Dark Rapture

by Hauf, Michele

  He was making love to this woman without removing her clothes. His lips kissed the delicate skin of her neck as he sucked away her precious life, his hands played roughly over her breasts and hips, stealing her flesh for his own evil pleasure, and his body melded hard to hers, soaking up her shuddering climax.

  And his teeth. His snow-white daggers, pushed along the vein that contained her very mortal essence. Her life.

  Scarlet shivered as she ran her tongue along her lower lip. The control Vince exercised over his victim was wickedly tantalizing. Though the redhead struggled no more, Scarlet couldn’t help wonder if the woman could still feel the rhythmic pump of Vince’s tongue pressing against her neck or the slow thrusting of his groin into hers.

  All of a sudden, Vince released the woman and she slid to the ground in a heap. He reeled backward, hitting the opposite wall with one shoulder, his hands pressed palm-first to his head. An orgasmic moan escaped his lips and he staggered to the left and then to the right.

  He looked more drunk than lost in the throes of some insurmountable passion but Scarlet found it impossible to take her eyes from him. He breathed deeply, his gasps sounding to her like a man in passionate fury, ready to come again if only given the chance. She was reminded of Sebastian lying over her, gasping as they made love.

  Maybe there is something more to this.

  She eyed the girl heaped on the ground with the words fuck you scrawled across her chest, and then looked to Vince. The girl, Vince, and back again.

  A noise at her feet startled Scarlet out of her trance. The alley cat meowed and glared up at her. Scarlet eyed the tiny beast, intent on gazing up at her, as if it were trying to communicate telepathically.

  And then a shuddering feeling swallowed her up. Not this way. She jerked her head back to Vince. She was a part of this…an accomplice.

  To murder.

  “I’ve got to get out of here, Vince. I can’t be here.”

  She ran down the alleyway, stopped at the corner of the building to glance back for one last look, and then crossed the parking lot.

  Chapter Six

  The back of the limo was cool and dark. Scarlet thanked Anthony for his early arrival, and settled into the soft maroon leather, her fingers curling about the short stack of diaries.

  Don’t think about it, she thought. Erase from your mind everything you saw Vince do. That was not you. It never will be.

  Frantic to occupy her racing thoughts, Scarlet popped open another diary and traced her finger across the first few sentences.

  Esmarelda woke to a burning streak of daylight stretching across the red velvet. She pulled the coverlet over her face and closed her eyes.

  He is truly a beast.

  Could that be Vince? If the legacy were true, than perhaps Adriano El Sangriento could be Vince’s forefather. The man responsible for Vince’s murderous nature. But Adriano must have a soul. Somewhere…

  From beneath the sanctity of the warm spread Esmarelda touched the smooth skin on her neck. No wounds! But how? He had bitten her last night. Sunk his sharpened daggers deep into her flesh and moaned the most animalistic growl as he did. Her blood had brought him great pleasure. Far greater pleasure than the sexual act had.

  Esmarelda let her hand slide across her stomach and between her legs. That pain too, had only been momentary. As with his bite, the pleasure that followed had been incredible.

  A beast?

  No. He did not harm her more than to take his pleasures. And the wounds had already healed.

  But that is just it, her conscience whispered, he took his pleasures. What of yours?

  ***

  “You want this too, Scarlet!” Vince yelled after her. “I know you do!”

  He pulled a knife from his pocket and bent over the redhead. He pressed hard, pulling the blade across the bite marks on her neck.

  “Seems the woman is a trifle repulsed at your choice of pleasures.”

  Vince jerked around. He scanned the alleyway for the smug voice he had heard, finding, sitting on the middle of the iron stairway overhead, a man who may have witnessed the entire scene.

  With one great leap he landed on the stairs. “Who are you?” He grabbed the man’s collar, but immediately dropped it, pulling his hand to his chest as if he’d been burned.

  “Your hasty violence intrigues me.” The man settled back against the brick wall and straightened the collar of his black jacket, ignoring Vince’s outburst.

  “What the hell do you mean?” Vince gasped. “Where are you from?” He looked at his palm, knowing the familiar sensations that had shocked him upon touching the man. The shimmer. “You’re a…a vampire?”

  The man nodded.

  “Yet I had no idea you were near. Why?”

  It was quite dark in the protection of the tall buildings. Vince was unable to make out much of the man’s appearance other than the unruly hair tousled about his head in a nonexistent style. Shadows worked across his face, a frightening mask of utter beauty and inner violence preying from murky eyes indiscernible of color in the darkness.

  “You were too involved in the kill to notice me. Who was the girl?” the stranger asked with a nod down the alleyway. “Not the heap on the ground but the one who ran.”

  Vince bent close, but faltered, catching his hand on the railing when he felt more as if he were being peeled layer by layer by this man’s shadowed eyes. “Who are you?”

  “Was she a friend?” the stranger asked, obviously hearing Vince’s inquiry but having no mind to comply.

  His ignorance infuriated Vince but he played along. This was a chance he’d never before encountered. The only vampires he had ever known were Scarlet and Sebastian, and then there was the devious Francesco—may his soul be burning in hell at this very moment. But now here he stood with another, a fellow vampire.

  Vince was cautious. “She’s a friend. What’s it to you? If you’re thinking about laying your fangs on her you can forget it because she already belongs to someone else.”

  “Another vampire.” The man didn’t ask, he stated the fact as if he knew it. “I sensed she was of our kind. I also assumed she is not yours to judge from the way she ran.”

  Tilting back a shoulder, the man eyed the roof ledge eight feet above the two. His hair, a deep mahogany in the glow of the streetlights, blew out across his shoulders as a gust of wind passed over their heads. He jumped, leaving Vince staring up.

  “She must mean a great deal to you for you to allow her to watch such a secret part of yourself.” The stranger leaned over the rooftop and gestured for Vince to join him. “I have a feeling you guard your secret well. Though I also sense you wish for companionship in your devil’s lifetime.”

  Vince looked down over the alleyway’s sparkling pools of water and grime. The dead woman’s face stared up at him, teasing him with her lost life. I shall haunt you in your dreams.

  Yes, the nightmares would come later tonight. Didn’t matter. He was used to the crazy images that flashed into his mind, images of his victim’s nightmares. They were a part of the bargain when taking someone’s life. With death, the victim’s nightmares were transferred to the vampire’s soul. It usually took a couple hours or sometimes days before they completely left, just depended on how ravaged a life the victim had led.

  Vince snapped around and leapt to the rooftop, finding the man had crossed the building and sat on the far side, his long black coat blowing out behind him.

  “I wanted to show her what it was like.” Vince approached slowly. “Tasting death.”

  “She never has?”

  “No.” Vince sized the new vampire up, sure to let him see he was not afraid. He would attack if provoked. “The vampire she lives with, her blood master, would never permit it. He’s way too restrained and forces too many rules on her.”

  “And you think you can relieve her of this…restrictive relationship?”

  The man’s curious grin charmed Vince closer and he sat next to him on the roof ledge, their l
egs dangling above the alleyway.

  “None of your business.” Vince found from where he sat the glow of the street light flowed across the bottom of the stranger’s face. He was surprised at the beauty that graced his smooth, angular jawline. A thin mustache traced above a bow mouth, and dark shadows hollowed the flesh below his cheekbones. The light glimmered and flashed off a thick silver cross that peeked out from the man’s jacket. “I don’t even know who you are?”

  “Forgive me.” He casually offered his hand, weighed heavily with thick silver rings and stones of shimmering blue. “My name is Federico Bellange. Rico, to my friends, and to you. I caught the last part of your show. Tell me, Vince, why is it you associate with so many mortals? I sensed you were the only of our kind in the band.”

  “Mmm,” Vince agreed with a laughing shrug. “It’s a long story. The lead guitarist is my best friend. At least I think he is. Things have been kind of funky between the two of us since I’ve vamped out.”

  Rico nodded and stared across the rooftops. “So you’ve only recently become one of God’s wicked angels?”

  “Wicked angel? Why do you call us that? A vampire is the furthest thing from an angel I can imagine.”

  “Ah…but we are all born onto this earth as innocent, sinless angels.” Rico’s voice was gentle and deep, harboring a soothing glint of restrained evil. “Even Satan was once an angel, if you’ll recall. Lucifer, Bringer of Light, condemned to rule the bowels of hell. But we, the vampire, still roam the earth, not quite sure whether our final sleep shall bring us back to our heavenly creator, or perhaps down into the darkness. Either way you look at it, we are the wicked ones, the devilish souls who live on human blood.”

  Vince shrugged, finding he liked the term. Wicked angel. Though, as for someday meeting his maker, he was sure heaven’s gates would be locked and securely bolted against him and all of his kind. “So where did you come from, man? What do you do?”

  “Basically, I enjoy my life to the fullest. I have my family of friends who surround me with love and devotion. I don’t have a mortal job, nor do I need one. I’ve amassed a great fortune over the centuries. But I sense we will be greeting the sun if we are to discuss my entire life story.”

  Rico gave Vince a camaraderie slap on the knee. “I like you, Vince. Perhaps you’d come to my home tonight. We already have one thing in common, and after watching you perform, I know there are many other things. Why don’t you come along and check out the recording studio in my home? It’s a marvel, though I myself have no use for it other than occasionally plinking out a tune on the piano. I believe the former owners used to do orchestral recordings before they, um…expired.”

  “A recording studio? Cool.” Vince looked across the street. Scarlet was nowhere to be seen. Must have called a cab, or else Anthony was early. His stomach swelled, satisfied with the nameless woman’s life. He nodded. “Yeah, I’d like to check it out.”

  ***

  Scarlet set the diaries on her vanity, and then opened the window, allowing a surprisingly cool breeze into the room, which kissed her cheeks as she sailed into the bathroom. Even after reading of Esmarelda’s deflowering, her thoughts were not long from the debauchery she had witnessed tonight.

  A flick of the light switch and her image appeared in the mirror, her eyes underlined by darkness, and her hair dripping with sweat and fear.

  “Why can I see my reflection?” she whispered, knowing Anthony was about. He hadn’t put a change of sheets on this morning and from the sound of crisp snapping cotton he was doing that now.

  Quivering like a child lost in the storm, she waited an answer to her helpless question. And then the anger emerged, rage that had built over the past months, rage from what Sebastian had done to her when he took her mortal life away, and the rage over the lack of control over her own life.

  “Vampires are not supposed to be able to see their reflections!”

  With a vigorous thrust, her fists smashed the mirror, sending silver fragments and large slivers of glass about the room and floor. Sharp pieces slashed down her fingers and over the tops of her wrists in long, stinging gashes. Scarlet stumbled back to the tub and buried her face in her bleeding hands.

  It would have been easier if she hadn’t been able to see her reflection.

  “Why am I still so human?”

  If she had been blind to the mirror as fictional vampires were then at least she would be a full-fledged monster, an oddity that had explanation, so different and incapable of human emotions.

  But as it was, her human nature made it hard to accept, to understand what she had witnessed tonight.

  “What have I done?”

  She tried to erase the image of Vince holding the dead girl in his arms as he used her in a macabre tool to satisfy his own unholy cravings. He had killed! And he had enjoyed it.

  And I watched.

  “If only I weren’t so human,” she started. Then Vince’s crime wouldn’t seem so terrible. Would it?

  But part of her couldn’t help think maybe it wasn’t. Maybe Vince’s victim had died a pleasant death under the blissful bite of the vampire. Maybe she had wanted to die in his arms as the sucking rhythms seduced her into unconscious dreams of everlasting life entwined in the arms of a handsome stranger. And in turn, her death gave immense pleasure to Vince.

  “Why must you forbid me to do this, Sebastian?” Scarlet rocked on the edge of the tub. “Is it because you don’t want me to have such pleasure? Am I to be your slave for eternity? Why must you always have control?”

  Vince’s words teased her mind. You would make such a lovely vampire…

  She needed comfort. Something to pacify her manic thoughts. “Come home to me, Sebastian.”

  “Scarlet?” Anthony tapped gently on the bathroom door. “Is everything all right? Did you drop something?”

  She exhaled and stared at her bleeding hands. The scent of her own blood did not arouse her as mortal blood did. She examined the silver shards scattered across the vanity and stone floor. “It’s nothing, Anthony.”

  Anthony peeked inside. “What happened?” When he saw the mess he immediately went to clean it up, the blood not bothering him in the least. It was to be expected from his employers. “Scarlet, there, take that towel and wipe off your hands. Run them under cool water.”

  She did, but it didn’t matter. The wounds had already healed, an intrinsic characteristic of the vampire condition. “I don’t know how to explain it, Anthony. There’s not much I can explain about myself.”

  She trudged past him, in no mood for mortal company. Right now, she needed to lose her thoughts in something other than Vince Lyons.

  Anthony finished picking up the biggest shards of glass from the floor and swept the smaller glistening slivers into the dustpan while Scarlet sat in the bedroom on the windowsill, watching dark thunderclouds press over the moon. The breeze cooled her face and floated the pink sheers into the room.

  “I’ll order you a new mirror.”

  “No,” she said quickly, almost too quickly, for Anthony froze in the bathroom doorway with broom and dustpan in hand. Scarlet shrugged, trying to act as if it was nothing unusual. “I don’t need it. There’s the mirror in here. I’m just so tired now, Anthony, leave me alone.”

  Seeing she was in an abnormally discontented state, Anthony flipped the bathroom light off and started out of her room, never being one to question a vampire when he or she was in a foul mood.

  But he stopped by the door and spoke softly. “You do know it is him who has so little control?”

  So he had overheard her. “What do you mean?”

  “I sense your discontent, Scarlet. You live with a man who must constantly know your whereabouts and exercise a certain control that makes you feel lost, not really yourself. While I can’t say I could ever begin to understand the vampire condition, I will tell you that you are not the captive.”

  She tilted her head, prompting him to go on.

  “Well…Sebastian is. He is
the one who cannot function without you. That is why he keeps such a tight grasp on you.”

  She had never thought of it that way before. “So you’re saying…”

  “You are in control, Scarlet. Don’t ever think you are not.”

  Anthony winked and left her to her brooding.

  But his words buried deeply into her being. You are in control…

  Chapter Seven

  Spain, 13th century

  “How is it that you…that you came to…” She didn’t know how to broach the subject. Thankfully Adriano read her mind.

  “That I came to be a vampyre?”

  “Were you born that way?”

  “Nay.” He laid a hand across her thigh and settled back against the coverlet. A tuft of gray fur flicked across his ear. “I was cursed by a witch.”

  “A witch! Heaven’s mercy. Adriano, how awful for you.”

  He gave a subtle nod of his head as if caught up in the torrential memory of his past. “I agree with you. It is dreadful this life I must lead. But I have no choice. Well…I had a choice…of sorts.”

  “Tell me, husband. Tell me everything so I may better understand you. I want to know you completely. For only than can I serve you as best as I can.”

  Adriano let out a gentle sigh and smoothed his hand along Esmarelda’s cheek. Like a gentle lamb she nudged her face into his touch, encouraging more if offered. It had been nary a fortnight and she had already fallen deeply into his spell. It mattered not to her that he was a vampire, for she had begun to see past the beast and to the true heart that lay beneath the vicious rumors.

  “You are too good, lady Esmarelda. God’s tears, I do not deserve you.”

  She lay down, resting her head in his lap, her silence a plea for his confession.

  “It was decades ago,” he started. “I was all of seventeen. A feisty young rascal, with eyes only for the ladies and not for the harvest my father tried so desperately to make me participate in. I was enjoying the rites of manhood. I took great pleasure in discovering all there was to this lovely creature called woman. Until I came upon the witch.”