They met again under the same street lamp outside the public library on a moonful night. She had been waiting beneath the yellow glow, transfixed and transformed into a fly in his silver spider's net as he walked toward her. Soft mist of rain in the April evening air diffused lamplight and cast a cobweb of gold onto the glistening grey pavement. The night was cool, humid. A rainy wind stirred his cape and her hair. Shining points of lazer light were their eyes as they sought each other through misty rain darkness. He wore the same cape he always wore of some varicolored hand-woven material. His glowing eyes exposed her most intimate self, devouring her. But it was the look of stunned love in those eyes that held her in thrall. Unbidden, a verse that she hadn't remembered remembering rose up like a bubble and burst into her mind.
"Round and round the shuttered square I strolled
with the devil's arm in mine.
No sound but the scrape of his hoofs was there
and the ring of his laughter and mine.
We had drunk black wine"
"You shouldn't have waited for me," he said. "Why did you come?" His voice was rich, round, elusive, foreign, the cadence of old cities and centuries past. "Because I know what you are now," she said, her gaze never leaving his face. At this he turned, releasing her, and they began to walk, the sound of their footsteps synchronizing on the wet pavement. "Say it," he whispered. She faltered. "A - a vampire then." He winced at this and when he spoke, his voice was hollow, toneless. "A vampire, yes, also a Vraucolaca, a Wukodlak, a Nosferatu..." In his gaze a vast old sorrow like rising dark water. "My people are ancient....and few." They were walking on the dark side street that led to her lodgings. "Tell me about them," she said simply. But again, unbidden, another verse pushed into her thoughts.
"I screamed, 'I will race you master!'
"What matter," he shrieked, "tonight
Which of us runs the faster
We have nothing to fear tonight
In the foul moonlight."
"You already know what few of your people know about our - ah - physiology," he said conversationally. "We are the most ancient form of mankind. It is you who are the mutants." She knew, yes. As the night librarian, she had helped him find answers to his questions about blood types and the lymphatic system, but she had only guessed about the valves in his hollow teeth that carried blood not into his digestive system but directly into his own blood stream. "We don't need a great deal of blood - only about a pint a month, and we do eat vegetables and grains. It is much like your need for salt. You require only a little, but without it you would eventually waste away and die. "You mean you're a vegetarian?" she asked, incredulous. "In a manner of speaking." His smile was resigned, unfathomable. "Our people have a saying, "We drink from the fountain of life; you eat from the fleshpots of the dead." Noticing her reflexive flinch at this, he answered her unspoken question. "Street derelicts mostly," a pause, "so that it is unnecessary to give the call." He considered her, watching. She slowed her stride. "The call" she half-whispered. He waited. From their very first meeting he had detected, beneath the scent of this woman's cologne the wild female smell he remembered in the very cells of his body - the musky fragrance of the women of his people - the first people. Her hair was swept up on her head in a dark rich tumble and the nape of her neck was vulnerable and lovely. From the first, the whiteness of her throat and the luscious fullness of her body had woken a male response in him that had amazed and enlivened his being. Carefully, softly, he reached out then and touched her hair. She did not shrink away. He stopped, dismayed. "But I never, I wouldn't, use the call on you." "Why?" she stopped also and faced him. "Why would you not?" she said again, "because you're attracted to me as a woman and not," she smiled, "a blood bank?" He looked hurt. "As a woman, yes." We don't kill people," he said almost petulantly, "We're not murderers." She saw that he believed that - needed to believe that - but she had felt his call in her body - felt the milk rise in her breasts as it had for the child she had lost - milk impossibly summoned by the moon's tide and the male desire radiating from him like a dark star. They continued on to her garret apartment and did not switch on the lights. Silver-white moonlight cast all else in shadow. Night air blew in from the open window, damp and cool. He undressed her with practiced deftness by the window, her body creamy white and moon washed as he folded her in his arms. Her breasts were like warm fragrant bread, the curve of her ivory neck bewitching, inviting him to the feast he had denied himself. In one motion, he stepped out of his clothes and she saw him as a Goya painting come to life in the moon-darkness. Burning coals were his eyes, caressing, devouring her, drinking in her fullness. He was hard and muscular and the man smell of him made her nostrils flare until she felt faint with desire. "You are beautiful," he said, "so lovely." His voice was husky. "It has been a very long time, too long." Her skin was pale as pearls - opalescent as the moon. His arms surrounded her and he bore her onto the bed. No preliminaries were necessary in their mutual arousal. In an ecstasy of surrender, she opened her thighs. Electric feathers of pleasure fused their bodies as they drank deeply of each other for a timeless time until they lay back exhausted, sated, deeply content, on her bed. Still, he did not sink his teeth into the lovely neck. Playfully she nuzzled his ears, his neck. "I'm not sure I believe this vampire business," she said. "You haven't put any bite on me yet. I wouldn't turn into a vampire too would I?" He smoothed back damp tendrils of hair from her face and kissed her forehead. "You know it doesn't happen like that." A pause. "It's because I cherish you, little moonflower," he said. "I would not have you cringe in horror from what I am as you must sooner or later." "Must I really?" she breathed, her eyes wide and mocking. "I know you my dear," she said, "I know you at least a little by now. There is no harm in you" she said seriously. Softly then, she laughed, and the sound of her laugh rose like a bubble on the dark water of the night. "Come my love, " she said, "I'm not afraid. Besides, I want to truly know you. I want you to know me." Her tone was faintly teasing, but as he looked into her dark eyes, for the first time in many long years, he saw love. Slowly then, gently, he lowered his head and bent to the feast.
"Then I looked him full in the eyes
And I laughed full shrill at the lie he told
And the gnawing fear he would fain disguise
It was true what I'd time and again been told
He was old. Old."
* * * * * *
(c)Pam Hanna, 1997