Cold, silver moonlight streamed through the window, painting the room in its icy brilliance. Its beam fell squarely across the sleeping form of the young woman, turning the blonde hair that spilled unbound across the pillow into an argent waterfall.
He came on that moonlight as elemental dust, as glimmers and sparks that danced at the corner of the eye, had there been anyone awake to see. From this, his form took shape, becoming a wisp of shadow, elongating, lengthening until he leaned over her, his skin too pale, the broken nails on his fingers crusted with grave-earth. With burning, red-lit eyes he stared down at the bed, his face rapt with an unholy hunger.
She had called to him, had this young maiden, beckoned him out of the night, summoned him with her innocent purity. His throat burned as he stared down at her, at the shallow rise and fall of her chest beneath the blanket, at the long, slender column of her throat.
He could not recall this feeling, this
compulsion she instilled in him. The red thirst that possessed him had never been so strong! He
had to have her, to take her, despoil her, taint her shining soul with the corruption lurking inside him. His jaw ached, his elongated upper canines throbbed in dreadful need. Yet for a long moment he did not move, letting the seconds tick by, each one full of the beautiful torment of anticipation. He savored it all, drank it up as ravenously as he would drink of the maiden’s life, until he could no longer remain poised on the razor’s edge.
When at last he bent his mouth to her throat it was not with the smooth motion of his entrance, but a quick. convulsive strike like a snake’s, upper body twisting as he lashed out. He pierced her, opened her vein and gulped greedily. But his hunger was not about the physical act of consumption. Rather, it was for the very essence of her life, the vital spirit she carried within her. The thing within him seemed to uncoil, reach out through the bond made by his bite, burrowing into her essence, seeking out the shining purity at the core of her soul…
Until he touched her, found what he sought, and all of a sudden felt it rushing back at him, a rising tide swelling to engulf his darkness, until that golden glory swallowed him entire and he wept at its terrible beauty and knew no more.
Lillet Blan stretched as the morning sunlight streamed into the room. She took a deep breath, then crinkled her nose in distaste as an unpleasant smell made itself felt, something not unlike if someone had set fire to a rotting swamp, the unpleasant kind filled with shambling monstrosities.
“I hope that’s not breakfast,” she murmured. No matter how many years she’d been practicing magic, Lillet had never shaken her farm-girl habits of early rising and large breakfasts, which made the threat of bad cooking all the more fearful.
Her lover and lifelong companion, Amoretta Virgine, made happy cooing noises and snuggled against her in her sleep. Amoretta was generally an early riser, as homunculi did not require as much sleep as humans, but this morning she had apparently decided to sleep in.
“Next time, you should take the side of the bed by the wall,” Lillet said. “You never get out of bed before I do even when you get up first.” Of course, she’d taken that side on purpose when they’d gone to bed; Amoretta was an enthusiastic sleep-snuggler and could knock Lillet clean out of a narrow inn-bed if Lillet didn’t take the wall side.
She didn’t want to wake Amoretta, but nature was calling, not helped at all by what the smell was doing to her stomach, so Lillet slowly drew herself up on her hands and knees, still looking up at the rafters, and swung her leg crab-fashion over Amoretta, getting purchase on the far side of the bed. She followed with the other leg, then stretched so she could reach down to the floor, and swung herself all the way out.
Lillet’s glee at her success was spoiled when her second foot came down squarely onto a pile of ash, kicking up a huge cloud that stung at her eyes and got into her nose and mouth. She sneezed loudly, four times straight, realizing as she did that the ash was the source of the sickly, fetid stench.
“Bless you! Lillet, are you all right?”
The sneezing had obviously wakened Amoretta; she was sitting up in bed, worry plain on her face.
“I think so. I just stepped in an ash pile.” She brushed at her nightdress, trying to get as much of the filthy stuff off as she could. “I may have to start carrying one of those witch’s brooms when we travel, though.”
“Oh? Have you figured out how to make one fly?”
“No, I mean just to clean up what’s left of all the vampires you attract when we’re in this part of the country!”