Evangeline squinted as the sun shone through the curtains, her mind still hazy from her slumber. She looked towards Vincent and was surprised to find him asleep still, but he was no longer in his chair. Instead, he laid, rather clumsily, across the desk. Her eyes drifted down onto the book, she had creased its pages as she slept. She was no closer to completing the tome than before; with every page that she read another seemed to grow in its place, infinitely adding leaves of parchment, as if it were alive and was testing her dedication.
The history surrounding his kind enraptured her; from folk law that had persisted throughout the ages, to influential vampires that existed long before Vincent. What shocked her most of all, was how closely human and vampire societies were intertwined; one altering the course of the other. His kind forced to adapt to the human world in fear of persecution. Such a way of life was alien to her and worse still, she never appreciated the life that she led. She did not have to hide within the shadows or feed on vermin just to survive, nor did she have to mask her true self in fear of her life.
What did other vampires think of this world? - If they thought anything of it. Did they admire humans, but despise their despotism? Just as Vincent believed. Or did they think differently? She remembered Vincent's conversation from the church. 'No vampire has ever done what I'm doing and no vampire would ever support it'. Why so? Were the risks associated with freedom too great? If Vincent exposed his kind to the world, what would become of him? Would he be outcast or hailed as a hero? She couldn't say. Vincent must have considered these questions before. She doubted that he would risk exposure without considering the consequences first.
She placed the ribbon across the page and closed the book. The heavy leather cover shut with a thump. He was right, no vampire had ever attempted such a feat. The tome recorded vampiric history to such a degree of accuracy that she scarcely believed it was no work of fiction, and even with such comprehensive documentation, it mentioned nothing of a vampire revolution. If there was an uprising, it was lost to time. 'But what about vampire sightings and legends?' She thought to herself. Humans used to believe in the existence of vampires, and each culture has its very own vampiric myth as a testament to this. Why would these fables exist if vampires had hidden away all these years? They must have made themselves known. Maybe a vampire, overcome with the hunt and oblivious to their surroundings, was spotted by a passer-by or preyed upon a human, only to have them escape and alert others . . . or, just like Vincent, a vampire confided in a human simply to see their troubles eased.
She sunk into the back of the seat and sighed, crossing her leg over the other. Her eyes fixed on the window as she watched the deep purples and pinks melt away alongside the rising sun. The familiar gleam shining through the gaps between the tree trunks and slowly advancing up the tall wooden columns. Their shadows, like prison bars, stretched across the dirt and into the office. Vincent winced as the light caught his eye and he stirred, awkwardly covering his face with his palm before calming, refusing to wake.
Evangeline narrowed her eyes as she looked at his skin. The sun was burning his flesh. She stared at his hand in horror as it rapidly changed colour, its blanched appearance growing increasingly redder and redder. Then, as she sat stunned, the skin dried and split, peeling off in large coiled flakes, as thin as parchment. Quickly she reached for the curtain, pulling the fabric over the window at such a speed that the railing squealed. She reached for him, squeezing his raw flesh hard enough to shock him out of his slumber. His eyes sprung open, and he lept back, gasping and clasping at his hand, the pain so intense that a grimace stole over his lips, revealing both of his large fangs.
A long guttural groan escaped through his teeth as he ran towards the kitchen, losing all sense of grace and dignity as his hands clambered across the walls and door frames, his feet losing their footing as though he were a man frenzied. Evangeline, after gathering her thoughts and regaining her reason, rushed behind him; too stunned to say or do anything other than watch with morbid intrigue as he plunged his arm into the sink.
He let out a sigh of relief as the cool water engulfed his flesh.
"In my bedroom," He gasped between laboured breaths, "I have an ointment and bandages . . . Can you bring them to me?"
She nodded shakily and obeyed, dashing into his bedroom with little regard to what she might find. Pulling open drawers and unzipping bags. She threw open the wardrobe doors, hoping the items were there, but they were not. Then she searched his dresser table. It could have been a reflection of her own with the number of cosmetics it adorned. She scanned each container, clenching her fists in protest at their number before snatching the nearest skin cream and bandage she could find. When she returned, she found him sitting in his armchair with his head in his hands, his forearm still gleaming with water droplets.
"Here. . ." She breathed, now kneeling beside him. Her eyes coming to rest on his arm as she examined the taught flesh for the first time. The dead layer of skin had peeled away, leaving the weeping, red flesh beneath. She reached for it and gently patted it with the pad of her thumb, its tackiness similar to that of human burns. He sighed as she applied the cream onto his skin in long, soothing strokes, the tension in his body melting away.
"Is that better?" She asked whilst securing the bandage on his arm. He looked positively corpse like, as though he were a mummy brought back from the dead with the dressing almost completely removed.
"Much better, thank you." He smiled at her, his vampiric charm masking the discomfort that tugged at his eyebrows and deepened the creases in his cheeks.
"I suppose the benefit of being a vampire is that your wound will heal quickly." She muttered absent-mindedly, now reclining on the settee beside him, but stopped mid-movement as she noticed his change in expression, his face displaying nothing other than bewilderment.
"Wha - You heal quickly, don't you?"
He shook his head.
"Oh."
She reached for his cat which sat patiently at the table, not for a second taking her gaze off of Vincent. "What about the other supernatural abilities? Can't you run at incredible speeds? Don't you possess godlike strength?" She asked him with a level of innocence that he had not yet seen in her.
A grin stole over his cheeks as he tried his best to stifle his laughter. "No, I wish I did," He turned to the window and brought his finger to his lip, as though he were envisioning having such abilities. Then he shook his head, dismissing the thought as if it were a childish whim. "- But, I thought you would know better than to believe in the supernatural." He teased.
"Ha! Well, I didn't believe in such things, but then I met you. So excuse my superstition." She joked, mirroring his sarcasm and went on, desperately trying to recover his seriousness as she asked of other 'supernatural' abilities he might have, forming quotation marks with her fingers as she spoke of the unnatural. "Are you immortal? Given how old you are."
He sat back in his chair and crossed his legs; still smiling. It wasn't a humorous or smug grin that mocked her naivety, rather; it was cunning.
"No. Vampires can live for a thousand years if not more. . . but we are not immortal."
She thought for a moment and gently stroked the cats head, its purr reverberating through her fingers like a recently stricken bell. "So you're still very young in vampire years."
He nodded, "I suppose I'd be no older than you, in what you call 'vampire years'."
'Vampire years'. She looked away from him. Human life was so fleeting in comparison, seventy years was nothing to him, yet, it is a lifetime for another. It seemed so strange. How trivial must human existence appear to him? That people go about their lives absorbed in the present, in the mundane, unaware of how little time they have, and he would watch them; unmoving; unaffected by time, as each life grew old in a never-ending cycle. Leaving him almost entirely alone in his prolonged state. Doomed to see his loved ones pass him by in a world which pays no heed to his kind. . .
"Paws seems to have taken quite a liking to you." He said suddenly, gesturing towards his cat which now lay curled up in her lap, something that had gone quite beyond her notice. It shifted slightly, rolling onto its back as if to stretch, beckoning her to make a fuss of it again, and she did. Her fingers sank into its fur as she stroked it, the sun catching each strand as though they were fine silk threads. It mewed as she moved her hand away, taken back by the loss of sensation. She looked up at Vincent, her face uncharacteristically sombre - she wore a look of indifference habitually. Then she spoke, her voice soft and sympathetic.
"May I ask you a personal question?"
He nodded.
"Have you always lived in this house alone?"
He was quiet for a moment and no longer smiled, whilst she seemed agitated. The silence she could bear, but not his melancholy. It had been there since his confession at the church and it unveiled itself again now.
"Why do you ask?"
"I was just curious. I thought that you would have lived with your family or with a partner. I'm sorry if I asked something too personal."
He shook his head. "Don't apologise, it was an honest question. If I was human, I would have married by now, but it's not that simple when you are a vampire."
He leaned back in his seat and placed one leg on top of the other, lost in thought, as though he were considering the legitimacy of his own words. And she, overcome with curiosity, urged him on regardless of what was considered polite; inquiring as to what he meant by 'It's not so simple'. He refused, at first, but soon gave in when mortification could no longer be used as an excuse.
"Vampires are strictly monogamous. 'we mate for life', and so picking a partner must be done with the utmost care and consideration or else you risk having a deep dependence on a being who you detest. 'Bound' to them, that's what I call it. Unable to live with them and unable to live without. I've seen vampires spiral into madness or end it all because of their choice in partner."
"But you must have experienced some form of attraction or desire, surely."
He nodded.
"Of course I have. There have been men and women who've taken my fancy. I've just never acted upon it." He stopped and smiled at himself. His ivory fingers tracing the contours of his lips, there was an undeniable sensuality to his movements that made him seem dangerously inviting. He glanced at her then, only to see that she had sunk back into the couch and was no longer interested in him, her small mouth down-turned, her eyes lowered in disappointment.
"What's the matter?"
She shook her head and offered him a faint smile.
"It's nothing." He couldn't have known how severely this revelation wounded her. If he shared her feelings, they had been all but destroyed now. It would be reckless of him to love a human, doomed to outlive them and spend the rest of his life alone; eternally craving their presence to receive no solace from it. No matter how frequently she repeated in her mind that 'this was a cruel act of nature' It did nothing to lessen the blow, that he - out of no fault of his own - would never come to love her. She was vain - and naïve - for letting her feelings get the best of her in such a short amount of time and now she would have to feel the weight of that burden.
He reached out for her hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze, convinced that he knew the reason for her silence.
"You are no riddle," He teased, "Please . . . don't think that I can't care about you because of my reticence or our difference in species. . . I'm perfectly capable of love and admiration outside of being 'unbound'. . ." He enveloped her small hand with his own as if to plead with her and bent down to meet her gaze, unable to read the expression she wore.
Her head nodded in understanding, her heartache adding a sluggishness to her movements, but before she could look at him he leant forward and kissed her forehead, quickly pulling away just as she did in his study, his mouth now curved into a knowing smile. She sat there staring at him, dumbfounded, her cheeks adorning a deep shade of rouge. She couldn't say what mortified her more: that he knew about her affections or that he felt her kiss him the night before.
They continued to gaze at each other and after a brief hesitation; he made the wise decision to steer the conversation towards more practical matters.
"My brother and I have managed to acquire vital lab equipment through close contacts. It's being delivered here tomorrow. I can't stress how much this will improve our studies, it's beyond measure. I could use your help when moving it. . . Evangeline? Are you listening?"
"Yes . . . and I'm working tomorrow so I can't." She said lowly whilst picking at the wooden table with her nails, her eyes transfixed on each indentation and crevice. Then she looked up at him, turning her head at such speed that her hair swung wildly around her neck. "Wait. . . Lab equipment? Where are you going to put it?"
"In my lab. . . It's behind the house, inside the barn. The interior has been completely renovated, so it would look no different from any lab you've been in." He said this with such nonchalance that it caught her off guard as if he had lived with this lab for aeons and no longer saw it as unusual.
"You have a lab!" She repeated in complete disbelief, her excitement rising within her body so that it stiffened her thighs and piqued her voice.
"Yes." He said calmly, "I wouldn't lie for the sake of it."
"Can I have a look?"
He thought for a moment, "I'd prefer to show you after you've completed your vampirology studies." He remarked with a smirk whilst heading into his office, only to return a few seconds later with the stack of leather-bound parchment in his hands. The books hit the table with a thump. "The sooner you finish them, the sooner we can continue our studies."
She arched her left brow as she reached for one of the tomes and dragged slowly across the table, as though she were a pupil who approached their professor's teachings with reluctance. "I'm not one of your pupils, you know . . ."
He winked at her, "You are now."
Evangeline couldn't say how long she spent studying that day. Time had no control over her as she read. Her mind painting pictures of fabulous worlds which she had not yet seen and made the very walls which surrounded her crumble into heaps on the floor. The brick and mortar, clattering over the cobbled streets of Victorian London, past a scrawny, frightened boy with porcelain skin and black hair, as he trembled amongst filth, sinking his teeth into the only comfort he knew: a rat. She turned away from him. Then, to her amazement, she gazed upon a freshly ploughed field, somewhere in eastern Europe, where the pagan farmers walked side by side with cattle and tended to their fields, unaware of the dark, ancient figures that lurked beneath the soil; soon to become the looming visages of death incarnate. And as night fell, she watched as people gathered in the streets with pitchforks and torches, following closely behind a horse that dragged a pale creature by its ankles towards a mighty blaze.
"Evangeline . . ." A familiar voice called out, the muffled sound seemingly coming from all angles. Her body turned in circles trying to catch a glimpse at its source and when it called out again and she looked up, the walls of the lounge suddenly appearing just as they did before, with their cracked paint and naked wooden beams; except that they were cast in an orange glow.
"It's ten pm." Vincent whispered, his eyes gesturing towards the clock on the mantlepiece as if to say 'It's time to stop', which she did and placed the tome down beside her.
"It's not that late," She yawned as she nestled into the settee and closed her eyes, her mind fatigued from reading. The fire danced in the hearth in front of her as she rested, as though it meant to escape the bars that contained it and steadily grew weaker with each wispy flame that freed itself.
"Oh really? Well, I'm going to bed," He said, slightly louder now, his voice weary with sleep, and bade her goodnight. Her eyes followed him through lowered lids as he moved towards his room, his light but disjointed footsteps echoing off of the hard wooden floor before falling silent behind his bedroom door.