Dark Knight of the Skye

by Ray, Robin Renee

  He slowly made his way back to her and pulled her to her feet. He touched her cheek, and then gently cupped the bottom of her breast, lifting it as he bent forward and laid a delicate kiss on the three inch scar that ran across her left nipple. He then moved to the horrific bite scar above it that lay just to the right. He heard D`nae sniffle and turned his attention back to her.

  “Ne’er agin, wull ye worry aboot this. Ah’ll tak the breath fum any livin soul who eer touches ye agin.” He bent, took her into his arms and carried her over to the bed.

  She sat on the edge of the bed while he stood in front of her, leaving no room for conversation. He began taking off his shirt as she unbuttoned his pants, and both were shaking like teens on their first date. He pitched his shirt behind him, used one hand to push her back and the other to push his pants down over his butt. D`nae was trying to push herself back further up on the bed with the heels of her feet and get her pants down at the same time. Danny worked his way up her body, doing his best to get as much of her flesh into his mouth as he possible could, nicking her breast with his fangs in the process.

  D`nae moaned in the onslaught of emotions, throwing her head back, arching her body more firmly into Danny’s face. The taste of her blood drove him in an altogether different array of passion. Every muscle in his body went tense, and the thought in his mind of “eating her alive” was more than just a metaphor. He stood and pulled the pants from her body in one smooth yank. She hadn’t even noticed when he had taken his off, but there he stood, that same beautiful rippling wave of once human flesh that she had never once stopped loving. He crawled back up on the bed, more animalistic than she remembered. He grabbed her thighs with his strong hands, spreading her legs at that very pivotal point, and gave her something that brought several memories crashing in all at once.

  The sensational heat of ecstasy, smarmily making its way from the center of her core, as he orally explored the very tender region which he had so longed for. When she was almost to the point of no return, he moved and began kissing the inside of her thigh. Two sharp piercing pains on her inner thigh brought a hiss from her swollen hungry lips, turning pleasure to agony then back again, as he drank his fill from her. Warmth ran up her body, attacking her knowledge of sexual pleasure and exploding her into a whole new world of earth shattering bliss. When he had finished, so had she. She was covered in a fine sheen of sweat when he raised his lust filled eyes up to meet hers. He licked her wound clean, and made his way up her stomach, kissing, tasting as much of her flesh as he could, until his mouth was locked with hers. They joined in union like they never had before, and made passionate love until the pull of dawn beckoned for his daily death.

  “Wull ye be here when Ah wake?” he asked as his eyes began to close. She lie facing him, their bodies entwined.

  “Of course I will. I love you.” He didn’t reply.

  She stayed next to his body until it started to turn cold, then she had to move. It was just too unnerving for her to take. Everything else was more than okay with her. “Sharing my blood, sleeping with someone who kills to survive, I can live with. My husband being the only one on the block that can only come out at night, no prob. But hugging up to a cold stiff corpse just is not going to happen,” she thought as she got up and went to the fireplace.

  They had four nights of pure joy, doing nothing but holding one another, getting caught up on what each other had been doing for the past three and a half years, and making the best catch-up love that was human and inhumanly possible. Danny fulfilled his hunger from D`nae when the necessity rose, and D`nae ate and drank from the supplies in her pack and what Danny had brought back that first night. D`nae brought something to Danny’s attention that she hadn’t thought about until that fourth night.

  “Danny, you know I have to go back. Everyone at that hostel, including Detective O’Grady knows that I was coming hiking up this way. If I don’t show back up…” she was saying before he interrupted her.

  “Nae, yer nae be fur leavin me. I cannae be withoot ye,” he demanded.

  “And if they come, then what, Danny?”

  “Ah’ll dae fitAh dae best.”

  “You can’t kill everyone, besides more will just come. I’ll find another way to come back, a way that no one knows I’m here.”

  “Aw we hae tae dae is toss yer belongin over the cliffs on the other side o the Skye.” He stood up from the chair and started pacing the floor. “They’ll be findin ‘em an thin ye went over.”

  “They’ll think someone around here killed me and tossed my body over, Danny. I heard them talking about your family having a curse on it, so the first thing they’ll do is go find your father, and he’ll tell them about this place.”

  “Me faither’s mind be gone, and Ah saw me brither an his family takin’ aff years ago. There be nae one tae ask.”

  “Then they’ll search this land until they find you,” she retorted. “Stop being so damn stubborn, Danny Gilmore, and let me do what I need to do.”

  “If ye luv me, ye won’t be leavin me. Ah been sae aw alone D`nae, Ah missed ye somethin awfu,” he said, dropping to his knees in front of her chair.

  “How can I make you understand how important it is that no one finds you?” she asked, wrapping her upper body around his. “It’s because I love you that I have to do this, Danny.”

  “Fit if Ah nae be fur lettin ye?” he whispered, nuzzling his head next to hers.

  Danny stood and picked D`nae up out of the chair like she was a child and carried her over to the Iron Gate. He was acting as if he had become angry at her attempt in persuading him that it would be best if she left him, and he wasn’t going to listen anymore. She didn’t struggle; she simply wrapped her arms around his neck, and asked, “Would you really lock me in the dark just to keep me here?”

  “Wull ye promise ye won’t leave me?” he replied lying his forehead against the side of her face.

  “I promise I’ll come back, Danny. You’re the only reason that I breathe. I love you more than life and I could never go on without you.”

  He raised his head and his cheeks were covered in crimson tears. She took his face in her hands and pulled it close enough to kiss the tears away as he held her, knowing she was right.

  “T’wull be mighty hard wi’ oot ye. Ah nae be likin it fur one minute ye ken.”

  “I know.”

  The two lay holding each other until the dawn took him from her. She covered him and kissed his cheek one last time. She gathered her belongings and headed up the stone steps for the first time since she had been brought there. She made her way through the piles of fallen stones in the grassy opening of the castle yard. The dew was heavy and the clouds were thick as she continued down the broken road that led down the side of the hill. She glanced back and could barely see what she could only imagine to have once been a fairy-tale castle, knowing that her prince charming lie sleeping in the depths, waiting for her to return.

  She walked what seemed like forever when she finally saw the water that she knew would lead her to the village of Kyleakin. Not a mile later, she saw a figure coming toward her and it was none other than Detective Grady O’Brian, only this time he wasn’t in a suit, he was dressed up in full hiking gear. As soon as he saw her, he began running in her direction.

  “D`nae!” he called out. She just waved like nothing was wrong and continued walking at her pace.

  “I was beginning to get worried about you,” he said, stepping up, putting his hand on her shoulder.

  “Oh please, Detective, you’re not going to tell me you got out of your suit just for me?” she replied smiling.

  “Hey, I’ve been known to do a little hiking,” he said in jest. “But truthfully, I was a bit worried with you being out here alone.”

  She looked up, giving him her best bat of the eyelashes, and said, “I’m headed back to the hostel. Where you headed?”

  “Well, I was just… what do you say I just turn around and head back with you?”

&nbs
p; “Sounds like a plan to me.”

  And together they headed back, with her only thought being how she would return.

  Part 2

  It didn’t take long after D`nae’s return from Scotland for her to realize that the rollercoaster life that she had recently experienced was slowly taking on a whole new twist. Unbeknownst to her, it would also bring her face to face with a piece of her past that had subsequently determined the fate of her future and written itself into her destiny. The love she held for her dark knight not only placed her life in the arms of an admiring heroic human, who would love nothing more than to have her all to himself, but it also had her right in the middle of a two hundred year old, single minded feud that came with a very strong desire for vengeance.

  In the two weeks that she’d been home, some odd occurrences had begun to happen. She would find her mail ransacked, half hanging out of the mailbox, and half shoved back in. The phone would ring in the middle of the night, with the caller hanging up when she answered. Nothing to really worry about until a few days later when a man started calling her landlady, asking if she knew if “Miss Creel” had a man living with her. He would call back every other night after midnight asking stupid things like ‘Have you met her fiancé yet?’ or ‘Do you know when they’re getting married?’ before hanging up. But the thing that made her skin crawl the most was the fact that someone had been in her apartment, rummaging through her things and taking personal items, namely her undergarments.

  * * *

  She sat on her bed, holding the card in one hand and the phone in the other, contemplating on whether or not to call the man that had persistently wanted to ‘just go out’ ever since they met in Scotland last month. Everyone she told about the weird happenings had a different reason as to why they thought things were out of sorts and none made any sense to her. The police that came to her apartment earlier that night had the worst conjecture yet.

  “Well, we didn’t find any forced entry. Do you know why anyone would want your panties, ma’am?” an officer named Hernandez asked.

  “No offence, ma’am, but are you sure you didn’t just have a bad dream and get a little a paranoid? Maybe you and the boyfriend had a fight and he took off with your undies,” this coming from the other officer.

  “Someone was… in my apartment.” D`nae replied and politely asked them to leave.

  “If you have any more trouble, don’t hesitate to call,” Hernandez said walking out the door.

  “Sure… you bet.” She closed the door and went straight to her room, where she now held the only number of a man that might be able to help figure out why someone was all the sudden finding her so interesting. She dialed the number and put the receiver to her head. It rang three times and as she lowered the phone to hang it up, she heard,

  “Detective Grady O’Brian, how can I help you?”

  D`nae slowly raised the receiver back to her ear and listened to him say hello one more time before she responded.

  “Grady, it’s me… D`nae Creel.”

  “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

  “Why does something have to be wrong?”

  “Because, you’re calling me for one thing. I’ve called you several times and you’ve never once returned my call. Figured I moved too fast in asking you out.” he explained.

  “Grady, I… can we talk about something else right now? Someone’s been breaking into my mailbox and I know they’ve been in my apartment. My landlady said she’s been getting calls every other day, with some guy asking if I have a man living here,” she paused to take a breath.

  “D`nae?” he whispered in question.

  “I didn’t know who else to call.”

  “I can be there tomorrow afternoon, if you want me to come check things out for you,” he said closing his eyes waiting for her answer.

  “You wouldn’t mind?”

  What she couldn’t see was Grady standing up, giving the air a high five and mouthing a silent “YES!”

  “Not at all, I’ll call you with the flight plan. Right now, I want you to make sure that place is locked up tight. If you don’t have a good lock on the door put a chair under the knob.”

  “Yeah, okay, mom. You have my cell number.” She hung up the phone.

  She lay back on the bed and wondered if what she had done in asking him here was a good idea, knowing that he had a little crush on her. She didn’t want to hurt him for being clueless of what she carried deep in her heart. Her heart belonged to her one and only back on the Isle of Skye, and she only had a few weeks left before she would be able to return to her very essence of life, for what she hoped to be a permanent stay; to live out her days by his side, no matter how long that time may be.

  The next afternoon, D`nae stood at gate four, waiting for Grady to exit the plane. She was looking for a tall man with short black hair wearing something like a blue pin-striped suit, but that’s not what came walking off that plane. The only parts of Grady that weren’t covered in black were his face and hands. He was wearing black denim jeans with a black t-shirt, covered by a black leather jacket, topped off with black snake skin boots, and a pair of black sunshades.

  “Going to a biker funeral?” D`nae asked stepping up to meet him.

  “What… you don’t like it? I think the color goes with my eyes,” he said lowering his glasses just enough to peer over the edge, grinning slightly.

  “Hmm, whatever you think, Grady,” she replied completely un-amused.

  “Well, I must say you look stunning. Did you dress up just for me?”

  “Don’t be a smartass. I came here straight from work. Do you have luggage or is that it?”

  “This is it,” he replied and held up his black duffle bag.

  “You really like black, don’t ya? What happened to the whole suit-and-tie thing?” she asked waving her hand about, looking at him from head to toe. His sudden chameleon-like character was proving to be very confusing to her, and not very reassuring.

  “That was business… and this is the only color that the bag came in.”

  She shook her head, flashing her best fake smile and the two headed out of the airport and back to D`nae’s truck. Grady threw his bag in the back and waited for D`nae to open the doors. After they were in the truck, rather than starting it, D’nae just sat there looking down at her keys.

  “What’s the matter?” Grady asked reaching across the seat, lying his hand on top of hers. ‘He is already starting with the whole touchy feely shit,’ she thought, deciding it was time to set things straight once again.

  “We need to talk.” she replied moving his hand away.

  “Okay, I’m listening.”

  “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea of why I asked you to come up here. I mean…” she was saying when he interrupted her.

  “I know what you mean. I came here because a friend called me… not for anything else.”

  She looked over at him wondering if what he had just said was true, or if he was saying what she wanted to hear. She knew if Grady had come along before she had found Danny things might have been different, but it was way beyond too late. The only thing she could do now was hope that Grady meant what he had just said, and not put her in a position where she had to hurt his feelings a second time.

  “I appreciate that,” she said looking over at him. “I just don’t have room in my life for a relationship right now.”

  “Yeah, you already told me that back in Scotland, remember?”

  She decided to start the truck and change the subject before the conversation went to a place she didn’t care to visit at this point in time. She had already gone through this little story with him and it was something she didn’t care to venture back into. How could anyone explain that their love happened to be the walking dead? It had been hard enough for her believe that Danny was a vampire, something she thought only existed in the world of fantasy.

  “So, what hotel are you staying at?”

  “I’m not… I’m staying at your place.
”

  “The hell you are, I asked you to come check things out, not sleep on my couch,” she replied, pulling out onto the freeway.

  “Why don’t you let me check your place out before we decide on anything? If someone has been getting in your place, do you really want to be there by yourself if they decide to come back? Do you?” he quickly asked with emphasis.

  “Do you think they’ll come back?” she asked, darting to look at him, causing the truck to swerve off the side of the road.

  “Hey, watch what you’re doing!” he yelled grabbing the dash.

  “Well, don’t say shit that’s going to freak me out when I’m driving!” she yelled back, trying to get the truck under control.

  He started laughing and she couldn’t help but join in. They drove without any more incidents all the way to her apartment, which was located on the outskirts of town. They talked about nothing but the shopping mall and Movie Theater that was located close to her place, and the way the reddish orange sky bled into the top of the pines and oaks on the winding rows of summer foliage.

  Her apartment was actually a small two story home, where she lived on the top and her landlady lived on the bottom. It was far enough away from the city limits that she felt like she lived in the country, but close enough that she didn’t have more than a thirty minute commute to work. Once they got out of the truck, Grady reached into the back and opened his bag, taking out a small handgun and a box of shells.