During each day she would find her chest tightening at the thought of bumping into him whilst in the street. She had glimpsed him sometimes, almost too scared to look out at all in case he caught her spying again. Mostly he had been hidden from her, covered from head to toe in the black of his leathers and motorcycle helmet. The fact that he was around during daylight hours at all might bring doubts to the mind of some vampire enthusiasts, but she had read and watched enough to know such beliefs were outmoded and erroneous. The strongest ones had powers beyond such things.
Staying behind closed doors was no guarantee of safety. He was her next door neighbour for God’s sake. He was already upon her. He had a right to be there, on his drive, in his front garden. Who would even notice him slipping the twenty yards to her back gate? Even if she could keep her door locked all day, how long would it take him to force his way in and be there with her, unseen and invisible to those outside? If he wanted to he could take her whenever he chose, and there really was very little she would be able to do about it. She was defenceless, as exposed as a grub on the same branch the crow had just landed upon. That thought sometimes had her curling up on the sofa, immobile for long minutes at a time, leaving her children happily playing on the floor. The children she would have to leave behind for an eternity.
In one mad moment she had actually sifted through her books, trying to remind herself of effective apotropaics - those items that could ward him off. Crucifixes were a fictitious anachronism, with this particular type of creature rising from the dead long before Jesus ever did; a deterrent no more daunting to them than sunlight or mirrors. She wouldn’t know hawthorn if it ripped her flesh and how could she gather any anyway, marooned here without a car as she was? Garlic and mustard seeds were the most viable options, and one time she even spread some on her bedroom window sill before sweeping them all off again into the garden below and sinking to her knees with her hands on her head, aware that she was perilously close to completely losing her mind.
In her clearer moments she knew her gathering mania was not caused by fear of him being the creature of the undead her senses suggested. It was from the fear of him not being. Why had he not taken her yet, over two months after he knew she learned his secret? If his teeth were not going to elongate as she watched petrified, if his eyes were not going to turn over white as he bit into the vessels of her neck and sucked the already dull life from her, dragging her forever into his world, well, then what? Although her current existence could come close to crushing her, total oblivion seemed an unkindness too far. She was still young. She could still somewhere feel the optimism of her earlier years. She had been pretty once and could be again, especially if he could melt away her imperfections and give her never fading beauty. He could bring back the promise. Together they would hunt amongst the gorgeous for youthful blood, and even if her soul was lost she could never feel as damned as she did now.
She knew these frivolous fantasies were likely to push her right over the edge, but thoughts of the alternative only brought moods like black clouds over her happiness. Postnatal depression: it might have had a medical name but she needed magic to make it go away. She needed the escape, especially on nights like these when she felt abandoned even though there were people all around. The more the days went by, the harder she found it to integrate with anyone. Her husband wasn’t there to shield her, stealing the time for himself to put his feet up and no doubt watch one of those DVD’s he kept at the back of his wardrobe. When were her hours of relaxation? She hadn’t argued. She never could. Large in her mind was the realisation that she would be there alone, unguarded, completely defenceless. If anyone had sinister intentions towards her then this was a prime opportunity. Except - and maybe it was indeed crushing disappointment that came with the realisation - it wasn’t going to happen tonight because he would not be there.
And then suddenly he was, standing on the patio being greeted by a smiling Nesta. Bethan’s insides jellified in an instant and she felt close to fainting away. He was near to her, lit by the lounge light from behind flooding into the garden, and by the flickers from the various fires in front keeping them warm. He was all in black: narrow-legged trousers and a plain wool roll-neck jumper. Over this was long leather trench coat, down to his shins, like those worn by the goths she saw drinking outside the Black Flag. Only his looked more expensive, cut from a softer leather and more tailored to his frame. If this was just a costume accessory as she suspected, it was an extravagant expense. To complete the look of Sinister Master the hair had been slicked back keeping it totally off his face.
This was exactly as she had pictured him in her dreams, or almost. In those the hair hadn’t been slicked and the coat was replaced by a cloak. The eyes were often more demonic, although now the reflected flames were indeed sending orange flashes across them. Then Nesta made his smile widen to a laugh and Bethan saw the teeth. These were no crappy fangs bought from a joke shop. These were as good as any you would see on screen, perfect canine points some half-inch longer than usual. There was no discernible join or colour difference to the other teeth. They were so life-like they had to be his own. Bethan felt the blood like bubbles in her veins. Oh God, the audacity, the cunning brilliance - using the cover of the costume to display like this, growing your weapons in readiness to strike whenever you wished, whilst all remained oblivious. All but one, that is.
She could barely keep her composure from that moment. She wanted to run but how could she? Nesta and Roni monopolised him, making him smile and plying him with blood-red wine. Then Maria joined them too, talking loudly and excitedly and squeezing his forearm, just as she’d done to him at the welcoming party - that standard signal of hers when her husband was elsewhere and she was half-drunk on wine, to make someone very aware how much she liked them. Didn’t she know that touching a vampire you lusted after allowed them to control your sexual urges, even your climaxes? Didn’t everyone know that? It is one of their most effective weapons against you.
Bethan stayed on the fringes as before, ostensibly keeping a watchful eye over the kids but actually finding it difficult not to look his way. The noise and the activity went on around her but it was mostly a blur. He caught her eye a couple of times, caught her spying on him as before because she wasn’t quick enough to look away. The first time he had given her a polite nod, the smile already on his face put there by others. It was just as he had done at his welcoming party, when she had been introduced to him from afar. The second time he held her gaze for longer, caught and held her in his tractor beam before she was able to force her eyes downwards. She could almost hear the voice in her head: ‘I’m coming to get you.’
However, he didn’t actually speak up and offer any conversation in her direction. He could have made his excuses and come to get her, but he didn’t. In the six weeks he had been living next door the two of them had not exchanged a single word. He had spoken to everyone else, but not to her. She knew if he did he would tell her he knew that she knew, and that would be the beginning of her end - or the start of her beginning, whichever way you chose to look at it.
An hour passed with her on the edge. She wished for some approach but at the same time shrank from the thought. There was laughter and squeals of joy all around. The fires burned and the rain stayed away but she was shaking. The now familiar performances were played out, the children doing their thing and then claiming sweets as a prize for their efforts. He even took his turn with a bowl. The kids weren’t afraid to go to him; they had greed on their side. If he was a monster then he certainly smiled and laughed a lot. The other girls saw to that. Maria’s husband turned up, without a costume. He had a black leather jacket on but nothing as classy as Hunter’s. He joined a couple of the other husbands but Bethan noted the looks he flashed towards Hunter and the three giggling wives. Maybe someone else was onto him too. More likely it was jealousy at Maria’s preoccupation. Bethan could sense tension although the smiles were still everywher
e.
‘Hey, Bella, quieten down. You sounding like a drunken bitch!’ The proclamation was out of the blue, loud enough to go over all the voices. It was said with humour but the malice behind it was carried in that final word, even if it was pronounced as beech. It was incongruous with the kids there happily playing but that was the norm with him and it got the message across as intended. Maria looked dumbstruck and caught out. The other wives wore thin smiles of embarrassment for their friend. Hunter raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips. They resumed their talk but Bethan saw that Maria was noticeably quieter than before, and kept her hands to herself. Too late! Bethan wanted to be with him, to take him away from these other attractions, these giggling girls who knew nothing about him. She wanted to remind him she knew everything that was going on. She purposefully looked his way and sure enough, he caught her eye with greater regularity, intentionally.
Still she couldn’t get close. She felt wild and light-headed, close to melt-down. Her mind was the familiar maelstrom of fear and wanting. She was sure he would move on her at any time, just come her way and force her into the shadows. Perhaps he had magic to make himself invisible, or clear the minds of the others so that they never knew he was there. She had visions of him just coming straight at her, driving her back into the darkness, just feet from where the others stood. He would bend down and sink his teeth into her, his prick hard to her belly as he did so. He would lift her legs from the floor, holding her up, opening her up, until he could get inside her.
Then, to her utter shock, the teeth were removed. He had smiled once too often at one of Nesta’s quips and they had become too much. He fiddled with his thumb at the roof of his mouth and then popped the dentures forward and out, holding them on display to his giggling audience. Bethan felt her stomach hit the floor. Her scrambled brain searched for reasons. Maybe it was some intricate double-bluff, because others had started to suspect. She looked for positives but could summon no contingency plan. She had put all her hopes in him and now the whole thing was crashing down. The shiver he always gave her might be a false one after all. As impossible as her senses told her it was, he might be every bit as alive and as undead as she. The joyful visions of a beautiful eternity stalking with the night creatures could be ripped from her. If so, all there was left for her was reality, and that was an unimaginable blackness.
He was going. She could see him holding up his hands at the girl’s protests and raising his eyebrows with a defensive smile. It was their fault. They had forgotten themselves and laughed loudly again, causing the three grouped husbands to turn their way, causing a barely disguised snarl to appear on the Italian’s face. The wives were not to prevent Hunter’s exit. If he left now that would be it. The faint hopes would melt. Tomorrow he would be just any next door neighbour and Bethan would have nothing to nail her resilience to. It would finish her. The pit would open and in she would fall. He was holding his hand up to the larger group, bidding farewells even to those he had said little to, pulling scary faces at the giggling mini devils and witches. She found herself inching backwards, unseen, going towards the dark passage out of there. It felt like a move towards oblivion but there was no other option. She had to force his hand.
She backed up against the corner of the house, feeling for the cold brick behind her, making sure she was unseen. They only had eyes for him. She slid around the corner into the passage, staying flat to the wall for support, her legs feeling too weak to hold her up if she let go. Pressed to the bricks in the darkness she stayed, not two paces from where Eva had caught her the year before. She waited and tried to hold her senses, listening to his on-going goodbyes, her breaths coming fast and visible in the cold air, her teeth clattering. He had to come past her. One chance: one last chance to drag her wordlessly away. In two minutes she could be naked beneath him in his bed, her legs up and spread wide, the old life being sucked from her at one end, whilst new bliss was driven into her at the other. No one would even notice she had gone.
He rounded the corner and nearly hit her head with his shoulder. He stopped when he was almost past, turning to face her. She was on the point of falling, quaking before him, rendered as mute as always. He looked down from on high, towering over a foot above her, almost blocking out all traces of light. His expression was not demonic, nor even the one of entertained humour he seemed to have sported for much of his evening. It was more serious - a frown, perhaps of concern, with a knitted brow. He held her gaze and she just about held herself upright. The frown lightened slightly, so he was now regarding her with apparent interest, like you would a story-telling child, or perhaps a work of art. It wasn’t an expression that suggested he was about to rip her throat out, but she knew she was dead anyway. He would leave her like this, wordlessly, the foolish nobody that she was, skulking in dark passages hoping for magic. What had someone like him to say to someone as pointless as her? But then he did speak. He said it clearly, slowly, and not too loud. He said:
‘You are very beautiful.’
To her it was like the sun had come out. The butterflies spread but her legs found strength, her mind found strength, and also focus. He was already gone, the back gate shutting behind him, but she was smiling, a big broad smile that sent the heat back into her cold bones. The first thing he had ever said to her. It wasn’t the gore-spattering seduction her dreams craved but it was something to show she existed and mattered. It was a little light in all the gloom, dragging her back from the brink. He wouldn’t need to come for her tonight because she had new energy now and fresh hopes that what she wanted would one day come true. To matter beyond your duties as a mother and a housewife. To be admired, possibly lusted after. She could barely remember happiness, but he might well have given her some now.
Flashpoint
Eva hadn’t spotted it start. The Italian had been mouthy and provocative all evening, even by his standards. She had put it down to blue balls and was looking forward to being on the receiving end of his release of tension later. There had been one conversation in which he had been particularly vocal. She hadn’t really followed what was being said, mainly because the Italian was a bit drunk by then and hard to follow. There had been references to that old favourite respect, and lots of mentions of the phrase shitting on your own doorstep, although the Italian pronounced it sheeting, which just gave her amusing images of the man she planned to fuck that night squatting outside various front doors and shooting plastic protective coverings out of his arse. It had all been insinuation at this point and Eva was only vaguely aware any of it was being aimed at their newest neighbour.
Things suddenly turned nastier on the short walk home. The insinuation became clear accusation, with Hunter being pointed at and told he was the one doing the doorstep shitting. He was apparently always trying to chat up the Italian’s wife - although in almost the same breath the ante was upped. With the others all trying to chip in and diffuse the situation, the accusing voice became more loud and aggressive. Before he could be talked down the Italian had made it clear he knew Hunter was trying to fuck his Maria. It was total nonsense - Maria was the one always fawning over Hunter - but Eva wasn’t about to step in and put anyone straight. Almost from nowhere the situation threatened to spill into fisticuffs.
The accused stayed silent and reasonably unperturbed. However, the others were all animation, each of them calling for an end to the flashpoint and raising placatory hands as if trying to woah the Italian’s motor-mouth like it was a bolting horse. Bolting stallion was more correct, to Eva’s mind at least. The buzz between her legs was in full flow now and she knew she had a wide smile across her face. The Italian tended to speak at high speed, so you had to concentrate for a while after he had stopped to make sense of what had just been said. This kind of nasty-edged gabbling was what she liked about him. It was just like his dirty talk. In a few minutes he would be inside her, snarling in his native language into her ear, then translating as best he could, telling her what a dir
ty cunt and a bitch she was.
She was usually ready for him just from the expectation, but the prospect of a fight swept an extra thrill through her loins. A punch-up was the only postponement to her impending pleasure she would welcome. It would be foreplay as effective as any tongue or fingers. Imagine fucking him when he was still bloodied, his knuckles grazed from the telling blows, his cock swollen fat from the surge of victorious machismo. Imagine his lip bust and the wound still seeping. She might have to break the habit of a lifetime and kiss him, just to taste the iron tang of his manliness. He would go back to his wife and tell her of his valorous exploits in defending her honour, omitting the part about how he immediately then fucked his luscious neighbour to celebrate.
Why fights made Eva quite so excited was anybody’s guess. One time she had seen a massive one break out in a parking lot between rival biker factions. Just before it started the tension and testosterone had been so palpable you could almost have bitten chunks of it out of the air and chewed upon it. For her it had been like those tantalising final fractions, when you feel the cock pressing at your ready entrance and know in the next instance it will slide in to fill you. Then all over the tarmac it erupted like wildfire, with her right amongst it. She even took a stray blow to the arm and reacted by lashing out with her boot, connecting with a knee just as the owner of it was crumpling from a vicious right-hander.
It had turned her on so much she found herself on the periphery, breathing in gasps, the excitement coursing, her hand openly and wantonly shoved down the front of her unfastened leather trousers. It was blatant enough to be spotted. A huge bearded man, who she had just watched crack someone around the head with a beer bottle, decided on a break from the melee to take other pleasures. He grabbed a hold of her shoulder and pushed her forward. The chill of cold night air was already on her bare arse before she had clapped her hands to her knees for balance. Then he was inside her, driving into her from the rear, and as much as it felt like it was forced she knew she had thrust back as far as she could to aid his entry. It felt even better because he was from the opposing gang to hers; one of the enemy taking his plunder.
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