A Door to the Past - Chapter Five (male vampire x female character, sfw) (Patreon)

Surprise?! 

It's been 84yrs since I posted a chapter of this story, but I'm sharing this one as a thank you to the lovely patron who reached out to ask about the status of this story. Here's chapter five for you, previously un-posted and freshly re-edited.

Last time: Nora watched Kjartan use his vampiric powers for the first time, and she defended his honour after the cruel 'garlic' prank from Halvar. 

This time: Kjartan gets some attention and doesn't know what to do with it, and wonders why Nora is acting different too... 

Kjartan

Breakfast the next day was beyond awkward.

Kjartan forced himself to go up and join them, mostly to prove to Halvar that he wasn’t about to let him forget his unspoken threats from the night before, or that he wasn’t going to start cowering in his room for their comfort during all the spare hours of the day.

“Here,” Satha said, sliding a mug of hot tea across the table at him. “You look like you could use a prop to hold, even if you’re not drinking.”

He stared down at the fragrant black liquid and smiled before flicking his gaze back up to meet hers. As a Dunmer, her eyes were completely red all the time, and she was particularly hard to read for the most part. “Thank you,” he murmured quietly and took the proffered mug.

Nora shuffled in a few minutes later and grunted something at them that no one understood, and not long after that, a very sleepy and tousled looking Aravi drew back a chair and folded herself onto it, sitting cross-legged on it and not making any kind of effort to grab any food.

“Everyone looks exhausted,” Satha commented as she stared around at her ragged, sleep-rumpled friends. “It’s only halfway through the first term…”

“This one misses what it feels like to be warm,” Aravi growled. “It’s always so cold here.”

“But your fur looks so cosy!” Nora grinned, ruffling Aravi’s thick, grey and black striped fur between her large ears. Instead of yowling at her in protest, as most Khajiit probably would have done at being treated like a common house cat, she tilted her head and began to purr noisily as Nora scratched her amicably for a moment or two.

Kjartan watched the interaction with a fascinated, hungry gaze, and a sudden longing for the casual touch of a friend blazed painfully bright inside him. He wrenched his eyes away.

“I wonder what Drevis is going to teach us today,” Nora mused as she moved and leaned her hips against the table to eat her sweetroll standing up, a mug of her own tea perched nearby.

He found his eyes taking in the shape of her body and he was grateful that he couldn’t blush. Even swaddled in a thick, knitted jumper — a light, sky blue that set her fiery hair off perfectly — and soft, formfitting, black buckskin leggings, he could see the wiry strength of her body beneath. She had the figure of a hunter not a lady, and she had the mouth to match, and he’d never been more attracted to a woman in his whole life. The realisation hit him like a silver stake the the chest and he ground his teeth and stared unseeingly at his tea.

“Kjartan, you’re pretty good at illusion magic. What do you reckon?”

Startling a little, he flashed his eyes quickly up to look at her. She had a pillow crease on one cheek and the urge to reach up and touch it was almost overwhelming. Trying not to preen under the unexpected compliment, Kjartan instead shrugged and sipped the tea. It didn’t taste too bad, if a little medicinal. “Perhaps he’ll try something like clairvoyance?”

“Ugh,” Nora snorted comically and rolled her green eyes. “If we have to meditate for three hours on that cold floor again, I’m going to get frostbitten arse-cheeks.”

“I’m sure Halvar would volunteer to warm them up for you,” Satha shot and everyone snorted.

Halvar himself, as it happened, did not show up at all for breakfast, and when the four of them entered the Hall of Elements, he was already in there with J’saad and a few others. Kjartan knew that in a place like this, news of Halvar’s ‘prank’ would have spread like dragon fire, and he braced himself for a flurry of dirty glances and sneering remarks about Cyrodiilian restaurants.

It came as a surprise to him then when no one reacted in a way that was out of the ordinary. A few shot him sidelong looks, but he was a vampire, so he was used to being stared at here. However, one of the other students who slept on the upper floor of the Hall of Attainment, and whom he didn’t really know beyond having been partnered with her in a few classes, caught him off-guard by sidling up to him and batting her pretty, dark eyes at him. Falisa was from Hammerfell, he seemed to remember, and she was extraordinarily beautiful.

Kjartan was no stranger to the presence of beautiful women. The vampires at Volkihar were largely Nords, with a few elves here and there, and almost all of them were stunning. His father had very specific tastes and standards when it came to the women he preferred, and that extended to those he turned and allowed to remain in his court. The men he selected for different reasons; mostly his own amusement.

Falisa’s full lips curved gracefully up into a coy smile and she looked up at him through thick, dark lashes. “I heard about what happened yesterday,” she said in an appalled stage whisper. “It must have been awful. Are you alright?”

People, on the whole, did not seek Kjartan out here and strike up conversations with him. An unsettling knot began to form in his stomach but he answered her politely enough. “I’m fine, thank you.”

Over her shoulder, he shot Halvar a glance and found that the Nord was staring at him, watching the exchange between him and Falisa. Kjartan offered him nothing more than a polite, cool incline of his head. As he did so, he caught sight of the way Falisa had tilted her head slightly to the side, exposing the long, sloping curve of her throat a little more. His eyes naturally latched onto the pulse at her carotid, but he wrenched his gaze away before he became fixated.

What was she playing at? Was she thinking to tempt him somehow? Test him? What was the point? Surely she couldn’t want him to feed from her, so it had to be a trick.

With a tiny smile that he couldn’t decipher, Falisa turned away from him as Drevis Neloren entered and the room fell quiet. In that new stillness, like fresh-fallen snow, he found Nora’s green eyes on him with an unreadable expression in their glassy depths. He offered her a smile, but this time it was not returned.

Alas, to everyone’s displeasure, it seemed that Master Neloren did have meditation in mind, though only for an hour. Sitting still for a long time was no issue for the vampire, though he often forgot to breathe which drew the attention of the Dunmer Master who wanted them all to be practising some strange and particularly deep breathing techniques that left Kjartan a bit dizzy and with purple flashes dancing around the edges of his closed eyes. Apparently though, that was the desired effect.

More than once, however, he opened his sensitive eyes to find that he had extended his senses a little too far and was now detecting all life in the room with his vampiric powers too, their essences flaring a bright, silvery blue.

On one such occasion, he found Falisa staring at him from her cross-legged pose beside him. It took him a while to realise that she was probably attempting to flirt with him, casting him doe-like eyes and a softly suggestive smile, and the fact so unsettled him that he lost all his focus on the meditation exercise. Trying to mask that fact, he rammed his eyes shut and stopped breathing altogether. Having someone take an interest in him for what he was felt so new, so alien to him, that he felt almost sick as anxiety boiled away inside him. The fact that he could actually smell her slight arousal from time to time as well, drifting around the room on the drafts, didn’t help.

His mind drifted while the others practised. Their heartbeats slowed, and some probably achieved the trance-like state that was necessary for many illusion spells, wrapping the magic of Oblivion around the user instead of channelling it through their bodies to transform into fire or frost or healing.

At Castle Volkihar, Kjartan had spent many of his days in the library, far away from the bustle of his father’s throne room and the endless, churning politics and posturing. There had been no place for Kjartan in Harkon’s court — his father had wanted another daughter for his dastardly blood ritual — but instead he’d got a scholar-son. The Daedric Prince, Molag Bal, valued females over males it seemed when it came down to his rituals, and perhaps because Molag Bal didn’t actually want the sun to be blotted out any more than anyone else but Harkon did, he had ‘gifted’ Harkon a son instead.

Disgusted that Kjartan had wanted no part in his hare-brained scheme, and unable to get rid of him without insulting the great Daedric Lord Molag Bal, Lord Harkon had made it quite clear that his son was an embarrassment. Not wishing to go openly against their lord, neither male nor female in Harkon’s court paid Kjartan the least bit of attention. On occasion, the acerbic scholar Vingalmo had dropped by to sneer at his latest historical interests, but that was the sum of it. With his mother going into hiding in the Soul Cairn before Kjartan had even reached maturity, and with an older sister he’d never met at the time also sealed away somewhere, Kjartan had always been utterly alone and unprotected as his father’s hostility had distilled into open cruelty. Until now.

A shiver scraped down his spine, like an echo of his father’s influence. For years, Harkon had kept his son cowed, meek, shying away from others, not seeking trouble or attention, cringing at the thought of being dragged out into their presence, and something about Falisa’s interest sparked memories in him that he had worked hard over the past year or so with Serana to put behind him. Don’t draw attention to yourself. Don’t believe their praise. Don’t let anyone in.

As the class finally ended, Falisa levered herself gracefully to her feet and turned to him. Kjartan kept holding his breath.

“A few of us are going into Winterhold tonight,” she purred. Her eyes were large, glassy and inviting, and he found himself leaning ever so slightly towards her as she spoke, not really hearing her words. “… to the Frozen Hearth for a drink. You should join us.” When she raised her fingers and gently touched his arm, the spell broke and he recoiled with a twitch. No one else seemed to be paying them the slightest bit of attention, but he felt as though a thousand eyes were on him.

Enough panic flared in him that he was tempted to use his vampiric influence on her to ask her to leave him alone, but the mere thought of doing that turned his stomach. This was not Castle Volkihar, and he was not his father. “No, thank you,” he said firmly but softly. “I appreciate it, but no.”

Falisa pouted and turned away. He doubted whether she had ever been turned down in her whole life, and suddenly the sheer humanity of her existence, of her fleeting wants and needs, took all the anxiety from him. He almost laughed. He was jumping at shadows. He was a new plaything for her to toy with, and now that he’d dismissed her, she would move on to other, shinier quarry.

His mood considerably brighter, Kjartan was on the point of striding from the Hall of Elements when he caught sight of Nora and Satha with their heads bowed, talking rapidly. Pausing to wait for them to catch up to him, he cocked his ear slightly to one side and concentrating, filtering out the background noises of shuffling footsteps and nattering conversations, he focused on their voices.

“… thought I was going to fall asleep there,” Satha complained, audibly cracking the tension from her neck and rolling one shoulder out. “You did alright though?”

“Eh,” Nora shrugged, and Kjartan thought he detected a note of something else in her voice, like a hidden harmonic hovering above her words.

“What’s the matter?” Satha pressed as they started to catch up with Kjartan.

Nora inhaled and let it go in a rush. “Ach, I’m just…” she gestured vaguely and then saw Kjartan standing there in the antechamber like a spectre. She offered him a half-smile that didn’t go all the way to her eyes, and when she joined him, asked, “How’d you manage?”

“Not very well today, I’m afraid,” he admitted. “Found it hard to concentrate.”

For some reason that darkened her face a little more, and both he and Satha frowned. The Dunmer turned to Nora. “You coming to the library for study period?”

She shook her head, a section of her thick, shoulder-length hair sliding forward into her eyes. “No. I’ll see you at lunch,” she said and with that she hauled the main door open and slid out into the snow beyond.

“She alright?” Kjartan asked, eyes locked on the door as the sheer weight of wood and iron slammed it shut behind her.

Satha twitched a shrug. “No idea. You heading up to the Arcanaeum? I could use your expertise in Ancient Atmoran if you’ve got a spare fifteen minutes or so…?”

Nodding, he smiled. “Of course.”

Nora remained uncharacteristically quiet over lunch and for the rest of the day, retreating to her room when not required in class. She did leave her door open, so when Aravi stepped inside and asked Nora to practise warding, the action clearly wasn’t too unwelcome.

Kjartan glanced up from where he’d been lounging on his bed, back resting against the solid wooden headboard, and watched as the two began raising and lowering wards in preparation for Tolfdir’s class that afternoon. Aravi laughed some time later as one of Nora’s fireballs fizzled out on the surface of the ward, and then they both reached a silent truce. Nora’s face was flushed with success, and Aravi’s fur bristled triumphantly.

“This one is thinking we will have no trouble today,” Aravi grinned. Then, to his surprise, she shot a look over her shoulder at his room and when she found him watching, she said, “You should practise too, vampire. Your wards were not so strong last time.”

“Blunt as ever, Aravi,” he chuckled. For some reason, when she called him ‘vampire’ it didn’t sound like an insult. “You’re right, of course.”

“Come over here then,” she smiled. “And I will set your pretty backside on fire.”

“You haven’t even seen my backside,” he quipped, hoping he’d read the humour of the room correctly, and standing and walking over to where they stood on the far side of the font of magicka.

“That is true,” she purred, claws extended and ears pinned back playfully. “It could be covered with scales like an Argonian for all I know.”

“If you haven’t seen it, kindly don’t comment on it then,” he rumbled and the Khajiit bared her teeth in a little laugh. “Nora?” he asked.

“What? I haven’t seen it. Don’t ask me to comment on it either,” she snarled.

With a snort, he shook his head. “No, forgive me, that wasn’t what I meant. I was going to ask if you minded my joining you to practise.”

Her cheeks flushed hot and he watched the blood rise with interest, though he masked it easily enough. “Oh,” she murmured, shoulders dropping. “Sorry. Sure. I’m done anyway.”

Aravi turned to her. “You don’t want to see if you can make the vampire dance? They don’t like fire, you know?”

“No?” Nora asked, something glinting in her eyes.

Kjartan had the horrible feeling he had missed something somewhere. “Not much,” he said, following Aravi’s line. “But I’m willing to tolerate a little…”

Her eyes narrowed and she called a crackling ball of fire instantly to life in her fingers. The light danced in the highlights of her auburn hair which was loose now, and fell around her face like the flames in her hand, and he was struck so stupid by the sight of it for an instant that he almost didn’t conjure a ward in time.

She grinned and launched another one at him. This time he did prepare for it, and the ward crackled as he met the projectile head on. It had been a while since he’d been paired with Nora in class, but he hadn’t forgotten what it was like to be on the receiving end of her magic. Quick and powerful as an experienced warrior with a two-handed sword, she wielded her magic in a way that left him breathless and always on the back foot.

This time, she hurled three fireballs at him in quick succession, and after the second, his ward failed. His magicka ran out and the ward winked out of existence.

Kjartan stumbled, reeling backwards and landing awkwardly on the floor as the last fireball struck the stone wall behind him and sputtered out.

Aravi laughed loudly, but Nora shot over to him, cursing. She came to a halt near his feet and looked down at him, face difficult to read. “You alight?” she asked, seeming now a little uncertain.

Chuckling, he pushed himself back upright and nodded. “Yes. All the more proof that I could do with some more practice. Let’s hope Tolfdir is a little gentler with me this afternoon than you.”

He had just turned to make his way back to his room, the unpleasant tingle of embarrassment still dancing around his chest, when Nora reached out and grabbed his right forearm as he passed. Instinctively, he looked down as he halted, eyes locking onto her strong fingers. His throat went instantly dry. She had a thick white scar across three of the knuckles of her right hand that looked like they came from the decisive slice of a blade.

“Wait,” she breathed. “I’m sorry.”

When his golden eyes met hers, he saw a hidden current swirling in her green gaze. There was more to that apology than just a simple ‘I’m sorry for almost singeing you’, but he couldn’t grasp it. So instead, he smiled and brought his left hand up and placed it gently over hers. Squeezing ever so slightly before releasing, he smiled again. “You have nothing to apologise for.”

She let go of him and stepped back, but he felt her gaze on his retreating body until he had returned to his room and closed the door behind him. For a moment, he leaned against the cool, solid wood of the door and closed his eyes.

That woman was fire; raw and real and utterly mesmerising. And if he let her, she could consume him utterly.

___

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