Dream Lover (24 page)

We met when I was still a student. He was attracted by my wild spirit and pure blood, also by my yellow hair. Zack liked blondes. He liked to drain the roses from their cheeks. It
amused
him. My experience with vampires, which is limited to him, is that above all, except blood-satiation, they like to be amused. I suppose after a few hundred years all this
Sturm und Drang
must get old.

We met and he bought me drinks, and we went to my dorm
and had sex. It was fast and dirty, the way I liked it then. I was drunk but not so drunk I didn’t remember to make him wear protection. He laughed, but he did as I asked.

I’d had sex before but not a lot and never like that. It was hallucinogenic. Our shapes were outlined with thin, bright bands, as if our auras were visible. Each sensation was multiplied a hundredfold. His lips, violently red against the pallor of his skin, were soft as petals on mine, but the kisses made my knees quake and my pussy twitch. I half suspected he’d spiked my drinks, yet I knew I wasn’t drugged. I felt sure: sure of myself and him, sure of the passion we were creating with frenzied licks and caresses followed by a hard fuck; this passion that was so strong it was like another entity in the room. I was sure that it was real.

After my orgasm had ripped through me and his had jerked through him, I wanted sleep but he was restless. He said he’d have to go soon. I asked why, and he told me. “I’m a vampire.”

“Oh, ha ha,” followed. And so on. He did a few tricks: made his shadow lurk and leap without moving his body, blew out the candles and reignited them with a flick of his wrist. I wasn’t convinced. He put my hand to his hairless, naked chest so I could feel his lack of heartbeat and bared his teeth to show me how he could make his canines grow huge and pointed at will.

Then I believed. “Oh, my god,” and so on, double takes and gaping.

I covered myself with a sheet.

When I did that, tried to protect myself, his black eyes went dead. “You’re afraid,” he said. “You don’t trust me, even though we just made love.”

“I don’t want to die,” I whispered.

“Stupid Lisa.” He put his clothes on, just like a regular guy—jeans and T-shirt and boots. “I don’t kill people. Life kills
people.” He mimed a phone receiver with his hand. “Call me,” he mouthed.
Whoosh.
Gone.

There wasn’t much sleep for me that night, after all. I was a loner, so I didn’t really have anyone to tell, even if I’d wanted to. But I didn’t. I was different, now,
really
different. I’d had sex with a vampire. No, according to him, I’d made love with a vampire. My world had always seemed lackluster but now it was gray. Zack’s cherry lips seemed the only bright spot in a colorless life.

A few nights later I called his name. When he arrived his lips were scarlet, slick with blood. “I came as soon as I could,” he said. “I had to feed first. For your protection.”

I actually laughed. “Thanks,” I said.

Zack and I made love again. It was huge. I don’t mean his cock was huge, although it was big enough: it was gorgeous, pale and smooth, rising from a patch of black pubic hair; proud, it seemed to me, just as proud as he was. My own shaft, small, pink, soft, seemed to rise to meet his. My clit swelled, before he even took it in his mouth. Eager, we were both so eager for it, wild for each other.

I asked him to wipe his mouth before he went down on me. This was in the mid-eighties, when everyone was scared of AIDS. He laughed. “I don’t drink tainted blood,” he said. He wiped his mouth anyway.

He devoured my cunt but I wasn’t afraid, or at least, not in a way that turned me off. A part of me knew he wouldn’t sink a fang into my defenseless clit. The rest of me feared it and ached for it equally. It made me crazy. I whipped my head from side to side, lashing the pillow with my hair.

“No!” I screamed, “No!” He didn’t hesitate. He knew I didn’t want him to stop. And this was only our second time together. He kept going, keeping a rhythm that was just fast enough to
make me come, no faster. It took a long time. The orgasm, when it finally took flight, was so powerful it almost hurt.

Postorgasmically I was usually rubbery all over, so I’d stretch out and revel in a sense of freedom. But this time I curled into a ball, as if to hold myself together. I didn’t feel free. I felt possessed. It was great.

Zack stuck the tip of his penis in my ear, a playful reminder that only one of us was blissed. I laughed. It was so silly.

I said so, although I used Zs to match his name. “Oh, Zack, you are zo zilly.”

He took advantage of my moving lips by nudging them with the head of his cock. I took it in my mouth and reciprocated, blowing him long and slow, toying with his small, tight balls in their smooth-as-suede sack. I massaged the entrance to his ass with the pad of my finger. When he moaned in delight I pushed my finger all the way inside. I’d never met a man who wanted his ass played with. Most vampires are bisexual but I didn’t know that, then. When he came in my mouth there was lots of ejaculate but it was thin, with the consistency of water and the clarity to match: vampire come.

We shared that congratulatory afterglow that is the privilege of couples who are really good in bed. He said he never lied. He said he was sterile, so we needn’t use protection. He said he loved me.

Zack left before dawn, but he was back before midnight. We were lovers, now.

My grades suffered, but I didn’t care. I lived for those wild nights of passion and the shocking, terrible tales he told when we were sated and the sky was still black.

Zack was about a hundred years old when we met; young, for a vampire. He’d been taken as a teenager, without his consent, by a vicious old vamp. “I was raped,” Zack said, calmly. “He
fucked me, against my will, sucked my blood, against my will, and made me suck his.”

He looked in his early twenties. He explained that vampires age, but very slowly. His lip curled with contempt when he talked about the vampire who’d taken him. “His nails were long and yellow, he was bald, his skin was like silver birch bark. He was still strong enough to force me, but he was
ancient
.” Zack seemed to resent the vampire’s advanced years more than the actual attack, or the change that resulted from it.

I asked if he liked being a vampire.

He shrugged. “I’m used to it,” he said. “There are advantages, like my youth and beauty.”

I giggled. He was matter-of-fact about his extreme vanity, the same as he was, I’d come to learn, about everything.

“I’ve never taken anyone, by force or otherwise,” he continued. “I believe it comes with responsibility, which I haven’t wanted. Until now.”

I shuddered. He loved to make me shudder, running his long, elegant fingers down my spine or blowing on my neck or saying scary, undead things.

Little by little I found out everything about him. How he fed, a nibble here and a nibble there. Where he’d lived, which was everywhere in the world, and what he had seen, which was a lot. Sometimes, when he talked of human beings, his eyelids would hood with contempt. He didn’t like us much. I was the exception.

One night, he said, “I want you as my mate.” It was a simple statement. He said everything, however horrible or wonderful, in the same manner. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” I said. My green eyes glittered with tears. “But I love my family, too. I love life.”

“Do you?” He glanced around my dorm room, smirking.
“This little room, your classes with your small-minded teachers. I can give you the world.”

To prove it he brought me gifts, jewelry and art. I made him stop. I didn’t know where they’d come from, how he’d acquired them. I was afraid of the consequences, should I be caught with them.

“Zilly.” He gathered me in his arms. He was slender but he was tremendously strong. “No one can hurt you now.”

Time passed. I wore black. I didn’t eat much. My appetite was for Zack, not food. I hungered for his love. I avoided looking in the mirror, fearful that some day my reflection would be gone.

He hungered for my blood. I knew it. Sometimes I’d fall asleep in his arms and when I’d awaken he’d be watching me, his nostrils flared. I became jealous of the women he fed on. I wanted their names, I wanted to know why her? And her? He rarely fed on men. He fed every night, before he came to me.

Word got out. Questions were asked. My parents came to visit and found me, wan and distracted, dripping with gold. More questions.

He wouldn’t, couldn’t come to my graduation. Or meet my parents or spend the night or share a meal. When I left the dorm, diploma in hand, I decided to leave him, too. As if a vampire can be left by a flight home or forgotten as one forgets what one learned in class.

He came to my parents’ house in Chicago, unbidden. I looked out the window and there he was, in the oak tree, like a long, skinny, wingless bat. His eyes were dull with despair. Still, I shook my head. He mimed a phone call. “Call me.” He didn’t sprout wings and fly away, but he was gone.

I got a job in a goth nightclub, the kind of place Zack would hate. I drank too much and tried a few drugs, which didn’t seem to have the effect on me that they had on other people. I didn’t
want to hallucinate; it wasn’t the same as sex with Zack. Drugs made me nervous, not happy. Profound discontent settled in, which was the general attitude of my contemporaries. I envied the hippies and the radicals but not enough to get involved in peace or revolution. I wanted my vampire back.

One night, a bunch of us built a campfire on Albion Beach. It was the end of summer. Lake Michigan is big and cold but a few brave souls waded in. Not me. I stood close to the fire and watched the partiers and the stars and wailed, inwardly, for my man, or my creature, for
Zack,
whatever he was.

His fist coiled my hair into a knot and he propelled me backward, away from the flame.

“Too hot,” he hissed in my ear. “Too bright.”

He threw me down and fell on top of me.

“Why should I make it easy for you?” I turned my face from his kisses. “You’ve made it so hard for me.”

“With what? My love? My gifts? My ardor or my beauty? Zilly Lisa.”

“You!” I insisted. I tried to sit up but he held me down. I’d forgotten how strong he was. “You’ve made my life impossible.”

“
Life
is impossible. Idiot.” He took my chin in hand and held my face while he kissed me.

I struggled ineffectively. I don’t know why I resisted when I’d yearned so
heavily
for him just moments earlier. I suppose because he was forcing himself on me and he’d promised he wouldn’t. Though, of course, all he’d promised was not to “turn” me by force. Some feminist inclination to resist, I suppose, temporarily overrode my need for him.

Then I was his again. His kisses made me glow so brightly I was afraid I might be rescued, but we were far from the fire, the foolishness of drunken youths, the “lifestyle” I’d merely endured as I’d tried to fit in.

“Zack,” I moaned, tugging at his pants. “Zack, Zack, Zack.” It was all I could do, speak his name; I was mindless with need. He tore off my bikini bottom. I freed his rigid cock from his pants and he was inside me. We were as frenzied as we’d been our first time, more so, even, desperate to know if our passion had survived our stupid, stupid separation.

“Yes,” he said, speaking for both of us. It was there, our lust, that third party that had always seemed to join us when we fucked. In mere moments I was toppling into orgasm and so was he. I exploded. I opened my eyes in amazement and took in the stars. It seemed they were exploding, too, as if thousands of stars were being sacrificed to my climax.

How could something so beautiful be the result of anything with even a trace of evil in it?

The paroxysms came again and again until I disappeared inside them. It was only when they’d abated to tremors that I became aware of his teeth at my neck and his mouth, greedily sucking my boiling blood from my body.

“Don’t…” I was weak and getting weaker.

“It’s okay…” His voice was soft but thick, coming as it did from a mouth full of blood.

“You said you wouldn’t…” My limbs were heavy. My voice was thick, like his, though not for the same reason.

“Just a taste…so good…so good…”

The sucking sounds were obscene. Disgusting, in fact, though the animal noises we’d made moments earlier had been musical. What can I say? I was still young.

“Stop. Please stop…”

“Sure?”

“I’m not ready.”

He drew back and stared at me. It was the first time I’d ever seen him flushed. His eyes glittered. His mouth was a dripping,
bloody gash. He snarled, baring those awful canines. “When?”

“I need more time. Please, Zack, be patient.”

“You’re getting old,” he growled.

“I’m twenty! Still young. And anyway, love is not something that should be affected by age. Love is—”

“Don’t.” He covered my mouth with his hand. His eyelids drooped, hooding his bright eyes. “Don’t
ever
presume to lecture me, not about anything, especially love.”

“I still want things, like a family.”

“So. We will take some babies if you wish.”

“Oh, my god. That’s horrible.” I pushed his chest. Light as a feather, he was off me. I leapt to my feet.

Zack pulled up his pants. “You don’t know what you’re playing with, Lisa.” He stood, looming over me. “I could snap your neck with a twist of my wrist. Put you out of your misery for good.”

“I’m not miserable…”

“You are. But it’s your choice.” He shrugged. “I’m beginning to tire of your games.”

“I don’t mean to play games. But what you ask is huge.”

“I shouldn’t have asked. I should have taken you that first night. Made you mine.”

I was suddenly cold. The fire, the frolicking young people, the laughter and music called to me, so full of life.

His hand was at my throat. I gazed at him, my eyes huge.