Dark Thirst

by Angela Allen

  He shook his head at my lingering stare. “I don’t get you guys. But, fuck it, man, that’s your lifestyle, not mine. Just keep making the music and don’t fuckin’ look at me like that.”

  He eyed me threateningly until I looked away.

  I turned and smiled at his sister to strengthen our bond. It was only a matter of time before I would have her. And possibly her brother as well.

  All was in place for the continuation of my plans with the Vargas family when, on a particularly windy night, Samia surprised me with a distressing phone call.

  “Poppi, Poppi, I don’t know who else to turn to,” she told me.

  The first alarm that I could think of at the moment was pregnancy. But there was no way in hell that I would have allowed that to happen. I would have sensed it. I had been locked on Samia’s body chemistry for weeks. However, as she continued her distress over the phone, I arrived at the next conclusion, the spilled blood of her brother, Domino, from gunshot wounds.

  “What has happened?” I asked Samia. I did not want to give my extrasensory perceptions away, so I was forced to play ignorant.

  “My brother’s been shot,” she confirmed. “I’m at the hospital with him now. He’s all I got, Poppi. He’s all I got.”

  I hated hospitals. There was far too much soiled blood there for me to stomach. And far too many chemicals from medicines mixed in the bloods. So I stayed clear of hospitals.

  I asked her, “Do you need a place to stay? Or, you know, just someone to talk to about it?”

  I was not going to the hospital. I was set to pass on any invitation to join her there.

  She responded, “Yeah, but I’m afraid to leave him. He might…”

  Her fear was understandable. She would never be able to live with herself if she missed the last opportunity to be with her brother and caretaker. Samia and Domino had no mother or father in the States. They had only each other and friends.

  I asked her, “Where was he shot? And what kind of condition is he in?”

  But I already knew those answers. Domino had lost plenty of blood; a major organ was punctured. His condition was critical.

  Samia answered, “They shot him in the chest and he’s lost a lung. The doctors are trying to save his remaining one.”

  I asked, “And where are your friends?”

  “They’re here, but they don’t know how to handle anything like this, Poppi. They’re screaming and crying and calling for revenge. I don’t need all of that right now. That’s why I called you,” she told me.

  Shit! Her desperation had me thinking insane thoughts. I had not shared my blood with many, but the thought of it had obviously surfaced in light of Domino’s situation and my connection to his sister. How would Samia respond to her brother coming back to her as a vampire? And how would she respond to me for transforming him?

  I was conflicted with human affairs once again. What would I do?

  “I’ll be there,” I told her.

  “Thank you, Poppi. Thank you.”

  I hung up the phone and stared at my dark walls. What kind of vampire would Domino Vargas be? He was a rather strong-willed man, and I expected as much from him as a vampire. But what of Samia? If I shared my blood with her brother, then I had no choice but to transform both of them.

  “Then so be it,” I told myself. It was their fate.

  But when I arrived at the hospital, I found that I was not alone in my quest. A vampire of much higher rank had beaten me there. I could smell the strong vampiric blood within him. Parts of it were even familiar to me. He was a Vargas relative. I could clearly smell their connection.

  “Their father,” I whispered to myself.

  I stopped there, no more than ten yards outside of the hospital entrance, in a panic. And before I could make a decision on how to handle myself, he was upon me.

  He spoke to me from behind, “I am their grandfather’s father.”

  I waited for him to reveal himself to me, and he did. He was as tall as I, and handsome, but he was much older than any vampire I had ever witnessed before. He had the wrinkles of aged skin and a full mane of long, flowing gray hair. It blew in the wind as he spoke to me.

  He said, “I was not a young man like you when I was reborn. And, as a human, I had my children late in age. But I am here now to reclaim the seed of my human blood spawned many decades ago.”

  I wondered immediately if he knew my intentions with Samia. Once I had thought of it, I realized that he did know. For I had revealed it to him in my thoughts.

  “I understand,” he told me. “I have heard of you and your abomination of virgin blood. But we are kin now, more so than I am kin with my own human seed. And I could still benefit from your services.”

  He spoke to me with respect and tact, but I still did not trust him. Human or not, I understood that his seed had his loyalty, and I had been ready to prey upon them.

  “Yes, but you have changed your mind now from your initial purpose with them,” he answered me. He continued to read my thoughts. His intuition was stronger than Abigail’s.

  “So, what would you have me do?” I asked him. For I was nevertheless in his debt, because of his superior rank and poise regarding my addiction. We both realized that his blood was much stronger than mine, and that he could discard me with ease. So I stood there at his mercy, a possible enemy.

  He said, “I will go to the son, and you will go to the daughter. And after you have consumed her humanity, you shall leave this place, never to set eyes upon us again. For if you do, it will surely mean your death.”

  I understood him immediately. He would allow me to live simply because he would not drink of the volatile virgin blood to which I had become addicted. But I was indeed still his enemy.

  He said, “But you are not my enemy. As I have said before, I understand. And although I am of higher rank, as I was reborn from the powerful jaws of a stronger vampire than you were, we remain vampire kin. However, many years will pass before the son and daughter will forgive you for your obvious preying on them. And I believe that I would fail in protecting you from them. But I do promise you that I shall withhold from them your origins. And when they have found out on their own, I would have you pray for their forgiveness.”

  There was no more that needed to be said or understood. It would be done. I would take Samia Vargas into my hungry jaws and transform her human blood into my own. And afterward, I would flee for my life and never return.

  I went to the daughter and found her waiting outside of the emergency room with several of her friends.

  “Oh, Poppi,” she called to me. She immediately wrapped her arms around me in blind faith. I began to feel guilt for her fate. However, there was not much time for me to waste with her.

  I said, “Allow your friends to stay with your brother. They have your cell phone number and will surely call you if anything goes wrong. But it is important for me to talk to you away from here. Something has come up regarding your future that needs to be discussed in private between us.”

  Samia searched my face with wonder.

  She said, “A major label is interested in our demo?”

  She wore all of the hope in the world across her face in her time of despair. For she needed a reawakening of her spirit.

  “Yes,” I lied to her. What difference did it make now? She would soon become my enemy. So I gave her what her spirit craved.

  She stopped and breathed deeply.

  “Oh my God!” she expressed. Her hands covered her face to hide a fresh set of tears. They were now tears of joy instead of sorrow.

  She said, “If Domino just makes it through, man. If he just makes it through.”

  “Yes, I believe that he will,” I told her. And I began to guide her away.

  “So, you have a contract waiting for me at the studio?” she asked me. “How come you didn’t tell me over the phone? Don’t we need to talk to my lawyer?”

  Her mind was moving rapidly toward business, so I decided to use my most powe
rful tactic: passion.

  I immediately turned to Samia and kissed her lips to paralyze her as Abigail had once done to transform me. I figured it would be the quickest way to get her out of the hospital and back to my place. And it worked. I was able to guide Samia away from there and back to my place like a dog leading a blind baby.

  By the time Samia had overcome the shocking surprise of my lips and tongue on hers, I had stripped her naked and stretched her out upon my bed. Her beautiful, untouched virgin body was a landscape of vivacious curves. She was the serpent without an illusion.

  “Where am I?” she asked of me frantically. “I must have fallen out. The last thing I remember was you…”

  She then realized her fate in her nakedness.

  “What are you doing, Poppi?” She sat up and covered herself. “I thought you didn’t like girls.”

  “No. I do like you, so much that I have decided to share with you a contract of eternal life,” I told her as I spread her legs with my strength. Samia had already dreamed of such and I knew that the quickest way to transform her was through her own blissful desires.

  She pleaded, “Wait, Poppi. No. I can’t do this. I can’t…”

  But it was already too late. Her fate had been decided. So I pushed my powerful, elongated tongue into her womanness.

  “Ooooh, Pop-pi,” she moaned obediently to the probing of my tongue inside her. I then caressed her breasts with both my hands, causing her to arch her neck and body backward, as she allowed me to have my way with her. Her body began to sway in the rhythm of her rapid heartbeat as she thrust her hips downward into my ravenous mouth.

  “Ooooh, yeeeaaaah, Pop-pi.”

  She then reached down between her legs and ran her hands wildly through the curls of my hair.

  “Ooooh, do me, Pop-pi. Do me, Pop-pi,” she moaned insanely.

  I readily filled her with my enlarged manhood and drove her into more insanity.

  “Oh, yesssss! Síííí, Pop-pi, sííííí!”

  “I am Martelli,” I finally revealed to her. “And I am a vampire, like your grandfather’s father.”

  I wanted her to know who and what I was. However, Samia was far too taken by her own lust to care. My identity became oblivious to her as I sunk my teeth into the soft skin of her neck.

  She grabbed my head to hold me there as she moaned.

  “Nnnmmmmmmm!”

  And I wept while still inside her, stroking the perfection of her womanness, engulfed in the heat of her desire, stripping her completely of all her purity and devouring her sweet, warm virgin blood, while her new master floated inside the room above us to inspect my work.

  “That is enough!” he told me forcefully. “I shall feed her with my own blood now. Vanish from here before I change my mind.”

  I slowly released my seductive bite from Samia’s neck and my overheated body from the radiance of her inner source. I watched her as she continued to squirm in lust upon the bed, as if a ghost had continued to stroke her. She was hot for rebirth, and I began to desire to keep Samia for myself. She would become my new Abigail in her heat.

  “No, she will not,” I was told, the father’s claws suddenly at my neck. “Take the deal you were offered in honorable kinship or die here.”

  “But she will love me!” I screamed in disobedience.

  “She will love blood, and your blood will not be as strong as she will desire,” I was told by her new master. For his transformation of her would make Samia a more powerful vampire than I could ever handle.

  I was tempted in my desperation to fight him, but I could not seem to release his mighty claws upon my neck, proving that I was no match for him.

  “If you cannot break the grip of an old vampire within an old body, then imagine what the son will do to you in a young, strong body when he finds you here with his beloved sister.”

  His point was well taken. If I wanted to live another full moon of hunger for prey, then it was best that I leave rather than challenge the strength and vengeance of a fresh-blooded vampire with more powerful senses and strength than my own.

  I weep now often when I think of how many opportunities for love I have wasted in my bloodthirsty lust. The way of a vampire is still more complicated than I could ever have imagined, as much so as the daily conflictions of humanity. And as I continue to read books and articles inside the dark library of my home, I can smell the exotic scent of another virgin who calls me to possess her sweet virgin blood, and to consume her human heat.

  Whispers During

  Still Moments

  Linda Addison

  “I need to tell you something,” Adina said, straddling her latest victim on the dank ground in the alley. He had been handsome, with a strong chin and high cheekbones. He’d also been arrogant in his tailored blue suit and perfect haircut when they had met at the Greenwich Village wine bar earlier in the evening. The designer sunglasses tucked away in his suit pocket were going to look good on her.

  Now, his ruined face gurgled. Blood dribbled from the sides of his mouth, streaking his blond hair. She didn’t usually eat meat, but his kiss had been so sweet, his tongue so tender, she had to take it. More important, his eyes were still intact, though glazed over by blood loss.

  “Don’t go yet, listen…” Adina said softly, leaning close to him, licking the blood from his face. It was cooling in the night air, but it was still savory. She whispered in his right ear, in her native African Amharic language, giving him part of the secret: “Fumiya ayzie, kambui sipo.”

  Trembling with release, she growled, ripped his throat and drank his warm blood. The ritual filled her body with tingling energy. As Adina swallowed his sweet blood her organs revived, her muscles and skin became younger, stronger, as if she were connected to the endless force of the Earth itself. This was the gift granted to first-generation vampires by the Whisper, their secret to apparent immortality.

  She stretched, enjoying the increased vigor, wiping the blood from her mouth, licking it from her hands. A scent made her glance into the shadows of the buildings. The sweet, sour smell made her stomach twitch. Something ran away.

  She jumped up and chased the figure down the alley, but it was gone by the time she reached where the darkness ended and the streetlights of the Village intruded. The sidewalk was full of people. Standing in the shadow of the building, she couldn’t tell which way the creature had run. The smell, the hot tendril of its motion, simply stopped as if it had disappeared into thin air, not something a normal human being could do.

  She inhaled the watcher’s scent. Could this be a first-generation vampire? That odor was familiar; it had been stalking from a distance but tonight came closer. The sensation of ants crawling under the skin of her neck and scalp tickled her as the thing ran away. Once it hit the street her physical sensing of it abruptly ended. No, this wasn’t a First. There was none of the maniac anxiety building inside of her, a typical reaction when one First met another.

  The scent was primal, and even though it wasn’t an animal, the being wasn’t a normal human. They couldn’t run that quickly. Could the thing have been a Remade, a human made into a vampire by a First?

  Adina walked back to the body. She rubbed the back of her neck as tingling danced lightly up and down her spine, another feeling she had when near another First. Whatever the creature was, Adina had been so engrossed in the ritual and feeding that she hadn’t perceived being observed before. It had dared to come so close Adina could still sense the thing’s body heat where it had huddled in the shadows. A shiver went through her. How did the strange being elude her? She would have to be more careful. Even a First could be destroyed.

  She used the dead man’s clothes to wipe the blood splattered on her black leather halter, bare midriff and leather pants. The blood didn’t come out of her belly button and silver belly ring easily, but what little was left wouldn’t be obvious against her dark brown skin. After shoving the man’s body into a large trash bin, she put on her black leather jacket and his sunglasses
.

  She patted her close-cropped hair in place and straightened her clothes. The alley was quiet, with only the sound of rats scratching in garbage, the wind moving scraps of paper and the distant murmur of traffic disturbing the peace.

  Adina walked out of the alley rejuvenated and intoxicated. The fall air was cool, so good against her body, running warm with fresh blood. The Village street was crowded with people out for dinner or movies or just enjoying the crisp air of September. They reminded her of flies flitting around dead carrion, feeding off the remains of an Earth they had little regard for, rushing through their days. So many of them. So much food.

  Two thousand years earlier she had been too aware of their lives, but the millennia had worn away her bond to them. Once she had cared for people, those in Sama, her home village in the Wello region of Central Africa. In time, everyone she cared about died. Each loss, each love ended by illness, old age or disinterest wore her heart thin. She questioned more than once the point of caring for anyone, of falling in love, until the pain and sadness were no longer worth it.

  The last time she loved one of them was hundreds of years ago. Tacuma had dark, sad eyes, a quiet voice, beautiful dark brown skin and strong shoulders that Adina loved to caress and kiss when they walked together. She was convinced he knew there was something different with her, but Tacuma never questioned Adina. Not when she went on excursions at night, not even when she asked him to leave his village and move to an unpopulated area. Moving was the only way she could hide the fact that she didn’t age.

  Tacuma truly loved Adina and would do anything she asked, without questioning the reason. Every time she looked in his eyes she saw his death, so Adina ended the relationship with him. She closed her heart and accepted the Earth as her only partner.

  The patterns of people’s births, lifes and deaths flickered over the years, like fireflies. Humans had managed to add some years to their life spans over the last thousand years, but death still came soon in comparison to her life. Hunting and feeding became the center of her pleasure. The Earth and the Whisper didn’t change. They were her only true friends.