BLOODLUST EXCERPT

    After having given up all hope of winning over Bridgette, I met another woman. In truth, that might have been when my life truly began.

    She was as beautiful as the Mona Lisa and as graceful as a lioness. The sounds of the tavern muted. It was as if she and I were the only ones in the place. Her dress swished as she walked towards me with her eyes locked on mine. I felt heat in her gaze, heat and longing.

    Her hair was the deepest shade of red that I’d ever seen, piled on top of her head save a few curled ringlets framing her face. Her skin was milk-white, pale and creamy perfection. She was tall for a woman and enticingly voluptuous, with a bosom mounting over the plunging neckline of her lavender gown’s bodice.

    She looked too privileged to be in a tavern after sundown, but she definitely didn’t look too innocent. Her eyes were as lavender as the gown she wore and had a cold, calculating look in them. Ice and fire mingled in her eyes; they mingled and then proceeded to dance.

    She approached me with a rare confidence and claimed the stool beside mine. “I’ll have what he’s having,” she told the man behind the bar counter.

    I smiled into my glass of ale. There’s nothing as humorous as a woman who thinks that she can handle liquor but can’t. I watched as the bartender graciously filled a mug with strong, amber-colored liquid.

    The woman accepted the mug gratefully and lifted it to her lips. She tossed the liquor back and swallowed it in two gulps. “Another, please,” she said to the bartender.

    Some of the other patrons were staring our way at this point, looking towards the woman who was taking in her liquor a bit too quickly. No doubt, some of them were considering taking advantage of her as soon as she stepped outside of the tavern.

    I don’t know why I felt protective of her. After all, I didn’t even know her. For some reason, though, I felt the need to protect her. So I started a conversation with her. Soon, we were laughing uncontrollably. We laughed and talked until a shrieking bell tolled.

    It was the curfew bell, a bell that alerted townspeople that shops and taverns were closing. I escorted the lady out of the tavern. She held on fast to my arm and leaned into me, but she wasn’t the least bit intoxicated.

    She curled her fingers into the inky black hair at the nape of my neck. “You do not look like anyone I have seen around here before,” she said softly. “What is your name?”

    “Iancu.”

    “Yahn-what?”

    “Ee-yahn-koo. Iancu.”

    “That sounds foreign.”

    “I am not originally from here.”

    That information seemed to fascinate her. She tilted her head back so that she could peer up at me.

    “What is your name?” I returned jovially as we walked. I wasn’t overly concerned that I was spending time with a woman out in the open without a chaperone. If she could overlook this small bit of indecency, then so could I.

    “Jordana.” She twirled a strand of her shimmering, red hair around a slender index finger. “Before I walked up to you, I noticed that you looked troubled. I hope I am not delving into private matters, but I was wondering why you looked so melancholy.”

    I shook my head dismissively, narrowing my eyes as I gazed at the well-worn path that stretched ahead of us. An ivory crescent moon shone high in a star-studded sky. I’d always favored the night over daylight hours.

    She was watching my face attentively. “I know it has to do with a lady.”

I arched a glance at her. I’d never talked to a woman about another woman before. “I was not in the highest of spirits earlier, but you have helped that.”

    “You have dodged the question,” she pointed out. “You did so quite skillfully, I might add.”

    “I would rather not talk about it, if you do not mind.”

    “I do not mean to pry,” she said softly. With those words, she stopped walking.  "But what if I told you that all of your troubles could come to an end?”

    I stopped walking as she had. The soft clatter of a horse’s hooves sounded in the distance. “I would not believe that for a second,” I said after some thought.

    “I know more about you than you do about yourself,” she told me.

    I folded my arms across my chest. “Fine,” I allowed, playing along with her game. “Tell me about...me.”

    She circled around me, looking me up and down, sizing me up. Her dark cape fluttered and billowed around her; the wind caressed her hair and ruined the style she’d molded it into only hours before. She made no move to readjust her hair or cape; she was focused solely on me. Her eyes searched mine and then pulled back from my gaze without warning. She said after a few minutes, still circling around me like a vulture did its prey, “The reason you were miserable earlier-the reason you still are miserable-is because the object of your affections does not know that you are alive.”

    I flinched as if I’d been slapped.

    She flipped over one of my hands and stroked my open palm. “You are a craftsman,” she somehow observed, sliding delicate fingers over the unblemished skin on my palm. “You forge necessary utilities, and yet you take great care with them. You care for them as if they are your children.”

    I yanked my hand from hers, my eyes wide with disbelief. “How did you know that?” I demanded.

   “I know things,” she said simply.

    “A witch?” I croaked.

    “No,” she replied, smiling softly.

    The sound of clattering hooves sounded nearer, but I found that I couldn’t take my eyes off of Jordana. “What are you?” I whispered.

    She closed the distance between us in one dramatic step and snaked an arm around my neck. She whispered roughly into my ear, “I am the answer to all of your prayers. All you have to do is trust me. All you have to do is close your eyes. Then, nothing in the world can stop you from having everything that you desire, including the woman.”

    She had to be a witch. There was no way that she could know everything she knew. There was the slightest chance that she could be a gypsy fortune-teller, but I highly doubted it.

    She was no gypsy. The grace that she possessed when she moved her body was otherworldly. She didn’t walk so much as she slithered. The hem of her dress brushed the ground, but I noticed that not a smudge of dirt touched the dress. I wouldn’t have said that she was a gypsy, but she could have definitely been a witch.

    She laughed abruptly and shook her head. She pressed the length of her body against mine. “Allow me to show you all that I can do for you,” she said, brushing my shoulder-length hair off my neck.

    A moment later, her lips were on my lips. Kissing her was addictive; whenever she pulled away, I felt as if she’d taken my very breath from me. I held her tightly to me. I couldn’t get enough of her. I think that at one point, I wanted to swallow her whole. We were kissing and panting, a moment away from rolling around right there on the filthy ground in the town square.

    Her lips moved from my mouth to my cheek and from my cheek to my earlobe. Then I felt her teeth gently tugging at the spot of skin just beneath my ear. She nicked me with her teeth, gently at first. She whispered dirty things into my ear that a lady wouldn’t dare utter. Her hands moved to my waist and started to tug at my trousers.

    Never before had I met a woman this aggressive. It was beginning to frighten me. All of a sudden, I didn’t want to be touching her. I didn’t want to be near her. Both of my hands closed over her hands.

    She pulled back and saw the hesitancy in my eyes. A flash of disappointment crossed her beautiful face, but the expression was gone as quickly as it had appeared.

    “I do not want to do this,” I whispered, squeezing her hands with mine.

    She turned her back to me and pulled her cowl over the top of her head.

    “I do not wish to taint your spirits,” I said quickly.

     She hugged her arms around her torso and ducked her head. I couldn’t be sure, but I think I saw her shoulders shake. She seemed to be sobbing.

    I rolled my eyes heavenward and cleared my throat. “I will escort you home. The hour grows late.” I slid an arm across her shoulders.

    She raised her face to look up at me, and it was not the face of Jordana that stared at me, but the face of Bridgette.

    My breath caught in my throat. I didn’t trust my eyes; I couldn’t trust my eyes. The woman standing before me wasn’t Bridgette. I knew that, and yet...my hand stretched out and brushed wavy strands of gold from her cheeks.

    Her eyes were lowered coyly. It wasn’t Bridgette, and yet...it was. Her sweet, flowery scent teased my nostrils. Her shy, gentle smile beamed at me with the brightness of a thousand suns. “Iancu,” she breathed, cupping my face in both of her hands.

    I closed my eyes and closed a hand over her right wrist. As much as I knew it wasn’t Bridgette, I allowed myself to believe that it was. In my mind, I was slowly bending to kiss the lips of Bridgette. My arms were snaking around the waist of Bridgette. I was lowering onto the grass with my lady, the love of my life.

    “I have always wanted you,” she said softly and even her voice had changed. “I have wanted to tell you all this time how I feel about you, but I could not.”

    “I understand,” I said, my voice choked with emotion.

    The grass around us bent at the heat of our passion. Our kisses were frenzied and our lovemaking was anything but gentle. Her nails dug into my shoulders and her ankles locked behind my back.

    I barely felt the sharp incisors piercing my throat; the ecstasy rocking my body was that intense. My blood stained her teeth and dripped onto the pristine white collar of my shirt. I began to feel dizzy; I could barely keep my eyes open. When the sensation of her teeth on my flesh finally registered to me, it felt wondrous. She pressed her wrist to my lips and without being told, I pierced her skin with my teeth and drank from her.

    A world of color exploded behind my eyes as her rich, dark blood coated my throat. I was hungry for her body, hungry for her blood, hungry to have every bit of her inside of me. I didn’t have an understanding of my feelings and emotions at the time. I don’t have an understanding of those feelings to this day. All I knew was that I wanted to sink my nails into her skin and carve my name into it. I wanted to peel her open and climb inside of her. All of the actions that I pictured inside of my head were barbaric and carnal.

    I pressed urgent kisses to her brow, her cheeks, and her mouth. I pawed at the bodice of her gown and howled at the crescent moon. At that moment, I couldn’t have cared less if all of the neighborhood residents exited their houses to see what all of the commotion was about. I had my woman beneath me, and that was all that mattered. 

    When the last of the tremors shook from my body, I stretched out on the grass beside her. Her fingers were intertwined with mine and mine with hers. Our eyes met, but the blonde hair changed colors before my tired eyes. The roots of her hair darkened to a glossy, dark red. The color spread from root to tip of each strand of hair on her head. The emerald green eyes turned violet and her complexion paled.

    I hadn’t made love to Bridgette at all, of course. I’d made love to Jordana...a stranger, a woman I’d barely known. The scent I’d recognized, the voice I’d heard, and the woman that had seemed so familiar...all of that had been a ruse.

“It is called glamour,” Jordana said, sitting up and adjusting her gown. “Soon, you will have the ability to do it as easily as I did.”

    “I do not understand.”

    “You are not the man you were twenty minutes ago,” she informed me, rising to her feet. “I have enabled you with the power to obtain your every whim, your every desire.”

    “I still do not understand.”

    “You soon will,” she assured me.

    Before I knew what was happening, I was introduced to a different type of life. My humanity was snatched from me as if it were a ripe berry, plump for the picking. It was devoured and nothing was left but an empty shell. All the information that I had gathered previous to this particular night meant nothing, because as of that night, I was changed.

    I was no longer a mere human man. I was so much more than that. I was at that point a breed of vampire, sired by Jordana. My strength was magnified at least tenfold. I was able to fool the naked eye with glamour, an ability that leads one or many to see what is not truly there. At times, I had the ability to be invisible to the naked eye. I could travel nearly at the speed of sound. I had heightened senses and the power to read minds. I could manipulate the energy around me and move objects without physically touching them.

    I loved hearing the tales that she told me about her people. She was a natural vampire; that meant she’d been born as a vampire. No one had stolen her humanity; she never had humanity to begin with.

    She explained that vampires were rumored to be the undead, trapped between the world of the living and the world of the dead. “I don’t like to think of us as being the undead,” she said to me one night beneath a starlit sky. “Our bodies operate much like the bodies of humans. We just need human blood in order for our bodies to function. Our hearts don’t beat consistently, unless we provoke it. We don’t have a pulse steadily thumping at our throats. That is why we need to feed so often; the blood in our systems isn’t circulated quickly enough to sustain us for long. But we cry, we sweat, we require sustenance in order to survive, and although we are often referred to as immortal, we can die.”