On the Far Side of Darkness (24 page)

“She didn’t think she was strong enough, and she didn’t want the monster to become all of her. I still mourn for her. I still wish I’d not asked her. Only God knows what I took from her besides her life.”

“I need another drink, please” she tells me. I get it and she sips at it. My love sits quietly and thinks for a long while.

“Do you have anything else to tell me?” she asks then.

“Only this. We’ll still love one another, Diane. That will be enough to carry us both through an eternity of nights.”

She smiles. I open my arms and she falls into them. We cuddle feeling those quiet, warm emotions lovers feel.

“So,
cher
,” I say to her, “what will it be?”

Death

He came to her at her hotel, helped her check out. They left her luggage at the front desk, saying they’d be back for it shortly. Then he took her by the hand and lead her into the Paris night. She never let go during the half hour walk. There was a fear in her, a fear that if she let go she would lose him again. Like Eurydice, she would be pulled back into an empty, bleak world if they were separated.

They stopped in front of a row house. There was nothing to distinguish it from the rest of the domiciles on the street. With a smile he opened the front door and with a bow told her, “Welcome to our haven,
cher
.”

Diane smiled as she entered, then she stopped. It was obvious at once to her that the house wasn’t lived in. It was clean, and neat, but there was no vibration of life in it. She turned to him with a quizzical look on her face.

Her lover chuckled. “That’s my lovely, intelligent lady. This is not where we’ll sleep. Come.”

Their destination was the basement. It was well furnished as a reading room. The parquet floor was beautiful, and the selection of books amazed her. This room, it seemed to her, was a place her sweetheart used often.

Diane’s vampiric lover reached for a particular book and pulled it out from the rest, just a little. In response a part of the floor at one corner of the room rose up like a lid on a jar. When he drew her to it she found a round hole in the cement and the top of a set of circular stairs. Only the top two steps were visible.

Diane paused for a moment, knowing this was the last point at which she could change her mind. If she entered the dark hole in the ground
all she knew would leave behind.

She straightened her back then. Georges would come with her. Her lover was the entry to a new world, not the exit from her old one. They’d be together forever, and Diane knew she wanted that more than anything. All other losses would be paltry to losing him.

So she descended into the dark. That murk didn’t last long. When the door closed above them lights came on to illuminate their destination.

Diane goggled at what was revealed when she reached the bottom step. It was a large area, done up as a bedroom. An old canopy bed in oak dominated the far end of the room. All walls were done in stucco and dark wood. Hooded lights shone on them filling the room with a warm light. There were two comfortable chairs in one corner, full bookcases behind each one. A fridge purred quietly in another corner. Next to it was a shower with a glass door. The room was her lover's, she could see that. It was comfortable but not ostentatious, a place where a man of refinement and restraint would sleep.

“Our haven,
cher
. Welcome.”

She turned and smiled. “I’m glad to be here, love.” But her voice quivered.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

Diane nodded, only the slightest hesitancy in the gesture.

He reached out, took her chin in his hand. Leaning forward, he kissed her. Just a soft touch, reassuring her she was in no danger.

Diane sighed, closed her eyes. She swallowed as he pulled back. When she opened her eyes again, she was looking into his. They were warm, loving. There wasn’t the slightest hint of what he was. Only a man, who loved her, stood there.

He stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her, kissed her once more, with passion. She hugged him tight and answered him with equal ardor.

His hand caressed her breast with tender passion. Diane moaned at that touch. Her nipple hardened under the silk of her bra as he brushed his thumb across it. Her hips jerked, pressing herself to him. Diane’s womanhood began to grow wet.

Her lover grabbed the hem of the wool sweater encasing her upper body, jerked it up and over her arms. Her undergarment quickly followed. His mouth left her lips, suckled at one of the breasts revealed. Diane grabbed his head, pulled him close, demanding he love her.

He played there for long minutes, swiping his tongue over her sensitive skin, rolling her nipples in his lips, biting gently at them. Diane’s passion rose, and rose, and rose. Her body twitched, shimmied at his teasing. Her vaginal lips engorged and her panties grew wet with her fluids. She kicked off her shoes as he was unbuttoning her jeans. He pulled her lower garments down and she stepped from them. She was naked now, ready now.

He stood and disrobed. Diane waited with heated expectancy. The sight of his body raised her warmth with the knowledge he would soon be pressed against her.

Taking her hand once more he led her to the bed, knelt on it. He placed her in his lap, hip to hip, chest to chest, intimately. His hands and mouth roved again. Diane did the same. She loved the feel of him, the soft of him, the hard of him. All these sensations made her groan, made her sweat. Her hips started to pump driven by ancient behavior. She sank into the bliss of her love.

His right hand moved over her stomach. Downwards and his fingers stroked her clit. Diane hissed, jerked into it. The feeling was so gorgeous. She could feel the precursors of climax shake her.

Fingers now playing over her lips, he soaked them in her lubrication. Her undead lover turned his palm towards her. The tips spread her open and thrust inside, filling her wanting emptiness.

Diane keened a sweet noise and her hips started jerking. “Yes,
chérie
,” she panted, “yes. How you fill me. How you love me. Please, please.”

He pumped harder. Her lust flared and slackened at the same beat, each pulse a little more ecstatic than the last. Diane clamped tight on his fingers, dug her nails into him. She exploded with a “Now!”

She thrashed, hissed, twitched, moaned. Her orgasm smashed into her awareness, burying it under sheer carnal pleasure. She was wandering in a hot mist of bliss.

Vaguely, she became aware of his mouth at her throat. The next instant his teeth penetrated and her delight overwhelmed her. Diane floated away, her only perception was joy.

A joy that shrank. Its borders pulled in, darkness replacing it. Diane didn’t care, wrapped in ecstasy as she was. She just watched, felt the blackness compress her. Smaller, smaller, and she was gone.

Undeath

Her awareness came back in a blood red haze. Her mouth held a taste of liquid. She knew what it was, knew that she needed it. Her whole body, her whole existence, was desperately hungry for it.

Diane’s eyes snapped open and she sat up from the prone position she was in. She was on the floor, lying on a large plastic sheet. Snarling, she looked for something to feed on.

She felt as much as saw an object flying towards her. When Diane snatched it out of the air she found it was a soft, clear container, and she knew instantly what the red fluid in it was.

Without hesitation she ripped the neck off, tilted her head back and poured the contents into her mouth. Diane was too famished to be fastidious and much of the liquid sluiced down her bone white skin. The taste wasn’t quite right, stale almost, but Diane gulped it down. She needed this.

She was finished in seconds, began wiping her body clean with her hands, licked away the scarlet coating her fingers.

There came that sense of something in the air and another container landed in her hands. Again she ripped the top loose and drank the contents down. She was more careful this time. The edge was off her hunger and she wasted less.

Another container came. Diane sank her fangs in it, sucked out delicious redness it held. The taste was still not quite right, but she reveled in it as she had once enjoyed the finest chocolate.

There was another bag, and another. Yet more after that. She drained them all.

In a precipitous instant, that howling hunger vanished and her reason returned. Diane stared at her blood stained hands, became aware of what she was sitting in. She opened her mouth but no sound came out. There was no vocalization for what she felt.

She was in his arms then. “There,
cher
, there. The first is the worst. Yours wasn’t so bad. When I was made, there was no way to store blood. So my maker had people ready. I fed on two of them to their deaths.”

Diane held hard to him, the anchor she needed. Without him she would be lost, lost to what she had become.

He stood and produced a towel. Pulling her to her feet he ran it over her mopping up the mess of her first meal.

“Shower, love,” he told her while leading her towards it. “You’ll feel much better after you’re clean.”

After starting the water running, warm, he placed both of them in the cubicle. His hands gently soaped her, caressed her. Diane’s fear receded at that. She discovered she had other pleasures, simpler pleasures, happy pleasures. Free of the effluvia left by what she now was, she felt free of its drives. It seemed she hadn’t lost much after all.

They dried each other with fluffy towels, exchanging soft kisses the while. When done they embraced again, happy with this intimate moment. Diane felt an extra happiness knowing this was just the first of an eternity of nights.

“Georges?” she asked then. “I feel something. Something odd. I feel like I’m fading.” What she was experiencing was disturbingly similar to the moments before she changed.

“Dawn’s coming, love. We must sleep.”

He led her to the bed. They lay down, her back spooned up into his chest. He stroked her, comforted her.

Diane smiled, closed her eyes. Almost none of her earlier confusion and terror was felt. She simply felt like a woman who was loved.

The instant the sun came up, she slept.

Beginning

Diane Patterson came awake. The sun was down and she was free. Free to hunt, free to feed. Free to terrorize and free to kill. She was overjoyed at the prospect of it.

Her eyes twitched open. She didn’t know where she was. She didn’t know
who
she was. Diane looked frantically around, searching for clues, anchors to draw her from the strange place she found herself.

The pair of arms held loosely around her torso pulled her tight to the body pressed against her back. “Shh,
mon amour
,” came a voice. “You’re here. The first waking is always confusing.”

Diane felt herself fill with loving warmth. She knew where she was now. With the man she loved.

Not a man!
came the thought then. Then all the memories from the previous night rushed back. “God,” she moaned, “what have I done?” A dreadful bewilderment colored her voice.

He rolled her to face him. For the third time she saw him without his mask. His face was that beautiful, inhuman monster she had first glimpsed almost two years ago.

To her surprise he didn’t frighten her. Instead she became aware that she looked the same way. She could feel the different shape of her features, the fangs in her mouth.
That
frightened her. She struggled in his grip, meaning to run, hide from herself.

He held her tight. “No, my love, watch.”

Wide eyed, she did.

The next instant, the man she remembered was there, his blue eyes loving and warm. Diane’s terror calmed as her love rose to meet his.

“You try,” he directed. “Recall what you looked like when human. Push that memory to your face.”

She did so, and she knew at once her own features had changed. No one who had known her before would be able to tell what she now was.

It was then Diane noted the lack of color in her lover’s skin, bone white. She glanced at her arm to find she was the same shade. No human was colored so. She looked at him with concern painted across her face.

Then his skin flushed, changed hue until he was merely pale.

“Feel your power, Diane,” he told her, “the blood in your stomach. Concentrate, take a small piece of it, spread it around your body.”

Diane did as he asked, and it was how he described. She took it, moved it. When she held up her arm she saw that her attempt at camouflage had worked.

“See,
cher
?” He smiled. “You have choices. You need not be a monster. You’re free to do as you want, not as it wishes.

“And the most important thing hasn’t changed. I still love you.”

Joy burst in Diane’s soul at that. That was a true statement, she could see it, and she still loved him. Without thought, her head darted forward and she kissed him, to show him how she felt. He answered with equal fervor.