Darkened Days (9 page)

“Well, I have two pussy’s here who want to come up to our room to party.”  He leaned over and whispered in her ear.  “On their own.  No compulsion.  They like French men.  I’m going to get my blood meal from them.  There’s enough for two.  Join us.”

Drawing back, Starla let her eyes wander to Henri’s small harem.  Gorgeous women, smooth dark skin, clos
e cropped hair that accentuated classic features, fit bodies, heavily made up exotic eyes.

Well, she did need to eat.  She grabbed her pretty beaded bag they’d liberated from a street market earlier that night.

“Sure, I’ll join you.”

Henri’s smile went electric.  “
Spectaculaire!
  A foursome!”

Starla popped him in the face with the little bag.

“For my blood meal.  Not sex.  These girls will keep you busy anyway.  I’ll clear out after I’ve eaten.”

With a dimmer smile, Henri led his women out of the nightclub behind Starla. 
Ah
, he thought,
a man can hope.

Up in their windowless hotel room, Henri had one girl out of her clothes and on top of him almost immediately.  In her bed next to Henri’s, Starla began a soft compel to calm the second girl as she bit and quickly drew sweet hot blood for several minutes. She had no interest in sex with her, although
the girl was beautiful, she would remain true to her promise of celibacy.

Henri was right.  Her vampire genome was punishing her for not giving her body what it craved.  Sleep was sporadic now and she found herself in almost a constant state of arousal.  She hoped it would lessen with
time.  Especially since every time she thought of sex now, it was with Jacob.  She should never have let her mind linger on him tonight.  His hands, his mouth, his cock between her legs…
Stop it!

Shit! 
Her thoughts of Jacob had distracted her and she found the girl pushing her back onto the bed, under the influence of the blood draw. Humans were often sexually stimulated during vampire blood draws.  She put her hand on the girl’s forehead and instructed her to stop, then sent her over to enjoy herself with Henri and the other girl.

As she closed the door, she smiled.  Henri was happy at least.  She was too, as she made her way to an all-night buffet to truly test i
ts policy on all-night.

She spent the night people
-watching at the Khan El-Khalili, the oldest bazaar and marketplace in the city.  A few times she smiled and spoke with passersby, using the common greeting “salaam,” which meant peace.  She and Henri had picked up several Arabic phrases which they found themselves already using frequently.

A young dark-haired girl came over to her, and charmed her way into Starla’s heart.  She spoke halting English, but Starla thought she did very well for a six year old.  She’d never
had an overwhelming desire to have children, and now it was out of the question.   But the lovely tawny skinned child had made her, just briefly, sorry she never would

It was a quiet enchanting night.  Humans
, people
, doing their thing.  Living their lives.  She loved every element of their diversity.  All shapes, sizes, colors, and mostly, their uniqueness.  Loud aggressive people who demanded to be heard and seen, to quiet calm people who tried to blend into the background.  Pretty girls who strutted their stuff and plain girls who watched them enviously.  Intelligent types who were trying to calculate the order of the universe, and types who were just lucky it didn’t take simple math to pay for a coke.  Everyone moving separately to make a life.  And hope that it was a good one in the end.

She felt like her café table perched on the edge of humanity and after her defeated attitude and disappointment in Jacob, it was time to rediscover it.
  This was a very good night.

When she entered their room just before sunri
se, in the dim light cast by the hallway, she saw Henri stretched out full length sideways on his bed, the two young women lay across him.  A human blanket.  His perfect buttocks and the back of his head were all that were visible.  With the door open to keep the hallway light available, Starla slipped in quietly and went around the bed to waken him.  She squatted down and blew into his ear.  Violently, a hand came up and swatted his ear, then dropped.  She blew again, and he repeated the gesture, more violently, until an eye popped open.  His face was crushed against the mattress.

“Oh, Star, it’s you.  Fuck off!”

“I know you mean that lovingly.”

He groaned and rolled over, dislodging the girls into a heap a
t the foot of the bed.  Smashing his eye with the palm of one hand like a child would do, he looked at her with the other and smiled.

“
Oui
, you know I do.  Ugh!  We do not get sick, but we
do
get hangovers.  This one’s a monster.  Is it morning?”

“Yes, nearly.  Get rid of your girls.  Time to sleep.”  She paused and looked at the girls happily snoozing.

“Score.  That’s your new nickname.  It suits the new you.  The man who scores.  I like it.”

He smiled in spite of the headache, shook the gi
rls, had them dress, compelled them to forget the night.

“E
xcept,” he added, “That you had incredible sex with an extraordinarily well-endowed man called Score. If a man ever comes up to you again, and says my name is Score, you will remember spectacular sex and want him again.  Now go.”

Starla threw a pillow at him.

“Such a guy thing to do.  Your self-esteem is governed by your cock.”

Still naked, Henri went to the door to close and lock it.  He turned, giving Starla a nice long look.

She smiled and rolled her eyes.

“Oh, I admit your equipment is impressive.  They were lucky girls.  I’m just saying you men are all about the little head.”

Henri pitched the pillow back and crawled into his bed.  Wearing a light tee and panties, Starla dropped into hers to sleep away the daylight.

Tonight, they were heading out of Cairo.  The first week of what was now a worldwide journey.  She fell asleep with a strange sense of serenity.  She felt she was exactly where she needed to be right now and that everything was happening exactly as it should.  Wasn’t that a line in the poem the Desiderata?  Tonight, it spoke to her. 
It had been her best night in a long time.

Once they traveled to Luxor, they fell completely in love with Egypt.  Also located along the mighty Nile, the city held an incredible wealth of the ancient history of this country. 
A taxi driver back in Cairo told Starla they must not miss the Temples of Karnak if they wanted to truly feel Egypt. 

They arrived on a crystal clear night to the area aptly named Valley of the Kings, a well preserved complex of temples.  Softly lit in glowing amber, the huge carved stone monuments were jaw-dropping.  On these royal burial grounds, dozens of tombs held gateways for vis
itors to step back in time.  Enormous statues carved in stone lined avenues of ruins left by people who long ago left this world. Starla was particularly touched by the carvings and paintings.  She fingered the warm stone that someone else had touched thousands of years ago.  Monuments to a people who believed in immortality, and left detailed evidence of their lives for wanderers like Starla and Henri.

Roaming through the
long abandoned streets, their footfalls in the echo of those that came before, she and Henri felt connected to them through ancestry of blood.  They were silent as no words felt important enough to interrupt the ghosts.

Returning to Cairo later that
week, she felt the pull of eternity even stronger now that, as vampire, she would likely be here to experience changes wrought by time.  She would actually live through history.  As a human, the tiny amount of years could see significant changes, but never what centuries would bring.  It finally hit her.  She would be here to witness mankind’s journey for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.  Something began in the pit of her belly at what her life held now.  A long, long future.  Who wouldn’t want to live forever?

The question hung there in her mind. And she realized.  She
did
want this gift of immortality.  She
did
want to be here to see the march of time in mankind’s journey.

The Pyramids rose up out of the darkness, their tips pointing to the sky.

Starla found it was suddenly hard to breathe and she told Henri to stop the car.  As soon as it did, she jumped out.  Henri came around to her.

“Star?  What’s wrong?”

“I just got it.  Immortality.  Henri, we’re going to live to see mankind put the first human on Mars. Maybe leave the solar system.  We’re going to be here to see if Earth survives our rampant consumerism that is ripping out her guts.  We’re going to live to see generation after generation have children, grow old, and die.  It’s overwhelming.”

She pau
sed to look at the starkly lit monoliths breaching the star-filled sky above them.

“Henri.” 

She whispered because it was just so sacred here in this ancient land.  They shared the air with those who went before and were yet to come. “We’re immortal.”

He was quiet too.  She could see the enormity hadn’t struck him either until now.

“We’ve been all about the sex and partying.  Well, that’s what young people do.  But we are still going to be here hundreds of years from now.  Still young.  Living history.”

She walked closer to the monument.

“Henri, I know what I want to do.  I never have before.  All my life I’ve tried to figure out what I wanted to do and where I belonged.  I want to record this.  I want to be a historian.  Record people’s stories.  Oh, Henri. I’ve found out who I am.”

Henri hugged her.  “
Chérie
, I am so pleased for you.  We should celebrate.  Under the stars by the largest pyramid.  We will drink to your new life.”

“Let’s promise, here and now, that we will meet here again, at the largest pyramid, no matter where we are on this earth, in one hundred years exactly to this day.  I feel a little euphoric right now.   I love the idea that I will be here in Egypt in the next century with my best friend.”

Henri dropped down on the sandy ground, looking up at the sky.

“It’s spinning
, mon amie
.  This world, it’s spinning away,” he said.

“
Oui
.  As it always has.  We’re connected to it.”

She crawled down and stretched out beside him.

“So.  Will you be here?  In 2113?  No matter what?”

He turned his head to look into her eyes. 

“
Je t’aime
, Star girl.  Nothing would stop me.  Ah.  Blood bond.” 

He tore open his palm with a fang.

Starla grinned and did the same.

They dropped back on the sand, hands entwined, while the blood dried.

The whispers of yesterday curled around the girl from a frozen town who thought she had no future at all.  Now, she realized the gift she’d received in a dirty basement on a dark night two months ago.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Koen hesitated, eyeing the first blood vampire every bit as big as he was.  The other did the same until they came together slowly with a tentative hug and then stepped away quickly. 

Xavier was a large intimidating vampire, used to controlling everything and everyone around him.  But he knew with Koen they were on equal ground.  Koen was as close to a brother as a first blood could have.  They’d been raised together in Scotland, but had a serious disagreement over a lass about eight hundred years ago, and didn’t speak for the next four hundred.  Since, they had slowly repaired the relationship, and although they rarely saw each other, they both still called the other one brother.

“Eillia, my pretty doll.  I’m so glad you came back from the dead.  And what is this?  Pregnant?”

His eyes shot to Koen.  Eillia rolled hers.  She didn’t really like Xavier.  If there was ever a perfect model for a chauvinist pig, he was it.  He liked women.  Loved them, in fact.  But seemed to have less respect for them as intellectual individuals.  And that was
her
opinion, yes, but she rather thought it highly accurate.  His seeking an explanation about her pregnancy from Koen, not her, was a clue.

“What the hell?  How did you pull that off again?  How hasn’t it ever happened before?”

“Not mine, Xavier.  Eillia and I haven’t been together.  No, the child is his.”  He pointed to Daniel, who stepped up protectively beside his wife.

Xavier scoffed.

“What!  That puny new vampire?   Made a baby with a first blood?”

Everyone took offense at that, not just Daniel. Koen pushed Daniel back when he started forward.

“Not wise, vampire.”

Daniel complied.  Something in Koen’s tone told him to listen.

Xavier looked smug and Daniel really wanted to beat the shit out of him.  Twice.

Koen walked coolly up to
Xavier.  “Daniel is a member of my family.  He isn’t first blood, but he is made from first blood.  You remember what that was like? 
Before
you became an arrogant motherfucker?”

Eillia finally understood the conflict between the two first bloods raised as brothers.  Radically opposing philosophies on life and specifically, vampires.

Koen was only inches from Xavier’s face now.

“How many born vampires have
you
sired, Xavier?”

Xavier stood still as a corpse, expressionless.

Daniel and Eillia stood ready to defend their group.

Xavier leaned forward, whispered something in
to his brother’s ear.  Koen shoved him back, hard enough that Xavier hit a huge marble statue and nearly dislodged it.   They were both laughing hard.

Eillia relaxed her grip on a powerful taser she kept for such moments.

Xavier grabbed Daniel suddenly and held his neck in a loose chokehold.

“My brother calls me a motherfucker.  How does
he
know?”   He laughed again and pushed Daniel back into Koen.  He came forward suddenly to kneel at Eillia’s belly.  Even on his knees he was nearly as tall as she was.

“May I?  I have never before even seen a first blood baby
.”

Eillia nodded and stepped forward to bring his hands to her.  To her child.  The baby wiggled as Xavier’s hands contacted Eillia and touched his life force.  Xavier looked stunned and collapsed forward to put his arms all the way around Eillia.  He laid his head against her belly.

As Daniel and Koen surged forward she put out her hands to stop them.  Shaking her head, she told them not to interfere.  All was okay.

Xavier finally stood up.   His eyes glistened.

“He’s the most beautiful thing in creation.  And I have seen about everything.  But…a first blood child.”  He took a deep breath.  “You two are incredibly fortunate.”

Daniel pushed forward to place himself between Xavier and his wife.  What was it with these oversized men thinking it was okay to fondle his wife’s body?  But he kept the peace.

“We know, thank you,” Daniel responded.

Koen slapped Xavier on the back.

“We are searching for two missing vampires.  One of them was made recently against her will by a group of young vampires we understand are living here in Paris.”

Xavier nodded as he filled enormous wine glasses with a pale rosé. 

“Yes, I have already dealt with them.  Twelve, I believe.  All young and arrogant.  Easy for a first blood, of course.  I arrested the lot, put the fear of me in them.  They got it.”

“We need to see if our young woman is with them.  Did you take names?”

“No point.  Most of them gave us their “cool” vampire names.  Or they would have lied.  But I’ll check with my first lieutenant and see if she knows if your girl was with them.  They’re gone now though.  Crystal released them weeks ago to follow suggestions that were anything but.  They were a danger to our community, running wild, partying, blood-letting, gathering attention.  Someone was bound to put it together, or get away without compulsion with evidence of vampire activity.  Cell phones. Cameras everywhere all the time.  Fucking annoying.”

“Do you know where we can find them?”

“Not anymore.  They were warned to break into no more than three per group and to disappear.  No more conversions.  Serious repercussions if I hear anything from the street about their activity.  Since then, I haven’t heard or seen anything.  Nice to see they took me seriously.  Good thing.  I meant the threat.”

“Okay, well, is your lieutenant available?”

“She should be.”  He called his housekeeper, who contacted someone named Crystal.  The housekeeper let him know she would be there momentarily.

“Have a seat.  This wine is from my newest line and it’s excellent.  Join me, please.”

Koen dropped into an oversized plush chair obviously custom built for a man Xavier’s size.  He liked the fit.  Would have to order a few for his villa.  Eillia and Daniel chose to sit close together on a love seat, also oversized, that matched the chair Koen took.

Xavier handed each of them the stemmed glass with his special vintage and leaned back to see their reaction.

Eillia handed hers to Daniel.  She really didn’t think the wine was a problem for a pregnant vampire, it just felt right to decline.

Ten minutes later a woman rushed in, breathless.

“Sorry, Xavier.  I was finishing some work downtown.  What did you need?”

“These are old friends.  They’re looking for some missing vampires.  A newly turned young woman. 
An older male.  Starla and Jacob, is that right?”

Eilla nodded and stood up.

“Hi, Crystal.  Lovely to meet you. I’m Eillia.  Xavier tells us you took care of the vampire cadre brought in recently.  I’m looking for a girl named Starla, very pretty, probably gorgeous now.  I know she was changed a few months ago.  Dark hair, dark eyes, about five seven.  I suspect she might have had quite an attitude from what I’ve been told.  Also, the man I sent to look for her.  Jacob Ward.  Two hundred years old.  Part of my new family.  He texted me he’d found her, that she’d been changed, and that she was pissed.  This was weeks ago and he’s been missing since then, too.  Did you happen to pick up an older vamp with the cadre?”

Crystal hesitated, then looked at Xavier.  She knew she had to fess up.  Xavier had seen Jac
ob the night the arrests occurred. 

“Uh, yeah…yeah.  But he told me about his mission and I let him go.  The next day.  Don’t know where he went.  But I did have the girl.  You’re right.  She’s gorgeous as vampire.  A truly natural beauty.  But she left with the others when I released them.  I’m sorry, Eillia.  I don’t know where she is.”  She hesitated. 
So, he’d been telling the
truth.  Well, then…

“Or him.  This Jacob.  Either of them.  I have no idea where they are.”

Eillia watched Crystal’s eyes.  She saw something, a flicker, brief. 
Worry?  Fear?

“You’re sure?”  She gave her another chance.

“Uh, yeah.  They’re both out of here.  He’s probably still out there looking for her.”

“But why?  If you took him along with the cadre, he would have known she was here. 
He would have waited for you to release her from custody.”

Crystal looked nervous now.

“He took off after I released him.  I don’t know.  I’m not his keeper.  I have enough to do monitoring vampire activity in this busy city.  On that point, Xavier, I need to get going.”

He finished off his glass of wine.

“Sure.  Send me a nightly text to keep me updated.”

Crystal nodded and left quickly.

Eillia looked at Xavier.

“She’s lying.”

“She’s my first lieutenant.   She knows better than to lie to me.”

“Well, she is.  I don’t know why but she is.  Xavier, I think she still has Jacob.  I need to see your cells.”

This wouldn’t go well.  It was an offense to his house to accuse his right hand of lying to a guest.  But Eillia knew she was.  And she wasn’t leaving without Jacob.  If she was right, he was still being held in Xavier’s holding cells.

Koen stood and sat his wine glass down sharply enough to get everyone’s attention.

“Xavier, let’s settle this.  Allow us access.  If we’re wrong, we apologize.  But Eillia is very rarely wrong.  If your lieutenant is lying to you, you need to know.”

Xavier was still.  Quiet.  He played with the cork from the bottle of rosé he’d served.  When he looked up at Eillia moments later, he nodded.

“All right.  Let’s go.  I want that apology brother.”

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!
  He hadn’t been lying. Eillia
was
alive.  So his story was true that he had nothing to do with the young vampire’s forced conversions. 
Fuck!

She had to get him out of here before Xavier came and found him.  Surely, they believed her and she had enough time.  Using her fastest speed, she crashed through the cell
door, startling Jacob, who was awake and trying to cough down a bag of blood.

Jacob
looked up, Crystal inside his cell for the first time without freezing him.   He surged forward to grab her, but she came around and froze him, his hands wrapped around her neck, tight, squeezing.  He couldn’t move, but she was locked in his hands, unable to move and barely able to speak.

“I know you’re telling the truth,” she squeaked out.  “I’m sorry.  If I let you go, will you promise to release me?”

He was within inches of her face.

“I promise.  How do you know?  Are they here?  Eillia and Bas, are they here?”

“Someone is.  Eillia.  Yeah.  Her.  I can’t release you if you won’t release me.  I know you’re a good man now.  So, promise.”

He nodded.  She waved a hand and he was able to move again.  He kept pressure on her throat for a few seconds longer, then slowly backed away, his hands at his sides.  Crystal moved just her right hand suddenly and he was locked in position again.

“What the fuck, Crystal?”

“I’m sorry, Jacob. 
You
promised.  I didn’t.  Your friends
are
here, but they don’t know I have you.  And I can’t let them know.   My sire would kill me.  He has a shit temper.  He can’t know I lied to him.  I’m sorry, but I have to move you.”

All Jacob could think of at that moment was that when he got free he was going to fucking kill that bitch to death.  Over and over until the ground glowed red
with vampire blood.  So close to freedom!  His mind raced.  There had to be some way to overcome this power she’d hijacked from her sire.  She was not first blood.  So she was not stronger than him.

Compliance.
  That was it.  What she wanted.  For her, it was all about control.  She wanted him to obey her every wish.  Jacob could do that.   He could do anything he had to do.  Tricking this cunt into believing he was her toy didn’t even rate in the top ten of horrible things he’d had to do to survive.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.  Rolling his naked body into her arms, she carried him away through a tunnel that led deeper underground, through a second tunnel, up an incline, and through a massive set of doors out into the warm night.  Trees, tall and rustling against the dark canopy.  Jacob was happy to see the sky for the first time in weeks.   He breathed deeply, grateful to fill his lungs with fresh air.  His inert body landed in a heap on the ground some distance from what had obviously been underground holding cells outside the city.  He couldn’t see the city skyline, so he knew they weren’t downtown Paris anymore.  And
even though he hadn’t been the one carrying a great weight some distance at an incredible speed, he was exhausted and had to calm his respiration.  He lay just as she dropped him, awkwardly twisted on his side.  She’d left him frozen.