How Do I Love Thee? Read online

  ‘I love you, and I want to live a long life beside you. But a mortal life, Sylvie. That’s my lot. It’s all I want.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Don’t go against me in this,’ he said, his face intent, eyes boring into mine. I opened my mouth to reply, then closed it again, as some more of what he was thinking leaked into my senses.

  He was afraid. Underneath his insistence that he wouldn’t be turned, he was afraid. Afraid I’d do—something. I couldn’t tell what.

  I sat back on my heels, reeling. Dan, afraid of me? Of what I might do to him? I abandoned my earlier reluctance to snoop and tried to focus in on his thoughts, extending my senses, tilting towards him …

  And a wave of lust tangled with a soupçon of tenderness blasted over me like a tempest.

  Yanking my hands free of his, I grabbed his shoulders, forcing myself to relax my grip when he winced, but he was with me, eyes heavy-lidded with desire. He twined his hands in my hair, and pulled me roughly to him.

  When his mouth claimed mine an agony of pleasure burst through my body, lit fires in my loins and sent flames licking along my skin, as my muscles clenched and my skin tightened. Dan shoved the kimono off my shoulders with impatient hands and bent his head, mouth battening on the skin of my shoulder, sucking at my neck, nipping the length of my collarbone.

  I thrust my hands beneath the waistband of his shorts, took him in my hands and squeezed him in the rhythm I knew he liked best, fingers stroking until he whispered my name against my skin and pushed me down onto the rug.

  I tilted my hips to meet him, more than ready, and as his weight came down on me I lifted my knees, curled my calf across his back, raised my body to receive his. When he plunged himself inside me I sucked in a breath and then used it to cry his name, so he could feel my words and my love pour out, against his body. He sank his length into me and I let my head fall back as the delicious tug of his flesh within mine sent sparklers of sensual energy skittering along my nerves. His hands curled around my shoulders as he pulled me against his thrusts and he filled me, loved me, drove me screaming over the edge into chaos, and made me feel whole, and human, in the only way that still mattered.

  But when I opened my eyes again the following night and I looked at the empty bed beside me I was reminded all over again that I wasn’t human. Not now, not ever again.

  I rolled over onto my back, tugging the sheets up to cover my bare breasts. My perky, eternally nineteen-year-old breasts. Of course, they only looked nineteen.

  I pushed the thoughts away, unsettled. I was dwelling on it too often lately. I wondered where Dan was, but when I extended my senses nothing happened. I was back to normal.

  Whatever that was.

  I reached for Dan’s pillow, and squeezed it against my chest, letting his scent rush over me. Lifting my hand to my face I could detect the special aroma we made when we came together, a mingling of both our individual scents. My loins twinged, reminded of the lovemaking we’d continued in this bed, until the sun rose high enough beyond the heavy metal shutters to send me to my rest.

  It wasn’t easy on Dan, this enforced nocturnal existence. A natural early riser, he still found it hard to get into a decent sleep pattern. It was no surprise to find the bed empty, but unease seeped into my bones.

  Despite the passionate release of our loving, tension hung in the air like a minute vibration, an awareness aching in the bones of my skull.

  I pushed the sheet down with my feet, hugging the pillow, driven to rise and reluctant to do so. But there was no resisting it. My sleep cycle, if you could call it that, was almost entirely involuntary. When the sun rose, I sank into slumber. I awoke when it set. You could set your watch by me.

  Damn it. I laid Dan’s pillow back on his side of the bed and left the rumpled sheets. Sunday, our day of rest. We had a couple of young guys, uni students, who took the Sunday night shift so we could have one day off a week. Sometimes, Dan would go to the last Mass of the day, while I still slept.

  I wondered if he’d been today. It seemed likely.

  Skipping a shower, reluctant to wash his scent from my body, I wriggled into undergarments and Levis, and then pulled a hand-knitted hoodie on over a cotton tee. I found my flat shoes under the bed and slipped my feet into them.

  A brief detour into the bathroom to splash water on my face, and I was ready. I went looking for Dan, pretty sure where I’d find him.

  In the doorway of the garage at the rear of the house, I drank in the sight of Dan hunched over the grille of the old Holden he was restoring. I raised my hand to shield my sensitive eyes from the glare of the floodlight suspended over his work space, and admired the long muscles in his back, clearly visible as he reached into the depths of the engine bay.

  ‘Want to pass me that spanner?’ he asked casually.

  ‘Sure.’ I crossed the threshold into his realm and delicately picked up the spanner from the other side of the vehicle. I handed it to him.

  ‘Thanks.’ He reached into the unknown innards of the old EH and tinkered mysteriously.

  My appreciation for modern inventions didn’t really extend to cars. They were transport, nothing more. I missed horses. Missed the warmth and strength of the strong creatures, yes, but I also missed the long journeys. You had time, then, to have a conversation. If we’d come home by carriage last night I could have made love to Dan within that shuttered, swaying bower, and held the argument at bay.

  Or perhaps not. Perhaps it was as inevitable as the tension that thickened the silence between us now.

  He wanted me to stop killing, but without that what was the point of my existence? Why should I be granted this long life if not for a reason? I’d been powerless once. My mother, too. All the years, all the evil men I’d slain, didn’t begin to compensate for all the women and children I’d seen betrayed, abused and murdered over the years. Men too, sometimes. Good men, like Dan.

  He leaned forward, and I stared as gold glinted at his throat when his tiny crucifix swung into the light.

  No, that’s a myth too, crosses don’t burn my flesh. But normally he only wore the crucifix when he went to church. When he felt in need of comfort. God’s grace, he called it. It was unlike him to leave it on when he was working around the cars.

  Troubled, I watched him in silence. Could he be right about God still having a care for me? Dan’s beliefs were deeply rooted, unshakeable. I’d sometimes wondered how he could reconcile his love for a creature like me with his love for God. But I’d never dared ask him.

  No. God had abandoned me—us—when He let my innocent mother be murdered. A loving god would never have allowed it, nor the thousands of other women strangled, burned, tortured, drowned.

  I’d agreed to become a vampire so I could claim the justice denied me by the law. In doing so I’d cut my last ties with God and never regretted it, or any of my choices.

  Until now. Until Dan.

  ‘Keep thinking that hard and you’ll break something, Sylvie. Want to share?’

  A good question. I didn’t, really. But this sense of wrongness, growing these past months between us, was fast becoming unbearable.

  ‘Do you love me?’

  ‘You know I do.’

  ‘Then why won’t you let me turn you?’

  Dan straightened up and looked at me with candid blue eyes. I blinked, shifted my feet uneasily. Sometimes I can barely stand to look into his eyes. His soul shines there, plain to see, reminding me of what I see when I’m foolish enough to gaze into my own eyes. Nothing.

  ‘You would imperil your mortal soul,’ Dan said.

  My skin crawled even as a startled laugh ratcheted out of me.

  ‘I don’t have a soul.’

  ‘Of course you do.’

  I stared at him. How could he be so naive?

  ‘Dan. I’m a vampire. No soul. Remember?’

  He scowled. ‘Don’t patronise me. You may be centuries old but that doesn’t mean you know everything.’

  ‘Sor-ry,�
� I said, stung, not meaning it.

  ‘You wouldn’t be alive if you didn’t have a soul.’

  ‘But I’m not alive,’ I reminded him softly.

  Doubt flittered across his face before his features set once again into the stubborn expression I knew so well. But it was too late.

  ‘I don’t have a soul, but you do. Is that it, Dan? Is it your mortal soul you’re afraid for?’

  ‘No,’ he said, but his face, as always, betrayed him.

  ‘Oh, Dan.’

  ‘Sylvie, no, you’ve got it all wrong.’ I jumped as the spanner clattered into the engine bay, but then his hands enclosed mine, thumbs stroking my knuckles. I crumbled at his touch. His hands on me.

  ‘I am afraid,’ he said, swallowing. Reluctance etched the lines around his eyes deeper into his skin, and a sickened thrill played along my nerves to see this proud man admit fear.

  ‘I am afraid,’ he said again, ‘but not for my soul. The only thing I’m afraid of is sooner or later you’ll leave me.’

  For a moment all I could do was gape at him. I swear my jaw would have been swinging in the breeze, if there’d been one.

  ‘That’s rich. It’s you who’ll leave me.’

  ‘Never,’ he said. For a moment his utter conviction thrilled me to the core, before fury rushed up through my bones and enflamed my skin.

  ‘You will leave me. You’ll die.’

  ‘Sylvie, I can’t help that.’

  ‘Yes, you can.’ I ground the words out, my fingers clenching on his. I saw Dan wince, the tendons standing out on his neck, and I gazed at the marvellously masculine line of his throat. The blood pulsing beneath the skin.

  I could do it. I could squeeze harder, force him to yield, bend his strong body against the grill of the car and drink from him, force him to drink from me, until we were one, until it was done. If I just pressed a little more—

  I flung away from him, horrified. What was happening to me? That I could think of bending him to my will, appalled me. My hands shook, my mind turning almost numb with shock. And still, my eyes strayed to his throat.

  ‘I have to go,’ I said. My voice wavered.

  Dismay drew his face taut and he caught at my hands. I evaded him easily and took a step backwards.

  ‘No, Dan. I have to go.’ I couldn’t trust myself. Insidious thought: that once it was done it couldn’t be undone. Part of me didn’t believe he’d destroy himself if I turned him, for suicide was a sin against his god. But I couldn’t be sure.

  ‘Don’t leave.’

  ‘I have to go. I can’t tr—I can’t stay here right now.’

  ‘Please, Sylvie. Talk to me.’

  ‘Talk, talk, talk, it changes nothing. I can’t stand by and let you die.’

  Dan’s eyes glittered. ‘But you expect me to let you kill.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘You really don’t know?’

  I glared at him. ‘I wouldn’t ask if I did.’

  ‘You don’t need to kill to live.’

  I didn’t understand what he was getting at. ‘So?’

  ‘You can choose not to.’

  ‘It’s not that simple.’

  ‘Yes, it is. Every choice matters.’

  I laughed, and bitterness stung my throat. ‘Oh, I know that. More than you’ll ever understand.’

  ‘Then help me to understand. What is it you won’t tell me?’

  For a moment, I was tempted. But it would be like tearing down a dam wall during a once-in-a-century flood. If I told anything, I’d tell all, and the guilt and the horror would drown us both. And in my fear, I’d damn both of us.

  Ice crept over my skin. By staying, I was cursing Dan to a half-life, a miserable nocturnal existence, cut off from his friends, suffering from lack of sleep and lack of sunlight. No friends, no family, no children.

  And before long, I’d give in to my fear, and I’d turn him. And then he’d walk into the sunlight, where I couldn’t follow.

  No.

  I looked at him, filling my eyes with the sight of his face, his eyes, his hair. His hands stretched out to me in an unspoken plea.

  Did I love him enough to leave temptation behind? To leave him?

  Always.

  ‘I love you, Dan. Be well.’

  ‘Sylvie!’ He lunged for me, but he was too slow.

  They’re always too slow.

  I loosed the preternatural strength and speed I usually kept tightly leashed, and spun away into the night, his voice calling my name a fading echo in my ears.

  As I sped through the darkness, seeking to put miles between us, distress burned my throat. If I was human, no doubt the tears would fly in my wake like pattering rain. Sorrow is agonising when you can’t express it.

  It shouldn’t have surprised me, I suppose, that he wasn’t going to let me go so easily.

  One night as I made my way wearily through the cemetery, a familiar figure detached itself from an adjacent crypt.

  ‘Dan.’ Oh, but the syllable slipped so sweetly from my lips. I’d missed even saying his name.

  ‘Sylvie.’ And my name on his tongue cut through my resolutions like a knife. Bittersweet.

  ‘You found me.’

  ‘You wanted to be found.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You could have moved her.’

  My mother. Once the wicked flames had burned out, I’d recovered her ashes. I carried her with me for years, but once I settled, I saw her interred with due ceremony in hallowed ground, as I knew she’d have wished. I’d spun tales, forged documents, used my magic to influence the local authorities until they accepted that she belonged where she was. I couldn’t disturb her rest now. Nor could I answer truthfully whether a part of me had hoped he’d come. I had come here, after all. Night, after night, after night.

  ‘Is she the reason, Sylvie? Do you kill to avenge your mother’s death at the hands of evil men?’

  ‘How—?’ He knew? He couldn’t possibly.

  ‘The brutality of the witch slayings around Fife are well documented, my love.’

  ‘You never said.’

  ‘I was waiting for you to tell me.’

  ‘I couldn’t.’

  ‘I know. It’s all right.’

  ‘I started with my mother’s murderers,’ I said, my voice low and scratchy against my throat. I scented smoke, pungent and suffocating, as I always did whenever I thought of that time. ‘After I was turned, I killed the men who were responsible. And then I hunted down other evil creatures hiding their sick malice and their power-mongering behind God’s word. I thought it would fill the hole inside me, but it never did.’ I looked at Dan, afraid of the condemnation I’d see in his eyes, knowing I had to face it. Perhaps then I’d have the strength to truly walk away. Let him go. Forever. ‘That’s how I know, Dan. I can’t fill the emptiness, so I have to keep killing. I have no soul, and I can never walk into the sunlight. There’ll be no eternal rest for me.’

  Dan looked back at me, and his face was haggard, his eyes lacking their usual light, but there was no trace of disgust or accusation there.

  ‘You can stop killing. That hole inside you needs to be filled, yes, you’re right, but it’s love you seek. Not death.’

  ‘How do you know?’ My legs started to tremble. I was shocked at how desperately I wanted to believe him. How much I envied his faith. In everything.

  ‘Look at you. So beautiful, so fragile. You were made for love. Even a fool can see it.’

  ‘You’re a fool, then.’

  ‘Of course I am. Please, Sylvie. Come with me. Come home.’

  Oh, the word was like a lance, a temptation aiming for my cold and silent heart as surely as a stake in the legends of old. Stupid. How could a stake kill something already dead?

  I shook with the desire to go to him, slip into the comforting circle of his arms, let the solid warmth of his body drive some of the chill from my own. But I knew it was transient. A false temptation.

  I didn’t de
serve the redemption he was offering me. I could never walk into the sunlight, for no salvation waited for me there, no light on the other side. Only a darkness I couldn’t face.

  ‘No, Dan. It’s not meant to be. I knew deep in my heart, when I still had one, I’d have to atone for my choices. I could have accepted God’s plan. But I didn’t. I didn’t care about anything but vengeance, and I thought I was prepared to pay the price. Any price. But then I met you.’

  Dan moved a little towards me, and I watched him warily. I could easily avoid him, but that wasn’t the problem. The problem was I didn’t want to.

  ‘I knew you were the one I’d been waiting for when you walked in to the shop and asked about the late-shift position.’ Dan said. ‘Five feet tall and female, all hair and eyes and curves, I knew you’d be a security risk, an invitation for every thief in town, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t let you leave.’

  ‘And then you found out I was damned. Should have let me walk out that door, Dan.’

  ‘You’re not evil. I know it. God knows it, or He’d have struck you down.’

  I wanted to believe him. But I’d learned the bitter lesson of complacency when I listened to my mother’s assurances that no harm would come to her. Wishing something was true didn’t make it so. A belief that everything would somehow work out didn’t make it come true. Prayers weren’t always answered.

  ‘God tolerates evil all the time.’

  ‘God has used you as His instrument against evil, Sylvie. That doesn’t make you evil.’

  I gazed at him, aware that although I could see him clearly by the light of the distant stars, with the moon sulking behind clouds I’d be nothing more to him than a familiar silhouette. And yet he’d known it was me. He knew me. Could this good man really be so wrong about me? Or was I once again indulging in wishful thinking?

  ‘Maybe I was just sent to tempt you,’ I said.

  ‘Sylvie,’ Dan said again, and surely he was aware of how every time he uttered my name it further weakened my resolve? ‘Yes, you’re right, you were sent to tempt me. Who wouldn’t be tempted by the promise of living forever? And how could God have made that promise any more enticing, when it offered me an eternity at your side? But I passed the test.’