Of Light and Darkness: The Vampire's Daughter

satiny pants emerged from the shadows of the long, thin hallway just in front of Valek. His long, white, curly hair hung neatly about his carved features like a French fop. He looked like something straight out of the reformation — handsome, young, and effeminate.

“Well, well, well. Who seems to have dropped in to my perfectly, pretty, parlor? Look what the black cat drug in out of the rain.” Francis grinned, flashing his long incisors before appraising Valek’s sopping overcoat and mangy hair. “Filthy, filthy.” He tsked.

“Francis,” Valek breathed. “They did not discover you! How did they not find you? You’re right in the blasted city!”

“Come now, dearest friend. How could they find me?” He chuckled. “Not when my house has been guarded by my indentured Witch.” He revealed a young woman, with tousled, brown curls and a face like a doll. She stepped around from behind him. “Don’t you think I’m aware of everything going on? I’m old enough to catch all of their tricks, my dear Valek.” His expression changed from fabricated joy to immediate disapproval as he lifted an eyebrow at the sight of Charlotte, hanging limply in Valek’s arms. He tsked again at Valek, then shook his head from side to side.

“Please, Francis,” Valek implored, clutching the only thing he still loved about life, slowly turning to death in his arms.

“Oh, Valek. Please! I do not receive a visit from you in almost twenty years and you come back to me…a family man?” Francis chortled like the Cheshire cat. “You’re soft.” He lightly prodded Valek’s chest with a slender, silver finger.

He sashayed over to a small table that held an elegant decanter, filled halfway with deep, red liquid. The black and gold ornate walking stick he clutched made thumping noises on the wooden floor as he stepped.

He slowly approached Valek with a glass half-full, sipping it as he walked. Standing before him, Francis ran the glass underneath Valek’s nose and watched his blue irises sink under the black. He smiled.

“Valek.” He pulled the glass away. “Do you know how many of us have attempted things like this? ” He gestured to Charlotte. “Are you aware of how many of us have experienced this very same situation? Listen to me when I say it is not her you are in love with. It is her mortality. You miss it so much. I can see it in you. That is what you are in love with. The idea.” He sipped at the blood again, swirling it around as though it were a glass of fine merlot.

“Francis, you are ignorant as you have always been,” Valek roared. He had half a mind to knock the glass from Francis’ hand, but he was too exhausted for another confrontation. “Please! I beg you to help us.”

“I am helping you, sweet Valek.” Francis sighed and twirled a strand of his friend's dark hair around his finger. “Which is why I don’t wish to see you hurt.” He turned his gaze on Charlotte again and sighed.

“The only way I would be hurt is if you refused us.” Valek’s voice wavered.

“I am hiding other Vampires here, you know. You are not my only friend. You would be subjecting the child to them, and you know how testy we get when we’re thirsty.” Francis cocked his head. “And she does smell so delicious.”

It wasn’t so much of a threat as it was a legitimate warning. But nothing Francis said was about to sway Valek.

“Surely we can settle on some agreement.” Valek straightened, tightening his jaw.

“Very well.” Francis shrugged. “But of course I have conditions….”

“Of course.…” Valek frowned. He didn’t like the sound of that.

“You see, my Vampires and I — we are living in the lowest form of poverty imaginable. My house Witch steals donated blood from the hospitals in the city, but she always brings it back cold. And sometimes we don’t even get the pleasure of partaking in that. Sometimes…it’s rats.” Francis’ gracefully long eyelashes batted toward Charlotte again.

“No.” Valek hugged the girl closer to his chest. “You’re mad. Absolutely not.”

“We would not be killing her, Valek, I assure you. She would be the most protected thing in this house. But we need fresh blood in order to survive. It is that dire. We have grown weak.”

“I said, no, Francis! This is my whole life I am holding.”

“Then she cannot stay!” Francis whirled around abruptly. “If she is not our blood source, then she is nothing! My word is final.” The effete Vampire turned on the black toe of his shined, leather boot. “Good luck.”

“Wait.” Valek’s reaction seemed more like a reflex. The world outside the door behind him grew lighter. Charlotte’s heartbeat grew slower. Valek’s choices were now even slimmer.

Francis peered over his pointed shoulder. The Witch grinned.

Valek crumpled. “Fine. But if any of you hurt her at all, I will tear you limb from limb.”

“Well…we can try not to hurt her. We will be taking it straight from the vein, of course.” He smirked.

Valek roared angrily at him.

Francis wagged his finger. “None of that. As I said, you are welcome to decline my offer and leave.”

Valek’s nostrils flared, but he had nowhere else to go. Aiden would surely find her anywhere else. Sadly and finally, he acquiesced.

“It’s good to see you again, my friend. I actually had a feeling I was going to.”

Valek breathed and nodded his halfhearted “thank you”.

“Sarah, show my dearest friend, Valek, and his—er—guest to the basement, won’t you? And then prepare a room upstairs for her.” Francis snapped his fingers once.

The Witch cheerfully gestured for Valek to follow, Francis staying close behind. She led them down the dark, brick hallway decorated with oddly placed oil paintings and flowery pastels — a clear disguise for the unlikely event any human would happen to enter the dingy, seemingly abandoned home. In the floor was a trap door, with only a rope for a handle, though it was so encased with dust, a mortal probably wouldn’t have ever noticed it there.

Sarah yanked it open, murky particles cascading into the dark abyss. Valek peered into it and glanced back at Francis.

“After you.” Francis grinned.

Valek hugged Charlotte closer to him and stepped forward, peering into the blackness. The tunnel was thin and seemed to grow thinner as he peered through it, though he could faintly see where it opened up to a lit room below. He pressed Charlotte even tighter to him and jumped, his shirt billowing up around him as he plummeted.

He landed gracefully, like a cat, feeling the dirt thud beneath his feet. He looked at Charlotte, who was trying to wake up, eyes twitching, small sounds coming from her mouth. He gazed back up into the hole from which he’d plummeted. It seemed like he had been falling for a while.

“Look out below!” Francis’ voice echoed from above.

Valek briskly moved out of the way as Francis landed neatly next to him.

“Well, here you are!”

Valek assessed the room, which was simply a large, dirt-packed basement, perfect for a gaggle of rogue Vampires. The cement walls were cracked where water pipes and tree roots emerged. Coffins lay next to each other in rows, their lids left open. It was dark, wet, and dreary; the faintest glow of orange firelight smoldering in the hearth of a modest fireplace against one of the walls. The only possible way for one to tell if it were daylight outside, were if all of the Vampires in the room stopped moving.

Valek lifted an eyebrow. “Coffins, Francis? That seems a little cliche.”

“Would you rather sleep on packed dirt? And in any case, it’s rather impossible to get a bed down here,” he explained. “Besides, I like cliche.”

The group of Francis’ “friends” sat in chairs around the brick fireplace. Its smokestack must have gone on forever after experiencing how long that tunnel drop had been. They seemed to have been carrying on a conversation until Valek, quite literally, dropped in. They were now all silent, studying.

Francis opened his arms to them. “Friends! This is Valek Ruzik, a medical expert from the Southern Bohemian Occult. He has escaped the walls of the Regime and has come here for salvation! He is one of my oldest and dearest friends, and I trust everyone will show him a…warm…welcome.”