Choosing Eternity

by Bridget Essex

  The blood had set in a nasty, jagged scab, and I shuddered a little, looking down at it. But once I submerged my hand in the water of the basin, the dried blood loosened, and once I’d gone over my hands and face vigorously with a cake of rose-scented soap, there was nothing but the pink wound, puckered and ugly looking within my palm, but no longer bleeding. I took the bloody handkerchief, and I washed that, too, and when I was done, the water in the basin was tinged the softest rose pink.

  I took out my traveling easel and put the pieces together quickly, then set it upon the bed, along with some good, stiff paper and my pan of charcoals.

  And then there was nothing for me to do besides.

  So I paced the confines of the small room, listening to the click of my boots upon the wide-grained pine floor, listening to the roar of my own heartbeat, my hands clasped tightly behind me, my thumb resting lightly over the wound.

  Wondering, wondering, wondering what this night could possibly bring.

  I did not have to wonder long, however. For there were three sharp raps at the door, and I flew across the room and pulled that door open in half a heartbeat.

  And there stood Kane, leaning against the doorframe, her head to the side as she regarded me with those dazzling blue eyes, a blue so deep and true and bright that it seemed to steal inside of me, unfurling.

  It touched me, as I wished with my whole heart that she would, reaching her long, elegant fingers out and placing them upon the aching skin of my collarbones. But she did not. Instead, Kane pushed off from the doorframe and prowled into the room, turning as I shut the door behind her.

  She no longer wore the cloak. Instead, she was patently resplendent in a men’s smoking jacket, made of sumptuous dark gray velvet. It set off the blue in her eyes splendidly as she took a pack of cigarettes out of her jacket pocket, turning toward me in the dim light of the room. She turned the packet around and around in her fingers, but she did not remove a cigarette. Rather, she considered me, almost as much as I considered her—and I was about to paint her. What reason did she have to gaze at me so, her eyes flashing, traveling over my length like a portrait artist, committing my curves to memory…

  Unless?

  Unless she was like me.

  And, like me, she wanted this, too.

  My palms were damp, and I pressed them to my full skirts, licked my lips, realized that I’d never been more nervous in my life.

  I’d bedded women before, and there was such an arcane ritual of pleasantries that needed to be circumvented to achieve that sweetest of pleasures. “Is she like me?” was the most worrisome of questions, because if I pursued a woman, and I was wrong, there would be hell rained down upon my life as sure as the devil dances out of tune. To love a woman…it was considered an inversion, if you were kind, and a blasphemy, if you were not.

  I had to be so careful…

  But she made me want to fling all those cares and worries away, to profess with ardor and adoration that when I looked upon her, I saw someone who made my heart ache. I wanted to drop to my knees before her, place my hands upon her thighs, beg her to be like me. Please, please, please be like me.

  My fingers shook as I pressed them once more to my bodice, placed my eyes upon the floor. My entire body shook like a gale moves sweet new leaves and young boughs in the wood. But I took a deep breath, raised my gaze.

  Kane was staring at me.

  In the soft light of the gas lamps, it seemed that her eyes had darkened. Her lips were wet and open, her chest rising and falling perhaps a little quicker than I remembered the rhythm of her breath.

  Please, please, please be like me.

  I moved to the edge of the bed, my neck bent, my back arched as I leaned down, as I picked up a piece of paper and set it down upon the flat board of my sketching easel. Then I turned, glancing at Kane, cocking my head to the side as I traced my eyes over her, trying only to see something beautiful to put down upon paper…

  But Kane was the sum of her parts, not one object that could be separated from her vastness. From her beauty. I took up the little stool, and my heart rattled in my chest as I approached her.

  “I confess,” Kane rumbled, glancing down into my eyes when I had reached her, “I have never done this before. I do not even know why I am here.”

  “Why?” I asked her surprised.

  “Why…” She looked like she was going to say something else, but at the last possible instant averted her gaze. “Why should you wish to sketch me?” she asked, and her tone was artificially light.

  I laughed at that, though my laugh was artificial, too, dying in my throat even as I tried to bring it to life. “Why…you’re extraordinary,” I told her, and then I lifted my chin, my voice dropped: “You intrigue me—you inspire me. There is…something about you.”

  “Something,” Kane repeated, and then and only then did I realize how close we were. Oh, to be a man, to be able to take Kane’s bold face within my palms, to press my mouth to hers. But I was not a man, and Kane was not a man, and the freedoms provided to two of the opposite sex were maddeningly out of reach for me.

  I had ached for those freedom so often in my life. I had wept into my pillow in anger and defiance for the lot given me as a woman who loved my own kind. But I had never let it defeat me. Never, not ever, would I allow the social constructs of the day to defeat me.

  But this dance…ah, how dangerous it was.

  But as I gazed up into her face…

  I knew that she was worth this.

  She was worth it all.

  “May I?” I whispered, holding out my hand to her.

  Kane regarded me quizzically, but placed her palm within my own.

  She was so cold. Cold like winter, like ice, like a frozen sea that devours you whole as you slip through water that freezes you to the touch. I brought her arm down, brought her hand to her side, and then my fingers brushed that slightest of curves there, at her waist. Her body was not like mine, with its wide and deep curves. She was different, and that was beautiful, as I placed her hand to grasp her own side. My fingers lingered there for only a heartbeat and then I took her other hand gently in my own.

  “Wait,” said Kane, and her brows were furrowed as she took my hand up, examining its palm. “You’re hurt.”

  “It is nothing,” I told her with a small smile. “I…cut myself upon the window pane there.” I gestured to the jagged crack in the glass just behind us. “Forgive me, I think I may have broken it with my clumsiness.”

  “What is a window,” Kane breathed, “in comparison to a hand? Your hand,” she clarified then, voice low and dark as her eyes sought mine, searching in the depths of them. After a long moment—perhaps a second too long—she dragged her gaze away, cleared her throat. “Do you not make a living with your hands, with your art? They are precious.”

  I glanced up at her in surprise. “It is nothing,” I repeated, for she seemed quite unhappy with the fact that I’d hurt myself. But she had not let go of my hand. It lay, cradled in her cold fingers, like a treasure.

  Kane stared down at my palm, her eyes dark, her lips in a hard, downward curve, before she bent low, and she brushed her mouth against my palm.

  I felt the coolness of her mouth against the wound, against my skin, and I shuddered from that singular touch with a delight I felt to my marrow and back. Yes, the wound was tender, but the coolness upon it…

  Oh, it felt like heaven. She felt like heaven, her mouth against my skin.

  “I am sorry,” she whispered, against my palm.

  What she was sorry for, I could not fully say. The window, perhaps, but the words that had slipped from her lips…they sounded so sad. So broken. I stared down at her, bent genteelly over my hand, and I frowned.

  “It is nothing,” I repeated, softer, mesmerized.

  She straightened, and when she looked into my face now, the breath hitched in my throat.

  Her eyes were dark with desire. There was no mistaking this look.

  There was no mis
taking any of this, any longer.

  I did not know what to do. Nothing in my life, nothing in the loves I had experienced, had prepared me for this. So, I did not know what to do.

  Except to move forward.

  I took her hand now, my fingers lingering along her skin, and—again—I placed it along her side. I took her other hand, and I placed it along her opposite shoulder. She looked guarded now. Defiant. Proud. I reached out, my heart hammering in my bones, as I took her hips in my hands, my hands shaking, my fingers shaking, all of me shaking…but I pushed her back just a little so that her feet fell hip-width apart.

  “Good,” I managed, licking my dry lips, swallowing. And then: “may I?” I asked again, reaching up, my fingers close to her face.

  She nodded.

  She had not stopped watching me.

  I reached up, and my fingers caressed the sides of her jaw, her cheeks, the cream-colored satin of her neck. I closed my own eyes, because this was too intimate and too intense, and I may falter if I could see her…so I closed my eyes, and let my fingers drift up and over her regal nose, over her full mouth, over the delicate flutter of her eyelashes and her proud brow.

  She was exquisite in every line of her, an anchor that moored me to the spot like a ship. I could not move, could only move my fingers as they explored every contour and plane of her lovely visage.

  When I had elevated her chin, when I had taken a step back, letting my hands fall to my sides once more, then and only then did I open my eyes again.

  She stood like a goddess before me.

  When I reached the edge of my bed, I sat down upon it as easily as I could, but I think it was fairly obvious that my knees were shaking and could no longer hold me upright. I took the easel upon my lap, the paper before me, picked up a piece of charcoal, my fingers immediately blackening, and then and only then did I raise my gaze to Kane once more.

  She had not moved, but there were subtle tells that this was not some statue of a goddess before me. Her chest rose and fell easily with her breath, her eyes were raised to the heavens, but she blinked, her shoulders moved. There was such a life to her, such a defiance and strength in this pose, and as I let my instincts take over, as my hand rushed over the paper before me, taking page after page up and doing study after study of her face, of her limbs, of her whole body, I fell into a kind of rhythm I had not achieved in such a long time.

  I stepped into the flow of the art. And it was beautiful.

  There were about twenty quick, rough studies of Kane upon the coverlet before I got up again, wiping my hands on a piece of cloth I’d taken out for that purpose. I dunked them in the basin, and wiped them again, though they were still dirtied by the charcoal. I sighed, glancing down at them, and then I wiped them harder against the cloth.

  “Could you, perhaps, sit on this stool?” I inquired. Kane glanced down at it, and nodded, and then I cleared my throat.

  “Could you, perhaps, take off your jacket?” I asked her.

  Kane glanced my way, and—holding my gaze—reached up and undid the first button of that pretty velvet smoking jacket. Color rose into my cheeks as she undid each button slowly, almost reverently, before slipping the thing from her shoulders. She folded it and set it upon the pillow of my bed.

  When she turned from me, I could see that sweet skin of her neck clearly in the dim light, could even see the slope of the origins of her shoulders. She perched upon the edge of the stool, placed one elbow upon her knee and glanced up at me with a dazzling smile.

  “Like this?” she inquired.

  I wished, so much, that I could see the muscled slope of her shoulders, of her arms, her back…but I nodded, turning from her to sit back down on the edge of the bed again.

  But I found that I was not close enough to capture her intensity. In frustration, I rose, taking the easel and the charcoals and the papers with me.

  And I sat at her feet.

  Paper after paper left my charcoaled hands as I—almost feverishly—sketched her, learning the contours of her like one learns a prayer, memorizing each delicious, sacred word by saying it over and over again. Finally, a pile of pages beside me, utterly spent, I set the easel aside, leaned back upon my hands on the floor.

  “I have you,” I murmured then, glancing up at her with a smile.

  “Do you?” she asked back, stretching her shoulders a little. The cream-colored shirt slipped over one shoulder, and I followed that perfect curve with hungry eyes, even as I tried to wrest my gaze from her. She was not something to be devoured…she was something to be admired, worshipped. My gaze fell upon the floor, and the ache I’d been feeling all evening threatened to consume me.

  She reached out across the little space between us.

  And she pressed two fingers beneath my chin, lifting it.

  I shuddered at the coolness of her touch, but I obeyed it, lifting my gaze to her once more. She smiled down at me in the dim light, her teeth dazzling, her eyes as dark as midnight. She breathed out between shining lips, and she leaned forward from her perch, leaned down toward me like I was pulling the heavens to my mouth.

  I thought my heart might give out as her face drifted closer to mine, and closer still. But it did not. Instead, it hammered along my ribs like it would bruise them, and I lifted my chin higher, higher, hardly daring to hope this was real.

  But it was not real.

  For, at the last possible heartbeat, she turned from me, anguish apparent on that beautiful face.

  I stayed perfectly still, hoping against hope…but she was already standing.

  “Wait,” I cried, and I was on my feet too, reaching out to touch her arm. I stepped so close and so fast that I was able to twine my arms about her waist, able to press my chest to her back, my face to the hollow of her spine, between her powerful shoulders. I closed my eyes tight, couldn’t dare to look, only speak. “I am like you,” I whispered, repeating it like a spell. “I am like you…”

  A long pause.

  An agonizing moment.

  And then:

  “It is not that,” she answered, and the rumble of her words echoed in her chest. I heard her heart beating slowly, heard the words within her before they came out in the air between us.

  I stiffened, surprised. “Then…then what is it? If we are like each other, then what stops us?” I asked, a thousand horrific ideas immediately crowding my head and heart. “Are you…are you married?”

  Kane laughed at that, a bitter bark as she shook her head. “Never. I would marry only for love, and I cannot love a man. Never.”

  Oh, the joy I felt at that. It soared in me as bright and unfurling as a hawk’s wingspan. I held tighter to her then, her strength holding me up as I hoped against hope.

  “Then…then what could it possibly be?” I asked, voice plaintive. “Are you afraid of how God will punish us?” I asked, hushed.

  Again, Kane laughed, shaking her head. “There is no punishment for love. Not now, not ever,” she told me.

  Love.

  Oh, that sweet word upon sweeter lips. I shuddered against her.

  “Then tell me. Please tell me, or I shall die,” I breathed, eyes closed tighter, tighter against the possibility of losing this perfect moment…

  “It is what I am, Melody,” she said then, brokenly, and she reached up, pressed her palms against my hands, gripping her tightly, clasped across her heart. “This can not be, for you deserve so much better.”

  “Wh—what?” I asked, and then and only then did I take a step back from her, extricating myself from my tight embrace. She remained facing away from me, her head low, defeated, and I balled my hands into fists, suddenly angry.

  “I do not care what you are or what you have done. Have you broken a law? I have broken them. Have you been cruel to someone? It is the nature of humanity to be cruel at times. Have you…have you killed someone?” I whispered, licking my lips. “I do not know what you have done, only what you make me feel, only what draws me to you, and these are things I can not ex
plain and I dare not even try. I only know that I am drawn to you, that you answer a question inside of me that I do not even know how to speak. Please. Let me judge. I will judge you gently. We have already overcome the worst and hardest…we are drawn to one another. And we are like each other,” I whispered to her.

  “No,” said Kane, and the word was broken. “We are not.”

  That stung like a knife to the heart. “You do not…you do not love women?” I whispered, my words haunted. “I thought—”

  “I do,” answered Kane simply. “But we are not the same, Melody.”

  “We are.”

  “No,” she whispered, and she turned. “We are not.”

  And though there was only dim light that surrounded us, a soft light that burned with a mere glow…she took a step toward me, out of the shadows.

  And I saw. I saw how her eyes had darkened to a blackness. I saw how her teeth had grown, elongated into fangs.

  I knew the word, but still, I stammered over it, scarcely believing.

  But there was nothing to believe, only see with my own eyes.

  The truth.

  “You’re a…” I shook my head, gazing up at her in wonder. “You’re a vampire?” I said then, and the word that rose between us was impossible.

  But true.

  -- Part Two: Eternal Vow --

  This was not a dream. It couldn’t be. These last few moments leading up to this one, I had never felt more awake, never felt more alive, never felt…more.

  But here she was, the woman who had awakened so much within me. She stood now before me and she stood tall, her chin lifted, her dark eyes—once so bright and blue and lovely—now black as death.

  And she possessed fangs like a wolf. Like a monster.

  Vampire.

  Kane Sullivan was a vampire.

  Of all of the outcomes of that night…this was one I could never have fathomed. But I must fathom it now, for I was faced with it as I stood close enough to touch her, standing before her, watching her, my heart pounding through every vein, against every bone.