Oblivion

 “Do you live there?”

 “Live there?” Jane’s brow creased and she twisted her head from facing the ceiling to me. I glanced back, moving too quick, a subconscious expectation that she might take a literal bite out of me. I was relieved to see she looked amused under the disbelief, almost laughing as she faced the ceiling again. “Of course not. I’m not an animal, you know. Or a ghost.”

 “Do you know ghosts?” I played with the hem of my dress, stretching and bunching it between my fingertips in a way that was surely destructive of the material.

 “Oh, yes. One of my best friends is a ghost.” The smirk had returned, the flash of a darker vindictiveness that I rarely saw in Jane’s strangely sunny face. The competitiveness and smug pride of a hunter.

 “Are ghosts real?”

 “You’re full of questions, aren’t you?” Jane rolled over onto her stomach; her head tilted towards me. The leather of her jacket creaked like my bed, which bounced us gently. It wasn’t so long ago, it seemed to me, that I had been bouncing on this bed as if it was a trampoline, my arms out of reach of the ceiling which Jane’s eyes had been searching. Now I was an adult with a woman lying beside me on my bed. No matter how chaste we were with each other, how innocent the blushes (of me, naturally) and stolen glances were, there was the less innocent aura that seemed to circle us both.

 Jane’s hair brushed my shoulder and I took a deep breath. I saw her eyes, an ordinary blue with silvery flecks, and my own gaze automatically fell to her lips; pale and almost white but glossed when her tongue gently brushed against them.

 I sat up, pulling my mouth into a smile that covered the fluttering heartbeat that Jane likely could hear. “Let’s do it. Right now.”

 “You want to go to a graveyard now?” Jane leaned up on her own arm, her lips pursed into a smile.

 “Yes. You did suggest it,” I pointed out, getting up to retie the laces of my boots. I had been dressed for a night prowling the streets, as it were, with Jane for hours but she had seemed to enjoy lying on my bed and just staring at the ceiling, talking calmly. It opposed our own usual hang outs immensely – dizzying nights soaked in neon under the moonlight, past pawn shops and punters; fast rides in stolen cars; hilltop views of a star-sewn sky where we would sit on the bench that overlooked the town and listen to the distant rev of engines. It surprised me that Jane, someone who never slept and seemingly never rested, who was constantly moving and matched the pace of a race car, would want to sit in my embarrassingly ordinary bedroom and recline.

 “But it’s a graveyard. In the dark.” Her eyebrows raised into points that matched her tone. I scoffed and pulled my own leather jacket on, an admittedly girly and clean cropped affair that didn’t compare to her scuffed and heavy clothing.

 “I’m not scared,” I lied, sinking my hands into my pockets. “Not with you.”

 “Well, maybe you should be scared of me,” Jane sighed. “I’m the one that would keep you in that graveyard permanently if the mood suits me.”

 “But it doesn’t,” I insisted stubbornly. It didn’t seem to. Her teeth remained human-like, her hands caressed rather than crushed my throat. I sensed she was dangerous but I wasn’t feeling in danger. No matter how many times she had told me about the necks she had slashed with her own canines.

 “You have no idea,” Jane said, but she stood up too and faced me. We were the same height, though I towered over her clumsily in my boots. She placed her hand on mine, pulling it from my side, and stroked it gently, tentatively. “I think you’re an idiot for trusting me.”

 “And I think you’re a coward for not going to the graveyard.” It was a risky insult, considering the way I had seen her eyes flash silver when I had pushed her over the edge before, but she just slid her tongue behind her lower lip and shook her head, holding my hand tighter.

 “Fool.”

 We walked there, of course. It took an hour, eating up the time of the night we had together, but there was something other-worldly about the midnight streets, the lamplights amber and casting a strange glow on Jane’s pale face, the moon fat and silver like her eyes in the middle of the sky. Everything seemed to sound different, like a distant echo. My fingers were cold and it seemed the heat poured out of me so I picked up the pace as we walked.

 The colours were different too; the green grass bleached to a pale grey, the trees in the distance shadowed black. Yet the lights of cars, both distant and close, shone brightly, like dancing, twinkling fairy lights. Neon signs still hung in the window, reminding me of the nights we first spoke and how her hair shone under garish scarlet and green. I had felt lonely those wandering nights, keeping out of the house and taking risky strolls along the streets, hunting for something I didn’t even know I was looking for. Freedom, I suppose. Then Jane, who I didn’t know I needed until she smiled at me one evening.

 “You’re dreaming again,” Jane pointed out, unaffected by the cold and unphased by the gloom. I bared my teeth at her and my hand found hers, clutching it tightly as we wound down the backstreets and into suburbia. Away from the screeching of the city and into the hushed beyond.

 “What if someone jumped out at you now?”

 “Questions again?” Jane laughed a little, rolling her eyes at me. “You know what would happen.”

 “Certain death?”

 “Perhaps a warning first. But if I’m thirsty, I suppose certain death.”

 “You’re thirsty now, aren’t you?”

 “What makes you say that?”

 A church loomed, ominous, as the shadows fell thicker around us, and Jane gestured dramatically. “The graveyard.”

 “Where you do your centuries-old thinking.”

 “Naturally.”

 We hopped over the gate and clasped hands again. The stones peered at us, watched us, as we stepped through them, and I found myself shivering, imagining ghouls and demons rising from the ground – or perhaps just staring in the gloom.

 “You didn’t answer my question.” Jane sat down and I followed, nestled in a patch of grass a few meters away from the graves. We were bathed in the moonlight, and the trees whispered.

 “Why you’re thirsty?” I hadn’t forgotten.

 “Yes.”

 “You never really talk about it. I assume since you’re so nice you wouldn’t make a habit of it.”

 Jane laughed. “Nice?”

 “You’re very nice for a vampire.”

 “Hey, I’m supposed to be terrifying.” Jane pouted and I smiled back. My hand rested on her knee, where it belonged. “Anyway, we have our sources for blood.”

 “Ah, the blood banks.”

 “No. We have donors.” Jane saw my expression of curiousness. “Either vamp freaks who found us out because they got too nosy and want to be part of our world, or people who wronged us and we don’t want to kill. Well, I go for the former. I suppose some of the human lovers like to give blood too.”

 “Lovers?” I blinked at the word. “You have human lovers?”

 “Not me. But yes, some do. Playthings or, sometimes, genuine love.”

 I bit my lip and ran my fingers through the grass. The graveyard seemed much less frightening with Jane beside me, like a summer’s day in negative. I didn’t know how to phrase the question.

 “If you’re thirsty, would you drink my blood?”

 Jane’s expression snapped to horror. “No! Of course not, I would never hurt you!”

 “But you said – lovers –“

 “I don’t think what we have could simply be phrased as lovers.” Jane leant forward slightly and my breath held. “Besides, I’d never do that to you. Don’t worry.”

 “And if I wanted you to? Would you?”

 Jane stared at me for a moment then sighed, deflating as she groaned. “You’re not really offering that.”

 “Yes I am.” My conviction surprised even me, but I knew my mind was set. She had given me so much – life, learning, wonder. She had woken me up from a deep sleep it seemed, and for that I’d give her anything. Not to mention, I wondered how it would feel, her lips on my throat and her teeth in my skin, drinking me while I lay in her arms.

 I blushed, not wanting to articulate these thoughts and desires – too passionate, too sensual, too…loving – but Jane seemed to read my thoughts through my eyes, like always. Like she knew exactly what I was thinking and what I was feeling. I suppose three hundred years of immortality would do that to you.

 “You’d do that?” Jane’s voice was soft, low, and the hairs on the back of my neck raised at the purr. She leant closer, and I fell back automatically, leaning on my elbows, so I could look up at her. “For me? You’d trust me enough?”

 “I’d trust you with anything,” I replied, and the words sounded foolish – though I meant them. Jane shifted, stretching her legs so she was leaning up on her own elbow; I stretched out on the grass, one arm raising to stroke a finger on her own neck.

 “Even your life?” Jane leant closer, her breath on my face. Her eyes were stuck on mine, the silver glinting brightly like a spinning coin. I nodded, my words lost on my frozen lips that waited as she inched closer. Jane’s mouth brushed my cheek and swept down, her hand cradling my face as her lips travelled towards my neck.

 I took a deep breath as cold air splashed on my skin, my lips quivering, and I felt the graze of teeth.

 “I love you,” she whispered, and then her teeth ripped into my throat.