Dislcaimer: I own all characters present in this story.
Others had always told me that I was a shark. That I had that innate killer instinct, that urge and skill to swarm the weak, storm them, devour them.
I had always thought it was flattering of course, encouraging as it were, and admittedly, slightly disturbing. I wondered what it was in me they saw that was so outstanding. Why I looked like I enjoyed blood more than most, despite it being the truth. From the smallest drop to a gushing fountain of crimson fluid, blood intrigued me, enticed me...addicted me.
Blood was my chocolate, my solace and aphrodisiac. Its heat as it blossomed through pallid flesh like scarlet rose petals over the spring meadows of the Earth; its sweetness as it spilled over my lips and tingled my stomach like immortal nectar; its sustenance as it carried me through the night on my usual routine; every aspect of blood was enough to drag me under red waves of an unconditional surrender.
Even still, I had never actually endeavored to take someone's life. Granted, I had entertained thoughts of it, of sinking my teeth into their throat and draining every ounce of precious being from their body, then discarding their limp carcass to the street -- to some obscure alleyway where nobody would ever notice.
That's the good thing about living in the city. Each he and she was more concerned about his or her destination than him or her helping another. I never had to worry about anybody noticing me slinking through the masses. I had infected dozens with my touch, with my kiss of the pariah, but they were discovered, executed, and buried.
In all my years on Earth, there had only be one other who had as much experience as did I in the art of the covert. I was a shadow of a tainted existence, nothing less, and nothing more.
It wasn't until my first kill, my first direct theft of another being's life, and my glorified bath in her blood, that my match resurfaced.
I was wiping the blood from my messy beard, and discarding the singular seashell that I'd tangled through it, which had been cracked in the struggle for my victim's mortality. She had thick blood like molasses or syrup, and equally as sweet. I savored the taste of iron dancing at my tongue's tip like a prima ballerina, and flashed a dangerous grin at my match through the shadows.
She was tall; I was taller. She was dark; I was darker. She was cold, I could feel it. I was different. she knew it.
Imagine my surprise when she clacked her heels through the vacant alley, with the exception of myself and my appetizer, and drove the point of her toe with an elegant power into the dead girl's rib. From the corner of mey eye, I watched her roll, but I knew better than to unlock my gaze.
She knew better as well. We stood in a stalemate, a gridlock before the battle had even properly begun. A single moment in time becamse a thousand beginnings, and an end for ach.
At the time I wondered if she knew that her eyes were devouring me, consuming me whole like I had just done to my unsuspecting girl. but this was different. It was an entirely new sensation altogether, frightening and enticing at the same time. I wanted her to eat me -- whole.
Her hair was brown and thick, and rolled down her back in tresses like the cascades of some new world cataract. Behind her bangs, ice blue and razor sharp, those hungry eyes awaited me. Her skin was pale, snow white, and although she looked hard of heart, her flesh looked lithe and supple.
I wanted her.
She took two more steps, undaunted my physique and the haunting glow she'd found in my otherwise plain brown eyes. I didn't spend any time looking at my reflection, there was no point. I couldn't recall ever doing it, and was uncertain as to whether or not I even had one, but I knew I must have looked rough.
My caramel face covered wild light brown, and was hardened by my constant thoughts. My hair was relatively short, but unbrushed, and my skin was covered in a sleek sheen of dirt, blood, and sweat.
I wasn't sure, but judging by the sway of her divinely sculpted hips, I think she wanted to add sex to the mixture.
She fixed her spectral eyes into mine, and bared an ivory fang in a seductive curl of her lips. It was as threatening as it was alluring.
I returned the gesture, though mine was lackluster. I couldn't extract myself from the distraction of subtracting her form-fitting dress, and ravaging her on a full moon night, then letting her suck me dry.
"You should be careful lurking around in these alleys," she hissed with a silver tongue. Her voice was a slice of sultry wrapped in a velvet box. "You might get hurt."
I watched her push the bangs that framed the left side of her back to her shoulder.
"There's nothing big enough or bad enough to take me out." My voice was dense with blood, and scratched with gravel. I wasn't a choir boy.
She winked, lowering her chin obliquely so the silver disk holding up the sky gleamed off of her crown, Boys always think it's only size that matters." The way she drummed her fingers against her hipbone made my heart race. I wondered if she could hear it.
"Do you prefer small toys?" I jested, crossing my arms.
"I prefer toys that get the job done."
"Touche."
She examined me like the piece of meat that I wanted to be. Another step. Her breasts were against my arm.
"You're special," she observed tersely.
"You must know," I shot back, eyes narrowed.
"I know what you need."
Our eyes burned against each other, at odds with equal parts awe, hatred, and desire. In a world dominated by my victims, I was the splinter.
She threw herself at me, pounced like a primed predatory feline with gunpowder in her veins. We tumbled through to the opposite side of the alley, crushing aluminum trashcans and rumbling over plastic barrels.
Her claws reached for me like deadly venom, raking the skin from my arms and neck. We were in the street then as her feral rage continued. One arm flailed, then the other; a knee tried to jar my ribcage, but met a solid elbow. She clawed and fanged, scratched and bit, all in search of the perfect artery to tear open. But for early every lethal inch she measured, I had a countermeasure.
Surprisingly, we were equal in strength and she easily surpassed me in quickness, but I compensated for it all with conviction. The conviction that had brought me to be the world's silent scourge, my mythos appearing in everything from headline news to tabloid magazines. Yet, there wasn't a single recorded image of me, not a legal. I was, quintessentially, the Jack the Ripper of my age.
And my age needed Jack. My age needed redemption.
I flinched as ivory scraped against skin, rent it until knuckle shone through. But relief washed over me when I read the pain in her eyes as my second fist struck her temple.
She screeched. It echoed down the street, which was unusually empty for midnight, and back. It speared my eardrums at a return pitch so high I was sure they'd bust.
But that wasn't a recourse for hesitation. I took that split second to turn the tables, and pounded her as if she was a slab of beef and I was the butcher. I pummeled her until my arms wouldn't jerk anymore until the cannons that were my fists had been efficaciously emptied.
She lay there, battered and broken, tears rolling like glistening diamonds down her swollen cheeks. Squirming in my grip, under my weight, she transfixed her eyes on me once again, and forced a feeble smile behind the words, "Love me tonight, Jack for the last time. Love me until I die."
It was melancholy, morbid to say the least. It was bittersweet that it all had to end that way, especially after years of being estranged, and still somehow mad about her, but she was right. She'd taken my humanity, sank her fangs into my wrist and stole a pint of my blood. She'd stolen the last of mankind's heroes, from his heart to his soul.
I allowed her. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the rush of power, the surge of impeccable senses and seemingly constant adrenaline, all locked with permanently chilled skin. There weren't anymore words to exchange with her, my former lover I shoved my lips against hers, smattered with blood, pried into her mouth with my tongue, and thrust myself into the single source of heat in her entire body.
We made love. She died in my arms. Died permanently. Along with any shred of benevolence that I'd ever had.
The street was still empty, but an ominous rain from the south was washing it, cleansing it of blood, obsession, desire.
Love.
In the distance, I could hear low pitched sirens hiding beneath gray clouds, rumblinh with the thunder toward me. They had sensed her death, and another flaring disturbance: My Change.
I removed what was left of my shirt and set it over her legs. Her eyes were closed but she smiled, like a peaceful slumber.
I'd join her one day.
Overhead, the blades of helicopters chopped the wind. Searchlights worked their ways toward me, encroaching like sunlight in a magnifying glass.
I was still a shadow of existence, an existence shattered. I made myself scarce, and vanished in favor of the predawn sun sneaking upward to the treetops.
I hate blood. But it loves me now. It loves when I tear it out of the throat of another bloodsucker, to make him oer her pay for my lack of humanity.
They were bad. I was evil.
Necessary Evil.