Is anyone still out there reading? Come on, don't be shy. As previously mentioned, I don't bite (much). Harris, it's nice to know you're enjoying it but DORIANSBABE?!?!?!?! What kind of a name is that? You need therapy. Let me know your new email adress as soon as you get it. Enjoy part seven everybody.

On with the show we go...~*Skaye

Jan 22nd cont

Dear Diary, true to form, Dorian showed up at the gallery smiling (as he always does) like he's King of the world. His expensive clothes and upper- class drawl are usually enough to prevent ordinary people from presenting any arguments to the contrary. Except me. His superior smirk or infuriating self-confidence does not intimidate me. He offered me his arm and for once I took it. We walked around the gallery talking about paintings like normal friends until just before we parted ways at the entrance, he pulled me into an empty room. Still holding me by the arm, turned to me and hissed, "That wasn't very nice of you Mina, to walk off and leave me at that party." I smiled and said, "Well it wasn't very nice of you to patronise me and treat me like your toy to just kiss and then ditch." He rolled his eyes, slightly angry, "I suppose that makes us even?" I smiled again, this time more cruelly, "No Dorian, not even close." He looked angrier about this and said, "I am not accustomed to being on the receiving end of revenge, Miss Harker, and there is a good reason for it. Most of the people who attempt revenge on me tend to not last very long." All humour was now gone from the conversation. "I think you'll find I'm a little different. I also think you'd better get used to being on the receiving end of revenge or else I'll be throwing you in at the deep end, so to speak. And by the way, it's Mrs Harker." "You're a devious woman, Mrs Harker, and I like you. I would really regret doing you any serious harm." I held out my arm to him, palm up. "Try it then, come on, break my arm." I said with complete sincerity. He looked at me like I was out of my mind. "Are you sure you know what you're doing, Mina, I have never stalled from violence before but then I've never had an enemy invite me to injure them before." I smiled sweetly and thrust my arm at him. "Come on, try. I'm sure you'll enjoy it if you are so anxious to hurt me." "You'll tell the police." "Then come back to my house, do it there. I guarantee I will tell no-one. And don't worry about a hospital, I don't think that will be necessary." He looked thoroughly enraged now. "You think I'm too weak to break a woman's arm, don't you?" "I'm not sure, you don't exactly look like the athletic type but I've been proven wrong before. Try and we'll see." "How far to your house?" "Twenty minutes walking, five by cab." "We'll get a cab" We went outside and he hailed one. The horses stamped and tossed their heads, cold and impatient. I could relate. I wanted to see his face when he realised I wasn't just an ordinary woman, when he saw how much more powerful I am than he is. The cab clattered along to my house, a small place Jonathan and me had since we were married. I opened the door and let Dorian in first with a little mutter of "Ladies first" He looked even angrier. I truly believed I was beating him at his own game. He was losing his temper. I took off my coat and scarf and offered him my arm. "Now the moment, Dorian. Can you or can you not break my arm?" He smirked and reached for my arm. He paused for a moment then took my arm and wrenched it so hard it snapped. He was strong. I yelled in pain but held up my arm which was rapidly healing. I bent it back and forwards then wiggled my fingers to show him it was healed. I laughed with delight at the expression on his face then to my absolute horror, he took a gun from his belt, drew back the hammer and shot a bullet right through his head. I screamed and leapt to where he was now lying on my floor. I was panicking and checking his head over for a bullet wound. There was no blood. Before I had time to be surprised, he leapt o his knees bowling me over and grinned. I looked at him now with disbelief and jumped up about to throw my arms around his neck but I held back. He laughed at me and then, at the furious look on my face kissed me, gentler than before. He broke away after a minute and said softly, teasing but not unkind, "You were right, you are a little different. What's your secret?" I looked at him suspiciously. "You tell me yours first so I know I can trust you." "Mina, don't you trust me by now?" "Assume I don't." "You won't believe me." I considered this. "Dorian, I just saw you shoot yourself in the temple from a range of less than six inches, under those circumstances I'm willing to take a little leap of faith, wouldn't you say?" "Well, I would if it was anyone but you." "Fine, here's my big secret," I began, inwardly in disbelief at myself that I was just about to tell someone my darkest secret. Dorian of all people, but I ploughed on, "A long time ago..." "Oh, it's going to be one of THOSE stories, just don't end it with 'happily ever after' will you darling?" "Do you want to hear my story or not and incidentally, I'm not your darling." "All right then, dear." "Shut up" "Get on with it" "ALRIGHT" I yelled, "a long time ago my husband Jonathan was sent on a commission to a nobleman or something in Transylvania, Count Dracula. He was an immortal, don't laugh, he was a vampyre. You know, of the bloodsucking, super-strong variety. This man was interested in purchasing property in London near where Jonathan and I lived at the time. A lot of things happened including the death of my best friend but at the end of it all Dracula was dead and I was a vampyre." I finished and looked up at him to gauge his reaction. He was looking at me sincerely and, maybe it was just my imagination, concerned. To break the silence I shook my head, very conscious of the fact that I was still sitting on the floor with a man I had only known for about three weeks. "So I've told you my secret, what's yours?" He laughed airily, "A gun that fires blanks. And I must say I had you quite marvellously fooled, darling." "I'm not so stupid Dorian, I saw the bullet leave the gun and I saw the wound it made in your head and how it healed. I think you would have to be a rather unusually skilled illusionist to fake that. Or you're lying to me." He sighed as one might when one is asked a rather stupid question by a child, "Alright, you forced it out of me," he hesitated as well and I wondered if his thoughts were the same as mine at that moment. "I was a normal, high born child once. It's just that that was over four hundred years ago. I was cursed one day with immortality and invulnerability which, at the time, I would have killed for. Now I would die to be without." He looked me in the eye and that, I think, was the only time he ever let me see his true emotion or showed any weakness. That was the moment I fell in love with him. "You know how it feels, don't you Mina? To see everyone you love die, watch people you knew as a child age and die while you remain the same through all eternity." A tear rolled down my normally cold cheek as I looked into his face and saw not a cynical, arrogant aristocrat who thinks he's seen it all but a lonely, grief struck man who has seen more than he wishes. I took his hand and hoarsely muttered, "Yes." Then we kissed, for ages, it seemed and yet not long enough, sitting on my floor with a bullet still lying there from when he had put it through his head and nothing else but the ticking of the clock and the beating of each others hearts.

Wow, if any of you ever tells anyone that I wrote something so romantic I will hunt you down and maim you, comprende? Hope you Mina&Dorian people liked that and you Dorian haters liked seeing him getting shot. Back soon with more, ~*Skaye.