Page 3 of Vacation with the Vampire
Ah, my gaze settled. I saw it now. Perhaps this explained her lopsided stance. Her knees were torn open, the strange dark-blue fabric ripped, and her skin bloodied. Now that I’d locked eyes on the blood seeping from her scraped skin, the scent sharpened instantly. Rich and metallic, it threaded through the stale air with intoxicating clarity.
My fangs descended before I consciously permitted it. How… inconvenient. I had always prided myself on control. Even if I had not slumbered the full three centuries, her appearance made me suspect I’d gone a very long time without feeding anyway. That broken fabric clung to shapely legs and soft thighs; pants. Not a skirt, ankle-length and modest, but actual pantaloons. A man’s clothing.
She shifted, wincing, and lifted the object she was holding in her hand. It was a strange, flat, glowing thing with no flame, no wick. The light it cast was harsh, unnatural, painting me in pale illumination. It caused shadows to dance sharply across the ceiling, and the eyes of some of the ancestors of my lineage Louis had placed here stared in accusation. They were supposed to be ties, guardians, a line to my past and my blood, but in that harsh, pale light, they accused me of hiding like a coward. Or perhaps that was simply my guilty conscience talking.
Her eyes widened when she saw me, and I heard her pulse spike in her chest, the blood through her veins rushing faster, louder,as her fear intensified. “Okay... What the… Nope, I can’t deal. Who the hell are you?”
Her voice, it was such a shock I nearly recoiled. The accent was atrocious: clipped, nasal, entirely devoid of elegance. American, I realized with immediate distaste. I’d only had a handful of dealings with them before I’d decided to lie dreaming beneath the City of Light. I did not recall any of those interactions as particularly pleasant, and braced myself for more of the same.
“How did you come here?” I asked instead, my own voice emerging rougher than expected, unused. I needed a drink, blood, followed by something much stiffer. My mind was already adjusting to her language, the changes time had wrought. That was how a vampire’s mind worked; we adapted, evolved. Not everyone of my kind was good at changing as time changed, but I had always managed. At least, I believed I did. Though Louis had called me dated and stiff even that last day before I began my planned, three-century-long nap.
“Excuse me?” She blinked, then gestured wildly with her glowing device. “I asked first. Who are you? And where is this? This was not on the tour.”
Tour. I ignored the word for the moment. She sounded like she was panicking, and I wondered if she’d appreciate a gentle slap with my handkerchief to snap her out of it. I reached for the normally snow-white cloth jutting from my jacket pocket and discovered, with horror, that it was covered in dust.
“I am Raoul,” I said with the dignity the situation demanded. “And you are trespassing.” Fine, no handkerchief for now; she appeared to be pulling herself together anyway. In fact, she wasprobably responding with far more pluck than I would expect most women to show. Not many would dare venture into the catacombs in the first place, but this one wore pantaloons, so perhaps she was different.
She squinted at me, and I noticed that her eyes were a pale blue, but her eyebrows were delicate arches. They were actually rather elegant, but I didn’t want to think that yet. She wore pantaloons and a sleeveless shirt. I could not begin to figure out what to think of that.
“Raoul,” she repeated, as though testing the name for authenticity. Her gaze swept over me, slow, assessing. To my surprise, something crept into her expression; it was inexplicably skeptical. “Wow. Okay. Commitment to the bit. That outfit is… very intense. What are you, like, a reenactor? Cosplayer? That’s cool. I gotta say, I’m very glad I found you! I was certain I’d never find my way out.”
I frowned as her words landed, but some struggled to make sense. Cosplayer, what was a cos, and how did you play it? Also, reenact what exactly? “I beg your pardon?” I asked, my voice rising in pitch and, again, escaping my control. I might have opened my mouth a bit too wide and given her a glimpse of my still embarrassingly protruding fangs. It was that damn scent of hers, the lure of her blood as it dried on her skinned knees.
She pointed at my attire—my coat, my waistcoat, my boots—with a baffling mix of amusement and disbelief. “The costume. It’s, like, super detailed. You guys really go all out down here, huh?” Down here, those words made me glance up at the ceiling as if that would help me make sense of what she was saying. Down here in the Catacombs? Down here beneath the city?
She talked about my clothing as ifIwas the one dressed strangely. I was beginning to think I’d made a grave mistake sleeping this long, and the world had gone to hell in a handbasket while I slumbered. “My costume,” I repeated, each syllable edged in frost. “Mademoiselle, your own clothing is an affront to decency.”
She looked down at herself—at her torn jeans and sleeveless top, her strange, odorless square light dancing over her body as she did so. Then she lifted her chin and glared at me. “Wow. Rude,” she snapped in that odd, clipped accent of hers.
“Indecent,” I corrected. “And impractical.” The way the dark blue fabric cupped her rear was scandalous, and she had not even turned around yet, I just knew. It made me want to look, my eyes skating over her shape, clinging to the pale fabric that was barely covering her chest. There wascleavageand the thrum of her heartbeat visible at her throat.
“I fell, okay?” she snapped, jarring me out of my spiraling, considerably lascivious thoughts. Then she winced and clutched her wrist to her chest. “Which, by the way, still hurts like hell. So if this is part of some immersive experience, it’s not funny. You can drop the act and tell me how to get out of here.”
She took a step forward, clearly not scared of me, even though there was no doubt she’d seen how I was practically drooling at her presence. The light shifted, her flat lantern moving through the air in her hand. It caught my eyes, that sharp beam of light. I saw the exact moment she noticed she’d illuminated my face. Her expression faltered, and her mouth dropped open. There was no spike in her pulse, though; she was surprisingly calm for someone who’d been caught off guard.
“Okay,” she said slowly. “That’s… that’s a bit much.” Her gaze dropped to my mouth. Now it was my turn to wince; I had not yet retracted them. She stared at my fangs for a long, suspended moment, and then, to my profound astonishment, her shoulders sagged. “Oh my God,” she muttered. “You’re a vampire.”
I inclined my head slightly, unsure whether to take offense or not. She knew what I was, yet she was not scared? How could this be? Her ability to walk into my sanctuary had made me wonder if she was a sorceress, but she lacked any hint of magic, so I’d ruled it out.
“And you’re committed,” she added, almost impressed. “Like, seriously, those prosthetics? That’s some Hollywood-level stuff.” She waved her hand with the light in my face, and it flashed across my eyes. I blinked, then threw up a hand against the glare. She had the good grace to immediately lower her hand again, pink staining her soft, oddly appealingly shaped cheeks.
“Prosthetics?” I ground out through my fangs. What was she talking about? A wooden leg? I’d seen some very good hand replacements made of porcelain… Those were prosthetics, but I was pretty sure I was all in one piece. My vampiric ability to heal meant I would never need to resort to such cosmetics.
“Yeah, the teeth,” she said, gesturing vaguely. “The glowing eyes thing, too. That’s a very nice touch. Look, I get it, okay? You’re supposed to be, like, the surprise scare or whatever? But I’m really not in the mood. Can you just...” She waved her hand weakly. “…break character and take me back? Please?”
I stared at her, blinking again and roughly pulling on my control in the hopes their glow would dim. “Break… character.” What onEarth was she talking about now? This was even more confusing than “cosplayer” or “reenactor.” Come to think of it, I was beginning to sense a theme here.
“Yeah,” she said, and she waved in a sort of fluttery manner through the air, this time with the hand she’d kept pinned to her chest. Pain blanched her features, and it made something glimmer in her eyes—tears, perhaps. She rushed to press her wrist back against her bosom, drawing my eyes there.
The silence stretched between us while I fought to yank my eyes from her far too appealing curves. It was the long sleep and the thirst that made me feel this curl of attraction despite her plain face and confusing vocabulary. When her eyebrow went up, a silent question, a hint of frustration seeping through, I still didn’t answer.
When she began shifting uneasily on her feet, it felt like the temperature dropped. Then, very deliberately, I said, “Mademoiselle, the public tour of these catacombs extends only to the ossuary. No guide would bring you here.” No guide would know of this place if Louis had done his job right, and I had no reason to think he hadn’t.
She rolled her eyes, and my mouth dropped open in surprise, shocked by her audacity. Had she really just rolled her eyes at me? Me? It was the act of a small, unmannered child, not a grown woman. My shoulders went up, my fangs tingled, and I wasn’t sure if I’d ever get control of them now.
“Yeah, obviously,” she said. “That’s the point. Hidden chamber, spooky vampire guy. It’s very on-theme with the whole thing.” Her hand, with the strange light, flapped, and the shadowsdanced. “But vampires aren’t real, so you can stop with the lecture and cut the crap.”
“I was not…” I spluttered, my shock only growing. Forget misbehaving children, I could not recall the last time someone had dared to speak to me this way!
