Promise Me Anthology

by Tara Fox Hall

  I nodded. “I’m surprised that you give me such an easy challenge.”

  “There is one simple request, however,” Nate said gleefully. “You cannot use your voice, Dev. You must gain her acceptance—and mine—without uttering one word of your own.”

  My spirits sank. “What about written words?”

  Nate smiled. “No more than one or two sentences at one time...and only five such sentences in the entire pursuit!”

  In terms of courtship, my skill with words was unequalled, and my voice in song one of my most powerful persuasive tools. Without either, any seduction would be an incredible challenge, even with my looks and money. But my blood was up now. “Agreed.”

  * * * *

  The next night found me at the address that Nate had specified. Like a contemporary Dracula, I stood outside the mark’s first floor window and looked in, hoping to get an idea of inspiration in how to proceed. The woman herself was not at home. The room in view seemed to be a living room, with a couch, a coffee table, some lamps, and some plain paintings of seascapes.

  She likes the water. That’s something to go on, at least.

  Finally, there was the sound of car in the drive, a small Subaru SUV. A woman with short brown curly hair emerged, then entered her home. After turning on lights, she poured herself some wine, sat down on the couch, and began to work on her laptop computer. From her intent expression, I concluded she was working hard at something, rather than just chatting online with friends or bidding on various internet auction items.

  I watched for a solid two hours, but the woman did nothing exciting, just kept typing on her keyboard. Even her wine was ignored, after the first sip. I was about to leave when she finally shut the lid of the computer, put it aside, and went to bed.

  I lingered outside until I was sure she was asleep, then crawled in the basement window. While I could have asked Lash to procure her laptop—or even for Titus to simply teleport me inside her home to look at it—my old instincts of hunter were re-emerging. I wanted to experience the thrill of stalking my prey, not just the inevitable triumph at the end.

  I walked over to the table quietly, secure in the fact that even if the woman were to awaken, I would be able to move fast enough to avoid being seen.

  I opened the laptop, scrolling through her desktop files. There were spreadsheets of grades, lecture notes, and two papers in final stages of completion, rendering up a lot of useless facts and figures, along with that most coveted of info, my quarry’s profession and name. She was a professor of English Literature at Southwest Tennessee Community College. Her name was Mary Ann Bridges. I committed the name to memory, then kept looking through files, hoping for something to leap out at me.

  Mary Ann had tried to be a poet, though she was an amateur from the verse I discovered. But her papers—in my opinion—were excellently written, all the points clear and concise, with well-drawn supporting arguments. This was a woman with intelligence who had an appreciation for the poetical arts, but was not gifted herself in them. Interesting.

  A phone rang shrilly, startling me. I looked over with alarm at the cell phone on the end table, then heard Mary Ann stirring in her bedroom. The phone shrilled again.

  I shut the lid of the computer, darting into the darkness of a shadowed doorway. Mary Ann emerged rumpled, trudging sleepily to the phone. “Yes?”

  I couldn’t make out what the caller said, only that the tinny voice was male and insistent. Mary Ann was equally forceful. “I don’t want to hear your excuses, Mike. This is the second time you cancelled on me for dinner at the last minute.”

  Mike said something to his defense. I took it for a poor excuse, the way Mary Ann’s face twisted in annoyance.

  “We’re supposed to be engaged,” she snapped, her resentful voice rising in volume. “No one who loves a woman treats her like this, Mike.”

  Mike began to give some explanation, but Mary Ann hung up on him. After turning her phone off with a vengeful push of a button, she trudged back into her bedroom.

  She was bound to be vulnerable on the rebound, especially with her fiancé’s behavior. Something to consider. I just had to find way to communicate with her without words...

  Then the answer leapt out at me. Music. I would serenade her using the voice of another to communicate my pining...No! Nate might say later I had cheated, if the song had lyrics. I would write my own classical composition, something to call her to me with its pure beauty and longing. That was the answer.

  * * * *

  I shifted again in my chair at Hayden, rubbing my left upper fang against the lower one. I had been sitting there in my study the better part of the last hour, a blank sheet of paper in front of me, pen in hand. The solution that had seemed so easy mere hours ago now appeared insurmountable.

  What is wrong with me, that I’m not inspired to write one single note?

  I’d never been big on my own compositions while travelling as a bard centuries ago, tending to be more comfortable giving perfection to popular songs with my voice than in bringing my own stories to life in song. But in my many years as vampire, I had always been able to write poetry, when the situation called, even if my stanzas were not exactly in Lord Byron’s exquisite class. Yet each time I had brought my pen to paper this evening, I stopped, the beginning of the proposed unwritten “new” melody revealed to be just another song I was remembering from my past. While any of those old songs might have been suitable for this situation, it bothered me that I could not write my own song, something new and bursting with not only beauty, but also life.

  After another hour of false starts and more than a few muttered oaths, I gave up and went for a walk, trying to recall what a fellow vampire David Helm had once told me about song writing. Something about pieces of his soul being written into his lyrics, so that they wouldn’t just sound beautiful, they would cascade into a powerful living thing capable of moving the listener to ardent emotion. I could not remember his exact words, but the passion in his tone as he’d spoken had been more than memorable, the stirring inflection of his voice coming to mind instantly. That passion was what I needed now.

  I chuckled aloud. Maybe my soul was too old and ragged to have any pieces left to spare for a song.

  Be that as it may, I had only six days left before I lost my bet with Nate. There was no time to try to rediscover my own passion. It was time to pay a visit to David, and call in some vampiric help.

  * * * *

  “You want a nocturne,” David said blithely, as he sat at his electric piano, working on a small melody.

  I watched the handsome former rock star from a short distance, wondering why he’d chosen an electric version of one of our shared favorite instruments instead of the real thing. Yes, he had once used that same model keyboard in his mortal life, but as a student of music, he had to know that the truest form of notes could only come from a grand piano, or at the very least, an upright. Electric keyboards played only recorded music at the touch of a button.

  This is not the time to critique, when you have come seeking help. And he’s probably still clinging to the vestiges of his mortal life.

  “I want a song of the night, yes,” I agreed, pacing back and forth. “Something to call to her, to evoke her interest. I can take it from there. But I need something to initiate first contact.”

  “I’m glad you’re doing this,” he said, changing the scale of the instrument. He hit a few keys, testing the sound.

  The new tones were too high-pitched, grating on my already frayed nerves. “What do you mean?”

  “That I’ve never known you to have someone you really cared about, not since I’ve met you,” David replied absently, still tweaking his instrument.

  “What makes you think I care for her?” I said scornfully. “This is not about love, David. It’s about seduction. There’s an abject difference.”

  David dropped his gaze, but not quick enough that I didn’t see his disapproval.

  “You object?” I said dangerous
ly, moving closer to him.

  “I do,” he said very quietly.

  I stared at him for a long moment, trying to overcome my shock. David had always been loyal since the night I’d saved him from himself and made him vampire. He had never refused anything I asked of him. He certainly had never dared to sit in judgment on any of my actions.

  “This won’t make you happy, seducing this woman you don’t even know,” he continued. Although soft, his voice had doggedness. “You don’t want her. Why pretend you do, or that claiming her will change anything about your life?”

  “Who said I wanted anything about my life changed?” I growled at him.

  “You didn’t pick the word abject on accident,” he replied. “Think about what you really want. That is worth writing music for. You need to consider that your lack of creativity may be due to lack of passion—”

  “You know nothing,” I said wrathfully, glaring at him with red eyes. “Come to me in two days with a composition, David. And it had better be the best song you have ever written.”

  “I will not,” he said quietly. “You can command anything else of me, my Lord. But not this.”

  I sputtered my words, so livid I could barely talk. “How dare you—”

  “Songs must come from the heart,” he said, talking over me. “Lies ring false, their dissonance magnified a hundred times. Anything I make you will be garbage, do you understand?”

  He advanced on me. “Tell me her favorite things, how her kisses would make you feel, how you long to make love to her! Tell me her dreams, what you wish your future would be like with her. Tell me you love her and mean it!” He slammed his hand down on the keys, striking discordant notes. “This is all that I can write for you, without that. Do you understand, Devlin Dalcon, Lord of Vampires?”

  I struck him then, barely restraining my taloned hand so it didn’t take his head off in one swift blow. David was thrown backward into his keyboard, both of them falling to the floor with a crash. I stood over him threateningly, wanting to kill him.

  “Go ahead,” he said, spitting out some blood. “Beat me. You will only hate yourself more than you already do.” He looked up at me, his expression not so much angry, but instead sad. “It will not change anything about what you are.”

  I left the room rather than tear him to pieces, knowing I’d regret it later. After teleporting home to Hayden, I stormed into the ballroom, then slammed the wooden doors and locked them. Sitting at the grand piano, I launched into the Moonlight Sonata, doing my best to make it sound as mournful as possible. I didn’t want light and love, happiness and life. I wanted anger and somberness, hopelessness and death. Because I was only those things, just as he’d accused. They were all I had been now, for hundreds of years.

  I felt tears on my cheeks, and hated them. I hated myself. I hadn’t wanted this! Not any of it!

  I wanted Anna. I wanted to be loved. I wanted all of the horror of the last two hundred years to be washed away in music and the slate set clean. Why hadn’t the years blurred some of the terrible times, or mellowed the anguish over her loss? Why couldn’t I remember our love as clearly as I remembered her death? I wanted to feel hope again. I wanted to feel warmth again. I wanted to unthaw from the dead thing I’d become and live again.

  The sound of clapping startled me. I struck a discordant note, then turned to see one of my werebear guards, Nick, behind me. “That was beautiful,” he said, looking apologetic. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but you have a call from Nate on line one. He—”

  I resisted the sudden urge to rise from my seat and tear his hands off. “Tell him I’ll call him back tomorrow,” I said sharply, turning back to the piano. “And don’t disturb me again tonight, please.”

  As the door closed, I was already losing myself again in my emotion, hearing the new haunting and plaintive music pouring out of me. I stopped briefly to set up some recording equipment to capture it, then resumed. Over and over I put all my anger, all my hate, all my hope and all my despair over my lost love into musical verse that swelled and grew greater and deeper, encompassing me in oblivion where only I existed in its void of true singular passion.

  By daybreak, I had a breath-taking melody, one filled not only with anguish but also fresh yearning. Carefully, I closed the piano keyboard and burned a compact disc of the music, titling it “Yearning.”

  I sent one of my guards to leave my composition on her doorstep with a quick note that said only, “For you. Please meet me at seven if you would be so kind.” I named a public restaurant, one within walking distance for her. I, of course, would teleport in via my demon, Titus.

  Excited but exhausted, I headed to my bedroom for a good day’s sleep, congratulating myself on reawakening my thirst for adventure. My wellspring of passion was flowing once more. “Yearning” was one of my best efforts. I would soon discover whether it would be enough to ensnare Mary Ann.

  * * * *

  Waiting at the restaurant that night, I wasn’t sure if she would show. I had been proud and satisfied with my efforts in the wee hours. But in the dusk of evening, now rested and refreshed, I worried that my song wasn’t good enough. I was out of practice, after all. What if she didn’t like “Yearning”? What if she stood me up? I was going to be mortified. I’d have to pretend to Nate that some crisis had come up elsewhere that had needed my attention, so I’d never have to admit what happened...

  To my abject relief, Mary Ann walked in that very moment, scanning the crowd anxiously. Catching her eye, I beckoned to her. She came over, drinking me in with her eyes, and sat down.

  “You wrote the song?” she said in disbelief. Her tone was heavy with ill-concealed lust.

  I nodded, pleased that she was clearly enraptured.

  “It was beautiful.”

  I smiled.

  She looked at me oddly, clearly wondering why I hadn’t said the expected thank you for her accolades.

  Nate would never know. And this is still my first sentence, technically. “I’m glad you liked it, Mary Ann.”

  “Your voice is beautiful,” she said, enraptured. “But what’s your name? How do you know me? Have we met before?”

  Answering just her questions would lose me the bet easily. I had one chance. “Then would you like a private serenade?” I said meaningfully, standing and offering my hand.

  At first, I was sure she was going to refuse me. He eyes narrowed slightly, obviously thinking that I had done this merely for sex. Then she put her hand in mine, and rose from her chair.

  “Yes.”

  * * * *

  Mary Ann was not an easy conquest. While I told her only my name, she gave me a long speech as she drove us to my home about how she was not the kind of woman who usually did things like this, that she was engaged, etc. etc. I nodded and squeezed her hand where appropriate, but otherwise said nothing. I was sorely tempted to ease her mind, to tell her that she owed her dolt of a fiancé nothing, that no one would know of her dalliance with me save Nate, unless she wished it otherwise. But my silence seemed to oddly be more of a comfort to her than any words would have been.

  That night, I loved her. But while her flesh yielded its own pleasures, I found greater ones in playing for her, in hearing both the song I had written and also others flow through my fingers and into the piano. Her enthusiasm for my art—and my body—was nothing short of exhausting. When she finally slept, I wearily rose from the guest bed where we’d frittered away most of the night and made a call to Nate, telling him that one half of the bet had been completed.

  He, of course, would not believe me without seeing her with his own eyes.

  A few minutes later, with a little demon assistance, Nate was staring enviously down at Mary Ann’s sleeping, satiated form. “You son of a devil,” he said darkly. He looked up at me. “You must have gone over the word limit.”

  “Only two sentences written, and two spoken,” I said proudly with a satisfied smirk.

  “But how do you propose to complete your success?” he c
hallenged. “You have only one more sentence worth of words, Dev.”

  I had no idea. Actually, I was somewhat surprised I had gotten this far. “In good time, my friend. Come. She may wake if we stay here.”

  I led him to the ballroom, then played him my composition. “You should have written her poetry instead of giving her the standard gifts.” I smirked at him again. “I needed only a song and an invitation to snare her, plus my name.” I laughed. “All women are not seduced the same way, my friend. You must tailor the lure to the woman.”

  Nathan grimaced at me. “Point taken. Now how do you propose to get her to agree to be my lover as well as yours?”

  “I suggest that you meet us at a social outing,” I said, thinking quickly. “I can introduce you as a friend, then quickly excuse myself. She likes the arts, so give her an example of your talents. You aren’t bound by your own rules, so you can take all night discussing—”

  Nate looked disgruntled. “I have none, Dev. My expertise is in business dealings only.” Old pain and rage flashed across his features. “You know that slaves of the original America did not often enjoy free time to learn the luxuries of life, only the basest toils.”

  “I know that you’ve had close to a century and a half to accommodate yourself with the luxuries of life, as you call them,” I countered. “Yes, most everyone you deal with in today’s world remembers you for your ruthlessness alone. But what about Colette? Do you not show your sister another side, when you two are alone together? That of the doting brother who never raises his voice, who buys her every new book of poetry her heart desires? You must have talked to her at length about her interests—”

  “But I have never composed something myself!” Nate said stridently, a trace of panic etching itself momentarily on his features.

  “There must be something you can come up with,” I persisted. “Some instrument you have familiarity with, some form of creative enterprise you could exploit—”

  Nathan snorted. “I know how to play the harmonica, and the knowledge of several bawdy songs the other slaves used to work to. And I have not played in close to eighty years. ”