Of The Father… Upon The Son

Kevin L. Higgins

“Last night you seemed much less the lad with no hope,” Sheila chided Jeyn. Sitting on his right, despite the lack of light, she could see the blue veins lacing the inside of his wrist as he rolled his hand and flexed a fist beneath an idle scrutiny. Her comment brought only a fleeting smile, and that without the flush she had hoped to evoke.

She loved it when men blushed, when the blood suffused their skin, making it hotter than normal with a crimson rush that she could often sense, no matter what the lighting. A fleeting thought made her bare her teeth briefly in the darkness. Jeyn’s father had not blushed! She quickly suppressed the memory and its accompanying emotion. As she did so she realized that, in their seemingly aimless walking, Jeyn had led her to a bridge very much like the one upon which his father had taken her under the chill rains of last fall. But she could sense nothing of malice from him, just the mild scent of dejection.

“There’s no way I’ll ever get out of here.” Jeyn slumped back against the bridge’s railing. Shifting his glance, he studied the palm of his left hand now, as if it might somehow reveal the means to alter his life’s direction. Raised as he was in privilege and never wanting for anything, he despaired finding the sort of adventure that made men’s lives worthy of stories. Longing for strife as only those who have never known it can, he looked to her eyes, seeking empathy. Quickly, she raised her eyes from Jeyn’s uncalloused palms to his eyes.

Her eyes must have reflected what he wanted to see. He snaked his arm around her small shoulders. Her heart thumped as he pulled her in close, certain that his hand’s dropping to rest upon the upper slope of her small breast was no accident. With shallow breaths and a tautening in her belly, she nestled her head under his jaw, snuggling up against the softness of his never-shaven skin. They had met only last night, but some intimacies come faster than others.

That was fine with her. She had, in fact, expected it. Two nights among the shadows, watching him among his friends, had revealed that he tended to change spirits easily and possessed an open and unguarded manner. She’d been pleased to see that. She needed it, in fact. Moody people were always more chaotic, more likely to accept, or commit to, something new. She believed that to be more true than ever among the rich.

“Thank you,” Jeyn murmured, turning his chest into her.

She smiled and wormed her way closer against him. That she didn’t ask, “For what?” she hoped he would take as confirmation of the sense of communion young lovers were supposed to share. In truth, though she could feel the blood racing through his post-adolescent veins and smell every scent that rose from his conscientiously clean skin, his thoughts were alien to her. Their worlds were too different for her to ever achieve that supposed communion.

Though they were far above the marshes of lower Mueglar, the night air was still and warm. The smell of the surrounding swamps wafted up to their height on the bridge, carried by slowly eddying air currents. She felt more than saw him wrinkle his nose. The heavy odor of decay and the throat-filling weight of rotting garbage surrounded them briefly, then was gone. On nights like this even the very rich—who could afford to live high above the chaotic flooding and vile smells plaguing the island studded swamp upon which the city was built—were occasionally reminded of Mueglar’s baser side. The reminder, that he was stuck in a dirty city anchored in muck, in a backwater corner of the Kingdom, drew another sigh from Jeyn. Feeling his dissatisfaction, Sheila hugged him sympathetically.

“Jeyn,” she purred into his neck. “Tell me a story. Something about what you would do if you could escape from here. About someone who’s living their life to the fullest, like you will one day do.” The request, calculated to be irresistible to him, was made more compelling by her taking his hand in her smaller, warmer one and bringing his fingers to her lips, where she flicked her tongue over them before rubbing them lightly over her soft lips. She sensed his mood lighten and smiled to herself. Drawing back a little, making sure her face, which she knew he found beautiful, was lighted by the moon, she gazed into his face with her large, dark eyes.

His brows dipped briefly and he hesitated through yet another sigh. At the precise point in time when his decision might have gone either way, she placed her palm, warm with her body’s incredible heat despite the night’s gathering coolness, lightly on his thigh. Their relationship was new enough that the action killed any chance of his refusing her.

“And make some parts funny,” she amended, this time succeeding at lightening his mood. She wanted him to enjoy these moments with her.

With a wry smile—how could he resist?—he half-turned toward her. After pausing a moment to gather his thoughts and decide where to start, be began.

She wriggled closer as he spin the tale, distracting him for a sentence or two. Scant moments into the yarn, she realized she had heard the story that Jeyn was weaving into his own heroic vision from another boy less than a week ago. It didn’t matter and she was careful to smile in all the right places, giggling aloud when the story demanded it.

The end left her laughing, for the very first time with her face open to him and her lips parted.

Even in the moon’s shadow, she saw him pale, felt him withdraw, sensed his breath catch. His eyes widened, as she’d known they would.

Then he clutched her arm. “Your teeth,” he whispered, not quite a gasp. There was no fear in his voice—that was good. But she tensed for the realization to spark into his mind: She’s a ‘neather!” But, amazingly, his family was so affluent that the thought that he might be cavorting with a member from the lowest rung of Mueglarian society never even entered his mind.

She smiled uncertainly, holding the expression until he swore, “You’re a vampire!”

Surprise replaced her self-conscious smile, not at his charge, but at the implication that it carried. Because ‘neathers, the humans and sub-humans who lived in the subterranean warrens below the Southeastern end of Mueglar weren’t part of his upper-caste world, the fantastic had occurred to him instead.

“Don’t be a fool.” Her smile faded. “There’re no such things.” She managed to produce a shudder, making it, to her thinking, too easily visible. But subtlety would have been lost on him at this point and she had no fear of his making any discoveries during later introspection. “Don’t even talk about it.” Her voice didn’t sound convincing to her ears. She frowned prettily at him, putting forth just enough of a pout to edge him toward the defensive.

He shook his head, denying her. “But your teeth… How could I not have noticed before?”

She lowered her gaze. “I never let you see them,” she said after a long moment, with a perceptible slump of her shoulders.

“Then you are a vampire,” he pressed, eyes wide.

“No, I’m not! Stop it!” She pulled away from him. He stopped her before she could draw entirely out of his reach, as she had known he would. Though she could have broken free—her body was so much more capable than his—she did not. “You’re mistaken-“ Excited, he missed entirely the new, underlying huskiness to her voice and couldn’t have understood its meaning if he had detected it. She checked her withdrawal just before breaking his grip. “I should never have let you…” A half-sob punctuated her failing protest.

His grip on her arms tightened. His eyes, though shadowed, were bright in the darkness. “No! Don’t you understand?” He didn’t shake her, quite. “It’s not bad. It’s good!” She looked up at him now. His eyes burned feverishly. “I’ve dreamed of something like this! There’d be no stopping me. Us. I—we—could go wherever we wanted. We would be hunters…” He tasted the word, obviously liking it.

Her struggle against his grip, half-hearted, got her nowhere. It was because she loved that she endured his fingers digging into her shoulders, driven by his sudden passion. Restrained by love, by commitment, her strength was not hers to exercise. “But I’m not a vampire!” She cried it out, but didn’t look him in the eye while she did. Even to her ears it sounded false. There was no way he would believe.

“Sheila,” he soothed. “Just think, we could go anywhere. We could get out of this place. And I’d never grow old. This thing we have, you and I, need never die because you’re forever young and I’m destined to age before your eyes.”

She realized that, in his youth, with its accompanying emotional instability and driving needs, he was convinced there was love between them already. Overcome by his excitement, he jumped to his feet, bringing her up with him. He lifted her chin with his fingers, forcing her to look up at him, to meet his eyes.

The time for protest had passed. Silent now, she watched him, felt him breathing, felt the energy in his body beneath her hands, which rested lightly on his waist. She felt the life coursing through him. With her eyes, she drew him into the depths of her attention, a small creasing between her eyebrows her only expression.

“You love me,” he said, his voice husky, with the faintest plaintive tremor. It wasn’t a statement, though she sensed he’d had a thought to make it so but been betrayed by his recently shaken confidence. It came out more of a question.

A tear formed in the corner of her eye. Gently, he wiped it away with his thumb.

“You do!” Now he was able to make it a statement, bolstered by her slight show of vulnerability. “And I love you.” He spoke faster. “I knew it from the moment our eyes met, Sheila. I’ve not stopped thinking about you for a single moment.”

She restrained the emotion his words brought. Another tear welled in the corner of her eye and it too was wiped away, wetting her cheek.

“It’s not what you…” Her protest trailed off into the night’s swirling mists. Her eyes dropped from his. She seemed unable to complete a thought anymore. The need to convince was unnecessary now, anyway.

“I want to be like you.” His voice, soft, shook with his intensity. She looked up at him again. “I’m yours, Sheila.” He took a half-step forward. “Make me one of you.” He swallowed nervously, despite his professed eagerness. “Make me a vampire. I love you.” The last sentence came out a whisper. He raised his chin, keeping his eyes on her, unblinking through her hesitation.

His throat, Adams apple prominently visible, gleamed pale in the diffuse moonlight.

Sheila looked around. The bridge on which they had stopped, swathed in marsh mists, was empty. Slowly, very slowly, moving into his trembling embrace, she brought her hand up and let it settle feather light on his nape. Her other arm moved between them and she produced a short thick dowel.

“Bite on this,” she commanded, her demeanor changing. Surprised, then sheepish, he did as she said.

He closed his eyes as she pressed her body’s length against his Her right leg wrapped his left one, helping to immobilize him. Teasing, her tongue flicked hot against the side of his neck. Against the inside of her thigh, she felt his body respond to her nearness. Even in the shadows under his jaw, she could see the slight pulsing of his artery, sense that his heart rate had increased.. Her hand tightened, her grip now iron on the back of his neck. With her other hand she timed his exhalation..

A savage moment and it was done. Startled, his eyes flashed open. His abdomen stiffened under her steadying hand. A shrill, muffled scream, almost sounding like an exclamation of pleasure due to the lack of air in his lungs, ripped from around the dowel. Warmth ran down her chin, hot, salty fluid overflowing her mouth before she could pull away. In a curious stop flash, she saw with preternatural clarity that his teeth had sunk deep into the dowel’s wood.

Hot wetness, black in the moon’s light, pulsed from his savaged throat.. Smelling of copper, it splashed onto her right hand. Wiping her arm dry on his shirt, she drew Jeyn’s finely jeweled dagger from its sheath at his belt.

“There are no such things as vampires, Jeyn,” she whispered to his staring, puzzled eyes as the life faded from their injured depths. Stepping back, she finally relaxed her left hand. His body, no longer supported by either her strength or his will, dropped bonelessly to the bridge’s rough stone walkway.

Moments later, his best cuts swinging heavily within a sodden bag she had slung over her shoulder, Sheila began her long trek back toward the Warrens. Jeyn’s remains, pushed over the railing, were already being disposed of by the ever-present, scaled and voracious slengaro that hunted the swamps in and around Mueglar.

Naught grew in her Warren’s eternal darkness. Naught but her kits, she amended. And while few people ever thought about the results of a young ‘neather girl’s rape, she knew even fewer would consider that Jeyn’s disappearance was an extension of the Warren’s underworld code of justice. Her litter had to eat, just like anyone’s.

In his own way, Jeyn’s father had turned out to be a pretty good provider.

A brightly whistled tune floated in the wake of her passing.