Eve had heard about the night creatures temporarily living in the coffin by sleeping in it, but she had never gotten to see it first hand. It was strange, knowing there were three more Moriarty members apart from her and Vincent, and they were all deep in sleep.
"How long has it been since they have been like this? In this condition," Eve softly asked, not wanting her words to be heard by the three resting vampires.
"My grandparents more than a decade or so. But great grand aunt Gretchen, I would say maybe from two centuries or more?" Vincent responded to her curious question. "You don't have to worry about the possibility of them listening to you. They can't hear a word we say or what happens. Once asleep, their body is put in a suspended sleep state and only when blood falls into their mouth will they wake up. Also the tube that is connected to the coffin, it has a gas that makes the person docile. It's why we have a protective glass sheath and servants are prohibited from stepping in here. Only Carla has access to this part of the building, apart from the members of the family."
Eve stared at Vincent's grandfather and murmured, "He holds a resemblance to your father. But you have taken your mother's features."
"Which I am very proud of," Vincent grinned, raising his hand up, he ran his fingers through his sleek silver hair. "He wasn't happy when he saw the baby's head which was full of silver hair."
"Because your mother was a human," Eve murmured, and Vincent gave a nod.
"Most of the pureblood families have a sense of superiority and don't like their blood mixed with any other kind. They like to keep it at the purest form, some marrying their own blood," Vincent stated with a straight face, which brought a frown on Eve's face.
"That's incest…" Eve murmured.
"Things people do to keep their family blood pure and thicker than what people know," Vincent leaned forward to take a closer look at his sleeping grandfather.
"How was your relationship with your grandmother? Was she strict with you too?" Eve asked Vincent, wanting to know more about him and his relationship with the other family members.
A mischievous grin appeared on his lips, and he said, "I used to be a very proper child when I was young. People would barely find the opportunity to point their finger at me. But that didn't stop grandmother from remarking on me either."
"So you weren't naughty before," Eve said with a smile, and this broadened the smile on Vincent's lips.
"I was, but not much. I was my mother's boy and didn't like to upset her. And there's often very little to subjugate a child when he or she is locked in the library. Unlike someone who liked to explore. Marceline often got into trouble like that. She broke valuable things that belonged to grandmother on more than one occasion, and I don't think she did it without knowledge. She knew it was going to upset grandma here," Vincent explained, stepping away from his grandfather's coffin, and he walked to the valve that provided air to the vampire and vampiress's coffins.
Eve, who had moved and came to stand next to the older vampiress's coffin, noticed the woman's grey hair. There was a stake pushed into the person's chest, which hadn't been pulled out. Even in sleep, the woman looked serious in the coffin.
She then moved back to the first coffin that was placed on the other table. She asked,
"What did you mean earlier when you said she will kill us if she wakes up?"
"She's grandpa's aunt, and she tried to kill him, and also my father," Vincent began, his lips twisting and a look of curiosity in his eyes. He walked from one side of the chamber to where Eve stood before stopping next to the young-looking vampiress's coffin. Gretchen Moriarty had red hair, her mouth full.
"Why?" Eve asked curiously, wondering if they didn't get along.
"No, it isn't what you think," Vincent replied with a slow grin when he read the expression on Eve's face. "The story goes such that Aunt Gretchen killed two males in the Moriarty family, and she then tried to get rid of grandpa and my father. Something to do with doom being caused by the males, which isn't fully clear. Long back, one of the female ancestors started to eradicate males in the family and only keep the daughters. It became a tradition. At first, no one understood why the males were having such an unfortunate life as they died too young and easily, but grandfather was smart enough to break the cycle. She isn't the first woman who tried to kill a person in the family."
"How wild," Eve replied in a wry tone and heard Vincent chuckle. The more she heard about the Moriarty family, the more she realised how twisted the family was that she had married into. She asked, "What happened to the other people in the family…?" Because the other killer women weren't here in this room.
"Torn, and thrown out," Vincent answered nonchalantly before he continued, "Enough of the morbid details, time to show you the other parts of this humble house of the Moriarty mansion," he grinned as he said those words because even he knew the Moriarty house wasn't humble.
But before they could leave the chambers, the housekeeper of the place arrived in the front of the door and offered a deep bow,
"My apologies, young Master Vincent. There is something that needs your attention," the woman didn't raise her head and continued to bow with her eyes on the ground.
Eve wondered how hard this woman must have trained when she was young to hold the etiquette to be the oldest housekeeper of the oldest pureblooded family. Or if she was born this way.
Vincent said, "One of the legs of the tables in here is weak and needs to be fixed."
"I will have it fixed, sire," Carla replied.
Vincent and Eve left the chambers, followed by the woman housekeeper.
