by Kallysten
Out of the Box 10
Kallysten
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2009 Kallysten
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written consent of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
The right of Kallysten to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First Published April 2009
First Edition
All characters in this publication are purely fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Edited by Mary S.
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Author’s Note
Three years ago, I wrote a very short story for the Confessions to Venus line of the now defunct Venus Press. Virginia and Anando entered my life. I thought I would take them for a spin on the dance floor and move on to other characters. How wrong I was...
Before long, I could hear Virginia’s voice again. She had more to confess. Much more. As I wrote other stories, short and long, she and Anando were never far from my thoughts, demanding that I reunite them again. What had started as a purely sexual encounter was turning into a love story, much to my surprise.
Three years later, Virginia has said all she had to say; it’s Anando who will tell us how it ends. I can only hope you enjoyed their journey as much as I did, and that this last dance is a fitting goodbye.
Kallysten, March 2009
Out of the Box 10
The elevator doors opened with a whisper. Virginia was leaving. I could stop her still. All I would have needed to do was go to her. Call her name. A word, maybe even just a look, and I was sure she would stay. With me. Here. Anywhere, probably. For as long as I wanted. As long as I let her.
I didn’t move.
I couldn’t.
I couldn’t move or call her back, just like I hadn’t been able to sleep that night, and for the same reason. If I had allowed myself to sleep by her side again then, if I moved now, I’d never let her go. Only pain lay that way.
The thing about living as long as I have is that there comes a time when you can’t fool yourself anymore. You can try, of course. You can ignore the warning signs. You can tell yourself that you’re not feeling what you know perfectly well you are, indeed, experiencing. You can pretend you still have time to pull back from the fire without getting burned.
I did all this. I lied to myself. And the whole time, I knew I was lying.
That’s why I didn’t stop Virginia. That’s also why I listened intently for the elevator to return, and clenched my hands on the sheets when I heard the doors again, then steps coming toward my room. For the few seconds that it lasted, hope was bittersweet.
“Silly man.”
Leaning against the doorjamb, Mary crossed her arms and shook her head as she looked at me. Her expression matched her voice: exasperated. I rolled onto my stomach, turning my face away from her. I hadn’t forgiven her yet for chaining me up. I wouldn’t forgive her either for bringing Virginia to New York. At least, not any time soon.
I couldn’t forgive her, and yet at the same time I was grateful. That was what thoughts of Virginia did to my mind.
It would have been too much to hope that Mary would leave me alone. With a little sigh, she came to the bed, and I felt the mattress dip when she first sat down, then lay against my back, her arm draped loosely over me.
“You still have time to go after her.”
I didn’t respond. I knew that only too well. I was trying the best I could to stop myself from going.
“Why did you let her go?” she insisted.
“Why did you bring her here?” I asked back, growing annoyed.
She chuckled quietly. “Because I was tired of seeing you moping day in and day out, waiting for her calls. Because I wanted to see what kind of woman can turn my Childe into a lovesick teenager.”
I wanted to protest—I don’t mope, and neither do I act like a child. However, it was an entirely different remark that came to my lips. “You know what kind of women I like. Or have you forgotten?”
After three hundred years, the bitterness was still thick in my words, surprising even me. She pressed her lips to the back of my neck.
“One day,” she murmured, her mouth caressing my skin with each word, “You’ll forgive me. But I’m done apologizing. I only—”
“I know,” I cut in gently. I rested my arm over hers on the sheet, covering her hand with mine and linking our fingers together. “I know you did it for me. And I did forgive you.”
I just couldn’t forgive myself.
“Then isn’t it time to move on? Or will you punish yourself until the end of times for what no one could have predicted?”
Was this what she thought it was about? Punishment? It wasn’t. And I had moved on. I had known many women since then. I shared a few happy years with a handful of them. In the end, though, it was always the same heartache—for them, because they grew old when I didn’t; for me, because I always ended up alone.
“Anando? Talk to me.”
“And say what?”
“What’s so special about her? How did she get past the armor you wrapped around your heart?”
I stared unseeingly at the frame of light growing around the drapes. How had Virginia slipped into my heart? I could remember our first night as if it had happened just hours earlier instead of months. I hadn’t known, then, that she would become so special to me. I had just realized she was special in and of herself. Special enough that I had been glad to see her return, time after time. Special enough that I had come to want no one but her. But I couldn’t have defined what made her unique.
“She’s just a human woman,” I said at last, talking to myself as much as to Mary. “There’s no reason for her to be different from other women.”
“But she is.”
Of course she was. One thing was the same, however, for her as for any woman I had played with for a few hours or a few years. I refused to risk changing them. I wouldn’t make that mistake again. And while she hadn’t asked me to do it, she had come dangerously close to the subject. I knew, from experience, that once the idea entered their minds, they never backed away. It might take them years to finally ask to be turned into a vampire. It might take them days. But they always asked. They always had the same reasons, the same perfectly sensible, perfectly understandable reasons. It wasn’t easy to say no and disappoint them. It wasn’t easy to leave when they didn’t stop asking. But the alternative—staying to watch them change, either by my fangs or by another’s—that was something I just couldn’t do.
“Tell me something,” Mary said after a few minutes. “Where would you have gone if I hadn’t been there?”
I tensed in her arms before I even realized I had done so. “Why wouldn’t you be?”
She laughed. “Only young children think that their parents are immortal, love. You’re not a child, and I’m not your mother. Surely, you realize I won’t always be there.”
I turned my head on the pillow to give her a hard l
ook. She laughed again.
“Don’t look at me like that. I’m not going to take a walk in the sun tomorrow, or any time soon.”
I could only frown. ‘Not any time soon’ was very different from ‘never.’
“You’ve thought about it,” I said, almost accusing.
“I’ve been alive for a long time.” She was dodging my question; we both knew it. “I’ve lived. I’ve loved. I’ve laughed and cried. There is very little I haven’t experienced. If I died today, I would have no regrets. Just fears.”
For the life of me, I couldn’t have said where she was going with that line of thought.
“Fears?” I repeated. “Fears about what comes after?”
“Yes, but not the way you think. I fear about what it would be like for my Childer when I can’t help them anymore. Did you know Laurent started a clan?”
I shrugged at the abrupt change of subject. I had heard the news, but I didn’t care much. Laurent was her Childe, too, but he was two hundred years my junior, and I had never lived with him and Mary.
“And Leticia is in love with a Master.” A thin smile pulled at her lips, but it didn’t touch her eyes. She was watching me like a hawk, no doubt wondering how I’d react. “She was so sure we couldn’t love, and now she’s all but married. He made her stop killing, too.”
Those few words hurt like as many slashes from a whip. Someone else had given back to Leticia what we had shared while she was human—what we had lost when Mary had turned her for me. I wish I could say I wasn’t jealous. My love for her had withered with time and regrets, but I still remembered what we’d had, what I thought we could have forever, and what a mess it had ended up being.
I remembered it all too well. That was the problem.
“So that only leaves you,” Mary finished, softness touching her eyes.
I huffed, annoyed. “I’m just fine without anyone trying to interfere.”
“Just fine, yes. That’s why you ran away from that poor girl and came here.”
I kicked the sheet off me and jumped out of bed. “I did not run away from anything.” I left the room and walked over to the bathroom. I closed the door pointedly. Even so, I expected Mary to walk in and keep badgering me; she was very good at it, and as often as she had called me stubborn, she was much more so than I was. She left me alone, however. Alone with Virginia’s scent.
It had permeated the bedroom, but then, I was so used to it, I barely noticed. Her scent and mine together, the smell of lust and sex—they had become very familiar in the past months.
Now, it was her scent alone that lingered in the air. I remembered the showers we had taken together in Haventown, some of them innocent, others a lot more naughty. It would have been nice to have a last memory of water cascading over her body, my hands chasing away suds and—
I stepped inside the shower stall and turned on the cold water at full blast. That took care of those thoughts. Shivering, I gradually changed the temperature until it was as hot as I could tolerate. The scalding water struck my shoulders and slowly melted the tension that had accumulated there.
Why did it have to be so complicated? We’d had such good times. Some things had remained unvoiced, but I’m sure we both knew where we stood, what we felt, what the other felt. I was rather certain she loved me. And she had to know… didn’t she? Wasn’t that why she had come to New York? She must have known I wouldn’t send her away. Not that I could have, chained as I was, but she had seemed rather sure of herself. I remembered her first visit to the club and how hesitant she had been then. How nervous and scared, too, even if she had tried to hide it. This time, she had been nothing if not confident. Sure of herself, and of the power she yielded over me. My sweet Virginia…
I looked down, and was almost surprised to see my hand fisted over my hardening cock. I gave it a light tug, sending a jolt of pleasure through me. More memories resurfaced. I closed my eyes to enjoy them even more. In my mind, the dancing lights of the club caressed the curve of Virginia’s neck and shoulder. Silk flowed against the swell of her breast. Wax hit her flesh and her whole body shook as she thrust herself down onto my cock. Water embraced her, surrounding her like she surrounded me, holding me tight inside her, holding me with her hands resting on my shoulders, her gaze holding mine. She cried out when I pushed in harder, then again when a second cock penetrated her. One moment, she was at my mercy, trembling in need yet obeying every word that fell from my lips; the next, she was the one leading the dance, trapping me with her eyes and mouth, freeing me from my chains.
Months of sex concentrated in one moment, hours of pleasure rewritten to wring a quicksilver orgasm from me: the hand on my cock was hers, for just an instant, and that was all it took.
Pathetic.
I stayed under the spray of hot water long after the traces of my escapade into the past had been washed down the drain. Part of me hoped that, with enough time, I could wash the memories away, leave them behind like I had left Virginia. Of course it didn’t quite work like that.
When I finally shut the water off, steam filled the room. I slipped on a bathrobe and tied the belt tightly before stepping out, leaving wet foot imprints behind me. Without thinking, I followed the fading trail of Virginia’s scent. It led me to my office. Mary was in there, sitting at the desk, a sheet of paper in her hands. She looked up from the paper to me as I entered.
“She left a letter,” she said, waving the sheet of paper. “Isn’t that sweet?”
I clenched my fists briefly. My annoyance flared anew. Mary and I had spent a few decades together after she had turned me, but since then, we’d rarely stayed together more than a few weeks at a time. We got on each other’s nerves too much for that.
I walked over to her and snatched the letter from her. “Do you really have nothing better to do than torture me?”
If she replied, I didn’t hear it. I was already reading Virginia’s parting words.
“Dear Anando,
It’s my turn to slip away without a proper goodbye. I hope you’ll forgive me as I forgive you. As much as I hurt right now, I’m glad I met you, and I’m glad you were in my life for those too few months. And if it had to come to an end, I’m glad I could see you one last time.
There is more I want to say to you, words that would break the rules one last time, but they’re words that should be spoken, not left to die on a piece of paper.
Think of me, sometimes. I will think of you.
Virginia”
Think of her? Not a day had passed since I had left Haventown that I hadn’t thought of her. Not a day that I hadn’t regretted bringing those thoughts to her mind. How long would it have taken her, if I hadn’t suggested that she slip into the skin of a vampire for a night? I knew she would have wondered, eventually, but how much time would we have had until then?
And how much harder would it have been to tell her no if we had had a few more months—or even a few more years?
It was better like this. It had to be. I had only spared both of us more pain.
Or so I was trying to convince myself when Mary stood, sighing softly. She reached over to slide something over my head, and I looked down to see a small silver key resting over my chest, hanging from a ribbon.
“No two sirings are alike,” she said. “You fear she’d change if you turned her, but nothing says she would. Nothing says she wouldn’t love you anymore.”
I shook my head. “And nothing says she still would. I promised myself I would never take that chance again, and I won’t.”
The line of her jaw hardened. Flames seemed to rise from the gray ashes of her eyes. “You never took that chance to begin with, Childe. I did.”
I had had enough. I turned my back on her and left the room. “If you don’t leave now,” I threw over my shoulder, “I will. For good.”
Whatever Mary said, I had made the right choice by severing my link with Virginia. At least, that was what I repeated to myself every time my fears resurfaced in the next few days. It di
dn’t work all that well, but I hoped that in time, I’d start forgetting Virginia. Time was something I would never lack.
* * * *
A week passed. Then another. A month. Mary stopped trying to convince me I was making a mistake, but sometimes, I could still see it in her eyes when she looked at me. I thought I was only imagining things until the day I found myself in front of Leticia. Her eyes widened in shock, and I knew she was as surprised to find me in our Sire’s guest apartment as I was to see her there. Mary liked to scheme too much for her own good.
“Anando,” Leticia said, inclining her head in greeting. “I didn’t realize someone was already here. Mary invited us to spend a few days in New York, but she forgot to say she already had company.”
A jolt passed through me when she said the word ‘us,’ and I forced myself to tear my eyes from her to look at the man who stood by her side. He was looking at me curiously, waiting, maybe, for Leticia to introduce us. I didn’t want to know him, though. I didn’t care to know what was so different about him that she would clutch his hand like this—like she had clutched mine, long ago.
I expected the jealousy I had first felt when Mary had told me Leticia had found someone to resurface. I was a little surprised to realize that all I felt was anger. This time, Mary had gone too far.
“You know our Sire. She can be quite forgetful.” My hands clenched and unclenched at my sides. “I’m leaving the city today, though. Why don’t you go up and say hi to her? I’ll be out of your way when you come back.”
She gave me a small, uncertain frown but nodded and led her companion to the elevator. As the door closed on them, I wondered, briefly, if she had ever told him about me. I chased that thought away with a shake of my head. Why would she?
It took me a few minutes to pack my clothes and the few possessions I had brought with me. Most of my things were in storage in Haventown, waiting for me to settle down. I had thrown the windows wide open to clear away my scent and was changing the bed sheets when the elevator pinged again, announcing its return. I expected Mary to come and explain herself. Instead, it was Leticia who stopped at the room’s threshold, arms crossed and looking uncomfortable.
