Hardest of Hearts

Hardest of Hearts
Cat Marsters
All rights reserved.
Copyright ©2010 Cat Marsters

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I saw my first vampire when I was sixteen. He was incredibly beautiful, a pale, tortured creature haunting the school corridors. An unearthly concoction of glittering skin and soulful eyes, drawing the yearning, desperate love of every girl in school.

I drove a stake through his heart, of course.

So when a vampire walked in through the doors of Oh My Goth one Friday night about ten years later, my fingers twitched for the stake in my bag. Unfortunately, my bag was in the back room, and no part of my outfit would have concealed it. Added to which, my boss would probably complain if I staked a customer in the shop. And I'd get stuck with cleaning up the blood.

The vampire was a looker. It's a trick of fiction to persuade us that all vampires are hot. They're not, just as not all humans are gorgeous. The better-looking ones are more successful, however. They attract more prey, which makes them stronger. Simple as that.

This one moved like a predator, the swagger and grace of a creature who won’t ever be challenged. A man who knows no woman can turn him down. A hunter who doesn’t believe he can be beaten.

I watched him move around the shop, graceful and predatory, even as my brain checked and discarded every available item it could think of which might be used as a weapon.

He was tall and lean in dark jeans and a leather jacket, and maybe I could stun him with one of the heavy coffee table Bible of the Dead books he was slinking past. No, vampire skulls were thicker than that.

He had dark hair, black maybe, curly and tousled and just brushing his collar, and now he was prowling past the crucifix earrings, maybe I could use those. No, probably not -- symbols of religious belief only really work if you actually do believe -- and in my experience they’re still not terribly effective on anything but the newest vampire.

His skin was pale, like that of most Caucasian vampires. He didn’t gleam with the sheen of the newly-fed, which probably worked in his favor. If he looked like he’d just eaten someone, I’d have to leap over the counter and bludgeon him to death with a coffin-shaped handbag.

He needed a shave, which was somewhat unusual amongst vampires, unless they were very old, before the art of clean shaving had been perfected. Maybe I could offer him one of the ceremonial knives to shave with, and then accidentally cut off his head with it. No. The blades were quite small, and I’d have to do a lot of hacking. Think of the carpet.

His eyes were dark, narrowed slightly as he glanced at the admittedly tacky range of Goth gifts for sale. His lips were shapely, and I could see no sign of fangs. Not that it would have bothered most of our clientele if he’d been displaying them.

The vampire moved past the range of dying flowers on the Valentines display to the Turnbury Murders exhibition, and as he looked up I saw his eyes were a chocolatey shade, with dark lashes. His bone structure was impeccable, with a strong jaw and high cheekbones. His nose might have been broken once or twice, but that only served to make his perfection a little more human.

Except that he wasn’t human, and I was considering stabbing him in the heart with an ornamental fan.

I could follow him outside when he left, perform some of my usual look-at-my-neck moves -- the vampire version of the crooked finger -- and lure him around to the little yard at the back of the shop. Probably, I could hide his body there until the shop closed, and with any luck he might have disintegrated enough to simply be tossed in the organic recycling bin.

Then the vampire turned to look at me, and my breath caught in my throat. I’d assessed the details, inventoried features, dispassionately noted his good looks -- but now he was looking directly at me, and that dark chocolate gaze was reaching right out to me and begging me to succumb. He had come-hither eyes, and I sure as hell wanted to hither and come.

Stake through the heart, I reminded myself as he prowled over to the counter. Poison in a pretty bottle. A gorgeous vampire is still a vampire.

Goddamn, he was pretty though.