Her Vampire Master Book two

Chapter Two

Elizabeth felt like she was swimming through thick layers of sleep, she didn't have any idea which direction she could take that would allow her to break the surface and wake up. She could hear Charles' voice, she didn't really want to talk to him right now though. She didn't remember why though and decided it was probably because he was a vampire and vampires are bad.

"Wake up," Charles said shaking her shoulder, she recognized his tone of voice and fought to try and wake up.

She opened her eyes, groaning, she half expected to have to cover her eyes and block out whatever light was in the room, she realized quickly that she had no idea what time it was and strong light wasn't going to be a problem with Charles. He didn't like the gaslights and normally turned them down at night.

"Rise and shine, Princess." He said stiffly.

Princess? That was new, and sounded like something that he called Mary, was he confused about who he was holding. Social etiquette drilled into her head by Angelus surfaced. “I think the proper form of address is Your Grace,” she said woozily. “I don’t feel . . . good.”

Before she could think about what was going on, Charles was peeling her blankets away and picking her up off the bed. She felt funny, her head felt wrong. She brought her hand up touching it gently, it didn't hurt, just felt different. Charles moved around the bed to the side where he had stacked several pillows, he lifted the hem of the fresh shift she had on. She didn't even remember putting on a clean one, he lifted the soft material up and over her hip and started unwrapping the bandage around her thigh.

It was starting to come back now.

She watched his bent head as he checked the bite mark on her thigh, "It's not bleeding anymore, so you won't need this," He said tossing the bandage to the floor.

“What happened?” she asked, pushing the hem of her shift back down, somewhat relieved that her head was okay.

“Knicked an artery,” he said casually, “Hell of a mess, blood spraying everywhere. I had Milos scrubbing the ceiling half the night.”

He placed a blanket up over her lap and went to get a breakfast tray for her. Elizabeth stared at him feeling like she had been dropped into another unreal life. There could be more of them. Infinite versions, and in this one, she was having a strange waking moment with a domestic and caring vampire who was currently unfolding a linen napkin for her.

“None of this is real,” she told herself.

He stroked her cheek, his hand startlingly warm. When she got started on things not being real it wasn’t a good sign. “None of that now love,” he scolded.

The unexpected, unreal warmth of his hand made her heart twist in her chest.

“You’re a vampire,” she blurted out.

He tilted his head to the side, peering at her. “What’s wrong?”

She stared at him, baffled. “You’re warm.”

“Carried your teapot up,” he explained, moving back around the bed to the side that she had vacated. “What did you think it was?”

That was part of the problem. She couldn’t think. Her head felt so thick and fuzzy.

"Why are you being so nice?" She asked, "What's going on? I feel so slow." It suddenly hit her, laudanum, "You drugged me?" She asked angrily.

"You needed to sleep," he said shrugging his shoulders as he laid beside her turning to face her.

Maybe she did, but she still resented it. There was something that she was almost remembering that was nagging at her, and she wondered if it was something he had done deliberately, to keep her off balance, though she didn’t have any reason to think that it was anything but what he claimed.

She quickly ate her breakfast without helpful interference. It was an English breakfast minus the more repulsive food groups. There was oatmeal with bits of fruit in it and a pear, cut in half and poached.

There were times when she longed for a large bowl of sugary cereal with ice-cold milk, the kind of cereal that was after school snack at her cousin Star's house. She and Star had collected the prizes—glow in the dark stars and moons that they had added to an old shoe box with the vague notion that someday they would paint a ceiling black and stick the decals on so at night the ceiling would glow.

It made her stop eating for a moment, the spoon resting on the side of the bowl as she closed her eyes.

“Eat a bit more, darling” Charles said. He had folded her pillow in half and was using it to prop his head up. His eyes were heavy-lidded, and she had an impression of him, like a reptile, absorbing the lingering heat on the side of the mattress that she had slept on, lulled into drowsiness by warmth. “Then you can go back to sleep.”

She had a brief recollection of him waking her up earlier and forcing her to eat soup. He hadn’t been soft-spoken and cajoling then. Her eyes opened. “You were mad at me,” she recalled.

“Was I?” he looked mildly interested. “When was that? I lose track.”

Elizabeth shook her head, she wasn't that out of it. “Before. You were mad at me about something, and I thought that you had been mad at me all day, but I didn’t know why.” She said

She stirred the oatmeal. It was congealing around the spoon in a sticky mess, she couldn’t make herself eat another bite. “I don’t want this,” she said, nose wrinkling in disgust. “I hate oatmeal. I’ve always hated oatmeal.”

He sat on the edge of the bed. “Drink your tea, then,” he sighed.

She looked at him warily. “I don’t get to know why you were mad at me?”

He nudged the teacup. “It’s not complicated, Elizabeth. You’re up to something, and I know it,” he told her, “So, drink your tea.”

His idea of up to something and hers were mutually incompatible subjects. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said. “I don’t think I’m up to something.”

“That native to your way of thinking, is it?” he mocked with a smirk, “Well, I think it may be a focal point of dark magic,” he raised an eyebrow. “Does that sound familiar?”

She just looked puzzled. “It’s just a theory.”

“You never mentioned it before,” he pointed out, a hint of coolness creeping into his voice.

“You never asked,” she frowned at him. “And,” she warmed to the topic, “I didn’t think you were all that interested either.”

He looked at her like she had said something notably stupid.

He had managed to get some sleep around the schedule he had established for feeding her. She kept waking him up, mumbling in her sleep. That was the reason for the laudanum, to force her into a deeper, less disturbed sleep. The drug slowed her heartbeat and respiration to a point that left him lying awake, listening to her. She was going to die. She was dying a little bit every day, and when she was dead, by whatever causes, there would be parts of her that would never come back.

“I’m interested,” he assured her. “I’m interested in everything that has to do with you,” he watched her expression change in degrees. She had secrets and no intention of sharing them with him, possibly ever.

He regretted the laudanum. Drifting through restless dreams, her body caught between the relaxation of sleep and the tension of her dreaming, she felt more alive to him. He was used to her sleepy mumbling. It wasn’t always understandable, but it was coherent. Odd names populated her sleep, names that sometimes appeared in her journals, usually as characters in little stories she told herself.

Once upon a time . . . a different time, in a less exotic place, there was a girl named Liz who loved everyone who ever loved her the least little bit, she was happy without ever understanding that it was mostly because she decided to be happy.

That was her real gift, but she didn’t know it.

She thought magic was her real gift and that she was meant to make other people happy because magic made her feel her happiness like a drug, and that was what made her think she could change things that were not meant to be changed.

She drank her tea, and he insisted on the second cup. She needed the fluids, and when she was done, he let her go back to sleep and went back to reading a three-year-old journal that she probably thought had been lost in Europe. Ciaran was pouring over books about Chroniclers, unaware that Charles had one in his hands. It wasn’t Elizabeth’s first story about a Chronicler, though it was the one that made him understand that her stories about Nova were stories about a Chronicler.

How in the name of hell did a former prostitute from Bristol know anything about Chroniclers? What was she hiding from him? Why did he have the feeling that it was all there, right in front of him and he simply wasn’t seeing it for what it really was?