White Vampire Ch. 02

"And then the werewolf came back, stalking from the darkness and the shadows with fresh blood streaking his fur - my father's blood. An arrow stuck out of his shoulder and I felt a rush of pride, viciously so, that my father had, at the very least, managed to injure him. It made the agony and injustice of his death seem just a little bit easier to bear, even then."

"But the wolf snapped the arrow and yanked it, head and all, from his shoulder, tossing it on the ground as if it had done no damage at all. He said my father had tried, mocked me and growled, his voice so deep that..."

But Elsa could not say more on that note, shuddering and turning away, shoulder falling from Jacob's grasp as she suddenly wrapped her arms around her torso. Falling apart even as she retold her tale, she nipped at her lower lip and brushed her fingers resolutely across her cheeks.

"He told me that I would suffer. And what would anyone else have done? I screamed, my throat so very raw, and I crawled up against the base of a tree with giant, gnarled roots, fighting to get away in any way I possibly could. Still, I wonder if I did not live that day and my life since has been but a dream of the afterlife."

"But the air whistled by just so in a white blur just as he lunged for me - and there stood Marchesa, snarling in a vision of terrifying beauty before me. You've seen her fight. She is deadly and I knew it even then as she placed her body between me and the werewolf, seeming still so much smaller and more delicate than him."

"'Get back!' Marchesa hissed at him, tail lashing. I didn't know what she was then but she snarled that, 'this one was hers', although I didn't know what that meant and I thought that she might have been trying to snatch me up for her dinner too. It was a ridiculously childish thought to have right then but my mind scrabbled in pieces, broken and shaken and grieving, already, for the arms of my father."

"And I don't know quite what did it, a little twitch of the werewolf betrayed some manner of motion and then Marchesa had him on his back, her teeth at his throat, threatening his very life. She snarled it out again, to leave me alone for I was hers, although she did, sweetly, spare his life. What more could that wolf have done for he may as well have been a mouse like me before her, helpless to fight one who was clearly shown to be so very much stronger than him?"

Jacob shivered. His bones still ached with the memory of his fight with the canine vampire, even if his wounds were healing quickly. That humiliation of blackness, falling and falling and falling and thinking that she had taken his life, that he'd never wake up again. He could only imagine just how much worse that would have been too if her teeth had closed around his throat in a sickening crunch of flesh and bone.

It would have been easy for her too. He could very, very easily imagine her taking down a full-grown werewolf, regardless of how an adult would tower over her.

"She stepped back from him, as wary as ever as she waited to see what his next move was, me wrapped up in the roots of the tree as if something like that would still be able to, somehow, protect me. And the wolf, clearly with a severely bruised ego and possibly sternum too, backed off and away with a growl that ripped through me... It was blood-curdling. But with a turn and a flash of red fur he was gone and he raced into the darkness as if he had never been, although I could never forget him, as much as I tried. There was too much missing from my life to ever consider forgetting the horror of what that werewolf did to my life and family."

"Marchesa turned to me and, even then, I thought she was going to take me, do something to me, although it would not have made sense as to why she would have sent the wolf away and then killed me. And that was maybe in the back of my mind and why I did not run as she knelt down before me, a glimmer of moonlight just barely catching the edge of her fur, outlining her head and the rounded points of her ears. They were one of the first discerning features I noticed about her as she came down to my level."

"Yet then she scooped me up into her arms, holding me close, and I cried and cried and cried, soaking her chest and shoulders, her fine blouse ruined. As much as I was afraid, I needed her too and she took me to the castle, soothing and murmuring sweetly to me the whole time, her voice a lullaby to a soul that so very terribly needed to sleep."

"'Don't worry little one, you are safe now...'"

"I had no reason to believe her, none at all, and yet I did. I think I had no choice, or at least felt as if I had no choice, but she'd rescued me and someone who had clearly saved my life could not be all that bad, even if I was still afraid of her. It took me longer than it should have done, maybe, for me to trust her completely, but I'll always be thankful to her for coming after me that day and taking me from the beast that would have so easily crushed my chest and left me bleeding out, left for dead in the woods with not a soul to see me to the other side of his cruelty."

Elsa sighed, patting Jacob's shoulder.

"There. You're done now. Go rinse off."

As Jacob slipped into the pool to rinse a burning concoction from some of the cuts that she had deemed the worst (although he most certainly had had worse). Apparently, it was meant to flush out infection but could not be left in - and he certainly understood why as he deftly slipped his towel aside and hid his lower half underwater even as Elsa looked away, allowing him a little privacy. His confidence and feeling of familiarity around her, however, could not help but have grown during the course of her tale but he would too have been amiss if he had not allowed her a moment to wipe the trails of moisture from her cheeks.

Quietly, she joined him, sitting on the edge with her paws dangling in while he rinsed out his mane from a slop of healing cream that had gotten mixed in with the longer hairs.

"I had never met anyone so caring of a stranger in my life... It was different, very different. And that is how we came to meet, in blood and violence, although this was not done by Marchesa's paws. My only regret is that we were not a little closer to the castle initially and that she may have heard our screams sooner but I still don't know how far through the woods I fled before stumbling into her territory, where she could hear me. For all that she did for me then and all that she's done for me since, I will very gladly serve her until my final days, without question."

The stallion shook his head slowly, although he was far from disagreeing with her. Such a harrowing tale that he had not, in the slightest, been expecting had to take a moment to digest, even though he thought that it may well have to be one that he'd need to sleep on.

Poor Elsa though... What a thing to go through. Losing her father so young?

"What of your mother?" He said quietly, grazing her gaze only briefly so as not to be too intrusive. "Did you ever hear from her?"

"Yes," Elsa murmured, chest rising as if in a particularly sharp inhalation that she hid well. "I went back to that town where we were housed some time after. She'd passed. It was painless in her sleep with the last of the herbs numbing her pain as she slipped from this life to the next. I can only be glad that she never heard of my father's death."

"I see... Elsa, I'm sorry - I never thought that this would have turned into such a painful tale for you and I'm sorry for probing."

Jacob swallowed and ran his fingers back through his wet mane, lamenting the fact that he, once again, had to dry off, although at least some of the aches and pains seemed to have eased from his bones and muscles. Maybe there was something in the mix she'd smoothed into his wounds after all, even though he would have been quite happy with good, old-fashioned time, if not rest, at the end of the day. There wasn't much he could do in the past about rest, to be fair, so he had never truly felt the effect of rest on any of his previous injuries.

"It's okay... It's nice to talk to someone. Marchesa knows everything already and sent money to ensure that the rest of my family would never go hungry again. I still visit them sometimes but I do miss my parents."

Elsa stood, drawing her legs from the water and letting her skirt fall back down them as she donned her sandals once more, a flurry of motion seeming to shake the claws of the tale told from her back. She bowed quietly, a small smile on her lips as her pink nose quivered.

"Try to dress lightly for the moment. Your wounds need to breathe before redressing them, if you feel the need to. I am sure that the treatment will do well with them until the morning, however, and I'd be happy to assist and treat them again for you."

She made no mention of her being obligated to do it as a servant, leaving him with the distinct impression that she was assisting him, strangely, as a friend as she made to leave, swinging open the door with dampness still dotting the floor in her wake. Yet there was just one little thing on his mind that could not wait to be answered until their next meeting and he flung out his paw in a sharp gesture that stalled her with a quiver, water dripping from each digit seemingly in timed turn.

"Elsa... Just one thing."

The mouse paused by the door, whiskers twitching, her typical smile back on her face now that the worst part of her story, at least he hoped, was good and done with.

"Yes?"

The stallion's brow furrowed.

"What did you mean when you said that you didn't know what she meant by Marchesa saying that 'you were hers'? Do you know what that means now?"

And Elsa smiled, her expression softening as she folded her paws neatly over the front of her apron.

"I know... I am hers. Marchesa meant that she was protecting me. And, in that way, I shall always be 'hers'."

And then the mouse was gone, whispering out into the hallway in a shimmer of cloth as if she had never been, her light steps disappearing as the heavy, wooden door closed smartly on her heels. Leaving Jacob to dress himself with his wounds feeling, yet again, a great deal better than they had when he had begun bathing, the mouse gave him more questions to a curious tongue than what she had already answered for him.

But he knew what he had to do next.

*

It took the stallion longer than he was proud to admit to choose clothes from his bedchamber, dressing himself smartly and then discarding the fancy cloth in lieu of something else. He fretted and rubbed at his mane, smoothing it down again as if that was going to, somehow, make his appearance just a little bit more bearable than it had been, the small mirror above the dressing table showing a coarse stallion who had absolutely no right to take himself into Marchesa's chambers as if he had any right to be there. And yet he couldn't keep himself away, ears flicking back and forth anxiously as he strode through the castle, hesitation in every other step he took. Although that in itself meant that half of him was confident in his decision, as much as his heart leapt and tightened dramatically somewhere in the vicinity of his windpipe.

He had to see her again.

He knew where Marchesa's bedchamber was after that time but he took the longer route there, deliberately taking the wrong ways as he wandered the hallways in just a pair of cloth leggings, bare of a shirt. If his wounds needed to air, he saw no reason to don one and it made sense to go bare for the moment. Elsa's story... Well, it certainly seemed to match with what Marchesa had said so far or, more accurately, what he knew of the vampire from her lips. Why would Elsa stay around otherwise? It was not possible for a vampire to bewitch another, he knew that much.

He didn't want to think that the mouse could, somehow, have a reason to lie but wanted to believe Marchesa's peace with the cellar of blood, the kills she'd made to ensure that she would never again have to take the life of another. But that, in truth, raised another question, for the mission that he'd been sent on was to kill the monster ravaging the city and the outer villages, stalking its prey callously and indiscriminately. There had been bodies then...left out in the streets with horrific wounds. He had known of the horror even before he had been paid to eradicate the killer.

But the question was that, if Marchesa was not killing them, who was?

As evening wore on, his stomach rumbling for another meal (not that he knew how to ask for one), Jacob found himself at the door of her quarters, knocking twice before entering. He did not know but a part of him was sure that she knew that he was there and wanted him to enter. Or else why would a vampire hang around to wait for him?

She sat before her make-up table, a more regal, elegant affair than the one in his little chamber. Brushing out her tail, she looked up at him, ears perked and a small smile pulling at the lips of her narrow muzzle. Elegance was simply a word that went with her, although his eyes fell on the mirror where his reflection stood, framed in the doorway, but no reflection of hers to be found.

Come on.

He just had to remember that the vampire was not against him. Not truly. Surely?

Gulping, he continued all the way into the room, unable to help himself from taking in her form, the black silk nightgown flowing down the lines of her body as if it had been specifically tailored for her, embroidered with tiny dragonflies that appeared so vibrantly silver that they could have fluttered off her nightgown and gone off on a little adventure all of their own, if only the right note of magic was present.

She was beautiful, he would have been a complete and utter fool to deny it, and him a coarse and bumbling fool of a stallion in comparison to her, standing there with his lower jaw slack and gawping. As she scooted around on the little stool before the mirror, her cleavage rounded out above the neckline of the nightgown, deliciously exposed and drawing his eye with her near enough luminescent-white fur. It took him another moment to gather himself, a little longer than he would have been strictly proud of at any other time. Marchesa, however, stripped all of that from him, leaving him a bare husk of a stallion who just hoped he was open to more that could be offered.

"I've..." He paused, clearing his throat. "I've been thinking... A lot has happened since yesterday and what happened today..."

Oh, why couldn't he find the words he wanted, scrambling and calling them to his lips to no avail? The canine folded her paws in her lap, surveying him quietly as she straightened her back, tail hanging off the edge of the stool as if she was trailing a lure.

"It's just that things happened and there's nothing I can say to apologise for pushing but -"

"No, no."

And then she cut across him, standing as she raised her paws to stall him even as he fumbled and ran his fingers through his mane over and over again.

"No... It was me, I apologise for my actions, Jacob - I came on far, far too strong. You couldn't have done anything about it, not truly, and I by no means intended to drive you on into something that you were not ready for. If I forced you in any way..."

The dog shuddered and took a breath through her lips, jaws gaping as if she needed to pant just to scrape more breathe into her lungs.

"If you want to leave..." She whispered, dropping her tone. "You are more than free to do so... I promise I will not keep you here, Jacob. Although I would be very much obliged if you would not return to attack me again."

Her eyes glinted with just a hint of mischief and he blinked at her, a bubble of out of place laughter curling up in the pit of his stomach. But he had to hold it down in such a serious situation, throwing caution to the wind as he closed the distance between them much as the werewolf had in going for Elsa's father's throat. Unlike the werewolf, however, he took Marchesa's paws in his, leaping into the unknown for something better even as words continued to stream from her lips like sweet, sweet wine.

"No, no," he quieted her gently, memorising the lines of her face and muzzle as he swept his fingers gently around the curve of her cheek and around her ears, the soft folds bouncing back up against his paw. "It's... It's not that, I don't want to leave."

It was a strange thing to hear himself say when he had, of course, arrived there in the first place to end her life - or at least attempt to. If he'd stayed there himself after the fact it would have only been to clear up the resulting mess, although that was hardly something that he wanted to dwell on, pushing the morbid thought from his mind. The last few days had been long ones, not just since he'd arrived at the castle, of course, and the wear it had taken on his mind made him feel as unsteady as a drunkard, swaying from one side to the other in the sanctity of his own mind. He was perfectly stable in reality though and, in fact, found himself holding up Marchesa as the canine trembled, eyes wide and lips just barely parted as the smooth, white expanse of her fur drew him in.

"It's... It's... No, I know now. You're not the monster I was sent here to find for there is no monster here."

He laughed and cupped her chin, tipping her muzzle up to his, tears glistening in her eyes.

"You're beautiful... So beautiful, inside and out. Look at what you've done to save many! And Elsa, of course, you've done so much for her, she told me everything."

Marchesa's eyes widened and she parted her lips to reply but he shushed her quietly, drawing her into his arms. For there was no time for words to be had when his heart pounded so vehemently. He needed her...just as she was. And maybe he didn't need to know or feel any more than that to know that, right there in that moment in time, that he wanted her in his arms for as long as he could possibly hold her.

Ah, why speak when actions could say so much in turn? Smiling faintly, he caressed her cheek, running his fingers very gently down and around to the back of her neck. She leaned into his touch as if she was not entirely with herself, the canine shivering lightly and turning her muzzle side-on into the palm of his calloused paw. He wore his many scars on those paws, along with his arms, back and every other part of him, and she swiped her tongue out as if suddenly struck shy, bathing his old wounds as canines of olden times would soften the injuries of their loved ones in times of need.

"I'm not sure if it's right for me to feel this way," he said, slowly and quietly as if he needed to draw out his words to make them heard, although she was right there before him, listening intently. "But I don't think that matters any more. Any life I had before is dead to me now and there's something, someone, out there working against you. There have been deaths and, since you have not claimed lives, then who can we say killed those people?"

She shook her head, not having an answer for him on either count, for Jacob's words did not come in any sort of seemingly order that would have made sense. Was he confessing his passion for her or did he want to talk about the greater problem and the bigger picture, what was going on outside the walls of her castle?

"But that's not the point, not now... Not for now, I mean."

Licking his lips, he strove to moisten his mouth but it was far, far too dry and he had not a drop of water (well, ale would not have gone amiss either by any means) with which to ease the soreness in his throat. Although he had spent most of his time earlier listening to Elsa, with Marchesa he had not quite allowed her to get a word in edgeways, the canine slipping her fingers between his as if she was trying to pull his paw in even closer to hers, palm to palm.