This story is my baby. I keep coming back to it, keep rewriting it … but hopefully this will be it's last incarnation. It is based largely off the Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice – really, it's a crossover between that and, of course, Harry Potter. Hope you enjoy!
Obviously, there are some major differences here from the books, though I have attempted to remain true to the vampires and vampire communities of The Vampire Chronicles. However, hopefully I will be forgiven for any inconsistencies, as I bring the characters of both genre's into a time neither author has dabbled in.
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We met met on the bridge, arriving nearly simultaneously, though I knew he had been waiting for quite some time, just out of sight. I caught it from the edges of his mind, before the old barriers slammed up, cutting me off as they always did. I never tried to delve deeper – let him keep his secrets, his thoughts private, his sacred memories his own.
We all had our little quirks, and for him it was the memories of his Life – the Life Before. One could almost call it a religion, the way he clung to those memories when all else failed him.
No so I. If anything, I longed to forget, and for decades at a time I had been granted that request in the past. But always he drew me back to myself, as I drew him out of his memories.
We always met on this bridge. I wasn't sure why; it held no signifigance in our past together, either mortal or immortal. But perhaps that was reason enough; it was neutral ground, safety.
He carried with him a book – thick, leather bound, the kind you didn't see so often these days. You didn't see much of any sort of books, these days. All computers, more and more advanced at the days aged on.
Not many came down to the lower levels of the city now, preferring their world in the sky – narrow walkways of super re-enforced glass, buildings that rose miles into the sky. No, it was only the most desperate who journeyed down to the surface of the planet, now. And this was, perhaps, more than enough of a reason for us to meet here, where the chance of a human coming upon us was so very slim.
I was leaning against the side of the bridge, staring down into the water as he came to stand at my side – neither of us bothering to speak for several minutes, not even to acknowledge the other's presence.
"I went to see her." There was no point in asking who he spoke of – we both knew. Ah, my dear, sweet Avangelista. She lay, even now, in her cave in the ice. She had gone there herself, to sleep away the centuries. We had tried waking her, once, only to find her as still and cold as the ice which now encased her, after so long in the frozen wastes of the world.
"And what did she have to say?" There was amusement in my voice, and I could feel the glare sent my way, even if I did not glance at my companion.
"That's not funny." I could almost hear the name he wanted to add to the end of it – the name he had called so often in anger and contempt when we were human children, so sure we were the greatest enemy of the other.
Now, we were all the other had.
I could still feel his glare as he spoke again, though there was a note of triumph to his voice, and I could almost see the familiar sneer twisting his lips in my mind's eye. "Actually, she wanted to know what the hell you were thinking."
I turned my head too fast for a human, so fast it would appear I had not moved at all – it was a useful trick when confronted with Hunters, but nothing more than that. There was no magic behind it; that had left me long ago.
"She is staying at a hotel in the Upper City. Will you come with me to see her?" He had not bothered to cut his hair that morning, instead pulling it back into a tight ponytail atop his head. He spoke softly now, so unlike the way he had raised his voice in anger as a child, as a teenager. Those eyes were the same as ever, however – cold, calculating, watching my every move and making his own assumptions. He had gotten better at that, over the years; better at living among muggles. But certain things stayed with you, and his upbringing was one of those things.
A Malfoy is always aware, always watching. Remember that – it might just save your life one of these days.
When had he told me that? Years ago; always it was years. I measured time not in minutes, not in hours, nor even in days. It came in years now, decades.
"She's worried about you." His words brought me back to the present, and I gave a short laugh as I turned to stare out at the water – water poisoned beyond repair. They brought it up in great tubs now, to be cleaned and processed and made drinkable for the humans who had been responsible for it's pollution in the first place.
They didn't like to think about that, though, did they? Didn't like to think of the past too much. Made them feel too guilty, I suppose.
"She has nothing to worry about. And neither do you." I could almost see the disbelieving look on his face as I said this, a small smile touching my lips. Of course he worried – it seemed to be the only thing we spoke of, his worries.
You stay too close to them – far too close. They'll only die in the end, they always do..
Oh, if only knew how close I had come to Turning my various human companions over the years. I held them mostly in Thrall, a simple enough trick with the Dark Gift, though over the years my control had strengthened to the point where it was only a suggestion within their minds, this love for me; they found their own reasons to rationalize it within their own minds.
But we knew, the both of us – all three of us – the price of making another; of bringing another into the immortal life. Knew that not all could take to this life – not all could survive the transition.
"So you won't come to see her."
There was a history there – a history between the three of us I didn't care to delve to deeply into. Didn't care to remember. But he would never let me forget.
Not for long, anyway.
Once, I would have laughed at the question – more as a defensive reflex than anything else. Such habits had long since left me, however. Instead I continued staring out at the water, into those murky depths. Even now, the great machines were pumping water up, into the great casks, as tall as ten men and as wide as five, that resided on the lower tiers of the city – not so far down as we on the surface but far enough that only the poorer dregs of society were forced to live among the great machines, to work among them.
"Then she was right." He held the book toward me now, and I accepted it with a raised eyebrow. It was an old game we had played often, before he slumber in the ice, back when we had been able to talk so easily – and far more often than these yearly meetings between him and I.
One of them would gift me a book – sometimes like this, sometimes with a hard cover, sometimes a soft. At times they were lined, other times not.
And they knew I always tossed them – in a dumpster, left in a coffee shop, on a park bench. It didn't matter where they were left, who retrieved them. They knew I didn't use them; didn't write my thoughts, my memories as they longed for me to.
"Back to this then, are we?" I asked with a slight smile, turning the book over in my hands.
When I glanced up again, he was gone, in the way he always left – without a sound, without warning.
Why didn't I simply toss it into the river? I can't say, but as I walked back to one of the lifts that would bring me to the Lower City, I still held the book clutched in my hands, turning it over every once in a while, even as I stared down at the ground without really seeing it.
The lifts were made of reinforced glass, allowing one to watch the ground quickly retreating – a nightmare to those who were born with a fear of heights, but those were few in this age of cities in the sky, this space age.
I could have left the book in the lift, could have left it upon one of the benches in the man-made park I passed. I could have tossed it in one of the large wire trash cans that lined that same park.
Instead I brought it with me into the small café I frequented quite often lately, these past few years. I found a pen nestled in the wire binding – just another way of Avangelista giving me no excuse not to use it, not to write in it. I still couldn't understand her obsession with making me write down the story of my life – of my undeath. Of my turning.
But the book itself lured me, in the way only an antique can. Paper had not completely phased out, not entirely. It was still used here and there, in the classrooms of the Lower City especially. And the rich would always have their journals, filled with the story of their rather mundane lives.
But books like these – well-made, thick, almost parchment-like paper and a sturdy cover – books like these were harder and harder to come by. Where she had found it, I didn't know. Even as I write in it now, I still don't know.
The café is quiet around me – the morning rush has come and gone, the afternoon rush not yet come. The perfect time to begin.
And so I shall.