The grin on her face could only be described as evil. “He’s merely trying to distract me from the fact that he’s been screwing every blood-whore in the theater company. While it might be true that Jacques lusts after me, Falcon knows I haven’t tasted that particular wine.” She narrowed her eyes and gazed at the love of her long life. “Not that I wouldn’t consider it under the right circumstances.”
Falcon lurched out of his chair, snarling, exposing all his teeth. Flashing crimson eyes dominated his pale face. He didn’t look nearly as handsome in his pissed-off vampire role. I didn’t think I’d ever seen fangs as long and sharp as his; they were truly lethal weapons.
I took an unconscious step backwards, bumping into my chair.
Jesus. I am so not trained for this.
Fighting my own increasing anxiety, I struggled to relax, and wracked my brain for a standard couples technique to ease the tension and move the session in a positive direction. I opted for a simple Gestalt process, and breathed deeply to calm the nervousness I was sure they could sense.
“Falcon, would you be willing to participate in a therapeutic exercise with Yvonne?” I focused on keeping my hands from trembling.
He sneered, Elvis style, the red of his eyes diminishing. “That depends on what it is.”
I switched my gaze to Yvonne, who watched me as if I were an interesting specimen or an unexpected snack. “Yvonne, are you willing to share?”
The question obviously surprised her because her eyebrows rose and she tilted her head to the side. “Share?” She paused for a few seconds, as if the concept was unfamiliar. I had no doubt vampires had a different – bloody – definition for that word. She studied me from beneath her dark eyelashes. “Share what?”
“Just a few feelings and emotions. Let me set the stage, so to speak.” I moved quickly to an open area in the center of the room, pulled two chairs together, and arranged the seats to face each other.
Keeping my voice light, I stood behind the chairs, spreading my arms wide like a game show model. “Okay, if you’ll both come here and sit, we can begin.” I tapped the tops of the chairs with my fingers. Seconds passed like hours. The two of them were so utterly still it was impossible to feel their presence. If my eyes weren’t assuring me they were still staring at one another, I’d have believed I was alone in the room. Suddenly, the hairs on my arms rose and a low, snarling sound rent the air. I didn’t know which one of them was growling, but sensing that things were about to go south quickly, I moved between them – not the brightest choice, perhaps, but I was trying to keep the situation from escalating.
Great, Kismet. Nothing like annoying two hungry predators.
“Are we ready? Come on, you two. Humor the therapist. I know you both want to have a healthy relationship, or at least that’s what you told me.” I pointed at the empty chairs. I didn’t know what I’d do if they continued to growl at each other, but my stars must have been auspiciously aligned, or my karma sufficiently balanced, because they drifted to the new seating arrangement.
I’d placed the chairs close enough together that there were only a few inches of space between their knees. My heart pounded so forcefully in my chest I could actually hear it, so I knew the vampires, with their exceptional hearing, would pick up every syncopated beat. And, of course, there was that smelling-my-fear thing. I had a ludicrous thought about finding a deodorant that would be strong enough to fool the undead.
Eau De Corpse?
Oddly, the moment they sat facing each other, their auras calmed and their muscles relaxed. Yvonne stopped fisting her hands and Falcon’s fangs retracted.
Whew. I thought we were in for a blood bath.
I stood next to them, and spoke softly. “Yvonne, would you please look into Falcon’s eyes and tell him how you feel when you’re worried about his whereabouts?”
She opened her mouth, then closed it again, staring at his now-innocent-looking face. She rested a hand over her large breasts and turned her face to me. “Well, I do worry about him. We’ve been together for a very long time. No matter what else happens, we’re still blood-linked.”
“Yvonne, tell him directly.”
“What for?” She pouted. “He heard me well enough.”
“He certainly did.” I smiled at her. “But this exercise is most effective if you allow yourselves to create intimacy – to build healthy communication. So, please. Look into his eyes and tell him how it feels to worry about him.”
She sighed dramatically and met his eyes. “I’m afraid you’ll do something stupid and someone will put a stake through that unfaithful heart of yours. Then where would I be? I’d be linked for eternity to a pile of ash.”
Falcon frowned and slid his gaze to me. “This is the warm-fuzzy exercise? Is it my turn yet?”
Crap.
“One moment, Falcon. Yvonne, see if you can go deeper into your emotions. Allow yourself to get in touch with the feelings you had when you first met Falcon. What was that like?”
A dreamy expression softened her face and she smiled. “Ah, yes. I remember it well. He was such a beautiful male specimen . . .”
“Tell him, Yvonne.”
She connected with Falcon’s eyes and leaned forward. “I’d gone to a theater performance with my sire and was dazzled by your small role in the play. I knew right then I had to have you. It was truly lust at first sight. And you were just as taken with me; I could sense it. Despite being human, you were a wonderful lover.”
Falcon grinned, “Were?”
She batted her eyelashes. “Are.”
Okay. This is good. About damn time.
“Falcon, tell Yvonne what was it like for you when you met her.”
He leaned toward her. “I came off the stage that night and saw the most gorgeous female I’d ever laid eyes on. Whatever you had, I wanted some of it. Discovering you were a vampire was immortal icing on a delicious cake, to use human terms. I talked you into bringing me over, blood linking with me, and the rest is history. I’ll never leave you. And I’ll never betray you.”
And the Oscar goes to . . .
They sat, smiling at each other, then Yvonne reached across and smoothed her hand down Falcon’s cheek. “You swear you aren’t boinking humans and drinking them dry?”
Feigning shock, he raised his hands, as if to ward off her words. He stuttered. “I . . . I can’t believe you’d even think such a thing. I am completely faithful to you, and I’d never get carried away enough to kill a meal. What would make you even ask?”
The evil grin was back. Yvonne reached out, snake fast, and grabbed Falcon’s wrists, holding them in her iron grip. I wasn’t sure exactly how much older than Falcon she was, but it was a significant number of years, and vampires get stronger with age. His charming mask slipped, and fear shadowed his face.
She licked her lips, pulling him close. “You’re just a cheating, lying peacock, addicted to the fluids of sluts, harlots and whores.”
Falcon shook his head vigorously, his frown lines on his forehead so deep his eyebrows almost touched. “No, no, you’re wrong. I haven’t done anything. I don’t know what you heard, but I’m innocent. I’m faithful to you. I haven’t killed anyone in . . . well, at least twenty, er, ten years. I have plenty of blood donors. You know that because you arranged them yourself.”
Things were definitely getting out of hand. I circled them, speaking loudly but calmly, saying everything I could think of to bring Yvonne back to her senses – such as they were – but I might as well have been invisible for all the notice they paid me.
This is bad. This is really bad. I’m not charging enough for this shit.
Yvonne smiled, then moving faster than I could see, stuck her fangs savagely into Falcon’s neck. She sucked for a few seconds, then lifted her mouth, licking her lips again. But she’d created such a vacuum with her sucking that, when she removed her mouth, blood arced from the ravaged holes, spraying all three of us, as well as the furniture. She repeated the suck-and-lick pattern
a couple more times – a bloodsucking praying mantis feasting on her bug, saturating everything with the bright red liquid. He screamed, struggling to free himself from her rigid embrace. The two of them tipped backwards in the chair, and landed on the rug with a heavy thud. The fall disengaged her fangs from his neck, but the wounds continued to flow freely.
I gasped and looked down at the blood splattered on my light blue suit. In the time it took me to shift my attention to my soiled attire, Yvonne had wrestled Falcon flat onto his back and was sitting on his chest, her purple dress hiked up around her hips, restraining his arms over his head. Red glistened everywhere.
My mind spun. We’d never covered anything like this in grad school. I knew I should do something, but my brain had put out the “do not disturb” sign and gone on sabbatical. I considered kneeling down next to them, and launching into another therapy spiel, but there was so much flailing and yelling going on, my words would’ve been lost in the maelstrom. And, even though Devereux had promised to execute any vampire who harmed me, I knew better than to trust the self-control of frenzied blood drinkers.
“Your blood tastes of fear, my well-endowed cocksman.” Yvonne grinned maniacally. “And I know why.”
Falcon twisted and squirmed beneath her, making a completely futile effort to escape. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He sounded terrified – even more frightened than the situation seemed to call for. What was I missing?
“Yvonne! Falcon!,” I bleated uselessly, inching closer.
He finally freed one hand, and pushed at her shoulder, causing her to lose her balance. She retaliated by lunging at him, wrapping her fingers around his neck, and attempting to choke him. He put up a good fight, and the two of them started rolling across the floor. Directly into my legs.
“Shit!” I cried as I went down hard on my ass, accompanied by the sound of my skirt ripping. I barely managed to shift my legs sideways to avoid being trampled. I speed-crawled toward my desk and made it as far as the end of the couch before noticing Falcon and Yvonne were on their feet again, lumbering toward my hiding place. I poked my head from behind the sofa and watched the blood-covered combatants grappling at the other end.
Adrenaline surged through my body, preparing me for fight or flight, as I listened to the snarls and barking sounds emanating from their throats. These vampires were insane.
Treating human crazies wasn’t bad enough. No, I had to put out the welcome mat for the demented children of the night.
Yvonne screamed at him as they fought. “I found your stash of dead women, my lying, fornicating consort. Either you’re incredibly lazy, profoundly stupid or you have a true-death wish, because you’ve been hiding your kills in the same place for the last century. I’m betting on all of the above. You knew I’d discovered the secret room underneath the dungeon when I confronted you with the remains of your mother’s body. Not that I blamed you for offing the cow the moment you became a vampire. She had sold you to that sadistic pedophile, after all. Not exactly ‘Mother of the Year’ material. But you could at least have buried your leftovers.”
Falcon managed to momentarily break free, falling backwards onto the couch. “I don’t know what you’re talking about! There are no dead women. You’re delusional. Mad as a hatter. I’ve never been anything but faithful and true. You don’t deserve me.”
Yvonne smiled wide, exposing her impressive set of fangs, and leaped – faster than my eye could track – onto Falcon. “I’ll show you what you deserve, pretty boy.” They flailed so vigorously the couch tipped over, depositing the pair onto the carpet again.
Falcon scrambled to his feet, grabbed a small statue of Freud off a nearby table, and heaved it at Yvonne’s head. The marble connected with a sickening whack, opening a bloody gash in her forehead.
Yvonne let out a shriek as blood dripped down her forehead, then charged Falcon, screaming, “I’ll kill you, you miserable excuse for a man.”
Not to be outdone, Falcon countered, his voice booming through the room, “My mother wasn’t the only cow, you sexless, frigid she-fiend.”
As they ran around my office, throwing everything they could pick up at each other, I crawled toward my desk, hoping the heavy wood would protect me from the onslaught.
My favorite paperweight flew by my head just as I reached the corner of my desk, and I huddled next to the thick wood, still able to see the maniacs, but safer from attack.
“You disgusting fool. I lied. You’re a terrible lover!”
“Yeah, as if I’d want to get within ten feet of the Ice Queen.”
She growled and tackled Falcon again, taking him back down to the floor. I heard a pounding sound, and high-pitched male screams.
This cleaning bill’s gonna be a bitch.
Suddenly a loud, resonating tone pulsed from the timer on top of my desk. The waiting room door burst open, and Falcon’s two bodyguards shot into the office. They each grabbed a disheveled, bloody vampire and heaved them to their feet.
My heart thudding like an animal caught in gun sights, I scooted out from my safe haven, made sure the carnage had truly ended – that the two lunatics were safe in physical custody – and slowly rose. The room was trashed. Blood oozed down the walls, pooled on the carpet and collected on my leather furniture.
We all stared at each other, frozen for a few heartbeats, then I reached over and picked up the appointment book from my desk. I flipped the pages, retrieved a pencil and held it poised over the page.
“Same time next week?”
Diary of a Narcissistic Bloodsucker
Chapter 1
Jesus. I radically overslept.
I could’ve sworn I set my inner alarm clock for a century. Blame it on my overworked snooze button. I always try not to downshift for longer than 100 years at a time because I might miss something interesting. Or someone interesting.
But then the word “interesting” is relative when you’ve been alive – excuse me, I mean undead – for thousands of years.
Yes, I’m a vampire. And not only am I a vampire, but I’m the oldest, most powerful vampire still exploring Amusement Park Earth today.
I’ve got the Nosferatu thing down to a fine science.
And who would have guessed that my powers would keep on increasing, branching out, and surpassing themselves?
Pretty soon there’ll just be no living with me. So to speak.
Anyway, I thought it was time I started writing down some of my exploits on paper. Craft my memoirs. Spread the goodies around, as it were. So I’ve begun this flow-of-consciousness journal and am sharing it all with you from my luxury mausoleum beneath the glittering city of Paris, France. A great place to hide. Not that I need to hide, mind you. There are just certain individuals I’d rather avoid, if possible. Devotees can be so draining – and drained.
I’ve already discovered that it is now 2160 and I missed my wake-up call for the year 2100, but it really doesn’t matter. I’ll share my delectable presence with the population of this time period soon enough. But I want to tell you about my last visit during the late 20th/early 21st century and the juicy human I encountered and fell for. Hard.
Of course, I’m sure he’s still pissed at me. But believe me, we have plenty of time to work things out.
Oh, how rude. The name’s Zara. Or, if you insist on proper names, Zarafina of Sherbrook. Sherbrook being the land owned by my family since the Eighth Day of Creation. I still own it – officially. But it gets so tedious having to pretend to be some version of my own great-granddaughter every few generations or so for the benefit of one lawyer or another that I rarely give it a thought. Don’t get me started on lawyers. But I digress.
You might find my nickname enjoyable: She Demon.
Yes. Not very creative I admit, but apparently quite accurate.
I don’t really know what happened to cause me to be the force of nature I turned out to be. I am truly immortal, beyond the usual understanding of the word. It amuses me that, at this point, I dou
bt if I can be killed. Even if some industrious Van Helsing wannabe brought out his best collection of sharpened stakes, crosses, and garlic. By the way, remind me to give you my opinions about that silly, superstitious nonsense.
I was born to darkness – or transcended the ordinary (your choice) – in my twenty-sixth human year. The One who turned me – Jeran – was your garden variety vampire. Handsome, tall, lean, magnificently endowed, magnetic emerald eyes, with the standard glorious mane of long, dark hair. You know, the kind to die for.
Hmmm. I heard he eventually faced the dawn. Pity, but not totally unexpected. When one’s philosophy consists of “so many women, so little time,” the bloom would likely fall off the rose at some point.
In any case, the mutation must have been in my genes to begin with, because after passing along his immortality, blood lust, hypnosis abilities, insatiable sexual appetite, astoundingly beautiful physical attributes – okay, so I’m not humble – and all the other more mundane vampiric aspects, I began to develop a unique and intriguing ability of my very own.
I need to take a step back for a moment and give you a lesson in undead mythology.
It is true that vampires can’t abide the sun. Imagine sun-sensitivity times a million. It has nothing to do with any antiquated ideas of good versus evil, or light versus darkness, but is an actual symptom of the condition of vampirism. Tedious really, but it’s just as well. With pale skin like mine, can you imagine how much I’d have to spend on sunscreen?
And we do live to drink blood. Literally. Despite the stories from other authors leading you to believe that vampires are angst-ridden and don’t enjoy drinking blood, I can tell you that ingesting the elixir of the gods goes beyond mere enjoyment. It is divine orgasm. Exquisite paroxysms of pleasure in every cell of the body-mind. Yes. It’s that good. I think you’ve been led astray because we really don’t want you to know what we’ve got going here, because then too many of you would want to join in. We do need to keep our existence as private as possible. I’m sure you understand.
Vampires! A Bundle of Bloodsuckers Page 2