December
Lucy's Age: 3
Imastious has just given me the best Christmas present I could have hoped for, and the most satisfying part of it is the fact that he doesn't even realize what a boon he's just provided to me. He came prepared for a serious confrontation of wills, so I was forced to play along, but when he told me that he'd recently turned another vampire and that he wanted me to be the one to train her, all I could think was that this was the perfect dry run for what I'm going to be doing with Lucy a couple of decades from now.
The girl is a scared eighteen-year-old whom Imastious kidnapped from her house a couple of days ago. Her real name is April, but I've decided that she needs to be brought down another few steps before she's going to be ready to start learning instead of just whining about the terrible things that Imastious has done to her.
I'll be calling her Venice from here on out; and once she starts to respond to that name, I'll begin feeding her something more than starvation rations. From there we'll move onto simple unarmed combat and see where her talents lie.
She's incredibly beautiful with a slender build and platinum-blond hair, so I rather expect that she'll do well when it comes to any missions requiring seduction. Imastious has historically been pretty heavy-handed on the operational side though, so unless he's about to turn over a new leaf, she's going to need to at least be able to defend herself against a run-of-the-mill normal human.
As much as I'd like for things to be otherwise, Imastious is planning on keeping tabs on her training, so I've been ordered to continue to use the containment facility that he has set up for her.
Not only would it be easier on me if I could relocate her somewhere closer, but I think it would probably be easier on her as well. Imastious has had a taste for blondes for as long as I can remember, and I suspect that her current quarters were at least partially chosen so that she's close enough at hand to wherever Imastious is living that he can stop in whenever he feels like it.
Which just goes to show that convenience is not always the best answer. If Imastious took a more hands-off approach it would make my job of using him as a common enemy to unite us much harder.
No, the current setup is ultimately much better. With any luck I'll be able to turn Venice into an ally. She's unlikely to have any real power for decades still, but assuming that I'm ultimately able to train her up to a reasonable degree of proficiency with a sword then she'll still be useful when I'm finally ready to try and kill Imastious.
Speaking of which, I need to make sure that I begin her mental conditioning sooner rather than later as well. I'll need to be very careful not to do anything that Imastious can detect, but there are a number of ways that I can go about weakening the suggestions he implants in her mind. Even better would be if I can manage to reinforce others slightly such that the overall working has different consequences than he intends for it to. Ultimately I'll need to simply limit the amount of conditioning he's able to implant while I get her to the point of being able to defend her own mind against casual intrusions.
The best option would be if I could convince her to let down her defenses for me at a later point so that I can implant some loyalty conditioning of my own, but that may be unachievable.
Lucy has begun talking a little more lately. She still seems to view Christmas as something to be scared of, but I've promised her that I won't be sending her away for Christmas.
It was a small thing to promise, which seemed to make a big difference in Lucy's disposition, and if circumstances were to change in an unforeseen manner, there is nothing she could do to ensure that I live up to my word. Children are much more blindly trusting than I'd realized, but I'll have to take care not to break trust with her as it would doubtlessly have a negative impact on our future relationship.
I've recently had to chastise Mrs. Agosti regarding the amount of television that she is allowing Lucy to watch. I clearly remember when the devices were invented and despite having been exposed to them for years, my opinion of them remains unchanged. They are nothing more than a distraction which serves no good purpose and there is little if anything useful that they do which cannot be better performed by way of the written word.
What little news is shown on the various networks is barely more than superficial talking points which are manipulated by various power blocs. Rather than being constrained by being spoon-fed information at a rate that the lowest common denominator can understand, I've long advocated reading from various sources as being a superior method of informing oneself.
Understanding current events is a necessary investment of time, but there is no reason to turn it into a kind of entertainment that occupies hours and hours.
Unfortunately, Mrs. Agosti has quite a different view, and my attempts to reprogram her away from the activity have proven unsuccessful so far. It is interesting to see how her psyche is reacting to my efforts though. I've rarely seen such a strong reaction out of anyone before when it came to trying to change their behavior.
I have decided, at least temporarily, to cease fighting this particular battle with Mrs. Agosti, but it has raised a very valid concern of what I would do if she and I were ever to come to a point where our differences became irreconcilable.
She has no close friends or family who could be used as leverage, and threatening her personally is likely going to just result in her telling Lucy about my behavior. I've already established from prior incursions into her mind that money will not be a very good motivator for her, which leaves me with little in the way of options where she is concerned other than the voice of reason, which I've also established is not always successful.
I've decided that it would be prudent to start investigating some kind of backup option. I'm not taking this course lightly because of the sheer amount of time which will be required to begin inserting the proper constructs in the mind of whoever ends up being my backup option.
It appears that I have found yet another way in which I drastically underestimated the level of inconvenience that Lucy would bring into my life. There are a large number of problems in life which I've found can be sidestepped simply by picking up and leaving. This is, unfortunately, much less of an option now that I'm responsible for Lucy.
In many ways this presents a novel, if fairly irrelevant, tactical problem which I've yet to fully solve. For now, I've decided that I'll need to spend slightly more time with Lucy in order to provide her with an alternate activity.
Mrs. Agosti tends to watch most of her television in the evening, so I've begun reading bedtime stories to Lucy before putting her to bed each night. I initially tried just ordering an assortment of options from an online retailer, but this proved less than acceptable for Lucy for some reason or another.
She displayed absolutely no interest in any of the books I'd selected, but Mrs. Agosti recommended I take Lucy to the public library for story hour. I'm finding that her suggestions are nearly always very reasonable, so much so that I can rarely disagree with them, but I'm increasingly finding that I'm taking over duties with regards to Lucy's care that I never intended to assume.
I will have to give the matter additional thought, but for now the important factor is that while story hour wasn't in and of itself a rousing success, it did lead to a triumph. Lucy didn't want to sit down and listen with the other kids, but she was absolutely fascinated by the stacks.
She wandered along the narrow corridors between the bookshelves with a subdued expression of delight on her face that was her equivalent to screaming for joy. We ended up going home with more than a dozen books, and Lucy apparently does like listening to stories, she just doesn't like being around large groups of other children.
The beginnings of a plan are starting to coalesce in the back of my mind. It's not far enough along yet for me to know exactly the opportunity that is approaching me, but I've been down this road before and I recognize the feeling. Hopefully this particular plan will come together quickly. Taking care of Lucy, and Venice, albeit in very different ways, is incredibly inconvenient, but I suspect that it is the boredom that will do me in first unless Imastious either assigns me a suitable mission or I come up with something myself.