-Chapter 1-
In the light of the moon the ocean looked like churning black sand. Earth over her coffin.
At first John didn't notice the soft footsteps approaching from behind him, the almost-imperceptible rustle of bare feet through dead grass. Then she spoke.
"John..."
It was just a whisper, but there was no mistaking her voice.
Slowly, not knowing whether he longed to see her or feared it, he turned his head to look.
She was as beautiful as on the day he'd first seen her. As beautiful as on the day they had married. Her hair was loose and flowed in soft golden curls about her shoulders as she stood under the moonlight in the dress he had buried her in. His lips formed her name, but no sound came out. She smiled down at him gently and he tried again.
"Lucy, I... I'm so sorry, darling."
She cocked her head and held out her hands to him.
He rose to his feet like a man in a dream and took them.
"I've missed you," she said, looking into his eyes as they stood facing each other. "Why haven't you come to me?"
She looked so innocent. Her brow was knit in confusion, her lips slightly parted as she waited for his answer. He wondered if she knew she was dead. He wondered if she knew about the monster that had killed her.
"Darling..."
He wanted so badly to reassure that innocent face, to hold her tight and tell her that none of it mattered and that she was safe now and he would never leave her again. He wanted to believe it himself.
As he struggled for the right words - for any words - her angelic face grew suddenly dark.
She dropped his hands and took a step back.
"You should have been there," she said angrily. It hardly even sounded like her voice. "You should have been there for me, John. Didn't you love me? Didn't you want me?"
"Of course I did."
"Then why didn't you fuck me, John?"
He could only stare, dumbstruck. She took a forceful step toward him and he stumbled backward. This was not his sweet wife. Her eyes had a fire in them, and her voice had a hollow ring, that affected him as if she had dealt him a physical blow. He'd seen that fire before, and heard that dark tone. An image seared before his eyes of the hellish fiend that had taken her life just days before. The very fiend he himself had unknowingly summoned from the Old World to cure the unspeakable disease that kept him from loving his wife.
"Why didn't you just fuck me, if you loved me so much?" she demanded. "Six weeks. Six weeks we were married and you never laid a finger on me. Was it because I was a woman? Is that it, John? You prefer fucking little boys and dogs?"
He fell to his knees. She continued to move toward him and he crawled backward toward the cliff, numb with shock and pain and fear.
Suddenly he felt the earth lurch. He had reached the cliff edge and his palm had landed on a loose rock. He would have slid over into the crashing waves below, but she swooped down with inhuman speed and grabbed the front of his shirt, lifting him straight up until his feet barely touched the ground in front of her. Her teeth bared in a snarl as she held him above her head and a gust of wind blew her long hair behind her shoulders. In the moonlight he could see the dark punctures in her neck where she had been drained of blood. He could see the gleaming incisors in her once-gentle mouth that had grown long and sharp to emulate those of her killer.
In a flash her expression changed from rage to lust. She turned and pinned him to the tree he'd been leaning against just moments before, lost in grief. That seemed like ages ago now.
His back slammed against the rough bark and suddenly her mouth was at his throat. She pressed herself against him like a lover, one hand gripping his hair and the other sliding down his shirt to his crotch. Her licks and kisses at his neck became nips and then bites and he screamed beneath the howl of the wind as her fangs pierced an artery. He knew it would all be over soon, and he welcomed the release. Tears streamed down his face. He had thought losing her was the worst fate imaginable, but he'd been wrong.
As he began to lose consciousness he was vaguely aware that her grip on him was loosening. Without feeling the impact, he found himself suddenly on the ground. He lay there helplessly and watched her bare feet walk away from him. His vision was a tunnel, the blackness around the edges slowly creeping inward.
"I'm so sorry..." he whispered. He wished so badly now that he had confided in her. Warned her. "I did want you... ...but I couldn't... I cou..."
His eyes started to close. He knew it would be forever.
She was standing in front of him again and then she was kneeling. A trickle of warm, coppery-tasting liquid dripped onto the corner of his mouth. It ran between his parted lips.
-tbc-