Free After Dark (The Vampire Next Door Book 2) by Rose Titus Page A

the darker corner of the room, gazing at him as though he fascinated her. And he searched for something to say, anything, to wake her from her silent trancelike state.
    “So, what’s up, kid?” Not the most intelligent statement, he admitted to himself. But it was something.
    “You never finished it.”
    “Huh? Finished what?”
    “The story you started telling me.” Any excuse to spend a few hours with him, to just not be so alone.
    And she did not know why, but she enjoyed his company.
    “Tell me a story,” he smiled. “You sound just like a kid.”
    “Want me to go?”
    “No! It’s okay, come on. I’ll close this place up. Customers are just too bitchy tonight anyway.”
     
    “...and so the soldiers went out searching through the forests to hunt him down, to try and find the place where he hid during the day. Back then, it was common to have several places to hide, in case one was unfortunately found.”
    “To kill him?”
    “No. To capture him. Remember? To find a way to control him. They would want someone like him on their side when there was a fight, for example. Or they could use him to intimidate enemies.”
    “Oh. I see.” She strained her eyes to try to watch him in the kitchen. It was dark in there; but she listened. He seemed to be getting his food—that’s what he called it. She wished he would come back out to be in the same room with her again.
    “But they could not find him, for that day he remained safe in the home of his girlfriend and her father, one of the few homes not yet burned to the ground.”
    “Oh.” She grew more interested now. “You didn’t tell me he had a girlfriend.”
    “Well, yes. He brought the family meat from the deer he killed, caught the fox that killed their geese, and the girl’s father had no big hang ups about him hanging around either, so basically, he let him hang around. Perhaps the girl’s father believed she would actually be better off with him than with any other guy. After all, he could read, and most people then could not. He had slightly better clothes, inherited a small amount of money, though he was not truly wealthy. However some of the peasants believed he was once a powerful baron himself, who had lost his lands and castle because of an ancient war. But it was not true at all.”
    “Are you quite sure?” She interrupted him when he slowly emerged from the darkness and returned to the room and sat across from her. “I mean, perhaps he was a count, or something, and lived all alone in his dark castle.”
    “With bats flying all around, right? No. He didn’t. And I am telling this story, not you. Okay? He just had a little three room place in the woods, with a thatched roof, or something primitive like that, and a stable for his horse, and kept a few sheep if hunting wasn’t too good. That was it. No castle.”
    “You didn’t even tell me his name!” She whined.
    “Pavel,” he answered simply.
    “That’s an unusual name.”
    “No. It’s not. It’s Russian. And so he was deeply in love with Yelena, the farmer’s daughter. Because he was good to the family they hid him, and when they butchered a lamb they would give him the blood, as people once did, thousands of years before written history began. The simple people remembered the old ways, and they were only doing as their ancestors had done. They shielded him from the day’s brightness and let him stay by their fire during the cold nights. He remained there for three nights, as the people of the village regarded him with a mixture of fear and awe, yet the family treated him as a guest. But they were betrayed by a neighbor who wanted Pavel out of the village. Soldiers came and hauled him off. And he did not resist because he did not want to cause the nice family any trouble. He was then tossed into a dungeon, filled with rats, of course, and smelling of the filth of the miserable souls that dwelled within.”
    “That’s awful! That’s an awful way to end a story,