Author's Note: Friendly reminder. I don't speak Japanese ... or Romanian.
***
Ana's blood chilled in her veins.
Within a second, many different thoughts jumbled in her mind.
A small but cozy apartment. A stove with only two burners. Shoes left in a genkan. A teenage girl's legs with a pair of long, baggy socks. Cheezy pop music blasting from a CD player. A secret stash of yuri manga. A pair of glasses being wiped by a cloth.
Since she was distracted, Vlad put Ana on her feet in a hallway.
Footsteps, tiny footsteps.
"Ana-chan!"
No. It was just some random Japanese woman.
But why did she know her name? And why was she referring to Ana so casually?
That woman approached, the one with the long hair and the pretty fingernails. Vlad held out a hand to stop her in her tracks. She looked down and put her arms at her sides.
Her face ...
Was so amazingly beautiful that Ana found herself staring.
High cheekbones. Pale skin. Brown eyes that had an upward angle and single eyelids. A straight nose and a soft little mouth. A figure that wasn't too slim, actually quite graceful. And wonderful black hair that fell at her hips. Straight as a board, as she'd once heard a random mother say about straight hair.
She was so familiar.
"Ana," Vlad said as he touched her shoulder, "I should have explained the situation to you long ago, but I knew that once I did nothing between us would be the same." He was speaking in Romanian, and he paused to look back at the Japanese woman with something that was almost a grimace on his face. His next words were Japanese. "You were misled, and so was I. Go back. I need to speak with Ana."
As the Japanese woman walked off, Ana asked Vlad with a fluttering tone, "Who ... who is she?"
"Miss Nakahara," Vlad quickly said. He pointed a hand off towards the foyer. "Now come. We need to talk."
That was when Ana remembered she was supposed to be running away. Before she could make a step, Vlad picked her back up. "Don't worry," he said with a strained voice, "you won't be harmed."
"Someone's getting fucking tortured back there!" Ana tried to whack his shins with her feet, but she missed perhaps ninety percent of the time, which meant that Vlad probably didn't even care. Feeling like an ancient village woman at the mercy of an invading soldier about to do some ... well ... it often came with the word pillaging, Ana continued to pitch a fit. By the time she was sat down on a bed in a guest room, she happened to notice there were quite a few fresh bloody scratches on Vlad's hands and arms. She tried to pop back up, but Vlad pushed her down by her shoulders.
"Calm down. He's a murderer anyway."
That wasn't important to Ana. She reared back and tried to aim her foot right at Vlad's groin. She wouldn't normally do that, but she worried that she too might end up strapped down and have her fingernails torn away. Unfortunately for her, Vlad was quick. He released her shoulders so he could turn his body and block her kick.
"Ana, we don't want to hurt you." He gripped her shoulders again. "You need to let me explain."
"What could you possibly say that could magically put this in a positive light?!"
His hands moved down to her upper arms. His eyes and nostrils both flared. "We're trying to find out who killed your parents."
Instead of trying to escape she just sat there, staring at the man's cruel face and trying to sew all his words into something she could understand. Really, what he'd said made no sense. Her parents were just ill, as surprising as that had been. Murder? No. That's just silly. Even if that were so, a detective would be all over the matter. Ana would've been questioned by one too. The first suspects in a murder were always the spouses and family members.
"We're not certain if he's the one who killed them," Vlad said as each word grew softer, "but he knows something, and he's killed other people."
Call the police! That's what Ana thought, but she thought if she even hinted that she wanted to call the police, she'd get hurt. She was convinced that Vlad and Mihai worked in a mafia, or a group similar to one. As more blood fled her cheeks, as her asshole puckered in fear, Ana tried not to make Vlad think he needed to have her killed. She just sat before him and listened.
"We aren't ... we aren't normal people." Vlad looked so sad then. His face drooped ... dried ... and even ...
Wait. What?
His hair ... was changing ... fading into a different color?
Her jaw fell.
"What I've shown you, what you've known of me, it's an illusion." Vlad's breath puffed after certain words, as if he was hurting but he knew he had to keep going or else the pain would get worse. His hair wasn't black anymore. It grayed out, and then some of the hair fell away, landing on her lap, leaving behind a much higher hairline. It vaguely reminded her of the high hairline many young women of the Medieval and Renaissance periods wanted. Apparently, they'd pluck and shave to get it. Beauty standards have always depended on the surrounding culture.
As if his lips were dry ... and they certainly looked that way, Vlad nervously licked at them. "I'm older than I seem, much older, and so is Mihai." His hair wasn't gray anymore. It was white, and his skin was slowly following as if it too wanted to be white. And the lines deepened. The flesh sagged a little. A pale raisin.
With ancient, wretched gray/green eyes.
Ana looked down to see that the scratched and bloody hands holding her were wrinkled, spotty, and had a little bit of extra white hair. The fingernails even looked longer.
She was trembling. "Uhm ... uh ... So ... what?"
"I know this is preposterous ... and inconceivable, but I've experienced this for years and years."
Her hands flailing a bit, Ana snapped out, "How the hell did you do that?! What did you do?!"
Vlad's pants creaked as he knelt down on both knees. His hands slid down to hold both of hers. The old, withered face gazed up at her. "The first fact you must be told is that vampires exist."
That ruined the mood. Ana laughed so hard that she fell back on the bed and rolled around. Vlad got back to his feet and said with an almost insulted, but still gravelly tone, "I'm not joking."
"This is ... hahaha!! This is the stupidest, most childish thing I've heard!!" Ana started gasping a little as she kept flopping around, clutching her own belly. "I ... hah ... ah ... I can't believe you'd tell a grown ass woman that!! Ahhhh hahahaha!! This is top tier cringe!! You're too old for this!!"
"Ana ... I'm not trying to impress you."
"Haha!! Good, because I'm not impressed!"
