull his arm back, "I have felt it these now two hundred years. Judgment judgment. Cry not. Is it pity? You are a cold thing, without heart, to judge me for what I do. Prideful toad."

His arm muscles worked against my grip beneath his blood bruised skin.

"Unhand me. Wretched, lye-broken flesh." After a time, he made a sound like a trapped fox, a dying child's keen, and gave up, lying back on the bed such that his hair fell across my face.

My other hand found his neck and stroked him.

"You will not know what it feels like, good heart," he said to me, softly, doing me one of his gentle nips of an insult, "for love to change you in an instant." He relaxed under my stroking, and his tone softened. "I only meant to help him die."
**
After his untimely death, the story of the vampire "L" comes together. Devotees tell the story from many points of view across history, painting a portrait of a man crushed by great loves, desperation, and the indifferent march of time.

featured 3/9/16
complete 8/31/16
Editing, as of 5/11/2018. Log: 0/129 chapters edited. 0 added.
Cover by @ferret-bird