Strawberry

by Desdemona Grey

  “Things are never that simple, Strawberry. She was a dangerous woman, her mind lost to violent illness before I took her in. There is no need to pity her in life or death.”

  Tears gathered and splattered his chest. “But it was my fault. I tried to talk to her, tried to run away. I made her snap. I killed Loretta.”

  “Loretta killed herself.” The words were mild. I felt his arms tighten almost imperceptibly around me.

  I squeezed my eyes tightly shut but tears pricked the back of my lids insistently anyway. “She didn’t have to. Why didn’t you just let her go?” I yelled, angry with him for no reason at all or maybe for every reason. I did not know which it was.

  “It gets lonely.”

  The words opened my soul, cut me to the already raw core of my being. It got lonely in this isolated, windswept little spot of earth. In the long years that made up the centuries. In the dark hours of night without seeing the day.

  He was lonely.

  I whispered, barely audible over the sound of the shower running around us, “That still gives you no right to hold people against their will.”

  Owen set me down on my feet.

  “Do you hate me so much, Strawberry?”

  My feelings for him were incredibly conflicted. On one hand, I had begun to care about him in ways that would have seemed unimaginable to me but on the other, I longed to be free of his teeth inside my flesh, and to be able to walk in the sunlight unencumbered by fear.

  I dropped my head. “No. No, I don’t hate you.”

  Owen turned the shower off and carefully dried me down. He wrapped me in a warm towel then left the bathroom without a word.

  He returned in dry pants, bare feet, and still buttoning up a new shirt. The moonlight filtered through the windows and outlined his incredible body and handsome face. The bloodsucking thing had kidnapped me and all that but he was undeniable gorgeous.

  The bedroom was spotless, cleared of any chicken remains, or mess from my struggle. I looked around, amazed at how fast Owen could be when he wanted to.

  I saw him staring lustfully at the pulse in my neck.

  He saw me notice. “I won’t feed on you after all you’ve been through. You need to recover again.”

  “No. You should drink. I want you to. I like you better after you’ve eaten.” I didn’t bother anymore with games or tricks. My cards were on the table.

  I sat on the edge of the bed.

  Owen stood close in front of me and I almost reached up to feel the lines of his stomach muscles I’d just seen under his shirt.

  Then he knelt down between my knees. His fingers traced my neck, where he’d bit my breast, and down to the bite on my inner thigh. I held my breath, and the uncontrollable shivering I’d just recovered from struck again.

  He took both of my hands in his, staring again at the damage the handcuff had done, then gently lifted my other hand to his mouth. His lips touched softly against my palm before moving to my wrist.

  I barely felt his teeth go in. I just felt the hot rush of blood flowing between us. I swooned, and he caught me around the waist, pulling me tight against his chest, my legs wrapped either side of where he still knelt at the edge of the bed.

  With my legs wrapped around him, and his arm wrapped around me, he stood up, lifting us, still clutching my wrist to his mouth and drinking. Desire came knocking again hard between my thighs and I leaned into him, pressing my mouth to his neck.

  He bent forward, laying me down on the bed with him on top of me. I could feel how firm he’d become under his pants and rolled my hips into his, my mind blurring away into pleasure.

  Owen pulled his teeth away from my wrist, kissing away the blood.

  When he rolled off me and sat up, I tried to hide my panting and disappointment.

  “I hope I didn’t take too much. I worry about your health,” he said.

  I probably looked more feverish than ever right then. “Nah, I’m fine. I hope you, you know, had enough to eat.”

  He smiled. Actually smiled. I didn’t realize that was possible. I gawped up at him in surprise. He looked… normal. Like a person instead of an undead killer. His face had color and his eyes had expression. His skin had gone a beautiful warm ivory, but when I reached for his arm his flesh felt cool beneath my fingers.

  His hand stroked my hair tenderly and I turned my cheek into his palm, seeking comfort even though I knew he was the reason I needed it.

  Too many complex emotions struggled to unleash themselves from inside me. Abruptly I remembered writhing against him in a stupor of passion and blushed so hard my face felt like someone had held a blowtorch to it.

  “Soooo,” I finally said, making the awkward silence more awkward.

  “It’s odd.”

  I blinked then said, “Yeah, being held against my will by a vampire who is trying to kill me slowly is certainly not anything I would have put in my yearbook as a future plan. But it’s more lost-my-shiny-round-play-things than simply ‘odd’ to be honest.”

  He laughed and not just any laugh either, he threw his head back and laughed so hard the skin around his eyes crinkled and I could see his nice even white teeth. The fangs had retracted or something and when he leaned back on the bed it creaked and the mattress sagged beneath his weight.

  “You are doing something to me Strawberry. I am feeling things I have not felt in centuries. I’ve never had blood like yours before. I’ve never been so… warm. I don’t like whatever it is because when I drink from you I become weakened somehow.”

  “Maybe you should let me go then,” I suggested. “Keep us both happy.”

  My attempt at humor fell flat. His lips thinned down to a line and his eyes narrowed.

  “My blood probably just tastes good because I like eating nice things. Bring in any old vampire groupie and feed them that fancy food you’ve been giving me and you’d probably get the same result. You don’t need me.”

  “No, there is something uniquely special about you.”

  His fingers were warm as they reached out and touched mine. I shivered with revulsion and pleasure; the intermingled sensations were disconcerting but not nearly as much as the sight of him looking so human. Dawn began to lighten the windows slightly, rosy little fingers of light barely cracking across the uppermost edges. I remembered the story Arabian Nights, how Scheherazade stayed alive by telling the bloodthirsty sultan stories he could not resist. I wasn’t sure what I could tell him that would amuse him so I asked him a question instead.

  “How did you turn into a vampire? Is it like they show us on TV? How did it happen?”

  “The mythology is pretty close. It hurts like hell. I won’t make you a vampire if that is what you are angling for.”

  “Oh darn,” I rejoined in as sarcastic a voice as I could muster. “What a shame, I would love to give up eating crème brulee in favor of a little O neg.”

  Owen smiled almost wistfully, and began tucking me into the warm covers of the bed. The fluffed up pillows and thick comforter were like heaven compared to the rough side of the building lashed with rain. I nestled into them, my eyelids growing heavy. Owen sat down above the covers. As he settled in next to me I could not help but wonder what he had been like when he was alive.

  That was dangerous thinking. I knew that it was. He was a vampire, purely and simply and even though he looked human he was not.

  I probed again regardless. “You didn’t answer my question.”

  Owen looked at me. “Strawberry, you should not ask so many questions.”

  “If you’re going to keep me here you might as well entertain me. Come on, vampire, tell me a story,” I said the words casually but under my skin my heart was racing. I loved a good story even if it was bound to have a pretty unhappy ending, which it was obvious my own was destined for.

  Owen sat still for a while and I didn’t think he was going to talk. Then slowly, quietly, he did. “I fell in love with a woman I thought I would die without. Instead it happened that to be with her I
had to die.”

  I didn’t know whether to be touched, or jealous. “You became a vampire for love? Then why isn’t Mrs. Vampire still around?”

  “She died many centuries ago.”

  Oh. Sympathy for him filled me although I did not want it to. I touched his hand, stroking the long sensitive fingers. “I’m sorry. I thought you vampires were immortal. How did she die?”

  “I killed her.”

  What kind of guy killed the love of his life? Vampire guys.

  Dawn was not yet reaching our little corner of the world but there was a pearly opalescence that said it would be soon. Owen looked toward the balcony, his face lifted to the sky. “I miss sunsets.”

  “You could watch from the window.”

  “I do, quite often. It makes me weak though.”

  “Is it worth it?”

  “Most things that make us weak are.” His lips twitched and I realized something, I hated that he took my blood, battened on me like a leech but I liked the person he became afterwards. Genuinely liked him. It was so weird I could not even form a thought for a few seconds.

  I rambled, “Everyone’s going to hurt you, the trick is finding someone who makes the suffering worth it. Bob Marley said that, or something like it, so you know it’s the truth.”

  He nodded slowly, a rich sadness torturing his features.

  Dawn showed its full face in the glass of the doors. Thin streaks of gold lay on the carpet and he got out of the bed, all the humanity wiped from his face as if it had never been there. One second he was standing there looking down at me, the next he was gone. I saw a blur in the corner of my eye and heard the door open then close but that was all.

  I lay there, confused and wrung out. Dawn bloomed, followed by a band of clear blue sky that showed in the distance. Birds sang loudly and I rolled over on my back.

  “I really have to get out of here,” I said to the ceiling but it did not bother answering.

  Chapter Eight

  Time began to blend together. I found myself sleeping during the day more often and staying up with Owen at night. He would feed me then feed from me, coming in as a monster, and leaving as a man. I grew used to being mostly naked, like being a prisoner it was just a fact, but always found a sheet or towel to cover myself when Owen visited. Having the cuff now around my ankle instead of wrist made it a little more out of sight, out of mind. My thoughts and emotions grew so conflicted my insides were at war, those emotions spilling out, making me a teary, giggly, snappy, lustful mess. Mood change mistress, that was me.

  One night Owen brought me a simple but truly delicious meal of handmade ravioli filled with whole egg yolks, coated in sage and burnt butter sauce. He wandered out to the balcony, staring at the stars while I ate. When I finished, I followed him out, figuring it was his turn.

  The silky white sheet I had wrapped around me trailed behind on the carpet.

  Instead of biting me, Owen asked, “Do you swim?”

  “Yes, I love to. Why?”

  “You should go swimming then.”

  He gathered me up in his arms, snapped the shackle off my ankle, and leaped to the top rail of the balcony. I started screaming, I wasn’t sure if vampires could commit suicide by falling to their death and I did not want to find out either. I did know I was very fragile and breakable even if he was not. We took flight. Terror had me in its grip and I screamed all the way down.

  His chest rumbled with laughter.

  “You still do not trust me,” he said when his feet landed on the concrete below.

  I was shocked that he could talk given that my arms were locked in a death grip around his neck. I could have killed him if he weren’t already dead.

  “Trust you as much as a drunken frat boy, pulling stunts like that,” I snapped.

  He laughed. Again it struck me how different he had become over the last week. His flashes of coldness still happened but he rarely seemed inhuman.

  “Go, swim. Enjoy some exercise.” He nodded toward the water.

  It was stunning, and I couldn’t resist wading slowly in. The sheet spread around me like a cloud and I let it drift away. My dark hair hung down over my breasts, covering them in the water. It felt longer than before, and I wondered how long I had been in this house, with the vampire.

  The water was dark and blood warm, the moon up above sent spangles across the tiny little wavelets created by my movements. The flowers planted around the pool gave off a heavenly smell of rose and jasmine.

  I swam over to the side where Owen had been sitting, watching me silently, and folded my arms on the edge.

  The vitality of being immersed in water in this dreamlike setting left my philosophical.

  “How do you see the world? Is it different to when you were human?” I asked.

  “It’s been so long I can hardly remember. How do you see it?”

  I stared around me. Everything was sharp and angular, black and gray with occasional splashes of color. The roses were scarlet but the dark shadows behind them made the blood red of them seem even brighter, arterial even.

  The sky was an immense dark bowl with bright pinpricks of stars and the moon hung bloated and bright in one corner. The mountain was cloaked by that darkness, making its edges softer, kinder.

  I described what I saw in halting tones. He sat on the lounge chair, leaning forward to listen, elbows on his lap.

  “No. I do not see the world the way you do. Maybe I never did.”

  He seemed softer tonight, less intense.

  “Do you miss daylight?”

  “I can see it from afar.”

  “But do you miss it? I mean being out in it and feeling it on your face, getting a tan or hanging out on the beach, that kind of thing.”

  “I never really hung out on the beach.” His tone was a bit sarcastic. “I do miss riding though.”

  “Riding? Like on a train or something?”

  “No, on horseback.” He stared out into space. “I used to love to ride.”

  “Why don’t you do it anymore? I mean, can’t you ride a horse at night?”

  “Animals tend to shy away from me now.”

  Oh. I had forgotten for a moment that he was a vampire. He seemed so human tonight. Pity filled me; his face was suffused with a kind of longing I had never seen on it before. I wasn’t sure what to say but he spoke, saving me from having to say anything.

  “The first woman I fell in love with I met riding. Rather, I was riding; her horse had spooked and was running away with her across Hyde Park.”

  The memory was powerful enough that a tiny smile ghosted across his lips and lit his eyes up. “Her hat had come off and she had slung her leg across the horse in a decidedly unladylike manner, which hiked her skirts up almost to her thighs. Still, she managed to get the stallion under control.”

  Jealousy stroked my nerve endings. I didn’t know who the woman he was speaking of was but I was jealous of her, of her ability to ride and make a haunted kind of happiness shine out of Owen’s eyes.

  “She sounds like one hell of a horsewoman.”

  “She was a lot of things.”

  A coyote howled from somewhere and I flinched, a movement he saw though I had not thought he was paying attention at all.

  “There’s nothing to fear. They can’t get past the walls.”

  The breeze ran across my body and my nipples tightened. My hair dripped down my back and the scent of chlorine grew stronger.

  Owen stirred again and sighed, a heavy sigh that sounded hurt and tired all at once.

  “I wish time had not moved on so much.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He laughed but there was no humor in it. “I mean, I don’t know how to live in this time. It wasn’t something I thought about before I was turned, that time would march on and leave me behind.”

  “Progress can be hard to adjust to,” I agreed. “I guess most of us don’t really notice it too much until we look back and think about it. My mom used to talk about the microwa
ve, how she never had one growing up until she was a teenager because they just weren’t around or because they were too expensive. She barely uses hers now because she never got used to it. But for my generation, well, I can’t imagine not having one.”

  Owen nodded. “Every time I think I adapt, something new comes along. Sometimes so fast it has already passed to the next thing before I even notice.”

  I swirled a slow three-sixty in the water, looking at the vast mansion behind me, full of expensive modern appliances. “You don’t seem to be doing too badly. Why did you turn vampified then, if it’s so hard? I mean didn’t you think about forever being such a long time?”

  For a minute I was sure he would tell me to mind my own business but then he spoke, “At the time being with her forever seemed like the proposition of paradise and I had no idea of how little like that it would be.”

  I didn’t have to ask, I knew she was the girl on the runaway horse. The woman he had killed at some point.

  “Adelle St. Delaurents. She was the daughter of a Duke and I was the second son of a mere Baron, an officer in the military whose entire pay went to support myself in what was hardly a high style. The match was impossible. Adelle’s family already had her betrothed to a very wealthy man.

  “She had to wed, back then women were little more than commodities, even the ones born into privilege had little or no control over their lives. A beautiful daughter was often sold off to the highest bidder in the most genteel manner possible, they were given huge wardrobes and trotted out to balls and fetes and soirees so that they could have a chance to make the best match possible for their family. It was all done with little if any consideration to their heart or desires.”

  The bitterness that lay in his words stirred sympathy and some other emotion I could not fathom up in me. The lack of freedom women of a past era suffered cut close to home. “Why didn’t you two run off together and get married?”

  “To run away would have meant allowing the ruination of her entire family. She married the man she was betrothed to. It drove me crazy. Her husband was thirty years older and he was… cruel. He found her too headstrong and outspoken and he spared no mercy in his attempts to change her.”