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The air outside the train is cold, but Nandor doesn’t feel it as he steps onto the platform connecting the cars. His hair is long, dark, tied at the top in a loose bun that is threatening to unfurl in the whipping wind. He is wearing a heavy cape, rich and royal and red, which simply looks gray in the moonlight, layered over a pale frilly shirt, dark pants, and thick leather boots.
He places a hand on the cool railing that lines the sides of the platform, peering down. The rocks that fill the tracks hurtle past beneath him, speckled with dark pockets of lost coal and the smeared earthy greens of scattered weeds.
Above him, the stars don’t smear. They are fixed points, brilliant and certain. Nandor wonders what kind of existence that might be. Perhaps Colin Robinson would have been able to convey it to him properly. But all he has now are cold comforts.
Ursa Minor and Ursa Major. A small bear with a long tail. One of his wives had told them that once, he’s pretty sure. If he tries hard enough, he can remember the scent of the room, heavy with incense and fruit and sex, and the soft sound of her laughter. But he cannot remember her face. Or her name.
The train moves forward, just as everything does. Nandor considers how it feels like the people they leave behind stop existing once out of sight. But they don’t, he reminds himself. They live full lives. They meet other people. They eat. They breathe. They are sad, happy, thoughtful, betrayed, overjoyed, all the various emotions. And then they die.
But the stars don’t die. And he doesn’t die. And the heavy weight on his chest doesn’t lift.
Nandor is staring at the sky, trying to put all these thoughts together into something he can understand. The train jostles, and he remains unmoving on the wriggling platform, watching a forest rush to greet the train before splitting to embrace it. Branches crisscross his view of the stars, and he sighs and stops trying to look for sense in the chaos.
He is tired of being confused. Tired of being sad. Tired of being tired. He circles back to the certainties. They have always grounded him.
He is a vampire. He is a warrior. He is a tyrant. He is a murderer. He is a monster. He is a man. He is alone in every sense of the word. He is so incredibly achingly lonely that it soaks into the marrow of his bones like icy rainwater. He is sad and lost and it smothers him, as if he’s been buried beneath the earth.
“Guillermo…” he whispers.
It’s almost a whimper. It makes him cringe and hiss. Guillermo left and the train moved on. The platform has vanished from view. And if those people continue to live, then Guillermo will too. Until he doesn’t.
“Our real grave is not in the ground but in men’s hearts.”
That same wife. She’d had so many words. They’d fallen slow and sweet from her lips like honey. He thinks he may have loved her but he can’t remember. Nandor wonders how long it will be until Guillermo’s face and name fade from his memory.
The forest whips by, and he feels something swirling inside of his chest, and recognizes it even through the icy cold of the wind and wild whip of his cape and the sting of his hair swatting his face as the train hurries along to its next destination.
“It’s grief Master.”
“Enough of this shit,” he hisses into the wind.
Nandor closes his eyes, and the stars disappear. He knows they’re still there, just like those people. Just like Guillermo. He focuses, through the haze of the ether with a tendril of a thought. He imagines it as a rope, shifting and round and inconsistent, brightly colored in the void of his mind.
Guillermo de la Cruz – hear me through the darkness!
He waits a moment. The tendril has come to a stop, smearing side to side like a streak of candlelight. Nandor finds himself matching the movement on the platform, his cape shifting and catching in the gusts of wind.
I know you’re probably not listening. I just wanted to say that I am sorry.
The grief blooms into something new, but he doesn’t wait to process it. If he doesn’t continue forward, he’s pretty sure he’ll never say what he feels like he needs to say.
I was a shitty master. I do not blame you for abandoning me. I know there is no excuse for how I treated you and I know that it is not fair of me to ask for forgiveness.
And if Nandor is being honest, he doesn’t think he deserves it. Any forgiveness given would be tainted – shrouded in doubt and guilt and pain. It’s far easier to ignore those things. To forget them.
In the distance an owl cries out. He can hear it clearly, as if it was right beside him, wind slipping so easily through those sleek white feathers, so perfectly suited for silence. Its talons catch around something small and frightened, digging deep and drawing blood as it rises once more.
It is difficult for me to… to share myself with you. With anyone. Being a vampire comes with a certain amount of… cynicism and pain. The act of becoming a predator. A villain.
Nandor can smell salt and sense body heat. He can feel fear and panic and uncertainty deep in his gut. But it is impossible for him to separate those from his own feelings, and so he does not try to understand.
Tears gather in the corners of his eyes, and this is how he knows he is truly undone. He has not cried in so long he has forgotten it. Like the faces of his lovers. Like the sounds of Guillermo’s heart, fading bit by bit from his mind.
I hope that you never have to know this.
He hiccups, and has to bring his hand to his mouth to stifle it before he falls apart completely.
I love you, Guillermo. Goodbye.
When he opens his eyes the stars are still there.