My sister had canceled. Elsa’s pregnancy was proving to be difficult and whatever reason it really was, I knew better than to ask and start the emotional tide. Serene had the hormones, Elsa, the swollen belly.

I considered going back to the center, but unexpected movements weren’t met with much welcome, and I had places I needed to be before I could indulge in my carnal appetite. Hunger of a less exotic nature gnawed at my stomach as I pulled up to the heavy metal doors that shielded the center from the rest of the world and cut the engine.

The guard lumbered out with a Napoleon-esque air that tried, and failed, to be intimidating. He reminded me of a pigeon, all breast and strut, but was mostly feathers and stomach. I leaned out of the window, only to have the bright flash of his flashlight shine in my eyes. Another guard walked around and stood in front of the car.

I’d dealt with another set coming in, but this too, was expected, because Lily, in her infinite wisdom, had told me about the process. I doubted I would go to this trouble if she were any less than who she was. I remained in the car until the short guard opened my door and motioned for me to step out. His girth prevented me from doing some comfortably, and I doubted that was unintentional.

There were courtesy glances to the neck, but more out of habit, I thought, than the careful perusal that accompanied a government screening. A newly converted vampire would hardly be leaving the center in any sort of shape to be standing before them as calmly as I had been. I’d never seen one, thankfully, but the news was littered with the graphic details the modern human wanted to know about the beasts so recently “out of the closet.” To think, a few years ago homosexuality was a big deal, now it was determining whether you neighbor might eat you given the proper set of circumstances.

Dangers that were always present had only made themselves known to the paranoid public, and so assuming themselves omnipotent and masters of their domain was hardly an option when there were bigger and badder predators than the littering, chain-smoking alcoholic your grandparents called the bad apple. Lily might be mine, but I was under no disillusion that it was because she willed it so.

It really put a dent in my dominant ‘master of my domain’ streak. Goddammit.

The guard held out a little test strip that reminded me of the diabetes tests I watched my brother take when we were kids. I held up my finger and he pricked it with the gentleness of a German brick layer. I bled; the machine beeped, and a moment later, the gates opened out onto the street.

Sunset went entirely too fast these days. It was like racing against the clock some days. Traffic accidents went up, yet only the sadistic police officers actually stopped the speeders. No one wanted to get caught after dark, them included. For my part, I felt a certain sort of safety that was entirely misplaced. Lily could care for me, yes, but the chances of her finding me in time, were I to walk down the wrong alley, would be slim.

My foot went a little heavier on the pedal, and the resulting thrust of the car put my mind into silence.

****

Had I told you that I was a step away from the medical degree, the burbs, kids, etc? Well, I’d managed one before my life went into the tailspin. I opened the door to my home and went immediately to my sometimes-used-for-work office. I saw patients there, but only the less crazy ones. I didn’t want the ones ‘on the edge’ to have a clue where I lived. Don’t kill the messenger didn’t always translate to the brain when things began to click.

Lights flicked on, and the silence was eerie even for some like me, who spent time in the company of vampires. Just being at The Center was enough to brand me on the outs with some of the more fanatical groups of religious zealots.

The t.v. provided enough mindless din to keep back the tide of silence that loomed just outside the room. The blinds were shut, by more habit of bachelorhood and Lily, than anything else. Still, I didn’t make a habit of offering myself up for whoever or whatever might be watching from the outside. Locks didn’t hold everything out.

I sent off a few emails and scheduled clients for the next , all while throwing back the too greasy remains of a cow sandwiched between a mealy bun. Ahh fast food. I felt sort of guilty for not telling Lily about the change of plans, but it was something I’d rectify when she came over later. I checked the locks on the doors. Sunset had long since passed, and a new night was newly born outside. I was in for the evening, and it was just as well that Serene had canceled because it looked to be a newsworthy sort of evening.

I had a mild sort of intuition, but it had proven itself reliable. Lily, if she kept to her usual routine, was going to be another hour or two. I stretched out on the sofa and muted the television. I blinked, blinked, and a long minute later I slept. Lily’s image was the first thing I saw when reality faded into dream.

That was the last evening I’d ever sleep through. It was the last evening I’d wake up. It was the last evening I’d ever see with my human eyes.

Shit!  Has it been since May? Time flies when I struggle with writers’ block.

Yes, it seems the name David is stuck in my head.  Imagine my chagrin to discover that error.  Eh.  Don’t get confused.  David from ‘The Trial’ is utterly different than old Belial here.

(more…)

I couldn’t move after she’d left me there in that black haze between consciousness and sleep. I felt the cold move into my skin, seep into my bones, but I was helpless to do anything about it. This wasn’t the first time I’d fed her. It wasn’t the first time that I’d placed myself willingly upon her dinner plate. I felt her place the blanket over me, but couldn’t acknowledge her. I hated the weakness that found me after she was done, but not enough to keep me away from her.

My mind raced within my incapacitated body. It felt as if my eyelids were glued shut. I should have wanted to open them, resisted the tug into oblivion. There were other things I wanted to do, wanted to say, but I was useless, trapped within the too-large prison that was my body, trapped by the silken whisper of sleep.

I don’t know how long I lay there, awkwardly laying against her sofa, mindful of the ache my body would later contain. Eventually, time bled into more time, and the blackness that weighted down my eyelids, won. I fell asleep with the alarm sounding outside, signaling the next round of predators.

*** *** *** ***

I jerked awake. It was as if my mind, tired of waiting, had jolted me awake. Tension eased out of my muscles a second later, and I, unmoving as I was, started to drift off again. I spent more time sleeping with her than sleeping with her. It was a shame, really, and a shot to my already unimpressive ego.

I yawned widely, and forced myself up, handling the wave of dizziness that hit me as well as I could. The first time I’d been sick, but, in all reality, I had been dealing with more than just a little blood loss. I’d had to handle the fact that I was on my date’s food chain. Did her screwing me then constitute bestiality?

Questions like that always popped into my head. I found it funny to be as large as I was and still subject to the appetite of a much smaller female. She should have, if life was fair, been afraid of me. I blinked, scanning the room for Lily, but didn’t see her. She would be close by, I knew.

I reached for the glass of sugar water she’d left on the table, and had to stop and focus on steadying my hand. I drank it and lay back against the sofa, shoving the blanket down into my lap, allowing the sugar to seep into my blood and give me enough energy to go and find her.

Outside the room I could hear the claws of some unknown beast walking past. The entire center was a large coven for those of her kind. I always shied away from the term vampire, but that was what she was. Lily drank blood, but there were others there that fed off of different things. It was those things I wished I could unlearn when she’d told me, things I’d wish I’d never heard. They were certainly people I counted myself lucky to have not encountered.

It was also the reason for the security, and my escort through the center. While each of the sections were allowed to leave their rooms at any time, except the brief times when visitors were allowed in and out, it was only safe to do so when the hand pad showed green. Right now, with the click of the claws outside on the tile, I didn’t have to check to see that it glowed deep red. Lily, she could handle her own against whatever it was on the other side of the doors. I would likely find myself made into a meal.

I groaned softly in the back of my throat, and I felt her hand settle against my forehead. I opened my eyes and smiled lazily into her face. She was flushed. My hand reached up and smoothed over her cheek, following her down as she kissed my mouth lightly.

‘How do you feel?’ She mumbled it against my lips as she settled into my lap, her thighs on either side of mine. I slid both of my hands into her dark hair and I felt my heart shudder in my chest. Her fingers were immediately on my chest. ‘David?’ She pulled back enough to search my face. Her cool fingers were on my face, her thumbs ran over my closed lids.

‘I’m fine, Lily.’ I pulled her hands down with my own and laced them together. ‘Stop worrying.’ I studied her face, as I had done a thousand times before. She tried to pull her hands from mine and I held her, leaning forward until our lips touched again.

The alarm sounded outside and there was a click as the locks shifted back to green, and the extra bolts retreated into the wells within the door frame.

I glanced over Lily’s shoulder and sighed deeply. ‘I’ve got to get going. I don’t want to get stuck when they let the dogs out.’ I said it with a slight twist to my mouth.

Lily smiled, but it was a shadow of her former one. She wanted me to stay. Hell, Lily would have converted me if I’d allow it, but it was against the law to covert someone, willingly or not. In most cases, it was difficult to determine who the culprit was, but Lily would easily be identified by the print of her teeth. She had double incisors, a rarity even for vampires who prided themselves on being unique.

That, and we’d been an item long enough for there to be a slew of people pointing the finger back at her in the event I was converted. Investigation was followed by execution and rarely did the vampire or shifter come out on the winning side. Lily shifted and sat off to one side. ‘I’ll go by your place later.’

‘I’ve got dinner with Serene and Elsa,’ I said, speaking of my sister and her lover, ‘but I’ll be home afterwards.’ I turned and cupped her face, running my thumbs over her mouth. ‘I want to see you.’

She smiled and stood with me as I moved to the door. The dizziness had receded, but I was still careful with my movements. I placed my palm on the scanner and waited for the door to click open. She rested her hand over mine. ‘Thank you for coming to see me.’

‘I knew you’d be hungry.’ I looked out in the hallway with no small amount of tension. A moment later a guard appeared. He nodded at Lily and then started to walk back down the path from which he’d come. I kissed her quickly and followed him, looking back only long enough to watch the door shut behind me.

I didn’t relax until the center’s main entrance was behind me.  It wasn’t the daylight that kept them pinned inside their center, it was the curfew established by the government which restricted their movements.  Daytime was ours, night, theirs.  There were few times it overlapped.  Full moons, days or nights, were always given to the Weres, because containing them had proven dangerous and ultimately impossible.  Vampires had rallied for the equivalent treatment and were given that same time.  Full moons were dangerous times, and inevitably, someone was nearly always hunted afterward.

I sank into the driver’s seat of my car, and cranked on the air.  I closed my eyes briefly and then reached into the glove compartment for my cell.  They were forbidden inside the center, but only for the guests.  I flipped it open and played the messages as I pulled out of lot onto the long driveway leading to the gate where the ‘half-breed’ guards waited.

Escapism in its finest form.

— — — —

You might know me if you saw me. I have the face of someone you knew at some point in your life a long time ago. It was a handsome enough face, shy of the model good looks that could have landed me a life of luxury and mindless praise, but hardly hanging on the low branch of the ugly tree. My hair was black, my skin naturally that color that white people everywhere prayed to the sun or bottle to get. I had, what I considered plain gray eyes. Blue would have been more striking, but like the rest of us, I was not given an options menu inside the genetic puddle from which I sprouted.

I could work out a little more, but I didn’t want veins to start sprouting out of my skin. I preferred the anti-steroid look. I still fit into the same pair of jeans I wore in high school, the ones I wore towards the end that compensated for the growth spurt that burst out of me around the 11th grade, and the subsequent adjustment of my height/weight proportion. I was tall, taller than most people, but not so much I stood out. I liked the quiet. I liked the anonymity that being, just plain, gave me.

But plain people didn’t find themselves in the situation I was in.

I’m getting ahead of myself here. Let me give you some history. I was, for all intents, given the best of everything life could afford me. We weren’t rich, but money was never an issue that I knew of. I wasn’t abused growing up, in spite of being a Catholic and my exposure to all those priests. Short of an overly stern father, my parents were normal. My mother doted, worried, wrung her hands with anxiety. My father was silent, never cooked and loved her openly, though he never showed me much of that affection.

I’d always followed my parents advise. I was sort of a nerd growing up, a little fat, too, given my obsession with brownies I learned in the mandatory homeec class. I loved chemistry, became fascinated with the inner workings of the mind after I read an article on bipolar disorder and the chemicals that cause and effect that condition. I moved onto college, excelled at it, lost my virginity and experimented with recreational drugs. They didn’t take, thanks to a rather embarrassing vomiting episode following some pot. In fact, I’d never fallen too far off the path that would lead me to a medical degree, a large house in the ‘burbs and 2.5 kids. Until I met Lily.

*** *** *** *** ***

The doors parted for me easily. I wasn’t hard to identify even given the poor lighting. I looked up and noted that the glass cases around all but one of the street lights had been broken. It cast the entire area in shadow, and that fit with the crowd. I could see them caring for the problem with a gun and good aim. A few extra gunshots in this area of town would never be noticed.

My feet scraped across the entrance way. I was always a little clumsy, it came with my size. My mother used to say that my feet and head were in different area codes. My forehead was forever in danger of striking the frame of any normal door. I was always pleased to find light fixtures, doors and ceiling fans (shudder) pleasantly out of eye-gouging range.

‘You’re a big one.’ The comment was said with a curled lip, by a too-short man in a too-tight outfit of all black.

My father, original inventor of the ‘zing’ had passed along his talent. ‘And you aren’t.’

The man turned and walked away, and I felt a momentary satisfaction with my answer that was immediately subdued by self-disgust. Another friend I’d just made there. My mouth was always just a little quicker than my brain. I held out my arms to my side as they wanded me, followed by an overly intimate hand search of my body. Thank God for female body guards, I’d hate to tackle the mental dilemma of getting a chubby for a dude.

As she came around in front of me, she smiled. She squatted, running her palms along my legs, while I looked down into the tight valley her breasts made, created, no doubt, by some creative undergarment. She laughed softly as her fingers brushed over my cock.

‘Oh damn.’ She mumbled to herself and then glanced up at me to see if I’d heard. I felt heat rise in my face, and looked away. She cleared her throat and stood. ‘He’s clean.’ I felt, rather than saw, her partner move away from me.

I dropped my arms and mumbled my thanks. ‘Pleasure was mine.’ She said, handing me back the wallet I didn’t realize I’d surrendered. I needed to pay better attention.

‘Lily is expecting me.’ I mumbled, waiting for the door to open into the other room.

‘You can’t go without an escort.’ The female guard with the cleavage responded. ‘Give me a minute, I’ll walk you back.’

I waited while she fussed with some papers and signed something on the small table they were calling a desk. She swiped a card and the door swung open. The short man in black was there, along with a few others, but we passed them. I felt their eyes upon me, and resisted the urge to bow my head and stare at my shoes while I walked. Instead, I turned my head to follow the guard.

She had a nice ass, but considering all things, she’d never look at me twice. There was too much about her that screamed ‘Diva!’ in spite of her blue-collar job. I thought that, but even as I did, Lily’s face floated before my eyes and self-doubt turned on me again. Why was I here?

The building was strangely set up. It seemed to be a maze, with long halls, meaningless hallways, and I understood why the guard didn’t allow me to go alone. It would be impossible to find my way around without help. I’d never met her here, and if she hadn’t explained the workings of the security, I’d think I was in the wrong place. This wasn’t the sort of place you’d find someone like her.

She was magnificent. Luminescent.

That image of her from our first meeting still clung to the backs of my eyes. I was picturing her in my mind, and so, when I ran into and nearly over the guard, I starred blankly at her for a long moment until I apologized, clumsily, as I seemed to do everything else. She only smirked in response and stood back from the hand pad, staring at me the entire time. I pressed my palm to the glass and watched as it blackened and lit up with a green flare of light.

I passed, obviously, when the door popped open. The guard left, back down the maze of endless hallways, and I ventured into the room.

Lily. I felt a sort of relief steal over me. She was as beautiful as ever.

‘David.’ My name on her lips sent a shiver running down my back. I didn’t bother trying to hide the reaction. I felt a smile tug at the corner of my mouth as she came out of the bathroom. I was in a sitting area, decorated with more taste than I could ever summon within myself. I ran my hand over the back of her sofa.

‘So this is your abode.’ I said it with a smile, glancing around and taking silent notes in my head of her preferences.

‘Yes.’ She didn’t say anything else, and I startled when I felt her hand settle on my bare forearm. ‘Like it?’

‘Yes.’ I sucked in my breath and reached out to smooth the sleek black hair, so like my own, away from her face. She turned her face into my palm and my heart beat a little faster. ‘You’re cold.’ I mumbled this under my breath.

‘I’m hungry.’ She pressed her body closer to mine until I could feel the fine movements of her. She kissed my mouth, had to pull herself up my body to do it, but I didn’t mind, my hands cupped her ass, her legs wrapped around mine. When her tongue slid into my mouth I was hard as a rock. I could feel her cool fingers sliding under the layers of clothing I wore, play in the valleys of muscle I’d perfected just a little more for her sake.

I bit her bottom lip. She brought out the animal in me. With her I felt a thousand things at once, protective, jealous, love, anxiety, desire… I could go on, but I was losing a rapid battle between thought and thoughtlessness. I walked us forward with great effort and nearly fell on her when we reached the sofa. I tore the dress she wore, because I just had to get at the smooth, perfect skin.

I broke the kiss and lay panting on her, bowing my head to kiss her throat, the swell where her breast started and finally, the peak. It, too, felt cold in the hot cavern of my mouth. I tugged and she arched her back beautifully.

‘Lily.’ I mumbled.

She squirmed under me. ‘Mmm?’

‘Do you want to eat first?’ I said, taking great satisfaction in the shudder of pleasure my words and actions were causing.

‘God, yes.’ She laughed softly. I pulled back from her and fell back into an open area on the sofa. She climbed into my lap, straddled my thighs. My palms found her under her dress. Her eyes flared with hunger. I slid a finger into her. I was drunk on confidence. Drunk on her fragrance.

‘You sure?’ I groaned, happy to have found one place where her body wasn’t cool, but radiating heat. She kissed the corner of my mouth, her fingers slid into my hair. I felt her fingernails run down the corded muscle in my neck. I ran my thumb over her clit.

She purred softly, then gasped as another finger joined the first. ‘You make me want so many things at once, David.’

‘Where’s the bedroom, Lily?’ My eyes were glazed, heavy-lidded. I could smell her scent. I ground my cock against what parts of her I could reach. I was in exquisite pain. Wanting.

‘Maybe later, David.’ Her grip tightened on my hair, pulling my head away from hers, until I had to look sideways to see her. I blinked, trying to clear the fog of haze, reconcile the discomfort her grip was putting on me. She leaned forward, kissed my throat.

And then I felt the skin at my throat puncture like the skin of a plum. Pain mixed with the haze of lust. I tried to jerk to avoid the sensation, but she held me like I was an infirm. Still it didn’t go together. I felt the rush of sensation to my neck where her lips met my skin.

Pleasure began to saturate me again, my cock lost some of its stature. I shuddered, my eyes rolled back in my head. I could feel the steady pull of her suction, helpless at first to stop it, unwilling moments later as I felt myself drowning in her being. It was where I wanted to be. I was inside her and still my own self, as if the blood she was drawing from me existed to feed and serve us both.

I felt her tongue, watched her draw back and lick her mouth with a mixture of sleepiness and passion. Her hold lessened, but I couldn’t find the will, or even remember why I wanted, to move. I smiled, almost apologetically, before I slid down and my head hit the sofa.

Then there was blackness.