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The creature came for him from out of the desert.
Nandor’s memories have long since been stretched thin by the passing of time, yet this, at least, he can still remember.
They were a horde once. Tens of thousands of men strong, their sheer numbers enough to grant them victory, but the desert cares little about swords or spears or how many there are to wield them; she devours nomad and sultan alike.
They strayed too far and now she lays waste to them one by one. They stagger and fall to their knees beneath the scorching sun as Nandor drives them ever forward, for they cannot stop to bury their dead, not if they wish to reach the river.
It is not far now, can’t be more than a two-day march for a hale and hearty army, but they are neither: they are victorious, yet scattered; triumphant, yet lost.
They are thirsty. They are starving.
Here, amidst the barren dunes stretching out towards the horizon, framing all as far as the eye can see, Nandor coaxes Jahan down on his knees.
The sand must burn, but Jahan is tired; he huffs a soft breath but does not fuss, and he seems to understand what must be done as Nandor leans in to touch their temples together.
My dearest friend, Nandor whispers against the softness of his coat. My Jahan.
If he happens to say more it is lost to the tides of time; Nandor remembers naught but the large, dark eyes of his companion as the pommel of his scimitar strikes Jahan’s forehead, the force of the blow radiating up his arm.
At first, he fears that it might not be enough, but then Jahan sags, his big head dipping down, and Nandor adjusts his grip on the scimitar, rotating his wrist to pierce the blade through Jahan’s chest, just above his collarbone, and Jahan’s heart – large enough to love Nandor unconditionally – does the rest.
The blood stains the sand a deep black as it spills; heavy, heaving pumps soak the hem of Nandor’s robes red where he kneels, palm laid out against Jahan’s muzzle as his dearest, oldest companion finally falls, death throes wracking his body before he stills beneath Nandor’s touch.
Jahan, Nandor breathes as his men descend, their blades flashing as they cut and rip, and, at the time, it had seemed to Nandor that the sun kissing the horizon must have been the only witness to this last act of desperation, but he had been wrong.
The creature comes for him that night as he watches over what remains of his army, as if beckoned by the blood he’s spilled upon these sands – as if a punishment for the gravity of the sin he has committed.
It claws its way out of the dunes where it has laid in wait, naked and burnt, an abomination crawling on all fours like an animal, but it is something else entirely – something unholy and ancient – and Nandor, with his belly horrifically full and his eyes resting upon a dark sky made entirely of stars, the heartsickness bleeding through his very skin, does not sense its approach until it is too late.
The creature is quick, and it is lethal, but so is Nandor; when it leaps upon his back, clawing at his shoulders, a lifetime of bloodshed means that his body knows what to do.
He rolls, and the creature rolls with him, clinging, until it is forced to let go. Nandor fumbles for purchase in the loose sand, hands shaking as he unsheathes his scimitar, but he barely has time to raise it before the creature descends on him once more.
The moon is full and bright, and he can see it clearly now; the creature a monstrosity, the likes of which he has never before laid eyes upon, and perhaps it is the shock of the sight – or perhaps it is the loss of Jahan that still weighs heavily upon him – but Nandor soon finds himself lying prone upon the sands once more, staring up at the stars.
The creature paws at his armor as it sinks its teeth into his throat, and when it starts to drink, Nandor finds that, for all that it is painful, each pull like a scimitar through his heart – Jahan, my dear Jahan – it is also peaceful.
It is a fading sensation, like drifting off to sleep knowing that the blood that he has spilled this day will be the very last shed by his hand.
Nandor has never known this kind of peace before.
I am ready, he thinks. I am ready.
The creature, however, seems to believe otherwise; it pulls away, blood dripping down its chin as it breathes a low, guttural laugh, and then it dips down close, near enough for Nandor to smell the rot and decay clinging to its blistering skin, and whispers something in a language that Nandor has long since forgotten.
A gift, it hisses. You fought me well. A gift!
And when it presses its sinewy arm against Nandor’s mouth, the blood from where his scimitar had barely nicked its hide smearing across his lips, Nandor is too weak to stop it.
Drink, the creature insists, and though the taste is foul and scalding on Nandor’s tongue, he does.
He swallows, mindlessly, his body choking against the bitterness, and feels his heartbeat slow to a stop.
He dies there, upon the endless sands of battle, and it is good. It is a fitting end for a warrior, he thinks, and when the darkness encroaches again, it is of little consequence to let it take him.
When he awakens the next morning, as if out of a bad dream, it’s to find the creature gone, and one of his men missing with it.
The rest of his army – the few who are still left standing – scream and tear at their hair when they realize one of them is gone, taken to the dunes.
They plead to quit this place, for it is evil, and Nandor knows it to be true; he gives the command to go, stumbling as he rises, shivering as he vomits blood-tinged bile upon the sand, and the men gather around to pull him to his feet, carrying him along, for he is their general, and they are his men.
He clings to them, weak as a newborn foal, the heat of their bodies seeping into his, their heartbeats like thunder in his ears, and feels the shift of something in him dying as another piece slots into its place.
A day later, as Nandor steps onto the banks of the river, covered in still-warm blood and sand, the stars will dance upon the water at dusk, and his men will all be dead.
There remains but flashes of what follows.
Pain. Confusion. Thirst.
His wives and concubines. His children. The terror in their eyes as he returns to them and they realize exactly what it is that has found its way home.
The hunger.
It’s ravenous. It’s soul-deep, like he’s mired in it with no hope of sating the desire; he feeds, yet it never seems to be enough, and when he is finally driven out of his kingdom by the very subjects who once prostrated themselves before him in reverence, the horror that graces their faces is the same as that which marred that of his children’s.
He remembers the cold, dark waters of the river Tigris lapping at his chest, and the way his armor weighs him down as he sinks.
He lets himself be pulled along by the current and it is not as peaceful as he had wished, for though his heart no longer beats and his body no longer needs to draw breath, the pain of being pulled under and dragged along the rocks at the bottom of the riverbed somehow remains the same as before.
When he emerges onto the banks of the river again, far from where he had entered, spit out like something too unholy to bear, it is Ersham who finds him.
Ersham. The first of many.
Nandor has lived his life in the sun.
As a boy, he played beneath the open sky; as a man, he rode to battle beneath the same.
No more.
Whatever it is he has become, he cannot bear the daylight any longer.
It is good, then, to have Ersham by his side.
He is a gentle man, the shadow of youth still trailing after him, and he walks the world when Nandor cannot. It is easy to grow fond of him, this man just beyond the cusp of boyhood who gazes upon Nandor without fear. If Nandor were still Supreme Viceroy of Al Quolanudar, he believes he would have taken Ersham as his thirty-eighth wife.
But those days are long past.
You are good to me, he tells Ersham as the moon rises for another night, and Ersham smiles, slow and content.
I trust, Master, he replies, that you too will be good to me, when the time comes.
And Nandor is.
Once the years – grown more fleeting lately, like a mere breath between seasons – start to make themselves known in the lines of Ersham’s face, in the strands of his hair and the spring in his step, Nandor bestows upon him the same curse – the same gift, if Ersham is to be believed – that was once forced upon Nandor.
Blessings upon you, Master, Ersham gasps, Nandor’s blood tinting his teeth pink, and it is a far gentler thing than Nandor remembers.
He feels Ersham’s heartbeat slow beneath his palm and wonders at what the two of them might achieve together. Great things, perhaps, should they choose it, and though his own heart has long grown cold and still, he thinks that what awaits them might just be enough to bring it out of its dormant state.
Rest, he murmurs, brushing a lock of hair off Ersham’s forehead as Ersham breathes his last, and it is a tender moment.
It is a moment Nandor will think back on later, once Ersham leaves, wordlessly stealing away into the night like a thief.
Yes, he is the first of many.
Time is a strange construct.
Before this curse was laid down upon him, Nandor had always been well aware of its passing; the days, the seasons, the years. There were many battles to be fought, after all, and much land to be pillaged and conquered and razed. Even a mortal lifetime is often not enough to leave one’s mark on history.
Now, it seems that he has all the lifetimes in the world, yet no mark to leave.
The years bleed together like blood pooling at his feet, as do the faces of those whom he takes in; they come, they serve, and then they leave, but not before they all ask of him the very same thing.
Sometimes Nandor grants them their wish. Sometimes the ravages of time catch up to them before he is able to do so.
Sometimes he says no, and those he can still recall the best; the anger, the teeth bared in snarls as if they had fangs of their own. Some abandon him once they realize that his answer is final. Others, like Benjy, he sends away out of necessity.
A few try to force his hand and thus die by it.
Gail is the only one who never asks it of him – who looks him in the eye and tells him no – yet it doesn’t matter.
One way or another, they leave him all the same.
Guillermo is like those that came before.
He thinks he knows what he wants. He thinks he understands.
He asks and he asks and he asks, and Nandor says in time and not yet and have patience, Guillermo, but none of it seems to deter his familiar.
He thinks that had Guillermo found him a few decades earlier, Nandor might have been more agreeable to the proposition.
As it is, he suspects that time has merely made him selfish.
He had thought little of it when he had plucked Guillermo from the maw of Panera Bread.
He’d been in need of someone to dust his crypt and bring him food and draw his baths, and Guillermo, though pathetically human where he’d kneeled in the dirt of the alley, shivering as if overcome by Nandor’s presence, had seemed as good a choice as any.
Yet, even though Guillermo’s heartbeat had been loud, beating the frantic tattoo of a prey animal facing down a predator, Guillermo had not appeared to be truly afraid. He’d met Nandor’s gaze head-on, and he’d seemed— excited, perhaps. In awe.
Nandor, far too old for self-reflection, had found that the thought pleased him.
It still does.
He does not expect much when he first brings Guillermo home. Choosing a familiar is always a gamble, humans being humans, and, initially, Guillermo does indeed not surprise.
The learning curve of a familiar is deceptively steep. Nandor sends him out for a snack and Guillermo returns empty-handed, a rueful expression on his face as he grovels for forgiveness at his master’s feet. Nandor tasks him with disposing of a carcass, and Guillermo is sick all over himself as well as the body. Nandor commands Guillermo to prepare a bath, and the water is far too cold with far too few bubbles.
Yet, as predictable as this might be, Guillermo remains determinedly committed.
He is quiet and subservient, like all proper familiars. He cleans and dusts and organizes. With time, he learns the proper things to say to lure virgins back to the house so that Nandor can drink his fill and more. He scrubs the blood out of the carpets and buries the carcasses in the backyard, and then he fetches Nandor’s clothing from the local washerwoman, capes and robes smelling of fresh flowers.
He helps Nandor dress and bathe and brushes his hair free of knots, and through it all his touch is almost reverent; when he looks upon Nandor, it is as if he’s seeing him for who he once was – a ruler of a great kingdom – and it stirs something in Nandor’s chest, something long since dead, nestled in the hollow space behind his unbeating heart.
It makes him want to remain in those moments, Guillermo’s attention upon him as his fingers card through Nandor’s hair, touch warm like the vague memory of sunshine.
It is a pleasant thing. A surprising thing.
Nandor is not used to being surprised.
Guillermo kills the Baron, and Nandor cannot abide by the punishment that is laid down upon him.
Guillermo murders Carol, and Nandor’s first instinct is to make sure that no one else will know.
Guillermo slays countless vampire assassins before slaughtering seventy percent of the most powerful vampires in the tri-state area, and all Nandor can do is shoulder the blame; deflect; point to Guillermo only to claim that he’s killed him already, because the alternative is unbearable.
Guillermo’s hands are steeped in the blood of Nandor’s kin, and still, Nandor lets him at his back each night so that the very same touch can ready him for slumber.
Somehow, Nandor manages to surprise himself as well.
When Guillermo finally leaves, Nandor finds himself not quite ready to let go.
He swallows his pride and goes after him, intent on bringing Guillermo back home, and the words feel heavy and foreign on his tongue.
I have been very unhappy since you left.
That is the first time.
It doesn’t take.
The second time, Nandor does nothing.
Guillermo finds his way back home nonetheless.
The third time it is Nandor who goes.
That doesn’t stop Guillermo from asking it of him one last time.
Nandor has lived a long life. Several lifetimes, in truth; too many, perhaps.
Sometimes he feels unfettered by it, as if he’s been set adrift in time. The weight of his cloaks, once so heavy where draped across his shoulders, is of little consequence now; the gloves on his hands are not due to the biting sting of a cold night, but worn merely out of habit; food tastes like ashes on his tongue, and the sun on his skin is akin to fire and death.
He is like a rose of Jericho, lying desiccated and dormant as it waits for the years to pass, each one the same as the last, all unnoticed.
And yet—
Guillermo draws Nandor in, like an anchor to the moment.
He follows Guillermo around the house as he does his chores, and the years slow to months slow to days slow to hours and minutes and seconds.
He watches Guillermo painstakingly dust each book in the library, and time stretches out like eons before him.
Guillermo asks one last time. So that after all these years, they can both be happy.
But Nandor can’t give him what he wants.
Before, somewhere between all the leaving and coming back, he’s tried to put it into words, but he’s never quite gotten it right.
I have forgotten the sound of my mother’s voice.
The sentence sits heavy on his tongue, pressed up against the back of his teeth as Guillermo carefully runs the brush through his hair.
I have forgotten the lines of her face. The feel of her touch. Her name is no longer familiar to me. It is as if I was formed from clay.
‟Almost done, Master,” Guillermo murmurs, strands of hair slipping through his fingers like sand, and Nandor closes his eyes as they fall.
I cannot recall if she lived to see what became of me. Perhaps she didn’t.
Guillermo places the hairbrush on the table next to Nandor’s coffin.
“There, Master,” he says, but he doesn’t step away; he remains close, the heat of his body warming Nandor’s back, and it’s like he’s waiting for Nandor to acknowledge him.
I often hear you speak to your mother on the telephone machine, Nandor doesn’t say, gazing at Guillermo’s reflection in the mirror hanging on the wall opposite the coffin. Her grief will be great when she realizes what you have become. Are you prepared to shoulder it? Would you remember? Or would you choose to forget, like I fear I might have?
‟Thank you, Guillermo,” he says, and Guillermo smiles a soft and secret smile as he turns away to ready the coffin for the day.
If I turned you, Nandor thinks as he watches Guillermo work, and you regretted it – if you left for good – I do not think I would be able to bear it.
Guillermo thinks he knows what he wants. He thinks he understands, but he doesn’t.
Even Laszlo and Nadja don’t know any better, for they are still young and in love.
Nandor, in comparison, has spent much of his endless life alone. He has lived long enough to witness the rise and fall of empires, his own included, and he does not think he was ever meant to.
Vampirism is a bane, and Nandor has come to—
He feels—
I've grown to have some affection for you. It would weigh too heavily on my conscience to burden you with this curse.
The truth is, it doesn’t matter what Nandor does.
If he doesn’t turn Guillermo, Guillermo will leave.
If he turns Guillermo, Guillermo will leave all the same.
However much he wishes it wasn’t so, Nandor doesn’t know how to keep him.
Guillermo will not let go of his hand. Nandor wants to slumber, but Guillermo won’t let go.
He wakes Nandor, again and again. He tells Nandor that he wishes he wasn’t doing this. He claims that he doesn’t care about becoming a vampire any longer.
I just… I don’t want you to go.
Nandor is tired, in all the endless, ageless ways that Guillermo will never understand.
He is angry, because he was happy at the Center, and then Guillermo took him away.
He is betrayed and hurt and so many other things, all these unpleasant feelings that churn and sting and keep him from slipping away—
But, as always, as Guillermo pleads with him not to go, it is the spark of surprise that shines the brightest.
When Nandor had raised Guillermo from his horrifically mundane existence and elevated him to the position of familiar, he hadn’t known what he knows now.
If he had, he might never have extended the offer; would perhaps have chosen a much meeker familiar. One who doesn’t talk back or kill vampires or tug at Nandor’s hair when he thinks Nandor’s moving around too much while he’s getting it brushed.
The truth is, it would be a poor substitute, even though keeping Guillermo happy and by Nandor’s side requires effort.
Nandor is as used to effort as he is to surprises, but he finds himself willing to take a chance.
Logic follows that, if Nandor cannot find escape in super slumber, he must find it in other ways.
He devises a very clever test – so clever that Guillermo is none the wiser – and while it requires some coaxing and prodding to make Guillermo play along, he eventually does.
He proves all that which Nandor already knows, and the pleasure blooms like a rose in place of Nandor’s heart.
And even though Guillermo has said that he no longer cares, when Nandor extends him the invitation to walk the banks of the river Tigris together, with all that it would entail, Guillermo looks just about ready to weep.
‟Yes,” he says, voice trembling like he knows the significance of what Nandor is offering. ‟Yes, of course I'll go with you, Master!”
He goes off to make arrangements, and Nandor is left alone with his maps and the strange, lingering warmth of the knowledge that this time, when he leaves, Guillermo will be leaving with him.
The course that Nandor has plotted is one that is well-known to him.
Before he ever made his way across the ocean, this is where he walked the dirt and sand. Hundred of years spent learning the land, and he wonders if any of it still looks the same.
He wishes to discover it all over again – wishes very much to show Guillermo; This is where I walked beneath the sun, once. This is the place that shaped me. This is where I left my mark.
He allows himself to wonder what Guillermo will think of Nandor’s palace, should any of it remain. What he’ll think of the moon rising out of the dunes and into a sky so very unlike that of Staten Island.
He imagines walking the banks of the river Tigris, and, as has been happening so very often lately, something stirs in his chest, like the simmering feeling of anticipation.
Yes, he thinks, it is a good idea to bring Guillermo there – to make his ancestral soil the same as Nandor’s. It is good soil, the only kind worthy of someone as impressive as Guillermo, if it must happen.
Nandor will bring Guillermo there, and if Guillermo still wishes it, Nandor will do as promised, because his word is his bond.
It would be a good place to die, there by the stars dancing upon the water. It had been beautiful once, and surely it must still be.
Nandor hopes it is.
The man on the train asks him if he’s coming or staying, but Nandor is doing neither.
He is waiting.
The train does not smoke or hiss like the ones he’s used to, and he thinks it is a shame that Guillermo is not here to hear this observation.
Nandor waits, guarding Guillermo’s bag against clever-fingered humans, as he feels the familiar feeling of something tickling at his insides. There are many plump and red-faced meals milling around the platform, but it is not hunger he feels, for he made sure to eat before he left the house.
This is something else.
The man on the train tells him that they are leaving, and the tickling is scratching is shredding is ripping is the feeling of sparkling, burning surprise, bright as sunshine.
Nandor waits.
Guillermo does not come.