To Love and Let Die

Patricia hadn’t been sure about her boyfriend for some time. She’d been with him for a while, and they had not experienced any major issues. Well, that’s not entirely true. Two months in, Patricia began to wonder why Stas Petrov only met her once the sun had gone down, why his skin made her gasp from its frigidity, and why he ate so sparingly when they went out for dinner–not just sparingly; he’d eat exclusively rare meats. A confrontation had to be made, so one night, standing in Central Park, Patricia asked Stas if it was something about her that made him act so strangely. Was it that he didn’t consider her beautiful enough to see during the day?

A simple psychological trick, but it worked. Stas’s black eyes snapped towards her, his pale skin struck with white fire under the street lamp. His accent, slightly European, formed careful words. “Patricia… There is something you do not know about me. Perhaps… I waited too long to tell you.”

She stood there with bated breath, a head shorter than him though she herself was a towering woman. “What is it?”

He lowered his gaze and seemed to wrestle with his thoughts. Finally, he said, “I am not from here.”

She laughed, despite a cold wind rustling through the fallen leaves in the park. It seemed the temperature dropped at that very moment, but Patricia didn’t mind the cold or the dark. In fact, she was rather drawn to both. “Well duh, I got that much. What does that have to do with anything, Stas?”

“Patricia…” He looked out into the distance. “I am from the grave.”

At first, she thought it was a joke. Then her eyes widened and she leapt back from his embrace. “Stas, don’t say–”

“I am what your people call… a vampire.”

She couldn’t believe it. Firstly, vampires weren’t real. Second, if they were, they didn’t live in New York, leastways not in the city! Shouldn’t they belong to some clandestine castle nestled amidst crags and sharp mountains deep in the heart of eastern Europe?

Several moments passed with her looking at him intently, realizing slowly that he was telling the truth. That would explain the pointed canines, the paleness, the almost raw, bloody meat he ate. Yet still, she needed more: “Prove it.”

He did not bargain. Stas simply sighed and turned his head up, seemingly vanishing into a cloud of smoke. She cried out as she saw a winged beast flying in the night sky–a massive bat, its wingspan nearly six feet and its head baring two long fangs that glistened in the city’s light. Then the cloud of smoke was back and from it emerged Stas, standing tall and terrible in the light, his face bearing death’s pallor as he advanced apathetically towards Patricia.

“Now you have seen,” said Stas. “Will you be able to love me?”

“W-will you kill me if I said no?” Patricia hated the feeble stutter of her voice; she prided herself on being courageous, but it was admittedly a lot to witness.

Stas looked at her imperiously, but it was with a sad voice that he answered, “I do not harm those I love.”

“What if I told people about you?”

At this, he actually laughed–a barking, grim laugh that sounded a little painful. “My dear Patricia… Who would believe you?”

She wanted to say that she’d take a video of him transforming into a bat or something, but in this day and age would anyone hesitate to call her out on using CGI?

So it was into his arms that she walked, a smile upon her face as she saw relief break upon his. He even picked her up as though she was a feather pillow and planted a kiss on her lips. Sure, it was cold… but it had the passion of a lifetime of experience.

They continued their relationship. Patricia applied for the night nurse job at the hospital. She asked questions of her boyfriend incessantly:

Was he ever tempted to bite her?

Constantly, he said, but the knowledge that he would forever ruin her by condemning her to a life in the darkness stayed his mouth.

Did he have other partners in the past?

He answered this with a sly smile that emphasized the hollowness of his cheeks. He’d been alive for almost three hundred years.

Did he bite other people? Had he ever killed anyone?

To those questions, there was only a damning silence. He struggled with his words, eventually saying that he did so only in order to survive. He also tried to only bite and kill those he deemed sinful. He prowled the night to find perpetrators of crimes and followed them stealthily to their homes before using a combination of deep hypnosis and charm to enter their dwellings.

She laughed at the notion of deep hypnosis, but he quickly said that he hadn’t used it on her, and that if he had, she would not have been able to resist it. When asked for a demonstration, he looked her square in the eyes and intoned, “Good evening… might I enter your home?”

His voice was so deep it seemed to itch a very reptilian part of her brain that sent a shock of fear through her nerves, yet at the same time it was soothing. The look in his eyes was breathtaking. Not only was he a beautiful specimen–very tall, lithe, with a slight aquiline nose and thin, red lips, his eyes themselves seemed to glitter and swirl invitingly. Patricia found herself whispering, “Yes, please come in,” before she could stop herself.

The idea that he had killed before stuck with her. She couldn’t look at him without picturing the victims he’d left in his three hundred years. How many weren’t innocent? How passionate were these embraces? Their own physical relationship, while satisfying, left something on the table for him, and she knew it. She could see it in his eyes that he wanted to bite her, to take her blood. He told her wistfully one night: “The venom flowing through your body… It is a sensation like no other. Every last nerve sparks with pleasure, every inch of your skin moves and shakes with satisfaction. Your mind slips into the ethereal realms which the ecclesiastics can only call heaven, for you do not know yourself or your soul anymore: you are simply experiencing the highest of all blisses. You are burning as bright and hot as a star from the birth of the universe, and every single sensation calls forth rapture.”

He broke off with her in his arms, adding, “I’m sorry. I forget myself.”

They shared the rest of that night uncomfortably, though he slipped out of her room a few hours before the sunrise as usual, and as usual, they saw each other the following night as well.

Did Stas really sleep in a coffin every night?

At that question, he had chuckled. Of course not; that was a myth propagated centuries ago from lofty literature. He had a bed, though he admitted it was in the cellars of his family’s manor.

Manor? How big was Stas’ family?

Well, he had his parents, grandparents… that’s about as far back as the lineage went. A smattering of uncles and aunts that still stayed on the estate, and a few siblings and cousins. It’s difficult in a vampire household, Stas says, because you can gain siblings and cousins not just biologically, but also if one of your parents or extended family happens to convert someone.

Are there other vampire families? Were there politics, factions, infighting?

Stas smiled, asking if she was writing some sort of book on the matter to need so much research. Patricia blushed but answered simply: “If I’m going to love you, I have to know what I’m getting myself into.”

So Stas said that there were other families, though very few of them, and that their lives were mostly peaceful. With so few vampires, territory wasn’t an issue, and frankly, most of them just wanted to live out their eternal lives in peace until at last they wasted away.

Wasted away? So they could die?

Of starvation, Stas answered. The stake through the heart and decapitation does the trick, but his great-grandparents had only somewhat recently chosen the path of a slow, painful death by starvation. Stas painted a macabre but poetic image of two individuals who were old enough to have witnessed the fall of Constantinople sitting completely still in the lotus position, meditating so deeply that their bodies almost turned to stone as they sat there. They had taken a pilgrimage to Romania just to die in the secret crypts of a castle long-since held sacred by vampires: the castle of Count Dracula.

There, amidst near complete darkness, they sat in alcoves amongst a few other vampires who sought the contemplative life of an ascetic. Blue candles were kept alight by a few vampires who worshipped the sanctity of the castle. Slowly, his great-grandparents began to grow thin, dying. Their cheeks hollowed out, their ribs began to protrude from their bodies. They did not need to breathe, and they hadn’t a pulse, but life, such as it was, could be seen in their glassy eyes for almost ten years. Then, one day, when their bodies were covered in a thick layer of dust from the crypt, the eyes closed for the last time. It was known that this was the end as attempts to revive previous vampires in this state with fresh blood had failed. Stas’ family had made the trip to see them one last time, after which their bodies were encased with gold and set permanently within the alcoves alongside other revered members of the vampire community.

After telling her this, Patricia’s questions stopped for some time. They dated, she did fall in love with him, but there was always a slight unease in her heart. Yes, it was exhilarating knowing how close she was to annihilation when she was near him. How could she not be thrilled when his every scintillating touch could lead to a moment of passion that left his fangs in her neck? Yet by that same token, she began to feel that there was an unfathomable gap in their souls. He, having lived so much life, seemed distant, no matter how close they tried to get. When she brought this up, he grew pensive, his eyes downcast.

“Would you like to meet my family?” asked Stas suddenly.

Taken aback, Patricia replied, “Oh… What does that mean?”

He smiled. “It means you come over to our manor, you have a meal with us, and we become engaged. There is not much further this relationship can go before then, right? Dating is fun, but we really must progress.”

Engagement? Patricia’s head spun for a moment. She even felt faint and Stas grabbed her with his strong arms. Did that mean she had to become a vampire?

“Not if you do not want to. I have had… other spouses in the past who have chosen not to travel down that path.”

Would his parents be okay with it?

Stas shrugged. “My parents do not care about my relationships, only that I do not marry a religious fanatic. You are not a religious fanatic.”

Laughing, Patricia answered, “Yeah, you could say that.”

Stas only warned her that his family had a ritual in which she would take part, but that it was minor. He did not answer any further questions, and so when Patricia and Stas drove up to the dark manor hidden in the hills of Westchester County, she had no idea what awaited her.

The manor, predictably, was gothic. Dark spires rose up into the cloudy night, obscured by thickets of mist that hung in the air. Candles were lit in some of the windows. Once inside, Patricia gasped at how cold it was.

Stas grumbled, “Damnit. I told them to turn on the heating for you. No matter; there is a fireplace in the dining room.”

Dark paint and wood made the tall shadows of the manor nestle up close to Patricia as she walked down the echoing hallway with Stas at her side. It was here that she felt fear for the first time. It was an animalistic fear, the kind that one can only experience when faced with a predator. She shivered as she entered the dining room.

There, sitting with soft jazz music playing, were ten individuals in high-backed mahogany chairs, grave expressions on most of their faces. Those who appeared younger were dressed more casually; only they had the trace of friendliness on their faces. For a moment, she wondered if Stas had led her into a slaughter, but then he said, “Tsk tsk. I told you to have the house warm and the fire on!”

He scrambled to light it. In the meantime, smiles broke on the face of every family member. It was amazing the difference that it made. The parents, Fyodor and Nastasya, remained stoic, but they greeted her cordially and invited her to sit. The younger cousins began to chat with her amicably. Though she could not shake the feeling that she was surrounded by predators–the fear stayed with her even when Stas slid into his chair next to her and put his arm around her, she was happy to note that a couple of his cousins were only in their forties, so conversation with them was fresh. This contrasted with a couple of his uncles and aunts, who had lived in what was now France during the reign of Charlemagne and asked her what she thought of him.

Dinner was served. Wine was drunk aplenty, and despite the flickering fire casting sinister shadows upon the high cheekbones and strong eyebrow ridges of the Petrov’s, Patricia had relaxed a little.

It was then that Fyodor Sergeich Petrov clinked his spoon against his glass and announced, “It is now time for the ritual. Stanislav, have you prepared her?”

He was silent, lowering his head a little. “Sorry father, I–”

“Spare me your excuses,” growled Fyodor, his tone making Patricia shift in her seat. “Three hundred years and you still ask us to do your dirty work for you!”

Nastasya put a hand on her husband’s shoulder. “Calm yourself, Fyodor Sergeich.” She turned to Patricia and said simply, “We must drink your blood.”

Her heart turned cold. “What?!”

Stas said quietly, “Not–but it’s tradition that everyone in the family tastes the blood of any new member, even if they are not to be converted.”

“W-why–”

“We must know your constitution,” said Fyodor. “We must see if you are worthy to be acquainted with us.”

“And,” added Nastasya, “We must make sure you are not diseased. Fyodor Sergeich was a doctor in his time; he once diagnosed a woman of consumption by a simple taste of her blood, before any symptoms had set in!”

Patricia felt clammy. Every pair of dead eyes in the room was fixed upon her. Stas whispered to her, “It must be a yes, my dear, if we are to marry. I am sorry.”

Yet Patricia could only stammer a chattering, “N-no! You can’t have my blood!”

Her words rung in the ears of every shocked vampire in the room. Nastasya grimaced, nodding to Stas, who looked desperately sad. “My dear… are you–”

“Yes, I’m sure! Now… now, I’d just like to leave–”

Fyodor laughed, his rasping chuckle harsh like the grinding of stones. “Oh no, dearie… Tis too late for that now.”

“I’m sorry, Patricia,” said Stas, holding her firmly in his iron grip. “I really thought you loved me. I thought you would say yes.”

She struggled futilely against it, her heart hammering.

She felt her head being pulled back by the hair. She let out a scream that died in the dining room, echoing around only briefly before she felt Stas’ hands on her neck, whereupon a vein pulsed tantalizingly. He groaned. “Must I?”

Fyodor’s eyes flashed. “You must. By bringing her here, you have revealed too much about us. She must either die or become one of us.”

“I will not kill her,” said Stas angrily.

“Then you know what you must do,” said Nastasya sadly. “I’m sorry, dear Patricia.”

Patricia cried out again. “No! Stop, I don’t want–”

Primal fear was sending tears down her cheeks. Were it a matter of human strength, Patricia was strong enough at that moment to lift a car off of a child. Unfortunately, the arms that held her tightly were not human. Stas spared her one last kiss on the lips, saying, “I know this will be morally painful for you, but you must see it from our side. Traditions cannot be broken.”

“I–I hate you,” cried Patricia.

Stas’ gaze broke. He whispered, “Today, perhaps… but give it a few years, a decade…”

And then his fangs sank into her neck, and in spite of herself, Patricia felt sublime beauty; indeed, it was the purest of all blisses. The whole universe collapsed in on itself and formed a center for divine energy in her body; every nerve danced with unholy fire, and her brain fused trying to process just how good it felt to melt into his arms, to feel the venom coursing through her veins. Yet with every passing moment, she grew thirsty, horribly thirsty. She was aware that she was dying, and it was only at the last moment that Stas pulled away, his mouth bloody and black. He smiled grimly at her and used a knife to cut open his forearm, from which blood trickled into her awaiting mouth. The pleasure redoubled, making Patricia faint. The last thing she remembered before going limp was a sense of something deep within her, something essential to the core of her being, floating away, never to return.