Chapter Two - Journal

Chapter Two - Journal

Zale lay in the darkness of his bed, a wide, down stuffed antique from an era gone by. No light permeated the cell beneath the guest house on the Gravari estate. The soft touch of velvet enveloped his body. He slept in the nude, though sleep had yet to take him. He couldn’t stop thinking of the young woman. He wondered, now that morning had arrived, did she leave? Had she thought him only a passing dream or nightmare? It’s best if she did. She was the first he’d approached in a decade without the intent to feed. “Ah, but feed I did,” he chuckled. “She tasted better than I remember any human’s blood tasting. He’d forced himself to stop.

Something was amiss on the property. He’d lived in the guesthouse for nearly a century. Its prior owner had used it as a bed and breakfast. He’d watched her from his usual hiding places among the thick birch trees that lined the rear of the property. She was old in his memory, a silver haired woman that favored crocheting on the wide porch at the front of the manor. Tess used to plant flowers in the brick beds near the steps, new ones in red and gold every spring. Sometimes she’d wander into the woods, humming in her casual way. He could follow her in the twilight hours when the sun couldn’t threaten his life. He didn’t know how or when she died. It was during one of his “hibernations” as he liked to call them, periods of extended, voluntary sleep. Life often became boring in its eternal darkness.

Zale Gravari didn’t keep friends or companions. What lovers he experienced over his countless lifetime were only appetizers before an engorging meal. The previous night’s exception made him nervous and curious.

Unable to sleep, he rolled on his side, concentrated and willed the candle to light. He liked candles. The one on his bedside table had been replaced over time atop the same brass holder. The many waxy colors he’d chosen had melted in bubbled lines to the tabletop and down one leg. It gave his meager chamber an eerie, eccentric feel.

The buttery light reflected off the masks that hung on every wall of his room. He liked shiny ones, sparkly golds and silvers, coppers polished to a fine, shimmering hue. They watched him with their tribal visages, haunting shamans or Asian theatre faces. He hardly noticed their presence at the moment though. The boredom he suffered was broken. He shuffled through the drawer to find his journal. He’d sharpened his pencil a month ago and the lead still waited for him to wear it down.

Zale set his pencil to the paper and wrote in his scrawling font. She thinks I am a nightmare, a ghostly vision come to take her in the night. That’s what I am, nothing more or less, but I wonder if that’s all I can ever be to this woman. She intrigues me with her books. I saw them on the couch, stacks of books she must pore over for hours. Her eyes are like the night sky, dark, blue and haunted. I should like to stare into them and make love to her.

He slapped the book shut. Frustrated that he would have to wait through the day to see her once more, he stood and began to pace. His nude body felt warm from suckling from her neck. He knew the sensation would waver after a time, but if she ate well and he kept up his will not to kill her, he decided their nightly trysts might prove amusing for a time. Zale had nothing else better to do.

You will tire of her and kill her.

“Be silent!” he told his conscience. “I will do what I feel like doing at the moment. No one can stop me. If I want to keep her…I can!” He paced faster, the candlelight becoming a blur at the corner of his vision. He wanted her again, had to have her, feel her tight, little ass or…or even her pussy. Yes, he wanted that. He’d not had that in a long time.

Zale licked his lips. He looked over his home, a simple room with a bed, the side table, the candle and an old bookcase covered in dust. He’d read them all, some more than ten times. “I need new stories,” he whispered. “That’s what’s wrong with me.” He paused and reached down to stroke himself, soothing away the increasing tension. “Or maybe, for once, I need to make my own story, a grand adventure, an affair. Yes.” He ran his tongue over his teeth, contemplating the possibilities. He drew a thin line of blood, sucked at it and pouted when the slice sealed over. His blood tasted like her, sweet, rich…fulfilling.

“I will take her each night, in different ways, any way I want to. I’ll make her do it. She’ll beg for me, and each morning, she’ll wake and think I was a dream.” The plan sounded like wicked fun. He saw no end for it, just night after night of sordid romping, fucking and releasing with the dark-haired beauty in his father’s old house. He’d not felt driven to do such a thing since his teenage years and that time had long passed with the beating of his heart.

He didn’t want to remember the night he’d been changed into what he was. Zale only wanted to feel the rush of growing desire. He placated his body by masturbating. Stroking his thick cock harder, he eased away his thoughts. His mind cleared and he closed his eyes, imaging her hand held him instead of his own. She’d do it the way he told her to. Zale moaned. He decided he’d teach her how to touch his balls, how to tickle the soft skin between his sac and his anus. He liked the feel of fingers there. She came when he took her blood, hard and loud and even screamed a piercing word.

His vivid memory echoed her voice. “Zale!”

One syllable, his name, bursting from her throat with wanton lust. His orgasm exploded too fast. Doubling over, he fought to catch his breath, marveling at the state his mind swam in. “She has bewitched me,” he whispered. He stumbled to his bed, drew the velvet over his naked body and fought the desire to stay awake, determined to save his energy for the night…for Victoria. His muscles shook beneath his skin. He shivered, lonely, not for the first time, but it pained him nonetheless.

He’d found others like himself, dark beings that raved and killed without discretion, often tearing their victims apart like bloodthirsty animals. He didn’t want to become that. His mind drifted toward the void. He tried to reach it, grasping with his will. Then the old memory trapped him and he ran through birch trees at twilight chasing the blonde temptress, the slutty wench that had settled his fate so many years ago. She’d lured him there to her private hunting grounds, tore away his clothes and pushed him to the ground. He’d thought her beautiful in her fair way, her skin a milky color. She had brown eyes and a lilting laugh, though she was careful not to smile. He knew why now. He knew she’d been hiding what she was until that moment.

“Stop,” he told the memory, but his mind turned on. There was little else for it to do. He’d not gone among the city for too long and his thoughts often turned to the past, to the loneliness of being forgotten and thought dead.

He’d been to his own grave three times. The headstone was cut from white marble, a great white, weeping angel mourning for all time beside it. His father used to place flowers on the grave. His mother, mad with the voices she always heard, had no understanding that she’d lost him, or that she’d had a son once.

“Stop it now,” he told his mind. “I cannot think of her now, not this night. It’s a new beginning for me, a new chapter, a new start. I’ll make something of this chance, this…woman. She is different.” He grasped his pillow and clutched it against his body. The tremors overtook him, some odd form of a vampiric anxiety attack. He held the down filled linen close and wished it was Victoria. “I won’t kill her,” he promised himself. “I don’t want to be alone…” The darkness clouded over his mind. He drifted into the state between living and sleep.

* * * *

Bullfrogs croaked out in the swamp. Zale rolled over. He heard them even though they were a good night’s walk to get to. A confused bird sang across the darkness, thinking to find a mate in the pitch of night. “That’s what I’ll do,” Zale vowed. “Find my mate tonight.” He rose up from his bed and left it, climbing the stairs without the aid of light. He saw well enough without it.

Dressed in pants and nothing else, he left the guesthouse from the servant’s entry and paused to stare up at the moon. Still round and pregnant with light, he studied her craters and shadows. She was his sun, his mark of time to follow. The stars glittered above. He glanced over the constellations, impatient, but slowing himself on purpose. He had to maintain control. If she was to be his toy, and he was to keep his promise, he had to be able to slow his instincts. The thought of doing so to success pleased him.

The back door was locked as it had been the night before. He turned the metal with his mind. Stepping into the mansion rent him with faded memories, some childish, many of his father and the arguments they shared. He bypassed furniture draped in dustcovers, pale ghosts that didn’t frighten him. Zale wandered up the staircase, paused on the landing and peered at her from her open doorway. He guessed she’d chosen his old bedroom out of fate.

Victoria lay sprawled across the bed, a book beneath her right hand. A pen rested close to the edge and would fall off at any moment. Her face looked serene. Her mouth ajar, she snored softly. Her thick lashes moved when he walked in. Her breathing hitched. Zale memorized her pose, determined to place her back exactly as he’d found her when he was done. It was all part of the game.

This night she wore a nightgown, thin and pink, it hugged her curves with satin. As she’d slept, she’d tossed or turned and the skirt of the flimsy fabric had hiked up, revealing her shapely thighs. He strode to the bed and stared down at her. Her eyes rolled beneath closed lids as she dreamed.

She moaned. Her voice caught, and she started to whimper.

She’s dreaming, he realized. Zale bent over and kissed her cheek. “I’m here, Victoria.” He touched her upper arm, trailing his chilled fingers over her hot skin. “Wake up. I have plans for us tonight.”

A tear streamed down her cheek, startling him. Her breathing became raspy as she wept in her sleep. “No…no…”

He licked the tear away, tasting the salt of it. It wasn’t her blood, but nevertheless, the taste was hers, unique and intoxicating. “Wake up,” he murmured, finding her soft earlobe with his lips. “Wake up to your fondest nightmare.” He nuzzled her ear, sucking in the skin with gentle nips. “Victoria…I want you.”

She cried out and awoke, startled and still haunted by her dream. Her blue eyes widened as she focused on his face. “Make it stop,” she whispered. “Please, make it stop. I don’t want to see it again…”