"I, Vampyre" - Chapter Fourteen

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Daybreak

 

            I awoke, however many hours later, with a gorgeous naked woman next to me, and a thoroughly unpleasant feeling of warmth on my leg.

            Opening my eyes, I saw a thin spiral of smoke rising from my bare, exposed left thigh.  A ray of sunlight was shining in through a crack in the shuttered windows of the child’s bedroom, and the dreaded light of day was effecting a slow, painful burn on my vampiric flesh.

I rolled out of the bed, stark naked myself, and stepped over the misshapen mound of blanket on the floor (trying not to think about what was still underneath it).  I grabbed the dead boy’s chest of drawers and hauled it over so it was against the wall beneath the window, blocking the infiltrating daylight.  Yawning, I plopped back down onto the bed.

Makenna stirred, rolling onto her back, but she didn’t wake up.  Thinking back on fond memories of the just-expired previous night, I pressed my lips to hers, and then kissed her lovely neck.  My mouth slid lower, and she moaned softly, bringing to mind her sadistic pleasure at torturing Ermakov.

“Mmmm,” she murmured dreamily, “that feels so good, Rodger.  Make sure you pay equal attention to the other one, now…”

I pulled away from her chest, frowning slightly.  It wasn’t that she called me ‘Rodger’ �" I would be the biggest hypocrite ever if I were to get overly offended at being called the wrong name in a moment of passion �" it was just that… I thought Rodger was Spike’s lost love.  I never realized that ‘Kenna had a ‘thing’ for him, too.

That was just great… another flaming log on the vamp-fire.

Makenna’s eyes fluttered open, and she blinked up at me.  “Hello, Nevik,” she said, smiling coyly.  She seemed to have instantly forgotten her dream… fantasy, memory, whatever it had been.  She looked around the room, frowning at the window.  “What time is it…?”

“Just a bit after dawn, I think.”  I shook my head, highly annoyed.  “I can’t believe we fell asleep here, in this place… much too dangerous.”

Makenna closed her eyes again and rolled over, showing me a full moon. “Siren… took care of it…” she mumbled, drifting off again.   “Don’t… worry… so much…”

I waited a handful of moments to see if ‘Kenna would say anything else, but she was dead to the world.  I was feeling rather hungry, so I hopped out of bed, pulled on my blue jeans, and opened the bedroom door.  I started to walk down the stairs, but I stopped halfway down… when a monster straight out of Hell confronted me.

A devilish dog, what looked like a three-headed Doberman, was sitting at the foot of the stairs, glaring up at me with three pairs of red, beady eyes.  I had met this creature, this hellhound, once before �" it was Tier, Siren’s loyal demonic familiar.  What I didn’t know was how he had gotten here, nor how he would react upon encountering me again.  After my violent ‘break-up’ with Siren in ‘75, we weren’t exactly best friends.

“Salvae, Tier,” I intoned.  “Canis bonumus… ‘Good doggie.’”  The ears of the hound’s center head twitched.  A smirk of self-deprecation split my face.  Typical… I couldn’t speak any of the so-called Romance languages to save my unlife, but I was fluent in the infernal tongue of old goat-face himself, the patron devil of vampires, Akem Manah.

Tier ascended the stairs at a brisk trot, and I pushed back against the railing.  The hellhound growled softly at me in passing, but left me otherwise unmolested as he gained the second floor, dutifully continuing his ‘patrol.’  Letting out an utterly unnecessary breath that I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding, I hurried down the last few steps to the first floor.

The downstairs windows had also been shuttered and barricaded, which was a relief.  On my way to the kitchen, I noticed the hideously mangled remains of the father, Pavel.  Even if Siren had mercifully anesthetized him with her Glamour, his last moments could not have been particularly pleasant.  A sticky puddle of blood was all that was left of his wife.

  I entered the kitchen, scratching my bare chest, suddenly unsure of what I had hoped to find therein to sate my gnawing appetite.  My gaze was drawn to a silver-and-black appliance that looked like a futuristic coffeemaker.  In many ways, St. Petersburg was still a city frozen in time, with classic architecture and simple people, slow to lay down the hammer and sickle of socialism and embrace the advances of the mid-twenty-first-century.  But even this family of modest means had a Bev-O-Matic.

The Bev-O-Matic could instantly create any beverage, upon command, using just water and one ‘matter-cube.’  I told it I wanted blood-and-hot-cocoa, but (predictably) it didn’t respond.  Even if I’d known the proper Russian words to express my intent, I had a hunch that particular libation was not in the machine’s recipe database.

“Can I interest you in something even tastier?”

Siren sauntered into the kitchen, wearing only Adrianos’s unbuttoned shirt, that damn opal necklace, and a bemused half-smile.  She leaned back against the countertop, rocking her hips forward as if inviting me to take a good look.

I looked.

“What are you doing up so early, Nevik?” she asked, blinking her blue-green eyes very slowly.  I was of a mind to ask her the same thing… and so, effectively, I just had.

            “I couldn’t sleep,” Siren explained, “although I should be exhausted.”  She slid one bare foot up and down the inside of her calf, and I felt like I was being attacked.  As much as Bellissima’s dagger, Spike’s magic, or my whip, Siren’s overt sexuality was a weapon.

            “Siren, could you… please?” I suggested, gesturing meaningfully at the hanging-open shirt.  She stuck her bottom lip out for a moment, but then rolled her eyes before buttoning the middle few buttons of the shirt.

            “How did your familiar, Tier, get here?” I asked her.

            “Spike showed me a little trick or two.”  I bit my lip, and I immediately felt Siren chasing down the trail left by my wandering mind.  “Hmmm… looks like ‘Kenna taught you a few new tricks, too.”  She paused, her eyes widening slightly.  “Oh my, and I thought I was limber…”

            I rubbed my eyes.  “I’m tired, Siren,” I said, truthfully.  “I’m going back to bed.  Is there anything else you wanted?”

            She was upon me in an instant, pressing her lissome body against mine.  I felt a pleasant warmth in my body, in my blood, a polar opposite of the horrid heat of the sun.  “I want you, Nevik.  I want you to show me a little trick or two…”

            “What about Draconus?” I asked, mindful of her lover, her darling childe.

            “He’s not here right now, is he?” Siren countered, fastening the top two buttons of Ad’s shirt for emphasis, obscuring the gemstone pendant from view.  Oh, the irony… now that she was all covered up, I wanted nothing more than to rip the shirt off of her.

            And speaking of not here right now… “Where’s Spike and Belli?”

            “In the master bedroom,” Siren answered.

            “So where’s Adrianos?”

            Siren paused, grinning knowingly.  “In the master bedroom.”

            I took a step or two back, putting some necessary space between us.  I didn’t even bother asking where Siren was spending the day.

            Her flirty demeanor suddenly became more serious.  “Ad’s dying, hadn’t you heard?  As absurd as the very idea still seems to me.  He deserved to have his… hm… ‘mind’ blown one last time…”

            Siren turned away from me, placing the palms of her hands on the countertop.  Even without the gift of telepathy, I could read the silent shudder that passed through her body.  “What happened to us, Nevik?”

            I opened my mouth… but I was at a loss of what to say, how to capture a century’s worth of memories and regrets, so I shut it again.  We had met, we had lusted… we’d craved, we’d killed… and I dare say we had loved.  My fear to lose her had meant that death of that love.  I drove her away, afraid that my pernicious Sire, Reybeart, would be the death of her… maybe the end of both of us.

            “We could have killed him, you know,” Siren said, still staring at the kitchen wall.  “You and I.  Us.”

            “Killed who?” I asked, feeling a creeping cold crowding out the prior warmth.

            “Your Maker… Reybeart.”  Siren turned toward me again, and there was a shade of bitterness darkening her gaze.  “Was he really so all-powerful?  You and Spike and Bellissima finished him, thirty-some-odd years later, right!?”

            She took a step or two toward me again, and this time her fangs were coming out.  “Don’t you think I could have Glamoured the remaining sanity out of him?  Don’t you think Tier would have kicked the a*s of that… what did you tell me it was called… a barghest??  We could have done it, if you had told me, if you’d just… let me in, completely!”

            I stared at the kitchen sink, just to have somewhere to look that wasn’t the despairing depths of Siren’s tormented eyes.  She was right… she could have helped me defeat Reybeart, perhaps without so much as breaking a bloody sweat.  We might have stayed together… forever.

            But… I never would have encountered Spike, most likely.  Never would have crossed paths with Bellissima, or met Adrianos.  Or Aussie Donna, or Makenna.  And Siren turned Draconus long before she met me, what would have become of him?

            “Things have gone as they should,” Siren said, with what looked like a forced smile.  “We are… right where we’re supposed to be.”

            I looked up into her eyes again, rubbing my temples.  “You just can’t stay out of my head, can you?”

            Siren sighed at that.  “I will… if you ask me to.”  I knew she would, too… the same ‘deal’ she made with Aussie D, the same she’d do for anyone �" anyone that she considered a friend.

            I smiled.  “No… I don’t want that.  I actually kind of like it.  And… I don’t want to hide anything from you.  Not anymore.”

            Siren smiled back.  “And that’s just one of the things I still love about you, Nevik Roc.”

Our hands were in each other’s hair in the next heartbeat, and we kissed each other, wetly and deep.  I pulled her tongue into my mouth, and she slid her fingers down the sides of my face.  My eyes flicked open briefly, just long enough to see that hers were closed �" given that her Glamorous gaze was her greatest power, shutting her eyes was a significant show of trust.

I kissed her neck, as her fingertips glided across my chest, and my bloodlust went critical in an instant.  I bit deeply into her jugular… and, as I tasted her delectable blood, I realized that it was what I had been hungering for, that which could satisfy my undeniable craving, the only thing that would ever fully satisfy me again.

So I drank.  I drank of her, my Siren, and for that moment it was nirvana.

‘Dani…?’

I opened my eyes as I heard Adrianos’s voice, and I glanced �" almost guiltily �" toward the entrance to the kitchen, expecting to see him standing there and with murder in his immortal eyes.  But he wasn’t there.

‘Dani, where are you?  Come back to bed, mein liebling…’

The voice died off as I pulled away from Siren’s bleeding throat.  I quickly realized what had happened… as I supped from her, I was ‘plugged in’ to her telepathy, to a degree.  I had ‘heard’ Adrianos as he’d projected his thoughts into her mind.  Lucky me.

“I have to go back,” Siren said, wiping her hand across her neck… she was a quick healer.  She stared down at the floor.  “You should try and get some sleep.  Big night coming up.”

I grabbed her hand before she retreated too much farther.  “You’re going to have to choose, someday,” I declared.  “Make a decision.  You realize that, don’t you?”

Siren still refused to look at me.  “What if… what if I don’t want to?”

“If you choose not to decide… you still have made a choice.”

Siren turned to nearly-invisible mist, and she quickly disappeared… but not before pushing a final thought into my sleep-deprived mind… ‘You must make your choice as well…’

She left me, once again, in my natural state:

All alone.

 

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