Embraced by the Shadows

by Mayra Calvani

  She dropped his hands as if she had been burned, and walked away from him to the other side of the room.

  "I didn't mean to be so blunt,” he said. “I didn't mean to frighten you."

  She raised her brows. “Frighten me? Frighten me? How could you possibly frighten me? You're only a vampire,” she said. “You're ... you're..."

  "Say it."

  Dead.

  "I want to say it. I do—I do, I want to say it. But how can I say it, when you're here, looking at me, talking to me, holding me, kissing me. You look so ... so alive!"

  "I am alive ... in a matter of speaking."

  They stared at each other from across the room, piercing each other with their eyes.

  "Come here,” he said, extending his arm, the white sleeve stained with her blood.

  For a moment she fixed her eyes on his stained sleeve. The sharp contrast of white and red had a shocking, obscene quality to it. Then she walked across the room and stood in from of him.

  Sadash unbuttoned his shirt. Then he took her hand and pressed her open palm against his heart.

  There was a strong pounding heart under that ribcage, throbbing against her open palm, as alive a heart as it could ever be. She knew this, of course. She had felt it thudding against her breast and against her ear a hundred times.

  "I told you last night. Living is a relative concept. I am alive, but I am not exactly human. I am something else,” he said, releasing her hand.

  "What?"

  He lifted his brows. “A vampire,” he simply said.

  "But your human body ... is it dead?"

  "This still is my human body. It's alive, though it is changed,” he said.

  "But before it changed ... it died."

  "Yes."

  "So you died before you became a vampire."

  "Yes. You have the general information. You have read the books."

  "Then all the legends, the books, the novels, the stories..."

  "Most of them are lies. But so much literature cannot be based solely on fantasy, don't you think?” he said. He took her hand and pulled her to him. “I want to take you somewhere. This is not a good place to talk."

  "When did you die? When did you become a vampire?"

  "Not here."

  "Please ... tell me."

  "Not here. It's not safe here. Your friend Valeria will soon come. We have to go somewhere else."

  "Where?"

  "Somewhere else. Trust me. You know I would never harm you. I would never, never harm you,” he said, his fingers raking her hair upwards from the nape of her neck.

  "What if I don't want to come with you?"

  "I would put you under my spell and take you with me anyway. But I don't want to do that. I hate doing that."

  "How do you do that—put me under your spell?"

  "I wish it done, and it's done."

  "Just like that?"

  "We're mostly psychic creatures ... in spite of our dark hunger.” Then he added, “I want you to come willingly. You want to come with me, don't you? It's only natural for us to be together. It's only right,” he said.

  "Natural? Why? Why such fatalism?"

  "Too many questions and not much time,” he said. “We have to go now. Valeria is in her car on her way here."

  "Can you see her right now, in her car?"

  "Yes."

  "Can you see the future?"

  "Alana,” he said patiently.

  "I can't stop asking questions. I can't help it."

  "I know. No, I cannot see the future. Now, let's clean your arm and change your shirt. We don't want to bring attention to ourselves. Do you have an oversized shirt I could wear?"

  For a moment Alana just stared at him, too confused to move.

  "On second thought, let's first clean your arm,” he said, leading her off by the hand to the bathroom sink, where he carefully rinsed off all traces of blood from her arm.

  "I didn't plan for this to happen. Believe me, I always do a spotless job. I didn't mean to be so crude ... but somehow you seem to bring out my darkest impulses,” he said, drying her arm lightly with a towel.

  Then he went to the closet and chose a blue shirt for her and an oversized T-shirt with a picture of Spiderman on the front for himself.

  He unbuttoned his shirt and tossed it onto the floor, revealing a torso that was lean and hard muscled. He slipped on the Spiderman T-shirt. With the blood-stained shirt he quickly cleaned the drops of blood and spilled wine from the floor. Then he wadded it into a ball and tossed it inside the hamper by her closet. “We don't want Valeria to get worried, do we?” he said.

  Alana stood like a statue watching him, the clean blue shirt hanging limply from her hands.

  "Alana...” Sadash said. “Why don't you change? Or you want me to do it for you?"

  "I...” she began.

  "Don't tell me you want me to turn my back,” he mocked.

  "No, no ... it's not that. If I go with you, what's going to happen tonight?"

  "Only what you wish to happen."

  "You mean you wouldn't ... without my consent, I mean ... you wouldn't..."

  He went over to her and traced the line of her jaw with his index finger. “I won't do anything you don't want me to do."

  "How can I trust you?"

  "I promise."

  "You promise? That's it? As simple as that?"

  "I promise."

  He pulled her shirt off over her head and bent over to kiss her neck, her shoulder. She moistened her dry lips and closed her eyes. Again that feral stirring inside of her, again that unquenchable thirst. She put her arms around him and began to caress his hair from the nape of his neck, her body automatically clinging itself to him.

  Rudely he pulled away from her, and when she looked at him she saw his canines had partially lengthened.

  "Aman Allah! Show some mercy, for God's sake!” he said, a glitter of lust in his eyes, and in a quick, abrupt manner he helped her into the shirt.

  "Just now your face seemed ... there was an opalescent shimmer to it. I noticed it before in the nightclub...” she said when he finished buttoning her shirt.

  "It means I am beginning to get hungry, very hungry."

  * * * *

  "Now, write the note. We don't want her to panic. And no tricky business,” Sadash said.

  Alana held the paper and pen in her hands. Then, bending over the dressing table, she began to write. Lord, her fingers were shaking!

  Before she was finished she felt his hand slipping inside her shirt and around her waist.

  "I can't keep my hands off you,” he whispered behind her back.

  * * * *

  "But I thought...” Alana began, bewildered, as he led her off by the hand towards the door and out down the hall to the elevators.

  "You thought we were going to fly off the balcony?"

  "I don't know what I thought. You said—I can't believe I'm actually saying this—you said you flew over here."

  "I did. From down the street to your balcony I flew over. But to the condo I came by car. The truth is, if we fly to where I want to take you, it'll only take a few minutes. By car it'll take at least an hour. I want to prolong the moment."

  "When you fly ... what if someone is looking out the balcony? Wouldn't he see you?"

  "With you in my arms he might. But I alone, no. Only for a second he'll see a flash of something indefinite. It's not really flying. It's moving through the air at an incredible speed. Again, mental power. Telekinesis. Same thing as moving objects with your mind. The only difference is that I'm moving myself."

  Once outside the building, Alana followed him a few yards down the sidewalk to his car, a metallic dark cherry-colored Porsche.

  Sadash opened the door and gallantly gestured for her to climb inside.

  Alana leaned against the seat, the expensive scent of polished black leather somehow soothing her senses. He drove smoothly into the traffic, though he appeared to be a bit reckless on the turns and curves. In a
few minutes they were on the highway.

  "Where are we going?” Alana asked, looking at his profile in the semidarkness of the car.

  Silence.

  "Sadash?” she said, her pulse throbbing.

  He glanced at her. “Don't you like surprises?"

  "I hate surprises."

  "Yes, I know. You hate many things. I also know what you love."

  "Sadash, please, don't play word games with me. I want to know where we're going,” she said.

  "I, on the other hand, love to surprise you."

  "You're enjoying this, aren't you? Every second of it."

  He didn't answer, but a broad smile spread across his face.

  "Sadash...” she began.

  "Yes?"

  "When I ask you a question, can I trust that you're answering me with the truth?"

  "Most of the time. I may refuse to answer your question, but I won't lie to you. As I said, most of the time."

  There was a pause.

  "Tell me the truth. Last night, when I almost got mugged...” she began.

  "Yes?"

  "Did you kill him?"

  "Yes,” he said.

  Alana stared through the windshield, stunned. She had felt it, had known it. But to hear it from his lips, just like this, in such a natural manner, was something entirely different.

  A killer...

  "Yes, Alana. That is what I am. There is magnificence in what we are, as there is also brutality."

  "We?"

  "I'm not the only vampire on this planet. Surely you can imagine that."

  Silence.

  "Why did you kill him?” she said. “Because he tried to harm me?"

  "I'm a very protective kind of guy. He meant to kill you. Just as he had killed another woman months before. I scanned his soul and that's what I saw—murder and drugs. I'm not sorry I killed him. As a matter of fact, I can honestly say I enjoyed it."

  "You enjoyed it? Killing a sixteen-year old? I know he was a killer, but..."

  "Remember the vigilantism paper you wrote in Boston? Junior year. Professor Allen's class. I loved it. I read it many times."

  Goose bumps appeared on her skin. “My God. You know everything about me, don't you?"

  "Surely you can see the big picture in it,” he said.

  "In killing? I'm not sure I understand what you mean."

  "Sure you do. With your radical ideas of law and justice. Haven't you always been a fervent believer in taking the law into your own hands? Well ... he was a killer, and yet he was freely roaming the streets. Wouldn't you enjoy cleaning up the streets and getting rid of murderers like him?"

  "Is that what you do?” Alana said sarcastically.

  "At least I don't feel guilty. When you look at the statistics, for each killer that dies a number of innocent people are saved."

  "So you decide who lives or dies."

  "I don't decide. I have to kill to survive. I don't have a choice. Blood from a blood bank would slowly make me sick. It has to be fresh. It has to be warm. I must have fresh blood. So I might as well clean up society a bit. I do good. Believe it or not. Not that I'm an angel, I'm not saying that. I've killed many innocent people before. I had a very reckless vampiric youth."

  "You could be an angel, why not? The Devil was an angel."

  "I thought you didn't believe in that stuff."

  "I don't have any idea what or what not to believe. After this, everything is possible.

  "A very sensible move,” he said. After a thoughtful moment, he said, “How come you're still a virgin?"

  She let out an anxious laugh. “What a question! Why do you ask me this, in the midst of this conversation? Not that it's any of your business."

  He shrugged. “I don't know. The thought just came to my head. I've wondered about it many times."

  "Well, it's none of your business.” The irony of it! How did she tell him that now that she had found her male ideal, that her male ideal was dead ... or undead. Suddenly a thought sprang into her head, and she frantically tried to shove it away. This was crazy. She should be fearing for her life. Yet here she was with a vampire, having lewd thoughts.

  She heard him laughing, a deep coarse laugh.

  "Don't feel so miserable,” he told her.

  "Can you stop doing that—reading my thoughts? I feel totally assaulted."

  "Okay, I'll try. But it's not easy. You're very passionate. You feel so strongly about things,” he said.

  There was an awkward pause.

  "Well? You might as well answer my question,” she said, annoyed.

  "No. Vampires cannot make love."

  "Oh."

  "Disappointed?"

  How strange. But she was. She truly, truly was.

  He looked at her, and his yellow eyes glowed in the semidarkness. His skin, too, suddenly seemed to glow very subtly here and there. “Carnal passion is nothing, Alana. Zero. Absolutely nothing ... compared to the bloodlust.” He said this in a voice so seductive, so intense, so promising it took her breath away.

  This remark seemed to close the conversation for the next few minutes.

  Just for a moment Alana thought about Valeria. Had she already read the note? Had she believed it? She felt so vulnerable sitting here, the air conditioning hitting her naked legs, her flesh so pale against the black leather. She furtively glanced at his profile from the corner of her eyes. Somehow the innocent picture of Sadash in the Spiderman T-shirt made him all the more terrifying. It reminded her of her childhood nights, when she had often imagined her stuffed Mickey Mouse growing out fangs and creeping under her blanket. And her mother ... her beautiful yet pathetic mother, her breath fetid from gin...

  Shhhh.... Such creatures don't exist, my sweet darling, come into my arms, close your eyes, go back to sleep ... How wrong! Oh, how very, very wrong!

  "Where are we going? We're on the road to Fajardo,” Alana said.

  "Shhhh ... I told you it's a surprise."

  A minute later she saw the sign to El Yunque, the national rain forest, and Sadash took a reckless curve in that direction.

  Her heart raced. “Are we going to El Yunque?” she said.

  But did it matter, after all, where he took her? Would it change anything? She was his special prisoner, his willing prisoner.

  She saw them in the distance, the dark high mountains, ominous and majestic. How many times, over many glasses of wine, had she talked about this place with Valeria and Humberto. About flying saucers, aliens, magic mushrooms...

  "There's an old Spanish tower there...” he said.

  Alana frowned. His words brought a crystalline image into her brain. The last time she had been there was years ago. But she remembered the old stone tower with a peaked slate roof, six or seven stories high, with little arched windows and a narrow curving stairway in its center.

  To be in a dark forest with him.

  To be in a perfectly dark and desolated place with him.

  It did bring out the most basic instinct—of survival. And she knew everything was leading up to a high unavoidable summit, like their ascent into the mountains. And yet she wanted to be right where she was.

  "Sadash..."

  "Yes?"

  "What's going to happen tonight?"

  "Afraid?"

  "No, no at all,” she said sarcastically. “Why should I? Why in the world should I be?"

  "That's what I love about you, your sarcastic humor in difficult situations. Even if it's only a defense mechanism."

  "Can you answer my question?"

  "Okay. It will be everything that you wish, and nothing that you don't."

  "You make everything sound so ... simple."

  "But it is simple."

  Alana sighed, watching the dark wild foliage around them as he made another turn into an ascending curving road.

  "How old are you?” she said.

  "You want my mortal age or my vampiric age?"

  "Both."

  "I was twenty-eight when I was turned into wha
t I am, and I have been what I am for almost three hundred and twenty years."

  "Three hundred and twenty years!"

  "Three hundred and fourteen years, to be exact. I think. I don't keep track of time anymore."

  But Alana was shocked. “Three hundred and fourteen! I never thought—I don't know why, but I never expected you to be so old."

  For a moment she shut her eyes.

  To be immortal...

  The idea of being immortal...

  "Yes ... immortal,” he said.

  "You're trying to seduce me,” she said accusingly.

  "Who? Me?” He gave her an innocent look. “Whatever gave you that idea?"

  "All right, all right. Where were you born? In Turkey?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "So you were born during the height of the Ottoman Empire,” she said.

  "You know your history."

  "I minored in history, remember? What were you during your mortal lifetime?"

  "A Sehzade."

  "What's that?"

  "The son of the Padisha. I was a prince and a soldier."

  "Oh, come on!” she blurted out, incredulous. “You're lying."

  But he looked puzzled. “You believe I'm a vampire, yet you can't believe I was a prince?"

  "Are you serious?"

  "Perfectly serious. I didn't ask for the honor, believe me,” he said.

  "And a soldier?"

  "A damn good one."

  "This is crazy,” she muttered under her breath. “Are you telling me the truth?"

  He raised his right hand. “I swear."

  Alana sighed. “How were you turned into a vampire? Who made you?"

  "We're almost there,” he said.

  "Aren't you going to answer my question?"

  His right hand stroked her hand. “Later."

  "But..."

  "No buts."

  "I thought you liked it when I ask you questions,” she said.

  "Like it? I love to talk to you. I have waited so long to talk to you like this. To reveal myself to you."

  "How long?"

  "Since you were a child. Don't worry. You will remember everything, all the things that have happened between us that are buried in your subconscious."

  "All the things...?"

  "Yes. All the things that I've made sure you don't remember."

  "But why? Why didn't you want me to remember?"

  "Isn't it obvious? To protect you. Think about it. What would you have done, a child-woman, if you knew a vampire had crept into your room and drank your blood?"