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  I parted her lips. Her canines were a little longer, and the teeth on each side of them were now pointed too. I ran my finger across them. When I nicked my finger, a drop of blood fell into her mouth. I barely pulled my hand back before she slammed her jaw shut. The snap was audible. I took that as a sign that she would most likely eat what I ate.

  The paleness spread across her skin until a quarter of her body was the purest white I had ever seen. Her tattoos disappeared.

  I got up, realizing I couldn’t live with the silence. I watched the TV news and learned that they’d found Chris and Jessica’s bodies. They were searching for people of interest. That would be us. Once Ash transformed we would have to move.

  I pulled out the little boom box with the CD player, then found the CDs. Jessica had done well by us. I put in a CD of slow cello music by Adam Hurst, and turned the volume down low. In my mind this would become the theme music for Ash’s change.

  *********

  The days came and went. Ash slept. She shifted slowly, going from her side to lying on her stomach with her face turned away from the door. The covers were around her waist. She reminded me of Sleeping Beauty, but that worried me. How had Sleeping Beauty stayed alive? Ash hadn’t eaten for days, and her body was thinning.

  Each day I bathed her and moved her to the sofa to change the sheets. The fever still had her sweating profusely. I made constant trips to the ice machine to keep her temperature down.

  Finally her fever broke, but she still slept.

  I stood in the doorway looking at her. I hoped her change was ending. Her flesh and hair had turned white, and she’d grown two black-spiraled horns about three inches long. Her bat-shaped white wings were almost as long as she was tall. They’d unfolded around her. Her tail went past her feet. It amused me to see it twitch as she slept, much like that of a dreaming dog. Her vampire skin had the softness of velvet.

  She didn’t have a dragon’s scales, and the rest of her looked human. In the end her teeth hadn’t changed much, but her aura had altered completely. The thin red line around her faded into black. When I looked directly at it the red wasn’t even visible. I could only see it with peripheral vision.

  To a human she would look like a demon or the devil itself. To me she looked like an angel.

  As the sad music played on I returned to window by the fireplace and watched the world pass through the night. Headlights moved down the street as snow dusted the ground. For a moment I imagined being human. From my viewpoint their existence seemed easy and carefree.

  As I grew hungrier I thought of feeding, but I couldn’t leave her alone. If she was anything like a vampire, she would be ravenous when she woke up. I listened to the mournful cello, leaned my forehead against the cool winter glass and closed my eyes.

  What could we do? I wondered. Once Kale found us he would kill us both. The only plus side was that she would be happy until that happened. This is what she wanted. But our last days would be few if we weren’t careful.

  Memories of my flashing premonitions filled my head. It was like looking back on a distant past. The pictures were fuzzy and my fears of the Quatre clouded my vision. Were these pictures of the past or future? I couldn’t remember.

  A cold silent hand touched my shoulder. In that instant, images raced by. I saw Sara. Then she was gone. My stomach lurched. I tried to not act startled.

  I turned, and saw pitch black irises. I was awake, and looking at Ash. She looked so sad.

  “The music is so beautiful. It’s such a tragedy that it plays in the presence of such an ugly monster.” The black liquid filled her eyes and threatened to spill down her cheek.

  She stood with a sheet wrapped around her body beneath her wings. Every mark on her body had vanished into whiteness. I couldn’t help but touch her. As my fingers met her shoulder I felt a vibration. As I drew her close she ran her hands across my chest.

  “You are not a monster,” I said. “You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.” I turned her face to mine and kissed her.

  The music put us into a hypnotic state. She wrapped her wings around me, then let go. She stepped back from me and said: “I’m hungry.”

  “Me too.”

  I took her hand and led her to get dressed.

  Chapter15

  COLD-BLOODED

  Ash and I would have had a lot to explain in a roadside search, so I tried not to speed on the snow-slicked two-lane highway. My stomach ached from hunger.

  I glanced at Ash. She looked determined. We’d decided on a skirt to accommodate her new tail. Until we could get some sewing supplies and alter her normal clothes she’d be stuck in skirts and halter tops. At that moment she was wrapped in my favorite trench coat to cover her wings and tail. We’d tried to conceal her horns with a hat but it hadn’t worked. She’d dyed her hair, but that only helped cover them in dim lighting.

  Though I’d told her my reasons for preferring to feed in large cities, she’d persuaded me to head for a small town in Ohio. I knew she must have a consuming appetite, and I was willing to go along. Ash had just become one of the most powerful creatures on Earth, and now I suspected that she wanted to use her new abilities to settle a score. As we sped toward our destination I smiled. This was going to be fun.

  “I don’t even have to project my thoughts to you for you to read my mind,” she said, seeing my smile.

  “I would have never thought this of you,” I said.

  “Just this once,” she said. “After this I won’t care who or where.”

  I slowed as we entered the small town and read the sign: Payne, Ohio. She stared straight ahead. “Pain is all it ever brought me,” she muttered.

  She showed me where to turn. Most of the stores and businesses in town were within a two-block radius. Half the buildings were deserted. Ash told me to park on a side street, past an alley. The town seemed dead.

  “Okay, now what?” I asked.

  She surveyed the area. There were no cars. “Follow me,” she said, opening her door. She jumped out and jogged past the front of a lit-up pizza joint, then down the alley beside it. I followed. At the rear of the pizza shop she turned right and disappeared into a narrow gap between buildings. I ducked in behind her.

  From our hiding place we kept watch on the alley. The only light came from a dim bulb at the back of the pizza joint, and the opening to the street on the far end. Ash turned, and we faced each other. I heard her thoughts.

  There’s a bar up ahead where the light is. All the drunks around here hang out there. They park their cars on the side streets and cut through this alley to get to and from the bar. I’m waiting for one particular drunk. He might be with someone else, but I want you to leave that person alone. The rest is yours.

  Care to share the story while we wait? I asked. I hugged her to keep her warm.

  Not much of a story. One is a good friend. I’d like to see him get it together. The other is a monster of the worst kind… Just understand: I don’t want anyone to have to go through what I did ever again.

  I kissed her. A door slammed hard. She pulled back from me, listening intently. This one you can have. As she stepped back into the shadows, I heard the shuffling rhythm of a drunk’s walk. As he passed in front of us I sent the thoughts to stop him. He froze. I pulled him into the gap. His aura was normal human white. He reeked of tobacco and alcohol. The alcohol would be an added treat.

  His mind was full of the jumbled thoughts of a drunk. Fear pumped through him. He wanted to fight me but his body wouldn’t follow his thoughts. I grabbed his shoulders, pulled him close and sank my teeth into his throat. Thin alcoholic blood sprayed my face. I took in his aura and blood in a hungry rush. His body went limp in my grasp. Even after his heart stopped I got almost all of it.

  Past where Ash stood, the passage opened into a small overgrown clearing. I carried him there and dumped him.

  Some pot smokers will find him within a couple of days, she told me.

  When I got back to Ash I wrapped
my arms around her. She smiled at me coyly.

  “What?” I asked.

  She pushed in close and licked my mouth and face. When I started wiping away blood with my hand she licked my fingers clean. She kissed me.

  I grabbed both of her thighs, brought them up, and she wrapped her legs around my waist. She wrapped her tail around my thigh. Lost in our vampire embrace, we bit into each other’s necks. She was hungry. What I had would give her some fulfillment. As we drank we explored each other’s minds.

  Finally we separated. As we caught our breaths she whispered: “Wow, that was different.”

  I stumbled from the alcohol. “Now you understand,” I said. “Things can get out of control for a vampire. I didn’t want to hurt you, but you needed to see. It’s a different kind of intimacy. You end up sharing mind, body and blood.”

  “Completely,” she breathed. Hearing her made me want more than a kiss. I reached for her. At that moment the bar door slammed again.

  Ash pulled back from me, took off her coat and threw it into the clearing. She motioned for me to follow the coat. Her eyes sparkled like a child’s on Christmas morning. “This one is mine,” she growled, revealing a menacing smile. She reminded me of a cat.

  I went back into the clearing and picked up her coat. I would not watch. This was for her. She was righting a wrong she’d endured as a human.

  I listened to the two drunken male voices. They said their goodbyes, then one went down the street and the other came into the alley. Even back in the clearing I could feel her hatred. She kept her thoughts walled off, maybe to protect herself from sadness, or possibly to shelter me from the knowledge of what she’d endured.

  I heard her move, and call, “Hey!”

  After a pause the drunk answered: “Hey…what the hell are you doing here? I told…I told you.” He laughed. “I knew you’d be back. You just can’t seem to get it through your stupid fucking head that I’m the best you’re gonna get.”

  “Shut up and get your drunken ass over here,” she hissed.

  I heard him stumble. I hung my head and closed my eyes.

  “Don’t you tell me to shut up you stupid whore!”

  If she didn’t kill him, I would. I heard a choking sound, and knew that she had him by the throat. There was the flap of her wings opening. When I heard his feet scraping the ground I knew she was pulling him down, into the darkness.

  “I’m not a whore,” she breathed. “I’m not stupid. I don’t deserve anything you did to me. And I am not! not! not! going to let you do it again…to anyone…ever.”

  I heard the snap and crunch of bone and cartilage. She’d bitten deep, tightening her grip. She pulled his blood quickly. His struggling slowed, then stopped. She let go of his body. It slid down the wall to the ground. More bones broke, then silence.

  Suddenly her hand was on my shoulder. She’d become so stealthy since her change. We embraced, then she pulled back.

  “I’m ready to go now.”

  I looked down at the broken man. She’d crushed his neck and face, but only after he was dead. She’d done him a favor. I would’ve killed him slowly, giving him far more pain. I stepped over him and followed her.

  As we reached the car I glanced around. The streets were empty. I went around to the driver’s side. She stood by the passenger door, licking the blood from her hands. She stumbled then giggled.

  “You’ll notice that if the person is drunk or high you get a dose of whatever they’re on.” As I got behind the wheel I noticed I was feeling good myself. “Where to now?”

  “Wherever you wanted to go before I dragged you to this godforsaken town,” she said. “Might as well make a night of it.”

  **********

  In that week before we were to meet the Quatre we both consumed more than normal. For the first time since I could remember, my body was growing. Most of it was muscle. I was glad that I wore my clothes baggy.

  Ash liked my transformation. I encouraged her to eat as much as she craved. She’d lost weight going through her vampire change. A few days of frequent feeding filled out her hips, restoring her curvaceous figure.

  We made a game of it. Ash found that she gained most from human blood. She experimented with her new mental powers, reading their thoughts, projecting her own thoughts into their minds, and generally toying with them.

  We traveled to several clubs where I showed her different incarnates. We kept to the shadows of the goth scene. That was where we fit in best.

  In one club I bribed the manager to give us a booth in a shadowy corner. There we sat, watching various incarnates. I pointed out a couple of visitors from other planets.

  “Really? Another planet?” She seemed amazed.

  “Really,” I said. I could barely take my eyes off Ash. As I pushed her hair from her eyes, our waitress showed up with four shots of vodka.

  She looked at me, puzzled. “Why did you order those anyway? We can’t drink them…can we?”

  I picked up a shot glass and drank it.

  “We can eat and drink anything we want. There’s just no real food value, or nutrition.” I drank another shot. “But just as we can get drunk from the alcohol in the human’s blood, we can also just drink it straight, and get drunk even faster. After all, you have to at least try to act human in public.”

  “But a lot of the customers here aren’t exactly human,” she said.

  I nodded. “That’s true, and we should keep that in mind. We can’t sit here staring them down. That’s going to make them as restless as a herd of wild buffalo. Some of these people are incarnates who don’t know it yet. They may not ever find out, but most of them have a kind of sixth sense that tells them something is off about us.”

  Loud music kept our conversation from human ears, but we could hear ourselves, and we could pick up some of the talk among the incarnates around us. Ash gulped one of the shots.

  “So, what do we do to fit in?” she asked, picking up her second shot.

  “Look around,” I said. “What do you see?”

  “People talking…dancing.”

  I bent, touching my nose to her collar bone. I gave her cool neck a massage on one side as I ran my nose up to her ear on the other. I inhaled her. “What else?” I whispered, kissing her softly under her ear.

  Her breathing quickened. She ran her fingers through my hair. “People…people searching…”

  “For what?”

  “Love.”

  She kissed me furiously, and ran her frozen fingers across my chest. I pulled her close. Her breath was like ice water filling my lungs. She broke the kiss, panting.

  “See? Acting human isn’t that bad is it?” I kissed the hollow of her throat. “Now very discretely look to the bar. You will see a medium-build Asian man with wire-rim glasses making out with a blonde girl.”

  Ash laid back on the bench, trying to drag me down with her. I laughed, and brought her back up again.

  “Not here, love.” I chuckled. “Wait until we get back to the hotel.”

  With her mind she begged.

  Always so eager, I thought. I kissed her again. The man with the blonde is a demon.

  What? she thought.

  That’s what we call them. They’re as old as the Earth. They’ve evolved with it, and they try to maintain an equal mix of good and bad in the world. They don’t go through any visible, dramatic shifts because they are always shifting, or evolving. With a single word they can strongly influence a person to do something against his or her will. It could be good or bad, depending on the life they have chosen. If one of these beings chooses good, he or she becomes an angel who gives life, but giving life to others takes away from the angel’s life force. If they choose to become demons, their influence is bad, and they can take lives…

  She finished the thought for me: …and they gain from it. She glanced toward the bar. I kissed her under the chin, then followed her gazed.

  As the blonde girl kissed him, the demon stared straight at us.

  I
don’t like him. She stared at him, then at me. He’s not putting up a wall, but I can’t read his mind. She nuzzled her face into my neck. He’s influencing that girl. She doesn’t know why she’s doing what she’s doing. Her mind is screaming in rebellion. But she can’t stop.

  Just keep your distance from them and don’t listen to anything they say. I stroked her chin.

  I can read the aliens. One doesn’t know and the other does. So that means that the one that knows can shift, right?

  I nodded. Yes. But he probably won’t. Most likely Earth’s atmosphere is different from that of his world. He could shift, but only for a few seconds. Aliens don’t have any special abilities, just the possibility of understanding that they are tourists here.

  What about Sara? You said she is a fairy. Where is she from? Ash thought.

  The mention of Sara sent a flash through my head.

  “Are you okay? I just saw something…in your mind,” Ash said, using her physical voice.

  “Yeah. That’s what Jessica told me about. I had my wall down. Sorry you had to see that, whatever it was. It pretty much blinded me.”

  It was a blur of images, she told me. I couldn’t keep up…

  What were we talking about… I thought. Oh, right…Sara. A fairy. Fairies, elves, trolls, dwarves, and dragons like you, all come from another realm. Fairies and trolls are very similar except for odor and looks. You remember Patti from the store--she was a troll. Trolls are deceitful liars and thieves. They won’t stop until they get what they want. Trolls have a glamour effect: they can manipulate their appearance.

  Fairies are persuasive, like a demon, and truly greedy. They will tell you whatever you want to hear, and make you believe it, but they don’t have any other abilities.