Mina’s shoulders slumped. “I told you, I’m trapped.”
“Do you need all the dirt?”
“I need enough to sprinkle beneath whatever I’m sleeping on. Or I don’t rest. And I can’t move out of a twenty-five-foot radius of the dirt.”
Krista nodded. “Put it back. We’d best clean up. It’ll be dawn soon.”
When they’d removed the traces of dirt from their bodies and dressed, Krista pulled Mina into her arms. “I’ll figure something out.”
The next night, Krista felt a tap on her shoulder.
“What are you doing?”
Krista pulled the long garden hose through the grating and sat back on her haunches to wrap the hose around her arm. Then she laid it aside. She straightened, easing the ache in her hip, then climbed off the platform to stand beside the shop vac she’d duct-taped to the hose. “Want to take a walk?”
Mina cocked her head to the side, her gaze going from the hose to the appliance. “Problem solved?”
Krista unscrewed the top of the vacuum and pulled out the bag holding the dirt from the bottom of the hole. “I have a bed. Will you mind so much if I sprinkle a little of this under it?”
Mina’s lips parted. Her eyes misted. “You did this for me?”
“I did this for us both—whether or not you come with me.” She folded over the top of the bag, then handed it to Mina. “But now you have choices. You’re free.”
Mina reached for the bag, then pushed it back toward Krista. “I like it when you’re in charge.”
They made their way through the museum. At the door, Mina paused to read the note Krista had already taped there. Her laughter trilled.
Mr. Van Helsing—the rat problem is solved.
SHE KNOWS I AM WATCHING
Rebecca Buck
She knows I am watching. I am her comfort and what makes her thrill with fear. I know she thinks of me when she is alone in her little college room in the lingering dark hours of the night. She believes I am a figment, a dream or a shade, an idea given life by her imagination alone, a result of too much reading, too much solitary longing. She does not realize she knows my appearance because she has seen me, a glimpse in the periphery of her vision, every day for six months.
She’s a clever woman, the one I watch, with her stacks of books and hours spent clicking away on her computer. Clever, but with a soul aching for release from the lure of printed words and the struggle to achieve, from success measured in numbers and percentages. Her intelligence is something beyond these limited assessments. She craves her freedom. I give her that release even now, a fantasy promise of what I could grant, if I chose it.
This city is inhabited by many souls like hers, the life being drawn from all of them. Oxford is a vampire city. The ancient honey-gold college buildings, the Gothic arches and gargoyles, the flagstones and sun-drenched quadrangles, the old brick and the worn statues. All of it is steeped in the souls and the stories of those who were here before. The very masonry draws on the life force of those who pass through this place, drinking in a little of their glory, taking a taste of their intellect, nourished by their inspiration. The city is beautiful and celebrated only because of them; a dream of a city, fed by hopes and aspirations, more insidiously glorious than any place on earth. A vampire greater than any who ever lived. And I have known many in my time.
Is it any wonder I was drawn here? A traveler from the New World, where to be what I am is suddenly to be noticed, to be desired and copied. I exist in shadows and dreams. To be exposed is a trauma I feel in every cell. The movies, the books, the fashions, they have all come just a little too close. I fled to a place where the shadows of history are long, and the minds are far too busy to pay me any real heed. The city drains its inhabitants so profoundly, feeding them only to feast again. They do not notice me. Oxford is my city now.
All of it made sense to me when I found her. I had to come here because she is here. All the currents and tides of time, and history, and fate brought me to her, to watch her like a guardian angel and breathe vitality into her fantasies. I am not a death-bringer as the movies would have you believe. I am a life-giver. I do not look like an angel or a demon. When you see me in the edge of your vision I am merely a woman, my pale skin only remarkable if you were to run your fingers over it. I am not cold like death, but I do not feel human to the touch. You would feel it as a tingling in your fingertips, as you made contact with something only half of your world. The human body has merely five limited senses. You would need far more to understand me.
I saw her first when the sky was blue but the leaves brown, the days rapidly sliding into winter. In a steady shadow close to the library I lurked, watching all of the world pass me by. And then all else lost its color and life and there was only her, a slender woman descending the library steps, clutching two heavy books. Casual jeans and a gray blazer, the blue college scarf, could not hide a Pre-Raphaelite beauty manifested in fiery hair with languorous natural curls, skin almost as pale as my own. Anastasia. Stacie to her friends, the few she has. I know all of her friends. I always watch.
My thirst is under control. I have lived too many years to be prey to irresistible urges. But I cannot deny the longing I feel to taste her. I anticipate the flavors of her essence, of her lifeblood, every time I am with her. I catch her scent in the air and my tongue throbs with want for her. Not merely the physical sensation, the nourishing goodness of the liquid in her veins, but the taste of every part of her, of her knowledge and her emotions, of her experiences and her desires. I would taste all of it.
Today she was reading Shakespeare, the sonnets. They make her heart ache at the same time as they expand her mind, her wisdom. Her blood would be sweet today, a long draught of mellow and overripe summer fruits, a hint of honeysuckle and rose. She will taste of old England and of love. Last week she was reading stale academic texts, the analysis of the already overanalyzed. Her blood was bitter like coffee then, pulsing with frustration and want, sharp and intense. I love her most at night when her taste is as ancient and sweet as the honey of mead, and yet spicy and hot like cinnamon and ginger: the taste of desire unfulfilled.
I know already, you see, how she will taste, though I have never approached her. I only watch and nourish her. The world would call me vampire and yet, for now, it is she who draws on me. I see the changes; I smell them when she is very close. Her skin is pinker, her body somehow more voluptuous, though she remains as slender as when I first laid eyes on her. Her eyes glisten with a secret she wants only for herself. She is cold no longer. I have made her warm.
I am a dream-giver, a fantasy-builder. I would not be welcomed by many. The people who have no need for me do not see me at all; I pass through their lives unnoticed. You may never see me or any of my kind. By an unspoken and wise consensus we rarely touch the humans we watch, the pleasure we derive being mostly vicarious. We are sensitive beings and to simply watch and feed a fantasy can be enough. Those who want us always know when we are near.
Anastasia could not articulate that she is being watched. She does not understand who drives her thoughts, but she knows I am there with her, and she no longer feels alone.
No doubt she wonders if the incessant studying has driven her imagination to seek refuge in an elaborate fantasy world. But she only knows her way to that world because of me. I am her fantasy. I see her dreams because they are of me, the woman, the creature she believes she will never find. I am the darkness in her depths she is finally acknowledging. I am the edge of pain she craves with her pleasure. I am the place where she loses control and gives herself. I will take her.
I have loved many women in my long and undefined life, some of my kind and scores of humans. But never have I been so consumed with the idea of what it will be like with one woman. Hers is such pale skin, I burn to see her exposed, an expanse of untouched whiteness. I will touch her. I will leave my livid mark on that skin as it flushes with pleasure, and she will welcome it, as I possess her.
My hands will be firm at her wrists as I taste the salt of the smooth skin of her throat. She will feel the graze of my teeth and she will know what I am with a thrill of fear. Desire will follow the fear and she will burn for me, the throb of her pulse a delicious tease on my lips. I could drink and she would welcome it. But I will not.
I will press my mouth to the heat of her kisses and taste her desire. My hand will slide over her warm skin, lingering on soft breasts, feeling the motion of every breath. Her body will relax and when my fingers reach her silky and soft, wet folds she will be open and so ready for me.
Inside her, I will find my own fulfillment, intimacy without blood, as her body yields to me and yet commands me to give her pleasure all at once. In the moment when all of the sensations merge into pure ecstasy and she cries out my name, the name she did not know until that instant, I will have found energy to drive me forward into the future. I take more than blood. I take wisdom and pleasure and heat and lust. This is why I am her guardian, the angel of her fantasies. I must give to her what I need her to return to me.
And she, knowing what I am, will want more. The beauty of it is almost ironic. I need blood to sustain me, and I yearn for hers with its spiced fruit flavors, but she need not be my victim. Her craving is as great as mine. I have made myself her fantasy, taken possession of the place in her heart that was dark and hollow before. She let me in and now, though I have the power, really she is in control. I will not hypnotize her or resort to violence to drink as I need to. She will beg me to do so.
And so another glorious tease will begin. I will taste her essence as it coats my fingers still, a diluted and sweetened version of what is in her blood. I will lick my pink lips and let her see my teeth. I will finally allow her to touch my body in her hope that bringing me pleasure will make me yield to her pleas.
She will gasp at how I feel beneath her hands. “Taste me,” she will say in a breathy whisper. My teeth will stroke over her skin again: the inside of her wrist where the blood is purple at the surface, the soft intimacy of her inner thigh. My breath on her throat will make her head sag back in anticipation. She has seen the movies too.
The risk of piercing her jugular is too great. I could heal the wound, but I will not endanger her life. I am not a killer except when I have to be. I give life, I do not take it. Eventually I will find the right place on her trembling body. The crease of her elbow, the flesh of her breast, the place where the cheek of her ass meets the back of her thigh. So many places I could choose. As she still pants for more I will allow my teeth to penetrate her skin, and I will taste honey and ripe fruit.
Filled with desire she will be like summer wine, intoxicating with the first lap of my tongue. I will be infused with wisdom and learning, with the fulfillment of desire and the longing for more. She will gasp and sigh with the pain and then be lost to the pleasure. She will be mine.
That is my fantasy. I wonder, watching her in her sleep, who is really the fantasy-giver. She dreams of me, as her hand creeps between her soft thighs under her cotton sheets in the night, because I have made it so. I have taken her emptiness and filled it with myself. And yet as I gaze upon her, I am as compelled to fantasy as she is. Unconscious though it is, she is just the same as me. Vampires and victims both, nourishing only to feed and, in the feeding, finding strength again. A cycle we are both locked in, each a reflection of the other.
But it is a fantasy only. I am only the ghost at the edge of her vision, the dream figure she does not understand. I watch still, because I fear shattering the fantasy into mirror shards. I could take her. I might take her. She wants it, I am certain. But we are meant to be dreams, or nightmares. We are meant to be part illusion, shrouded in mystery, only half-seen, half-known. That is why there are so many myths and movies. You know we are there, and you are fascinated, entranced. You want us and you fear us. But if we step into the light, what will you do then?
The eternal dilemma our kind face: to be a fantasy or a reality? If she sees me fully, will she still long for me? Or does she crave me because she believes she cannot have me? I could offer her freedom. In my bite I could make her mine forever. I could give that trapped soul wings and we could fly together. But I will be her fantasy no longer and she will not be mine. Could I give that up?
And so I still watch. She walks from her cramped room to the hallowed library, consumes the wisdom that will give flavor to her very blood. She passes through the throngs of the oblivious, separate from them all because she has me in her head and her heart. She lies in her bed and with frantic movements and fierce caresses finds a temporary release for the desires I have given her. I watch everything and absorb every intoxicating detail: from the blush that spreads over her cheeks and her breasts with their rosy hard nipples—as she thrusts the thin sheets from her sweating body—to the rhythm of her hand between her spread thighs. I see the glistening of her arousal, as her flesh swells and her breathing grows ragged, her hips rising as if begging for my intimate touch, her back arching as she offers herself to me.
As I watch, I cannot help but slip my own hand lower, to relieve the ache she creates in me, more insatiable than the blood thirst. Beneath the leather of my pants I find myself as swollen and soaked as she is. Powerless to resist, my fingers mirror hers, rubbing and pinching, circling. I am touching myself, but also her. When she finds her shuddering and gasping release—and the night is filled with the ripe, moist, scent of her—I am with her, falling over that precipice, the two of us locked together in that transient satisfaction. It is never quite enough. Desire compels me to finally reach for her. The need is biting and sharp. In every moment I want her. But I hesitate. Perhaps I want to be her fantasy more.
Do you feel us? In those moments in the dark when your desires are for the most forbidden fulfillment? When you crave the relief of losing yourself? When your passion is so strong only pain will give you release? Those moments where connection is everything, and you are so thirsty for more you feel you can never get enough? We know what is inside your yearning heart. We feed on that need and we make it stronger. We are your fantasies, always there, where you can almost glimpse us but are afraid to look.
Maybe you should look, and maybe you should be afraid when you see I speak the truth. Feel the thrill of the fear; it adds spice to your blood. At the point where fear and fantasy merge, that is when you are hardest to resist and where you draw from us with a hunger to equal our own for you.
Anastasia is mine, and I am hers. Vampires both. She knows I am watching.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
VIVI ANNA, a 2008 Romantic Times Reviewer Choice Winner and Canadian, likes to burn up the pages with her unique brand of fantasy fiction. Whether it’s in the Amazon jungle, an apocalyptic future or the otherworld city of Necropolis, Vivi always writes fast-paced action-adventure with strong independent women who can kick some butt.
REBECCA BUCK is from Nottingham, England and the author of the novels Truths and Ghosts of Winter. An English graduate, Rebecca spends every free moment writing, the best outlet she knows for an overactive imagination.
ANGELA CAPERTON writes eclectic erotica that challenges genre conventions. Look for her stories published with Black Lace and eBury Publishing, Cleis, Circlet, Coming Together, Drollerie, eXtasy Books, Renaissance and in the indie magazine Out of the Gutter.
CHRISTINE d’ABO loves the world of science fiction, fantasy and romance. By combining the elements of those genres into tales of adventure and love, Christine creates the types of stories she loves to read.
ADELE DUBOIS is a former newspaper and magazine columnist, features writer, and foreign correspondent published in the Caribbean, the United Kingdom and the United States. When not on the beach by the ocean, or walking along the quiet shores of a Delaware bay, she enjoys her rural eastern Pennsylvania home where she is currently working on her next novel.
DELPHINE DRYDEN ditched a career in public education and an earlier stint as a lawyer to write smart, kinky, erotic romance novels. Sh
e also writes science fiction. Sometimes, she even writes kinky, erotic science fiction!
A. E. GRACE is a writer of horror and nonfiction, currently studying for a degree in creative and media writing at Middlesex University, England. In her spare time she is a DVD and book reviewer and enjoys reading both mainstream and genre fiction.
MYLA JACKSON pens wildly sexy adventures of all genres including historical westerns, medieval tales, romantic suspense, contemporary romance and paranormal romances with beasties of all shapes and sizes. When not wrangling words from her computer with the help of her canine muses, she’s snow-skiing, boating or riding her ATV.
REGINA JAMISON enjoys writing fiction, erotica and poetry. Her poetry has appeared in Clamour and more recently in Off the Rocks: An Anthology of GLBT Writing. Her erotica can be found in Zane’s Purple Panties. She is currently pursuing her MFA in creative writing at City College in New York.
SHAYLA KERSTEN believes everyone deserves a little romance. Her published works include gay, straight and bisexual romances with one common thread—heat and passion. Shayla currently divides her time between writing, her mother, the evil day job and her spoiled rotten critters.
ANNA MEADOWS is a part-time executive assistant, part-time lesbian housewife. Her work appears in Best Lesbian Romance 2010 and 2011.
VICTORIA OLDHAM lives in England with her partner of more than seven years. She has published erotica in various anthologies, and is currently an editor for Bold Strokes Books, as well as a freelance writer with more than sixty published articles.
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