7. Distress
Book 1-2.
Author's Note: Cute, in an offhand way, but much less humorous than usual. This is what you get when I'm stuck home with a sinus infection. :d
Need to level the ratio.
And I must say, many thanks to you reviewers! 3
Even if you shouldn't be, you're the ones who keep me going.
And to prove it, this is mega-long. XD
The first few months after Darren was torn from his family were the hardest. Larten was impatient and harsh, trapped in a residual bad mood - his new pupil was equally petulant and moody. The child avoided him and snapped at him, intentionally provoking with every action and word.
Verily, the older vampire was no fan of moping and melancholy; they were qualities that infuriated him to no end. Needless to say, the tantrums were viewed poorly and often punished, to some degree; and after years studying under Seba Nile, Larten was no stranger to punishment himself. Yet, even in his terrible humor he was loath to further stress his relationship with the boy, who was in a volatile enough state as it was. The bond between them was to be watched and measured, guarded like the treasure beneath the gaze of a dragon; after all, no student could learn while fearing their teacher, and no teacher could educate without the attention and respect of their pupil.
There had to be boundaries, Larten reasoned. The child was like an uncontrollable colt; he was spirited, valiant and headstrong. All of these were qualities the clan viewed as admirable – and he would work as the craft master, tempering, molding, and mending them, as they should be. In order for the boy to survive among his newfound brothers of the night he must learn his place among them, learn to bend to the will of his princes. It was his duty, as the man and artist who was to fashion the boy, to achieve this end using whatever means he dubbed expedient.
The matter of Larten's control over the child finally came to a head on a night of moonless sky and ice. He had walked in the lead, with Darren following reluctantly a few yards behind, as if pulling at invisible string binding him to the vampire. His mind had drifted for a time – as all great minds must – and when he glanced back over his shoulder to check on his apprentice saw, instead, nothingness.
It had been a bitingly cold night in early January; snow fell lazily from darkened clouds, freezing to the bark of the bare-branched conifers that grew in walls on either side of the narrow deer-path that the two were traveling along. A light fog made the distance appear unending, and the shapes of drifts of snow rose like ghosts against the grey backdrop. Above their heads, branches whorled and clung to the graying sky.
It took a moment for the emptiness to register, and he cleared a further five feet of snow before it occurred to him that he should stop. The icy throbbing of his extremities faded, a sudden sea of fury rising in his throat –and at his sides both elegantly calloused hands clenched into fists. There was a moment of silence and stillness that would have frightened any observer; the air trembled with glaring, shuddering rage. Enough, a tiny voice whispered deep in his mind, was enough.
He wheeled violently, eyes flashing in the lightless night, and snarled. Almost as quickly his feet found their rhythm (his step was quick and practiced – furiously passionate) in the snow, and he backtracked at a jogging pace with his eyes trained on the obscure end to the tapering, twisting path. The dead, desiccated stalks of grass that managed to break the surface of the deep snow bent beneath his weight and the ground flashed past beneath his shoes.
His pace increased, falling only short of a run, and his eyes caught a hint of color in the pall. A splash of red marked the snow, and a trail of drops led off the path to the trunk of a rotten old oak tree. Fury ebbed in a sudden change of tide, and bare-boned fear for his apprentice slowly dribbled in to replace it. He stared at the trail for a moment, standing rigidly, a drop of solidity in a slowly dissolving world. Shock – like anger had only moments ago – slipped away in a split-second rush and he had the power to move again; the distance between the path and the hollowed out tree was gone in the blink of an eye.
"Darren –" he hissed, bending down in front of the tree, where the smell of blood battered his senses and pushed him to the very edge of comfort.
No answer came. He bent over further, peering through the gap in the trunk that the child had crawled through; and inside he could just make out the prone form, curled beneath the pack that the vampire had prepared for in an effort to keep warm. Blood oozed from a long cut along the child's temple. The vampire cursed and pulled back, ripping out a long swathe of rotting bark to gain access to the unconscious boy. Reaching inside, he gathered him up into his arms and inspected the injury. The cut was long but quite shallow, so Larten removed his cloak and wrapped it around the shivering body and – holding it close – began to run.
wet, cold, shivering – he can't stay here, no, NO! red –bright, violent, bad, the color of terrible and painful things – interposes itself stubbornly in his view, burned into the very fabric of the synapses that make up his life, slowing down in the terrible, saturated cold that saps his energy… damn that tree, all the branches that split off from life, all the possibilities that lie in the future and will never be realized or drawn from. and the wind is, he knows, howling in his ears and he can't escape - never ever ever.
He felt his eyes open for a second, blinking feverishly, and focused the long, twisted and scarred face loom above him, watching him with a mixture of curiosity and concern. But sight was still too much for his feverish body and mind, and he noted, detachedly, the blackness ebbing into his minds eye and slipped into the comfortable abyss. In the senseless blackness of the abyss there were monsters, he somehow knew, but at least they were the monsters he had known since the day he was born.
So cold, so cold, let it be over, let it end soon, please…
And – even as far lost in his own mind as he was – the answer rang blatent, angry, and loud in his frostbitten, anguished ears; "No."
Two days later he broke away from the fever, and it took another day more to wake. Stress, fear, and misery had been building for weeks, and they had finally pushed their vessel over the edge; a self-compromised immune system made vampire blood nothing but a useless commodity.
After half a week of playing nurse to his assistant, Larten Creplsey was exhausted. His back and neck ached and his eyes hung heavy with fatigue. Accordingly, he was leaning against a rotting beam of the old barn that he had set up camp in when the boy stirred. The warmth of the fire he had built to keep the feverish boy warm was playing with his senses, casting dancing shadows on the walls. He only barely registered the shifting of the little lump of blankets nestled within the pile of dry, sweet-smelling hay. The vampire only fully woke as a ruffled brown mat of hair and flushed red face rose above the worn gold.
"Mhmm… Mr. Crepsley?" he murmured, eyes focusing strenuously on the still-blurry face of the older man. Larten blinked, looking vaguely owlish, and nodded, barely su. Darren reached toward his temple, registering a mild stinging above his eye – the vampire reacted quickly, reaching out to stop him. A rough, spidery hand gently caught his own and pushed it back down, away from the rough bandage he'd fastened around the boy's head.
"Stop. You will reopen the wound."
"The…? Oh…" he croaked, mouth suddenly dry. Darren's hand tentatively climbed to his hairline, gently fingering the rough cotton strips tied across his forehead with a grimace. Beneath his fingers flakes of blood chipped away from his pale scalp. Confused eyes darted up to Mr. Creplsey's, a question forming on his lips.
" It would not close due to the extremes in temperature," the man explained, " but it should be completely healed by now. You have been ill for a number of nights. Do you recall what happened?"
" I-I'm not really that sure," Darren murmured uneasily, "I remember seeing you ahead, but then the wind picked up and a branch – I think – fell, and when I came to you were gone…"
His eyes caught the light of the flickering flame like tiny, flawed jewels, and the intensity of the light made the slow welling of tears in them look as though they were spouting their own fire. Left behind in a stagnant, twisted, unfamiliar universe by his family, friends, and species, to be left behind a second time had been one of the worst feelings in the world. Shrouded, protected in the darkest region of his heart and mind a crack was appearing –
Unfamiliar arms wrapped protectively around the boy and he was engulfed in the smoldering warmth of a hug. Suddenly, crimson seemed to no longer be such a wicked color.