of her slumber, she found Tori curled up next to her. Her head still ached, but only slightly. Her arm was better, though still painful to move. Two felt very human indeed, and wondered if her regression to that form had been hastened as she had healed.
She sat up, looking around, trying to determine what hour of the day it was. The media room’s windows were dark. Two could see smears of dirt in the hallway, and realized that during the day, Tori had dragged herself into the front closet.
“Smart girl,” Two said. She turned on one of the televisions. Sights and sounds flashed by, news reports on things she didn’t care about. She flipped channels and found a cable access station broadcasting the time and date.
Near midnight, mid-December. It would be Christmas soon, the television informed her. Had she done her shopping? To Two it felt like she had lived ten years in the course of the past two months. She turned off the TV and stood on shaky legs. She was starving, but not for blood. What she really wanted was a cheeseburger. This realization both amused and saddened her.
Two made her way upstairs into the room she had shared with Theroen. Her clothes were still there, in closet and dressers. Bathroom supplies, books of poetry, it was as if she had never left. Two thought of Theroen, lying next to her on the bed, and the ache in her heart leapt to the forefront.
“I could kill you a thousand times, Abraham, and we’d never be even. You took everything I had.”
Two went to take a shower.
* * *
They lived at the mansion for six weeks, and in that time Tori began to show definite signs of returning to humanity. Christmas came and went, the new year began. Two and Tori healed. As her mind changed, Tori began to behave in new ways. She mimicked sounds, and was beginning to understand simple questions that Two asked.
She was still strong. Still fast. Two wondered if the changes that vampirism had made to the girl’s physiology would every truly leave. She wondered if Tori would ever fully regain her mind. She didn’t know.
There were only two moments of unpleasantness left for Two during her stay at the mansion. The first occurred early: the burning of Abraham’s remains. Two had taken care of the head first, out in the yard, dousing it with gasoline and covering it with kindling. She’d taken the machete to the skull, blackened and cracked by the flames, and scattered the pieces around the grounds. She’d repeated the process with the body. If Abraham could somehow heal himself now, then it was beyond her power to do anything more about it.
The second occurrence came a week later. Exploring the mansion, she had come upon Abraham’s study. Even with the vampire lord gone, it had seemed still to pulse with evil, and Two ventured into it with trepidation, lighting candles as she moved down the hall toward the double oak doors.
The worth of Abraham’s collection of ancient manuscripts must have been beyond measurement, Two had thought as she inspected the room, her high-power lantern casting odd shadows that did little to improve the room’s appeal. There were books, scrolls, and even a few stone carvings that she had no doubt were of historical significance. She had wondered what she should pick, if she chose to disturb anything in this room, and to whom she might sell it.
At the far end of the room she had found a set of heavy iron doors and, beyond them, a staircase leading down into darkness. Determined to master her fear and explore the mansion in its entirety, Two had made her way down them, wishing she had thought to bring the gun, or the machete, or both. It had seemed impossible that there would be anything living down here, and yet many things she had seen would have seemed impossible to her just a few weeks before.
The sight upon reaching the bottom had forced a cry of despair from her lips. There, on a stone bier, lay her lover. Theroen, pale and broken, was spread out on the slab. His body had been cleaned. Abraham had perhaps been performing some sort of ceremony. Two had run across the room, bit into her left wrist hard enough to bring blood, barely aware of the pain, and held it above Theroen’s open mouth.
Nothing.
Crying, begging, Two had held her neck against his lips. They were