Lucius - Thousand Year Old Vampire - Part 8

16.1 It became clear that Marcus was right. In the coming years there was a great fire in Rome. It killed more people than I ever could. There were rumours of what had started the fire. If true, if the blame lay at the hands of the emperor himself. How could I be the monster?

Though Marcus said he was my servant, he seldom acted like it. We did have a form of partnership though. He would provide and shield me. I would hunt his enemies. While we both knew it to be a ruse, it suited me well. Marcus would speak about the crimes those men and woman had committed.

At times it could even be crimes not yet committed. I liked listening to those stories, even if I knew I was deceiving myself it helped. Those stories made it easier to accept my actions. I wanted to hunt them, but I needed the excuse. The lie.

Claudia was always the servant. I struggled to understand her goals. Since some years she had stopped sleeping in my room at night, where she always used to pick at my never healing wound trying to free those nails. When we’d met, she was older than me, now she aged while I didn’t. I think it made her uncomfortable. I could hear her unspoken yearning that I’d turn her, that her body would remain young.

Marcus and Claudia provided what I needed. With little work to occupy my days, I gave myself to the lyre. Nights and days I’d play. I did it out of both enjoyment and guilt. I loved to play and create music. At the same time it felt shameful. It only took a few tones to remind me of Aulus and what I’d done to him.

Even with the shame, my love for music grew. Though it came with a cost. As I honed my craft, I started to hear the faults of other musicians. It might be a slight slip, so their tones sounded off, or that the instruments were out of tune. With singers it could be that they were breathing to much. As my skills grew so did my annoyance in the performance of others.

As much as Marcus loved my music, he didn’t like that I was becoming famous due to it. Had I been someone else it wouldn’t have mattered. He kept telling me that I should live behind the curtain of men. Be the force people sense but never saw.

I agreed with him. Letting any who came to listen see me, was a bad idea. But it didn’t matter. I had to play to honour the memory of Aulus. I wish that I paid my respects to Aulus in silence, but I’d spoken about him in the beginning and word spread. I was the musician who played for my friend that a monster killed. Someone even put up a play about our story. I both wanted to go and couldn’t bear it. In the end I never attended.

A man called Titus approached me, he told me that he himself was also in mourning. He’d lost a friend, another musician killed in the night. Titus said it would mean a lot to his friend’s wife if I could come and play for his dead friend in the same way I honoured Aulus.

I don’t know if I was the one who killed his friend. Even if it wasn’t me, it felt like it could have been. It shamed me that someone had murdered his friend. It had been years since I played in a location I didn’t choose myself. Had the circumstances been different I’d never have accepted this.

The widow lived in a villa outside of the city. I thought it strange that they wanted me to say a eulogy for their dead friend, for the widow’s husband and I learned someone’s father.

The crowd seemed somber, though under the circumstances I couldn’t blame them. There were no smiles when I played. I didn’t know how to behave. Instead I continued to play.

The widow lit candles as darkness fell. Only afterward I realized that no one drank their wine. Too many years had passed since I drank myself so I no longer took notice of those kind of things.

There was a tension in the air that I didn’t understand. My first clue that something was wrong was one of the woman crying. Many of them were crying, but one of them was Claudia. She was putting on an act.

Between two songs, Claudia wiped her tears and approached me. She whispered that someone lured me there. That they wanted me to speak in the beginning so that someone who had heard me in the night could identify my voice.

Claudia urged me that we needed to flee, that they would kill me tonight. My first instinct was to agree with her, to flee. But, these people had used Aulus against me. My heart couldn’t beat faster, and nothing happened with my blood. But I was furious.

I whispered back that all I needed was darkness. Then I continued to play. Glancing at the crowd I now saw them for what they were, hunters. They thought that they’d catch me in a trap.

I felt tense as Claudia cupped the first candle in her hand. I could both smell and see the smoke as the flame died. No one seemed to notice, their eyes were on me.

Claudia extinguished more and more candles as she moved around in the room. I was ready when someone called out and rushed forward to shove a small man into a table where some candles still stood.

Panic erupted when the room turned dark. I smelled the blood and even tasted some when it splashed in my face. But I didn’t care about feeding. I just wanted to maim, to kill.

I came close to killing Titus too, but I stopped myself. Instead when I found him I pushed him to the ground and sat on him. Our eyes met and I leaned in to bit him. He reeked of fear. Then I whispered, “this was your fault.”

On our way home Claudia stopped me and embraced me. Her entire body shook, this time her tears were real.