Dark Thirst

by Angela Allen

  “No!” I protested. But I had responded too late and too passively to save the woman. Abigail had strangled her as quickly as possible.

  “Had her blood been ripe, she would not have died so easily.”

  I knew not what to think of it at the moment. I only watched as Ericka’s cold, limp body crumbled lifelessly to the earth.

  I then looked to Abigail. “And what will I eat now?”

  Abigail answered simply, “Other prey.”

  She then heaved Ericka’s body into the air and carried it over her shoulder to our hidden place of rest. When we arrived, Abigail led me into a hideous pit of corpses and tossed Ericka’s body atop the pile. The stench of rotting humans was so strong there that I moved to cover my nose, only for Abigail to slap my hand away.

  “Get used to it,” she told me. “The smell of death should never repulse you. You should learn to invite it. For it will mean that you have feasted well, and that you are still alive.”

  Alive. I could not imagine the word having the same meaning as before, when I was still human. Were we really alive as vampires?

  “We are more alive than humans will ever know,” Abigail answered, reading my thoughts again. “We may rest while humans are at play, but when we are awake, they are no more than blood-filled children to us. You see how easily she came to you?” she asked. “There will be many more like her, Martelli, and many who are better suited to consume.”

  “How do you continue to know what I am thinking?” I questioned her. I had no such power over her.

  She smiled at me with exposed teeth.

  “Because I was once like you. And we are kindred spirits,” she answered. “The many thoughts that you now think, I have already thought them.

  “And do not worry, Martelli,” she added. “We will surely eat. For there are hundreds of thousands of humans who would suffice to feed us.”

  “And how many of those thousands do you plan to eat for yourself?” I asked her in jest.

  She answered, “As many as my belly will allow me to consume before I meet my cold and agonizing death.”

  Virgin Blood

  Abigail trained me to hunt for the surging, vivacious blood of human gamblers, those who saw gold in mere stone. So we feasted upon idiots, mistresses, slave owners and love-thirsty whores, like Ericka Chappell, whose blood radiated with boundless energies of submission, possession, loyalty and naïveté.

  We then would share our hungers between us, mounting, stroking, humping and devouring each other in our own ravenous desires. It appealed to me then that Abigail would have us choose blood that would make our cravings for each other more purposeful. Or at least more purposeful for her. She had chosen me as her mate, but I had not actually chosen her as mine. Maybe she had even been jealous of Ericka Chappell’s passion for me, and so she had killed her to keep the virus of jealousy-spawned blood out of our vampiric cohabitation.

  However, I had grown bored with Abigail’s premeditated and wicked touch, as well as with her cold-hearted demeanor. For she seemed only pleasing to me while we danced to the passionate drums of the serpent. She had rarely set my mind at peace. And I had found that even vampires desired stimulating conversation every once in a full moon.

  “Do you still think as I think?” I asked her one night in our laziness.

  Abigail turned to me and attempted to suppress the truth. For even she realized I could not be held captive for an eternity. I had been her mate for some three decades. That length of time for me to remain faithful to her purpose surprised even me. But time had much less vulnerability to vampires than it did to humans. Humans grew old and weak, dying as mere shadows of their earlier years of prime existence. But vampires aged only in wisdom and experience. Our prime years were in our age, and I had become anxious to explore more of the world with what I had learned of it as a vampire.

  Abigail responded, “You disappoint me with your boredom, Martelli. You are still young yet.”

  “And you are not as old as I once thought you were,” I countered. “You are far too selfish in your ways to be as old and as wise as you’d like me to believe. Selfish to not even introduce me to other vampires.”

  She became angry with me. “For what purpose, Martelli? I have my own set of rules and my own codes of existence. I do not need them meddling in my affairs with humans.”

  “Am I a part of your affairs with humans?” I asked her. “Do you still view me as such after all the years that we have been together?”

  We had even been forced to move our dwelling several times to adapt ourselves to human technology and advancements. I now posed as a night-shift photographer, where I could hide behind the lens of a camera while studying my prey. And Abigail was a head maiden of entertainment, enticing young ladies of the night to serve the personal whims of men who could afford to pay for them.

  We lived in a fine stone-built house, still away from the major population of New Orleans, where we could maintain our privacy. We used other facilities within the city to entertain and prey upon humans, never allowing our place of rest to be jeopardized by investigations. We had even built a coffin large enough for us to rest beside each other. Another one of Abigail’s splendid ideas.

  “Of course you are not human. Not anymore. However, you still hold certain thoughts of favor toward them. And I have noticed these favors.”

  She was right. I had swayed in my emotions with certain human women. And Abigail had caused them to die in ways that humans could accept, such as automobile accidents and falls from opened windows. She dared not feast upon these women, for I would smell their blood in her and drive her jealous with envy of their wonder.

  She said, “You must continue to cleanse yourself of such cravings for them.”

  But it was already too late. My eyes burned when set upon one woman; my nostrils flared for the scent, ears toned to the voice, fingers longing to touch and tongue anxious to taste the exotic treasures of a young Creole named Ira.

  I had met the young, caramel-coated woman in a photo shoot with her father and a white man who was her entertainment manager. They were desperate to make her a singing and performing sensation, but she was not yet polished enough. At least not as a singer. Nevertheless, her look and presence were to die for, with curly reddish-brown hair that fell in healthy tumbles over her shoulders. Her large, maple-brown eyes teased me as she stared into my camera with the poise of a woman and the zest of a child. Even the small mole on her right cheek was perfect. And I could not stop myself from thinking about her, even as my thoughts betrayed Ira to Abigail.

  Casually, Abigail told me, “I still manage to protect us, you know.”

  “How, by killing humans who dare to challenge or investigate us? I can do as much for myself now.”

  She grunted. “Our privacy is not as simple to maintain as you believe.”

  “Is that a threat?” I asked of her. Perhaps she was reading more of me than I thought, and she had already begun to calculate leaving me to my human passions and alone to defend myself.

  Abigail spoke no more of it.

  So I anxiously awaited the next photo session with Ira, her father and her manager. But they never called me again, forcing me to find her on my own. Which was not at all a hard task for a vampire. I could locate her radiant presence just by thinking about her under the full use of my heightened senses.

  I followed her trail of energy and scent to a recording studio on Charles Street near the French Quarter. The New Orleans area had begun to industrialize with the naming of many streets and sections. I sat outside the studio against the sidewalk with my camera until I could sneak a word with the young maiden. Ira was no more than sixteen at the time, and her father was very protective of her.

  When I felt her presence nearing the entrance door, I prepared myself to act surprised to see her. But as she approached, I could sense distress from the abnormal sound of her heartbeat. And when I viewed the loss of spirit in her face, her distress was confirmed.

  “I’
m singing the best I can,” she confided to the wind as she stepped outside of the studio doors alone.

  I had no time to waste. I was certain that someone would be coming soon to comfort her before I would be able to connect with her if I did not act immediately. So I threw myself at her feet.

  “Ira. How have you been? You look gorgeous as always.”

  She wore a simple sky-blue dress so she could sing and perform without hindrance, and no shoes, the sign of a free-spirited woman. Abigail despised shoes herself.

  Ira looked at me and was embarrassed by her emotional outburst.

  “Martelli. What are you doing here? I thought you no longer wanted to take my pictures.”

  I could not believe what I was hearing from her mouth, nor from her heart. She was actually happy to see me. I could sense it.

  “No such thing,” I told her. “I would never tire of taking pictures of you. Who told you that?”

  “Well, your agent called and told us that you were busy with other projects.”

  I stopped and thought before I spoke. My agent?

  However, I had no time to deal with such insignificant matters. I could deal with that later. At the present, I only cared to connect souls with my new interest.

  I said, “That’s nonsense. I would be a foolish man to deny such a beautiful young lady my professional services. I would take your pictures for free if your manager could not pay me for them.”

  Her heart fluttered and she smiled at me.

  “Well, I’m glad to see you. But they are working me to death in there,” she informed me.

  I thought fast and asked her, “Would they mind if I took pictures of you while you sing? I could call it The Work of Genius.”

  She laughed a girlish laugh and said, “Oh, you flatter me. Come along and I’ll tell them myself. You can help me to relax.”

  “But I don’t want to intrude,” I told her.

  “Oh, nonsense. I must have you. I always thought you were a great-looking photographer,” she confessed with glee. “I couldn’t imagine replacing you with some pig-faced pervert. You were always such a professional with me. Even while I flirted with you madly.”

  “Oh, well, I did notice as much,” I flirted back. The demon in me begged to allow it. And as she guided me inside the dimly lit studio to join them, her soft touch on my arm told me that she would love me dearly.

  “Father, Herman, look what the cat brought in to boost my spirits.”

  I smiled and nodded to her father and manager. There were at least eight other young men in the room with them. They were all recording engineers and musicians whom Ira was to perform her songs with.

  With my presence in the room, I could suddenly hear the violent heartbeats of several of the young musicians, black, white and Creole, who immediately took emotional offense to Ira’s liking of me. I pitied the fools, but I was not there to lose to them. I planned to seize the prize unabashedly.

  “Martelli,” Herman, her manager, greeted me with an out-reached hand. He was short and plump with dark brown hair and wire-framed glasses, wearing a gray business suit. “We thought you were no longer on the job for us. And we hated to have to replace you. You do such great work, as if you can read her emotions before you snap the picture. No one else has been able to capture her versatility like you do. It’s a gift, I tell ya’.”

  “It sure is,” her father agreed. He was a fellow Creole man with dark brown, wavy hair combed to the right, with a part to the left. He wore a business suit as well, of fine brown wool.

  “Well, I’m here to make amends by snapping pictures while she works,” I told them.

  Herman said, “Be my guest, Martelli, as long as you continue to make her look good.”

  We all laughed before I moved to secure a corner of the recording booth from which to shoot Ira and her band of jealous musicians. My presence did not help Ira’s voice much. She needed vocal training, not a recording session. There was still much for her to learn about singing.

  “I / went down the road / and found / my heav-ven…I / went down the road / and found / sweet joy…”

  It was a beautiful song. And even though Ira had difficulty nailing all of her notes, her singing of the song appealed to me in a matter of purity and rawness. Sometimes the honest and natural note, even if wrong, can be more perfect than the right note delivered to perfection.

  I began to feel as if Ira’s song was being performed specifically for me. It was our song. It was a song of our love. No one else inside the room mattered to either one of us. And as Ira continued to sing our song and stare at me through the lens of my camera, I began to envision us, not in a serpent’s dance but in a swan’s dance upon the peaceful waters of a lonely pond. We were white swans upon the surface of the water, flapping our wings playfully as we spun ourselves into blissful circles.

  “Rrrrnnnnkk!”

  A wrong note was violently stroked by a blond-haired guitar player, destroying the tranquillity of my vision. And it was played not in honest mistake, but in calculated envy of Ira’s obvious attentions toward me.

  I gritted my teeth and promised myself that the blond-haired boy would die a thousand deaths if he meddled in my affairs with Ira.

  “Shit, Joseph,” one of the recording engineers blasted him. “That was our best take yet.”

  Ira smiled, no longer stressed about her performance.

  She said, “You see what I mean, Martelli? They are working me to my death. And I have yet to even be loved by a man.”

  She had knowingly thrown fire onto a gasoline-filled house and had burned the ears of every desirous young man inside the room. A woman who knows her power over men has a dangerous weapon. Ira was showing me just how well she could wield it.

  I only smiled at her, knowing that her heart raced the strongest for me. Nevertheless, she had presented me with a challenge, a challenge that I would take with all of the possessive zeal of a full moon. I even decided to toy with my competitors.

  I told her, “I am quite sure that Joseph would die to love you.”

  The blond-haired boy looked at me with anger in his eyes and in his heart.

  He said, “You’re just a photographer. What do you know about anything?”

  “I know much more than you could ever imagine.”

  It was just what Ira wanted, a noble fight amongst men for her love. Only I was much more than a man.

  Herman walked out from the engineering booth and said, “Hey, what the hell is this? Are you guys gonna make music or what?”

  Joseph complained, “This guy’s distracting me with his camera. Why do we even need him here? This is not the time for pictures. I don’t even like my picture taken.”

  Herman looked at me with a decision to make. He was obviously fond of what my expressive pictures could do for Ira’s career, a career that he realized would be more about her look than her voice.

  He turned back to Joseph.

  “You can sit out for a while and let Martelli take the pictures with the rest of the guys. Then you can get back in there when he’s done.”

  Joseph was incensed. “What do you mean? I don’t have time to hang around here while he takes pictures. This was supposed to be a music session, not a photo shoot.”

  The boy was begging me to end his irritable life. I could clearly see that he would cause me problems if I did not bother to handle him.

  Herman finally told him, “Well, do whatever you please, Joe. But if you don’t finish the song, you won’t get paid.”

  Joseph looked at me and stormed off with his guitar.

  “Damn nigger blood,” he spat as he headed toward the door.

  His last words seized Ira’s attention, along with that of a few of the band members.

  She said, “I have nigger blood too, Joe. So do many of us here. Do you feel the same way about me, and about the rest of us?” she asked him.

  The boy looked conflicted. Did he love her, or did he only love his own desire for her? I had to ask the same question
of myself. We were both vampires in our lust for her.

  He answered, “It’s the photographer that I don’t like. The rest of you are fine. But I just can’t stand the way he looks at you.”

  “And how does he look at her?” Herman asked the boy. “He’s a photographer, for God’s sake. He’s supposed to look at her.”

  Joseph looked at me again and was still conflicted. I began to worry that maybe he did see something unusual about me, which was all the more reason to kill him. But I dared not threaten the boy with bodily harm, not in front of Ira and the rest of them. So I maintained my peace.

  “I just don’t like him. He seems creepy.”

  I was forced to at least defend my character.

  “Why, because I am not a band member and I choose to make my living by capturing the perfect picture from my camera and not by strumming the wrong notes from a guitar? Sir, if you do not like to take pictures because of your own deep insecurities, then you may admit as much. But please do not attempt to push your insecurities off on me. I am quite sane, and your outburst, on the other hand, has surely presented you as the mad one here. Or the jealous one, I should say.”

  When the band members began to smile, along with Herman, Ira, the engineers and her father, I knew that I had won their collected favor over Joseph and could relax.

  Joseph did not walk away as I expected him to.

  “I’m not afraid of taking pictures,” he announced to us. “And I have no insecurities about them.”

  He then retook his place in the band, with the obvious intention of assessing my continued cravings for Ira. His presence now served only to make me uncomfortable, which I am sure was his plan.

  I was able to maintain my poise and ignore the lad. Nevertheless, my flirtations with Ira would have been more purposeful without his nuisance.

  I was incensed at Abigail’s attempt to sabotage my relations with Ira. That night I waited for her at our house until she arrived after midnight.