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Perhaps body snatchers weren’t the most reliable source of information, but he was desperate.
Julian’s fingers tightened around the lantern he clutched. With a downward glance, he sidestepped a tombstone half-pried from the ground by a defiant tree root.
The mausoleum was somewhere up ahead, he had been told. That information had been acquired from a body snatcher by generous plying with a handful of coin and several glasses of alcohol. Resurrection men were not known to give up their secrets lest they be turned in to the local constabulary.
But his friends who had provided the name of the resurrectionist were medical students not likely to give up their supply of fresh meat. That had done half the work in convincing the body snatcher to whisper, behind gnarled, curled fingers, the story about the undead thing that supposedly lived in the cemetery.
Julian pulled the lantern closer to the map he’d scrawled during that discussion. Jagged, scratchy lines danced over the printed type of the broadsheet it was drawn upon.
Julian squinted. That little oblong thing he’d drawn — was that the fallen tombstone he’d passed? The resurrectionist had mentioned it as a marker to watch for on his journey to the mausoleum.
Yes, it must’ve been. It couldn’t have been anything else. Julian raised the lantern again. Something skittered over the grass a few paces in front of him, the light of the lamp glancing off its eyes.
If only he had the same visual perception in the dark as the creature that slunk between the graves. Maybe his journey would‘ve already been over.
Then again, what would he do when he reached his destination and if the rumor proved true? Julian told himself he’d hold his head high, stare down the creature, and demand that it save him.
But what reason would a wolf have for sparing the life of a sickened deer? Julian had nothing to offer.
And, besides, what was the likelihood of something like a vampire existing? Perhaps the illness had made his brain feverish and prone to flights of fancy. He always had predilections for the strange — reveling in drawing room tales of ghosts and ghouls. Of course, he always nodded along later and said how silly such things were, while a sliver of his mind wondered ‘What if?’
And his trite little stories and poems, scratched on spare scraps of paper, hidden from mocking eyes and prattling tongues, were riddled with lurking monsters and slouching, otherworldly beasts.
A pang in his chest sliced through his churning thoughts. The lantern trembled in his hand. He swept the beam of light across the ground and saw the outline of another tree trunk some paces ahead.
Julian pushed himself, hurrying towards it. The beginnings of a rattling cough began to scrape at his chest. He swallowed, pushing it down. He had to make it to the resting spot. If not, he might fall and dash his head upon another overturned headstone.
He pushed himself faster, all the while knowing he was exerting his body beyond its present limits.
Julian fell to his knees, and his back slammed against the trunk. He could no longer deny the protestations of his body. A hacking cough squeezed from his lungs and up the tunnel of his throat. With each rasping, braying cough, the muscles in his sides pulled and contracted, driving lancing pain through his abdomen.
Blindly, Julian fumbled for a crumpled-up handkerchief in his waistcoat pocket. Fingers gripped at his lungs, squeezing the fragile organs until they might burst. Julian gasped and hacked into the handkerchief. Wetness dribbled between his lips. Salty, coppery.
“Damn,” he murmured. He dabbed the blood away with the cloth.
Such a pointlessly polite gesture, as if there was anything in that cemetery that cared whether his blood and phlegm were smeared on his mouth.
Julian’s head fell back against the trunk. He gasped in the cold night air. His eyes wandered to the sky. The pinpricks of the stars were cut through by crisscrossing, outstretched tree branches. Newly budded leaves fluttered in the breeze, waving as if greeting his presence.
This might have been the last night he would ever see the stars again. Or he would see them tomorrow after knowing that this had all been for naught, he’d fallen for a children’s fairy tale, and he was still doomed, his body still withering away, the cough still scraping and rasping in his chest.
Julian inhaled and set his jaw. He snatched up the lantern and crude map once more and resumed his path. His steps did not stumble. Instead, he was surefooted as a goat, glancing back and forth from the map to the circle of light washing the bent grass and rows of tombstones planted into the ground.
Then —
There it was. The end of the map. And, before him, crouched like a great stone beast with its mouth open wide awaiting prey, was the mausoleum. Thick pillars lined the outside of the structure, holding up the high, pointed roof. It reminded Julian of a temple devoted to some long-ago god.
The stone’s surface was devoid of any words. If it had borne a name on its facade, it was long worn away. The flame inside the lantern wavered as his hand shook — whether from nerves or weakness he did not know.
Julian grasped at the fading determination inside himself. Man could not cure his ailment with seaside retreats and fresh air, nor through bed rest or bloodletting. He had seen consumption turn one of his dearest friends into a shivering, sweating shade, and a cousin into a wilting flower entombed before the winter came.
With a firm gait, he approached the mausoleum, climbed the steps, and put the lantern down.
“I’m told that an undead creature lives here. One that has weathered the centuries,” he began. Julian figured a certain degree of respect was an appropriate way to begin his request.
“A body snatcher once trespassed here, in your hunting grounds, but never returned once he saw what lived here. I am here because I have heard the story, but I don’t fear you.” Was that right? Would the creature prefer fear to be admitted? Too late to take it back.
“I want what you have,” he continued, trying to remove any quaver in his voice. “I want immortality.”
Julian straightened and stared down into the dark entrance to the mausoleum. No sound. No night creatures skittered over the stone, and no birds battered their wings against tree branches as they took off. There was not even a breeze.
He glanced away, back toward the jutting tombstones and the unblinking gazes of carved angels. What a foolish thing. Of course there was no help — not from the corporeal world, and certainly not from the preternatural. Julian reached for the lantern. The flame guttered.
His eyes flicked up. There was a breeze, then, when two icy hands grabbed him and hauled him back into the mausoleum. Julian didn’t even have time to cry out — for all the good that would’ve done when there was no one living to hear — for he soon found his back pressed against the wall.
One hand was on his throat, the other pressed to his mouth. Julian tried to shift his head under the grip of the hands, but he was held fast. Air.
He needed air. He needed breath. His lungs cried for it. Julian arched his back and kicked in the black room, hoping to collide with something. One kick did manage hit something solid.
Whoever — or whatever — he hit exhaled a laugh. “Useless efforts. But I suppose one must admire a resolute, defiant man. And you are indeed one, are you not?”
The hand slid off his mouth to cup his cheeks. The pads of the fingers were cold as the touch of winter’s first kiss. “You come here … " Julian’s head was tilted back and forth by the hand, as if he was being appraised, “to my home and ask me to give you eternal life at no cost.”
The hand around his throat tightened. “I should kill you where you stand.”
Julian’s pulse hammered, drumming against cold skin. He knew that if this mausoleum truly housed a vampire, it would more than likely kill him. The risk was known, weighed, and accepted. But no amount of imagining could have prepared him for the true thing.
“Do it if you want. I have few days left as it is,” he said. Julian raised his chin as much as he could, but the movement felt foolish. Like a little boy trying to be brave.
“Do you?” Some real interest echoed in the creature’s tone. A finger pressed into his skin, hard enough to draw a small trickle of blood.
The tip of a nose pressed against his neck, and Julian gasped. A predator’s mouth was at his throat, yet a dim memory flashed through his mind — a moment shared, only a few years ago, before everything had gone wrong. A night between him and his friend Miles, mouths on skin, fingers entwined, a night never spoken of again but never forgotten.
Perhaps he was right in thinking his mind had somehow become affected by the illness that infested him to make him think of that moment. Or, perhaps, it was the beginning of precious memories flashing before him before the killing bite.
The creature’s mouth grazed over the cut. “Your blood and body are corrupted.”
“Yes. I’m dying — slowly — but I’m dying. So, kill me if you wish. I would rather have it end tonight than watch myself fade slowly over months or years, helpless to do anything. If you kill me now, at least my death will have served some purpose nourish another.”
As Julian spoke the words, he surprised himself by realizing he meant all of it. He wouldn’t want to lie in clinging, sweaty bedclothes day by day and night by night as the meat withered from his bones and his family and friends looked on with watery eyes and the doctor solemnly shook his head, giving weak, empty condolences.
Julian did not want to be mourned before he’d even become a corpse.
The pressure of the creature’s fingers lightened. He closed his eyes, anticipating the clamp of the vampire’s mouth against his throat.
Instead, light flared behind his closed lids. He opened them again. Candles flickered around the room, lit by some power that he did not understand. Thick stone walls with spidery cracks surrounded him, and candlesticks were affixed to the walls. A stone casket lay in the center, the lid ajar.
He raised his eyes to the thing before him.
Julian did not know what he expected a vampire to look like. Perhaps something half-decayed, with a rictus, gaping mouth, and black staring eyes like a crow.
But the man clutching him looked quite human indeed, though with a few differences. His face was long and narrow, with high cheekbones and a straight, pinched nose. Dark, though not black, eyes shimmered in the candlelight. Sharp canines appeared between his twitching, smirking lips.
Brown and long, untidy hair fell almost to his shoulders.
He was arresting, in a strange way. The vampire was very unlike the clean-shaven and groomed men whom Julian knew.
“There are very few that would offer themselves as a willing meal to sustain me,” the vampire said.
His long fingers brushed over Julian’s neck, then dropped to grip his shoulders. The touch was deceptively light. He didn’t dare move.
“Perhaps I misjudged you, hm?” The vampire fixed Julian with a stare.
“Then you will consider what I am asking for?” Julian pressed. It was a risk, but he needed an answer tonight. He was set on it.
The vampire’s eyes narrowed. “You cannot ask for such a thing without offering something in return. But I suppose you might indeed be willing to make sacrifices if you offered me your life.”
“ … What would you ask of me?” Julian could not dare to think what a man no longer living would need, aside from his blood. The vampire couldn’t want money — not that he was in possession of much. His family’s fortune had dwindled over the years.
Power and influence? Perhaps, but how would a monster go about moving and human circles to obtain them? Julian could not offer that either. With dwindling fortunes came shrinking social status. A once well-regarded family name only got one so far.
“Servitude. Prove your loyalty to me in this way, and I will give you immortality,” the vampire said.
Julian blinked. “What could you need a servant for? You’re more than human. You seem to command elements — the way you lit the candles proves as much.”
The vampire bared his teeth in a facsimile grin. “True. But there are limitations to my power. I cannot emerge during the day, and I am vulnerable during that time. There are those in the world who would seek to kill my kind. Some of my kin have servants that protect them during the daylight hours.”
He paused, cocking his head without breaking eye contact. “And hunting is enthralling, but difficult at times too. It is beneficial to have someone find you fresh prey.”
“You would have me find people for you to kill?” Julian tried to pull back, forgetting the vampire’s hands. His nails dug into his shoulders.
“You seem quite surprised,” the vampire scoffed. “However, I am capable of self-control. Still, some die. It cannot be helped.”
Julian tore his gaze away from the creature. Being a servant would be an indignity, for his family had not yet fallen so far from grace for their sons to become servants. Yet he could bear watching over the sleeping place of a vampire. But being complicit in the taking of life?
“It is your choice to make. I will let you leave tonight if you do not think you could serve me. But, as you say, you will die without my service.”
Julian’s resolve wavered. He was not the most selfless of men — begging an unnatural creature to save his life was proof enough of that. But it was one thing to sacrifice his life; it was quite another to ask dozens of unknowing others to be foisted upon the serving tray so that his meager life could continue.
Innocents that wanted to live just as badly as he did, innocents who —
Oh.
“Do you … have preferences as to the character of your prey?” Julian glanced back at the vampire.
This time, it was the creature who blinked. “What do you mean?”
“Do you care if they’re wicked or kind?” Julian raised his chin again and set his jaw.
“No. Blood is blood, in the end.” The vampire’s hands brushed over his shoulders, dropping to hold him by his upper arms. “You would bring me the dregs of your society?”
Julian was being given another chance to refuse — to leave. Was the vampire testing him? Perhaps he wanted to know if Julian really was willing to do as he said.
He wasn’t quite sure of it either. Julian’s mind tipped one way and the other again — balanced over a precipice.
If he truly wanted to become what the vampire was, he would do more than just provide a hungry predator with lives. He would be that predator, a tick clinging and sucking at humanity’s skin over the centuries, too stubborn and too selfish to let go and become fodder for the worms.
Or he could die as natural order seemed to have decreed it — too young, breath rasping and fingers grasping onto the fragile cord of life.
Julian should have wanted the latter. No tales said that the undead were anything but unholy corruptions of humanity. And yet that was what he wanted. Survival, regardless of the cost.
“Yes. I could do what you ask, as long as you permit me only to bring you the worst of humanity. I won’t bring the innocent to sate you.”
“I am satisfied with that. Now, then, shall we begin by testing your loyalty right at this moment?” The vampire’s grip tightened on his arms.
“Wh — tonight? You’ll have me find you prey already?” The night had to be half-over already. There would hardly be any chance to find the kind of victim that Julian imagined.
The vampire shook his head. “Not quite. You inferred earlier that you would allow me to drink from you if that’s what I desired. Because of your visit, I have not fed yet. Will you allow me to feed on you now?”
Julian’s pulse jumped, but he didn’t try to pull away. He was weak tonight. He didn’t know how much more his body could take.
“You won’t kill me?” His eyes raised to gaze up at the vampire.
“I will not. I’m certain that sounds unlikely to you, but that is the test — begin with trusting me. How can you believe I will give you what you seek if we do not begin upon a foundation of trust? Now — " The vampire’s hands raised from his shoulders to brush over the sides of his neck, “will you acquiesce?”
Julian’s heart beat so hard that he thought it might crack through his ribs — or more likely cause another coughing fit. The vampire could be simply lulling him into a false sense of security to gain an easy meal. But Julian would be placing his life into the creature’s hands either way. It was time to test if he’d meant all that he’d said.
“Yes. You may drink.”
The vampire’s lips slid down over his fangs and he gave a tight, close-lipped smile. Julian’s jaw tightened. He may as well have been willingly laying his throat in the waiting jaws of a jaguar and trusting it not to kill.
He was pulled away from the wall by his arms and guided towards the stone casket. Julian started. “What — do you mean to put me inside?”
“Ah, I see you do not trust me already. Not a promising sign, my young man.” The vampire loomed over him, the long reach of his shadow falling along Julian’s body and the wall, blocking out the candlelight.
The creature pressed upon Julian, willing him to bow towards the casket. Somehow he sensed that the vampire was holding back some of his strength, that he could have forced him down if he so wished. That was enough to let Julian allow himself to be pushed down, down, until his back met the cool stone of the casket. His heartbeat was a thrum, a rush. The vampire’s eyes glittered with a hunger.
Once more, as he lay prone beneath the creature, caught in the moments before he was bitten, Julian’s mind tilted towards the liaison with Miles. They had lain very much like this, once. He squashed down the memory until it was flattened into nothingness. That moment was long past, and he doubted there would be any tenderness in this.
Julian’s eyes flashed up to meet the vampire’s. “Do it.”
The vampire needed no more prompting than that. His head plunged, and his jaws locked about Julian’s throat. He gasped, and his back arched off the stone, his chest pressing into the vampire’s. The reaction was more from surprise than pain, however. He’d expected it to feel as if two needles had pierced his vein, but all he felt was a hard pressure on his throat.
The vampire’s mouth worked against his throat, caressing and brushing about the skin even as he took from Julian.
At that moment, an aching sweetness surrounded him, descending upon him like a heavy, smothering fog. He knew what was happening to him, but he could not find it within himself to care.
The vampire pressed closer, harder against him as Julian found it more difficult to keep his neck erect the weaker he became. Still, all he could think was, My body has so little left to give. Every drop lost is all the worse for me.
He thought it with the same dispassionate observation as a naturalist might watch a fox tear apart a rabbit.
Julian’s head rolled limply to the side. This certainly would be an altogether dramatic and romantic death for a failed writer, he thought. Even more so than withering from consumption. He was not dying as a crumpled flower but rather as one still quite vibrant and full.
His eyes shut. In the haze, it seemed that his soul detached itself from some mooring in his body and floated up, pressing against his ribs, questing for access to escape his weakening form.
Death is more peaceful than I thought it would be, he mused.
Julian’s soul fluttered, squeezing out through a gap between two ribs. The moorings were about to snap, he was sure of it.
Those cold lips lifted away from his throat. A trail of blood snaked down the side of his neck, hot against the chill of his skin. His soul startled and darted back into its secret hiding places within himself, reattached to his mortal body — at least for the moment.
The vampire’s weight lifted off his chest, its shadow passing away. Candlelight flickered and danced behind his eyelids. Julian opened his eyes and blinked.
The vampire extended a hand to him. “Come, allow me to help you rise. You will certainly be weak and cannot sit up on your own.”
Perhaps the vampire offered such a courtesy after Julian proved his trust. However, the creature had also waited for assent before feeding. Maybe it was more a consequence of temperament than anything else.
Julian took the vampire’s hand, which was coated in a smear of blood across the palm and several fingers.
“You will need something to give you strength enough to return home.” He retracted his hand, and Julian sank down to sit on the edge of the stone casket.
“What do you mean?” He could hardly be offering Julian medicine.
The vampire pressed a nail to the inside of his wrist. “You have allowed me to take from you and so proven trust. I now will give to you. Consider it a presage of gifts to come.”
His nail pressed an indent into the skin until the pressure broke the flesh and released the creature’s blood. It was darker and oozed more slowly than the blood from any living man.
“Do you mean for me to … drink it?” Was this one last test to measure whether he truly wanted to become a vampire, to see if he would drink that which would sustain him for centuries?
“Yes. As I say, it is a gift. My blood will give you strength and briefly slow the disease from further ravaging your body. Now, come. Drink from me.” The vampire extended his hand, two swollen droplets of crimson rolling down and dripping from his arm.
Julian stood and walked to the vampire, only to kneel on the ground before him. His legs could hardly have allowed him to stay upright for long. The stone floor made his knees ache, and dampness along the floor seeped into the legs of his trousers. The vampire lowered his wrist, not moving, almost a statue himself.
Julian raised shaking hands to grasp the creature’s wrist. His movements were not graceful and as the vampire’s had been. They were clumsy, fingers dancing and fluttering over the skin until they wrapped around the wrist. By the time he did, he’d smeared tracks of blood up and down the vampire’s forearm. The vampire did not protest or chastise as Julian might have expected. He raised his eyes to the vampire, almost in supplication.
The vampire nodded. “Drink,” he said again.
Julian no longer hesitated. He lowered his mouth to the wound in the vampire’s wrist and lapped at it with his tongue. The vampire’s tendons stiffened, and he almost thought he heard the creature gasp when his tongue touched the wound, licking up the slick of blood.
It tasted like any blood — metallic and hard on his tongue and thick in the back of his throat. But for all that the blood tasted ordinary, its effects were not. With each taste, something inside renewed and flourished. The scrape in his chest that had been there almost the entire night subsided, and the tremors in his hands disappeared. He pulled his head away from the vampire’s wrist, gasping and panting. He heaved in another breath, reveling in lungs that could fill with air as easily as they once did. He smiled, and blood dribbled from his lower lip.
The vampire pulled his wrist away and brushed the tips of his fingers over Julian’s hair. He nearly startled away from the touch.
“Yes, very good,” the vampire murmured. His hand passed through Julian’s hair thrice more and withdrew his hand. “Rise.”
Mutely, Julian stood on legs that were solid pillars beneath him. He did not feel as if he would bend and topple at the slightest wheeze in his throat. What was he meant to do now? Would he now stay here, leaving no note or goodbye for his dear ones?
The vampire stepped aside and waved his arm. “You are free to leave. Come here once more in a fortnight and we shall further discuss our arrangement.”
Julian stared past the vampire’s arm and out into the darkened graveyard, where a breeze whispered through the grass and a crow called to another of its flock. He rubbed his hands over his trousers, doubtlessly smudging blood there.
“You mean that I can simply … leave?”
“Of course. As I have said, this relationship must be one of trust. You have trusted me, and now I must trust you. If I am to put my protection and possible survival in your hands, then that is what I must do.”
Julian reached for the creased little map jammed down into the very bottom of his waistcoat pocket. It fell to the ground. He half bent to reach for it, but the vampire picked it up before he could. Their eyes met once more, and the vampire’s eyes held his, as human and hopeful as any living man as he had ever seen. The darkness of his eyes were not something hard and unknowable, then. They beckoned. And, perhaps, they beseeched.
The vampire rose in a fluid motion and extended the map to him. “You will need this, should you return.”
Julian took the map, fingertips nearly brushing the vampire’s. “Thank you,” he said, and he meant to say, ‘Thank you for it all,’ but even that did not express the magnitude of their pact. It meant a future. It meant life and survival. It meant the only time spent in the tomb was not forever, but merely the paltry hours of the morning until he could rise by night and do as he wished.
The vampire bowed. “I thank you as well … "
“Julian Ravenwood,” he said. “If I’m to serve you, then I suppose you must know my name.”
The edge of the vampire’s mouth curled up. “Hm. Indeed. And it would be fitting for you to know my name as well. I am Lawrence Wyck.”
Julian returned the vampire’s bow. “Goodbye, Master Wyck. I shall return to you soon.”
He moved past the vampire and out of the mouth of the mausoleum. The lantern he’d carried there had reignited and cast a small circle of light on the steps of the mausoleum. As he lifted it, he glanced back.
The vampire — Lawrence — was no longer there.
Julian turned away and walked into the night.
He did not even have to give it thought.
In his bones he knew that he would fulfill his promise.