"What gift?"
She pulled back her hair once again to reveal the wound. "You figure it out."
It was on the tip of his tongue, but it sounded so improbable that he withheld it. She must've noticed his arrival at this conclusion, as she squeezed his hand and offered a faint smile of encouragement.
"Go on..."
"You can't die...at all?"
He sounded like a stuttering idiot to his own ear, but could not further articulate the revelation that his girlfriend was, apparently, invulnerable.
Elisabeth nodded. "A gift from Alina, our queen. Conventional weapons cannot kill me."
"You're...invincible?"
"Not completely, no. Only a few know how to do it. It is not, as you might expect, something I would like known."
Allen sat silent and stunned.
"It has its advantages, but a silver bullet to the brain is like dying a thousand times. You endure the moment of impact, that singular second between life and death, until it is removed. In this case, until you fished the silver bullet from my skull. I was crippled by it, unconscious for what felt like an eternity."
"This has happened before?"
"Once. Though nowhere near as painful. When Aetius and I were ambushed I was stabbed through with a silver pike, but escaped. Tracked my would-be killers for days, all the way back to the Black Sea. I did not kill them as a wolf, either. I needed them to be absolutely certain of who was sending them to hell...that, and my injuries prevented me from shape-shifting."
"You killed them?"
"I took my revenge. The order sought retribution for my actions, but I had lost my desire to wage war. Aetius was too great a loss."
She pulled the teeth outward and looked at them.
"Decades passed before I considered another relationship. It was probably a hundred years before I gave myself to anyone for anything beyond a meaningless tryst. Not a day passed where I did not obsess over Aetius...his death etched in my brain like intaglio. I was angry and unbalanced...two different people. The things I did after...I lost my urge to kill, but sometimes, when the mood took me, I lashed out even worse."
Elisabeth collected her thoughts and centered herself with a deep breath.
"I was so afraid to give myself to anyone ever again. Like when you fail at something so often that you begin to fear you will always fail at it...I told myself I was crazy but a part of me believed my curse was to never find love again. Fear controlled me. Loneliness was me. Until I met you.”
"Quite the ego trip...first real love in what? A few hundred years? I have to admit, I feel pretty good now."
A fleeting smile.
"At first, I thought you would be a fun distraction. You certainly take care of yourself and I figured you could help me tend to other desires. I wanted you for a night. But then we spoke of the Renaissance and you told me you would've given anything to live back then, to experience the cultural reshaping of the world. That...uh, stirred up feelings long gone. You got me thinking about how much I missed that part of my life. About how much I have been missing."
"That's a long time to live in exile."
"Not exile, but an empty existence all the same. When I resigned to falling for you, I realized how much happier I was. When we were attacked the other day I thought for certain I had lost you. While lying there, dying over and over again, I could not stop thinking about you. Wondering whether or not you were alive. I thought I had lost you no sooner than I found you. That it was, in fact, the curse once more."
The sentiment had him grinning like an idiot.
"I love you," he said through a lopsided smirk. His cheeks were hot and rosy while he felt a familiar flutter of butterflies in his gut once more. Elisabeth was an expert at sending them scattering.
She slid from the creaking chair to the cushion beside him and moaned in his ear, "I love you, Allen. Which is why I need your help." She bit the side of his cheek and then sat back wearing a wicked smile.
"What?" He was left stammering in the wake of her vivacious assault.
“You heard me," she said, cupping her open palm against the sudden bulge between his legs. "You have to help me feed, Allen. The sooner you do it, the sooner we can start our life together. Truly together."
His moral resistance fell away in a haze of affection.
Elisabeth tugged his zipper down and slipped a hand inside, sliding below his boxers without effort. She fished it free and looked at it with admiring eyes.
Allen liked the approval on her face. Her attraction excited him more. Their emotional connection was, undoubtedly, the reason for their love. But Elisabeth was attracted to his physique, too. He loved when she played with his six-pack, licking and biting his pecs with appreciation.
"Will you help me?" she asked, gliding onto her knees. Lustful eyes looked up at him. "I throw myself on my knees before you...begging you to reconsider."
Her mouth slipped over him.
His breaths were heavy, his moans soft.
That wicked smile again. "Then you will do as I ask?"
"Anything you want. Anything." He guided her back down with a vicious tug of her hair. She growled her approval and closed her mouth over him.
It didn’t take long to finish and he did so in her mouth. She swallowed him without as much as a wince.
They lay on the couch afterwards, wrapped in each other's arms. Allen had never wanted to experience this before. An orgasm typically brought you back to your senses. To the point when you realize that you can't stand whoever had just sucked you off. Normally, he couldn't get out the door quick enough.
With Elisabeth, he wanted nothing more than to feel her impossibly soft flesh against his, to drift asleep to the sound of her cadenced heart. Soon there was peaceful sleep, encouraged by the repeated tick tock of the cuckoo clock.
The cock crowed six times the next time Allen paid any attention. They were still entwined, Elisabeth's head resting comfortably against his hard chest. He stretched indolent muscles while suppressing a yawn, but it was enough commotion to lure Elisabeth from her sleep.
"Can you believe we slept all damn day?"
"I hate that clock," she said.
"Me too. It was bad when I was living here. Now, you know, that I have...better hearing, it's even worse."
"Can I break it?"
"Please don't. Better that we leave here with as little controversy as possible. Breaking that beloved family artifact will mean one more useless conversation I've got to have with my parents. And then there's the subsequent lecture. No thanks."
"Since you said please."
"Is that all I have to do with you? Say please."
"Actually, that does not often work."
"I didn't think so."
She pinched his nipple and laughed as he winced. "I have an idea for tonight."
Allen braced himself for the pitch. It was what he agreed to hours earlier, and she wasn't simply going to forget. In fact, he was somewhat surprised that she'd allow them to sleep for so long—let alone together. Maybe it was best to get this inevitability out of the way, so they could get back to that. It had been so soothing, he wanted to cuddle up with her once more.
This newfound urge was almost scarier than the ones provoked by being a wolf.
"Help me feed tonight, my love."
"I was thinking we could have a nice romantic dinner here, just the two of us."
"We can," she laughed. "Just go out and bring someone back here."
"That's not what I meant."
"It is what I mean. And you agreed."
No getting out of this one. "I know I did. That's what I'll do if it’s what you want."
She got up and stripped her dress away, offering a fleeting glimpse of that tight, round bubble as she sauntered upstairs.
From above she called out, "Do it and I am yours, Allen. Anything you want. Anything." Her footsteps disappeared, ceasing with the slam of a door and the onset of a flowing showerhead.
Allen sat with his t
houghts, alone in the darkened living room. This was another line he wasn't ready to cross. He didn't think he could bait someone back here with the intention of murder and live with it—especially if it meant seeing another angry spirit at night.
No choice.
He stood and weighed his options one last time before heading for the car. It might be hard to live with, but it wouldn't be hard to do. He could get someone back here, no problem.
In fact, he already had somebody in mind.
Someone that might not even be missed.
***
Lucy brushed a smattering of pine needles off her knees and squinted toward the sky. The sun was an orange ball collapsing on its nightly descent over Lake Wahkan.
An entire day gone. Spent trying to find this place.
She stood at the edge of the summer camp, crouching behind the aggressive width of hemlock trees.
Nick was among the group of kids splashing around during a game of Marco Polo. There was a swell of nostalgia for her summers spent here. Her first kiss had been on that waterfront after one of the socials. Seth Landry's breath had stunk of too many onions on his hot dog, and his hands had wasted no time in exploring her chest behind a pastel blue Camp Wahkan t-shirt.
He hadn't been the most attractive boy, with acne pocks on his cheeks and a feminine lisp that buoyed his annunciations, but he wasn't afraid to let her know he was interested. His confidence had been intriguing, despite his physical imperfections.
In hindsight, it hadn't been a very good night but she realized there was a stitch of nostalgia for it now.
An uncomplicated sliver of life.
Things were different for the Eastman kids now. Nick didn't know it yet and she had no idea how to break the news that he had no mother to go back to. What he did have was a monstrous father with no interest in him, and a sister cursed with something she couldn't explain.
She wouldn't let Rory do the same to him.
She also didn't know how to keep herself safe, let alone Nick. Instead she dialed Aunt Rose's number.
"Hello?"
"Auntie, it's Lucy."
There was no way to do this without sounding like a complete loon. Hopefully, Aunt Rose would take her word at face value.
"This is going to sound weird but please listen. Something's happened to Mom...I think my father is involved. He's after me now. Wants to hurt me. Please come and get Nicholas. He has no one else to go to."
She hung up after making Rose promise she would pick him up. Then she went back through the thick forest, making her way to the main road. She didn't have her car anymore. No idea where it was. And it didn't matter. It was time to leave Greifsfield.
No hope for greener pastures here, not when the instinct to hurt those around her was increasing with every passing moment.
Lucy jammed her hands into her pockets and started down the street. It was going to take a while to get where she needed to go, and her tight t-shirt and short shorts guaranteed she'd be able to thumb a ride to get there.
What she couldn't guarantee was whether or not she'd hurt the driver.
It would be dark soon and her dark visitor was already itching to come out.
She felt it simmering just beneath her surface.
Waiting.
***
With Elisabeth's appetite quelled, she beckoned for Allen. The wolf nestled up against her, panting. His whiskers tickled her ribs, and she wiggled uncontrollably. Allen seemed to know what he was doing, wrinkling his brow before snapping a healthy portion of the dead girl into steel-trap jaws.
Each bite had brought Elisabeth closer to total rejuvenation, and by the end of dinner she felt the wolf ready to return. The unsightly bullet wound had been warded off by familiar nourishment—now just scattered remains on the bedroom floor.
Allen had gone out and brought back one of the town's pass-me-around barflies. Tonight, her pup turned out to be far more dutiful than imagined. She almost felt guilty over it.
Almost.
She lay still for a while, watching the wolf ease into Allen's form, enjoying the sight and the company. A naked young man curled up in a ball beside her, and an hour passed before he lifted his head in her direction.
"The dreams," he said. "Sondra...she was just here...told me that I could save myself if I went back to Greifsfield and found Jack."
"She wants you to get yourself killed."
"Why am I having these dreams?"
"They are not dreams, per se. Your victims, or what remains of their aura, come to you in your sleep because that is the only time your subconscious allows them entrance. You only see them because guilt controls you. The only way to make it stop is to do as she says and kill yourself. That is not an option for you, my love. So just expunge these feelings of remorse."
"How?"
She planted cotton kisses on his neck in between words.
"Easy."
Peck.
"Just let them go."
Peck.
"You are a wolf now."
Peck.
"And wolves..."
Peck.
"...are very instinctual creatures."
"Figured that part out already," he said.
"We hunt to feed, yes, but sometimes we enjoy the sport, toying with our victims to heighten the experience...and their terror. It creates a more bountiful feast. It hardly seems worthwhile to empathize with your meals, right? I have already asked you if you ever leave a steakhouse and have nightmares of the cow that died to be your steak."
"Funny." Allen stared at the shapeless carcass in the corner of the room, wondering how they were going to clean this up and hide the body without his parents suffering any blowback.
"I do not intend to make you laugh. You know this is what you want. I'm what you want."
She kissed him, the best defense against apprehension.
"You are."
"Good. Then promise me you will put these stupid girls out of your mind. That one served a purpose and can be forgotten. We will leave this town soon and not return. Before long she will feel like part of a distant life. Someday you will wonder whether or not she really existed, or if it was all just some dream."
"Is that how it happened for you?"
"Yes. I can hardly recall my parents beyond vague recollections. Fragments."
"Jesus."
"It is not a bad thing to live in the present. Many dwell in the past, letting it dictate their life. They cling to it and pretend things were better when they were younger, desperate to keep those days alive. Remember, I plucked you from a life of monotony, allowing you to live, Allen. Live with me."
She pointed to the body.
"Do you think she was ever going to amount to anything? Would've spent the next few years doing the same thing, until realizing what an embarrassment her life has been. Then it would've been family time, right? At the end of her life, she would have been nothing...just like me had I stayed a peasant in Iasi. Just like you had you gone on to finish college and shackle yourself to corporate America."
"That never sounded bad to me. It sounds bad to you. Who are we to put our importance above others?"
"You are not more important, just different. Superior. We are more evolved in the way that Homo Sapiens have progressed past primates."
"I never went around killing monkeys when I was...er, human."
"You ate meat, indirectly causing the deaths of millions of cows, chickens, pigs, deer and whatever else your society deemed acceptable to ingest on a regular basis."
"Goddamn it, Elisabeth, you're not making any fucking sense. I went to high school with that girl over there. I didn’t have Ancient and World History with the cow I ate at Texas Road House."
"I should not have asked you to do this for me in your hometown. It is my fault for being so narrow-minded. You have already been through enough...killing an old acquaintance on top of everything else isn't the way to get you to accept your fate."
Gently, she pushed Allen onto the floor an
d mounted him. She took his hands and put them atop her breasts. He fondled them and she felt him stiffening again. The boy had an endless sex drive and that suited her fine.
"Tell me you love me, Allen."
"You know that I do."
"Do I?" She forced her weight onto his mid-section to provoke him.
"I fucking love you, Elisabeth," he said and slipped inside her.
"Good. Realize then that what you did here was for me. I would never have been the same without it. You brought me back to life."
She rocked him while his hands rubbed, squeezed and grabbed.
"We must strengthen our bond by finding something we can accomplish together. Something that will provide you with enough satisfaction for you to embrace your wolf."
"Anything." He grunted between warm thrusts. "Anything you want."
She patted his chest playfully. "No, no. I want you to tell me how we're going to do it. It has to be your idea." She lowered herself to his face.
"That bitch," he said through gnashed teeth. "The one who tried killing you..."
She tried withholding a smile.
Of course it was this.
"Go on."
"I'll kill her. I will track her down and kill her."
"You would not have a problem doing that?"
"She tried taking you from me. I want to pay her back."
"And what of your friend? Her companion? I would so enjoy killing him while you avenge me."
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