[FIC] Todesglocken (Tanz der Vampire, PG-13, gen) [Roses for Lucifer]

[winter]

For fyrie, who is currently busy utterly breaking my brain in another post, and who once asked how did I think Herbert von Krolock got to be a vampire.

Tanz der Vampire, no pairing. You don't have to know anything about the fandom beyond the fact that the Graf von Krolock is a vampire, and before he came to be one, he fathered a son.

In keeping with the canon mood - well, the canon is a Gothic rock opera. That should tell you something. 2,750 words.

(Still not sure if I got the name of the duelling ground in Vienna correctly. Corrections and other constructive criticism welcome.)


TODESGLOCKEN


Autumn of the Year of Our Lord 1638, Vienna, Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation


The night air already carried the autumn chill, but the ground of the courtyard was still more dust than mud. Kinga was grateful for it as she carried the pail of dishwater to the gutter. Less cleaning to do, especially now that most student lodgers were spending the night outside the city gates at one of the last revelries before the cold chased them back to the wineries and cellars close enough for the boys to drag themselves home once they were kicked out. They would wake her then to open the gate for them, but tonight they'd rather sleep under the stars than chance the long trek.

All except one, she thought. Just one window with the faint light of a candle she'd lit for him before dusk fell. She would have to go there and light another before she went to sleep; otherwise he'd wake and open his wound again trying to do it himself.

Kinga shivered. It was really getting cold at night.

She heard hoof beats, a sharp staccato over the cobblestones. She wondered who it could be, now that midnight had passed. A courier, perhaps, carrying mail from the outer reaches of the empire. She had sent a letter to the boy's home when he had first been brought to her lodging house, but she doubted he would live to read the answer.

The horse came around the corner at near gallop, pulled back by the rider just as it was about to ride her down. It was a great bay with a dark coat that was almost black in the moonlight. She stepped back towards the gate of the house, out of the reach of its hooves.

Of the rider, all she saw was a swirl of a dark cloak as he dismounted. "Which of these houses belongs to Kunegunde Tiedeman?" he demanded sharply.

Transylvanian accent, flickered through her mind.

"That would be me," she said, drawing her tiredness and indignation around her. She hadn't been running a lodging house for unruly students for twenty years without gathering some force of her own. "And I'm not accepting visitors this late."

The stranger grew still. She had the feeling he was watching her, though his face was in shadow.

"Forgive me, Frau Tiedeman," he said. "I did not expect the matron of a lodging house to be out on the street so late at night."

"Usually, I'm not," she scoffed. She headed back inside the courtyard, heard him following, leading the horse. He seemed to have manners, at least. "I gave the girls the night off - there is a feast outside the gates tonight. I would go myself, but care of the sick comes first."

"Care of the sick?" There was hesitation in that voice, as if he wanted to say something more.

He really had a remarkable voice, Kinga thought. Deep and melodious, and she was sure the accent reminded her of somebody.

She sighed. "It's such a sad story. Students duelling - I don't know why they don't just settle it with a brawl like normal people. And the boy won't tell anyone who the other man was, so all I know is that his friends found him in Buchenwäldchen Grove and brought him here. The doctors had hope at first, but now..."

"Now?" he whispered.

"He is dying. One day, maybe two." Kinga shrugged. "It happens. I've done my best."

For a moment, the courtyard was silent enough that she could hear her own breathing. Then the horse snorted.

"I'm sure you did, Frau Tiedeman," the stranger said. "Thank you. And thank you for sending the letter."

She startled. The letter? But it should have barely reached the border of Transylvania by now-

The man dropped his horse's reins on the ground, as if he were sure the animal would not move without command, and stepped into the pool of light falling from the attic window.

He wore black in the Spanish style, restrained and unembroidered. His hair fell down to his shoulders, straight and thick and dark. His face was pale, but it wasn't only the paleness that brought such resemblance between him and the boy.

His eyes were dark as night.

"I am Graf Johannes von Krolock," he said, bowing to her as if she were a princess of the blood, not a simple Viennese bürgerin. "Herbert is my son."

* * *

The attic room was bare and worn, but clean. The light of the single candle flickered on the crumpled sheets on the bed, on the pale gold hair arranged, funeral-like, over the shoulder of the still figure tangled in the bedcovers.

The air smelled of decay.

If Von Krolock's heart had beat, it would have skipped and stuttered at that moment. He moved his hand blindly to close the door behind him, and the wooden planks struck the doorframe with a dull thud.

"Frau Kinga?" The voice was the one he knew, but so weak and strained, almost silenced. "I told you I'd be all right - the candle's still-"

"Herbert," von Krolock murmured, unable to stop himself from audibly reassuring the boy's identity.

A jerk, a sigh that was almost a cry, grey eyes falling open, and for once he blessed his unnatural speed as a second later, he was gently cradling his son.

"Father." Herbert's voice was breaking even more, now. "I thought you'd come."

Von Krolock pressed a kiss to his son's hair. "I'm here."

Herbert's smile was as warm as always, his eyes as bright - maybe brighter - but the rest of his senses told von Krolock that the situation was by no means good. The smell was the worst of them, rot and decay like a body already disintegrating. Under his fingers, Herbert's shoulders were frailer than they had been since he had discovered fencing at fifteen. Each breath the boy took was laboured, underlaid with a stifled gasp of pain.

"What happened to you?" The question had been preying on von Krolock's mind since he had learned of his son's injury. Herbert could be reckless with horses or affairs of the heart, but with a blade in his hand the boy had long surpassed him. Even swordsmen with centuries of experience found Herbert a skilled and unpredictable opponent, and von Krolock could not believe another student had beaten him so easily.

"When you're fighting for someone's honour-" Herbert paused to draw a laboured breath, then winced as he shifted his legs to free them from the confines of the tangled sheets. "You don't really expect him to stab you in the gut when he falls into your arms after you've sent your opponent's sword sailing into the air."

The hiss came before von Krolock could clench his teeth, the monstrous and human parts of him for once in agreement about the fate of someone who had hurt what was his.

"All false - start to end." Herbert's laugh was cut off by a pained moan. "Should know better. Yet such a pretty face."

"They'll suffer," his father promised.

"Oh, yes, yes." Pale lips curled back from white teeth. "I'll cut them to pieces. If I can."

"You will. I'll summon doctors from the University, from the court-"

The softest rasping sound of long strands of hair shifting against each other as Herbert shook his head. "They've been here. All of them."

"I'll find others-"

"I-" Another drawn-out breath, and Herbert was trembling now. "I don't think I have the time."

Von Krolock's fingers clenched, and for a moment he thought his nails had cut his son's skin, but the sharp smell of fresh blood had another source. As Herbert struggled to raise himself and turn in his arms, the sweat-soiled linen of his shirt parted, revealing a bandage streaked with red and brown. At the edge of the bandage, the pale skin was reddened, pulled taut.

"Father, listen," the young man hissed. "It comes and goes, the fever - late night brings retreat, but I don't know how long I have, how much time with my thoughts clear enough. Listen."

For a moment all was still. Then von Krolock placed his hands under Herbert's arms, supporting his son's weight without jarring his wound. The trembling was more pronounced now, a sequence of bone-rattling shudders that ran the length of Herbert's skin.

"I'm dying," Herbert said. "There's poison in my blood, and no doctor can draw it out. I don't want it to end like this."

He paused to catch his breath. This close, the smell of decay was sharp, mingling with the blood and sweat.

"I've had a week since the poison set in," he started again. "Nothing to do but think. And what I thought is that nothing - not my blood, not my soul, not any chance at heaven I could possibly have - is worth dying like this, before I've seen, lived, loved, anything. You said it's damnation. Let me be damned, father."

Von Krolock's eyes closed, then opened. He opened his mouth, took an unnecessary breath.

"No," Herbert breathed, his strength clearly failing him. "What's the choice? Even if by some miracle I live like this, crippled, half-rotted - but dead or living, I'm no good to anyone. There would never be heirs by me, father, and God does not love such as I."

Slowly, carefully, von Krolock lowered his son's body to the bed again, spreading his cloak to provide a gentler surface than the coarse sheets. He stroked the pale hair, felt the dampness that spoke of a recent wash. It made sense, somehow: nothing appealed more to Herbert than his own beauty, and the matron of the lodging house looked to have a heart soft enough to comfort her patient in the only way that was left.

He remembered holding Herbert like that, some fifteen years earlier, as his son had struggled to breathe in the grasp of some childhood fever. In the end, he had found a book describing how cool, moist air would ease that affliction. Herbert had spent the rest of that week sleeping beside him in the crypt and had treated it as the greatest adventure ever.

"You're precious to me," he whispered.

The smile he got in return was hardly more than a pained grimace. "Then keep me with you. I've watched you for twenty years... I know what I'm asking for..."

"Herbert-"

"Father." A trembling hand reached out, seized his shoulder in a surprisingly strong grasp. "Please."

This was his son, his child, his and Izabella's - Izabella, dead these twenty years, dead with fear in her eyes, blood in her pale gold hair - but he had lived through, learned so much since then, though he'd never wished-

Before he was aware of the choice he had made, his fingers were slipping into Herbert's hair, gently lifting the boy's head. He gave into the pressure of the hand on his shoulder, bowing lower until the dark strands of his hair brushed Herbert's skin.

With a pained hiss, Herbert bowed his head back, arching his throat. How many people had the boy seen killed that way, von Krolock wondered. How much courage, how much trust did that one motion take?

As he bowed lower, Herbert's other arm wrapped around his neck. He only heard the whisper because his ear was so close to his son's mouth.

"Thank you."

He could hear the heartbeat, too faint, too slow, Still Herbert's grip on him was feverishly strong, threatening to tear the fabric of his clothes.

His fangs sank into his son's neck far too easily.

He tasted the dark poison in the blood as he heard the pained gasp, but the bitterness did not stop him. What danger was the rot to one that was already a corpse?

He forced his clenched throat to swallow. This close, with the same blood running through them both, a thought sufficed to bridge their minds, another thing he had not done in many years. He near-shook under the weight of the pain, but still he took it into himself with the blood and the life, leaving nothing but ashes in his wake.

Herbert's breathing slowed, evened out. His fingers flexed once, twice, then slowly slipped from his father's shoulders.

The last draught of blood was sweeter, untainted. The blood of the heart, he remembered his Sire's words, and the last you're allowed to take if you would have another made in your image. That time, the lesson had come too late.

He raised his head with a gasp. The incisions on Herbert's neck were small, bloodless. He leaned his forehead against his son's, letting their hair mingle on the folds of his cloak under Herbert's head, and listened for breath.

None came.

He wanted to hold the body in his arms again, stroke the golden hair, but there was no reason to, not now that there was no-one to feel the comfort. Instead, he straightened and leaned against the headboard of the bed, looking into the shadows. He pressed his palms against each other in the gesture his mother had taught him long ago, but of all the books on religion in his library, not one sacred name came to his mind.

The candle burned and flickered as the melting wax pooled below it, sending the shadows dancing. They floated over Herbert's pale skin, dark eyelashes, the pale gold strands scattered over black cloth. He knew the body would be cold by now, colder than his own skin.

He knew dawn would come soon, but he did not move. In the distance, the bells of a hundred churches tolled the rhythm calling the faithful to prayer at the first ritual of the day, though the sun had yet to rise.

He wondered whether any of the bell-ringers knew, the passing of how bright a soul these bells were mourning.

* * *

There were enough candles in the suite to read easily even once the last twilight had faded from the horizon. The Black Swan spared no expense on its guests' comfort, and they in return certainly did not spare money by lodging there. Von Krolock made a note to pay another retainer for the suite before he left; this was the most comfortable set of rooms in the guesthouse, and he had no desire to lodge anywhere else in Vienna.

He turned another page. His favourite publisher had proven as reliable as always, and while he got his hands on a fresh English Rosicrucian text that was even more interesting than this heretic treatise, the book had engrossed him completely. It was from the Netherlands, so he would have to hide it carefully on the way home, but the ideas were fresh and interesting. It was a pity it was so short.

Someone was whistling on the staircase, taking the stairs two - no, three at a time. The melody was the latest unofficial hymn of the University of Vienna, something unprintable and rife with rumours about the private habits of various faculty members. The door creaked as it opened.

"Did you have a pleasant stroll?" von Krolock asked.

"Just delightful." Herbert chuckled and twirled on his heel. The Brussels lace at his cuffs was even paler than his skin. "The weather's great, too. Refreshing."

Von Krolock reached out and grabbed his son's right wrist on the next rotation, ignoring the protesting yelp. He pushed back the lace, revealing a cross-shaped burn.

"Hey, I did that," Herbert pointed out. "Darling Janos was Hungarian and an altar boy. I wanted to see the fear in his eyes. I would have done it in front of both of them, but I only saw the crucifix after I'd put Heinrich's eyes out."

"You'll have to wear gloves for the next few days."

"I like my gloves. Are you done with that book, father? It really is a pleasant night."

Von Krolock gave the book a rueful look, then closed it. "I'll finish it later. What did you have in mind?"

"You've heard of the Spanish theatre troupe in town? The one doing Vega's plays?"

"The one whose performances are by invitation only?"

Herbert brandished two squares of pasteboard triumphantly. "It appears dear Heinrich had used his parents' influence. Since he won't be using them..."

Von Krolock smiled as he followed his son out of the suite. He could see a hundred thousand nights like these, stretching out into eternity.

The nights were theirs to seize, after all.

=FINIS=

Comments

[winter]

Herbie is ♥ :)

He's got a surprising caring streak, doesn't he? Not that it's accompanied with any particular softness, but he bosses people around for their own good something frightful.

[fyrie.livejournal.com]

He's certainly one of the tough-love school of thoughts ;D "If I think you should go to bed, I will pick you up and throw you into it and you better not argue" :D

[winter]

Dawn should be happy it's one of the bed-for-strictly-medicinal-purposes situation ;)

[fyrie.livejournal.com]

*grins* I have no doubt it'll be brought up when Spike's conscious again.

"Oh, yeah, while you were out, me and herbert snuggled..."

[winter]

*sporfles* Such a soap opera :D

[fyrie.livejournal.com]

*g* Ah, yes, but we only have 3 of the 4 people sleeping with each other so far ;)

[winter]

To Dawn's eternal frustration :D

[fyrie.livejournal.com]

I'm starting to wonder whether she'll be able to hold off for the library thing or go, find him and jump him ;)

[winter]

Mayhap, reassured by Herbert, VK'll offer magic lessons (in the library) as apology? She did mention she wanted to learn the voice-projection and random apparition thing at the beginning of the fic :D

[fyrie.livejournal.com]

*ponders* Could do...

Oy!

Apparently, Herbert arranges the encounter in the library, through secret plans and clever tricks and lo, Dawn being all studious lures VK onwards :D

[winter]

I reiterate, Herbert is ♥

:D

[fyrie.livejournal.com]

Herbert nodded, as if realizing something, pressing his fingertips to his lips. “Have you felt like this before?” he inquired.

“Yeah,” Dawn shifted against the pillows. “It’s just a cold. No big deal.”

Clicking his tongue, Herbert reached out and laid a palm against her brow. Dawn gasped at the chill against her flesh that was so much warmer than usual. “As I recall, bedrest and bleeding were the best cures… leeches too…”

“Uh…” Dawn blinked at him. “I think I prefer my mom’s chicken soup and too much TV way better.”

The vampire grinned at her. “You’re soft,” he said fondly. “Nothing says good health and well-being like being bled.”

“You wish,” Dawn retorted, then sipped some more of the scalding tea.

[winter]

Muahaha. Do you know, I never put together medieval medicine methods and vampires before? :D

(Would explain some facts about medieval quacks if some of them were vamps in disguise...)

[fyrie.livejournal.com]

I doubt a patient would take it very well if their doctor announced "I'm just going to bite your wrist. This may sting a bit."

[winter]

I believe that's what the hypnosis power was designed for ;)

[fyrie.livejournal.com]

Ooh! Good point :D

[fyrie.livejournal.com]

“I didn’t mean I would do it!” Herbert protested virtuously.

“Then who would?” She rolled her eyes. “Your dad? Last time I saw him, he was way bitey.”

“Ah…” Herbert climbed over her legs to sit on the wider expanse of the bed, crossing his legs in front of him and resting his hands on his knees. “I was curious as to how much you saw last night.”

Blue eyes darted up to him. “You knew?” she squeaked.

Shrugging his shoulders elegantly, Herbert smiled. “I’m a vampire,” he said. “I can smell these things.”

“Skipping by the part where that’s totally gross,” Dawn sat up a little, staring at him, her face flushed and eyes fever-bright. “You don’t care that your dad was screwing your boyfriend?”

One of Herbert’s eyebrows arched. “What makes you think I have made such a claim of William?” he inquired.

“Um… you kinda jump on him all the time?”

“That hardly means he is my ‘boyfriend’,” he observed dryly. “It merely means that he and I desire one another and since he belongs to us anyway, I see no reason that we should not have a little fun.”

“Belongs?” Dawn cocked her head, forcing herself to concentrate past the fluff that felt like it was coating her brain. “Isn’t that kinda the same thing as being involved with someone?”

[winter]

Aww, poor Dawn and her ignorance of the ways of the Bitey Ones :D

BTW, Mother just came home and says you're more than welcome to stay for a week or so, only caveat being that my aunt and nephew are leaving on the 10th, so that's the earliest day there'll be a free bed in the house.

[fyrie.livejournal.com]

She's about to get a quick lesson :D

Nifty! I wouldn't be able to make it until after the 13th anyway, because of finishing classes and whatnot, but yay! :D

[winter]

Can't wait :)

14th or 15th then, to give you time to recover properly before we go get consumed by the Fangy One?

Last post before leaving:

[fyrie.livejournal.com]

“If that is the case, then William is ‘involved’ with both my father and I,” Herbert replied, lacing his fingers together in front of him. Apparently, she looked confused enough to draw a smile to his lips. “Dawn, darling, you must remember that we do not see things as mortals or humans see them. Our rules are less finite, less rigid.”

Her brows drawn together, her head throbbing, she stared at him. “So Spike’s what? Your sex-moppet?”

Returning her stare for a moment, Herbert started to laugh. “Oh, he will be mortified if I tell him I wish to call him that,” he said, shaking his head. “No, no… I doubt he is anyone’s moppet any longer. When I say he is ours, I mean that he belongs to us. If anything happens to him, it will affect us, it will rouse us and if he is hurt, it will bring down our vengeance upon the heads of his aggressors.”

“Kinda… like you’re a family thing?”

“I suppose it is as good an analogy as any,” Herbert agreed amiably. “Originally, his family by blood were the ones he belonged to, both by choice and lineage, but with the deaths of Angelus and Darla, without anyone left to turn to, he came to us and we claimed him, father and I.”

“And you both get to screw him?” She was gaping again, she knew it.

“You think that is all you saw?” Herbert looked both offended and surprised. “My darling child, you saw what few, if any mortals have ever seen. My father was marking that which he claimed as his, in every way. He rarely feels the need to do so, only when he has something new he wishes to add to those around him.” He leaned forward and murmured softly. “And you caused it.”

Re: Last post before leaving:

[winter]

*flails* I want a Herbert of my own just so I can cuddle him to death, you know.

Re: Last post before leaving:

[fyrie.livejournal.com]

If I could transplant him from my head and into your living room, I would happily do so :D

P.S.

[winter]

Also, I adore Herbert slipping into his dad's speech patterns there with the "darling child" :D

Btw, I think that later on, he might want to hint she'd better wear a scarf while doing any jumping of VK's bones. That, or get dad to buy her a really sturdy choker necklace.

Off to Japanese class now, though might beg off on grounds of being a plague carrier. I think Draculea's insistent purring in my head means he wants to get some, so there may be fic later...

Re: P.S.

[fyrie.livejournal.com]

I have a sneaking suspicion that in a few days time, Herbert'll slip her a little present of a velvet collar or something along those lines ;)

If you're in class, I'll be working away on fic, I have no doubt :)