Lucius - Thousand Year Old Vampire - Part 9

22.1 Claudia’s black hair started to have touches of gray. At first I wanted to pull out the offending straws. Not because I cared about her appearance. No, because of the constant reminder of how time treats mortals. A lifetime now seemed short. Within decades both Claudia and Marcus would wither and die. Time was the greatest monster, it would end so many more lives than I ever could.

I still had many years until they would leave me, but there was nothing I could do. Their end would come. I started to think about finding others who could serve me.

I’d never want Claudia to leave me, still when I thought about it there were things in her that I didn’t want in a servant. Even more so for Marcus. I had stumbled upon them both but never truly chosen them.

When thinking about gathering other servants I ran into a dilemma I couldn’t solve. If I had a servant I’d need to confide in them. I didn’t want to do that if they turned out to have some flaw that I disliked.

Killing them would always be an option. But it felt wrong to kill someone who served you. Like something a monster would do.

The solution came to me during a dinner in Marcus’s new villa. I never took part of those events, instead I sat to the side and played my lyre.

After the event with Titus I didn’t want to play in public, but I still wanted an audience. While I didn’t care about their business, Marcus’s guests at his dinners became my audience.

A young couple sat close to Marcus and talked. Marcus had their entire focus, still they took time to eat and drink. They paid neither me nor their infant any mind.

It annoyed me that they didn’t show any respect for my music. I was about to leave when I found my audience. Their infant girl had turned her head. From that point on she never looked away.

I tried different pieces to get her to react in different ways. Then in the end the tunes didn’t matter, the child seemed to love everything.

Later that night I entered Marcus room. I sat on a stool I knew would give a creak and he woke up. I could hear his heart beating faster. I waited a while before I spoke. I didn’t threaten him, no my presence alone was a reminder of our hierarchy.

I told him to wrap up any dealings he had with the couple and arrange for them to die. That he should use disposable men for the job because I’d go in and kill them to “rescue” the daughter.

First he started to object so placed my hand on his chest and said that I didn’t want to argue in his bedroom. He agreed.

I never said it to Marcus, but my goal was that I’d never lie to the child. I’d say that criminals murdered her parents and that I’d came upon them and avenged her parents.

She became Octavia, if the child had some other name before I don’t know. Whatever name she’d had I would probably have changed it regardless.

I ordered Claudia to find a wet nurse for Octavia. Though Claudia informed me that the child was old enough to not have to nurse from a breast.

Instead I’d mash the food and feed Octavia. I stopped playing music for guests of Marcus. Instead I played for the child.

I’d considered calling her my daughter, and Claudia said she could adopt Octavia if I desired. I decided against it. Some decades ahead Octavia would serve me and mixing up family ties in that would only complicate things.

When she was fourteen she asked me about my meager possessions. She couldn’t understand how I could be the master of the house when I had so little in my room.

She treasured my lyre and accepted my hammer. When I told her about the old bottle of vinegar and pegs she sniffed and threw it into the wall where it shattered. She said that things like that are only holding me back.

At seventeen she’d heard stories of how Claudia helped me years past. Octavia told me she wanted to see me feed, to be part of the hunt. It had been years since I hunted people in the night like that. I didn’t know how much I missed the thrill of it.

Throughout her childhood Octavia had deferred to Claudia, but I could see the change. The power balance shifting. Octavia would be taking over soon.