Chapter 43: Approach
Dezzy ended up leaving before nightfall, which was probably a good idea, considering the inherent danger of a rare-blooded person wandering the halls of the castle at the time when all the vampires were out and about. Damien was sad to see her go, though he thought maybe not quite as sad as Grace, who seemed utterly dejected by their parting. He tried not to smirk about it too much, but it amused him to see how much Grace and Dezzy were dancing around each other even though they were both clearly smitten with one another. Grace should have just invited Dezzy to stay and they could have figured something out. Or maybe Dezzy should have invited Grace to go with her.
Though, he reflected, Grace was still a thrall, and therefore beholden to someone in the castle. He wondered who. She'd never really talked about who had enthralled her. He knew she was loyal to Cain, but she'd also made a point of saying that Cain didn't really have thralls in the technical sense. So who was her master? And if Cain had so many enemies, was her master an enemy of Cain? Did that divide some of her loyalty to Cain? Was it even possible for a thrall to walk away from their original vampire, and choose loyalty to another vampire? What about choosing to be loyal to someone who wasn't a vampire? The way Grace talked about it, it sounded impossible.
Damien didn't like the thought of that, because he knew that Dezzy would be saddened by the thought that Grace could never be free from her vampire masters, and thus never really available for a relationship. He also didn't like it because he had the sense that Grace hadn't exactly chosen to become a thrall, and he hated that so much of her loyalty might be an artificial condition born from her enthrallment. He still didn't think he could ever be a vampire sympathizer, but he was beginning to realize that sympathizing with thralls wasn't really the same thing as sympathizing with vampires.
Some thralls were still pretty annoying, though. He was reminded of that the next morning when some of the laundry thralls gave him grief for not having as much energy, and accused him of playing around too much the day before, since he'd left early. That was especially annoying because he'd been given permission by Ellen, so really they had no right to complain. Despite the negative attention, Damien tried his hardest to contribute, but it quickly became clear to him and everyone near him that he was fast-losing strength. The shirts he had with Cain's scent weren't doing as much for him anymore, either, and he didn't like what that boded for his future wellbeing. Especially since Cain seemed to be sent out of the castle all the time, so it wasn't like Damien could really count on him being around when he needed him.
He managed to struggle through the entire day at the laundry, and was really looking forward to escaping to his room for an early night's sleep, so it was perhaps understandable that he didn't pay much attention to the now-familiar hallway before him, though he did find it odd how deserted the hallway was.
Then, another body was crowding his, and Damien found himself backing up to the wall instinctively, looking up to see the crimson eyes of a hungry vampire staring down at him. His fangs were out, and his expression was both vicious and vindictive as he stared down at Damien. The vampire's skin was ashy pale, and though he was rather bulky and muscular, he didn't seem keen to put his hands on Damien, instead looming over him with a predatory glint in his eyes.
"Hello, Morsel," the vampire purred, a slight lisp catching at the words as he spoke around his fangs.
Damien immediately realized he was looking this vampire in the eyes, and dropped his gaze, freezing in place where he stood, pressed with his back against the wall. Terror made his heart pound faster, and he could feel the pressure of the predator's attention on him. He swallowed hard, daring a glance up to where the man's broad chest still pressed toward him.
The vampire reached for Damien, his hand pausing about two hand-spans from his shoulder. He hissed, pulling his hand back, and tried again with the other hand, stopping at a similar point. Taking a step back, the man demanded, "What is this?"
Damien wasn't about to give Crowe - for what other vampire had dubbed him morsel? Of course it was Crowe - the satisfaction of more eye contact, but he couldn't ignore him, either. "I don't know, sir," he said. The word sir grated him, feeling like sandpaper on his tongue, but he remembered the way the bones of Crowe's thrall had creaked in the angry vampire's grasp. He didn't want to make the man angry - at least, not any angrier than he already was.
"Why can't I touch you?" Crowe hissed, taking another step back. Damien could feel the searing heat of the vampire's furious gaze roving over him.
As long as he didn't make eye contact, the man couldn't enthrall him. As long as he didn't make eye contact. His mother's vampire-repelling stone seemed to be working, so Crowe couldn't touch him, which meant as long as he didn't make eye contact, he couldn't be enthralled. Damien clung to that knowledge desperately as he repeated, more softly than the first time, "I don't know, sir."
"What did that pathetic waste of a turn do to you?" Crowe demanded, stalking first left and then right, pacing in front of Damien, his gaze still heavy, despite the fact that Damien refused to lift his eyes.
Voice trembling in a way that he would probably feel shame for, later, Damien tried to say again, "I don't-"
"I KNOW YOU DON'T KNOW, YOU SNIVELLING WEAKLING!" Crowe shouted, clearly angry. He stalked back and forth in front of Damien twice more before snarling under his breath and walking away, leaving Damien pressed back against the wall, heart pounding, breath shuddering, somehow unharmed and yet terrified of what his next encounter might entail.
Cain had been right, Damien realized, despite how much he hated to admit it. He should have worked harder to avoid Crowe. But how could he really avoid Crowe if the man was actively seeking him out? He wasn't sure, but he made a firm mental note to never remove his anti-vampire amulet. Not until Cain was back, anyway.
-*-*-*-
"Damien," Grace said urgently, pulling him aside in the hallway the next morning, before he could get to the laundry, "What happened?"
Damien swallowed. "Um?"
"Everyone is saying that Mister Einhardt gave you some special protection against Crowe," she said. "He didn't, did he?"
"From Cain? No. I have the… you know," he said, pointedly not gesturing to his amulet in case someone was watching. He didn't see anyone, but after the incident from the previous evening, he was starting to feel paranoid. "But it's not from Cain." He wasn't sure why anyone would think Cain had given something to him. (Besides the shirts, but only Grace knew about those.) Had Crowe assumed that Cain gave it to him? Had he told his thrall, who told everyone else? He supposed that was how rumors had started flying around about him and Cain the first time. Crowe's thrall was the root of the rumor mill, as far as Damien was concerned.
"Whether it's from him or not," Grace said, waving the matter aside as if she hadn't been the one to ask Damien about it in the first place, "it's common knowledge that you have something to repel vampires."
"Not all vampires," Damien grumbled under his breath. He remembered how Cain had been perfectly capable of touching him, that it simply required patience. Cain had even made a point of telling him that if he figured out the secret, then Crowe would learn how to bypass the amulet, too. He really just needed to figure out how to avoid Crowe, as he suspected it wouldn't take the man long to find a similar solution to Cain's.
Grace's eyes narrowed. "Right," she said. "Mister Einhardt was able to pick you up and hold you. You do realize that just seems like a confirmation of the suspicion that he's the one that gave you something to keep other vampires away while he's gone, right?"
Damien sighed. "I guess I can understand why someone might think that," he admitted. "But that doesn't make it any more true."
"True or not," Grace said irritably, "It's just making you more enemies in the castle. Johann is absolutely beside himself."
"Oh no, whatever will I do, not talk to the thrall I literally only met yesterday?" Damien rolled his eyes. "I've never even seen Johann before, it can't be that hard to avoid him. Why should I care if he's upset about this or not?"
Grace didn't seem to appreciate Damien's annoyance any more than he was appreciating her paranoia. "Because Johann didn't have nearly as much of a reason to dislike you, before."
"And he does now?" Damien challenged.
"You've been very terrible at hiding your connection to Mister Einhardt," Grace replied, looking halfway like Dezzy did right before she punched him in the shoulder for being an idiot. "And he's jealous. Especially since he now thinks that Mister Einhardt is protecting you even when he's absent from the castle. He's never done that for any thrall before, no matter how much protection they needed."
So the pretty boy was jealous? Damien didn't see how that was his problem. "But it's not from Cain," he hissed, "and if I just say that-"
"Then you'd have to explain what it is and where it's actually from," Grace shot back. "Which would be even worse."
Damien had conveniently forgotten that not every thrall was as circumspect as Grace when it came to the anti-vampire amulet he wore. "...right." He sighed. "So what do you want me to do, exactly?"
"Don't go anywhere alone," Grace said firmly. "I'll try and keep an eye on you, and so will Ellen. I also asked Liam to check on you every now and then."
"What, do you think Johann is going to stab me or something?" Damien teased. "He's going to kill me and loot my body for any gifts Cain might have given me?"
The serious look on Grace's face made him reconsider his joke.
"He… he wouldn't do that," he said, but the sentence came out half-questioning, rather than the certainty he'd been aiming for.
"Probably not," Grace said. "But… Johann hasn't been well for a very long time."
Damien didn't know what she meant by that, so he pressed her for clarification. "How so?"
"He was Mister Einhardt's first thrall," she said. "His only thrall."
"I thought you said that Cain doesn't have thralls!" Damien protested, feeling somewhat betrayed and dismayed by this news.
"He doesn't," Grace insisted. "Not anymore. Johann wasn't Mister Einhardt's, not originally. But for about a year, Mister Einhardt fed exclusively from Johann, and then suddenly, he stopped." She pressed her lips together in a flat line. "I told you before," she said, "that thralls can be chosen by someone other than the vampire that turned them."
Damien nodded.
"And thralls feel connected to the vampire that feeds from them," she added.
"It's a connection that gets harder to break the more often you're fed from, or the more often you make eye contact," Damien nodded. "So… Johann still feels like he's Cain's thrall?"
"It's more than that," Grace said. "A thrall can begin to… crave the bite."
Damien shuddered. "Crave the bite?" he repeated. "So what… Johann feels like he needs to be bitten by Cain?"
"And he's violently jealous of the idea that someone else might be the one getting bitten," Grace explained. "Even if it isn't true, if he thinks it's true, he might do something… foolish."
Damien grimaced. "Great. So now it's not only the vampires I have to watch out for, but the thralls, too?"
"I warned you that some might get jealous of your connection to Mister Einhardt," Grace pointed out. "This is just… a lot worse than I expected, and a lot sooner than I anticipated."
Damien sighed. Things could never be easy, could they? At least he felt he'd probably manage all right, so long as he kept Liam or Grace around him when he wasn't working under Ellen's watchful eye. "Right. I'll do my best to be careful, then," he said. "Walk me to the laundry?"
Grace nodded. "Let's go."
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