Final Days

by C. L. Quinn

  “Not until you’re ready. Not tonight. But you will find that sex and blood are a combination that will drive you over the edge of ecstasy faster than anything. Someday, and soon, I want to feel you feed from me while you come. And oh, God, I want to do the same.”

  “You can. Um, if you want to, you can do it tonight.”

  “You need more time to adjust to this, Alisa. I promise, though, you are going to love being vampire.”

  She still didn’t know if she could believe it. But right now, every thought went out of her head as he arrived between her legs, and with joy, because she was able to do it, she lifted them up to let him in. He played with her, pulled and tongued her until her feet came down on his back and she lifted higher while he held her gently in hands that she knew would always take care of her. Sweeping beyond the edge of the first orgasm she’d had in several months, her mind swept to something he said earlier. That they would do this every night for ten centuries. It made the orgasm hit harder, then a second one pulling her upward again. But it wasn’t enough.

  The sensation of sexual pleasure didn’t satisfy Alisa. She grabbed his shoulders and pulled him back up the bed with her.

  “Get inside me. I need to feel you inside me.”

  Her hands went to his cock, which was hard and ready.

  “You need me,” she whispered.

  “I’ve needed you since October. Every night. I don’t want to hurt you, baby, but it’s been since then. I haven’t relieved myself since you’ve been gone.”

  “Get inside me. Now.”

  Koen thrust, slowly fitting himself in her, and once he was in, he stopped and just felt her. He gathered her in his arms and held her, arms tight around her body, his cock nestled inside, and didn’t move.

  Alisa felt the tears on her own face as he held her and cried.

  “I was so afraid she took you from me forever.”

  All of the days spent missing him in Brazil, Alisa hadn’t realized how much more painful it had been for him. Because at least she had known he was safe. He hadn’t known the same about her. All the pain that woman caused…

  “We’re together now. Forever.” And suddenly, she believed everything he’d told her. Because she trusted him more than anything in her life, which meant everything he told her was the truth.

  “You’re going to be inside me just like this for hundreds of years,” she said quietly, with awe.

  He lifted his head and kissed her then as he started to move inside her. “Forever, my love.”

  His slow strokes were so erotic, the heat and friction so intense, they both came moments later, inextricably bound, physically and spiritually in a sensation neither one of them had ever experienced before. They were reminded that the universe had chosen them for each other, that destiny had already spoken.

  Alisa kissed Koen’s face gently on the forehead, the chin, his nose, each cheek, and then on the lips.

  “You belong to me,” she said, as he curled her against him and their bodies melted into each other. They were both finally where they belonged.

  They slept through the night, the following day, and next night. Neither had slept well in months, and now that they were back together, safe in each other’s arms, their hearts and minds relieved of worry and pain, they rested for the first time in many days.

  Alisa woke first, and pushed up to look at Koen sleeping beside her. Everything that had happened since the night she’d gone to have dinner with Percy, seemed like a dream, a nightmare. An illusion. Nothing seemed real. Now, back in her home with Koen beside her, everything should feel okay and normal again. But it didn’t. Couldn’t. Not after what Koen revealed to her before they slept.

  Carefully, she got out of the bed, wrapped a light robe around her and walked to her balcony. She wanted to feel the air on her skin after so many months never seeing daylight or breathing fresh air. Normally, she would just open the French doors and go on out. But some kind of heavy metal shutters were locked and crossed in front of the opening. What the hell?

  She shook her head as she looked them over and figured out how to unlatch them and get outside. Nothing normal anymore.

  Except the scarlet around the edge of the city skyline. Except that apparently the sun did always rise, and here it came, spreading light over Chicago and washing away the artificial lights that glowed from so many tall buildings. A light breeze tugged her robe and lifted her hair. It was spring now, she’d missed winter.

  Alisa considered the past few days since her rescue. Her life had taken another wild turn. So much so, she put her hand on the back of her neck and smiled. She should have whiplash. Bringing that hand back down, she watched the fingers while she moved them back and forth, made a fist, then snapped her thumb and middle finger. It was amazing.

  Koen had told her something impossible. And yet here she stood, stood, and walked, when she shouldn’t have been able to. He told her he was a vampire. He had to drink blood. Impossible. His blood could heal her of the devastating disease of ALS. Impossible! And he would turn her into one too so they could live together for centuries.

  “Impossible,” she whispered.

  The sun felt incredible. She dropped into her lounge chair and sighed.

  Koen had rescued her. He loved her, she knew that, and she loved him just as deeply. No matter where her life went from here, it would be incomplete without him. So she would accept anything he insisted and take care of him, as he had done for her.

  She glanced back at the heavy doors pulled only wide enough for her to slide past.

  He couldn’t be a vampire, they just didn’t exist. Right?

  The morning air was wonderful, but it was still a little nippy so she entered the living room, closed the French doors, looked at the alien shutters and secured them again. Nothing normal anymore.

  Her vampire was still asleep and only moaned as she crawled back in bed and scooted up against him. Seconds later, she was asleep again.

  A scraping sound woke her some time later. Alisa rolled over, reaching for Koen, but she was alone in the big bed. She sat up and wiped gently at her right eye that seemed fuzzy. More sounds filtered in through the partially closed bedroom door, so she got out of bed and walked down the hall.

  Koen looked up at her as she entered the room.

  “Hi, lady. You slept well. So did I. It’s been two days of marathon sleep. I’m ravenous and I know you must be too.”

  He’d pushed her furniture back and laid a blanket down on the floor. On the blanket, surrounded by lit candles, a buffet of food waited in various containers with wine glasses and plates beside each other.

  Koen pulled her forward.

  “Breakfast buffet. You may as well get accustomed to it. Vampires eat a lot of food on rising. Come here, baby.”

  He seated her in front of one of the plates and sat beside her.

  “I think I have all your favorites covered.”

  Alisa looked over the displayed food. He did. And he was right. She was starved.

  “This is beautiful. I can see you’re a romantic.”

  “You bring it out in me. Go ahead.”

  She began to fill her plate, and looked at all the calories on it when she was finished.

  “Holy shit. If I’m truly healed, I’d better stop eating everything in sight.”

  “No, you’d better get used to eating everything in sight and then some. Vampires have to consume ridiculous amounts of calories because we burn them so quickly. Alisa, I want to show you what I mean. Will you come with me after we eat?”

  Alisa laid the sweetened toast she was eating back on her plate and touched his face. “Koen, I would go anywhere with you anytime. Vampire or not, I trust you. Strangely, even from the beginning, I never doubted you.”

  “Brilliant woman. First, though, let’s enjoy. I am about five thousand calories low already tonight.”

  Alisa just stared at him.

  An hour later, dressed in snug jeans, a soft sweater, and her favorite stiletto-h
eeled boots that she thought she would never be able to wear again, Alisa stood at the door to the stairwell on the first floor of the Willis Tower.

  “I want to take you to the top of this building,” Koen told her.

  Glancing down at the high-heeled boots, Alisa gave him a pained look.

  “I wish you would have warned me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because this is the tallest building in Chicago and I’m wearing five inch heels.”

  “Doesn’t matter, my love. Your feet won’t touch the ground.”

  He swept her into his arms, and used vampire speed to fly up the stairs, all ninety plus floors, until they arrived, faster than was possible, on the observation deck overlooking the city from every direction.

  Even though she was carried the entire way, when Koen lowered Alisa, she was winded and stunned. Her eyes shot to his face.

  “What the hell was that, Koen?”

  His expression was serious now. “That was a demonstration. I know I’ve asked a lot for you to believe in something so bizarre, so out of your experience, you feel confused enough to wonder if you’re sane or if I’m insane. This is vampire hyper speed, a way of moving through air by displacing it, a way we move so quickly, it’s hard for people to see us move at all. For you to really understand what I am, to really believe it, I needed to show you something that we can do that is so extraordinary, it can’t be disputed. Quite a ride, isn’t it?”

  Alisa was speechless. She looked around her at the empty Skydeck and calculated it couldn’t have taken more than four or five minutes for him to carry both of them up all those flights of stairs. Turning to Koen, she punched him in the chest.

  “Just warn a girl next time you decide to teach her a lesson.”

  “I agree. You understand, though? Vampires can do many things humans cannot do. You’ll learn as you join my family. I just needed to show you something to help you understand. To adapt to this news.”

  “Okay. Adapting.”

  The view from here was breathtaking, although the hyper speeding had already done that to her. Alisa looked around at this city she’d loved, aware that she would probably be leaving it soon to go with Koen. A moment of sadness faded when she looked at Koen, who was also looking over the sparkling city lights below.

  “Isn’t this place closed this late at night?”

  “Not to vampires. Locks don’t bother us. And we can use a simple method we call compulsion to control humans. I know what you’re thinking, but most of us use it only to keep our secret or make life easier.”

  “So we’re alone up here. No one else will come.”

  He looked at her, leaning against the railing. “No, no one else will come here.”

  Alisa nodded, and walked up to Koen. “I want you to make love to me, and I want you to drink from me. I know you want to, I’ve seen you looking at my neck. You linger there when you lick me. And I’m curious about it.”

  Koen’s heartbeat picked up.

  Alisa sat on a bench and pulled off her right boot, then her left. Koen didn’t move as she slipped her jeans down, the pale beige sweater dropped just below her hips and he couldn’t see if she was wearing panties. She stood and walked back to him.

  “I’m not,” she said quietly.

  He was hard and straining already before she grabbed the waistband of his jeans, popped the button and violently yanked the zipper down. She caressed him as she slid his cock free and rolled her fingers over the tip.

  Koen lifted her then and she put her legs around his waist as she wrapped her arms around his neck. She rode him while he moved them over to one of the Ledge observation boxes, all glass walls and a glass floor, suspended out away from the building. It was one of the most exhilarating places in the city, and he thought it was the perfect place to make love with her and take her blood for the first time.

  Pressing her against the glass wall, he pushed her long loose hair away from her face and looked into her eyes.

  “You’re sure?”

  “More than anything. You really need this, don’t you?”

  “More than anything,” he parroted, and pushed into her, as deeply as he could, over and over, and just before he felt as if he might come, he licked her neck and hesitated.

  “Now, baby,” she whispered.

  Koen struck, fast, pierced her soft skin, the bite so quick she felt only a brief pain and then felt his tongue moving against her as he drew on her. She’d been just on the edge of an orgasm, but it changed, intensified, became hotter and deeper, and when she began to spasm, her body writhing upward, he thrust one last time and they both came explosively. It was the most erotic experience of her life.

  Keeping her neck against his mouth, she tightened her grip on him and began to move again. Alisa rode him to a second orgasm while he finished his blood draw.

  Once he pulled away and he licked her to seal the punctures, he held her close as they slid down the wall and cradled into each other.

  Neither one of them could speak for a while, they just lay against each other and that was all they needed.

  Eventually Alisa lifted her head.

  “Wow, Koen, just…wow.”

  Letting his fingers roam under the sweater, along her side, across her breasts, Koen nuzzled back under her hair again.

  “I know. It’s incredible. I can’t wait until you can draw from me. Even more important, I have your blood in me and I can be used to trace you if anything happened to you again. Alisa, I love you so much, I can’t lose you again.”

  Alisa pulled away to kiss him, her tongue moving aggressively inside him.

  “Never. I’m not ever letting anyone take me again. Make me like you, baby. Take me home, and make me a vampire.”

  TWENTY FIVE

  Jacob slipped on a pair of the loose fitting harem-style pants he’d grown accustomed to since living in the village with the children of the moon. It was home now. He walked barefoot across the bamboo mats that covered his path from his bedroom to the baby’s room just adjacent.

  Eras’s cooing had awakened him before Starla, so he went to him.

  “What’s the deal, little guy?” he whispered, and lifted the baby into his arms.

  Eras immediately reached out, his dark eyes searching for Jacob’s. The love in those eyes still astounded Jacob every time. He curled his hand around the thick cap of satin-soft ebony hair that covered the little boys head. He’d always heard babies lost much of their hair after birth, but Eras never did. Anyway, he thought he was the most beautiful child that had ever existed.

  “What do you want, young man?”

  Eras made it clear, even without words he wouldn’t be able to use for many more months, but Jacob knew he wanted to be carried outside.

  Opening the back door into the enclosed garden behind their dwelling, Jacob carried him out and took a seat in a large rocking chair, leaned back with the baby on his chest and watched the sky, which was pitch black and crystal clear tonight with no moon.

  A few moments later, a brilliant flash streaked across the sky. The baby lifted its head and watched.

  “You wanted to see the shooting stars. Okay, although some day you’re going to have to let me in on how a baby only four months old knows these things.”

  Adjusting his position, Jacob lay back with Eras on his stomach, both now watching the sky. Several more meteors streaked by as Jacob held his son.

  His son. As much as anyone else’s, and he would fight to defend that truth. The baby had chosen him. Although he had no genetic connection to this remarkable first blood child, he was father just as much as Ahmose.

  This child was a part of his soul, his heart, and the woman he loved. This life they’d built was beyond anything he ever expected, his destiny grander than anything he deserved. But because of her, because of Starla, he was bound with powerful first bloods as guardians of the Mother Earth.

  He didn’t fully understand it, but Jacob knew that someday these special people would stand between t
he continuation of this planet, and all life upon it, and the final destruction they would fight so hard to prevent. This child he held in his arms would be a soldier, a leader, the catalyst that would save a world.

  And somehow Jacob had become his parent and teacher. He was overwhelmed and humbled. And loved this baby more than his own life.

  Warm hands slid down and curled around his shoulders, one dropping onto Eras’s tousled curls.

  “What woke you?” Starla asked.

  “Eras wanted to see the shooting stars. I just gave the little guy a ride.”

  “Hmmm.” Starla took a deep breath and came around to the front to sit on a low bench. She was wearing Jacob’s favorite outfit, a see-through white robe that hid none of her perfect body. She looked skyward as a flaming earth-grazer meteor left a path seconds long and covered over a quarter of the visible sky.

  “Wow. I guess it’s worth losing sleep. The sun will rise soon.”

  “We’ll be back inside long before that.”

  “Okay, sweetie. I’m going back in, but if I’m asleep by the time you get him back to bed, wake me. I have something I need you to do.”

  His cock twitched. He nodded as she ran a hand along his thigh and stopped just short of touching him where he wanted her to before she leaned over to kiss the little boy on the forehead and disappeared.

  “Getting sleepy, little guy?” Jacob asked.

  On a hill several hundred yards away, a granite stone lay on a fresh grave. The grave would see the moonlight and feel the heat of the sunshine during the day. Perfect for a first blood’s final resting place.

  The granite had a simple inscription carved in ornate letters:

  WINDARI

  Who lost her Way

  Returned to the Mother

  For Forgiveness.

  Ahmose had wanted her there, near the village, because she was one of the children of the moon, and he thought that maybe somehow he had failed her. He himself had lost his way and nearly hurt someone who meant the world to him now.