The Craving

There is a hunger that consumes me in the night. I seek out the one thing that will satiate this craving. I smell it long before the object of my desire comes into view, no matter where I might find it. It is a strong scent. Coppery, with iron, and flesh, and salt.

I need it.

When I wake, long after the sun goes down, I seek out the scent. I follow it through the streets, through open doors, through windows. It calls to me from many places, from many people, all at once. But there is one that I desire more than the others.

She has captured me. After all these years, she has caught my imagination, and it is her I see when I follow the others. No matter who they are, how warm or cold, how large, how quiet, I find that it is her. I feel the brush of her long hair on my hands and arms. It is her short nails that rake over my shoulders. It is her rough hands that clasp my head close. It is her slightly bitter, briny taste that reaches my lips. It is her smell -- that rich, metallic odor -- that causes the rising of sensations in my own body.

They are all the same. Some struggle when I rip their clothes away. Some scream and try to fight. I always overpower them. The need for their juices causes me to be rough sometimes, but they never fail to react. At first it is fear. They distrust my pale skin and sharp fangs. Those things that mark me as being different. They despise my cold flesh.

Then they feel my lips against theirs. They feel my tongue seeking out the nub of flesh between their curls, titillating and teasing that center of nerves until their juices run freely. Many times they still object. They try to push me away when I strip away the bits of scrap they use to protect themselves from being soiled, but it needs to be taken away before I can reach the rich flavor of their blood. I need to rid them of these human things to feed on the natural reactions of the human woman near the end of her cycle. There can be no barrier between me and my feast.

And, when that barrier is gone, I work in earnest. I work at her -- the one I see -- to make her writhe with pleasure. I suckle at that button of flesh while my fingers twist and pinch at her nipples. When they rise up and become hard, it hardens bits of my flesh as well. When her body starts to twist and her legs wrap around my shoulders, when her back arches and she starts groaning in pleasure, that is when my tongue moves quickly. Inside her deep well it lengthens, filling her, seeking out the last droplets of salty liquid and bits of blood -- those things I need to stay as I am.

Then her hips start to buck. She produces more, letting it flow freely between my waiting lips and over my eager tongue, down my ever arid throat, into my waiting belly, and my body reacts. I can sense when she nears her finish, and my body hardens. It becomes warm, as hers is. With each drop it increases the old feel of humanity and makes this insatiable need harder to bear. I become impatient and move more quickly, an aching desire welling up from within my soul, willing for her to go on like this for hours -- until I no longer feel the craving that has consumed me for centuries. Yet I know this will end all too soon, and I can feel it coming. I can feel her body tensing, bucking wildly, out of control, her voice echoing wordlessly and rising in pitch with a fevered tone buried within it, until she can no longer vocalize in the height of her lust. When her rush of release and the sweet juices flow into my waiting mouth, that rare sensation occurs, and for just a moment I am near human again.

My release comes as well.

Then she is gone. I am left holding a strange woman, whose sex juices and the last vestiges of her bloody time is left stuck to my cheeks and lips. I am left with a strange woman who knows nothing of me, yet begs for more. I am left with my own sex juices over the lower half of my own body and a coldness creeping up from deep inside.

I leave her there, this stranger, and run back to where I hide throughout the day. I lay in my crypt, hidden away from the human world, and wait. I know that when night falls again, the hunger will return. I will seek out another. I will see her. Until then, I wait, and hunger for her body once more.