Kiss of the Black Angel

by Della Van Hise

  *

  My next awareness was of being in the great room of their home, where candles burned on the sills and the scent of smoke from the fireplace filled the air like pleasant anesthesia. Dimitri led me to an overstuffed sofa of soft burgundy leather and had me wait while he went to tell Miquel of my decision. He even told me not to be afraid, though he confessed he was glad he'd never had to make the choice himself.

  As I sat there listening to the irregular pounding of my heart, it occurred to me to jump up and run. I was beginning to think Dimitri and Miquel had forgotten about me entirely when I heard the hushed padding of tennis shoes on the hardwood floor. I looked up, expecting to find some monster looming over me, but instead it was the young servant from the night before.

  He stopped in the shadows of the stairwell, peering at me from a distance. Tight bluejeans hugged his athletic legs, and a green spandex top made it look as if he'd just come from the gym. His hair, which had been tied back before, now hung almost to his waist in glassy waves the shade of imported dark chocolate.

  He was a vision, unreal, an album cover.

  When I saw how exotic he truly was, I thought I'd been mistaken and this wasn't the same boy at all. But when he emerged into the light near the foot of the stairs, his porcelain doll skin and graceful movements were trademarks that couldn't be forged or inadvertently twinned in nature.

  Seeing him better—firelight flickering over pronounced cheekbones, narrow nose and defined chin—I realized he was older than I'd first believed. Twenty, perhaps. No more than 22.

  "Hello," I said, sensing that any quick movement would cause him to bolt. He was a shy animal, wild, and I could only wonder what had happened to make him this way. I held one hand toward him. "I'm Stefan—Stefan London."

  He nodded a wary acknowledgement, looking at me with wide brown eyes reminiscent of a deer.

  "You came back," he said, coming no closer.

  I'd almost decided he was mute, but his voice was even more clear and sharp than Dimitri's—not a human voice at all, but the plaintive sound one might expect from a merman or some fabled he-wolf crying to the moon. He cast a nervous glance toward the darker part of the house, then inquired in a fervent tone that sent chills through me, "Do you know what will happen if you stay?"

  I was too scared to be scared anymore, so I sat there numbed to the bone by his voice, his extraordinary male beauty. "Yes, I think I do." I didn't, of course. How could I?

  He crept a step closer, and as our gazes locked across the wide room, I felt sorry for him without understanding why. Uncomfortable with the silence, I started to say something, but a sound from the top of the stairs stopped me—a little bump, a soft thump, hushed male voices that sent a rush of dread through my gut. My head jerked toward the source, but the darkness sweeping down that curved stairwell revealed nothing.

  There was a sensation of abrupt movement nearby, yet when I cast my eyes toward the young man, he was nowhere to be seen, the only thing that gave any hint to his whereabouts a curtain moving on the far side of the room. The window was open, and as I leapt from the sofa and hurried over to it, a shadow streaked through darker shadows at the farthest edge of the lawn.

  I opened my mouth to call out, but the garden of statues and their watchful black angel stole my voice away completely.

  Perhaps I should have gone after him or run away myself, but a writer's curse is to record events, often missing their significance at the time, so that he might mull them over at some later date. Returning to the sofa, I sat tentatively on the edge, struggling to quiet my ragged nerves.

  The fire in the hearth was warm, a pleasant crackling filling the room, comforting somehow. The smooth white walls which stretched two stories high here in the great room were adorned with ornate tapestries and the hardwood floor covered with Persian rugs perhaps as old as Miquel himself. Overhead, a stained glass skylight depicted two enormous seraphim in frantic flight, carrying between them a third comrade whose head hung limp and whose broken wings trailed from his muscular back, lifeless.

  Enthralled, I stared at it as the moon rose to illumine its fragile beauty. Then, when I could no longer bear the grief captured in the eyes of those stained glass angels, I drew my attention back to Earth.

  What brought a smile to my lips was the large screen tv. and the elaborate stereo system with its 8-speaker surround sound tied in to the home theater. Two DVDs in rental cases sat next to the array, tagged with a common yellow sticky note which read: Dimitri, return these on Monday. ...M.....

  For reasons I might never understand it was that silly detail which made Miquel human to me—sticky notes and memberships at the local video shop and a note written with plain black ink instead of blood.

  For all his eloquent speech and his Ming vases gathering dust on a corner shelf and his undoubtedly authentic Van Gogh leaning against the wall as if he hadn't yet decided where to hang it, Miquel Kaliq Constantine was no Count Dracula imprisoned in a dreary castle. He could be just as comfortable at a rock concert as at the Bolshoi, and that was the thrill of him.

  My stomach leapt unexpectedly – a rare premonition – and when I spun toward the stairs, it was to see the vampyre descending in all his glory. Whereas the night before had seen him in jeans and a plain white shirt, now he wore a tuxedo that made him appear even taller and darker than I remembered. He hadn't shaved—his scruffy countenance part of his vain self-portrait—and his glossy black mane crept inside his collar to nuzzle his neck, a curious pet. His eyes sparkled with mischief as he glided toward me and extended his hand in greeting.

  I laughed nervously as we shook hands, halfway expecting him to say, 'Smile, you gullible fucking idiot, you're on Candid Camera!'

  Instead, completely at ease, he took my hand and pressed it firmly between both of his own, meeting my eyes in a steady emerald gaze that wasn't meant to mesmerize but nonetheless left me light-headed.

  "You must forgive my protegé for not offering you something to drink," he said with consummate poise, "but I'm afraid he's run away into the night again. The act of creating a vampyre still scares poor Donny, you see, for he was made against his will—a struggle that almost destroyed us both." He smiled a little, sharp fangs glistening in his mouth. "Tell me: did he try to talk you out of it?"

  I went cold to the bone when I saw his teeth, when I thought of what he was going to do to me. "Uh—no. But why—why did you—why against his will?" I stammered, taken off guard by the realization that the boy was a vampyre and the strong insinuation that Miquel wasn't above using force to get what he wanted.

  He put an arm around my shoulder and led me to the window, and though I'd never been accustomed to such familiarity with another man, the strength of his embrace was reassuring. I tried to relax, knowing the time was past for changing my mind.

  For a few moments, he looked at me as if trying to decide whether to answer my question. The creek gurgled, rushing through the flower gardens. Glass windpipes hanging beneath the eaves began a melodic chiming.

  "Donny was my blood lover, you see," he explained in a voice that was barely audible despite our physical closeness. "When he fell ill, I had to bring him into this life or lose him forever." Taking his gaze from the window and fastening it on me, he added darkly, "I do not like to lose, Stefan."

  These words he uttered with an arrogance that was palpable in its intensity. I could think of no appropriate response as he looked at me with a vulnerability which told me he really did want me to understand why he did the things he did.

  "I have been acquainted with death for over a thousand years," he explained, and I knew then that the madness in his eyes was history. "I've seen him steal friends, obliterate families at a whim, annihilate entire civilizations. Normally I've looked the other way, ignoring him as he's ignored me. But when he came for Donny and singled him out of all the world, I took his audacity as a personal affront, and on that day death and I went to war."

  His ardor chilled me. His passion moved
me. And because I wanted to understand, I foolishly muttered, "I understand."

  Miquel turned his head to me, his scrutiny causing me to writhe inside. "Really?"

  Knowing he'd seen right through my bravado, I gave him the truth instead. "I want to."

  This made him smile, though somewhat sadly. "I believe you really do, Stefan."

  Then, before I knew what was happening, he reached out to run his fingertips over my hand, a gesture that wasn't intrusive when I consciously lowered my walls in response to the telepathic presence of his will. And without the bulky burden of words, I suddenly knew—

  —the April storm was unexpected, making the house damp and full of shadows even at mid-afternoon. By the open window, Miquel danced, naked and frenzied, grateful for the clouds yet resentful that the sun was hiding behind them, waiting to sneak out again. The windows fogged, frosty ghosts peering in at the corners. Music screamed—the same song playing over and over on speakers omnipotent enough to render even a vampyre deaf to the world's din.

  The thirst aroused him, thoughts of drinking from his chosen blood lover causing his lips to part and his eyes to roll slightly upward. How long had he known Donny? A year? Or was it two? The kid shouldn't be dying. The kid shouldn't have AIDS.

  "I shouldn't have to kill you just to make sure you will live." Though he said the words aloud, Miquel never heard them above the music and the pounding of his own crazed heart. Death was mocking him, challenging him to a duel for the soul of a dying man.

  Donald Anthony Carrera—lead vocalist in a rock band that played weekend gigs at the local pub. The first time Miquel laid eyes on the kid he had to have him: a taste of his blood, a drink of his poetry. The first time he heard him sing, he was lost.

  To make it perfect, Donny loved the blood bite, his entire essence surging every time Miquel drank from him. With this one, there was no need to hide the truth, no need to resort to sorcery to make him forget. With Donny, Miquel could openly enjoy being a vampyre again, partaking in the shared symbiosis as it was meant to be.

  His body quickened. Neither God nor Satan could have the kid and that was that!

  He visualized making it real: Donny climbing into his arms as he'd always done, accepting without fear or fight the sharp kiss that would end his life in order to chase away his death forever.

  The magic wouldn't be quite that easy, of course. It never was.

  From the cold gray fabric of the storm, Miquel gathered strength, knowing he would need every molecule of power he could conjure, and even then it might not be enough. The sting of mortal death was sometimes fatal, defying even his blood. Fear could destroy it all and plunge the kid into the sun, a failed Icarus.

  He trembled, feeling terribly small. He had to be more than a man, more than even a vampyre. Could he be the Creator now, when it mattered more than anything?

  He never knew, and that was the hell of it.

  "You must fly – beyond the ability of Death to undo!" Miquel said to the empty room, the breath rushing out of him as he collapsed on the floor, his chest heaving from hours of exertion. He touched his body for magic, for luck, and to bring forth the power of Creation itself.

  He closed his eyes, hugged his arms to his chest, and he wept. Soon it would be night—time to take the life of a love.

  I was staring fixedly into Miquel's eyes when the trance dissipated. A small sound escaped my throat, and though I swayed dizzily in response to the clash of conflicting realities—what I'd always believed possible and what I'd always thought of as myth—the myth steadied me with a firm grip on my arm.

  "I will not lose you either, my friend," he assured me.

  The sheer force behind those words caused me to look away. Panic pressed close.

  If this thing had to be done at all, it should be clinical, detached and quickly over, an awful thing to be gotten through like a trip to the dentist. I didn't want to hear him talking about mortal lovers and challenging death and making a man a vampyre against his will—an act that sounded obscenely erotic despite its more sinister overtones. I didn't want to watch the plays written in his memory, nor see him dancing like some savage warlock, naked and crazed by a storm.

  To my surprise, Miquel laughed, then reached out a hand to tousle my hair. "But don't you see, Stefan?" he murmured with a little grin that caused my heart to miss a beat. "I've danced the day away for you this time—to prove to Death that my will is stronger even than his."

  I tried to speak, but no words came as I took a step away from him. He had danced for me. He had danced a barbaric dance because it truly was his intention to kill me.

  Suddenly it was all very real and sharply focused, and I was no longer ready to give up my life even for the prospect of living forever. Before, it had been an idle thought, a fantasy. Now, with him standing in front of me as we finalized some unholy pact, it became 3-dimensional and far too detailed.

  Without volition, I stumbled another step backward, glancing toward the tall double doors, knowing I would never reach them.

  "Oh, God," I whispered. "Oh, God!"

  Instead of chastising me for my cowardice, Miquel followed after me and slipped an arm around my waist in an attempt to calm my fright. If I'd ever wondered how a prisoner felt on his way to the gas chamber, I knew. My body was numb, my mind detached, and my life was far too finite—measured in minutes and seconds rather than years. The air in my lungs had turned to fire because I'd forgotten to breathe, and I was on the verge of nausea when Miquel pulled me to his chest and forced my head down on his shoulder.

  Without words, he held me there, swaying easily back and forth with his fingers tangled in my hair and my cheek pressed to the ruffled shirt of his tux. His chin rested against my forehead, his shadowy stubble coarse and entirely too physical, his clean scent filling my nostrils. Unable to bear the sight of our reflections in the mirror above the mantle, I clenched my eyes tightly shut, dancing with the instrument of my impending death.

  An hour passed, maybe more.

  Finally, when I could breathe again, he placed his hands on my shoulders and held me at arms' length as the room came back into focus. I do not know what our minds said to one another, but after a minute or two, he led me to the sofa and sat down at my side.

  "I know you're afraid, Stefan," he told me with compassion, resting a steady hand on my shoulder. "But I've done this thing before and I know you'll make it through. So we'll speak with reverence of your death for a moment and then we'll simply do it. I think it would be best that way—without so much angst and contemplation, yes?"

  It was so easy for him, so natural to seduce a mortal soul right out of the vessel that held it. All I could do was stare at him, at those feral eyes framed by the most exquisite features I'd ever seen.

  He was both executioner and messiah. He was my fate and undeniably he was my faith.

  I tried to reply, but my stomach cramped and my vision blurred. My heart went into an unearthly rhythm until I cried out in pain, ashamed of myself for an anxiety so acute it reduced me to this.

  In the face of eternal life, I was about to die of a stroke.

  Miquel squeezed my shoulder to calm me. When he gave an unexpected smile at my predicament, I saw his teeth and once again knew that special fear reserved for those who had looked their death squarely in the face. Meeting my gaze with an expression of real empathy, the amusement left him.

  We were alone in the world then, and I believe he planned it that way—for time to stop, for the lights in the distance to dim, for the wind to stop stirring the chimes in the garden. All that remained were the songs of the frogs and the gurgling of the little creek, a miniature Styx winding its way past the window.

  "All you need do is come to me willingly, Stefan, and I will do the rest," he assured me, holding his hands open as he spoke. Here he paused, fingertips brushing my cheek. "Can you do it, my friend? Can you surrender your life to me and trust me to make you whole again?"

  I hated him for the images his words a
wakened—a savior offering me body and blood and telling me I would live forever if I were first willing to die.

  I began to weep, for there was only one answer to his question, and with a gruesome effort that drained me, I whispered it before I could change my mind: "Yes."

  His entire self surged in response, a burst of energy on my mind. "Excellent," he breathed darkly. "Perfect."

  Then, meeting my eyes and compelling me not to look away as his trance engulfed me, he began to speak in a voice that was hypnotic and soothing unto itself.

  "When you feel my lips on you, draw a deep breath and rejoice in knowing it will be your last as a mortal. You'll think you're drowning, but remember I'm with you in the waters, driftwood at your side. You'll want to fight me, but if you do, know you'll die the death from which not even my blood can awaken you again."

  I couldn't breathe. I couldn't move. "I'm afraid."

  He wet his lips with the tip of his tongue, as enraptured by this insufferable act as I was horrified. "Then come to me, Stefan, and let us take that fear away from you forever. Let me show you the way out."

  Our eyes locked, passing candlelight back and forth in an endless hall of mirrors.

  It was the only way out, terrifying and terribly seductive because of that very singularity. When I finally saw that, when I acknowledged that death was the only chance I had for life, I fell into his outstretched arms because there was nowhere else for me to go.

  I believe I was speaking—whimpering and crying and begging him to let me live, I suspect—though I could not tell you for sure. It was a terror I would will on no other living soul, and had I known I would experience such an all consuming dread when his arms closed around me, I could not have gone through with it.

  My world was ending and I was going to my death as if it were a lover.

  My body surged in protest, survival instinct making me resist even his pleasing trance. But when he seized my wrists and forced me down with a strength I could never match, I could only look up into his eyes and accept as fact that I was already dead.Releasing one wrist, he touched my face as his weight pressed me deeper into the dream. Then, as if he wanted to shield me from the hunger I read in his gaze, he brushed his fingertips over my eyes, forcing them to close.

  "Driftwood, Stefan," he whispered as my head began to spin and I knew he really was going to do it. "I am driftwood."

  I caught a shaky breath when he gathered me to him and his lips fell quickly upon my throat. My heart pounded, wild drums. My tears fell, a fatal storm. In a final act of resignation that begged for mercy, I threw my arms around his back and pulled him roughly to me, burying my face in the curve of his neck as I began to weep.

  "Beautiful," the angel of death whispered, his thirst a palpable force in the room. "Your surrender is genuinely beautiful." His fingers caressed my throat, luring the blood to the surface, and then I began falling into a warm, sheltering faint. "Now let the world be gone, Stefan. Let the world go away so the night can come in."

  And with that, he seized me with his teeth in a grip so fierce I felt the cramp of torment all the way through to my feet. My eyes flashed open for an instant, but I clamped them tightly shut, afraid I would see death in the room. Warmth poured down my neck, a rushing river caught by the devil's lips.

  I panicked, surrendered, panicked again.

  At first, I fought to shove him away from me, but when I remembered his final warning as my blood ran freely and I began to suffocate, I grabbed the driftwood to me and rode that hellish tidal wave straight on into the night.

  The world went still then, and I stood apart from myself, a voyeur watching my own metamorphosis as I lay in the arms of a vampyre who drank my dying soul. It was all I'd dared to think it might be—my body conquered beneath him, my soul rising up to dance on the ceiling in a bid to escape the terrible pain.

  The music of the spheres wasn't Lawrence Welk or Andrew Lloyd Webber or even Enya. It was rock and roll, with my own high-pitched scream wailing like an electric guitar.

  The suffering was indescribable. The pleasure left me spent. I stopped breathing. And then, as Miquel suckled the blood from my world, I knew the gruesome serenity of death itself.

  Though one might think it would be the most enigmatic experience of man, the actuality of it was altogether dull. For a moment, it seemed that whatever essence had made Stefan London a creature unique unto himself would merely be absorbed into the spongy black cloth of the cosmos, soaked up, finished.

  The horror came with the realization that even this disintegration of the Self would have been acceptable, because the will to live was the first thing death stole away. In that way, it was an altogether flawless mechanism. Annihilation wasn't a process of defeat or surrender. It was, in the end, nothing more than nonexistence—a state of non-being which would triumph by default because one could not do battle with a vacuum while inside that very vacuum.

  In one moment, I had been alive and vital and terrified that my life was going to end. Yet when that ending came, the heavy blankness obliterated even the realization that there had been a me to be destroyed in the first place.

  For the first time in all of time, I did not exist and never had and never would, and that was the nature of death as I perceived it. There was, if Nothing can be said to exist, Absolute Nothing which could not even be perceived because the ability to perceive was lost in the Nowhere, swallowed whole. There was no blinding white light, no line of dead relatives welcoming me to heaven, no angelic choirs, and not a single deity or demon in sight. And yet, if there was a Hell, this was it: this profoundly empty and hollow void where Stefan London had once existed, this hole death created in the very fabric of space and time, this hole which was the annihilation of consciousness itself.

  Adrift in that nihilistic state, I didn't see Miquel loosen his crisp black tie nor unfasten his ruffled shirt to reveal his neck to me. And though I have no recollection of him making a small incision below his ear, I was drawn to the scent of that scarlet milk as a baby instinctively seeks its mother's breast—the only real thing in the midst of the cold black mire.

  Because I could not do it for myself, he lifted my head to the wound and held it there as I was overcome by a hunger so fierce it threatened to consume me. Abruptly, I was dragged back into my lifeless body—too heavy, so small, so cold—when I tasted the precious salts of his blood on my tongue.

  Greedy for that flavor which I now recognized as the only cure for death's nonexistence, and gifted with sharp fangs that had replaced my own dull incisors, I bit down hard and sucked in my first immortal breath: a choking, gurgling reverse scream of vampyre evolution.

  Miquel cried out when I was born, trembling beneath the suffering I caused him even as his arms tightened around me and a low groan of wicked bliss whispered across his lips. The anguish thrilled him as it thrilled me. We were two of a kind, he and I. We were cloud and rain. Pain and pleasure. We were flesh and bone.

  At first, I knew only the security reserved for a newborn first set to its mother's nipple. But then, as his blood began threading its way through the veins and the capillaries of my death-still heart, something happened I hadn't anticipated. It came as a flash at first, a quick burst of images with no rational explanation.

  A male concubine, groomed as a consort to the emperor, but arrogant and defiant in his youth, refusing to be subservient even to the highest lord of Byzantium. When he struck the monarch and would not allow himself to be taken, his belly was cut open and he was thrown out for the wild dogs to find.

  But it was the king's odd son who found the beautiful creature first, the pale young prince who fed the dying man blood from his own body and nurtured him back to health in secret.

  When Miquel was well again, he stole the vampyre's sword and plunged it through his heart—not because he believed it would kill Prince Leo, but because he desperately hoped the prince would be driven to kill him in a fit of rage and revenge. Leo, like his father Basil, had taken liberties with
Miquel against his will. A vampyre now himself, he would not be sodomized like some common whore; and though he secretly wept when his maker cast him out into streets, he never saw the prince again.

  But he would not let me linger there, giving me only the briefest glimpse of his past.

  Centuries tumbled together in his mind, a haze of lost memories made dim by the will to forget. Before Dimitri, there was only the darkness. After Dimitri was born in his arms and he knew he was a Creator capable of building a new world, he no longer mourned the loss of the sun or cursed the thirst.

  He was a vampyre, and now he held his head high as he smiled at the moon and admired his own reflection in pools of still water. Though barely 19 when Leo changed him, Miquel's magical body had settled into the maturity of a man in his early 30s—the prime of mortal life, the peak of strength and prowess, when a man was feared by powerful men and desired by beautiful women.

  The images came hard and fast, mixed in his blood. The images were the blood, the culmination of all Miquel. I drank of popes and soldiers, kings and fools. I tasted Lord Byron on my tongue, and pressed the elixir of Shelley to my lips. I sampled the soul sick sweetness of Norma Jean and the final breath of Jim Morrison. There were the homeless urchins from the streets of L.A., whose blood ran strong and quick in anonymity. And there were the willing victims who had sought out the vampyres since the dawn of time in the hopes of finding immortality.

  I suckled deep as his heart fed me, finally encountering my own familiar flavor running fast through his veins. The taste was narcissistically sweeter than all the rest, and I yearned for it so much that I released my hold and re-sank my teeth to gain a better view.

  Railroad tracks slick with rain and tennis shoes pounding footprints into the mud. Wild pumpkins growing in an empty city lot, still green. A finger sliced open and the flood of blood in a little boy's mouth as he sucked it, secretly hungry with the need to know himself better.

  Again Miquel writhed, fingers twisting in my hair as he held my head to him and encouraged me to feed.

  "Yes, my child, take all you need and take it deep," he whispered, though I heard the words in my mind more than in my ears. He stroked my face, my throat. The instinct is strong with you because you were born to the Blood.

  I floated in the soft, warm core of him and let its red waves gently rock me. But as my feast continued and I indulged this terrible hunger to the point of gluttony, something went skittering past my lips that gave me sudden pause. It was a presence half remembered, a face in an album of faded photographs, an old song playing on a distant radio.

  "Drink deeper, Stefan," Miquel encouraged, though his voice had gone sad, resigned. "Drink it to the soul so you may understand it."

  Because he was my Creator and I was compelled to obey his will, I drank deeper of this familiar essence. So perfect was the flavor on my lips that I never wanted to let it go, so dulcet and trusting I wanted to devour it as Miquel had once devoured it.

  They moved together on the dance floor at the costume ball—the vampyre in his tuxedo, and the goth girl with the dyed black hair and skin paler even than his. Enamored of his physical radiance, thrilled when he lifted her in his arms and waltzed with her, she threw her head back and laughed with an abandon only an adolescent girl can know.

  "Are you really a vampyre?" They'd courted one another all evening, covert glances across a crowded room. Finally, he'd asked her to dance.

  "I really am," Miquel told her, and captured her in the folds of his cape.

  She rested her head on his chest, for she barely reached his shoulder. A strange sensation such as she'd never known alighted in the pit of her stomach.

  "I believe you," she whispered, and she did believe. A soft sigh pressed through lips painted red with her mother's borrowed lipstick. The calm inside her grew. "Can you read my mind?"

  "Yes."

  "What am I thinking, then?" Her head was held high, chin beginning to tremble.

  He drew her close, so close, caressed her hair. Emeralds snarled in ebony. "You want to die," he barely whispered, sucking that ghastly aloneness until her essence filled him. Other couples danced nearby, oblivious to the pact being secretly sworn.

  Her eyes closed, cheeks suddenly wet. Her small hands clenched his back, shiny black fingernails digging in. "Nobody understands," she told him, her soul awash with the torment of growing up. "Nobody ever has."

  "I understand, Stephanie."

  God help me, I believe he did. He understood something about her I never had. He understood her pain enough to acknowledge it and, more, enough to make it stop.

  And though I tried to tear myself away from him and run screaming into the night, I could never run far enough now. In a horrible flash that came through the blood, I knew how she'd died—kiss of death, soft and fine and without fight or pain—and I knew it had been as mystical for her as it had been for me because it had come at Miquel's skilled hands.

  The bastard even made love to her before he pressed his teeth to her throat and gave her the release she desperately craved. As he stole her innocence, he liberated her from a life she'd never wanted: a mother addicted to therapy and booze, and a father more obsessed with trying to describe the color of her hair than with questioning why that color came from a bottle when she was only 13.

  When I tore my mouth from his nurturing throat, my lips wet with her blood, I could only look into Miquel's predatory eyes and cry out when I saw my own iridescent reflection caught there. I would have killed him if I could, yet there was no denying he was already dead.

  In shock, my words came out cold and ineloquent. "You godless, soulless bastard—you murdered her!"

  But he shook his head and forced my head down on his shoulder, knowing I was too weak to resist. Worse, he knew I wouldn't resist, for he was my Creator whom I would love by nature, even in the face of a hatred equally profound.

  It was a paradox for which no reconciliation existed, and by that very definition it was madness itself.

  In defiance of nature, my body quickened as he coddled me, and that was worse still. Shame overwhelmed me, and I wept in denial as the river of arousal flowed from me in a rush that confirmed his intolerable power over me.

  "You murdered her!" I shouted, twisting and writhing. My fists flailed at his face, his neck, the air, but the blows had no effect whatsoever. "You murdered her! You murdered my baby girl!"

  With little effort, he stilled my protests, placing one hand firmly over my mouth and the other in the center of my chest until I fell back, unable to do anything more than stare up into his face.

  "No, my dearest Stefan," he said with a degree of regret that astonished me, "you murdered her—you and your busy, busy world that had no time for a little girl with a melancholy soul." And as if I needed to hear it again, he leaned down close to my ear and repeated, "You killed her. I only gave her the ability to die."

  My mortal tears were drying as they fell, though my chest still heaved. "Then kill me, too!" I begged, so frail I could barely speak. I hadn't the strength to attack him again, yet I couldn't imagine going on with him in the same world—wanting him, needing him as a father, a friend, a teacher and more. Loving him more than I could have loved hatred itself.

  I vowed to destroy him. But at the same moment, my immortal soul was swelling and shattering with the excruciating love a man feels for someone who has just saved his life.

  That was the price, that was the passion, that was the motivation which would spur me to eternity itself. Damned to love the creature who had murdered my daughter, it was his blood mingling with hers in my veins that caused my vampyre heart to start beating.

  "Kill me!" I demanded, appalled at the strengthening flutter in my hollow chest, yet secretly filled with a hunger that horrified me with its intensity. "If you have any compassion in you, kill me, Miquel!"

  A jeweled hand stroked my head. "I already have," he whispered, and gave an ironic smile.

  Then, rising from the sofa, he lifted
me easily into his arms and, like a loving father, carried me up the stairs to his white satin bed. There he lay me down to sleep, curling his body around me, sheltering me in the down of his noble black wings.

  Perhaps there was no God, but I knew then there was a devil. Not the Christian devil, to be sure, but colder still and far more brutal. Marble hearted. Not a fallen angel, but one who had deliberately flown away from the light because it offended him.

  Is the coyote evil because he kills? No, he is only a hungry coyote, capable of compassion.

  Because he left me no other choice, I fell into a cold and bottomless sleep with the kiss of the black angel on my lips and the blood of my Stephanie dancing The Mephisto Waltz in my veins.

  ~~~