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It was coming to a close.
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ch.3 - This is Temporary

I didn't have anyone to talk to. I could always talk to Leechtin. I didn't have that then. It was all the same stuff, moping around Paris, liking rainy days. I didn't have very many bright spots that weren't the same old s**t, the thrill of being in love for the first few days, being felt up in alleys, so I thought of Leechtin often. I would sit outside and think of him, wanting to be out of the suffocating apartment.

I was 17 when I first asked Leechtin to take me, 23 when he did it. It was a lot of life to have lived back in those times. I'd had lovers, a few of them, met plenty of influential people, spent more than my fair share of money. I wasn't as naive as I could have been, but more in some ways than I should have been.

I knew what the reality of what Leechtin was could be. He wasn't the sort to drink very much blood, drinks even less now. I didn't know that was strange. Of course I'd met others. He'd had friends, at least Yaksha. Yaksha never talked to me very much, but what I'm saying is that I understood that Leechtin wasn't the only one and that there were different ways to go about it, being a vampire and whatnot.

Yaksha was a lot more intimidating, but then I hadn't grown up with him. Leechtin had always looked after me, cared for me, and made sure I came to no harm for the most part. What did I have to fear? All I knew was that death was all around me and that I was afraid of that.

I didn't want to get any older. I didn't want to see age or death on my face so I asked him to take me and he said no. He always said no, as if being a vampire and immortal was so much worse than dying and I would keep pressing him.

It was a lot more common in those days to go out and just see death everywhere. I knew, always did, that no matter how I was treated by my master that I was not free to do as I pleased, and even if other people in the street didn't know this I always knew it. My friends were slaves. I was not friends with free men, a lover perhaps, but not a friend. I knew how things were for the underclass. It was like I was beneath it, like it was suffocating me. It was like a heat.

And whether or not Leechtin knew that he did take me when I was 23.

I was upset that day. I had seen a friend beaten to death.

Leechtin saw me looking upset and as always it made him tender towards me, but it was different.

He kissed me.

He whispered things in other languages.

I've asked him since what he said and he shakes his head, in his way.

He doesn't want to talk about it.
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Not that I didn't talk to Dasius then. I did, but it was often just a big flirtation. I had a lot on my mind and flirting kept him from taking me too seriously. Also, I got to kiss him in the dark which was just not a problem.

"I'm 2000 years old," I'd say, tearing up.

"Oh really," kissing me, his raspberry stained lips. It was easier.

I kept it in bed, only in small hours. I could tell him things he wouldn't remember that way.

"My master used to call me 'Orange;' he used to call me 'Arantii.' " I'd whisper against his skin.

"Laurantii," my lover whispered into my ear, kissing my earlobe.

"No, that's not why."

I had a few others then, boys to love in the night, but there weren't many. I was too busy for it, too engaged. It is one of the reasons Dasius was compelled to stay in my bed, not that he could go. If I didn't have lovers, it meant that I didn't have blood.

Dasius, unlike Nicky has never had a problem with my taking lovers under his eye. For him it means that I am sustaining myself, so my not cavorting with boys was a problem for him. It is still one of his biggest buttons, people he needs not taking care of themselves, or roughly, not doing what he wants them to do. He can be quite peevish about it, depending on who it is.

With me has always had a grand patience, if I can call it that. Towards the end he was going mad with fretfulness.

-continue last paragraph-

It reminds me of the time I kissed Mini's boyfriend, the drug addict, when he kissed me under the bed.

"You are not me."

Touching my lips, pressing them against his ear. That was a bad time too, but I was in control of it then. I'm never in control, not with Nicky, not with Leis. Sometimes I don't know if I'm in control of what I have with Dasius either. I don't know why I can't be sorry.

Even then, when it was black black black.

Oh... Do we have to linger on such dark times?

I can just tell the story of how Leis went off by himself, mad, and came back with his arm around that boy and wouldn't speak to me unless I would continue to kiss him. Is that not how it was? Is that not what we were? About how I raged at him, about how I cried and Dasius stood in the corner and Leis looked at me as if he couldn't understand me, couldn't connect with me because we'd spent so much time being too dramatic. How it was like it was all I was to be emotional, that he didn't know I could be anything else but a kiss. How could I tell him that I loved him, that I felt so much more for him than I'd ever felt when he couldn't even look at me as if I were human, that I'd been human once? Just like him, just like what he was looking for I wanted so much more than what I'd become and what I'd needed to be...

But it's so far away now, how can I explain it the way it needs to be explained? How can I tell him?

I don't love him. I don't love him. At the heart of things, I do not love him. And I crush myself.
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When Leis left for England it was 1772. Dasius didn't want to let me stay in France, not the way it was, so I left home without being able to say good bye. Pre-revolutionary France, that was my home. I cannot go back home. I've been awfully homesick for it; the street, the dark.

Where did we go? Anywhere. I don't know. Dasius drugged me. He put incredible amounts of drugs into little ampules and shot me up with them, locked our apartment and took me out of Paris. I lost things, things he didn't know to take.

Where's my little gold button? What are you talking about?

How could he know? I guess.

My little gold button, the one that was given to me. I don't know what you're saying.

He offered to try to find Nicky for me.

"Someone will know where he is," he said.

"Why would I want that?" I asked him.

"I don't know. You seem sick. I thought you might want a little comfort."

"I have you."

"Let's not fool ourselves," he said, in English.

"What?"

"You want some drugs?"

Traveling Europe again with Dasius. He used the time to study regional medicine and I'm not really sure what I did actually.

He didn't leave me alone again, and I was glad to be taken care of by him then.
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In the present, some nights, when Dasius is finally sleeping and I go into his dreams, he is dreaming of those times.

Why wouldn't he be, I guess. He wanted to be needed, and I needed him as well as I've ever needed anything. It wasn't very long to wander, eventually getting to New York by boat, coming back to Europe. I'm sure he remembers a lot more of it than I do. He is not like Nicky in wanting me for himself, he doesn't. Dasius is too simple for that. He just wants me to want him.

The French Revolution came and went and he tried to keep me abreast of it when I was lucid.

"Laurie," he'd say, slapping my skin lightly with his open palm, looking for a blood flush, making me smile, "Marat is dead."

"Laurie. Laurie. Read this. You must learn English now. It's going to be the language of the new world."

"Oh no I won't bear it," I'd said, that time.

I tried to convince him to let his hair down, to stop being so constrained by his intense feelings about things. He spiraled downward continually, a bipolar with no mania. I was swimming through too much filth to help him. So I didn't help him. He survived it.

What he has become is not so bad. It is just things we do. We become what we are, over time. I became what I am, going through so much trouble to not change. If a vampire still wants to be human he becomes a warped notion, a reflection of a stupid idea.

But I'd defy anyone but Nicky to say that they have not become some part of the dumb reflection of human, that they're not a million pieces of disappointment. All of this is collected over time. You just can't be yourself anymore. I suppose the most human part about it is the inability to stop trying.

Sex and small complaints, these have been my vices. They are crimes against the creature of vampire, but I keep powdering my damned face.

Nicky pressed his fingers to my cheeks, held me up, sitting with him.

"Laurie, Laurie."

"Ne me frappez pas encore," I whispered, eyes rolling back.

"What?"

Dasius stood up, "Give him to me."

Nicky gave me up so Dasius could put me in the bath.

"I'm sorry this happened to us," he whispered, sobbing.

I turned my face away, in the water.

"Don't think I wanted this happen," he said, begging, "You don't have to do anything. If you want to I can send him away. We can go somewhere together."

How many times had I said those sorts of things to Nicky? Dasius knew it. He knew how it didn't mean anything.

"Tell me what you want."
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I went with Nicky to the opera once. I took him with me like he was my ward, in my arms. Dasius curled Nicky's soft brown hair and scrubbed his little face and we went to the Salle de la rue Le Peletier, the two of us, to see Rossini and Nicky drank my blood on the grand tier. He hid his head by neck as if he were sleeping. I dug my fingers into his curls and pulled on them.
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Believe me. I cannot say this without the truth. I never wanted Leechtin to come. Maybe I needed it. I never wanted it. Though it was the good solution, I couldn't love it. I never could.
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Sometimes Nicolas would go into my closet, look through my things the way a child does. He would sleep between the silks and expensive linens in the daytime. He would forget about things.

For me, sleep was difficult. My bed was beneath a large window. I would spend time looking up at the moon, listening to the leaves outside. It would comfort me to have Nicky in my bed, but in the night he would go roving.

"Laurie," Nicky said.

I touched his face.

"Oh I cannot bear it," he whispered, "come out of bed."

He turned my head from side to side with his hand, anticipating my response.

"We can go out together. I will find you something to wear."

Go to the bar, find a boy, push him up against a wall, kiss the bridge of his nose.

I hated the electric lights.
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It was Nicky who was keeping things in order then. He had all the money and he would arrange the tailor and manage the rent, even buy the furniture, flowers, whatever suited us. Unlike Dasius and me he had been living an intimate life with the world, his raven's eye switched on to everything that mattered.

Before the Revolution I had been connected. I could make money easily from investments, little things whispered in my ear while rich throats were being kissed, but obviously by the 1820s that was over.

"Here," he'd say, giving me something or other, "I bought it for you, what do you think?" I didn't ask him where the extra money was coming from. Dasius was making a little with research, freelancing for chemists and doctors, a little writing or drawing. It was enough for the apartment; it wasn't enough for the sort of life Nicky was pulling down.
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"I will slap you, Dasius, believe me I can't... Dasius take him away," falling against the wardrobe in a tremor.

"I will stab him with a little knife," Nicky whispered, hissing, "What he's done to me! I will put it between his ribs just there," he said, pointing.

"I'll take him out." You know he wouldn't hurt you.
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Killing men for money. Nicolas.
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When it happened, when I went blind I was alone. In the alley, I looked for the boy who had done it to me with my hands, gasping with my open mouth. I could taste the blood running down my face from where the boy had carved my eyes out of my head.

It shouldn't have happened. I was drugged. That's what was wrong in those days. I was always drugged. I went through the whole thing dazed. Nicky killing for money, Dasius clawing through the underground for bodies to slice open, I couldn't care about any of it. It was pretty enough on the surface.

But I hadn't gone out on my own for some time. I didn't know what to expect from pretty boys with nice teeth. I was full of heroin, drowning in it. Dasius wanted to stop the drugs, but it was so easy to give them to me. He couldn't stand to see me so sad so he did it. It was all for me, the money, everything that was going on. I know that, and really compared to what it could have been it was a good life. So when I went into the alley with that young, sweet youth I just didn't know any better.

He wanted to kiss me so I let him kiss me. He wanted to unbutton my shirt so I let him unbutton my shirt. He wanted to reach into my back pocket and that was fine with me. But when I wanted to rip him open with my teeth he pulled out his little butterfly knife and put it in my face.

I was shocked for a moment. The knife had blacked out my right eye. We were standing there in the alley with my knee pressing him against the wall. My chin tipped back when he stabbed me. I made a little sound in the back of my throat, a little gasp.

The boy was spitting to get away, struggling. He hissed something to bring me back to him. It was a small motion that took my eye out, a little circle. I lost the other one in the same way, unable to speak. He was cursing at me, threatening me with the knife. He pushed me to the ground easily when he felt my grip loosen and ran away with my money. There was nothing beyond the shock.

In his surgery, Dasius put blue eyes in my head, the wrong color.

"Look at me," the blue eyes rolled around to look at him, "take a deep breath."

I hugged him. I wanted to get out of Paris.

The eyes would black out. Dasius was in my face all the time with his little scissors and those long black needles he uses to stitch. It was ok after awhile.
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And then Leechtin came.

Pt. 3 - Whip

Nicky's broken mirrors, Nicky's little knife, they weren't related. He had a distaste for himself but not for me. He always had these fits. It was just worse then. He would come to me. He would come to my bed. He would look into my eyes, and he would sigh, his little sighs.

Nicky smelled good. He didn't do things for me the way that he had, but he did them for himself. His brown hair was curled just so; he was even curling his eyelashes then. He was a perfect little picture of a perfect little child. He was always taking care of me. He was always looking after me.

That is what has to be understood about Nicolas. He was always looking after me. He would follow me to the bars and stay in the dark. If he was at home he would stay up waiting. It was not something Dasius would do.

But he would go off into his rages and look at me as the creature inside of him, and it was bigger than me. Even if he had not drunk the blood of the old, the creature that was part of Nicky was bigger and meaner than I was.

He had a little knife and he would knotch it into his windowsill.

He had his own room. Unlike my room, with its mirrors and damask curtains and gold bedposts, Nicky's room was spare. He kept no mirrors and no bed and he slept in the claw footed bathtub in the adjoining wash room. Sometimes he would steal my clothes and sleep with them in there, a great mad nest.

Over time he told me parts of the story that drove him mad, about the woman who loved him and the raid on his apartments that killed her, but like most things he largely kept it to himself. He had a distant smile that he would show about it, if asked. No words at all, he would just give the smile.

He has never been one for self mutilation, so the little knife would stay in the windowsill or in the wall or, when Nicky was feeling better, inside the top drawer of Dasius's desk . Dasius didn't try to keep the knife from his brother, left the drawer unlocked.

Nicky has always considered me a part of him, an extension of himself so we were all sure he would leave me alone.

If he had been doing then what he had begun doing before my death, Leechtin would have killed him on sight.

As it was, they merely loathed each other.
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I will not pretend that when Leechtin came I didn't try to give it all up and run home. That is what happened.
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He had been in my dreams for months, years, real Leechtin, picking at my brain. I have not discussed it with him. Maybe they were just dreams, for both of us, but he knew about it. He whispered to me about it, just one time, an apology, quietly, in broken English. I should have pushed him away. I should have spat at him. I would do it now.

The problem has been that with Leechtin it is too easy to be a victim. I destroy my own life.
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I staggered back from the shadow of him in the street, a blond petit losing his balance in the mist.

"I'm sorry I couldn't be a better dream," he wanted to say, all green eyes like brush strokes and black black hair. He was dressed like an Oriental. I shut my eyes.

I forgot about it. We forgot about it for two years.

He was there listening when my eyes were cut out of my head. He was there listening in the bars and in the theaters. When he came to collect me he knew my name.

He wouldn't dare say he didn't come to collect me. I know why he was there.

Nicky breathed in sharply, like a hiss.
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It was Dasius who would eventually go. I know all about it.

Leechtin, out of time, pushed Dasius into the dark. Nicky would not be pushed. Nicky pushed back.

He would shriek epithets at Leechtin if parted forcibly from my side, "You are a two faced libertine! A false lover!"

Nicky would never call me libertine, but only because it would cut too close.

For me, his appeals were earnest, more personal, "You cannot," he would cry in my ear, "Let me lie in your bed one night and then turn cold to me the next time, Laurie you can't." He fought for me against Leechtin because he sensed what Leechtin was. He pushed because he feared that I would go away with my master.

Dasius has never been as perceptive as Nicky, not half. Dasius was watchful of Leechtin, but he missed the gravity of it. I am certain that's the case. He would cover himself up and disappear first in the daytime, and then some nights too, and then he was gone. He let go of me and went off by himself for some time, but not before Leechtin could kiss him and not before I lost control of myself. We lived there for maybe a year, the four of us, on Nicky's dwindling money in the dark.
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Leechtin looked into my eyes, holding my face still with the tips of his fingers.

"It doesn't suit you."

I looked back at him steadily.

He murmured in our vernacular. I looked away.

"Please talk to me," he whispered again, with the dead accent.

"If you hit me I will go," I said, quietly, "I will not ever speak to you again."

He recoiled subtley, "I never hit you."
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I laid in Nicky's bathtub, one leg hanging over the side. I swept blond hair out of my face.

Leis looked up. He dropped his head back against my chest, sighed out a breath.

I held mine, closed my eyes.

"I dream of you," he whispered, thinking it.

"Where are you?"

His slender pointer finger circled my navel, "Dreaming, somewhere."

Like with Leechtin, I dreamed of Leis before he returned. They were different kinds of dreams.

"Ooh," he breathed, a girlish sound.

"Will you want blood?"

"Show me."

I gave him my arm to look at.

He sighed.

The dreams were different because the Leis in my head is part of me. He is connected to me. Leechtin was real in my dreams. Leis was real but he was also a dream, something not imagined but too good. He was like a feeling. There was no caution with him in the rooms of my mind. He was never going to do something wrong.

When I woke up Nicky was there, looking in on me. I shied away from his touch.

"You look troubled," he said, softly.

"I am."

"Are you angry with me?"

"Come."

He climbed into the bathtub with me and I told him some fairy stories, old ones, just to tell him, just to talk to him.

He turned his face against my collarbone, resting. I could feel his breath on my skin. It was a familiar way to sit for us. I have been many things to him, but more than anything it was this, resting together, that bound us to each other. It will bind us forever.

In a way, we belong to each other because of what we have done and how we have been.

No I know why Nicky could do it.
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Leechtin in Paris was no chamaeleon. He would tap his flute against his thigh, wet his rough lips, look me in the eyes. He would really look, but then avert his gaze. He wanted me to go out with him, and if he was looking for ugly ironies I'm sure he found them. When I looked at him all I could look at were his clothes; the long cut of his robes reminded me of my childhood, of running to him in the hot air.

He would have held me, sans doubte, if I had crumpled into his embrace. Oh his long robes, that filmy green stuff he wore that was soft against my face as a child, he wore the same cut of robes two thousand years after. What the hell was he doing in Paris dressed like that?

He wanted me to face him, to speak to him, but I couldn't look at him without my throat closing up from what I felt. It was appalling. It was awful.

But didn't I eventually go? When I eventually began to lose it in Paris, the first night where I tried to draw my own blood, it was his hand that held my wrist when I pulled out my hatpin. Leechtin had seen it before. He knew what I wanted with hatpins.

"Is it too hot?" he whispered, talking to me. He talked too much in Paris, giving me every opportunity he could to talk back.

I moaned a needy moan, embarrassing.

"Kiss my neck if you need to, kiss me," he pushed, pushing me with his voice.

I struggled against his body, didn't kiss him, cried.

"Take me with you," I begged him, hanging onto his collar with tight fingers.

"Laurie," he whispered.

We didn't speak.
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Leechtin would do things like cut my hair in front of my big mirror, taking his time. It was good for him to touch me because it kept him from speaking to me.

He would brush my hair in front of my face, comparing the lengths, cut a little bit, compare again. It was very strange to be touched by him. I don't know that it would have been strange if we had spoken to each other before falling into a pattern. After awhile the only way to change things between us was to change them physically, hold his hand, touch his face. It was impossible to talk to him.

It was oppressive. I couldn't stay at home. I couldn't stay.
++++

Another alley, another boy. There were a lot of them in that period.

Nicky would follow me out to make sure I didn't get into any more trouble, but it was easier and easier to go out alone. It was generally a simple routine to spot, a certain look, a certain way of standing up to go, following those beautiful Enlightened boys to their ruin. They liked a little something devilish in me, boys thinking about boys, pushing against me in a hotel, down a street, on the dark seat of a coach going nowhere in particular. They liked to press their fingers into my hair, cut into whatever style Leechtin thought was chic, a pretty old fashioned boy kind of girl. They liked me for those things.

I liked their smart commentary, the rude touch of them, their like of the bite. Those sorts of boys, they liked the teeth. They would whisper declamations, protests, their breath would be hot in my ear while my eyes rolled around in my head, drinking their blood, their whispers getting feathery and then choking on the words. Even then they loved the blood while I looked on them, smiling at my scarlet grin they'd want a kiss.

You've never seen Nicky pitch a fit as much as he did the fourth or fifth time I brought another Enlightened boy home. But why shouldn't I have had them? They liked my bed and I liked their bodies and the taking was good.

It was even better to go out with them, because the taking was just as good with two. It was ugly and rich and fantastically rotten to do the taking with two. Even Enlightened boys could find the horror in two scarlet grins. They wouldn't like their old fashioned girl then, but I've always liked a violent struggle too. A person has got to be careful with a struggle, sure, but then a dying man doesn't have to be convinced very much to shamble off into the dark with a beautiful devil.

I would give them names, whatever suited them, and they loved being mine.

"He's going to kill you," Nicky said once to one of my jewels, to my Ruby.

"It doesn't matter," Ruby whispered, because they all loved the primrose path.

Of course I loved it too and all of it was eating me and just like all the other times I really didn't care.

Sometimes Leechtin would climb up my covers, find the jewel and have it. That was alright too. I would laugh. He would kiss them and tear them apart for the blood, without a word, without fuss, and it was so wonderful to be ourselves.
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It was when Leechtin was full of blood that I wanted to have him.

He was sitting up in the attic by himself when I came up through the trap door. He set his embroidery aside when he saw me reflected in his mirror. I turned his chair away from the desk roughly with both hands, looked into his eyes, shallow breathing.

"Escha-"

I struck him with my open hand. The flush of blood under the skin was immediate, blushing from the slap.

He stood up, knocking me backwards with his knee. I kept my balance but he wanted to keep me off it, wanting me to stumble back against the wall. My head was spinning after it struck the wood and he caught me off guard, biting without kissing.

I imagined a scream but I was silent, scratching him with helpless fingers, trying to push him away without a word. But I succumbed to it, fainting when he let me go.

And it was something I had only ever done once to drink his blood, when I was young, but when he saw me waking up he gently took me into his embrace. There was soft look in his eyes, something knowing but not knowing.

And that ******** only let me have a taste before he knocked me off balance again, looked away. He covered his face while I shrieked at him, sobbing about the things he wanted.

"Shut up!" I screamed, shrill with rage, "You wanted me to! How dare you! Look at me!"
++++

I took it out on Dasius because I could.

He offered to put the right colored eyes back in.

I should have accepted it but I couldn't. I wanted to hurt him.

I wanted Nicky to hurt him too but Nicky wouldn't be an instrument of venom. He couldn't be a comfort to me either, but he refused to be used against his brother.

"I hate you," I insisted, looking into his open face, the child's face.

"Stop it," he whispered, my Nicky, "What's wrong with you?"

[continue]
Sometimes he would be in Leechtin's sewing room, sitting beneath the iron sewing machine in the dark, back against the wall, knees apart over the pedal.
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More often than not, Leechtin was quiet, lingering where he could linger, just out of sight. Dasius still grumbles about him doing that, astute like he can be about Leechtin, grumbling about spooks.

"That man is just a ******** gigantic snake," he hissed at me once, in the present, after Leechtin had gone away from the tv for the evening.

We were settling in to watch Soapnet, Dasius's nightly ritual.

"You know what he said to me? He didn't say a ******** thing! Just stares at me from the crack between the doors in my room, staring at me! Eyeliner drawn on up to his ******** browline, who does that?"

"He's playing with you."

"That has not gotten past me. He is trying to disturb me and it won't work."
"Also he likes you."

"Never. Shut up," he whispered, settling under my arm and playing with my fingernails.

I noticed that his eyebrows were looking extra sharp on the ends and didn't say anything.

The present, what it was before I died, it was a brilliant routine. It felt like everyone I knew were all living in the same house with me, no one coming no one going. After living in so many apartments over so many years I was living in this big house in the countryside watching soap operas every night at 7 o clock and I was amenable to it. Go out in the night to have a drink, go out in the day to find some good sunglasses or another nice pair of boots or belt or hairclip or whateverthehell, come home with boys, go to bed. There were not a lot of problems.

Of course it got out of hand. When were there ever any real problems? It was a matter of having problems up top, in the mind, a ravel in the brain. A person lives on their own long enough and they develop these patterns of madness that aren't madness at all, looking through cracks in doors, staring into dark corners, talking to birds. But the problem is all of the interaction with other mad people in a situation like this and we end up with knives through our throats on the bloody coverlet when we're supposed to be watching tv down in the kitchen with our other child.

With the knife, Nicky didn't really have a problem with me at all. It was all in his head, all of this madness about how things were supposed to be and what was necessary. It was his logic that was dangerous because it was all tied up in other things that were inconsistent or that had sat so long in his head that they didn't make sense anymore. I shouldn't try to work him out like Miriam does. I don't know what he was thinking.

"Don't bite me, bad girl," Dasius whispered to me on the couch.

My eyes rolled around in my head.

Back in the 1830s with Dasius gone and Leechtin there and Nicky spitting at me I wanted to shut off, so I went to cafes. I'd tease up my coiffure and go out dressed in nice tailored coats with my scandalously high heels and drink weak coffee in scrolling gold chairs out of doors.

In the present, I could have love affairs conducted entirely on couches. Not then, not in 1830. I was very active. But towards the end of my life, there was never enough energy to do things like that. It was always blood. For me, blood.

In my bed in the dark, bodies climbing up the covers, dragging me out to rip me open. I couldn't go out. I couldn't get out of the house. I know that it was dire because it is still so close to me. I was always trembling from being without the blood.
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Even Quinn had been up to see me in bed, Leis's "Darkling" who came back with him to France in 1836. He was 27 when he was taken, and had been living with Leis for 57 years when I first met him but Nicky was entirely right to dislike him for being too new. Nicky would do things like lock Quinn under the stairs.

"Darkling" dragged me out of the four poster bed just once in the present, biting and slapping. He bit me on the inside of my mouth, sucking on a bloody kiss. I never told on him because I loved his self loathing. It was like beating him to death.
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"Look at him with his hawky little nose and his little snaggletooth. He's got one. I've not seen him smile. He's trying to hide it." Nicky was more fascinated by Quinn than hateful. He liked to kick the new puppy but he followed it around as well.
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"What do you like in a boy, Nicky?"

Nicky put his drink down. "What?"

"Sorry for scandalizing you."

"Scandal."

He paused.

"I like it when they put their fingers near their mouthes, just there," he touched the corner of his lower lip, smiled.

He has had very different habits than I have had.
++++

I never talked to Leis about Quinn very much, ignored him whenever I could, but because of Dasius I knew everything about him. Dasius became friends with Quinn for many reasons and it wasn't my place to get involved.

"Leis is your boy more than you realize," Dasius whispered to me once, in my bed in the dark.

"Sh."

"He locked Quinn in the cellar. He didn't want to be Leis's lover, but Leis is like you, mean when he doesn't get his way. He kept Quinn in the cellar until he could come out in the light, until he understood the value of loving his maker."

I turned my face away.

"Don't say you wouldn't do it. You know what you did to us."

What I did to them.

You don't have to say any more.

I wouldn't, whispered the dark.

I loved you.

He was quiet. Always quiet.
++++

I ran my fingers up Leechtin's brocade robes, tugged open his collar.

He sighed, tired, and pushed me off.

Pt. 4 - Angry

I was in a cafe when I first saw him. I was stalking a clever boy, switching tables when he did, catching his eye when he shot off secret little smiles, getting ready to grab my coat when I went blind. I staggered, sat down again, rubbed both eyes with the backs of my hands.

When I looked up he was walking in, tall and long blond hair pulled back away from his face. He had on a gentle little smile, boy by his side. I eyed Quinn for the first time, narrowed my aching eyes.

I'd known Leis was near. I didn't imagine that he couldn't sense when I was.

When I pushed the clever boy against the wall in the alley I was upset.

At home, when Leis pushed me down on the divan in the drawing room I was spitting with rage.

How he wouldn't stay unless he could kiss and have the blood, I have already said it.

Nicky would stand outside my bedroom door, back pressed against the silk wallpaper, listening with one ear. It was like he was in the walls, because Nicky knew everything that was going on. I could see it in how he tender he was. His hands would tighten at the sound of Leis's voice; he would look around like stalking cat, kiss the punctures on my shoulders and neck, whisper soft things in my ears.

I was rattled by the behavior. Nicky kept watch on the front door with zero subtlety, sitting at the table until Leis came home to get an idea of his comings and goings, rubbing away the lacquer on the table with pensive fingers all night.

Occasionally I would smell blood on Nicky, but he mostly washed it off, laundering his shirts where I couldn't see it and coming to my bed to be a sentinel. Leis would not come when Nicky was there, because Nicky unlike Dasius is a palpable threat. His gaze is serious and every inch of him is wired to rip in the face of a challenge. Leis did not talk to me about this.

Really it wasn't so awful, but it was awful enough at night without the blood, vomitting and falling against walls. And the boy looked straight through me, the Darkling, seeing into my head and looking past me. I have always hated him for looking down on me, as if he were too good to be in Paris, too good to look me in the eyes, too good to even acknowledge when his bed was cold. I wanted to slap him when he looked at me but I couldn't bring myself to raise my hand.
++++

"Leis," I whispered, hands fluttering against his chest, against his face, to find his lips.

He kissed my palm.

"Why did you come here?"

"Hush, sacre couer, ne pleures pas, mon sucre."

The weight of him was good, knees pressing into my hips on both sides. The lace at his collar tickled my neck. He kissed the little beauty spot beneath my lip.

"Ne m'embrasses plus," I whimpered.

He wiped the tears from the corners of my eyes with gentle fingers, sighed and settled against the wall instead of biting, hugged my fragile body with trembling arms.

"I came here to be with you."

"You are a liar," I choked, throat tightening with emotion, "Do not tell me that you love me anymore. I have seen the way that you love."

"Petit Severe. You will tell me that it is wrong to love you."

"In my house," I whispered, "Made a fool of in my own house."

Leis will always tell me that Quinn is nothing when we are alone. His two faces are perfect.

When Quinn is near he is a wreck, and I know that to himself he is the wreckage. The face he turns to me in love is the lie. The desperate look in his eyes when I run my fingers up his stomach in our hotel or in our private room at the club is a lie, and Leis has always thought that it should be alright because to him it is enough to feel that it is true when he shows this lying face.

For me I have come to crave the passion between us and I no longer care. I never wanted his love.

Then I was not sure of it, or I was not sure what I wanted from anything. I wanted him to love me without wanting me. I wanted so many things without any certainty.