The Grave
I called Tommy the next night, fearing he’d hang up on me. “I’m sick,” I explained, making excuses for why I’d left. “It’s a blood disease. No, it’s not contagious. It’s hereditary from my father’s side. Yes, yes, I want to see you again, but I don’t want to hurt you. I’m so afraid I’ll hurt you.” My words were as close to the truth as I dared get.
“Why did you leave?”
I glanced around the bedroom, and my gaze fell on a triad of prescription bottles by Rory’s framed pictures. I lied. “I forgot my medicine.”
“Geez, Angela, you could have told me that then. I’ve been worried about you all week. I don’t even have a number for you.”
I gave him the number to the mansion. He seemed to calm down a little. “I’m no good for you, Tommy. What we had was just starting back in school before I left. It’s not like we really know each other.”
He sighed, sounding impatient. “Don’t you want to get to know me?”
I sniffed back a tear. “Yes, of course I do. You’re all I’ve ever wanted.”
There was silence on the other end while he thought over what to say next. I stared at the painting of Karada which hung now near the bed. She stared right back at me with eyes the same as mine.
“Okay. Okay then. Friday, are you busy?”
“No,” I stood and paced, nervous, afraid I’d mess this up again.
“Dinner and a movie?”
“It’s not too cliché?”
“It’s a start, Angela. That’s all I’m asking for.”
“All right. It’s a date. I’ll try my best not to...”
“Not to get spooked. You were scared that night. I don’t know why. No clue what I said or did.”
“It’s not you. It’s me.”
He laughed. “Now that’s a cliché line.”
We talked a while more, mostly about his work on the new city park recreation center. Then we said our good-byes, and he told me he loved me. I couldn’t say it back, no matter how much I felt for him. What is love to a wretch like me, a creature that subsists on the blood of the living like some leech? “I’ll see you Friday,” I said and hung up.
“What do you think, Karada?” I asked the painting. She said nothing, regarding me as she had her painter so many years long before, with an expression of knowing mirth. I wondered what their relationship entailed and how it had ended.
I went for a walk in the evening. Two more days until my date with Tommy in which I wanted to make a plan to get
us
to work. Somehow, there had to be a way.
I imagined telling him what I had become, made up all sorts of reactions and explanations. I had darker thoughts, well-thought-out scenarios in which I turned him into a vampire and we lived out eternity together. Could he love me enough for such a dream? I doubted so.
Crickets chirped out their night songs near the flagstone path. I strolled along through the winding garden past trees and intricate plantings. Flowers bloomed here and there, their perfume lingering to make the walk more pleasant. I had not eaten since the opossums in the woods, and I did not hunger yet for the taste of blood.
Pausing by a small, stone building, I realized I had not walked so far into Rory’s Garden of Eden before now. The crickets were silent here. The blue-black sky barely bore a faint tinge of pink. I vowed to pay attention to my hunger this time and to use the sky as my guide in order to know how long it took before my need became unbearable.
“Lockets and trinkets, he used to bring…” A strange voice sang on the wind.
I tensed. Seeking the source, I looked over where I was, better taking in the details. The structure near me was a mausoleum of sorts. Angelic carvings in relief decorated the marble walls, vines knotting over their faces and wings.
“Hello?” I called. No one should be in the garden at this hour. The usual housekeepers and groundskeepers were not due for another seven days. “Who’s out here?”
Laughter echoed from a stretch of trees. It bubbled and danced in my ears. I trembled. I’d heard the same sound in my dreams. The shapely mist-colored figure of a woman passed between the tree trunks and glided away from me.
“I’m seeing things. Can’t be real. She can’t be.”
“And not a fanciful gown for his beloved...” She stopped, glanced at me, and flashed a glittering smile.
I knew the shape of her face. “Karada?” I asked.
“Little angel, another of Rory’s toys. Now you and I are all alone.” She held out her hands to me, beckoning. I didn’t want to go to her, fearful of a mind-hold as Rory had forced on me. If he had such powers, then surely she did as well. “Come,” she urged. “Let us know each other this night. There is much to tell you.”
I shook my head.
“Angela,” she chided. “Come and hunt this night with me. We are sisters, you and I. Sisters in blood. Mine runs through yours just as it did through Rory’s. Don’t you want to know me?”
“No.”
She started forward, and the pale gown she wore caught on the high flowers. When she stepped onto the path I saw her bare feet. Stains tainted the hem of her white dress, bits of torn lace fluttered in the wind and a gory hole in the bodice over her chest caused me to shudder. Her dark skin glowed in an ethereal way. Remnants of a veil blew about her silken hair, strands of the dark mass tied at the ends with beads.
“He kept me prisoner,” she explained, nodding once at the mausoleum. “But I broke free the night he died. His mind couldn’t keep the locks in place then. I’ve bided my time, waited. Cold, wrinkled and a creature of death myself I didn’t know if I could find sustenance. I thought I might escape the stone prison only to die by the light of the sun, too weak to hunt.”
She reached me. Icy fingers traced my cheek as she smiled. Her face looked worn, not the smooth beauty in the painting by the bed, but a mask of it, wrinkled at the edges and sallow, sunken. Her lips twitched every so often, a nervous tic while she studied me.
“You’re hungry, little one, so hungry.”
“No. I won’t kill my own kind again. Never again.”
“Your kind. They are no longer your kind.” Karada licked her black lips with the tip of a pinkish-gray tongue. A fang showed itself before she spoke. “What is life without the thrill of the hunt? You will miss it too much. It will weigh on you as it did on Rory. He tried not to kill at first, to drink just enough to sustain him. But once you taste of a living human, you will want to drink away the rest of its soul. You can’t resist.”
“I can.” I began to back away, thinking her a thing worse than a vampire, maybe a cross between vampire and ghost for that’s what she looked like to me. Ethereal and otherworldly, a thing of nightmares.
Her laughter frothed in my mind. “Perhaps you will be the first to do so. Perhaps not.” She stepped toward me, her eyes flashing red for an instant, but not long enough for me to prepare. Claws extended from her hand when she struck me, slashing my face. “Perhaps,” she began as she passed me, “we will never know.”
Blood dripped down my cheek onto my T-shirt. Fury threatened to send me after her. I wanted to fight back, to cut her face as she had mine even though I felt skin stretching back into place to knit and seal my wound.
Karada began to sprint, her arms at her sides, the ruined wedding dress she wore, flapping. Chocolate-colored wings burst from her shoulders, bat-like and hideous. She rose into the night to leave me standing there, confused over what had happened and what manner of being I had encountered. I wiped at my cheek to find it healed.
The iron door of the mausoleum clanked against its hinges when the wind picked up. Clouds had moved in to threaten rain. Humidity pressed in on my skin.
My attention drawn to the door, I approached it to investigate. Inside, a few candles burned in glass vases. The walls bore jagged red-brown lines. Intrigued by them, I went in farther. Tracing a finger of a set, I understood. They were the exact size and pattern nails would make if someone tried to scrape her fingers over the stone. The color meant Karada had scraped her fingernails past skin, bleeding with each futile attempt to escape.
At the rear of the small room another door enticed me. I went, a lamb willing and curious. Behind it I found Karada’s open coffin. All around the casket, vases of dead flowers decorated the grim scene. Scattered over the floor were pieces of paper, most so damaged by moisture that they’d fallen apart over time. I knelt, retrieving one spattered with drops of red-brown—blood.
Rory’s slanted script spanned the slip of ruined paper, the words faded.
A chill passed over my heart.
In my mind, a scene unfolded. He had come to her grave, this very place and had pushed back the lid of a different coffin. Beneath it, the bride rested on silken pillows, her eyes closed, her hands crossed on her chest. Her neck however, was no longer attached to her body, and some superstitious fool had driven a stake through her chest where old blood stained her dress.
Standing there by the light of a candle, Rory threaded a needle and whispered a prayer. He set to work, stitching her head back to her body.
When he finished, he lifted her body from its resting place to cradle in his arms. He sang and spoke, willing her to wake. When she did not, he brought his wrist to his mouth and drew fangs against skin to release the crimson flow. It dribbled over the makeshift stitches.
The magic in the blood worked its cure. Skin fused. Flesh knitted. Not long afterward, Karada opened her dark eyes to regard him. Her lips parted in a demon’s smile with sharpened teeth. “You are mine this night, my love. Mine now and always. My angel of death.”
I released the paper to drift back to the soiled floor, wishing I had never touched it. The love between Rory and Karada confused me. My darker side wanted such a love. Not the master-and-teacher bond I’d had with Rory, but a bond as an equal with the man I wanted, desired, and cared for.
Backing from the coffin room, I bumped into the door. Another vision swept over me.
Rory’s face appeared, snarling and demonic as he leered in on Karada between the door and its frame. “You will give your loyalty to me, woman, or remain in the darkness forever.”
She shook her head, fury and rebellion glittering in her eyes. “You belong to me, Rory Archibald, not the other way around!”
He cursed and shut the door.
In a manner of moments, time passed, days, weeks, months, years. The hunger became so intense that Karada lay weeping in the corner of the room until she could scarcely move. Bite marks blazed over her arms where she’d succumbed and tried to stave off her pain.
I jumped back from the door, severing the connection to the images. Could this be another of the gifts of my curse? How could objects hold memories of the past? Was it real or a delusion my mind created? I had only one way of knowing the truth, but the vampire who left me in the garden was not a creature I wanted to see again anytime soon. I left the mausoleum and returned to the night. The sky remained its same pink-tinged navy with stars sparkling in its midst. The silence near the gravesite lent an eerie, nightmarish aura to the grounds as I returned to the mansion.
Dinner Date
On Friday, I stood outside Tommy’s door. I’d fed on a tiger in the local zoo and, surprisingly, left it alive but dazed. Its claws had raked down my side. I hadn’t worn my shirt in the attack and my wounds, though deep, had already healed.
I knocked. This time it took a while before he answered. His cologne tantalized me and, along with it, the delicious scent of his skin.
“Angela.” He took me in his arms as he had the last time I’d shown myself here. I melted against him, relieved to be held by him.
“I’m sorry,” I blubbered, still guilty for having left him before.
“It’s all right. I understand.”
But he didn’t really understand me at all. I waited while he gathered his wallet and keys, marveling at his face, his body, the casual way he’d left his shirt unbuttoned at the top. If I were still human, I would have felt safe with him. Tommy still had the build of a football player. But I was not human, and I didn’t feel safe. I felt like a predator luring its prey out into the darkness to kill it.
“You have that look again,” he said, stopping before me. “You okay?”
“Fine. Fine. Where are we going tonight?”
“Marion’s Italian Bistro. You do like Italian food, right?”
“Sure.” In my planning and plotting, I had overlooked actually eating a meal. Could I eat? Would my body reject food?
We walked along the hall, rode an elevator down to the parking lot, and found his Honda. He opened the door for me. My face flushed. “Thanks.”
Inside the car, he leaned over and kissed me. I kissed back, thinking maybe we ought to stay at his place for the night instead of going out. His lips settled a warm fire in my body. Our mouths fit together perfectly, our tongues testing and touching. Everything tingled when he pulled away to turn the key. The engine started up. I kept my eyes on his face the whole way there and tried not to notice his heartbeat, low and insistent, in my ears.
“They have the best meatballs,” he said when we pulled into the parking lot.
“Your mom’s are the best,” I reminded him.
“Mmm. I don’t know about that. Marion’s are pretty good.”
I shook my head. “I’m telling.”
“You would, too. My mom always liked you, Angela. Maybe we can take a trip to Miami and meet up with my parents again.”
I thought back to the woman who so readily welcomed me into her home. She’d hugged me, taken me in without question. I’d felt loved there for the little time we’d had. I missed it. “I’d like that.”
The restaurant was dim. The waiter seated us by a large window, giving me a clear view of the sky. Tommy ordered wine. The red liquid poured into my glass. I sucked at my lower lip, thinking it looked like another liquid I wanted to sip. Lifting it to my lips, I wondered if my stomach would revolt.
I drank.
Tommy smiled, doting on me.
The bittersweet wine ran down my throat. It burned. I felt it all the way down, filling my stomach, draining out into my veins. Certain I wouldn’t retch it out, I drank more and more. The night went on. I ate pasta and felt alive, though it tasted less pleasing than I remembered in my previous life. I could pretend to be human enough to pass in his world. Nothing went wrong for us that night. Through the movie, I stared in wonder at him. The lights from the screen danced over his face. I wanted him that moment. I had to have him for eternity—one way or another. Selfishness pushed me closer until I was kissing up his neck.
He moaned, pulling me close. His chin atop my head, I assaulted his skin with kisses that turned to nips. My teeth grazed over his neck just above the place where his vein pounded out life to his mind. I wanted the sweet elixir beneath that small barrier. I wanted to taste him, his soul.
He took my hand, pulling it toward his crotch where his hardness evidenced just how much he wanted me too. Decadent and lustful, I rubbed along his length beneath his clothes. I sucked at his neck, wanting to break through so much it pained me. His fingers closed over my hand, stilling my efforts to please him, halting the moment and the headiness I felt.
“It’s almost over,” he said. “Do you want to come home with me?”
I nodded.
In the car as we drove to his apartment, I watched the clouds inking over in deeper shades of pink. My hunger would come by the next night, I guessed. For now, we had tonight. I had him for myself. I prayed I could resist the carnal urge to feed from him.
In the elevator, we succumbed once more to the torrid pre-dance of mating. Chests ran along each other. Crotches thrust to meet, kept apart by cloth and patience. The patience would waver soon enough.
Inside his apartment door, I unbuttoned his shirt to push it away. I kissed his chest, making my journey down past the hairs on his chest, at one side of the line leading into his pants. Those too, I unbuttoned and relieved him of. He remained hard for me, turned on by my brash advance. Fingers curled into the band of his boxers. I slid them from him, so I could examine him more closely.
Tommy combed his fingers through my hair. I looked up at his blue eyes and saw the wonder there. Instinct overpowered me. My mind pushed into his thoughts. His eyes, so aware, so bright only moments before, went glassy as I pushed him to a daze with my will. How easy it would be to control him. How a small push could make him believe so many things—anything I wanted of him. He would follow, a lamb to the slaughter, a slave if I so wished it.
I touched the soft skin of his erection, guiding it over my cheek, across my lips. He smelled like soap and man. I breathed him in and out, in and out, prolonging this moment of fantasy.
Releasing him, I stood and undressed slowly, letting him see me but controlling him so that he stayed in place. I should have let him do as he pleased, but my dark side wanted this moment, wanted him inside me as I had envisioned our coupling. Stripped of my dress and my underwear, I sauntered down the hall, my man following behind. His warm hands caressed my shoulders, rubbing away my misgivings. If I would leave with anything, it would be at least with the memory of making love to him.
“I love you,” I said, letting him have back his will.
Lips touched down by my ear. “I love you too, Angela. I’ve dreamed about you ever since I met you. Every night.”
I wished I could have said the same with some truth in it, but my nights were stolen from me. “Make love to me,” I whispered, hoping the sky in the sliver of window by the desk would not turn red soon.
He took my small waist in his big hands and guided me, face down, to the mattress. I lay there, complacent, my legs parting while he eased into position. Poised and ready to enter me, he paused. “Are you sure?” he asked. Thumbs ran circles on my skin.
“Oh yes.” I bucked back, forcing him inside.
He let out a sharp breath.
Slow and tortuous, he pushed farther inside me. Once filled, I looked over my shoulder to see the expression on his face. His eyes were closed, his lips in a blissful frown. Our coupling continued, his thrusts gentle, my hips grinding down for more, for something urgent and harried. He drew out the moments until I rode a wave of euphoria. Hunger became a memory in that time. Only the feel of his body slapping against mine, the pressure of his length advancing, retreating, advancing, stilling. He exploded inside me and cried my name in a desperate plea. I came too, not far behind his release.
Together we lay afterward, our arms and legs entangled, out faces inches apart. We whispered about our future together, about our children-to-be, about a grand wedding by starlight in a wide-open place where flowers perfumed the breeze. He kissed me over and over. I reveled in him. “I love you,” I murmured time and again. “I love you more than life.”
We slept together, I in a state of half-dreaming until just before dawn. The sky bled near its peak. I had underestimated how much time I had. His skin at my lips, I passed my tongue over his neck and felt my teeth lengthen, readying to take more of him. The dark thing inside me begged for a sip, a small drink, a taste only.
I closed my eyes, torn by the decision, but as any predator starved when its meal is laid at its feet, I bit down.
It flowed into me, his blood a taste new and unlike any others. I drank in unhurried swallows, savoring him, feeling something else pass into me. Flurries of his dreams tickled my mind. Dark places where light showed down in gray rays. I saw my body in his dreams, his fantasy to part my legs and taste the sweetness between. His thoughts shifted and changed in mists of fog.
His pulse thumped in my ears, steady, strong. I had only to drink with more fervor and I could halt its pace completely. I could force my blood past his mouth, make him swallow, make him cross over into the darkness with me.
I drank more. I suckled. The heat of frenzy overtook me. My nails grew to claws, sharp and dangerous. My body lit with the thrill of an impending kill.
“Angela...” he said softly, his mind lost in dreams and the hold of my will.
I stopped.
I pulled back. Two perfect holes glistened with wetness on his neck. I stared at them, ashamed. With a deliberate swipe, I sliced open the fleshy part of my thumb and dribbled blood over the wounds to seal away the evidence of a broken promise to myself.
His lips parted and he mumbled.
The holes pulled together. Skin grafted back in place.
I stared at his mouth, knowing I could force my blood there and aware that I would not.
Slipping from the bed, I went to shower. I washed away the scent of him from my body, scrubbed my skin and cleaned my hair with his shampoo. My body ached where he’d invaded me and become part of me. I smiled. His blood ran in my veins.
“…once you taste of a living human, you will want to drink away the rest of its soul. You can’t resist.”
Karada’s words haunted me. I toweled off and went to stand beside my lover’s bed, watching him sleep, wondering if the old vampire was right. Even as I loved Tommy, I wanted to kill him. The urge would not leave me, no matter how I tried to push it away.