Chapter Text
Southern France, 1002
One day, late at night, Lucien had called Victoria and two of the service girls —Mildred and Adelaide— to the chapel. After arriving, they found the place empty. The three of them found that strange and decided not to wait for Lucien. They preferred to exit the chapel; after all, they had heard the stories about the creatures lurking in the dark and about the disappearances. All three turned around to get out, just to find Lucien blocking the exit. Smiling from ear to ear.
“Girls! Thank you for coming to meet me”, he gleefully greeted, as if the situation wasn’t totally weird.
“Why did you wish to see us, Lucien?” a nervous Mildred questioned.
“Well, you see, my dear Mildred. I wish to do a couple of experiments, and the three of you will be my test subjects”, Lucien announced while he walked closer to them, and the girls instinctively stepped back, feeling creeped out.
Lucien started playfully humming while pretending to pick who he would start with. The fear kept growing inside the girls, and this seemed to amuse the man even more.
“What are you playing at, Lucien?” Victoria asked boldly.
Before Lucien could respond, Mildred tried to make a run for it but was ultimately stopped by Lucien when he grabbed her shoulder and placed her back to where she was before, on Victoria’s right side. This action seemed to have helped Lucien make up his mind quickly.
“You’ll be the first one since you seem so impatient to get this started,” he told her mockingly. He launched towards Mildred until they collided with one of the structures behind her.
Adelaide horrified at what they were witnessing, could only scream and step back while tears damped her cheeks until she found herself against some of the pillars that supported the chapel and slid down until she was sitting on the floor, holding her knees. Victoria could feel her own tears fall down her face while she silently walked back and followed Adelaide’s steps; she placed her arms around her and removed her eyes from such a scene unraveling in front of them.
After what felt like an eternity, Lucien walked away from Mildred’s cold body, which was now lying on top of the structure they had collided with when Lucien started his savage attack. His whole mouth was covered in blood, and the expression that painted his face was of utter euphoria. He took a couple of steps towards the girls hugging each other.
“Oh, you do not know all that you are missing! Ahhh... WOO!” he yelled out, enraptured, “I feel as though I have left the fog of winter to enter the most glorious springtime!”
“Please! My family!” Adelaide pleaded in between sobs.
“The next stage of my experiment starts now,” Lucien continued, ignoring the scared woman's pleas. He set his eyes on the other girl, who was trying to avoid looking into his eyes at all costs. “And I choose you, my dear Victoria.”
Before she could say anything, Victoria saw Lucien launch himself toward her with superhuman speed; he made her stand up by taking her by the shoulders and biting her neck. By instinct, she screamed, hoping that someone would hear her and rescue her, but nobody came. Victoria started feeling weak when Lucien finally stopped his assault on her neck, bit his wrist, and forced her to drink his blood. She resisted, but while trying to fight him off, she couldn’t stop some blood from getting into her system.
The man removed his wrist from her mouth and held her head with too much force for Victoria’s liking to see how the bite on her neck started to close up.
Satisfied, he couldn’t help but laugh and said, “It works. It’s a success!”
“What in the bloody hell are you talking about?” Victoria asked, bobbing her head while still feeling lightheaded and confused. Lucien held her head steady with his hands.
“This will hurt you a little, but we’ll see each other later… or maybe not.” thereupon, he snapped her neck, and everything went black.
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“... your plan after killing these girls? Perhaps were…?” said a distant voice interrupted by a loud gasp from Victoria, who was now sitting behind the two vampires who were feeding off the now-deceased Adelaide.
The three men laid their eyes on a perplexed Victoria, who seemed disoriented and was looking everywhere, trying to figure out what had just happened. With a bemused look, the oldest of the three returned his look to his younger brother, who looked just as confused as him. Then, he set his eyes on the only possible culprit: Lucien. He seemed very satisfied with himself and had a dazzling smile.
“Lucien…” started, who Victoria recognized as Lord Elijah de Guise, “Would you mind explaining what you’ve done to this poor girl? She, whom, until a couple of minutes ago, we thought dead.”
“Well, you see, it’s a fascinating story.” Lucien started off like he was about to share the most amusing tale. He started walking from one side to another and making hand gestures while saying: “After I died, I felt this insatiable craving for something. I didn’t know what, but I needed to feed. Although not just anything. I craved something particular: blood. But I also felt a curiosity to know why I was alive. I mean, Tristan’s guardian stabbed me with a sword, right?” he stopped his movements and stared into Elijah and Niklaus’ eyes, who just stared at him. Lucien turned around and looked at Victoria with a big smile.
“So… I told my good friend Victoria and the other two ladies to meet me here so I could test a theory. And yes, I did eat Mildred. Adelaide was Nik’s work,” he said without a care in the world. “But Victoria. Oh, my great experiment,” he added while getting closer to her; she backed away from his reach while still on the floor.
“Leave the poor woman alone,” Elijah warned him after seeing how frightened she was.
“Well,” he gave up trying to get closer and turned around to face the brothers, “I fed her some of my blood and snapped her neck to see if she became one of us. And she did!”
Niklaus, who had not muttered a single word, looked at him curiously but annoyed. “What was the purpose of doing this?”
Before Lucien could answer, he was interrupted by Elijah. “The purpose is irrelevant to the situation, brother.” he looked at the both of them. “The important thing is that we have a girl that is now one of us. She’ll go through the same desires and cravings, and she won’t be able to control them.” he was pointing at the woman as if she weren’t present while saying all this.
“Stop talking about me as if I wasn’t here,” Victoria ordered with irritation. She could feel this fierce wrath bubbling in her chest. Lucien had killed me? For an experiment? she thought.
“She has to drink blood,” Lucien announced. “Not long after coming back from the dead, that was the only thing I could think of… That and heightened senses, and I had this murderous desire of putting my hands around Tristan and….”
“Enough.” Elijah stopped his rambling. He returned his eyes to Victoria, who had stood up from the floor and was now leaning onto the structure carrying Mildred’s body. “If you wish to, you can….”
“No,” Victoria said adamantly. “I’m drinking no one’s blood. I’d rather die.”
“Are you sure?” Lucien asked, leaning his head to the side and a little smile playing on his lips. He slowly bent down to hold Adelaide’s arm and dragged her closer to Victoria. “I know you want it. You need it . You can feel the smell clouding your senses. Flooding your mind. It’s the only thing you can think about.” he continued before biting Adelaide’s arm.
Victoria closed her eyes and turned around. She took deep breaths, trying not to fall for Lucien’s temptation. But he was right; that smell filled her nostrils and her mind. When she opened her eyes, they fell upon Mildred’s body. She was there, in front of her. Blood dripped from her neck. The next thing Victoria felt was this marvelous liquid overwhelming her palate. She couldn’t stop and wasn’t going to until she felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned her head slightly; it was Lord Niklaus.
“Someone needs to keep an eye on her,” Elijah spoke while looking at his brother. “Someone needs to teach her how to be one of us, teach her about control.” he turned around to look at the culprit of the situation.
“Who? Me?” he asked with a shocked look and pointed at himself with his finger.
“If you can go around the world turning people, you could very well teach them how to control themselves and be careful not to be seen.” Niklaus joined with a very calm tone, but underneath there was a bit of anger.
“Exactly. I could. But I won’t.” Lucien rushed to say, “I myself don’t even know how this whole thing works.”
“You should’ve thought about that before playing around and experimenting,” Elijah barked. “But, brother, he does have a good point.” he admitted, “He can barely control his own urges… it would be naive of us to think he’d do a good job.”
“I have an idea,” Lucien spoke once more, “we could kill her, and that way, no one needs to look after anybody.”
Victoria just looked at every one of them in panic after hearing the words and even more after seeing Niklaus’ demeanor change and seemed to think that was a good idea.
Before she could refute that, Elijah said: “We will not kill anyone.” he walked up to her brother, who was still next to a very scared Victoria. He stood before her and, looking into her eyes, said: “If Lucien can’t look out for her, I will .”