He’d been alone for so many decades that he’d long since bypassed the disbelief, the rage, the grief. The madness. 1550 had been a particularly bad year; if he tilted his arm just so under the light he could still make out the faint, white tracks of scars down the inside of his forearm where he’d clawed himself. But, like all long-term prisoners, Valerian had settled. There had always been guards, some more sadistic than others; some terrified; and there had always been those who would use him. A few mages, another vampire, once. And then, beginning in the seventeen-hundreds, an endless string of doctors who wanted to poke and prod him like one of their lab specimens. Some he’d cooperated with; one he’d decapitated. The guards had thrown boiling oil on him, then; it had taken two years for his hair to grow back.
He’d projected his consciousness often, with varying degrees of success. It was easier now that the Institute had taken over his care; they kept him well-fed and he was stronger, could reach farther, stay for longer. He’d made some exceedingly interesting friends that way, as of late.
But he hadn’t had real, in-person company in so long. In centuries. So long that he’d begun to think that he wasn’t lonely at all, and that in his lifetime of captivity and confinement, this might be as close to decent as he could get.
And then the wolves had come.
The Baron Strange was a legend, arguably the most notorious wolf in existence, certainly the oldest still living. Valerian had smelled him the moment he entered the basement, the unmistakable musk of wolf filtering through the air vents and into Val’s shitty little cell. He’d sat up so suddenly that he’d yanked his chains, their silver-lined titanium cuffs biting into his wrists.
Truth told, he’d been disappointed when he finally met the man – wolf – himself and saw that the great Fulk le Strange had become soft and hesitant in his old age. He’d given up, Val supposed, just as he had. Grown weary of expending so much energy on ruthlessness.
But that wasn’t it at all. Le Strange had found a mate, and he would behave like a housepet so long as he thought his cooperation would keep her safe.
Fulk was entertaining, but it was Annabel le Strange who had reminded Valerian that he was, in fact, lonely.
He heard her now, the faint scrape of her boot soles across the concrete floor, and sat up from his listless slouch in the corner, pushed his hands through his ratty, knotted hair – for what little good it would do. He’d been beautiful once; he supposed he still was, but he could feel the dirt caked into every crease, taste the foulness of his own breath. He tried gamely to pick the tangles from his hair with his fingers, but it did little good. Beyond a mouthful of fresh blood, his greatest fantasy was of a steaming bathtub.
The first door in the sequence unlocked with a low, deep thud and a hiss of air releasing. Then he could smell her sharply, wolf and pine needles and warm late-summer air. The hinges of the barred door creaked when she pushed through it, and her footsteps came down the hallway to the end, to his dim cell. She appeared on the other side of the bars in cutoff shorts, harness boots, and a faded old long-sleeved Zeppelin shirt.
She smiled and held up a little glass bottle. “Look what I brought you.”
“What is it?”
She turned it on its side and slid it through the meal slot; it just barely fit. “Mocha Frappuccino. It’ll change your life.”
He shifted forward – chains slithering over the floor – and plucked the offering from the shelf. “To be fair, it doesn’t take much to change my life.”
“You know what I mean.” She dropped gracefully to the floor and settled cross-legged, casual and relaxed in a way that no one ever was around him.
The bottle was sealed with a bit of plastic – a marvelous invention – and Val smiled inwardly as he peeled it off and listened to the satisfying pop of the top when he twisted it. Whenever Annabel brought him gifts, they were always still enclosed in their original packaging: a silent assurance that they hadn’t been tampered with. He could still remember the cramping of his abdominals after those cretins in 1976 had slipped him poisoned milk. They’d laughed when he’d started to vomit up his own stomach lining. That was alright; he’d clawed their larynxes out with his fingernails a few days later, gotten his first taste of human blood in a decade. So. It all worked out in the end.
Annabel laughed when he took an experimental sniff of the drink. It smelled like milk, and coffee, and chocolate, and the faint tang of chemical preservatives and sweeteners.
“It’s good,” she said. “I swear.”
He took a sip, and found she was right. Not homemade, but sweet, and thick, and better than the slop they brought him on his dinner tray every night.
“Yes,” he agreed, “thank you.”
She clapped her hands together once, satisfied. “I brought you something else, too.” Her smile turned sly before she glanced back the way she’d come, held out her hand, and made a kissing sound with her lips.
A cat trotted up to her, butted her palm with its tiny striped head. It was small, probably young, only a year or so. A female orange tabby with big golden eyes that it turned on Val with curiosity, and not a touch of fear.
Animals had always liked him.
“I thought you might like to have a friend down here,” Annabel explained, and something shifted in the dark confines of Val’s heart, pushed at old rusty padlocks and rotted hinges.
“Oh,” he said, and took another sip of his drink. “Well. I suppose that was thoughtful.”
She chuckled, the sparkle in her eyes indicating she could see right through him. “She doesn’t have a name yet. I thought you could give her one.”
Val capped the bottle and set it down slowly, the cat watching him the whole time. He wiggled his fingers and she came to him, slipping right through the narrow bars and padding up to him with her tail aloft, expression bright and eager. He folded his legs and she climbed up into his lap, purring and butting his chin with her head.
Oh, dear. That was lovely.
“Hello, beautiful,” he murmured, reaching to scratch behind her ears.
Her purring intensified and she leaned into the touch, happily kneading his leg.
“Ooh, she loves you,” Annabel said.
“Yes.” He ran his hand down her back, watching her spine lift into the motion. “Unfortunately for her.”
When he glanced up, he found Annabel watching him with sympathy.
“Don’t pity me. It makes me feel pathetic.”
She snorted. “We wouldn’t want that.”
The little cat circled and then laid down in a tidy coil, warm and purring.
“Can I ask you something?” Annabel said.
“Ah.” He smiled. “I knew you didn’t come to bring me a cat.”
“Hey now, I did! Don’t make me out like one of them.” She was of course referring to his captors – whom he guessed were her captors as well, in a way. “But you said some things to Fulk the other day, and I’ve been curious.”
“About what, my dear?”
“You said Alexei Romanov is still alive.”
“He is. Have you much interest in Russian nobility?”
“Don’t get cute.” She tried to look stern, but was smiling. “That whole story – the whole family getting killed? The Bolsheviks? – that’s crazy. Who isn’t interested? But you know what I mean.”
They studied one another a moment, and Annabel’s eyes narrowed, some of her true steel peeking through the youthful veneer. “They left Fulk and me alone for a long time,” she finally said. “And then they called. Things are in motion, Fulk says, and he’s right. Something big is coming. He’s always wanted it to be us against the world, but just the two of us can’t fight off something this big. It’d be nice to know if there’s any friendlies out there.”
“Friendlies,” he mused aloud, stroking the cat. “I’ve never known any in my own life.”