The Soul of a Vampire #1

by Rachel E Rice

“From who? There’s no way to defend yourself from a witch or a vampire.”

  “Then why not give myself up to him or her and stop all this running and hiding.” I set the statue down on the kitchen isle and leaned close to Sebastian, pushed the collar of my sweater down and leaned my neck to the side.

  Looking up at him, “Are you one of them? A vampire?” I said in jest, “Then take me and make me an undead. Do whatever you want with me. I give in.” I snickered.

  Turning away in horror, his eyes shining like polished jade, he inhaled as if the air was taken from the room and he couldn’t breathe, and he exhaled and said, “You don’t know what you’re saying or doing, don’t do that again.” His voice cold as ice.

  “I thought you would stay at the hospital until morning? Give me some time to myself.”

  “I took off early to bring you a bottle of wine.” His voice softened. “And to make sure you were alright. I can’t be too careful with Samantha running around.”

  “Your girlfriend. Thanks, but I can handle Samantha.”

  “How many times do I have to tell you she will kill you?” He reached for my shoulders and brought me close to him.

  “But you won’t let her. Will you?” I smiled.

  “I could kill you myself,” he said looking at me with a long erotic tortured gaze. The sound of his voice, a broken whisper, a sensual rasp of excitement, which made me tremble with anticipation in his arms.

  Staring back at him I had to admit to the attraction I felt for him, and his for me. I didn’t want to acknowledge that this man thrilled me and filled me with desire.

  “Go ahead. It would be better than dying of boredom in this fucking place,” I said and turned my back on him to reach for the wine. I needed to get some space between us. He placed his hands over my hand and looked at me as he turned me around.

  “Say you don’t want me to kill you.”

  “I don’t want you to kill me. Does that make you happy?” He let my hand go. We stood looking at each other.

  “What now?” I said.

  “Nothing,” he said. And he turned to walk away, and then he turned back as if he had a second thought, to meet my eyes.

  “What?” I said.

  “Marry me.”

  “Are you out of your mind? I don’t want to marry anyone. Well not yet. But I do know this handsome guy in school I might want to fuck.” His hands tightened on me. “You’re hurting me,” I said. He released me quickly and looked at me as if he had injured me. I walked around to get the wine opener.

  Turning to him I said with a smirk, “Are you jealous?”

  “You have to be in love to be jealous,” he said. And I threw the opener at him. He caught it. Some reflex, I thought. His gaze never left mine and he walked around and held me again. “Why are you angry? Did you want me to be jealous when you made that remark? Why do you have to say those things to me? One day you will go too far,” he said his voice heated, and simmering with unrestrained passion as his eyes met mine.

  I couldn’t control my heartbeat. I couldn’t control my need to be held. I couldn’t control my attraction to him.

  His body close to mine where I could feel his coldness because we were meld together and I gave him my heat. He leaned giving me a heart stopping kiss. The kind that made my body shudder. I lay my head to the side and before I knew anything he lifted me in his arms, and was climbing the stairs two or three steps at a time.

  Chapter Ten-Sebastian

  Zoey took nothing serious. Maybe it was because of her youth. I should have turned her when I had a chance, but she was too young. She was only fifteen when Aare wanted to change her. I saw what he had done to the younger girls when they became teens, and so I took her and fled with her.

  We hid out in Spain and Italy for a while, but all she had known was my family. And many nights she cried herself to sleep. I know she thought I was cruel for separating her again from a family she thought she loved. But she knew nothing of what was waiting her.

  My mother and father and brothers and one of them would have eventually turned her into a lifeless creature where they could control her forever. I could never see her like that because she was too warm and full of life, but that was the future of all the children who walked through my father’s house.

  They were to be changed after they reached eighteen.

  I thought of those days when I lay her across her bed as I helped her disrobe. I looked down at her. Her body supple, warm and youthful. Her skin flawless. Her mouth slightly parted where I could hear her breathe.

  Zoey was a beautiful living being and I envied her. I needed her. She reminded me of all that was innocent in the world, and that life was precious, and there was no way I could take it from her.

  The darkness in the room masked the cold white of my skin. But it would be sunlight soon. “Tell me you want me as much as I want you?” I asked her. I needed to hear her voice her affection for me.

  “I think I want you more than you want me,” she said as I leaned down to kiss her soft lips. Her lips swollen and red with lust. Her eyes warm and trusting. And her neck. It took all my control to kiss it without plunging my fangs into her. Maybe I could just taste her sweet blood, I thought. I wouldn’t draw more than I need to satisfy my need for her.

  I couldn’t trust myself. It had been years since I taste and savored the blood of a human I loved and wanted so much.

  The last time I tried at the insistence of the woman I met and thought I loved, the rapture of her blood overcame me, and I didn’t want to stop feeding and I didn’t stop until it was too late. I see her eyes now. It went from bright to exciting. She laid her neck to the side like Zoey did, waiting for me to kiss her, and then her eyes went dim and the light left, and all that was in front of me was a shell.

  Had I stopped at one point she would have been like me and even then I could have lived with what I had done, but the smell of her sweet blood sent me into a feeding frenzy, where I had no control.

  That’s why I will never tempt myself again, especially with Zoey.

  I smelled Zoey’s body and my want and need swelled in me. I touched her soft hair and sniffed it as I closed my eyes remembering how she grew into the woman I know today, and how much I want her now.

  Raking my fingers through her scented washed hair, the sweet fragrance of fresh rain water and roses took me back. I closed my eyes and I see her as a teenager sitting in front of her parents’ house. I remember that spring day and the smell of the air. And I remember what it felt like to be a young man in love when I saw her as a young woman. It’s like that now with her.

  “Would it be terrible if I were to lay with you like this for a lifetime and never want to leave you?” I asked Zoey.

  She turned and pushed her leg across me and lay on top of me naked. The feeling of lust and then love claimed my thoughts and then my body.

  “How are you going to love me if you’re fully clothed?” she said and she helped me take off my shirt. And then my shoes and pants.

  I lay there bear with her watching intently at me. “You’re so pale. You need some sun,” she said trailing her finger across my chest and up to my mouth. I took her finger into my mouth and she pulled it out and placed her lips where her finger once lay.

  Then she kissed my chest and kissed my mouth. Her lips closing on mine. I smelled her fresh breath and kissed her with the passion and hunger I reserved for only her.

  My tongue in her mouth. My breathing hard and my need ready to burst.

  She was taking everything from me as if she was the vampire. She owned me. My soul and my body.

  I could never be the same from the time she walked into my life. But now how could I explain to her what I am, and that my life is long and hers will be short. And if I don’t change her then I will have to spend an eternity without her love.

  “You are the only woman I’ve ever loved.” She looked me in the eyes as if I had given her the most precious present.

  “No man has ever said t
hat to me. You love me?” she questioned with a small voice. “You are the first. No,” and she giggled, “my father was the first to say that, but I doubt you have the same intentions as my father,” she said to me.

  “No. My intentions aren’t honorable. I want to make love to you. I want to feel your warmth and smell your lust for me.” I gently turned her on her back and lay over her. I wanted to hear her tell me she loved me too, but she didn’t say it then. But I could wait. I can wait a lifetime and then some.

  Leaning over her she placed her hands around my neck. “I was wondering when you would want to make love to me. I thought maybe I had to rape you,” she said to me with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes.

  “So what you said about wanting to fuck a man was all a joke?” She placed the tip of her finger in her mouth and shook her head yes.

  “The man was you.”

  She smiled and I kissed her nipple and she raised her hips to me and I placed myself inside of her. At first it was difficult. I kept trying as she lay there smiling until the smile was replaced by a painful moan.

  She grimaced because of the coolness of me entering her and I smiled because of her heat covering my flesh.

  “You’re a virgin,” I said not out of surprise. I had watched her from the time she was fifteen until now and I knew her habits.

  She was a homebody, cooking, and cleaning for her father. Going to school and never accepting a date. I didn’t know what I would have done if she had gone out on a date, but then I did know, but I didn’t want to admit that to myself. I couldn’t have her and I didn’t want anyone else with her.

  What would I have done if she didn’t end up here with me? I didn’t want to think about that so I placed those thoughts away, with the rest of all the thoughts of hundreds of years crowding my tormented mind, because today, I have beautiful memories to add to them.

  “I was hoping I didn’t stay a virgin forever. Who wants to be an old maid?”

  “You know that expression?” I asked.

  “Some things are universal.” She kissed me and I felt her heart beat wildly.

  “You’re no longer a virgin,” I said remember what happens to a virgin. I had to control myself more now than ever since the smell of her sweet blood could make me wild with blood lust.

  “You’re the culprit,” she said kissing me and bearing down on my hips pushing me farther into her. “And now you have to make me an honest woman.” She smiled and somehow I knew she was kidding.

  We were two people who needed each other for warmth and love. She needed my protection and I needed everything she had to offer whether it was a lot or just this one night to be with her until the sun came and I had to enter into my room and sleep alone. But I wanted to sleep with her. I wanted to sleep with Zoey for all of eternity.

  Zoey’s tongue moved across her mouth, her eyes shut, her head to the side as I kissed her neck. Her scent was overpowering as I merged my body into hers and she raised her hips to meet me. I sucked her neck and concentrated so that I didn’t make a mistake and draw blood.

  Once I did, I may not be able to control myself and I needed control.

  As I fell deep into her, I felt her warmth, I felt her love course through me. I knew then what it felt like to be human again. I wanted this feeling, I desired this feeling over all the years of waiting for her.

  I sought this feeling from her, and now that I have it, I can’t let it go. I can’t let her go. I can’t live without her.

  When my orgasm came, it was like the breaking of light over my body. I wanted to scream not from pain, but from the joy of knowing that I had found love. That I had found what I had been searching for all these hundreds of years.

  Chapter Eleven-Zoey

  I wasn’t sure what came over me. One minute I can’t stand him and the next I can’t live without him. When he placed me in his arms and carried me up the stairs, I lay my head on his cold hard muscular chest. I was burning up. Having a temperature that’s high all the time, which stayed with me constantly night and day, his body became a relief from that everlasting warmth.

  The doctors said that they didn’t know why I lived this long. No one can keep a temperature like that forever.

  “The heat from your body is mesmerizing,” Sebastian said. “I know now why I love you. I know now why I can’t stay away from you.” I didn’t know but I welcomed him to enlighten me.

  “Because of my unusual warmth?”

  “You can say that. I feel more human than I have ever. With you of course more than with any human I’ve been with.”

  “You constantly say that. You talk about being human as if it’s something foreign to you.”

  “But it is. I’m not what you call human. At least not anymore.” I narrowed my eyes and his expression changed as if he misspoke, or had a slip of the tongue.

  I sat up away from him. Pulling myself from his body as I glanced at him confused by his bewildering words. Had it finally dawn on me what I was hearing. I had heard him say this before, but never paid attention and thought he was trying to scare me the way a child is afraid after reading Hansel and Gretel. And that thing about a witch.

  Sebastian didn’t just mention witches and werewolves, he threw in vampires. They were the most hideous and loathsome of tales, where vampires can creep in your bedroom at night and drain your blood and you will become one of them.

  Of course there are no such things as vampires my mind said to me. I slanted my head and raised an eyebrow and cut a glance at him.

  “After you’ve made love to me, this is what you’re revealing to me that you’re a werewolf of some kind?” I questioned.

  I was ready to give him one of my barefaced grins. What a silly idea. What a nut I’ve found among all the nuts I had to pick from. Of all the idiots I’ve come across and ass holes that I could have fallen for, I’ve fallen for the biggest wackiest one of all. I shook my head and closed my eyes for a second in disbelief.

  “I’m not a werewolf,” he said with cold sarcasm. I breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe there was help for him after all. He’s a doctor and quite handsome and not a bad catch. I could do worse. I lay back into his arms feeling a sense of profound relief.

  “I’m a vampire.” His voice rang with a distant sadness.

  “Oh for fuck sake. Did you have to tell me something like that just when I was beginning to like you? I could accept it if you said you were a werewolf, and you could have been taunted as a child where you were unusually hairy. I can see that, because you have a head of hair a werewolf would envy. That is if I believed in werewolves. But I don’t, and now you want me to believe in something more outrageous. Like the kind that sucks your blood, kind of vampire.”

  His eyes wavered to me and then around the room as if he had to leave, but he didn’t want to go just yet.

  “Yes. The kind that sucks your blood.” I glanced at him and laughed. Not a huge laugh as before but a small laugh because I really didn’t want to know all this. There’s a saying that ignorance is bliss and there is a reason for it. I moved away from him as if he had a plague. I put one foot on the floor and then the other as if I would run, but if he was really a vampire, where could I run?

  I just had terrific mindless sex with a vampire, and now I wanted to run away from him. Not because I didn’t like him or because he wasn’t my idea of a boyfriend, but because I was scared out of my mind and I finally believed him.

  “Where are you going? I’m not going to harm you. If I wanted to harm you, I would have done it the night I found you outside that club.”

  “What are you going to do to me?”

  By asking that question I had almost fell into the trap of accepting that he could be a vampire. I had to stay with reality and not fall into fantasy land.

  Standing with my hands to my side trembling and shaking, I turned and reached for my robe. What did I think I could cover up because he had seen everything there was to see and been with me half the night kissing my body. And he had taken care of m
e for months. As he said before, he knew every freckle on my body. I wished I had paid attention before tonight.

  He turned to answer my question. His eyes locked on mine. “I’m going to love you forever.” Chills rose on my skin from the finality of his words, and his tone, and the warmth of his voice.

  “Well if you are talking about making love to me, I don’t think that is possible anymore.” I made a dash to the bathroom to take a shower to wash away the unholy love I had engaged in. I scrambled to lock the door behind me. Rushing for the shower, I felt his cool breath on my back. He placed his finger lightly there. I jumped and turned to face him.

  “I know every freckle on you. And that small strawberry birth mark under your arm near your breast.”

  “You scared me I didn’t hear you.” I breathed out loud through my teeth. “How did you get in here? The doors are locked.”

  “Why should you be afraid of me? I have touched all of you and now I know what I want and that is you.” He had this serious stone face and cold eyes watching at me.

  “I don’t know what I want. I’m too young to devote my life to you. Anyway, if you are a vampire how old are you?”

  “More than five hundred years. I don’t really know.”

  “See what I mean. You’re too old for me.” I shot him a weak smile. I tried to lighten the seriousness of his words, but he wasn’t laughing, and I was more afraid of him than I have ever been. It’s a strange thing that once your eyes are open, and you can see the light, and the light is too glaring, then you beg for darkness.

  I was begging to go back to the point where I thought everything coming from him was a joke. I knew someone was trying to kill me and I thought it was the people who had kidnapped me as a child. It was, but I thought it was his family who operated some kind of human traffic ring to kidnap young children, and sell them. Maybe try to kill me because I knew too much, but I knew nothing except now I know they are inhuman creatures. They are vampires.

  But I’m still not convinced because I can’t wrap my brain around the idea that vampires exist.