Kiss of the Black Angel

by Della Van Hise

CHAPTER FIVE

  "Stefan? Have you reached a decision in this matter, Stefan?" Dimitri repeated, tapping a fingernail on the wine goblet from which he never drank in an effort to regain my attention.

  I snapped back to reality and tried to think of at least one reason why I should refuse him. Eternity courted me in his eyes as the world shrunk to hold us. Batman and Robin had gone away, leaving only an empty plate at an empty table. Kirk and Spock were tucked safely in bed.

  My heart screamed in my chest. "If you had it to do over again, would you?" I asked at last. "Would you give up your human life to embrace what you've become?"

  "Oh, yes! Yes—I would!" he whispered with a fervor that showed me a glimpse of the things he'd seen in his lifetime. He'd stood on the battlefield at Gettysburg. He'd sailed on the Titanic and gone down with her in dark waters. He'd danced with royalty and drunk from the veins of slumbering queens. "Any fool can die, Stefan, but it takes a brave heart to beat forever."

  His passion made me want it all—that perfection, that dark evolution, that immortal life coursing through his body. I leaned closer, unintentionally conspiratorial as my stomach knotted with thoughts of Miquel, with details of what had to be done.

  "What about you?" I asked, nervously running my fingertip through a drop of wine spilt on the table. "Why can't it be you who... why can't you be my... Creator?"

  He grinned at my uncharacteristic lack of words. "You flatter me, Stefan, but I do not have the power to give life back once it is taken." His little fangs glittered as he smiled philosophically. "And besides, why would you drink from a peasant's stone cup when the golden chalice of the prince is pressed to your lips?"

  Dimitri was good, a cunning and patient hunter who knew a net of pretty words would capture me faster and hold me tighter than any cage. If he really had been jealous the night before, it didn't show now, for he was open and casual in a way that put me at ease.

  There was only one thing left for me to know, and that because I was still afraid of the dark. "Will it be terrible?"

  His blue eye winked. His green one sparkled, reflecting the chandelier and all its little lights. "It will make you whole and enable your spirit to fly."

  We left the restaurant together and, like two little boys, raced across the lobby to the limo waiting beyond glass doors.