by Slay (epub)
“Don’t touch me!” I said, but his grip was tight. I punched at him with my free hand.
“Can you feel it?” he asked me.
I blinked. “Feel what?”
“My heartbeat,” he said.
I rolled my eyes at him. Was he trying to be romantic? His face was stoic. He gazed at me with pleading eyes.
I sighed, then I laid my palm flat on the left side of his chest, pressing hard to feel through the fabric. When I couldn’t feel a heartbeat, I pressed harder. Nothing. Next, I tried to find the pulse on his wrist and his neck. Still nothing. Stunned, I didn’t know what to do or say.
He cried. “I told you that you wouldn’t believe me. I didn’t believe it at first myself. But here I am. Dead. And alive.”
As improbable as it was, I sensed the sincerity in his voice.
“So, is that why you look young enough to be my son?” I asked.
He nodded.
“What are you then?” I whispered. “Some type of zombie?”
“Vampire,” he said. “But it’s nothing like the movies. The girl I’m with is not my partner, if that’s what you are thinking. She’s more like a daughter to me. I turned her when she got sick.”
I shut my eyes and shook my head, trying to make sense of his senseless words.
“Why are you here?” I asked. “Do you live in the States again?”
“I live in Nigeria. I’m taking her to see her family one last time. She was visiting family in Nigeria like I was when she fell ill. When one becomes a vampire, we have to leave our former lives behind. Over time, people start to notice when a person stops aging. I promise, not a day has gone by when I didn’t think of you,” he said.
“But why were you in Indianapolis?” I crossed my arms over my chest. “She lives in Chicago.”
His lips formed a tight line, and he looked away as he spoke.
“I made a detour to see you. I wanted to make sure you were alive and well, but I didn’t want you to see me.”
“You were spying on me?”
“Only briefly. I just wanted to see that you were well, so I stopped by our old home. When I found another family living there, I stopped by your work and watched you walking in. I didn’t expect you to see me, obviously. I didn’t know you would be at the airport.”
So even after all these years, he’d been concerned about me. I took his hand and met his gaze.
“I believe you,” I said. “But this is crazy.”
His expression softened at my touch, and I felt the breath from his sigh of relief on my neck. He pulled me into his familiar arms.
“I could turn you,” he whispered in my ear. “We could be together again.”
My breath caught in my chest at the thought of being with him again. I chuckled nervously and tried to ignore the hope that invaded my heart. “What would you need to do? Bite my neck or something?”
“It's not as sexy as the movies make it out to be,” he said. “Actually, it’s the human who needs to taste the vampire’s blood to turn, not the other way around. All of those movies paint us as predators, but most of the time we are the prey. I have killed mortals before, but usually in self-defense. My blood is in high demand from those who want a taste of eternal life.”
“I see.” I didn’t even want to ask why he had used the term usually.
He brushed my hair away from my face. His fingers felt electric. “But if you'd like, we can try and make it sexy,” he whispered.
I blushed and stepped away from him.
“I . . . don’t think I can commit to eternal life right now,” I said.
“Why not?” he said. “Come with me when I go back to Nigeria. Where could you possibly be going that's more important than this?”
“Like I said, I’m picking up our daughter.”
“I would love to meet her.”
“And then we will be on the way to . . .” I swallowed. “My wedding.”
From the look on his face I knew that if he had a beating heart, it would have stopped.
“Wedding?” he whispered, placing his hand on the wall to steady himself.
“Wedding,” I said. “Your life may have paused after your trip to Nigeria, but mine didn’t. You are asking me to give up not only my mortality, but my future, at the drop of a dime. I can’t do that. I made a commitment to you twenty years ago and you left me. Now, I’ve made a commitment to someone else.”
He closed his eyes, as if trying to calm his mind.
“I had to leave.”
I said nothing.
“You can still marry him.” His face contorted at the thought, but he shrugged. “He’s got, what, another good fifty years in him if he’s lucky? If there is one thing that I have enough of, it’s time. I’d wait for you forever. You could have an infinite future.”
I laughed. “You are 25! You will always be 25 and I’ll be older each year. You really want to come back for an old hag?”
“You are eternal. Age means nothing,” he said. “I could turn you now and you will stop aging, and you could leave him when—"
“I’m not leaving him.”
Derek frowned.
From the corner of my eye I saw the Nigerian girl walking toward us. She looked from Derek, to me, and gave me a shy smile.
“Your flight is about to take off,” she warned. “Didn’t want you to miss it.”
She smiled up at Derek, clearly eager to be done with me. I frowned at her. Derek may see her as a daughter, but was she feeling something more?
“I have to go,” I said, not wanting to prolong this. I needed to see my daughter and get ready for my wedding. I wrapped him in a hug, knowing it would be our last. His hands found their usual resting place on my neck, bringing back the buried memory of him placing them there when we kissed.
“Goodbye Derek.” My heart was heavy.
He pulled away, but Derek's eyes never left mine as he dug his hand into his coat pocket. He took a small object out and placed it into my palm.
“After I saw you on the plane, I prepared this for you.”
Whatever it was felt smooth and cool. He cupped my hand over it and held my palm closed.
“I’ll see you around, Angel,” he said. Then he turned to his friend. “Come on.”
As they walked away, I looked down into my palm to see what he had placed in my hand. It was a tiny glass vial of red blood.
Part Two: Derek
7420 Clark Tree Road was a private beachfront property an hour’s drive away from Orlando, Florida. I was surprised that Lyric would leave Indiana, where all of her friends were, and buy a home here. It was too remote, and she had always been a people person. Maybe as she got older, she and her husband wanted a quiet place to settle down.
I pulled my car into the driveway and took note of the vehicle at my side, a cherry red Prius. Was her husband out? Was he even was still alive?
I got out of the car and walked to the door. Taking a deep breath, I knocked, then listened to the quiet shuffle of feet on the other side of the walls. I could hear her every move as she approached, one of the quirks of being a vampire.
The door opened, and for a moment I thought it was her. She favored Lyric, had the same big hair and wide, beautiful, black eyes. But this woman was thinner and looked to be in her twenties. Even if Lyric had consumed the blood the same day that I gave it to her, it wouldn’t have caused her to age backward.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “You wouldn’t happen to know a woman named Lyric?”
Her eyes lit up with recognition, but she crossed her arms over her chest.
“Who’s asking?”
“I… I’m an old friend,” I said.
The girl was silent for a moment, eyeing me suspiciously. Finally, she answered. “She’s dead.”
I felt like the air had been pulled from my undead lungs.
“No!” I couldn’t stop myself from slamming my fist on the wall of the house. Why didn’t she drink the blood?
The woman took a step back,
reaching for the door in case she needed to slam it in my face and call the police.
I composed myself. “And her husband? Does he live here?”
She shook her head. “Mom never remarried. Broke it off the day before the wedding.”
Mom?
I studied the girl closer, recognizing some of my own features on her face. She had the same chestnut skin and hazel eyes as me. Could it be? It couldn’t. She was too young. By now, my daughter would be in her forties. Unless . . .
“Do you know why you stopped aging?” I asked.
She gasped and tried to close the door, so I spoke quickly.
“I don’t age either, Evelyn.” I said.
She paused, peaking back out of the door at me. “How did you know my name?”
“Your mother told me.”
Her hands trembled. “She thought I would die. I don’t age because mom prayed that I would get better. She didn’t want me to be sick anymore. She said I had a guardian angel that made me this way.”
Though my heart still ached from the news of my wife’s death, I couldn’t help but smile. My angel used my blood to save my daughter's life. Most of the time, being undead made me feel like a monster, and I shuddered at the things the vampires who turned me had required me to do as payment for the gift of eternal life. But now I was Evelyn’s savior. I couldn’t have my wife, but I could get to know my daughter.
“Yes,” I said. “But that guardian angel had a little help from your father.”
The girl shook her head. “My father's dead.”
“Yes, he’s dead,” I said. “The same as you are.”
She studied me closer, loosening her deathgrip on the door. “Are you like me?”
I nodded.
She stepped aside, allowing me into her home. I went inside, both nervous and excited to be in my daughter's home. Had she realized who I was yet?
Her eyes grew wide as the truth dawned on her. A single tear rolled down her face as she wrapped me in a warm embrace.
She looked up at me. “Dad?”
Unfleamed
Penelope Flynn
The Praefect, Yannara Stone-Tejan-Forza lay drowsy and dazed in the nearly pitch-black alley prostrate beside the streetwalker's corpse. Her senses were dulled, overwhelmed by the filth, the noise, the unyielding lumps of the cobblestones beneath her and the blissful taste of blood.
Only her sense of sight was unassailed, her ally in the darkness. In this way her hybrid lineage provided a distinct advantage over the mere mortals surrounding her, these Paradoxans. Normally she could literally see them coming a mile away. But that advantage was of no assistance, in England in the cramped and winding streets of Whitechapel.
In a part of town she would never condescend to be driven through in a carriage, she laid like a bloated sow with the danger she had placed herself in beginning to dawn on her. Unlike the Revenants, whose mechanisms for digesting Paradoxan blood were efficient, her hybrid lineage slowed the process, sapping her energy for a much longer period of time before she was fully functioning. She didn't require a blood drain. But on those rare occasions the feral side contributed by the Revenant half would raise its ravenous head and demand to be satisfied.
She chuckled, imagining the scenario when the authorities came upon them. She an aristocrat of seeming African descent laying in the street near the body of a dead, mangled harlot, drained of nearly every ounce of blood would be quite a sight. She almost laughed out loud when she envisioned the headlines, “African Cannibal Kills in Whitechapel” or “Black Beast Defiles London Streets!”
It was funny, but only for a moment.
She moaned, disgusted, as her mental fog began to lift. The woman had obviously lied when she said she hadn't used any intoxicants within the past two days. Yannara's limbs felt heavy when she tried to rise. The after-effect of draining a drunkard, she mused. Attempting to mist would be futile. It was too soon after ingesting tainted blood. She had ignored her Eynnoi, that separate consciousness that members of the Revenant bloodline possessed. It assessed their circumstances and apprised them of impending peril. She had been impulsive with her choice and now she would pay.
She shifted her head to the left. There it was again. The smell, that familiar olfactory sensation. She tried to crane her neck in the direction it came from but lost the trail... just like before. But it was the same, male and standing downwind. When she breathed in expanding her consciousness, focusing and attempting to pinpoint his location, she discovered that he was moving, not away but toward her. He remained in the shadows until his feet were mere inches from her head.
He spoke in a low and rapid cadence. “What great risk you take. This place is not safe.”
“Not safe? Now, why did I not think of that?” She chuckled.
The male peered down at her. Even at that close proximity, he kept his face obscured. He cocked his head then drawled with a bit of a local accent, “It seems we have an incident here.”
“You don't appear to be the law, so what business is it of yours?” Yannara asked hoping to buy time before he realized that she was immobilized and at his mercy.
“You do realize that there is a proper way to handle these things, to procure a willing subject?”
“I possessed the coin of the realm and she was more than willing to do whatever I had in mind to procure it.” Yannara sniped, trying to get her body to cooperate, to move, to do anything.
The male continued, “It seems neither of you bartered for her current condition, nor yours for that matter.”
Her temper flared. She would have relished backhanding him for his insolence except that at the moment he was probably the only means she had for escaping the alley undiscovered.
“In case you are wondering,” she said, “I still possess coin and other resources for an individual willing to assist me.”
She glanced at the streetwalker’s mangled body, whose brown curls and coat were matted with blood and gore... the type of destruction to the body that a member of the bloodline might inflict during a feral episode.
“It seems I waited too long before embarking on this venture.”
“So it seems,” he muttered dropping to one knee peering into her eyes, then onto her exsanguinating fleams, still fixed in position, still tinged with blood. Then without another word he scooped her from the ground and took off, bounding through London’s twisted backstreets. He ran fast, at an inhuman speed, a speed she could have managed but for her inebriation. A dizziness overtook her, and her eyelids grew heavy. The scenery of the dark streets flew by until they became no more than a blur before she lost consciousness.
When Yannara opened her eyes she was covered by a large, warm blanket that billowed over the bed, which was itself nearly half the size of the room containing it. Again, she smelled the male that she had encountered in the alley. He wasn't visible, but he was nearby.
“Hello!” she called out as she curled up to sitting taking note that the bodice of her tailored sky-blue cotton and lace dress was speckled with blood, but her face and hands had been washed. She shuddered. The thought of being primped while she was unconscious unsettled her, but she had no time for squeamishness.
“You, from the alley... where are we?”
Her companion strolled into the room wearing white shirtsleeves, black trousers held up by black suspenders and a welcoming smile. It lit up his entire face. He carried a small tray with two hot cups of tea along with lemon, honey, cream and biscuits.
“You'll excuse me. Prior to this I have never had occasion to entertain such a distinguished guest,” he said as he placed the tray on the bedside table then stepped away.
Yannara nodded and smiled while taking stock of him and her surroundings.
The apartment was not large, but neither was it small. In the area beyond the bedroom she viewed a maintained space lined with shelves, holding rows of books and collectibles. The furnishings were tasteful and suited to the space, just as he was. He was not tall, at least not as
tall as her Sebastian, yet he was taller than her with a medium build. His hair was dark but just beginning to gray. He wore spectacles and the term that came to mind when she finally decided upon one, was “bookish.”
“I hope you don't mind,” he continued, “I added honey and cream. That is the way you take your tea, yes?”
“Yes.” She replied scrutinizing him.
“I provided biscuits to aid in digestion. It is known that you resist consuming Paradoxan blood. I presume it must inhibit one or more of your abilities... possibly cutting off your mindspeak. Otherwise you probably would have called your driver to retrieve you. You must have been in a terrible feral state to hunt in Whitechapel,” he prattled on.
She held her posture steady studying the man as he moved closer, then nodded and said, “Yes. Paradoxan blood especially that which has been adulterated with pollutants, does inhibit my abilities.”
She sat up taller in the bed, smoothing the wide, coarse braid that ran down her back and past her hips noting, “You seem to know quite a bit about me.”
Then she signed the salutation known to all of the hybridized bloodline and she smiled displaying her entire pearly array, teeth, fangs and fleams all fully engaged.
The male regarded her with hesitancy and then bowed low.
Yannara shifted uneasily beneath the comforter, filled with the tension of a coiled snake. Her brow wrinkled as she inhaled in his general direction then demanded, “Who are you?!”
He hesitated, “Madame, Stone-Tejan-Forza I am, ahem, we are of the same hybrid lineage.”
Yannara's face twisted into a frown and her words rolled out in an offensive growl. “If this is true, then why is it that you fail to formally address me? In your haberdashery, why do you not display your House colors? And why are you hiding your fleams?”
“There, there is an explanation,” he ventured a weak smile exhibiting neither fleam nor fang.
Yannara bolted from the bed and was on the stranger before he exhaled his next breath. Though standing no taller than five feet four inches, Yannara's skills as a fighter and a killer were unparalleled. Speed and precision were her weapons and she wielded them with mortal accuracy. Her talons had sprung into place the moment she bounded onto the man's chest and sent him sprawling to the hardwood floor. His face reddened as he coughed and squirmed to no avail as her talons tightened around his neck.
