Scents

Scarlett is a young vampyress. The daughter of the coven's leader. She has a happy life, safe, fairly uneventful, but when her father starts to worry about her safety she begins to have some suspicion

The cold air tussled the branches in below trees as I slowly stepped out of the cave where I slept during my hunting time. The moon glowed and brought a tremendous beauty to the forest at the foot of the mountain on which I stood.

I was expected to return back to the coven that night, but the previous feed of the night before had not fully satisfied my thirst. The stars were bright against the deep blue of the night sky. Another breeze made my hair dance around my waist.

I pulled at the end of the silk black ribbon tied in a bow around my right wrist. I wrapped the length of silk around my waved black hair and tied it in a bow at the top of my neck. Another breathes made my pony tail swayed at my waist and the skirt of my dress to move like the rolling waves of the ocean. It’s dark red silk tickling the chalky white skin two inches above my knees. The beautiful red silk under a layer of intricate pattered black lace was still when the breeze ceased.

I lifted my face to the light of the moon. My chest rose and fell under the tight strapless bodice of my red and black dress as I inhaled the scents of the forest beneath. I wriggled my toes in the damp earth under me. I lowered my head after slowly opening my eyes. I cocked my head slightly as I looked at my pale, bare feet and continued to nuzzle my to the earth. I took another deep breath, again absorbing all the scents of my surroundings, with my eyes closed. The fresh scent of the pines filled my head, along with the sweet and sharpness of the ripened plums. The lush smell of the grass and the perfume of the heather radiated from the ground. All of which where followed by the faintest and most beautiful smell of blood.

I could just hear the thrumming of the warm and seductive liquid as it coursed through an unfortunate and uninformed human.

I allowed my lips to part for a moment, now inhaling the amazing smell. My throat burned and stung with my longing to taste it. My top lip twitched upward in hunger, exposing my lethal and razor sharp fangs. I froze my entire body. My jaw clenched tight, all my muscles tensed, my throat continued to burn in hunger. My eyes were still closed when I snapped my head up, then inhaled all the scents of the forest below and rolled my head like I had a cramp in my neck.

When my face was again facing the moon my eyes flashed open. I whipped my head around to face the East. I had heard sounds of humans. And stupid, naive humans at that; to be even on the out-skirts of the forest, when the hour was so late and the sky so dark.

In the woods you couldn’t so the light of the moon but up on the mountain of which I stood it’s full glory was revealed to me.

Still smelling the air, I walked slowly toward the eastern edge of the mountain. I curled my toes over the edge of the mountain, the strongest breeze of the night whispered as it playfully made my hair and skirt dance, but more importantly it blew the scent of the poor human’s blood straight towards me. It was as if the night wanted me to fly through the forest to meet the human.

So that is what I did.

I leaped from the near top of the mountain, flying through the night sky with the wind whipping my face. I hit the ground running around three miles away from the mountain with incredible grace. The trees whizzed past me, my feet barely touched the ground. I ran farther Eastwards closing the distance between myself and the human’s blood. As I got closer I realized that there were more than one heart beating at the edge of the forest and they were retreating back into the city.

But I was faster than them.

Much faster.

In a matter of seconds I had covered the distance between my cave and the forest outskirts, twenty seconds the be more descriptive. The corners of my mouth tilted up. Twenty was a personal best but I always ran faster when I was thirsty.

I was mere metres away from the humans now. There were five of them, and they were all very ruff looking men in hoods. One of them carrying a ball and the others with their hands in their pockets.

I knew this would be easy.

I could see the humans far of the truth story that would appear on the news and in the papers. The human reporter would write whatever the naive human investigators and police told them with added exaggerations. The story would not be a problem at all because it would have no mention of the human being lured into the forest and drunk dry by a vampyress. And even if they got the story completely and utterly accurate, who would believe them? And what on earth would they do about it if they did? I thought, then another breeze caused my long pony tail and the skirt of my dress to dance and blew the scent of the humans towards me.

I could still see the humans through the darkness, but I was completely invisible to them. The dark of the night my faithful ally as the light of the sun is my sworn enemy.

“Oi! On me head, John!” one man shouted to the one holding to ball. The man threw the ball toward the one that had just spoke. As the ball flew threw the air, I dove into the man who was to receive the ball’s mind.

His name was Simon Patterson, he was aged twenty five. He was a recovering alcoholic, and had recently broken up with his girlfriend because he had caught her cheating on him. It had took me mere seconds to gain this information, by which time Simon had headered the ball back to the man named John and was squaring up for the next throw. The other three men made distracting noises to try and make him miss, but he paid no attention to them.

“Simon...” I whispered into his mind. He whirled round looking for someone to appear from the forest, but I liked it better when my food came to me rather than chasing after it.

The crowd of four burst into laughter and the one named John shouted “Fail!” mockingly. The laughter died down and I moved silently toward the ball. I stopped two metres away from it. Simon had obviously missed the ball and it had rolled into the forests darkness. A breeze rustled the branches of the trees and gave me another waft of the glorious scent of the blood coursing through the men’s bodies.

“Better go get that man!” one of the humans told Simon.

“Why me?” Simon asked worriedly.

“Cause you’re the failure that couldn’t header it!” The human named John mocked.

“But my uncle Jimmy told me that there’s wolves and bears a-and...” Simon stammered.

“And what Simon?!” another one of the humans asked.

“And vampyres!” Simon told them looking like he felt a little ridiculous and immature.

“ Don’t be such a baby! You’re no five, you’re twenty-five! And anyway after that lift off your uncle to the game last month, We’re all pretty sure he’s on something!” the first unidentified human called. The rest of them sniggered at the mans comment.

“Fine, I’ll go get it, my uncle was probably just trying to creep me out,” Simon said giving up. The rest of the men started chatting but I didn’t listen in. I was concentrating on Simon’s footsteps on the forest floor.

He was veering off slightly in the wrong direction so I gave him a little help. “Over here, Simon,” I whispered into his mind softly. His footsteps stopped for a moment then he started walking straight towards me. I had my back pressed against a tree trunk, the ball he was searching for merely four metres away from me in the clearing.

Where I stood under the trees was to dark for a human to see but the clearing was illuminated by the moon’s light. Simon jogged towards the ball and scooped it up in his hand. I stepped slowly from my hiding place among the darkness of the forest into the small clearing where Simon stood. He was paused in mid-turn when he saw me emerge into the glowing moonlight of clearing. He parted his lips, like he was about to say something but couldn’t think of what he could say.

“Hello, Simon,” I said being friendly and flirtatious, looking at him from under my eyelashes. I smiled but was careful not to show my fangs.

He looked me up and down over and over again as he said nervously, looking rather shocked, “Hi.” I took a step closer to him, my feet were silent on the moonlit grass. “How do you know my name?” he asked again nervous and rather shocked.

“Let’s just say... that I’m well informed, shall we?” I said being careful about what I told him.

“Yea, yea cool,” he answered, “W-what’s up with your eyes? They’re like red and black? I mean your irises are black and the bit that’s meant to be white is red, are you okay?”

“I’m perfectly alright,” I answered. He was correct in a sense, though my irises weren’t black, my pupils were just far larger to take in more light, allowing me to see far better in the dark than a human. Because of the size of my pupils there was no space for the whites of my eyes. Around my immense pupils where my irises, they were in fact red, the same shade of dark red as the silk of my dress.

“Well they’re deadly cool,” he exclaimed, trying to look at the ground but I held his gaze, deadly was right. He wasn’t that much taller than me, around four inches. His scruffy blonde hair looked like an animal on top of his head. He rubbed the stubble he had on his chin and jaw as I looked into his hazel coloured eyes.

“Follow me,” I said beginning to step backwards to the of the forest. Simon followed me into the darkness without question. It took only seconds to get deep enough into the forest so it was too dark for him to see anything.

“Stop,” I whispered in the the vast blackness that Simon was seeing. He did as I commanded and looked around himself searching for me.

“I can’t see anything,” Simon laughed nervously. I silently crept up behind him until my body was less than an inch away from his. I slid my hand from his hip, up his arm to his neck. He shivered, but didn’t turn to face me.

I whispered in his ear “I know...” Then I gripped his shoulder with my right hand, my nails making cuts in his skin. Tiny droplets of his blood landed on the forest floor. He winched but didn’t say anything. He seemed to get some sort of sexual pleasure from it.

I positioned my mouth on his next about to clamp down my jaw and satisfy my hunger, but I pulled back and whispered “Your uncle was right, Simon,”

I positioned my mouth again and this time I did not hesitate to bite.

The taste of his blood distracted me so much that I couldn’t concentrate on keeping him quiet, and he began to scream as I drank. Above his screams I heard the call of bats, as they flew towards me. I looked up at them as I drank. Hundreds of black shapes now flapped and soared in a circle above me and Simon. They were beautiful creatures of the night.

Simon’s blood was extremely sweet but had a bitterness that hit the back of my throat. He grew faint and dropped to his knee and I followed still drinking. He wasn’t screaming anymore.

He wasn’t screaming anymore because he was dead.

I could tell that he hadn’t much of his sweet, warm blood left, when I pulled away. The bats continued to screech above me, swooping and barrel-rolling in the space between the tree tops and where I stood. The corners of my blood stained mouth curved up as I looked at the swirling screeching black shapes.

Every vampyre had to find a way to ‘clean up’ the mess they left after hunting, otherwise the humans would become suspicious that the bodies they found had big puncture marks where it was most accessible to arteries. Most would throw the body in the lake or off the summit of the water fall. Others make the body unrecognisable and put them in dirty back alleys in the city. But I was one of the very rare few who could use animals to help them ‘clean up’ as it were. Normally it was wolves or bears that came to the few who could use animals. A vampyre could not call on the animals and they come, the animals had to come to them without being asked. My father had a bear who would tear the flesh and meat from the humans body then take the bones back to gnaw on in his cave. But I was the only vampyre in history that was helped by bats.

As they flew around and around in a mass of black I marveled at how beautiful they looked. Their musty yet cold scent filled my nose as it took a deep breath, I felt at home with the bats, my bats. I held my arms out to my sides, and closed my eyes. The bats dove from the height of the treetops and flew around me with incredible synchronization. They were waiting.

Waiting for me to let them have the limp lifeless body that lay at my feet.

I kept them waiting a moment longer so I could just inhale their scent, that to me was the second best smell ever, after blood. They did not grow impatient, they knew it was just a matter of time before I let them, my friends, my family from the animal kingdom, have what was left of the body.

My smile got wider and I laughed, not in the way a suspect a human would expect a vampyress to laugh, cruelly and some what evil sounding, the laugh I released was more of a giggle between my teeth, “Get rid of that for me...” I whispered gazing in aw at the black creatures.

Immediately they ceased to dance in the air around me and shot toward the body. Their teeth and claws ruthlessly tarring at the corpse. I watched them rip it apart for a moment then began walking silently, deep into the forest.

Author's Note

Hope you like it x :)