A Lonely Prince with Fangs (completed)

Cute Bookworm

"What was that?" I asked Alexandru, who was just sitting at the piano.

"You peeked into my memory." He answered my question as if he had never heard of such a thing.

"How?" I was mystified.

"I guess I allowed it." The vampire looked at his hands in disbelief. "You triggered a memory, a memory so strong that you were me in it."

I didn't know what to say. It was silent in the room for a few seconds until I finally had something to ask him.

"What did you do to Marishka, and everyone else?"

Alexandru stood from the piano and walked over to the windows of the ballroom. He put his feet together and his hands behind his back.

"I erased her memory, and everyone else's. I cleaned up the bodies and the party carried on. My fiancé was never my fiancé after that night. She just knew me as Count Dracul on the mountain top. Just like the rest of the town. I then moved to America and became an investigator. I wonder what made him come back.

"Hunters," I began, "Are they from a certain blood line like vampires and werewolves?"

"No, they're just humans. Humans that have been raised in small nomad families to hate and kill children of the devil."

"What did you do with all the dead bodies?"

Alexandru turned to me and smiled a kind smile. "You ask too many questions." I sheepishly looked down. "I had to find a way to explain their deaths." He answered. "It was very wrong what I did that night. I promised myself that since meeting Marishka I would never harm a human again. It wasn't until I had pity for a boy dying in the hospital that I made him into a vampire. It was foolish of me. I didn't pay as much attention to him as I should have. He terrorized cities and countries. Killing everything in sight. I took action immediately before the investigation reached me. I disposed of the stripling vampire, and yet, I was too slow in my calculations. Maggy, I only ask of you this, know that I haven't tasted blood since that night. And upon meeting Marishka, I hadn't drank human blood for three years." I thought about how redness came to his cheeks when drinking that hunter's blood. And how I felt his hunger. It was excruciating. "I drank every last one of those men. I made another vampire, and blamed it on them." Wow. This really isn't a dream. I'm really talking to a vampire.

"Are you still hungry for blood?"

"Well, of course I am, but I drink the blood of beasts from now on. You may hear some vampires think that that is childish but I think it is what we were truly made to do."

Again, I was lost at words. I had no way to comfort him like I had thought of when seeing him in the puddle of blood. Again, awkward silence.

The Count tapped his heel and smiled at me. "You haven't had breakfast yet!"

My stomach grumbled and I shyly smiled.

We had breakfast together in the kitchen and spent all morning comparing and making fun of vampires from books and movies and how bad they were portrayed.

We talked about going into town. But after finding out that vampires need their sleep I told Alexandru to get some rest, since yesterday he spent a while in town. He insisted we go anyway and to not worry about him. I ended up making a deal with him; he'd go and drop me off and I would just get a ride back. I also learned that when a vampire sleeps they go into such a deep slumber until the rising of the moon and that that is the best way for a hunter to kill them—when they are sleeping they cannot protect themselves.

So Alexandru dropped me off in front of the small bookstore that the town had then left me. He gave me more money than he had yesterday. I should probably tell him to stop. Twenty bucks would be just fine.