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The would-be assassin was just a child.
All that tension, and passion, and anger that had been holding him together as he'd hid in the doorway waiting for his target faded as soon as he realized he'd been apprehended.
He flinched, turning his face away from the one who'd grabbed him, awaiting the blow that would end his life.
It didn't come.
This person, those hands had knocked the gun from his grip and spun him around before he'd even noticed anyone was there, yet in the seconds since then, neither had moved.
"You'd hit one, and then what?"
The voice was that of an adult man, firm, but not harsh. Silky, yet sharp at the same time.
The boy opened his eyes, tentatively, uncertain. He couldn't see the man from this angle.
"They'd catch you right away -- kill you without even asking questions. Even if you'd hit one, you wouldn't have been able to kill. Is that what you wanted?"
The boy tensed, and his assailant realized he wasn't wrong.
It wasn't hard to guess the reason for his death wish. His hood had slipped just a bit, just enough to expose his healthy skin and hair, from a life of good nutrition and safety, though things had changed for him recently. He must have been a noble. Perhaps the revolution had killed his family.
"Dying isn't an answer, you know."
Still, the boy didn't respond.
The man paused to consider for a moment, as if trying to talk himself out of what he'd decided. He'd lived like this for three hundred years, and never done anything like this before. Then, he picked up the boy, and leapt into the air. Upon landing, he burst into a sprint faster than the human eye could follow, and they were both gone.
The cluster of soldiers would all wonder, all think to themselves that it had been to strong, too present, to be just a wind, but that it couldn't have been a person. Some would tell themselves they were imagining it. Some would say it one some one or another mythical beasts.
Would any of them ever guess that it had been a vampire?
Joseph woke up slowly, trying to remember where he was, what had happened.
At first, it had seemed as if Claude was there beside him. At first, it always did.
After that passed, then what? He thought he was somewhere soft, but it might have been only in his mind. Was it dark, or had his vision not recovered yet? Had he been captured? No -- they wouldn't do that. They would have simply killed him.
No, someone else had taken him away from there.
But why?
It was soft, he realized, this thing that he was sitting on. It hadn't been his imagination. It was a familiar kind of softness, and there was a familiar yet unfamiliar loftiness to the room he found himself in.
It was all askew. Curtains hung at odd angles and from odd places. There were no doors where there should have been, and spaces that shouldn't have had doors had them. Moonlight came in through the window, and through unseemly angles, illuminated the room. The window was open, and a cool spring breeze drifted in. Most of the furnishings were of a different style than he'd known. Older.
He ran what he saw against any possible situation he could think of, but it didn't fit anything.
What on Earth...
Then, his head cleared enough for him to realize that he could hear, along with the crackling of a fire, voices.
He heard the man who had taken him-- he remembered as soon as he'd heard the voice. His plan to take revenge against the soldier who had taken his parents, then that mysterious figure, out of nowhere...
"It is unlike me, I know," the man was saying. Joseph turned towards the direction from which he heard the voice, and he realized he could just make out a reflection in a large mirror. Three figures stood there, all dressed in black.
One figure leaned back, sitting against the edge of a table, legs crossed. A fabric was draped across the top of the mirror, blocking Joseph's view of the man's face. A second figure stood next to him, and Joseph could see that he wore a sword at his hip.
"Or maybe it's exactly like you." The voice was deeper, and Joseph could tell from the standing man's voice that he was the one who had spoken. "In a certain way."
The central figure didn't respond. He seemed to be considering the situation, what he'd done and what to do next.
A third voice spoke, softer. "It is, isn't it?"
All three wore black, and through the mirror, it was hard for Joseph to tell where one of them started and the other ended, but the softer one seemed to have his hand on the central one's arm, affectionately.
I can see them in the mirror. Then, they aren't vampires. As soon as that ran through his mind, Joseph wondered why he'd felt it. Had he-- had he thought they were vampires? Vampires didn't exist, did they?
The deeper voice gave a short laugh. "Right, it's not too far off from how we acquired this one, is it?" But Joseph could hear a smile in his voice, and the softer voice laughed in response.
Joseph felt a strange feeling come over him. The tension that had started to grip him again faded, and the ache in his heart was left exposed. But somehow, he felt that that was fine.
Whoever those three were, they loved each other.
The three of them had a most unique bond, Joseph could tell, even from those few words he'd heard them share.
He felt a longing in his heart, a wish to become close to them, to get to know them. To learn anything they could teach him.
Was that what they had taken him in for? He, who had nowhere to go... would they give him a new home? Why? It was ridiculous to even imagine. Or, if not, there must be some catch -- he couldn't let himself trust them. And yet...
At last, the central figure responded, and Joseph realized how long the other two had remained silent, waiting for him to respond. Then, he was their leader, Joseph realized.
"I suppose this is always how it happens," said that voice, elegant and smooth like honey.
It...
"That wasn't how we were blooded," the deeper voice reminded him.
"But we're just about the only ones, aren't we?" the softer one said. "And we were, well... we were adrift. You were our only reason for being," -- he was talking to the silky-voiced one, Joseph could tell -- "And we thought we'd lost you. But you came back..."
You came back. The way he'd said that... that voice. Joseph could hear the smile in it, the love in it. It struck his heart, made his longing for what they had overflow. That voice, those words, would flow through Joseph's mind as long as he lived, he thought.
Claude never would come back. Neither would their parents.
Blooded... what did that mean? Were they...
They'd moved out of sight of the mirror, towards the door... towards him. Joseph heard a kiss -- from who to whom, he couldn't tell.
And then, they entered.
As he'd seen before, there were three of them, all dressed in black.
The central figure was the shortest of the three. He wore his long, jet black curls loose around his shoulders, and there was a certain sharpness, intelligence, in his eyes. From the way he stood in front of the other two, Joseph knew he had been right -- this was their leader. The tallest of the three also had curly black hair, but short. His expression was friendly, but fierce, at the same time, and Joseph could tell that his hand was never far from his sword. The third had blond hair, darker than Joseph's own, a shade like honey, in a ponytail over his shoulder. His smile radiated kindness and warmth, and seeing him for even just a moment made Joseph's tension start to fade.
They aren't human. They're...
Why did Joseph think that?
Why did they seem so... so old?
It wasn't just their clothes, Joseph realized -- their clothes were old, like something out of a two-hundred year old painting.
But it wasn't that their clothes felt unnatural -- it was that they did feel so natural. These clothes felt as natural on them as contemporary styles seemed on contemporary people, and contemporary styles, Joseph realized, would seem unnatural on these three. It was as if these three, especially the leader, had been the ones who inspired some of the great artists all those centuries ago.
It wasn't so hard for him to accept them as vampires, he realized. He just, somehow, knew.
Thus, the first words he spoke to them were, "How old are you?"
He blinked after saying it -- how had he just blurted it out like that?
And the three were as surprised as he was -- then... they laughed. The two behind the leader looked at each other, the tallest one's lips moving just enough that his smile was evident, the blond one breaking into a smile that took over his entire face.
They were kind. Even if they were vampires, they weren't pure evil.
Their leader between them, though, was the one who smiled the most. He stepped forward, leaning over Joseph, almost. And Joseph saw... he didn't know how, but he did... in that charming smile, he saw that this man had been through it all, that he'd dreamed big dreams, sought them, and had them crushed... and emerged alive, and, somehow, found that smile again. And there was... yes, there was cruelty in that smile, or the potential for it, at least. He was kind, but not soft. As soft as those dark curls were, that fell forward, close enough for Joseph to reach out and touch, he realized that this man could be a cold-hearted tyrant when he wanted -- that he had it in him, and that he would bring it out when he found it necessary.
Why... why did Joseph trust him?
"How old are you?" the man said, tossing Joseph's question back at him. "And what's your name?"
"Joseph Desaulnier. I'm fourteen." He had nothing to lose. Nowhere to go. There was no reason not to answer. "And you?"
"My name... well... I've had quite a few of those over the years."
A non-answer. Why? Was it a name Joseph would know? That smile made it seem like it was.
"As for my age... if I said I've been alive for over 300 years, what would you think?"
Joseph didn't react, and the tallest of the three -- the tallest vampire -- noticed.
"You were right," he said. "He is smart. Seems he's figured us out."
Joseph would think back to that night countless times over the years, especially on nights where the moonlight was bright and clear like tonight.
Years after they'd met, Angelo told him about the bright moonlight night that had sealed his own fate and connection with the other pair, Miguel and Cesare.
How long had it been until they'd told him who Cesare was -- or who he had been when the three of them were human? He'd suspected. He'd developed a short-list of possibilities -- and it turned out he'd held multiple of the identities on Joseph's list, besides his original one. But before any of those were confirmed, Joseph decided it didn't matter. He grew to love his master, regardless of who he had been in the past, or what he'd done.
By that time, he had allowed them to blood him.
And they had raised him, really. He wouldn't be who he was now without them -- he wouldn't be alive, but even if he had managed to scrape by, even if he'd been found and blooded by someone else. He shook his head, looking in the mirror as he prepared for the night.
He ran his fingers against the back of his neck, the scar that, long ago, Cesare's nails had cut into his flesh that night, in the shape of a flower.
Belonging to his master gave him the courage to stand on his own. It sounded paradoxical, but it was true. How many people like that could there be in the world?