Thanks again for bearing with me! 

I hope you'll like this chapter ;-)

Sea

*

The ringing of the apartment's bell startled Sophie. It was half past two in the morning and she had just changed into comfy clothes: only one person knew that she could be disturbed at such a late hour. And it was because she knew the identity of her visitor that Colibri had jumped at the doorbell's ringing.-

"Colibri?" said a deep voice behind the door. "Are you visible?"

Sophie was just tall enough to stand on tiptoes and take a look through the peephole. She recognized Heath's black hair, his dark skin, and tall stature. Heathcliff. 

Colibri was the one who had eventually given him that nickname. He was living in her building at the time - it had been seven years since - and she only saw the apartment of the 'tall, phlegmatic swarthy man' occupied when the weather was grey. It seemed that this strange and surprisingly calm person attracted bad weather by his very presence. Heathcliff had been very useful to her during the last three investigations the young woman was involved in and he had almost become a friend to her. At least, that's what Colibri thought.

It took her a little too long to open the door. She knew it, and she knew that Heath knew it too. With a steaming cup of vervain in hand, the young woman looked up at her 'consultant' and offered him the fakest smile her zygomatic muscles could produce.

"May I come in, Sophie? I think you and I need to talk."

"Yes but how- How did you get into the building?"

"The digicode hasn't changed," the man cut her off, pronouncing 'digicode' as if it were a word from a foreign language. "Not since the time I lived here."

Heath did not smile back at his hostess. He cavalierly took a seat in a chair and didn't wait for Colibri to be seated before crossing his fingers and speaking:

"I thought you had more respect than that for people's privacy."

"It was either that or the mental asylum for me." 

"The mental asylum seems like an attractive option to me."

"I-"

"Who was that?"

Heath had a young face. He wasn't forty. On paper, at least. But at that moment, his dark gaze had become so severe and serious that Sophie Colibri felt like an elementary school student being scolded by her teacher.

"It wasn't-"

"You thought I was going to lose control, didn't you? That Jayvart could then stop me and that everything would be over? Poor Jayvart! He's going to have a terrible cold case on his hands.

"I had to be sure!"

"And for what, by golly!"

Colibri, when she had answered, had frowned and raised her voice, which was not at all impressive given her very small figure, it had to be said. Heath, on the other hand, had slammed his fist against the handle of his chair and literally exploded. And that was terrifying. The man put a hand on his heart, closed his eyes and had to focus to breathe properly.

"Jayvart," he said in a tense tone, "thinks so highly of you that he took your word for it when you said the heart of that poor fellow had gone through his throat. The latex part was good. But it's impossible to get an organ like that down someone's throat.

"I couldn't possibly-

"In reality, it was you who opened the corpse. You lied brazenly when you said that the heart was not there. You simply disemboweled him. Then you removed its teeth, flayed it and burned it, all to make me believe that it was attacked by a- a what, exactly? A vampire hunter?"

Sophie Colibri was terrified now. Heath's left leg seemed restless, making the chair jerk. He seemed ready to go insane.

"Your real name is Radu Draculea, right? You're Vlad Draculea's brother. The Impaler? The Dracula from the legend?" she dared to ask in a small voice.

"I've lived all these decades without ever once risking to be discovered and do you know why, Colibri? Because I'm not like my brother. I am not a blood drinker. I have the same defect as him, I have to live like him, to flee the sun at all cost, but I am not like him. My illness probably prevents me from being a monster," Heath added bitterly. "Let the slightest excitement seize me, and I fall on the ground as if I was dead. And this body, then, where on earth did you get it?

"It was a body dissected by some students at the medical school. I had to be sure of- 

"You'll have to find an explanation for Jayvart."

"Heath, you'd have to find an explanation for me first."

"An explanation? Didn't I already give you one?!"

"I don't believe in vampires! Heath, or Dracula, or whoever you are! I don't believe in werewolves, ghosts, supernatural forces! I- I stopped believing in God since I was fifteen!

"So why the theatrics? Why did you do it?" 

Heathcliff, his fists clenched, had jumped to his feet without even realizing it. His face radiated with fury.

"I never did- I never did or intended you any harm, Colibri!" the man thundered, no longer even thinking about controlling his heart rate. "I simply helped you during interesting investigations! Helped! I enjoyed- I enjoyed spending time with you, because you don't care about death, you don't care about life! What are you going to do, if you don't believe the lies you wanted to hear?

"Heath, back off."

"No, I'm not. I am not backing off. I am a prince, I am a voivode (1). I have never taken orders from anyone, and it won't start with you."

To see a man who has always been known to be calm, cool, collected, lose his composure like that was a frightening experience. Even for Sophie Colibri, who was now trapped in her couch by the strong arms of the man she had always considered a friend - although that word made her lips crawl.

"You have a disorder of" the coroner,  who was trying not to tremble with fear, wanted to explain. "A disorder- of- a personality disorder-"

*

I knew for sure that I should have let Colibri come to me. It was necessary that she came to ask me for explanations whenever she would have been ready. Not the other way around. Never do anything out of anger or fear. That was one law I forgot that night but I was positively beside myself. Colibri, with her unbearable habit of thinking she knew everything better than anyone else, had tried to get me to admit that I was crazy - and she had done so in a more than questionable way. During our last investigation, shortly before I left for Osaka, she had invited herself in my apartment and had - pardon my French - snooped into my office. A consequence of being too discreet about my illness, I guess. Methamphetamine possession, since the success of that Albuquerque TV series, seems suspicious to anyone now. I probably should have done a better job of hiding the incendiary correspondence I once had with my older brother, Vlad, in the middle of the fifteenth century. Or that book of black magic that I would have had to destroy anyway. At the time - I mean the time when Sophie Colibri had given herself permission to go through my personal business - I had smelled her scent, a decidedly human aftertaste, wafting into my office after she left. A mixture of apprehension, excitement and a little floral touch of jasmine that I find very pleasant. But enough with those memories: Sophie Colibri had cornered me. She had forced me to reveal a part of my life that I was perfectly happy to forget. Then she had the audacity to tell me that she didn't believe a word of it and that I had to be committed. Take the word of a Draculea: this is a speech that a voivode cannot bear to hear, Gelineau's disease (2) or not.

I don't really regret my outburst, to tell the truth. Without it, Sophie Colibri would never have believed what I had just revealed. And Colibri was probably the only human I knew who could bear the idea of my existence. And everything that came with it.

*

(1) Voïvode: from the Romanian 'voievod', shortened to vodă, sometimes also called 'hospodar'. A voievod (in Romania country) is an officer of princely rank. Literally, the word means 'who leads an army'.

(2) Gélineau's disease, better known as 'narcolepsy', is a disease with a genetic component that can reveal itself a few years after the individual's birth (sometimes after adolescence). A narcoleptic is subject to a sleep called "incoercible" and all or part of his body can fall into a state of cataplexy (sudden loss of muscle tone without loss of consciousness) when the affected individual is subjected to an emotion (anger, fear, joy, surprise). The state of cataplexy ceases when the stimulus that triggered it also ceases. The management of the disease involves certain drug treatments. In Heath's case, who has had to live with it for a long time, controlling his emotions, taking stimulants and methamphetamine are three major components of his self-management.

*

Again, sorry for any mistakes, don't hesistate to point them out !!! 

Sea