Darklands: A Vampire's Tale

The city spread out before Susan like stains of gray and yellow. Because she had been sleeping, she had not been able to take in the desolation of Dunwich the other night as Devin drove her through the barren streets.
It was shocking, this rundown version of the place she once called home for a short time as she left childhood behind. Businesses had closed—the pizza joint where she had shared too many drinks with a weird girl named Mary Lei. Seeing the little restaurant boarded up, the sign gone to rust and peeling paint brought a pang of sadness to her heart.
The little college she and Peter had attended—Stevens and Brown School of Art and Design—was shut. The campus had been nothing more than several majestic-looking, wide-columned buildings, over two centuries old to begin with. Now all the structures were in various states of decay. Windows had been broken out and appeared to be staring into the night, black-eyed and rather sad. For a moment, Susan imagined running to class, late as usual, the sun warming the top of her head.
The student center where she and Peter had taken art history and portrait drawing (and had both volunteered to pose nude for extra credit) was only partially standing now. Fire had taken down half. All that remained was the blackened framework and charred, crumbling bricks.
A smattering of businesses remained—essential to those who chose to stay in this hellhole or else could not afford to leave. Bars, bodega groceries that seldom received shipments of fresh food, strip clubs. The only redeeming quality the place held was the shore. Mother Nature had regained her glory over the beaches, devoid of tourists stupid with days off and money to waste. Dunes, untouched for at least a decade stood tall with reeds and dune grass. Myrtle trees grew wild, having escaped the sheers of overzealous pruners. Jasmine vines snaked up and over fences and porches, still fragrant even in the midst of autumn. Beyond that, the Atlantic seethed, angry and black, the sound of the waves as harsh as a complaint.
Susan felt invincible, and she supposed to a degree, she was now.
By way of a rusted and creaking fire escape, Devin led her up five stories to the top of the old and rickety Palmetto Hotel. When she looked up, flakes of rust floated down into her eyes, stinging. Cursing softly, she blinked it away. Once on the flat, gravelly roof, their breaths billowed like plumes of smoke from their lips in the chilly night wind. Susan’s hair whipped wildly across her eyes and lips and she tried unsuccessfully to smooth it back.
Devin brushed his hand across her ass, then squeezed one cheek hard. He pressed his lips to her ear, warming it nicely and said, “Maybe I’ll just throw you down and have you right here.”
Susan laughed. “Hands off, darling. You don’t get anything from me until I decide.”
“As you wish,” Devin replied with a quick bow. He planted a soft kiss on the frozen tip of her nose and she shoved him away playfully.
The salty scent of the ocean puckered Susan’s lips, but there was something else, something more interesting. She leaned over brick wall that edged the rooftop and looked down. A man strolled along just below them, in the shadows of the alleyway between the hotel and a closed down bookshop. Susan detected the smell of blood, of body odor and recent sex on the man’s skin. For a moment, she imaged taking him and opening him up just below the jawbone. She imagined drinking, her mouth filling with hot blood.
She shook her head, as if that would clear away the wretched thought. Just how far from human had she already become?
Quickly, she detected another scent, as well. More delicate—he was trailing a woman. Susan squinted, training her eyes on the man, her mind latching onto his thoughts.
She deserves what she gets. Nobody’ll miss that bitch, anyway.
To move her mind from the man below, she turned away from the edge of the building and looked at Devin. “Why did you choose to come to Dunwich?” she asked.
Devin kicked at the tarry gravel with his sneaker. “I don’t know, really. Maybe it’s because dead cities draw creatures like me. Maybe it’s because this place is shit and the people are shit.” He laughed, a rough, barking sound. “Really, all I’m doing is clearing the rubbish. Taking out the garbage.”
Susan had not heard him sound so cynical before. That was her role. “Every place has its share of shit, Devin. This place is no different.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Devin told her. “I couldn’t very easily leave after setting my eyes on you. I needed a reason to go on and you became that reason.” He looked away, almost shy now. “Eternity is a long haul, Susan. You have to find your reason, or else you’ll go mad.”
Susan smiled, touched by his openness. “We’re all mad, anyway. Now, come here.”
“Make up your mind.”
Susan grabbed a fistful of his leather jacket and yanked him to her. She kissed him hard, pulling his bottom lip between her teeth, then bit down sharply.
“Ouch! Damn,” Devin hissed, but Susan kissed him again, tasting his blood.
She was suddenly, intensely aroused.
“Maybe I will let you have me here,” she whispered into his mouth.
His hot, sweet breath caressed her face and he cupped her bottom in his hands, lifting her up, grinding himself against her. “Naughty thing,” he said, smiling.
It seemed that all Susan’s senses had come awake since taking that first drink of Devin’s blood. She could hear a cat padding along the street below; she could hear the thrumming of Devin’s blood beneath his skin. The darkness might as well have been daylight, she could see so well and so easily. She wondered naughtily exactly how much her sense of touch had improved, as well.
That, she would find out later. Her eyes bored into Devin’s. She grinned and flicked out her tongue to get that last drop of his blood from the corner of her mouth. Until now, he had acted as though he were in charge, that she was his to do with what he wanted. Tonight she would turn the tables on him. She would make him scream her name.
A small, secret smile touched her mouth, thinking of him beneath her, her tongue working him into a frenzy, his head thrown back as she drove him to orgasm.
She almost tasted his sweet, salty taste of his blood.
“Now, listen to me,” Devin said, pulling her back into reality. “First things first, sweetheart. You need to know how to hunt.”

Devin leaned and peered over the edge of the building. He quickly spotted the male walker below, still teetering along. “That one. I know you’ve already picked his brain” he said. “Now you just follow what I do and we’ll get to him before he gets to that woman.” He climbed to the top of the wall, crouched and looked downward.
“What the hell are you doing?” Susan asked, panic unwinding in her gut.
“Shhh. Trust me.”
Devin leapt off the top of the building, arms spread-eagle, and into the soft cloud of mist rising from the street. Susan leaned over the edge of the roof, shocked.
“Shit. Shit! What the hell did you just do?” she muttered.
In a breath, she could just make out his bulky form as he settled on the pavement. Despite his size, it was a soft, catlike landing, his knees giving slightly before he straightened back up to his full height. The man went on, unaware he was being watched. Farther up the alley, the woman meandered, singing some old blues song to herself, her mind racing. She had just fixed, having bought the junk from the man who was now stalking her.
Slowly, hesitantly, Susan climbed the low barrier wall herself. Condensation slicked the surface of the bricks and her boots slipped. How she hated heights! Her breath caught in her chest a moment and her leg muscles tensed, then froze.
She glanced down one final time, her eyes watering from the cold, then took another deep breath, chilling the silky lining of her lungs and her throat. She exhaled a balloon of steam.
Closing her eyes, she thrust her legs up and out, away from the rooftop and into nothing.
She was falling.
Falling.