He opened his eyes to find his lungs full of the freshet scent of the falling rain on the air.
One of his requirements for his sanctuary was that the outside air be continually circulated through the space. He had long ago surrendered to this requirement as a necessity; to "awaken" to the stuffiness of an enclosed environment sometimes triggered ancient terrors, which he had no wish to relive, even in memory.
The contractor employed by Augustus had done a masterful job of arranging for the airflow without the noise of fans or the alteration of the sanctum's consistent cool temperature.
His eyes traveled to the metal shutters; he could hear the drops of rain beating hollowly against them as the wind buffeted the exterior surface. He could hear the rain drumming against the high ceiling of the room, though a human would have heard nothing but an oppressive silence. Below the rattle of the rain he was aware of the persistent rolling grumble of the disturbed ocean as it lapped at the shore.
The hunger was there, as he knew it would be. It was his body's prompt to his mind. The hunger coiled low in his belly, a barely there ache, perilous to ignore.
With a sigh he turned on his side.
It's wet tonight; there will be fewer people about. Perhaps I should try the theater district; it is probably time I hunted a bit further afield. If I leave early, I could feed and be back in time to do the preliminary priming of the canvas for the gallery in Gastown next month. I should receive those new Daniel Smith oils that I ordered online any day now; I'll check with Tanya, they may already have arrived. I'll call down and ask.
He threw back the sheet and rising, crossed to the double doors. He slipped the locks and passed through the dark room intent on the intercom. On his first indrawn breath, he paused and his face swung round to the entrance to his apartment. On his first indrawn breath, he knew…
***
Kicking the elevator doors was childish; she knew that, as was the mantra that was running around in her mind, Fuckity-fuck-fuck-FUCK! Oh! Coreen you are so going to…Shit I don't even know what…but…something, Uhhh!
Vicki turned in a tight circle, looking for the stairway and twenty-five flights to escape. The hard contour of the champagne bottle was clutched to her chest as her eyes hit the red-lit exit sign. Before she had taken a step towards it, she heard his door open behind her.
"Vicki?"
She heard the disbelief in his tone.
Caught in the act of escaping. This is like some B-Grade horror movie, she thought, her brain doing some strange and disjointed dance. "Slowly I turned, step by step, inch by inch . . ." she flashed back to a Three Stooges clip that she and Henry had laughed over almost a year ago now.
Expelling her breath in an explosive sigh, she turned to the vampire.
He stood in the darkened doorway, one hand on the frame, and one arm thrown up to protect his eyes from the bright light of the atrium.
Obviously he had just risen, as he was still wearing his sleep pants and nothing else. Her eyes took in the tousled hair and the pale muscled torso, moving on to fall over the arch of his ribs to the low slung waist band of the soft gray flannel where it dipped low under the navel dimpling the flat planes of his taunt belly, then to ride back up over the slim hips.
She raised her eyes back to his face, where he stood squinting and blinking. She saw him succumb, as he closed his eyes and raised his chin, scenting the air, seeking the validation of his other senses.
My God, she thought, he looks so young, so beautiful, how could he ever…
His eyes opened, tearing with the glare and his lips parted slightly, a puzzled frown overcoming his brow.
She shifted her stance, standing with one hip raised, the slightest of challenges evident in her posture. She could feel the weight of every one of her human years. Taking a single step forward she held out the wrapped bottle cradled in both hands, towards him.
"Happy…Birthday…Henry"
***
He had crossed the room in a blur and had unlocked the door and pulled it open, quickly even by vampire standards.
Foolish, foolish, the brilliant light of the atrium virtually blinded him as, too late, he realized his error, throwing up his arm in front of his face.
He couldn't control the disbelieving hope that tore the name from his lips before he could bite it back.
"Vicki?"
He couldn't control the hope anymore than he could control the rise of the somnolent vampire within, who sprang to life with a howl. Though he managed to give no voice to the word that echoed around and around in his mind…mine, mine, Mine.
Closing his eyes against the pain of the brilliance, he resorted back to the vampire, lifting his chin to draw in the scent of…her.
Mine, mine! His instincts shouted in his ears.
That sweet scent, preserved in memory, the sweet scent that was all her own, the spice of her anger and the tearing attraction of her stubborn fear, convinced him this was no apparition.
He opened his eyes, viewing her through the blur of protective tears.
He could not think for the echo of the vampire roaring in his ears as Henry held him back. Mine, mine. He frowned trying to make sense of this shift in his reality. She was here?
She moved a step towards him holding out her hands, her voice, sweet as a long forgotten melody, words that he knew he understood…mine, mine…
It was when she said his name, that he lost his grasp…
*****
She felt the impact against her back at the same instant that she realized she was moving.
Her breath left her in a whoosh as the sprung arch of her ribs flexed with the impact against the wall. They flexed inward and then could not expand for the immovable force that pressed her against the hard surface.
The vampire leaned the entire length of his body against her, his arms on either side of her shoulders, imprisoning her between them.
She could not breathe.
The bottle, which had dropped from her hand, spun slowly to a halt, unbroken, against the lip of the elevator door.
She could not breathe.
The vampire's head nestled in the crook of her shoulder, and she could feel a cool slickness where he nuzzled his lips and tongue wetly against her flesh. The vampire shifted his stance slightly and she felt the growing hardness that swelled positioned tight against her pubic bone. She felt the lift of her body against the wall where he pushed himself upward against her.
She could not breathe.
"H-Henry," her heart hammering, she pushed out the little remaining air in her lungs to whisper his name close in his ear as the nuzzling became more insistent and she felt the soft texture of his lips replaced by the smooth hard surface of his fangs pressed flat against her pulse point.
He drew his face back, in response to his name; midnight black eyes searched her face above his emergent fangs.
She could not breathe.
She could find nothing in that gaze that she recognized. The empty eyes slid away from her face and he looked down to where his chest pressed hard against her breasts. He ground the hardness trapped between them against her once more, a look of pain crossing his brow, and then she felt the terrible pressure ease away from her chest.
The vampire raised his face to hers again as she drew in a gulp of air and then another. She could not name the expression she saw in those moist black eyes, but she knew at some instinctual level that it was death to look away from the gaze of the predator.
For an endless moment they stood so and then, he was gone.
Vicki doubled over, sucking in long breaths as black spots floated before her eyes and her stomach rebelled in shock.
What the fuck, what the fuck just happened? She thought as she straightened and lifted a hand to wipe at the wetness of his saliva at her throat.
She studied the glowing red exit sign and then the blank darkness beyond Henry's open door.
Trembling, she bent and retrieved the bottle from the floor. On unsteady legs, she crossed the few intervening feet.
She could still hear her heart pounding as she stepped into the dark.
***
The darkness inside Henry's apartment was complete, the light from the door sufficient only to catch the hard edges of the furniture of the living room. Vicki was blind, in unfamiliar territory. She felt her way. Easing her foot out one step at a time, her hands stretched out, groping the air in front of her.
She listened for some indication of the vampire's presence, some indication that he might attack, but all that she heard was her own heart pounding.
I wonder how Henry likes the sound of that...the random thought crossed her mind followed by, Nelson what the fuck, are you doing?
Finally her questing toe contacted the bottom of Henry's sofa and as her hand touched the leather back she leaned forward, her hands finding an anchor in the blank dark. Feeling along the sofa back with her fingertips she found its arm, and then the nearby end table.
When her groping fingers touched the base of the lamp, she breathed a sigh of relief that her blindness was about to end.
At the flick of a switch, the room was softly illuminated by a golden glow, barely sufficient for Vicki's limited vision. Vicki whirled around to look around the large room, but there was no vampire lurking in the shadows.
With the courage that the light provided she called out to him softly, "Henry?"
There was no response. She walked slowly to the open double doors of the bedroom; the soft light from the living room illuminated the space enough that standing at the door she was able to feel for the wall switch by the door.
If she had expected to find him cowering in his sanctum, she was wrong; the bedroom and the adjoining luxuriously appointed marble bath were empty.
Returning to the main living space, she crossed to the pristine modern kitchen, switching on light after light as she went, driving back the threatening dark.
Though she called out to him twice more, still he did not answer.
She crossed to the stainless steel shutters covering what appeared to be a floor to ceiling bank of windows, and ran her fingers over the cool satin-brushed finish of the metal. This was his safety, his protection. She took a strange and obscure comfort in the knowledge that Henry was safe here.
She could hear the sound of the rain and feel the trace of a damp breeze against her cheek. She followed the source of these sensations, which eventually led her to the foot of the circular stair to the roof.
At the top of the stairs she could see that the door was standing open and the rain was blowing in to drip steadily from the open metal treads, to the dark hardwood below.
She saw him as soon as she emerged into the rain at the top of the stairs. The vampire leaned out against the railing. He was staring down to the street so far below.
Oh my God! Is he going to jump? She thought, a wave of terror so intense it made her knees buckle passing over her. The vampire lifted his head, no doubt scenting her terror.
As she approached him he turned towards her, leaning his weight against the rail, He was drenched, the cold rain slipping from the loose tendrils of his hair to run down his pale shoulders. It funneled across the 'V' of his shoulders to flow downwards over his pale chest. The soft flannel of his sleepwear was plastered against his lean muscled thighs. He was standing barefooted in a puddle on the gravel.
His eyes, when she caught his gaze, were huge and dark in his pale face.
Vicki knew that Henry was not really dead, despite the legends to the contrary. His heart beat, he breathed and he felt and he bled. She had seen it with her own eyes, dealt the injury with her own hand. She knew that he was not dead even when the sun took to the sky. But here, in his roof garden in the rain, the voice that emerged from him was as expressionless and uninflected as a voice from the grave.
"Why are you in my territory?" he asked flatly. His tone indicated that there could be no possible reason for this to be so.
She halted, perhaps five feet distant from him, when she saw his muscles tense, either for flight or for attack. Henry's hands were clasped tight on the railing, the muscles of his arms corded with his effort to remain in place. His eyes were dark and unreadable; the tips of his fangs dented the soft surface of his lower lip.
She had seen this Henry before. She had seen him chained and broken in a church basement with that cursed golden device clamped over his heart.
Tonight, his pale chest slowly rose and fell unblemished, his nipples tight and hard in the chill rain. Yet the same feral and wounded spirit looked out of those fathomless eyes. As she had done then, she spread her hands away from her sides, open and empty, the message I am not a threat clearly written on her body.
She did not move closer as she said clearly, "I am not a fucking vampire, Your Grace, I don't need your leave to travel to Vancouver!"
Whether it was her familiar sarcastic tone, or the honorific or just the logic of her statement, the horrible taut tension eased in his shoulders.
Henry pushed himself off the railing and swept past her and as she turned she saw him fade further into the leafy darkness of the garden. Vicki was cold and already wet through and she wanted to go back into the warm light of the interior, but she trudged a few steps after him eventually losing him in the darkness. She took a few tentative steps forward and when she halted, heard his soft voice off to her right.
"I'm here."
She turned towards the sound. She could barely discern a pale shape that appeared amid the dripping vines; she edged forward until he was in her view again. He appeared to be seated on a stone bench, but when she made to approach him he spoke again.
"Stay back, Victoria." It was not a request.