by P. Mattern
“Not really,” I said, brushing my hair, still in ringlets, back off my shoulders.”I was on my way to a play rehearsal.” I lied, knowing that my attire would be an issue. All I could see around me were bikini and swimsuit clad individuals .The rhythmic roar of the ocean echoed in my ears.
I looked around for a sign of some sort to identify this place. I knew I was stateside, in America, which I considered a very good omen. It was the dad type that helped me figure it out.
“Well,” he said, looking at me through his sunglasses, “Glad you seem to be okay . It must have been the sun in my eyes…I thought I saw some sort of explosion. But guess not. And I need to get my rugrats to Disney World so…have a nice day!”
The little girl kept looking back at me over her shoulder as she walked away, holding her father’s hand. I waved at her and she smiled and waved back with her free hand.
“Kind of early in the day for a play rehearsal,” the young guy remarked, taking me in from head to toe. It’s barely 11 am. And it’s 96 degrees .You must be burning up in that outfit.!”
“I am sort of hot,” I replied.
The guy chuckled. The red haired lady seemed to have disappeared.
“Oh I would say that you were VERY HOT. Sorry!” he said, following up immediately, “Couldn’t resist the pun—which was intended!”
I smiled up at him shading my eyes. He seemed to be a decent guy. And cute, sort of Neo-Goth with tattoos and a piercing under his left eyebrow. And most importantly I knew I could take him…being a vampire.
“Can I buy you a snowcone at least?” he asked, “My name is Jax.”
I grinned back at him. His face immediately lit up because he thought my dazzling smile had been inspired by his company.
The truth was it had suddenly hit me that I had, against all odds, made good on my escape. I was free and I was in America. For now that was good enough. I figured traveling by night could make the 750 or so miles back to Fort Wayne. I wasn’t sure how quickly I could fly but I imagined it wouldn’t take more than a few hours to clear that distance.
THE BURN
We walked to the boardwalk and down a couple blocks, Jax insisting on carrying both my hooded cloak and my backpack. By the time we settled under a metal table with an umbrella I was beginning to feel unwell.
“Good GOD!” Jax said, peering into my face, which seemed to be on fire ,”Are you deathly allergic to the sun? You are as red as a lobster!”
Frowning, I put my hand up to my cheek and felt small blisters forming.
“Tell you what,” I told him, ”I AM allergic. I need to go to the Ladies room and put on some sunscreen and splash some water on my face. You can go ahead and get the snow cones and I’ll be right back!”
I trotted into the cool and dim interior of the Confection Shoppe, past the soda fountain and back to the restrooms. What I saw after I pushed the door to the ladies room open shocked me.
Instead of my normally creamy and pale complexion I was beet red. My pulse was pounding in my temples. All the areas of my body that had been exposed to the sun, my face, chest and forearms, looked as though I had sustained second degree burns.
Quickly I turned on the faucet full force and began splashing cold water on my skin. After a minute or two, or perhaps just because I wasn’t in direct sunlight any more, it seemed to help. My color subsided to the point where I only looked as though I had a dandy regular sunburn. I was relieved but totally confounded.
I knew how vampires worked—sort of. I had read all the popular literature for entertainment including Bram Stokers “Dracula”, Anne Rice’s “Interview With the Vampire”, and others. In almost every case the literary works had emphasized that vampires could not tolerate sunlight, and were relegated to the ranks of creatures of the night.
But up in the Arctic Circle the perpetual daylight hadn’t been a problem. I had ridden in it, walked around in it, flown in it and picked berries in it.
There was no reason, based on my experience, that I could have anticipated this.
I combed my fingers through my hair, noticing that my vampireness was healing my burn as the minutes ticked by. But I couldn’t afford any more sun exposure, that was for sure. And I had to rejoin Jax where my snow cone was doubtless currently in the process of melting.
Instead of stepping outside I just opened the door to the outside and suggested to Jax that he join me inside where it was cooler. He came struggling in a minute later, carrying my backback, cloak and the two melty snowcones, neither of which looked as though they’d been touched.
“I’m sorry,” I said, meaning it, “I forgot how allergic I am to the sun! Thanks for everything! Really!”
Jax chuckled and held out both the snowcones. One was red and the other was blue.
“I got two flavors so you could choose…what’s your pleasure?” he asked.
“Blue,” I said, taking the glistening blue snowball ensconced in a paper cone from him and slurping delicately at the edges. It tasted delicious. I realized that I must be parched.
Jax was crunching into the red one.
“Your lips are turning blue,” he said, looking directly into my eyes.”Blue lips are my favorite by the way.”
I smiled at him.
“And yours are cherry red. Looks good on you. And you have a little dripping at the corner of your mouth. You look like a vampire!”
I could have bitten my tongue after I said it, but he laughed.
“Have you ever been kissed by a vampire?” he asked, leaning in more closely toward me in the booth.
“I bet you’d like it. Wanna try?”
I was so distracted by my inner monologue ticking off all the things that I should be doing to avoid sunlight until it got dark enough to travel that I was scarcely paying attention to what he was saying.
“Sure,” I said brightly,
Jax got up and moved to slide in beside me on my side of the booth. Before I could follow what he was about his cold red mouth was on mine and we were kissing.
It was nice. He was a good kisser ,and his kissing made me forget the trauma of the burns a few minutes earlier and relaxed me. I allowed the kissing to go on for quite a few minutes.
When I pulled back he said ,”Damn girl!”
“What?” I asked, looking in his eyes. His pupils seemed to grow wider looking into mine.
“Two things,” he told me, looking serious ,”I thought if your mouth was blue and mine was read and we kissed we’d make purple…but your mouth is still blue, which is kind of nice because it brings out the color of your eyes. And the second thing is….and this is sounding stupid even to me…but I think I’m falling for you!”
“Wow,” I answered, feeling at a loss, ”I don’t know what to say, Jax. I have to leave tonight.” I looked into his eyes again and was alarmed to notice that his irises had all but disappeared, and he was staring at me like I was the only female on the planet. Something clicked in my brain.
DUH…I was a vampire…I had probably mesmerized him without even meaning to. And I quickly jumped to the only logical conclusion.
That had happened because of my newly present predatory nature. I wanted to drink his blood. And as I breathed in his scent, both the male musk of him and the blood bouquet that I could smell because of his proximity, I found that I wanted to taste him.
“Give me my cloak,” I said in a half whisper, “Where can we go?”
I knew he was thinking this was about sex. I no longer cared about what he was thinking. My attendant Pam had been right to jump back from me when I approached her back at the Silo. I was a ravening beast, hungry from my trauma of the day and my travels and I was not going to say no to a full, vibrant container of blood in the shape of a young human male. I didn’t care about the sex, although I imagined that it would be easier to take what I wanted if I used it as a distraction.
“Hurry!,” I told him, slipping the hood over my head far enough to cover my face.
He lived in a one bedroom walkup two b
locks from the beachfront. I told him that I wanted it dark and he shut the blinds and pulled the curtains closed. I ripped his clothing off as he tore at mine and we both fell over sideways onto his bed, which was so narrow that we couldn’t even lie side by side.
I solved that situation by getting on top.
I don’t remember what happened after that in detail. There was pleasure and I remember he groaned, and then groaned even more loudly as I sank my fangs into his chest and filled my greedy mouth with his blood. It was the singularly most delicious substance I had ever tasted .I had to exercise the utmost restraint not to drain him of every blessed drop.
He fell asleep after I had fed. I stayed around long enough to ascertain that he was still breathing , and that the sun had slid down onto the shoulder of the horizon, ushering in the night tide.
The night was my friend, and I left him, laying across his pillow and still naked, feeling better than if I had smoked crack cocaine. I had that feeling crackheads describe in documentaries, that feeling that I was all powerful and completely and ecstatically happy and content and that I could do absolutely anything in the world.
But that feeling was not an illusion for me, because I was a vampire now.
It was aggravating flying through the night sky in a Northwesterly direction , because I knew that there was doubtless a portal, or several portals available that could have saved me time and trouble. Lacking a portal map, if such a convenience existed, I would have to do the best I could.
I didn’t fly high enough to be detected by airport radar, so I didn’t anticipate technology being a problem. I tried speeding up . Then speeding up some more. Finally I was at a speed where I could hear the wind whistling past my ears and kind of settled into that groove for awhile. I didn’t think that I was flying as fast as a jet.
But my instincts told me that I might be able to.
My thoughts were a jumble, and I was starting to feel mildly guilty about having fanged, and screwed, Jax. The sex had been a collateral adjunct to my bloodlust, nothing more. Pleasant but entirely forgettable.
Jax’s blood had been a different matter. It had been my first ‘live’ feeding and the euphoric feeling it had given me was unsurpassed in my experience .I reflected that it was good that I was putting some distance between us, because I wanted to go back for seconds—an act that I was fairly certain would have changed him permanently into a vampire.
And that was another thing. WHERE had my conscience gone? I couldn’t make myself care overly much about what had happened between myself and Jax. My compassion seemed to have slipped a few notches.
I saw another cluster of bright lights coming up and I determined to set down and ascertain where I was. I had kept on track according to the compass but I’d never had a very good sense of direction to begin with so I needed to check.
The bypass with just a few cars traveling along it at this time of night was garishly lit and I could tell by the interstate signs that I was just outside of Indianapolis, the state capitol of Indiana. I had been to Indy before to shop with Desi at the Fashion Mall or eat at the Cheesecake Factory, so I sort of knew where I was. I felt a pang in the general area of my heart, realizing that I had probably been driven by the very sign I was looking up at maybe a scant four months before with no inkling that the next time I saw it I would be changed.
Permanently. Into a vampire.
The last leg of my flight went quickly and my heart leapt in response to seeing the outlying part of Fort Wayne: the runway lights at the airport, the lit up truck stops where semis were coming and going 24 hours a day, the commercial areas with the huge neon art deco marquees.
My street was , as usual , in semidarkness as I touched down on the edge of a wooded area at the end of the cul de sac. With a shock I realized that I had been gone long enough to miss two seasons. It was fall here, the trees were turning and the wind had a cooler feel to it.
I had missed the summer, traditionally my favorite season. Tears sprang into my eyes as I sprinted up the block toward my house. I was elated to see that there were lights burning dimly in the interior. I wasn’t sure what time it was, but I didn’t care about any of that .I just wanted to be home.
I sprang up onto the front porch taking the steps two at a time, took a deep breath, and tried the doorknob.
Of course it would be locked. I let out a frustrated noise and stretched my hand out toward the lion’s head brass knocker that had been there for all of my life. They would be shocked to see me I was sure—but that I would be welcomed amid happy tears by my Dad and Desiree and my dog Spiro was a foregone conclusion.
My hand never connected with the big brass knocker hanging from the lion’s mouth. I was pulled backwards so suddenly and violently that the wind was knocked out of my lungs. My outraged scream was cut short by a hand clamped over both my mouth and my nose and I found myself being dragged backward into the bushes at the side of the house, where my legs were kicked out from under me and I was thrown violently onto the ground. My head hit the ground hard, but I kept kicking, shaking my head to clear my double vision so that I could see who was attacking me.
It was Seth .And he looked as furious as I felt.
For once he had abandoned his cool and nonchalant demeanor.
“Exactly HOW much trouble are you trying to be?” he demanded, his eyes shooting daggers even in the darkness.” You think you’re so clever finding your way back through the old portals in the Ice Palace! You’ll be happy to know that the Prince had them destroyed after you left!”
He had me by the throat and he was squeezing as he spoke. I tried to pry his fingers from my throat but it was no use, he was stronger than I was.
“PLEASE!” I croaked, his vicelike grip distorting my voice ,”PLEASE let me see my parents! Just SEE them! Even through a window…”
To my surprise he released his hands from my throat and moved off of me so that I could sit up, coughing and gagging.
“Tristina,” he said, in his familiar snarky voice, ”In your hurry to reenact the movie classic ”Lassie Come Home” with yourself reprising the starring role of the bitch dog you ran right past your reality check without even noticing! Look across the lawn!!!NOTICE ANYTHING?”
My eyes peered through the dimness at a set of double louvered real estate placards placed at the entrance to the walk up to the porch. Wrapped across the inanely smiling faces of the realtors on the signs were two white banners with bright red lettering that said, “SOLD!”
“They…MOVED?” I asked, incredulously.
“DUH,” Seth answered,”And DOUBLE duh! Why would they want to continue living in the same house when their daughter’s mutilated body was found just a quarter mile away barely 15 feet into the woods on a bike path? I bet people have been telling you that you need to “stop and think” your entire life
--but you never do, do you Tristina?”
I wilted then. I felt that my entire body was limp and all the fight had gone out of me. Not even my dog was here.
It had all been for nothing.
Seth jumped up and held out his hand. As he was hoisting me up he spun me away from him and cuffed my hands together behind my back with shackles that seemed coated with broken glass-if I pulled against them at all I felt multiple jabs of sharply radiating pain.
“You may be a vampire now, and stronger than a human,” he told me, ”But these restraints are enchanted and the Prince had them fashioned just for you. He’s understandably pissed at all the commotion you’ve caused, and it will be some time before he’s calmed down enough to even LOOK at you.
You left a Princess…you will return a DISGRACE to Him that Made you. You are hereby under arrest and sentenced to remain incarcerated until it pleases the Prince to mete out your punishment. There is a portal nearby and we will arrive back at Svalbard shortly. I suggest you lower your expectations for a warm welcome…
…you’ve been a VERY naughty girl!” he finished, pulling me by one elbow toward the woods.
VAMP PRINCESS #3
THE WHIPPING BOY
OLIVER
For three days after I was dragged back to the Svalbard Silo I waited, naked and in chains, for the Prince to come vent his spleen at me. The rumor was that he was so furious with me that he was letting some time elapse for fear that he’d accidently kill me on sight.
On the fourth day he arrived in full regalia and wearing a black mask , more ornate a mask than usual, it included blackened rams horns on the sides . He didn’t look the same to me. The dark eyes behind the mask seemed devoid of life.
I scrambled to my feet. I was chained against one wall. I hadn’t been allowed to bathe for several days. I knew what I must look like, smell like. I wondered if I would ever be allowed to bathe again. Still I was determined to face him standing.
We stood uncomfortably in the same space for a few minutes. I kept my eyes cast downward. He was standing as far away from me as was possible considering the size of the cell, which I considered a bad sign. Finally he cleared his throat.
“WHY?” he hissed at me in a low and somehow terrible voice,”WHY TRISTINA?”
I had to return his gaze now, and trying to speak quickly so that my voice wouldn’t tremble, I answered ,”I saw you with Theda, making love to her. I thought—“
The Prince stamped his foot, making me jump.
“THAT WAS NOTHING!” he raged at me, ”That was a Prince exercising his right of Prima Nocte,’ First Night ‘before Theda’s marriage to one of my Guard! How DARE you have an OPINION on things that you don’t understand, much less ACT on that opinion!
DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MUCH YOU HAVE SHAMED ME?” he raged, his voice bouncing crazily off the stone surrounds of the cell. I felt as though his voice reverberated right through me.
He stopped speaking for a moment. I could tell that he was trying to get his breathing under control. When he spoke again it appeared that he had calmed himself down. At least enough to speak to me at a normal volume.
“Look at me Tristina,” he said.