sanguineangels (30 page)
The creature watched her closely as she made her way down the darkened street. She moved quickly, and he smelled the fear emanating from every pore. She had parked in the alley earlier that afternoon, but she hadn’t expected it to be dark when she came back. Now,
everything
looked dark and imposing. Every shadow was a demon, every passerby a murderer. Her eyes darted this way and that, seeing nothing but she imagined everything. She felt hunted, though she couldn’t possibly imagine that which hunted her. She moved faster, sensing his presence, her keys clutched firmly in her hand. She tried not to look around, afraid that she’d be staring into the face of the devil if she took too much time to focus. Finally, she reached the end of the alleyway where her car sat and seemed relieved to see it.
Creeping along the ledge overhead, he followed her down the street, keeping low so that she couldn’t see him. He didn’t need to see her, he could feel her. Smell her. Her scent permeated the air around him, and he breathed deeply, taking it in. He wanted to pounce, but knew that the anticipation would only make it sweeter. He ducked back into shadows, crouching down at the corner of the building to lie in wait.
She fumbled with her keys and cursed the lack of streetlamps in this town. Someone down the street screamed, startling her. She turned to look, and her keys went flying, glinting once in the moonlight before being thrust into the inky darkness. The girl made a noise somewhere between anger and terror and dropped to her knees, feeling around the rutted pavement desperately.
“Where the fuck…?” she whined, crawling forward a little. Her knees scraped against the rough gravel, and he was instantly inflamed with the scent of her blood. It carried on the wind and for a moment, it clouded everything else. His mouth watered, and he felt the burning pinpricks as his fangs began to grow. It was time to make his move. He was in the perfect position to head her off if she tried to run. There was no escape from the alley but into his embrace. His body tensed, ready to pounce. If the monster had a heart, it would have been pounding hard against his sternum as the blood rushed through his veins. But there was no heart. As they say, it’s always the first thing to go.
“Can I help you, ma’am?” A voice thick with alcohol and bayou stopped him so suddenly that he had to slam his body against the brick wall behind him to squelch the momentum.
“I’m not sure,” the woman replied weakly, almost slithering on the ground as she felt around. “I dropped my keys.”
Stupid girl
, the vampire thought.
Never tell a stranger that you’ve lost your only means of defending yourself. That’s Self-Defense 101
. He narrowed his eyes, watching the intruder closely. Perhaps this would be a two-course meal. The man was slight, wearing dirty jeans, an old sweatshirt and a toboggan. Classic mugger material, but the silly cunt on the ground couldn’t be bothered to notice. The corner of his eye detected a slight glimmer, and he noticed the gun shoved down the back of Toboggan Man’s pants.
“That’s a bummer, girl,” he grunted, shamelessly checking her out as she crawled around, head down, ass up. The vampire closed his eyes and opened himself to the man’s thoughts.
“Yeah, baby…show me that sweet ass. I’ll fuck that shit up before I’m through with you, bitch.”
The vampire listened a little longer, his eye twitching at the disgusting plans this man had for his prey on the ground before him. And they called
him
a monster. Vampire or not, he could not abide rapists. It was their weakness that sickened him. This waste of skin couldn’t get a woman on his own and even if he could, he couldn’t get it up, so he had to prey on weaklings to satisfy his reptilian brain. It was revolting. Not that he was noble—far from it, but as a child of the Pharaoh’s slums, he could never stand to see good food wasted.
Toboggan Man strolled up behind her, going for his gun, slowly but surely. “About where did you drop them?”
“I can’t tell,” she whined. “They flew out of my hand so fast; I didn’t see where the damned things landed.”
“That’s a shame, girl,” he growled, sidling up behind her. She could feel how close he was and turned, but he was too quick. Before she could react, Toboggan Man delivered a swift kick, knocking her backwards onto the pavement and dislocating her jaw in the process. She didn’t scream—she couldn’t. She could only groan from the pain where her teeth had opened a deep gash in her lip. Blood splattered the pavement, and she started to whimper.
“Please, Mister… You can have whatever you want…” she cried, the words garbled. She jerked her purse clumsily from her shoulder and heaved it in his direction.
“You best believe, girl.” He snarled, and the vampire saw him pull at the button on his pants. “Little whores like you always give it up.” A car drove by on the street behind, outlining the man in a dirty orange light. She started to crawl backwards, a sort of crab-walk that would have been comical if the scene hadn’t been so pathetic.
“Please, Mister…take all the money you want…just don’t hurt me…”
He brandished the gun, going down on his knees and straddling her hips so fast that she didn’t have time to move. She felt the cold steel pressing against her cheekbone. “I ain’t gonna hurt you, girl. Long as you do just what I tell you, everything’s gonna be just hunky-dory for you.” He crouched over her with a predatory pose, sniffing at her perfume. “Goddamn, girl! You smell just pretty as a picture.” With that, he leaned over her and licked the side of her face with his wet tongue, black with chewing tobacco. The strange crudity broke her silence and she let out a bloodcurdling cry.
“Help me, please!” she shrieked, twisting and squirming in Toboggan Man’s grasp, but it was too late. He had her pinned beneath him under his heavy thighs. He leaned back and laughed, using his free hand to pull at his shriveled dick.
“Go on and scream, bitch. Ain’t nobody ‘round to hear you.” He was wrong, of course.
The vampire leaped from his perch on the ledge, aiming for the back of Toboggan Man’s neck. The impact of his attack was enough to make the man see stars, but just as quick as it happened, the vampire was gone. “What the fuck…?” He grunted, frantically looking around. Before he could regain his balance, he was hit from the other side, a few of his teeth scattering in the alley, probably in the same black hole as the girl’s keys, as he fell backwards onto the ground. “Son of a bit—” The words were lost in a painful groan as the vampire kicked him hard in the belly, sending his body sliding down the alley until the brick wall stopped him. He heard the metallic tinkling of the gun bouncing across the gravel.
The vampire stepped out of the shadows and showed himself to Toboggan Man. “Hey there, limpdick. Care to dance?” He smiled wide, purposefully showing off the strangely pointed canines.
“Shit, man… I was just havin’ a little fun…” His feet scraped the gravel as he tried to gain enough traction to get up. “I’ll just be on my way—”
“No no…” the vampire chuckled with an overly pleasant tone. “We’ve only just met, friend.” He reached down and grabbed Toboggan Man by the throat, lifting him high off the ground. “It wouldn’t be polite not to have you for dinner.” Before he could scream, the vampire bashed him twice against the bricks behind him, shattering his skull and leaving fragments of gray matter and bone behind. As the man fell limp in his grasp, the vampire stole another look at the girl and saw that she was dazed with shock. He tossed the man aside, leaving him to ooze his blood slowly onto the pavement beneath him.
He paused a moment, licking the man’s blood off of his fingers before turning to go to the blubbering mess behind him. He approached quickly and she recoiled, instantly sensing that there was something not quite human about him. “Thank you…thank you, sir,” she said nervously, trying to get to her feet. “If you hadn’t come along…”
“You’d be raped and murdered,” he replied without a stitch of emotion to his timbre. “Silly girls like you never learn, do you?”
“I’m sure…I don’t know…what you mean,” she whimpered, using the rough wall as leverage to push herself to her feet. Once again the scent of her blood was overwhelming and he had to step back.
“Did anyone ever tell you that little girls who stray too far from the path after dark are likely to be eaten by the Big Bad Wolf?”
“Wwwell…” she started, the tone of his voice making her so nervous that she could barely speak. “I didn’t think it would be dark when I came to get my car. There wasn’t any parking near where I work…”
“LIAR!” he snapped, backing her into the side of her car. “You just didn’t want to walk that far.” His lip curled into a sneer. “Isn’t that right?” He was so close to her now that he could smell the heady perfume she wore mixed with the metallic, sickly sweet smell of her blood. He could feel her warmth against the cool marble of his skin, and he suddenly needed to take that into him. “Answer me.”
“Yes.” She sighed. “You’re right. I should have parked in the garage a few blocks down.” Her eyes rolled back in her head slightly as his arm found its way around her waist, and he pulled her close. She gasped, tense that a total stranger would embrace her in such a suggestive manner, but then she caught wind of his scent.
“Yes,” he whispered, his mouth so close to her ear that his tongue brushed the thin flap of cartilage at the opening. “You never know what creatures of the night might be lurking about.” She groaned softly, succumbing to his wicked magic. “Some of them may not be as nice as me.” The vampire placed his hand against her chest, feeling her heartbeat pounding beneath her skin and for a moment, longing for that gentle continuous rhythm that would measure out his days.
“Well thank you, sir,” she said, biting her lip as his fingertips strayed to the crest of her cheekbone, caressing it with the softest of touches. “How can I ever repay your kindness?” she asked, knowing full well how she would like to repay him. The vampire sniffed again, the scent of her blood overpowering, but there was something else, mingling with the bittersweet aroma. It was sex. Her arousal stank like a thousand funeral bouquets. It swirled around him, and he felt his self-control lapsing, despite his thousand years of practice.
“My kindness?” he purred, using the point of his elongating canine to lightly prick the skin just under her ear. “What kindness?”
“Well,” she breathed, her nervousness quickly swirling into a lustful abandon, brought on by the effects of his wicked enchantment. “You saved me from that…man…”
A drop of blood appeared at the site of the tiny nick, and he lapped it away with a few swirls of his tongue, giving himself a small taste. “Saved you? What makes you think I was saving you?” he asked, his tongue slip sliding over the bloody wound.
“But you stopped…” Her words were cut short as he sank his teeth into the soft space in the curve of her throat. She tried to scream, but her vocal cords were of little use as the razor sharp fangs sliced through them in a matter of seconds. The venom in his saliva quickly infected the wound, making the blood flow faster and faster until finally he was drinking deeply, barely having to suckle. Her body relaxed into his deadly embrace, and she felt lighter as he drained the precious fluid from her veins. He pulled back, letting her head loll against his shoulder. She looked up into his eyes fearfully, seeing her own death in them. Tears rolled silently down her cheeks, and he could read her thoughts. She begged him to let her go, pleaded for her life. She thought about how the pain was gone, replaced by a dark nothingness that was creeping in slowly.
“Tell me, love,” he whispered in her ear. “Do you want to fly?” She tried to make a noise, but her severed vocal cords would only allow a weak grunt. The vampire smiled, blood smearing his lips and chin. “Very well.” He pulled her tight against him, his arms cradling her as if she were a small child. A deep breath and they were rising off of the ground, rushing toward the clouds with a reckless exhilaration. Her heartbeat, so slow now that it was nearly inaudible, even to his heightened perceptions, shuddered erratically against his chest as he held her. Higher and higher they rose until the buildings far below were mere pinpoints of light.
She had one last thought before he sank his teeth into the wound again, draining the last bit of life from her limp body.
“Are you an angel?”
He laughed, pulling himself away from her at the last possible second. He mustn’t take her death into himself.
“Fallen, love,” he whispered before letting her go.