“What are you thinking?” I asked while toying with my nails.
“I think…” She looked so hard at thought, even my brain ached. “…she never really wanted two.”
I shook my head, “How can you say that?”
“I don’t know… I just feel it,” Jodie said, grimacing.
“I still wonder why they split up, don’t you?”
“Doubt they will ever tell us,” she said with her eyebrows raised.
“Mystery, then,” I added contemplatively, and my sister vaguely nodded in agreement.
I knew one thing. When we were very small Mum had once told us both, “Forces exist out there in the world, ones we don’t understand, but they exist. Forces of the supernatural. I once saw a figure, you know… this woman. In a dream she told me she was watching over you both… keeping you safe. Said you were miracles, both of you. I believed her.”
It was why I still believed in the supernatural as an adult. My beliefs made me mistrustful and superstitious and it was one of the reasons why I had feared having a child of my own. Why I feared other things too, perhaps.
Jodie cleared her papers and pens and other stuff, leaving only her empty glass behind. She whispered in my ear as she stooped to kiss my cheek, “Don’t look now but we are being watched by some pervert… though he seems a new addition to the crowd.”
I turned briefly to see where she was looking and caught Fabien’s eyes. I looked back at her, shocked and surprised to see he hadn’t given up. A lazy smile coated my sister’s mouth as she whispered, “He’s gorgeous.”
When she looked up again, however, she looked so forlorn as her eyes darted only to be met with empty space at the bar he was just sat at. “Oh no, he’s gone.”
FABIEN
I WAS TOO excited to think straight. Was it truly her? Was it my love? Like with Jaimie, I couldn’t read Jodie’s mind either, but after she left the pub I followed her to find out where she lived. As soon as I knew, I made a plan to woo her on New Year’s Eve, and I followed her after she left the house that night.
She didn’t even glance my way until we were at her third party of the night with her rowdy friends. I supposed I might have used my powers of mind control to gain entry to each ‘event’. While she drank and chatted, I stood in the background, watching curiously as the woman I harboured love for pretended to ignore me.
It wasn’t until we were at the sixth house party that she finally acknowledged I was following her. She sidled up to me and whispered, “I know what you are. My mother warned me about people like you.”
I winked and flashed her a brief smile. “Yet you deign to talk to me?”
“I do,” she said smiling, “you were in the pub… you disappeared.”
“Things to do,” I explained. I had to take a moment. My, Juniper… could it be?
I dared not believe it was true.
I knew I’d been right to keep following Jaimie around for a little while longer, seeking more answers before I went to Leticia and risked my life for possibly everything and nothing. An instinct had told me that even though Jaimie wasn’t my chance, fate had led me to her for a reason, and she still presented some tiny piece of hope. I just needed patience and within days, I was so well rewarded. She’d led me to her twin—quite possibly the answer to my prayers, the reason I still existed—hope of a very real kind.
Jodie wore a beautiful black dress, short but not what the modern people called tarty. Her muscular arms were exposed but her chest was covered with the dress, which had jewels and embroidery decorating the heavy cotton material. I appraised her long legs with a smile.
“Beautiful,” I told her, gesturing at her dress, “just right for you.”
“Thank you,” she said, pressing her lips together.
Her blonde hair was tucked back into a twist and her make-up was minimal. She was beautiful without it. For once I hadn’t worn my cloak and she was staring at my chest and shoulders, so thick and broad behind my white shirt. I had more than enough strength to protect her this time. Nobody would take her from me, ever again.
“Want to tell me why none of these parties are good enough?” I asked with anticipation of seeing her speak, seeing her smile, watching her watching me some more…
“Hmm,” she said, tapping her glass of wine against her teeth, “we keep moving on until we find the man or men we want.”
“Oh, I see,” I said disappointedly, and for a moment, I wondered whether modern courting was lost on me. “Then do you see anything you like?”
“Perhaps,” she said, looking around the room.
Was she another of those soulless creatures who would have sex with me, like Leticia had, then leave me with nothing else afterwards? Nothing but emptiness?
I need not have feared. She placed her drink on a nearby table and wrapped one hand around the nape of my neck, just like Juniper would have done. Not flinching when she found I was cold to the touch.
“Kiss me and we’ll find out what this is,” she whispered.
“Yes.” I nodded, gulping down my terror.
Our mouths were so close already but I stared into her eyes and searched for answers I wouldn’t find, not until we kissed like she’d suggested. I was afraid in the moments before we touched because if we kissed and it wasn’t like before, then what did I have left? What had I suffered for, all these years? I feared I was either going to my doom or my reawakening, both of which could equally break me.
I took one of her hands in mine and kissed the back. Her eyes fluttered open and shut and I sensed this professional, confident woman never usually acted in this way. Alone, that made venom drip from my fangs. She was so sweet, so candid, just like my true love as she once was.
I placed her hand on my shoulder and she murmured with her eyes shut, “You’re very strong?”
“Umm-hmm,” I replied, tucking some silken strands behind her ear.
“Please,” she said with a sigh, and then I pulled her closer with my hand in her hair and another holding her shoulder gently.
I tickled my tongue just between her sweetly scented lips and despite the crowded room, she pushed her tongue out to meet mine so we were both exposed for a moment—until I sealed my mouth completely over hers and took her so fast, she had no comeback to better my kiss. I poured all my yearning and my sorrow into that kiss and her hands grasped my arms, desperate to hold on. I pulled her body into mine, my arms wrapped tight around her, and I drank of her warmth and her need. She tried with all her might to fight back, but I had her and I used her, never once shaming my love with a dash of venom. No, it was pure and innocent and yet all kinds of shades of a sensual greeting wrapped up in one, never-ending kiss.
“Darling,” I said in agony, pulling back to give her a moment of respite.
She pushed her body to mine and wrapped her arms tight behind my neck, her nose buried in my throat. “Fabien,” she whispered huskily, her heart racing a hundred beats a minute, “oh Fabien, take me home and make love to me.”
I wondered how she knew my name…?
Perhaps her sister told her…?
I let it pass and she grabbed her coat, then we left together.
I hoped she knew, I really was going to make love to her, like she may never have experienced before…
Part Two:
Reunion
FABIEN
321 years ago
IT HAD BECOME dangerous to continue meeting in the alehouse where Juniper was a serving wench. Humans could be controlled for only so long before I got tired of feeding their minds with little distractions. It got so that there were too many eyes, too many whisperers. I was easy to spot.
Vampir, their little minds whispered, until I closed that thought off to them. My powers of telepathy and mind control were great, though Leticia’s were greater.
Eventually I began flying into the woods late at night to sneak into her father’s log cabin, hidden deep in the forest within a circle of evergreen trees. I had to see Juniper at least on
ce a day—and I even dared risk her father’s wrath to claim her company.
Juniper was the only salve I’d found during my desperate servitude as Leticia’s sex slave—a role that was pleasant and pleasurable, but only reminded me I was dead inside. I was soulless and empty, especially when I was fucking Leticia, but life seemed to fill my veins again whenever Juniper looked into my eyes.
The real me, Frédéric Fabron, was a Frenchman born in the early fifteenth century. I hardly remembered him. I knew he fought against the English under King Charles VII. My father was a blacksmith and so was I. Through my trade, I was lean and strong. In the mid-1400s I fought at the Battle of Castillon and that was the last I remembered of my human original. I never found out how or why I became a vampire—for so long, I deduced I was cut down in action and changed into a bloodsucker as a hungry vampire fed on the bodies still warm on the battlefield.
Fabien was the name Leticia gave me when I entered Valdoria in the late fifteenth century. As plague ravaged the earth, our kind sought safety in the confines of Valdoria, a small commune where the weakest of us became the food. Human blood didn’t taste the same as the weak creatures all suffered the bubonic disease together. It had been going on so long, we didn’t think the dreaded inconvenience would ever cease. Except when it did, and we were able to venture out again occasionally, it was then I found a taste of freedom. My old self, the adventurer, still lurked somewhere inside me.
TOO many nights I spent luring Juniper with passionate kisses as she lay in my arms on her thin, familial bed, nothing like the luxury I had grown accustomed to at Krill Castle.
Eventually the kisses weren’t sufficient enough for Juniper and she wanted more. I’d known this would always be to our detriment. I read her mind and saw her love for me melded within her green eyes. She wanted me to take her hymen. I should have known it would always come to this—I would bed her—inevitably afterwards, she would die. I was Leticia’s to own. Except, the passion between Juniper and I could not be curtailed.
The exact moment my doom faced me head-on was the night Juniper turned to me with such intent, such love, such yearning—I knew before she even uttered the words what she was asking. A long-forgotten wave of pleasure rippled through my almost bereft soul to remind me of other times, human times.
“Fabien, make love to me,” Juniper had said in Russian, the tongue of her folk. I understood not only her language and mine, but Latin, Italian, Spanish and English. Krill, our commune, was fairly multinational.
I heard her words but refused to acknowledge them vocally. They meant fate. They meant death.
“You know what I am?” I asked, gravely.
She nodded slowly. “I care not.”
“I care,” I growled beneath my hand, careful not to wake her father.
“Fabien,” she said, whispering my name. The warmth of her voice drifted to me, like a tender, lover’s kiss caressing my cheek—quelling the cold of that decrepit shack—thus shortening the distance between us.
“Do not ask this of me!” I demanded, my teeth lengthening, turmoil boiling my insides out.
“Fabien,” she called again, and this time, she untied her cotton cover so only her skin remained to clothe her soul.
“Juniper,” I gasped, my dead soul relighting, my eyes on fire as I stared at the loveliness she revealed so willingly to mine eyes. I tried to look away but my sight was singed by her figure. “An angel, I don’t deserve. That is what you are.”
“Take me, or let me die. Let me die wanting you, let me die having you. Either way, I am yours, please, take me,” she said, tears sprinkling her pink cheeks.
Either way, we were doomed; she wasn’t a fraction wrong.
Always damned; destined to live wanting love, or die having had it.
“I cannot,” I pleaded one, last time, but when she placed her hand on mine, I faltered. I broke. I hungered for her warmth and more. The racing of her heart and blood was an intoxicating aphrodisiac and I grew hard instantly.
She climbed onto me naked and wrapped her body around mine. Within seconds of our lips touching, I had disrobed.
Juniper’s virgin breasts caressed the thick, mossy growth of hair on my chest and she sank heavily in my arms, her heart pounding so loudly against my body and in my powerful ears, I was overcome with desire.
“Juniper,” I begged, as she touched the one part of me that was warm.
While she caressed my cock I read her mind and found she was entirely pleased with the sight and feel of me. The lovely bloom of her hips captivated me and I moved so quickly she was stunned when she looked down and found my tongue spreading open her virginal petals to reveal the entrance to her womb.
“Oh my stars, Fabien,” she said, breathing and panting.
Did she not know her breaths, her heartbeats—her life—meant everything to me? All she was, I was not. I loved her for being alive, for not being me. I loved her for all that and even as the conflict raged within me, I couldn’t tear myself away from the human taste of her cunt. It made me delirious. I wanted her hymen. I needed it.
“I love you,” I told her.
“Please Fabien, give me pleasure,” she begged.
My tongue entered her vagina and using my powers I swelled my mouth’s muscle to a girth big enough to break her hymen. As she writhed an orgasm tore through her, somewhat masking the pain, while I drank of her broken hymen and took a part of her soul into mine. I wouldn’t bite her throat but to waste such a wondrous thing as that which broke for the first man she’d loved? That would have been a crime for sure. As I savoured the taste of her broken flesh I saw images of Juniper as a little tot, blonde curls flying behind her, the father she loved dearly chasing through the woods right after her. I saw a little princess laid in her bed, hearing stories from Nanny, the woman who’d looked after her since her mother died in childbirth. I loved her all the more for seeing her innocence, for feeling her beauty and sweetness bloom inside me. She was so pure.
I kissed her stomach and moved my way upwards, prowling, taking deep sucks of her youthful, pink-tipped breasts on the way. She arched beneath me, her eyes barely open, and as I sank into her I heard her thoughts.
Fabien, I belong to you.
As I belong to you.
Her eyes flickered open and she looked shocked. “You can read my mind?”
“Yes, Juniper— I was going to tell you.”
“Hush, Fabien. Don’t fear. I think it’s wonderful.”
She wrapped her arms around me and lay back as I moved within her, as I tested out her responses, as I listened for what she enjoyed. She liked it all but she especially liked that she could hold me close and kiss me, that she could lay beneath me and still feel no fear like she sometimes felt as a serving wench, terrified of the men who got too drunk and whose eyes turned a different shade when they looked at her. I hadn’t a clue why she loved me but she loved me above all others and she trusted me.
I would never hurt her. If I was going to, I would have done so already, but the rich taste of her hymen still hadn’t been enough to convince me to bite her flesh.
While she came over and over, I didn’t tire, and I was relentless in loving her. I licked at the sweat covering her skin and gave her periods of rest when she needed it.
“Fabien, am I not enough? Why haven’t you given me your seed, yet?”
“Your pleasure comes first. My kind are able to restrain for long periods. But if you wish, I will come for you.”
“Yes, now,” she’d begged.
I held her in my arms and thrust inside her tight body, her breasts shifting with my long strokes, her nails digging into my arms viciously. She loved that she could hurt me and it didn’t really sting.
I kissed her with lavish strokes of my tongue, my hands holding my weight as I allowed myself to finish inside her, as I bared my fangs and my eyes turned red from the pleasure. She didn’t turn her face away, instead she watched me. She goaded me, begging, “Bite me and we’ll be together fore
ver.” Turning her head, she bared her jugular, offering it freely. She wasn’t afraid, she wasn’t joking, she was serious.
It wasn’t even a matter of resisting. I just couldn’t. She was perfect to me as she was.
“Juniper,” I groaned, emptying into her, her legs shaking violently as she orgasmed, the mere presence of my cum inside her making her convulse powerfully around me.
She lay in my arms afterwards, giggling and stroking her hands up and down my body.
“My love,” she whispered, and I saw in her mind she wasn’t done with me yet. She wanted me to bite her, to be with me forever, but she didn’t see the sacrifice that came with it. The loss of her life would torment me forever if it happened because of me.
That night we spent the most beautiful hours of my entire existence. Somehow I knew, we’d never get those moments back. Never. Juniper must have sensed what would happen and that’s why she constantly tempted me with her throat. If she was a vampire too, then perhaps we’d stand a chance.
Whether my love realised it or not I didn’t know, but we were puppets and Leticia the puppeteer. Nobody would fight her and win. She was the most powerful vampire, a queen no less. She was also physically powerful, mentally, and worse—she had witchcraft on her side.
FABIEN
2013
IT WAS NEW Year’s Eve. I crossed the threshold into Jodie’s house in the city centre and felt awed as soon as I stepped foot inside her premises. A woman of means, she had a respectable property, and moreover she lived in it alone. No longer a serving wench, but a lawyer no less. Yet still as beautiful, still as kind and fair.
I watched as she hung her coat and slipped off her shoes in the hallway. Feeling awkward, I was not sure where I should place myself. I knew nothing of modern convention. My only encounters with humans were outside; on riverbanks, in doorways or behind hedges, perhaps even at the back of watering holes—as I drank their blood. Many moons ago when I lived amongst society inside Leticia’s castle, I had been a leader yet a slave. Here, what was my office? I wasn’t sure yet.
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