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Dawn is breaking by the time Guillermo finally makes it back to the house.
Though it’s early hour still, the shadows have already begun to shift and grow shorter as the sun peeks out from behind Sean and Charmaine’s house; in the still-shaded areas, the morning mist rises from the dew-dappled grass of the front yard, blades heavy with condensation. Guillermo climbs off the bike and squints against the sunlight that is slowly inching its way toward Laszlo’s vulva garden, teasing at the tops of the topiaries, and then sighs as he begins to pull the bike across the grass, jostling it around one of the last stubbornly remaining sinkholes, and internally curses Laszlo for not sticking around to help.
The vampire had been quick to abandon Guillermo once their business with the necromancer had been concluded, taking to the skies with his usual cry of Bat! as soon as they stepped outside. He’d left Guillermo to deal with getting the bike back home on his own, but at the time Guillermo hadn’t given it much thought; he’d still been reeling, racked with part guilt, part concern as he pictured Topher leading Derek down the basement stairs.
Perhaps, he’d tried to convince himself, it had all turned out for the best. Maybe Derek would make a better zombie than he had a vampire. Guillermo didn’t think anyone would disagree that he’d made for a truly sorry one. As far as he knew, Derek had never wanted to be a vampire in the first place; had seemingly only been looking for friends when he got caught up with the Mosquito Collectors and subsequently got turned on their very first outing. If Topher truly isn’t the only zombie living beneath the necromancer’s lair, then at least Derek will never want for company ever again.
Even so, Guillermo had lingered just outside the door, waiting for— for something – Derek crying out in anguish or begging for help, perhaps – but the silence had stretched out, and eventually, Guillermo had gotten on the bike and slowly pedaled his way home, cruising down empty streets as the first hint of a pink sky broke through the wispy clouds gathered at the horizon.
He lingers now, too, having made it to the base of the steps leading up to the front door, as he takes in the full splendor of the sunrise he was never meant to witness.
It’s beautiful and terrifying in all that its brilliance implies. He should feel thankful to see it, he thinks, but in reality, he feels only numb, as senseless as the feeling in his fingers after his wind-bitten journey home; it’s like he’s been run through, just as Derek had been – both of them hollowed out and then brought back to life, pieced together into something new, having been made whole again each in their own way – and the relief that the thought brings is liberating. He feels as light as the clouds pierced by dawn – truly and impossibly human once more – and, watching the sunlight lap at his feet, he wonders if perhaps the events of the past month even happened at all, or if it was merely a dream, and if that perhaps means that he’s in danger of drifting away, as one sometimes does in dreams.
But he remains, however inconceivable the thought, fettered in place by the warmth of the sunlight against his skin. Soon it will reach the house as well, scaling the walls to probe at the heavy curtains and newspapers that line the windows in its attempts to slip past Guillermo’s safeguards. The vampires all slumber inside, shut away in their crypts, trusting as newborn lambs, and Guillermo feels his relief be replaced by the now-familiar weight of the confidence that has been placed in him, settling across his shoulders as heavy and as grounding as a yoke, yet at the same time so, so welcome.
It is dawn, and he is home, and all is as it was and should be. And there is nothing for Guillermo to do but to leave the bike here, at the base of the steps, as he turns to ascend to the front door.
The house rarely changes.
It is, in a way, a perfect reflection of the ageless things that live within it. The vampires might break down walls and flood the basement and bring in home improvement shows to install useless golden toilets in each and every room, but eventually, somehow, the house returns to what it has always been.
When change does happen, the progression is slow, over years if not decades, as if the house needs time to settle into the idea of this new thing it is becoming. It’s a proud thing, this home – as set in its ways as its masters – and while, at times, this can be a source of frustration, it can also be one of comfort.
Here, in the foyer, the ceremonial banners hanging from the mezzanine sway gently in the draft as Guillermo quietly closes the front door behind him. The robes and hoods lie discarded on the floor where the vampires had dropped them all those hours ago, and the Home Depot candles dotted around the room are burned down to the wick; Guillermo knows that as soon as he’s cleared away the evidence of what has transpired here, this too might be as if it never happened. As if a dream.
The thought is strangely disquieting, and he steps over the mess and makes his way further into the house, drawn towards better thoughts, towards the door that has been left open even though the red of dawn has already washed away the stars in the night sky.
He steps into the dim light of Nandor’s room, and this, too, is the same. It could just as well have been the first time he’s entered, for all of how little the interior has changed throughout the years; could have been his very first day, feeling that sudden, primal fear at the realization that he’s walked into the den of something unholy, but somehow, somewhere along the line, Guillermo has instead grown to associate this space with safety above anything else.
It is his master’s domain, filled with all the things Nandor still wishes to remember: the pictures and paintings spanning countless scenes across hundreds of years; the gold, the jewels, and the weapons; the exquisite robes and furs and the heavy capes that Guillermo used to carefully drape across those broad, strong shoulders come each sunset.
The air in the room carries a richness to it, thick with the scent of sandalwood and spice, pleasant though foreign not only to the house but to Staten Island itself, and even the coffin – a large, dark thing that holds place as the true centerpiece of the room, something which should give rise to nothing but revulsion in those that lay eyes upon it – inspires comfort in Guillermo. It is where Nandor rests, after all. It is where Guillermo can hide away, if needed, entombed in the scent of the oil he works into Nandor’s hair, and know that he is perfectly sheltered.
The coffin is open this morning. When Guillermo steps closer, he can see that it is empty, and for a split second he feels fear, not for himself – never for himself, not in this room – but for Nandor. But then the shadows to his right seem to shift, and Guillermo spots him; a tall, dark silhouette standing silently before the mantelpiece, long fingers trailing along the surface of the aged wood, a pensive look on his ageless face.
The fireplace is out, but the candles still flicker, casting the same long shadows as they always have, and where they once appeared to frame Nandor in a foreboding sense of gloom that had made Guillermo – young and so very out of his depth – hesitate to approach or even speak up, he can see things all the better now; the candlelight wraps Nandor in a warm glow that seems to soften his edges, that adds color to the pallor of his skin, and he looks startlingly alive like this – as if, should Guillermo reach out for him, he’d be warm to the touch despite Guillermo knowing far better.
No, the house might not have changed, but, somewhere along the way, Guillermo did.
He watches Nandor idly trace his fingers along the edge of one of the picture frames sitting on the mantelpiece – the one holding the grainy, black-and-white photograph of the four vampires attending a gala in the early 1900s – and it’s surprising to find him awake this far past dawn. If he’s been waiting for Guillermo to make it back to the house in one piece, however, he doesn’t show it.
This is not something he would have done when Guillermo first started serving him. Even a few years ago, Guillermo doubts that Nandor would have cared to dwell long – if at all – on the possibility that his familiar might not make it home safely, yet here he is.
Sometimes it’s easy to overlook how much Nandor has changed as well.
“Master—” Guillermo begins, voice hushed so as not to startle, but of course, Nandor already knows he’s there, and the vampire doesn’t look away from the picture as he interrupts whatever Guillermo intended to say next, talking over him as he’s always been wont to do.
“Derek all squared away?”
Guillermo blinks in surprise. “He— Yes. He is.”
Nandor makes a soft noise to himself but doesn’t say anything else. He, noticeably, doesn’t ask where Guillermo’s been. Doesn’t question why it’s taken him nearly half the night to bury Derek among the other corpses in the yard.
As awful as the truth might be, Guillermo is an old hand at disposing of bodies by now; Nandor has witnessed the process several times – with Topher, with Toby, with far too many of Nadja and Laszlo’s familiars – and he knows perfectly well how long it should take Guillermo to dig a grave and fill it back up. But he doesn’t ask, and Guillermo wonders if maybe this – taking Derek’s body to the necromancer – is another one of those things that Nandor somehow already knows.
It makes him contemplate what else he might have overlooked when it comes to his master – what other kind of knowledge Nandor might already possess that Guillermo does not – and he finds that he doesn’t particularly like the possibilities that such a line of thought offers up to him.
“It’s late,” he says instead, adding, “You should be slumbering.”
Nandor turns to face him then, regrettably depriving Guillermo of the perfect lines of his profile in the process, and Guillermo feels the loss of it somewhere deep in his chest, almost like a physical ache, but it is only a temporary pain because Nandor is striking from any angle; Guillermo is thankfully never bereaved for long.
He watches, breathlessly, as Nandor silently moves across the room until he reaches the coffin, hands curling around the edge where the thick fur lining the interior meets the wood. His ever-present rings glint prettily in the flickering candlelight but Nandor is, comparatively, rather dressed down this morning; the cape he’d worn to the phony Ceremony of Vampiric Transmogrification is thrown across the love seat to Guillermo’s left, the collar of his tunic is unbuttoned, and Guillermo can’t help but the way his eyes are drawn to the hollow at the base of his master’s throat and the way the light plays over the smooth expanse of skin revealed there.
Nandor rarely leaves his throat bare. Guillermo’s spent more than a decade dressing him, covering that seemingly fragile part of him with layers upon layers – cravats and high collars, fabric upon fabric – and he doesn’t know why Nandor insists on it all, but he knows this; that earlier today, he’d pressed a stake against Nandor’s neck, close enough to feel his skin give beneath the force, and Nandor had allowed it – had directed Guillermo to do it, cold hands enclosing Guillermo’s own as he pulled the stake closer, before spreading his arms wide to give himself over completely to Guillermo’s mercy.
It makes Guillermo think, unbidden, about Nandor’s promise. About the banks of the Tigris, and what would have happened if Guillermo hadn’t been ready then either. What Nandor would have done. What he might have allowed Guillermo to do.
He chokes back the bitter taste at the back of his tongue and looks away; clears his throat, the sound startlingly loud in the quiet of the room, and tries to find the right words.
“Do you want me to brush your hair before you go to coffin, Master?” he manages, latching on to the practicality of the request, because he knows from experience that if Nandor keeps his hair in the top knot, it’ll pull and tangle as he slumbers, and come evening he will be grumpy, squirming and hissing beneath Guillermo’s hands like an angry cat as Guillermo tries to brush the knots out, acting more like a petulant five-year-old child than the nearly eight centuries old former warlord that he is.
Nandor surely knows it too, but even so, he merely tilts his head to the side as he peers at Guillermo. “It is beneath you,” he slowly replies, and it’s true; brushing Nandor’s hair – dressing him, drawing his baths – is a familiar’s job, and Guillermo is no longer a familiar.
Truthfully, he doesn’t know what he is. An ex-bodyguard. Human once more, but barely anything else. Someone who got everything they ever wanted, perhaps, only for it to crumble to ash in the palms of their hands.
“I would very much like to do it,” Guillermo insists, earnestly, because he does; he needs this right now, desperately – needs to know that there is still a place for him at Nandor’s side, even if, for now, he’s rejected the very gift he’s spent more than half of his life chasing after.
Nandor says nothing. He simply keeps gazing at Guillermo, and Guillermo wonders what it is the vampire sees – wonders if he looks as off-kilter and exhausted as he feels, or if, perhaps, it’s the beard that’s grabbing Nandor’s attention. He resists the urge to raise his hands to touch it, feeling the weight of Nandor’s eyes on him, like he’s being judged and found lacking.
‟Master,” he pleads.
He’s taking a liberty by calling Nandor as much, especially when it might no longer be true; he’s not deluded, knows the term is as much a claim on Nandor as it is a pledge of service, but he can’t help it. He’s found himself suddenly untethered, bound to this place and these vampires by nothing but the fulfillment of a promise of something he’s now rejected. There’s no reason to stay now, not when he’s already gotten everything he’s ever asked for, except—
‟Yeesh.” Nandor sniffs, like what Guillermo’s asking is quite an imposition. ‟Very well,” he says, and then he’s sweeping across the room and taking a seat in the armchair by the foot of the coffin, somehow managing to make the motion dramatic even without the aid of his cape.
Guillermo finds himself staring at the back of Nandor’s head, and it’s—
It’s comforting to be able to slip back into the role he’s played so faithfully for the past fifteen years. It’s safe, and Guillermo reaches out to free Nandor’s hair from the top knot and watches the locks unfurl down his back, black like obsidian. It’s beautiful, like all of Nandor is beautiful, and Guillermo itches to touch him, so he does; runs his fingers over Nandor’s scalp, applying enough pressure for Nandor to tip his head back into the touch like a giant cat, something not unlike a purr rumbling deep in his chest.
He’s dangerous – the fear that Guillermo had felt when he ran had been primal and real and bone-deep – but here, now, with his master so pliant beneath his hands, it’s difficult to remember exactly what it is Guillermo’s supposed to be so afraid of.
It is kind of Nandor, he thinks, to humor him in this way. It shows that he cares, even if moments like this are why Guillermo has always been so thrown by Nandor’s constant refusals to turn him.
Only, it had all been one and the same, hadn’t it? The caring and the refusal.
It had stung to realize. Still does, if Guillermo’s being honest with himself. Years upon years of being told not yet and later and have patience, Guillermo, and he’s been so angry at times, so frustrated and tired with this master of his who strings him along for no reason, except it turns out that that hadn’t been the case at all, because Nandor had been right all along.
He had had a reason for telling Guillermo all of those things, for putting it off, and Guillermo had simply been too close to what he’d always wanted to be able to see it.
Nandor had been right not to turn him when he’d asked, and the realization is as bitter on his tongue as the taste of the blood he couldn’t bring himself to drink. Guillermo prides himself on knowing these things – on knowing himself – and even so he’s managed to fall so very short of the mark. He’s raised himself on fairy tales and horror stories and none of them had managed to capture the true, brutal actuality of it – the sacrifice that has to be made if one wishes to be stronger, faster, better.
Nandor had known. He’d tried telling Guillermo, many times over, but Guillermo had been too stubborn to listen. He knows better now, though; is starting to realize what Nandor means when he claims that vampirism is a curse.
It’s just— Guillermo has grown to love them, these creatures of the night that roam the hallways of this house. Even Colin Robinson.
He had thought that he could earn their respect by becoming one of them, only to find that Nandor already respects him in his own way – in the way a seven-hundred-fifty-year-old creature can respect something that has the lifespan of a gnat in comparison.
And Guillermo’s slowly starting to realize that the past decade of toil might just have left him jaded; he’s grown so used to witnessing the way vampires will brush their familiars’ concerns aside, has heard so many useless, endless promises parroted back at him that, after a while, it truly became all that he could hear.
Vampires sometimes do that – present a vow as a gift only to snatch it right back again at the slightest dissatisfaction – and you need only take a look around any familiar mixer to know the truth of it; old men and women still eagerly awaiting the coveted, promised bite as their masters, forever fresh-faced and unaging, work them to the very last, too spoiled and too lazy to train a new familiar.
Nandor is not like that. None of Guillermo’s vampires are, but Nandor, in comparison to most of his peers, has been downright compassionate toward Guillermo. And Guillermo, in turn, has always known as much, hasn’t he?
He has, in the past, proclaimed it to anyone who will listen and many who won’t – werewolf, witch, vampire; Derek, even as Guillermo was waiting for the bite he hadn’t been ready for – because it’s true, and as unusual a thing among familiars and masters as there is.
Guillermo guards Nandor’s heart, but Nandor’s gone as far as calling Guillermo a friend in return. He’s protected Guillermo, in his own way; at first, by forbidding Nadja and Laszlo from eating him; later, by helping him conceal his first fumbled slayings; by lying before the Vampiric Council to spare Guillermo from rightfully accepting the blame; by submitting to an actual death sentence in Guillermo’s place. Just hours ago, Nandor killed Guillermo’s sire, a fellow vampire, to restore Guillermo to life.
Guillermo knows he’s not perfect. He’s faltered at times – has found himself doubting the truth of his master’s affection for him – but he always seems to circle back to this; the steadfast knowledge that Nandor cares.
And yet—
Guillermo wonders if perhaps, even so, he’s underestimated the true extent of it.
Nandor had shown Guillermo a massacre, but he had not insisted that Guillermo take part. He’d shown him what would be expected of him, but he had not forced Guillermo’s hand. He’d been watchful – hopeful, even – but when, somewhere between leaving the house and descending upon the unsuspecting patrons of Spaghettini’s restaurant, Guillermo had lost his nerve, Nandor had not pushed.
He’d taken Guillermo home, and, knowing how Guillermo revels in the pageantry of vampirism – the ancient ceremonies, the romanticism of unending life – he’d draped a cape over Guillermo’s shoulders, a mirror action to the norm. He’d dressed Guillermo for a grand initiation, gentle and attentive as he’d prepared him, and, ultimately, he’d made sure that Guillermo knew that it was his own choice to make. That there was no shame in either answer. Vampire or human. Human or vampire.
Guillermo has never asked Nandor about his own turning. Maybe he should have. Recently, he’s begun to suspect that his master was never offered a choice of his own.
He sighs now as he reaches for the brush lying on the nearby table, picking it up and gently running it through Nandor’s hair, glossy and black as ink in the glow of the candlelight. Nandor is silent and still in the face of Guillermo’s attentions. He doesn’t gloat about being right – isn’t parading around the house like a peacock hoping for someone to acknowledge his superior handling of Guillermo’s unturning. He’s watchful, rather. Quiet and pensive. Waiting for Guillermo to decide the next move, perhaps, but even Guillermo doesn’t know just what that might be.
Turns out, there are many things he does not know about this world he’s decided to traverse – the shame of accepting the bite of someone not one’s master, for one; that the killing of a vampire turns its sired children human again, aging them beyond repair at times; the intricacies of the ceremonies; the complexity of the hierarchies; the policies of the councils. Guillermo had thought himself an expert on vampiric lore, though in reality, he’s anything but. A mere fanboy, clinging to tropes, in over his head.
Even his understanding of the very nature of vampires had been nothing but make-believe. Turns out that they’re not so much mysterious as they are peculiar creatures. Out of phase with time and, for all their hedonistic leanings, strangely set in their ways, suspicious of change, extraordinarily helpless, and amazingly clueless about the most basic of things. But you don’t survive for centuries without being clever – without being crafty – and it’s surprisingly easy to forget that the predator submitting beneath Guillermo’s hands right now is an ancient one.
Sometimes Guillermo suspects that this is what is at the core of it all; the vampires have simply lived for too long. They’ve known too much. The mind was never meant to contain so many centuries of knowledge – memories forgotten and revived and forgotten once more. The things Nandor has seen and lived through, they’re more than Guillermo can ever hope to dream of – the memories his master’s lost to the sands of time more than any human could ever wish to know. What remains, in the end, must be only that which is held dearest; lovers and battles, stupendous victories and grievous insults. Because, after all, what use is there for a vampire to retain the intricacies of human nature and feeling when humanity is all but lost to them?
Nandor has been trying, however. Guillermo is not blind to that. Not anymore.
Because Nandor had known the cure all along. Had known the answers to all the questions Guillermo had not dared to voice. He’d known exactly what Guillermo needed, then as well as now – had carried Guillermo’s glasses on his person, just in case.
He’d known Guillermo better than Guillermo knew himself.
Do you want me to do it? Nandor had asked, head bent low, voice a mere murmur, and Guillermo—
Guillermo hadn’t been able to bring himself to put it into words, too shaken and ashamed to acknowledge the desire that burned ever brighter in his chest, but Nandor had still known.
He cares, Guillermo thinks as Nandor’s hair sifts through his fingers soft like silk, he cares, and it beats like a tattoo in his chest.
He knows me, Guillermo thinks, somehow struck by the revelation even though he’s always known it to be true.
He sets the brush aside to gather Nandor’s hair back from his face, and finds his thoughts, unbidden, drifting to his sister’s daughter. It has been years now, but he can still recall sitting on the floor in front of the television, little Selena in his lap as he wove her long hair into braids. He’s out of practice, and he’s never dared to bring it up to Nandor before, but they’re equals now. That’s what Nandor had said, and even though Guillermo has since reverted back to being human out of his own free will, something of the words still linger.
He thinks maybe Nandor can feel it too – has known it all along as he helped Guillermo ready himself for the unturning, dressing Guillermo in the same way that Guillermo has spent the past decade dressing his master, touch careful and almost deferential as he secured the cape around Guillermo’s shoulders, voice murmuring soft reassurances, his hands—
Guillermo closes his eyes. Takes a deep breath. Dares to hope.
‟Should we try something different tomorrow, Master?” he asks.
Nandor, who’s begun to turn restless at Guillermo’s prolonged stillness, grows motionless beneath his hands. He’s quiet, obviously thinking, turning the words over in his mind, and Guillermo wonders what he might be reading into them but he doesn’t dare spell it out. Might not know the meaning himself just yet.
‟Nandor?” he dares, and the entirety of Nandor seems to shift beneath his hands.
‟Very well,” his master murmurs.
He rises suddenly, hair easily slipping from Guillermo’s loose grasp, and Guillermo opens his eyes and lets his hands fall back down to his sides. They feel strangely empty, but only for a moment; Nandor turns, face betraying nothing as he extends a hand of his own, and Guillermo takes it and steadies his master as he climbs into the coffin.
The answer, Nandor had told him, must come from your heart, and Guillermo can still feel the echo of that truth now, just as he had heard it back then.
‟I think I’ll stay,” he says, feeling Nandor’s hand slip out of his own as he makes himself comfortable. ‟Just for a while. Until you slumber.”
Nandor gracefully reclines, arms crossed over his chest. ‟If you insist,” he says, dismissive, but Guillermo doesn’t have time to take it to heart before Nandor grimaces. ‟That is to say,” he continues, ‟that I think I would… like that.”
Guillermo smiles, and he’s going, going, gone, helplessly so, weak in the face of the way Nandor is watching him right now, eyes dark and guarded.
It’s a forever thing, he faintly thinks. Until the end of time or until the end of Guillermo, whichever comes first.
Maybe it always has been, ever since Nandor stepped out of the shadows of that poorly lit alley behind the Panera Bread and allowed Guillermo to lay eyes on him for the very first time, tall and dark and deadly, yet so devastatingly beautiful that he might as well have been plucked straight out of a dream, a perfect amalgamation of everything Guillermo had always yearned for.
‟I’ll stay,” Guillermo vows now, just as he had back then – because what else can he say? – and Nandor’s eyelashes appear long and dark against the paleness of his skin as he closes his eyes in acceptance.
Guillermo reaches up to close the coffin, watching the shadows shroud Nandor’s form as he carefully lowers the lid, and once it’s done he lets his hands rest there, palms pressed against the intricately carved wood as if able to sense the one who lays within.
It was a horrible and hard decision, Nandor had said, hand touching Guillermo’s shoulder in what could never be mistaken for anything but a true gesture of comfort. I think you made the right choice.
Guillermo thinks so too. One day, he’s sure that he will be ready, but that day is not today.
Until it is, he’ll be right here waiting, ready to help Nandor rise come sundown.