Chapters 8, 10, and 12

[xhesika]

Gale excerpts below, trigger warnings: blood, gore, vivisection, abuse, necromancy, I'm going to go ahead and say sexual content as well since some of the descriptions get pretty racy.

The relationship between Gale and Ritz has a nice start, but it quickly becomes...unhealthy, I'm just waiting to be ridiculed for writing this book.

To make it worse my mind has been in very dark places during the entire month of November because of this, I am seriously reconsidering my December endeavor.


Gale DeWinter's Army

Chapter Eight


It would be the first time that Renée would wake in a coffin, and I made sure to return to my spot next to her inside before she woke. It would not be very many nights afterwards that I would get a new one, a larger one, a coffin big enough for two. I could not risk her wandering off alone as such a young vampire.

She woke with tears in her eyes, frightened of the box, frightened that it was a coffin, and terrified of the sound that came from her own nails as they scratched at the walls.

I quickly grabbed her wrists and pushed her against the wall of the box to stop her from thrashing about. I held her there for a few moments waiting for her to recall the events of the night before, and knowing that the tears that threatened now would certainly fall when she realized that she was no longer dreaming.

I was correct.

Renée stopped thrashing about and crumpled into tears, reaching for me and pulling herself into my chest as she had that morning. For all that I hushed and embraced her I understood that I was running out of time, she would have to feed.

She did not like that I left her to hunt for us, and she liked even less that I locked her in the window-devoid room with the coffin, but I could not risk her going feral from hunger and running off. Renée was not my sireling, and I would not be able to find her. Worse, Mary would be looking for her, linked to both Renée and I, and using such knowledge in waiting for Renée to leave my side.

It had been at least a year by that time that I had been forced to leave the house to hunt. In those days I would have been more selective about my prey, but with Renée back at the house I rushed, and not to say that I was sloppy, rather I took the first weak-minded human I found and brought them back to the house. Normally I would have looked for someone who deserved to be drained, someone with whom sin had seasoned their blood, but I returned to the house with a brunette that I knew little to nothing about.

In that moment, on that day such things simply did not matter. I was out of sorts, panicked and upset over what had happened.

She was sitting on the floor next to the door and she only turned her head upwards to look at me when I opened the door. She said nothing about the unconscious woman draped over my shoulder, and merely held a disappointed look on her face for quite some time.

When I sired Mary, she had not been able to go so long without nourishment, she had been violently bloodthirsty, yet here Renée was sitting distraught and yet strangely calm in her own hunger.

I closed the door behind me and set the woman onto the floor.

Renée’s eyes widened at the woman, “Elle est morte?” She is dead?

“No! No.” I said softly, still slightly awed that Renée had not lunged at the woman in the same way that Mary had attacked her first meal. “Never drink from the dead; it will do more harm than good.”

She only stared at the woman, she had seen me feed before, not purposefully, but she had seen it before. I knelt on the floor next to the woman and beckoned Renée to the body.

“It is as simple as it looks, you bite and you drink.”

She looked at me once and then to the woman, crawling over to us on her knees, and taking the woman into her arms after being momentarily surprised at her new increase in strength.

“All of your senses are heightened,” I said with a smile, “You will soon learn how to control your new strength.”

She did not bite, she instead cradled the unconscious woman, holding the back of her head and looking into her face with nothing but regret.

“Renée?” I asked slowly.

She began to cry again, squeezed the woman gently in an embrace and shook her head slowly, “Je ne peux pas!” I can’t!

“Vous aurez faim!” You will starve! I was completely floored, even with the source of her nourishment in her arms; Renée refused the blood that pulsed only a few centimeters away. It is not uncommon for fresh sirelings to refuse to feed at first, but I had not come into contact with one that refused while the source was so close. “You will lose control of yourself.”

“Je ne peux pas, je ne peux pas, je ne peux pas.” She was only whispering now, still clinging to the body and crying as fully as she had when I had first found her that morning.

I did not understand, and I wish I could say that it was because I was young and foolish, but I was not young, and my age had nothing to do with it. I had been a vampire for so long I had no idea what it was like to lose humanity in a single night and awake to the night as the living dead.

I stopped pushing; the thought had now crossed my mind and made my stomach feel ill, that Mary had forced her own blood into Renée the night prior. For a second I wanted to know, and in that second of looking at Renée I pulled the previous night of events, winding through her head over and over again. Renée had followed Mary up the stairs, and took a step backwards upon hearing the chilling words "Don't be afraid, it will only hurt for a second" realizing that she had been coaxed away from the crowd by one like me.

Mary might have achieved angering me by sireing Renée, but that was not her reasoning for it. An albino vampire? Intrinsic really, when you think about it. Of course Mary’s own desire for my wife did nothing but infuriate me.

Renée’s jaw had been broken as a human; it was only the vampiric regeneration that mended it once Mary had forced her own blood down my wife’s throat. I pulled myself from her thoughts immediately, certain that if I continued I would not be able to allow Mary to live. As it was, I was having a hard time not leaving the house to take care of her that second.

I pulled the unconscious woman away from Renée and pulled the weeping woman against me, wrapping an arm around her waist and letting her grasp onto me, crying despite the fact that she should not have been able to.

“From me then.” I held her head against my chest, letting small strands of her hair thread my fingers, “Take from me, you will not hurt me.” I deserved it even if she did.

She shook her head quickly, “Je n'ai pas faim.” I am not hungry. Her face crumbled with the words and her jaw trembled once she had said them, identifying a past desire for food with a new bloodlust was a lot for her to think about, and saying it aloud was all the harder.

“You will go to her if you starve.” I pulled her to look straight at me, the both of us kneeling on the floor, me holding her up by her arms. “If you do not eat on your own you will go to her, because she is your sire. She is your master and it is your instinct.”

“Non.” The words came from Renée’s mouth in a choke of disbelief.

“You will, and you will belong to her.” She shook her head, reached for me once more, and pulled her against me with one arm, lifting the other wrist to my mouth and biting in.

Her eyes widened and she tensed as if ready to pounce out and stop me, “Gale!” My name came from her mouth in that instant with an unearthly tune; the honeyed music that I had heard very only briefly before wove its way through the letters with so much more potency than they had when she was living.

Her body relaxed slightly as I held my wrist up with a small smile, the blood ran in a single stream down to my elbow, staining the sleeve of my shirt as it went. “It does not hurt.”

She looked at me, crying once more, but this time because she knew that the feeling inside, the strange craving, was triggered by the liquid that dripped from my wrist. She wrapped a hand around my elbow, and then placed the other on the back of my hand.

It had been years since I myself had been fed upon. Before it had been painful, my blood had been taken greedily and rapidly, leaving the unpleasant feeling of a vacuum being formed in my veins. Of course it is impossible for our blood to be completely drained, over the years we have sort of evolved and our body blocks off a separate set of veins when we begin losing too much blood as a way to stop us from going dry.

I had expected that telltale pain of a newborn feeding, and I grimaced in apprehension, but there was no pain whatsoever on my wrist or through my arm. I opened my eyes and realized that Renée was indeed feeding from me, but she was incredibly gentle.

She released my wrist, and I watched her wipe the blood from around her mouth before licking my wound and watching the cut heal almost instantly. “Feeling better?”

Renée nodded, clearly calming down emotionally from feeding, but she still jumped slightly when I licked the small smear of the blood from the corner of her mouth.

I turned my gaze to the woman on the floor, I would have to take every last drop and I would have to dispose of the body properly. I had expected Renée to take care of the first bit, and I had been slightly careless in procuring the victim because I had expected her to meet her end at the mouth of my wife. I however had been quite well fed for the past few days and would not require so much blood. I sighed slightly at the thought of the drunken and swimming feeling that would meet my head after binging on an entire human.

Renée grasped my arm as I started to move towards the brunette, “Non! Let her be!”

“No.” The single word could not be stopped, although I did understand how harsh it must have sounded to the fresh sireling. I attempted a smile, but failed miserably, “I will need to show you how to dispose of a body.”

I look back on the event now and will tell you that it went well, but then I would have told you it was simply awful, and it was not because Renée tried to stop me, rather it was because she did nothing but sit back in horror.

She of course refused to ever dispose of the body the way I did, then again I do not know many vampires who actually choose to devour their victims, flesh and all.

When all was said and done she sat in the room with no windows next to the coffin for awhile, simply staring at the ‘bed’.

“Get dressed; I would like to take you out tonight.” I said to her, pulling her attention away from the coffin. The way she looked at me now was different from the way she had as a human, in becoming the same as me she seemed to have changed her opinion of me.

Whatever internal struggle she was having, she did not allow it to interfere with that night. The night was young, and there were still many things for her to learn about me, and I about her. I had a few ideas about her gift formed in my head with the events of that night so far, and I wanted to go test them out.

She climbed up into the passenger’s seat of the Model T, and I smiled at her saying, “I am going to take you to a party. You will enjoy it, I think. I go whenever there is no party at our house.”

“You still need more?” She said in a sort of heart-broken whisper.

I shook my head, “No, we will not be feeding.” I pulled her red lipstick from the glove compartment of the car and held it up for her; the color seemed to suit her now more than ever. “We will be learning your gift.”

It might have been too much to ask of her after such a life-changing event, and I know that I really ought to have spent the night at home with her.

“It is easiest if the victim is despicable.” I said in the car, Renée did not look at me, her eyes instead focused on the changing world outside and how different it looked with her new eyesight. “I will tell you a little about the people at the party when we arrive, I want you to put yourself out there, flirt like you used to at the club in Paris.”

It was a lot to ask, but at the time I was not as bothered by it as I am now.

I knew that Renée would object to the party once we arrived, they were friends of hers, people who had come to our house on several occasions. A well-off businessman and his posh housewife, Reginald and Matilda, neither of them really well-to-do people, but it was not them that I fed on, and I made sure to assure Renée that I had never touched them apart from a handshake.

Oh they were pleased enough to see me, and even more so to see my wife who had never previously come with me to one of their gatherings.

I was a spectator that night, debuting Renée to the world of darkness and watching how her prey reacted to her. What I learned was positively chilling.

My gift is one of the most coveted to a vampire, even the living envy the ability I have. Knowing the thoughts of the people around you has always been one of the most lustrous of abilities, but Renée showed me something that night that I envied.

I had noticed it earlier that night when she said my name, but the extent of it did not sink in until she smiled to Matilda, took her by the arm, kissed her cheek and uttered the tune, “Ma-til-da.”

Matilda had a weak mind, I knew this well, but how it reacted to Renée once she spoke the name seemed to bend her mind more than I could ever hope. Matilda was immediately obsessed, and I would not doubt that she would have pulled her hair out of the way for Renée herself if asked for a bite. I watched Renée turn the entire room in this way that night, constantly awed by her, and I slowly came to the realization that she was perhaps more deadly than I was.

Paired with any vampire, Renée could take over anything she wanted.

I could let Mary close to her even less now.

Even worse to think of, with Marley’s ambition he would target Renée simply because of her gift once he found out, it would no longer be due to him wanting to take away what I loved most.

It was with this in mind that I stole a lock of Renée’s hair as she slept in the coffin that day, and into the basement I went, carrying herbs, tools, string, clothes, blood, and corpses I procured in a quick trip to the local coroner.

There is a school in my native country, it resides high up in the mountains, far past where the trees become too thick to see through, and too painful to walk past. It is muddy all year long; the rain, sleet, snow, and hail will never tire. No animals will go there, if you were to bring a bloodhound in search of it, they would take you in a large circle, during which journey you may take the time to look up to the sky to notice that no birds will pass that way either. Past those trees is a large lake, and in the center is an island, taken up completely by the stone walls of the Scholomance.

You cannot reach the school by foot, the lake has no bottom and the kraken will devour you. You cannot get there by horse, there is no bridge, and the horse would sooner turn tail and run than look upon the stone. The only way to the island is by boat, driven by the spirits and allowed in past the iron gate which is kept shut for all else. I spent many years in that school learning all the secrets of the living world, the many languages and basic communications between animals, and every manner of divination, charms, and dark arts, clad in black robes with the devil as my teacher.

In the basement of my house where Renée slept peacefully a few floors above me in our coffin, I employed one of the hardest sorts of dark art that I had learned in those stone halls centuries prior. The ordeal took hours to set up for: the bodies had to be torn apart and the freshest pieces stitched back together, the remaining bones needed to be ground into powder, the blood had to be kept warm, and the preparations for the herbs was another task entirely. I was only lucky that the moon was on my side for the event, I would have hated to have to wait a full month for the proper phase for my ritual.

I decided on amaryllis with her hair, I was making a flesh golem and I needed it to have some sort of connection to her, some driving force for it to be loyal to both her and me, I could think of nothing more personal than belladonna lilies and a bit of the cake from the pantry.

I got no sleep that day, the drone was making its first movements in the necromancy circle by the time Renée awoke and came looking for me.

Wells was grotesque in his first few days until the expedited healing was able to work its way through the sewn together bodies, and so I could understand Renée’s horror when she came down the stairs to the cellar and saw me with an elaborate zombie that looked at her and bowed deeply.

“Qu'as-tu fait!” What have you done! She screamed and fell back against the stairs, holding her nose, burning from the smell of rotting flesh that did not dissipate nearly fast enough.

“This is Wells; he will be keeping Mary away from you.” And Marley, but I did not dare tell her that I believed he would come looking to be introduced to her. I closed the circle ceremoniously and then looked to Wells, “Stay out of sight until you are healed, and please take advantage of the books in the library in teaching yourself to speak.”

I took a step out of the circle and reached out for my wife as I walked to her, “Good evening, shall we try feeding again?”

She looked at me, her expression firm and her jaw clenched hard, “No.” She held out her hand to me, palm facing me, “Stop. Don’t come any closer!”

I stopped quickly, confused by the gesture, “Renée?”

“What happened to you?” She had begun to cry yet again, and I could have sworn that she should have lost that ability the night before, “What happened to my husband?”

I furrowed my brow at her, feeling the pang of her words. “I am as I always have been.”

She shook her head quickly, feverishly, still crumpled against the stairs in a fit of tears.

I reached out for her once more, “I understand you are upset.”

“No.” She said gravely, struggling to maintain a hard tone when her mouth wanted only to pout, and grasping the stairs behind her to stop from reaching out to embrace me, “You don’t understand because you have never gone through this. You were never human. You never had any humanity to lose. You devour people because it’s what you’ve always done.”

I did not reach out for her then, the bitter truth of what she had said sank in, that I did not know, that I would never know. My wife believed me to be a monster, and she hated herself for becoming like me.

She pushed herself up off the stairs and rushed up them, I stood in the basement with the drone I had created for her, staring at the spot she had been in, and after a few moments I heard the front door open and shut, and the car rolled off the property.



Chapter Ten


Renée was gone for a full month, when she left, and I was never certain that she would return. Never before had my lack of a bond with her infuriated me more than those small moments when Wells tensed because of his own bond with her. He knew if she was well or not, and due to his blasted inability to talk because of being freshly made, he was unable to let me know if she had been caught or not. I took his continued tenses and jolts as a few moments more that she was alive.

It had been so long since I had been without her companionship that I had forgotten how lonely being a vampire was. Wells was merely a presence, and I held myself back firmly every time I contemplated seeking out Marley and Adam.

I could not, however, restrain myself from looking for Mary, the worry ever-present in my mind that Renée had ended up at her mercy.

Mary was a more nomadic creature, like most of us were in the days before covens and blood deliveries, but with the sire and sireling bond between us there was no place that she could hide from me.

I found her hiding out in the house of a couple on the edge of the city, the bodies of the owners drained and burned earlier that week, and thankfully devoid of butter cream.

I would have left immediately, simply come and gone without a word to Mary, but she caught me and called out to me from the parlor, “Welcome to my house! Enter freely. Go safely, and leave something of the happiness you bring.”

My feet took me to the parlor, and knowing that if I saw her face things would end badly for her. I made no resistance and before I knew it I was standing in the doorway and grimacing at her as she sat cozy in the large armchair.

Mary closed the book of Dracula that she had pulled from the shelf, then rested her elbow on the arm of the chair and rested her chin on her hand, looking at me then with a small bit of amusement. “Let me guess, you got into a fight.” She smiled and let out a small giggle, “And now, all you want is Ren—”

I lashed out without a thought, stopping my hands only once my fingers were poised on her throat. She had not expected me to jump at her, never before had I ever made such a grave threat as my hands themselves made then, even as she ran around London having illicit affairs with anything that moved (and some things that did not) I had never once struck her.

With my hand still poised on her windpipe I smiled, strangely liberated by the feeling of complete loneliness, “Go ahead; say that name.”

She looked up at me quickly, knowing with every bit of her gift and instincts that I had no intention of leaving there without her blood smeared across the walls.

She could read Bram Stoker in the large plush chair all she wanted, but I had a few more modern ideas of vampires of my own. “I do not believe I ever properly broke you.”

Her eyes widened the second before my claws dug into her throat, tearing just as her scream began and then dwindled to nothing more than a gargle. I left it hanging from her neck, and she looked at me in sheer horror, unable to scream, but clearly wanting to.

I knelt in front of the chair with a small smile, took the book from her lap, and tucked it neatly into my breast-pocket; it would make for a lovely bedtime story when Renée returned. “Make any claim to her, and I will rip you worse than I have now.” I grimaced, “Your blood smells like ash, like you have soiled it.”

Her eyes remained glued to me, open wide, and I wanted to pluck them out, shoot them off into the night and send her on a hunt for them…perhaps without her legs. No, there were better ways to deal with her.

…Then again…

With speed I had only used before in hunting I plunged my hand into her stomach and she writhed in silent agony, the smallest whistle from her exposed windpipe sounded off as she huffed, watching me pull her liver, stomach, and kidneys from the small hole.

I wished in that moment, more than anything, that Renée would respond. That she would not be too far away from that house to return, and she would feel the devastation of her sire. I was willing to test it, after all, I had all the time in the world with which to wait, and the house Mary had stolen seemed to be nicely stocked with books.

With one crack after the other Mary’s feet were torn from her legs. She watched me in nothing but horror and loathing as I stood, her nails digging into the arms of the chair until the upholstery shredded and frayed under them. I offered her a simple smile, relishing and reveling in the idea that she, for the first time in her existence, was frightened of me. I turned to sit on the couch opposite her, and pulled the latest Sears and Roebuck catalogue from the end table.

I gasped slightly and pointed to the freshly prepared vodka and tomato juice sitting on the table as well, picking it up and taking a small sip, “What a lovely gesture, my thanks.”

Renée did not return that night, though when I returned to the house where Wells still was he gave me the indication that she had noted Mary’s pain. Whether or not Mary was out among the streets looking for her eyes and stumbling along with entrails dragging behind her was none of my concern, she would heal, albeit slowly, but it was one of the more useful advantages to being a vampire. We are practically indestructible.

I was certain that Renée would sooner or later come looking for me and would return to the house in search of me, perhaps even wanting to pick up where we had left off. I had Wells board up the windows in her old room, coating the wood with pitch for good measure and spent my days surrounded by her scent and my fingers entwined with her silver rosary, my loneliness ever increasing. It is a terrible thing to feel that you have lost something important, I found myself on several occasions searching the house over, and quite meticulously mind you, without realizing and feeling even worse when I did realize that I was looking for her. It was always the smallest spaces that I caught myself, thinking somehow in my desperation that Renée could have shrank herself to sit inside the bureau and live there comfortably.

I had just about given up hope that late January in nineteen twenty-nine, she entered the house, bringing a gust of wind and snow with her, and Wells greeted her as if she had only been gone for a few moments rather than an entire month.

I had rushed to the top of the stairs upon hearing the door, I stood at the top and looked down to the woman at the door, hair slightly longer and face sunken in slightly from hunger, in awe that she actually had come home.

She looked up at me with her big red eyes, and immediately started crying.

I bolted down the stairs and took her into my arms, “You came back.”

“Bien sûr.” Of course. She sniffed, “Je t’aime.” I love you.

I was happy, so happy it bubbled up and I laughed, kissing her forehead.

“Gale?” She said in her tune.

“Oui, ma lapine?”

“I crashed the car in the lake. Pardonnez-moi.” She mumbled.

I started laughing for other reasons now, the misadventures of Renée began to run through my head and I imagined a different scenario for each time that Wells had grimaced, tensed, or even looked thoroughly disturbed in the past month during chores.

“We can buy a new car,” I said.

“Gale?” She asked again.

“Oui, ma lapine?”

“I think I’m wanted in France. The ICPO might come after me. Pardonnez-moi.” She said quietly, as if I were going to scold her on it.

I laughed harder; I did not doubt that Renée would be able to make the top ten most wanted on Interpol’s list. The woman who had left the house a month prior because she could not stand being associated with any sort of darkness would have had to get to the point of pure desperation to make a move against another living being, “Make a bit of a mess?”

“I killed Brigitte.”

The memory of the girl beckoning Renée away with her the night I had first bumped into her came back to mind and I gave Renée a small squeeze in my arms.

“I didn’t mean to,” She sniffled once more, “I got so hungry. I went looking for foods that I could taste, but she didn’t even taste like food, just spicy.”

I shook my head slowly, “You will never be able to taste food.”

She looked up at me, “You taste like peppermint.”

You may have thought to yourself that the relationship between Renée and I was unhealthy, abusive, manipulative, and you still may, but Renée will never leave my side and I will never leave hers. I will tell you honestly, and without reserve that I love my wife. Take it as you will.

“We can go traveling for a while, sell the house, it would be nice to see Europe again.” I said with my fingers now winding themselves up in her hair.

“We can, let’s go see Reginald and Matilda before we go.” She looked up at me alight with happiness.

I grimaced, recalling the first week of Renée’s absence and the couple that I had devoured therein. “They do not live here anymore.”

Her expression fell and she blinked quickly, batting her eyelashes in a skeptical manner before pursing her lips and knitting her brow together tightly.

“They were the first I took.”

“Oh, Gale. No more eating my friends,” she said then sighed and pressed the side of her head back to my chest. “Although they were a dreadful sort of folk, weren’t they?”

I chuckled, delighted that she no longer considered me a monster, and curious of her sabbatical that had returned her to me with a simple understanding of what she was. “Positively vile,” I said with a grin.

We went out that night, this time Renée was more willing to aid me, and we developed a system that we would hold true to for the next century. I would pick out the most atrocious person, the one with the worst conscious of the bunch, and I would tell her their weakness. She would then approach them, singing their name in a honey-sweet tune and pelting them at their weakest point. When I say weakest, I do not necessarily mean “weak”, I mean their Achilles’ heel, the part of them that they are most prideful of. Renée would easily twist their pride to her will, and they would offer themselves up within an hour at the most.

She insisted upon not feeding from the humans, certain that there was some sort of food that she would be able to taste. I humored her, and after hunting (although you could not rightfully call it hunting at that point) I took her for a treat that I was sure she had never tried: vodka and caviar.

We sat at the table, I already satiated, but she sat across from me reaching into the silver tray for the caviar and chasing it with the vodka as if she actually had an appetite for the food itself.

She seemed to roll the eggs in her mouth before swallowing and then sipping the clear alcohol.

“Anything?” I was certainly not trying to patronize her; rather I was just as curious as she was if there was anything that would hold flavor to her in the same way that Adam was able to enjoy food.

She shook her head slowly, and then began to chew on the inside of her mouth, nervous that I would disapprove of her next statement, “I can’t feed like you do, I’m sorry.”

I shook my head simply and took my own bite of the dish, none of it holding any flavor other than the normal void of water, “I can sustain you for quite a while if you wish.”

Her eyes widened, “Can you do that? You would do that?”

I shrugged, “It will not satisfy the way,” I made sure the waiter was out of earshot, “human blood would, but it would keep your appetite curbed.”

“I’ll keep you fed then.” She said quickly, then licked her bottom lip and looked off to the side thoughtfully, carefully planning out what would be our ritual for years to come. “I’ve gone without for a long time before; it had to have been at least three weeks. It won’t be so hard if I have you.”

“If you ever do choose to feed on your own it will not be hard at all, easier than doing without. They will flock to you.”

“Why is that? Not my gift, but the way they seem to be drawn to us?”

I leaned back in my chair, “You still cry, you still blush, and you can do all of those things in the presence of prey.” I shook my head, “We are stoic creatures and humans find it intriguing. We are beautiful to them even if only for that simple reason.”

“I’m…lacking then?” She said slowly.

I shook my head once more, “Not at all, your flaw and your gift compensate each other; it is the way it always works out.”

“Is that how it works for your friends?”

I paused, mulled the idea over in my head a few times, and then spoke slowly, “You may meet them, on the condition that I tell you everything there is to know about them before we introduce you. You have all the more reason to be wary of them as a vampire than you did as a human.”

How lucky I am that the spark of Renée that ensnared me years ago in nineteen twenty-six in Paris became her vampiric flaw. Every simple passionate movement and each intrinsic laugh were felt by me, vicariously and hopelessly shaking my previous connotations of sheer joy. As a vampire, being completely vulnerable to the old human emotions can be simply detrimental. She has a fragile mind; such things live and die, blinking out in their era. They represent the plight of an age, the heartbreak of a generation, they are not meant to withstand the test of time. One day, the passion that Renée had for life will become her passion for the next.

It would be the last time we would sleep at the house, Renée and I had planned to simply abandon that house, keep it in the back of our minds for a rainy day, and perhaps use it to hide out in if in fact Interpol did catch up with us.

In the room where my coffin had sat (untouched for the past month as I had been sleeping in her bed), Renée eyed the box, even ran a couple fingers along the edge, and I stood at the door, not wanting to pressure her inside.

“I forgot how small your coffin was.” She said with a small smile.

I shrugged, “We will leave it. I will get us another, one we can sleep in a bit more comfortably.” I took a few steps over to her, close enough to wrap my arms around her waist from behind and rest my chin on her shoulder, “I had Wells block out the windows in your old room. We could stay in there if you liked.”

Her face brightened, “Could we really? We don’t need the coffin?”

“The windows are blocked but light still gets through. We would not get as much rest in the bed as we would in the coffin, but we do not have to.”

She turned in my arms to face me and gave me a quick peck on my cheek, wrapping her arms around my neck, “I’d like that very much.”

I squeezed her waist, never wanting that moment to end.

“Gale?” She asked with her head on my shoulder.

“Oui, ma lapine?”

“You did mark me, didn’t you?” Her voice waivered slightly, and she bit back on the bad memories.

Of all the times for Mary to weasel her way into the subject, at home and getting ready for bed with my wife was not the most opportune. “I have taken care of it.”

“I was leaving Paris, and I felt worried about her suddenly.”She shook her head, “I still think about her, I don’t understand.”

I nodded slowly, “You may feel that from time to time, please ignore it, she has no claim to you.”

“It’s hard to ignore, worse than the hunger, it’s like a tug.”

That “tug”, as Renée so simply put it, I assumed was her connection to Mary, and in the long road to recovery for the one whose entrails I had pulled out, Renée would certainly find her sire invading her mind on more than one occasion.

We took to bed early that night, reaching for each other in exasperated and long-delayed passion. When the sun rose we passed out entangled in each other, on the bed that I had spent each restless day on, and this time in the arms of the one I yearned to touch for a whole month. She was petite and curvy in my arms, eyes just barely open as she drifted off, satiated from my blood and I from hers, the taste of butter cream on my tongue once more.



Chapter Twelve


The house that Renée and I abandoned in nineteen twenty-nine remained in my name, and to this day it is still mine, of course we have quite a few more vampires living with us these days, it went on to become my dear Rehabilitation Project 13-23: DeWinter.

The corpse that I raised in our basement accompanied us to Europe, and although Renée was apprehensive of Wells, she could not deny that a drone was a wonderful thing to have around.

Interpol was indeed after my wife, and every official that we passed while getting onto the ship to my native Romania held the vivid mental image of a gruesome, drained, and neurotic Parisian, an image that I felt the compulsion to hold my wife with each mention. With her siren-gift and the flirtatious attitude that she had mastered in Paris, Renée was able to waltz past Interpol, not unnoticed by any means, but rather leaving each and everyone we passed completely infatuated with her.

We procured a hotel room in Sibiu, deep in Romania, both well aware that we could not hope for sleep until we were able to procure an apartment of our own that would be safe enough to store a coffin. It was my desire to spend a little more time than just to the end of the coming summer; Renée could not seem to get out of the habit of looking at time as if she were still human.

She sat on that ridiculously uncomfortable bed of the hotel, in nothing but her slip and stockings, with wildly curly hair tied up into a short pony-tail, and reading over the copy of Bram Stoker that I had taken from Mary.

“We exist, do werewolves?” She asked without looking up at me, still flipping through the pages.

I shut the door behind me, “I certainly hope not, what mangy creatures.”

She looked up at me with a skeptical glare for only a second, and then smiled.

I felt forward onto the bed, causing Renée to gasp slightly before pulling myself towards her, resting my head on her stomach with her right leg tucked nicely under my arm, my fingers held onto the edge of her stocking, ready to tear apart the garter.

“I would like to spend a few years here; I have found a nice large house I think will do nicely.” I said slowly, letting my hand run over her knee and the strange texture from the stocking.

“Years.” She said softly, “I guess I’ve got a lot more time than I thought, huh?”

“Hmm.” I hummed bringing my hand up from her knee to the spot on her stomach that my head had been resting on.

There, next to her hip, as if it were a piece of her that had to accompany her wherever she went, was her silver rosary. Her hand fell down to it, fingertips drawn to the beads, and cords winding themselves around each phalanx.

“Scholomance. Would you like to be enrolled?” Perhaps it was not the best question to be asked while the rosary was in her hand.

Renée nearly dropped her book as she shut it, pulling her legs away from me to sit on them. She looked at me the same way she had when I had first asked her out to coffee, as if I had offended her.

The beads in her hand began to shift, “Necromancy. You’re asking if I want to learn it.”

I sat up and reached out for her, “It is not only necromancy.”

“No.” She shook her head slowly.

“Ma lapine.”

“No! Don’t you ‘ma lapine’ me!” She shook her head, the beads now shifting faster in her fingers, “Gale, you’ll send me to hell!”

“Renée, ma chèrie, hell is not a place; it is a state of being.” I smiled at her reference and incredibly Catholic way of thinking (I myself was more of a hedonist as most vampires are), and marveled at the idea that I would never be in hell as long as she was by my side. As long as she was by my side the two of us could rule hell and I would be none the wiser.

She stood, right on the bed, rosary in one hand and Bram Stoker in the other, angry with me. I would become very familiar with her routine when she had taken offense to something I had said, staring at me and then turning to walk away, all too aware that I knew what she was thinking. Eventually I would let her be when she did this, but that first time (for she had never gotten so cross with me when she was simply my young human bride as she did a vampire) I found myself not so willing to let her walk away from me, not so soon after she had returned from running off from the States to Paris.

I reached up and grabbed the wrist of the hand that held the rosary, too tangled in her fingers to fall from her hand, and pulled, bringing her back down to the bed from her feet crashing down into the bed and onto her knees with me. I pulled the copy of Dracula from her hand and tossed it onto the floor and brought my hand to her chin, smiling as she blushed as no other could.

“I would not force you. You would starve in a place like that.” I teased.

She was too catholic for Scholomance, and she would never be any less, I was only lucky she did not think me too much of a hedonist for her, but I believe that she understood that to become angry with me for such a reason would be hypocritical.

“Is it close?” She said slowly, as if the proximity of the school would corrupt her soul by itself.

“South, just slightly south of here.” I released her chin, but kept my hand around her wrist.

She nodded, now considerably calmer than she had been only a few minutes prior, “You mean you’d starve if I were in a place like that.”

I scoffed, raising an eyebrow and marveling at how sure of herself she had become on the trip, “I am capable of taking care of myself you minx.”

“Devouring your victims?” She turned her head and looked at me from the side, “You’re right, I hope werewolves are fictitious as well, as long as you continue to dispose of bodies like that.”

I grabbed her other wrist now, releasing the one that had held the book, “I do not have to kill as long as I have you, ma lapine.” I pressed my mouth to hers, slightly laughing into her mouth at the way her mood melted just as her taste did.

The rosary beads dropped from her fingers as I pushed her back onto the bed, and she reached out for me in place of them. With a snap, I had broken her garter, and she gasped at the unexpected sound while making the mental note to demand a new pair from me the following day. I would comply then, but while I was going to be buying her a new pair of garters, a new slip could not hurt, and I tore the fabric starting at her shoulders and ripping right down the middle, un-peeling her from the clothing like a piece of fruit.

No longer human and fragile, I reveled in the new ability to not hold back so much with my wife, and every push in precisely the right spot brought forth a new sensation for her. A moan at every thrust and several bites from me along her neck sent the both of us into fits of ecstasy, and the sheets were always tossed and spotted red by the end with our blood where her nails dug into my back and where drops of her own butter cream had dripped carelessly by me.

The days of nothing but passion for the two of us without a horde of whelps to look after stretched longer than any human life would have allowed. Once, maybe twice during that time I will give you my guiltiest confession: I thanked my sireling for procuring what I loved most a spot in eternity, a spot that I myself had been too fearful to give her.

The house we bought in Sibiu was more of a castle truth be told, as were most of the larger and more private properties in that locale. I had passed by the property many times in my vampiric youth as I came and went to the Scholomance, and found that the superstitions for that school of dark arts still held as vivid a spot in the native’s mind as ever. The castle was acquired at a much lower price than the others, the property reaching far into the mountains, and Renée and I became the stereotypical vampires, living in a castle in the mountains and inviting unsuspecting guests to dinner parties.

The location of the castle was gracious enough to protect my wife and I through the second world war, and I regret to tell you that if you are looking for an epic story of how Renée and I fought Nazis, you will have to look elsewhere for that fiction.

Our lives there would not have been so easy without Renée’s gift, the siren-song’s honeyed tune enamored every inhabitant of the region, and we nestled ourselves comfortably in the upper-class. The days of my vampiric youth that I had spent prowling that same city and being known as ‘Rasp’ had been washed away and renewed with fresh memories, fresh and much more pleasant ones.

Yes my friend, I am Rasp. A Scholomance trick as simple as any other, the ability to transfigure oneself, and it was one of the easiest to master. I often wonder what vulgarities Bastian would have uttered had he known Renée had taken him that night to the club to see me hiding out under an old name and stolen guise adding arsenic to Mary’s drink and wishing without any luck it would at least burn. I doubt Bastian gave a second thought to the plate of lemon wedges I gave Renée and watched her devour gingerly, or the way she smiled and blushed in asking me to make her martini ‘just the way I like it’.

One afternoon, with the light of the day slowly fading, I coaxed my wife from our coffin for a stroll, the snow of the first winter settling into place. I entertained the idea that albino would blend into her surroundings, but she took to the snow with the vigor of an adolescent, pleased with the sight and running through the precipitation more than a rabbit would.

Up in the mountains behind the castle, beyond the great ageless fir trees and thick bramble, I took her to the clearing that she had only read about in books, the slice of timeless forest still feared by the inhabitants of Transylvania, the Scholomance and its unnamed lake.

From the edge of the lake Renée could see the kraken beneath the waters, and her eyes traveled from them up to the stone wall surrounding the island before turning to me abruptly, “I told you already.”

“I had no intention of asking you again.” I said evenly, “I only wanted to show it to you.”

It was enough for her and she nodded once before beginning again, “Did Marley attend?”

“Yes, although only once.” I pulled her into my arms, resting my chin on the top of her head and her small black beret.

Once back inside the warmth of the castle I waited until Renée pulled her scarf off and gave it to Wells before beckoning her to the parlor with me. “I have contacted Marley and Adam, would you be opposed to them coming to stay with us for a little?”

She only looked at me for a few minutes, and then licked her lips for moisture, “If you think that it is safe.”

“They will want you, each for your gift.” She leaned against the arm of chair and turned her back to me, listening intently, “You are going to have to hold your own against them. I do not doubt that Marley may try to take you away by force.” I closed my own eyes for a second, thankful that Renée’s back was turned to me, and now worried that Marley might find it even more appealing that Renée was so emotional. “Do not let him see you cry. Do not let him see you blush. Do not let him see you angry. You will have to hide your emotions; you will have to fight your flaw as best you can.”

Renee nodded slowly and then turned to me, sitting more on the arm of the chair than before, “Will we still be inviting people over?”

I nodded, “You may be emotional then, we can play it off as an act.”

“And when I’m alone?”

I shook my head slowly, “It will not be so easy. Marley has the gift of invisibility at will, he has no increased strength while hidden, but he will see you. His flaw is a lack of conscious, I will instruct Wells to keep an eye on him, and I would like for you to do the same, but I believe he may endanger us here by killing someone.”

She did not want to hear it, and her she looked at me with her brow knitted with worry, “And Adam?”

“He is more trouble for me. His quantakenesis allows him to manipulate numbers and amounts; you will have to forgive me if I lash out at him because of it. He is also, however, mysophobic and easy to veer from the room.” I reached up to stroke her cheek with the back of my hand, her large red eyes flickering with her thoughts, “I am worried for you; that is why you have not yet met them.”

“You told me you hated them.” She pursed her lips tightly, “you want to invite them in now?”

“We must keep our friends close, our enemies closer, and those we love closest of all, ma lapine.” I shook my head, “Above all, do not let them know that you do not take from humans. Your blood has become incredibly potent from being passed between the two of us, if they knew they would crave it.”

I took her and into my own and she looked down at it slowly, “I can feel Mary. She’s hungry.”

The hand that was not in my grasp reached up to her neck and her fingers curled into themselves at the base of her throat. She felt Mary, and she wanted to offer herself up to her. Not willingly, but because of the bond. I felt a twinge of anger at her actions, enough to reach out and grab her hand from her neck, get to my feet with both her hands in mine, and kiss the spot that she had indicated.

I doubt she knew what she indicated at all, but the fear of Mary hung heavy in my mind. She would have been healed by then, and she could have come looking for Renée, and my paranoia would not let me be.

It did not take the two vampires I had made contact with long to arrive at my doorstep in Sibiu. I met Marley and Adam at the door one night after Renée and I had fed, and I invited them in, introducing Wells at the same time.

Sometimes, knowing what people are thinking can be the worst gift of all, and it certainly was then.

Upon seeing my wife Marley wanted her. Without even learning what her gift was, he was infatuated with her physically, something I had not thought to worry over, but I was now kicking myself wondering why not. To say Renée is not particularly attractive is a blatant lie; all performers must have some sort of defining characteristic, some sort of beauty to them, and she was a performer, perhaps more as a vampire than anything else.

Adam was a different story, he of course noted the pleasant appearance of Renée, but was more curious over the sweet smells of the bakery that seemed to emanate from her veins. In that moment of meeting her he immediately identified her with the night in Paris that I had returned to the apartment smelling like butter cream.

I thought Renée was doing a good job keeping her emotions hidden when she joined us in the foyer, but when she reached out to take the hand of each of the other vampires in turn; she attempted the same cordial smile that we had practiced the night before. While I thought that she did well, Marley immediately noted that her smile felt warm.

Renée did not like either of the two immediately, ‘cold’ was the word that she immediately associated with them, and as much as I had noticed Marley’s reaction to Renée, she had noticed it more. The entire idea of being truly desired by a man other than myself without the use of her gift was alien to her, and she immediately shut herself off in response to it, becoming as ‘cold’ as the other two vampires.

“Marley, Adam, I would like you to meet my wife, Ritz DeWinter.” I attempted a cordial smile to them and wrapped an arm around Renée’s waist.

She looked at me once and only very briefly before straightening her neck and holding out her hand to Marley.

“Young.” Marley did not take her hand, and instead eyed her up and down, “Very young.”

“I recognize your scent from Gale’s coat. Paris, yes?” Adam accepted her hand where Marley did not, smiling slightly and lifting it to his lips, “You are the albino performer; I’ve had several friends who were fond of you. Do you still sing?”

Renée immediately preferred Adam to Marley, and for as much as they do not get along now, in those days they could find no quarrel about each other. “In a way.” She said with the same reserved smile.

“Your rooms have been set up, if you have your own coffins you may use them, but I have procured a couple in the off chance that you came with nothing. Please ask Wells for anything that you might need.” I said while wrapping my arm tighter around Renée’s waist. The longer they spoke with her the sooner she could be compromised; it was not something I wanted to happen so early on.

I knew in that moment that Marley was envious of the life I had. A drone the likes of which he would never be able to imitate, a wife of such unearthly beauty (and he had not seen her in action), and a home equipped with all the comforts that I could ask for.

The night following the arrival of Marley and Adam, I opened my home up to several of the upper class to introduce them to my friends. Before the party I made sure to explain to Marley and Adam in great detail the rules of mine and Renée’s game: only take from victims that come willingly, and do not take enough to kill.

It was then that I allowed Marley and Adam to watch Renée. They did not notice her in the crowd at first, they immersed themselves in petty conversation with a few from the town committee, but when they saw the crowd around them slowly dissipate and the humans fly to Renée like moths to the flame the rules of the game made more sense.

With her wonderfully fractured names of the guests Renée hooked each of them into her spell, then she poured simple smiles and attentions on each of them, and picking out which humans to send to which vampire in the room. It might have been the first time that Adam did not cringe while watching another feed, the entire event was incredibly quick and painless, and none of the guests were any the wiser that they had been fed upon, all simply under the impression that they had dozed off for a few minutes near the end.

When the last guest left the castle, and Wells had shut the door, Marley approached Renée in such a way that made me uncomfortable, lifting his hand to hold her chin and shocking her so much that she jumped backwards.

“You could be quite powerful with the right help.” He said, paying little attention to the way she jumped and how she looked at him as if frightened, but taking note of it nonetheless.

Renée pushed his hand away, “I have the right help.” She walked past him and started towards me.

“Rasp, you might have kept one for us, we haven’t fed as often as you have.”

The comment was directed to me (I was not so used to being called by that ancient name), as if Marley expected me to have no quarrel with his previous comment to Renée, but it was Renée that took offense to him.

“You will not kill in this house.” She stopped half way to me and turned her head back to him, “You will wait until we next invite company and you will take a small amount then as well. You will do this until you feel no hunger.”

“You will, if you please, appease the lady of the house.” I let out a small half-chuckle, “She can be quite a trial when vexed.”

“I noticed.” Marley said in a low voice, his attention back on my wife, eyeing her up and down, and fulfilling my fear of his infatuation with her emotions as he followed the line of her body through the black evening gown. “It didn’t take you much performing to pull that off, did it?”

Renée gave him a hard look; all the distaste for him that I could not show she immediately threw out into the space between them. “Envious?” She said in an awkwardly light and lilting tone.

Marley closed the gap between them and raised his hand to touch her chin once more, this time she kept her focus on his face, all the while giving him the same hardened stare. “Covetous.” He gave her a devious smile, and her flaw was immediately in the open, “Do you blush between the sheets?”

Vampires are very polyamorous creatures; being immortal it is one of the easier concepts to come to terms with, but it was one that I had not warned Renée of, mostly because I had not expected Marley to want to bed her so quickly. I grimaced at his tone, and then found myself smiling by the end of Renée’s retort, something that was noticed immediately by Adam.

“Oh, a snuggle-pup?” She started in a flirtatious tone and then pushed it into pure disgust, “A desperate one. I do not desire you in the slightest.”

It was because she was married, it was because she loved me, it was because she had truly never looked at any other man, and it made my heart soar.

“Your sire might have taught you otherwise.” Marley said as he released her chin.

“I have no sire.”

It is a dreadful thing when a woman feels compelled to lock her door when she retires to her room and an even more dreadful thing when she is married and lives with her husband. I had expected to enter into our room as simply as I always had, but found myself knocking until she opened the door for me, crying as only she could.

Renée had been truly terrified of Marley in the foyer when he had approached her, appalled that he would outright ask such questions, and even more horrified that he had legitimately expected her to agree to it. It would not be the last time that Marley would make the request of Renée. Worse still was the complete and utter cruelty of the man, living once more under the same roof as that man would have been bad enough if I were alone. I immediately regretted inviting Marley into my house.

I found her clinging to me in our room once I entered, so shaken that she took my doting to heart rather than shaking it off with her usual snide remark and eye-roll. She had held her own, she had done well, and I was proud of her regardless of her secret being learned.

She understood me fully then, and she was torn by the idea that as sinful creatures as we are, there is something darker still, and there are those like us that have no compassion for anything.

Through everything, the thought hung in her mind and ate at my nerves; Mary was starved, and possibly knowingly fasting to lure Renée to her. I wanted to track Mary down and force her to feed, but with Marley hounding at my wife I was not going to be the man to leave her while she was under fire and needing me to protect her even at least emotionally.