Chauvelin was quick to realize both things upon Monsieur and Mademoiselle Meaux’s next visit. He had been standing on the beach, watching an osprey, when he heard Jacqueline come from behind him. He spun around suddenly to face her, and caught her in his embrace as she raced across the short distance to him. That was the beginning of their love affair.
He wasn’t wholly surprised to find that his emotions toward her had not changed after the first night. He still felt like she was only a friend, a good, sweet friend. Nothing more. And she felt the exact same way, which was how it ought to be. They were vampires; their purpose in love making was not to create bonds, it was merely to share with each other the earthly pleasures they were given. The affair lasted not quite two years, before they both respectfully decided that there was nothing left in it. Feeling no emotion beyond that of a friendly bond, more like siblings than like lovers, he had told her that while he enjoyed the time spent with her, it was growing old. She agreed, and was relieved to be allowed to scope out other lovers without fear of retribution.
It was brief, orderly, formal, polite, and not quite passionate. That’s how things are among vampires.
And so, time passed in Dieppe. Chauvelin grew, until he was becoming a first rate vampire. He hunted alone now, he had had many more lovers, he had seduced many more women. Just past his fiftieth birthday, he had hit adolescence, and had lately been moody, feeling like an animal trapped in a cage, both physically and mentally. Bouquet noted this not without a bit of a heavy heart. Still, he’d known the day would come. It was time to advance the protégé’s training.
This direction was given noiselessly: Chauvelin was hiding in an alley way, mentally dictating to a waitress in the tavern to leave and come to him. It was working, as always. In a trance, she was doing as he said.
“Good girl. Just a little farther, that’s right. Now-”
The command was interrupted, the girl broke out of her daze. Startled, frightened, she looked around her, wondering what she was doing outside in the dead of night.
“Armand, there you are.” Bouquet had found his young “son,” and, in speaking to him, ruined his concentration. Chauvelin’s eyes had been closed, and they snapped open, irritated.
“What is it?” he demanded. “I’m kinda in the middle of something.”
Bouquet rolled his eyes. “I told you not to go wandering off. We were going to leave soon!”
“I didn’t go wandering off. I’ve been in this alley way the entire time, waiting.”
“Don’t be cheeky,” sighed Bouquet. “I had your trunks loaded on to the carriage. Come on, let’s go.”
Chauvelin did not follow his instructor. “Hold on! I’ve had my sights set on this one for a week! By the time we return, she won’t be worth having any more.”
“There will be far prettier girls where we’re going, I assure you,” sighed Bouquet, grabbing Chauvelin by the wrist and dragging him from his prey. “Now, come on!”
They scurried back to the house, which was being boarded up in favor of a large flat in Paris. In five decades they could return and live in it again. Mournfully, Chauvelin watched as it was religiously locked up, sighing.
Bouquet felt much the same way, and did his best to cheer his young companion. “Don’t worry, Armand!” he insisted. “I had to leave my little village when I was your age, and my master took me to Paris. Some of my best memories are from my adolescences. But you’re going to be needing to feed a lot now. Your latest spree has made that only too clear. Dieppe is too small to support an old timer like me and a young buck such as yourself.”
It did little to cheer Chauvelin. “Still, I liked the sea coast. I grew up here!”
“And you can come back someday, but think of the adventure that awaits! I’m going to start teaching you how to walk in sunlight once we get settled in Paris. Won’t that be fun? You’ve been wanting to do that for ages! This is the time of your life when you really hone your skills and become a great vampire. And since you’re already a very good vampire, I have no doubt you’ll be one of the best. And, as one of the best, you simply cannot stay in Dieppe. It doesn’t have a large enough population to support your hunger.”
He sighed, and agreed, and said no more for now, missing the house already, when he hadn’t even left.
Though eight hundred years older, Monsieur Bouquet looked to be about two years older. All the same, Chauvelin treated him with a fatherly respect, and if they needed to participate in some decidedly odd activities – like brief exposure in the sunlight – they tried to do so away from Paris. Monsieur Meaux’s residence was actually where Chauvelin learned to do most of his walking. It was perfect for brief and steadily longer exposures without compromising himself or attracting unwanted attention.
And so, time passed, and the melancholy Chauvelin had felt at leaving the little sea village of his “youth,” departed surprisingly quickly. As a human, he’d lived and worked in Paris, so he felt a little like he was stepping back into his proper setting. He’d made the mistake, at one point, of researching what had happened to his human family, and all he found were grave stones. It sent such shivers down his spine that he retired to the flat and refused to feed or leave for several days. Bouquet fretted briefly over the laconic mood, but when Chauvelin explained to him what had happened, Bouquet paid it no more mind. After all, he had warned Chauvelin that too much permanent human contact for a vampire was dangerous, and it was far better to leave those sort of things behind.
“And what of Monsieur and Mademoiselle Meaux?” he’d demanded.
“An exception to the rule in a very special case.”
And despite all of the younger’s cajoling, Bouquet refused to reveal any more than that.
“Well, what about you?” he continued. “Did you have any family?”
Bouquet paused in very serious thought for a moment. “I think I had two sisters…..I don’t really remember.”
This astounded Chauvelin. “You don’t remember your own flesh and blood?”
“Incorrect. You are my flesh and blood, because it was by me that you were born. My blood is vampire, theirs was human. They are no more a part of me than dust. But you, Armand, you I remember.”
The conversation struck vampiric chords in Chauvelin, and he began to let the incident go. Soon, he was his normal self again.
“Quiet, will you! They’ll think you’re stark raving mad.”
“I think you are.”
Bouquet was chasing his young protégé across the house, who was supervising the moving of his things into a different flat in another part of the city. Bouquet was positively hysterical at his only “son,” leaving home at such a young age. Around twenty, relatively speaking.
“You’ve said so yourself: I’m twice as powerful as I ought to be at my age. Moreover, I am an adult vampire now. Mon Dieu, Andre, let me spread my own wings!” He paused to help the laborers for a moment before returning to Bouquet. Bouquet thought it a very odd quirk of Chauvelin’s. He didn’t mind the common herd as much as Bouquet did. He wasn’t exactly fond of them, but neither was he a stuffy aristocrat.
“But what if your wings aren’t fully fledged yet?” the “father,” begged.
“They are!” promised Chauvelin.
Terribly depressed, Bouquet sighed, and nodded.
“Look,” bargained the younger, “this way you can move back to Dieppe. You’ve been talking about going back for a year.”
“But I didn’t actually mean it!”
Chauvelin gave him a winning smile and a condescending glance, and Bouquet gave up entirely. “But what will you do? How will you get along?”
“I’ve set up a law office,” Chauvelin said, as thought merely talking about the weather. He impatiently flicked an imaginary piece of dust from his sleeve, which he did whenever he knew he’d done something that did not meet with approval.
“A law office? For who?”
“Well, for everyone, I would imagine.”
Bouquet scowled, and hummed darkly. “I’ll be quite candid with you, Armand. I do not like the idea of you staying in Paris.”
This just caused him to laugh. “Why on earth not?”
“Because!....Because…” He glanced around as though about to say something entirely treasonous. “The French peasantry has been awfully restless lately.”
A grin spread across Chauvelin’s face, and his feature’s brightened. “Yes, I know, isn’t it wonderful?”
“Wonderful? Armand, they might revolt!”
“Oh, if only they would!”
“Armand!”
“Don’t be an old tuft, Andre. It’s about time the peasantry got up and did something. And it’s about time the aristocracy got a little of their own back.”
“Watch what you say, Armand Chauvelin,” snarled Bouquet quite seriously. “Especially since you are an aristo.”
“No I’m not,” he laughed, waving the idea aside as though it were utterly preposterous. “I’m as you said: I’m a vampire.”
“Yes, and a particularly rich one.”
Now Chauvelin’s features darkened quite seriously. “Not after today. Today I earn what I make.”
Bouquet sputtered in disbelief. “But…!” Chauvelin waited expectantly for the final word to come. “You’ve an inheritance a mile long just waiting for you!”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
“Armand, I’m not getting any younger. In another one hundred years I’ll have outlived my usefulness.”
“Please don’t say that, Andre,” begged Chauvelin, clasping his hand with a son’s devotion. “You know I hate it when you say that.”
Bouquet shook his head, and scowled. “This is all a phase, I suspect. In five years you’ll be good and over it.”
Chauvelin laughed triumphantly. “Not likely! Just you wait! The people will prevail!”
“Yes, yes, whatever. Well, get going, you’ve got things to unpack in your own new flat.”
Next Chapter