Dark Thirst

by Angela Allen

  “I am not a powerless maiden to be robbed of the blood of my feast,” she proclaimed as she shoved me away from her.

  I was so hungry and engaged in my quest that I never fell backward. I maintained my balance and attacked her as fiercely as she had pushed me away.

  She then attacked my throat with her lethal nails again. I grabbed her long fingers before she could strike and pushed them away from me while squeezing the bones within them.

  “Uunnnnhhh!” she squealed.

  I was obviously stronger than her now, and still ravenous for her blood. Yet, she was still as swift in her movements as I was in mine. And as I lunged toward her neck again with my teeth to take her, I found her own teeth locked in a battle with mine. It struck me for a moment as animalistic, and it startled me long enough for Abigail to toss me backward over her shoulder.

  I was not able to stop myself from a bad landing on her second counterattack. She was indeed a clever fighter.

  “You will not have me tonight until you are cleansed of that foul animal blood,” she reminded me.

  I paused and took the first sniff of myself. I reeked of animal foulness. But so what? It only made me more determined to have the fresh human blood that I smelled within her. And it would serve her right to have my animal stench upon her, draining her of her sweetness. I planned to punish her for including me in her living hell in as many ways as I could make possible.

  I smiled at her and leaped back to my feet, still surging with vampiric energy.

  “So, you will deny me of fresh human blood, even as I reek of panicked animals?”

  She backed away from me as I slowly moved toward her.

  She said, “You have been asleep and feasting on beasts for several nights now.”

  “And I will now feast upon you,” I told her as I attacked her again.

  Abigail stuck her hand directly into my mouth and grabbed my tongue with her nails, drawing blood from it. She then pulled my tongue forward from my mouth. I growled in pain as she attempted to lacerate my tongue with the nails of her free hand. I grabbed her arm and twisted it away from me, squeezing her wrist defensively like the head of a serpent.

  “Aaahhhh!” she squealed in pain, as I crushed her wrist.

  Suddenly, in the middle of our standstill battle, I felt weak. I was panting like a spent hound. She had forced me to use much of my new energy in a reckless tussle with her. And my grip upon her became weak again.

  Abigail could sense my distress and began to laugh at me once more.

  She said, “There is still much you need to learn, Martelli. Much indeed. For animal blood fades far too easily, and it is only to be used as temporary fuel, until more human blood is consumed.”

  She had given me the information that I needed to defeat her, I was sure of it. And as I could sense the elements stirring within her, I was certain that she could sense the same within me. So I slowed my breathing and my vampiric blood flow to fake exhaustion.

  I breathed deeply and told her, “Please, let me have some human blood. I beg you. Why do you continue to torture me?”

  She said, “You must learn to hunt for your own.”

  “I understand that. But as of now…as I am again weak…”

  I dropped to my knees as Abigail pondered my fate. I then began to sense the excitement that she held for me. Her heart rate increased with the curiosity of sharing fresh blood from her veins with me.

  She said, “It is not a vampire’s way to beg.”

  I responded, “What choice do I have when you continue to fight me?”

  She was determined in her struggle to deny me. She bared me her fanged teeth in another smile when she responded, “Then you admit that you are not my equal.”

  How could I be her equal? I had just become a vampire, while she had been one for many years already.

  So I agreed with her assessment.

  “Yes, I am far from your equal. You are my master, and I am your pupil.”

  She nodded to me with all the pride of a queen.

  “And I shall teach you what you need to know, starting with the choices of blood,” she explained to me.

  But before she could begin her lecture, I used my remaining strength to latch on to her exposed neck with my teeth. She had let her guard down. I had sensed it.

  “You deceived me!” she yelled, as I bit into her neck with my teeth.

  It was too late to fight. I had already punctured her vein, and the sweet human blood squirted freely into my hungry mouth.

  I expected Abigail to fight me in vain as I drained her of her precious blood, but she did not. She became submissive, moaning and cuddling me as I feasted.

  “Ooooh, Martelli. You…youuu…”

  She reached for my groin, not to attack me there, but to feel the throbbing of blood energy as it filled every part of me, including my masculine pieces.

  “Do you feel the heat?” she asked of me.

  My eyes began to roll upward toward the moon in lust.

  “Yessss!” I hissed into her neck. I dared not let go of her until I had satisfied myself.

  And as she held on to my masculine parts, I noticed that they as well had grown more powerful than before, and more sensitive.

  Our serpent’s dance had finally begun. It was an ungodly seduction upon the hard rawness of the earth. Abigail pulled my filthy clothing from me, and I pulled her clothes from her, so that every naked inch of our brown vampire bodies could intertwine.

  “Mar-tell-leee. Mar-tell-leee,” Abigail continued to moan as I mounted and slithered upon her.

  Imagine a thousand strokes of pleasure throbbing through every inch of you, transforming your body into a giant worm of a thousand orifices. Every touch was climactic in itself as the shared, warm blood of prey shot through our bodies and heated us in the frigidness of the night. Even the insects of the earth envied us, and crawled upon us to have their share of the bliss.

  I began to stroke Abigail diligently, and dutifully, and consistently. And she stroked me in full submission, and squirmed, and moaned. We stroked into the virgin earth together with the wind stroking us, and cooling the rapid heat that emerged from our open feast of each other.

  I panted breathlessly, in disbelief of such raw and purposeful devouring. It was as if life itself had needed us to fertilize it and each other through our hungry sexuality. And I had no idea how long it had lasted, I only knew that Abigail had outlasted me, and she had carried me to a secret lair to rest me in my very own coffin until it would be time for us to awake…and feast again.

  The Ways of a Vampire

  When I awoke in my coffin, starved by new hunger, Abigail was there to help raise the lid.

  “You must learn to conserve your energy if you plan to survive as a vampire, my darling Martelli,” she greeted me.

  She wore another virginal dress of flawless white, and had clothed me as her twin in a white shirt and dark pants.

  “And how is a vampire to conserve his energy with such blood-soaked passion from you?” I teased her. I no longer thought of her death. I accepted my fate as a vampire now, and I needed her to assure my survival as well as to match me in my passions.

  Abigail smiled as I arose from my dark coffin.

  I looked around me and noticed nothing familiar in this dark place. I could smell the stench of death.

  She said, “You must allow yourself to become familiar with the smell of death, for death is key to your survival.”

  I told her, “I am already familiar with the smell of death. I have been around it all of my life. Must I rise to the smell of it as well?”

  Abigail nodded to me. She could understand my irritation. Nevertheless, she countered, “Then think of it as a reminder to yourself to heed the lessons that I give you, or you will soon join those who have died around you.”

  She had a point, and there was no more need for argument. So I accepted her logic to benefit my own survival.

  “Put this on,” she told me in reference to a burgundy
gentleman’s jacket with golden trim.

  I looked it over before trying it on.

  “Nice taste. But whose is it…or was it, before me?”

  Abigail turned away from me and became elusive.

  “Let’s just say that you remind me of someone.”

  I looked in her direction at her smooth brown skin and striking beauty, and I understood more than what she was willing to tell me at the moment. After all, I had been experienced with the many moods of women.

  “So, as he has impressed you, you have impressed me, and I shall impress someone else.”

  Abigail became violent in her look again.

  I grinned smugly and approached the gentleman’s jacket she wanted me to wear. Abigail had set out to make me her companion, but it would have been far more fruitful for her had she chosen to court a more loyal man. I could only wonder how much she had thought out her predicament with me before she acted to include me in her dwelling. Although I had been a vampire for less than a week, there was no reason to believe that my attractiveness and cunning as a human would not be increased now that I was a vampire with enhanced senses and strength.

  I went with Abigail back to the populated city of New Orleans after the sun had gone down, and carried with me a heightened perspective. Not only did I assume certain conclusions about the humans we pondered to feast upon, but I could now sense their truths and falsehoods as well. I could see straight through their many façades. I could hear their heartbeats when they lied, became fearful or tried to hide their excitements. I could touch them ever so faintly and read all of their deepest emotions. And I sensed how sweet or sour their blood would taste when consumed.

  As one could imagine, I was like a child in a candy store with humans, a candy store of easily attainable blood. And New Orleans was known as a late-night town.

  “Martelli! Martelli!” an old friend called in recognition once we reached the center of town.

  I had known Ericka Chappell for the majority of my life, and she was quite excited to see me again. She was a white maiden with a sprinkle of Native American blood, giving her the deep, dark eyes, olive tone and dark hair of an ethnic woman. However, her father, Mr. Harvey Chappell, was a staunch Englishman and a wealthy man, which had solidified Ericka’s place as a white American woman.

  I stopped with Abigail on my arm and introduced the two women.

  “Ericka, this is Abigail.”

  Ericka was surprised and read the situation immediately, but did not speak on it.

  “I’m pleased to meet you,” Abigail told her with an extended hand.

  Ericka took her hand and exchanged pleasantries.

  “The pleasure is all mine.”

  But she could not deny her curiosity.

  “So, you two are soon to be married?” she asked of us.

  Abigail looked into my eyes and grinned. She considered that we were already married, as intertwining vampires.

  “Yes, you could say that,” she answered.

  Ericka appeared stunned by Abigail’s answer.

  “Oh, well, I guess you two have that much in common.”

  She meant it as a slight to both of us, but more so to Abigail, “The Gypsy Woman.” Ericka had always flaunted her family’s wealth and found it hard to fathom that I would not want at least some part of it. It was all a game for Ericka, but she had just slighted the wrong woman.

  “And who do you have a commonness with, my dear?” Abigail asked her snidely.

  Ericka was stunned again. Abigail and I were still colored people, and of a lesser New Orleans class, who were supposed to regard her with the proper respect.

  She said, “I beg your pardon.”

  “I beg yours,” Abigail responded.

  I smiled and stepped between the two women to defuse a rising situation.

  “Well, I am not afraid of you or your magic,” Ericka hissed at Abigail.

  I intervened and asked my old friend, “And what magic would that be?”

  I was curious to see how much she knew.

  Ericka looked at me as if I should have known.

  “She makes people afraid of vanishing and dying mysteriously. But I am not afraid of her at all,” Ericka huffed at me. But she was afraid. She was a little drunk too. I could smell it on her. She was also without panties under her dress. I could smell that as well, as I am sure that Abigail could.

  As a crowd of onlookers began to stop and listen in on the conflict, Abigail quickly walked away, leaving Ericka and me alone.

  Ericka looked at me sternly and whispered, “How could you be with such a woman, Martelli? I had such great hopes for you.”

  Ericka had great hopes for everyone, and she had shared her bed with many.

  “I am in a better place now,” I told her calmly. “But what about you? Are you still searching for peace?”

  Ericka stammered to find words. “Well I…I just…”

  She then stopped and stared at me.

  “I always considered you as very handsome, Martelli. Believe me when I say that.”

  Ericka was utterly confused. She had no idea what to do with her father’s wealth and influence, and it drove her to reckless habits and decisions.

  I told her, “I don’t doubt that you believe it, my dear. However, I do believe that you need to find what it is that will truly make you happy.”

  She looked at me with vulnerable desperation.

  “You are not interested in me for yourself, Martelli?”

  It was a dangerous question. And even if Abigail did not hear it, I am sure that she would know. She knew it before Ericka had spoken to me. The woman was ripe to die in lust.

  “Are you certain that you would be satisfied with me?” I quizzed her.

  “Oh, yes, Martelli, I am so very certain,” she assured me.

  However, in her state of inebriated desperation, Ericka was liable to say anything to anyone.

  In my own deviousness, I tempted her to confess her demons.

  I whispered, “Have you been denied a good spanking recently?”

  Surely Ericka knew what I meant. She looked at me with blissful eyes and confirmed it when she began to laugh.

  “How did you know?” she asked me. “Is it that obvious?”

  The young woman was practically falling over me in public. And she was still very alluring, just confused about her place in the world. Humans are all orphans and gypsies in their own ways. It’s a wonder that any of them understand the confusions of each other. I rarely understood my own conflictions as a man, but they had been simplified as a vampire: seek, prey and consume.

  I asked Ericka out of my own curiosity, “If I offered to take you to bed with me tonight to experience the strongest passion you have ever known, would you say yes?”

  It was a rhetorical question. I knew her answer as soon as Ericka had recognized me in town that evening. It was her fate to be taken. She was begging for it. Her blood was so ripe and so strong that night that I began to crave her madly as we continued to speak. I sized up the major vein in her neck and could nearly taste her tainted blood before I even touched her.

  She asked me, “Would you? But what about your woman? Would you betray her for me?”

  Ericka wanted only to hear something pleasing that night. She would have believed me if I had told her I would sell her a piece of the moon.

  I told her, “My only desire is to give you what you need that would make you happy.”

  She looked into my gray eyes as if I were a dream come true.

  “You wouldn’t lie to me, would you? That would be so very bad of you, Martelli.”

  “No,” I told her. “I speak the truth. I would like to share something with you that you have never experienced.”

  She placed her gloved hand across my chest.

  She said, “I want to experience it.”

  In my ignorance, I immediately began to lead her away by her gloved hand. I cared not who had spotted us. I only desired to feed my hunger. So I led Ericka away f
rom the crowd of town and into more private pastures.

  “Where exactly are you taking me, Martelli?” Ericka questioned.

  She was giddy with excitement. She had no idea what would become of her. My teeth were already beginning to tighten with anticipation of my feast.

  “We are going where you can scream without anyone to hear you.”

  Ericka thought of it as a joke and began to laugh out loud.

  “Martelli, I had no idea you were such a devil.”

  I grew impatient and turned to her too soon and too eagerly.

  “Well, now you will know,” I told her.

  Ericka spotted my sharpened teeth, ready for the kill, and she froze. Not a sound arose from her mouth. She was in a state of total shock. I stared at her for a moment in bewilderment before I decided to feast on her.

  Just as I lunged at her neck with my teeth, Abigail appeared and shoved me forcefully away from the woman.

  “Leave her be,” she told me, “Her blood is spoiled by drink and depression.”

  “Nonsense,” I responded. “Her blood is ripe.”

  I was irritated that Abigail had stopped me. I could already imagine the taste of Ericka’s tainted blood making its way into my vampire system, quenching my growing thirst for her. I cared not that she was drunk or depressed. She had excited the demon within me, and I needed to consume her.

  I pushed Abigail out of my way and started back toward Ericka. The woman continued to stare at me as if in a daze. She could not believe what was before her. I could not even smell the stench of fear. She had none. She wanted me to consume her in whatever demonic way that I saw fit. She really was depressed, and suicidal.

  “Martelli, what has happened to you?” she asked of me. “What have you become?”

  Although in a stupor, she even approached me. That amazed me and halted my hunger. Could she not see my teeth and my vile, animalistic appearance? Was she not at all repelled by me?

  Before Ericka’s or any of my own questions could be answered, Abigail reacted to my moment of confusion and seized the maiden by the neck to strangle her.