Katherine entered the cell. Amelie stood next to her chair, looking out the window. Manacled chains tethered her to the wall. It couldn’t have been comfortable, Katherine thought, but at least this way she could get up and stretch from time to time. She looked around to see if there were any remains lying around, but the only proof of Amelie’s evening meal was a stain on the far wall.

 

“Good morning, Amelie.”

 

“Good morning, Katherine.”

 

Amelie turned around. She looked a bit more alive than she had the day before. There was more colour in her cheeks. Katherine tried not to notice. 

 

“Are you feeling up to it today, Amelie?” She asked carefully. “I can come back tomorrow if you want me to…”

 

Amelie smiled softly and sat down.

 

“I’m fine, Katherine. I’d love to talk.”

 

Katherine took a seat herself and laid out her papers. “If you’re sure.”

 

“I am. How are you today?”

 

Katherine sat for a moment. She shuffled her papers aimlessly, and adjusted her writing tools several times over. She seemed out of sorts.

 

“My work with you is drawing the ire of the Lord Inquisitor. They want me to finish my interrogation of you so they can proceed with the execution.

 

“Oh?” Amelie seemed completely unperturbed. “When is this execution supposed to take place?”

 

Katherine’s answer was so quiet Amelie didn’t hear her.

 

“Excuse me?”

 

“Two days ago,” Katherine mumbled. 

 

“Oh,” Amelie said, and suppressed a smile. “Are you in trouble?”

 

Katherine shook her head, and then paused. “Not… quite. Not really. But people are starting to ask questions. They want me to finish up.”

 

Amelie wanted to reach over to touch Katherine’s hand but the chain pulled taut with a clang. Katherine shook up. 

 

“I’m sorry!” Amelie said. “I didn’t mean… I just wanted to…”

 

Katherine saw the lack of hostility coming from the woman. 

 

“You’re okay, Amelie.”

 

Amelie sighed. “I’ll… Let’s finish up, today, then. I didn’t mean to cause you any problems.”

 

Katherine’s mouth became a thin line. “You’re not… All right.”

 

Amelie thought for a moment. “I went looking for a cure. For something.”

 

---

 

I spent years, decades, travelling. I had decided I was going to either find a solution to my unchanging and unchangeable appearance, or I would find a cure to my vampirism altogether. While I was away from home most of my time, I had plenty of time in ship cabins and shuttered rooms to write my parents, and I wrote them often, keeping them apprised of my current whereabouts. I never told them of my condition, of course, and lying to them constantly was not something I enjoyed. I had told them I’d found a passion for the arts and learning, and would travel the world to learn what I could. My mother missed me dearly, but she was ultimately proud of me, and I did visit when I could. They… died, in an accident.

 

It is a comfort that I had seen them shortly before, and we had spent several days happily together while I told them stories of my travels. Our parting was a happy one, and I’m glad that my last few memories of my mother are of her smile. 

 

Once they’d passed away, I spent a long time, too long, trying to find a cure for any of it all. Whether it was my body, my mind, my infernal unchanging nature, and at times, my consciousness or my life. I used every substance under the sun, and found not one permanent or impactful enough to give me the rest I needed. I drew a swath of revelry across Europe, and quickly became known as an eccentric, famed for lavish parties, as I drank and fornicated my way through court after court. 

 

Through careful practice and tailoring, I slowly became adept at changing my appearance to appear more feminine, practicing and training my voice and my mannerisms until I could regularly pass for a noblewoman. I say regularly. Occasionally, perhaps, is more accurate. Whenever that failed, of course, I doubled down on my escapism, grasping at anything that could alleviate the pain, even temporarily.

 

It was a miserable time, and one I’d prefer to leave behind me more than anything. After a while, I found that intoxication allowed me to forget about my situation altogether. I was ageless, undying and unchanging, and I existed without consequences. I was also, of course, not even remotely alive. Not truly. I had all but forgotten about my initial quest. It had been a century of extravagance, changing my name regularly so as not to arouse too much suspicion. Money was never an issue. When one is undying, investments and landed titles often paid for themselves. 

 

This all ended in Paris. I had found my way into court, as I had often done before. I looked particularly feminine that one day, and not a person realized I was not an ordinary debutante. Slowly, I tried to find my way around the intricacies of court as I had done so many times before, when I saw her. I hadn’t seen her in over a hundred years but I immediately recognized her. When she saw me, she seemed shocked, as if she’d seen a ghost. As not to arouse suspicion, she made a polite exit, but she approached me with such determination I could do nothing but freeze to the spot. Even after a hundred years of life I was still completely stunned at the sight of her. 

She took me by the arm and led me to a separate chamber. I made some comment I thought was funny and playful about her only having to ask me if she wanted some alone time, but she seemed to have no patience for my brand of humour. She grabbed me by the hair and I thought she indeed wanted something from me. That didn’t last very long, when she talked. 

 

“What did you do?” she barked at me in English, I presumed with unwanted listeners in mind. I had no idea what she was talking about, of course. I’d committed several acts that would warrant that kind of response over the years, and I was honestly somewhat amused. 

 

“What didn’t I do?” I smirked. I could tell by the look in her eyes that she had half a mind to slap me, but at that time I cared about so little that this barely registered.

 

“Your hair!”

 

That confused me. My hair was in the standard style of French court at the time, and I thought it wouldn’t give anyone reason to pause. She yanked it again, and I couldn’t help but hiss from the sudden start, though physical pain barely registered anymore. She spoke in an angry whisper.

 

“Why is it longer?”

 

I froze. 

 

“Why is it what?”

 

“Your hair. It was barely long enough to brush your shoulders a century ago!”

 

I had never truly realized that it had grown, over the years. The change had happened so gradually it had completely avoided my thoughts until she drew my attention to it. It had indeed grown, by quite a lot. Every inch must have taken years to grow but it indeed had. 

 

“I don’t understand,” I said. “We are unchanging. ‘Perfect’, aren’t we?”

 

“We’re supposed to be,” She snarled. “I suppose that’s why you look like a woman?”

 

“I… realized I was one, the night you turned me,” I confessed. “It’s why I feared my altered state so much. I feared I would forever be bound to my hideous masculinity.”

 

Her demeanour changed. She relaxed, and sat down on a chaise longue. 

 

“I resented you, you know.” She told me. “I had never offered the gift to someone who reacted with such vitriol to the change. I feared I’d truly done you wrong. But you’d been so eager up to that point. I considered ending your life then and there, you were so miserable. But I couldn’t make myself do it. This… explains a lot. After several years, I presumed you would hate me for having done to you what I did, so I made sure to stay out of your way.”

 

I sat next to her and her hand reached up to my face. I let her, her intoxicating presence impossible to resist. She held my jaw and tilted my face this way and that. I felt like a horse at a competition. 

 

“I’d say you’ve already proven yourself capable of change, child. Most definitely still yourself but your features are… different.”

 

“Really?” I gasped, perhaps more eagerly than I should have. I’d have to take her word for it. 

 

She nodded. “Yes, your face is softer. Your cheeks more prominent. Your eyes have a more pleasant shape.”

 

“How? Why?” I didn’t understand why this was happening. She got up and told me to meet her that night. That we’d talk more later. I was shocked by her revelation. I sat there for what must have been only minutes, but felt like hours. 

 

That night, I met her at Montmartre, where she’d rented a small room, away from prying eyes. We talked for hours that night. She told me about vampire lore, what she had been told herself, of how vampires had come to be. That the blessing, the gift, had originally been granted to one who had begged heaven, earth, and all in between and outside, for a truly perfect existence, at the cost of the light of day, and that this gift had been granted. She told me there were many stories like it, but that the idea of a single progenitor who had demanded and received perfection, and the ability to pass it on, was a constant.

 

She postulated that perfection was further away for me than it had been for most others who had received the gift. Perhaps, I thought - and told her as much - the only thing I required to shed my horrid shape was time. She agreed with me. But that there had only been minute changes, over a hundred years, filled me with anguish. It would be centuries before I could see myself as anything but an abomination. She sighed and paced, and we considered various solutions.

 

Finally, she remembered a man, an old clergyman, back in England, who had mastered certain unholy abilities. He had remained human, but in his obsession with his impending death, he had turned to dark arts to prolong his life, with no success. This is how she’d encountered him, as he’d asked and begged her to give him the gift. She had refused, but she seemed to genuinely believe his dark arts to hold some merit. 

 

“Perhaps,” she told me, “his meddling with time and age would allow him to help you?”

 

“What if he refuses to help me?”

 

“Then you will have to be persuasive. He is not a nice man, a kind man, or even a good man. He will try to trick you into giving him the gift. I tell you now that he should never receive it. He does not deserve, and would only do horrid things, with the gift of eternal life. Promise me.”

 

I did.

 

We spent the night together. She was constantly impressed with how different I looked from the previous century, but I never saw it.

 

I left for England the next day, with no intention to wait in whatever fashion. She had given me the man’s name and the name and location of his militant holy order. Arriving a month later, I approached the castle at night. It was heavily guarded, but time gives someone like myself inhuman power. The older I had become, the stronger I’d become, and climbing the castle walls had proven to be easy, my fingers easily digging into the mortar as if it was mud. 

 

She had told me that, as the eldest and most respected member of his order, I would find him in the high tower, and when I climbed it that indeed seemed to be the case. Though it was late, he was still awake, standing by a table full of books and apparatus I didn’t recognize. He was mumbling to himself in Latin, and I decided to make an entrance. 

 

Soft as a whisper, I climbed in through the window, and made my presence known.

 

“I hear you seek a vampire,” I said. My voice was low, but carried through the air with practiced precision. He spun around, unsure whether or not to be terrified or elated. I must have struck an impressive sight. I had come dressed as a man, fearing not to be taken seriously if I’d worn my preferred clothing. My eyes bored into his with what I hoped was intimidating intensity.

 

“Y--... Yes!” He stammered. “Vampires! Yes!”

 

He approached me eagerly, his old, bent shape casting a silhouette on the wall opposite the grand fireplace. I shook his hand with feigned dignity. His entire presence was repulsive, as he eyed me up and down with an eagerness that made me feel objectified.

 

“I… I don’t know what the… what the protocol is… b-- but I need you to… to bestow your gift upon me!”

 

He seemed almost hysterical. I understood where he was coming from, of course. The man was clearly ancient, and not long for this world. But he did indeed seem like an unstable sort, the kind of mind you don’t want to unleash on the world with an immortal body. Besides, I’d made a promise. 

 

“I hear you’re… knowledgeable, when it comes to the arcane?”

 

“I.. Yes! I am! But I can not stop the sands of time,” he wailed. “I have aged myself irreparably with my experiments.” That caught my attention. I mulled things over in my head, as he ranted on.

 

“Hold up, good man,” I said. 

 

He paused and looked at me with suspicion.

 

“I need you to do to me what you did to yourself. Age me.”

 

He didn’t understand and stammered as much. 

 

“My reasons are my own, old man. Can you do this?”

 

“And in return you bestow upon me the gift?”

 

I hesitated.

 

“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” I said, keeping things deliberately vague. Perhaps he’d think I was simply incapable. “But I have access to many resources you do not. I will help you in whatever way you can to help you achieve your goal, bar that. You have my word.”

 

He seemed to mull this over. “All right, vampire. You have a deal, but it has to be now.”

 

I didn’t have anything better to do, after all, so I agreed. He led me to the attic of the tower, where I saw all manner of infernal machinery and occult symbols. In the middle of the attic was an object that resembled a coffin, with all manner of occult symbols painted on the lid and sides. He made it clear to me that this is what he’d used in the hopes of halting his aging, that it’d had the reverse effect. 

 

I was uncomfortable at the idea of being locked in a coffin for any length of time, but he insisted that this was necessary. Besides, I figured, I had the strength required to open it myself if it came to that. 

 

Lowering myself into the box, I was apprehensive, but I was willing to try anything. The lid closed over me, and the sound I heard I will never forget. It was mad cackling, as I heard a silver nail being driven into the box. I immediately pushed up but whatever infernal incantations the man had cast on the box had made it impossible for me to apply my full strength. The hammering lasted for minutes, as did his cackling. He told me through the wood that he’d hold up his end of the bargain, that I’d spend eternity in this box aging, that he would use my life to extend his own. 

 

I railed and raged against the inside of the coffin. Clawing, scratching, punching or screaming, nothing helped. At first I applied all my undying strength to push against the lid of the coffin, but that produced no results. 

 

You must understand that I was in that confined, cramped nothingness for a long time. Keeping track of time in the dark was something that had been difficult for me as a child, but took no effort at all now that it was my domain. I can tell you with certainty that I spent centuries in there. I thought I might go mad several times over. Cried my eyes dry a thousand times. Wished for death. I heard nothing from the outside of the coffin. I wondered, sometimes, if the man’s experiments had borne fruit, or if he’d simply died and I’d been forgotten in this attic. My begging, regardless, clearly fell on deaf ears.

 

As I lay in the dark for untold centuries, I kept myself sane by telling and retelling myself my life’s story. Remembering my parents. Elisabeth. The woman, who had started all this. My century of love and misery and culture as I travelled through Europe. I told it over and over again, and thought of how I would tell my story, if I ever got the chance, clearly and concisely. 

 

As the years passed, I felt myself becoming stronger with age. I became intimately familiar with every inch of the box, my fingers tracing the lines of the occult symbols that lined the inside of the box. As my hair grew, so did my understanding of the symbols, and after what I would wager was close to a millenium, I found an error, a flaw, in the designs, and scratched at it. When the seal broke, it was as if air rushed into the coffin, a wave of pressure that came and went in an instant. Immediately I pushed forward and the coffin’s lid exploded in a shower of splinters. As I rose, I saw the old man, hammer still in hand, about to descend the staircase triumphantly. Only moments had passed, for him.

He cursed and swore so violently I can not repeat his words here. He seemed completely shocked. “What in the name of God?!” He yelled. “Who are you?!”

 

I did not understand his question, until I looked down and saw my hair flowing down to my waist, my chest most definitely more… differently defined that it had previously been. To him, I must have been unrecognisable. A man had entered the coffin, to him, and woman had exited it only moments later.

 

“It’s you! You should have been…” He did not finish his sentence.

I was filled with rage, of course, but there was an extra layer there, one he could see in my eyes. He had locked away a vampire for a thousand years. A thousand years of hunger. Of thirst. What he had done to me was monstrous, and he’d be punished by a monster for it. 

 

I was on him faster than he could blink, and together we fell down the stairs into his chambers. I didn’t care, I had the strength of lifetimes, I barely felt the impacts, but his body broke as my teeth sank into his neck and I drained him dry. He stopped moving fairly quickly. 

 

The noises had alerted the guards down the stairs, and they rushed in. I didn’t struggle or resist when they captured me. I was still recovering from what had been done to me, and from the effect it’d had. I was barely aware of when and where I was. I was captured, and dragged to a cell.

 

---

 

“Which is when we met…”

 

“Which is when we met,” Amelie said with a smile. “That’s my entire story.”

 

“I… there’s… We thought you’d come to kill the Grand Inquisitor…”

 

“That was never my intention.”

 

Katherine put her pen down.

 

“I wish… I wish the Lord Inquisitor would understand…”

 

“He won’t. Men like that never do.”

 

Katherine sighed. “I’m sorry.”

 

“Don’t be. I’ll be okay.” That caught Katherine’s attention.

 

“You.. You told me that vampires get stronger the older they are. But… you’d be ancient…”

 

Amelie nodded.

 

“How strong are you?”

 

As an answer, Amelie casually tore off her manacles as if they were made of paper. Katherine could only stare in fear.

 

“But… why… why stay…”

 

Amelie shrugged. 

 

“I like you. I wanted to give you the satisfaction of a proper interrogation. You seem new at this. In fact," she said as she got up and walked over to the window to look outside. “You seem like you’re not cut out for this at all. You seem like too… kind and gentle a person for the Inquisition, Katherine of Cornwall.”

 

Katherine stammered. A lot was happening. She was scared and confused. Amelie grabbed the bars blocking the windows and tore them out of the wall with all the effort it might cost one to take down a painting. 

 

“If I’d known that my extended stay here would cause you trouble, Katherine, I would’ve left days ago. I’m sorry.”

 

Katherine shook her head, mumbled to herself as much as she did to Amelie. 

 

“You’re fine, Amelie.”

 

“Will you be okay, Katherine?”

 

Katherine looked up at her. “Maybe you could… wound me? They’ll never believe I let you go…”

 

Amelie sighed.

 

“Katherine… I don’t want to hurt you.”

 

Katherine didn’t say anything. 

 

“They’ll hurt you if I don’t, won’t they?”

 

She nodded. Amelie sighed, and held out her hand.

 

“One time offer, Katherine. Will you come with me?”

 

Katherine looked up at Amelie, who was not nearly the monster she’d been told, the story this woman had told her, her beautiful, amazing, impossible story, and thought to the life she’d lead if she’d stay. Her fear of the repercussions if she… 

 

Katherine grit her teeth. 

 

“One one condition.”

 

“Name it, Katherine.”

 

“Say please.” A hint of a smile danced on her lips.

 

Amelie laughed, loud and happy, for the first time since she’d been dragged into the cell tower. 

 

“Very well, Katherine of Cornwall. Will you please come with me?”

 

Katherine put her hand in Amelie’s, and smiled.