DINING AT THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE

Feature Writer: BelleCanzuto

Feature Title: DINING AT THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE

Published: 02.10.2019

Story Codes: Erotic Horror

Synopsis: A pale stranger changes my life

Author’s Notes: This is my entry for the Halloween contest. Many thanks to Rustyoznail for editing this for me. It was an enjoyable collaboration. Two brief notes: 1) I’ve taken some liberties with the uniform of the police officer character, so please just roll with it. 2) According to Wikipedia, Vlad Tepes is the real name of the person who inspired Bram Stoker’s “Dracula”, and Wikipedia’s never wrong, right? Anyway, I do hope you all enjoy it. Please vote however you think is appropriate, and I’d love to see whatever comments you have. Thanks for reading, Belle

Dining At The Devil’s Backbone

It was a dark and stormy night. Really, it was; one minute rain fell so heavily that the windshield wipers couldn’t keep up. The next minute the deluge dissipated, but the fog was so thick it was like my car was just a suspended bubble wrapped in a cloud. Sound dampened, air dense and oppressive.

I was driving up to my friend’s cabin for a weekend Halloween bash. One of those excuses to drink too much, sleep too late, and bed down with near strangers. Come in costume. Then cum in your costume. That kind of thing. I intended to escape from my dreary life and celebrate some good news.

An accident on the interstate blocked both northbound lanes, traffic backed up nine miles by the time I saw the first notice about it. I shunted myself off onto the highway that had been the main road through these mountains before the interstate was built. Apparently, everybody and their brother was going north that evening, and everybody’s cousin had the same idea to avoid the interstate.

I thought, hey, I live here; I know these roads and I can figure out how to get there from here. I got off the highway onto the secondary road that would lead to the tertiary road that would eventually wend itself in the direction I needed. I wasn’t in a hurry. Plus, I’ve got GPS on my phone; it’s just a lot harder to get lost in this day and age than it used to be.

Still, I managed to somehow.

I turned off the highway. My little sedan climbed in the mountains, and the road got more and more narrow. The two lane track stuck precariously to the ridge like cat hair on a t-shirt. I felt the enormity of the rocks looming over my left shoulder and the enormity of the empty space on my right. The drop off was so steep that the tree tops didn’t shield anything. For a while I was glad that I couldn’t see over the edge.

There was a solidity to the blackness that pressed in on all sides. And what with the rain, or the fog, and occasionally both, my headlights barely penetrated the murk. I turned off the music that I’d been blaring, and my tires on the worn pavement groaned in a fatigued complaint.

I hunched over the steering wheel, my skirt bunching up under my thighs. My hands so tight that my knuckles had gone white. My feet in the cowboy boots slipping, unsure, hesitating between accelerator and brake. My chest ached; I realized I’d been holding my breath.

‘Get a grip, Stevens,’ I thought to myself. “It’s just a damn country road in the dark. You’ve driven on these before.” That I said out loud.

I rolled my shoulders, trying to resettle the little halter top and littler bra I wore as the top half of my costume. Sexy cowgirl; or sexy hillbilly, that’s what I’d been going for. Short denim skirt, red and white gingham halter. Hair in pig tails. I’d borrowed the cowboy boots and a worn out Stetson from my roommate and her boyfriend.

The road kept going up, getting more narrow, and the fog just got worse. The rain had mostly stopped, but the water vapor in the air hung so thick I still had to use the wipers. A wall of white rolled away in front of the vehicle. The only saving grace was that I was certain mine was the only car on the road.

Still and all, there was plenty to worry about. The road was twisty, with s-shaped turns, blind curves, and bad markings. If there had been white lines at the edges, they were long since faded away. The yellow line, doubly solid the whole way, was at least consistently visible. So, I took my half down the middle, as they say. I used the center line as my guide, and crept along at a pace just fast enough that momentum overcame gravity.

I realized I had started muttering a mantra about avoiding bears and deer, asking the universe to save the abrupt rock fall for some other day when a person would have a fighting chance of seeing it coming. I crested the ridge and had to shake out my hands, as my grip on the steering wheel had caused a spasm.

Just then I glanced down at the phone to check my position and get some sense of where I was. The phone was black. Not switched into night mode. Not searching for a signal or endlessly recalculating a route. No, it was black; like dead. And I had to keep going. There wasn’t a hint of a safe place to pull over, and I didn’t risk stopping in the middle of the road. My options were to keep driving the way I was, or try to turn around. It was pitch dark; I hadn’t seen a street lamp in at least ten miles; and I had no visibility around me. I had a mostly full tank of gas. So, realistically, the only option was forward. I forced myself to press the accelerator, knowing that prolonging the descent would just make me more nervous.

The fog got worse. It didn’t seem possible. It didn’t seem physically or atmospherically possible for the visibility to decrease. But somehow it did; the hood of my car disappeared and the light from my headlamps just bounced around aimlessly. I started panting, half convinced that the darkness was swallowing me and my car. Half believing that the night was alive, intent on eating me whole, or that I was already halfway down the gullet of some monstrous creature.

I drove on, counting my heartbeats, feeling sure that at some point the road was going to abruptly end and my car would just free fall off the side of the mountain.

Then, the quality of the gray light reflecting back from my headlights changed. Subtly at first, then a little more noticeably. I realized there was a streetlamp or something just ahead, off to my right. I crept closer, and noticed that the light was more than one color. I pieced together that it must be a sign. And I thought a lighted sign meant a business, which meant a parking lot. Which meant I could stop, try to figure out what was wrong with my phone, and maybe get my bearings.

As I got to the sign, I saw that it read “Devil’s Backbone Mercantile and Diner.” I stared at it, unsure I was seeing it correctly. There is a tourist attraction I know called The Devil’s Backbone; it’s a rock formation along a mountain ridge popular with hikers. And the name of a brewery. But I shouldn’t have been anywhere near it. I should have been miles to the south.

A large metal awning sheltered a couple of gas pumps that were obviously out of service. I drove under it, between the pumps. For the life of me, I could not see a building. The sign illuminated the area just enough for me to park safely. The fog enveloped my car, the sign and the awning, isolating me in what might have been an endless night. I put the car in park, shaking, and just sat there. I debated whether to turn the map light on, trying to decide if it would blind me or be useful. But mostly I just sat there, willing the tension to dissipate. I reached for the phone, and my hand trembled too badly to pick it up.

I had a couple of bottles of liquor in my suitcase. I thought about breaking one of them open. I thought of the rough warmth of decent whisky, and the probable calm I’d feel. Then I thought about attempting to keep driving this road even one iota less clear thinking than I had been. The crystal clear image of my car careening off the mountain, crashing through tree tops and plunging into a creek, never to be seen again, convinced me to leave the liquor where it was.

Suddenly I was freezing, even though the car’s heater worked fine and just a few minutes ago I’d been sweating. I shook uncontrollably, and let the spasm roll through me. Just when I’d calmed down again, the fog lit up in red and blue.

I jumped, startled, confused, disoriented. Red and blue, red and blue, alternating. Then the echo of a rumble of a large engine, and I understood. He pulled in front of my car, side on but a good five or six feet away from my front bumper. His lights blinded me, bouncing off all the water molecules, refracting. I held my hand in front of my face, blinking rapidly until my eyes adjusted somewhat.

By then he was at my window, tapping on the glass with that wooden club that so many cops carry. I breathed a sigh of relief. A State Trooper, stopping to see if I needed any help. I pressed the button to lower the window all the way.

Before I could say anything, he said, “Miss, I need you to turn off your vehicle.”

I did.

“Do you know why I stopped you this evening?”

I thought, ‘What? I was already stopped.’

But what came out of my mouth was, “No, Officer.”

He leaned down so that his face was level with mine. “I’ve been following you for miles. You were driving recklessly.”

I thought, ‘Wait, creeping through fog at ten miles an hour is driving recklessly? And no one was behind me.’

But what I said was, “I’m sorry, Officer.”

I realized I was staring at him. Staring at his eyes. They were as gray as the fog that surrounded us. They were as blue as a turbulent sea. They were as green as a forest in the last throes of summer. They were as brown as a freshly dug grave. I couldn’t look away.

His lips were blood red. They were wine red. They were pale pink. His lips were full. Or thin. Or his mouth was wide. He smiled. No, he frowned. No, he grinned. No, he grimaced. His voice seeped out of him in a low rumble that reverberated in my skull. His voice was a high pitched keen that pierced my ears and made my eyes water.

He smelled like roses, and lilacs, and ash, and smoke. He smelled like cherry blossoms and death. He sucked the air out of my car, and the cold radiated off of him like a warning. I still couldn’t look away. You couldn’t have paid me to look away. I bathed in his stare, wrapping his voice around me like a plush robe.

My hands dropped, slipping off my thighs and hitting the seat. I relaxed into the backrest and my knees fell open. Every muscle loosened and my focus shifted, narrowed, and concentrated on his otherworldly handsome face.

I registered a movement out of the corner of my eye, and realized he’d reached in through the open window, holding the nightstick. The end of the club tapped the seat between my knees, just below the hem of my short skirt. I breathed in sharply and felt the pleasure of my pussy beginning to flush and the sensation of moisture soaking into my thong.

The trooper’s fingers were long, thin and pale, wrapped around the end of the black billy club. My gaze shifted to his hand, and a low groan leaked out of my mouth as I imagined his digits inside me. As I ached for him to touch me.

As he began inching the tip of the truncheon along the seat, closer and closer to my crotch, I had one moment of incredulity.

‘I should be screaming,’ I thought. ‘I should be horrified. What is he doing?’

The nightstick made contact with the hem of my skirt, and inexorably he kept it moving, folding the fabric onto itself. He shifted the position of the stick just enough that it dragged along my bare thigh. That was the last minute I thought anything was amiss. The touch of that painted wooden dowel was electric. It was better than any vibrator, better than my favorite dildo, better than the last two boyfriends I’d had.

He handled it smoothly, gliding along my tender skin as my arousal increased and my panties became completely soaked. I spread my legs as far as I could, completely open to his ministrations. The end of the club made contact with my vulva, and he pressed it there firmly. Then slid the end up and down, catching the front of my slit and causing a gush of lubrication to coat my underwear, the seat and the nightstick. He kept the movement going, up and down, over and over, until another moan rolled out of my mouth.

He’d been staring at me, his expression unreadable, the whole time. I was lost in his eyes, some part of me hoping that he would devour me. The part of my brain that had been nervous or surprised now silent, overruled or overwhelmed by my reaction. My body felt leaden, paralyzed and boneless, like potter’s clay waiting to be formed. Waiting to be handled by those long, thin fingers and large, pale palms.

After a few more strokes of the end of the truncheon against my mound, the trooper started drawing the stick upward. My skirt pulled up more, and he began to trace a line over my stomach, toward my breasts.

Then he spoke again, the words floating out of him. “You can unbuckle your seatbelt now, Miss. You won’t be driving for a while.”

I did as I was told, and much to my relief, he continued caressing my torso with the nightstick. Then he traced a circuit of one breast and eased the tip up to my chin. He pressed on my chin slightly, and I dutifully opened my mouth. He pushed the end of the club into my mouth, and I tasted my own juice on it. I licked the end while still staring into his eyes. He smiled briefly, and my heart thumped with pleasure at having done the correct thing.

He pushed the billy club a little further into my mouth, my jaw gaping open to accommodate it. He pressed down on my tongue.

I heard him say, as though from a distance, “You’re driving under the influence, Miss. That’s very dangerous. I’m going to have to cite you. Possibly arrest you.”

I found myself nodding slowly, the rod still in my mouth.

He reached in with his other hand and unlatched my car door. As he opened it he used the billy club in my mouth to direct my movements, turning my head towards him, and then starting to withdraw it to lead me out of the car. I clamped my lips around the end, and whimpered when he had to take it out of my mouth so I could step past the edge of the door.

He slipped the truncheon back into its loop on his belt. I stood a foot or two in front of him, staring up at his face, still hypnotized by his eyes. His grey uniform fit like a glove, and the belt with his weapons, truncheon, handcuffs and other tools hung suggestively at his hips. There was a brass name plate over the right chest pocket of his shirt.

The name on the plate was: V. Tepes.

I stood there, slack jawed, inhaling his scent, trembling with need for his touch. I stood, breathing slowly, unable to question why I was reacting the way I was. I stood there, not caring that none of this made sense. I stood still, enveloped by his presence, shielded by the fog and a night as black as sin.

When he spoke, I watched his breath disturb the air. It shouldn’t have been possible. It wasn’t cold enough to see breath, and I was so close to him that there wasn’t enough fog to bother. And yet, in my memory, I see the air moving as the words lilt out of his mouth. He smiled, as though he was pleased with both of us. A knowing smile, not a happy one. His smile and his eyes drew me up straight, pinned my feet to the ground. They were strings attached to me, and made me his marionette.

He said again, “Miss, you’re driving under the influence. That’s very serious. I’m going to have to investigate.”

“Yes, Officer, sir,” I replied.

“Sergeant Tepes. That’s how you will refer to me.”

“Yes, Sergeant Tepes.”

“What’s your name, Miss?”

“Vivian Stevens, Sergeant Tepes.”

“And how old are you, Miss Stevens, to be driving so far from home so late at night?”

I should have wondered how he knew anything about where I lived, or how my age was any of his business. But I was past caring.

“I’m twenty-nine, Sergeant.”

He nodded, slowly, and I saw his gaze travel down my body then scrape back up again. My heart thumped and a shiver ran down my spine. He walked around me, making a complete circuit, and I felt his stare the whole time. I felt a spot of cold drawing itself around me, covering me, electrifying my skin.

When he stood in front of me again, his smile was wider and he drew in a deep breath through his nose and exhaled slowly. His mouth opened slightly as his grin broadened. There was something slightly odd about the way his lips covered his teeth. I noticed and dismissed that. I wanted his mouth on me somehow, somewhere, and any deformity in his anatomy was worth accepting.

He spoke again, softly, “Miss Stevens, I’m going to have to investigate thoroughly. I will search you and your vehicle. You will cooperate. You will do whatever I ask, and answer all of my questions completely.”

He wasn’t asking; he was asserting. I wasn’t actually under any obligation to cooperate, to let him search anything, or to give him any information other than my name. But in that moment, anything other than obedience was unthinkable.

“Yes, Sergeant Tepes. I’ll cooperate fully.”

“Good.” He pulled a plastic bag from somewhere, opening it up with both hands. “Take off your panties, and put them in here.”

“Yes, Sergeant.”

I reached down, pulling up my skirt, and used my thumbs to hook into the waistband of the thong. I stepped wide and shimmied the underwear down my leg. I worked each leg opening over the cowboy boots, and managed to step out of the garment without falling. I stepped toward the Trooper and dropped the drenched fabric into the plastic bag.

He brought the bag to his face, taking in another very deep breath through his nose. When he looked at me, his eyes flashed scarlet and then went back to the indistinguishable dark shade I’d first seen. He was grinning then, slack jawed, as he closed the bag, folding it over itself to trap the air. Then he sealed it with an orange sticker with the word “evidence” written in big black letters.

He stepped back. “I’m going to put this in my vehicle. Take off the rest of your clothes and put them on your driver’s seat.”

He turned his back and I hurried to comply. I shucked off my skirt, pulling my feet out of the boots at the same time I was unzipping the fastening. I turned and tossed the boots into the car, not caring where they landed. I stood next to my open driver’s side window and dropped the skirt in. Then I reached up to unfasten the halter, but the knot was tight; I just yanked it up and slid my arms out. I did the same with the bra, not bothering to unhook it, but just stretching the fabric over my breasts and pulling it off like a shirt. My heart was racing. I didn’t feel the chill. The damp of the fog comforted, like each water molecule was caressing me somehow.

I turned away from the car, and the Trooper was standing next to me. I hadn’t heard him move. He pulled the truncheon out of its loop, and ran the tip down my side, across the front of my thigh and up my center. He pressed the end into my crotch, sliding it back and forth slightly, coating it with my copious lubrication. Then he trailed the stick up, across my belly button, over my sternum and tapped my chin again. I opened my mouth wide, sucking on the end that he pressed to my tongue.

“Follow me,” he said, softly still. He stepped away and I stepped forward. He used the nightstick again to guide me into the position he wanted. We went around to the front of my car and I backed up until my legs touched the front bumper.

He tilted the nightstick up, and I craned my head backward, extending my neck. He pushed down on the stick and it slipped further into my mouth. I sucked and swallowed, managing to look at his face, hoping he understood I’d do the same to him. He hadn’t touched me but I thought of that baton as an extension of him. He pulled it out and traced another line down my front before replacing it into its loop.

“I have to search you now,” he said.

I nodded as he continued, “Turn around.”

I turned my back to him and felt him step close to me. I was aware that I didn’t feel any body heat coming off of him, but thought that was just a matter of the weather. I’d clasped my hands together at the back of my head and he put one hand there, where they met. At this first, innocuous, touch I gasped loudly and lurched against the car. My pussy and ass clenched and I felt a surge of fluid dripping between my legs. I’d never been so physically aroused in my life. I felt so hot that steam should rise wherever the fog touched me. My eyes rolled in my head.

Sergeant Tepes curled his fingers around my hands, helping me stay upright. He used his foot to push my feet farther apart and stepped up so that his body met my naked back and butt. He pressed himself into me, steadying me. His other hand met the first at the back of my head, and then each hand traced a slow line down my arms, squeezing gently until he got to my armpits.

He slipped his hands down the side of my ribs and I whimpered. His hands went lower, his long fingers splayed and reaching toward each other as his palms passed over my sides toward my hips. When he reached my hips he turned his hands so that both of his middle fingers grazed the sides of my vulva. I shuddered, moaning and beginning to whisper.

His voice was in my ear, “Sshhh, Miss Stevens. There’s no need to talk now.”

I forgot how to speak. I forgot what words were for. I moaned again, low, an incoherent entreaty as his fingers brushed the edges of my lips and met at the hood of my clitoris. He shifted his hands again so that his longest fingers touched together as they went back up. He was drawing the heat off of my body, drawing something primal from the center of me. My head lolled back against his chest, my eyes rolled up, my mouth hung open.

His hands traced up the front of my ribs, curving in, and then cupping my breasts. He held each of my breasts in a hand, kneading my flesh tenderly and then lifting them. He let my globes fall, my nipples scraping against his palm. My nipples had never been so erect; they stood away from the rest of my breast, the areola completely contracted into a hard knot. When he let go my nipples stood almost upright and the slightest touch of air on them caused me to shiver.

This otherworldly Trooper stepped back and I groaned again at the loss of contact with him. He brushed my back with his hands, down to my ass, and the backs of my thighs. Then he leaned into me again, gripping my breasts and tugging them out and down.

“Bend over,” he said.

I bent down until my chest pressed against the hood of my car. My hands were still behind my head and I felt him gripping my wrists, one after the other, twisting my arms so they were straight and clasped behind my back. He patted my hands, and pressed lightly on the small of my back. I arched, tilting my ass higher in the air, and pressing myself lower onto the car.

“Show yourself to me, Miss Stevens.”

I gripped my ass cheeks and spread them as far as I could. I spread my legs further and turned my toes in so my heels twisted out. I felt the cool damp air on my most intimate parts and I was completely at peace. Well, not completely, I wanted him to touch me again.

Instead, I felt the familiar hard knob of the end of his truncheon. It slipped between my ass cheeks and roamed up and down my perineum, tapping my opening, and then travelling back up again. Then he pressed the baton to my vagina, making tight circles at first. Then he spun the baton in place, and once it was coated with my juice, he pressed the end into me.

I moaned, my back arching instinctively, and I pushed back onto the intrusion without any thought. I wanted that stick in me, I wanted something he was controlling inside me. I cried out again, as more of the club slipped into me. I felt my muscles gripping it, contracting wildly around it. I gave in to the sensation, and an orgasm consumed me. I was writhing around on the car hood, my breasts compressed onto the hard metal, my hands grasping and pulling myself open so I could get more. I needed more, I had to have more, had to have all of it. I shuddered and babbled uncontrollably, and as the orgasm faded, I realized the Trooper, whoever he really was, had bent over so his torso was once again aligned with mine.

He had pulled out the low pig tails I’d put my hair in, and brushed my hair away from my neck. His weight on me was cold and comfortable, drawing off the fire that was raging in me, holding me still. His fingers brushed my cheek and I felt the hint of his breath on my neck.

He shifted his weight again, and I felt his hands on my back, then heard the unmistakable sound of a zipper being lowered. I grinned broadly as he shifted once more and his hard cock settled into the cleft between my ass cheeks. His truncheon was still firmly in my pussy, and I was still spasming around it. He didn’t attempt to enter my ass, he just laid his shaft there.

Then he was laying on top of me again, his scent thick in my nose. Roses and ash; lilacs and smoke; cherry blossoms, and decay. The smell of a pile of wet leaves, or the cool earth at the bottom of a deep hole.

“Do you have anything to say, Miss Stevens?” His voice rumbled in my ear.

My power of speech returned.

“Yes, Sergeant,” I managed to whisper.

“What do you want to say?” He shifted again, and another moan tumbled out of my mouth.

“Just do whatever you want. Just don’t stop touching me. Please. I’ll do whatever. Just don’t stop. Please.” I heard the need thick in my voice, the hunger. It was foreign and yet somehow felt perfectly familiar and true.

“Oh, don’t fear,” he whispered, from somewhere inside my head. “I’m not done.”

One of his hands wound in my hair, pulling it away from my neck again. His other hand glided down my side, lighting sparks, trails of cold fire, until it slipped under me to cup my vulva. His fingers touched my nether lips, setting off another cascading orgasm. I bucked up, into his pelvis, rubbing my ass on his cock as his cool fingertips danced on my clit. I clenched hard around the nightstick.

Then I felt his breath on my neck. Something wet tapped there, just over the pulse, and then a short sharp pain. I caught a whiff of the smell of copper before another orgasm crashed through me so hard that I forgot what was happening. He suckled my neck and I tried to scream in pleasure but no sound emerged. I opened my mouth wide, meaning to groan and beg him to never ever stop what he was doing. But I was silent. I was still. My muscles so overwhelmed with sensation that I couldn’t move. I didn’t want to move.

A moment later, he let go of my neck, standing up straight and drawing me upright with him. He pulled the truncheon out of my hole and it clattered onto the ground. He spun me around to face him, and picked me up, sitting me on the hood of the car.

In one swift movement, he positioned his cockhead at my entrance and pushed deep inside me. His prick felt like an icicle. It felt perfect. He filled me up completely, his head pressing at my cervix, and stretching my walls far more than the truncheon had. My body accepted him like I’d been waiting for him my entire life. I wrapped my legs around his waist, my ankles crossed at his back and resting on his uniform tool belt.

He wrapped his arms around my waist and shoulders, drawing me to him. When our mouths met a light exploded in my brain, I saw galaxies and tasted stardust. I tasted my blood on his tongue and I sucked myself off of him, craving more. He moved his hips, pulling out of me slightly, and I couldn’t bear even that minute loss of contact. I pushed my hips up, and he shoved back into me. His every movement spawned another climax, another crescendo of pleasure that left me dizzy and speechless.

I held on to him desperately, my whole body clinging to him, refusing to let him go. My whole mind spinning with desire and the absolute certainty this strange man was my life. That by whatever magic or fate I’d wound up where I had, I didn’t dare leave.

He pumped into me, his thrusts going deep and faster until he grunted loud. My head was thrown back from all my silent screaming, my arms and legs jelly. He was holding me up and holding me to him. His climax came, and suddenly there was a heat in my belly that set me on fire. I felt his seed erupting inside me, felt him coating me. Felt him claiming me.

My last orgasm shattered me. I convulsed all over, arms and legs, stomach and head. I finally managed to scream a word, “Mine!”

He laid me down, gently onto the hood of the car, and stood stock still between my legs. He kept me from sliding off while the rest of my spasms subsided. He pulled his cock out while I was too far gone to notice. My pussy clamped down hard, and none of his seed leaked out.

I was so spent, so overwhelmed that I probably couldn’t have walked the few feet it would have taken to get back in my car. I was babbling gibberish. He leaned down, and I managed to look into his eyes. They really were red. The red of Mars, or a burning coal in the middle of a deep night; the red of fresh blood on white sheets. I didn’t care. He had the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen.

He picked me up, like I’d pick up a half dozen eggs in a carton. Carefully, but with no thought as to how much I weighed. Somehow the back door to my car was open. He sat me on the edge of the back seat, and suddenly I was dressed. Or at least mostly dressed. My skirt and the halter top were on, then a cardigan that had been in my suitcase. He helped me lay down on the seat, and settled a blanket I keep in the trunk over me.

My last thought before I passed out was the realization that he’d rolled up the windows, and was locking me in my car. He secured me safely, and I was gone.

When I woke up it was morning. The sun shone brightly through the car windows. I was warm and slightly uncomfortable. Surely that whole thing had been some kind of strange stress dream, brought on by getting lost. I sat up, and noticed my car keys on the console between the two front seats. Tucked under them was a note.

I picked up the keys, and pressed the button to unlock my doors. As I slipped out of the backseat, I realized my pelvis was sore, and so was my neck. I stood, stretching, my back aching, my legs still a little wobbly. I realized I was starving. Then I remembered I had no idea where I was.

I looked around. The awning and the gas pumps were still there. The remnants of a parking lot, a burned out husk of a building. No sign. I turned around and around, but there was no sign, lighted or otherwise. I looked past the building to the rolling mountain ridges, and then turned again to look at the towering hill I’d driven down.

The road was fine. The markings clear. It wasn’t especially narrow. Perplexed, I sat in the driver’s seat. I reached for my phone, and it responded normally. The GPS told me exactly where I was, and quickly calculated directions back to my apartment. I checked and saw a text from my friend asking if I was on my way. When I didn’t respond he sent another text saying that he canceled the party because no one had showed up.

On the passenger seat, next to the borrowed cowboy boots, were my bra, and what looked like a policeman’s nightstick. That’s when I realized my underwear were gone. And then I remembered the note.

In tall, narrow handwriting, someone had written: “Miss Stevens, I don’t know who you are, but I will. And you will know me. I had planned to take you last night, but found that I needed something different. Please forgive my transgression, and the sample I purloined. I shall endeavor to make recompense in a manner satisfactory to you. We shall encounter each other again anon. Your servant, Vlad T.”

‘Who writes like that?’ I thought. But there was something earnest and endearing about it. I couldn’t remember most of the previous night. Only remembered fear transforming into unbridled and unstoppable waves of pleasure and passion.

I put the note in my purse, pulled the boots on my feet and drove home.

~~

He knocked on my door about a month later, on a dark night when the moon hung in a small sliver. I surprised myself by answering. Typically, I ignore people who show up unannounced. I wasn’t expecting anyone, and my roommate was out spending the night with her boyfriend.

I opened the door and my heart stopped. I recognized him immediately, though he was not in uniform. He wore black twill pants, dark shoes and belt, and a light colored fine gauge sweater. I think it was cashmere. I had on a t-shirt, old sweatpants, and an older cardigan. He looked at me like I was a supermodel.

Memory flooded over me, crystal clear snippets of that night, frozen as though they’d been illuminated with a strobe light. The sign. His eyes. The truncheon. I gasped and swayed on my feet. I was held upright only by my grip on the door handle. My cat ran up to him, hissed and ran away. As the flood receded I was left weak kneed and shallow breathing.

My hand still grasped the door, and my other hand was spread over my lower stomach. The memory of him inside me lingering after I was able to compose myself.

I managed a smile.

“I have something of yours, Sergeant Tepes,” I said.

“You are everything of mine, Miss Stevens,” he replied.

I knew the truth of that statement. I knew it in the nucleus of every cell in my body.

“Yes,” I found myself saying.

I stared at him, absorbing him. Fixing his image in my mind, and attempting to compare him to my newly refreshed memories. His eyes were a soft gray, and a little blood shot. I’m taller than average for a woman, and he stood a few inches taller than me. His shoulders were broad, his legs long and his lips were the color of Merlot. His hair, which I hadn’t paid attention to before, was brown and softly curled, cut short on the sides and a little longer on top. I drank in his scent, roses and smoke, cherry blossoms and that thick organic smell of a forest floor in summer.

He stood, stock still, waiting. For what I didn’t know. His hands clasped loosely behind his back. He grinned in that slightly odd, slack jawed way that somehow managed to shield his teeth. I think I knew then. I knew, if not exactly what he was, I knew what he was not. That he was not entirely human. I didn’t care.

“Do I need to invite you in?” I asked.

He inclined his head slightly. “It is the customary thing to do.” He spoke with the slightest Eastern European accent, and the way he pronounced all the vowels sent shivers down my back.

“But not, strictly speaking, necessary. Is it?”

“No,” he said, as his gaze dropped momentarily. “That boundary is already breached.”

My hand had crept up my front, over my breasts, and I touched my neck where the sore spot had been that beautiful November morning. A look of dismay flitted across his face, and he winced in what might have been shame.

I stepped back from the door and to the side, clearing his way.

“Do, please come in Sergeant Tepes. Vlad.”

He gave a little bow, and crossed my threshold. The door slammed shut behind him as though sucked closed by a gale of wind. I swear I heard the deadbolt slide, even though neither one of us touched it.

He stepped very close to me. I kept his eye contact, and felt none of the disorientation I’d felt the other night. He reached for my arms, but stopped himself before making contact.

“Miss Stevens,” he said softly, “I would very much like to kiss you.”

“Well,” I answered, “if you’re going to do that, you’d better call me Vivian.”

“Yes,” he whispered, “Vivian.”

He cupped my cheeks and the back of my neck with his long dexterous fingers. Our lips met softly, so gently at first, and I felt myself melting into him. I leaned in, stretching, as he lightly tapped my lips with his tongue. I opened my mouth and he slipped his tongue inside, just a little at first, probing, seeming to wait for me to relax. I slid my hands around his waist, then arched into him, slipping my palms up his strong back. He held my head only, and I wanted more. I wanted his hands all over me, his mouth all over me, the length of his body pulsing on mine.

I opened my mouth wider, and he responded by letting me have more of his tongue. He allowed me to suckle him, and I finally felt one of his hands stroke down my back, wrap around my waist and pull me to him. I could have kept kissing him for hours. I could have died a happy woman right then. But I needed to breathe, and broke the kiss with a low moan.

He laughed, low, in the back of his throat. He kissed my neck, right at the hollow of my throat. I almost collapsed right there in the hallway. I forced myself to step back from him. I took his hand and lead him back to my bedroom. The cat heard us coming and shot out from under my bed, racing back into the living room, but stopping to hiss at him on the way.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“To retrieve your lost belonging.”

“You’re not lost.”

I turned toward him in the doorway to my room. “No, I don’t suppose I am.”

I surprised myself by saying that. If any other man had claimed me as a belonging, it would be one of the last things he said to me. I certainly wouldn’t be leading him to my bed with every intention of making love to him. I shrugged it off, another oddity in my behavior that seemed normal in this situation.

I stepped into the room and he followed; I watched him survey the mess. He took in the random piles of clothes, the clutter on the desk, the various boxes for jewelry or hair stuff on the dresser. The candles in jars on the nightstands and the top of a bookcase. I pulled him into the room and shut the door behind him. His truncheon was hanging from a loop on the back of that door. Where I could see it every night as I lay in bed.

I reached around him to pluck it from the door, handed it to him, and stood next to my bed. He brought the end of it to his nose, smiling, and then lightly tapped his other palm.

“So,” he said, grinning again. “Have you enjoyed my gift?”

I laughed. “No.”

Suddenly he was very close to me, and I felt the tip of the nightstick on the inside of my knee.

“No?” he asked. The end of the club slid up, grazing my thigh, pressing the sweatpants to my leg.

“No,” I responded, hoarsely. “I waited for you.”

The tip of the club brushed my crotch, then he ran the length of it back and forth, pressing up, ever so slightly. My eyes were half closed; he wasn’t touching any other part of my body. He controlled the stick, keeping his hand from making contact with me. Instantly, I ached for him, I ached for more. He breathed in through his nose, and I witnessed his eyes flash red.

The truncheon passed through my legs, again, his hand moving in a methodical and slow pace. He increased the pressure a little more, and the crotch of my sweats discolored with the amount of lubrication surging from me. He changed the angle of the draw just enough to create even pressure directly on my clit. I moaned, my hips pressing toward him, and my arms hanging loose.

He pushed the club back again, away from him, stopping just when his hand would have met my clothed pelvis. As he pulled it back to him, even more slowly, he whispered to me.

“Is this what you want, Vivian?”

“Yes,” I whispered back.

He pushed the stick away again.

“You want this. You don’t want MY nightstick?” he said, teasing.

“Oh, God,” I moaned. “Oh. God help me. I want both.” My breath caught in my throat.

He shifted even closer to me, now drawing the tip of the truncheon up, across my clit, and up the center of my stomach. He leaned down, putting his hand on the back of my neck. He tossed the nightstick onto my bed and brushed my lips with his.

“God,” he said, “has nothing to do with this.”

He kissed me lightly. Then there was a flurry of movement, the hint of a breeze, and at the end of my next heartbeat I was naked, sprawled out on my bed. Dead center, my legs and arms flung wide, and Vlad stood at the foot of my bed, beaming down at me.

He crossed his hands at his hips, as though to pull of his sweater, and there was another flurry of movement. The lights went out so the room was as dark as that night.

I cried out, “No. I want to see you.”

“Shh, Vivian.” His voice came from all around me. In my next breath all my candles were lit. By the time my eyes adjusted, he was laying next to me, unclothed. He stretched out on his side, his head propped on one hand, and his leg flung over mine. His free hand tracing a long elliptical path down my stomach to my mound and back up again. He brushed the tips of my breasts. My nipples hardened and elongated, standing out farther than I’d ever seen them. His lightest touch bringing me closer and closer to an orgasm.

He shifted a little lower, and I felt him pick up the nightstick which had landed conveniently between my legs. I stretched my arms over my head, holding on to the vertical bars of my head board. I clamped my mouth shut, knowing that if I attempted to say anything to him it would be incoherent, unintelligible, verging on gibberish. He smiled, and there was a sweet kind of evil in that smile that made my heart thump louder. He laid his head down on my chest, his ear on my sternum, as though he wanted to listen.

He slipped both hands down the length of my torso, then used one tease open my lower lips. He picked up the billy club with the other hand and put the tip at my entrance. I shuddered, from his touch, the memory of the other night, and from the anticipation. Perhaps I should have been bothered by my primal need for that hard intrusion. I might have been worried if a friend told me she’d been pleasured in that way. Certainly it was possible he could have hurt me, either intentionally or through carelessness.

But as soon as the tip met my inner lips, as soon as that hard width breached my entrance, my body demanded more. My body demanded all of it, as much as could possibly fit. He made a few small circles of the baton, right at the outermost edge of my vagina. Then he spun it in place. My juice dripped down and my hips bucked up, I pushed at the headboard trying to guide him into me. I groaned, loudly. He slipped that wooden rod into me, achingly and desperately slowly. He stopped as I felt the end meeting the top of my tunnel.

He pulled the truncheon out, almost as slowly, spinning it in time with the withdrawal. Then he reversed, pushing it back into me with another twist. In and out, spinning slowly, out and back in. I was spinning. I clung to the headboard because my nerves had made a detour for my pussy. Every nerve I had now ended where that wooden rod moved in and out of me. I heard someone panting, muttering, and distantly realized that had to be me. He moved the rod again and an orgasm crashed over me, crashed through me, shaking me.

Vlad turned his head, shifting his upper body so that he lay face down. He propped himself up with one arm, while continuing to move the nightstick in me with the other. He started kissing me. He ignored my lips and my face. He began at my throat, kissing a line around my neck, and down part of one shoulder. He kept kissing, softly, but drawing my skin into his mouth and tapping with his tongue. He trailed down, onto my breast, then licked around my nipple.

I might have screamed, if I had breath. His tongue on my nipple set me on fire. I exploded. Then he closed his lips around and suckled, softly and then more insistently. I felt his mouth opening wider, and him taking more of my breast into him. For a lot of reasons, I’m thinner than average and my breasts aren’t large. But they’re not tiny either. No man I’ve been with has taken even the majority of one of my breasts in his mouth. But Vlad seemed to be. The suction grew, the strength and the rapidity of the pulses. I swear that I felt his lips and his teeth on my chest wall.

He moved the truncheon in me faster, taking longer strokes. I bent my knees, spreading myself even wider, tilting my hips up. I arched my back and would have pressed his mouth more tightly on my breast but I couldn’t figure out how to move my arms. I couldn’t make my fingers unclasp the headboard. I felt his tongue take a long flat lick up the underside of my breast, then he let go except for the nipple. He sucked my nipple, hard, flicking the tip of his tongue around it. I bucked into him, groaning. He twisted the truncheon and I shattered again.

He let go of the wooden rod, leaving it inside me as he shifted to attend to my other breast. His teeth scraped gently on my skin and he kissed all around the base of that breast, then laid a line of light kisses over the side, across my nipple and down the other side. By then he was kneeling between my legs, and my pussy had been pushing the nightstick out of me.

He looked up at me, and as soon as we made eye contact I knew what he needed, and I knew what I needed.

“I need YOU,” I moaned. “You, inside, please, now.”

He shoved the billy club away somewhere, and replaced it with his perfect prick. He slid home, full length. It hadn’t been an illusion the first time, I could feel his head at my cervix again, could feel the stretch, could feel the sense that my sheath was made exclusively for his penis. I arched my back, pushed down onto him and wrapped my legs at his back.

When I looked at him again, there was a hollow, fundamental hunger in his eyes.

“May I taste you?” he asked. His lips didn’t move, and his voice was inside my head.

I nodded, unable to figure out which word would most enthusiastically convey my permission. I hoped he really could read my mind, that he could know how much I wanted that for him.

To my surprise, he didn’t move to my neck. He lowered his head to the breast he had just been attending to. He licked all around, and then laid his head down on my sternum. His teeth sank into the flesh of the inner part of that breast. He sucked, and I felt his tongue pulsing against my flesh, licking up the blood I knew was leaking out. One of my hands finally let go, and I cradled his head, pushing his mouth more firmly into my flesh. With his every suck, another orgasm rolled through me. My vagina gripping and pulling his cock deep inside me, my hips rocking up into him.

I thought I’d known pleasure before, but that was a shallow pool compared to the oceanic waves of climax crashing down on me with Vlad’s every subtle movement. He managed to remain latched to me even as he started moving his penis, thrusting in me. At first he made small motions, but as I continued to respond and use my body to encourage him, he became more forceful.

He let go of my breast, bracing himself over me and using the leverage of his hips and legs to pull out of me almost completely and then push back in. I grabbed his neck and pulled his face down to me. I made him kiss me, made him let me lick the traces of my blood off of his lips, off of his teeth. I made him let me feel his fangs with my tongue. Something went wild in him when our mouths met.

I planted my feet on the mattress so I could push myself up to meet his downward thrust. We crashed together, over and over. The sound of our pelvises meeting was joyous and obscene and I wished it could be endless. His hand clamped onto my butt, steadying me so that he could grind into me more, harder, faster. I don’t know, I lost count, of how many orgasms I had.

All I know for sure is that when he finished, when once again I felt his seed coating me, I was practically paralyzed. He jerked to a stop, and lowered himself down. He kissed me gently again, and I opened myself to his tongue. He pulled his prick out of me and settled on his side, our bodies still touching.

I laid on the bed, arms and legs still akimbo, my breath coming in ragged spurts, and my mind still spinning. My body vibrated, every muscle shaking. He placed a hand on my stomach, spreading his fingers, and once again I had the sensation that he was drawing off a flame that might otherwise have consumed me. I covered his hand with mine and looked at him, grinning drunkenly.

“Finally,” I said. “I finally know why the French call orgasms ‘the little death’.”

“That,” he answered, “or sometimes, ‘seeing the angels’.”

I made myself roll over to face him, searching in his crimson eyes.

“Oh, no. I’d much rather see devils.”

“I’m not a devil,” he said almost sounding hurt.

I put a hand on his chest, suddenly sorry for my joke.

“No,” I whispered. “You’re not a devil. You might be my savior.”

He looked at me for a long moment. “And you might be mine.”

He kissed me deeply, and I fell asleep in his arms.

When I woke up, it was almost noon the next day. Vlad was gone, and I wasn’t surprised. What did surprise me was that the apartment was completely cleaned. He’d organized and put away all of the clutter in my bedroom. He’d straightened the mess that was the living room. My cat was curled up next to the pillow he’d lain on, purring contentedly. He didn’t leave a note. But I knew I’d see him again.

~~

He showed up again about four weeks later, on another night when my roommate was away. I felt him coming up the stairs before he knocked on the door. My cat greeted him like they were old friends, winding between his feet and purring. We made love, and this time I managed to keep my senses. We took our time this time. The truncheon remained on its hook on the door. He let me look at him, and I drank in the sight of his long limbs, his pale skin, and his lack of body hair. His prick was a thing of beauty, uncut and as thick as my slender wrist. He stayed the night, and we spent all of it talking and touching each other. He asked me to pick a number between one and fifty. I picked forty two, and he told me a story about the celebrating the US Bicentennial.

Another month passed until his next visit. I greeted him at the door, and he swept me into his arms, carrying me to bed like a scene in the best kind of cheesy romance novel. After I’d recovered my strength, we sat up in bed and I found myself babbling to him about my life. I found myself telling him secrets and fears and fantasies that I’d never dared speak out loud. Nothing I said bothered him. Nothing I confessed to changed his regard for me. He listened intently, without judgement, and I believed I was safe with him. But I didn’t tell him everything.

Thinking about it now, it’s striking the things I told him, and the things I didn’t. I talked almost exclusively about my present and my plans for the future. I didn’t tell him about my family or my past or how I’d wound up where I was, in the circumstances I was. I complained about working two crappy minimum wage jobs, about needing to have a roommate at almost thirty. I talked about wanting to go to college, but not why I hadn’t been able to already. I talked about wanting a family, and nothing about the one I’d come from.

I talked of the future, while he talked of his past. He talked about things he’d seen and done. He talked about the ways he’d had to adapt, the languages he’d learned, the things he does to live unnoticed. But he didn’t talk about family either.

He asked me to pick a number between fifty-one and one hundred. I picked seventy-three, and he told me about fighting on the beaches at Normandy, in World War II. Could he have been reciting something he read in a history book? Maybe, but I knew that wasn’t it. I didn’t say the word, but I knew what he was.

Two weeks later he was back. After that he visited more frequently, never more than two weeks apart, but always when my roommate was out. He started showing up earlier in the evening, I’d feel his arrival soon after sunset. I don’t know why, but I never asked him where he came from. I never asked him how he knew where I lived.

One night I mentioned wanting a way to reach him when we were apart.

“Check your phone,” he said.

I did, and he’d put his information in, with two phone numbers, an email, and no address. His contact photo was the truncheon and he’d listed his name as Bram Stoker.

“You’re hilarious,” I said. “When’d you do this?”

“December.”

That was the first time he’d visited me at my apartment. I’d looked at my phone hundreds of times in the months since then, and I’d never noticed. It was situations like this that I felt the differences between us most acutely. He observed everything, nothing escaped his notice. Nothing escaped his understanding. His mind was quick, agile, taking in new information and remembering everything so well.

He’d just finished telling me about the terror of the Yellow Fever epidemic in Philadelphia, in 1793. It was the latest round in his game of having me choose a number from a range and telling me something that happened that many years ago. His way of leading me to understand how many years he’d witnessed.

Next to him, I felt slow, dull, and weak. No match for his strength. I felt like a receptacle, a vase he enjoyed admiring, but had to be careful with for fear of causing it to shatter. A question formed in the back of my mind, but I didn’t ask. I looked into his eyes, his soft gray and red eyes, and lost myself for a moment. I put the phone down, crawled over to him and kissed him. I straddled him and took him deep inside me.

“Taste me,” I asked, and he did. He lifted my arm and sunk his fangs into the flesh of my forearm. He let me watch his face as he drank. I saw waves of primal pleasure and hunger coloring his eyes and flushing his skin. I don’t know what he saw on my face. I know that I felt a deep yearning for him to do more than taste. I know that the pulse in my neck jumped, jealous to be ignored.

He tasted me almost every time he visited. He never bit my neck. Mostly, he would suckle at one of my breasts until I begged him to bite down, usually while his prick was deep inside me. Each time his bite would seal itself almost immediately, and the mark completely disappear in a few days. He didn’t take much more than a tablespoon of blood, or that’s what it felt like to me. He was careful, considerate, and more than repaid me in pleasure. But almost every time, I wanted him to take more. I hungered for him to devour me, to bring me to the brink, to suck me nearly dry.

The months went by, and his visits became more frequent still. In May my lease was up. My roommate moved in with her boyfriend, and I moved into a smaller apartment across town. I didn’t bother to tell him. I knew he’d find me.

He did, and his only comment was that it would be nice to have real privacy. He stayed the whole weekend. He slept during the day. We talked, touched, and screwed all night. I got an answer to one of the questions that had swirled in my mind since his first visit.

Sunday evening, barely past dusk. I heard him stirring, and listened as he wandered down the short hallway to the living area. My cat, having been asleep in the bed with him, padded next to him, then jumped in my lap, purring. He sat on the couch next to me.

I turned sideways to look at him, and drew in a breath.

But before I formed the words, he said, “I was hunting.”

I raised my eyebrows, my mouth half open. I couldn’t decide if I loved or hated that he always knew what I was thinking.

He turned toward me, took my hand in his. “I’m a predator, you know that. I was hungry. I was hunting.”

He rubbed his thumb across my knuckles, then turned my hand over and did the same over the pulse in my wrist. He looked at my hand, not making eye contact. “I could smell your fear for miles. It smelled. Delicious. So appetizing. And the closer you got.”

My stomach growled, even though I’d just eaten some cold pizza. We both chuckled; I’d started to expect an inexplicable synchronicity in our needs.

He looked at my face, finally. “The closer you got, the more I wanted.”

“So,” I said, “why didn’t you?”

“You stopped being afraid. And then I felt something else. Something very rare. A different instinct asserted itself.”

He brought my wrist to his mouth and kissed it, tapped his tongue on the pulse, hummed against my skin. I gasped, and then my breath shot out of me like I’d been punched in the gut. I moved toward him, annoying the cat, but I kept moving until our legs were pressed together. He held my hand in his, and cupped my neck with the other.

“Something in your blood matched something in mine. Speaks to something in mine. In me. As soon as I tasted you, I knew I couldn’t take you. That you were special somehow.”

“They say vampires mate for life. For eternity.”

“Who is ‘they’?” he asked

“You know, the lore, or the modern lore, anyway.”

“Oh,” he laughed, mirthlessly. “Most of that is bunk.”

“Most of what?”

“The myths humans have come up with. The stories you tell yourselves about things you can’t explain.”

“Oh,” I said. “But, ‘Twilight’ is a documentary though, right?”

“What?”

“The movies, and the books. You know, vampires and werewolves fighting over the same girl or something. Vampires sparkle in the sunlight. That’s gotta be true, right?”

He stared at me, sure I had lost my mind, wondering if I’d suddenly turned into an idiot. I managed to keep a straight face for five or ten seconds before I burst out laughing.

“Next time you visit,” I said, still laughing. “We’ll watch it. We’ll do a marathon of all the vampire romance movies, and you can tell me the parts they get right. It’ll be hilarious.”

He was so serious all the time. Physically, he looked about thirty. But there was a weariness in his eyes and his movements that hinted at his age.

Finally he laughed too, a full body guffaw that boomed across the small apartment and I grinned along with him.

“That sounds like a fine idea, Vivian.” He managed to finally say between chuckles.

Two weeks later, that’s what we did.

~~

It became the routine. He’d show up at dusk on Friday, and we’d spend all weekend having sex and watching TV shows or movies about supernatural creatures. I also read passages to him from books. He usually tried to distract me.

He usually succeeded. It was difficult to keep reading while he touched or kissed me. One night I had a book in hand and he was using his mouth on my pussy. I thought I did pretty well, only stopping in the middle of the orgasm when I really couldn’t breathe. So he redoubled his efforts, laughing that he was going to make me drop what I was holding.

His tongue and lips teased and pleasured me until I shook. But I managed to keep grip on the book, I even sputtered out a word or three. Then he sank a fang into my labia. The second that he drank, that pulse of his tongue and the sensation of my blood in his mouth overwhelmed me. I came so hard I passed out cold.

When I woke up, he was stretched out next to me, his hand on my heart. He tried to look concerned, but mostly his expression was smug self satisfaction. I was too wrung out to be annoyed with him. He gathered me into his arms, fitting himself around my body. I slept deeply, more secure and content than I could ever remember feeling.

When I woke up he was still curled around me, but he’d freed an arm and had been reading the book. I don’t remember which one it was. I found the courage to ask him the other question that I’d mulled over for months.

He felt me shifting and put the book down. He kissed me lightly.

“Are you hungry?” he asked

“No, not really. Are you?”

He shrugged. I sat up, put a hand on his chest.

“I’m serious. Are you hungry?”

His eyes narrowed and he clenched his lips into a thin line. “Don’t ask me that,” he said.

I pressed my hand into his chest more firmly., I felt safe enough to be reckless.

“You could have me, if you wanted,” I said. I didn’t see the danger.

He sat up, shaking his head, his eyes wide.

“No, I couldn’t.”

“I’m telling you. I’m ok—”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he interrupted.

“I want to be like you, Vlad. I want you to make me like you. Drinking me is the first step…” I trailed off because of the fury I finally recognized in his eyes.

His hands clamped on my upper arms so hard I found bruises later. His gaze tunneled through me and I remembered the fear I’d felt that very first night, on the road.

“What do you think you’re asking?” he said, his voice choked and almost impossibly low.

“I’m asking to become a vampire. To be made strong. To be able to stay with you forever.”

He let go of me, pushing away hard enough that I fell back on the bed.

“You’re a child. You know nothing.” In a heartbeat he’d gotten out of the bed, dressed himself and stood next to me. “This isn’t a game. It’s not life and death. It’s just death.”

He left. I sat on the bed in stunned silence for an hour before I managed to make myself get dressed. The whole week I was nervous and scared, sure that he wouldn’t come back. Then sure that he would. I trusted that primal connection we had, that ineffable something in my blood that matched his.

I called the numbers he’d given me. I left voice mails trying to explain myself without actually telling him the truth. Asking for a chance to see him. Plaintively begging for one last chance, if only to end things on a better note. He never called back. The weekend came and went; he didn’t show up.

The next week was worse. I was so distracted I got reprimanded at work. I stopped calling him. I ached all over, not just heartache, but a real physical pain like some kind of withdrawal. I barely ate. I laid in what I’d come to think of as ‘our’ bed, tossing and turning and berating myself for my foolishness. By the time Friday arrived, I dreaded the weekend. It suddenly seemed like an eternity to be in that apartment without him.

Friday evening, I sat on the couch, angry at myself for not broaching the subject of transition more carefully, for missing the sign that Vlad might not want that for me. Then I felt him; I ran to the door and threw it open just as he’d raised his hand to knock.

I flung my arms around him, then dragged him into the apartment. I was babbling apologizes, and he stopped me with a kiss. I saw galaxies again, felt the universe unspooling beneath me, collapsed into his arms. He carried me to bed. He didn’t taste me, was careful, so careful to avoid even an accidental drop of my blood. He was exquisite, he was masterful, and we created oceans of pleasure in each other. I was drunk on his presence, soaring and floating, surrounded by his smell, the sound of his voice, the echoes of his touch on my skin.

When we’d satisfied each other until neither of us could move, we laid together, our arms and legs entwined and foreheads touching.

When I could breath again, I started to apologize. He pressed his finger to my lips.

“Sshh, Vivian,” he whispered. “Let me say something.”

I closed my mouth and nodded slowly.

“I know what you want,” he said. “I know why you want it. You think it’s better, to be like I am. That it’s easier, maybe. Or at least safer. It seems romantic. But it’s not. It’s lonely. It’s dangerous. I kill people.”

He shifted away slightly, so he could look in my eyes. “You hear me? I kill people. I wanted to kill you. And to change you, I’d have to kill you. That’s how it starts. I kill you, then catch you at the last heartbeat, and hope that you have enough strength to swallow enough of me to bring you back.”

He took my hand and placed it over his heart that only occasionally beat. “I stop your heart. And if you live? It’s not pretty. It’s not romance. Why would I do that to you? I love you.”

He shifted again, wrapping me in his arms and kissing the top of my head. “Don’t ask that of me, please.”

I nodded, determined to drop the subject.

~~

But I didn’t. I couldn’t. Every time I was with him, my desire to be with him forever grew. My fear of staying human grew. My fear of growing old and frail while he stayed young and vital. My fear of illness, of the diseases that ravage people, some that I’d known too well already. Almost every time he visited, I’d hint at what I wanted. Or I would ask outright. We fought over it. We wore out the arguments we made, trod over the same positions again and again. He seemed immovable on the subject, but I believed I could wear him down, erode his resistance. He kept coming back, as insatiable for me as I was for him. We kept making love, or screwing, or whatever term was applicable. We argued, we reconciled, we fought, we fucked, we ignored the subject, and then I’d bring it up again.

One night he tried a different tactic to dissuade me. He told me the story of how he was made, that he hadn’t had a choice in the matter, but had been attacked one night. That one vampire had killed him, and that it was only happenstance that the second decided to revive him. He told me that Vlad wasn’t the name his parents gave him, and that he was so old he couldn’t remember what they had named him.

He told me of his inability to recall anything from his human life, that all he knew was afterward. That months after he’d been changed, a woman with a young boy ran to him as though she knew him, but he had no idea who she was. She flung her arms around his neck, babbling incoherently about how she thought he was dead. He said that she claimed to be his wife, that the child was his son, that she was pregnant with another. He told me that he’d pushed her away, snarling, and that only the firm hand of the vampire who made him prevented him from killing that woman and that child.

He told me of all the people he’d known who’d died and in what horrific ways. He told me that even the vampire who created him had been killed. He told me of being hunted, being frightened, the loneliness of seeing the world change so much, and of not really being a part of it.

We were standing in the kitchen. He watched me making soup. I listened intently, I absorbed the lesson he imparted, and it changed nothing in my mind.

I turned to him and asked one simple question, “Would you change it?”

“What?”

“All this you’ve told me. Would you change it? Would you choose not to be what you are, if you could?”

He stepped close to me, angry again, and underneath that feeling, I sensed he was unnerved. “You weren’t listening. I didn’t have a choice. I wasn’t given that luxury.”

“I know.” I looked at him, meeting his gaze with one I hoped looked steady. “You didn’t have a choice then. But if you had, if you could undo it. Would you?”

He shook, not just his head. His whole body shook. Then he disappeared.

I know, he didn’t literally disappear. He just moved so fast it seemed that way. The front door slammed shut. I waited. This time I knew he would come back. I don’t know how I knew it; I just did. I was certain.

I waited two days. I woke up in the middle of the night and he was sitting on the bed next to me. He reeked of blood. I sat up and he turned on the lamp on the nightstand. I expected him to be covered in fluid, from the smell. He wasn’t. There were a few drips at the corners of his mouth, one small smear on a cheek. But the odor was coming off of him, leaking out of his pores, coloring his eyes, and making his skin ruddy.

He smiled, a rictus of death that should have frozen me in fear. Instead I sat up, leaned over and licked the blood off his cheek. He jumped, gasping, as I moved and licked the corner of his mouth. I slid over closer to him, aligning my hips with his, easing myself to straddle him. He was too startled to move. But when I licked across his lips, when I pushed my tongue between them to get at his teeth, he launched himself at me. He pinned me down, hovering over me for a second, then pressing himself down onto me. Our mouths mashed together, and my tongue found its prize in his mouth. He opened wide, and gave into me, letting me clean off every drip I could get to.

He moved and suddenly he was naked. I had already been nude. He mounted me, shoving his prick home in my pussy all the way to his balls. I wrapped my legs around his waist, clinging to him as he pounded into me and I finished consuming the last drops of blood from his face.

As soon as I was done, he bent his head and bit my neck. He sucked, hard, and I felt a joyous release, and a searing pleasure roiled through me. His cock pistoned into me, and I wrapped my arms around his back, one hand on his head. I couldn’t think, or process all the sensations that coursed through me. I hallucinated flashes of his memories as our bodies seemed to merge completely. He kept drinking, far more of me than he ever had.

I felt myself weakening, starting to drift off. I smiled, blissful, overjoyed at the prospect of dying in his arms. I didn’t care whether he intended to bring me back or not. I think he realized that, because no sooner did the thought form than he shoved himself away from me.

I tried to cry out, to cling to him again. But he had backed off the bed to the door. In one last glimpse before I passed out, I saw a look of horror and shame on his face. Then he was gone, and I collapsed on the bed. I slept for a long time. More than a day, I think. When I woke up there were increasingly angry voice mails from my boss. The last one said not to bother to come to work because I was fired.

I didn’t care. I’d worry about working and money later. I wanted Vlad back. I needed him. I felt elated, but also weak. I tried calling him, but the numbers listed were no longer in service. I emailed and that got returned too.

Over the next week, I realized I was sick. At first I thought it was just a late summer cold. I was tired, easily fatigued, headachy, and my bones sore. When it didn’t go away after a week and I found an inexplicable bruise, I went to see my doctor. Who told me to call my oncologist. I made the appointment, already sure what the news was going to be.

Oddly, I didn’t feel the same sense of desperation that I’d felt after our first big argument. I missed him terribly, but never doubted that he would return to me. I trusted that connection in our blood to draw him back to me when the time was right. I wrote long emails explaining myself, or at least partially explaining myself. I wrote emails exonerating his behavior and articulating my feelings for him despite how he needed to act to survive. I sent them, and even though all of them were returned as undeliverable, I was certain he read them.

Three weeks later at the beginning of October, I’d just had a follow up visit with my oncologist. I curled up on my couch and tried to consider my options. The cat coiled herself neatly at my stomach. I felt Vlad approaching and didn’t sense his usual confidence and happiness. He felt sad and weary. So did I. I didn’t have the energy to greet him. He knocked, and before I could tell him to come in, he opened the door. He stopped just inside the living room.

“You’re sick.” He said it, not as a question.

“Yes.”

“Really sick.” He walked around to the couch, kneeling down near my face, making eye contact.

“Yes. Really sick.”

He sniffed, and it should have been annoying or seemed demeaning, but I was so used to him knowing me by my smell that it didn’t bother me.

He stood up, lifting my shoulder so he could sit on the couch with my head in his lap. It was the most palliative thing anyone could have done. I rolled onto my back and looked at him. He brushed his fingers through my hair, and laid his other hand on my chest just below my heart.

I knew he knew what was happening, but he just looked at me, one eyebrow raised. He wanted me to say it out loud.

“Leukemia,” I said. “I was in remission when we met. It came back. I just found out.”

“It came back after. The last time I was here. After I?”

“Get over yourself, Vlad. You didn’t cause this. You drinking more than a drop of me didn’t bring this back.”

I sat up, leaning on the back of the couch. I took his hand in mine. “But,” I said slowly, “you could fix it.”

He nodded slowly in turn. When he spoke, his face was still, his voice gruff. He looked sideways at me, and spoke slowly. “Is this why? Why you kept asking me to?”

I shook my head, then tilted it. “No,” I said firmly. “No, this illness isn’t the reason I want to.” I paused, realizing I had to be completely honest with him for once. “Not entirely. Not even mostly. I did think about it though. I thought about what it might feel like to never have to worry about it again. But, no, I just want to be with you. To be able to stay with you forever.”

“You say that now. But that myth about vampires mating forever isn’t true. We get annoyed with each other, we argue, you could get tired of me. And you’d be a different person after. You’d see me differently.”

“Ok.”

“And you’d forget this whole life, forget you even had it.”

I laughed. “I’m ok with that, too.”

“What about your family? Your parents?”

“My parents?” I snorted. “My parents. Vlad, the man who my mother exclusively referred to as ‘that sperm donor’ has been in prison since before I was born. I doubt he knows I exist. My mother? She kicked me out when I was sixteen because her boyfriend told her I was coming on to him. I haven’t talked to her since. Hell, I don’t even know if she’s alive.”

I jabbed a finger in his direction. “You are the only person who actually cares if I’m alive or dead.”

He sat back on the couch, regarding me. I got the sense that he was making up his mind about something. Suddenly, I wanted him with a fever and determination that wouldn’t be denied. I leaned over and kissed him, hard, wrapping myself around him and then sliding off the couch.

I pulled on his hands, and he stood up with me. I led him to the bedroom, drawing him to me, even as I pulled of my clothes and undid his belt.

“Don’t say anything,” I said to him. “Don’t decide anything. Just get in this bed with me and make love to me until we can’t move.”

He did just that. He touched me and kissed me so tenderly that I thought I might crack open. We undressed and laid down on the bed. He covered my body in caresses and kissed every inch of me. He drew me to him, and I felt my insides liquefy and open for him. His erection was thick and heavy on my thigh, his mouth surrounded my breast, his hands exploring every part of my skin. I did the same to him, kissing him, sucking on his nipples, filling my mouth with his soft, cool, skin and tasting him. I reached down and wrapped my hand around his rod, stroking him and guiding him to enter me. He moved so slowly, so gently that I began to tremble. I held his head in my other hand, while spreading my legs so he could lay between them.

He licked my nipples, first one breast, then the other, sucking them deep into his mouth. I grabbed at his backside, urging him up, yearning to feel his thick shaft filling me. Somehow I knew this would be the last time we made love like this. I wanted him immediately and for it to last forever.

I moaned and pleaded silently, beyond words, using my hands and my body to communicate my need. He listened, easing himself into me, moving deliberately, allowing me to feel every inch of his length as he pushed inside. As he stretched me and took up his place we started moving together, undulating against each other, sealing our connection.

He looked in my eyes, and showed me the weariness of his life. He let me see under the mask that was his unnatural youth. He let me see the damage of the ages, the grief, the loss, his own loneliness and fear. I drank in his look; I’d never seen him more handsome, more beautiful, more desirable than in that moment.

My pleasure rose up and bubbled over both of us. These were not the crashing, shattering orgasms that he usually elicited from me. They were more like a waterfall inexorably filling me, trying to quench an eternal fire. He pumped in me, his every retreat causing a hollow yearning that only subsided when I felt his tip touch my cervix once again. He slowed his movement, pausing at his greatest depth in me, and I responded by clenching myself around him, holding him to me with all my muscles.

After one long thrust he stopped, settling in me and resting his weight on his elbows and my hips. I opened my eyes, lost again in his grey and crimson gaze. He brushed hair off my face, away from my neck, and traced his fingers down my shoulder. He kissed me, and then bent his head hovering near my neck.

“May I taste you?” he asked in a voice that once again echoed inside my head. The question that sealed my fate to his, and the only answer possible.

“Yes. Please,” I whispered.

He sank his fangs into my neck, the pain a momentary heat quickly overwhelmed by a cascade of pleasure as he drew in his first mouthful of my blood. He drew on me slowly still, gently, somehow. His whole body motionless except for his lips and throat. His cock rested deep inside me, and I clung to him with hands made into claws and heels bent to grappling hooks. He took more than his usual tablespoon, but far less than he had the last time we were together.

I felt every corpuscle as it left me, as it entered him. I felt a connection strengthening and changing, made deeper, even more fundamental than it had been. I felt his decision to let go before he moved his mouth away. I turned my head to meet his mouth, and when he kissed me the galaxies I saw unfolded in slow motion. Stars burst into supernovae and collapsed into black holes and all I wanted was to draw him deeper into my body and never let him go.

He was moving again, thrusting in me in short but furious pulses that I somehow managed to match. When he erupted, I felt his seed coating me again, claiming me again. He broke our kiss, looked at me and climaxed again. My vagina spasmed, clenching around him, milking every last drop of semen from him, draining him completely. We had barely moved once we laid down, but I might as well have run a marathon.

He settled on his elbows, pressing our foreheads together. He stayed hard inside me for a long time, longer than should have been possible. I was lost, floating in a haze, aware only of his weight on top of me, cooling and comforting me. At some point, I fell asleep. When I woke he had rolled onto his back, and I laid on him, my head on his chest, arms around his waist, legs tangled together.

His arm was wrapped around my waist, and his other held the arm I had encircling him. I stayed like that, unmoving for as long as I could. He stroked my back and my arm, as though he was trying to catalog the sensation of my skin. I thought he was saying goodbye.

I pushed myself off of him and sat up. He followed me, stroking my cheek, then turning my head so he could see the spot on my neck. As usual, his bite had sealed itself, leaving two tiny dots of slightly discolored skin, but no scab, and no further bleeding.

Then he did something I didn’t expect. He bit his left wrist, waited for his blood to well up, and then used two fingers from his other hand to collect the blood. He held his hand out to me, giving me those fingers to suckle. I raised an eyebrow, surprised, but the smell of his blood was intoxicating, and I didn’t hesitate to lick him clean. At the first drop going in my mouth I moaned. He looked solemnly at me, and offered me a few more drops.

I started to ask a question, but he shook his head. For a moment he was gone, then he came back, sitting on the bed next to me, fully dressed.

“I have you leave you, Vivian,” he said cupping my cheek and brushing his thumb over it.

I started to protest, but he shook his head again.

“Almost a year ago we met. I was going to kill you, use you to feed myself. Now you think you want to become what I am. Find me, on the anniversary of our first meeting. Find me, and if you still want what you think you want, I’ll do it. Find me. Tell me your answer. If you can’t find me, then…” He shrugged.

I knew. If I couldn’t find him then, I’d never see him again.

“Ok,” I found the strength to say. “I will find you.”