Our lips still connected, he swept me up and took me to our bed, where rows of candles lent a consecrated ambiance. The flames seemed to flicker at his command, creating images on an adjacent wall of lovers in various throes of passion.
He pulled off my jeans, slowly and methodically, his lips sucking, kissing the soft flesh inside my thighs, the backs of my knees. My head spun with desire, and I reached for him while I murmured his name. Grabbing my ankles, he spread my legs wide; his lips roamed once again as warm determined fingers disappeared inside me. On the brink of ecstasy, I snapped my eyes open when he stopped, and I bolted upright, trembling in delirious anticipation as he began removing my blouse. He tossed it aside and his fingers strolled under the straps then along the top of my bra, finally snaking their way underneath.
I quivered, wet and ready, and whispered his name. “Tristan,” I repeated, loudly, pleadingly, desperately, and he raised his head. Devious honey-gold irises haloed his crimson pupils. A mischievous smile corrupted sensual lips. Elongated, glimmering canine teeth shredded my bra and then his tongue—hot, wet, and feathery soft—bathed my nipples in euphoria.
I shook violently, shredding his back, relishing his bloody flesh beneath my fingernails. He rocked backward, righting himself in one fluid motion. He stripped off his pants, a smile affecting every glorious inch of his face when my hungry eyes moved over him, and I ran my tongue over piercing fangs. Then he stood over me, straddling me, tormenting me. He flipped me onto my stomach, tugged my knees toward him, and thrust himself inside as I screamed his name. On the precipice of orgasm once again, I clung to him when he shifted position and rolled me on top of him. He gripped my shoulders and guided me into a seated position, then cupped my breasts, fervent fingers looping my nipples. Grinding, writhing, our bodies in unison, we climaxed simultaneously, Tristan howling while I sank my teeth into his neck. I began to convulse as an ungodly energy surged through my body. I absorbed his power and with it came a clarity, a complete understanding of everything within the universe. A moan swelled in my throat and with it escaped a gush of all the amorous things left unspoken. Taking my face in his hands, his eyes whispering I love you, he drove his fangs into my jugular, and we began again.
Hours later, Tristan collapsed onto his back and combed his fingers through drenched hair. He sighed blissfully, then cradled me in his arms. I stroked his chest, and he kissed the tip of my nose, then cocked his head toward a window drizzling condensation.
“It can’t be morning already,” I groaned. “Can’t we just lie here?”
“It’s not safe, Celeste,” he said, nuzzling my ear.
“But you slept in my bed before—”
“Indeed, I did, my love. At my own peril. But now, I have you to worry about.”
“But the blinds are closed, the curtains drawn. No one’s going to come in here and open them.”
He arched a brow. “Of this, you can’t be certain.” He was right. I thought of the time the maintenance crew barged into my former apartment unannounced as I was climbing out of the bathtub.
“Daylight has become your enemy. You must always remember to cover yourself from the light of day. Promise me,” he said, lifting my chin.
“But I remember you, Nick too, often—”
“Greeted the sun? Yes, but never for more than an hour, two at most, and never without concealing every inch, head to toe. Come, I have a surprise.” He swept me into his arms and glided across the hall, where he unlocked the utility closet and swept the door to the wall.
In addition to a broom shedding bristles, a neglected Dyson vacuum, and a mop that had yet to meet water, the room hid a gleaming coffin large enough to accommodate two. Following a prolonged kiss, he laid me inside and settled in beside me. He moved his arm overhead, and I scooched closer. Snug up against him, I stroked his cheek and ran my fingers over his lips.
“It’s so good to have you home, Celeste,” he said through a yawn, bringing my hand to his lips.
“It’s good to be home. I’m looking forward to a long lazy night, just you, me, and Raina.”
His chest heaved and he expelled a long sigh. “I depart come sunset.”
“No,” I said, propping onto an elbow. “Can’t it wait?”
“Our foe has rallied, and the Omniscients demand our attendance, Celeste. What would you have me do?”
I was formulating more questions when his breathing slowed; soft nonsensical murmurs escaped his lips, long dark eyelashes erratically fluttering. I swept a stray strand of hair farther from his eyelid and considered discovering the answers to my questions by stealing a peek inside that complicated head of his. Met with hundreds of voices speaking at once and vivid chaotic images—most involving strategic plans or ghoulish battle scenes—I terminated the connection by filling my head with random trivial thoughts.
Then he murmured her name.
Intruding upon his private thoughts once again, my breath caught when I saw his wife, Alexandra. Although her complexion was fairer, her eyes more green than blue, her features a bit more prominent, the resemblance between us was undeniable. Involved in a bitter argument with a merchant who’d swindled her out of a silver sixpence, she flung long golden waves over a defiant shoulder while jeering bystanders garbed in ruffled linen shirts overlaid with doublets jockeyed their pints of ale outside an English pub.
She set down a bucket of coal and raised a fist, her other wrapped tightly around a parcel of bound wheat. Tristan abandoned a conversation with several sixteenth-century English noblemen and swung a leg over a gleaming black horse. The stallion pounded hooves against compacted earth, dust settling on the horse’s gilded armor-plated chest piece. Tristan dismounted in a fluid slide, served her a rakish grin, and bowed arrogantly.
“Milady, may I be of assistance?”
“Indeed, my good sir. This lubberwort has trifled with the wrong sort. I shan’t be a willing participant to his thievery.”
The scene faded, and Tristan’s thoughts shifted to a lowland lush meadow bursting with deep purple columbine, tall pink foxglove serenaded by energetic bees, ice-blue forget-me-nots, and lemon-yellow daffodils. From his horse, he collected a cloak bearing the king’s crest. He tossed it among a grouping of red poppies, took her in his arms, and laid her down. Her long hair spread about her, backdrop worthy.
He undressed her tenderly, and I swallowed past a lump when his hands, his lips, began to explore her body, slowly, painstakingly. I felt a flush of resentment, prickly sensations building from my scalp to my toes. How different he had always been with me until tonight! Foreplay had always been practically nonexistent, an unnecessary extravagance. Was it because he had loved her more?
He moaned suddenly and turned away from me, and his thoughts once again became erratic. He flipped back over, a radiant smile stretching his lips. I dipped in again and found him and Alexandra on a beach, her arm slipped around his waist. She smiled up at him as he tossed a baby into the air, seagulls swooping and squawking in the background, and then the memory vanished, as though a candle abruptly extinguished.
I jumped when he cried out beside me, his fangs erupting past taut lips. I shook him gently and his torturous wail ebbed to a strangled moan. Another memory had surfaced: Tristan, head in hands, surrounded by mass graves and hushed condolences. The body collectors wheeled a death cart, wooden wheels creaking and squalling, toward the plague pit reserved for victims of the Black Death. Black pustules dotted Alexandra’s pallid flesh, her arm escaping a waxed cloth confinement. Tears swamping his face, Tristan howled a grief-stricken scream and lunged for the cart. Longtime friends, Ariel and Paulo, tackled then restrained him, long after a wall of fire consumed the bodies of his wife and child.
Bloody tears ran down his cheeks, soaking the pillow we shared. I whispered his name, and his eyes fluttered open. “Baby, I love you so much,” I said. “I’ll never leave you.”
He smiled, turned into me, and pulled me close. “And I love you. Sleep now, my love.”
I woke to Fane’s disturbing grin as he pinched open the coffin lid. “Rise and shine, my slumbering properly deflowered flower. For a rapturous rendezvous, though riotous it may have been, is no excuse for laziness.”
I ignored him and discovered Tristan gone without as much as a goodbye. A toxic mingling of anger and sadness reddened my cheeks, and I wanted to wrestle the lid closed before Fane noticed.
The lid snapped shut and he yelped. He forced it open and began hopping on one foot and then the other. “Now look what you’ve done, you insolent hussy. Thanks to you, I’ve chipped a nail.”
“Maybe you’ll remember that the next time you come in here uninvited. How can you wear those ridiculous things anyway? They don’t even look real.”
“Humph. I shan’t entertain the slightest offense, given the criticism comes from someone with about as much fashion sense as a common beggar. And to think, finding myself with rapturous spare time on my hands since Bianca’s return, I chose to spread my renowned good cheer with the likes of you.”
I pushed him out of the way, and then I tumbled from the coffin. “Don’t do me any favors.”
“I would have thought the aftereffect of such glorious ecstasy might have altered your usual sour mood.”
“Don’t you have anything better to do?”
He puffed his chest beneath a neon orange Nehru jacket and straightened the braided ropes canopying exaggerated shoulder pads. “Alas, no.”
I shoved him out of the way, my intention to grab a bottle from the refrigerator, but he beat me to it, intercepting one in a grand flourish.
“Ah, 2019.” He rolled his tongue across his palate. “Acceptable, I suppose, though aged blood too often compromises the bubbly undercurrent. Allow me,” he said and poured me a glass.
Wearing an obnoxious grin, he watched me sip from the glass. I rolled my eyes while I continued to drink, still dehydrated from the night before. He quickly became bored and began fumbling with the large colorful buttons scattered disproportionately over his jacket.
“I have missed you,” he said, without making eye contact. “You are the salt to my pepper, the logic to my illogic, the yin to my yang.”
I set the glass aside, crossed my arms, and squinted with suspicion. “What do you want, Fane?”
He gasped and clutched his chest, then dropped his head and slouched his shoulders. “I expose my innermost feelings, and that is your response? I have missed you . . . terribly.”
I scuffed my feet back and forth over the Italian-tile flooring. “I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t realize you were serious. You seldom are.”
“And?” he said, raising his head just enough for me to see his eyes.
“All right. I missed you, too. And thank you for taking care of Raina.”
“How she missed you! ‘When is Mummy coming home? What do you suppose Mummy is doing at this very minute? Is she thinking of me?’ Quite redundant, it was. I can tell you, with all certainty, that I shall never own a parrot.”
I picked up the glass and hid a grin. “Fane, she’s just a kid. And from what Bianca told me, I think she’s equally taken with you.”
His eyes suddenly shone with excitement. “I dare say she is most intuitive, particularly as it involves that dreadful game hide-and-seek. Most often, she only requires a night, two at most, to find me.”
“Oh my God. A night or two? She’s five years old, Fane.”
He crinkled his nose, and I knew an argument was forming. “Five, you say? To forfeit discussion, allow me only to remind you that the young lass has had over two hundred years to cultivate her cunning and resourceful skills, skills which she too often displays at that dreadful school.”
I felt what little color I had drain from my face. Maybe Bianca hadn’t told me everything. “What skills exactly?”
“Perhaps I have overstepped.”
“Oh no. You are not going to shut that annoying trap of yours now. Spill it.”
“As you wish, but before I say a word more, do show some mercy, dear girl.”
“Keep talking, Fane.”
“She may have taken a shortcut, as it were, to the schoolyard on occasion.”
“What kind of shortcut?”
“Why travel down two flights of slippery stairs when one can simply fly out the window? Such a preposterous notion.”
“What else?” I asked, horrified at the possibilities. Because I knew Fane habitually saved the worst news for last, I felt my anxiety escalating.
“Certainly you have heard her speak of Blain Beaumont?”
“Yes, the bully. What about him?” I asked past a lump.
“That is not how she refers to him, now is it?” Fane asked, beneath raised eyebrows.
“No, she calls him Blain the Meddlesome—”
“Vermin. Quite right, Mummy Dearest. At her wit’s end one particular afternoon, what do you suppose became of prickly little Master Beaumont before she chose to grant him a few hours of repose within her desk?”
A hand flew over my mouth. “Oh my God. What did she turn him into?”
“A bloated rodent, what else?” Fane threw back his head and laughed. “Not only was Raina spared an afternoon of vicious maltreatment but her contentious school chum endured hours of passionate interrogation when prompted for an explanation for his absence, to which he, of course, could provide none.”
“Is that it?”
“To offer supplementary accounts would prove redundant.”
“So you’re saying this is commonplace?” I asked between gritted teeth.
“Who in heaven’s name could blame her for acting out?” Fane asked, rushing to my side. “Those hideous schoolmarms chastise her with every breath.” In very Fane-like fashion, he imitated the teachers. “‘Eat something other than meat, Raina. Did your mother even take time to cook that? You are getting blood all over the cafeteria floor, Raina.’ Pick. Pick. Pick. Add Blain the Vermin to the mix and, I dare say, I considered keeping her home. And I would have, had she not thrown a fit the likes of, well, me.”
I felt a migraine coming on and refilled the glass. “When you say you witnessed, did anyone witness you witnessing?” Suddenly any supernatural stunt Raina may have performed seemed much less damaging in comparison.
He laughed, and I caught a glimpse of diamond tongue studs. “A trade secret, I regret to say, you inquisitive fiend.”
“So you’re saying you made yourself invisible.”
“Precisely, my perceptive chum,” he said, a pyramid of bracelets jingling as he wiggled his wrists. “The Hidden Cloak, though most challenging—and not so unlike teleportation—definitely has its advantages.”
“Will you teach me sometime?”
He rolled his eyes and collapsed into a chair. “What were you doing with the Elders all this time? Enjoying the sights, while I endured the never-ending ramblings of that precocious child?”
I folded my arms hard across my chest. “Will you or won’t you, Fane?”
He sighed and looked away. “I cannot. There, I have disclosed my shortcomings, which you shall revel in till time eternal, to be quite sure.”
“Why can’t you?”
“Because I was neither granted the Power of Persuasion nor the power of telepathy, my obtuse friend, both of which would greatly benefit such instruction.”