The Seducer: A Gone From Daylight Inspired Story - 31. William Harker’s Journal: Entry 31

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Saturday, December 9, 1989

“Ungh…Wha-what was that strange language you were speaking at my parent’s grave Tuesday night…ooo? It certainly wasn’t…uhhh…Romanian!” I asked of Vlad as I sat between his legs on the floor with my back to him while he remained in his wing chair. With wicked skill he gently massaged my shoulders and neck with those powerful, bone-crushing hands of his.

“Verzpertillio.” Vlad said this strangely lisping word nonchalantly, like it was nothing.

“Verzzpurr-huh?” I turned to look at him with a look of confusion.

“Verzpertillio…it is a very old language known to Vampires. Many sacred scriptures were written in the language to make them indecipherable to mortals. Such knowledge was not for them so Verzpertillio was developed to keep our secrets hidden from the mortal world.” Vlad explained.

“I’m mortal…why speak it around me?” I asked, wondering why this particular mortal should be so ‘blessed’ to know this vampiric secret.

“Because, I trust you and these are not the times when Verzpertillio is much needed. Mortals do not have the sway over my culture they once did. There were fewer of us in the ‘old days’ and we had to remain better hidden. With ‘modern sensibilities’ at play, mortals these days tend to be very skeptical of most things they do not understand. So, they ignore what they do not wish to know about! It makes it very convenient for the Vampyre to walk the night while in plain sight. All we need do is hide our ‘dining habits’, heh heh.” Vlad chuckled at that last part…which I found a little disconcerting.

“I-If you don’t need to speak it…unnngh…then why do you?” I asked between pleasured groans.

“Some old blessings and invocations have no translation into modern vernaculars. You must understand…I am a very, very old vampire, William. I remember medieval times like they were yesterday! Some of my old ways stay with me. Blessings of peaceful rest for the Mortally Dead is one of those old things that I hold on to. I find them…necessary.” Vlad finding that ‘necessary’ only brought up more questions, but, I left it alone.

“How old is this Verzpertillio language?” I asked instead. I felt quite proud of myself for pronouncing that difficult word right.

“Oh, thousands of years. I believe it was based on Latin, so I can conjecture that it is at least 2000 years old, but I suspect older. Perhaps Latin was based on Verzpertillio!” Vlad said as he finally relented in his massaging of me and sat back in his chair.

“How far back do Vampires go?” I wondered, turning on the floor to face Vlad.

“That…is a mystery. Even my own sire couldn’t tell me exactly. As old as I am, he is vastly older! He has become so old that time has lost its meaning for him. The best he can do is recount his many fables and stories. He, himself, harkens back to a time when the Etruscans ruled Italy, hundreds of years before Rome came to be. He speaks of Ancient Greece and of other peoples long forgotten as if they still existed in this time.” Vlad answered wistfully.

“Who was your sire, if I might ask?” I just had to ask who could possibly have created THE Dracula of legend! That was too interesting!

“…Ambrosio. He is my sire.” Vlad said, looking meaningfully into my eyes.

That tall, handsome, tanned Italian that everyone had fawned over at that strange house-party of Vlad’s just a couple of months ago? THAT was Dracula’s sire?

“He claims to be the first of us. I have no reason to doubt him. He is far more powerful than any other vampire I have ever encountered and, though fragmented, his memories of his past all endure close scrutiny. He came to me all those centuries ago and offered me the power to defeat the Turkic armies that were invading my homeland. He turned me gently, taking me in three bites, allowing me to die easily to the mortal life and then to be reborn into Darkness.” Vlad said, looking back across the unfathomable depths of time.

“What is it like? To be ‘turned’, that is?” It had been a question niggling at the back of my mind. A little irritation of curiosity that I didn’t know if I wanted an answer to or not. But, that curiosity got the better of me and I wanted to know. Maybe…I wanted to know for a reason?

“It can be painful. Not the bite so much as the dying process. But, if done right…in stages, the process need not be completely miserable. The mortal life is a tenacious thing. Its very instinct is to persist, hanging on unto the bitter end. This severing of the mortal to become one of the immortal is a struggle. That cannot be denied. Nature cannot allow mortality to be extinguished so easily as nature is predicated on mortal death.” Vlad explained.

“Nature depends on death?” that was a strange concept to me since I’d always looked at nature as being based on survival…not death.

“Mortal death is the beginning of mortal life for other things. Nature recycles. It must destroy to create. That is, well, its ‘nature’ for lack of a better English word.” Vlad instructed, ever the ‘Professor’.

“The Vampyre are UNnatural in that respect. We thwart nature’s death urge and assume immortality through the continuous ingestion of mortal life. According to Ambrosio, this was a feat of the gods. A way of giving mankind the same perspective they have. An immortal perspective. But, Ambrosio’s tales and explanations have often confused me. I cannot often tell if what he speaks of is his truth or merely his own fanciful storytelling. You see, to his mind myth and reality are often mixed. It is a very ancient mindset predating ‘scientific rationality’. The world was described through allegories and myths and the truth in them did not depend so much on the story being told as the meanings behind the stories.” Vlad said.

“Where is Ambrosio now. You said after the night he’d gone missing that he’d simply gone to Los Angeles. Is that true?” I asked, wondering if I’d ever get to hear these myths myself from Ambrosio’s own lips.

“In truth…I do not know. Forgive my earlier deception. I was not yet ready to reveal our truth to you at that time. After he went missing that night he never was found again. It is cause for…great concern.” Vlad confessed.

So, he’d lied about Ambrosio? What else had he lied to me about, I wondered. I left that thought, seeing that, in Vlad’s perspective, it probably made sense to deceive me like that at the time. What would I have done if I’d known then what I know now? I probably would have done what he would have predicted. I probably would have tried to make a break for it!

Yet, it’s strange that I don’t feel that way now.

“What do you think happened to him?” I asked, seemingly ignoring his admission of deceiving me.

“As I have said. I do not know. I can only conjecture that whoever was behind the assassination of Rochelle and Charles and the attempted assassination of you and I must have gotten to Ambrosio first.” Vlad’s mouth turned down into scowl as he rubbed his goatee thoughtfully.

“Whoever they were needed to have been extremely adept and powerful to have challenged Ambrosio. His power, as I have stated, exceeds nearly every other vampire in existence.” Vlad’s face darkened further even as his face turned to the light of the fireplace.

“To attempt to assassinate the Eldest? Such audacity is unheard of in the whole history of vampirism.” Vlad growled with a slow simmering rage.

“It is my sincere hope that Ambrosio escaped or destroyed his would-be assassins and is now, simply, in hiding somewhere.” Vlad looked up with a definite look of worry on his face.

“Me too, Vlad. I didn’t get to know him very well at that party, but I could tell he was a very cool guy. I’d have liked to have gotten to known him better.” I admitted.

“By Selene’s Grace, may you get your wish, William.” Vlad said as he face softened and a small smile cracked to dourness in his face.

There was a long pause as I built up the courage to ask the next question.

“…could you turn me into a vampire, Vlad?” I asked it, point blank and without warning. It had been the main question I’d been building up to all evening. I had nothing left to live for and I had already grown tired of this life even as young as I am. Losing my family has cost me the will to go on myself and yet…I don’t want to die. Becoming a vampire seems an elegant solution to this dilemma. A new reality, a new life, a fresh new start! A new me with no connections to this world at all! Only to Vlad! Only to the one that seems to be the only being in this world left that truly cares for me!

Vlad stared at me hard for several seconds not saying a thing. His mesmerizing gaze stared unwaveringly into my eyes and I felt myself frozen by them somehow. I figured, possibly, that he might actually show me by doing it rather than telling me. There seemed to be a longing in his gaze that I could feel. Was it simply thirst or was it more?

Then a fear gripped me! A fear that he might actually do it! That he’d might actually take me, bite me, and drain my blood! It was instinctive and irrepressible, this fear. The fear the prey animal has staring into the eyes of the wolf!

With the onset of that fear I finally saw Vlad blink and look away, releasing me from his gripping stare. Vlad slowly stood and paced away to the window of the room we were in. He rubbed his hands together fitfully as his paralyzing eyes cast themselves over the velvet darkness of the ocean.

He sighed and said with a strange disappointment, “No. You do not yet know what you are asking. I should not condemn you in this way. I…love you too much for that.” Vlad admitted with unexpected emotion.

Now, I was stunned for other reasons rather than fear and paralyzing eyes.

‘He loves me?’ was my only thought.

The silence of the night settled on us both as Vlad continued staring out of the window and I looked on into the flames of the fireplace in silent bewitchment.