Friday Night Bites

Blood donor

Melanie had been jogging alone in the predawn hours of a clear fall morning. She'd worn a headlight and reflective strips along her back and sneakers. The yellow bands gleamed as she crossed into and out of the winding streetlights. Her husband knew where she was. He always knew where she was in the mornings. Ever since they'd moved into the cozy cul-de-sac that was Willow Circle five years ago, she'd jogged the same thirty minute route. If she was late, he could always reach her by calling the cellphone strapped to her arm.

There were no sidewalks in the wooded neighborhood, but tall, steely light poles painted a warm path against the backdrop of red maple leaves and deep emerald pines. Melanie, breathing hard fifteen minutes in, crunched through the brittle leaf litter on the side of the road. Her long red ponytail bobbed past the bushes I was squatted in, and carried on down the street to the pleasant thump-thump of steady footfalls.

Melanie was a careful, cautious woman.  

She just wasn't very observant.

She could've caught me many an early morning if she'd only bothered to turn her head.

I was glad, as always, when her labored breathing became a whisper in the wind. It'd take a few more seconds for the sound of her heartbeat—my favorite sound in all the world, an intoxicating rush that made my tired bones feel young again—to patter away to silence. If she ever caught me, if she ever met the neighbor in the unkempt house at the top of the circle...Well, over the centuries I'd tried my best not to eat the neighbors, especially married women with children.

I looked down to the quivering meat in my fingers with sullen resignation. Rabbit, with its stringy, fear-drenched flesh, would have to do. As I lifted the bloody little body to my lips, that's when I heard it: a high-pitched whine, a squeal of tires. Rushing beneath the streetlights, black panels gleaming, roared an SUV. It barreled down the road, swerving wildly from side to side. 

I rose, ran onto the road in its wake, aware in the back of my mind what was going to happen, but aware too late.

The vehicle slammed into Melanie. Her body rolled up the hood like a ragdoll, safety stripes flashing through the light as she hit the ground and tumbled off the road. The SUV careened violently through several saplings, rumbled back onto the pavement and roared away into fading starlight.

If I hadn't already fed, I would have taken the easy meal.

But the copper taste was still thick on my lips as I, the sole witness to the unfortunate incident, abandoned my dinner and approached the victim where she lay. The round halo of light, whose pole her prone body had come to rest against, framed her body like a fallen angel among the leaves. She lay curled on one side, her face covered by long, cherry red hair: a rich, dyed hue that made the blood hard to spot to the untrained eye.

Speaking of eyes, hers were rather difficult to see. One was too close to the ground, and the other was a bloody mess thanks to a lacerated eyelid and deep scores around her forehead and nose. The longer I stood beside her, waiting for a chest that never rose, the redder her body got. Color oozed from underneath her shirt and pants, trickled along her angled thighs.

There was nothing beautiful about death. I never understood why humans romanticized it. Hell, I never understood why my kind romanticized it. Death, true death, was raw and uncomfortable.

After wiping my hands on my own thighs, I rolled up my sleeves and crouched beside her. Gently, I brushed her hair from her face. Almost immediately the scent of warm blood overwhelmed my nostrils. Her chin, nose, cheekbones, eyebrows—they were all coated in that thin, dark liquid.

The animal in me salivated. "Get it together, Virge. She might still be alive."

Taking a deep breath, I felt her throat. Somewhere beneath the wet surface pulsed a thin, erratic heartbeat.

 "Melanie?" I whispered, laying my hand on her shoulder. She didn't answer. Of course not. She was dying. My tongue snaked around my fangs in quiet contemplation.

I tried again. "Melanie Bridges?"

Her fingers twitched. Blood pooled in a large gash on her forearm, trickling daintily into her palm and down onto orange leaves.  I glanced at her hand, at the little diamond on her ring finger and sighed. For a creature like me, you take what you can get. I couldn't remember the last time I'd had dessert, and that wound was soaking into the ground. I wouldn't even have to bite her, wouldn't leave no evidence behind. Not that the cops would look for any in an  obvious hit&run.

As long as I was careful, I wouldn't even have to disguise this one like an animal attack as we'd always do back in the day when wolves, not toy poodles, roamed this stretch of Massachusetts forest.

Rabbit forgotten, my stomach roared.  I checked the road. No cars. I checked Melanie once more, just to be polite. No answer.

So I lowered my face against her warm, warm wrist and began to lap. When my tongue probed the wound the woman shot up electrified and punched me across the jaw. She didn't have the breath to scream, but the pallid, open-mouthed look of horror said it all. She was staring into the enchanted red eyes of a monster.

Modern vampires had it easy. They were glamorous. They were handsome. And if they weren't handsome, then beautiful. I'd seen those young little things clustered together in dingy bars with wooden tables and black roses tastefully placed alongside white candles. They thought living forever made you stop aging.

They were in for quite a surprise a few centuries down the road, if they lived that long, when the wrinkles came and their noses receded and their ears grew pointy and the webbing started growing underneath their arms. There was a reason we were so closely tied to bats in so much lore and mythology. Young vampires didn't understand what it was to be a true creature of darkness, a wretched soul, a cursed soul, a monster that had spent the centuries hidden away from light, drinking blood, fueling man's imagination on dark, windless nights.

They didn't know about the hunched, flightless beast they were doomed to become.

"What?" Melanie panted, scooting backward, dragging a twisted leg through the grass. "What are you?"

"Alive," I rasped, freezing in place, her blood sweet nectar as it rolled down my throat. I looked at my hand, at the clawed fingers that had once been able to form a fist like hers, and set it against the leaves carefully. "In a way. More than you. You're dying."

Her head bobbed. She lifted it tiredly, and in a weak voice said, "Get me to a hospital. My husband—"

Melanie was in immense pain. She didn't see me for what I was.

"You won't make it," I argued, inching closer on my hands and knees, fighting against the urge to put her from her misery. My ear twitched back, scanning the road for signs of another driver, but there was no one this early to rescue her.  Instead, I leaned my head in closer, laid the length of my ear against her chest. Her arms moved, but I hopped backward before she could strike me again.

"You have to try," she said. "You have to save me. I'm a good person."

I shook my head, touching her chest with the edge of my hooked thumb. "Your heart calls to me. I can hear it. It's failing. You'll go into cardiac arrest."

"Please," she whispered. "My family..."

I stroked leaves from her crimson hair. She reeked of sweat and fear. "I can only give you a half life, a life in the shadows, a life like mine. You don't want that."

"Will I be able to see my husband? My kids?"

Carefully, I positioned my forearm against her mouth. "You have to bite me. You have to drink my blood."

"If you're my angel," she said, taking deep, wheezing gasps between each word. Her teeth trembled on my unbroken wrist, her lips a warm brush I hadn't felt in a hundred years. "Carry me away to the other side."

Next Friday, we take a trip to the sea....