Vincent Heartwood's Arc

Chapter 2 of 9

Vincent reached the window with the bottle warm against his chest. His hand rose to knock. Then it stopped. The elixir could hold a body together. It could not force a heart to say yes. He had never told the man what he was. If he bit him tonight, in secret, he would steal a choice that could not be given back. He turned from the glass and walked away. He went back to his grandfather's house instead. Morwen still sat by the candles, her rune-staff across her knees. She looked up when he came in, and her small mouth curled. "You didn't do it," she said. It wasn't a question. "I can't turn him while he sleeps," Vincent said. "He doesn't know I have fangs. He doesn't know any of it. If I change him now, he wakes up trapped by a lie." His grandfather rose from his chair. The candlelight caught his red eyes. "Now you learn wisdom," the old vampire said. "Better a coward at the window than a monster at the bed." "I'm not staying a coward," Vincent said. "I'm going to tell him the truth. Tonight. All of it." Morwen's staff tapped the floor. "Then he can refuse you. He can call you a liar and shut the door forever. You know that." "I know." Vincent's voice held steady. "But if he says yes, he says it as himself. Not as a body I tricked." His grandfather studied him a long moment. "Six hundred years," he said quietly, "and I never told the woman I loved before I turned her. She woke hating me. She never stopped." He looked at the fire. "Go. Tell your boy. Let him choose." Vincent left the potion on the table. He would not carry it back to the window like a weapon. He returned to the man's house and knocked, loud, three times. A light came on. The door opened. The man stood there in his sleep-shirt, blinking, confused, smiling to see him. Vincent did not soften it. He opened his mouth and let the fangs show in the porch light. He told him what he was. He told him the years would not touch him unless the man asked. He told him people died in the change, and that a witch had made something that might save him, and that none of it would happen without a yes. The man's smile fell. His face went white. He gripped the doorframe. For a long moment he said nothing at all. Then he stepped back inside. "I need to think," he said. His voice shook. "Give me until tomorrow." He shut the door softly. Vincent stood on the step. He had not been refused. He had not been accepted. He had told the truth, and now the choice was no longer his to make. He walked into the dark to wait for morning, and an answer he could not control.