pointless, existence. My life began and ended with Porcia. Amor meus. My love.
A horn blared on the road below, a human yelling about using indicators, each word is clear as a bell to my sensitive ears. Our townhouse in Spitalfields was noisier than our country estate, but it was conveniently close to Porcia’s apartment and club in Shoreditch. If Louis found the commotion of central London irritating, he’d never brought it up. He had lusted after Porcia for 1500 years less than I had, but I was confident his devotion ran as deep as mine. She had that effect on others, whether she wanted to or not.
If London was where Porcia was, London was where we would be. That was an indisputable fact. She’d lived out many lifetimes here over the centuries. It was one of her favorite places.
I sat up in my bed, propped up against the pillows, and swiped my phone from the bedside table. 24 November. It was the anniversary of when I’d discovered Louis in 1347, recently turned and in the throes of bloodlust. Each year he jokingly referred to it as our anniversary, since we’d been together ever since.
Louis was tenacious. When I’d found him, he had been crawling through a ditch in Saint-Andiol, desperate to find drinkable blood. He’d been abandoned by his sire who had been on a hunger-fueled rampage through southern France, turning victims of the Black Death. Those were dark days, when finding a healthy human to drink from had been almost impossible. I remembered the hunger acutely. Sending healthy humans to Porcia first, then taking what was left to sustain myself.
As desperate as things had been, I’d never succumb to the temptation to turn anyone else as many of my peers did in those days. They would get carried away, high off a feed after coming so close to death, reveling in the thrill of siring new “life”. Turning them was one thing, but they rarely stuck around for the painful part of the transition or the subsequent bloodlust their “progeny” suffered from.
I did not consider myself a compassionate man. At the time, I cared for no one except Porcia. But it must have been fate intervening because leaving Louis to suffer, alone and vulnerable, had been intolerable to me. He’d reminded me of the younger slaves I’d helped care for and defended in my mortal life. So, rather than kill him like I’d done with every other revenant turned in that spree, I took him back to my cottage in Cavaillon for him to finish his transition safely. I taught him how to feed responsibly, and gave him time to mourn the life that had been stolen from him.
He’d never left. It was a fact I was grateful for now, though I was simultaneously grateful that I’d acquired no other strays over the centuries.
We were due to feed tonight, perhaps we could make it a celebratory occasion. Pick up a couple of women to enjoy the night with. Louis’ teasing label of it as our ‘anniversary’ depressingly wasn’t wrong. We were like a married couple, without the sex.
I pulled up a news site on my screen, curious to see if any new disappearances had been reported during the day. There had been an unusual rate of humans vanishing over the last month since we’d got back from a trip to New Orleans to keep watch over Porcia. It was only a four-day trip. Generally our territory, five miles or so around our home, would have been safe from poachers in that time. The scent of our venom would have lingered anywhere we’d fed or fucked. If the disappearances were courtesy of a revenant, they hadn’t encroached close enough for us to worry yet, but I took no chances with Porcia’s safety.
Female revenants were rare. Ones as ancient as Porcia were non-existent.
Even if that wasn’t the case, I loved her. I would never let any harm come to her.
My attention snagged on a news article about another disappearance. It had only just occurred last night. The man had been out drinking with his mates. Mysteriously disappeared. His friends were talking to the media, concerned the police weren’t yet treating it as suspicious. The guy had been drunk and was known for all-night benders, but his friends knew something was wrong.
It was the eighth such case within a month, so far as I could tell. They weren’t on our territory, or Porcia’s, but they were uncomfortably close.