Alexandru
I stand at the tall windows of the library, watching the first pale light of dawn creep across the Silverton Valley. Behind me, embers glow in the hearth; only the occasional pop of sap dares to disturb the hush of the manor.
I flex my fingers, remembering the fear in Ms. Renfield’s eyes.
Remembering the thin line of crimson trailing down her neck.
The fury that clawed through me felt raw. Ancient. Almost primal.
Ms. Renfield, however, continued to question him. Even at the point of a blade, thanks to her maddening desire to know the answers—to put her ducks in a row, as she likes to say.
Why send a gunman after us?”
Continuing to question the man. Simply outrageous.
But so very like her.
It’s been four days since Bo Richardson dared press steel to Ms. Renfield’s throat. Four days since I dragged him back to consciousness just to savor his terror and his useless struggle as I ripped into his neck.
I drank him to the dregs and flung what remained into the Silverton River like the refuse he was.
I fix my gaze on a squirrel rooting around in the brambles near the cliff’s edge, fixated on that image of that blade biting into her flesh.
Reliving that fury.
In 1610, Thaddeus Wilberforce Renfield proclaimed in a crowded London tavern that he served the one true master. The rabble dragged him into the street and beat him to death for blasphemy and treason.
I returned from a courtesan’s bed to find his corpse displayed in the town square like carrion. From the velvet shadows of my carriage I heard the tale spreading: “The fool dared boast he served one better than God! And see now what came of it.” Laughter, spit, the clink of tankards. A story spreading like plague.
I felt nothing but annoyance. Thaddeus’s lack of judgment truly was astonishing. His death forced my hand. I had to replace him at once, and so I turned to his daughter, Millicent Arabella Renfield, lady-in-waiting to Queen Anne herself. Twenty-nine, unmarried, with no illusions about her station, she possessed what Thaddeus never did: caution, discretion, and a Renfield’s impeccable instinct for management. In her, at least, I would not have to fear another tavern proclamation ending in a public spectacle.
But how different is Ms. Renfield’s lack of judgement? Insisting I take a murderer for my meal, walking into peril armed with nothing but spreadsheets and stubbornness.
She got a blade pressed to her neck for her trouble.
And continued to question him!
But instead of annoyance, I felt fury and rage, and beneath it, something worse. Something that tasted disturbingly like fear.
It was hunger, of course. Four weeks without feeding made me more beast than man, my judgment clouded.
It was this clouded judgement that drove me to press my lips to her palm, inhaling the winter-crisp scent of her skin and the faint note of vanilla beneath. It was as if my body demanded some primitive form of proof that blood still flowed through her veins.
As if I needed it.
The sound of her footsteps echoes from the east wing.
Things are as they should be now—my Renfield existing here at my beck and call, answering only to me, supervised only by me, protected only by me. 
She moves into the foyer, footsteps across marble, proceeding down another hall into the kitchen.
I gave the builders very specific instructions for her wing to have double-thick plaster walls and fireplaces in both study and bedroom—there is to be no damp or chill in her small part of the manor.  Her windows are large, with a sweeping view of the valley, particularly from the office where she will spend her time. The rest of the manor’s windows are treated with leaded panes and smoked glass to blunt the sun, but hers were left clear.
There is a chamber where she may immerse herself in steaming water as well as furnishings with fine fabrics—velvets, soft linens, Egyptian cotton sheets. Not ostentatious, but comfortable and efficient.
She thrives in light and warmth, surrounded by order. She is mortal, after all. Frail.
I will not have her fall ill or become compromised in any way.

The kitchen door opens below. Cabinets open and shut. A soft hiss tells me she’s ignited a gas burner.

Perhaps she is preparing the oatmeal she once spoke of. Her customary breakfast of oatmeal.
For a moment, I consider joining her, observing this strange human ritual of preparing sustenance at dawn. But I remain where I am, taking in the small domestic sounds that make this vast, ancient house feel different.
Footsteps in the corridor outside the library interrupt my thoughts. Gregor approaches with an undercurrent of nervous energy.
“Overlord,” he says from the doorway.
“Speak.”
“The ledgers.” He pauses, then, “Ms. Renfield has instructed me to send them back to Karsovia. The crate is prepared for shipment⁠—”
I whirl around to face him. “She what?”
“She insisted they be removed from her chambers yesterday. She was quite... emphatic about not wanting them near her.”
Heat builds in my chest. “She instructed you to send the ledgers to Karsovia?”
“She did indeed.”
Every Renfield has worked with those ledgers, or at least some version of them.  They lose themselves in the patterns and the mysterious symbols. The ledgers speak directly to their obsessive natures.
To work with the ledgers is the Renfield way.
Yet this one would reject her very heritage?  The audacity of it is breathtaking.
“Y-you said I was to provide whatever she needs.”
“The ledgers remain here.” I stride from the library, my footsteps sharp against the marble floors. I descend the central staircase.
She is standing at the stove when I arrive, hair loose around her shoulders, wearing some form of flimsy long shirt over hose of some sort... are these undergarments? She is dropping raisins into her little pan of oatmeal, whispering numbers. She’s counting them.
“The ledgers will not be sent to Karsovia,” I announce.
She turns, surprised. The front of her shirt bears the words: I paused my true crime podcast for this?
“I don’t want those things anywhere near me,” she says.
“What you want is irrelevant. You are my underling, and the ledgers are part of your duties.”
She straightens, chin tilted up in that defiant pose I have come to know too well. “They weren’t mentioned in the contract.”
“The contract specifies that you will manage my business affairs. The ledgers are part of those affairs.”
“The ledgers are creepy old books full of weird symbols. They have nothing to do with your modern holdings."
I press my hands onto the kitchen island between us and lean in. “They are the accumulated work of your forebears, the foundation upon which your family’s service to me was built.”
“In what way?”
“That is for you to determine.”
“Fine,” she says. “Put them back in my wing. I’ll be happy to go to work on them right away—with a match and a nice big canister of lighter fluid.”
For a moment, neither of us moves.
I hold her gaze. The fiery bits in her brown eyes, I can see them so clearly now.
She wouldn’t.
Or would she?
I smile—cold and sharp. “I will keep them for you. And mark my words: someday soon, you will come to me and ask for them. You may even find yourself on your knees, begging me for them.”
“Not likely,” she says.
“What’s more, you will not wander the house in your undergarments.”
“What? These aren’t undergarments. It’s a T-shirt and leggings, a totally normal thing to wear around the home. Also, it’s comfortable. I can’t think clearly if I’m not comfy,” she adds. “I have a vast empire to manage, not to mention the project of finding a new killer to hunt."
I study her across the kitchen island, the faint steam of her mortal food curling behind her. “Those are not undergarments?”
“Newsflash—if I were wearing my undergarments, well, you’d know it.”
I tilt my head, weighing her insolence the way a hawk weighs the twitch of a mouse.
“This is a totally normal outfit in this era,” she adds hastily.
“Very well,” I say.
It is no matter.
She is my Renfield. She is becoming more my Renfield with every breath, every heartbeat.
She will capitulate in the end. They all do.

~ The End ~