Twilight Hunger. Maggie Shayne

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СКАЧАТЬ relief of that was soon overruled by the realization that he would have, had he not been certain I would die on my own within a few minutes. I could not feel the blood spreading beneath me, staining the grass. But I sensed it flowing from my body, felt myself weakening steadily from the loss of it. Felt myself … dying.

      I heard his footsteps retreating. Heard the door of his ramshackle house banging closed. And then I heard nothing beyond the gentle wind of the night, whispering in the trees. Whispering my name.

      “Oh, sweet Dante,” a voice said from very nearby. Not the wind. Not this time. “You’ve brought this upon yourself far more quickly than I would have liked.”

      I moved my eyes, turned my head very slightly, but only that. For the most part, my eyes seemed to be the only part of me I was still able to command.

      Sarafina stood beside me, silhouetted by the night, like some dark angel. Those black fingers of cloud stretched over the stars behind her. I tried to speak, but the words came so softly, I knew she could not hear them. Then she knelt and bent close to me, and with every ounce of strength in me, I managed to say, “Sarafina … I am dying.”

      Her soft hand brushed my dark hair away from my forehead. “No, Dante. You know full well I shall not let that hap pen.”

      “B-but …”

      “Hush. It is almost time.” She glanced down at my body, and I wondered what she saw. “You’ve nearly bled to death. It will only be another moment.”

      My eyes widened, and panic choked me. “Sarafina!” I rasped, fear giving my voice new strength, though it still emerged as little more than a harsh whisper. “Please!”

      “Trust me, my darling. You will not die.”

      “But …”

      “You will not die,” she said again.

      I lay there, fading, fading, darkness closing in around the edges of my vision. I realized dully that she looked no different to me than she had when I’d seen her last. No older. No different at all.

      “There now. That’s better.”

      My eyes opened, fell closed, opened again. My breaths came shallow and sparse, and I could feel my heartbeat. It pounded in my ears, ever slower … slower … slower….

      “Listen to me, my special one,” she said, and her voice seemed to come from very far away, as if she spoke to me from the depths of a cave. “You have a choice to make, and it must be made now. There will be no time to deliberate. Do you wish to die? Here and now? Or live, though it will mean living in exile, as I do? Hated by the family, outcast and driven away.”

      I felt weak. As if I were becoming a shadow. I didn’t understand her questions.

      “Life or death, Dante? Speak your answer. If you delay, the choice will be gone. You will die. Tell me now. Which will it be? Life … or death?”

      I strained to form the single word but never heard it emerge from my lips or felt them move at all. It was all I could do to think the word with the intention of speaking it aloud. Life.

      “Good.”

      She moved. My vision was fading, so that I could not see where she went, what she did. Then she pressed something warm and wet to my lips and whispered, “Drink, Dante. This is the elixir that will make you live. Drink.”

      The warm, thick liquid touched my lips, and there was a quickening of my senses, followed at once by a shocking sensation of need. I closed my mouth around the font she offered and nursed at it like a suckling babe. Life seemed to awaken in me, along with a hunger such as I had never known. My arms moved, my hands clasping this bounty, holding it to my face, as I sucked at the luscious fluid that flowed into me.

      “Enough!”

      Sarafina gripped a handful of my hair and jerked my head away. And only then did I realize it had been her wrist at which I’d been so eagerly feeding. Her blood I had been drinking so hungrily. Even now, she pulled her forearm away, tugging a scarf from her hair and wrapping it tightly around the wound.

      Horrified, I felt my stomach lurch, turning my head away from her and lifting my hand to swipe at my mouth.

      “It’s all right, Dante,” she whispered. “It is the way the gift is shared.”

      I looked down at my hands, red with the blood I’d wiped from my mouth. But alive. Strong. I moved my fingers, made fists.

      “What is this?” I asked her softly. “What … what does this mean?” And even as I said it, the numbness was receding down my body. The feeling rushed back into my torso, my legs and my feet, with heightened intensity.

      My senses prickled with keen new awareness. My skin tingled at the touch of the very air. My eyes seemed to see more vividly, more precisely, than ever they had. And strength surged through my veins.

      She tore my shirt away, making strips of its fabric as she spoke. “It is a gift, young Dante, though the old one calls it a curse. It is a gift I have given to you. You will never die now. Never grow older. And though your family will turn against you, you will never be alone, as I have been. For I will be with you. Always.”

      Looking over my shoulder at her, for she was now wadding the fabric and stuffing it into the wound in my back, which caused me immense pain, I shook my head. I did not understand. She tied several strips tightly around me, to hold the wads in place, then reached down, clasped my hand and helped me to my feet, and even as I rose, I saw the old man’s silhouette looming just behind her.

      I opened my mouth to shout a warning.

      Before I said a word, Sarafina turned with such speed she seemed a mere blur. The farmer’s rifle went sailing through the air, out of sight, firing harmlessly into the woods as it hit the ground. And Sarafina, the beautiful, gracious woman by whom I had been so entranced, gripped the farmer’s shirtfront and jerked him forward. Before I could even react, she had fastened her mouth to his throat.

      I heard the sounds…. I saw, very clearly in the darkness now, what she was doing. Drinking … his blood. Gorging herself at his throat. At first the farmer pounded her back and kicked at her … and then … then he simply surrendered. I heard his sigh, saw him close his eyes and even wrap his arms around her. He let his head fall backward, and I saw him grind his hips against Sarafina’s as she continued to suck at his throat.

      And then there was no life left in him at all.

      She let go his shirt, and the corpse fell to the ground. Empty. A rag-poppet. Utterly drained.

      With one of her scarfs, Sarafina dabbed delicately at her mouth as she turned to face me. I gaped at her, my mouth working soundlessly.

      “Don’t look so shocked, Dante. Are you telling me you’re only just figuring it out? Hmm? We are Nosferatu. We are undead.” She licked her lips, tilted her head and smiled very slightly at me. “Vampires,” she whispered, and I swore the night wind picked up the word and repeated it a thousand times in a thousand voices.

       Vampires.

      A breeze from some unseen source made the candle flames leap and flicker. Morgan tore her eyes from the weathered pages and СКАЧАТЬ