The Other Kind (The Progeny of Evolution Series)

by Arsuaga, Mike

  I cleared my throat to buy time for the arousal to subside. “Vampires are strong but not superhuman,” I said. “In human form they achieve world class performances in strength, endurance, or speed. After transformation, or morphing, they are much more powerful, but they can't move faster than the eye can follow or punch through concrete walls or fly. Extremely bright daylight is uncomfortable but not dangerous. Vampires do not burst into flames when in it. They can be killed the same as a human. They have highly developed senses of hearing, sight, and smell.”

  Sam turned, facing me with a smile. I thought the expression might be motivated by something besides the role of enthusiastic interviewer and, in doing so, presented another tantalizing view of her small shapely breasts. “This is good,” she commented while my mind contended with the thought of what they might feel like out of the chiffon blouse and pressed against my bare chest. Disrupting my reverie she suddenly asked, “What do they eat? How do they feed?”

  I told her my “theories” regarding vampires having an unnamed substance to preserve prey. “It reduces the need to kill by nine-tenths, with a proportionate decline in chances for detection. It has to be something like that for them to have avoided exposure.”

  As close as we sat, traces of her womanly scent hinted encouragingly at her mood. “It probably induces a sort of coma,” I continued, “as long as the vampire maintains the levels in the victim’s bloodstream through regular feedings the coma would be sustained.” I left out the part concerning the reflexive voiding of bladder and bowels when Kutzu hits the bloodstream. “By this process,” I summarized with a distracted catch in my breath as wisps of heat and scent from her mound teased me. “They reduce exposure to the general society.”

  Unable to resist the fire searing through every fiber of my being, I pressed her to me and sought out her mouth with mine. Her eyes momentarily widened in hesitation before she responded with a wild and ravenous kiss.

  Too soon, a small tan hand came between our faces. Regaining self-composure, Sam backed away. “Doctor Jim,” she panted. “We have to get through this. Please continue.”

  I backed away, still holding her hand in mine, and again cleared my throat uneasily. Not since Lois had a woman gotten under my skin so completely. With Sam, it came on a lot faster. “Uh–well,” I continued, “prey last around a year until all bodily fluid is consumed. By then they’re mummified. I suppose the vampire could crush the desiccated remains and put them out with the trash without arousing suspicion.”

  We remained side by side, thigh pressed against thigh, holding hands. Our interlocked fingers rested in the tight wedge between us. Her trifling touch sent a sexual heat straight to my aching loins. By the uneven light she consulted her notebook and how much time remained on the tape spool. With schoolgirl conscientiousness, she made a checkmark and stared at me with feline green lamps. “How do you feed?” she asked. “Who are your primary victims?”

  I studied her warily for a moment. She phrased the last question as if interviewing an actual vampire. Did she detect something to suggest what I was? Impossible. I’d successfully preserved the secret of my true nature for well over a century.

  A beautiful twenty-something face innocently met my scrutiny, convincing me to relax and continue. “Children are taboo, although the convention came about only in the last century. Not taking them took a lot of pressure off because nothing riled humans more, according to my theories, than taking their young. Since prey lasted longer, vampires gained the luxury to hunt populations and groups more on society’s fringe, groups less likely to be missed. Prostitutes, criminals, and the homeless are the most popular.”

  She smiled with lips made darker by the odd candlelight and checked off another question. “How many vampires are there?” By now, the spirit of the interview held me fast. I pretty much dismissed the idea she thought I spoke from actual experience. Spurred on by her mesmerizing aura, I plunged ahead.

  “One of them comes along in every hundred million births. No more than six or seven hundred have ever been alive at one time,” I said.

  “What about turning humans? Can they do that?”

  I chuckled. “I believe that’s a myth. I’ve taken enough biology courses to see such a metamorphosis is impossible. Being born a vampire is the only way.”

  I answered a few more routine questions while savoring the sweet aroma of her scent when it sporadically evaded the candle wax. In response, my manhood rose as fire coursed through my veins. I thanked my stars for being seated.

  “Do they marry or have relationships with one another or with humans?”

  I thought again of Lois. “I would think vampires don’t marry in the sense you and I understand it. ‘Mate’ is the term they use for spouse. A ‘pair bond’ represents their equivalent of marriage. Of course, in a relationship with a human they would use the conventional human terms: woman for female, spouse for mate. That sort of thing. To answer your next question,” I continued, “no, vampires cannot breed with humans or one another. They are as sterile as mules. In fact, propagation is one of the vampire’s great quests.”

  Her interest had settled into the routine assimilation and recording of facts, but now her eyebrows suddenly rose. “Great quests?” she asked with new interest.

  “Yes. In my theory, they have two imperatives. These are to propagate, and to integrate with human society. They have almost given up on the first since no young have been conceived in all of their history, spanning probably several millennia, but there is hope for the second through improved feeding methods and other advances. The Holy Grail is to find a substitute for human blood, removing the need to hunt. It’s every vampire’s dream.”

  For sure, I wanted nothing more. The new methods of feeding had allowed us to blend. As long as we changed identities every twenty years or so and stayed smart with hunting we could expect to live out our lives in relative safety, albeit in isolation. Most of us wanted more. We dreamed of living side by side with humanity in full disclosure.

  A small pink tongue peeked from between the red lips, as Sam jotted a quick note in her book. “You just said it’d be every vampire’s dream. Don’t you mean in your theory it would be every vampire’s dream?”

  I cleared my throat, uneasy over the amateurish slip up. She distracted me so completely. “Yes, of course. These are theories only,” I hoped the reply didn’t sound hurried. I didn’t need a wannabe female Van Helsing snooping around in my life. A mushy feeling of relief spread in my chest when she moved on to another question, apparently losing interest in the issues surrounding our coexistence with humans.

  “If there are so few of them and they are scattered all over the world, how do they find others of their kind to pass on knowledge? How do they learn what—uh—who they are?” She asked.

  Relieved and newly confident she suspected nothing, I resumed the discourse. Once again, I surreptitiously poured over the well-turned little body before answering. “Of course, all I have told you is fantasy but, to flesh out the illusion, I surmise vampires have a way to sense another's presence, possibly through scent. The older ones seek out and mentor the young whenever the opportunity presents. The process is random and unreliable. Until well into the twentieth century, practically all of them lived and died as misfits or outcasts without ever meeting another. The coming of the Internet made finding others much easier and more successful. Through it, the Internet, knowledge passed more efficiently and mentoring improved.”

  Sam took more notes, nodding in agreement. “It makes sense.” Her eyes locked with mine. “So, Doctor Jim, if this were all true doesn’t it mean you are one of them?” She sat back and awaited my answer with an appraising expression.

  With heart pounding, I played dumb. “Yes, I suppose. If it were true,” I answered, carefully watching her reaction.

  After a tense second she threw her head back, exposing a delectable throat, and laughed. “As you said, it’s all a theory.”

  My mood relaxed, certain she di
d not suspect. “More tea?” she asked, rising partially erect to pour. For the first time I caught the full range of her scent.

  She broadcast a definite receptiveness to my overtures.

  I am no glamour boy, but I get my fair share of second looks from women. I am a shade over six feet and around two hundred pounds. My legs and arms are long for my body. These are coupled with narrow hips, gradually angling to wiry but square shoulders, what Lois used to call a matador’s build. I have a long thin face with sharp features except for the knobby nose. I wear reading glasses now and tend to peer out at the world over them, giving my face a semi-permanent, wide-eyed inquisitive expression like an owl. All placed under a head of—thankfully—still thick and glossy brown hair. Women frequently told me they would kill for it.

  We returned to the discussion of vampires and spent another hour filling in my “theories.” As it turned out, I didn't need scent to estimate the strength of her interest. She made it clear by what she did during my visit, such as giving the view I avoided when she stood at the top of the ladder. Setting down the antique tea set, she bent sharply away from me. Her skirt rode up from behind. Thighs, indented at the apex, created a diamond-shaped opening through to the skirt material on the other side. A sliver of white cloth furrowed the prominent, but narrow, cleft between the hard globes of her butt cheeks and expanded into a triangular pouch filled with her intimate flesh and its promise of paradise.

  She turned in a blur and faced me. The candlelight darkened her hair to a light burgundy. When she spoke, her teeth flashed from a shadowed face. “You’ve been very patient and helpful, Doctor Jim.” Taking my larger hand in her much smaller one she coaxed me to my feet.

  “Where are we going?”

  The perky face brightened in the full candlelight. “To show you the rest of the apartment.” Pulling my hand with a surprisingly strong grip, she led us to the bedroom.

  We didn’t take two steps when my cellphone vibrated. I pulled it out. A text message from the building supervisor at my apartment complex said maintenance needed to enter my place. A sewer pipe burst and threatened to flood the whole floor.

  A weight of fear hit my chest like a rock landing in the bottom of a well. “Sorry, Sam,” I said hurriedly. “I have to go.”

  She raised brick colored eyebrows. “Is there a problem?”

  “It’s an emergency at my apartment. I have to leave and let maintenance in,” I said, already heading for the door, frantically texting an answer as I went. “May I call on you?” I added hurriedly, hoping it didn’t sound like an afterthought, which it was.

  Displaying an expression of vague disappointment, she hesitated. We stood at the edge of a moment upon which lives and futures pivot as she considered the request, no doubt weighing it in light of the offhanded way I presented it. To my relief the V-shaped mouth smiled. “Yes, I’d like it very much.”

  In a second I stood outside. Sam closed the door slowly behind me, peeking from the dwindling vertical aperture, apparently still mildly confused by my behavior. She might have been unbelievably hot, but nothing killed a mood faster than the vision of a maintenance crew finding mummified prey in my walk-in. The chilling image haunted me all the way home.

  Chapter Two

  A Date with the Girl in the Library

  For a week Sam seemed to vanish. She didn’t return my calls. I couldn’t get her out of my mind. While driving to class or lecturing or eating lunch, visions of us doing things with the more intimate parts of our respective anatomies caught up to me—sometimes with embarrassing results.

  Once, while counseling a freshman, my mind wandered to a favorite fantasy where I arrived at her apartment as she prepared to have sex with one of her fellow grad students. They were naked on the couch where we did the interview, only she opened it into a bed and pushed the coffee table to the side. She lay across the mattress on her back with legs open in the dim light as he positioned himself between them. A deck of cards lay scattered across the dinette table. Articles of clothing covered the floor beneath it. They’d been playing strip poker.

  “No one draws two to a flush,” she murmured from underneath.

  “So sue me,” replied the deep voice with the smooth expanse of streamlined back muscle, narrow hips, and butt, whose hard shaft hovered at the door of her femininity.

  The heat and odors of their passion saturated the small closed room, displacing the candle wax smell. In the fantasy, the intensity of their mutual involvement, unrealistically, prevented them for noticing my entry. He eased himself into her. In seconds the hard contour of his strong hips strained to its limit in heated motion. Her legs wrapped his waist in a tight grip of tawny firm flesh, and she raised her hips to meet him. His muscled butt stood out in the red candlelight. White, while the rest of him, and all of Sam, was tan. Approaching climax, Sam made short automatic gasps. His back arched. He grunted as the bronze expanse of his torso undulated in rhythm with the motion of their interacting pelvises.

  “Deeper,” she cried from the folds of the bed covers. “I want all you have!”

  I crept up behind them, still unnoticed. His pendulous balls brushed against the hammock of flesh between anus and pussy. With each thrust, her sphincter made a tiny involuntary contraction. The smell of musk and perspiration in the room, Sam’s muted cries, and the liquid noises they made as their slippery and glistening bodies smacked together overwhelmed me.

  “Oh God,” he gasped between breaths in his ardor to attend to the place where she most ached for fulfillment. All of him strained and extended to the breaking point in support of the amorous enterprise.

  I work out at the campus fitness room or run five times a week, but even if I did nothing but grade papers or watch TV all day, I would still be as strong as a heavy-weight boxing champion. As the pace of his lunges into her tight and wet womanhood reached their peak, I took his head in my hands. With a quick twist, I broke his neck. He died making a quiet gurgle. I reached under the shoulders and pulled him off her. In the sudden silence his penis flopped out onto the sheets. The engorged shaft glistened in the pale red light, covered with Sam’s bountiful—and in my fantasy—aromatic secretions. I moved the body. His corpse landed with the slippery clump of a dead weight.

  Sam shrank back and, with large eyes, watched silently from the far end of the mattress. Her knees pressed close together, covering a molten and slippery core. The grad student lay on his side toward the bed. His head, turned unnaturally far around, stared at the ceiling with a wide-eyed, open-mouthed expression of rapt attention. His penis stretched on the floor, like a brown torpedo, still erect from the blood trapped there. Illuminated by the candlelight, a white drop of viscous fluid formed at the tapered end of it and slowly lowered itself to the black floorboards on a miniscule silver thread of liquid.

  I turned to face Sam who sat up in the bed with chin on knees, an introspective expression on her face. By killing him did I arouse or horrify her? I soon got my answer when she smirked up from the shadow, with a face all teeth and titillated gleaming eyes. “Are you going to leave me hanging like this?” she demanded sweetly.

  “Not on your life,” I said, stepping over the cooling remains preserved by death in permanent tumescence.

  Nothing aroused my first lover, Carole Henson, more than men fighting and dying for the prospect of her sexual favors. We played a game with male victims where I killed them at the moment of climax. After Carole the fantasy stayed, but I never actually did it because I never met another vampire female. They were the only kind who might understand.

  “Then let’s not waste any more time,” Sam countered.

  In my fantasy I needed no more encouragement. Ripping my clothes off, I joined Sam on the couch, casting a last glance at the grad student. His legs made a few minor shivers and twitches as the last of life passed from the body. I lay beside Sam and revealed my strength by lifting her onto me. She knelt, straddling my hips, and sought out my cock in the dark, expertly inserting it into the passion m
oistened depths of her hot wet orifice.

  * * * *

  “So, Doctor White,” the freshman said, bringing me back to reality, “Now do you understand why I can't stay at the University?”

  I regarded a fly preparing to land on the edge of a lamp across the room and lowered my reading glasses into place. I might not be able to read the ingredients on a soup label without them, but I could see the movement of a fly’s wings as easily as a human observes the flapping of a flag in a breeze.

  I had not been totally inattentive. After more than six years in the job, I heard these same arguments with minor variations numberless times. I could have countered them before he sat down, but the boy needed to feel like he got a fair hearing for a problem he considered both life-altering and unique. So I heard him without really listening and provided stock arguments for sticking around. Apparently placated, he thanked me and stood to leave. As I rose and shook his hand, to my horror, I realized a stout erection pressed against my fly accompanied by a stain slowly seeping through. Fortunately, because of the way I had turned, no one but me saw it.

  To be sure, Sam burned white hot in my soul.

  As I sat in the student union, eating lunch and reviewing a test key during one of the fifteen minute periods in the day when thoughts of Sam hadn’t pushed everything from my mind, a group of upperclassmen harassed a freshman a couple of tables away. I stood, intending to straighten them out when I heard what I hoped for all week. “Doctor White,” Sam said from behind, “how have you been?”

  I turned, leaving the besieged freshman to his fate, facing her with a grin and a measure of internal relief. “I told you to call me Jim.” She wore jeans and a blouse tied in the front showing a lot of sleek tight midriff. The jeans slung low to her hips. A formidable black leather belt inlaid with silver held them up. A small clear stone glittered from her navel.