Endlessly (15 page)

She crept closer to me. My chest ached.
The pull I’d been feeling was now replaced with fire. She smiled as
she read my mind. She kissed me and ran her hand down my chest. I
surrendered to her pleading. I couldn’t have stopped her if I’d
tried.

*********

That afternoon she turned the fireplace
on, took a book from one of her bags, and lay on the couch reading.
Finally she dozed off. Once she was asleep I found it impossible to
wake her.

I turned on the television.
Housekeeping stopped by. I told the maid we were there for an
extended stay and my fiancé was ill. Could we leave the old sheets
and towels out in the hall? I asked. If they replaced those with
fresh bedding I could do the rest. That, combined with a good tip,
convinced her. Ash slept through all of it.

I went out to the car and got the rest
of our things. I returned to find her still sleeping. I called room
service and ordered an assortment of dishes. I wondered when she
would go from food to blood.

*********

After falling asleep on the sofa Ash
didn’t wake up for a long time. That evening I carried her to bed,
then stayed up watching television. I nodded off, had a strange
nightmare, and awoke early Tuesday morning. The sun had not yet
appeared. I tried to remember the dream, but couldn’t. All I knew
was that it seemed as if time were running out.

When I checked on her I noticed patches
of white hair forming. She still had a fever. As I felt her
forehead I noticed that the two lumps had grown. They were forming
points. The areas around them looked bruised. Paper-thin skin
stretched over the dark areas. She was growing horns.

She didn’t stir even when I removed her
robe. The lumps between her shoulder blades were arching up--
wings. At the base of her spine I saw the beginnings of a tail.
Though I was glad that she was sleeping through it, I wondered how
she would react when she saw her new additions in the
mirror.

I parted her lips. Her canines were a
little longer, and the teeth on each side of them were now pointed
too. I ran my finger across them. When I nicked my finger, a drop
of blood fell into her mouth. I barely pulled my hand back before
she slammed her jaw shut. The snap was audible. I took that as a
sign that she would most likely eat what I ate.

The paleness spread across her skin
until a quarter of her body was the purest white I had ever seen.
Her tattoos disappeared.

I got up, realizing I couldn’t live
with the silence. I watched the TV news and learned that they’d
found Chris and Jessica’s bodies. They were searching for people of
interest. That would be us. Once Ash transformed we would have to
move.

I pulled out the little boom box with
the CD player, then found the CDs. Jessica had done well by us. I
put in a CD of slow cello music by Adam Hurst, and turned the
volume down low. In my mind this would become the theme music for
Ash’s change.

*********

The days came and went. Ash slept. She
shifted slowly, going from her side to lying on her stomach with
her face turned away from the door. The covers were around her
waist. She reminded me of Sleeping Beauty, but that worried me. How
had Sleeping Beauty stayed alive? Ash hadn’t eaten for days, and
her body was thinning.

Each day I bathed her and moved her to
the sofa to change the sheets. The fever still had her sweating
profusely. I made constant trips to the ice machine to keep her
temperature down.

Finally her fever broke, but she still
slept.

I stood in the doorway looking at her.
I hoped her change was ending. Her flesh and hair had turned white,
and she’d grown two black-spiraled horns about three inches long.
Her bat-shaped white wings were almost as long as she was tall.
They’d unfolded around her. Her tail went past her feet. It amused
me to see it twitch as she slept, much like that of a dreaming dog.
Her vampire skin had the softness of velvet.

She didn’t have a dragon’s scales, and
the rest of her looked human. In the end her teeth hadn’t changed
much, but her aura had altered completely. The thin red line around
her faded into black. When I looked directly at it the red wasn’t
even visible. I could only see it with peripheral
vision.

To a human she would look like a demon
or the devil itself. To me she looked like an angel.

As the sad music played on I returned
to window by the fireplace and watched the world pass through the
night. Headlights moved down the street as snow dusted the ground.
For a moment I imagined being human. From my viewpoint their
existence seemed easy and carefree.

As I grew hungrier I thought of
feeding, but I couldn’t leave her alone. If she was anything like a
vampire, she would be ravenous when she woke up. I listened to the
mournful cello, leaned my forehead against the cool winter glass
and closed my eyes.

What could we do? I wondered. Once Kale
found us he would kill us both. The only plus side was that she
would be happy until that happened. This is what she wanted. But
our last days would be few if we weren’t careful.

Memories of my flashing premonitions
filled my head. It was like looking back on a distant past. The
pictures were fuzzy and my fears of the Quatre clouded my vision.
Were these pictures of the past or future? I couldn’t
remember.

A cold silent hand touched my shoulder.
In that instant, images raced by. I saw Sara. Then she was gone. My
stomach lurched. I tried to not act startled.

I turned, and saw pitch black irises. I
was awake, and looking at Ash. She looked so sad.

“The music is so beautiful. It’s such a
tragedy that it plays in the presence of such an ugly monster.” The
black liquid filled her eyes and threatened to spill down her
cheek.

She stood with a sheet wrapped around
her body beneath her wings. Every mark on her body had vanished
into whiteness. I couldn’t help but touch her. As my fingers met
her shoulder I felt a vibration. As I drew her close she ran her
hands across my chest.

“You are not a monster,” I said. “You
are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.” I turned her face
to mine and kissed her.

The music put us into a hypnotic state.
She wrapped her wings around me, then let go. She stepped back from
me and said: “I’m hungry.”

“Me too.”

I took her hand and led her to get
dressed.

Chapter15

COLD-BLOODED

Ash and I would have had a lot to
explain in a roadside search, so I tried not to speed on the
snow-slicked two-lane highway. My stomach ached from
hunger.

I glanced at Ash. She looked
determined. We’d decided on a skirt to accommodate her new tail.
Until we could get some sewing supplies and alter her normal
clothes she’d be stuck in skirts and halter tops. At that moment
she was wrapped in my favorite trench coat to cover her wings and
tail. We’d tried to conceal her horns with a hat but it hadn’t
worked. She’d dyed her hair, but that only helped cover them in dim
lighting.

Though I’d told her my reasons for
preferring to feed in large cities, she’d persuaded me to head for
a small town in Ohio. I knew she must have a consuming appetite,
and I was willing to go along. Ash had just become one of the most
powerful creatures on Earth, and now I suspected that she wanted to
use her new abilities to settle a score. As we sped toward our
destination I smiled. This was going to be fun.

“I don’t even have to project my
thoughts to you for you to read my mind,” she said, seeing my
smile.

“I would have never thought this of
you,” I said.

“
Just this once,” she said.
“After this I won’t care who or where.”

I slowed as we entered the small town
and read the sign: Payne, Ohio. She stared straight ahead. “Pain is
all it ever brought me,” she muttered.

She showed me where to turn. Most of
the stores and businesses in town were within a two-block radius.
Half the buildings were deserted. Ash told me to park on a side
street, past an alley. The town seemed dead.

“Okay, now what?” I asked.

She surveyed the area. There were no
cars. “Follow me,” she said, opening her door. She jumped out and
jogged past the front of a lit-up pizza joint, then down the alley
beside it. I followed. At the rear of the pizza shop she turned
right and disappeared into a narrow gap between buildings. I ducked
in behind her.

From our hiding place we kept watch on
the alley. The only light came from a dim bulb at the back of the
pizza joint, and the opening to the street on the far end. Ash
turned, and we faced each other. I heard her thoughts.

There’s a bar up ahead
where the light is. All the drunks around here hang out there. They
park their cars on the side streets and cut through this alley to
get to and from the bar. I’m waiting for one particular drunk. He
might be with someone else, but I want you to leave that person
alone. The rest is yours.

Care to share the story
while we wait?
I asked. I hugged her to
keep her warm.

Not much of a story. One is
a good friend. I’d like to see him get it together. The other is a
monster of the worst kind… Just understand: I don’t want anyone to
have to go through what I did ever again.

I kissed her. A door slammed
hard. She pulled back from me, listening intently.
This one you can have.
As
she stepped back into the shadows, I heard the shuffling rhythm of
a drunk’s walk. As he passed in front of us I sent the thoughts to
stop him. He froze. I pulled him into the gap. His aura was normal
human white. He reeked of tobacco and alcohol. The alcohol would be
an added treat.

His mind was full of the jumbled
thoughts of a drunk. Fear pumped through him. He wanted to fight me
but his body wouldn’t follow his thoughts. I grabbed his shoulders,
pulled him close and sank my teeth into his throat. Thin alcoholic
blood sprayed my face. I took in his aura and blood in a hungry
rush. His body went limp in my grasp. Even after his heart stopped
I got almost all of it.

Past where Ash stood, the passage
opened into a small overgrown clearing. I carried him there and
dumped him.

Some pot smokers will find
him within a couple of days,
she told
me.

When I got back to Ash I wrapped my
arms around her. She smiled at me coyly.

“What?” I asked.

She pushed in close and licked my mouth
and face. When I started wiping away blood with my hand she licked
my fingers clean. She kissed me.

I grabbed both of her thighs, brought
them up, and she wrapped her legs around my waist. She wrapped her
tail around my thigh. Lost in our vampire embrace, we bit into each
other’s necks. She was hungry. What I had would give her some
fulfillment. As we drank we explored each other’s minds.

Finally we separated. As we caught our
breaths she whispered: “Wow, that was different.”

I stumbled from the alcohol. “Now you
understand,” I said. “Things can get out of control for a vampire.
I didn’t want to hurt you, but you needed to see. It’s a different
kind of intimacy. You end up sharing mind, body and
blood.”

“Completely,” she breathed. Hearing her
made me want more than a kiss. I reached for her. At that moment
the bar door slammed again.

Ash pulled back from me, took off her
coat and threw it into the clearing. She motioned for me to follow
the coat. Her eyes sparkled like a child’s on Christmas morning.
“This one is mine,” she growled, revealing a menacing smile. She
reminded me of a cat.

I went back into the clearing and
picked up her coat. I would not watch. This was for her. She was
righting a wrong she’d endured as a human.

I listened to the two drunken male
voices. They said their goodbyes, then one went down the street and
the other came into the alley. Even back in the clearing I could
feel her hatred. She kept her thoughts walled off, maybe to protect
herself from sadness, or possibly to shelter me from the knowledge
of what she’d endured.

I heard her move, and call,
“Hey!”

After a pause the drunk answered:
“Hey…what the hell are you doing here? I told…I told you.” He
laughed. “I knew you’d be back. You just can’t seem to get it
through your stupid fucking head that I’m the best you’re gonna
get.”

“Shut up and get your drunken ass over
here,” she hissed.

I heard him stumble. I hung my head and
closed my eyes.

“Don’t you tell me to shut up you
stupid whore!”

If she didn’t kill him, I would. I
heard a choking sound, and knew that she had him by the throat.
There was the flap of her wings opening. When I heard his feet
scraping the ground I knew she was pulling him down, into the
darkness.

“I’m not a whore,” she breathed. “I’m
not stupid. I don’t deserve anything you did to me. And I am not!
not! not! going to let you do it again…to anyone…ever.”