Rose and Crown Inn - April 23, 1890
All my past life is mine no more,
The flying hours are gone,
Like transitory dreams given o'er,
Whose images are kept in store
By memory alone…
Whispering to himself, John sat in a chair near the window of the room, the curtain tucked back into his hand revealing the quiet of the sleeping town below. The cobblestone streets were glossed with summer dew, sparkling under the lampposts. The black salt waters of the coast drifted inward and back out, against the dock and away, rocking boats endlessly. And as he watched two men wander from the alleyway opposite the Inn, both of them heading into the yellow of a nearby tavern's light, a smile crossed his lips.
Under his breath, he concluded:
Then talk not of inconstancy
False hearts, and broken vows
If I, by miracle, can be
This live-long minute true to thee.
It is all that Heav'n allows…
A rustle of sheets advanced on a small voice in the shadows of the room.
"I've missed the sound of your sonnets."
The curtain fell from his hand and John turned.
"That was beautiful."
His eyes traveled through the darkness, finding hers alive, with an emerald afterglow of an afterlife. Ella rested on her forearm, half lounging under the blankets, but staring directly at him through a veil of tea-colored spindles. She was a vision of untouchable beauty, and as ever before, he was drawn directly to her side.
Standing by the bed, he raised her hand from the mattress and touched her cheek at the same time. For whatever reason, whether for desire or comfort, Ella nestled her face further into the palm of his cool hand with a brush of her sleek lips.
"Hours have past. I feared you might never wake again." He stroked her thick hair. "You seem well, though."
She pulled back to look up into his eyes.
"I'm hungry."
With a faint laugh, he held her powder-soft face in both of his hands, leaning down to steal a kiss upon her forehead.
"Ah. You remain immortally clever, I see."
Ella smiled and covered his hands with hers. She crawled weakly on the bed, on her knees, reaching his same height from where he stood. As their eyes were leveled, she stole a glance over his shoulder, outside of the window to see the moon falling slowly from the sky. Her nerves rose and she pouted, returning to his waiting eyes.
"Will you show me—?" she stopped herself. "I don't know how to..."
And he understood well enough to nod in reply to her unfinished questions.
John left one last caress on her cheek and stole away a final spark from her evergreen eyes, the ones that—with her burden of rebirth—had grown as dense as any real forest could. He grabbed her coat from the bedside chair and wrapped her in it tightly, knowing what purpose it would serve her without proper nourishment, in the cold of night. Then he took her hand in his, smooth porcelain against strong stone, and led her from their room of secrets to the world outside, the one that housed so many more for her to discover.
Ella uncovered the first of these on her own, standing on the corner below, desperately pulling at the hood and thick sleeves of her coat to find warmth of any kind. She was sure she had never been so cold in her human life, if it was comparable at all to her new one. The feeling of ice in her pores crawled from her toes to calves to her hips, then higher to her elbows and ears. Strange as it was though, she did not breathe a breath of chilled air or stutter when she spoke, and for that matter, she did not tremble or shake either. She merely froze, from the inside out, and right back in.
"What's wrong with me?"
Shifting on his feet, John stared back at her, worriedly. He pulled off his own coat when he saw the overly-pallid color of her cheeks, and threw it around her shoulders, holding her close.
"Nothing," he murmured in her ear. "This is how you know you must feed, Ella."
"Does this happen to you, too?"
With her question, silence fell and his answer refused to come. He moved away from her slowly, and concentrated on the doorway of the tavern. Ella wasn't sure if he was ignoring her or if he hadn't heard the inquiry. She was too miserable and cold and starving far too badly to give it another thought. She stood idly by and watched him, watching out for what she knew was an easy victim.
John stalked. He prowled at the building's corner like a lion in the shadow of night. He touched the brick briefly, pondering the territory he'd chosen, and then he began to move again, back and forth at Ella's feet. His eyes never left the glowing doorway of the tavern. Not until the moment came, and it swung open, revealing the wobbling flesh of a completely unsuspecting man.
"There," she heard him whisper under his breath.
Her eyes went to the man in question, and in ways she couldn't understand or describe, they were fixed upon him from that moment on. Ella moved from the building's cover, brushing past John enough to contemplate her prey as he stumbled around in the wet street.
"Go to him, Eloise."
She stiffened at the sound of John's voice behind her, instructing.
"I don't know how to—"
"You will," he interrupted. "Go."
Anxiously, she glanced back over her shoulder, only to find the corner empty and her supposed mentor gone. She moved her eyes around the hazy street for a moment, hoping to find him in hide somewhere. He did not show, but the scent of a drunken man yards away and moving, tugged more strongly at her senses than John's whereabouts.
Ella's eyes were carried back to the man, and before she could stop herself or wonder why it was happening at all, she felt herself begin to drift. She was weightless, a feather floating in the icy air. She was off the ground, following after the sweet aroma of thinned blood in jetting veins. And the next thing she was aware of, were her feet back on solid cobblestone where she was hidden in the shadowed edge of an alleyway.
Someone was speaking quietly.
"He's coming, Ella. Be seen to him."
It was John, commanding softly in her ear. She turned around, expecting to see him. But he was not there. It was only her and the sound of a man's footsteps approaching on the sidewalk. Her hands drew into fists and her boots scuffed the ground as she moved carefully into the light of the single streetlamp. The cold was all but forgotten as her skin began to tingle with the power of the scent driving her, the one of the handsome man, alone and fumbling in her direction.
"Do not attack him, darling."
His voice returned and she focused, suddenly aware of its origin. John was in her mind, from wherever he waited and studied. He was guiding her like a ravenous puppet on a string.
"You must entice him. Lure him to you. "
She wasn't sure she'd ever known how to be alluring. Ella had been good at a few things in her short life, but being a temptation to men, at least with her knowledge of it, was not one. And yet, it took little more than a swivel of her head, a toss of her thick brown tresses in the moonlight and a whisper through kissable lips, to attract this man.
"Good evening, sir."
He wavered to a halt, smirking.
"Miss," he then answered with his hat pressed to his heart.
Ella fluttered her lashes and gave him hints of her fierce green eyes. She moved into the warmth surrounding him on the corner, drowning herself in his breath laced with heavy drink. She wanted him to believe anything, the most obvious truth about her greeting in the night. And as she wished it to be in her mind, he began to speak the excuse she had thought up, as if it had been given to him directly through the entrapment of her stare.
"Walking alone this late?" He hiccupped a little and smiled at her. "No lady should find herself without proper company to ward off the evils of the night."
A devilish smirk crossed Ella's lips.
"You are too right," she replied softly. "Perhaps you would see me home safely, sir?"
The man stood straighter at her request, expanded his chest a bit and held his arm out for her to take.
"It would be an honor."
The drink had clearly gone to his head, whoever he was. This left Ella humored on the inside, as she stepped close to him and wove her arm through his, hooked for his enticement and her certainty of devour. They walked along for a few moments, just the same, offering one another their names and speaking of the dreariness in the late evening air. And though she tried to ignore it for patience's sake, the scent of him—rich and toxic and moist—was everywhere, all over her. It was impossible to ignore the thirst, her tongue salivating inside of her cold mouth.
But she didn't have to. He was clumsy in his footing at the following street corner and when he tripped on his own boot, he fell towards the outer wall of a closed notary's office. He was laughing in embarrassment when Ella collapsed on him, slightly.
"Pardon me for this horrid display."
He hiccupped again and she breathed a wicked laugh on his neck.
"I shall think nothing of it, Mr. Anderson."
Ella felt his body growing hard beneath her, out of nature's own instinct for man. It made her hunger fly out of control for some reason. Her hands on his chest caressed gently and she extended her lips to his jaw, her kiss light and taunting.
"Oh," he mused with a twinkle in his eye. "Is that the sort of company you're after, lassie?"
She bit into her own lip with a bat of her lashes. And then she heard John again, orchestrating the madness of her first feeding.
"Do not play with your food, Eloise. Have mercy on that poor bastard."
Forcing herself to hold back a laugh, she moved to his neck, inhaling the warmth and freshness of what she could see boiling under his skin. His vein was throbbing in ecstasy that wouldn't come. And because she knew this, something in her stirred a smile on her lips. It was those same lips which bared, in the shadow of his collar and jaw, a pair of razor-sharp incisors. Ella could feel her fangs, see their shadow on his neck, and with her fear washed away by her immortal thirst, she memorized that first difficult incision made by them to human flesh.
The man howled as he sobered with his shock. Ella sunk further into the heart of his vein, savoring the burn on her tongue.
William Anderson struggled for a few moments, trying to decide whether he was being seduced with danger or taken victim by beauty. He writhed against the wall and beneath Ella's delicate hands, which were stronger than either of them could have imagined. He gasped for air and could find none. He bled profusely, on and on, into the softness of her mouth. And even when he had closed his eyes and fallen unconscious under her grip, Ella could not stop herself. She could not retract her teeth or ignore the blood flowing still between her suckling lips.
This was where John appeared.
"That's enough."
She could not open her eyes, but she could not deny that he was there, right beside her, instructing her to let the wonderful taste go.
"Ella. He's going to die. That's enough, darling."
John's hand on her arm, as smooth as his voice, was the only thing to win against her desperation. She forced herself to release the man in her hands, and half fell against the wall herself, breathing deeply and licking the last drop of blood at the corner of her mouth. She could feel no remorse above the deliriousness. She could find no guilt in what she'd done, only proof of her new spirit. She could not deny how alive she suddenly felt, how powerful and euphoric and full.
She opened her eyes to find John smirking at her.
"And so," he teased viciously in the quiet of the night. "The muse becomes the hunter."
Ella smiled the smile of welcomed sin.