Saint Michael Part 3

         Draven opened his eyes as he felt Lana’s weight leave him.  He looked up to see her running her fingers over her elongated canines.  Her concentration moved from her teeth to her hands.  She stared at them as if seeing them for the first time.  She flipped them over and examined every minute mark on them.  Draven stood up and wrapped his hands around hers.

         “What have you done to me?” she asked looking up into Draven’s eyes.  He could read the fear behind them.

         “I saved your life,” he answered.

         Lana laughed coldly and shoved Draven away from her.  “Saved me?” she said dropping onto the couch and ran her hands through her hair.  “Cursed me is more like it.  Why you?”

         “Would you rather it had been Michael?” Draven said sounding hurt.

         “I’d rather it had been not at all.  From what I know of you two now, the Assembly should have killed you the first chance they got.”  Flashes of memories passed across Lana’s vision.  It would take ages to sort them all out.  She experience a moment of disorientation as she forgot who she was and immersed herself in a vision.  A full moon hung high and bright in the sky.  The stars were caught in the skeleton arms of the trees.  She saw a stone altar awash in the silver moonlight.  Michael stood behind it.  The mass of human bodies swayed in a trance in front of her.  Michael slit his wrist and let the blood fall thickly into a silver goblet.  She watched each flickering drop reflect the moonlight as it fell.

         “Drink of my blood,” he said aloud, but Lana heard his voice whispering in her mind and reverberating through her bones.  Hundreds of hands reached forward and the goblet was passed from lips to lips.  Lana passed it on without drinking, somehow knowing that this was meant for the humans not for her.  And there would be more blood to come.  The goblet made its way back to the altar.  With all the splendor of an angel, Michael moved passed the altar into the crowd.  They swarmed around him, reaching for him, hundreds of hands brushing his clothing, and hundreds of necks bared for him.  He chose a slim, dark-haired girl and sank his teeth into her neck.  The girl sighed and clung to Michael in the darkness.  At that signal the others who had been waiting on the edge of the crowd, chose a human.  Lana saw Ari pulling a young man into her embrace, his eyes wide in awe.  She saw the innocent look on his face disappear as Ari’s teeth pierced the skin.  Lana stepped forward and pulled a brown-haired girl to her.  Her olive skin seemed to taunt Lana, and she bit into it eagerly.  Blood exploded into her mouth, and the forest began to spin.  The humans around her fawned on the vampires as they drank.  Some indulged in orgies of their own.  Lana looked away, disgusted by that meeting of the flesh.  She looked up and saw the familiar white furniture and dark figure of Draven.  She shook her head in a useless attempt to clear it.

         “A curse,” she whispered.

         “I gave you my memories in the hope that they would help you understand Michael and I,” Draven said sitting next to her.

         “So that I can be haunted by the same regrets you two have?” she asked harshly.

         Draven shook his head.  “I don’t regret anything.  That was the way things were.  There is no use regretting what is done and over with.”

         “Then why does Michael have regrets?” Lana asked, doubting Draven’s logic.  “Don’t you have a conscience?”

         “I refuse to pay penance for my past.  Michael is free to do what he wants,” Draven added with a shrug.

         “Why the sudden change of heart?” Lana asked.

         “Maybe I understand Michael a little better now,” Draven said brushing a strand of hair out of Lana’s face.

         “Don’t touch me,” Lana said shifting away from him.

         “Does it still hurt to have a vampire touch you?” Draven asked pulling his hand away.  “I don’t see how it could.”

         “No,” Lana said.  “But every time you touch me, I end up regretting it.”

         A cocky smile crept onto Draven’s lips and he laughed.  “Eternity is too long for this,” he said, still laughing.

         “Stop laughing,” Lana said darkly.

         Draven stopped and his black eyes became as cold as flint.  “Do you think your Assembly wants you now?” he asked grabbing her arm and twisting it so the silver moon shimmered in the dim light and the black rose glared accusingly at her.  “Do you still fancy yourself the huntress?  The protector of humans?  Killer of thirty-five vampires?”  Draven put a hand under her chin and lifted her lip with his thumb to expose the sharp white teeth.  “You’re a vampire now.”

         In a flash Lana had Draven’s arm twisted to the breaking point.  Her hand whipped behind her back and grabbed nothing in the empty sheath.  Using her moment of disorientation, Draven writhed out of her grasp and snapped a hand to her throat pushing her back against the couch.  With the other, he pulled aside his shirt to reveal a thick white scar.

         “I’ve already tasted you blade,” he growled.  “Now what will you do without it?”

         Lana’s eyes widened at her weakness.  Her breath came in trembling gasps through her constricted airway, and she was aware of a slight pain beginning in her heart and radiating through her veins.  Draven’s eyes burned with a cold fury.  He leaned across Lana, and his weight was oppressive. 

         “The thirst,” he whispered in her ear.  “My fledgling and Michael’s.  Michael killed you.  I gave you life.”  With his hand still at her throat, his lips moved to the pulsing life at her neck.  She trembled at the pleasure he aroused, trying to deny the possibility with all that remained of her sanity.

         “I gave you the key to my mind.  Now we will be even,” Draven whispered against her throat.  Lana gasped as his teeth punctured the thin layer of skin at her neck.  Draven’s hand slid from her throat to entwine itself in her hair, while the other pulled her closer.  Lana lost herself in Draven’s embrace and wound her arms around him.  His weight pushed her into the couch in his lust for her blood.  Her heartbeat echoed in both their ears, and Lana’s body arched against Draven’s with each agonizingly slow beat.  The world seemed only to exist for this moment.  Everything else vanished but Draven’s body pressing on hers and his lips on her neck.  Draven lost himself in the ecstasy of her blood.  The rich red river of it flowing and filling his veins was intoxicating.  Her heart pounded in his mind, and her memories pumped in with every beat.  He was adrift in the colors and sounds of her past.  It was a swirling sea that existed only for the connection between them.  Draven’s passion ebbed, and he gently slid away, leaving Lana panting and grappling with the thirst that threatened to engulf her mind.  Her vision was almost completely red, and her veins felt full of dust.

         Draven stood up and pulled Lana up with him.  She clung to him for support.  He seemed to be the only solid shape in her careening world.  Lana didn’t even bother to ask where they were going.

         Draven brought them to a back alley in some large city.  Lana only knew that there were warm bodies full of blood around her.  She could hear their heartbeats and smell the musky odor of life in them.  The thirst completely distracted her from the dirty bricks and thick smell of trash that assaulted Draven’s senses.  She looked down the alley towards the street.  Silhouettes of people walked by the narrow opening of the alley.  Their long shadows stretched down the concrete as they passed in front of the street lamp.  One shadow, however, was never moved.  There was a man leaning against the brick wall.  Lana caught the glint of a knife in his hand.

         “Maybe this will appease you conscience,” Draven whispered in her ear.  “No regrets for murders and thieves.  Drink.”

         Lana needed no encouragement from Draven to hunt.  With the silent steps of a huntress, she walked up behind the man.  Everything she learned as a hunter now turned to a darker purpose.  Before the man knew what was happening, Lana had snapped his neck with quiet efficiency and pulled him into the darkness.  Draven turned away.  For reasons he could not fathom, he couldn’t watch her drink.  This was a primal hunger, and Draven did not want to see Lana in such a way.  He examined the brick wall at the end of the alley with great intensity until he felt a hand on his shoulder.

         “So,” Lana said with a devilish smile.  “You don’t like what you created?  Look at me.”

         Draven turned around.  Lana still had blood on her lips and her fangs gleamed in what little light penetrated the gloom.  Her blue eyes were as cold as ice.  Draven sighed.

         “Let’s go home,” he said, putting an arm over Lana’s shoulder.

         “Fine,” she said wrapping her arms around his neck so that her wrists were pressed against his neck.  Draven gritted his teeth as he controlled an intense desire to leave her there.  It was a passing impulse inspired by the fact that the blood pumping beneath her skin was torture.  And she knew it.









         When they reappeared, Michael was sitting in a chair with his fingertips pressed together thoughtfully.  His gaze moved from Draven’s pleading looking to Lana’s contemptuous one.

         “No one can predict the future,” he said.

         “The great Michael has spoken,” Lana said sarcastically as she sat heavily on the couch.

         Michael raised an eyebrow.  “I’m sure you know I’ve killed people for less.”

         “So kill me,” Lana said with almost a sob.

         Draven sat next to her and put an arm over her shoulder.  “Lana,” he said softly.  “You don’t want to die.”

         “I can’t go back.  I’ve lost everything I knew.  My family, my friends, even the Assembly.”

         Draven brushed away a blood tear that ran down her cheek, leaving a red trail behind it.  “This is just another part of your life.  There are things here to enjoy.”

         “Listen to Draven,” Michael said.  “Believe it or not, he is right.  What is done is done.  You have to move on.”

         “Why the sudden change of heart?” Lana asked spitefully.

         Michael shrugged.  “Eternity is a long time to regret the past.”

         “Eternity,” Lana said with a heartless laugh.  “No one’s immortal.”

         “You know this better than anyone,” Michael said with a shrug.  “We both know your past.  You have to trust us.”  Draven pulled Lana closer to him.  She unwound herself from him and stood up.

         “I just need some time to work this out on my terms,” she said.  She felt fundamentally changed, not just from the transformation, but something inside her.  She had always known what she wanted to do with her life and where she was going.  The Assembly had allowed for no other options.  Everything had been so concrete.  All of that had been turned on its head now.  “I need to think about what happens next.”

         Lana could look into Draven’s memories and see herself sitting in the back of the auditorium talking to Nicole and Michael.  She could feel his jealousy.  He had wanted that connection with Michael and the easy ignorance that she possessed.  From her own memories, she knew how certain of her future she had been at that moment.  She realized how much she had taken for granted, never looking at the larger picture.  Would Nicole even accept her now, in her world of black and white, white and red?  Hunters and vampires?  She had no answers for these questions and wasn’t sure that she wanted to find out if she still fit in that world, but neither did she know where else to go.

         You don’t belong there any more, a voice whispered in her mind.  It was startling to hear Draven’s voice in her mind, and Lana rebelled against it.

         I don’t belong in yours either, she responded.

         You do now.

         “I can’t deal with this right now,” Lana said aloud and vanished.

         Draven looked over at Michael.  “What do we do now?  Should we go after her?”

         “Give her time.  She’ll find us when she’s ready.”







         Draven should have waited, but he had Lana’s memories and knew what this change meant to her.  He could put himself into her mind and understand how she was feeling, the confusion, frustration, and helplessness.  So after Michael had gone to bed in the early morning, Draven vanished to the place that he knew meant the most to Lana.

         And there she was, sitting on the edge of the stage, twisting her knife in her hands.  The stage behind her was completely bare, except for rigging, ladders, and forgotten set pieces pushed against the back wall.  The only light came from a bare-bulb work light high in the ceiling.  The light filtered through flies and catwalks, casting a web of shadows across the wood stage.

         “You found your knife,” Draven observed as he sat down beside her.

         “Yeah,” Lana said without looking up or elaborating.  They sat there in silence, watching the light reflect off the knife and dance across the empty seats.

         “School will be starting soon,” Draven finally said.  “We probably shouldn’t be here.”

         “This is the only place I ever felt truly at home.  The theater has a tendency to attract damaged people.  People never asked questions.  Everyone just wanted to forget the outside world.”  Draven said nothing.  He knew the attraction to the theater.  Sometimes it was easier to pretend to be someone else than fact the cold hard reality that waited outside the double doors in the harsh light of day.  “It’s all meaningless, isn’t it?” Lana asked.

         “What is?”

         “Everything I’ve done in the past.  School, the Assembly, classes, kills, friends, everything.”  She punctuated the last word with a slice on her hand that healed within seconds.  Draven took her hand and kissed away the stray drop of blood.

         “It wasn’t meaningless.  It made you who you are.”

         In the distance they heard the bell chime, and students began to file into the auditorium.  There were whispers and stares as the students noticed Draven and Lana sitting on the stage.

         Let’s give them something to really talk about, Draven mentally whispered as he stood and offered her his hand.  Matching his cocky smile, Lana slipped the knife into its sheath, took his hand, and the two of them walked, hand in hand, into the darkness of the storage room.  Darkness was nothing to them, and Draven wrapped his arm around Lana’s waist after closing the door behind them. 

         “It isn’t as bad as it seemed, is it?” Draven asked, pulling Lana over to a box and sitting on it.  Lana stood in front of him, both of her hands in his.

         “This just isn’t easy for me to adjust to,” she answered.

         “I know,” Draven said pulling her close.

         Over his shoulder, Lana saw a glint of silver.  Next thing she knew, Draven had screamed and pushed her away.  The pain and anger boiling in Draven’s mind blinded Lana.  Through blazes of red, she saw a white hand pull the knife from his back and slit his throat.  Blood poured in rivers across the storage room floor.  Before Lana could form a coherent thought through the rush of pain, strong hands were dragging her off.  Lana felt Draven’s mind vanishing from hers.  Finally, there was only a whisper, and Lana blacked out.