by Aya DeAniege
Through my mortal life, I became quite adept. Especially with charcoal, which I could get my hands on easily enough. Or stick and dirt.
I wooed more than one woman into my bed while still mortal by drawing her face.
Or, near enough to. As long as I was alone with her, it worked.
You might take advantage of mirrors now, but that crystal-clear image wasn’t always so. Beauty and grace could be forged with a stick of charcoal. Women ate it up, the more vain, the better.
After being turned, I went a long time without art. Lucrecia was aware that I knew how to hold a pen, but that I refused.
Shortly after becoming immortal, Lu caught me drawing. It cost me my hands for almost a year. The second strike, he broke my hands daily. Due to my ability to heal—of all our ability to heal—such a feat hurt but left no permanent damage.
By the time Lucrecia found me, I wouldn’t even write my name. It had been beaten out of me. She still has no idea what my handwriting looks like. When I would send her word, I would hire a man to write the letter to her, rather than do it myself.
Some two hundred years after being turned, Sasha caught me staring at a tapestry. I had looked at art while with the pair of them. Lucrecia collected a few pieces here and there that spoke to her. She also had a full-length portrait done once a century.
There were polished surfaces in Lucrecia’s home from long before I entered. She tried to capture the essence of self, to understand the question, “who am I?” For a time, she believed that if one could see oneself in true reflection, one might know. Without that, she believed one cannot be true to oneself.
For if you don’t know the look of your own face, the curve of your waist, you cannot understand your innermost thoughts.
She is still pursuing that belief, though now she believes those who grow up knowing their faces hide their mind.
Art was the closest Lucrecia could ever come, and I thought her portraits could be better done. However, I said nothing to her, simply questioned one of the artists when he came to do her portrait.
What about the tapestry?
Hm?
The tapestry, he did it again, and you changed to Lucrecia.
Oh, Sasha hates tapestries, she burned it. I thought that her belief of art. She just really hates them. Embroidery suffers a similar fate when she’s feeling particularly nasty.
Anyhow, I cornered Lucrecia’s hired artist. Pestering the man for using the wrong colours, for altering her flaws to please his patron.
He went to Lucrecia with a complaint.
I really should have expected as much, but I wanted her portrait to reflect her, not the money she was paying to have it done.
She called me to her room. I recall being excited. The only time she called me without also calling Sasha was when she wanted to share her bed.
Lucrecia and I have never been lovers, but we have had sex over the centuries. There is a lust between us that is simply never sated.
I entered the rooms and found her in nothing more than a light robe.
“Sit there,” she said with a motion to the writing desk.
I sat as commanded. We often had sex on different bits of furniture. To educate me on their stability, she claimed. Furniture used to be built to last, so it wasn’t so much educational as it was a great deal of fun.
She approached the desk and then moved past me. She pulled, from a cupboard behind me, a little package which she set beside the sheaf of paper on the desk.
I frowned at the pair, package and sheaf, because she had never pressured me into writing before.
We hired scribes for that sort of thing. That I could read and told her I could write had always been plenty enough.
Lucrecia walked away, slipping off her robe as she did so. I watched the fabric float to the floor, wondering what new game this was.
“Draw me,” She said.
“What?” I asked.
“You seem to think you can do better than the man I hired to do my portrait. I want to see what you think you can do. Draw me. Or I break the bottle into the fire.”
She meant the bottle of Maker’s Blood, which I was still being weaned from. While my doses were few and far between, I still did not want to be separated from it.
“I’ll starve,” I protested.
“Then do as I command you.”
I hadn’t drawn for centuries, but as it turns out, our muscles recall. They relearn so very easily, which allows for speed and dexterity later in life.
I drew her, aware that while my hands remembered, my eye hadn’t kept up with the art of the time. I needed to upgrade my skills, as I had been unconsciously upgrading my language over the years.
Lucrecia looked when I told her it was complete.
“Your technique is two hundred years old,” She said. “Here, what is that?”
“Your nose,” I snapped. “Which is why it’s in the middle of your face.”
“It’s not shaped like that.”
“Says who? Your painters? They ply your ego. It’s too big for your face, not like Sasha’s at all. Your eyes, though, they capture that to perfection. They are a good feature.”
“My nose is not shaped like that.”
“It is,” I insisted. “Do they all begin with a blank canvas, or do you show them the work of men who have come before? You blind them with your coin and your expectations. Painting has yet to come into its own. There’s little renown to it. All they have is the pleasure of their patron, who they hope will pay for their supper and a bit more.”
“Artists are not so shallow.”
“They are. All men are shallow. Have a woman paint you. Ask a young buck to dabble in the arts and have him do a portrait without looking at those pieces done before he was born.”
“This is not me.”
“Ask Sasha then, see what she has to say on the matter.”
“I will. I will do just that.”
Lucrecia marched out of the room with my sketch. She was, of course, still naked. The woman has nothing to hide and knows it. That body she has comes naturally.
I sat in silence after she left, just staring off as she grew further away. Finally, it dawned on me what I had just done, what Lucrecia was about to do. I chased after her, headed for Sasha’s room.
But I was too late. As I all but stumbled into Sasha’s room, I heard those damned words again.
“That’s not my nose.”
Sasha just blinked at Lucrecia. Then she turned to me, confusion plain over her features.
Perhaps I should explain.
Sasha kept stock near Lucrecia for feeding purposes. They were a cycled stock, which meant that they didn’t stay at Lucrecia’s long. It was more like a pilgrimage for them.
On one of those pilgrimages, a woman was raped by one of Lucrecia’s stock. Now, it’s not something that Lucrecia allows. I think pretty well every vampire knows Lucrecia by her reputation alone.
Most of us maintain stock but don’t hold them to a high moral regard. She does, her people have always been the pious sort. Good people, but still people.
Immortals are not the only ones dripping in sin.
When word reached Sasha, she didn’t tell Lucrecia what was going on. If she had, Lucrecia would have made an example of the man, and that would have been the end of it. Sasha took it personally and therefore wanted to handle it as such.
Which was why she had found me. We had been wandering apart for several decades, as happens at times. She had come and found me with a complaint from her stock, wanting support in her investigation.
We questioned the woman and witnesses and easily picked out the aggressor among Lucrecia’s stock. He readily admitted that he had done the deed.
Sasha called him to her rooms and proceeded to make a small example of him. As in, small bits everywhere. The lump of a creature that remained as Lucrecia and I entered could hardly be called a human. There was nothing recognizable left.
Sasha was covered in blood, blade in one ha
nd and a hot knife in the other. She was cutting, then cauterizing the wounds to keep him alive longer, to prevent bleeding out.
With practice, we can keep a mortal balanced on that point for days. Too much too quickly can send them into shock.
Sasha was just coming into her own then. She wasn’t quite as adept as she is now, but good enough.
“Why are you covered in blood?” Lucrecia demanded.
“I’m in the middle of something,” Sasha said. “Can you come back later? I need to wash the blood out of my hair at least, before you two explain what it is that is going on. He looks like he just saw Death himself!”
“No, why would I have seen him?” I asked.
I tried to lean casually on a desk, but missed and hit the floor instead.
We must learn our grace. Vampires can still fall, and we still feel the fool for having fallen.
“That’s mine,” Lucrecia said.
“He hurt mine,” Sasha said with a shrug.
Apparently, Maker and Progeny will fight and bicker, figuring out the pecking order, so to speak. It wasn’t uncommon to hear about one trying to kill the other. Lucrecia and Sasha were no exception. They waged bloody battles over the most ridiculous things.
Such as a woman they both wanted as a lover, but were unwilling to share with the other.
I had not personally witnessed the fighting before, Lucrecia would send me out of the room as it was beginning. I probably should have asked why I was sent out earlier. I did have centuries to ask, after all. For some reason, it never occurred to me until that point, that not asking might be dangerous.
“Is this how my nose looks?” Lucrecia demanded, throwing the sketch at Sasha.
Who caught it with a bloody hand and peered at my charcoal markings in the dim light. She squinted a bit, then looked up at Lucrecia and squinted once more.
Vampires have bad eyesight?
It’s not damage, though there has been a remarkable improvement once the eyes have been removed and one grows new eyes.
However, we didn’t know that at the time.
“This artist is shit, Lucrecia. He’ll never earn his supper if he draws the flaws of his patrons.”
“He did it,” Lucrecia snapped, jabbing a finger at me.
“Oh?” Sasha said, very suddenly interested. “He’s done quite well capturing your shape, but I’ve seen better work. He’s probably just out of practice.”
“Are you saying that my nose looks like that?” Lucrecia demanded.
“Yes, it’s not the cute little something everyone else has been putting in their paintings.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that?”
Sasha shrugged again, which drew a growl from Lucrecia.
“You seemed content with the portraits they provide for you. I saw no point in telling you otherwise. The portraits are important because they’re important to you, not because they are true to form. If you want true to form, have him paint you.”
She would do just that.
Lucrecia immediately hired tutors for me. I learned about drawing and the most recent pigment techniques. Again, I burned all my works. Lucrecia inspected them and allowed me to burn them, but told me that it was only her word that let them go to flame.
Once a century I pull out my paints and brushes. I spend a few months refreshing my memory on the strokes, and a little time with local artists. Then I paint Lucrecia a portrait.
She swore to me that she was burning them all. Then when we went public, she gave a tour of her home. You can see it on an online streaming service I believe.
On the walls of her private home are my paintings. No one makes a comment on them, but you see her gazing at one of them, reaching out to touch the aged and cracked frame of another.
She hasn’t spoken to me since, but I’ve texted her about it. And I know she received and read those text messages.
They can’t be bad if they’re hanging on her walls.
They aren’t bad. Just cheap imitations.
Sasha says I have an artist’s soul. An old soul, humble and far too anxious about others seeing my work. She said as much as I destroyed a painting of mine that I caught her with.
That destruction caused the most recent rift. We’ve hardly spoken in decades because of it. She seems to think I was overly dramatic.
The next time I went wandering, I found a man on the side of the road doing a sketch. He wasn’t trying to sell it, just making art.
So, I bought it.
The early centuries of my life didn’t survive so well when it came to art. Mosaics and reliefs survive better. I do have a few painted statues. Away from mortals, the colour has survived quite well.
By the time painting became about canvas, transferable as you might say, I had my pattern set almost in stone.
In my wanderings, I would keep my eye out for artists. When I found one whose style appealed to my nature, I would purchase a painting. I would befriend the painter, checking in on them over the course of a decade or so. To each, I would tell a different tale, but all thought I had inherited a great deal of wealth.
If I deemed them appropriate, I would continue communicating by letter or messenger. They would never see my face again.
The problem there being the fact that they would age and I would not. Sometimes, for the very special ones, I would go when they were older and enough time had passed. I would tell them that I was my own son and that my father had sent me for a portrait.
I’d then pay whatever sum they wanted. If I was pleased with the work, I kept it. They would wake after I left to a fantastic sum, enough of one to take on an apprentice and live comfortably.
I did not always find masters. While the great masters may have been influenced by my desire to have realistic paintings, I was only in direct contact with a very few of them. Only one was ever raised up by me, but I did employ as many of them as I could.
Commissioned artwork was a bit of a vanity, much like owning the newest phone. Except a great deal cooler because only one or two people ever received the metaphorical phone.
When I first started collecting art, I only asked for a piece. Much art was lost due to my folly. Masters of old were my focus, but their art has not survived because it was destroyed.
An utter shame.
As the Renaissance took full hold, there was art and beauty everywhere. And sex. So much sex and debauchery even happening behind the scenes. And DaVinci, my God, that man.
Not mine, yet so much of his work has survived.
Gay.
No, bisexual.
Completely and fabulously gay.
Not gay, bisexual.
With all due respect, Lu, shut up. Sexual orientation doesn’t matter.
I believe he is trying to allude to the fact that many of those I took under my wing were of a sort. Straight men who happened to be artists tended not to be hunted down. Their work wasn’t burned.
I helped those with that preference to hide what they were and survive in a world that would have seen them dead.
But I have also been a patron of straight men, and women of all sexual orientation. There’s one artist of some renown who claimed the artwork of his wife, and I’m not talking about those ones with the big eyes.
While well loved, I always found those depictions to be frightening.
Art, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. I also didn’t like Warhol, but I’ve typically been more about landscapes. The landscapes I’ve had done by masters who are known for their portraits are exquisite.
I will never sell them.
I have sold pieces in the past. Selling to a lord of a stable house and land, I’d keep an eye on the lord through his life, then reclaim the artwork upon his death.
His heir would always think mummy sold it to keep her lover clothed and fed. The lord’s wife would always assume the son had sold it for the same reason.
Over the centuries, I have lost some pieces. Some through loaning them out in such a fashion. A few were destr
oyed during the upheaval before I started following the Council the way I do. Some just due to degradation over time.
I’m having a few of those restored, however.
As you are aware, I keep house near the Council. That’s not to say that I’m always around them, but that I literally keep a house. It has some, but not all, of my paintings in it. I cycle them out every few years.
I have art stored across the world.
Over the centuries, I have followed the art. There’s always rumour and a shifting when art is about to bloom. I’ve often found artists and writers hand-in-hand. The two can become the very best of friends.
That fact has probably brought me closer to Lu than I realized. On more than one occasion I found myself in the same room as paid men who asked after books for a wealthy benefactor.
Unlike my unique pieces, Lu could pay to have the books transcribed.
Sometimes into their native languages. Sometimes into others, older languages which even vampires have difficulty speaking and reading. Or he’d have a copy of the native language made, only to transcribe it himself.
Half of the books in this house are probably done in cuneiform.
During the World Wars, I bought up or simply stole artwork from the homes of those who abandoned them. My collection grew more in that fifty or so year span than it had in the previous two centuries.
A few of the descendants of the original owners have tracked me down even. Imagine my surprise, to have someone come to me with all the paperwork. All the people that the art supposedly changed hands of and they still found me.
Depending on their tale of woe, and their ability to keep the painting without it being damaged, I return the art.
I may eat babies, but I do have a heart.
For those who could not keep the art safe, I offer alternatives if I find them worthy enough. Donate the painting to a museum and pay them the worth. Not all have accepted this offer, and I have gone to court several times over it.
Hence the lawyer.
Hence the team of lawyers I employ. They also take on cases from others, which helps build into my empire. You cannot cut off a vampire once we have set up our base, we are spread too far.