Hunger

by Lillie J. Roberts

  Strolling in the evenings became something I savored, glorying in the strange new animal I had become. Greeting those around me, my guarded eyes watched for prey, searched for the aroma of the richest, finest blood like a connoisseur. No one would ever guess the nicely mannered young man—who spoke with cultured tones and dressed in silken attire—was a killer. Not even when I was taking their blood.

  *

  One such evening, I wandered through the park in downtown Paris. It was a darkly, beautiful night, just cold enough to feel crisp to the fingers. Stars twinkled overhead. Day dwellers never see the night for what it can really be, a place of shadows and imagination, but also one where fright can run wild. It made my life as a vampire more fulfilling. My beast savored the darkness and the fears it could conjure.

  I made my evening rounds taking in the horses that clopped past, carrying their riders’ home. The air smelled of human sweat and waste as the day laborers made their way. As I watched, one of the many lights pricking the dark fabric of the night lost its place and fell to Earth. It arced to leave a blazing trail, and I heard the sharp intake of a delicate breath, immediately setting my beast to the hunt.

  “Mademoiselle, ‘tis a lovely evening,” my voice purred, nostrils flaring while taking in her coppery-floral scent. My hooded eyes sought the pounding of her pulse, quivering beneath her flesh. “Did you happen to see the falling star? Was it not glorious?” I exhaled into the night, my pheromones mixing with the other heady scents.

  My prey this evening was demure and sensual; I found her quite alluring. If my heart had a need to beat, her beauty would have halted it. She was petite, her breasts powdered and pushed up, begging for release. Her wares made a breathtaking display.

  “Oui, Monsieur, it is wondrous, is it not? Imagine catching the wayward star in the palm of one’s hand,” the young lady responded with the barest hint of an accent, releasing a shimmery white cloud, her eyes downcast, as any properly trained paramour would. She lifted the rounded turquoise of her eyes to my gaze, entranced.

  “Do not think me presumptuous, but do you mind if I join you this evening?” My beast rolled within me as I stoked its fires, fed the flames while calming its call. Her heartbeat thundered. Arousal poured off her in waves while the richness of her blood coursed freely through her body, soon to be mine. Stepping closer, I inhaled her feminine scent, part lilac and vanilla, part copper.

  “I would be most honored, Monsieur.” She dropped a curtsey, her tiny hat bobbing.

  Little did my sweet paramour know she gambled with her life, her only wish to collect a few coins. As we strolled through the darkness, I leaned in to whisper in her ear, “You are as lovely as the night.” Stirring the loose tendrils of her hair, I breathed against her neck, nudging her head gently aside. Again, I inhaled her perfume and exhaled my own. Her heart raced faster, responding to my vampiric pheromones, and when she stopped in the dark of a shadowed building, it was easy to pull her into the depths of the adjoining alley.

  “Monsieur, please, the coins first.” Even as her heart hammered, she was the sensible business woman. With quickening breaths, the coins fell from my gloved hand into her shivering palm. She closed her eyes to the night and my beast scented its prey.

  “As you please, Monsieur.” She breathed out in a shimmery fog, lifting her skirts. But I stayed her actions.

  “It is my pleasure, Mademoiselle,” I growled and my teeth nibbled her sweet shoulders, causing her to quiver. Her pulse throbbed and I lifted my face, inhaling her rich scent. She arched up to greet my mouth. My cool, pale lips skipped across her red stained ones, moving lower to find the sensitive flesh of her throat, kissing and sucking, pulling the flesh into my mouth only to let it go.

  Before letting my beast out to play, my lips dipped down further to find the shuddering softness of her ample breasts. They peeked above her corset glistening in the moonlight, a feast in the making. I took her darkened rosettes between my lips, lavishing one and then the other. With each of her quickening breaths, the beast in me became eager for release, rolling within my body, and I groaned with need.

  She sighed deeply, inhaling more pheromones. A breath of whisper greeted my ears. “Anything you please is my wish this evening.” Her eyes remained closed, head flung back, and her body quaked with need. I explored her lithe body until her tiny bud was discovered. My fingers slipped over and into her soft folds, her core bursting to life as she shook with release.

  I pressed hard against her, letting her feel the depth of my desire, both for her blood and her body. I’d have to settle for her blood; my beast would have it no other way. My kisses became rushed as my beast turned frantic. With fangs extended, tickling her flesh, I descended into the bloodlust creature as it roared to life. Too late she realized her mistake, but my beast enjoyed her struggle. She slipped so easily into my hands.

  Then to soothe her losing battle, my beast used seduction, purring in her ear and fondling her body with growing delight. It promised her pleasure, but it wanted only death. Her struggles wilted and she gave herself willingly, begging me to take her. My fangs grazed her satiny throat as they found their entrance, plunging deep into her softness.

  She shuddered and swayed, her hands clasped me tighter, pulling me closer until her eyes glazed as her life emptied into mine. With the last beat of her heart, I sealed the wound. To the passerby, she’d be just another paramour lost in a drunken state, but with the morning’s light they’d find a shell, a glassy eyed doll cold with death.

  With the loss of control, I hated the beast, detesting this parasitic life. My beast didn’t care. It wanted death. It liked the fear. The harder my prey struggled, the more likely their demise. I loathed the bastard beast.

  With Lucius’s guidance, I discovered the restraint that allowed me to manage the bloodlust. My beast wanted to rule me, to bask in the violence. It was when I acknowledged the ruthless killer that control came.

  For more than a hundred years, we roamed Western Europe, finally settling in London. By appearances, Lucius was a man of forty years, his age at his death. When vampirism took him, it made him bold and brawny. He was well suited for his looks, six feet tall with short cropped blue-black hair just starting to grey. He claimed his eyes were the most changed going from midnight blue to piercing black. His appearance remained unchanged for all our years together.

  But I barely looked twenty-five, and where his features were inky dark, mine were fine and fair. We matched in height and brawn with sinewy muscles bunched beneath pale flesh, but I wore my blond hair longer, just past my shoulders, pulled back in a leather thong. Where Lucius’s eyes could bolt you to the ground with his black stare, mine were as grey as the Highland mists. But it was the core of my eyes, with their blood colored centers, that needed to hide behind dark lenses. We made quite a pair, dark and light, father and son for an eternity.

  Chapter Four

  Lasting control occurred one evening as I made my way through the mud of London’s Hyde Park. England had grown from farms to industrialization. It was quite different from our memories, sootier, dingier, and coarser, the year of our Lord 1796. The Great Fire of 1666 laid waste to much of the city, changing its landscape, leaving it somewhat of a lingering work in progress.

  It took the senseless cruelty against an innocent to rally my conscience to life, to cause the child of the Black Death to rise up. The humanity I thought to be lost forced itself upon me, and it happened quite unexpectedly.

  Strolling through the park reminded me of the happy years of my childhood, now some two hundred years in the past. Unable to tolerate the sunlight, my body sang in the twilight, taking pleasure in the sights, sounds, and scents of the night. The song of the cicada as they clung to the trees. The buzz of a mosquito close to my ear. Leaves as they bristled in a light evening breeze, flinging droplets from an afternoon rain, while birds settled in their branches. It all became my music.

  My walk led me to a secluded part of the park, and I found what I knew woul
d be the perfect spot for hunting. But sharing the space with me was a man and kneeling before him, a young woman who reminded me of the lady who’d cost me my human life.

  “Bitch!” Spittle flew from his lips. His cane whipped across her back. “Don’t ever question me again! You’ll get what I give and nothing more!”

  The act caused me to recognize the beast inside myself, the one capable of thoughtless savagery, filling me with disgust. The crickets stopped chirping, the buzz of flying insects ceased as the predator emerged. The man should have noticed, but instead he continued to berate the cowering woman as if she were no more than a beetle to grind under his boot heel.

  The world narrowed down to what was happening before me.

  “I will beat you within an inch of your life.” He raised the cane again. “How dare you demand anything of me?”

  The woman’s face was already swollen and bruised, her blaze of red hair dulled—it was not her first beating.

  “No, husband, please. I promise it will not be spoken of again. I only wish to please you.” She cringed, bowing her head. “It’s only that my family starves.”

  Then, swift as a striking snake, his gentleman’s hand caught the bridge of her nose.

  Why was no one stopping this madness? Is this what our world had become?

  A sense of chivalry I had all but forgotten reasserted itself, and I found myself between the offending hand and the young woman. My fisted hand tightened over his wrist. His blood pounded below my fingertips, both with anger and fear. It surprised the man who by appearances was my elder.

  “Young man, remove yourself from my sight. This is of no concern to you,” he blustered before flourishing his cane and I allowed him to pull his hand free. “Leave now or next it will be you who tastes my temper!” With these words, he’d committed his first fatal error in judgment. There would be a tasting, but of a different sort.

  “Sir, you are bigger, stronger, and dare I say, much older than this young lady and yet you treat her worse than an animal. Have you taken leave of your senses? Have you no sense of common decency?” As I spoke to this man, a beast of his own making, I reached down and pulled the woman to my side. She flinched away with fear in her eyes, unsure if she should trust her supposed guardian angel. Life had not been kind to her.

  Once again, the man threatened me. “Perhaps you didn’t hear me. I said for you to get the hell out of my way. She is mine to do with as I please, my wife and property, bought and paid for. I don’t need interference from some arrogant young bastard unable to mind his own business.” He swung the cane above my head. My hand shot out, grabbing the cane on its down swing.

  “Sir, you do not want me for an enemy,” I whispered mere inches from his face. My eyes moved over his features, the sour stench of his alcoholic exhalations billowed like a cloud of toxin.

  If the world had quieted before, now a funeral parlor-like silence settled in the air. There was soft menace in my voice which the man chose to ignore, the second of his mistakes. My beast pressed against my fevered flesh.

  “And I repeat, lad, I don’t need your kind in my way.” He sneered, assuming he was better than those around him, but his demeanor gave him away for what he was—a bully through and through. His judgment had erred three times over.

  “You know not who you threaten, sir.” My humanity slowly leaked away as my voice grew to a purring growl. He had provoked my beast for the last time. It no longer pressed outward but clawed inward. It craved violence, too long bound. The hunt stood before it, a breath away from death.

  “And you, young pup, need to stay out of my business.” He spoke with disregard and attempted to stride around me, the promise held in my glare unseen.

  Again I stepped between the man and young woman, extending my arm. She leaned heavily upon it, and we walked away with the man screaming out his frustrations.

  “Rebecca, come back, do you hear me? It will be all the worse for you later!” he grounded out, cane hitting the packed dirt. “If you make me come find you, stupid bitch, you’ll be sorry!” he raged, slamming the cane’s wooden bottom until it splintered, useless.

  We slowed and I turned back, my eyes blazing with the need to silence the beast’s rage.

  “Sir, if you are wise, you’ll forget you ever knew this lady.” My beast wanted to take him, and I wanted to help it, to hold the man down, rip out his throat, and let it have its awful way.

  “I’ll see you rot in debtor’s prison, Rebecca. Mark my words!” he thundered into the night air, sending a flock of birds to search for a new roost.

  “Please, sir. It might be better for me to return—he won’t quit until he finds me,” the woman said softly, wringing her hands.

  “No, he means to kill you. If not today, then another,” I spoke with sure confidence. It was the truth. I could read it in his eyes and in hers and in his thoughts. He was already imagining his life without her.

  As for her, I could feel her pain, the inevitability of her bleak future. She was biding her time until death freed her.

  “Come with me, madam. My name is Benedict Draco. Let my family and I help you. You don’t have to stay with the likes of him, now or ever.”

  The husband continued to sputter and curse. Glancing back a single time, I memorized his anger to give it back to him in kind.

  The young woman turned to me with a shaky smile. “I’m Rebecca Malkey. I don’t know what I did to earn your kindness, but I thank you.”

  “Do not think me impertinent, Madam Malkey, but how did you find yourself at the mercy of such a man?” I questioned gently, while escorting Rebecca to our apartments. It was a struggle to keep from returning to the man. My beast longed for vengeance.

  “My family is starving to death, sir. I was promised in marriage to Mr. Malkey, sight unseen, and he was to provide my family with payment.” She shivered. “Ireland is suffering from cursed winters. Our crops are spoilt before we harvest them.A great famine has damned the people to hell’s inferno.” Her gait was halting and painful, evidence of past beatings as well. “He is a foul monster, and my family is dying. He’s never going to keep his word.” Tears leaked as she revealed her plight.

  I slid my arm around her slim shoulders, guiding her as she sobbed. My beast roiled, begging to revisit Mr. Malkey, and from the sounds of it, he would reap what he had sowed.

  *

  Together, Rebecca and I returned to my home. She remained timid, the abuse worn into her features.

  “Mrs. Kelley, if you could lend a hand, please?” I called out.

  The older woman bustled into the room and seeing Rebecca, went into a frenzy of activity. “Mr. Draco, sir, what’s happened to her?” Mrs. Kelley whispered, “Ach, the poor young thing.” She shook her grey-haired head.

  “Apparently, her husband takes greater liberties than he should. Please take care of her.” I left Rebecca in Mrs. Kelley’s competent care. Need ached through me to bring Rebecca’s abuser a small piece of justice. My beast smacked its lips, ready for the hunt, and for once, my prey had earned his terrible fortune.

  Vampires are not a vengeful breed. On the contrary, we’re quite logical. Everything we do is a survival mechanism. Vengeance holds no meaning; therefore, there is no need. But when I found vengeance burning like acid in my belly, the feelings caused me to question myself. Was I looking for a reason to unleash my beast? Was it Rebecca’s predicament and need? Or my own sick desires?

  Maybe this was the reason for my rebirth or the foretelling of my future. It was meant to be, this call to meet injustice, righting the wrongs? Or was it a reckoning for my own existence? Maybe it didn’t matter.

  Chapter Five

  With a renewed purpose for my undead life, I started my first hunt for justice, Richard Malkey. Since the Great Fire, housing had improved for a great number of London’s population, but it remained deplorable for the poor. Parts of the city unsafe … at least for humans. Only Lucius’s great wealth allowed us to find apartments in one of the better distr
icts where noblemen once resided.

  The Malkeys lived in one of the newly rebuilt areas, modest dwellings of the once wealthy, and this would be where the hunt would begin. A visit to the local constabulary and the exchange of a few coins revealed all I needed to know, enough to make my beast purr, lusting for blood. My prey was suspected as the cause for more than one death, and those meeting his wrath were always weaker than he. It was time for him to pay the price for the injustices he had wrought.

  *

  I found Malkey consoling himself before a small fire, drowsy from inexpensive wine, cozy in his aloneness. Empty bottles littered the floor around his feet. Most people think vampires need to be invited into homes, but for that to be true, the home needed impenetrable wards erected by powerful witches against outsiders, human and vampire alike, or Fae guardlings, wee beasts of a sort. Without others near or witch wards magicked for protection, he was as alone and helpless as Rebecca was under his care. He radiated cold hatred, as if a demon possessed his frosty soul.

  With no fear of reprisal, I clomped into the room, smashing a few of his bottles. Malkey’s muddied gaze glared into mine, and I wanted to feel sorry for the man, if not for his abuses. His actions purchased his destiny. Sometime before my arrival, I had come to acknowledged that some evil existed in the world, and it would never be extinguished by the rules of man.

  “How the hell did you get in my home? Get out. You have no right to be here!” He lurched to a stand as recognition struck. “You! You’re the young whelp who stole my wife. Where is she? I want her back!” he shouted, staggering. His thoughts turned even uglier. Revenge now neared the surface of his demented mind.

  “You’ll pay for what you’ve taken.” He slipped to his knees, his cane slick in his hands, but he managed to heave himself back up. The air shifted as the cane cut through it, meaning to rap my skull.

  Easily leaning back and away, my hand whipped out to grab his throat, letting him experience some of the terror he’d thrust upon Rebecca. Breathing into his ear, I took in his malodorous stench whispering, “Hello, Malkey. Is today a good day to die?” My beast, quiet until this moment, growled low in my throat—thirsty for vengeance and to feed my inhuman hunger.