A/N: And, I'm back with another chapter! :D So glad to know you guys enjoyed the unveiling of the vampyre to the slayer! Thank you for the wonderful reviews – and hope you continue to enjoy the tale! … Take a deep breath – this chapter unlocks some of the mysteries (but not all of them. Where would be the fun in that? ;-))
And now…
XXX
.
He found her curled up in his wingback chair of the music chamber, sound asleep in front of the low fire, the last place he would have expected Christine to seek refuge. Surprised that she had not remained closed up within her bedchamber after the evening's vile revelations, he noticed the slim book in her lap, her finger marking the place where she had left off reading. Carefully he extracted the novel from her limp hand without waking her and grimaced at the title.
The Vampyre: A Tale. by John William Polidori.
Recalling her expressed disinterest with horror in literature and her disdain at seeing it on his shelf, it was quite evident why she had slipped into his library and chosen it.
The Count flipped to the page she had marked – "The guardians hastened to protect Miss Aubrey; but when they arrived, it was too late. Lord Ruthven had disappeared, and Aubrey's sister had glutted the thirst of a VAMPYRE!"
Wonderful, he thought with weary sarcasm. In her insatiable need to have curiosity met, she sought information on his kind from foolish mortals who had no clue - and gleaned knowledge through a piece of absurd fiction, involving merciless vampyres who drained their brides shortly after the performed nuptials.
He set the reprehensible book on a nearby table. Had she drawn some ludicrous parallel? And yet, she had come to his favorite chamber where he spent much of his leisure time, the same room where he gave her voice lessons, so she could not be too apprehensive of him to seek out his company.
Taking a seat in the chair across from Christine, Erik studied her flawless face where her head rested, turned against the scrolled rim. In repose, her features glowed in the dying light of the fire, angelic and tranquil. He could only hope that she remained as calm once he satisfied curiosity with regard to those areas of his sinister life he felt he could broach - and avoid sending her fleeing in terror from here to kingdom come, running pell-mell into the night as was her wont, as she had done this very evening…
Leading them full circle toward the dreaded revelation.
Erik frowned. What the devil had she been doing in the midst of the forest, so far from the castle? And what damnable misfortune that she had come onto the scene as he rid the world of another fledgling vampyre! Erik had attacked before the fool could make a permanent repast of Lucy's doctor and later compelled the traumatized man to forget all of what occurred, including his own presence there, but Christine never would... Nor, with his slayer wife watching, had Erik been able to ensure that the newly-turned beast would never again rise, leaving Gregor's apprentice with the order of decapitation.
How would she ever understand his world and what he had become, all of it without choice, those morbid acts he must eternally accomplish a prerequisite to survival...? His. And hers.
All along he had known one day she would come to reject him, if not for his excuse of a face then now, for the beast into which he'd been cursed. Since he had made her his wife, a part of him sensed that, despite his best efforts, she would one day uncover the truth...
And now, that day was here.
He had willingly let down his guard, allowing Christine into his life as he had done with no other. If she should come to despise him, if she should leave him - he would need no blade of silver or lack of a daylight ring to destroy him.
Despite her sweet words of love, words he yet struggled to believe, he had seen fear and doubt linger in her eyes to see him in his changed form - no longer her guiding Angel, but a monster in the truest sense of the word.
And yet, perhaps he did not give her enough credit...
Christine was no wilting hydrangea. She had proven to be both beautiful and strong with thorns to dissuade and a scent to allure - like the blood red rose that covered the vine in great number and looped closely around the three-headed dragon of his family crest.
His gaze wandered down her slim neck and perfect bosom to the hand that lay in her lap with open palm, white and unmarked, and softly he licked his lips at the memory ...
The base part of his nature had derived undisguised pleasure in her sweet, pure taste, and he had taken his time after closing the deep wound to savor her blood and gradually lick away every drop that remained. To his amazement, she had stood silent and watched, absent of the usual coercion required, which had no effect on her mind, completely aware though certainly in shock. Not once attempting to stop him from continuing to lave her hand once the cut immediately closed and she no longer felt the burn.
Nor had she run when he then approached and wrapped her within his icy embrace, the Count no longer finding it necessary to hide from her his skill to disappear and materialize into one of his three homes. A vampyric ability, often used as a defense when outnumbered or cornered and one that only the eldest of their kind could accomplish, of which there were few remaining. But a detriment in catching the bastard son of Vlad III, who had that same ability... To use the skill severely depleted Erik's power, especially the further his destination, and he did not employ that mode of homecoming often.
He thought to the monumental task ahead...
Before entering this chamber tonight, he had not planned to share with Christine those secrets of his dark heritage still painful to remember, and some of the more lurid aspects of his unnatural existence he could never bring to light. But silence no longer presented an option for the former - not if he wished her to separate the truth from ridiculous fables written and spoken about his kind. No doubt that irksome Vicomte had also had his say in the matter, of which he knew so very little…
She stirred softly and Erik's attention lifted to her face. Her dark lashes flickered and opened, her eyes meeting his across the short distance that separated them. She blinked away the remnants of slumber and gave a tiny lift of rosy lips, the smile never fully forming, only dimming as recollection set in, the welcome that first lit her eyes also fading, her expression now guarded...
What he sadly assumed to be the precedent to each of their encounters henceforth.
She shifted from her curled position to sit up, setting her stocking feet to the floor. "I was looking for you," she began. "That man from the alley who I think must be the threat to us – Nicolae. Is he like you?"
The Count stared at her with some surprise. A question about his nemesis was far from what he expected, given all she had learned about her monstrous bridegroom this night. Still, he supposed it prudent she know the truth about the fiend who attacked her, now that she had been made aware of the existence of his kind.
"He is. Why do you ask, Christine?"
"It's Lucy – when I went to Montmarte earlier. I think he must have bitten her!" And in disjointed sentences that slowly began to meld and make sense, she poured out all of what occurred, including her discovery of the unique button of bone in the maze, similar to one Archer found in the alleyway, the telltale accessories indicative of Nicolae's bizarre preference in wardrobe.
The news was unsurprising, though utterly disheartening; it was clear that Nicolae intended to add Lucy to their number, if it was not already too late. And for one with her simple and sweet childlike mind, the step leading beyond the point of no return into vampyrism could be treacherous for the girl and for all involved.
Personal experience had taught him that ghastly truth.
"I will do all that I can to help your cousin," he assured quietly, resolved to secretly visit Lucy at the first opportunity. "Since she is under the effect of a soporific at present, it is useless for me to speak with her until it wears off."
"But - why would he even target her? I don't understand. You said that he threatens what is associated with you - but you don't even know her."
"That is not entirely true," Erik admitted and noted her gaze sharpen on him. "Two years ago, when first I returned to Berwickshire, in part to keep track of Nicolae's activities, I found Lucy alone inside the center of the maze. I spoke with her from beyond the bushes, sang to her, and told her stories each time I visited there, for a season, though she never once has seen me, only heard my voice."
"Like you did with me in the chapel."
"Yes."
"But why?" she insisted, and he heard a tinge of hurt and envy in her tone. "Why would you even do that?"
"Once I fled Paris, in those empty years after losing you, I was wretched in my solitude. She, too, was lonely. In her gullible, childlike state I never once considered approaching her as a man to a woman – she was barely that. But for a time I sought companionship, as well as making it my duty to watch over her, to ensure her safety. Much as I behaved toward you at the opera house, though I quickly learned she had been given no talent to sing."
"You were the other dark faerie," Christine said with weary realization. "She spoke of more than one in the maze. And Nicolae is the other."
He inclined his head in a slight nod.
"Then he found out about your time spent with her – and was jealous?" she floundered, as if desperately trying to make the pieces fit. "Is that why he has singled her out and brought her to harm and now has a vendetta against you?"
"No. I soon discovered he was not residing in Berwickshire at the time. He never knew of my visits there."
"Then why Lucy?"
She seemed inclined to push away the terrible crux of the mystery involving him and their forbidden relationship – what affected her on a much deeper and darker level. Yet Erik welcomed the reprieve, dreading the moment he must unveil truths he had always hoped to keep hidden.
"To understand, you would have to know more about the man I now hunt. Nicolae is the bastard son of Vlad III, later known as Drăculea, the dark prince who began this damnable curse, originally put on him alone, by a vengeful gypsy witch." He saw the enlightenment in her eyes and nodded, "Yes, it is his face on the medallion I gave you. Every vampyre fears him; to see the talisman is a warning to those who dare to draw near with evil intent. The silver and the spelled bloodstone ensure that those foolish enough to ignore the threat will suffer greatly for their attack…"
Restless, he stood to his feet and walked the short distance to the hearth before he resumed -
"Drăculea would not acknowledge Nicolae as his rightful son, wanting nothing to do with the boy. And though the dark prince shared his curse and power with two men of equal standing, one of them my father, he refused to extend immortality to his own flesh and blood."
"Immortality..." The rasp of dazed shock entered her quiet voice.
He gave an abrupt nod. "In my initial ignorance of the precepts of this curse, I made the mistake of giving aid and, in so doing, granting that which Nicolae sought. In his anger to be overlooked and ignored by his father, he began a vendetta - seizing what he willed from vampyre and mortal alike, leaving his victims desolate or dead, breaking every rule of our Order. Toward the end of the eighteenth century, he found his way to Berwickshire and sought to marry the only daughter of the earl of Montmarte, a beauty who refused him and made Nicolae a laughingstock in front of her friends. That night, he took his vengeance and lured the young woman into the maze. She was the first to die there, but not the last."
Erik continued to peer into the flames, recalling what he had learned of that epoch in time ...
"Decades later, he again wreaked havoc with the descendants of that family, feeding off a young nursemaid inside the same maze near twilight - but this time there was a witness to the death, hidden in the bushes, having been involved with her nanny in a game of hide-and-seek. A girl of four whom Nicolae then spied, frozen in terror, and manipulated into a state of forgetfulness and more. The nursemaid was never found, assumed to have run away. The small girl was never the same, and as she grew older, her mind remained that of a child's, trapped inside a fantasy, forever compelled toward the maze…"
He looked at Christine then. Her wide eyes appeared almost vacant, her lips parted in shock, as if a thousand thoughts spun inside her mind around one that suddenly settled with force.
"Lucy," she whispered.
"Lucy," he affirmed.
She blinked and briefly looked toward the fire then back at him, slightly shaking her head as if trying to make sense of all he told her.
"You speak of decades…"
Her words faded away, unable to finish the statement made, and he supplied what she feared to ask.
"I have walked the earth for centuries, my dear."
"oh…"
Almost amused by the soft, understated wisp of her reply in light of the titanic revelation he had just given, Erik grimly smiled.
"Perhaps before we go further, you would care for something to drink?"
"Yes, please."
He moved into the adjoining chamber to pour whisky into two glasses and returned, handing one down to her. She took it but did not sip as she had on previous occasions, instead throwing it back like an experienced drunkard and emptying her glass. Unlike a drunkard, she immediately went into a fitful spasm of coughing.
He waited until it cleared then offered her his glass to replace the one she had emptied. She made a face at him, showing her exasperation at his light, mocking gesture, and in that childish little roll of her eyes, he knew relief that her ease to be with him had gone unchanged. Still, he set his glass on the table near her, believing she needed its bolstering effect more than he, especially for what was yet to come.
"That explains the state of my poor cousin, but why is Nicolae after you?" she asked. "If you gave him what he wanted, it seems he would be pleased, not resentful."
Ah, and there it was. He toyed with the idea of disclosing only a portion of the truth and omitting the rest, uncertain how much more she could take.
"It is not I that he is after. It is you. He seeks to destroy me by harming you."
"Because I'm a slayer," she whispered. "Is that why you gave me the medallion?"
"He does not know you're a slayer - he must never know!" In a sudden fit of nervous energy, Erik whirled to pace a short distance away. He halted briefly before retracing his steps to the hearth and looking back at her. "No one must know the truth of your heritage, Christine. No one. Do you understand? Keep your secret. I will never tell a soul."
She peered at him so intently, so at a loss, a myriad of questions sparkling in those haunted brown eyes.
Questions, always more questions. However, he had told her he would answer those he could. Given the wretched state of their circumstances, he had little choice.
"Yes," he said at last, "that is why I gave you the medallion. I first issued the order to have it created for a small girl, Daria, centuries ago. I knew of its power to protect."
"Daria?" she asked when he went silent.
Uncertain he could speak of a topic so painful, he nodded. Yet for her to better understand their enemy, he must open old wounds.
"I did not know until years later that she was Nicolae's bastard daughter whom he sired before he was turned. She was a drop of sweetness in a bitter world. So much like you … my Lotte."
At his gentle words, something softened in her expression and gave him the strength and will to continue.
"It was three years after my encounter with Nicolae on the battlefield that I came across Daria, at first on occasion and by chance in the village streets of my homeland. She was all of five years old, dirty and unkempt but so spirited and full of the joy of life, helping her mother hawk their wares to passersby. Later that year, her mother died, and I took Daria away from her poverty and into my guardianship. Yet I have many enemies among my kind; it always has been so, and I feared what they might do to her. I gave Daria the medallion to wear in my absence. I thought of her as my own daughter."
He clenched his hands at his sides, the next part difficult to say. He had never told anyone as there had been no one to tell.
"While the medallion protects against the preternatural, it cannot fight the plague. Upon my return to the castle after an extended absence, I found Daria deathly ill. Dying." He shook his head. "I could not bear to see her so weak and helpless and…rid her of the sickness. That same day, she was sitting in a high window and reached out to catch a butterfly. She fell and became like I am."
He bowed his head in despair, feeling almost physically ill, and grasped the mantel.
"All that made her the sweet child she was became twisted by the darkness. I tried to teach her all she must know to survive, but I failed. With a child's mentality and a monster's need, she could not reason or understand consequence; our curse to her became a perilous bloody game - the villagers, especially the children, pawns she captured, toyed with, then killed. She was a danger to our kind, to herself - there was no other way…" His voice hitched, a tear falling from beneath his mask, uncertain if he tried to convince Christine or himself of his guiltlessness when he felt such blame. "Shortly before dawn, I tricked and locked her into the eastern tower where the morning sun floods in through the windows. In so doing, I ended her existence. In my nightmares I still hear her cries, her terrified voice calling out to me –"
He brought his dismal words to a halt, stunned to feel Christine's small hand press against his upper back. Slowly he turned head and shoulders to look. Her cheeks were wet with tears, but he saw nothing but empathy in her eyes.
"Oh, Christine," he whispered softly, never ceasing to be amazed by this mortal woman he had taken as his wife.
She offered a small, tender smile and held his drink out to him. He took it with a grateful nod and grim twist of his lips, tossing the acrid, smoky-flavored malt back as she had done, but without the fit of coughing that followed.
"So Nicolae seeks vengeance toward you because of Daria," she said quietly after a moment.
"And power. Daria only made it personal, though he never once acknowledged her while she lived. It is why he has targeted you - to take you from me, as he falsely claims I took her from him."
"Power?"
"Drăculea disappeared early in this century. It is believed he was trapped by a Van Helsing, his coffin chained and locked away into a secret chamber."
A shadow passed over her eyes as she seemed lost in another thought.
"But – what does that have to do with you?"
And now, they were getting to the heart of the matter.
He exhaled a heavy breath, deciding it best to lay all the cards on the table. With her sharp, intuitive mind and her now dwelling within his castle, making it her home, it would not take her long to realize…
"Your world, the world of mortals, knows me as Count cel Tredat, and I am that. But in my world of darkness I am also a prince, Vlad Balaur, a ruler of my kind and my father's successor. With Vlad Drăculea missing, I am in power."
Her eyes glazed over, and she stared at him as though she had gone into a trance.
"I…I think I need to sit down," she whispered and turned to reclaim the wingback chair, clutching the curved armrests the entire time, even once seated, as if in an attempt not to lose all consciousness.
Without a word he returned to the adjoining room, collected the bottle of whisky and brought it back with him into the music chamber. First he poured another dram into her glass, then his own before setting down the bottle and retaking his seat across from Christine.
Her wide gaze never left the fire.
"Perhaps we should continue this discussion another night," he suggested, himself wearied in emotion after speaking of Daria.
"No. Not yet..." She looked at him then, a veil of dread having closed over her eyes though he did not believe it related to what he had just revealed, only to what she would now say.
He took a long draught from his glass and set it down on the small table beside his chair, waiting.
"Raoul recently told me that my parents did not die in an accident as I always thought…" She swallowed hard and he could see the vein in her neck began violently to throb. "…They were killed by a vampyre attack, in the south of France. Please, tell me, please, that you were not the cause."
He had killed many men in his lifetime; among them there had been slayers. Excluding those despicable mortals who escaped the court's justice and deserved to become food for the slaughter, he now killed only when his life was threatened and had adapted to that rule for centuries.
If her father and mother had set out to destroy him …
He closed his eyes. "When did they die?" he all but whispered.
"In the month before I came to live at the opera house," she said softly, fear trembling within every word.
The relief he felt was palpable, shaking the breath from his lungs. He could have so easily been the cause of the Daaés' demise. Had that been the case, Christine would never have forgiven him; nor would he expect her to.
"I had been living in Paris for three months before I made myself known to you. I did not leave once during that time."
She too let her breath out in a relieved gasp, pressing fingertips to lips that formed a shaky smile. "Thank God," she whispered.
"Indeed."
The Count looked away, back to the fire. It was a moment before she again spoke.
"Have you ever killed…?"
He tensed, waiting for her to continue.
A hesitation, then –
"Have you ever killed a slayer?"
At the decidedly unwelcome turn of conversation, he sharply looked her way.
Her anxious gaze was focused on the book she earlier held in her possession.
x
He rocketed up from the chair. She shied back in alarm.
In three strides he was at the table next to her and snatched up the novel.
"This tale is nothing but rubbish!" he growled and held the book aloft. "Pure lurid melodrama – a contradiction of all that I desire to be for you – and fit for nothing but to nourish the flames!"
With brutal force, he hurled the book into the fire. Christine gasped and recoiled further into the backrest as spark and flame flew high on impact, the blaze giving a greedy roar as it consumed leather binding and pages.
"Even Drăculea, as cruel a tyrant as he was, loved a woman, his wife, so that she became everything to him – her tragic death at the hand of his enemies is what set him on the path to this curse of destruction. He never got over the loss of her."
Christine regarded him with startled eyes that went even rounder, but remained silent.
"My God, do you think after all you have experienced with me – all I have done for you – that I would act in any manner that leads to your death?! Do you, Christine?"
The hesitant shake of her head was hardly satisfying, and he cursed his earlier sarcasm in the forest when he spoke cold words never meant, as a defense to the anguish he'd felt upon her wretched discovery. If it came down to such a harsh choice between his life or hers, he would gladly accept death to save her life that he valued most precious - if only he could make her believe that!
She had told him on more than one occasion that she knew he would never harm her - most recently hours ago.
What had changed?
Erik worked to control his fiery temper, pacing to and fro a short distance, before he retraced his steps to her chair and crouched down before her. He took her hand in his, grateful when she did not pull away.
"These rings on your finger – I chose them, I designed them, when I harbored the desire for a bride I had not yet met, the yearning to possess what other men have and be in union with a woman I could one day love. I found that woman in you."
This brought a soft smile and her eyes began to shimmer with a look he never thought to see again. But then the smile faded.
"You would have bitten me."
He inhaled a swift breath through his nose but did not respond.
"You would have bitten me," she said again with more volume this time. "At the festival of Samhain. And in the fog. You nearly did." She brought her free hand up to her neck at the spoken memory of his fang scraping her flesh.
He could again deceive her, but what was the point? She had seen how greedily he had cleansed her hand.
"Yes. But I would not have killed you. Never that."
"Why?" she insisted. "What makes me different from any other slayer?"
He sighed and released her hand, changing position to sit on the floor like a dog at his mistress's feet. And was he not exactly that – a foul beast eager for her acceptance? And she, as always, his beautiful Angel. When finally he had stopped avoiding her and given in to what had been blossoming between them, he had bared his heart, without words, exposing a vulnerability he had shown to no other, vampyre or mortal.
As he did again tonight with them…
"At first, I did not understand. I only knew that you were different. I could not bend your mind to my will and have it remain in my power."
"You can do that?" she whispered in astonishment.
"Not with you," he repeated and shook his head, remembering. "Never with you. You were impervious to my every persuasion, silent and otherwise. The night of the ball I saw the sign of the slayer on your arm and could have killed you in your bedchamber, but I never wanted that. I think I loved you, even then. I have never tried to manipulate one of your kind, did not know it wasn't possible, and I put you into a deep sleep, whispering to your unconscious mind to forget me - but that failed to work as well. Those weeks apart from you were a private hell I embraced, in part to keep you safe. But then you came to me of your own volition, always of your own volition, and when I learned you were my Lotte, I was hopelessly lost, deciding I must do all I could to help you."
With her heart in her eyes, she regarded him tenderly the entire time he spoke, but then shook her head a little as if afraid to give in.
"I must know, Erik. Is that something you still want...? To bite me?" Her last words came timid and whisper soft.
How could he truthfully respond without scaring her away?
His silence was its own answer.
"I don't want to be bitten," she said with nervous conviction. "I don't want to become…"
At her abrupt hesitation, he filled in the words, "like me."
An apology in her eyes, she nodded.
"You cannot become as I am by my bite. It is much more involved than that."
"oh…"
Again, with the response that was barely there.
He sighed and once more took hold of her hand, gently rubbing her fingers with his thumb.
"In all truth, Christine, I would not wish this curse upon you. I prefer you as you are – my living wife, and I vow to do all within my power to protect you. As I have always protected you …"
She gave him a tremulous smile but said nothing, a shadow having entered her eyes.
A dart of worry pierced his cold, dead heart.
"Yet, perhaps those hasty words spoken in the forest you have reconsidered after such frightful disclosures? Is it too much to anticipate that you still welcome my presence?"
She hesitated too long.
"No, I - "
He pulled his hand away from hers and swiftly stood to his feet. Before he could move away, she clutched his sleeve.
"I meant everything I said," she finished quietly.
"Then you will stay, with me, here at the castle?" He could not disguise the hope in his voice, having dreaded that she would flee back to Paris at first opportunity as had originally been her plan.
A hint of uncertainty clouded her eyes.
"I will stay but… I need time."
Time…
What the devil did that mean? Time. And why did the word resound like a death knell throughout his empty soul? It was clear with the manner in which she worded her response, time referred to him and his company was no longer wanted.
"It is all so much to take in," she added, her rapid words sounding like an excuse.
"You owe me no explanations," he said with icy formality and a chill smile.
"Erik, please -"
"I have business to which I must attend that can no longer wait."
"But Erik - wait!"
Christine craned in his direction as he strode past her. Losing sight of him, she popped up from the cushion and went around to stand beside the chair, her hand clutching its winged back. "There is so much more I want to know! About you, about how you came to be this way – I want to know everything there is to know about, well – all of it."
"We will speak further on the matter another time, my dear," he said, briefly halting at the entryway and barely looking over his shoulder. "Perhaps you would do well to get some rest before the dawn."
Christine stood motionless, mouth parted in shock, and stared after her suddenly unapproachable husband as he swiftly exited the chamber. Nor did she miss his scathing emphasis on the word time.
She should be accustomed to his mercurial mood swings by now, blowing hot then cold, but felt dismayed that she had evidently wounded him with her unthinking response.
He had been so open with her, so gentle, pouring his heart out to her with beautiful words she had waited so long to hear – whereas the majority of her replies had been offered as silence, and when at last she had spoken, it had been a request for time.
She shook her head a little in dismay, fearing her mind would remain in a perpetual daze...
Of course she needed time – hours, days, months – to sort through her thoughts and feelings and make sense of all he'd told her. Could he not understand that? Such a request was not inconceivable given the continual shock of her unending discoveries.
But she could have handled it better, should have at least told him with more clarity what still beat strongly within her heart.
Her eyes fell shut with the truth of what she had seen burning in his eyes.
He wanted to bite her... wanted her blood... to sink his fangs deeply into her neck ...
She had already seen the verity of that in his clear delight to taste. And though she should have been entirely appalled by what he had done, there was more that lurked beneath the surface of such uneasy feeling, more that had kept her fixed, breathless, to watch him... not having known then that his tenderly savage act would heal the cut on her hand.
The journal had said he was no more than a monster. At every turn, Raoul attempted to drum that idea into her mind -
But monsters did not heal, surely. Nor would they care to do so...
Christine put on her slippers she had discarded and exited the music chamber, but her dark Angel was not in the throne room, and a quick peek into the library proved that empty as well.
She recalled the wretched book he had so furiously thrown into the fire… not that she'd given it serious thought. Much. Yet portions of the grisly narrative had troubled her...
Still, stories of fiction weren't real.
Erik was real.
Lucy and her frightening dilemma, that was real.
Vampyres with vendettas and slayers destined to stop them were real.
Christine wished she could withdraw to a safe world of pretense, as she had done as a child, as Lotte, but such escape into fantasy was no longer possible... and again she thought of her poor cousin who could never escape from that world.
With a troubled sigh, she took the stairs up to her bedchamber, glancing at his closed door in indecision before she opened her own. Once she had shut herself inside, she turned the key in the lock, staring down at it a moment, before moving across the room to the chair that held her newly retrieved carpetbag and beside it, her mother's journal. With grim determination, she picked it up from the seat and walked back across the rug, toward her bed.
Suddenly the door blew inward on a great gust of wind and hit the wall, causing her to drop the book and spin around in shock.
The Count towered just outside the entrance, a formidable force - the cloak he now wore flowing from his broad shoulders to the ankles of his boots. His eyes within the ebony mask blazed golden from beneath the black fedora he wore.
"First lesson to be learned, my dear," he said, his voice like dark velvet and dangerously soft. "Locks do not keep vampyres out. Only a lack of invitation keeps the predator from your door. And once given, it can never be retrieved."
"Erik," she breathed unable to form another syllable as she pressed a hand to her racing heart.
He gave a mocking little bow. "I bid you goodnight and farewell, as you have a preference for such conventions." His manner grew somber, and though his was an intimidating presence, she saw, too, the sadness in his eyes. "You have no need to fear, Christine. I'll not cross your threshold again."
He grabbed the edge of his cloak, swinging it up high around him in a rustling snap, and in a puff of red smoke –
Vanished from sight!
Overwhelmed, Christine sank as if boneless to a sitting position on the floor, her legs no longer able to support her.
xXx
A/N: Vampyre 101, Christine - remember your lesson well. muwahaha ... Ah Erik, poor Erik, thinking she, too, has rejected him. And poor Christine, too staggered by all she has learned to be able to think at all – fun, fun, fun! lol – (I love writing these two.) :) Trivia time! - While "Dracul" is Romanian for dragon, "Balaur" is a many-headed dragon of Romanian legend. (Seemed fitting as a surname for a disfigured vampyre prince who prefers disguises and has such rapid swings in moods ;-)) – "Florin" means flower (for those who remember when Nicolae called Erik son of Florin) - and "Vlad" is prince… and yes, "Drăculea" is the Romanian form of Dracula… While I did say this tale wasn't based on the Dracula story itself – (with that leader of vampires as the main character) – I did not say that it wouldn't have aspects of the legend of Dracula woven into its lore … ;-)