Sorry for the delay. My Internet connection just... died or sth.
Sam frowned.
"I don't understand," she said finally, sinking lower into the sofa. "I don't understand at all."
Danny was perched on the sofa's velvety arm. "Still don't?" he asked, smiling smally, letting her know that he was willing to repeat himself as many times as needed. In fact, Sam noticed, having to repeat himself seemed to amuse him a lot. The heavens knew why.
"I thought that when you were bitten by either a vampire or a werewolf, you died," Sam stated irritated at Danny's good mood.
"Oh, it's much more delicate with vampires," he said suavely.
She eyed him curiously. That was the explanation she wanted to hear.
Smiling, he went on, his eyes dreamy as if he were lost in a good memory, "See, we can choose in the last instance if we'd rather our meals survive, or not."
Sam frowned at being called a meal, again.
But Danny didn't seem to notice. "Werewolves are too stupid when they're transformed- of course they can't choose... didn't you know that if you're bitten by a werewolf you've no choice but to become one?"
She fake-coughed, and her cough sounded a lot like, "off topic!"
"Come on Sam..." the half-vampire said, mocking a pleading voice, "I need to ramble, I've been alone and quiet for like, 300 years, and I hate it!"
"You can't possibly say you haven't spoken in so long..."
"Well, no..."
Sam smirked in triumph. "I know for a fact, mr. Daniel the III, that you do speak to your so-called 'meals'..."
Danny frowned. "Well wouldn't you?"
"I'm not saying I wouldn't! In fact I... Oh, forget it. We're rambling," Sam said, the tone of her voice sounding matter-of-fact-ish. The half vampire chuckled.
"You're rambling," he remarked, "I'm socializing."
She quirked an eyebrow. "How come you say you hate being alone, but after 300 or whatever years you were still alone until we met?"
"Yeah, about that... hehe..."
She looked at him questioningly.
"The only vegans I found out there were creepy old guys who locked themselves up in dark basements and did weird stuff with glass bottles..." Danny confessed, albeit sheepishly.
Sam did nothing to suppress a smirk. "Those "creepy old guys" are generally known as alchemists..."
He shrugged. "Anyway, I wasn't about to make any of those immortal, so..." Thinking back on what he'd just said, Danny found himself remembering something he'd been told centuries ago:
"Go for the pretty ladies!" his father had exclaimed the day Danny turned 18.
Danny'd been reluctant at first: "But I... uh... are you sure about this, dad?"
But his father was more experienced: "Couldn't be more certain."
And so Danny had done as told, and the experience had almost cost his life. And then the unfortunate half-vampire had learnt one important fact: the blood of any normal human was in a balanced equilibrium with said human's diet. By eating meat, a human allowed a large portion of iron into its circulatory system, and that iron was lethal to Danny's organism- as he found out after he'd bitten his first victim, his metabolism refused the iron, and caused some strange allergies within his own body. He had been forced to accept that the blood of the most ordinary of humans was the subtlest, deadliest poison he would ever be able to find.
Unaware of that, the first time he'd drank human blood would be engraved forever in his mind as his most painful experience. He'd taken in so much of the venomous substance that he'd been lying down in a bed, half conscious half not for an uncertain period of time that could have been a couple of days or a couple of weeks, trying to fight a peculiar scorching sensation that ripped his insides apart.
Gradually the pain had eased, and Danny had then learnt that in the blood of a human that fed only of vegetables, the gradient of iron was considerably smaller, and it was dissolved in the crimson liquid in a different way.
Finding victims had always been hard and, as Danny previously mentioned, those counted among the ranks of the oddest. Alchemists, fake witches, painters, wiccans, opium smokers, he'd tasted every kind of vegetarian freak that walked that world, since, more or less, the year 1304- which was the year he'd turned 18, and had started feeding (or at least, trying to) like any other ordinary vampire would. Before that, he'd behaved like any normal human kid.
Danny had been called Daniel the III because he was the third Daniel in his father's pure-vampire-blood family.
Really, his father wasn't the brightest crayon in the box.
On the contrary, Danny's mother- a Frenchwoman primorously named Maddeleine- had been a devoted scientist. True, she was part-time model in an atelier, but she had had to get some money to live. Scientists were pretty much underestimated during the Middle Ages. She quit the part-time job after she and Danny's father married, and they moved to a quiet little town in the French countryside.
Danny was 23 and hadn't aged one day since his eighteenth birthday, the day Maddie was accused of witch, vampire and necromancer by some nose-bitching neighbors. Although all the charges were false, the Inquisition found them pretty credible, and three months later Danny's mother died being 48, amidst dancing orange flames. Danny's father, devastated at the loss of his only love, starved himself to death.
The young, considerable inexpert half vampire roamed aimlessly for an indefinite period of time, losing himself in forests and trying by all means to forget, blaming all those disgraces on himself and his lack of strength. If only he'd been less clueless, if only he'd been less selfish, if only he'd had a better timing, if only...
Until he understood that the grim reality was, that not all the guilt complexes in the world were enough to bring back two people from the grave.
Danny's grip on reality tightened from that point onwards, and it all came from a simple promise: no one should ever have to suffer what he did- as long as he could help, he would. That finally made his conscience leave him in peace.
As all these memories danced without a particular order inside Danny's head, Sam was left pondering on the half-vampire's words.
If every vampire turned into a vampire all the people he bit, the world would already be populated only by them. So what Danny said did make sense. By being able to choose whether their victims became undead or not, the vampires themselves regulated the extents of their population. And, of course, less vampires always equaled more food.
And it also equaled less choice of mates... and why not, more probability of half-vampires being born...
What did that have to do with... anything? She shook her head.
She eyed him, and he eyed her, and after blinking in confusion and gradually pulling themselves back to reality, they started laughing at eachother's disconcerted faces.
The half vampire couldn't deny he was, from time to time, a bit teeny weeny clueless, but he knew it wasn't a trick of the light when he guessed a small blush tingeing her cheeks.
Oh well, it was probably in his cheeks too.
And that reminded him... oh, Danny couldn't say he wasn't lucky in love. He'd had many lovers, mortals, all of them. Of course he'd been dumped constantly, because when his little human blossoms started to wither, and he hadn't aged one minute, they felt jealous and overshadowed, and kicked him out of their lives, before it was too late for them to find a man who would age with them. (He remembered with special affection one Paulina, but that had been a couple of centuries ago, during the Spain/Netherlands war. Yes, her father had conducted a hunting party after they found out his true nature.)
But he still remained a cute 18-year-old young man with looks that any lady would die for, which meant there was always another girl to make up for the last one.
But Danny eventually grew tired of all that.
It came a time when, even though still immersed in the pre-adult innocence, he'd already tried anything and everything and he was just tired of drifting. He wanted a place he could call home and a woman he could call dear.
But whenever he found one that made him tell himself, 'Well, this is the one', he faced an ironic dilemma: 'If I bite her I die, if I don't she dies' And he valued his life a lot, thankyouverymuch. He felt there were still many things he had to do...
He still had to taste what real, solid, tangible love felt like. He'd tasted lust. Many times. But it was just like smoking an opium pipe: one moment you're high, the next you're falling deep, deep, deep... and it's very empty down there.
Danny always tried before discarding.
Opium and whores counted among the discarded. He wanted a life, not a scapegoat.
He was caught off-guard staring at Sam -again- with a pensive look. But instead of a scowl, he just got a small smile. And that infamous, uncomfortable shadow-of-a-blush.
From their place on the sofa they could see the grey forest out of the large ogival window. The morning wasn't even stirring yet, but a dim, sleepy light was hovering ghostly over the black-green treetops. A flock of undistinguishable birds flew past the castle towards the West, away from the soon to appear sun.
Sam stood up and walked towards the window, opening it and letting the fresh air wash into the room. Danny breathed it pleased, it carried around a revitalizing scent of pinetree wood. Standing up as well, he walked to the window and closed the heavy dark curtains. He looked at Sam, the room was dark again. That had just been a taste at what he knew they'd never have, warm daylight.
"Let's go to bed, the sun's about to rise."
I know, all about the iron the blood and the veggies up there is made up. Toooooooootally made up. n.n
I hope this chapter Sam and Danny were IC. I hope. If they weren't, tell me.
BTW, there IS going to be at least one more chappy :D