Welcome to Gaia! ::

CHAPTER ONE

I opened my eyes.

This failed to make any great difference in my view, except for the fact that the darkness became marginally thicker, and my head started to throb. The floor lurched, and I tumbled sideways, landing heavily on my side. Cold metal pressed into my wrists when I tried to push myself up - handcuffs?

My brain finally unearthed the relevant memory:

It was October 30, 2006, and I was, as per schedule, walking Hercules the incredibly wimpy dog. Night was already setting in,and clouds hung low and threatening above my head. It was a perfectly normal evening, an entirely ordinary walk, and the dog in question was extraordinary only in his name, which was not so much a blessing as a curse.

And the back of my neck was prickling.

My father went on a lot about the dark roots of humanity and the underlying instincts of man, and mostly the rest of us nodded along and spent a few happy moments completely ignoring him, but right then I could believe every word. Senses older than me were spreading feelers, scenting the air. Hercules started to growl.

The distant rumble of a car's engine reached my ears, and normally I would have assumed that the vibrations were what had been making me uneasy. That night, though, I started to run.

Unfortunately, I was fifteen years old with all the muscle tone of a rubber band, and the car was approaching at speed. I tried to convince myself that it wasn't following me. Just because it was going the same way and was the only other moving thing on the road didn't mean anything, obviously. Then the car caught up with me, and I glimpsed a sleek black hood as it rolled to a stop under the orange glow of the streetlamp. The door opened, and what looked for all the world like a solid shadow stepped out and raised one hand.

Then there was only pain, and pressure, and darkness.

"Crap, crap, crap," I mumbled, tugging ineffectually at my bonds.

But it didn't make any sense! My parents, in an act of universal kinsmanship with mothers and fathers around the world, had pushed paranoia to heights far beyond the boundary of logic, and they didn't so much as hand me a cell phone when walking down Elm Street. Crimes didn't happen to the aging citizens of Elm Street. Hell, crimes
weren't worth the effort on Elm Street, where people kept their money in respectable banks and put complex padlocks on the doors out of habit. It was possibly the quietest place within a ten mile radius of the area.

Or not, I thought wryly, as the floor gave another lurch.

Someone chuckled. I looked around wildly and completely pointlessly, searching, nevertheless, for the source.

"Over here," said a low voice somewhere to my left. "Do you like the handcuffs?"

Drunk on adrenaline and fear, I snapped "I can't see them, genius!"

There was a pause. I replayed the sentence in my head, winced, and added, eloquently, "Uh."

There was another silence, in which I realized that my forehead was slick with sweat, in the best traditions of terrified kidnap-ees everywhere.

Then the voice murmured, "Of course. How remiss of me."

Sudden, dazzling white light blinded me, and I let out an involuntary yelp of surprise. The kidnapper did his trademark low chuckle again. I was beginning to harbor a deep dislike for that chuckle.

As my eyes adjusted, I took in my surroundings. I was lying in the cramped trunk of a small, stylish car done up in black leather and chrome, the kind of vehicle that would have made my mother, the incurably obsessed automobile lover, drool. It looked like a well cared for rich boy's ride, except for two key details. First, though the white light was far stronger than most car lights and illuminated the space perfectly, I could find no obvious light source, and second, the windows were solid black. Not the diffused, second-rate black of midnight or the dark grey of tinted glass. This black looked like someone had simply cut a hole out of the universe and hadn't bothered to fill it up again. It wasn't velvety, smooth, rich, or any of the words that people use when trying to describe shades of darkness. In fact, it simply wasn't. Trying to look out those windows was an exercise in futility, and also made my eyes water.

I groped vaguely for something to say, and finally had to settle for "Where are we?"

"That's not what you say next," said the mystery man - and yes, now I listened the voice was definitely male - firmly.

"Huh?"

"You're supposed to say 'Who are you? Why did you hit me? Help! HELP!!' etc.," said the man, with the air of someone imparting a life lesson.

"Who the hell are you?" I growled, with heavy sarcasm.

"My name is Gabriel von Dhampir," said the self-proclaimed Dhampir.

"And your name, my love, is Lily."

I opened my mouth and paused, silenced momentarily as I debated between two tempting options: demanding how he knew my name and demanding who he thought he was, calling me 'his love'. It was a painful decision, but I eventually decided to sacrifice righteously angry inquiries in the name of different righteously angry inquiries.

"How did you know my name?"

Over the top of the backboard I thought I glimpsed a pale face turning towards me.

"We have our ways. You would be surprised how much we know - if I were to tell you, that is," he added smugly.

I could practically hear the evil smile.

*

It was a dark and stormy night.

At the northernmost point of the Oregon Coast, a dark castle reared above the sheer cliffs. The only other sign of civilization was the golden smudge on the horizon, which marked the edge of the city. Standing in front of the imposing double doors, listening to the thunder still ringing in my ears, it was easy to imagine the sort of terrors that normally inhabited only the lesser class of horror movie.

"Bloody Oregon," I grumbled loudly, to drown out the fuss my imagination was making. "If you're going to stalk and abduct me, couldn't you at least have dragged me somewhere warm?" We'd been driving for only five hours, according to my digital watch, and that was impossible. He'd started in Menlo Park, and even without
traffic it should have taken nearly ten hours to cover the hundreds of miles between California and the northern edge of Oregon. Then again, it wasn't as if there weren't impossible things coming out of his ears. I'd spent most of the trip at varying levels of dizziness, irritation, and fear. The combination resulted in excessive sarcasm on
my part and excessive amusement on his - and I was scared. Because one of the few things Gabriel von Dhampir had told me was that he wanted me to stay with him forever, and there, staring up at the desolate towers he called home, I wasn't at all sure how to escape him. It wasn't as if von Dhampir had been very sparing with information. He had spent most of the time snickering at me. Plus, on the evening of the second day, he had suddenly turned pensive, and started to murmur outdated endearments to me, the kind of thing you read in 18th century romance novels, which was possibly worse than the snickering.

Actually, the whole story might have made me laugh if I hadn't been too busy trying to remember all the tips they gave me in the annual self-defence courses provided by my old school. It was a pity, I mused, that the classes had been held a week before the public release of the last book in my favorite series, ensuring that my mind was far,
far away. I didn't really think 'tips' would have helped anyway, but they would have been something to fill the dreadful hours of waiting with.

"Well," said the kidnapper, behind me, "are you going in?"

Did I mention he had something that felt suspiciously like a claw pressed to the back of my neck?

"Why not," I said resignedly, and knocked twice on the heavy oak.

High above us, someone turned on a lamp. The door creaked open, and a thin line of light pierced the darkness before us.

"The young master is home," rasped the apparition that had appeared in the doorway, apparently to the air beside him. He was a patchwork doll of a man, deformed, one-eyed, and limping. He used the word 'master.' These little clues can suggest a lot to the average if nervous teenage mind.

"Let me guess," I sighed. "Igor, right?"

"Yes, miss," said Igor, and beckoned for us to come in. His master increased the pressure slightly, and I stepped forward. The doors slammed shut behind us with a leaden thud, while the corridor stretching out ahead of me was bare and cold and empty. Even the grey flagstones seemed to emanate a chill. Torches placed in
convenient brackets along the wall cast long shadows in the wrong
places. It was, in short, a scene familiar to anyone who'd ever seen a film of Dracula. I glared at it, on general principles.

Then one of the shadows stepped forward and, as the yellow glow of one flame passed over it, suddenly took the shape of a woman.

She was clearly related to Gabriel, with the same perfect, carved white features and the same hair, so black it looked wet where the
smooth curve of her skull reflected the gleam of the flames. She was wearing an evening gown of dark burgundy, and when she spoke her voice
dripped elegance.

"Ah, the prodigal son returned to us at last. And I see you bring a visitor.'

They exchanged bright smiles.

Without showing teeth, I noted.

Obviously, I knew vampires didn't exist. But the fact was that I knew vampires didn't exist in the same way that I knew there were no ancient, craggy castles in Oregon, and that men who had undergone as much surgery as Igor clearly had could only be found in one place, and that was six feet underfoot. All those things were common sense, but under the circumstances common sense was a bit of a problem for me, since I was pretty sure this wasn't any sort of hallucination. I pointedly avoided thinking about this as my footsteps echoed loudly in the prominent silence. Apparently the entire family, staff included, walked like cats.

"My name is Lucinda, and I am Gabriel's mother, as," she smiled again, briefly, "you may have guessed. And what is your name, my dear?"

"Don't you already know it?" I said bluntly.

Gabriel, acting on the reasonable assumption that even if I did run I wouldn't get far, moved gracefully in between us.

"Impolite," he murmured, as if chiding a child.

"She is tired, of course," replied his mother easily. "It has all been a great strain, I can see. Igor will show you to your room."

"Yes, mistress," said Igor. "This way, miss," he added, pointing to a narrow passage turning left I would have sworn hadn't been there a moment ago. I glanced warily at the two most-certainly-not-vampires, but they seemed happy to trust Igor implicitly - the cause of many entertaining plotlines, whispered a little voice in the back of my
head, but probably not useful in the real world. The upshot of that particular exchange was that I followed Igor deeper into the bowels of the castle. We reached a stairwell, and I guessed we were standing at the base of one of the four corner towers. Narrow, high windows were set in the stone, offering glimpses of the night sky outside, and I counted them as we continued up the apparently endless steps. 37, 38, 39...

"Here we are, miss," said Igor, just by my ear. I suppressed a squeak and followed his gesture, and discovered that the door to 'my' bedroom was dark and spiky, covered in what seemed to be a rather unwieldy amount of heavy bolting. I was beginning to wonder if the entire castle had been ordered from a catalog, but was distracted suddenly when the servingman opened it.

The room before me was cavernous, arching high above my head into the gloom. There were torches here, too, but the sheer size of the room diluted their light and made it almost entirely ineffectual - their lonely orange pools illuminated just enough of the decor to make me shiver. On cue, one of the high, narrow windows flashed white, followed in short order by the low rumble of thunder.

"Does miss have everything she needs?" asked Igor, who was still, for some reason, behind me.

I thought for a moment of asking him for help, salvation, key, file, or at the very least trusted confidentiality in this strange, illogical world I had inadvertently stumbled into, but as the afterimage of the lightning faded, I realized that his good eyeball was spinning and emitting little blue sparks. I said instead,

"Miss would appreciate some more light."

"Of course, miss." He lurched away.

I stood at the threshold of the room for some minutes after he had dematerialized, eyes focused blankly on the far wall.

If I assumed, just for the sake of argument, that this was a vampire castle or something quite like it...then there were certain
conventions to be followed.

At that moment, lighting flashed again in a suitably ominous fashion. I turned around slowly and told myself I was entirely unsurprised and not at all horribly relieved to find no one there.

"Miss?"

I yelped and jerked back to face the inside of the room. Igor, who had apparently teleported magically to the center of the bedchamber, was meticulously unfolding a small stepladder, and held in his free hand what looked an awful lot like a cigarette lighter.

"Miss?" he repeated. I exhaled, quieted the mocking little voice that was muttering about narrative causality, and replied,

"Er... nothing. You surprised me. Er. Lights would be lovely? Please?"

"That is what I am attempting to achieve with this lighter, miss, " said Igor patiently, brandishing the aforesaid device. With no further ado he mounted the stepladder and started to fiddle around with something in the darkness, of which I could only make out a faint, dangerously spiky outline, like a hanging bat -

A candle flared, and I realized I was looking at a chandelier. It was a massive construction, all dangerously heavy black iron with frightening stalactites and big drippy white candles. The sight of Igor, fumbling around on an ordinary wooden ladder, trying to spark the ancient wicks with a flashy, modern looking lighter was curiously incongruous with the rest of the image. Eventually, when all the candles were aflame, lighting up rather more of the room than I had expected, he stepped down and made himself and his tools very scarce indeed.

The room was slightly less impressive without the cover of darkness. It was still big and... ha.... posh, but the angular shapes of the elaborately carved furniture were less threatening by candlelight, and swallowing, I entered the bedroom proper. An extremely winedark sea of carpeting muffled my footsteps, but I was uncomfortably aware of my scruffy sneakers, and when it came down to it, my muddy jeans and greying T-shirt as well. It was ridiculous to be embarrassed in the house of - of a kidnapper, but I was, and the tall wardrobe just across from me looked suddenly inviting. I went over to it and opened the doors, reflecting that I would have quite liked to go to Narnia at the moment.

What met my eyes was a mass of black silk and lace, the kind of thing worn by a rather older generation of Gothics than the eyeliner-bedecked girls sprinkled throughout my classes. I frowned at the selection and shut the wardrobe again. Was there nothing here for a reasonable person to wear?

"No, of course not," I said out loud, and looked around again. A narrow door just next to the useless wardrobe caught my eye, and I tried the knob experimentally. It slid open soundlessly, revealing...

...a small, pleasant bathroom such as you might find in any half-decent hotel. On the (entirely inaccurate, as I would later discover, to my chagrin) basis that things couldn't get much worse, I went in and closed the door on the outside world with a certain amount of gratitude. The shower looked considerably more attractive than the rest of that
damned castle, and I gave it only a cursory examination before stripping down and stepping into the gleaming glass cubicle and turning on the water with a kind of tired glee. Hot spray hit me full in the face, and I let my head fall back, closed my eyes, and forced my muscles to relax as much as possible, considering. My inner paranoid twitched slightly, but I reminded it cheerfully that I'd already been hit over the head and spirited away to Oregon, and that bathroom assaults were not in fact a key component in any adaptation of Dracula I'd ever seen or read.

Although this was of course beside the point, because vampires didn't exist anyway.

Still, I finished the shower quite quickly after that, and spent a lot of time awkwardly clutching the towel to me. Possibly as a result of this important preoccupation, it took me several minutes to realize that my old clothes were gone, and had been replaced by a sort of cotton shift.

'Oh,' I mumbled, after searching the bathroom a few more times and putting on the shift, which wasn't so bad. I hadn't heard anyone enter the bathroom, but that, I reflected, really meant very little with the individuals concerned. It was hard to say whether the idea of Igor coming in while I was showering was more or less terrifying than the idea of von Dhampir doing the same. I opened the door a fraction of an inch, and applied my eye to the crack, but there was no one in the bedroom, and after a few more seconds of hesitation I padded out and looked hopelessly back at the wardrobe.

It opened of its own accord, which was typical. The dresses hanging inside failed to be any more aesthetically pleasing than the last time. However, they were at least more protection against the drafty air than the thin fabric of the flimsy nightgown of a garment I was wearing, so I lifted out the nearest ensemble and dressed quickly and
roughly before glancing critically at the vanity mirror.

I stopped.

The black silk fell into place as I watched. Lace frills uncrumpled and fluffed outwards. Ribbed folds on the bustle of the skirt swelled despite the distinct lack of any wire hoop frame to hold them up.

I was pretty sure I heard a little tinkly noise, too.

I spun around slowly, keeping my eyes on the mirror. It wasn't that the dress was no longer absurd looking. It was. It was just that now it was absurd, but with bags and bags of style. Then my gaze traveled upwards, and I saw the face in the glass.

When I was eleven, and devouring fantasy at a breakneck pace, I came across a book that was based off a fairy tale, though one I'd never read the original version of. It was well-written and, in some places, very scary indeed, but one of the passages that stayed in my mind long after other details had faded into oblivion was the description of the princess. Narrated by one of her ladies in waiting, it went something like this:

Oh, the princess was pretty enough, in and of herself, but you could look at her two ways. You could just see what was there, and that wasn't any kind of eyesore, she was a handsome young woman, a little awkward in her long-limbed body, perhaps, a bit gawky, an attractive face, but flawed. But for us, we could also see her mother in her, when she was feeling angry, or imperious, or proud, the profile of a woman who had once been named the most beautiful woman in seven kingdoms, the lines of her face and the sparkle in her eye still there in her daughter, slipping in and out of focus from moment to moment.

The face in the mirror was like that.

I could see the imperfections, the zits, the little bumps, the irregularities and imperfections. They were all still there. If you looked at it, really looked at it, it was just a fairly average teenager's face, but you had to concentrate, you had to try to fix them in your mind to see them, otherwise the mirror stole them away and left behind only a perfect statue staring back at me, a visage as enchanting and enchanted as one you might imagine belonging to Psyche, to Galatea, to Cleopatra. Not mine, in other words.

And there was a... feeling around me. Not quite hunger - maybe something akin to potential. I knew what came next.

"Igor?"

"Yes, mistress," said the composite man, behind me (as usual).

"Does the young master have a message for me," I said, perfectly calmly and without jumping out of my skin at all.

"Yes, miss."

"Well?"

"He wants to know if you eat turkey, miss."

*

Clink. Clink.

We were sitting in what was technically a dining room, but was in a very real sense too big. The empty space pressing in on me was at the same time spilling outwards beyond the boundaries of mere physics and, for that matter, the solid stone walls. The table, by comparison, was only mildly ginormous. This was from my point of view something of a bonus, since Gabriel von Dhampir was sitting at the other end.

The cutlery made little scraping noises as I ate. I hadn't bothered to ask whether he had put anything in it. As he'd already pointed out, it wasn't as if he was going to knowingly tell me anything useful. Besides, I was hungry. Such was logic.

He, on the other hand, wasn't eating anything. Surprise, surprise.

"How are you finding your meal, Delilah?"

That was another thing. He kept calling me Delilah, even though he knew my proper name. I didn't feel the pressing need to correct him, under the circumstances. "Fine."

"Just as well, as I don't know that we have any other food in the house."

I paused and brought my knife and fork down carefully. "Except for me, you mean?"

"Pardon?" he replied, flashing me a brilliant smile.

I watched his mouth, and thus saw the light as it glinted off his fangs. "Vampire," I said - or perhaps accused - flatly. "Undead bloodsucker? Yes?"

"Oh, I see," he said, apparently disregarding both tone and wording. "My mother and father and I, yes." Something seemed to occur to him. "Although my father is no longer technically undead, having passed on to his, ah, final rest some years ago."

"...Really?" I rasped.

I did believe it, to my mild discomfort, but at least I didn't... well, think it, I suppose. Rationally, anyway. Or at least didn't want to believe it. Rationality had very little to do with the matter. Well, who could blame me? When in Zer Castle, do as, er, the Zer Castleans do. Not one for the books, I reflected, and probably would have continued trying to find a better wording for my little catch-phrase had Dhampir, who had been regarding me silently, moved. As it was, I was distracted because he did move. Impossibly.

Again.

It was less an action than a tweaking of the fabric of the universe, and then he was standing at my shoulder, one thin white hand on the back of my neck, before I could finish taking a breath. I, naturally, yelped and jumped back, accidentally knocking my claw-footed dining chair over in the process. There was a loud bang as it hit the stone floor. I clapped my hands to my ears, recoiling at the noise, and therefore was mercifully spared for all of two seconds the unpleasant sight of a smug vampire grinning at me. "Really," he said, cheerfully. It took me a moment to realize what he was talking about.

Pause. Then,

"Shut up!" I said, almost screamed. "Shut up, shut up, shut up. Don't say a word," too, because he'd opened his mouth. "I don't believe it. You. This. Any of it. Okay? I don't know why I'm here, or, or what you think you're doing, but I sure as hell know when someone's pulling my leg." And then, because I wasn't quite that insane - yet - I fled the empty hall with its big dusty table and didn't stop until I was several left turns and stone passages away.

A/N: I'm sorry it's melodramatic. I don't even know why I started writing a vampire story! Oh well.

Thank you! I'm glad you like Lily and the writing in this. I'm well aware that the plot is like the most predictable thing ever - storylines, alas, are not my strong points. Hopefully the predictability didn't ruin this for you, though.

And I will probably have Chapter Two up sometime this weekend, so, y'know... keep an eye out?

wink Gotta love those adorable, slightly over-enthusiastic cliches with their violent tendencies. I mean, uh, eccentricities.

So... whatcha think? (Now that you're alive and whatnot.)

xd Completely improbable? Better believe it. Unfair to the vampires? You have no idea. This is only chapter one...

I'm glad you liked it anyway though.

The style is really, really good, very visual and descriptive. The references to other literature was interesting. I thought it was strange that Lily didn't try harder to escape, and that Lily decided to shower, of all things. Otherwise, I thought she was pretty realistic. The whole typical vampire, vampire mansion, vampire style, etc. really takes some appeal from the story. The strong style makes up for it, but it'd be greater if there were novel ideas in the story.

CHAPTER TWO

It was dim. The torches had all been blown out by a sudden and mysterious gust of wind, which was probably special.

In the darkness, someone was cursing.

It was, in fact, yours truly. I’d stubbed my toe on what apparently a genuine dribbly candlestick someone had dropped previously, without any consideration for other human beings.

Or just beings, I thought, and started cursing again.

It wasn’t a very suitable prison for a mobile, healthy(ish) young woman such as myself. It would take so much effort to track me, for one. Although with… vampires… who knew? Maybe they had internal GPS. Since I didn’t know whether or not they could—well, whether or not anything, really—I might as well stop and think properly for a moment. I slowed down to a walk and then halted entirely when I came to a new fork in the halls.

It occurred to me that I was hopelessly lost. This failed to impress me much, though, because I had probably been hopelessly lost past the limits of Elm Street.

Thinking properly clearly wasn’t helping. I took the right hand path, which ended at a door of the same make as the one that led to my bedroom.

I pushed it, gently. It didn’t budge. I thought of all the stories about the wisdom of leaving locked doors untouched. The bloodthirsty tale of Bluebeard was at the forefront of my mind.

Then, by way of experiment, I gave it a good hard kick. It squelched slightly and popped open.

I smiled beatifically at my achievement and went inside without hesitation, black gown trailing behind me with a soft swooshing noise, possibly caused by the pale dust clouds it was lifting off the floor.

The room was a library and smelled, comfortingly, of dust and old paper. It wasn’t, admittedly, an extremely comforting smell, but it was certainly quite ordinary and human, which was good enough for me.

It was also, I realized, the first smell I’d come across since I entered the castle.

Even the turkey had been odorless. Which was odd. Not as odd as the rest of the business, though.

The only furniture—besides the elaborate bookshelves, of which there were many—was a heavily upholstered armchair in the center of the room, surrounded by stacks of what looked to be recently disturbed books, if the dust clouds were anything to go by, and an oak end table shoved up against it, on which a candle was still burning.

It was, of course, possible that this homey looking set up was a trap. Within the realms of possibility. I didn’t have the energy for true fear at the moment, though, so I sat down. It was a very comfortable seat. I closed my eyes, just for a minute.

Although this was traditionally the place for the daring heroine to fall unwillingly into the deep yet informative slumber, in my case it actually was just for a minute, because I was quietly jerked back into full consciences by a sizzling noise. A small glob of hot wax had fallen on the nightstand and was now managing to look both incredibly innocent and incredibly evil at the same time.

Still, it was only wax, and it wasn’t my nightstand. I tried o go back to accidentally dozing off, and failed miserably.

Eventually, for lack of something better to do, I picked up the nearest book. It was an illustrated edition of St. George and the Dragon and looked surprisingly new compared to some of the leather bound old tomes moldering on more distant corners of the library.

I opened it, and began to read.

After a while, I turned the page.

And again. And again.

St. George and the Dragon was not a particularly long book, and I read fast. It had taken me some time to finish it, though, because first I had to decipher the notes written on the margins in narrow, spiky handwriting. They were not, in general, worth the effort, but a few were interesting.

Like the short and cryptic one jotted down next to the passage when St. George tells the princess of his triumph over the evil dragon, which said:

AHA. TASKS AGAIN.

It didn’t actually mean anything, obviously, but it was fun to speculate about and far more intriguing than the book in which it was etched. Etched was definitely the right word, for whoever had written it had a very heavy hand on the pen.

I couldn’t see Igor doing a little light reading about St. George’s escapades, unless he was interested in what had happened to the dragon’s carcass afterwards, and besides, the person’s handwriting had serifs. There was an inkblot in one corner. Using my amazing deductive powers, I concluded that von Dhampyr had been by recently.

Come to that, von Dhampyr was probably watching me right then. I glared at the bookshelf in front of me and said, “I hate you.”

The bookshelf did not respond, which seemed like a good omen, so I picked up another old tome. Well, what else could I do?

The only noise in the world, it seemed, was the rasping sound of fingers on pages.



Somewhere the sun was rising.

Not of course, in Oregon. In Oregon the only discernible change was a slight lightening of the shade of grey outside the window. The plate glass window of the vampire’s library, I thought, and came fully awake at last. I sat up. I registered the crick in my neck. I cringed. The words Good move, genius, crossed my mind. Really, though, sleeping in a chair was frankly preferable to sleeping in ‘my’ bed.

It only took a few minutes for me to realize that something was wrong. Something new, that was, not just the general wrongness.

I sighed and tried to think, massaging the persistent ache occasionally with no apparent effect.

Then it hit me. Besides the crick, nothing else had changed. There were no wrinkles in the lacy monstrosity I was wearing. My hair had, contrary to all the laws of Murphy and, y’know, physics, actually settled into a neater arrangement then it had been in last night after the shower. I prodded my face with apprehension, but, typically, discovered that my zits, at least, had remained unchanged.

It occurred to me I was afraid of the face in the mirror. I laughed, in a way that maybe edged towards hysteria in a sneaky sort of way.

“It’s not as if it even makes sense,” I taunted myself, aloud. “Who wouldn’t want to look like that? Besides me, obviously. I must be mad. Which would explain why I’m talking to myself.” And everything else, too.

I tried to remember whether mad people could realize their own insanity, but I started thinking about rabbit holes and was eventually forced to give the entire subject up. I decided, then and there, that I was sane. I stood unsteadily, wobbled, almost fell over, fell over, stood and thought soothing thoughts about books.

Not very soothing, however. There was a trend to the books Dhampyr had been reading. From my point of view, it wasn’t a happy trend.

All of them, one way or another, were tales of courtship. And I don’t mean really courtship, but the, hah, romantic version in stories. Romantic, too, in the oldest sense of the word, including the bloody bites as well as the sugary ones.

He was a vampire, after all.

I was interrupted mid-reverie by said vampire appearing, apparently out of thin air. He looked rather vexed.

“What do I have to do,” he said, “to make you follow the rules of the story?”

“What?” I said stupidly.

“The story,” he snapped. “The plot.”

I gaped at him. He looked… oddly solid, compared to the pale shadowy form I remembered from the night before. His hair even looked slightly mussed. That couldn’t be normal for a vampire, could it?

His face was still flawlessly detailed and drawn, though.

Did I just think that? I thought, proving myself an idiot. Whatever, I had other things on my mind.

“Um,” I said. “Which plot?”

He paused, temporarily derailed. “Pardon?”

“I mean, are we talking Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty here?” I said, taking a certain amount of pleasure from his mild shock.

I was disappointed, however, when he stopped looking unpleasantly surprised and started smiling. “I see you’ve been doing a little light reading.”

“Well, what if I have?”

“Not…quite right,” he muttered, apparently to himself. “Books are not terribly romantic. But it will have to do.”

“Excuse me?”

“You are excused,” he said brusquely.

“That’s not—“ I started.

“Enough. Go to your room. That is where you are supposed to be, after all. Dearest.”

The expression in his eyes suggested very clearly that now was not the right time to be asking questions, so I did what I could with the whole stalking out bit.

I stopped outside, though, because I had no idea how to get to ‘my’ room.

“Igor?” I whispered.

“Yes, mistress?” said a voice behind me.

I sighed. “Can you… show me to my room?”

“Yes, mistress.”

He was waiting for me when I got there.

“What was the point of that exercise, exactly?” I said brightly, stopping at the doorway.

“You shall see,” he replied. “Sit, please.”

I shrugged and headed for the single chair, but he stopped me before I had taken more than a step. “No, no, no! The one by the window.”

“What one by the window?” I said, genuinely bewildered. There was only one chair, and it was with the vanity.

He looked, muttered something inaudible and snapped his fingers. A ridiculously delicate looking chair sprang out of nowhere just under the sill. I glared at it. He raised an eyebrow. I glared at him. He raised his other eyebrow. I sighed, marched up to the damn thing, almost knocked it over—by accident—and sat down heavily. He smirked.

“Have I mentioned how much I hate you?” I said.

“Yes, if only by your body language.”

“Well, good. I wouldn’t want you to miss out on anything.”

He ignored that and developed a look of soulful intensity. His eyes started to glow. The light went ting off his teeth. Even the fangs.

“Dearest,” he said, loudly, “what is your heart’s desire?”

I blinked at him “for you to open all the doors, give me a map of the castle, close your eyes and count to sixty four thousand?”

“Very funny,” he said. Somehow, I got the impression that he wasn’t amused.

“Well, what did you mean?” I said.

“What do you mean what did I mean?”

“What do you mean what do I mean what did you mean?”

“What--" he stopped himself, barely. “Enough!”

“That’s not very romantic,” I said, grinning.

But he wasn’t listening. He had a faraway look in his eyes and was frowning thoughtfully.

I got bored of watching after a moment and looked out the window instead. It occurred to me that I wasn’t sure said window had been so low down and elaborate and frilly looking last night. I sighed, and tried concentrating on the view. It didn’t help. The landscape was covered in a grey veil of fog, and I couldn’t see through the stuff.

“Better,” said the vampire, out of the blue.

“Huh?”

“The pose and expression. Something to work with, anyway.”

“Look, if you won’t—” I said, and then suddenly silent. I thought of the books, and the notes in the margins.

So he wanted to marry me. And he wanted to do it by story…

“Really, though,” I said abruptly, “which plotline? You’ll have to tell me if you want me to act out my bit. Right?”

He gave me a long measuring stare.

“Correct,” he said, finally. “I suppose. Very well. The story. Twelve tasks. On the completion of the tasks, we will love each other, we will marry, and we will live happily ever after.”

“Happily ever after? I don’t know if you’ve forgotten, Mister von Dhampyr, but you are a vampire. Vampires don’t get the girl, they get the bloody stake.”

“Ah,” he said, smiling again. “The perils of reading only that is left out for you to read. Think of…other stories, my love. More recent ones.”

“I don’t—” but he had pulled a heavy looking book, apparently out of thin air, and thrown it at my head. I ducked and put my arms over my head. He made a disgusted noise.

“Oh, shut up,” I said, under my breath, thought only barely. I bent over and picked up the book, which was shiny. The title was—

“Twilight?”

“Indeed,” said Dhampyr, looking pleased with himself.

“Twilight by Stephenie Meyer?”

“Quite.”

“That doesn’t count!” I said, once I realized that he was getting up. “The vampires in there are practically angelic and don’t obey their instincts!”

“Have I even tried to suck your blood?” he retorted.

“Not the point. You certainly aren’t angelic.”

“Why ever not?”

“You kidnapped me! Do you call that very divine behavior?”

“Well, some of the gods I’ve known—”

I put my hands over my ears. “No, no, no, no! I’m not having this! You haven’t met gods! You can’t have met gods! You’re—you’re probably just a lunatic in plastic fangs!”

I don’t know why, or when, I forgot to be afraid of him. The terror came rushing back, though, when Lucinda glided in on silent feet.

She, alas, did not look any more solid and real, but was as terrifying as ever. She seemed, rather, to carry with her into the prosaic day a little circle of darkness. Good for her whole dark and light contrast deal, but not for the state of mind of anyone unfortunate enough to be nearby.

I realized she was smiling. “Ah, the lovebirds,” she said brightly. “But…there seems to be some dispute?”

“Er, no,” I squeaked. To my surprise, Dhampyr appeared to be sharing the sentiment. He muttered, “Nothing like it.”

“Really,” she said, and her smile grew marginally more fixed. “How strange. Well. Perhaps I grow doting in my old age.”

“How old?” someone said. I realized that it was me, and cringed.

“Don’t you know better than to ask a woman her age, my dear?” she replied, still smiling. I tried not to whimper.

Then she was gone.

“How old is she?” I asked him, once I had recovered.

“Oh, about 39,” he said, with forced lightness. “In this body.”

“In this body?”

“Oh, yes. She used to be blonde and wear scarlet lipstick.”

“What?”

“We…evolve, love, to fit the times,” he explained. He seemed to be regaining his composure now that he had someone to condescend to.

“Right,” I said, dropping it but filing away the little piece of information for future reference. We stayed in silence for a moment, contemplating the fog.

"As I was saying,” he said abruptly, “I have met some gods who acted quite a bit worse towards their objects of affection. Jove, for instance, was really a terrible womanizer. Bulls and swans! I ask you. No sense of style and discretion at all.”

“J-Zeus?”

“That was his Greek name, yes. I must say I’ve never really cared for the Greeks. They focused so much on the Other Worlds and never thought of the horrors to be found in this one.”

“Not true,” I countered. “What about, like, Charybdis?” Then I remembered what he was saying. “Besides, Zeus and the rest weren’t real!”

He looked disapproving. “Please keep up, my dear. Is that phrase even relevant to this situation? To me?”

“No! It isn’t!”

“I’m glad you understand—”

“Because I’m probably standing somewhere on the beach near my house, freezing my arse off and hallucinating!”

His expression changed. “I had thought you would have finished with the denial stage, Delilah,” he said, testily.

“You thought wrong. And don’t call me that,” I snapped (give me a break, I hadn’t eaten in like 24 hours and I was getting peakish).

G-Dhampyr, that is, gave me a strange look. ‘You would prefer…” he said, disdain dripping from every word, “'Lil'?”

“Not really,” I admitted. “But an insultingly juvenile diminutive is better than the name of an evil heathen temptress, isn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t know,” he said, flatly. He wasn’t meeting my eyes.

“O…kay…”

I must admit to having been rather confused. “Uh. Right then. Where was I?”

Dhampyr looked relieved, if I was any judge. “I believe you were complaining about my—or possibly your—lunacy?”

“Right! Thank—I mean, and it’s not as if you’re possible!”

My heart wasn’t in it, though, and I suspected that he could tell.

“That’s nice,” he said, and added helpfully, “although I think you said that already.”

This at least annoyed me enough to get me back on track. I ranted at him for a good five minutes straight (not as easy as it sounds, believe me) before running out of steam again, only to discover to my unpleasant surprise that he was positively grinning at me.

When he was satisfied that I was finished, for the moment, he swept out, but paused at the door for one last parting shot.

“Do tell me,” he said, with perfect gravity, “what I can do to win your heart the moment you think of it.” Dramatic pause. I was about to open my mouth to rudely interrupt said dramatic pause, when he wisely pre-empted me and finished “…Delilah.” Then he was gone.

And verily, I, newly-christened ‘Delilah’, saw red.

The cold, pale light of noon found me again in the library. This time, however, I had a specific god in mind.

So he was following ‘the story’, was he? I’d show him plotting.



“Tasks,” I muttered to myself, frantically searching the dark shelves, “tasks, tasks, tasks.”

“Tasks?” said a soft voice behind me.

I whirled around. There was no one there, of course, this being a haunted – or Draculaic, or whatever - castle, but there was a gentle laugh. It was tinkling and sweet and sounded like what a spring of pure water should sound like if someone dropped a bell in it. It was kind of weird, actually.

Still, I knew how it was supposed to go. I opened my mouth to say “Where—”, abruptly changed my mind mid sentence, said “Screw that” and finished “Yes, tasks.”

“What…sort of tasks?” said the voice. It sounded strangely wary.

“I dunno—Herculean, I guess? Dragon slaying?”

“I see,” and now the voice was openly hostile.

“Er…sorry?” I said, backing away from the empty space where I thought the voice was coming from.

“You should be sorry!” snapped the voice, which no longer bore resemblance to bells and/or sparkling water in any way whatsoever.

“Why?” I said, quite reasonably, I thought.

“You know very well, Miss… Delilah…”

“Sorry, saying my name spookily without my telling you it lost its novelty value the 300th time Dhampyr did it. Possibly even the 200th,” I added.

“Hmm,” said the voice, in a completely different tone (again). What was this person, bipolar?

“What are you, anyway?” I said, changing the tack. I figured it didn’t count as obeying the orders of the dramatic plot since I was asking it, if I was any judge, several lines too late.

“You mean you don’t know?”

“Er…should I?”

“Of course you should know who I am! I am…your favorite character.”

“You –“ I started. Then I shut up, because for no apparent reason, one of the books on the higher shelves slipped from its place to the floor, which it hit with a thud, and then fell open to a page almost directly in the middle of the volume.

Except…the ink of the text was flowing, oozing over the pages. There seemed to be more ink than a relatively small book could possibly contain. Loose pages were falling about it, too. I’m pretty sure I saw my end-of-term English paper among them.

Then they were wiped blank by an unseen hand, and…

It was just a book, lying on the floor, open to a page somewhere near the middle. I frowned at it.

“What are you?”

“Anastasia? Belle?” said the voice sweetly. I started to back away, while trying to stay calm.

“Uh…not really a Disney person, thanks all the same.”

“No? Perhaps…” there was a sound I refused to think of as someone opening a file cabinet nearby “…Harry Potter?”

“That’s not an answer to my question!”

“I told you: I am your favorite character. I am all your favorite characters.”

“Then why am I supposed to apologize to you?” I demanded.

“You and… that abomination… have every reason to apologize to me!”

“That abomi –Dhampyr?”

“If that is what you would call him, yes!”

“I’m not working for him!”

“Oh? You deny it, then?”

“Deny what?”

“Stealing…my – my world. My power. Mirroring me, dogging my footsteps, trapping me in paper cages…”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about! I—”

Then something clicked. Paper cages? Following it…

“You’re the story Dhampyr was talking about?”

“I believe some of you people call me that, yes.”

I’m really not that vulgar-mouthed in ordinary life. The fifteen incredulous seconds after the story identified itself really didn’t count.

“Are you quite finished?” the…whatever…said cautiously, when I was quite finished.

“In the long run, I doubt it,” I muttered. There was an awkward silence.

“What exactly does that mean? I said, finally in what I think was an impressively calm fashion.

The story looked blank.

“I mean – what are you? Some sort of spirit?”

“Certainly not!”

“Okay, then tell me what you are.”

“I…” the story said.

“Well?”

“…am thinking. Be quiet.”

I stared at the book. Not so much because I thought that the story was really confined to a single book, more for lack of anything else to do.

“I am not a – I am not something so easily defined as that. I am you people’s words and dreams and other selves. I am all your stories.”

Not just one?

“If we made you, why do you hate us?” I interjected, genuinely puzzled.

There was nobody there. But if there had been, it would have been giving me a withering look.

“That’s practically the oldest story of all. Hello? The progeny overthroweth the sire?”

“Er…"

“Cronos, Zeus. Satan, for that matter.”

I was starting to get the gist. “Okay, okay, rebellion against parents is traditional. But it’s not like that for you, is it? You’re not really independent of us, are you?”

“I do not know. Yet I do know that to be tied to you creatures of dust is the worst sect of existence there can be.”

“What—oh. I think I see.”

“I doubt it.”

Well, that wasn’t exactly encouraging.

“Fine, maybe I don’t. Too dusty for that.”

“Indeed,” said the story gravely.

I paused. “Are you talking differently or what?”

“Pardon?”

“You are. Why are you talking differently?”

“I am not—” the Story started, and then fell silent for a moment. “Ah. Perhaps I should explain that a more appropriate pronoun would be we.”

“Huh?”

“Because… we… are many as one.’

“O…kay,” I said. “So like a person with multiple personalities.”

“I suppose you could put it that way,” it replied, voice dripping distaste.

“Right then. But what’s the point?”

“Excuse me?”

“Of all this. Why is he trying to act out a story? Couldn’t he just do whatever it is that he’s planning now?”

The Story laughed mirthlessly for some time. I waited patiently.

“My apologies,” it said finally. “But I begin to see why he sent you.”

“He did not send me!” I snapped, indignant at the implications in the strange… creature’s voice.

“Why, what do you mean?” the thing said in a genuinely surprised tone.

“I mean, I’m not exactly here of my own free will!” I said, getting angry.

“No?” it said sounding little less certain, which from my point of view was only a bonus. “Are you not a mere vessel of the thing, then?”

“No!”

“Well, perhaps not,” it said doubtfully. “Yet how do I decide, one way or another?”

“Decide what?”

“Whether or not to trust you, of course.”

“Why should I trust you?” I snapped. “You said yourself he’d got you trapped. Maybe you’re buying your freedom by selling my skin.”

a/n: I suspect that I may not be able to write this story much longer - this is old stuff typed up. My writing's changed. Oh well.