New story. No idea if I'll get a chance for any more chapters any time soon...but I got this one down :)
Obtain
It was the fluttering that caught the eye of the vampire. Not much movement, but in the soggy gritty gray slush, the tiny corner of a bit of paper...fluttered. The troops milled about in the wet raw night to his right. He was well out of their sight in the darkness, which suited him perfectly. Abraham...was close enough to see him, but also watching the troops. He was safely unobserved, and with the swft and silent gracefulness of his kind, Alucard plucked up the paper and the dull bit of metal under it.
A pound note and silver shilling? Bemused, Alucard stared at the currency, the first he had held in years. The pound note was very wet and fragile...careful white gloves tucked it into a sleeve to dry. The shilling was sturdier and immediately scrutinized. Tiny and worn, Victoria's scratched and begrimed face adorned the front, the finest details lost to time but still radiating the grace and poise the Queen was known for. On the back -
"Alucard!" Crisp and demanding, the voice cut into his thoughts, shattering his concentration and startling the vampire. Abraham was now watching him, walking towards him, and the expression was not kind. Alucard had done something other than simply wait quietly and shivered a bit inside, wondering what Abraham would do.
Not much, truly, not for simply picking something up to look at after half an hour of boredom. But he WOULD take the shilling, at the least. And yes, the man's demanding hand thrust out, waiting. "What do you have?" Not even a question, really, more of a command. With an internal sigh that showed nothing on his carefully blank features, Alucard placed the wet, dirty coin in his Master's palm.
"And where did you get this?" Abraham probably thought he'd stolen it. He was quite capable of picking the pockets of anyone around him without their knowledge, but was not so foolish as to entertain himself doing so. Abraham demanded perfect behavior...anything outside of that could result in punishment from a lost meal to a month confined to his cell to a week without his coffin. Small infractions might call for a mere welt from the silver-tipped crop always tucked in the man's belt, waiting for an excuse to mark the vampire.
The white hand pointed downward at the small pit in the slush, now filling with dirty, ice-cold water and the quiet, gray voice murmured. "It was there."
Abraham's face relaxed a bit. The vampire HAD been standing very quietly, after all. He hadn't even needed to take a single step to pick up the coin. And it really wasn't a great deal of money; it might buy a few pints at the pub, but not much else. Feeling generous, unusually mellow towards the vampire, Abraham grabbed the white hand, turned it, and placed the coin on the palm. Fingers were folded about it to hold the coin tight. "You might as well keep it." And a touch of cruelty, too, for what could a vampire actually want, and when would he be able to purchase it? "Maybe you can buy something you'd like with the money you found." Striding back into the night, Abraham went back to the men, leaving the silent and surprised vampire behind him.
Alucard wasn't entirely certain what a shilling could buy, but a pound note could buy a great many things. He'd simply have to find a way to use them...but his mind was already turning over what he wanted to get, somehow.
Sitting curled on the dirty floor of the coach, back against the side, crouched among the mud and boots and wet ends of coats, he thought all the trip back. Yes, he knew what he wanted, yes he did. And he'd determined how to obtain it, too.
x x xx x x
The butler might have had a grand suite of rooms; main room, small office, bedroom, even a private bath, but the lower-level butlers had small cramped rooms. Private, but small, and little spare time to be in them for naught but sleep. Even so, Evan had found both space to store an instrument and time to practice it...at first. As the months wore on and he became familiar with his job, his duties expanded. Enjoyable, challenging, and he found himself liking his employment very much indeed. Yet his viola had done nothing but gather dust in its case under the bed for over half a year, and he hadn't had more than a few moments with it for the months prior.
Frankly, he could use the space it took up and he didn't really miss it...after all, his gal Sally was far more interesting! And so, when the simple note was found slipped under his door asking if he'd sell it, he was intrigued...and quite willing. A few days later, his response vanished from the downstairs table, to be replaced by a pound note. The viola was worth more...but not by much. It had been cheap and well-used when he'd gotten it, and the last time he played, the loose tuning pegs and slight wobble to the neck made it difficult. He could take time and money to fix it...or buy a pretty shawl and flowers for his darling.
The viola arrived and vanished from the table. He hadn't been able to decipher the scrawl of a name but day staff and night staff, butlers and potboys, were strictly separated by status and schedules. It was easiest to simply pass money and instrument by way of a small side-table in a rarely-used hallway. And the shilling to buy replacement strings gave him a few extra pence to keep once the packet of coiled wires was delivered.
Sally loved the rich brown velvet shawl, drapingg it over her shoulders at any excuse, preening on how it made her large dark eyes seem even larger and softer. He never gave a second thought to his odd trade, conducted on scraps of paper, once his love had expressed her delight in a very pleasantly physical way.
x x xx x x
Loving fingers raced across the surfaces, barely touching, the white gloves a hair from the surface as the vampire grinned over his new possession. His only possession...everything he "had" was only his because Abraham let him use it. That included his coffin. Van Hellsing had not been hesitant in denying the vampire access as punishment, coldly recording the resulting anguish and decay in precise scientific detail. Clothing, blood, even intangibles such as rest, were at the whim of the human.
This, this was his and his alone. He nearly shook with excitement, with the joy at the possibility of becoming something more than a tool. Taken out to hunt, stored away when done, maintained physically and with as much consideration of "him" as if he had been a hammer. The sheer monotonous eternal days were broken by hunts...and naught else. No conversations, no interactions, no expression of who he was. At best, he could steal a few minutes away in the house upstairs but only if he remained invisible to the inhabitants. He could not speak to them, touch them interact with them...
But he had found his loophole. He could take nothing from Abraham that was not given, but discarded paper? Trash? That was in the household, but not "property"...only waste. And filching a scrap of paper was simple. A nail from the decaying crates piled about the basement stairs was sharpened by running it across stone, and the black from candles created a convincing black ink. And so he had crept up late at night, listening and peering and moving as quietly as only a vampire could, staying unseen and undectected and leaving his notes, retrieving responses, and finally exchanging for this musical instrument.
This instrument.
His.
A chance to give voice to who he was, to resurrect the soul that was near to crushed inside.
And so his hands shook and he shivered in the tumult of emotions and caressed, so very carefully and delicately, the battered wood and frayed strings of the most beautiful thing he had ever owned.