The Embrace (10 page)

Something about the kiss seemed cold and hollow. I don’t think Gabriel was changed by his little demonstration, but I certainly was. I still had a shivering feeling deep inside. Something about the power we could yield was suffocating me. I knew it was important but I had no idea why.

As Gabriel and I kissed in the shadows I tried desperately to recall the things I had spent months trying to repress. Eventually I gave up but something cold still dwelt inside.

We killed that night as we did every night and returned with our hunger satisfied. I slept in his arms as usual. Gabriel couldn’t sense a difference in me, but for some reason the cold feeling in my bones had changed me. Lying in his arms lacked the affection it had held just one night before.  Everything had changed once more as our perfect life shattered around me

Even though the compulsion trick left me feeling uneasy, part of me was desperate to try it out. I wanted to see how far our control extended, and whether I really had as much promise as Gabriel thought.

A few nights after his display, we went out to hunt in a town a few hours away and I decided that the time was right to test my newly discovered skills.

We reached the town not long after sunset, and the pounding drums appeared the moment we touched the border.

Gabriel kissed me gently on the cheek. “I have some business to attend to” he told me. “I’ll find you, I promise.”

He smiled and ran away, melting into the shadows as he went.

This sudden exit did nothing to soften my doubts. Gabriel was hiding something from me, that much was obvious. I worried constantly about our relationship these days, and nothing he did could make me relax. My love for him was still there-eight years of devotion can’t dissolve overnight-but something had changed again.

Gabriel still smiled at me and kissed me. He still wrapped me up in his arms, and I still fell asleep with him every night, but that didn’t make me feel any better. The uncomfortable feeling still rested in my bones ever since the compulsion lesson. There was something about Gabriel that didn’t sit right, something that jarred in my mind, but I couldn’t place it. I was so frustrated that I was close to giving up completely, no matter how important it might be.

Although I missed Gabriel the moment he left me, I also felt a surprising flutter of happiness. I was free to hunt alone for the night, and I felt liberated.

This town was almost alien to me. I hadn’t visited here as a vampire, and I hadn’t been as a human since long before the murders. I walked through the shadows, following the natural curve of the streets as I explored my surroundings.

The beat in my head wasn’t overpowering. It was a light, tantalising sound that echoed around my mind and pulsed through my veins as if it was my own heart beating.

I followed the streets for a while, imprinting the layout of the town in my mind just in case we returned. It was a pleasant place, but slightly dull. I would never have picked to live there, vampire or not. Despite that, it’s charming atmosphere was quite endearing and I felt my thirst growing as I rounded each corner.

I reached a large, Victorian building just at the border of the town. There were dozens of cars parked outside and I could hear the heart beats clearly ringing out from inside the building. I closed my eyes and tried to sense how many people were in there: 90, maybe 100? I guessed it was some kind of town meeting as I could hear beats ranging from the weak, endearing beats of children to the irregular pulse of the elderly. 

This was to be my hunting ground for the night.

I ran quickly to the building and walked slowly up the staircase. As I reached the top, the hustle and bustle of a crowd of people hit me like a slap in the face.

I hadn’t been in such a densely populated area since my transformation so I had never experienced a mix of sensations quite like this. I could hear the mingling beats of all the people and smell the salty sweat gathering on their foreheads. I could hear snippets of conversation that floated towards me, and I began to get impressions of people beyond their outward appearance. 

At my side, two women were chatting with huge grins on their faces, their conversation peppered with loud, intrusive laughs. They were discussing their children. When I looked at the older of the two women, several emotions surfaced and I struggled to hold my laughter: she was thinking about how hungry she was and how the other woman hardly ever ate anything which explained why she was so skinny.

I was impressed by my ability. I couldn’t exactly read thoughts but I had developed a radar for emotions and feelings. If I focused enough, some of the stronger thoughts would appear in my head.

I had never picked up on this before. Anytime I had killed, apart from my first attempt, I had been wishing the minutes away so that I could escape Gabriel’s awkward hunting rituals. Most of the murders had only involved Gabriel and the victim, with myself on the sidelines. They thought of nothing but pain and so I never picked up on anything else.

I had never known to use this ability before, but now that it was switched on I couldn’t turn it off again. Part of the thrill when I killed my victims came from the terror I saw in them when they realised I was going to kill them. I could never have detected this terror unless I truly understood what they felt. Maybe the power had been with me all along.

This place was some kind of town hall, probably used most frequently for meetings and fundraisers. The event I had stumbled upon was the annual charity dance in honour of some foundation or other. I remembered my mother talking about it when I was a child, and my auntie Penny describing several pieces of gossip she had picked up from there over the years.

It felt strange to think of my family so clearly. I lacked even a basic human attachment to them now that I was dead, but I still felt a pang of longing. I didn’t miss the people, but I would quite happily have returned to the days of contentment I had felt before the murders, the kind of comfort I had lost since becoming a vampire.

I made my way through the crowds, picking out the stronger hearts. Everyone seemed lively and vivacious, and in this small room I could pick up the spectrum of human emotions. A large man to my right was chatting pleasantly with a rather mousy young woman and trying desperately not to look at her cleavage; a teenage girl following her parents was worrying about her boyfriend and the possibility that she was pregnant; a little girl playing alone with a toy impressed me with her emotion. I’d never felt that much pure, unadulterated joy from one person.

As I walked through the crowd, untangling the mass of thoughts and feelings, something else appeared. A cold feeling crept up from the base of my spine, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

I looked around desperately and tried to pinpoint the source of my discomfort. I felt as if I was being watched, and not just by the eyes of the humans who found me so attractive. Something else was in this hall.

I stopped and focused all my energy on tracing the source of this feeling, the position of the person watching me. I used my mind to feel out to the furthest corners of the room, brushing past the emotions of the people surrounding me.

A brick wall came thundering up in my line of movement. Whatever this thing was, I knew that it was stopping me from locating it.

All the thoughts, conversations and heartbeats around me melted away and one startling image was left: a young woman was standing in a luxurious apartment. The detail of the image was astounding, as clear as if it was right in front of me.

A man came up behind her, his face shrouded in darkness. He gently kissed her neck and then bit into her flesh with extreme force. At that moment the vision suddenly faded away.

The person watching me had sent that vision to me for a reason. It had left me with a strong thirst and the red cloud of hunger was descending. This strange observer knew about my kind. They had implanted this picture in my head to increase my thirst. They had known I wouldn’t be able to control my hunger when such a strong kill was dangled in front of me.

That left only one possibility of the nature of my follower. He had to be a vampire.

I had no time to think about this strange experience. I had to pick a victim and get out before my thirst became uncontrollable.  I tried to calm myself as I looked around the room, stalking the strongest possible prey.

My eyes locked on to a man standing behind the stall advertising the charity chosen that year. He was tall and gangly, but he had a welcoming smile and I knew he’d be easy prey.

This was the perfect opportunity to test out my new control over my victims. I focused on this man, the desperate red thirst strengthening my ability like adrenalin does for humans. He looked straight at me and I mentally urged him to walk towards me. I placed the image of him walking away in to his mind and to my pleasure he did as I compelled him to.

I ordered him to follow me as I left the hall, sneaking out of the back entrance into the area next to the wings of the grand stage. Moments later the young man arrived, completely dazed.

I walked up to him and kissed him gently on the lips, letting the kiss linger just a second longer than that of a friendly kiss.

The red curtain was still lowering, consuming almost my whole field of vision. I felt my fangs jutting out already as I stroked this doomed youth’s face.

I knew it would be crucial to control him as we were in such a public place, so I had to compel him again. I thought back to Gabriel and the girl, Grace, days before and mimicked the tone he had adopted.

“I need you to stay very quiet for me, can you do that?” I asked. He nodded, still confused, and I carried on. “Okay, this will hurt. Don’t shout out, don’t even make a sound.”

I waited until he acknowledged me and then leaned in to his neck, piercing the skin quickly and easily. He followed my demands and not a single sound escaped his lips.

I drank in the blood, lapping it up eagerly. The curtain was slowly pulling back as my thirst subsided. I could feel this young man’s heart beat slowing rapidly, in fact much too rapidly. He was a weak man who hadn’t yet grown into his body, and if it hadn’t been for that extreme hunger I would never have picked him. I felt the floor spin as his heart beat neared the point of death.

“Ben! The stall needs operating. You can’t just walk off like that!” A woman yelled from the wings.

I didn’t need to be supernatural to know the victim in my arms must be Ben. I pulled my head from his neck, suddenly struck by panic. I was alone and a human was nearing me while I was in a very compromising position. I could have killed her easily but Gabriel had warned me not to expose my true nature to humans.

Times have changed since Gabriel was turned. A race that thinks you are just a fairytale can be very beneficial. In the old days people were scared of vampires and knew the ways to best protect themselves, but now they think it’s all a myth. Exposing our existence to humans would put them on the offensive once again, and we couldn’t risk it. That had been Gabriel’s strongest warning during his endless lessons.

I let Ben’s body fall to the floor and left through the fire exit at the back, sensing the owner of the angry voice arriving just as I left. I ran quickly away from the building, the feeling of panic still throbbing through my body.

I heard a blood curdling scream echo out from the back of the town hall. The woman must have found Ben’s body.

I waited under the trees near the town hall, blood coating my face. I wiped it away quickly to try to rid myself of any reminders of what had just occurred.

Gabriel arrived after a while but I wasn’t sure how long as time had ceased to matter. I had no idea how long I’d been waiting. I tried to smile brightly for him and ignore the close shave I’d just had but the atmosphere remained tense all the way home. We reached our nest in record speed and fell asleep soon after, but I couldn’t get that scream from my mind. I spent the rest of the night on edge.

I fell asleep praying that Gabriel would never find out about my indiscretion.

I checked the newspaper everyday. It took three days for Ben’s name to appear in the obituaries, and I read the article with dread. He was just 19 years old, a promising student who was heavily involved with voluntary work. His name was given as Benjamin Robert Greene.

I felt terrible. I felt no guilt about killing Ben. I was made to kill and I could no longer feel guilt in the same way humans did, but I felt ashamed of lying to Gabriel about my rash decisions. I feared that someone, some human being who had knowledge of the supernatural world, would realise Ben had been a vampire’s victim and hunt us down.

I hadn’t forgotten about the unknown vampire who had watched me. I knew little of Gabriel’s vampire past before my arrival, so it was possible that one of his old enemies was using me as a target.

I had no idea if I should tell him about my stalker. Eventually I decided to keep it to myself. After all one more secret couldn’t make me feel any worse than I already did.

After the stress of those few days I was desperate to leave town. I wanted a new life more than ever. The once comforting woods behind my house seemed threatening, and the gentle streets were filled with dark corners for an enemy to hide in. I’d hidden in those corners many times myself but now they weren’t a sign of safety, they were a potential threat.