Penny looked up confused, her expression clear on her face where the vampiress caught to smile, “I know. I am as confused as you. That was my reaction when he said he bought a maid which was you.”
The words confused didn’t even make for the current situation. Why would Damien buy her from the market if he disliked slaves?
“Actually hate won’t even cover it. They basically disgust him,” said Maggie, pulling out other little boxes before finally taking a kaleidoscope which was made of colors. She had seen them in the fairs which were set up yearly twice or thrice in the local villages, “Have you both met before?” the lady asked when she placed the little tube on her, turning to light so that she could enjoy the different patterns and colors that burst through the glasses.
“We haven’t,” answered Penny with a shake to her head. If they had she was sure she would have remembered him. With a personality like his, it was hard to forget.
“Is that so. Not everyone knows that he hates them, it’s just that I am his elder sister that I know,” the vampiress pulled the kaleidoscope away from her eye. She then suddenly shifted the conversation back, “The number of things that are in here, it’s like memories that are saved from the past. nostalgic ones,” humming to herself, Penny saw the lady blow air on the object before she started to observe it with a faint smile on her lips.
Penny wondered if that was the reason why the lady had asked her to accompany her up here in the attic so that she could find the reason for her brother’s sudden change in attitude towards the maids. Remembering that the lady had asked her to speak freely, she took a deep breath to heard the vampiress say,
“You don’t have to be scared of me, Penelope. I won’t hurt you, not unless you do something bad to my family,” Maggie assured Penny with the gentle smile on her lips. Penny’s mind was nowhere to wanting to hurt the lady’s family. All she wanted was to leave this mansion and go about her life where she could live amongst her own kind, who were the humans. The vampires scared her, and there was no saying when they would use her as a source of amus.e.m.e.nt to torture or kill. Having come across many tales, she didn’t want to see the ugly side of this world which was waiting right outside her door.
Pulling out some courage into her nerves, Penny asked, “Milady, if you don’t mind me asking, why does Master Damien hate slaves?”
“Hmm, I think it was because of what happened to one of his dear friends. One of his vampiress friends once used to have a slave. He was a pet boy. Barely fifteen I think,” said Maggie, her voice soft on Penny’s ears where they were surrounded by the silence of the attic, “The boy was loved and cared as her own child. I heard he was very loved but when the time came…the boy killed his mistress.But there are many other cases which led him to believe that slaves only try to get close to their master and mistress to free and backstab them.”
“I thought pureblooded vampires are immortals.”
Penny’s words brought a delighted smile on Maggie’s face, “Silly girl if it were so we would have nothing to worry of,” how odd, thought Penny to herself, for vampires to worry about things and here she had thought their life was perfect. Maybe there were two sides to the story and sometimes a third one too, “We sure have longer years. Some of us crossing decades and more but there are times when a vampire, especially a pureblooded vampire cannot hold on to themselves. Have you heard about heart corruption?” asked the lady.
Pennys shook her head again. As she spent time with the Lady, she came to realize her ignorance about the night creatures. Right now it was as if she was being given knowledge about them and she gave her keen ear to hear what Lady Maggie had to say.
“A pureblooded vampire cannot be killed easily because you won’t find the details of the pureblooded vampire bodies as you have for the witches and humans. There might be basic information but nothing more than that. Our pureblooded vampires, the ancestors I mean they never wanted to give out the information about us feeling that it would only lead to our kinds downfall.”
“Isn’t that unfair?” asked Penny, “To know about others but not share the same about them?”
“It is indeed but who wouldn’t want to protect themselves. No offense but humans have been willful and stupid to not know when and what not to do. Every kind of ours has good and bad people but what I mean to say is the number of people who would want to sell their own kind is more when it comes to my kind. Do you disagree?”
Penny didn’t say anything about it. The truth was already out there and she had seen it. As much as she didn’t like what Lady Maggie had to say about the humans, she wasn’t lying about it. After stepping inside the slave’s establishment and stepping out for the short duration of a week, she had observed that there were more humans than vampires or half vampires in there to be sold. Even if a vampire abducted the humans, how many cases had the situation where one’s own relative had sold them away for a bag of coins?
Lady Maggie looked at Penny, her eyes slightly softening wondering if what she spoke had struck something in the girl, “We were speaking about the vampire’s immortality and corruption.The corruption of the heart is one of the ways which can lead to a vampire’s death. The process starts slow and is like a disease that cannot be fixed. It not only evades the person’s body but also minds, which in turn infects others who get bit by the corrupted vampires.”
“It must be very difficult,”Penny had never heard anything like this. It seemed that humans were really ignorant who didn’t know about vampires and their sufferings.
“Indeed it is. That’s why we make sure to not trust people we don’t know about.”
“Was the boy caught?” asked Penny, feeling sorry for the woman who had died due to her affection to the human slave.
“No,” Maggie closed the box. Did that mean he was out there freely walking on the lands? “The boy ran away after causing corruption. There are many ways a heart can be corrupted. Some are caused due to loss of spouse or family members, some due to the emotions that lead to depression.”
Penny didn’t know for how long they were in the attic with the clouds hovering in the sky, it was hard to tell the time with no clock on the wall. But time felt to move quickly without a pause.
“Here let me take that,” said Lady Maggie when Penny had finished cleaning the box, “Thank you for your help, Penelope. It was wonderful talking to you,” the lady thanked her. Penny bowed her head,
“It was nice helping you. Please let me know if you ever need my help again,” said Penny, her eyes drifting to look at the entrance of the attic hoping Damien wouldn’t come bursting through the doors.
Lady Maggie gave her a nod, walking out of the attic before the butler Falcon came at them with a frantic look on his face. When he saw Penny with Lady Maggie, he let out a breath of relief.
The butler who had gone back to the room where Master Damien’s slave was to get her some water had suddenly disappeared leaving the man to sweat profusely at the thought that he hadn’t locked the room well the last time he had visited.
The devil would have striked him into a boiling pot of oil if the girl had tried to run away. Along with the girl, he would have been subjected to punishment and torture. To see the girl here, he couldn’t tell how relieved he was right now.
“What’s the matter, Falcon?” asked Lady Maggie on sighting the butler of the house who looked slightly out of breath.
“Lady Maggie,” the butler bowed his head in respect, “The girl was missing from her room,” the vampiress gave him a knowing nod, a smile upon her lips she was gentle as her appearance.
“Don’t worry. She was going to her room.Penelope knows not to disobey her master’s words. She’s a smart one who wouldn’t run away,” Penny didn’t react to it and kept the beating of her heart as calm as she could. If there was one thing she had learned from her master, it was that the pureblooded vampires were nosey when it came to listening to people’s heartbeat.
Going back to her where the door was locked again, Penny went to lay back on her bed. Her eyes closed before it opened to look up at the empty ceiling. She didn’t know when she started to drift to sleep but when she finally did, she was woken up with the sound of water droplets hitting the walls which she could hear coming through the window. The rain was too much that it numbed any other sound.
For now, it felt peaceful. Alone in the room, with nothing to do and no one bothering her, this might have been the laziest hour of her life, thought Penny to herself.
She wondered where God had placed her right now. In a house full of off vampires, some appeared nice, others appeared odd but in the end, it seemed like they were all insane. Was there anyone sane in here?
She wondered if she would turn insane in time just like them. It felt as if her world had turned upside down. A few things that the vampiress spoke of lingered in her mind. The thought of betrayal from her own relatives. She wanted to know why they had done what they did to her.
Was she not their blood relative?
Getting up from the bed, she placed her hand on the window, feeling the vibrations when suddenly a flash of lightning struck close to the lands of the mansion.Her eyes closed to hear the sound of rain and thunder which got louder and louder, shaking the lands and the glasses of the mansion.
