by Liz Strange
Together we fell back to the bed. My body was still thrumming with need, but I regained some control over myself. I didn’t feel like my body was on fire any longer, and I was aware again of Giovanni’s touch, and the sounds of the outside world.
“I’m sorry,” I said in a strange and wondrous voice.
“Don’t be sorry, love. We are all like this at the beginning. The need for blood is terrible and consuming in the first few years, until you gain better control. That is why some of us don’t make it. Our need sometimes overcomes everything else, and we make ourselves vulnerable to exposure and, ultimately, destruction. Don’t worry, I will help you.”
“Tell me everything.”
His laughter was soft against my ear. “I cannot tell you everything tonight, but I will tell you what you need to know. At first you will need to feed almost every night. The thirst will be so intense you will be without reason until you satisfy it, but your need cannot bypass keeping our true nature a secret. Our survival depends on that. Too many deaths will draw attention. You need to know who to take, when, where and how to dispose of the bodies.”
The bodies. “Tell me.”
“We don’t always need to kill to feed, because we can often cloud our victims’ minds, or their own fright does it for them, but until you have more control, that is most likely not a possibility. Sometimes I dispose of a body where it will not be found, or disguise a killing to make it look like an accident or natural causes. That was what I was doing in the hospital that night. Sometimes I take patients who are near death and I speed the process along.”
“So that’s what you were doing. You were feeding. I suspected as much.”
“Yes, I found a comatose young man, who would never have regained consciousness, an automobile accident victim and two long-time cancer patients. In fact, the one cancer patient was so close to death, she thought I was an angel. In situations like that what I do is mutually beneficial. Sometimes I even take inmates from their prison cells, choosing the lowest of the low. I get the blood I need, and I relieve the taxpayers of the burden of supporting the dregs of society. Feeding doesn’t have to always be cruel, or senseless, though I have to admit that sometimes I take people simply because they attract or irritate me. Sometimes I need the fear, and the act of the hunt as much as I need the blood.” He spoke without malice or hesitation, a simple statement of the truth. His voice was wine for my ears, soothing my pain and distraction.
“Let’s get cleaned up. Then you can experience the night with me as it is meant to be for creatures such as us.” In one effortless movement he was up and across the room.
With one hand on the doorknob he looked back at me and smiled. I sat up, and just as the thought of going to the door crossed my mind I was there, colliding into Giovanni’s back. I felt like a gangly, young colt not quite in control of its limbs. He caught me as I stumbled, and pulled me toward him. Where his chest had been as hard as stone before, it was now simply firm, but like velvet under my fingertips. Just as I was enjoying the feeling of my fingers running across his bare skin, a sharp sound from outside intruded, and the moment was lost. I couldn’t seem to hear, and feel and think all at the same time. It was confusing and frustrating.
“It will come in time,” he whispered.
We made our way along the dark hallway, the stone damp to my bare feet. Though there was no source of light, I could see perfectly fine, discerning the many layers of grim, and the difference in shades of the stonewalls. I could smell the age of the building, and the death that resided there.
After a quick shower, the water cascading over my body like liquid silk, we returned to his room to get ready. Giovanni enjoyed my reactions, though his words were always kind and reassuring. I still found the increased awareness of my senses distracting, but with Giovanni’s touch I could function more clearly. We quickly dressed, me in borrowed clothes— as mine had been reduced to shreds the night before— then slipped out into the waiting darkness.
The night offered a spectacle of movements, colours, aromas and sounds to my new, preternatural senses. The cars on the nearby road thundered, vibrating the ground beneath my feet. Hundreds of heartbeats took up a chorus of tiny jackhammers, poking away at my awareness. The softly falling snow was as loud as a rushing waterfall, fighting for its place over the incessant pounding of the heartbeats.
I stumbled down from the step, my coordination thrown off by the assault of sound. He reached back to take my hand, and I was immediately comforted, but my thirst had returned with a vengeance. The need clawed the inside of my brain, and my throat constricted painfully. I squeezed Giovanni’s hand in desperation, and I heard his voice inside my head. “We will feed, and then I will show you the night as I have known it for almost three centuries.”
We sped off through the darkness, with me clinging onto his hand tightly for fear of being left behind. He moved too quickly. Even with my new strength and awareness, it was difficult processing the surroundings as we moved through the night. Individual items fleetingly caught my eye, landmarks I recognised, only to be lost to a new sight or sound. It all mashed together incoherently in my head, and I reeled from the inability to absorb it all quickly enough.
I knew the night was cold because snow fell yet I seemed completely indifferent to the exterior temperature. I was not cold, though I could recognise the dampness and the movement of the wind. I marvelled at beauty of the individual flakes as they tumbled by, momentarily blocking the rush of noise and my desperate thirst.
We stopped abruptly, with my body pressed against his back. I buried my face in his hair, forcing the smell into my body in a pathetic attempt to ward off the building rage. Giovanni tensed, and I became acutely aware of a sound above all the others swirling about me. It was breathing, and from the sound of it, the person was very close.
Looking out from the shield of Giovanni’s body, I realised we stood in an alleyway. From the smell I surmised we were behind a restaurant or place where food was prepared. I detected garbage, grease, sweat and an underlying stench of urine. Yet the scent that made me swoon with need was blood.
The man sat, half hidden in the shadows of a large dumpster near the dead-end of the alleyway. He rested on the ground, knees drawn up against the cold. As we moved closer, I noted his eyes were closed, and his chest moved in shaky breaths. His clothing was ragged and ill fitting, his face and hair so filthy it was impossible to guess his age. His blood rushed through his veins, his heartbeat a beacon to which I was impulsively drawn. A strangled sound escaped my lips.
In the blink of an eye, and without a whisper of sound, Giovanni caught the man in his arms. The man’s eyes fluttered open in surprise. They were bloodshot and bleary from alcohol consumption. My love forced the man’s head back at a terrible angle, and clamped down on his throat. I trembled as I heard the sounds of the blood being sucked from his neck. I approached them like a zombie, and the man was thrust into my waiting hands. My fangs were already out and I sunk them into the wound with enough force something in the man’s neck snapped.
I drank and drank, the hot liquid pouring into me, and I was pulled into a euphoric state more intensely pleasurable than drugs or sex. My body thrilled as thousands of synapses fired at once— bright points of desire quenched with a man’s blood. He struggled, but he was no match for my strength. His attempts to fight somehow heightened the experience, awaking an unknown perverse gratification at another’s fear. I was drunk with power and blood. The night raged around us in our deadly act, and Giovanni’s scent danced on the air.
All too soon the man’s body became a lifeless husk, and Giovanni pulled it from my grasp. My mouth broke away with a sickening slurp, but I was unfazed. I had enjoyed every second of the man’s terror, and every drop of his blood I had consumed. The wasted body was slack, held awkwardly in Giovanni’s arms. The man’s head pulled over his right shoulder and slightly to the back, the ragged wound on his neck exposed to my sensitive eyes. It looked like a wild animal had been
at him, not a human. My killing was not neat, but my need dominated my discretion. I had been lost to the call of his blood and the thirst threatening to drive me mad.
Giovanni tucked the corpse under his arm, indicating with a tip of his head that I should follow. We silently walked to the end of the alley to look out onto the connecting street. The time of night and the bitter cold kept the streets nearly empty, and we were free to make our way down to the nearby waterfront.
Giovanni stopped me at the end of the pier, before he dropped to the ice-covered water below. I watched as he made his way out across the lake to where the ice grew much thinner. There he forced the body through a small opening, leaving it to the harsh elements and the whimsy of the lake’s movement. His movements were quick and light, barely making contact with the cold surface, and leaving him in no peril himself.
In a few minutes he was at my side again. “How do you feel?”
I felt strong, aroused, satisfied— things that I could not put into words. I nodded then was pulled back into the night.
So we walked back into the streets, hand in hand like innocent young lovers, and I experienced the night like never before. I savoured its dark beauty. I saw things in ways that I would never have without Giovanni’s dark kiss. I was able to perceive the many layers to the darkness, the sprinkling of stars like spotlights beating down on us. I marvelled at the way the shadows danced across the ground, melting into the night air. I never knew so many shades of grey and black existed. It was amazing to behold. It was no wonder then that I had been disoriented and overwhelmed in the light of Giovanni’s room, where there was so much colour and detail to process.
As we made it to the heart of the downtown district, the number of people on the streets picked up significantly. Each person we passed gave off a unique aroma. Some people smelled clean and fresh, others musky, and on some I could even detect illness or death. I often felt myself drawn to a particular scent, and if I had not fed to my full capacity, I don’t think I would have been able to resist the temptation. My body responded to the sounds of their heartbeats, each tempo its own, yet all calling to me.
The flashes of thoughts I was exposed to were incredible: worry, pride and anger. I saw daydreams and memories, snippets of media people had seen, and thoughts people were most likely not even aware they were having. Several times I laughed out loud, Giovanni amused with my obvious delight. This phenomenon was not like “reading” minds— it was more a transfer of random thoughts and feelings. Each person left a psychic footprint of some kind, some intense, some fleeting.
A few times a dark or hateful thought passed through a person’s mind, and I was instantly drawn to it, like a moth to a flame. Each time it happened I realised Giovanni felt it as well, and I understood then how the choice of victim could sometimes be made for you.
As we passed a large storefront window, I caught a glimpse of myself, and I hesitated. It was me— yet it wasn’t. My skin, which had always been fair, was now a luminescent white. My eyes were almost as bright and blue as Giovanni’s. I smiled, and was reassured by the matching smile on his reflection. How beautiful and perfect we looked together, two halves of one whole. It was the first time I had ever felt I was exactly where I belonged.
The streets teemed with life and people excited about the upcoming holidays. I always enjoyed this time of year, and the same feelings were reflected on the faces we passed. Though I had lived in Kingston my entire life, I felt like I was seeing the city for the first time.
I hadn’t realised before just how many young adults there were in our population. With the number of post-secondary institutions within the city limits, young people passed in droves. In the near future others would replace them, as the students returned home, got jobs or went on to other educational endeavours. It was a strange metaphor for the way our existence would also be— passing through towns as the students passed through their programmes, moving to other places to escape the notice of our never-aging bodies, as the graduates escaped to whatever life held for them after they completed their education.
As we continued our walk I asked Giovanni many questions about his past, suddenly as hungry for knowledge as I was earlier for blood. “Where were you born? What year? What happened to your family?” A series of rambling questions spilled out before he had the chance to answer any.
He chuckled softly. “Whoa. If you want to know where I came from, I will be happy to tell you. It’s been a very long time since I even thought of my origins, much less spoke to someone about them. I don’t know where to begin.” A wistful, almost pained expression crossed his face as he spoke.
“Start with where you were born, and your family.”
“All right. I was born in Catalonia, Spain, in 1712. I lived in a moderately sized town by the ocean. I was the middle child of six boys, two of whom died in childhood. I had one sister who was several years younger than me. Her name was Teresa, and my surviving brothers were Raphael, Fernando and Xavier. Our family was wealthy, because my mother came from a family of landholders and merchants. My father’s family was less successful, made up of skilled labourers, artisans and clergy. Both of my parents were supremely devoted Roman Catholics, and their families knew each other through church. We had a good upbringing, we all went to school and church, and were encouraged to develop artistic skills.” He paused, seemingly lost to those ancient memories. As he took my hand I was flooded with images of unknown people. I surmised that I was seeing his brothers and sister as children, then young adults, because the faces shared his characteristics, and all had the same ebony hair.
“Is Giovanni a Spanish name?”
As he locked eyes with me, the images disappeared, and it was just the two of us on the dark, snowy street. I hadn’t noticed that we had wandered away from the crowds, as I was lost in his memories. “No, it’s not actually. I was named after my mother’s favourite uncle, an Italian merchant who married my grandmother’s sister. My mother was the youngest of nine in her family, and she told me many stories of this man. He travelled extensively, and always regaled them with tales of far-off lands, bringing the children exotic gifts from the places he visited. When he died, he left my mother a large sum of money.”
I smiled, but didn’t speak, as I wanted him to continue. His voice was wonderful to hear, and it blocked out many other distractions. The memories danced through my mind, filling me with warmth and wonder, the most intimate of connections with my love.
“Now where was I? Oh yes, my mother was very involved with the church, as most women of that time were, and she was completely devoted to her children. She had the most wonderful singing voice, and she often sang to us as children, before bed. My father had dreams of being an artist as a young man, but discovered that he did not have the skill to be successful, and instead trained as a calligrapher for the church. After he and my mother married, he was pulled into her family business. After that he had little time for artistic pursuits.”
“What was it like then? How you lived, the country?”
Before he spoke again I experienced views of gorgeous blue waters, huge expanses of countryside, stretches of mountains and clusters of citrus groves. The colours of the fruit were psychotically vibrant, the image so real I saw the wind ruffling the trees. I could smell the tangy aroma of fresh oranges and lemons.
“It was a beautiful place to grow up, and it still is a beautiful place today. I try to return every few decades to see how things are. Then, it was also a time of great change and development. I was born just before the end of the War of Spanish Succession, which had caused much upheaval in our area. After the new king established himself, Spain tried to crush the Catalan region’s sense of identity. It was also the time of discovery, with many countries sending out ships to the New World, and Spain was a leader in these expeditions.
“As I entered my early teens, I discovered that I had a real talent for drawing. My father seized on this immediately, vicariously living his own dream through my talent. He
found me a private tutor then sent me off to study in both France and Italy. At that time, there was not an established art training school in Spain. The Academy of San Fernando would not yet come for many years. So I went to school, and I spent time with my siblings swimming, riding and attending local social functions. I was even betrothed to the daughter of a family friend.”
His smile spread across his face in response to my scowl. “There is nothing to be jealous of. I was never in love with the girl. She was always like a sister to me. We grew up together, spent holidays together, but that’s what happened back then. Children were matched with suitable partners to maintain alliances, wealth, satisfy the church and culture.”
I clenched my lips together tightly, the remnants of the green-eyed monster still tugging at my heart. “What happened to her?”
“She died a little over a month after her fifteenth birthday. Smallpox.”
“Oh, how awful.”
“Yes. She was a very sweet girl. It was a sad time. Many died of smallpox, including relatives and close friends. The rest of us made it through. I would have been eighteen the year that she died. God, its so long ago, it doesn’t seem like it could be real. I spent that summer at home then I was off to the Academy de San Luca in Rome, where I spent two years training. My father hoped for me to become an artist for the church, but I was undecided as to what I wanted to do with my craft. Rococo style was all the rage then, but I felt drawn to express myself in other ways and other styles. I was searching, for what I don’t know… Eventually I made my way to France to try new things… ” His voice trailed off as bitterness crept into his eyes. We walked for a way in silence, the night a vast carpet of protection and acceptance to two of the world’s most dangerous inhabitants.
“Then, what happened? What happened to your siblings and your parents?”