Weekly Drabble #240: Give and Take (Patreon)

With the prompt of 'epiphany' from Knightress (which, uh, kind of got lost in the redrafting), we return to a setting of a vampire and a vampire hunter. Enjoy!

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Give and Take:

The vampiress sat on the edge of her bed, dabbing at her lover’s forehead with a wet cloth, wiping the sweat away. My foolish hunter, she thought sadly, the words tinged with guilt and self-loathing. She’d drunk too much from him, awakening in the forest to find him sprawled next to her, his breath weak and heart struggling as he continued to bleed out. She realized what she’d done and what he’d done for her... and she’d also realized that the sun was coming.

Vampires could not fly as the tales might say, but she had run so fast that she might as well have been able to, ignoring her injuries that had yet to heal and her own fatigue. Dawn rose behind her, the lethal embrace of the sun stretching across the forest, the shadows shrinking minute by minute, but it wasn’t only for her life that she ran as fast as she had. She held her unconscious lover in her arms like the world’s most precious cargo, her half-dead heart and lungs straining to keep her moving. A ray of light broke through the forest canopy like a monster’s clutching limb and she’d weaved around it, feeling her flesh start to itch and redden as the day broke.

Smouldering and steaming, she burst through the doors to her estate, struggling not to collapse as she carried her lover to bed, pressing water to his lips and massaging his throat so that he would drink. He was burning up, his flesh as hot as her own, pale and limp like a corpse himself. She’d taken too much from him. A human could survive no more than losing a third of their blood over such a short span of time. Had she drank that much? She would never forgive herself if she had.

There were stories about the magic of vampires; she had none of her own and even if she did, not a single one of the undead could use their magic to heal. Vampires did not give, the saying went. They took. Nowhere was this more perfectly encapsulated than her present circumstances. Twice, her Hound had given her life. In return, she might just have robbed him of his.

We do not give. We take.

The vampire tried to ignore that thought, tending to her lover as best she could. He was the one with knowledge of healing. She knew how to treat injuries she’d inflicted, but little more than that. Still, she turned what knowledge she had to the task. She cleaned the wound on his wrist. It was still bleeding, for a vampire’s bite was slow to close and the more they drank, the less likely it was to heal, but vampire hunters knew their craft. Her Hound was well-equipped to deal with such injuries. She’d already used some of his potions in the forest to slow the bleeding and now she used more of those poultices, spreading silver nitrate on his wounds to keep infection at bay. The bleeding finally ebbed to a trickle, soon to close but that wasn’t enough. He hadn’t woken and he was still in dire condition. She didn’t know what else to do.

...we only take.

She held his hand, hoping – for she did not chance pray and had not for a very, very long time – that he would recover. He was so weak, more than she had ever seen him before. She didn’t know if he would make it. That couldn’t happen. She couldn’t let it happen, but there was nothing else she could do for him.

Nothing else she could do. There was a doctor in town. He might know something that she did not... but the sun had risen very high in a cloudless winter sky.

She wouldn’t let that stop her. Not today. Damn the day and the sun. You won’t keep me here!

In town, they called her the Mourning Lady. The rumour, that she had helped spread herself, was that on the bright summer’s day of her wedding, her soon-to-be husband had gone missing, and it had also been a bright autumn day when his body had been found. Since then, she hardly ever went outside while the sun was up. It also helped that she had a small, well-kept chapel on her property and there were no bloodless victims turning up, nor sightings of great bats or wolves in the area so her secret was largely safe. There were some whispers over a ‘gentleman caller’ that some claimed to have seen at her residence, but that was a far cry from suggesting a vampire was in their midst.

Given that such news would be met with an armed, fiery mob, the vampiress was all too glad to allow her neighbours to think of her as an oddly damaged woman, grieving the loss of a lover in a strange, but harmless manner. Today though... today the Mourning Lady would have to make one of her rare trips outside during the day. The vampiress stripped quickly, sparing just enough time to make sure her bloody and torn hunting clothes were stashed well out of sight, glancing back at her lover every few seconds as she rushed herself into a dark dress and mourning veil. It would offer some protection from the sun. Enough to get to the physician’s and back, but she knew what she would have to go through. She didn’t care, though.

Not today. Not for him. She had lost one branch of her family to that feral beast. She wouldn’t lose him. Today, she was going to find a way to give.