Mortal Agent of a Vampire - Chapter 17

Vince was playing the piano and I was lying in the couch, staring at the ceiling with two desperate eyes. I don’t know how old the couch is, it looks like it’s straight out of Downton Abbey. Sunlight filtered in through the stained glass of the skylight.
The TV is full of French programs, sure, we’re in France, it’s normal. But I’ll tell you, it’s a big lie to say that you can pick up a language very quickly if you have the environment.
“You know what we look like now?” I say, and Vince looks up, Liszt’s dream of love still flowing from his fingertips, filling the whole of the great room, “medieval aristocrats behind closed doors in a castle, waiting for the Black Death to pass.”
It’s no exaggeration, we haven’t been out of the house in a month.
“Agreed.” Vince said, “But I’m a nobleman, and you’re a nobleman’s servant.”
God, he really doesn’t miss a chance to hit me.
“May you keep your mouth shut: harsh words tend to hurt.” I quote the poem by Freiligrath, from which the passage he’s playing now is adapted, “Can’t you be kind to me?” I raise my hand and pinch it between my pinkies, “Just this much.”
“Okay, I’ll reflect.” He winked, “If you’re bored, I can teach you to play the piano.” He slid across the keys, leaving a perfect string of butterfly notes and jumped to the Mozart channel, “Just start with the little stars, like it?”
“The only time I don’t like the piano,” I declared, “is when I’m the one playing it.”
“Regret.” Vince paused, “This could have passed a year or two.”
“A year or two?!” I sat up in shock, “Are you serious?”
“It’s not that hard.”
“No! Who told you about the piano, I mean, we’re going to be here for a year or two?!” I almost screamed.
“The last time someone came after me, I hid for ten years.” He said, as if that wasn’t enough, adding, “In the Amazon. I still remember the awful taste of crocodile blood.”
“Is Ruiz that good?”
“Yes.”
“But you still beat him.”
“Yes.”
“But ……?” I had a feeling there was more to come.
“His clan is the most powerful on the west coast.” Vince explained.
Ah, double fisted.
“When do you think he’ll give up?”
“That depends on how angry he is.”Vince didn’t answer positively, “But look, I nailed him to the wall with a silver dagger ……”
I think that means Lutz is very angry, “Is it safe to hide here?”
“No.” Vince kinda surprised me with such a dry denial, “But there’s an unwritten law in our circles: if you’re in trouble, find a faraway place to hide, don’t make too much of a spectacle of yourself, and make a show of introspection, so that when it comes time to settle the score, they’ll be gentle.”
“Gentle how?”
Vince thought for a moment, “Locked in a coffin and buried alive for a century.”
Gentle must be a bad word in their world, I don’t want to know what strong arm tactics are anymore, “Have you, ever been treated gently?”
“No. But I’ve seen it.” Vince gave me a complicated look, “An old nemesis of my former clan, he’s buried in a cemetery in Paris, I can still hear his curses in the ground when I walk by there. As well as, the sound of bugs gnawing on his face.”
I felt like throwing up, “I don’t want to know the details.” I put up my palms and tried to explain to him, “Look, I can well understand you not wanting to be found, but I can’t stay here with you for years at a time. I …… have a life of my own and I have to get back.” By the end of it, I was a little afraid to look him in the eye. I was very weak. Because in the beginning, it was my fault, I shouldn’t have meddled in his world. I was like an asshole who took the liberty of making a mess of things and then said, I’m leaving, you see to it.
Vince didn’t say anything.
After a moment, he spoke, “That means, you quit.” His wooden tone tightened the heart.
“That’s not what I meant ……,” I tried to sound euphemistic, but I’m damn bad at it, “It’s just, temporary suspension. You know where I am, and when the crisis is over, you can still come find me and I’ll …… be waiting for you.”
Vince shook his head, “You don’t understand, once you walk out that door, it’s over between us.”
I froze, “Why? Don’t be so desperate.”
Vince sighed and walked across to me and sat down, leaning forward and looking me in the eyes, “If you leave, I’ll have to wash away your memories, the part about me. Otherwise Ruiz will soon follow you to me.”
I get it, because Lutz, like him, can read minds. I would betray him, even if it wasn’t with the best of intentions.
“So, as Shakespeare said, stay or go?” My life and him, both must be given up as much as the other, and that’s the choice I’m faced with.
Vince nodded.
“But you said that even if we keep a low profile, Lutz will find it just the same.”
“I’ll ……” Vince closed his eyes slowly, then opened them, “I’ll do everything I can to keep you safe.” He said softly, trying desperately to sound careless, but he failed, and I felt the heavy weight of those words. For the first time ever, he made a promise to me in person, and my eyes moistened. Almost, I obeyed my inner urge and promised him to stay. But then I thought about my family, true, they weren’t perfect, and at times were even a source of trouble, but they loved me, and I couldn’t just disappear.
“Think about it.” Vince finally said, getting up and walking away.
That night, as I lay in bed with a sky full of stars winking at me (I purposely chose a bedroom with a skylight), I lost sleep.
It wasn’t about duty, obligation, morality …… or anything like that. The crux of the matter was how I really wanted to spend my life.
My mom asked me this question early on. “Plan well.” She always said. But all this time, I was muddling along, taking one step at a time. That’s why a lot of people succeeded and I didn’t, I didn’t have that goal that I wanted to grab with everything I had.
But when Vince came along, something changed. In the past, if I had to list the moments when I felt most fulfilled, I would have said it was being with Mina and watching her smile. But now, her smile is so distant and fuzzy, as if it would fade into nothingness if I didn’t think back to it every day.
But some other memory, in the back of my mind, seems like a beacon in the darkness of the night, so bright and clear and uplifting.
It was a dusk in the South Pacific. I could even smell the salty odor of the sea, feel the warm sand brushing against my skin, feel how the setting sun warmly enveloped me, feel the rough letter paper unfolding at my fingertips, the welcome scent of ink, and a line of handwriting jumping into my eyes: “You should write a preface for this book as soon as possible.”
Even in retrospect, I can vividly remember how it made my heart pound with happiness. It was the taste of success, no doubt. But if I dig deeper, that’s not all that matters.
I remember the days and nights of the long-haul flight, and as I wrote Vince’s story, though it’s a bit of a cliché to say so, I felt that I was no longer the crappy reporter Lyle Firth, that my soul had broken out of its shell and gained complete freedom, and that the clock was ticking, but that I was oblivious to it.
According to Oriental terms, that state is called ‘meditation’.
As the night continued, I rose from the bed and opened the lift-top desk under the skylight, on which a notebook lay spread out.
It recorded how Vince had transformed into a vampire. I’d guessed correctly that I did catch a glimpse of the tip of the iceberg of his past that night, when he was treating the wound on my forehead.
It was when he had just become a vampire, his shifter, forcing him to prey on his mother. He loved her, and he knew he couldn’t do it, it was a complete denial of his humanity. But the thirst for blood defeated him and turned him into a beast. He binge drank, enjoyed, and indulged until she was a cold corpse.
It was the most painful experience I’ve ever recorded of his. I didn’t give it to Vince to go over, it wasn’t necessary, and my lines improved a lot after my last experience. Besides, didn’t those memories torment him enough?
Deep down, I knew that I would never send it to any publisher in my lifetime, although the last editor had asked me if I’d ever thought about a series. I didn’t even want to share it with anyone else; I had a feeling it was a secret between Vince and me, a bond that bound us together.
While it was nice to publish a book and gain notoriety, ultimately, I just wanted that feeling of being ‘in the zone’.
I put down my notes, closed my eyes, and imagined myself standing at a lonely fork in the road. On one side was the familiar road home, the house I grew up in standing at the end of it, my dad waiting for me on the front porch with his arm around my mom, Brian with his arms wrapped around him in a tugging manner, with only the slightest hint of joy in his eyes, and old Otto hobbling toward me with a flying saucer in his mouth……. On the other side, there was total darkness and unknownness, and the road went on and on and on and on and on. A figure was walking alone.
Then I took a step.

Vince leaned against the railing of the arched lanai, moonlight covering him, and only then did he look like a vampire wandering beyond the earthly realm. I walked over through the undulating veil.
“No regrets?” He asked, still facing the bright moon.
“I wanted to see the end.”
Vince laughed silently, “You know, for us, there is no such thing as an ending.”
I shrugged my shoulders, “According to the technical term, it’s called an open ending.”
Vince looked at me, okay, sneer, bad habit.
“You could die.”
I thought about it for a moment, the fear left by Luz’s fangs was still fresh in my mind, but strangely enough, my insides didn’t quiver, “Do you know the story of Aladdin?”
“and the Forty Thieves?”
“No, that’s Ali Baba. Aladdin’s the one who met the Lamplighter, remember?”
“Come to think of it.”
“I’ve often wondered what my three wishes would be if I met a lamp god.”
Vince flashed a smile and I knew what he was thinking, I wouldn’t meet a lamp god, I ignored him and continued, “My three wishes were to publish a book, travel the world, and win the lottery. Now they’re all accomplished, so I guess if I die, I won’t have any regrets.”
“When did you win the lottery?”
“No.” I waved my hand, “But the whole point of winning the lottery was to become rich, and now I’m rich, so, it’s kind of reached.”
Vince raised one eyebrow, “You call yourself rich now.”
“I’ve got five zeros in my account! In front of the decimal point!” I told him proudly. That’s what I looked like in seventh grade when I waved my straight A’s in front of my dad’s eyes.
“It’s nice to finally not have to sell matches.” He pursed up his lips and winked with a look that instantly made me feel like a mangy dog on the street with a limp. It was heartbreakingly pathetic.
“You can’t always measure others by your standards ……” I retorted deflated. I’d never figured out how much money he really had, it was weird, I’d always thought I added up pretty well.
“Honestly, I never figured it out either.” He reassured me, heading towards the house, “Come on.”
“What for?” I saw that he’d pulled on a lily-patterned black silk baseball jacket, which would have made me a living sexual deviant if I’d worn it, but he looked like he’d walked straight off the runway from the new spring collection launch of the previous year.
“Makes you rich.” He picked up the car keys and jiggled them.

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