1. Within/Without

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London 1880:

Darkness enveloped him. He knew his eyes were open for he had opened them just a moment ago, hadn't he? Confusion started to set in. It was never this dark in his room, even on the night of a new moon. Therefore, he reasoned, he must not be in his room. He struggled to think what the last thing he could remember was.

Her. Strange and beautiful, she had been, stalking him across the alley, speaking to him of dead fish. He had been certain she was a robber. She must have half-bricked him. That would explain the ache running through him. He must be at the infirmary. He thought of how worried his mother must be as he moved to sit up and hit resistance almost immediately.

"What?" His voice echoed around him, sounding hollow.

He felt around himself, frantic now, and felt only silk. That's when it hit him. As scared as he was, he should feel his heart pounding in his ears...but there was nothing. Memories came crashing back to him. She'd offered to give him the effulgence he had so terribly wanted. Her face had a metamorphosis into a grotesque masque that he had somehow still found entrancing. The pain of her bite had been quickly replaced by a pleasure intense and unlike any he had known in his sheltered existence.

He knew where he was and that his mother would no longer worry for him.
 

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Moonlight glimmered across the grass, a sea of subdued green marred by a fresh mound of churned earth, a new grave. Two women, a blonde in red brocade and a brunette in white silk, were waiting. The brunette danced around nervously while the blonde looked on in amusement.

"I told you that you should never have left him in that alley. It seems his family is not well enough off to have a mausoleum. Now, they have gone and buried him. He will never make it out; they seldom do."

"But he was to be my white knight. We must help him."

A deep chuckle came from the trees before a large, dark man walked out into the moonlight. A lilting Irish voice spoke tauntingly, "What kind of knight would he make for you if he cannot even make it out of his own grave? Honestly, Drusilla, I do not understand why you insisted on turning that boy." He walked to the blonde and put an arm around her, eyes still on the slim brunette, Drusilla.

She, meanwhile, was staring intently at the grave marker. She reached up to run her fingers across the inscription, reading it aloud. "William Wesley Whitehall IV, 1852 - 1880, Perchance to Dream." She sighed and turned to her companions, rising from the dirt. "You are just like the rest of them. You refuse to see his great potential. I see that beauty that dances behind his eyes."

The blonde laughed aloud. "You have missed much amusement, my Angelus. She does go on about poetry and nonsense, like a love sick little girl."

Drusilla spun back around and knelt on the grave, grinning. "The fish are swimming."

"Darla, did that make any sense to you?"

"I would guess at her excitement that he is about to come out, at last."
 

TBC