Chapter Text
“I am all in a sea of wonders. I doubt; I fear; I think strange things, which I dare not confess to my own soul.” ― Bram Stoker, Dracula
There was a brief moment where Guillermo had thought himself to be an expert familiar. After a decade of service, it seemed natural to him that he had mastered the trade. Guillermo could keep the household running efficiently while navigating the mercurial moods of the resident vampires and still ensure that the property taxes were timely paid without skipping a beat. And with increasing regularity, Guillermo had personally saved Nandor and the others from death itself. If any familiar had the right to be called an expert, Guillermo reasoned, it was him.
Not that Guillermo really knew many other familiars. He never really made a habit of socializing with them. He never really seemed to fit in. Actually, Guillermo never really fit in with anyone, but it was a terribly abrupt feeling to realize that even among his fellow familiars, they all had nothing in common. Like when he would miss a step walking down the stairs and it’s as if the world rushed up to meet him. It had been distinctly unsettling.
And it wasn’t as if Guillermo didn’t try to get along with them. They just had nothing in common. A lot of familiars were on drugs. Others were so openly resentful of their vampiric masters that Guillermo couldn’t believe any self-respecting vampire would put up with it. But he supposed most vampires never really paid attention to humans outside their availability as a ready food source. And familiars garnered even less attention than regular humans. Although when they did get some attention from vampires, that attention was invariably negative and quite often fatal. So on reflection, Guillermo supposed the resentful familiars weren’t going to last long, and it was a relief that he wouldn’t have to deal with too many of them.
But those types of familiars, as distasteful as Guillermo found them, were manageable to deal with. No, the familiars that Guillermo could not stand, the ones that really set his teeth on edge, were those familiars who got a little too familiar. Or tried to, anyway. Guillermo had never met a familiar who seemed able to pull it off. But Guillermo had met an alarming number of familiars who seemed very keen on living out a sort of bride of Dracula fantasy, and the thought of it turned his stomach. It was a pathetic and delusional thing, to chase after the idea that any vampire would have so little self-respect that they would—well, do anything with a familiar. It just wasn’t done.
So Guillermo really didn’t pay much mind to what other familiars got up to. He just wasn’t interested.
And then, predictably, Laszlo ruined everything. Laszlo had mentioned it offhand, flippant gossip that struck Guillermo like a slap to the face. Guillermo was cleaning while Laszlo and Nadja lounged. Nandor was off feeding somewhere. Guillermo never made a habit of listening to Laszlo and Nadja; their conversations were explicitly pornographic and bizarrely sentimental in a way that made Guillermo both uncomfortable and a little sad. But at the mention of a scandal he perked up. He always did like a bit of gossip.
“I do have a treat for you, my darling,” Laszlo drawled. “A real peach of a scandal. Top-shelf stuff.”
“Oh, Laszlo,” Nadja answered. There was a low, breathy quality to her voice that Guillermo always found exceptionally irritating. “Don’t keep me waiting. What is it?”
“Word around the watering hole has it that Laurence the Lustful has taken up with that ripe little familiar of his.”
Bullshit, Guillermo thought. He felt his face heat up. He tried to focus on his dusting.
“No!” Nadja shrieked with delight. “You are pulling my legs!”
“As much as I love pulling and parting your silky-smooth legs, I am assuredly not doing so in this instant,” Laszlo said. “I’ve had it from a reliable source that Laurence and his familiar were caught in flagrante delicto at some club or another. Apparently they’ve been an item for quite some time.”
Nadja barked out a laugh. “How absolutely revolting! But you know, he always did seem the type.”
“I agree, my darkest princess. He was never really invested in the bi-annual vampiric orgy.”
“I do understand the urge to sample a human from time to time,” Nadja said. “I do, really, but to be exclusive with a human, and worse, a familiar—it is a feeble brain that wants such a thing.”
“There’s no propriety in it. As a gentlemen I would of course give the servants a good rodgering from time to time, just to keep them on their toes, so to speak.”
“Of course,” Nadja agreed.
“But there’s a real difference between romancing a servant and fucking one. And what is a familiar if not a perpetual servant? No, my dear, it just doesn’t seem the appropriate thing to shack up with a familiar. Call me old-fashioned, but that’s just the way it is.”
“I agree with you, my darling, I really do.” Nadja shifted on the chaise longue. “Do you remember that boy, in the eighteen-eighties?”
“I remember a lot of boys in the eighteen-eighties,” Laszlo said, grinning.
Nadja laughed loudly. “Not one of yours, darling,” she said. “The one who lived here. Nandor’s familiar.”
“Oh, him.” Laszlo waived his hand dismissively. “Yes, I quite remember him. That’s exactly the sort of thing I was talking about. That whole affair just didn’t sit right with me. Honestly I don’t know what Nandor was thinking.”
“I know what he was thinking,” Nadja said. Her dark eyes flashed.
There was a sort of buzzing in Guillermo’s ears. He felt the duster slip from his fingers and clatter noisily on the floor.
Nadja and Laszlo whipped around to gape at him. “How long have you been standing there, eavesdropping on our private conversation?” she demanded. “Such cheek you have! You terrible cheeky boy!”
“Really, Gizmo, you’re being very rude,” Laszlo said.
“I’m sorry,” Guillermo said, “but please, can you just—can I just ask, what are you talking about, exactly?” There was a panicked edge in his voice that he could not control. “What happened with Nandor’s old familiar?”
“He died, of course,” Laszlo said. He rolled his eyes. “Honestly, what you don’t know could fill a very long and very ridiculous book.”
“I know he died—”
“You cannot know such a thing,” Nadja interrupted. “You were not there.”
“No, you weren’t there, I’d have remembered that.” Laszlo turned his attention back to Nadja. “Now that you’ve brought it up, I do recall it was a rather scandalous affair.”
“Please,” Guillermo said, his voice nearly cracking, “please tell me what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, darling, let me tell him,” Nadja purred.
Laszlo smiled fondly at his wife. “You know I cannot refuse you anything. Go ahead, my dear.”
From the chaise longue Nadja sat up straighter, turning her full attention to Guillermo. For Nadja to give Guillermo any manner of true focus devoid of open hostility was such a rare thing that it gave the encounter a distinctly unreal quality. With the fire crackling behind her and the dim lighting of the room, there was almost a dreamlike feel.
“For a brief time in the eighteen-eighties there was a boy here called John.” Her eyes glittered, dark and beetle-like. “He was small and quiet, and when I touched his face, he would look away.” Suddenly she reached forward, her cold hand stroking Guillermo’s cheek. Guillermo turned his face as if he’d been burned, swallowing hard. Dimly, he was aware of Laszlo laughing.
“Like that,” Nadja said. Her voice was very soft. “I always liked that.” She pulled her hand back. “John was a pathetic boy. Laszlo and I thought Nandor had brought him back to be eaten. He was so timid, and his smell was so virginal. Truly virginal, I mean.”
“There’s different kinds of…of virginal?”
“Oh, yes,” Laszlo interrupted. “John’s virginity clung to him like a marital shroud. There was a heated sort of self-repression there that would absolutely permeate a room.” He shifted a bit in his chair. “I’m a little hard just thinking about it.”
“He would have tasted sublime,” Nadja breathed. “They don’t make virgins like that anymore.”
“But we never got a taste,” Laszlo said. “Nandor got there first, the prick.”
Guillermo felt his hands clench.
“Laszlo, please,” Nadja said. “I’m telling the story.” She fixed her gaze on Guillermo. “As I was saying, John lived here as Nandor’s familiar, and his delicious virginity infested the house. You simply could not escape the smell of it. Until one day, when Laszlo and I awoke and the smell was just—,” and here she lifted her hands, as if invisible tendrils of smoke were wafting away, “gone.”
“Gone?”
“Completely gone. So of course we thought, well, there goes poor little John. Off to meet his maker. Time to find a new familiar.” She leaned forward conspiratorially. “But then we saw John that very same night, and we could smell Nandor all over him. And so the cat was out of the bag.”
Guillermo felt very hot. “What happened then?”
“Oh, it was terrible,” Nadja said. “We were finding them together all over the house. And Nandor was like a big selfish baby refusing to share his favorite chicken bone, he would not even give us a single taste of the boy.”
“There was a great deal of sexual frustration in the house, I can tell you that,” Laszlo added.
“Yes. And it went on and on for years.”
“What happened to John?”
“I told you already, he died. We were there,” Nadja said.
Laszlo sighed. “Nandor didn’t take it well at all, poor chap.”
“How could he?” Nadja said. “It was his fault.”
“What do you mean?” Guillermo asked.
“I mean that Nandor killed him,” Nadja said. “Snapped his neck. But what do you expect, galivanting around with humans? They can never keep up with vampires.”
“The whole affair turned old Nandor off of sex for at least, what was it, fifty years? Sixty?”
“At least sixty,” Nadja answered. “And he hasn’t taken another human to bed at all.”
The front door slammed open and shut with a tremendous thud. Guillermo jumped. Nandor.
“Right, this conversation has gone on long enough,” Laszlo said quickly, eyeing the hallway. “Gizmo, bugger off if you know what’s good for you.”
Guillermo didn’t need to be told twice. He scurried off back to his room as fast as his legs could carry him. He couldn’t face running into Nandor. Not now, not while Nadja’s sultry voice was still ringing in his ears. We could smell Nandor all over him.
Guillermo threw back the curtain to his room and collapsed into his bed, groaning. This sort of thing was absolutely none of his business. It didn’t matter who Nandor brought to bed. Brought to coffin, rather. But he rarely brings anyone to bed, Guillermo thought, in spite of himself. And they never stay. In the ten years that Guillermo had served his Master, Guillermo had witnessed a handful of Nandor’s truly abysmal attempts at seduction, and he could count on one hand the number of times that Nandor was ever able to convince a vampire to spend the night. Guillermo was invariably the one to clean it all up, so it’s not as if Nandor was in any way discreet. But Guillermo had never seen any of Nandor’s vampiric conquests make a reappearance at the house.
Maybe, said a nasty little voice in Guillermo’s head, it’s not vampires that do it for him.
“Oh fuck me,” Guillermo hissed. He pressed his fists, white-knuckled, into the sockets of his eyes, focusing on the pressure there to distract him from the throbbing between his legs. So what if Nandor fucked humans occasionally? If he preferred it, even? It was none of Guillermo’s business, and it’s not as if Guillermo was anything approaching Nandor’s type.
Not that it mattered if Nandor had a type.
“God damn it,” he groaned. Guillermo was resolutely determined that he would never be one of those familiars mooning after some unobtainable vampire. It was a self-destructive lust that catapulted past masochistic yearning into the realm of suicidal infatuation. Vampires were dangerous. Vampiric strength was alluring of course, and Guillermo wanted it for himself, but to be subjected to it—to think of what happened to John—
To be at the mercy of that brutal strength did not bear thinking about. To have a vampire’s large, cold hands gripping you, knowing that the barest flex of those fingers could pierce the thin membrane of skin and bury themselves inside the meat of you, and you would be helpless to stop it, and the wet crunch of bone and skin colliding would ring in your ears—
Guillermo felt his cock pulse. He didn’t know if he wanted to throw up or rut against the sheets.
Don’t think about it. Guillermo gritted his teeth and finally took himself in hand. Don’t think about it. He stroked himself quickly, as a means to an end. His eyes were screwed shut. He thought of large pale hands and dark hair, of hot blood streaming out of his neck and down the long white column of a powerful throat, and when he came it wrenched from him like a pale nameless creature leaving a cave for the first time in some hazy primordial world. There was a horrible trepidation, like he’d passed a threshold without knowing it. Like someone walking on his grave.