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Tears welling in my eyes, I draw myself into a sitting position. “You’d better start explaining, and this time I want the truth. No more games, no more riddles, the whole truth. I need to know everything or we can’t move forward with this relationship. I need to know exactly what I’m dealing with so that I know how to protect myself.” I pause and take a deep breath. “I want to see the paintings.”
“What paintings?”
“The paintings you removed from the walls of this room. I’m not stupid, Nick. Did you think I wouldn’t notice? I know you took the pictures down because you’re hiding something. I want you to bring them from the attic now and show them to me.”
For a second we lock eyes, like two bulls ready to fight. Neither of us wants to back down. Finally, it’s Nick who relents. With another deep sigh, he leaves the room and goes upstairs to retrieve the requested items. He returns a few moments later, carrying a large wooden crate containing numerous portraits in heavy gilt frames. Setting them on the floor, he straightens up and shoots me a warning glance.
“Are you really sure you want to know?” he asks quietly.
“Yes!”
Like a man resigned to his fate, he slowly reaches down into the box and pulls out the first picture. Without showing it to me, he strides across the room to the far wall and carefully fixes it back in position.
I cover my mouth with my hand. The painting shows Nick sitting in what appears to be a dimly-lit parlor. He looks about twenty, and is dressed in dark Victorian-style clothing. Standing beside him is a tall, grey-haired man with a kind face and piercing green eyes.
“That’s my father,” Nick says. “Dr William Craven.”
Silently, he returns to the crate and pulls out another painting and attaches it to the wall opposite me. This one shows Nick standing beside a stunningly beautiful woman with black hair and peach-coloured skin. She too is dressed in dark Victorian attire.
“My wife, Veda,” he says softly.
My eyes widen. The gorgeous woman in the painting bears no resemblance to the horrific creature I just saw in the garden. I look to Nick for clarity, but he ignores me and continues rummaging through the crate.
At last, he pulls out the final painting and attaches it to the wall above the fireplace. This one shows a pretty girl of perhaps five or six years old, wearing a black frilly dress under a white pinafore. She’s sitting on a chair, holding a large porcelain doll. Instantly, I see the resemblance and before he says anything, I already know who she is.
“My daughter, Coppélia.” His voice is almost a whisper and his eyes are moist with tears. My heart breaks for him. I know the tale which follows will not be good.
Wordlessly, he steps back to the window and stares out at the bleak grey sky, his face is the picture of disquietude.
“Nick?”
He flicks a glance in my direction, then looks back out the window. When he speaks again, his voice is low and hushed. He tells me he was born in 1860, an only son to loving, doting parents. He grew up in Belgravia in a beautiful townhouse surrounded by cherry trees. For the most part, his childhood was a happy one, full of joy and laughter. His father, Dr William Craven, was a prominent statesman during the reign of Queen Victoria. Well-liked by his peers, William appeared the picture of respectability, but behind closed doors, he nurtured a deep rooted obsession with the occult. In his youth, he travelled the world in search of strange things that could not be explained by scientific logic. It was during this time that he first encountered vampires in Eastern Europe, and witnessed first hand the devastation caused by their evil. Tormented, William swore to rid the world of them and so, for want of a better word, he became a vampire hunter.
Between age nineteen to thirty, Nick worked as his father’s assistant and travelled across Europe with him, hunting down vampires in an attempt to rid Mankind of their evil. For a while, things went well and the two men gained a fierce reputation as the most effective vampire hunters in the world. However, events took a terrifying turn on a trip to Romania when they visited a deserted village. The place was over-run with rats and the stench of death lay heavy in the air. After searching each cottage, they found that almost every man, woman and child had been killed in what Nick described as the worst mass slaughter he’d ever seen.
The perpetrators, they soon discovered, were seven beautiful women—the wives of a German nobleman named Count Karlock, who lived in a hilltop castle above the village. Karlock was well-known in those parts as an evil man, a rumoured Satanist and a vampire who had sold his soul to the Devil.
Survivors from the village, led by William and Nick, invaded Karlock’s castle and found an underground tomb where the seven vampire brides lay sleeping. After a great battle, in which several men were killed, Nick and his father succeeded in driving wooden stakes through each of the brides’ hearts. They then searched the castle for Karlock but could find no trace of him.
Weary from fighting, father and son returned home to England where William suggested Nick settle down and find himself a wife. William was getting old and Nick had no desire to spend the rest of his life hunting vampires, so the two opted for a life of domesticity in London.
“I had known Veda since we were children,” Nick explains softly. “Her parents and my parents were great friends and they’d always hoped that one day we would marry. Up until then, my father’s exploits had prevented that from happening…” He hesitates and looks wistfully into the distance. “Veda was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen—the kindest, sweetest person imaginable. As soon as I returned to England, I proposed and we were married that Spring. A year later, Coppélia came along and our lives were complete.”
My breath comes thickly.The most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. The words pierce my heart and I’m consumed by a colossal wave of jealousy. I glance up at the painting on the wall and imagine him kissing her, making love to her, and it’s almost too much to bear. My hands are shaking; inside I’m coming apart, but somehow I manage to hold it together. I need to stay strong so that I can hear this.
“So what went wrong?” I ask in a choked voice.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, it sounds like you had it made: the perfect wife, the perfect daughter…” I break off. I don’t mean to sound bitter but I simply cannot help myself. The thought of Nick loving someone else and having a family tears me up inside. Knowing that Veda was able to give him a child, something that I will likely never experience, is completely soul-destroying.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“I’m fine,” I lie. “Tell me what went wrong.”
“Are you definitely sure you want to hear this?”
“Yes. Whatever it is, I can handle it.”
