––––––––
“-ing,” I said groggily and sat up. I was in the hotel bed and I was stark naked. The curtains were still drawn against any lingering rays of sun but the room was only in semi-darkness, thanks to my enhanced eyesight.
Turning my head slowly to the left, I found Luc in bed beside me. The sheets were pooled around his waist, leaving his nicely muscled stomach and chest exposed.
“I thought it would be more expedient if we were both naked when you woke,” he explained. One eyebrow rose and he gave me a slow smile that made something deep inside me quiver.
Rolling off the bed, I grabbed a pillow and used it to cover my nakedness. “No. Uh, uh. No way. We’re not doing that again, Luc.” I didn’t care what was quivering inside me, I wasn’t doing the horizontal mambo with him again. Retreating from the bed, I searched for my clothes and found them folded neatly on the back of the sofa.
Standing, Luc displayed his readiness to go ahead with the arduous job of sating my flesh hunger again. “My name is Lucentio and I wish you would remember that.” He clearly had no idea how lazy Australians were. We always shortened names. Naturally I wasn’t going to use a cumbersome name like Lucentio. “Why delay the inevitable?” Luc continued. He seemed more willing to have sex with me today but I still wasn’t going to put either of us through it again.
“Forget it, Luc.” I said his nickname with emphasis as I snatched up my clothes and hustled toward the bathroom. He followed me, naked and ready. “Go find someone else to sate your hunger on. I’m off limits.” And so was he. Slamming the door, I leaned back against it, sensing him standing right on the other side.
“I do not have the insatiable craving for flesh I once did,” he said softly. “I am able to control myself. You however,” he lectured primly, “are newly born. We shall see how well you can control your flesh hunger.” There was that vampire smugness again. They all must have it to some degree. Those who had been around long enough to gain control of their hungers anyway.
“We shall see how well you can control your flesh hunger,” I mimicked in a childishly high tone. I hated being lectured, which was one of the reasons I didn’t bother with University. The other was that my grades hadn’t been up to par.
Apparently, Luc was correct and I couldn’t control my new hunger all that well. I was burning up from the inside without feeling any actual heat. Stumbling into the shower, I took care of matters myself. Self-gratification wasn’t anywhere near as good as the real thing but it seemed to do the trick. The hunger abated and I was able to think again. I have to get a grip on this thing. It was a pity I had no idea how to go about doing that.
Luc’s eyes widened when I emerged, clean and fresh and didn’t leap on him to tear his clothes off and salivate over his body. “So,” I said as I took a seat on the armchair again, “what’s the plan?”
“We will have to make the journey to Romania in several stages. First, we will fly to Singapore, which will take about eight hours. Then we will fly to France the next night, which will take fourteen hours or so. Then it is just a short, six and a half hour flight to Romania.”
“That’s a lot of time up in the air.” He was talking about a total of over twenty-eight hours just in flight time and not including hiding from the sun during the day. Faced with the sudden prospect of leaving the country of my birth, death and strange re-birth, I felt panicked. “There is one small problem, I don’t have a passport,” I said with some relief. Maybe this would put the trip off for a few days.
“You won’t need one,” Luc responded with quiet confidence. “We should hurry, our flight leaves in two hours.” Doubtful but left with no other option, I followed him from the room.
Standing at the airport half an hour later, I fidgeted with my backpack uneasily. The heavy iron and silver cross was wedged firmly inside, hidden from view but handy if I needed it. Standing at my side, Luc put a calming hand on my shoulder. An instant picture of my legs wrapped around his waist filled my mind.
Shaking it off, I noticed that we stood in a small space of our own in the line. People either sent nervous glances at us or stared in outright fascination. Luc ignored them all with studied indifference. We’d arrived at what seemed to be peak hour. Roughly two hundred people were packed within the guide rails. Those not in our sphere of influence wore expressions of annoyance or were dull-eyed from the tedium of shuffling forward every minute or so. I tried not to focus on how tasty they all smelled. The pressure on my shoulder increased when I swayed towards a man standing in line ahead of us.
“You should have fed before we left,” my companion scolded me quietly.
“I wasn’t hungry then,” I gritted back. That was then and this was now. Blood hunger raised its head, took a sniff and decided it wanted a snack.
“Not here,” Luc warned and gave me a slight shake.
It was enough to snap me out of my daydream of pulling the overweight, balding man in front of me backwards and taking a bite out of him. The space around us had miraculously increased. There was now a five foot wide circle surrounding us. No one seemed to notice and I figured it was vampire mojo at play. Luc’s or mine, I couldn’t tell.
Finally, it was our turn at the check-in desk. “I am Lucentio Black and this is Natalie Pierce,” Luc said. I slanted him a look at the surname he’d given. It didn’t sound very French to me. His accent didn’t sound particularly French either. I was pretty sure he was Italian but didn’t want to embarrass myself by asking. “I believe you should have records of the seats I purchased via the telephone.”
Snorting a laugh at how archaic he sounded, I pretended I had a tickle in my throat and forced out an unconvincing cough.
“Identification?” the bored man behind the counter asked. Luc handed over two passports. I was torn between anxiety and curiosity. One of the passports was supposed to be mine. Opening the first passport, the clerk took a long look at Luc and verified he was the man in the photo. Opening the second passport, he frowned at the blank page and looked at me. Our eyes met and he was caught in my snare. A dreamy smile appeared on his face and stayed in place.
“So pretty,” he crooned.
“Tell him to give us our boarding passes,” Luc murmured. I dutifully followed directions and took the proffered items.
Receiving a few stares at our lack of baggage to be checked, we followed the steady stream of people to the x-ray machines and did the usual stripping off of our shoes and placing metal objects into plastic trays. My cross received a puzzled frown but it was passed through as being acceptable.
In a daze of hunger, I allowed Luc to propel me towards our gate. I caught the eyes of several men during the journey but my tall, dark guardian broke the contact each time. I sensed my prey would follow me blindly even to their deaths if he hadn’t. Keeping my attention on the floor, I thought of the long flight ahead and how very hungry I was going to be by the time we landed.
Miserable at the idea of the pit growing in my stomach again, I didn’t take much notice of where I was being led. This probably didn’t bode well for my future survival but I was too hungry to care. Luc pushed open a door and I wrinkled my nose at the sudden stench of stale urine and fresh faeces. Spotting a line of urinals bolted to the wall, I opened my mouth to protest about being dragged into the men’s room. Luc put a finger over my lips and indicated he heard someone coming.
Shuffling both of us to the side, Luc waited for the door to open and grabbed the man who entered. Putting a hand over the unfortunate victim’s mouth, he dragged him into the cubicle at the far end of the row. Luc sent me an impatient look over his shoulder. “Hurry, our flight leaves soon.”
Sidling into the cubicle, I pulled the door shut then turned the flimsy lock. The vampire cop easily held the man quiet with a hand over his mouth and the other around his throat. We stood in a tight circle with our bodies pressed up against each other. How was a girl supposed to get into the mood to eat in a situation like this? You don’t have to be in the mood to eat, numb nuts. No, I just had to be hungry. And hungry I was.
In his fifties, red faced, sweating and blubbering in terror, my snack wasn’t very appealing despite my increasing appetite. Shaking my head, I tried to back away but had nowhere to go. “I can’t, Luc. Sorry, but he’s just too pitiful.”
Luc rolled his eyes impatiently. “You have to stop feeling sorry for them, Natalie. You don’t mean the man any harm. All you require is a little sustenance and then he can go free.”
Perking up at that last part, the man started nodding frantically. He fumbled for his wallet in his back pocket and handed it over. Taking it doubtfully, I met his eyes and he was caught. Pale green and bloodshot from fear, they went blank and his entire body relaxed. Luc took his hands away and the man swayed toward me.
“I’ll give you anything you want. Anything at all.” He tried to reach for me but Luc held his arms straight against his body.
Even taller than my companion, my snack’s neck was too high for me to take a bite from. I went up to my tippy toes and he bent down for me, smacking his head into the cubicle door. In his hypnotized state he didn’t even seem to feel the blow. My teeth sheared into his vein and he made a sound of pleasure as I fed.
Luc pulled me away too soon but I let him. The pit in my stomach was half full again and I was in a comfortable state of contentment. With our interaction complete, Luc sat the snack down on the toilet and eased the door open. Taking a pristine white handkerchief from his pocket, he wiped a corner of my mouth. A tiny smear of red bloomed on the fabric. “You are going to persist in your annoying habit of butchering my name, aren’t you?”
I nodded then shrugged. “It’s the Australian way,” I explained. “We all do it. I think it’s in our blood.” Mmm, blood, I thought dreamily.
With a huffy sigh, Luc checked that all was clear. I dropped my meal’s wallet on his lap before leaving the bathroom. His Aussie cash wouldn’t be of much use to me in Romania.
Luc sent me worried glances as we hurried towards our gate. Our flight must have been called minutes ago because we were at the tail end of the line. Only a few stragglers were left ahead of us. I managed to regain some focus by the time we took our seats. It was a pleasant surprise to be seated in first class.
After the twentieth cautious glance from Luc, I turned to face him. “What?”
“Now that you have fed your blood hunger,” he said quietly, “I am waiting for your flesh hunger to rise.”
“Going to take another one for the team, huh?” It was uncharacteristically cynical of me but I figured I’d earned a bit of cynicism over the past few days after what I’d been through. “Don’t worry about it. I took care of it in the...,” I trailed off when I realized what I was about to divulge. “Never mind.” I’d suffered enough embarrassment without spilling the beans about my solo shower gratification.
“I have to mind,” he argued. “You are new and cannot control yourself yet. It is my job to make sure you don’t expose us.”
Grumpily turning away, I looked out the dark window as the plane prepared to take off. Luc’s pale reflection stared at me over my shoulder. “I don’t feel hungry in that way,” I mumbled and ignored the twinge of heat inside that made me a liar.
“When your hunger does rise, let me know.” Settling back against his seat, Luc folded his hands neatly across his stomach and proceeded to ignore me.
“Sure, we’ll just cram inside the toilet and have a quickie,” I muttered to myself sarcastically then turned as far away from him as I could. The idea of a quickie in the bathroom actually didn’t sound that bad. Don’t even think about it, I scolded internally. I might be a vampire and subject to hideous hungers but I still had my dignity, or so I told myself.
This wasn’t my first time on a plane but I’d never been out of Australia before and now I was about to travel to Europe, via Singapore. Soon, we’d be thirty-odd thousand feet in the air. If something horrible happened and the plane went down, what would happen to us? Since we were already undead, would we die again when our bodies were smashed to pieces? What exactly did it take to kill us anyway? Apart from a cross speared through your heart, that was. I’d stumbled across that particular killing method all on my own.
Disturbed by the direction my thoughts had taken, I turned to find my companion waiting with an eyebrow raised. He could either read my mind or I telegraphed what I was thinking harder than I thought I was. “What sort of things can kill us?” I asked very quietly, practically mouthing the words.
“Fire. Holy objects. Holy water. Being pierced through the heart. Beheading. Sunlight. Consuming the blood of our kin.” The list was short and about what I’d expected. Except for that last one. I’d never heard of that before.
“So, if we fell from thirty thousand feet, we’d survive?”
Thinking about it, he shrugged. “You might. I would probably not. The impact would most likely shatter my body beyond repair.” I pictured Luc as a runny, splattered, bloody pancake and held in a shudder.
“What would happen to me?”
Taking my left hand, he gingerly examined the cross mark without touching it. He met my eyes briefly. “I do not know.”
On impulse, I took his hand in mine. He went rigid then relaxed when he didn’t burst into flames. “I should have known it wouldn’t hurt me. After all, it is not the first time you have put your hands on my naked skin.” His tone was suggestive and he slid his gaze across to my face slyly. I yanked my hand free.
“We’re not talking about that. It never happened.”
“My spine took half an hour to heal,” he said conversationally. “You’re very strong.”
I remembered snapping the metal crosses off the sarcophagi easily and vaulting over fences in search of a dog blanket. I’d never been particularly athletic before and it was still a novelty to me. For a moment I almost felt special. Then the reality set in again. I was Mortis, doom of the vampire race. It was unfair that I would be the total destruction of beings I’d never truly believed existed. Why couldn’t I have been an ordinary vampire? Because if you were, you’d currently be bowing and scraping for Silvius. Would you prefer that? It was a toss-up; being a slave to a creepy old man for eternity or being the curse of the undead.
It was a long flight and I eventually grew bored enough to engage my vampire companion in conversation. “Ok,” I turned to him to ask, “so, if we’re real then other myths and legends must be, too.”
Slanting a look at me, Luc crossed his arms and shook his head as the flight attendant appeared to ask if we wanted anything. I waited for her to walk away before continuing. “What myths and legends do you have in mind?”
“How about werewolves?”
“No.” His response was immediate and final.
“Oh.” I thought for sure they had to be real if we were. If werewolves didn’t exist then who were our natural enemies? Duh, that would be me. “What about zombies?” I was almost disappointed when he shook his head. “Witches? Wizards? Unicorns? Fairies? Giants? Leprechauns? Hobbits? Ghosts?” Each one was followed by a shake of his head. I was exasperated by now. “What about aliens?”
This time, Luc hesitated. Most of the other passengers were sleeping. Snores and a few quiet murmurs surrounded us. We’d turned our lights off so we wouldn’t draw attention to ourselves more than we already did due to our weird vampire charisma. We were easily able to see each other in the dim cabin light.
“There is a legend,” he began, leaning in toward me, “that says we are descended from a being that was not originally from our planet.”
“Are you talking about little green men with creepily big heads and gigantic black eyes?” Despite myself, I leaned in closer to hear his answer, fighting down an urge to giggle at the idea of a spaceman being the creator of vampires.
“Whatever it was, it was here long before mankind crawled out of their caves. It is said that the creature, our Father,” he made a slight face at the title, “made a bargain with a human who then became the first of our kind. Our Father sealed their bargain by feeding the First his blood.”
“What was the bargain?”
Luc’s reply was his usual shrug. “He offered the First immortality.”
I mulled this over with a frown. “I wonder what our dear old Dad got out of their deal,” I mused.
“That is something no one knows,” Luc said broodingly.
My new friend didn’t seem inclined towards further conversation so I spent the rest of the trip watching movies. My hearing was so sensitive that I could hear what others in my general vicinity were watching through their headsets.
Bright lights caught my attention as we neared Singapore. I stared at the dazzling sight until we were too low to see them anymore. Upon touchdown, Luc hurried us to the head of the line and we were the first off the plane.
Minutes after we finally bamboozled our way through customs, we were in a taxi and heading for a hotel. Our driver sent frequent glances at us in his rear view mirror. Ok, he sent frequent looks at me in his mirror. I’d been careful not to catch his eye and accidentally hypnotize him. The last thing we needed was a zombie for a driver.
Our hotel for the day was far less luxurious than the one we’d stayed at briefly in Brisbane. The two women manning the reception desk were valiantly trying to pretend they weren’t half asleep. Since it was nearing sunrise, I couldn’t blame them for their tiredness. I was also feeling the tell-tale signs that meant I would go down for the day shortly.
Noticing me suddenly beginning to blink owlishly, Luc quickly paid for our room and took the key card. He guided me to the elevator with a steadying hand on my elbow. “Just another couple of minutes, Natalie,” he soothed but that was two minutes too long for me and my circuits shut down.
Snapping awake far quicker than usual, I found myself sitting in a cramped, uncomfortable chair with my head resting against the wall. Slightly confused and wondering why I wasn’t lying in a bed, the seat suddenly shook from side to side and my eyes sprang open. A quick examination of my surroundings told me that I wasn’t in a normal chair at all. I was buckled into a seat on a plane and had no recollection of how I’d gotten there.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we are experiencing some heavy turbulence at the moment so we ask that you remain in your seats until the seatbelt sign is switched off,” a woman announced over the speaker system. She gave the message in both French and English to cover both bases.
Luc, calmly sitting beside me with his headphones on, raised an eyebrow inquiringly when I glared at him. “Is there a problem?” he asked quietly.
“How the hell did you get me to the airport, through security and onto the plane?”
“I told anyone who enquired about your health that you were narcoleptic,” he replied with a shrug.
“Narcoleptic?” It came out higher pitched than I’d intended and a few heads turned in my direction. “That’s the best story you could come up with?”
“It worked, didn’t it?” Clearly annoyed that I wasn’t impressed by his cleverness, Luc turned his attention back to whatever program he’d been watching while I’d been unconscious.
We spent the next twelve hours ignoring each other. From time to time I left my window seat in the pretence that I needed to visit the facilities. In reality, I did it to annoy Luc. The elderly man in the aisle seat didn’t mind getting up to let me out, he needed to visit the bathroom even more often than I pretended I needed to.
Part way into the sixth or possibly seventh inflight movie in a row, I turned to the window and squinted at the slight hint of greyness. Hadn’t it been pitch black just a moment ago? What would happen to us after we landed and it was full daylight? Incineration was my first and only guess. I had enough time to turn my head with the intention of asking Luc what his next clever plan was when darkness struck.
·~·