A/N: One of my fills from the AA kinkmeme: reposted, edited, slightly polished. Just a quickie inspiration drabble for a really old prompt, because vampires are fun.
Reclining against an antique sofa that was almost as old as he was, Manfred swirled the blood in his wine glass and contemplated the fate of the small boy in the other room.
Gregory Edgeworth's spawn, shaken and confused and oh so vulnerable despite the brave face he was putting on. Judging from the faint sounds that Manfred's heightened senses could pick up with ease through the walls, he was working through the Pyraminx that had been left out in the open — probably to distract himself from useless, pathetic thoughts of his father's "untimely" death. The puzzle toy belonged to Franziska, her protests about such a label notwithstanding, and she had yet to solve it.
Franziska herself must have been watching the boy. Manfred could feel her small presence through their familial link, her child's emotions thrumming in his mind like the vibrating waves of a tuning fork: fierce concentration, fascinated absorption, wariness and curiosity, the mild resentment that a mere human would dare to touch her things. All of it clear and sharp and well-defined, safely walled off from his own emotions. All of it mingled with...a budding admiration?
Manfred puzzled over the secondhand feeling for a full minute. He was about to convince himself that his daughter must have misunderstood something when, from the other room, Franziska squealed in delight and clapped her hands, her end of the link suddenly set alight with a wonder that burned like neon. The Edgeworth brat must have solved the puzzle.
Already?... Manfred thought, surprised. The boy — Miles, Miles Edgeworth — was no dullard, then.
Interesting.
...Regardless, I must remember to scold her for that later. Opening your mouth too wide invited only flies, especially when one had not yet mastered the art of hiding your fangs.
Not that it was characteristic for his fledgling to make such a sound in the first place; she was only two years old, but that was more than old enough for a von Karma to master the basics of self-control and decorum. Though really, if there was anything about his daughter that invited genuine disappointment on Manfred's part (instead of the amorphous and ever-present dissatisfaction that he felt toward the world in general), it had to be her fangs. Young as she was, they weren't much more than the milk teeth of a kitten not yet weaned. Tiny needles that barely scratched skin, so small that Manfred already despaired of seeing them grow into proper incisors.
But maybe having another brat to boss around would help to keep her other edges sharp, might yet provide a better focus for her aggressive, willful spirit than any of the servants thus far had yet managed.
Manfred took another sip, enjoying how the blood went down smooth like dessert wine, sweet without being cloying. A good vintage. If memory served, this blend had belonged to a wealthy businessman he had successfully prosecuted for murdering their spouse. Prosecuted, and then bled nearly dry in the nights leading up to his execution. When Manfred had flitted into the man's cell and taken enough to fill several bottles, the rich tang of blood in the air had been exquisite.
He could smell the boy's blood, too, even from here. Could hear it rushing through tender veins, fueling the muffled beat of his young heart. Hot and fresh and delicately spiced with turbulent grief, a small bite was all Manfred needed to steal a taste. To make Miles forget — not just the bite itself, the sensation of teeth sinking into flesh, but whatever else that Manfred chose. Pain, fear, all recollection of the man he had once called father, anything. Everything.
A deeper bite would make him part of the von Karma family forever.
...Hm.
Manfred rubbed his right shoulder and frowned, mood shifting restlessly to somewhere between thoughtful and annoyed. A bullet wasn't enough to kill a vampire, especially not a prime specimen like himself, but it certainly could (and did) sting like a miststück. He wasn't sure how well he liked the idea of someone who had managed to hurt him, complete accident or no, being accepted into the ranks of the nachzehrer by his own hand. Or his own fangs, as it were.
He took another sip.
Franziska would probably enjoy a little brother more than she would a mere thrall, he supposed. After their pacification, the latter became little more than overgrown pets who provided the occasional snack, their sense of self wiped clean alongside their free will. She was the last of his sired birth-children, the only one even halfway suited to inheriting his glorious legacy at some distant point in the far-flung future. There's the fleeting thought that she would inherit an empty house as well, full of priceless mahogany furniture and servants that might as well have been carved from the same wood.
But it would be beyond foolish to entertain such sentimental claptrap, let alone feel a pang in his chest because of it, so Manfred doesn't. Only lifted his glass again for another, longer sip, and scowled upon realizing that it was already empty.
(Drinking too fast, you old monster? And here I thought you were so straight-laced. What's gotten under that thick skin of yours?)
Monster. Gregory Edgeworth had called him that once in jest, completely unaware. But just who was laughing now, fool?
Who indeed.
Briefly tempted to shatter the empty wineglass against the floor, Manfred instead gently placed it aside on a low-slung coffee table no less antique than the sofa. He leaned back, folding both hands in his lap, and simply listened. To the house settling, the sound of Franziska and Miles' whispered conversation in the other room. The soft hush of the outside world moving by them all, slow and graceless and overburdened with fools.
What to do with the boy? Turn him, or break him?
...
On the other side of the wall, Miles muttered something that Manfred didn't catch, and Franziska giggled softly in response to whatever it had been.
...Obviously, the real question was which choice would have hurt that foolish Gregory Edgeworth the most. No other factor was worth considering.
Framed like that, reducing the boy to just another mindless, broken slave was clearly a foolish waste; mere cattle only had so many uses. As for turning him, well. There was no point in being overly hasty about it. The boy wasn't going anywhere, couldn't run or hide or fight back; he had no inkling of any reason to even try. It would be a shame to spoil such an irreversible moment by seeking it too early. Better to draw out the brat's helplessness. To savor his presence as a mouse among beasts, oblivious and doomed.
Fangs slipping out to fill his mouth like knives, Manfred smiled to himself, cold and hard and glittering. Satisfied, in a way that had nothing to do with the lingering taste of blood on his tongue.
A/N:
miststück = bitch/bastard
nachzehrer = a type of German vampire that isn't accurately portrayed here