Tail of the Devil (9 page)

“See, now isn’t that better?” Nosferatu asked.

Mathias shook his head. “You are strange, you know that?”

Nosferatu smiled. “Yes, I know.” He then proceeded to adjust himself, popping out his wings and letting them gently graze the floor. His wings were different too, somehow pointier than the others Mathias had seen.

Mathias was starting to think he was going to like this one.

“Now, we might as well get down to business. Vlad, you see, is a blunderer. No other way to put it. This is just one of many.”

Mathias raised his eyebrows.
Wasn’t Dracula supposed to be like this elegant vampire god or something? Guess that’s why they say not to believe everything you read.
“Like what?”

Nosferatu chuckled to himself. “Well, the best one was the first. Vlad also has been known by many names. The earliest was Lucifer.”

Wait. Dracula really is the devil? Nah.
“You can’t be serious,” Mathias said.

“I am completely serious. For you see, Lucifer did not fall the way you have been told he did. In the beginning, Mathias and Lucifer were the first angels that the Father created. He made them special, black feathers, pale features, the works. We were told that the father had even given them each a part of himself, so that they were able to do things that the rest of us just weren’t capable of.

“Every angel created after them was different, nowhere near what Mathias and Lucifer looked like. Even our Queen, my own mother, had white feathers.”

“You can’t honestly expect me to believe that.” Mathias rolled his eyes.

“Mathias, listen. If you don’t want to hear the story, fine. Tell me now. But if you do, I expect no interruptions.”

Mathias was quiet for a moment. It wasn’t as if he had anything better to do. He motioned for Nosferatu to continue.

“Very well then... As I was saying, even my mother had white wings. The Father had intended his special children to come to earth and pave the way for the human race. He had planned for Mathias and Lilith, our Queen, to go down and populate, but Adam destroyed it all. Before they were set to leave, Adam lied and told Mathias that the Father had something to tell him. So Mathias left the portal area and Adam went down instead of Mathias. That is how it all began.”

Nosferatu stretched his wings and let them gracefully fall around his shoulders. “The Father never intended for Adam to be a vampire. So, although his chosen one did not get to go down, he created Lilith in the form of a vampire and later put Adam to earth as a human. Lucifer’s fall came a few years later.”

Nosferatu waved his hand and a stone goblet appeared in it. He took a sip and settled the goblet between his knees. “Mathias and Lucifer felt unloved, mostly because Adam had gone down instead of Mathias. To make matters worse, Mathias and Lucifer did not believe that the Father had nothing to do with the change in plans, and they chose to believe what they wanted to believe— which was that the Father no longer loved them. Because they thought they had fallen out of favor with the Father, they spent most of their time complaining and whining all over Heaven.”

Nosferatu smiled and his eyes seemed lost in the mist of the past. “While they were in the middle of their daily walk and whine, Lucifer missed the cloud he’d been walking on, and literally fell. Mathias tried to catch him, but only ended up biting Lucifer on the ass.” Nosferatu snorted. “Why he tried to bite him to catch him, I’ll never know, but Mathias was always weird also... So the fall wasn’t a “fall from grace”, but when, in fact, Lucifer fell off a damn cloud.”

Mathias rolled around on the floor in hysterics. “He bit him on the ass?”

Nosferatu laughed. “Still bears the scar to this day. But he tries to blame it on some old sorry story about a fire monster.”

“What the hell is a fire monster?” Mathias asked.

The bald vampire rose from his chair, walked over to the bed, and turned it down. “That is a story for another day, and is best told by Vlad himself.”

“Why do you call him Vlad, and not Lucifer?”

Nosferatu snorted. “He prefers it that way. Seriously, how would you like to be called “The Prince of Darkness”?”

Mathias laughed. “Well, unless I was Ozzy Osbourne, I guess it would get kind of old.”

“Get some sleep. I’ll be here at breakfast. Vlad thought it best that the two of you spend some time apart. For now, I will be staying with you in his chambers.”

Before Mathias could protest, Nosferatu waved his hand in front of the boy’s eyes and Mathias collapsed onto the bed, fast asleep.

* * * * *

Click. Click. Click. CLICK. Click. Click
.

Mathias jerked up in bed. “What is that?”

Click. Click. Click. CLICK. CLICK. CLICK
.

He threw back the covers, got out of bed, and stepped closer to the door. He stood for a moment, listening. Then, he pressed his head against the door. The rapid fire clicks continued. When he couldn’t take it anymore, he threw open the door. There, sat Nosferatu sitting in a chair at the table. He closed his mouth and the clicking stopped.

Mathias rolled his eyes and stepped into the room. What a way to wake up. “What in the hell were you doing?” Mathias asked.

Nosferatu smiled. “Come get some breakfast. You look positively famished.”

Mathias felt amused that his question was ignored. The bat was weird anyway. Maybe he figured that his noise made the perfect alarm clock or something?

Mathias walked over to the table and sat down in his usual chair. Then, he looked at the food covering the table. He’d never seen a spread like this. Various types of expensive fruits were scattered around the table. There were no plates or silverware. The only bit of normalcy Mathias had come to expect was a crystal goblet filled to the brim with blood.

“What’s all this?” He asked.

Nosferatu motioned for him to dig in. “I have...some different dietary requirements, and I thought, that maybe, you would enjoy it for a change.”

It had been a long time since someone had thought something so...simple in regards to things that he might like. He realized he missed that. He grabbed a pomegranate from the table, never having seen one before and leaned down to bite it.

“No!” Nosferatu grabbed the pomegranate from him. “These you don’t eat the flesh. The flesh is poisonous to humans, and the taste is very sour to us.” He used his thumbnail like a knife and cut the fruit in half. Then, he handed the fruit back to Mathias.

“You see, with pomegranates, you eat the seeds. No other part. Go on, try it.”

Mathias carefully pried a seed from the fruit and dropped it after realizing that his fingernails had grown quite long.

“What is the matter?” Nosferatu asked.

“My nails...”

Nosferatu produced a few clicks, much like the ones he’d heard earlier. “It’s normal. If they bother you, you can always file them. But remember, they do have their uses.”

Mathias nodded. It was hard for him; there was so much to get used to. He picked up the seed and popped it into his mouth. He bit into it, and pleased by the taste, smile. “This is pretty good.”

Nosferatu smiled back. “I am glad you think so. Pomegranates are one of my weaknesses.”

Mathias wondered why Nosferatu was so different from Vlad, but he kept his mouth shut. Vlad was always so serious while Nosferatu, well, he was just something else. This wasn’t the time to pry. Then, he remembered, the bald vampire hadn’t answered his question about the strange noise. “What is that sound you make?”

Nosferatu sighed. “It is called a chitter.”

“A what?” Mathias asked.

“A chitter,” he snapped, “I’m part bat.”

It was kind of interesting to hear him say it. It wasn’t like he wanted to be rude, but it was probably better to hear the story from Nosferatu himself instead of believing the story he heard. “How does that work?”

Nosferatu rolled his eyes. “Surely, you aren’t that ignorant. My mother, to put it in language you would understand, screwed a bat.”

Mathias tried not to smirk. It was kind of funny, but probably not very funny to the other vamp. Nosferatu did seem a little off, so what he’d heard wasn’t entirely wrong. “Why did she do that?”

“I have no idea. She said she recognized a soul mate or some such nonsense. So here I am, a freak. She always tells me that I shouldn’t worry about it, but people, even vampires, still stare.”

It was odd. Nosferatu felt more with it than Vlad Tepes did. In a way, that scared the crap out of Mathias. His sire had been the crazy one. Not good. And, with the way Nosferatu seemed, maybe his craziness wasn’t all that crazy. “If it helps, your mother is totally nuts, but it’s not your fault.” Mathias said. Then he thought about it. What business did he have consoling a vampire that was that old?

Nosferatu smiled. “It’s all right. It is nice of you to try to understand...I knew him, you know.”

“Knew who?” Mathias asked.

“Him. The original Mathias.”

“Wow, you really are old.” Mathias said.

“One day, some young one will call you ‘old’ too. But yes, I knew him. Probably better than the rest of those who claimed that they knew him. He was my best friend.”

“Vlad said Mathias was his best friend.”

Nosferatu chuckled. “We knew him in different time periods. Both of us have fond memories of the man. I think if Mathias were around today, we’d all get along quite famously.”

Mathias was now so engrossed that he forgot to drink his blood. “What was he like?”

“I didn’t know him until his final lifetime, which is memorialized by that statue in the courtyard. He would have hated that.”

“Why?” Mathias asked.

“Believe it or not, Mathias was a private person. He was really rather humble.”

Nosferatu pulled an old and tattered book from his robes. Its cover was spotted with age and mold. It was brown leather, at least that’s what it looked like. The pages were yellowed and kind of uneven. “Mathias, I entrust this to you. It is part of my memoirs. It is the volume that I stopped working on after I knew the truth about what had really happened to Mathias. I think, perhaps, that it is easier that you read this, rather than for me to tell it. I’m not sure that I could.”

Mathias carefully took the old book and gingerly placed it on the table in front of him. He opened it and was surprised to find that it was written in English. He raised an eyebrow and looked at Nosferatu expectantly.

“Is anything wrong?” Nosferatu asked.

“I can read it.”

Nosferatu laughed. “Well, of course you can. Surely, you don’t think that I would be foolish enough to present you with a book that you could not read.”

“But, when you were born, English hadn’t even been invented yet.”

“No, it was not. I think, Mathias, that you have forgotten one thing about vampires.”

Mathias waited.

“We can ‘blink’ things into existence.” Nosferatu said with a smug smile.

“I thought it simply had something to do with moving from place to place.”

“No, Mathias. Think of it as a type of magic for our kind. It is what enables us to change our form, disappear and reappear in a different area, and create things. Granted, there are limits.”

“What type of limits?” Mathias asked.