Down the Long Empty Nights

"What have you done to me?" Erin asked, burying her face in her hands.

"I have given you a gift."

"But why?"

"Because I love you. Time will not mar your beauty, nor steal your vigor, nor rob you at last of breath. I cannot stand such torment again."

"You're a vampire! You can't love me. Even if you could you don't even know me!"

"I know you. More personally than your first lover, I know you. I know your hopes and fears, your deepest desires. I know how to fulfill you, as a lover, as a friend, as much more."

"How?"

"Think you that this is our first meeting, Mwana?"

"I've never been here before and I would certainly remember you if we had met," Erin said, but even as she asserted it, doubt crept into her voice.

The woman's face now seemed hauntingly familiar. Not familiar as someone she remembered, but familiar as if from a dream.

"We met for the first time in Bergen, you were riding your new tricycle and ran over my foot. We met again, some years later, when you won first place at the state finals in the four hundred meters. And again, when you were bleeding and alone and afraid to tell your parents because they would know you had lost your virginity. I was there when you graduated and on that long, cold night when you were snowed in at your dorm. This is not the first time you have found ecstasy in my embrace, merely the first one I have suffered you to remember."

"I don't believe you," Erin said without conviction.

If this upset Valerie, she didn't show it. She seemed amused and tolerant, like a mother with a precocious child.

"Your mother was a beautiful woman. Beautiful, but not very intelligent. She was one of my many lovers and she could have received the gift, but on the night I finally decided to bestow it, I felt you already growing within her. To have taken her would have condemned you to an eternity in limbo. Not even for love could I do that. As I waited for you to be born, I discovered how close I had come to making a terrible mistake. I feel love so rarely I had forgotten how it clouds judgment. In the end, I let her go, but I kept an eye on you."

"Why?"

"I do not know really. Perhaps because I felt I owed you in some strange way. Or perhaps because I hoped you would possess her beauty, but have a personality more suited to an eternity together. You did get her beauty and with it your father's intellect. And over the years of watching you, I grew to love you as I have never loved a mortal, as I have loved only one other."

"But I don't love you."

"Don't you?"

"I don't even know you, how can I love you?"

"We shall see. Perhaps you will grow to feel for me as I do for you. If not, you will still have the gift I have given. It comes with no strings attached, save for those that rule all of our un-lives."

Erin digested that. Her mind still wanted to deny this was happening. Vampires were simple myths. Yet she knew it was real when she realized she was no longer breathing, but still obviously functioning.

"Are all the legends true?"

"No. All of them couldn't be true, but some are. We cannot stand the light of day, nor do we operate effectively while the sun shines. We may move with speed so fast humans seem to stand still, we may be able to sleep within the earth or assume other shapes, or use magic or...well, many are true. Different bloodlines have different gifts."

"Do we drink blood?"

"Yes, that part is true of us all."

"I can't kill anyone!" she said in alarm.

"You can. In time you will, unless you wish to see your un-life end. But you need not fret. We drink blood, but we do not have to kill. The taking of blood fills humans with contentment and pleasure. So you may take a little from several over the course of an evening and do none of them harm. They will remember only kissing a beautiful woman."

"I feel very tired," Erin said.

"The morning approaches and like all of us, you must sleep."

"Oh shit. I forgot all about Vanessa!"

Valerie smiled and picked up a small remote control device. She pressed a button and the bookcase split in the middle and each half slid back into the wall. A bank of monitors was revealed. Valerie hit another button and several flared to life. Erin couldn't believe what she was seeing.

Vanessa was lying on a big bed. There were several nude or semi dressed men standing around laughing and drinking. One guy was fucking the hell out of her while she sucked on another guy's cock.

"What have you done to her?" Erin demanded.

"I? I've done nothing. Well, almost nothing. I did arrange for the room. This is what she wanted Mwana."

"It is not!"

"A gangbang! Yeah, that would be the wildest ride of 'em all," Valerie said in an uncanny imitation of Vanessa.

"But..."

"No buts. On this night I made my own dreams come true. I helped her and countless others make theirs come true as well. Men left this building with women they could never have hoped to have in their wildest fantasies. Women left with men who they always wanted to have sex with, but were afraid to approach. Submissives found the dom of their dreams. Doms found the perfect little sub. Women left with women, to try their lifelong fantasy or experiment with a long held curiosity. Men left with men for the same purpose. Married couples will go home and try that variation they have both longed to try but were afraid to voice to their lover. And all will wake on the morrow, blame their sudden adventurousness on drink or the anonymity costumes conferred. On anything but the magical drinks made with a drop of my blood. Thus do I pay my debt to the humans who sustain my life. Thus do I assuage my own guilt."

"And me? Did you make my dream come true?" Erin asked defiantly.

"Yes. Though you do not realize it yet. Or more precisely, because you refuse to admit it to yourself. I took from you the control you so scrupulously maintain and at the same time so abhor. I gave you pleasure, pleasure so strong you let go and experienced life without control. That is what you truly desire, Mwana. Not control, but to be controlled. That is why your relationships fail. And that is why you will come to love me."

Erin didn't know what to say. What she did know was this woman knew her, even better than she knew herself. And when she looked into those green eyes, she saw, not a monster, but infinite tenderness and love.

What she knew for certain was that her secret fantasy was a secret no more.

She sleeps now. Worn to exhaustion by her first feeding, an experience I will not allow her to remember. Her body will adjust slowly, so that she may avoid sleep with an effort of will, as I do now. Her mind is open, sexual ennui working to lower the internal barriers. Over time, she will learn to cloak her mind, even in sleep. Tonight I can see her thoughts and feel her moods without even resorting to the brazier and spells.

She is as I had hoped - intelligent, resilient and deliciously complex. The power that she has been given makes little impression and that is good, for that way lies pride and with pride comes carelessness and with carelessness the final death.

Some of the good in her and the strong empathy she feels towards her fellows will decay. It cannot be helped. One must work to feel kinship for one's source of sustenance. Even the deeply empathetic man feels little kinship with the cow that went to make his hamburger. Yet with this one, I think much will remain.

Her first thoughts on becoming were not of the new powers she wielded, but of her inability to kill and then of her friend. It speaks well of her that her new condition wasn't as great a factor in her mind as her friend's well being. While such close, personal ties to the world of the living must end, it is good that she feels them still so keenly.

These are very good signs, but where she goes from here I cannot know.

Only the long, endless procession of nights will tell.

Finis