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  He scooted across the tub until his shoulder pressed to mine. “Are you thirsty?” he whispered against my ear.

  I shivered and leaned into him, realizing that yes, I was thirsty, more thirsty than I could ever remember being in my life. I wanted to drink, to suckle like a starved babe at his neck. His fingers curled into my hair as he guided my lips to his cool skin. The scent of him, like incense, sent butterflies flurrying in my stomach. My body warmed in the most delicious way. My lips brushed his skin, back and forth. My gums tingled, frightening me, but he held me in place with a firm grip at the back of my head.

  “Drink, little angel. I know you thirst. I know what it feels like. I am yours to feed from whenever you have need.”

  His voice spurred me on. My mouth opened, and I licked a wet place over him before I bit. It felt natural as if I had done so all my life. My teeth, longer than they had been moments before, pierced the layer of skin and a fount of thick liquid passed over my lips. I pressed my lips to the wound and drank it down, each gulp a languid pulse over my tongue, down my throat, filling me as no drink I’d known. I wanted more, every last drop of him. I pulled and swallowed for so long I feared he might get angry.

  Instead, his free hand ran along my back, stroking up and down my water-slicked skin. He awakened a darkness in me, a passion, a burning need. His thoughts pushed into my mind and I obeyed, straddling him ever so gently. Between us, his erection touched my inner thigh. I knew I should pull away, should release his neck and stop this insanity, but I didn’t.

  Holding me to him, he moaned and swayed. His hand traced my behind, tickling with tender circles before he swept his fingers between us to grip his cock. Knuckles rubbed against my womanly folds while he stroked his length.

  “More,” he urged. “Drink more. Take all of me. I’m yours.”

  His blood was not enough. I found I did want more. I had always planned to save myself for someone I loved, someone I planned to spend the rest of my life with. Rory pushed away those musings. He guided his rigid erection to my center and entered me. I whimpered, still suckling the line of escaping blood. It hurt but not in an unbearable way. He rocked forth, burying himself to the end. My nipples raked over his chest. I drank and joined his rhythm, quaking with so many sensations at once—his blood, his scent, his body connected to mine, our minds twisting with dual thoughts.

  As we continued, I floated in a bliss-filled haze of red. I tried to remember what it was about my old life I so needed to get back to. It all seemed so far away, so long ago and insignificant. My blurred existence with Rory tasted good. I drank my fill and then some. Releasing him, I leaned back, bucking my hips. He groaned and squeezed my hip. His face tensed, his mouth open and his eyes pinched tight. His cry of pleasure racked an echoing one from me. We had danced a sacred mating dance and reached our climax at almost exactly the same moment. Of all the things I had not expected from him, the pleasure he gave me was the most surprising.

  I cried afterward, his body still part of mine. He hushed me and held me, whispering and trailing kisses over my face. He licked away my tears, blood tears that stained his tongue and lips red. His mouth returned to mine over and over until I gave in to his gentle assault and tasted him. Our tongues met and rolled in unison. He tasted right. I can explain it no other way.

  When the water cooled, we stepped out of the tub. I stood before him, naked and embarrassed. He toweled off my body, his pale hands contrasting with my chocolate-colored skin. We didn’t match at all save out thirsts. I was way too young for him, and he, despite his outward appearance, was a good many years too old for me.

  “We’ll hunt another night,” he soothed, guiding me out of the room. We walked, hand in hand, through a wide hall lined with lesser paintings, all dark and grim, ones I feared staring at for long. Entering an ornate bedroom, we paused. The bed centered the chamber, a place larger than the apartment I’d grown up in. Crimson curtains were tied back on one side, revealing a sumptuous mattress and comforter which was turned back, inviting repose.

  “Sleep in my arms,” he said. “Tonight and every night after. I don’t want to be without you.”

  I nodded, still a victim in his mind-play, for I felt his hold even though he surely tried to hide his dominance from me. He closed the curtain, submerging us in a sensual darkness where all I knew was the feel of satin against my skin and his touch, cool and erotic, on my nakedness. We spooned together beneath the sheets. A strange sleep overtook me in which I walked through dreams that felt like memories. They were places in Rory’s mind, a plantation, slave-houses, a woman with braided hair and skin black as night who loomed over me. She smiled with teeth as sharp as my new lover’s, and she spoke in a language I could not discern. This woman took my hand and guided me through fields of cotton abloom beneath a navy night sky twinkling with stars.

  “Who are you?” I asked over and over, aware at some point that I spoke aloud. I turned in the massive bed, my hand reaching for the man who’d shared himself with me in the bath. I found nothing. I opened my eyes and looked for him. The bed remained empty except for me. “Rory?” I called, a little frightened. I didn’t know him or this house. Who else might live here? What if something had happened to him and I was all alone? Being alone terrified me. I tried to remember someone, another name I should call for, but a now familiar pressure pushed away my worries.

  “The sun has set, my angel. Come and walk in the gardens with me.”

  “Rory?” I whispered. His mind-call compelled me to rise and walk, still naked and barefoot, through the mansion. I can’t say I knew where to go, only that the pull of his mind led me to the French doors in the rear of the house. A tinge of gold remained on the horizon, fast melting beyond to be lost from my sight. My eyes ached if I tried to study it too long.

  I glimpsed my lover on a terrace overlooking a fountain. He faced the east, his auburn hair blowing in the breeze in strands. He wore only long pants, his fair skin aglow in the waning light. He held out his hand to me without turning.

  I opened the doors and hurried to him. The perfume of blooming flowers overwhelmed me. A bird twittered out in the vast expanse of greenery. “This is like a really big park,” I said, feeling young and silly. I don’t know what he saw in me. Our fingers interlaced. He embraced me and kissed my temple.

  “Yes. A park of sorts. I find peace here at times.”

  I nuzzled against his chest, breathing deep and longing to bite him once more. Pain flared in my stomach, soon echoed all through my body. I groaned, and he massaged my back with his other hand to soothe me.

  “You hunger,” he explained. “It will grow worse until you feed properly. I can sustain you for a time, a few weeks at most.” His mouth sought mine. He smothered me in a kiss. We parted when the sky became dark. Staring into me, he told me more of what my future held.

  “After you feed, you’ll change. You’ll be able to shift your shape to other forms. It varies…for our kind.” Rory looked out over the garden.

  I followed his gaze to the fountain, noticing a sculpture holding up the basin. A woman’s form, curved and alluring, familiar as the dream I’d had the day before. I squinted and asked for more information. “Shift into what? What do you mean?”

  He chuckled. He tensed his shoulders and encircled mine with his arms. A shushing sound crackled behind him and his wings, something I’d nearly forgotten, spread out behind him. They were not beautiful to look upon, but I struggle to explain them. I reached out and grazed my fingertips over the furry softness. They did not comfort me, but quickened my curiosity. “You said I’d fly. Last night you said…”

  “You will, little angel.” He stretched his wings. Flapping through the air, he carried us over the monstrous garden with its manicured trees and spans of labyrinth shrubs. “But you must feed first.”

  He carried me over the hills and through a sky which slowly turned pink in my changed state of vision. I couldn’t help but wonder, as the ache in my stomach strengthened, at how the sky r
eddened to a deep bloody shade. Blood. I licked my lips thinking I needed to taste it. Below us, suburban homes whizzed past. My gums itched, and I didn’t wait for his leave this time. I bit into Rory’s shoulder, drinking him down in greedy gulps.

  He tasted so good, like rich chocolate melting slowly in my mouth. As I fed, I felt him even more, the inklings of his thoughts, his desire, his need for me. He needed me for some reason I couldn’t fathom.

  We landed in an alley behind a stretch of condominiums. Hands rested against my face, tugging me away. The double wounds I’d caused faded to a matching set of pink scars. Car exhaust and fresh-cut grass scented the light evening breeze.

  “You’re still thirsty, aren’t you?” He dragged his thumb across my lip. It came away bloody. Rory drew it to his mouth and sucked away the evidence of what I’d done. He slid his thumb free in slow motion. The glint of his fangs made my heart race.

  A basketball thumped against concrete not far away. It sounded like it came from the yard to our right. The red night sky pulsed. A pale moon began its ascent. “Yes,” I answered at last, doubtful I could ever feed from anyone other than him.

  Chapter Five

  Wings

  I followed him, my lover, my father, the creature leading me down my path of darkness. He had birthed me into this existence and I needed him to survive, to understand what I needed to keep me alive. Rory and I entered the small yard through a side gate.

  The boy couldn’t have been more than sixteen. With cropped blond hair and in a T-shirt and jeans, he could have been anyone’s son. He was someone’s son, but that thought didn’t matter to me. He’d not been playing long enough to work up a sweat. He ran across the makeshift court, arched, and shot the ball. It passed through the hoop with a whoosh and bounced back toward my prey. When he caught it, the vein on his neck stood out.

  I swallowed. Pain lanced through me. I had to have him, to taste him, to hold him down and nip through his skin, straight into that vein. His heartbeat pounded in my ears. I darted forth, Rory shadowing me. The boy cried out before my hand clamped over his mouth. But it was a small scream. I doubted anyone heard him.

  For an instant I heard his thoughts, his confusion and questions. His eyes glazed over. The boy buckled beneath me even though he stood a head higher than I did. We fell together, me across his body. My fingers slipped away from his mouth. His eyes widened.

  “I need you,” I told him.

  He nodded, but understanding didn’t sparkle in his gaze. He leaned back in surrender. I moved forward and sniffed at him, a lioness with a meal in my claws, toying, savoring. The vein pulsed, inviting me. His heart slowed.

  “Take him,” Rory advised, his urgent voice filling my mind. “He is yours, little angel. Feed.”

  My fingers trembled. I kissed the boy’s neck in a soft way, but hunger took over. My bite hurt him. He made a small sound in the back of his throat. Then he fell silent. I drank and suckled until I could take no more. Sitting back on my ankles, his blood wetting my lips and chin, I watched the boy die. He stared up at the sky—which had now turned a blue-black—and breathed a few choked sighs before he died.

  A distant part of my mind told me I should feel regret. I felt nothing, except satiated. Cold hands gripped my shoulders. I remembered I sat there nude, a murderer, a predator. I had killed and fed. The boy’s blood ran through me now, heating me, empowering me.

  “You took him gently,” Rory said, pride in his tone. “Now give of your blood and seal his wound. Leave his passing a mystery.”

  I didn’t understand.

  My mentor sat beside me and took my hand. He brought my fingers to his lips, kissing each one before he took the smallest and pierced it with his fang. I flinched. He lowered my bloodied finger to the boy’s neck and smeared it across the wounds. Skin reached for skin. The holes closed, and the pink scar left behind faded.

  Rory and I left by the winds, just as we’d come. I clung to him, my back itching with a burning heat. The boy’s face haunted me long into the night and for many nights thereafter. I couldn’t do it again, never again, yet each time Rory took me out into the night, I did do it. The animal within me took over. I drank, killed, and I began to revel in it.

  I lost count of days as they melted into weeks, months, even years. The Angela I had been became a fleeting thought, not even worthy of being a memory. Rory and I made love often enough, his pursuits to teach me all he had learned over his incomprehensible lifetime a delight. But something was missing. I had lost a part of me. When I tried to remember what it could be, my mentor would find me—whether I walked among the roses in the enormous garden or lurked in the basement reading by candlelight—and he would kiss away my sadness.

  “You must stop,” he told me one night as I struggled over an oil painting, badly copying a Rembrandt. I liked the arts but had no talent at all. He kept telling me I would one day. I slashed a great black X across the woman’s face and tossed my brush to the floor.

  “Stop what?”

  “Pining for who you were. We are now, not the past. We just are.”

  My eyes narrowed. “I don’t understand what you mean.”

  “Stop trying to remember. There’s nothing for you, nothing. I’ve given you a better life. How can you mope around like you do? What do you need? What more can you possibly want?”

  I closed my eyes, straining for an answer. His mind had wrapped so tight over my own that no answer could penetrate his hold. It irritated me. I knew he controlled me to a point, and I was growing tired of it. I shoved the easel backward, causing it to crash to the floor in a messy heap. The canvas skidded away.

  “Petulant woman,” Rory muttered and left me there with my bitterness.

  I had belonged somewhere once, and I knew it wasn’t this mansion, this cold, empty building where every material need offered me only made me want for more. The paintings, the infernal oil paintings all over the walls bespoke cruelty and torture. “I hate it here!” I yelled, knowing he could hear me well enough even if I whispered. I heard everything now. If I tried, I could hear the cars driving along the highway miles away. With concentration, I could pinpoint the chirp of a single cricket out in the garden. These new talents were wondrous and beautiful at first, but now I hated them, hated what he was making me into.

  “I’m leaving you!” I screeched and ran up the stairs half expecting him to be in the hall to stop me. He wasn’t. The back doors had been flung open and the cold night air assaulted me through my thin nightgown. I ran outside and shouted like a lunatic. “I’m leaving! I’ll never come back to you! You can’t keep me here!”

  The wind picked up. My skin prickled. Clenching my fingers into fists, I stomped up the spiral wrought-iron staircase to the roof of the house. There we often sat and watched the moon or the stars while he held me and talked of his other life—a time when men owned slaves and wallowed in wealth without regard for those they stepped on along the way. I thought of his words as I strode to the railing overlooking the garden so many floors below. “You’re the same as you were then,” I whispered. At least he could remember what he was before. I could not.

  Hunger twisted my stomach when I climbed over the rail and stood on the edge teetering. But I had no plans to hunt this night, to turn into the demon I harbored so I could feed on the living. I spread my arms out, closed my eyes, and jumped.

  The air enveloped me. My back itched and burned like never before. Panic crushed my thoughts—not my panic, but Rory’s. He knew what I’d done. I felt him coming for me. Skin tore; flesh burst forth at my shoulders. I screamed at what I was, angry for all of it as my wings ripped their way into being. He kept telling me I would fly one night. How ironic it would be the one night I wanted to fall.

  The new appendages fanned wide, my body’s instinct—or perhaps the instinct of the thing inside me—struggling to gain height. I tensed and they flapped. When I opened my eyes, the blood-red furry wings I’d grown to admire folded around me. Rory clutched my body to his, carr
ying me higher, up and far from the death I wanted.

  “No,” I said through sobs. “Let me go. I don’t belong here with you.”

  His skin, hot against mine since he’d recently fed, comforted my anguish. “You must be strong, little angel. We must go on and survive. Don’t let the darkness get to you. There’s always the moon and the lights. The splendor of the stars. You’re sad. Let me make you happy.”

  “I don’t want to kill anymore.” My fingers clawed at him in a weak way. I wanted to fight, but his mind-hold over me prevented it.

  “Shh. Come away with me. We’ll go to the river and talk.” His heart beat within his chest, close to my ear. With his wings, he carried us far from the city and his ornate home filled with oddities—me being one of them.

  In the quiet of the wilds, we landed on the banks of the St. John. My guardian held me in his lap while I cried. Fingers combed through my hair, occasionally pausing to stroke my wings. I hated them. Black and overly large, they made me look like some dark angel of death. “I want to go back to what I was,” I pled.

  “This is what you are, my little angel, my lover, my cherished one.” He lifted my chin with two fingers to regard me. Dried blood stained his stern lips. Freckles stood out in a splash across his nose, faded from time but still present. “I know I please you when we make love, that you find joy in the gifts I bring you. I know too that you revel in our hunts and take pride in slaying our prey with tenderness. What more do you want from life?”

  I thought over his question. I wanted to answer it now, to push past the veil of darkness he clouded my mind with. “I want to remember who I was before you. You’ve taken that from me. Give it back.”

  He frowned. Sparkles of light dusted his pupils, indicating his depth of thought. When he turned angry, they would be red, and when happiness flooded him, they showed golden, and in the throes of bliss, they sparkled with every color imaginable. A palm pressed to my left cheek before Rory kissed me. “Very well,” he said against my lips.