I dove down deep into your psyche, turning over every word you gave me like a jewel. Looking for meaning, seeking out the mysteries of you. I didn’t care if I lost myself in the process. I wanted to be brought by the hand into your world and disappear into your kiss until us two could no longer be told apart.
You turned a strong-minded girl into a pulsing wound of need.
I never knew the meaning of the word enthralled before you.
Our first visitor to the home was our last, and although it still feels like treachery, I can’t help but admit that I still think fondly on our young harbinger of doom. Maybe it was because I hadn’t spoken to another person in decades, possibly even a century by then. I had grown starved for the sound of a human voice that wasn’t just the gargled screams of the victims you brought home to teach me how to kill. By then, I was better acquainted with the jugular vein, the forearm’s tender ulnar river, and the beckoning femoral artery hidden in the soft cushion of a thigh than I was with pleasant conversation.
That’s why I was so startled by the knock on our door that came one heady summer evening. The sun had barely set and I was still sleep-grogged, but I pulled on my dressing gown over my chemise and hurried down the main stairs. You were nowhere to be found, so I stepped into my role as mistress of the house and opened the door.
He shuffled into the dim of our home, a figure wrapped in stiff oilcloth. The hem of his robes dragged along the floor, smearing dirt through the entryway. Most notably, he wore an eerie mask under his wide-brimmed black hat, long-beaked in the Italian style and battered as though it had been dragged through a warzone.
“Can I help you?” I asked, unsure of what else to say. He was neither pilgrim nor beggar, and certainly not anyone from the village below. He smelled of strange waters, drying herbs, and the slow rot of disease. The scent of sickness quickened my heartbeat, inflaming a deep-rooted self-preservation instinct. Vampires learned to fear the smell of infection early on in their second lives, to keep them away from meals that might putrefy the stomach. We don’t die of disease, but infected blood makes for foul meals.
The stranger inclined his head at me politely.
“I seek the lord of this house, my lady.”
“He is not available.”
The words were an easy, set script you set out for me early in our marriage. I was to turn all unexpected visitors away. No questions asked.
“I’m afraid my business is very urgent. Please.”
Your voice filled the empty space of the hall, commanding without needing to be raised.
“He’s permitted, Constanta.”
I turned to see you at the top of the stairs, tall and beautiful and terrible. I was always most impressed with you when I saw you through the eyes of others, beholding you as though it was the first time. You descended the stone steps with a painful, slow deliberateness, not speaking until you came to a stop right in front of the visitor.
“Speak,” you said.
The stranger bowed at the waist, polite but perfunctory. He was used to dealing with gentry, but also used to haste.
“My lord, I’ve come on a matter of great urgency. I am a physician of—”
“Take that off,” you said, gesturing to his mask. “If you’re going to address me, do it properly.”
The stranger faltered, hand raising partway to his face before dropping again.
“Sire, it is a protection against sickness, a tool of my trade. It keeps away the miasma.”
“There is no miasma in this house, nor any sickness. Do either of us look sick to you? We’re the only ones here. Take it off.”
The doctor hesitated, but he did as he was told, unfastening the leather straps that held the mask in place. It came away in his hands, showing that the beak was full of dried flowers. Little bits of mint, lavender, and carnation spilled around his boots.
He was younger than I had guessed, bright-eyed and ruddy with cheeks that still had the fullness of childhood on them. He couldn’t have been more than twenty, with curls of brown hair that wanted for a trim. Were it not for the determined look in his eyes and the bruised shadows beneath them, he would have looked perfectly cherubic.
The sharp sweetness of lavender wafted over to me, along with the enticing spice of his blood, heightened without the mask to protect him. You undoubtedly ordered him to speak to you barefaced to assert your power, but also because it would be easier to snap his neck this way, or dig your teeth into his tender throat.
“I am a physician of the body, trained in Rome and dispatched to Bucharest,” he said, voice a little quieter now that he was face to face with you. He had to look up to speak. “I have served in fine houses and in the hovels of the least fortunate, diagnosing illness and administering medicine.”