I turned my head to watch Daniel as he looked out on the lake. His handsome features appeared relaxed as the sunlight danced off his blue eyes, making them sparkle like the water. His chiseled body was apparent even as he reclined in the rocker. He really did look a heck of a lot more like a male model than a teaching assistant. Glancing down at my old clothes, I sighed. I couldn’t believe how incredibly frumpy I felt sitting beside him.
He turned, meting my gaze and smiled. The unpleasantness of the morning no longer showing on his face, he reached over and took my hand. He pulled it towards him and gently kissed it.
A question occurred to me.
“So I’m guessing that thing about vampires not being able to go outside in the daylight isn’t true.”
He smiled and suppressed a laugh.
“I’m not sure where that one came from, but if I had to guess, we may have started that one on purpose. It’s a myth that has stuck around a long time and certainly one that doesn’t give people cause to give us a second look if it was something they believed.”
I couldn’t help but wonder what it must be like to be a vampire, to live a life ruled by animal instincts. Part of me wished I could experience it firsthand just so I could understand what he was going through. Yet part of me shuttered at the thought of losing my humanity to a dark creature; that, in a single moment, this internal manifestation of evil could devour my ability to think rationally. What part of Sara would survive this transformation process?
It forced me to wonder what Daniel had been like as a human. How much of the human Daniel had been left behind when he … died? I shoved these thoughts to the back of my mind as I felt him squeeze my hand again. Needing to deepen my connection to him, I shifted my gaze from the boat that now gently drifted on the far side of the lake to his face.
“How can your entire perspective on life change so radically in such a short period of time?” he asked.
I assumed it was a rhetorical question and didn’t answer.
“A few weeks ago I barely knew you existed. My life was an endless progression of days with no discernable end in sight. Eternity can seem even longer when an immortal feels devoid of any real passion in life. I see things so differently now, like I was living in black and white before. You brought color into my life – and happiness.” He smiled like his face wasn’t used to the sensation of it. “Since my human death, I’ve had brief moments where I’ve experienced happiness or at least I wasn’t unhappy, but nothing real, nothing sustaining. Now, when I look into your eyes, I want to be a better person. You make me want to be better, to be what you deserve.”
“I don’t want you to be anything other than what you are right now,” I quietly replied.
Still holding my hand to him, he leaned back in his chair.
“I know – it’s one of the reasons I love you, yet somehow it also seems completely incomprehensible to me. How could you love a monster like me? But, for some reason, I think you actually do. I wish it could always be like this. I wish it was possible for us to just run away tonight and never come back.”
“Where would we go?” I asked playfully.
“Does it matter? Anywhere you want. Where shall it be?” he asked playing along.
He was kidding, or so I thought.
“Well now, let’s see … I’ve always wanted to see the South Pacific. Tahiti maybe? Bora Bora perhaps?”
Warm sands, cool water, Daniel shirtless . . .
My mind started to drift.
“They’re nice, too touristy though. I can think of a couple of small islands in the area where the tourists don’t often go, islands with the whitest sand you’ve ever seen. When the sun hits just right, it sparkles like diamonds and it’s as soft as powder under your toes. The water is a crystal clear blue and laps up against the shore like a gentle caress on your skin. Strolling along the sands, you can feel the cool soothing breezes brush against your body like silk after the heat of the sun has touched it. And there are coral reefs just off the shoreline you can swim too as well, with hundreds of fish of just as many colors. Oh, Sara, you’d love it.”
“So when do we leave!”
“I think your parents would get a little upset if I whisked you away for the rest of the semester – or longer.”
I frowned.
“Poor, Sara. You’re just going to have to be content with this beach for the time being.”
“So speaking of my parents –” I started, hesitant to change the subject. “I have to go home next weekend. I’m driving down first thing Saturday morning and should be back by Sunday evening.” I sighed when I saw the light leave his eyes. “I’ll try to get back as early as I can.”
“I don’t like it when you’re not near me,” he murmured darkly.
There was a possessiveness behind his words that surprised me. His grip on my hand increased and I soon began to lose sensation in it.
“What’s wrong?!” he asked, sensing my pain.
“My hand,” I whimpered.
He quickly released his grip only to gently cradle my injured hand in his palms.
“Did I? – ”
“It’s okay. It just needs to its circulation back.”
“So fragile,” he said softly as he stared down at my pink hand in his. “It’s so easy for me to forget.”
With my other hand I reached over and rubbed his shoulder to show him it was alright.
My tender monster, I thought to myself with a smile. Irony, it seemed, might always be an essential part of who I fundamentally was as a person.
“Too bad there isn’t anything I can do to get even with you, but I suppose if I hit you I’d probably just break my hand.”
He smiled. I think he was getting a picture in his mind. An amusing one by the look in his eyes.
“I’m afraid so, but – you can do much worse than that.” He looked down at my hand again, suddenly serious.
“How’s that?”
“You could leave me.”
His eyes travelled up to mine. There was a sadness behind them as if he had momentarily contemplated a life without me.
“I love you, Sara.” He paused and took a deep breath. “But you should leave me. You should be with someone with a heartbeat. Someone who, when he kisses your velvet neck, doesn’t feel the pull of your pulsating blood under that pink layer of skin. Someone who doesn’t have to beat down a monster inside of himself that only wants to rip that soft, delicate neck open. If I was a stronger person, I’d find him for you, that heartbeat you should be with. But I’m not.”
He was completely serious, but I still couldn’t wrap my mind around me being a compulsion for anyone let alone him. I stopped rocking only to get up and stand in front of the chair and look out on the still waters. I wish I felt that calm on the inside. I was anything but.
After a minute, I felt his hands reach out and gently pull me down onto his lap. As I curled up against his chest, he wrapped his arms around me, pulling me even closer. This whole thing, us being together like this, was so difficult, and yet at the same time it felt like the most natural thing in the world.
“Your first kiss, huh?” I heard him ask, trying to sound all casual, but of course he sounded anything but.
“Yes.” I said as I nodded.
He pulled me a little closer.
“Good,” was all he said, and in that one word I heard his deep gratitude that I had waited for him.
We sat there for a long time in silence, just feeling the pressure of our bodies against one another. I was sure he could feel my heart beating and the sound of my slow rhythmic breathing. But I heard nothing from him. I’d begun to notice that he didn’t breathe all the time, like he sometimes just forgot to. I guess it wasn’t necessary for him. But still I think I preferred it when he did.
A few times I felt him reach up and play with a strand of my hair for a while or trace the line of my leg across his lap with his hand. Was he studying me? For some reason, I felt like he was trying to make a memory of me, on
e that might sustain him when I wasn’t there anymore. Something about that made me sad. Maybe it was because I knew I was doing the same thing myself.
Taking in a deep breath, I drank in his scent. That wasn’t the only memory I wanted to help sustain me. There was also the way in which I could feel the distinctive contours of his chest through his shirt, the way his arms felt wrapped around me, and how our silence said volumes.
Was this what love was like?
Tabitha said she was in love with Mike and I’d heard him say the same of her, but I’d never sensed this kind of intimacy between them. I had to wonder if this was something couples only shared in private.
We sat there for what felt like hours. Slowly, I watched as the shadows crept across the shoreline until the shade finally enveloped us completely. I was fully content to stay where I was forever, and wouldn’t have stirred for the world if a cool breeze hadn’t blown, causing me to instinctually move closer inside his sheltering arms.
“It’s getting late. Why don’t we head back,” he whispered into my hair, but I didn’t move. I couldn’t see his face, but I could feel his smile as I curled even closer under his arms.
“I can carry you all the way to the car if you like,” he said, straightening his back as if he might do just that. I stirred, leaning back from him so I could look up at his face. It looked peaceful, like I felt. Against my desires, I got up and together we walked back to the car and slowly started our way down the mountain.
When we got back to his house, it was as if the unpleasant moment on our hillside that had brought such an abrupt end to our first kiss had never happened. Thankfully, our clock seemed to have reset itself as I’d hoped it would, but even then I wondered how long it would be before he summoned the courage to try again.
It was chilly inside the house. Most of the windows faced east out over the lake and didn’t enjoy much of the warm rays of the afternoon sun. Coming into the main room, I curled up on the sofa while Daniel strolled over to the fireplace and started to pile wood in the hearth. A few minutes later, he sat down beside me and spread a blanket across my lap as we settled in to watch the fire flicker to life. Needing to feel him near, I snuggled closer to him while I pulled the blanket higher around me. I wished he felt warm pressed up beside me, but at least he wasn’t cold. Without a word, he put his arm around me and we watched the fire, listening to the wood snap and pop as it was slowly consumed by the flames.
I wondered if that was me. Was I being consumed? I felt like parts of my old life, my life before Daniel, were falling away, snapping off little by little. I was changing. Somehow this seemed normal; the way things were supposed to happen. In my heart, I felt as if I was undergoing my own transformation just as he had undergone his.
But what if I was being consumed by the fire, snapped and broken apart piece by piece like the wood, so slowly that I didn’t even realize it was happening. Would I be a pile of ash when I finally realized it was too late to save myself?
The fire was strong now. I could feel its heat radiating across the room giving a pink glow to my cheeks.
Does the wood mind that this was its fate – to burn? When it was just a sapling in the woods out back, did it have any idea that this is how it would all end?
“What are you thinking?” Daniel asked thoughtfully.
I wasn’t sure how to answer. If I told him the truth, told him that I didn’t care if this was how I would end, burned up by the blind love I had for him, he’d only get angry. Flame is a predator that devours by instinct alone. Was that Daniel as well?
If I was to burn in Daniel’s arms, I knew it would not be because he had wanted it, but because he was powerless to prevent it, powerless not to be the predator fate had evolved him into.
“You said you transformed. I was wondering how much of the Daniel I love, is the Daniel you were as a human and how much is Daniel the vampire.”
It was a fair question reflecting the spirit of what I’d been thinking. I had the feeling that his answer would determine for how long and how hot I was to burn. I looked up at his face. I wanted to read its expression as he answered, to see if I could decipher some deeper meaning to his answer there. Still snuggled under his arm, I watched as he inhaled deeply and got a far off look in his eye, like he was pondering his response.
“I am different than I was before, this is true, but not as much as you would think. When one changes, your personality isn’t destroyed so much as it’s sort of magnified. The good become better – most of the time, but the bad always become worse. Every human has a dark side, a part of their personality where all their darkest thoughts and desires reside. Animal instincts long forgotten and submerged lie dormant there. The transformation awakens that part of you. How strong you were before will determine how much you can control yourself as a vampire. That’s why some of us live as animals while others are capable of making the rational choice to live like the Professor and I do. In my experience, most live in a dark gray area somewhere in between.
“But as to your question, I like to think I was a good person as a human. I loved my parents and family very much. I worked hard to help provide for them and hoped to find a woman that I could love and raise a family with. I went to church and thought I had everything in life to look forward to. To be honest, I wasn’t really the usual target for a vampire. After the transformation I would have given myself over to that animal part of myself. I’d have been ignorant that there was even another way to be. Fortunately for me, Randall was there to show me the way.
“It was hard at first, to wrestle control from my animal side and manage to keep a tight rein on it. It got easier as the years progressed. He did his best to make it as easy for me as possible. I think in the end, he wanted me to have the experience with it he never had. I am different now, but you can’t go through those kinds of experiences without being altered. Even if I was able to be human again, I wouldn’t be the same. I’m a little darker now, more cynical, jaded. I guess that happens when you see the darkest recesses of this earthly existence.
“I have to struggle with the instincts of the predator which is the hardest thing for me to do. These are not good instincts. It’s not like the instinct to pull a child from the path of an oncoming car, but the instinct to prey on the weak and use their disadvantages to your advantage. Most of the time, I can feel it rising within me, recognize it and push it down, but on rare occasions the desire will be so strong within me that I have to beat it back with every ounce of my being. Sometimes all you can do is run away and hide until you regain full control.”
I had the feeling he was thinking about me, about a knife in my hand, the sensation of my lips upon his.
“Have you gotten better at it over the years?”
“Yes, to a certain extent. I would probably be more immune if I slowly exposed myself to more. But wherever we go, I’ve always shied away from as much temptation as possible. It may be like a muscle that needs flexing to become stronger. But then again, it may be that I’ve reached my limit.”
“What about the Professor?”
“He’s different. Like I said, we take what we were as humans into our existence as vampires. He is much stronger and in control than I could ever hope to be. But I think that has a lot to do with what he was like as a human.”
I settled back, nestling my head in the crux of his arm and stared at the fire for a minute in silence.
“Do you think the human you were back then would have loved me?”
“The human part is what loves you now, so yes, I’m sure of it. I’ve wondered if you would have loved the man I was before. You seem to have accepted the monster inside me with so little hesitation. I’d be lying if I didn’t say that startles me. You should have a healthy fear of me, not …” and his voice trailed off.
“You’re saying prey shouldn’t fall in love with its predator.”
“It doesn’t last long if it does.”
I moved closer to him, wrapping my arm around the front of his c
hest.
“Maybe it doesn’t care.”
“Well, it should,” he said quietly. “I’m not as strong as you think I am. If I were, I would wait until you fell asleep, quietly slip out the door and disappear from your life forever.”
Hearing his words, I froze.
“If I had the strength within me, I would do everything in my power to protect you, which includes protecting you from me. I’ve considered this many times in the past few weeks and come close a few times, but it’s too late now. Your hold on me is too strong. It’s almost like you’re the predator and I’m the prey, too weak to escape you.”
He held me tighter then leaned down and kissed the top of my head.
“But don’t worry. Go to sleep if you like. I resolved today that it’s too late. What happens now happens. I’m too weak to stop it. It won’t be easy, believe me, but I couldn’t leave you now even if I wanted to. Whatever happens, just know that we’ll face it together. I’m glad you love me, because … you couldn’t get rid of me now even if you tried. I’m your shadow for life.”
I exhaled and closed my eyes. This wasn’t the first time he’d intonated that there was a storm ahead of us. He seemed to know something I didn’t, but I trusted him fully now. He was right, whatever it was, we’d face it together.
It was completely against my nature to be curled up by his side, completely exposed and vulnerable to attack. But I was doing my best to ignore that nature. I was beating down those impulses as if they were the enemy and not there to help me survive. In this way we were alike. He had beaten down the impulse to kill me, and I the impulse to allow myself not to be killed.
My eyes were closed, but I could still hear the crackling of the fire. I readjusted my position, but it felt so soft, not like Daniel’s muscular chest at all. As my eyes fluttered open, all I saw was the arm of the sofa in front of me.
The Purity of Blood: Volume I Page 25
