by Ranae Rose
Brendan exerted a gentle pressure on her shoulders, turning her to face him. “Do you still?” he asked, meeting her tearful gaze.
She tried to speak, but only sobs would come out. She clamped her mouth shut and nodded instead.
“I gave you this ring,” he said, holding her left hand and touching the circlet of white gold from which a single diamond winked. “I’m not going to take it back. I’ll gladly be your husband, if you’re sure you want me.”
Carrie buried her face in his shoulder and wept, causing his shirt to quickly grow damp. “You know I do!” she exclaimed. She hadn’t expected this. Earlier, he’d spoken of wanting to be her husband in the past tense, not the present. And why would he agree to marry her so quickly when he wouldn’t even speak of changing her?
“You can take time to think about it, Carrie,” he said, softly stroking her hair. “Marrying me won’t be what it would have been when I was human.” He paused and frowned. “I’m afraid you’ll be selling yourself short. Vampires don’t make very good husbands.”
Carrie straightened and met his gaze. “They do if their wives are vampires, too,” she replied.
Brendan sighed. “Not this again.”
She balled her hands into fists and glared levelly at him through her tears. “You can’t stop me from wanting it.”
“How can you?” he demanded. “I told you—”
“It’s easy,” she interrupted. “Like when I’m being manhandled by a vampiress who could snap my body in two like a matchstick if she wanted to, or when I meet a beautiful vampiress waiting outside your building to see if she can seduce you. At times like those, I think…I’d do anything to be like them, so I could be an equal match for you.”
Brendan stared at her in astonishment. “An equal match? Carrie, you’re a thousand times better than I can ever hope to be now! I’m the one who’s not good enough for you!”
She shook her head. “I hate the feeling of being so fragile next to you and of being at the mercy of vampires. It would be misery to live the rest of my life this way.”
He compressed his lips into a thin line. “Then don’t marry me,” he said. “Forget about me and live a normal, happy life.”
Carrie’s palm burnt as the sudden urge came over her to strike him. Only the memory of what had happened the last time she’d done that several days ago stopped her. “That’s not possible!” she cried. “If you knew anything about what the past year of my life has been like, then you’d know I can’t be happy without you.” Her anger dissolved into a trembling lip, then sobs.
Brendan wrapped his arms around her and drew her close against his chest. “Then marry me,” he said. “Then…think about it. Just try being my wife as a human for a while before you ask me to change you. Then if you decide you really want me to, I will.”
Chapter Seven
Carrie paused for one last moment behind the screen of pine boughs. The country sky was velvet black and spangled with brilliant stars. She took a deep breath as she looked up at it one last time then emerged from her shelter, abandoning the street clothing she had worn when she’d entered.
“You look amazing,” Brendan said from where he stood in the clearing. “Absolutely beautiful.” He crossed the space between them in three long strides and took her hands in his. A few crickets braved the autumn air and sang from the forest that surrounded them, as if echoing his sentiments. “The dress looks even better on you than I’d imagined.”
Carrie blushed and gazed down at the white gown. She had carried it into the forest and had managed to change into it without soiling it. Even the train was spotless. The soft carpet of pine needles had protected it from dirt.
Brendan reached into one of his pockets, and Carrie glanced to her left and right at the tall trees that would be the only witnesses of their marriage. The crickets continued to sing, and she was grateful for their sound, which seemed more beautiful to her than an entire orchestra.
Brendan unfolded his palm and two white gold bands glinted silver in the moonlight. A few small diamonds winked from Carrie’s, echoing the array of bright pinpoints in the sky.
“Carrie,” Brendan said, “will you be my wife?”
“Yes,” she replied. He took her left hand in his and slid the ring onto her finger.
“Brendan,” Carrie asked as she lifted the remaining band from his palm, “will you be my husband?”
“I’ll be your husband for eternity,” he said, pausing to smile, “and a year, to make up for the one we lost.”
Carrie slid the ring onto his finger, and he folded his hand around hers.
“I love you,” Carrie whispered.
“I love you, too,” Brendan replied as his lips covered hers.
The kiss was wonderfully, joyfully intense and threatened to stretch on for as long as Brendan had vowed to be Carrie’s husband. A while passed before she finally pulled away, breathless. “I love you,” she repeated.
He rested his cheek on the top of her head and sighed. “I love you, too.”
They stood that way, quietly enjoying the genesis of their marriage, for several minutes. Then Brendan traced the line of Carrie’s spine down to the edge of her dress and the soft sound of fingertips against silk joined the crickets’ chorus as he searched for the zipper.
She stood, still and expectant, as he slid it down, parting the fabric of her gown to the small of her back, where the stitches still sealed her wound. He moved the lace cap sleeves gingerly aside and the dress drifted to her waist, baring her to her bellybutton.
Brendan sighed, “Oh, Carrie,” as he placed his hands on the fabric covering her hips and eased it down. When the dress had fallen into a puddle around her feet, she was completely bare.
“What I’d bought to wear on our wedding night…” Carrie began. “I wore it when you returned, that first night you came to the apartment.” She lowered her gaze, trying not to think about the argument that had driven him from her home before they had ever made love that night. The beautiful garment had been wasted, as she had thought their engagement vows had been. “It was bloodstained.” She could still see in her mind the ruby-red drops that had spotted the breast of the filmy garment. She had not had the time to replace it with another. “I didn’t think I—I’d ever need it.”
“I’m glad,” Brendan replied softly. “I’m glad you didn’t wear it. You could never look more beautiful than you do in just your skin.” He laid a hand on her breast, then traced the curve of her body down to her hip.
She moved forward, reaching for him.
“Wait,” he said. “Wait just a minute.” He stepped backwards. “I want to look at you. I want to make sure I remember this moment forever.”
Carrie stood still, clad only in moon and starlight, with tendrils of her hair, which she’d curled for her wedding, brushing her shoulders. “You’re so beautiful,” Brendan breathed. “So perfect.”
His hand twitched as if he longed to touch her, and she trembled, remembering all the times he had and longing for him to do it now, as her husband.
“Come here,” he said finally. “Come to me.”
She stepped carefully out of her dress and into his arms. He kissed her as he had after their vows, deeply and blissfully.
“I’m so glad you’re my wife,” he said, touching the ring that circled her finger and glancing down at his own. The band of cool metal pressed against the lower curve of her right breast as he cupped it, leaning low to kiss its fleshy swell then repeating the ritual on the left.
Carrie pressed her hands against his chest, feeling the hard expanse of his muscles beneath the fabric of his shirt—a crisp, white, buttoned one he’d worn in lieu of a traditional three-piece suit. “Take it off,” she said. “I want to touch you, too.”
He removed it, and his fair skin glowed faintly in the moonlight, as cool and silky as water beneath her hands. “I’m glad you’re my husband,” she whispered as she reached for his fly, seeking the bulge that rose beneath it.
His pants slipped down, and it amused Carrie that he had retained his apparently vampiric habit of not wearing underwear. His penis swelled with the invisible tide of longing, as white in the moonlight as if it had been carved from the moon itself. It drew her—he drew her—as if she were a smaller planet caught in the gravitational pull of another. She knelt, but he followed just as her lips brushed the tip of his penis, denying her.
She opened her mouth to protest, to insist, but he pushed her down onto her back, falling deliberately over her.
“Does this hurt you too much?” he asked.
The wound had healed a good deal over the past several days, and the cushiony floor of pine needles exerted no great pressure against the bandage that covered it. “No,” she said. Even if it had, she didn’t think she could have told him so. An intense desire had settled deep into her bones as soon as he’d leaned over her, and she parted her thighs, inviting him into the warm space between them.
“Good.” He entered her without preliminaries, thrusting his way into her body in one smooth motion.
She gasped at feeling herself parted and deeply penetrated so quickly, and reeled in the wake of shocking pleasure. He withdrew halfway before launching himself even deeper inside her, a motion he repeated again and again, making her moan beneath him.
He supported his weight with his left arm while he explored her chest with his right hand, pushing one of her breasts upwards until its swell nearly reached her collarbone and the hard spike of her nipple rose from between his fingers, its flushed pink contrasting sharply with his moon-white skin. He bent his head to touch it with his tongue, and the air rushed out of Carrie’s lungs as she began to contract around the hard form of his penis. Her climax was as intense as it was sudden, surprising her so that for a moment she was silent, labouring to draw enough breath to cry out. Desperate to express her ecstasy somehow, she writhed beneath him, pushing up with her hips so they were shoved hard against him, forcing him deeper inside her. His cock touched her cervix and she finally found her voice. “Brendan!” she cried, and he thrust a little farther.
Left weak in the wake of her climax, she let her arms fall from around his body and onto the pine needles. He cried out a moment later, joining her in orgasm.
Brendan’s body was as cool as ever, hardly warmer than the air of the southern, autumn night, and she shivered slightly as he lay against her.
“I love you, Carrie,” he breathed, nuzzling his face against her neck before withdrawing from her body.
“I love you, Brendan,” she replied as the tip of his nose pressed against the rapid pulse in her throat. Though he no longer shared her body, a comforting warmth remained somewhere in her middle. He was hers—her husband. Just knowing that fact granted her a sense of peace she hadn’t felt in over a year.
Carrie drew breath sharply as twin pains pierced the flesh at the side of her throat. “What—” she began, only to find that speaking drove Brendan’s fangs deeper, through her skin and into her muscle.
Her blood fled her veins under powerful suction. The warm surge hardly touched her skin but flowed instead into his mouth as he swallowed regularly. “Brendan!” she gasped, wincing at the pain it caused her to do so. Her vision blurred, all of the forest’s trees becoming one before her.
He remained silent, intent upon his bloody task. She blinked up at the starry sky and watched in confusion as it faded to a deep black, vast and lightless.
* * * *
Carrie opened her eyes to find a thousand other pairs staring back at her, bright and winking. She blinked, confused. No, they weren’t eyes, but stars. She was looking up at the sky. She blinked again and saw a pale glimmer somewhere in the corner of her vision. “Brendan?” she rasped. Why did her voice sound so strange, and why did her throat feel so dry? “Brendan?”
There was no reply. She turned her head towards the white glimmer, but it was only the moon. Around where she lay were only the trees, silent, still and fading into shadow after a couple of yards. Something sleek and white had been draped over her body and covered her from her shoulders to mid-thigh. Her wedding dress, hiding her nudity in a puddle of pale silk.
Of course, her wedding dress! The events of the night flooded back to her, and she trembled at the memory of her new husband’s touch. But where was he? Why had he left her lying nude beneath her hastily-arranged gown in the clearing where they had married and made love for the first time as husband and wife?
The bite. Carrie’s hand drifted slowly to her neck and came away bloodless. She touched it again, pressing her fingers against her skin, probing, and encountered two mounds of irritated flesh, slightly oblong and each about half the size of a dime. Brendan had bitten her, her blood surging into his thirsty mouth. Was that why he’d left her? Had he lost control and fled before he could drain too much of her blood, in order to save her life? She glanced at where he had shed his clothing. It was gone.
If Brendan really had left in order to avoid harming her, he was probably somewhere in the woods, waiting for the urge to drain her blood to subside, or perhaps hunting an animal to quench his thirst. She rose, and her dress slid over her skin like liquid, pooling in a delicate pile atop the pine needles. She didn’t dare put it back on—it would be torn to tatters if she hiked into the woods while wearing it—so she left it there and stepped behind the screen of pine boughs, finding her street clothes where she’d left them and pulling them on. Then she began her trek into the forest, watching for a tell-tale flash of Brendan’s pale skin as she tiptoed past pines and other trees.
She searched for a long time, calling out until her throat was even hoarser than when she had awakened and she burnt with thirst. Tears stung her eyes, and she stared down at her wedding band, touching the cool metal which had become her only evidence of the wedding. Where was Brendan, and why had he left her there, naked and alone in the heart of a dark forest? Had something happened to him?
Eventually, she came to a stream. She dropped gratefully to her knees, splashing her face and parting her lips to receive the water. The bank brushed her bust as she knelt, staining her shirt slightly with mud.
She spat the water out violently, struggling not to retch. She stared wide-eyed at its surface, which gleamed silver in the moonlight that filtered through the forest canopy, as she scrubbed at her mouth. What in the world was in the water? It had tasted bitter and foul. She hoped she hadn’t drunk some pollution, maybe dumped into the water by one of Charlotte’s factories, or runoff from a farm farther upstream. The tears that had been biting at her eyes broke free, pouring down over her cheeks as the thought proved itself to be the proverbial last straw.
She wept for several minutes on the stream bank before rising to tramp through the woods again, alternately sobbing and calling Brendan’s name as she searched aimlessly. Eventually, when her tears had given way to despairing exhaustion and her hair had been robbed of its curls and tangled by branches that jutted in the darkness, she decided to go back to the clearing, hoping Brendan would eventually return to her.
It was a long hike, due mostly to the fact Carrie had only a faint sense of which direction she was heading. The moonlight played tricks on her eyes, casting shadows in strange places and causing her to trip more than once. The wood was quiet—even the crickets were silent—until an unusual rumbling sound reached her.
It was loud and accompanied by the crunching of brush being trampled underfoot—under very large and heavy feet. The eerie growling came again—deep, guttural and certainly not human. Breath rushed from what Carrie imagined as a toothy muzzle, its owner exhaling in preparation to scent the night, perhaps in search of prey. The creature shuffled through the underbrush, twigs snapping. The wilderness’s fiercest animals flashed through Carrie’s mind—bears and great cats. She made every effort to quiet her own breathing, though her lungs itched to race, to infuse her veins with oxygen so she could run!
But she didn’t dare. She stood as still as a statue, pressed against the prickly bark of a large
pine, which was little more than a black shape against the lesser darkness. Would she even see the beast before it tasted her, she wondered frantically? Its footsteps grew louder and nearby vegetation shook audibly as it was parted. A cat wouldn’t be that heavy-footed, she found herself thinking, or that loud. It must be a bear. She broke out into a slight sweat as she imagined the last forest creature she wanted to encounter, only yards from her now.
The beast broke through another screen of vegetation, and its thick, slightly sour musk, tinged with the coppery odour of blood, reached her. She hoped that meant it had eaten recently, that it would be too full to bother with her. That hope didn’t seem like much as she pressed herself harder against the tree, willing herself not to quiver as she tried to become one with it.
The snapping of sticks and the soft crunch of their being pressed into the carpet of pine needles seemed the loudest thing Carrie had ever heard. The beast came so close she could see its pale muzzle surrounded by a dark face and even darker eyes that shone in the moonlight filtering through the forest canopy. Yes, as she had feared, a bear. She trembled and slid slowly down the tree trunk, curling into a ball at its base as the beast approached her.
Its muzzle was surprisingly warm against her skin, and its breath sent her hair flying in warm gusts as it nosed her, apparently curious. One great paw forcefully nudged her side, and Carrie gripped herself tightly, focusing all her efforts on maintaining the ball into which she’d curled herself, her head pressed against her knees. She thought of Brendan, lamenting that she would surely never see him again, but he did not appear to save or comfort her, as he might have in a good dream. Instead, a cry pierced the night, feral and manic—the sort of sound that could be heard in only the worst sort of nightmare.