A Beautiful Night For A Moondance
The moon in Middle Europe shines with an older silver than it does anywhere else in the world. Its light falls more heavily, lying like quicksilver on the land, flowing molten and cool across water, and silvercoating the skin. It rides high and silent when the sky is clear, looking down at the sleeping Earth, witness to a thousand nighttime mysteries.
August, 1889
Near the Borders of Transylvania, Buchovina and Moldavia
A woman slept alone in a bed meant for two, her window open to the night breeze and the moonlight. Crickets and nightbird calls shivered the air, and the parted curtains blew softly. Her red hair, dark in the moonlight, tumbled over her pillow, and one arm was flung out over the empty side of the bed, looking in sleep for a husband who was no longer there.
A shadow paused at the open window, then passed by. The breeze died, and the crickets and nightbirds fell silent. There was the softest of clicks, and the door of the small cottage opened almost silently, the faintest of creaks betraying the movement of the hinges. The woman in the bed sighed and the door stopped moving: she settled again and the door opened farther. A swirl of darkness disturbed the moonlight like a hand sliding through clear water, and a dark shape towered silently above the sleeping woman's bed, cloaked and motionless. After a moment or so of contemplation, the figure seated itself carefully on the edge of the bed.
A masculine hand, white and graceful, reached with infinite care toward the woman, slid the shoulder of her nightdress down a modest inch or two, and traced one finger along the smooth curve of her shoulder. She shivered in her sleep and sighed again. The dark figure leaned closer, its mouth nearly at her ear, and blew softly on her neck. Her eyes opened and she blinked sleepily before it registered upon her that she was not alone: she shrieked and sat up, clutching her bedclothes around her, and the dark figure sat up quickly too and laughed, a low, ominous sound.
The figure faced her across the bed in the moonlight as she shrank back towards the opposite corner, the lowered face a chiaroscuro study of slanted planes and dark-shadowed angles, silver-blade cheekbones, eyes completely shaded beneath arched brows. The sensuous lips parted, and the figure said in a caressing whisper, "Did you miss me?"
The woman sat deathly still for a moment, then two, tangled in her bedclothes, before closing her sagging jaw with a snap. "Everyone said you were gone," she quavered. "They said you must have been destroyed."
"They were wrong." The voice sounded like the sort of voice a tiger might have if it suddenly gained the power of human speech, low and deep, with an edge of velvety growl that brought a shiver down the spine. The visitor raised his head: the moonlight flooded into the huge eyes, dark, dark, with the faintest trace of red around the edges, and a brief flash of red luminescence reflected back from the pupils: a predator's eyes, fixed unwaveringly upon her.
The woman's own eyes, their lovely green washed silver, welled with tears. "You hell-devil," she whispered. "You absolute monster."
The figure raised its eyebrows and laid a slightly dramatic hand on its breast . . . me?
And in the space of a heartbeat the woman flung herself across the bed with all her strength and threw her arms around the dark figure: he caught her without effort and pulled her onto his lap. "I thought you were dead," she murmured into his neck.
The vampire smiled into her hair. "I am," he said.
"I missed you, you horrid creature," she said, her voice muffled in the shoulder of his cloak. "It's been almost a year . . . I was sure you were really lost this time. Why didn't you let me know?"
"Circumstances prevented it. And really, what if I told you where I was and the opposition came to call? The Van Helsings of the world show me no mercy . . . can you imagine what they'd do to a witch if they knew who she was and what she knew? Your pretty red scalp would look wonderful hanging from Father Sandor's tentpole, wouldn't it?"
"I hate you, do you know that? Do you know how I've grieved for you?" She angrily dashed tears from her eyes.
"Ah, Elise. Tears for me?" He actually smiled a little, and brushed wetness from her cheek with his thumb.
"I fought you to a standstill but you still won, didn't you, just like you always do. You didn't get my blood, but you got my heart. Beast." She made a fist and hit him, not very hard, in the shoulder. It was like punching stone. The vampire caught her small fist and kissed it before enfolding it in one pale hand.
"When the two strongest children in the schoolyard meet, they always fight and then become friends, don't they?" He laughed silently down at her, moonlight glinting on that mouthful of wolflike fangs. He could conceal them if he wanted . . . but Elise could tell that tonight he didn't care if she could see them or not. He seemed in a bit of a feral mood, and the woman knew that, old friend or not, she should probably tread carefully. His intellect was powerful, but it was almost completely subject to the lightning mood changes of his undead nature. "You witches fascinate me, Elise," he was saying, tipping his head in a birdlike gesture that made her think of hawks. "Your power is even greater in some ways than mine. You are the only human being, and a woman besides, who's ever met me on my own ground and fought me to a standstill, and then offered me her hand in friendship. And only a girl then. How much more powerful the woman must be." He smiled again, dangerously, and touched his cold lips to her temple. "In all my long years, I've never before met a creature like you."
"And won't again, either, you may wager." The woman stood up from her visitor's lap, shivering in spite of herself, and reached for her dressing gown. Tying the belt around her waist, she said, "It never does any good to offer you tea, does it?"
The vampire was amused. "You know better."
She went and stirred up the fire under the teakettle. "You'll forgive me if I indulge," she said.
He inclined his head graciously. "Of course."
While the water was heating, the woman warmed her hands for a long moment by the fire, then came quickly to where her guest still sat on the edge of the bed and took his face in her hands, pressing their warmth against his cold cheeks. Looking down at him, she said, "In spite of my cross greeting, I am very glad to see you. Gladder than you know." She bent and kissed the white forehead, hard and cold as porcelain under her lips. The vampire's lips parted, and he closed his eyes. She may have missed the brief red flare in them when he opened them again. "I can tell you haven't fed," she said. "Your skin really is like ice." He said nothing, but laid his hand on hers where it pressed his cheek for a moment, and she made the mistake of looking into those fathomless black eyes.
For a moment she felt her will draining, felt an overwhelming desire to fall into his arms, to let her head fall back and expose her throat to him, inviting him to . . .
She snatched at her own power, dragging it up from the earth and up her spine in a great draught, blasting his dark spell apart. She pulled her eyes away from his deadly gaze and backed quickly away from him. "Damn it!" she snapped. "Don't do that!"
He looked away. "Sorry," he said, not sorry at all. "Force of habit." He laughed again, the bitter whisper she had heard many times before. "As you said, I'm very . . . cold. It makes me . . . indiscreet."
Elise looked at the vampire in her house, her old friend, for a long moment, and silently offered him her wrist. He looked from the slender wrist to her face and back, and then shook his head. "No, Elise. Thank you, but no."
She turned her back without a word, and went to the fire to make her tea. Bringing the pot to the table to steep, she fetched her favorite mug and sat down with it, beckoning to her guest. "At least sit closer to the hearth," she said. He rose and came to the table, and she offered him the chair closest to the renewed fire.
She poured her tea and sat with the steaming mug clasped between her hands for a moment before reaching for one of her guest's icy ones. "You've . . . borrowed a little from me before," she said. "Why not now? Wouldn't there be some relief?"
"What I've borrowed from you in the past was the equivalent of you accepting one chocolate from the entire box." The vampire shook his head. "You are tempting, my dear. But it must be no. My need is too great now. I would not be able to stop myself, and you deserve a better fate than to fall to me, or to become just another concubine, after all these years." The black eyes flicked to hers, then away.
She said nothing for a long moment, glancing over at the empty bed. "I'm alone now. Would it be such a terrible thing?"
Without a hint of warning the vampire exploded to his feet, sending his chair flying, and seized her out of her own chair. Her chair had not finished falling over before he effortlessly yanked her to him, her waist was clamped tightly in the crook of one iron arm, the other hand twining in her hair and inexorably dragging her head back, exposing the pale length of her throat to his teeth. Her bare feet beat a helpless tattoo in the air a foot off the floor, and she pushed against his chest with both hands and all her strength, trying with futile desperation to ward him off. She who was probably the most powerful witch in Europe could not find any power to draw on . . . he was stone, unmoveable, and his implacable will drained hers away. The vampire brought his face within an inch of hers, his eyes hellish, rapacious, before darting his head towards her throat . . . and stopping, fangs not . . . quite . . . touching the delicate skin over her carotid artery. "Yes," he hissed into her ear. "Yes it would be a terrible thing." He nuzzled her throat, grazing the skin with his lips, and she shuddered, beyond terror. He murmured, "What would the blood of a witch taste like? Sweet? No . . . spicy, I think . . . shall we find out?" She made one small whimper as he dragged one razor-sharp fang very lightly along the length of her throat, the tip finally just piercing the surface of the skin. One perfect ruby drop welled from the tiny puncture, and the vampire deliberately licked it from the woman's throat. He brought his suddenly blazing eyes close to her face and hissed, "It's not what you expected, is it? Had enough?"
She hung paralyzed in his steely grip like a rabbit in a snare, eyes wide and fixed on the ceiling, unable to move or breathe, frozen to the bone with mortal terror. Finally he let her slither out of his arms and drop to her feet. She staggered, staring at him in disbelief, and he caught her arm with one hand and righted her chair with the other. She sat down quickly, then bent over and put her forehead on her knees. The vampire righted his own chair and sat down calmly, crossing his legs and resting a casual elbow on the tabletop, lacing his fingers. Whether or not he felt a need to compose himself as well would have been impossible to say. He watched and waited silently as Elise tried to recover herself.
It took a little while . . . she was completely rattled. For minutes she just sat still, until waves of trembling started to wash over her from head to foot, and intensified until her teeth chattered and she gasped for breath. The vampire watched this phenomenon with raised eyebrows, mildly alarmed, and after a moment went around to the back of her chair. He laid a hand on the back of her neck and she flinched. "Don't touch me, Vladimir," she managed to gasp. Silently he retreated to his chair and sat down again, studying the backs of his elegant hands, porcelain-pale face impassive.
Eventually the shaking stopped, and Elise slowly sat up in her chair, her face absolutely white. She looked long at him, tears standing in her green eyes, fear and fury warring on her face. "Why did you do that to me?"
He met her blazing look with a stern gaze, pointed a long forefinger at her and said emphatically, "To teach you a lesson."
Anger galvanized her and the urge to weep disappeared. "I am a grown woman," Elise flared. "I am not a child that needs lessons from you."
The vampire's hand suddenly hit the tabletop with a sharp crack that made her jump as he stared fiercely at her. "Excuse me, madame, but you have not lived even 50 years upon the earth, and I have existed nearly five hundred. It is not inconceivable that I might know something you do not." He narrowed his eyes at her. "I know there are women who have somehow gotten the idea that this . . . life . . . of mine is something romantic, love for all eternity, something that they want to share. I do not want you to start thinking like that."
"You terrorized me deliberately . . . and you bit me! And I did not like it!"
"You were not supposed to like it!" snarled the vampire in exasperation, "and if I had really intended to bite you in earnest, you would not be sitting there arguing with me now!" She became very still. The vampire smiled grimly and said, "We have argued about many things over many years, but there is no argument here. I told you that you are tempting . . . do you really want to know what it means to tempt a vampire? How easy it would have been for me to let go and take you! Less than an inch, my sweet Elise, and you would have lost the sun too. Do you want to be a hunted thing?" He leaned over the table toward her, and she caught her breath but did not move away, damned if she would be afraid of him after all these years.
The vampire reached for Elise's hand and held it more gently than she would have believed possible. "Do you know why I keep coming back to you, why I've never taken you when it would have been so simple?"
She shook her head and wearily rested her elbow on the tabletop, propping her chin on her fist. "No. I have wondered now and then over the years. I can't be as interesting to you as all that."
He smiled a little sadly. "As a matter of fact you are, but that's not it. You see, dear Elise, even in the night, even in the dark, I can see the sun in you. I can smell the heat of noon on your skin, and I can see you in your garden or walking along the road, with that red hair of yours blazing in the sunshine. It's been nearly five hundred years since I saw the sun, but when I'm with you, I can still remember what that was like. In this place, with you, I can still remember what it was to be human." He laid a hand on his breast. "I can almost remember what it was like to feel my own heartbeat. I want to keep that as long as I can."
She looked at him askance. "Are you trying to make me love you?" she asked.
He gave her that fanged smile again. "You already do, my sweet."
She gave a long sigh, and getting up carefully, testing the steadiness of her knees, she went over to the vampire sitting at her table and put her arms around him. "You're right. I do love you, you miscreant." The vampire chuckled, and Elise said, "I will credit you this, visits from you are never dull. Leave it to you to frighten five years off my life and then two minutes later break my heart." The vampire leaned his head against the woman's breast for a moment, listening to the beating of her heart, then looked up at her. "Am I still a hell-devil?" he asked.
"Yes." She sat down again and poured herself more tea. The vampire glanced over at the empty bed. "By the way, not that I'm sorry to miss him, where is our Rolf ?" he asked.
"Rolf is gone. He took up with a barmaid from the Cross Keys and he's been with her for almost a year . . . right after I saw you last, as a matter of fact." She looked down at her hands. "There were times in this last year when it would have helped to talk with you."
"I'm sorry," he said, with what sounded like genuine regret. "It was unavoidable."
"I know. She's expecting, so I hear, Rolf's woman."
The vampire raised an eyebrow. This would be a worse blow to Elise than simple desertion. "Really." He leaned forward conspiratorially and lowered his voice. "Do you want me to . . . visit him?"
"No. Leave him alone. An infant needs a father, such as he would be."
"Forgiving of you."
"Not really. She's welcome to him."
"Liar," he said, in the most gentle voice she had ever heard her vampire friend use. She looked up, to find him standing over her. He reached for her hands and she stood, still looking up at him. It was a stretch for her . . . he was more than a foot taller than she. He smiled down at her. "I am always amazed by the amount of power contained in such a small person. I can't imagine where you keep it."
"The same place you keep yours, I expect."
The vampire actually laughed aloud, a sound not heard much in the world, or by many living people. He rested his hand on the back of her neck, under the warmth of her hair. "Dear Elise. I have to go soon."
She slid her arms around him under his cloak, which he wrapped around her like great wings. The only warmth under the heavy fabric was her own. His flesh was stony and unyielding . . . there was no heartbeat under the cheek she rested on his breast. "Such a short time. Will you come back? After . . . after you've . . . hunted."
"Do you want me to come back? You know that the risk in sheltering me is very great."
"I'm not without resources," said the witch. "You know that you are well-hidden here. How many times did Rolf walk right over you while you slept and never know you were there? Let the Van Helsings and the hunters come. Their crosses and their garlic and their other rubbish hold no terror for me."
He said nothing, and after a moment she said, "Why do you stay here? Why don't you go away, to Berlin or Paris, or even London? It's not safe here for you . . . there are always legions of self-appointed crusaders about."
"Wouldn't you miss me?" he said, for once without the irony that laced almost everything he said.
"I miss you all the time anyway. I want you to be safe."
The vampire tipped up the woman's chin and looked seriously down at her. "There is no safety for me. And I can give no assurance of safety. Not even you are entirely safe from me . . . as you've seen." He gave her a darkling look. "I am not the same being elsewhere that I am with you. If you knew of even some of the things I've done, you would no longer welcome me here."
"I would always welcome you, no matter what. But if it worries you, then don't tell me. I prefer you to be the old friend I met as an adversary when I was seventeen." She suddenly giggled in a tired way. "You were so completely thunderstruck."
"I was." They were both silent a moment, remembering another moon-silver night nearly thirty years in the past, a young witch just coming into the full flush of her power, confronted by a tall, silent figure in the forest. He had thought to take her, like any other maiden he might have found in the woods at night. She had thought otherwise. She had fought him back with waves of fierce, undisciplined power that had left him gasping in shock and amazement, thwarted for the first time in centuries, and utterly intrigued with the little red-haired fury who had stood off such a formidable night being as himself. That night she, little spitting wildcat, had actually made a hunting vampire laugh, and he had been coming back ever since, simply to spend time with a living being who knew him for what he was and somehow welcomed him anyway. Over the years he had visited her many times, and they had talked of many things, power and magic, love and fear, other things incomprehensible to ordinary mortals. Sometimes they had long, quiet conversations lasting most of a night, sometimes passionate arguments, and a deep friendship had grown over time. The vampire had watched the young witch mature and watched her power develop. He had expressed his fastidious disapproval of her choice of husband, and offered refined sympathy when it became obvious that she was unable to have children. He had been a warlord once: he understood the importance of the clan. He had comprehended something of her grief when it had become clear that there would be no clan for her, as perhaps no human could have.
Now she said, "You feel like the very stones. If you need to hunt that badly, there's . . . there's an encampment of gypsies over by the river, near the falls." She blinked back sudden tears . . . she had traded for some of the supplies of her craft with them and considered them friends, or at least friendly acquaintances.
"I see."
"They're close." She looked up at him again. "You could easily be over there and back here by morning. Your hiding place is still here, still safe."
The vampire glanced at the window, judging the lateness of the hour by the angle of the moonlight shining in. "There would be time. If I can do this tonight, then tomorrow night we will talk the night away together, and it will be safer for you. In spite of my insufferable ways, I do miss you."
Elise walked the vampire to the door, and opened it. They stood in the almost searing white moonlight, and she looked up at the silent full moon. "Every time you leave me, I'm sure I'll never see you again," she said, not trying anymore to hide her sadness. She had been hiding sadness for the loss of a friend and the loss of her husband for the better part of a year, and finally it was just too hard.
The vampire stood motionless, one hand pressed between her shoulder blades and the other caressing her hair as she wept into the front of his jacket. "I have never seen you like this," he said, "and I feel to blame. I am sorry." She shook her head against his breast. "I'm the one who is sorry," she said, trying mightily to stop her tears. "I've always tried to show you more dignity than this."
An idea struck the vampire. "Come out with me," he said suddenly. "The night is full of light and magic. The moonlight tonight, one could almost dance to it."
She looked up at him, startled. In thirty years he had never invited her to go with him into the night. "But, aren't you going to . . . hunt? I . . . I don't think I could watch that."
He raised a thoughtful eyebrow. "No, you're right. I don't want you to. But Elise, the moon is full for two more nights. Tomorrow, I won't need to hunt, and I'll take you into the night with me. You will see it the way I do."
She looked up at her vampire friend for a long moment, fear of the unknown warring with the desire to leave behind her pain and loneliness for at least one night. She truly didn't know what she would say until it came out of her mouth. Whether it would mark a change between them, she could not say. It would be easy for her to let it . . .it had not been coincidence that her unfaithful husband had been tall and dark. But even if I have no more sense than that, she thought, he will. She had stood heart to heart for her entire adult life with a being that most probably would have thought of as the most evil creature on Earth, and had never known any harm from him. He had taught her a valuable lesson this night. In spite of what he had said and done tonight, she knew he would never let any harm come to her, from himself or anything else. And even if he did, just one night, running in the moonlight with her dark companion, that would be worth a lifetime. "All right," she said softly. "Come for me right after sunset."
"I will. But now I am beginning to be in pain, my girl. I have to go."
"Go then, and be back before morning. There's one named Josef among them, who has two gold teeth in the front and wears a green kerchief. He beats his wife and children. Strike like lightning and don't lead anyone back here. Your sleeping place is ready . . . I just looked at it a couple of days ago."
The vampire laid his chilly hand on her cheek, raised her face, and kissed her, something he did with no other being on the Earth, once quickly on the forehead, once more softly on the mouth. "Thank you, little Elise," he said, and in a swirl of darkness and moonlight was gone.
She stood in the open doorway, looking the way he had gone. As usual, he had disappeared in the blink of an eye. "Come back to me, demon lover," she said softly. After a moment she went back inside, closing the door, and the window too. She looked at the bed, and it seemed impossibly empty. She pulled her rocking chair close to the fire, and, wrapped in a blanket, sat down in the rocker to wait.
In spite of herself she soon slept, until a scant hour before dawn. She woke to find herself being lifted gently from the rocking chair, carried across the room, and gently placed in her own bed. A second blanket was pulled over her. A strong hand, now warm and alive, closed on her own, and lips now warm and human touched her temple. Without opening her eyes she smiled. "My bad penny has turned up again," she whispered.
"Always," Count Dracula said.
