by Anastasia,P.
He pressed one of my hands more firmly against his skin.
“And you are as beautiful as you have ever been to me, Matthaya,” I added, massaging my fingertips in a thoughtful line along his shoulder. “They are part of you, as am I.”
He inched closer to me and his fingers crept up along my arms where he slid the sleeves of my dress off one shoulder and then the other. The tiny hairs on my neck stood on end, but the sensation made me squirm happily. I reveled in the soft, velvety sheets against my skin. Matthaya was finally mine and I could think of nothing but giving him all of me.
His hands trailed down the sides of my waist and then down to my legs where he pushed up the lacy hem of my skirt and bunched it across my hips. My chest shook with tiny gasps and my fingers drove through his silky hair as his palms wandered up my legs, followed by soft kisses against the inside flesh of my thighs.
The taste of his kiss came once again to my lips and Matthaya’s body pressed against me; my knees trembled as they pressed back. I imagined my legs squeezing him in closer and felt my grasp tighten around his belt as my fingers quickly worked to unclasp the buckle. All the while, his kisses trailed down my neck and across my collarbone; the anticipation of his touch cloaked every inch of me in heightened sensitivity. I was powerless to contain a heaving groan of need.
The belt slipped out of my hands and to the floor just as he came down on me again. His mouth encased my lips beneath his and his tongue grazed mine.
Sweat beaded on my brow. Lust and instinct took over, driving my body to pulse and writhe as if under a spell.
My mind was in a thousand places at once—all of them, with him. I was hot, woozy, and disoriented, but desperate to be made his. I wanted the pain and I was ready to endure it to be bound to him always.
“Matthaya, please.” I exhaled a heavy breath close to his ear. My fingers danced across his naked back and then tightened at his waist. I felt the firm flesh of his abdomen and embraced the subtle curve of his hips with my palms.
The soft skin of his neck was inviting and I licked a trail of kisses across his throat.
He gasped.
It made me smile.
And just when I had thought that he was helpless in my grasp, his eyes met mine. A warm hand rested against my thigh and I froze, sucking in a quick breath.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said. The tone of his voice was melodic and soothing.
Perhaps, deep down, I was frightened, but the fear of it could not compare with the need for it.
“I will never fear you, Matthaya.” My words were bold and true.
The corner of his lip curled into a grin and he lowered his head to bring a powerful kiss down against the sensitive indentation behind my ear. Delicate bites to the base of my neck aroused and consumed me, the gentle pain making it difficult to breathe.
The heat of his skin sliding over mine sent a jolt through me, making my body arch to meet his. My arms tightened around him and a short cry escaped me as my flesh gave in to his. I lost my breath and a ripple of emotion rushed through my veins as he sunk deeper into me. My fingers tensed against his shoulders, nails almost scratching him too hard. Restless and unable to let go.
Every action became involuntary and instinctual. His movements complemented mine and the flow of our passion became completely unrestrained and sacred.
It was unbelievably right… having him inside me.
I quivered and filled my lungs with short, swift breaths as his body possessed mine…
WITH THE DEEPENING OF MY kiss to her neck, hints of her unadulterated blood tantalized me and reminded me evermore of my hunger. Still, the sound of her passionate breaths and the soft, pleasured sighs were as charming to my ears as they had ever been.
I savored the lush curves of her lips with my tongue and then kissed her again. In what appeared to me as flashes in and out of reality, I lost myself in the darkness of our lovemaking. The impassioned, airy groans that escaped her sensually parted mouth filled me with resurrected desires. I imagined my body, warm against hers, a soft friction between us. I wanted to take her as my own. I wanted to lose myself inside her.
If only …
What I would have given to be human enough to taste the sweetness of the warm sweat beading up across her breasts and to inhale the captivating scent of her tousled red locks. It truly was Kathryn’s blood pumping through her veins, and the depth of her passion drove me mad as she surrendered completely to me.
I regretted being so naive in my youth. Our encounter now would never be what it would have been when were young and I was still alive. My honor and guilt had led me to preserve Kathryn’s innocence for so long—until it was too late. Now I struggled with that decision, as my body participated little and gained no pleasure from her ecstasy. It was all in our minds alone.
If only we hadn’t been stopped.
If only we had been able to share that night together.
I had imagined her body having been made to fit mine as if we had been two rare pieces of a puzzle. Hers needing mine to be complete—and taking me in and swallowing me up inside her warm flesh.
How I had once fantasized…
Now, I would take her blood and make her part of me forever.
Kathera’s heartbeat hastened and her breathing became labored.
I wanted her.
More than ever.
Her body writhed blissfully with the vision of our entwined flesh, but I selfishly yearned only for the satisfaction of my fangs burrowing into her throat—of her blood mingling with mine.
Her… blood… inside me.
I licked a path up to her throat and then gritted my teeth as Kathera called out to me again. The vampire instincts amplified the sounds of her heart with vivid exaggeration. Each beat throbbed and pulsed through me, leaving my bones rattling with tension. They reverberated through my brain incessantly until—
It was a swift bite.
My fangs sank into her neck and her fingernails into the flesh of my back. She let out a desperate cry as my teeth pierced her throat and blood spilled onto us both. The colors of the room became muted momentarily and then burst back and forth from gray to red, flickering in and out of reality and fantasy.
Her pained screams were drowned out by the seductive thrill of her body falling victim to mine. Deafening the sounds of dying prey to our perceptive ears was a feature of the curse that softened the blow of killing, but only by a thread.
Within moments, I lost power over Kathera and the illusion flashed violently in and out, faster and faster. The poisonous glow of my eyes reflected in her dark, terrified pupils.
I couldn’t let go.
Venom spread through her veins, infecting and attacking every cell of her blood with its paralyzing effect. The illusion vanished and the room became dull and gray again. Her nails dug helplessly into me, as she grew ever weaker from the poison. The arousal of the kill left me eager. Insatiable. My wings unlatched and stretched out to arch high above her body as the heat of her blood blinded me to her agony. The scratches she left would heal before she even remembered them.
But how her blood charmed me. She was wonderful. Rich. Unique.
How long it had been since I had tasted such perfection—since I had fed so guiltlessly. It was a necessary sin to make her mine, but how difficult it was to stop myself from bleeding her dry—from killing her with the pain instead of allowing the disease to take her first.
There was a delicate balance between the two and my inexperience left me guessing… and praying my instincts would perceive those nuances.
Her cries were quickly reduced to weakened moans and it was then that I gained the sanity to pull myself away from her, withdrawing my fangs from her bloody throat.
Kathera’s heartbeat slowed significantly and her grip loosened. The blood from her wound seeped down her bare neck and off her pale shoulders, staining the sheets below us.
I lifted her dying body up into my arms
and carried her closer to the fireplace, laying her carefully down on the large, plush rug nearby.
It wouldn’t be long before her heart would cease to beat.
“Forgive me, Kathryn.”
I kissed her forehead as she trembled. She was everything to me—in this life and the last.
“I love you,” I whispered and then kissed her just as the last of her warmth dissipated from her skin.
Kathera’s final mortal tears trickled down her cheeks and, after a final gasp of air, she stared into nothingness. I was filled once more with hate and regret. There was no way of knowing when… or even if she would reawaken.
I ran my hand over her face, closing her eyes. Dragging my fingers down her neck, I then brushed them over her pendant, wiping the translucent red glaze away from the gold.
God had not answered my prayers before, but never in my life had I longed so much for an attentive ear to hear me. In the quiet darkness, I was lost yet again to the solitude of my curse.
HOW LONG WOULD IT TAKE for her to come back?
Had it worked?
It must have…
There was a strange quietness to my thoughts. Ve’tani’s essence and consciousness had vanished within moments of Kathera’s death and I felt surprisingly lonesome without that connection. I had grown accustomed to it over the centuries.
Now, I felt empty.
Kathera remained cold and there was no way of knowing when she would awaken. Every passing moment of her silence made it harder for me to function. I wanted to sleep it off and wait for her return, but I was too restless. And I couldn’t leave her to face the poison alone. I wouldn’t let her face the darkness without me. I had to be patient. I had to wait.
I sat back in the nearby chair and rubbed my un-aging eyes with my palms. I used to feel things… emotions now so dead to me that I have forgotten many of them. Time erodes even the strongest of stones into dust, and the greatest memories into dreams long lost in the night.
Years—many, many years ago, back when I had still been killing for the fun of it—I had learned a horrible secret about the delicacy of life. There is an unfortunate moment, just before death, when your body becomes a mere shell hosting a fading life force.
Too many times have I gazed into the ambiguous eyes of death because Ve’tani had taught me to look upon humans with indifference. Anything else would cloud my judgment and make the kill difficult. She taught me many things in my young life which I now wish I had never learned.
It takes many years for a vampire to mature mentally once they have been infected—to reestablish a grasp on their humanity. Though many decades pass, many of us never do and I nearly didn’t.
The first time I had recognized death in the eyes of another had not been when I watched my beloved Kathryn take her life, but when I had taken the life of a girl who had resembled her. Only then had the nightmare of what I was finally sunken in.
It all began following my resurrection. Ve’tani had nurtured me like a lioness, praising my kills with more and more blood for us to share. She was a lost mother, tattered and torn from a past I would never come to know. Trying her best to train me as her own, she led me to an addiction to what I now know as “blood tapping”—feeding upon the most vulnerable and innocent of humankind: children. The ritual ingestion of immature blood of a youth leaves us feeling invincible.
Smooth. Young. Delicate.
Like an exquisite wine, the untainted blood of the young is something we lust for. It is fresh and potent, unlike its elder counterparts. The more mature the blood, the more toxins it contains and the less it curbs our hunger. Adolescent blood makes us strong but in the end, neither type of blood ever fully satisfies our thirst.
A vampire who kills to please him- or herself and never notices the eyes of the victim whose life they have stolen is a lucky one. I was not one of the “lucky” ones for long.
It’s a wonderfully invigorating feeling to taste the flesh of a kill so close to your lips, and there is a power in that kill that makes one feel fulfilled. That is until you see the killer—yourself—reflected in their tears.
She couldn’t have been any older than I had been just a few years before I had been taken. Her hair was an auburn shade from what I could tell, and her eyes were… empty. It was the moment before her death when I saw it as I pinned her down against the dirt road. With her last ounce of strength, the girl stretched a hand out past my shoulder and desperately toward the sky. It startled me, but I had already finished with her. I tore my teeth from the girl’s throat and darted off.
Then, I heard someone approaching. Watching from a hiding place in the distance, I could see the horror and disbelief in the stranger’s eyes as the girl’s arm fell lifelessly back down to the side.
The approaching man dropped to the ground in aid, bellowing into the darkness for help, but no one was near enough to answer. I watched as the man vainly attempted to gain a reply from her corpse.
I could see it again and more vividly than ever—the eerie green light of my eyes reflecting in the whites of hers. It had pierced me like a blade; cutting a hole so deep that it had revealed an image I had long forgotten. It was the same reflection I had seen in the water so many years before, as I had watched Kathryn drown. She was reaching out to me.
The uninvited vision provoked me and I snarled, drawing the attention of the weeping man.
“Who’s there?” he asked, frantically searching to find a face within the shadows.
Then a vision seized my mind: I was holding Kathryn down in the water, watching her drown and gasping for air as the blood from the tear in her throat filled the pool with crimson. My eyes… my green eyes… glowing with hunger and a lack of fear—I was pushing her to her death. Destroying her.
No…
It wasn’t true.
But the girl I had killed—she brought about a horrible vision of something that had never happened—something more terrifying than ever.
I would never hurt Kathryn…
I coughed violently on nothing and spat blood onto the ground.
It felt like death was coming for me again. If my heart could have skipped a beat, it would have stopped right then. I drove my blood-soaked nails into my hair and let out a frightened howl into the night.
I ran.
Unable to escape, I fell prey to the arms of a frenzied Ve’tani.
“What has happened, Matthaya!?” she roared, blocking my path and digging her claws into my forearms.
I broke free, driving her away with a violent thrust of my arms.
“What have you done to me?” I continued to gasp desperately for the air I did not need. I coughed again and watched as more blood splattered the ground. “What’s happening?” My hands trembled uncontrollably.
My coat glistened red beneath the moon and I could bear its guilty weight no longer. I tore the sleeves down off my arms and tossed it into the air, thrusting it far behind with the force of my wings stretching wide.
“You cannot escape this, Matthaya,” Ve’tani warned, but her omen went ignored.
“You will not control me any longer.” With that, I took off running into the distance. I had to get away, whether or not she pursued.
A forest blocked my path to freedom, but I knew that with the help of my agile wings, gliding between the trees was a swift alternative to navigating them on foot. I scrambled up the trunk of the closest tree and climbed quickly toward the sturdy midsection. From there, I leapt into the air, caught myself on the branches of the nearest tree, and then vaulted into those of the next. My nails dug into the bark of one tree, and then another, sliding, leaping, and gliding as swift as an eagle until I was as far away from Ve’tani as I could get in one night.
The air smelled familiar and my nostrils flinched at the scent of the salty seawater. I was at the shoreline that bordered what had once been Kathryn’s family estate. It wasn’t intentional that I had arrived there. Perhaps fate had sabotaged m
y fleeting attempt to hide from my past, forcing me to come face to face with the very place that echoed with Kathryn’s death.
Many decades had passed since I had been confronted by the sea that had taken her away from me, and for the first time, I was not looking into an ocean, but a bottomless grave. As I crouched to take a closer look, my head jerked in the direction of a faint splash. A drop of blood sunk beneath the surface and disappeared below me.
My wounds had long healed and it was not my own. It must have been blood from the girl I had recently killed. Her vengeful spirit mocked me and my loss. I lowered a wing into the water and quickly gathered the fading blood within it. I would not allow it to tarnish Kathryn’s tomb.
I poured the pink liquid onto the sand at my side and plunged my cupped hands into the sea. I stared hard into the handful of water as it escaped my grasp, seeping though the cracks between my fingers.
Kathryn!
Again, I saw her! Screaming—flailing—reaching for me as she sunk beneath the surface.
“Kathryn!” I shouted, batting violently at the water with my hands and wings. “Kathryn!” I cried again. My feet slipped out from under me and I stumbled back against the shore. Ocean water crashed over me, leaving my wings mottled with traces of sea foam and my clothes drenched with saltwater.
I felt worthless and empty.
It was there that I stayed until the light of morning threatened my eyes with a fire beyond expression. I wanted to die then and there. I wanted the sun to burn me alive like the demon I had become.
Take me.
My insides churned and pulsed with a new kind of pain and I curled my fingers around a handful of sunlit sand as I pleaded for a swift end to my suffering.
A large, dark covering was tossed over me and a cloaked figure pulled me to my feet.
“I will not let you die here, young fool.”
It was Ve’tani. She had traced me back to the water’s edge.
“Let me go! Please,” I begged, fighting her grasp, but the draining sunlight had made me too weak to do so.