Fire Nectar (23 page)

“Was your skin always this perfect?”
 
he
asked.

“No, it was normal with moles and little lines and
blemishes. Those went away.
 
Like yours.
 
You
haven’t looked in the mirror since we woke up, have you?”

“No, I haven’t!
 
Do I look different?” he laughed, and his eyes shot to the powered-off
flat screen to see his reflection.

“You do.
 
You
look younger. Go look in a mirror.
 
There’s one over there.” He jumped up and walked to the mirror with
human speed. “I’ll get some dinner.
 
I have blood here for us.
 
You must be starving.” She walked to the kitchen and opened the secret
refrigerator.
 
“I’ll give you the
wine glass I got in Moscow.
 
I
collect them from all the places I live.”

She put a single packet of blood in the microwave to warm
it for him.
 
She rarely gave herself
this luxury anymore.
 
She’d lived
alone for so long – the pleasure of eating take out had no appeal.
 
Best to get it over with and get working
on her next shoot, do something creative.

“This all happened when I slept!” he said in wonder as he
inspected his perfect complexion, the bags under his eyes gone, his hair
fuller, healthier and shiny.
 
“My
hair looks different, too.
 
And I’ve
trimmed up a little.” He marveled, touching his waist.

She grabbed the Moscow glass, filled it up as she said,
“I noticed. Your body got rid of what it didn’t need. I hope you like the
length of your hair because that’s the length it’s going to stay forever.
Here,” she said, holding out the glass.
 

He shrugged and walked casually toward her outstretched
hand. “I’ve had it this long for years, so I guess I’m okay with it.”
 

He took the glass from her, said, “Cheers,” and took his
first sip of human blood. Her blood was different than what she offered him
now. It was vampire and did not have the same effect that a human’s blood would
have. She knew he would love it, but she had no idea that the moment it hit his
tongue, he would start to change.
 
Smiling, she watched him drink it down but when he finished, his tongue
reached in and licked ravenously for remnants inside the glass. Her smile faded
at the expression on his face. When he couldn’t reach the bottom of the glass,
he growled and shattered it in one hand, pieces falling everywhere.
 
He fell to floor like an animal and
licked every drop from the slivers of broken glass, cutting himself again and
again until his face and hands were a raggedy bloody mess.
 
His head shot up toward her and he
hissed, fangs
bared
.
 

She gasped in horror and
stared,
helpless as his beautiful blue eyes turned black just like those of the
cacodemonic she-vampire Dani had seen dragged into the sun so long ago.
 
Dani watched his pupils and she screamed
as they spread and grew from the inside out, like black tar pouring onto a flat
surface, until there was no white, no blue.
 
No Adrian.
 
His wounds healed instantly before her
eyes.
 

A low moan poured out from her as she watched him lunge
toward the open refrigerator door to get at her blood supply.
 
It was the same moan that comes from a
woman who watches her child die and can do nothing. She fell to her knees and
sobbed.
 

He thrashed open the packets, one by one, tearing open
the plastic and licking it clean.
 
In the middle of his rampage he turned to her and hissed the words, “You
tried to keep this from me.”
 
She
said nothing and tried to look away but was paralyzed.
 
When he was done and he’d made sure
there was no more blood to drink, he turned slowly, eerily toward her.
 
Instinctively she steeled herself, ready
for an attack.
 
His eyes didn’t look
like eyes at all, more like hollow black holes, as he squinted at something on
the ground beneath her feet.
 
She
followed his gaze and found herself to be standing in a puddle of blood tears.

She flashed away just missing him as he lunged for the
floor and began licking it, trying to catch the tears before they
disappeared.
 
He licked with long,
loud, ugly slurping sounds and she shuddered, anger rising in her.
 
“Enough,” she said quietly.
 
She said it again, more loudly this
time. “Enough!”
 
He didn’t hear
her.
 
She jumped and leapt on top of
his back yanking his mouth off the floor.
 
He writhed and fought her as she pinned him onto his back and held him
face to face.
 

 
“ENOUGH!”
 
she
screamed,
in a voice so loud that the sound shook him to his core. His body and breath
fell almost silent, as though she had ripped past his primal instinct to where
he lay within. She searched his black eyes and pleaded, “Adrian, your
eyes.
 
Your beautiful eyes…I don’t
know what to do, I’m so sorry. I had no idea this would happen.”

He spat at her face, “Get the fuck off me.”
 

The door of the loft opened and Daniella looked up to
find Julian standing in the doorway, his mouth open wide in surprise.
 
Her thoughts raced at the sight of
him.
 
What must this look like?
 
What could she tell him?
 
In her shock she made the fatal error of
weakening her hold on Adrian.
 
He
shoved her off and sprang toward Julian.
 
Toward his first live human.

“NOOO!” Dani moved faster than she ever had before and
barely cleared the distance, beating him by milliseconds.
 
She shoved herself between them, thrust
him away with her hand and kicked him backwards.
 
Adrian went flying across the room.
Standing guard in front of Julian she furiously hissed at the beast
who
had stolen the body of her lover.
 
“I’ve had time to train for things like
you.”

“Impressive,” Adrian said, noting her speed and
skill.
 
His smile sent chills down
Julian’s spine. “Later, Julian.” He was gone out the door.

Dani stood stone silent in front of Julian until she felt
certain the immediate threat was over.
  
Finally she turned to him.

“I…I…heard you scream. I’m glad you’re safe.” He
remembered the number Elizabeth had left him and added,
 
“Let’s call Elizabeth.”

She was speechless.

2012

Adrian tore out of the building with the greatest speed he’d
ever possessed.
 
He wanted to get as
far away from her control as possible.
 
The people he passed saw only a strobe-like cold
wind
which they dismissed
simply as a figment of their imagination. A skinny
junkie’s hoodie blew off. A homeless man’s cart toppled and he swore.
 
A cat hissed
,
it’s hackles raised. He could smell them as he passed, none of them knowing how
close they came to dying. He was about two miles away before he felt safe and
sure that Dani wasn’t following.
 
The bitch.

He was a hunter now and that’s all he cared about. He
wanted to walk among the humans as one of them, to take in their scent, to pick
and choose. He slowed his gate to a human pace, to blend, and felt as though he
walked in sand, hating every slogging step. Part of the excitement of the hunt
was to trick the prey. Surprise them. Tease them.
 
Taunt them.

Closer to the heart of Downtown now, his mouth salivated
at the thought of his first live kill.
 
He felt his feet moving quicker and he slowed them down.
 
Careful, now, he thought.
 
Have fun with this.
 
What’s your
rush.
You have forever.
 
He shot a cunning
smile at his reflection in a window and saw what looked like black holes
staring back at him from where his eyes had been.
 
He stopped and peered more closely,
turning his head this way and that, examining himself. And he laughed.
 

All at once his smile faded as it occurred to him that he
would not be able to pass for human with eyes as cool as those.
 
He considered chucking his need to
surprise his kill. Why not just attack and be done with it? Tempting. He
lowered his head and turned down an alley to wait for a solution.
 
He felt like he was starving.

The solution to his dilemma presented itself in the form
of a small group of human males exiting a bar across the street.
 
He looked at the sign: The Good Luck
Club.
 
One of the human male twenty-
somethings
was wearing sunglasses.
 
Perfect.
 
With a flash Adrian was across the
street and knocked the guy down.
 
As
his glasses went flying, Adrian snatched them from the air unseen and was gone.

He retreated back to the alley and listened to their
confused conversation:
 
“Hey, you
okay?” “Yeah, I just fell down I guess.”
 
“Dude you fell hard.
 
I
didn’t think you had that much to drink.”
 
“I didn’t. Where are my glasses?”
 
Adrian smirked as they searched the ground and came up empty.
 
“I don’t know, I can’t find ‘
em
. Huh. Weird.”

He thought about attacking the men and the pull of their
scents was debilitating, but since they were out in the open he didn’t know if
someone would come up and stop him, or if they even
could
stop him if
they tried. Better to answer those questions later. He was too hungry to
experiment. He waited and watched them leave as he put on his new sunglasses.
He walked across the street to the bar, to turn its name to dust.
 
The smells swept into him. He stopped in
the doorway and breathed it all in. It was a small one-room dive and he quickly
counted ten people including staff.
 
They didn’t look like the cream of the crop of society, which was fine.

“Your ID?” The bouncer held out his hand, palm up,
unwittingly exposing and presenting his artery vein to a fledgling cacodemonic
vampire. Adrian saw it and his senses slammed into focus at once. He heard the
heartbeat, saw the blood pumping in the vein, smelled the life force and all of
his plans were thrown out the window.

With lightning speed Adrian slammed the door shut,
grabbed the man’s wrist, jammed it up to his mouth and shot his fangs into it,
nearly tearing off the man’s arm. The bouncer screamed out in pain and shock
and tried to fight him off, knocking off the stolen sunglasses in the
scuffle.
 
Overpowering the 220lb
man, Adrian viciously sucked him dry in seconds.
 
As he drank, his body relaxed with the
relief and satisfaction of his first live kill.
 
Through it, he heard and smelled the
room go
crazy.
 
With his vampire senses he heard heads swivel, people gasp and yell,
sweat jumping out and onto skin. He felt the breeze of movement as some tried
to run and some ran to help.

Adrian’s head jerked up like a nightmare with hollow eyes
and blood dripping, covering his mouth and chin.
 
Two men and a woman who had come to help
froze in their tracks. Adrian looked at them, reached up, grabbed the bouncer’s
head and broke it right off.
 
The
woman started screaming like a banshee from hell, her mouth held open and her
eyes wider than they should be, the sound of terror pouring out of her in a
deafening pitch. People ran over each other, scrambling for the door.

Adrian reached forward and grabbed the two men, simultaneously
throwing them into opposite walls like rag dolls. He punched the screaming
woman in the face and she flew backwards and lost consciousness.
 
He bared his fangs with a warning hiss
to a terrified room. Somewhere deep inside him a voice whispered for him to
stop.
 
To leave.
 
To run and find Dani and ask her what
was happening. But he couldn’t.

He must drink.
 
He had to.
 
It was
everything.
 
It was the answer.

One by one he picked off his victims. He jumped on the
woman who was blessed with unconsciousness and made sure she never woke again.
He swiftly blocked the exit of a little guy, locking his fangs into his little
neck and draining him until he had no breath. No life. No future.
 
He jumped both men he’d thrown, one at a
time in the span of seconds and they battled him with futile punches as he
sucked their lives away.
 
It was not
enough. He leapt over the bar to find the bartender crouched there, hiding, and
snapped his neck off in his haste.
  

The blood was never enough.
 
Even as he drank, he didn’t feel
whole.
 

No one made it out the door, and when he was done, he
walked around the bloody scene looking for more. There was none.
 
He kicked the arm of a hulky biker who
had been in his early forties out of his way, sat at one of the booths, and looked
down at
himself
.
 
His shirt was splotched and splattered and there was a bit of someone’s
ear on it.
 
He flicked it off
casually.

Nine.
 
Nine
bodies.
 
He froze and counted again.
Yes, nine had fallen, but he had originally counted ten. Time slowed to a crawl
and he excitedly counted again. Shhh. He heard it.
A very
quiet fast-beating heart.
He stood and followed the sound to a door he
correctly assumed led to an office. Yes, the heartbeat was inside. There was
more. More blood. He grabbed the handle and tore the door off its hinges.

The gasp came from under the desk, where a pretty
brunette with a Betty Page haircut and tat sleeves hid. Mascara-stained tears
streaked to her chest as she stared, wide-eyed at him, sobbing like a small child
and cowering back against the wall for protection.
 
He looked at her and cocked his
head.
 

“What’s your name?” he asked the silence.
 
“C’mon now, I won’t bite.
 
What’s your name?”
 

She sobbed and answered against her will in a hoarse
voice, “Rebecca,”

“Rebecca? You don’t look like a Rebecca.
 
You look like a Nancy… or a Veronica,
maybe.
 
Let me ask you a question,
Veronica Nancy… you look like the type of girl who likes vampires. Are you the
type of girl who likes vampires? Normally.
 
Maybe not today but, you know what I mean.”
 
She hadn’t blinked since he’d walked
in.
 
He could see she was staring at
his demon eyes as she nodded yes. He laughed. “I thought so.
 
They exist, you know.
 
We… exist.” She just stared at him.
  
Before she could see him move he
was in front of her, kneeling three inches from her face.
 
She gasped. “How do you feel about them
NOW?” She screamed in his face as he lunged at her and sank his teeth into her
neck.
 
She tried to fight him
off.
 
She beat her fists and kicked
her legs in a futile attempt at survival. As the strength leaked out of her,
she let out a little whimper and her heart beat for the last time.
 

He let her drop and she fell onto his lap, her head
twisted grotesquely. He looked at her, and a pang of guilt stabbed him. She
looked so young.
 
He blinked a
moment and lifted her by the shoulders.
 
He shook her.
 
He slapped her
face lightly to see if she still lived.
 
He put his ear to her chest to listen, not knowing if he did this
because he wanted to save her or because he wanted more to drink.
 
He didn’t understand the battle of
regret and insatiability that waged inside him. She was dead.
 
No life left.
 
So young.
 
No blood left.
 
What about her family? Need more.

His emotions were so much stronger than when he was
human, and he felt like he had lost his mind.
 
Dani jumped into his mind and he wished
she were there to save him.
 
No. He
didn’t need her.
 
If he had more
blood, he’d feel better.
 
That was
all he needed, but there was none, and this guilt hurt so badly. He looked at
the girl he’d killed, dead in his arms, raised his head and let out a roar of
anguish from the depths of his empty soul.

It was this sound that stopped Dani’s search.

She had been nearby on foot when she heard him.
 
She’d followed the sound as far as she
could, and the miasma of fear and blood, the rest of the way.
 
She turned the knob of The Good Luck Bar
and closed the door behind her. It was worse than she’d imagined but not the
worst she’d ever seen.
 
Adrian,
hearing the break-in, appeared in the office doorway, his silhouette framed by
the light behind him.
 
She couldn’t
read his expression but he looked almost childlike as he met her eyes.
 
Was it fear?
 
It reminded her of how children look
when they’ve fallen, and they don’t know if they should cry– or if it’s
okay.

She heard the police sirens first.
 
Her eyes twitched.
 
He saw her expression change and then he
heard them, too.
 
He looked around.
 
It was as if he was seeing what he had
done for the first time.
 
Her eyes
stayed on him trying to gauge his being for remorse.
 
She didn’t know why that would
matter.
 
His eyes were
unchanged.
 
He looked ugly to her
this way, and
she was overwhelmed by the depth of sadness she
felt
.
 
She stood firm.

“Dani…” he said, his face covered in blood, his clothing
dirty and ragged. “Dani, I…”

“I’m so sorry, Adrian,
”
 
she
said, devoid of emotional
inflection.

The front door opened and shut fast behind Dani as
Elizabeth flashed to her side. She assessed the room and Dani shot her a look
as Adrian blinked and tilted his head in confusion.
 
“Now. We don’t have much time,”
Elizabeth whispered.

The sight of Elizabeth took Adrian completely by
surprise. He recognized her as the woman he’d met at the party but now he
learned she, too, was a vampire.
 
He
was stunned as he put the puzzle pieces together and, reading his expression,
Dani finished his thought for him.
 
“Yes. She’s the vampire who made me.”
 
At once he knew what that meant;
Elizabeth was even stronger and faster than Dani.
 
Just like the people he’d killed, he was
trapped.

With symmetry, Dani and Elizabeth leapt through the air,
landing in front of him as he tried to escape.
 
Elizabeth overtook him and with great
force pinned him to a wall, pulled a tennis ball out of her jacket pocket and
shoved it into his mouth.
 
His fangs
bit into it reflexively and stuck.
 
Problem solved.
 
Elizabeth
sneered at him and said, “Hurry, Daniella.
 
We have to leave.”