Lucius - Thousand Year Old Vampire - Part 11

25.1 As the years passed our activities in the city started to get noticed again. There was talk of packs of hunters searching for monsters of the night. The army did patrols within the city. More than once Octavia suggested that we should leave Rome.

The notion of abandoning Rome appalled me. I was Rome, I’d never been more than a few days away from the city. Rome was part of me. How could I ever leave? Still there were days when the thought was tempting.

I didn’t know what I’d do with Claudia if I left. I wasn’t sure how she’d manage on the move. Claudia had turned into a form of a nurse to the now elderly Marcus. We had to splash Marcus’s neck with vinegar to prevent Claudia from feeding on him.

Most of the servants who used to work for Marcus had moved on. He was no longer a power within the city. When he complained about pains I did consider ending his life. But given how it had turned out with Claudia I set that idea aside.

One of the reasons I considered ending Marcus was that it had become harder to find feed. His blood would sustain myself and Claudia for some time if we took it.

Another reason why I didn’t want to kill him was that Claudia remembered Marcus, she’d forgotten so much and seemed to have problems forming new memories. I didn’t know what it would do to her if Marcus disappeared from our lives.

After coming home from an unsuccessful hunt I found Claudia drunk at the dinner table. I didn’t understand how she could swallow the stuff and so much of it. She’d have drank a lot of it for it to have any effect.

Claudia was clinging to a piece of parchment, drenched in wine. She called it Pompeia’s poem and said it made her sad. I don’t remember her ever meeting someone called Pompeia, perhaps the poem was something Marcus had kept from his old library.

I discarded the old paper and wiped her clean. I told her that I’d find her someone young and reeking with fear and that she’d feel better after that. She patted me and called me her saviour.

Thinking of Claudia dripping with wine made me think of the river and a thought occurred to me. I told Octavia that we needed to learn how to swim.

She laughed at first but I convinced her that we could do it. My plan was for us to swim up to boats and drag down the people we could reach. It might not work for long but it would be safer than the city where people only moved in large groups because of our recent activity.

Octavia took to swimming before I did and in the end she helped me master the art. It felt good that she was the better swimmer. I wasn’t sure I’d die if I was unable to swim, or if I could just crawl up once I reached the bottom. It pained me that Octavia could feel so fragile.

When she climbed that first boat she didn’t look fragile at all. Octavia sneaked up behind a woman and gave her a gentle push. People around would have heard her break the water. The victim was never able to call out. The taste of her blood mixed with that of the water. I had to struggle and paddle my feet to stay afloat while feeding.

Other times I was the one that pulled them down. Octavia would hold me and paddle to keep us from sinking.

Once I pulled down a man to the depths, then carried his unconscious body back to our home and let Claudia feed on him. She was angry that Marcus didn’t join her for dinner.