Bloodlust and Redemption

Turning from him, I leapt out the third floor window I had entered through. On the pavements outside of the townhouse, I froze. I had seen his sister coming down the staircase at a speed dangerous for the length of her dressing gown on my way past the second floor window.

“Hell and blast! She could not have awoken and heard our quiet conversation. No, if she had she would have entered the room to find out who Michael was talking to.” I spoke to the vacant outdoors, as I saw her light enter the ground floor. Although I knew I should run, my feet remained seemingly manacled by the fog. I watched the black shadow, so female in its curves, move into the entrance hall.

When the door opened, I moved as if I had been just walking at this hour of the morning.

“Please, wait.” I heard her speak, but I continued my deuced charade anyway. “Pardon me, David, might I have a word with you too!”

I stopped dead in my tracks, a questionable choice given I could hurl myself through space at speeds great enough to avoid this encounter. Yet, her slightly alto female voice had uttered my name, the timbre of which played deeply inside of me swirling much like the frail mists. I turned to face the source.

“Pardon me?” I tried not to hiss out my words and to contain my glower.

“I apologize, but I heard you talking to Michael.”

“That is not possible.”

“I have made it a habit to wake every few hours and sit just outside his door. I was already there when you entered his room. You see, I do not wish to disturb his sleep, and sometimes it is simply comforting to hear him breathe. Also, I fear him needing me at some point, and not having the strength to call out for me. I castigated myself for listening to your most intimate words. Yet, your voice captured my rapt attention. You uttered such sympathetic and caring and kind… sorry, I am...” She had looked down at her own feet then, making the last of her omissions a whisper.

“Dash it all! What a devilish thing to do!” She looked up at me with a flush upon her cheeks shining through the tears dropping from her eyelids. At that moment, the galling ardor that had begun to simmer just below the surface was dowsed. I could smell her fear baiting me, making me crave the blood that kept me going.

“My intention was not to bedevil you,” she continued on undaunted by my fit of temper. It is beyond me the reality that you are a vampire. Even having overheard your conversation, I still can not bring myself to believe it.”

“I do not mean to shun you, my Lady, but it is not fitting for us to be talking here. The grim reality is there are other vampires near. I must hastily go before being seen with me gets you killed. I bespeak of you to conceal yourself safely back within your townhouse and to forget of what you overheard.” I had not meant for my words to be so abrupt and brash, but I could sense more of my kind entering the vicinity.

As I turned to flee away from her, I continued to contemplate my personal hell. A hand on my back stopped me. I wheeled on her with my fearful ire quite visible.

“Blessed woman, you must get indoors!” My manners diverted, I pulled her warm body to mine and secured her into her townhouse hoping we had not been seen by a villain of the night. When she shivered, I realized I was holding her unthinking to my chilled skin.

“Please pardon me, but you should have listened. You could have been killed! I will not have your blood on my hands.” Her hands were wrapped around her now, but she turned to look up at me with a steady countenance that was betrayed by the thrum of her heartbeats so audible to me.

“Why would a…” she hesitated, brooding, but looking directly into my eyes. I stepped back.

“A vampire,” I inserted for her gruffly while bound by her intense stare.

“I daresay, you are being nonsensical. Why would another vampire want to kill me, but you do not?”

“The sober truth is but a tangled situation.” I became abruptly distressed with the actuality of having a discussion with a non-dying mortal, a very much-alive female who had not realized in her haste to get to me her state of undress. Such pleasurable curves were mapped out for me by the light burning through the darkness from her doorway. The thin material of her attire merely creating an angelic haze around her frame. The briefest turn to the right granted me the silhouette of one perfect, succulent breast.

“Explain it to me. I have never had the pleasure of meeting a vampire before.” The way she forced out the word vampire, as if such a thing were unbelievable, endeared her to me. “All I know of your kind is from the cautionary tales my grandmother used to spout off. We had thought her jawings were nothing but bubble-brained notions of dementia.”

“I sense your fear of me,” I scoffed because this vexed me as if she had decided to personally hate me. She stood with her hands on her hips now, but the quick rise and fall of her chest was more veracious. I wished but to uncover them, grasp them in my hands and knead them until they were blushing ripe with blood. The ache of my fangs which were moistened by my own saliva was a cautionary sign to maintain my best appearances.