by P. J. Burgy
“Do you always have to kill your victims?”
“Yes.”
“Why so… so brutally?”
“Life is brutal, my love. As is death.”
“Why not just, um, cut… someone… and…”
He regarded her coolly, his hands moving to splay across his strong thighs. “Bleed them?”
“Yeah.”
Shaking his head, he dismissed the notion. “That’s just not how it’s done.”
“Why?”
“The blood has to come directly from the flesh, my body to theirs, my lips on their skin. If it touches the air, it’s useless to me.”
“Oh.”
He waved vaguely in the air. “In the movies, they show vampires drinking blood from chalices or licking it off their fingers. Completely inaccurate. If the blood sits out too long it becomes detrimental to our health as it were, in whatever way you define ‘health’ for a vampire. It makes us weak.”
“Do you need to drain them completely?”
“They’ll die from the bite regardless; may as well get a full meal from them.”
Lizzie’s nose crinkled. “Martin, you’re talking about people. Drinking their blood. Killing them. That’s awful.”
“Is it?” he asked. “Do you scold the owl for hunting mice? The wolf for eating deer? No, you don’t. There’s a natural order to life. Predator and prey. Your kind is just accustomed to being on the top of that food chain. Finding out that you aren’t is disconcerting, I’m sure, but you might as well accept it.”
“It’s a lot to process.”
“Vampires aren’t the only creatures that hunt and feed on humans. We are the most famous, I will say.” He seemed to brighten momentarily, a subtle smirk on his lips. “If it’s any consolation, the ratio is extremely skewed in your favor. Vampires are a rare breed. The creatures of the night have dwindled in number during the last two centuries.”
“Why is that?”
“Simply put, it’s harder to hunt. Harder to survive.” Martin scowled then, rolling his shoulders. “Cameras everywhere. Humans never sleep. There is no night anymore, not in the cities.”
“So, you move out here, to the sticks…”
He lowered his head and looked up at her. “Exactly. We had to adapt.”
“I could have been killed and eaten by a monster at any point in my life then. Comforting to know…”
“But I found you first. You’ll never be in any danger ever again. Not from vampires. Not from any of them. Once I mark you as mine, they’ll dare not even look your way.” He extended a hand toward her, palm up and fingers out. “If you accept me as your master.”
She stiffened. “Mark me? Master? Whoa, hey.”
“It’s just a formality…”
“And if I decline? Politely… decline.”
His expression chilled. “Why would you?”
“Because I’m not sure I want all that, Martin. Sure, it’s like a fantasy. Something I’d wish for until I had it. You said yourself that your companions aren’t allowed to live a life outside of you,” she said. “You say ‘god’ and I hear ‘pet’.”
“No, no.” He shook his head, brows furrowing. “You are special. I’d… I’d let you… let you live freely outside of the house if you let us bind. You’d be the first, but I’d do it if it’d convince you to stay.”
“Martin…” She stared at him, his gravity growing stronger. When he reached out to her, she took his hand.
“As long as you returned home to me, and kept me first and foremost in your heart, I’d allow you freedoms. I promise.” His gaze held intently on her. Red stains formed in the corner of his eyes, turned to small, beaded swells and then broke into tiny trickles on either side of his nose. “Please do not refuse me.”
Her breath caught. Lizzie reached to his face with her free hand and touched the bloody tears where they stopped just above his lips. “You could literally have anyone you wanted, Martin.”
“I want you.” He leaned toward her.
Her eyes closed before she could fall into him, the draw becoming too much for her to stand. Her heart pounded against her ribs. “I’ll consider it. How about that? But, ah, I want to write up some conditions, you know. I think it’s fair to make a contract with some rules, right?”
“Conditions? Like?”
“Like you don’t feed on anyone from this town. And, ah, if you have to kill humans, you kill bad ones. There’s a lot of bad people out there. No more innocent women,” she stammered, shoulders tense. His stare felt heavy on her, and she opened her eyes again. “Can you do that?”
The blood on his face made him look pale. He managed a slow nod. “If it would please you.”
“In fact, ah, promise me now… Don’t hunt here.”
“I promise.”
“I’m not saying yes or no yet. Just that I’ll write up some rules and if we’re both on board I’ll, ah, I’ll consider it.” She swallowed, lips dry. “Ah, how would… you mark me?”
“There is a ritual,” he said. “My body and yours. Merged. You would wear something I gave to you. A ring. A necklace. You would never take it off. You couldn’t take it off, even if you wanted to. You’d be bound to me, body and soul, for the rest of your natural life.”
“I’d be your Renfield.”
“Oh no, nothing like that. Free will is necessary in order to create great works.”
“What would removing the item do… if I did somehow?” Her bottom lip trembled as he stroked her hand, his icy fingers pressing a bit harder against her skin.
“You would die.” The blue of his eyes might’ve shifted to a darker shade, if only for a second, or the lights flickered in just the right way to make it appear so.
“At least you’re honest about it…”
“There’s no benefit in lying. I want you, Lizzie Clay. I want you more than I’ve wanted anything or anyone before,” he stated, tone flat. “You are always on my mind when I am awake, and even as I slip into the daytime death at sunrise.”
“You die when the sun rises?” She squeezed his hand.
“Every morning. Every day. For six-hundred years.”
She looked to his hand, paler than earlier. “Martin…” Fatigue had begun to tug at her eyelids, and she exhaled slowly. “I will consider it, okay?”
“That’s all I can ask for,” he whispered. His fingers brushed against her wrist, his touch gentle again. With his other hand, he stroked her hair, drawing closer to her.
Lizzie felt trapped, paralyzed in his sights. When he kissed her, she yielded and parted her lips. His was not an invasive kiss, but soft and exploratory. The off-putting sensation of his cool tongue was jarring, and she made a sound in her throat.
He pulled back, aware of her discomfort. “That was too bold of me. I humbly request your forgiveness.”
“You kissed me.” She blinked rapidly, her eyes tracing over his face. The blood stood out starkly now against his flesh. He was indeed growing paler.
“I desire your affection. Your touch. Not carnally, but emotionally. Empathically. I need to know that you love me as much as I love you, and I want your warmth. Your living heat. Please. Let me kiss you again.” His irises darkened, the blue closer to that of the evening sky than the morning.
“Martin,” she began, shivering in his shadow. His gravity had changed. She felt like a tiny bird under a cat’s paw. “I want to, but I’m… I’m afraid…”
“Afraid of what?”
“I don’t know. I’m just afraid.”
“Let me hold you then. Just for a little while.” His tone grew pleading. “I’m cold, Lizzie.”
“You’re cold?” She licked her lips and moved toward him. Her arms wrapped around his shoulders and his slid around her middle. He embraced her snugly, tightly, drawing the life out of her and sucking the air from her lungs. It was a fleeting sensation; terrifying as it was exhilarating, and she cried out weakly.
No breath left his lips beside her ear, his chin on her shoulder
, and yet he moaned in soft pleasure.
Her pulse raced. She ran her fingers through his hair, her thumb brushing over his ear. He held her against himself, fingers splayed across her back.
Martin pulled her closer and she inhaled deeply, the faint scent of perfume lingering on his clothes. Fabric softener. He had no smell of his own. Her lips touched his throat.
“How would we merge, Martin?” she asked.
“The ritual is ceremonial in nature,” he whispered in reply. His head tilted to the side. “But the magic itself is real. A spell. Both of us at midnight, tied together at the waist and bound at our wrists in the circle. You will offer your soul and I will take it. We will join. The rite is completed when you put on the token I gift you and pledge your fealty to me, and only me.”
“You’d own my soul?” Her fingers moved across his shoulder, cautiously feeling at his muscular upper arm.
“Yes.” He nuzzled her ear.
“Do you… have a soul, Martin?”
He gave her a gentle squeeze. “A damned one.”
“Would my soul be damned too?”
“Yes.”
“I’d go to Hell when I die?”
“If you believe in such things, yes.” He inhaled through his nose and then exhaled through his mouth; the sound ragged in her ear – that wasn’t a breath. “You smell so good to me.”
She pressed against him, her insides gnawing at her, begging her to relieve the mounting tension. “Do I?”
“I would never want to harm you, Lizzie, understand that, but the effort I’m exerting in holding back is becoming far too great to bear. Holding you close like this… it brings me profound joy. But, unbound as we are, your scent is too tantalizing.” Having said that, he unexpectedly licked her throat, his tongue cool and dry.
She stiffened, a pleasant chill running up her spine. As the implication sank in, her heart skipped a beat. “Oh. You’re thinking about… biting me?”
“I am,” he replied. “I am famished. I haven’t fed yet tonight. Perhaps tomorrow we can continue this conversation, and you can consider our pact. For now, though, you should go. You won’t be safe around me for very much longer. If I hurt you, I’d… I’d never forgive myself. So, please, go home.” He untangled himself from her and pulled away.
Lizzie hadn’t been ready for his face. Still handsome, but sharply drawn, his eyes darker and his lips parted to show the sharp tips of those fangs he’d displayed earlier. His mouth shut and he stood, helping her up.
He looked at her with hungry eyes.
“Not… anyone in town, Martin. Okay?”
“No one in town.”
When they reached the foyer he raised a hand, stopping her. The soft smile appeared out of place considering his state. “Wait.”
Martin slid a hand into his back pocket, drawing something out and then holding his open palm out to her. A key.
“For me?” she asked.
“Yes. So you can come and go whenever you like. My home is open to you.” He nodded as she took it.
He walked her to the front door, and she left, hearing the door close behind her. He stood on the landing, watching her make her way to her car. A flurry of motion in the light, like shadows dancing, and he was gone.
Fear gripped her heart, and she hurried to start her car, suddenly petrified of the thing that hunted in the night.
Chapter 11
The night air bit her cheeks as she limped through the woods, the light of the moon bright enough to guide her cautious footsteps across the snowy, uneven earth. Black trees, tall and spindly, loomed like grasping hands above her, swaying as a cold wind blew from the north.
Barefoot, skin on fire, she struggled onward, holding herself as her hair hung in her face. Her nightgown did little against winter’s breath.
Lizzie stumbled forward, a clearing visible through the trees many yards ahead of her. She tried to sprint and found her legs useless, weakened far too much. Still, she pushed herself as hard as she could.
A body, a woman, lay on her side in the clearing, curled up and buried under a thin layer of snow. Lizzie broke from the tree line and went to her, calling out, asking if she were all right. She already knew the answer.
The body had no head, only tiny spatters of blood – black in the moonlight – were visible on the snow closest to that tattered stump of a neck.
The cracking of slender branches from behind her prompted Lizzie to spin on her heel. Standing at the edge of the forest, the bottom half of his face coated in thick, viscous blood, Martin waited silently. His fingers were tangled up in a mesh of black hair, the woman’s head held at his side, her mouth gaping wide open like her vacant eyes.
Lizzie lost her footing, nearly tripping. An ice-cold grip took her bare ankle and she looked down to see the headless corpse holding fast to her, the body contorting, the bones crunching as it forced through the rigor mortis to attack.
She kicked it away, freeing herself, and toppled to the side, landing on the hard ground. Frantically she glared at Martin, who stood idly by, his black, silk shirt open, blood smeared across his chest. He watched her, head tilted.
“You don’t know her,” he said.
“You don’t know me,” the woman’s head croaked.
“She had a name,” Lizzie whispered.
The head gurgled, a thin voice leaving its frozen lips. “Dead.”
Martin nodded. “Dead.”
Lizzie ran her fingers through the snow. “You killed her.”
“The owl hunts mice,” Martin said.
“The wolf eats the deer,” the head said.
“The rabbits,” he said. “They eat the rabbits.”
“What are you?” Lizzie asked.
He grinned, blood seeping out of his mouth around his teeth, all fangs now. “Damned.”
She woke up, sweating, and grabbed for her phone as the alarm blared a jaunty tune. Lizzie’s heart pounded hard, her mouth dry. Rolling over, she flopped out across her bed and stared up at the ceiling. Her dreams faded quickly, leaving only the anxiety.
She looked to the window. 6 AM and still dark out.
Forcing herself up, she sat and stared at the empty side of the bed. Tommy would still be sleeping at this hour, snoring away, and hogging the blankets.
After a shower, Lizzie got dressed and shambled downstairs to make herself breakfast. Scrambled eggs. One of the eggs cracked to reveal a bloody yolk and she doubled over, almost vomiting. That batch was tossed into the trash. She microwaved some frozen pizza instead and ate that.
At her laptop, she searched for recent police activity. A body found. Decapitated woman. Anything. Another article, something from a few days earlier, popped up in an area thirty miles away in the town of Berryville. She read it and saw a picture of a lovely, dark haired woman – Olivia Francelli, age twenty-five – with an eerily familiar face.
Her dream…
‘I have to eat, Lizzie…’ His words echoed in her mind.
How could she accept it? What difference did it make where the victim came from? She stared down at her lap.
The silence in the house became too loud for her and eventually she went for her morning jog, her earphones on and her music blasting.
Gary tried to wave at her, and she ignored him. He’d have attempted small talk about Tommy, she was sure of it. His dogs yipped madly and chased her for twenty feet before giving up and returning to their master.
Mrs. Hempstead wasn’t out to berate her for running all alone so early in the morning. Lizzie felt some relief in that, as she didn’t have the stomach to be scolded. Kate would have been furious if she’d known.
And what would Lizzie have to be afraid of? A killer? A monster roaming the streets of Puhtipstie at night? The demon in the dark was Martin. He wouldn’t harm her – or so he’d said. She had nothing to fear from him.
She ran up along the sidewalk and made the turn to her house, stopping abruptly at the sight of the bloody, furry thing in the yard. Her breath caught
and she approached cautiously, seeing that it still moved weakly in the snow.
An injured rabbit, torn at the middle with its guts spilled out, twitched below her as it breathed, its black eyes wide in terror. Lizzie spun around, seeing motion behind her. The neighborhood stray, a big orange tom, scurried out from under her car.
Blood on his muzzle, he stopped to bathe himself close by, licking his paw and dragging it over his head.
Lizzie turned back to the dying rabbit. It suffered greatly, hardly able to move. Her chest burned. She looked toward the porch and saw that Tommy had left the gardening shears out by the chairs. The terrible image of what she had to do flashed in her mind.
She went to the porch, picked up the shears and came back to the yard where the thing lay. The cat went skulking off, bored of watching, and left Lizzie to stand alone above the rabbit.
At first, she crouched, then she knelt. She stood again and held the shears in her shaking hands. She opened the shears and closed them again, fidgeting and staring. Sweat beaded on her forehead and her skin grew clammy.
Taking in a deep breath, she feigned stabbing the wretched thing. At the last second, she stopped, unable to proceed. A gag escaped her throat. She attempted to open the shears and lowered them toward its head. Again, she pulled away, feeling her stomach lurch.
She huffed a few times and crouched down, raising the shears above her head. The rabbit went still, twitching one last time before she could bring the shears down into its body. It died there in front of her as she stood frozen, her arms shaking from the tension. She dropped the shears to the side, heaving softly at her failure.
She placed the dead rabbit in a trash bag after going into the house for one and relocated the body to the backyard where she could give it a proper burial. Lizzie wasn’t sure why she’d felt the need to bury the creature, but she was glad she’d done it.
After washing her hands in the sink, she took another shower and popped in a movie to watch. A sci-fi. Something a bit less scary than her current life.
She called Kate again and left a message. Nothing urgent, of course. She didn’t want to alarm or upset her while she was away.
