The Lust and Thirst

What else could he do but think of her. He fell to his knees twice, fell down on the cold mud like he did when the men from the town had come to burn their camp to the ground. He was twelve, and he saw not for the first time the cruelty of men. His grandfather was burned in his bed, and his mother was beaten to death trying to save his little sister from being raped. She was nine. They strangled her when they were done.

He was twelve, but something happened that day and it made him ageless. What was in his eyes was grief and rage that far surpassed his boyish face and made him look like an aged soldier. A beast of war.

He buried his family.

It took four days.

And then he hunted them all.

At twelve years old he murdered six humans. He was damned, but the lust for revenge had damned him a long time before murder did. He killed them with the gypsy knives of his grandfather, and burned them until their bones were black and crisp as charred wood. He regretted nothing, and grieved for nothing, and was nothing... because he had no one.

He could've died long before his twenty eighth year, before he became vampire, and he didn't care. He was alone.

But now, seeing her face in his mind. Kate, short for Katarina. He was on his knees staring at the mud that would soon come up to meet his face and bury his body, and he thought of her. The way she lay there after they made love with the silk sheet slid down to her hip. She was trying to dream, that's what the sisters said. He stroked her arm and side and slid the sheet all the way down. She turned and they made love a second time, violently, as though this was the last night of their existence.

He pulled himself up. For her he would try to live. He would try to protect her even if she didn't want protecting. Like the time on the battlefield, their first battle together, when she had shocked him so badly the skin on his wrist began to split, but he didn't let go. He wouldn't ever let go.

He stumbled through the forest and when he reached the house he fell to the dirt again, as though the weight of relief was too much for his body to take. He got up again.

No, he didn't. He only thought he did. Instead he collapsed fully to the ground and his head hit the rock that he'd worked into the ground when he had been play fighting with Kate earlier. He lifted his hand to his head, his hair was matted with blood. How strange, to see your own blood again after so many years. He was weaker than he had been before.

As weak as a human.

Kate hadn't dreamed. But she no longer cared about dreams. Instead, what she did when she lay there on the silk sheets exhausted after pleasing him, and using his body to please herself, she thought of him. His face. His eyes locked with hers. His strong arms lifting her on top of him. His rough hands stroking her cheek. His lips on her neck. His teeth biting her earlobe. His chest rising and falling quickly. His hands guiding her hips to rhythm. The word that he whispers when she feels herself rising to the end.

'Kate.'

The moonlight bathed them in silver, and the night air blew the leaves from the forest into the bedroom and swept the curtains into a dance. A whirlwind was around them, but Kate cared nothing for it. The whole earth and the human world could've collapsed out of existence and still she wouldn't stop. She wouldn't ever stop.

'Garret.'

She was locked in her own mind, in her own thoughts, and didn't notice until now that he hadn't come back from his hunt.

She dressed herself in his shirt and went out into the living room. Her sisters had lit the fire and were playing cards in front of it. They laughed when she entered.

'You haven't any clothes of your own, sister?' said one.

'Garret ripped them all trying to reach her nudity,' said the other.

They laughed, and Kate ignored them. She walked over to the iPod that was playing songs from a playlist called '1920's Jazz Era,' and she turned it down.

'Have you seen him?' she said.

'Who?'

The sighed and held her arms out and nodded her head up and down the shirt. 'The only other 'him' we know.'

The sisters put down their cards, 'we thought he was with you. We thought he'd come back from his hunt now. How long has he been gone?'

'What time is it? Oh, he's been gone for four hours.'

The sisters stood up. It was remarkable how they could seem relaxed at one moment and then become ready to attack the next moment. But that is the vampire way; to enjoy a lengthy existence, but to be always ready to fight to keep it.

Kate looked at both her sisters. Her calm attitude and what seemed like nonchalance suddenly slipped to reveal the raw heart at the centre. 'Garret,' she whispered.

The three of them sped downstairs. But Kate, as though she shared a soul with him, was the first to find him.

He was lying on the ground in the rain, blood seeping from his head. 'No,' was all she could say, as if this word would make it all not true. 'No, Garret.' She fell to the floor beside him and lifted his head onto her knees. 'Garret, wake up. Wake up, Come on.'

She looked over at her sisters who were crying. 'Stop that,' she said. 'Stop it now, both of you, and get over here.'

They came over and stood over them both. 'Kate, is he?'

'NO! Don't even say that. No, he's not. Now help me. And stop snivelling.'

They took him inside the house and laid him on the bed in Kate's room. If he should die the eternal death, it should be where they had lain together.

Kate barked at her sisters, 'go and get some water, go and get some blood.' They sped from her side. She could hear them crying like ghosts in a gothic tale. She looked back at him. 'Garret, Garret, wake up.' She moved his hair out of his face and kissed his cheeks. 'Get the emergency blood!' she shouted.

'The blood bank blood? But Kate that's human,' they yelled from the kitchen.

'I don't care,' she snapped.

She didn't care. Not anymore. She was terrified, and this terror would push her to the limit of her own morality. She knew that for him, for her own selfish reasons, she would go and slaughter a hundred humans just to keep him with her. How deadly they both were apart, but how apocalyptic they were now that they were together. She was spoiled by him, she had become completely and wonderfully selfish, and she would kill anyone and anything that tried to take him away from her.

'Garret.'

Her sisters returned with the blood. It was in a plastic hospital issue bag. She snatched it and ripped it open with her teeth.

'Will he drink it?' The sisters said.

Kate looked down at him. His body and face were still. Vampires couldn't sleep and yet he looked to be sleeping, or beyond sleeping, in a coma or... or a death... of some sort. Kate looked at the bag, and then at her sisters.

'Kate, don't!' they said but it was too late. She drank a mouthful of human blood, something she hadn't tasted for fifty years, and she opened his mouth and kissed him. The liquid emptied from her mouth into his. It was a kiss of death, and life, a rekindling of a lustful addiction. She kissed him until his eyes opened. She did the same again, and again, until the bag was empty and his tongue entered her mouth, trying to lap the last traces of human blood from inside her. He held her head there until he was done, and he realised what was happening.

Kate's eyes were red.

'Katarina,' he whispered. There was pain in his voice. 'What did you do?'

She held her hands to her face. She was trying to stop herself crying but when he pried her hands away she couldn't hide it. 'I thought you were gone,' she said. He looked into her eyes. They burned for him; his very soul was contained within the confines of those ruby red irises. He kissed her, and she grabbed fistfuls of his hair and tugged them as though she was trying to punish him. 'I thought you were gone,' she said again. 'I did it for you.'

He kissed her again, and rubbed the blood from her face. 'I'll never leave you, Kate.' He brought her hands up to his face and kissed her thumbs. 'Even if I died eternally, I'd haunt you. I'd haunt you until you were tired of seeing my face.' He kissed her. 'Then I'd haunt you twice as much.'

Kate laughed. A laugh that was mingled with both relief and despair. She looked over to her sisters, and wiped the tears from her cheeks. 'Can you get me another bag? And bring me some deer blood?'

'That was the last one,' they said. 'You made us throw out all but one bag in case Garret became tempted by it, remember?'

Garret stood up, his face filled with horror. He was silent, reflecting on something that Kate couldn't understand. He looked up at them. 'That was the last of your blood supply?'

'Yes,' Kate said. 'But it's okay we have a forest full of blood. You'll just have to be content with deer and boar from now on.'

'You don't understand,' he said. The image of the old man in the chair returned to him, the blood, his granddaughter, his broken gums and the blood that oozed through the plastic pipe. It all returned to Garret like a trauma resurfacing. 'All the blood,' he said. 'It's been poisoned.'

Kate and her sisters exchanged looks. 'What do you mean,' said Kate.

Garret opened the curtains and looked out into the forest. Six lights flickered in the trees. Voices grew louder. There was laughter. 'He's coming,' Garret said.

Kate and her sisters bared their teeth and growled. They could hear the voices. No one from the town had ever dared come this far before, they believed that there were wolves in this part of the forest. 'How can someone poison the blood?' Kate said.

'He put something in the water, some kind of poison. All the humans and animals would have been drinking it. Kate, I can still feel it now.'

She stopped growling. Her eyes grew wide. 'Are you poisoned?'

Garret clutched his head. There was a pain, a white hot flash that made him squeeze his hands into fists until his palms bled. It went away again. 'Yes, but the blood helped I think.'

'What will the poison do?' She said, and he refused to meet her eyes. 'Garret, you tell me what the poison will do.'

'Kate, we have to go!' her sisters yelled. 'Something's coming.'

Kate rushed over to Garret and held his head so that he couldn't look away. 'What will it do?' she said.

'I don't know,' he said. 'And that's what scares me. When you saved me all I could think was how glad I was to see your face again.' He kissed her. 'But, something else was there too,' he said. 'I thirsted for something.'

'Yes,' she said. 'I gave you human blood.'

'No, he said. 'I didn't thirst for more human blood, Kate. I thirsted for something else.' He pushed her gently back and brought his hands to his face. 'I thirsted for your blood.'