A Vampire’s Guide to History: Chapter Four

Gavin had been staring at Patrick’s mouth for nearly a minute, a glazed expression on his face as if there wasn’t a single thought moving through his brain. When his upper lip raised in a silent snarl, as if that was somehow going to produce the fangs both he and Patrick had concluded were missing from the scenario, Patrick threw his hands in the air, sinking back on the worn sofa of Gavin’s rental flat.

Gavin made some extra money on the side on cards as he’d always had a knack, even at a young age, which was how he could afford his current abode. It was nothing fancy but he loved to rub it in that he had a home and Patrick had a walk-in closet with furniture that could probably tell a tale or two.

Not that Gavin’s furniture couldn’t do the same if given the chance.

Patrick lifted his hands off the corduroy, placing them gingerly on his lap instead as he willed away any thought of what the sofa might have been forced to bear witness to. Poor thing. He couldn’t keep a glare down at his friend proving surprisingly useless. He was typically the one brimming with ideas whenever they were faced with a new scenario.

”What?” Gavin asked, eyebrows raised.

”What?” Patrick parroted. ”You were supposed to help me, Obi-wan. You’re my only hope.”

”Don’t bring the Wars into this, okay?” Gavin denounced, getting to his feet. ”It’s a sci-fi epic romance space opera. It’s a completely different genre to whatever,” he gestured to Patrick, ”this is.”

Patrick’s mouth fell open in pure disgust. Gavin immediately looked remorseful, adding a quiet apology and slapping himself on the top of the hand that had made the gesture. Patrick couldn’t keep a smile down. Gavin’s remorse turned to a sympathetic frown.

”I mean, what the fuck,” Gavin offered.

Patrick nodded. Even if Gavin wasn’t able to offer up a river of answers, at least he wasn’t drowning Patrick in questions either. The acceptance of Patrick’s retelling of the series of deeply unfortunate events that had brought him from the pub to Gavin’s sofa highlighted the foundation of their friendship: they didn’t bullshit. Gavin had no reason not to take Patrick at his word, no matter how outrageous that word might seem.

It made Patrick feel steadier. He’d been able to open up and share the fucked-up-edness of his situation without barely pausing or stumbling once. He wished he could’ve done the same for Sally. The guilt washed over him but he couldn’t make room for it just yet. He clenched his fists lightly against it, sending Sally a wordless apology hoping somehow she’d feel how sorry he was. He could swear he could feel her sometimes, like a thread was stretching taut between them whenever they thought of each other at the same moment, and his heart ballooned in ways only she could fill it.

”You’re thinking about Sally,” Gavin observed. ”She’ll get over it.”

Patrick raised his eyebrows high, giving a light scoff. ”The vampire thing?” he asked.

”Oh, yeah, no, I meant the biting thing,” Gavin said. ”The vampire thing might take a bit of adjustment.”

”You think?” Patrick rubbed his hands across his face. ”What the hell do I do? Like, I’m not starving. Is that weird? Shouldn’t I be feeling… thirstier, or something? Like I want to…”

He couldn’t bring himself of say the word ’hunt’.

”Did you Google it?” Gavin asked.

Patrick paused, wanting to question the suggestion but finding himself unable to.

It wasn’t a bad idea. It wasn’t one of those out-of-the-box ones that he’d expected from his friend but perhaps this black hole he was toeing only appeared daunting because he was overcomplicating it. Maybe falling in didn’t mean disintegration but discovery.

A few minutes later and Gavin was typing into the search bar, Patrick standing over his shoulder, slight frown on.

”’Are vampires always hungry?’” he asked, skeptical.

Gavin shrugged, hitting the search button and Google immediately spat out results that all basically said yes, vampires were always hungry because vampirism was a curse and the hunger or thirst or both was part of it no matter how you twisted it.

Patrick realized he knew very little about vampirism.

Or the lore surrounding it, anyway.

He’d read Interview with the Vampire as a young teen but his indulging in any land of the undead hadn’t extended much further than Lestat’s immortality mania. He knew Dracula was a famous one and that vampirism was linked to bats and creatures howling at night and other markedly Halloween linked themes but now he was staring at Reddit threads discussing all sorts of sordid details he never would’ve even thought to contemplate before having to wonder if they could be applicable to his plight.

Or was plight even the right word? Plight implied this was something to be found a solution to and to be gotten out of. As far as he could tell the only solution was to force his own body into sunlight and perish in fire. Would a stake work?

But he didn't want to die.

He was dead already so he supposed he didn’t want to die-die.

Was he dead?

He pressed his fingers to the side of his neck, catching Gavin turning his head to him, a look of wonderment crossing his face. ”You haven’t done that already?” Gavin asked.

”I don’t know,” Patrick muttered. ”It’s hard to tell. Your fingertips have a pulse, kind of.”

Gavin got to his feet, pressing his entire hand against Patrick’s neck and holding it there firmly for a few seconds before releasing him, nodding. ”So does your palm, seems like,” he said, a lopsided smirk on his face that made Patrick smack him on the shoulder.

”And this is a dead end,” he said, ignoring the pun.

”Yeah, but you did feel hungry, right?” Gavin remarked. ”That’s why you bit Sally.”

Patrick didn’t want to think about it but knew there was no way around it. Why had he bit her? Like he’d observed before, he’d felt a sort of compulsion to taste her. It hadn’t been thirst, it had been more a desire to… To what? It hadn’t even been about the blood or having it on his tongue. She’d been right there, her skin had been soft, her scent had been all over his senses and then he’d just bit down. It had felt natural. Thinking about it now, the simplicity of it was eerie. As though he’d done it before when he’d never once been violent with her like that. Or with anyone else, for that matter.

He didn’t feel different but everything about him was different now.

He should be hyperventilating but his chest was still like a grave on Sunday morning.

No movement, no breath.

He placed his hand at the place of his heart, the reality of it having stopped beating setting in like a blow to the side of the head. His ears were ringing from it. He leaned forward heavily on one knee while pressing into his chest, his hand clenching.

He wasn’t human anymore.

”Oh, bullocks. You okay?” Gavin asked, getting to his feet again, this time to offer support as he propped Patrick up as best as he could. ”Hey, you’re alright,” Gavin reassured, ushering Patrick onto the chair he’d just gotten up from.

”I have to find the guy who did this to me,” Patrick said, voice strangled with the urgency of it. ”He left a note.”

”A romantic.”

Patrick glared at his friend but was grateful for his hands on either of his shoulder and the unwavering way he was looking at him, gentle concern on his face. Gavin nodded his agreement that they had to find Victor. ”I mean, it’s a good idea. Find the man responsible and all that.” Gavin said. ”But maybe you should make sure you eat something first?”

Patrick could tell he almost said ’someone’ and wished it would’ve made him feel sick but there was no bodily reaction to the thought at all. There was no yearning either. Perhaps he only had to feed if he chose to, if he was seduced to, the way being near Sally had seduced him. Perhaps this really was freedom. Except for the being locked in his room all day.

”I don’t even know if I need to eat,” Patrick said. ”I breathed in some blood droplets. Maybe that was enough.”

Gavin made a face that reminded Patrick of how he’d felt when he thought of the history of the piece of furniture he’d been occupying, mouth and nose scrunched, and mirrored the expression because what the fuck?

”Weird topic of conversation, man,” Gavin said.

”Yeah,” Patrick agreed, rising to his feet.

”Why don’t you call your dad?” Gavin asked. ”The Hartford always knows what to do. And he’s a doctor. It’s like fate or something.”

”How’s that?” Patrick asked.

”Your dad studied life and death and here you are the living dead!” Gavin exclaimed, clapping his hands together once as though this was the brilliant suggestion Patrick had come to him for.

To call his father.

”I can’t call him,” Patrick said. ”Of course I can’t bloody call him. Do you realize what this will do to my mother?”

Gavin opened his mouth as if to say something but closed it again. ”She does take God pretty seriously.”

”And Jesus. And Mary. And Joseph,” Patrick agreed.

”And all the saints,” Gavin added.

”Amen,” the said in one voice, crossing themselves.

Neither of them had caught the faith bug no matter how Marianne Hartford had applied her efforts, doting and devoted as she had been. She had tried to lead by setting a good example and encouraging them to learn on their own, to question, to see the church as a space open for community and togetherness. Patrick had found it difficult to look beyond the sordid past of the church itself with its inquisitions and witch hunts and general tendency to look between its fingers whenever the misconduct was being done by someone tied to its hallowed halls. Gavin had never had any interest in the religious or in the esoteric since he could as a thousand questions and never get a proper answer to them. He’d found it all rather unimpressive and fairly dull.

”You could lean on the resurrection,” Gavin suggested tentatively. ”If your mother wanted proof that Jesus got up and walked out of that cave, all she has to do is look at you.”

”Jesus was alive when he walked out of the cave, though,” Patrick said. ”That’s kind of the whole point. She’d think I’m some kind of abomination. Fuck. I’m never going to be able to tell them. I won’t age. In ten years I’ll have to start making up excuses. In twenty years I’ll probably have to fake my death or something.”

”Now that’d really kill ’em,” Gavin remarked.

Patrick pinched his lips together at the very thought.

”I didn’t choose this,” he said. ”It isn’t fucking fair.”

For the first time his lower lip wobbled but he sucked the tears back down even though he knew he didn’t have to in front of Gavin.

”Okay, mate,” Gavin said, matter-of factly, leaving one hand to squeeze Patrick’s shoulder, ”we take this one step at a time. Do you feel like biting me?”

Patrick unclenched against his heart a little as he could conclude that he really didn’t.

”No,” he answered.

Gavin nodded, giving one final squeeze before grabbing the laptop and pulling up a chair to face him, asking after a little bit of scrolling, ”On your way here did you pass any type of pet or animal and, if so, did you feel like biting them?”

Patrick scrunched his nose. ”What, like a dog? No, I didn’t feel like biting any dogs. Or cats.”

”Birds?” Gavin asked. ”Squirrels? Some wayward rabbit?”

”A rabbit in Oxford?” Patrick asked.

”I said ’wayward’,” Gavin remarked.

”No, I’ve felt no desire to bite any other living thing apart from my girlfriend who now no longer trusts me and will dump me and grow to hate me for all the years she’s wasted on me. I bet she’ll start dating some ass-wipe like Larry the Astrologer too.”

”Fuck Larry the Astrologer,” Gavin said with emphasis.

”’You work too hard, don’t you? Classic Capricorn.’ Fuck off,” Patrick agreed.

”Fuck off,” Gavin repeated, shaking his head. ”Sally won’t dump you,” he added. ”She loves you.”

Patrick remembered the look in her eyes too vividly to hope that was still true. He wished the floor would splinter so that he could fall to where the ground might swallow him whole, but despair had never done anyone any good so he smacked the emotion away and focused on what might actually do him some good: finding Victor.

”All I have is that note,” he murmured. Gavin raised his eyebrows and he added, ”From Victor.”

”The…?” Gavin gestured to his neck area and Patrick assumed he meant the question to be regarding the biting he must’ve suffered, and he nodded, one of his hands sliding up and over his neck as if searching for the bite marks he already knew weren’t there.

Did that mean that he at the very least could heal instantly? Or had he never been bitten? Was a bite not how vampire’s were created?

No answers, only questions.

There was overwhelm still sneaking around the outskirts of his mind. He’d seen all the possibilities lying on his bed with his entire life pouring itself into his head like a dream suddenly remembered in vivid detail. There had been hope when immortality itself seemed to fold itself around him like origami that he just needed to learn the trick of and he’d be able to choose its shape for himself. But the plain truth was that he was fumbling in the dark for a light switch that he knew wouldn’t work anyway because he wasn’t the one who could shed any light here.

Victor was.

The absolute dick.

”And you don’t remember anything at all from the accident?” Gavin asked.

Patrick thought for a moment, then shook his head, a small furrow between his brows as it was a strange fact to remember everything that had ever happened except for the most important thing. Perhaps no vampire was granted the memory of their death, though. Perhaps it was a sacrifice that had to be made. Oddly enough it made sense to him. Nothing in life was free, was it? Win one thing—lose another.

”What if my metabolism is on some kind of clock?” Patrick asked. ”Like how I wasn’t able to leave the room during daytime. Maybe hunger will just kick in at a specific time of night and I’ll have to… eat.”

”Drink?” Gavin suggested helpfully.

”Whatever. I might be dangerous, Gav,” Patrick said earnestly.

Gavin didn’t flinch, then shrugged, like there were worse things in the world than the possibility of being attacked by your closest mate. Patrick couldn’t keep the smile down, shaking his head at him. It was Gavin’s best trait. He went with the flow no matter where it might take him. Patrick had never been like that; wouldn’t even know where to start.

”This whole thing is a serious inconvenience,” Patrick said, resting his head in his hands as he leaned forward, elbows on his knees.

Gavin patted him gently on the back, then began smattering away on the laptop keyboard. They were quiet for a handful of minutes, Patrick trying to empty his head of the gloom that was spreading until Gavin said: ”We go to hospital.”

Patrick raised his head to look at his friend. He was holding the laptop up to show the page he was on: John Radcliffe Hospital. Patrick shook his head slowly while Gavin started nodding.

”Don’t you see?” he asked. ”There’ll be blood all over the place. We might even be able to break into the blood bank.”

”How?” Patrick asked. ”We’re not mastermind criminals. Remember when we tried to break into your dad’s toolbox to repair the drone before he could see you’d smashed it?”

Gavin got a far-off look in his eyes. ”Oh, yeah,” he murmured. ”That was a bad day.”

”It really was,” Patrick said. ”How the hell are we going to break into a secured part of a hospital?”

Gavin pursed his lips. ”I don’t know,” he admitted. ”We’ll think of something. We’ll cry, if we have to. Hell, we’ll beg, if it comes to that. Let’s go. Right now. What do you say?”

Patrick wanted to have a counter argument that was a bit heftier than we got yelled at by your dad, but he didn’t. He couldn’t see any other solution.

”Do you want to go round the park instead?” Gavin prodded. ”See if there’s anyone out strolling all alone that’ll make for an easy mark?”

”Emphatically no,” Patrick said, getting to his feet. ”We’re going to hospital.”

Gavin rose as well, a broad smile on his face. Patrick knew why it was there. Because Gavin was on Patrick’s side but he needed Patrick to take the lead on how to deal with this inconvenience. If Patrick had decided to curl up in a ball until the moment he might get violent then Gavin would’ve had to take the lead and Gavin didn’t want that responsibility. Not when it might mean that he’d have to tie Patrick to the bed. Or worse.

Patrick didn’t want to consider that.

He was going to find a bag of blood if it was the last thing he ever did.

Which, given the circumstances, was highly unlikely.