Lucius - Thousand Year Old Vampire - Part 7

12.1 I’d begun to find joy again. Claudia looked at me with admiration. When hunting criminals, I didn’t feel like the monster I’d come to identify myself with. What we were doing might be vile and in ways cruel. Those hurt by our actions were all bad people. I try to remember that.

Claudia must have stolen from the people we executed. She had no work that I was aware of but was better dressed than when I’d met her. She’d also gained weight and wasn’t so skinny as she’d been. I’d meant to talk to her about it, but it didn’t feel important enough.

She was serving me and I reaped the benefits of having a constant stream of fresh blood. She had to get something out of the exchange. It might be small thing, but I thought that it tainted what we did in some way. It’s not that the dead would miss what she stole from them, but still it didn’t feel honest.

At night she’d often crawl up to me and hold me. It wasn’t even much of an effort not to bite her. It might have been different had I not been drinking so much blood. Over the months I’d gained more control and trusted myself to move about in the city again.

In the beginning I saw it as a form of practise having her so close. Now I enjoyed having her there. Her touch gave me nothing, what I liked was her trust. That provided me with more than her body ever could.

Claudia had a sixth sense for sniffing out the bad people of the city. I felt something was wrong when Claudia knifed a woman who started arguing with her. The woman didn’t die before I could feed on her so I didn’t make a fuss about it.

Then the net I hadn’t been aware of tightened. The city had mobilised, the senate invoked emergency laws to hunt what they called the night crawlers. The killers of the night.

I’m ashamed to say it took me some time to realize the truth. Claudia wasn’t finding criminals. I learned of Marcus who paid her to murder his enemies. We had our first fight.

Rather I was trying to fight her, she spoke in such a reasonable voice, never to defend her actions. She said she’d done it to help me, that the law were for mortal men. Not for those such as me.

As I thought about our time together, I knew that I’d looked the other way. That I fooled myself. It shamed me that I didn’t see it from the start. It shamed me that I didn’t care much in the end. I liked our arrangement and didn’t want it to end.

I was the hunted one now. The army was searching Rome and the places where I could hide were shrinking. I ran when they came for me. Even though I’d gotten fast, some of those soldiers seemed to be able to run forever.

Marcus saved me, he galloped in with his horse and let me ride off. The horse didn’t like having me on its back, but it accepted me in the end. I was far outside the city when Claudia found me.

Together we sneaked back into the city a few days later and found Marcus. He lived in a large house. When we entered he drank wine and two musicians entertained him, a woman who sang and another who played the flute.

The flute player had skill, she smelled good too. When Marcus saw me watching her, he indicated at a cup at his table. To my surprise it contained blood. The blood was three days stale and I’m not even sure it even came from a human to begin with.

Marcus began talking but I stopped him and asked him who he was. While he presented himself as a statesman I could see him for what he was. A criminal, one of the bad sort. I told him as much.

He said I lacked perspective, that the empire of Rome had killed countless in her conquest across the world. That what we were doing was to prune the garden from weed close to home.

Regardless of the morality of what had occurred he made it clear that due to the big hunt we’d have to lay low for a while.

His manners annoyed me. At the same time, just like Claudia he humanized the part of me that was the monster. I could see his point, there were monsters everywhere.

I told him to send away the musicians which he did. Then I took the cup with blood and poured it on the floor. I explained to him that Claudia served me and I asked Marcus who he served.

After looking back and forth between Claudia and myself, Marcus admitted that he also served me.