Epilogue

As soon as arrangements could be made, Mitch and I went to England. We told no one what had occurred that evening in our apartment, explaining only that we would be gone for a while on an extended honeymoon. Mitch needed time to learn, time to adjust to his new life, and I needed time to calm my panic over what I have done.

Before returning to my house and the pub, we decided to travel through the country, seeing the sights at night. Stonehenge was wonderful, and we crept past the guard and the gates and lay in the center, whispering to each other, making love on the dry, cold gravel. At Mitch’s suggestion, we even stopped at Whitby. From our hotel bed we listened to the waves beat on the rocks and read aloud from Dracula, pointing out to each other the inconsistencies of the book compared to the life we knew. As always, at the end of the story I cried when the stake pierced the count’s chest, remembering with a shudder exactly how it felt to kill a man of great power and age. And he laughed and kissed away my tears.

We have found that Mitch has a great instinct for hunting, his senses having been finely honed by his many years of police work. He is as good as I, or perhaps even better, at the post-feeding suggestions, but he still approaches the feeding and the victim timidly, tentatively, as if he had no right to their blood. He senses this hesitation as a liability, and I console him that he will get better with practice.

As for me, I don’t dream much anymore. When I allow myself sleep, it’s become like a small death, silent and mindless. Mostly, I lie awake and watch him sleep, wrestling with his own private demon of dreams. He moans and quivers, his eyes rolling within his closed lids, and he wakes covered in sweat. I never ask who appears in his dream, with whom he fights daily, what figure haunts his sleep. I fear his answer, sensing deep inside that I already know, not wanting to hear him say that I am the demon. So I lie, my mind pure and emptied of all former ghosts, holding him while he writhes, tormented and struggling in the darkness that is my eternal gift to him.