Chapter Seven

Dormand remembered a body-viewing he had attended several centuries ago. It was inhumanly hot from all the people crammed into a single drawing-room and trying to keep a respectful distance from dearly deceased Grandpere Marcel. Ladies were fanning themselves with black-feathered monstrosities, and the smell of their sweat and jasmine perfume pervaded the air, the stench of death. Dormand remembered that Mother had to leave after a half-hour of this ordeal, simply from the smell and the terrible atmosphere.

As he lay in the sewers, covered in excrement and being seared by holy water, Dormand thought he could understand Mother's discomfort.

The immortal child was crouching against a wall, hissing in pain and trying not to touch the part of his face which had been burned away. He couldn't find Mother, and he suspected she had fallen somewhere else in this hellhole when he crawled in. As if that wasn't upsetting enough, Dormand could still hear her voice demanding that he find her immediately. He wanted to respond, but whenever he moved his mouth, something on the damaged side of his face would start to open and weep. The pain was so bad that he didn't dare risk the infection spreading, so he listened to his mother's tirades in pain-riddled silence.

His marionette was tangled up in a pipe. Dormand's left hand was trapped in the very same cords that wound the marionette in a grotesque position around the pipe. With some trepidation, Dormand realized that the pipe he was attatched to was directly under a grate that led to the wide open air.

Right now, thankfully, only moonlight filtered onto Dormand's exposed face and hands, but he knew it was only a matter of time before the sun would come to eat away at what was left of his face, leave a bleached skull in its place... no, he was panicking. He couldn't panic. Only the insects would come when they smelled the fresh meat under the sun. Only the insects would come, make a feast out of he who could not end.

A sudden stab of pain made Dormand instinctively press his free hand to the side of his face. Instantly, his fingers started to burn and the pus from his face began to cut into his palm. Dormand stared at his hand as it blackened and as his fingernails started to fall off. He realized that the same thing was happening to his face. It was at that moment that Dormand's vision started to blot out and his other senses became muddled. Without even having the time to try and calm himself, the boy fell to a state that was rather like death to mortals.

---

"What took you so long?" Danny asked in a mixture of irritation and worry. He was crouching on the bed, and had drawn all the blinds in the apartment. Carson looked at his obvious fear with a sort of laughter pulling at his thin lips.

"Miss me, Danny-boy? That's sweet of you," he taunted, throwing Danny a bag full of garlic, vials of holy water, and crucifixes. "Careful where you put that stuff, alright kiddo? Don't want to accidentally kill me, I hope."

"Look man, I'm fucking terrified. You left me alone with the knowledge that vampires are out there, ready to kill me at any second," Danny practically yelled. He was shivering like he had spent a day submerged in icy lake water. "And no, I won't kill you, because I know you've probably got a bunch of undead buddies that you can sic on me if I try."

"You're very amusing. I now know why I decided to keep you around," Carson said with a bit of a smirk.

"What do you mean? You're keeping me to kill this freaky-ass kid, right?" Danny reminded anxiously, brandishing the pinhole photograph of Dormand at Carson.

"Not anymore, I'm afraid. That freaky-ass kid just got his face burned off by holy water and fell from a great height. Technically, I don't need your services any longer. But then again, that freaky-ass kid might be a bit of a cockroach, so I'll keep you around in case he comes back," Carson explained generously. "Also, your paranoia greatly amuses me."

Danny looked like he wanted to protest the existence of his paranoia, realized that his paranoia was his only lifeline, and shut up. Carson chuckled and took his violin out of his case for more practice.

---

Dormand wondered if Hell was cold. He knew he was going to Hell, because apparently three centuries of unwavering devotion to his mother hadn't qualified him for Heaven. With a strange sort of feeling that was like bitterness and amusement at the same time, Dormand reflected that he would not see his mother for the rest of eternity. After three hundred years, she would surely have nobody else apart from him to look after her, to make sure she was comfortable. For all Dormand knew, she was still in the sewers. Dormand felt a surge of anger. Whatever Almighty had picked him off at this crucial moment would pay for his mother's pain. Challenging Satan to stop him, Dormand opened his eyes.

An emaciated young man met his defiant gaze. He looked to be of Asian descent, though at the state of death his body and features were at, it was hard to tell. He wore a t-shirt and jeans, and a wooden cane leant by his side. As Dormand looked around, he realized that Hell appeared to be a cluttered shanty of some kind.

"You're finally awake," the man murmured in accented English.

"Is this Hell?" Dormand challenged. The man laughed a laugh that rang untrue, as though he had no sense of humour. It was then that Dormand saw the man's fangs. "You're like me," he said with some dull realization.

"Yes," the man said. "Not very long, though. I've spent the last four years looking for another vampire, and I found you. It was fate that I could save you from dying in that sewer. I mean, what are the odds that we would have met if not for fate?"

"You can believe in fate all you like, Monsieur, but I can assure you it has nothing to do with me. It was luck," Dormand murmured, and sat up from the floor he had been laid down on. By now the pain in his face had subsided to a dull throb, and he could bare to move and talk without too much of a problem. "Did you happen to find a skull and a marionette when you found me?"

"Yes, They're right here. Um... I'm sorry, but the puppet was wrapped so tightly around your hand that I had to cut a string off of it," said the man uneasily. He obviously knew the significance of the marionette to Dormand. "It won't hurt you, will it?"

"I doubt it," Dormand said, grabbing his mother out of the young man's hands. He was intensely relieved to be reunited. "What's your name, so I can thank you properly?"

"Yuki Masimoto," said the other. "I was turned in Kyoto six years ago."

"Thank you very much, Monsieur Masimoto," Dormand said with all the manners that Mother had taught him. "Now, if you will do me one more favour... could I please have a mirror?"

Yuki hesitated, then nodded, rummaging about the cluttered rom and finding a child's plastic mirror for Dormand.

Dormand looked into its depths, and laughed.