<TW: some mentions of aggressive behavior>
Everyone in town is aware that the charcoal-black homestead at the edge of the residential district is haunted-–I work very hard to keep it this way, in fact. The fire-licked facade of the five-bedroomed two-story structure is just that: a finely crafted front. The small windows encrusted with grime to the point of revulsion, those were a week-long labor of love. Each of the couple dozen insect exoskeletons artfully placed in believable death throws on and between the window panels are the only observations would-be visitors are gifted with were they to opt for a peak inside. Unless they had an astute pair of eyes, then I do imagine they may catch the drooping of greenery and vines cascading from the tall, pitched roof.
For me, this beautiful wreck is the perfect getaway to recuperate and catch up on all the literature I have missed this last century. Time really does get away from oneself, and all these new ideas have been the pigment in the watercolor of my life, each concept a bold saturation, a wash of life touching what was empty and waiting. I act on my thoughts of aquarelles and ink, quickly grabbing the gel pen and scrap paper on my side table nearby. In my most elegant script is my updated shopping list:
- Scented beeswax tower candle
- 6mm velvet ribbon, emerald
- Pine forest incense cones
- Cold pressed w.c. pad
- Ochre, carmine, u.marine (pigment)
Maybe next week will be when I take to the skies in my bat form and make my monthly secret rendezvous with the crafting and vintage bookstores ten kilometers away. My eyes drift towards the warm light radiating steadily from my current candle, the most luminescent spot nearly at the bottom of the warmly glowing cylinder. Hmm, looks more like this week for restocking. While I can certainly read in the darkness, there is absolutely no good reason to do so. I inhale slowly through my nose, enjoying the pumpkin scent mixed with sweet, golden propolis filling my library. There is especially no good reason to deny such a simple pleasure as agreeable olfaction.
This basement does not exist to either the town’s historical society or to the city planning office, so there is never a visitor to disturb me. The still solitude of this place wraps me in a blanket of comfort. It is very similar to the contentment of cuddling into my own leathery wings while in my Chiropteran form. Except this way I retain the benefit of being able to hold books.
I look around the refurbished bunker walls, the original characterless concrete space has been completely flipped into an expanse of elegance with the aid of only a few dozen rolls of dark wallpaper, two pails of paint, a large armchair, and about two-thousand bound books in dark shelves. There is something that happens when I admire what I have built here, something building just beneath my sternum, a feeling plucking insistently at the strings of my core. Neither pride nor mere joy, but a conglomeration of self-care and cultivation. I should pick up a Latin dictionary on my next outing also, certainly the Romans have put a word to this feeling. Or better yet, if I could get my cold hands on a Japanese dictionary, that language of poets would surely name the various maladies of my heart.
My fingers twitch to pick up the writing utensil still in my lap, but there comes a faint tremor to my senses and I come to deadened stillness in response. No breath, no muscle twitch, no heartbeat drowning out my long-range hearing in this underground chamber of silence. I wait, but nothing more comes.
I do not take chances anymore, so I stand anyway and bustle to the ladder leading up to the main house. In a moment I ascend and stop at the top of the metal rungs, holding my palms flat against the trapdoor above me. It is thick wood, heavy and inset into the floor, and fortunately/unfortunately I can feel the faintest reverberations now that I am in contact with it.
With absolute silence, I slip back down the ladder to extinguish the unattended candle flame, and I am back at the hatch in mere moments. The trapdoor’s hinges have been oiled enough that they make almost no sound as I sneak up and out from the subfloor. After closing the door gently to seal my true home, I stay in a low crouch, fingertips to the floorboards, listening in every way that I can. Through the hypersensitive mechanoreceptors on my fingertips I feel the shifting of a body’s weight across the parquet joinery of my little art studio at the back of the house. An individual pair of footsteps, carefully placed and perfectly silent to my ears. Definitely not a vagrant or adventurous youngling, these were calculated steps. Had this intruder not made the earlier error, I would not have noticed the intrusion at all. There seem to be no torchlights or flame employed by my uninvited visitor, but there is the low-glow of sunlight bouncing through the fabricated darkness.
Ahh, it adds up now. An illicit window entry, the greeting of heavy darkroom curtains, and the unexpected discovery of a large canvas being removed from its easel beyond that. They were being exceptionally cautious now, unless they were merely conducting a slow art critique, advancing only a few steps every eighty seconds or so. I move in unison with my intruder, giving them minutes to live.
So much closer now in the nearly stagnant air, the forward bubble of movement presses brisk, earthy scents and other sensory information towards me like a river rapid. Earth, pine, baking soda. Human. Female. Familiar. I recognize this scent and it is synonymous with rage. No longer am I happy to play ghost from the shadows, because here is an old adversary that I owe a debt of wrath.
“YOU!” I bellow, stepping in front of the open archway.
She stands in mid-step nearly four yards away, less startled than I would expect. I want this confrontation now. Anger quickly and seamlessly takes possession of my body. I catch the knife that gleams in swift, spinning arcs towards my face. There is a second blade that I knock away with the first, but I catch the third and let out a sharp laugh as I toss both blades swiftly back from whence they came.
I feel a dull thud in my upper chest and look down to see a black knife hilt protruding about two inches above my heart. The knife squelches quietly as I pull it from my cold flesh, and I notice that both the blade and handle are entirely black. Ah. Very clever. I smile, the anger I felt before changing into something closer to the anticipation before a hunt. The intense focus before satisfaction. I look up to see her darting into what is the old nursery, slamming the door behind her. As if that would do her any good.
“It is so nice that you are here, bringing the meal to me, human!” I pronounce, black knife ready to be flung blade-first from my fingertips as I stalk forward. I grasp the ornate metal knob, but find that it does not want to turn. I feel a moment of surprise, as this door has no lock on it, and then I move my nose close to the metal and inhale. Hot and acrid, and the distinct aura of magic. Damnit, this was original hardware! Anger takes my body again and with a swift punch near the doorframe, the door jolts open with a crack.
I grin maliciously as I step inside, flinging the knife towards her throat as soon as I see her. The throw is true, but in defiance of my expectations it embeds itself with a thump into a door thrown open just in time. Now what in the world? As the surprise door shuts and I hear quick steps going up creaking stairs I recall the servants' staircase that I never find reason to employ. So she researched my home and planned for this attack. It is impressive, if oppressively frustrating. I pop the knife out of the door, tuck it into my belt and turn around. Gathering my consciousness tight in my mind I shift away from my two-footed form and let the shadows gather me into something else, something small and fast.
As soon as sensation is discernible on my stretched palms I furiously rotate my shoulders and beat downward. The thin membrane connecting my fingers catches the air and I surge forward. It takes only moments to rush down the hallway and for me to fly higher and study the second floor landing. I let out a high-pitched screech, twitching my ears acutely to every returning soundwave. My sound mapping gets me no closer, indicating no movement from either landing or the study straight ahead. I circle the vaulted ceiling and swoop down into the hallway to the right of the landing. Some years ago I joined three smaller rooms into an indoor greenhouse of sorts; the painted glass skylight already present was a perfect match for my uses. The servants’ staircase should have led her up there, but I can scent no disturbance to the stale air in the short corridor. Something about this already seems off, even before I scramble the slick metal doorknob open with my large, clawed feet. It swings open after a moment's work and I shoot inside. I scan the large area quickly with eyes, ears, and screeching sound waves. Encircling the spacious wing entirely, I only find that which belongs here.
Grudgingly, I force myself to run the gauntlet of vine-dodging once more. It is not the verdant cascades that give me pause, but the tingling burns that welt across my fur from stray bands of refracted light. This time around I focus on dodging sun spots and concentrating on the scents in the large open space. I am frustrated to confirm that my adversary never so much as cracked the camouflaged door into this part of the house.
I angle my trajectory back towards the ajar entry, eager to return to the safety of darkness, and the high-pitched cry I let out as I do is what saves me from complete surprise. Metal object, moving fast, do avoid.
Unfortunately the confined space of the 19th century hallway does not allow much maneuverability and in a split-second decision I pull my wings in tight, dropping fast. My senses are a blur for a few disconcerting seconds, and I only know darkness, silence, and pain crashing throughout my right wing. My recovery finds me crumpled on the floor a few yards from my assailant. The book-burning bitch managed to snag me pretty good, most of my delicate finger bones are broken, based on the popping and pressure I feel as my body grinds its bits back in place. It is acutely painful, forcing my body to shift forms at the same time as trying to heal, but it is worth it for the time it gives me.
I am able to coalesce my form into shadow and then back to my bipedal form faster than ever before. Sensation returns to my skin and before my eyes wake up I am feeling with my left hand for the knife at my belt. I throw the blade quickly once tinges of gray seep into my vision, and I am sprinting right after it. The throw is roughly on target, and as expected she blocks the attack with the blade of another dagger. However, she cannot stop me from tackling into her hard a mere second later.
We crash together, both of us grappling for purchase and position as we tumble from the wall to the landing. I try to propel her over the landing's handrail to repay the broken bones, but she mitigates this with a sudden strike to my inner knee, buckling my left leg and releasing my firm grip on her arm. She backs away quickly into the open arch of the study.
“The townies say people go missing out here, that this house is haunted by unholy spirits. I am here to fix that, bloodsucker.” She speaks for the first time and her voice surprises me by lacking any venom.
“Can you at least say ‘vampire,’ please? I cannot take you seriously,” I call back to her, standing up smooth and slow. We study each other’s motions carefully.
“Is that really all you have to say for yourself? No defense for your crimes?”
“I have done nothing but craft the setting, dearest assassin. No one knows the true story of what happened here because there is no story to tell.” I shrug and make a show of relaxing against the railing behind me, resting my body in an open stance. “I am sorry to say, you are wasting your time here. Whatever you heard is from the minds of basic humans living their basic fucking stories.” I shrug again and look to see my adversary glowering at me as intensely as if I held a knife to her throat.
“That is such a conceited outlook.”
“My consciousness has been elevated by three lifetimes of study and introspection. It is not conceited of me to speak the truth.”
The black-bedecked woman pulls her hands from her hips to gesture my way. “Bloodsucker, you can clearly have lifetimes of elevated thinking and still be conceited. I know because it is happening in front of me right now.” Is that a hint of mirth in her voice?
“Now what did I tell you about using proper wordage?” I ask her, joviality with an undertone of edge audible to the both of us.
“Actually, you didn’t tell me to do anything. You asked and I decided not to oblige. And if you don’t take me seriously, that’s on you.”
She arches an eyebrow slowly when I only stare at her for a few moments. Damn fool is proud of herself. There is a degree of ire inside me, yes, but there is a larger part of me that finds this exchange invigorating. I grin, wide and toothy.
“So tell me how you found me so easily.” I carefully begin tensing my legs, coiling my strength at the base of my feet.
She scoffs at me. “I have trained for this, there are some obvious tells.”
As soon as she is between breaths I erupt from my calm posture and am across the room in rapid bounds. When we collide I have complete control, there is no time for a countermeasure. Her muscular wrists strain against my grip, full hips trapped beneath my own. No human, not even a blessed witch, can overpower a vampire in this position. This is what nature crafted us into, monsters of the hunt.
“Probably your worst trait is underestimating ‘basic fucking humans’,” she goes on, as if nothing changed. I put some strength into pressing her down. The floor creaks in reply, and the woman beneath me smiles. She knows precisely how to taunt me. I hate her sense of impunity, but her sheer audacity is exceptionally easy to admire. “Vampires are obsessed with perfection,” she says with only a minor amount of strain. Things feel different than they did before, now that our bodies have been touching like this I feel her pulse throughout my entire body. For the first time in a long time I feel my body heat rise and I almost remember what it is to feel alive. This is a quizzically different sensation than the temporary spike in internal temperature that drinking blood brings. "You, in particular, are always within flying distance of a bookstore. You craft stories around your home to keep people away, but any attempt to verify those stories brings up nothing. Your home has a movie-set-perfect exterior. Your floorboards don't creak–"
"Alright, I get the picture." Damn, I am a little flummoxed by her, this genius witch I have trapped. The warmth of her that has awakened my body brings about more drastic changes in my intentions. I press my chest into hers and the way our breasts come together brings me another step closer to the memory of living. What a good feeling this is, being against her like this, maybe I will not eat her after all. In fact, I am enjoying myself. I relax my hips a fraction and stretch down her body until our centers align.
There are a few quiet moments that pass between us, then I slowly bring my mouth to the side of her bare neck and press a soft kiss there. Her heartbeat builds quickly, and she hums at my touch. With this kind of encouragement it is only a few moments before I release one of her arms to instead pry open the top two buttons of her shirt. She makes no move to get away, unless that is her cover excuse for the persistent grinding of her hips.
“I’m going to stake you in the morning, okay?” she adds breathlessly beneath me. My mouth is sucking on a smooth portion of skin under her collarbone and I grunt. “I’m serious. You’re dead tomorrow.” She delivers this line perfectly, seemingly unaffected by my tongue flicking over the angry red mark that I have left on her skin.
“Sounds like a date,” I reply, tangling my right hand into her long hair and pulling our mouths together into a rough kiss.
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2 comments
This was so good! It kept me on the edge of my seat and left me wanting more!
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Thank you for your comment, I'm glad you liked it! 😊
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