Chapter 89 - Interval

Liege. December 24, 2010. 3:32 am.

For a moment, I sat on the edge of the bed, my eyes distant. I was still far away in my thoughts, far from my finely appointed apartment with all its modern amenities: its televisions and laptop computer, its telephone and security system, electric refrigeration unit and cooktop range (these very rarely used). The wail of a police siren drifted very faintly into the room from the street below, but I did not hear it. For a moment I was still flying across that Austrian plain, my dying child in my arms, an arrow piercing him between the ribs. I was still fleeing through the night, looking for a safe wooded place where we could hide from the Oombai long enough for me to tend to the boy's injuries.

Then the man taped to the chair across the room from me shifted in his bindings and cleared his throat, and I blinked, my mind returning to the present. My gleaming eyes tilted his direction, and I smiled.

"Do you have children, Mister…? Ah! I just realized I do not know your surname. What is your family name, Lukas?"

My handsome captive answered my smile with a sullen grimace. "Jaeger," he finally replied.

"Jaeger," I repeated, a look of amusement crossing my stony features. "Do you know the origin of your surname, Mr. Jaeger?" I asked.

"No."

"Jaeger means 'huntsman'."

He just stared at me.

"I thought you would be amused by the coincidence," I said, but he appeared unmoved. "Ah well. You modern folk have little respect for such things. Too much TV. All the noise and flashing images atrophy your sense of wonder."

I have little patience for television. With my enhanced senses, I can see the images as they are inscribed on the surface of the display, one by one, like cartoon pictures in a child's animated flipbook. It gives me a headache.

I do, however, enjoy music. I have fine collections of vinyl recordings in all my far flung homes. The collection I have in my American home is quite self-indulgent, I must confess. I have a lot of time to pursue my hobbies.

I thought of my rambling estate in the Appalachian Mountains, near the Cherokee National Forest in Northeastern Tennessee. The mountains there are so beautiful in the summer. It is tranquil and remote. I should return there soon. It's been a long time.

Excuse me. I'm so easily distracted…!

"As I was saying…" I continued. "Tell me, Mr. Jaeger, do you have children?"

My captive—my beautiful killer, my plunderer, my rapist—did not respond to my question at first. I could see the thoughts running through his mind. How should he reply? With the truth? With a lie? What would benefit him the most? And why was I asking him this? Was I probing for weakness, something I could threaten him with?

Finally, reluctantly, he nodded.

I sighed. "A boy," I said. I could see it in the way his eyes and mouth moved.

He shot me a startled glance. "Yes," he said.

"What is his name?"

"I'm not telling you that!"

I spread my hands. It didn't matter. "I have no desire to harm your child. I was merely curious," I said.

Rising from my seat, I drifted toward the balcony doors. I pushed aside the heavy drapes and looked out at the city. The glass was frosted, the skyline blurred by the intricate crystal patterns. "I only wondered if you would understand what I did next. If you could fathom the horror I felt as my adopted son lay dying in my arms. I loved him, though he was no child of my flesh. The thought of losing him was too much for me to bear. And so, once again, I found myself heaping another great wickedness onto the pile of offenses I had already committed against the boy. All of them sins of my own immeasurable egotism. He was ever, and always remained, an innocent, unsullied by my depravities. Even when he rose up against me, his vengeance was pure."

I felt tears come to my eyes. I stood with my back to my captive, my vision blurring for a moment. Not human tears. Of course not. These were the cold, infectious black tears of a monster. Ebu potashu, in the language of the Oombai. The Black Blood. My vampire lover Zenzele called it the Venom.

I did not wish the brute to see my pain. I wiped the tears away quickly.

"So you turned him into a vampire," Lukas said.

"Yes, of course, I did," I murmured.

The man shifted in his seat again. I knew he was dreadfully uncomfortable, but I wasn't about to release him. He was, after all, my captive audience. Call it "dinner theatre".

All joking aside, I was still in the mood to reminisce.

"Listen, Varney," the German said. "I want to hear the rest of your story. I really do, but right now I need to piss like a racehorse. I'm about to bust."

I couldn't help myself. I burst out laughing.

I was tempted to let him soil himself, but then, angry and humiliated, what kind of audience would he be? And I wanted him to hear my tale of woe.

What is a story without a listener?

Answer: The masturbation of the literate.

Without replying, other than my surprised laugh, I turned and left the room. In my kitchenette, I flipped through the cabinets. There were few dishes, little in the way of food-- only enough to maintain the appearance of normality, if, by some chance, I might have guests who would look through my cupboards.

"What are you doing?" my captive asked when I returned to my bed chamber.

He protested as I kneeled down before him and tugged at the zipper of his fine designer pants.

"Hey! Stop that! Don't!" he objected, his face blazing red. He kicked and jerked in his chair, trying to squirm away from me.

"Calm yourself," I scolded him. "You said you needed to urinate."

"Yes, but--!"

"But what?" I asked mildly. "Did you expect me to release you from your bonds? Allow you to roam free in my home? On your honor? A child murderer?" I chuckled. "You would lunge for the nearest sharp object, I'm certain. Not that it would do you any good."

Flushed and sweating, he set his features in an expression of resigned indignation, turned his face aside. At his acquiescence, I wriggled his fly the rest of the way down and slid my fingers inside the gap. He jerked a little at my icy touch. His organ grew slightly tumescent as I handled it, but I pretended I didn't notice. He had a rather large penis. I could smell the little girl still on it, the child he had murdered after raping tonight. Placing his uncircumcised cock inside the rim of a large drinking glass, I waited for him to void his bladder.

I watched as his face turned ever ruddier. Finally, he said in a strangled voice: "I can't."

"Shall I avert my gaze?" I mocked him.

He glared at me, suddenly enraged. I watched the veins in his neck and temples stand out, and then a great gush of urine sprayed from his cock.

"There we go," I chortled. "You really had to go. You've almost filled it up."

I left the room when he was finished and poured his vile-smelling urine into the commode. I flushed. Glanced at the soiled tumbler and dropped it into the garbage can.

He glared at me with pure hatred when I returned, sitting with his knees splayed and his cock dangling out his fly. "What if I have to do number two?" he asked.

I arched an eyebrow. "I trust you'll not press your luck so soon."

He grinned wickedly.

"My hunger for your blood is very finely balanced against my desire to converse tonight," I warned him.

I walked to him, helped him regain his dignity, then left one more time to wash my hands. I did not want his rapist's stench on my flesh.

When I had taken my seat on the edge of the bed across from him, he prompted me: "So… you turned the kid into a vampire."

I smiled sadly, my eyes waxing distant. "Yes. Ilio was my first Blood Child." I looked down at my hands, clasped once more between my knees. "In all the millennia I'd lived as a vampire, I never thought to make another like me. The idea, in truth, never even crossed my mind. That was how much I hated the monster I'd become. But he was dying, my young Ilio, my innocent little boy, and I was weak. I could not bear to let him go."