Temptation's Kiss Ch. 03

She sighed deeply. She had been too hard on him. Not that he had been all that easy to live with either, but she had to be fair; she was afraid to be alone, too. After 500 years, she imagined she might be a little manic about it, too. She wondered what had happened to the one that had made him? Had he, too, gone mad with loneliness and grief and done the same thing Adrian had, out of desperation?

She shuddered, and put the necklace on, anything to draw attention away from how haggard she looked. The red stone settled over her heart in the cave between her breasts and glowed softly. How like his eyes it was! Suddenly, she missed him terribly, and hauled herself out of the chair to wander the castle, to find somebody… anybody.

The liquid strains of the harpsichord were amplified beautifully in the old ballroom. Adrian’s preternaturally swift fingers played over the ancient mahogany keys, drawing out the piece like running water, flawless, perfect, crisp and fluid. His burning red eyes were closed in concentration, his handsome face tipped back with the rapture of the music written across the sharp features. He had discarded the duster and hat, his long, slender neck rising gracefully from the plunging open collar of his white poet shirt, gleaming softly in the sepulchral darkness of the deserted ballroom. A candle flared to life nearby with a soft hiss. Michael’s gold-rimmed glasses flashed briefly in the glow. His somber face followed in the light, his soft amber eyes focused on the vampire at the harpsichord. Another candle was lit, then another. Soon, the great room was lit with the softly glowing flames of hundreds of tapers in brass sconces and candelabras positioned everywhere. The high ceiling was still in shadow, though now the cobwebs hanging from the chandeliers looked more like streamers in the candlelight. Bernard, with a satisfied grin, puffed out the lighting taper in his hand and melted into the shadows.

Michael stepped out behind Adrian into the room, lifted his violin to his chin, and entered the tune seamlessly, blending his falling leaves with Adrian’s running water. The music formed a more perfect picture, passion and beauty in a pastoral fall milieu. The notes wove intricately, expertly, flawlessly in and around each other, painting the piece in the vibrancy of life neither musician possessed, but which both remembered with poignancy.

Suddenly, Adrian smashed his hands into the keyboard with a toneless cacophony, screaming in rage. Michael pulled the bow from his strings and watched, helplessly, as the vampire rose from the bench, knocking it over and sending it flying behind him, and, screaming still, continued to bash at the antique harpsichord until his knuckles bled red on the wood keys. He stopped just short of doing damage to the instrument, turned and continued to howl into the silent room, his rage echoing eerily through the halls. Finally, Adrian fell to his knees, a drop that would have shattered the kneecaps of a human on the marble floor just off the rug, buried his face in his hands and shrieked beneath the veil of his silken black hair. A hopeless sound.

Frantic, Michael tried to comfort the distraught vampire, but nothing he said or did could get through to him. He could not touch him to distract him from his misery, so, with a flash of inspiration, he rushed from the room.

He found Branwen on a slow, staggering approach to the ballroom, looking like the walking dead, her eyes full of pain, and ran to her. She flinched weakly and held her arms up as if to ward off a collision, closing her eyes, which resulted in Michael catching her in his arms before she collapsed entirely on the floor.

“What is it, Michael?” she asked, her words slurring some, “What’s going on?”

“You have to come with me, Branwen,” he panted, pulling her to her feet, “It’s Adrian, he’s lost his mind!”

“Well, that’s a big surprise…”

Michael’s hand was warm on her face, his thumb rested on her cheek beneath her eye to remind her to keep her eyes closed, but she could hear the concern in his dulcet tone. “You… you’re cold. Freezing. And you look like…”

“Hell?” she finished for him, almost too tired to open her eyes.

“Jesus Christ, this is killing you,” he breathed, “You’re dying.”

“I’m a vampire,” she whispered, “I can’t die, I’m already dead.”

“No! Dammit, Branwen!” the shade picked up her weakening body and carried her to the ballroom where Adrian still knelt on the floor, bent so low his forehead was touching the cold stone, keening.

Still cradling Branwen in his arms, Michael knelt beside the vampire and grabbed his shoulder, firmly. His reverie broken, Adrian slowly lifted his head to gaze, thunderstruck, first at his hand, then at his face.

“Mick?” he said softly, raising his hand to brush the stubble on the shade’s cheek, nearly flinching when he connected with warm flesh.

“Adrian, Branwen is dying,” Michael mumbled, distracted by the vampire’s gentle contact. “God, Adrian…”

The vampire sat up farther, and took Michael’s face in his hands reverently, running his thumbs across his cheekbones, his eyebrows, his lips with an expression of disbelief on his vulpine features. It was as though he was seeing him for the first time ever, and he was drinking every last minute detail that he could in that single shining moment. He moved closer, encountering Branwen’s body between them, and heard her soft sigh as he reached over her to pull the shade’s body closer. As though something might happen to end the moment, Adrian impetuously pressed his lips to Michael’s, crushing him against his chest, cutting both their lips with his fangs. The shade laid the woman’s body on the floor between them, carefully maintaining contact with her, and held the vampire close to him, looking into his eyes, losing himself.

“Do you think I could… just in this moment…?” Adrian mused aloud, brushing Michael’s errant curls from his high forehead.

“There is no blood in my body for you to drink, Adrian. That body was buried 200 years ago. I cannot come back. We have but this moment left us… and she whom has made this possible lies dying between us. If we don’t help her soon, she will die, and this will all be for nothing. Please, Adrian, help her. Then, at least, you will not be alone.”

Adrian grit his teeth, his face grimacing in the agony of the moment, but he pulled Michael in for one, last, breathtaking kiss, their tongues intertwining warmly. When they parted, the vampire lifted his hand to catch a crystalline tear that traced down the shade’s pale cheek with his thumb, his own eyes full of pain. “I have always loved you, Mick, no matter what awful things I may have said to you.”

“I know.”

Adrian picked up the girl and carried her to one of the couches that lined the sides of the great ballroom, laying her down gently, as though she were fragile as glass. He stood, and turned to Michael, his expression odd, or at least it seemed odd, as Mick had not seen this look on his face since he, himself, coughed the last of his own life away in a fever haze of blood, sweat and pain. “Watch over her,” the vampire said, then turned and fled from the room in a clicking of his boot heels and flying silken black hair.

Michael sat beside the unconscious woman on the couch, holding her hand, and waited. It was all he could do, and he was good at it, having learned the patience the vampire never had in all his years of bloodlust.

Adrian came back some hours later with a bundle in his arms, a rather small one at that. Michael stood quickly to regard him with no small ferocity. “Of all the horrid things, Adrian! A child?!?”

“Shut up, Mick, I know what I am doing,” Adrian hissed, unwrapping the bundle and kneeling beside Branwen on the floor. “I don’t like it any more than you do. I would never have chosen this for her, myself, but we have little choice in the matter now. She has not the strength to overpower an adult by herself, and this child has little time to live, besides. Let his last moments be a haze of cradling arms, her eyes, a tiny pain, then oblivion sweeter than mother’s milk.”

“Oh God…” the shade wept.

“Kiss her one last time, Mick,” Adrian said, his voice husky with anticipation, “It will be your last.”

Michael knelt beside her once more, and brushed the locks of her bangs away from her tortured eyes. She awoke, her eyelids fluttering a little. “Michael?” she whispered.

“This is it, love, you must drink now, or you will die.”

“If I die now, would I become a ghost like you?”

“No, love,” he replied, his voice thick with tears, “You wouldn’t. I don’t know what would happen to you, but you could not be here with me. I hate to think of what you would become. Less than human. Please. Make this kill. Stay with Adrian, for he is so desperately lonely.”

“He cannot love me,” she sighed dismissively, “Let me die.”

“No, love. There you are wrong. He is capable of loving, deeply. You have no idea. You will understand when you do this thing. Do it for you. Do it for him. Do it for me. Then, at least, I will see you around.”

“I will miss your touch.”

“And I, yours, love.”

He bent down and kissed her lips as her eyes closed, so tender, so gentle, so reverent. Before he broke contact with her, Adrian put a hand on his old friend’s shoulder, and smiled for him encouragingly. The shade then stepped back and out of the way as the vampire sat beside Branwen on the couch, removing his duster and hat.

Adrian pulled her up to sit, propped on the arm, and put the bundle in her arms. A moue of distaste crossed her features, but the Master held the child’s neck closer to her lips. The child made little sound, so far gone was he, when with tears in her eyes, she bared her starving fangs and buried them in his neck. Strength flowed up through her limbs like red light as she cradled the tiny victim in her arms and drained the essence from his body, rocking it slowly. The circles beneath her eyes faded and smoothed, her hair grew lustrous and thick, and though her skin was still pale, it took on a ruddier hue instead of the ghastly chalky colour it had achieved over the course of days of starvation. As she came out of the blood thrall, she chanced to look down at the bundle in her arms. The boy was young, barely 4 if that, and nothing but spindly limbs and blonde hair, but his face was peaceful, as though he were asleep. Branwen began to weep as Adrian took the child from her, wrapped the body, and handed it off to Bernard who seemed to be ever at his elbow appearing out of the shadows.

“How could you?” Branwen sobbed, beating Adrian’s chest half-heartedly with her fists, “That was a child! Have you no ethics at all?”

“Listen to me!” Adrian snapped, grabbing her shoulders, “You were going to die. I could not live with that. There was no way you were going to overpower an adult in the condition you were in. I had to do something. Yes, I have ethics, and normally I would not have taken a child, but the situation called for delicacy. You can be angry with me, if you want, there is little I can do about it, but I did what I had to, and I am not sorry I did.”

Branwen sniffed, halting her pummeling to bow her head and rest it on Adrian’s bare chest where his shirt lay open. The vampire sighed, and put his arms around her, stroking her hair and holding her.

“I’m sorry,” Branwen whispered. “You were saving my life. I know. I am sorry. I should have listened to you. I’m so confused, and afraid, and lost, I hardly know what to do with myself.”

“Are you going to break down like this every time you make a kill, girlchild?”

“Oh, tell me it wasn’t a hard thing for you to face when it was your turn to have to do such things!”

“We can be angels of mercy to those to whom death has been denied for whatever reason. The suffering, the lost, the dying. That woman yesterday: she was dying of heroin withdrawals. Her next hit would have killed her. The child just now: a homeless vagrant orphan, living under a bridge, dying of starvation and disease. When we take them it is a mercy, and the pain is so brief, the rest is soft as cream. Nobody will notice they are missing. Nobody will miss them. They have a brief moment in your arms, looking into your beautiful red eyes, and they succumb to you thankfully. It may be the only kindness they have been shown in their entire lives. We are gods, my love. No one will tell you otherwise. We rule the night. Do not despair.”

She looked up, catching a glimpse of Michael over Adrian’s shoulder, faded and brooding, then looked back at her Master, “But we aren’t perfect…”

The vampire cast a glance over his shoulder at the shade, then turned back to his fledgling. “No, and I will tell you why. Part of us, maybe the best part, is still human. To err is human. To love is human. When we lose sight of that, then we will truly be monsters. Believe me, tesoro mio, there are monsters out there. You will meet them in time. Until then, will you trust me? Do as I say? The rewards are endless.”

She blinked slowly with a sigh, and leaned forward to press her lips to his, slipping her fingers through his silken hair. He returned the kiss, deepening it, pushing his warm tongue past her fangs and teaching her, even then, how to kiss with the long canines in the way. The new sensations were astounding to the new vampire. Her skin was so sensitive, every nerve alive as it had never been, and the kiss was an endless delight. She could feel every tiny nuance of his smooth skin, his silken hair like tendrils of shadow in her fingers, his hot tongue and lips on hers burned like fire, his ivory fangs hard, long, and sharp.

He lay her down on the couch beneath him, covering her with his body, and continued kissing her, passionately. His fingers stroked through her hair, reveling in the new luster her curls had taken on with the change. He growled deep and low in his throat, the sound seeming to emanate from his chest as he undressed her beneath him. She writhed, accommodating his skillful fingers as he bared her body to the cool air and the heat of his own body. His skin felt like warm alabaster, and she stroked his back and shoulders over and over again, never tiring of the smooth hardness beneath her fingertips. He was surprisingly gentle with her. Even though she could already tell she was tougher and stronger than any human being alive, his touch with her now was more tender than it had ever been, more thorough. She no longer had a pulse to drive him mad with bloodlust, and this was the way he loved. When he entered her, the sensation drove her half insane with rapture, feeling every inch as a new level of ecstasy. He thrust slowly into her, building the pleasure incrementally, still growling softly. She was beyond rational response with the agony of lust she found herself in, moving with the thrust of his lean hips to take him in deeper, faster, harder. She dug furrows into his muscular back with her claws, now fully formed, and screamed her release, the howl echoing through the ballroom. Her lover was carried right over by her tremors, and the cry torn from his graceful throat joined hers in the halls, chasing one another like a pack of wild wolves.

They lay together for a long moment, it may have been minutes, it may have been hours, neither could ever tell in the timelessness that is undeath. Time meant little anymore to those that would live forever.

A violin crooned its sorrow to the quiet that fell… and did not go unheard.