by Various
Chapter Eleven
Dinner Date
On Friday, I stood outside Tommy’s door. I’d fed on a tiger in the local zoo and, surprisingly, left it alive but dazed. Its claws had raked down my side. I hadn’t worn my shirt in the attack and my wounds, though deep, had already healed.
I knocked. This time it took a while before he answered. His cologne tantalized me and, along with it, the delicious scent of his skin.
“Angela.” He took me in his arms as he had the last time I’d shown myself here. I melted against him, relieved to be held by him.
“I’m sorry,” I blubbered, still guilty for having left him before.
“It’s all right. I understand.”
But he didn’t really understand me at all. I waited while he gathered his wallet and keys, marveling at his face, his body, the casual way he’d left his shirt unbuttoned at the top. If I were still human, I would have felt safe with him. Tommy still had the build of a football player. But I was not human, and I didn’t feel safe. I felt like a predator luring its prey out into the darkness to kill it.
“You have that look again,” he said, stopping before me. “You okay?”
“Fine. Fine. Where are we going tonight?”
“Marion’s Italian Bistro. You do like Italian food, right?”
“Sure.” In my planning and plotting, I had overlooked actually eating a meal. Could I eat? Would my body reject food?
We walked along the hall, rode an elevator down to the parking lot, and found his Honda. He opened the door for me. My face flushed. “Thanks.”
Inside the car, he leaned over and kissed me. I kissed back, thinking maybe we ought to stay at his place for the night instead of going out. His lips settled a warm fire in my body. Our mouths fit together perfectly, our tongues testing and touching. Everything tingled when he pulled away to turn the key. The engine started up. I kept my eyes on his face the whole way there and tried not to notice his heartbeat, low and insistent, in my ears.
“They have the best meatballs,” he said when we pulled into the parking lot.
“Your mom’s are the best,” I reminded him.
“Mmm. I don’t know about that. Marion’s are pretty good.”
I shook my head. “I’m telling.”
“You would, too. My mom always liked you, Angela. Maybe we can take a trip to Miami and meet up with my parents again.”
I thought back to the woman who so readily welcomed me into her home. She’d hugged me, taken me in without question. I’d felt loved there for the little time we’d had. I missed it. “I’d like that.”
The restaurant was dim. The waiter seated us by a large window, giving me a clear view of the sky. Tommy ordered wine. The red liquid poured into my glass. I sucked at my lower lip, thinking it looked like another liquid I wanted to sip. Lifting it to my lips, I wondered if my stomach would revolt.
I drank.
Tommy smiled, doting on me.
The bittersweet wine ran down my throat. It burned. I felt it all the way down, filling my stomach, draining out into my veins. Certain I wouldn’t retch it out, I drank more and more. The night went on. I ate pasta and felt alive, though it tasted less pleasing than I remembered in my previous life. I could pretend to be human enough to pass in his world. Nothing went wrong for us that night. Through the movie, I stared in wonder at him. The lights from the screen danced over his face. I wanted him that moment. I had to have him for eternity—one way or another. Selfishness pushed me closer until I was kissing up his neck.
He moaned, pulling me close. His chin atop my head, I assaulted his skin with kisses that turned to nips. My teeth grazed over his neck just above the place where his vein pounded out life to his mind. I wanted the sweet elixir beneath that small barrier. I wanted to taste him, his soul.
He took my hand, pulling it toward his crotch where his hardness evidenced just how much he wanted me too. Decadent and lustful, I rubbed along his length beneath his clothes. I sucked at his neck, wanting to break through so much it pained me. His fingers closed over my hand, stilling my efforts to please him, halting the moment and the headiness I felt.
“It’s almost over,” he said. “Do you want to come home with me?”
I nodded.
In the car as we drove to his apartment, I watched the clouds inking over in deeper shades of pink. My hunger would come by the next night, I guessed. For now, we had tonight. I had him for myself. I prayed I could resist the carnal urge to feed from him.
In the elevator, we succumbed once more to the torrid pre-dance of mating. Chests ran along each other. Crotches thrust to meet, kept apart by cloth and patience. The patience would waver soon enough.
Inside his apartment door, I unbuttoned his shirt to push it away. I kissed his chest, making my journey down past the hairs on his chest, at one side of the line leading into his pants. Those too, I unbuttoned and relieved him of. He remained hard for me, turned on by my brash advance. Fingers curled into the band of his boxers. I slid them from him, so I could examine him more closely.
Tommy combed his fingers through my hair. I looked up at his blue eyes and saw the wonder there. Instinct overpowered me. My mind pushed into his thoughts. His eyes, so aware, so bright only moments before, went glassy as I pushed him to a daze with my will. How easy it would be to control him. How a small push could make him believe so many things—anything I wanted of him. He would follow, a lamb to the slaughter, a slave if I so wished it.
I touched the soft skin of his erection, guiding it over my cheek, across my lips. He smelled like soap and man. I breathed him in and out, in and out, prolonging this moment of fantasy.
Releasing him, I stood and undressed slowly, letting him see me but controlling him so that he stayed in place. I should have let him do as he pleased, but my dark side wanted this moment, wanted him inside me as I had envisioned our coupling. Stripped of my dress and my underwear, I sauntered down the hall, my man following behind. His warm hands caressed my shoulders, rubbing away my misgivings. If I would leave with anything, it would be at least with the memory of making love to him.
“I love you,” I said, letting him have back his will.
Lips touched down by my ear. “I love you too, Angela. I’ve dreamed about you ever since I met you. Every night.”
I wished I could have said the same with some truth in it, but my nights were stolen from me. “Make love to me,” I whispered, hoping the sky in the sliver of window by the desk would not turn red soon.
He took my small waist in his big hands and guided me, face down, to the mattress. I lay there, complacent, my legs parting while he eased into position. Poised and ready to enter me, he paused. “Are you sure?” he asked. Thumbs ran circles on my skin.
“Oh yes.” I bucked back, forcing him inside.
He let out a sharp breath.
Slow and tortuous, he pushed farther inside me. Once filled, I looked over my shoulder to see the expression on his face. His eyes were closed, his lips in a blissful frown. Our coupling continued, his thrusts gentle, my hips grinding down for more, for something urgent and harried. He drew out the moments until I rode a wave of euphoria. Hunger became a memory in that time. Only the feel of his body slapping against mine, the pressure of his length advancing, retreating, advancing, stilling. He exploded inside me and cried my name in a desperate plea. I came too, not far behind his release.
Together we lay afterward, our arms and legs entangled, out faces inches apart. We whispered about our future together, about our children-to-be, about a grand wedding by starlight in a wide-open place where flowers perfumed the breeze. He kissed me over and over. I reveled in him. “I love you,” I murmured time and again. “I love you more than life.”
We slept together, I in a state of half-dreaming until just before dawn. The sky bled near its peak. I had underestimated how much time I had. His skin at my lips, I passed my tongue over his neck and felt my teeth lengthen, readying to take more of him. The dark thing inside me begged f
or a sip, a small drink, a taste only.
I closed my eyes, torn by the decision, but as any predator starved when its meal is laid at its feet, I bit down.
It flowed into me, his blood a taste new and unlike any others. I drank in unhurried swallows, savoring him, feeling something else pass into me. Flurries of his dreams tickled my mind. Dark places where light showed down in gray rays. I saw my body in his dreams, his fantasy to part my legs and taste the sweetness between. His thoughts shifted and changed in mists of fog.
His pulse thumped in my ears, steady, strong. I had only to drink with more fervor and I could halt its pace completely. I could force my blood past his mouth, make him swallow, make him cross over into the darkness with me.
I drank more. I suckled. The heat of frenzy overtook me. My nails grew to claws, sharp and dangerous. My body lit with the thrill of an impending kill.
“Angela...” he said softly, his mind lost in dreams and the hold of my will.
I stopped.
I pulled back. Two perfect holes glistened with wetness on his neck. I stared at them, ashamed. With a deliberate swipe, I sliced open the fleshy part of my thumb and dribbled blood over the wounds to seal away the evidence of a broken promise to myself.
His lips parted and he mumbled.
The holes pulled together. Skin grafted back in place.
I stared at his mouth, knowing I could force my blood there and aware that I would not.
Slipping from the bed, I went to shower. I washed away the scent of him from my body, scrubbed my skin and cleaned my hair with his shampoo. My body ached where he’d invaded me and become part of me. I smiled. His blood ran in my veins.
“…once you taste of a living human, you will want to drink away the rest of its soul. You can’t resist.” Karada’s words haunted me. I toweled off and went to stand beside my lover’s bed, watching him sleep, wondering if the old vampire was right. Even as I loved Tommy, I wanted to kill him. The urge would not leave me, no matter how I tried to push it away.
Chapter Twelve
Hope
The truth shined through so many of my words often enough that I believed my own lies. “I work at my uncle’s estate. He died a few months ago.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Tommy said, looking sincere.
We sat across from each other on our seventh date in so many weeks at a hole in the wall late night diner. Things between us were settling into a comfortable routine.
“He was ill for years,” I said, for there was truth in that. There were many times I’d come upon Rory in the corner of the bedroom at dawn, hugging his knees to his chest and rocking. I used to help him into our bed and hold his head to my chest while he cried or muttered nonsense. I wondered if I would be reduced to such ramblings in my future.
“You’ve lost a lot.”
I shrugged. He was right. I had. But that’s how life is. “I have you now.”
He smiled.
I did too, and a strange sound tickled my senses. Over the usual beat of Tommy’s heart, a sound I knew well, I heard a second thrumming, faster, fainter. We ate our meal, and all the while, I tried to pinpoint the noise. A few patrons chattered in the front of the restaurant. Two waitresses stood behind the bar cleaning up. Nothing else ought to be giving off such a slight pulse.
My food seemed dull to me. The flavors were there, but they mulled around in my mouth as if ash tainted them. I imagine my tastes were like that of a heavy smoker’s, spiced up only by that which they crave—the inhalation of tobacco, the high of the hit—for me, the roll of blood down my throat.
“What did your uncle do to amass an estate in need of a caretaker?” He sipped his soda and watched me, intent.
“Rory collected art.”
“Mmm.” Tommy nodded. “I failed my art history class in college. Never could keep all the names straight. It was boring.”
“Yeah.” I laughed. That was all well and good. There’d be no question about Rory Archibald and the odd things he hunted down to keep in his extravagant home. I glanced out the tinted glass window to check the bloody progress of the sky. Just outside a pair of dark eyes caught mine, the woman’s face narrow and smooth, her smile wicked. She tapped on the glass.
I swallowed wrong and choked.
“Are you okay?” Tommy jumped up and patted me on the back until I caught my breath. When I turned to face the window again, Karada wasn’t there. Did I imagine her? Was my mind already slipping away?
The smaller pulse thump-bumped in my consciousness.
I drank down a glass of soda, amazed at how tasteless it was. “I hate when that happens,” I told him.
Back at his place, we cuddled on the couch and watched TV. I listened to his heart beneath my ear and the smaller sound echoing it. His hand trailed to my abdomen. I sucked in a startled breath. Could it be? His palm ran back and forth. I didn’t think my belly looked any different than it had before, but if what I thought might have occurred was even possible, it might not have changed yet.
How could I tell him? What would he say? Already he accepted that I slept during the daylight hours and went about at night. We met always in the middle of light and day by evening just after sunset.
“I think I’m pregnant,” I whispered.
His hand stopped.
The beatings of the two hearts—one tiny and insignificant and one strong—were my hope. Tommy kissed the top of my head and hugged me. “Are you scared?”
I thought it over. Scared? Of a child half-human, of our child growing inside me? Yes, I was scared, but in a different way. What would this baby’s life be like? Would it be a vampire? Would it die in the light of the sun? Would its father find out what I was now and hate me for it?
“No, I’m not scared. I have you.”
He smiled. A tear fell from his face and onto my forehead. “Let’s get married, Angela. Tomorrow night. Let’s just do it. We can go down to City Hall and sign the papers. I know a priest who will do it outside his church when we’re ready to have a real ceremony.”
“All right.” I placed my hand over his on my belly and listened to my family, to the small sounds of change and growth inside me and the eventual soft snores of the man who would be my husband come tomorrow night. I didn’t know how I could work out going down to sign for the marriage license, but I’d find a way.
Three hours before sunrise, I scribbled a note for him to find when he woke. I wanted to go back to the mansion, to pick out a dress and gather my things. It wouldn’t be much, a suitcase of clothes, a few trinkets, and the easel and paints. I wanted to try and paint again now that no one was there to force me to try.
Climbing the stairs to the roof of Tommy’s apartment, I thought over this new turn of events. Scared. Yes, I was frightened of the unknown and what it would bring to us—us, not just me anymore.
The sky bled only faintly for me in that remainder of darkness. I tugged off my blouse, spread my wings and leapt out into the air. Flying brought me a joy humbled only by the happiness I felt. My life was looking better at last. I had a future no matter how unusual or impossible. Someone loved me and I loved him back.
The city dwindled beneath me, giving way to thick trees and the cooler drafts of the wilds. Rory’s mansion beckoned me to my second home. I landed in the backyard. The little heartbeat inside me stayed steady. The French doors were open, giving me pause. Karada’s voice echoed from within, singing in a lilting voice with foreign words.
“Look who has returned.”
“I’ve only come for my things,” I shouted, hoping she’d let me alone long enough to take what I wanted and leave.
She appeared in the doorway to the bedroom in a green silk gown, her hair over her shoulders and tied by red beads. “Will you be staying here long?”
“No. It’s all yours now. I won’t come back again.”
“Ah.” She returned to the bedroom, her bare feet soundless on the rug. I followed after her, a twinge of warning in the pit of my stomach. When I entered
the room, I found Karada seated at a lacquered table before a mirror. She kept her eyes wide while she applied eyeliner beneath each one, extending it far outside her eyelid on each side.
“Are you from Egypt?” I asked, dragging a suitcase from the back of the closet. I set it atop the bed, zipped it open and gathered my underwear from the bureau drawers.
“I am.” She set the liner pencil down and reached for a tube of lipstick. “I haven’t been back in so long. I’m sure it’s all changed by now.”
I packed in my clothes, not bothering to take out the hangers. I closed the suitcase, zipped it shut, and readied to leave.
“Don’t you have questions for me, little angel?” She stood, brushing her fingers over her hip while she walked toward me to block the way out.
“Only one.” I heaved the suitcase off the bed and pulled out the handle so I could roll it on wheels. I figured I could take one of the cars in the garage. There were five. Karada didn’t need them all. “Did you love Rory?”
Her thin eyebrows tensed. Her lips twisted in a confused expression. “I loved him. Yes.”
“What went wrong?”
“His half-brother cut off my head and drove a stake through my heart. Not a very nice wedding day present.” Her eyes glittered red.
“Oh.” I steered to the right, dragging my suitcase behind me. She stepped in my path, one hand out to snatch my forearm.
“Stay with me,” she said, her voice low, dangerous. “I get lonely. I won’t have the same difficulties with you as I would a male companion.” Her teeth lengthened before she pulled my wrist to her lips. “Let me taste you.”
I struggled against her hold. Fingers twisted into my flesh, claws sank deep. My blood scented the air in the room. The suitcase fell to the floor.
Karada laughed, dragging me along with more strength than I could match. Her mind pushed at mine, but I pushed back. I would not be taken over again. I would not be a slave to her as I had been to Rory. She pulled me through the French doors, across the flagstone path, and out into the gardens. I bit her once, her thick blood painful as it burned my tongue and throat.