Title: Hunger
Rating: T for now, will issue warnings if it progresses further.
Genre: Drama/romance
Disclaimer: Tanz Der Vampire and its associated characters all belong to Roman Polanski, Jim Steinman and Michael Kunze. This fanfic is written solely for entertainment, not financial gain.
Summary: Why is Count von Krolock, a centuries old vampire, interested in Sarah? He is an educated nobleman, she is a simple village girl. It must be something more, something deeper….
A/N: I didn't really intend to write this at all but after watching parts of TdV on YouTube I couldn't stop thinking about the story and the translation (as I do not speak German) and hearing the amazing music and voices swirling in my head. I started writing a little TdV vignette as a break from my original novel (please God, help me finish it!) and don't know how it became this…thing. I think you TdV writers have infected me. I usually write slash, so this is a little bit of a departure for me. Wasn't sure about posting this after reading some of the amazing fic here, but what the heck. And yes, I've read with interest all those deep discussions about the meaning of TdV, about the relationships, about love & lust, the evil and the good side of living forever…this is a spin on the elements of the musical, not tight to canon, okay? I'm a romantic; so sue me. Also, the story is one chapter away from being completed. I'm having some issues with formatting and uploading to this site. I apologize if you see any words run together or other strange formatting gaffes. Any other mistakes, like spelling, please let me know. I try to be careful, but no one's perfect.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Hamlet (1.5, 166-7).
xxx
Hunger
Chapter 1
Birth Day Witness
0
Count von Krolock stood on the battlements of his castle looking out into the night. His senses ranged far afield, surveying his domain. On the wind hunger called to him, sweet as newly spilled blood. It drew him from his dark meditations and down into the small village at the foot of the mountain.
A woman in childbirth, at the small inn. He smelled the child come forth in blood and water, heard her fierce cry, felt the hunger. A babe, an infant, demanding to be fed. A simple enough birth, they happened all the time in the families of his territory. Replenishing the herd, growing the livestock. He had no illusions as to what these mortals meant to him and his ilk: food. To think otherwise always invited pain and death. He could never forget what he was.
Nevertheless, he couldn't stay away. Curiosity drew him, almost more than the drive to feed. It seemed like an eternity since he had felt anything more engrossing than bloodlust.
For the life of him-or unlife, he thought wryly-he didn't know how or why he found his feet pacing the perimeter of the inn, night after night. Staying to the shadows, listening and watching, always on the outside looking in. And inside, a comely pink-cheeked wife rocked her first born daughter, her innkeeper husband doting on them both, smiling indulgently. The scene brought up the ghost of a memory...the day long ago he had held his own first born, a tiny boy-child, head crowned with ashen gold, his son Herbert, his heir apparent.
He turned away from the sight of domestic bliss, forced himself back to his eyrie, to his world of night, to his family of darkness.
Why wallow in the past, which could not be altered? Why waste even one waking moment on the light he would never see again…other than the tempting thought of THE last sunrise, glorious and searing, before a blessed nothingness….
He wanted to forget. Only one existence remained now.
Yet, four months later, he clung to the roof of the inn in the dead of night, considering the attic window. It was unlocked, cracked open to let in the warm spring air. It was the work of a moment to slip inside, to glide down the ladder onto the landing of the second floor. He already knew where innkeeper Chagal and his wife Rebecca slept, and he knew their little daughter slept in the small adjoining room, a makeshift nursery. His nose wrinkled at the lingering smell of garlic wafting up from below, but mercifully the bulbs of the "stinking rose" were absent upstairs. He felt a slight smile quirk his mouth as he recalled the loud argument some months ago. It had ended with Chagal grumbling but removing every trace of the noxious plant from the bedrooms as Rebecca trailed after him, glaring if he missed even a clove.
A few moments later and he stood in the nursery, drawing back the curtains and opening the window. Slight rustling sounds greeted his ears as he turned toward the crib sitting in the center of the small room. He scooped up the baby- Sarah her parents had named her-and held her up in the moonlight.
"Hello little one," he breathed. Little insistent feet thumped against his chest. He gave a low throaty laugh, charmed. He could already see the beauty she would become in the curves of her face, the underlying structure of cheekbone and jawline. Wavy reddish-brown curls stood up every which way on her skull.
When her face screwed up and her body began to arch in his hands, he soothed her. Crooning soft and low, a wordless lullaby. She calmed, unclenching her fists, greenish eyes regarding him gravely. For a long moment he gazed back, her head engulfed in one taloned hand, her body nestled in the other. Her heartbeat fluttered against his palm, rapid as a bird's. So small, so helpless. How easy it would be to snuff out such a life, how simple. But he was sick of death, sick of the black thing he carried inside, a part of him yet not. Instead, he breathed in her scent, milky and sweet, opening his mouth to taste itbetter, letting his tongue slip past the curb of his canines. He settled her back into her crib and closed the window, letting the curtains fall. In the familiar darkness he slipped back out the way he had come in.
He tried to stay away then, tried to distract himself with other, darker amusements. Still the strange hunger prodded him, her hunger, growing with each passing season, each passing year. Again and again that yearning drew him, until he gave up resisting.
xxx
A/N: "I've been waiting for you, Since you've been born. I've waited patiently, But not for long. And since I know all your dreams, I understand what you need, And when I call you, You must go where I lead. Your dreams are so hungry, It's time now to feed."
- from translation of Gott Ist Tott, provided by Vamptanzen's "Tanz der Vampire" Site.