Lucius - Thousand Year Old Vampire - Part 15

40.1 Years passed in an uncomfortable pace. I tried to be aware of how I spent my days and before sleeping I’d try to remember my past. Claudia claimed she didn’t worry about lost memories. She said she’d only forgotten the bad parts, but Claudia had started to loose her memories to old age even before she became an immortal.

The new Rome was still a mystery too me, even years after waking up it felt like a foreign place. The thought to leave crossed my mind many times. Some form of anchor must have remained, for I didn’t leave.

Partly the reason was Claudia, I didn’t know what an unknown land would do to her. If she’d get confused. Was I responsible for her? If so for how long?

Sahylina didn’t seem to care much for me after turning me. But she’d known what she was doing, I’d turned Claudia by accident. Still, did that mean that I’d have to care for her for a thousand years?

These thoughts came in waves, I’d call myself a fool. I didn’t want to leave Claudia. Even without ties to my mortal life, she was still my oldest companion. I wanted to have her around, only I wanted her as she had been.

I missed Octavia, I dreamed of Fabia, and I tried to remember someone else. Over the year I tried to remember that person, no matter I tried I couldn’t remember their voice or see even their silhouette.

A mortal came to visit us in our abandoned house. Claudia brought him in and after just a glance at her I was sure I’d need to kill the man standing in the doorway.

Claudia had dried blood around her mouth, I was sure the visitor had seen it. She normally took care to hide any marks of her feeding. I wondered if we had a dead body nearby.

The visitor bowed and introduced himself as Alexandros. “I know of your kind and I’m here to beg a service from you. In payment I offer my own life for you to do as you please.”

At this Claudia licked the dried blood from her mouth. I bade Alexandros to sit and to tell his tale. He’d fallen out with a politician and due to some wrong doings of Alexandros, the politician had murdered Alexandros family. Before he even got to the end of his story I knew what he wanted. Revenge.

A few things nagged me. How had Alexandros known that I, that we were vampires? What signs were I showing the humans to betray our nature? What had happened to the Lucius of my youth? Everything around this would have horrified him.

I realized that I missed having mortals around, not as an emergency source of food. Instead as guides and of course as servants. I needed someone to navigate this unfamiliar Rome that I now lived in.

I told Alexandros that I would help him to avenge his family and end the line of that politician. His payment would be that of service and not his life.

Alexandros swore himself to me and moved into our house. He filled it with life and I realized my self deception, where I thought I was portraying myself and Claudia as mortals Alexandros could bring that lie to life.

He even taught me to act and walk in a different way. To change the pitch in my voice and don new clothes. The person who emerged, wasn’t Lucius playing a human, but a persona that was a human. An identity I could slip into like a borrowed pair of sandals.

Just like myself and Claudia there were days where Alexandros stared into nothing and pondered demons from the past. But a sense of purpose was growing on him.

He might never be Octavia or Claudia, but he was Alexandros and he was mine.