Eternal (7)

Mirra mustered up all of the courage that she had to walk toward her closet thinking only of hiding herself in her ratty old blue terrycloth robe, but his voice stopped her cold. “Mirra, my love, come to me.”1

She turned to him. He had risen and was standing beside her bed. The covers were a shamble strewn all over the floor and the sheets were in wads. Mirra had to step over a pillow to walk toward him. It was then that she noticed the dark stains on her bed. She knew what it was and it scared her. What have I done? 2

“Mirra.” The sound of his voice drew her mind toward him; nothing mattered but the deep sound of his voice. She looked into the dark pools of his eyes and nothing mattered but him. She waited. 3

Her lover held something out toward her. It took her a moment to break the link between their eyes before she could focus and figure out what it was. It was a simple black dress. “Let me help you.” His right hand touched her shoulder and Mirra remembered the fire that hand had instilled in her earlier and she shivered. The dress slipped over her head as she raised her arms. The strong hands that gently touched her shoulders to turn her around so he could zip up the back made her head swim with emotion. He slowly caressed her arms and kissed her neck, making Mirra want to swoon. Involuntarily, she fell back upon his muscular silk encased torso and sighed. She felt her nipples straining against the soft fabric of the dress and desire swept though her again. Mirra turned to face him and the kiss they shared was enough to make her exhale deeply. Oh, she could fall in love with this man so fast. She wasn’t thinking clearly.4

“Where did this dress come from?” she asked, not really meaning to speak out loud. How had he known her size? He hadn’t been carrying anything outside on the patio. 5

“Here, my dear,” he said holding out black lace panties and black high heeled shoes toward her. She sat down on the bed to finish dressing and he began to speak. “I bought it for you. I knew you'd be even more beautiful wearing it.” She looked up and he was holding his hand out toward her once more. Something glittered. She stood up so he could place a delicate gold chain around her neck and looked down to find a perfect diamond shining up at her. She smiled. He began to speak as he took her hand and lead her from the house. “You are gorgeous, my angel, and I have been waiting for your company for far too long.” 6

They walked out the front door and down the brick walkway. Mirra turned to him and said, “Wait. I have to lock the house.” He seemed surprised at her silly notion.7

“Mirra, this life you had is gone. I have given you a better one. Forget all that was and simply be with me now.” She accepted his words and turned her back on her home and her possessions.8

“I hurt,” Mirra realized that something had been growing within her and the pain was back, but different. Her head was beginning to ache and she felt weaker than she had after her shower. The pangs in her stomach were getting stronger and her temper was flaring. He was acting as if nothing were wrong when she knew something was terribly, terribly wrong with her. The night seemed different, more vibrant, more alive, more everything. She could detect noises coming from everywhere and she could see as well as she ever could in the daytime. The wind seemed to whisper to her skin, but all that was drowned out by the terrible gnawing growing inside her.9

“I know, Mirra”, he said soothingly, “I’m going to give you something to make it all better. Just get in the car and I’ll explain.” He spoke to her as if she was a small child and his voice seemed to stroke her like she was a kitten. Mirra complied. He started the car and pulled away. “Look in that envelope, Mirra.” She took a little manila envelope from the dash and opened it to find pictures of a woman lying in a hospital bed. Her face was bruised, broken, swollen, cut, and gashed. Her arm and leg were both in casts. She looked like hell warmed over. 10

“Did you do this?” Mirra asked hesitantly.11

“No.” Drayden answered. “But you’re going to kill the bastard of a husband who did.” He let his words sink in before he began again. “You know what you are by now, Mirra. I’ve given you the gift you always dreamed of: Immortality. But, it comes with a price and that price must be paid in blood. I’ve found that at first feeding on the guilty makes it easier to pay that price. So, I’ve chosen her husband to be your first. He is an animal. This isn’t the first time he’s beat his wife, but it will be the last. The hunger you feel growing within you must be sated.” Mirra listened, detached, as Drayden explained how it was to be done.12

Two minutes later Drayden pulled the car over to the curb, got out and vanished into the night. Simply vanished. One minute he was there, and the next he wasn’t. He’s gonna have to show me how he does that, Mirra thought absently then another pain hit her, stronger than ever and she followed her feet to the door of the house. Despite the hour, the light was on and the TV was blaring. Mirra knocked and waited. The door opened and she beheld a balding man with a spare tire for a stomach. Ironically, he had on a dirty wife beater and jeans. His feet were bare. A few days growth of beard struggled out of his acne scarred face but the veins on his neck were all that Mirra really saw. His blue eyes were cold as he stared at her. 13

“My car ran out of gas,” Mirra explained. “You’ll let me in to use your phone to call someone to help me won’t you?” She held his eyes and turned the question into more of a command. 14

He held the door open for her and said, “Sure, come on in.” The place was a shambles, but Mirra felt the animal within her now. She knew it would do what she could not. He turned his back to lead her into the living room and the fury within could not be contained any more. 15

She imagined she could hear his heart pounding, the blood pounding through his veins, and that was enough. She could feel her mouth changing. On some subconscious level, she knew her teeth were changing. Her fangs were descending, razor sharp and she flicked her tongue against one. It excited her. 16

His back was hairy and disgusting but she leapt on it anyway and sunk her new fangs into the right side of his neck and amazingly hit the carotid artery. The hot liquid spurted into her mouth and she didn’t even hear his scream. The vampire was in full control now and it was good. The blood tasted hot and thick and drowned out the dirty salty taste of his skin on her tongue. It flowed down her throat and she wasn’t even aware of swallowing. The man grabbed at her over his shoulder in a futile effort. He tried to bang her up against a wall, but there was no way she was letting go now. Her legs were wrapped around his paunchy waist and her arms were tight as vice grips across his chest. She began to squeeze and suddenly, miraculously, he had no air left with which to scream. She had learned something already, though she barely recognized it through the blood. 17

The blood. There was nothing except the delicious crimson river flowing slower and slower down her throat. Its coppery taste felt like ecstasy on her tongue. Mirra’s mind was not her own. It belonged to the beast within her and she didn’t even care. All that mattered was the blood. The images of the warm red flow brought warmth to her body, spreading out, taking its glorious heat with it. It was like pure happiness, warm sunlight shining throughout every cell. Mirra had never felt anything so good in her entire life. Never known anything could feel so exuberating. Heaven couldn’t feel this good, could it? 18

He collapsed to the floor with her still attached to his throat. The flow of blood had stopped and she was instantly mad that there wasn’t more in this sack of wife beating shit. The new vampire got off of him and kicked him in the back because there wasn’t more. Mirra wanted more. She kicked him again and again, beating his limp corpse. Suddenly, she stopped. What was she doing? Her mind returned to some semblance of her own. What was she doing? She wheeled to flee the house and saw Drayden standing in the doorway. How much had he seen? Enough from the look on his face. He was smiling at her, like a proud father seeing his son hit his first game winning homerun. 19

Mirra didn’t like that smile. 20

He was waiting for something. Then it hit her. He couldn’t come in. She wondered if that was really true or if he was just being old fashioned, but she humored him anyway and motioned him inside. She needed his help now. “What am I supposed to do with the body?”21

Drayden stood over the lifeless wife beater for a moment surveying his neck. “I think that this had better look like a chainsaw accident, don’t you?”22

For the first time, Mirra looked at the man and was horrified at what she’d done. Practically a quarter of his neck was ripped away! When had she done that? She didn’t remember doing that! She’d just daintily sunk her fangs in his artery and sucked hadn’t she? How in the hell had that happened? The flesh was ripped and jagged and there was a gaping hole where his neck should’ve been. She looked up at Drayden and felt all of her newfound blood drain from her face. What kind of monster was she? What must he think of her? Drayden said nothing else, grabbed the man’s arms and effortlessly drug him out into the back yard under an old tree. Mirra followed soundlessly. 23

Drayden left her standing beside the body and went back in the house to search through the garage. He returned only a minute later with a ladder and a Poulan chainsaw in his gloved hands. He promptly drug the saw through the man’s neck, making sure to coat all the tines with his remaining blood. He threw the chainsaw down on his neck carelessly and placed the old rickety wooden ladder against tree. Drayden stepped up on it and used his hand to break one of the high rungs in two. Mirra was shocked at how easy it would be to assume that the wife beater had been going to trim his tree, broken a rung on the ladder, and fallen down on his chainsaw killing himself. 24

“Let’s go, my sweet.” Drayden held out his hand to her and she gladly accepted it. He led her to the doorway of the house, but before they walked in, he removed a silky red handkerchief from his pocket, gently wiped her face, and gave her a kiss filled with passion. He pressed his body next to hers and she was immediately aroused. 25

Drayden broke the kiss and calmly wiped off the door handle. He turned and strode into the house, surveying the damage. He straightened the pictures on the wall, righted an overturned end table, and placed the contents back on it. There was amazingly little blood on the linoleum floor. Mirra watched as he cleaned up the droplets and surveyed the scene. “There,” he said triumphantly, “No one will be the wiser and his wife can collect double on her accidental death life insurance policy.” The master vampire grinned, “She owes you a great debt, my dear, and she will never know it.” Drayden locked the door from the inside, turned and strode out the back door, shutting it behind himself and Mirra. 26

Standing in the backyard near the corpse, he removed the gloves and placed them in his pocket. “How do you feel?” 27

Mirra considered the question for a moment. She should feel like someone whose soul was burning in hell, but she didn’t. She felt more alive than she had ever felt in her entire life. Power flowed through her very essence. She could feel it; she reveled in it. A mutilated corpse lay on the ground not ten feet from her and she had done that… taken another persons life. She should feel horrified, but she felt elated. There was nothing that she couldn’t do! She whirled around and hugged Drayden. “I feel utterly free. It’s the best feeling in the world! I want to do everything, see everything… I want you to teach me everything.”28

The smile on his face was one of genuine happiness; a thing that had eluded him for years. He knew his patience had paid off and she would be worth the wait. Drayden took her hand in his and together they leapt easily over the wooden privacy fence that shielded their earlier work. Hand in hand, they raced through the night. 29

As they strode through the neighborhood, Mirra noticed things that had never been there for her before. It was as if the night had come alive once and for all just for her. She heard the leaves when they fell from their branches, she heard and smelled the chemical bioluminescence of the fire flies before they illuminated, trying to attract a mate. The night was a wondrous world to her, new and exciting in each little detail. 30

Before she knew it, Drayden was opening a car door for her and she stepped inside. He drove and she rode, not paying any attention to where they were headed. She barely noticed him roll down his window and press in a code of numbers to make a wrought iron gate swing inward as they drove up to his home. It wasn't quite a mansion, but it was a very luxurious house, to say the least. When they stepped out, Mirra was greeted by two of the largest Rottweilers she'd ever seen in her life. With one word from Drayden, they backed off of her, committing her scent to memory. 31

As they entered the house, Mirra found herself staring at all of the treasures he proudly displayed. Works of art, she supposed to be originals, were abundant and the place looked like something off of the TV show Life of the Rich and Famous. Drayden found her astonishment mildly amusing. "You'll get used to the finer things in life all too soon, my sweet," he grinned. "Come now, dawn approaches, I'll show you where we sleep." 32

For the first time, Mirra realized how lethargic she was becoming. But something else crept into her mind that terrified her. Coffins. Vampires slept in coffins. She couldn't handle that. Drayden took her hand, led her down a secret passageway in the library, through the wine cellar, through another hidden doorway, into his bedchamber. To Mirra's relief, there were no coffins in sight. In fact, the room was as tastefully decorated as the upstairs. The huge king size four poster bed was a welcome sight. So welcome, in fact, that she flew to it and bounced up and down on the downy softness. She pulled back the comforter to find satin sheets and wiggled in their softness. She smiled invitingly at her new man. Instantly Drayden was at her side, holding her tight. 33

Outside, night was loosing the battle to the dawn as the first rays crept over the horizon, and Mirra didn't know it, but she was feeling the effects. Sleepily, she lay with her head on Drayden's chest. Before she drifted off, she said, "Thank you, Drayden, thank you." Drayden would remember the first time she said his name for all eternity. She was thanking him. That made it all the sweeter. 34