Possession

         Micah looked out the window of the old warehouse.  The windows on the west end of the building were boarded up, protecting him from the setting sun.  When he was awake, this was his favorite time of day.  It was when the humans skittered home and ate dinner with their families or watched a big sports event on their televisions.  In a way, he longed to join them.  Not to be human—no, he had come to enjoy his immortal life—but to feel a part of something, to be needed.  Ever since he’d left Leland’s clan, eighty years after his creation, he’d been stuck going from building to building, sewer pipe to sewer pipe. 
         He was lonely.
The closest thing to interaction he got now was watching the humans and reading their essences.
         Micah was a soul reader.  He could know everything about a person with a simple look, even read their thoughts if he wished.  He was scanning a small group of young girls when he spotted her.  She sat at a bus stop across from his hideout.  She was much older than the clique of childish preteens who believed stuffing their training bras made them look older, probably in her late teens or early twenties.  She was reading a book to pass the time.
         Micah’s silent heart gave a small jerk as he watched her.  She tried, unsuccessfully, to tuck her waist-length hair behind her ear as she read.  Micah looked deeper, to her soul, and gasped at what he saw there.
         She was like him. 
         She, too, was alone; stuck in a rut.  She wanted to be needed, wanted to be wanted.  She felt detached; like an outsider.  She looked up then and, by instinct, looked at the very window Micah watched her from.  He didn’t worry about her seeing him; he was concealed by shadows.  But their eyes locked and Micah felt a jolt of electricity shoot through his body.  A cacophony of human emotions pounded in his brain and with them came a startling realization: he’d felt this before.
         Micah shook his head, trying to look away, but her gaze held his.  It wasn’t possible.  The emotions that assaulted his body belonged entirely to humans and humanity.  He’d forgotten those notions when his Kassandra had been killed in cold blood four centuries earlier; killed by Leland, who thought Micah’s union with a human was unfit. 
         No, Micah no longer knew how to express emotions of the heart.  He felt his cold blood begin to boil under his skin as the passionate emotion morphed to something darker, something he knew and understood: lust.  His attraction to her now had nothing to do with feeble human emotion; he wanted her, he needed to possess her.  The urge was as strong as his thirst, to kiss her, touch her, control her. 
         The girl snatched her eyes away at the sound of the approaching bus.  She gathered her things and when the bus stopped, she climbed aboard.  As she made her way to the back of the bus, Micah looked inside her again and searched until he found a name: Arianne. 
         He smiled grimly.  “Dear girl,” he whispered to himself.  “We are so much alike.  We are both lost souls.  You may not know it now, you may never truly know, but we need each other.”  Then his voice rose, speaking as if she were standing in the room with him. 
         “I don’t care what you do, or where you try to hide.  I will find you.  I must wait until the time is right, but you mark my words, Arianne:          you will be mine,” he purred, watching as the bus pulled off into the darkness. 

***
Four months later 
Arianne

         I glanced over my shoulder again.  The sun had almost completely set; the sky had returned to blue and only a faint yellow light radiated from behind the buildings in the west.  It wasn’t safe anymore.  I needed to return to the apartment before he awoke.  If he discovered that I was gone, he would punish me and his form of punishment was unimaginably cruel.  My mind went back to the last time; the suffocating darkness, his cold hands burning my skin as he held me down, the pain of it all.  I wasn’t able to walk for almost a week. 
         I pushed the memory back behind the wall I’d built to retain my sanity.  Thinking about what he’d done to me only made living that much harder.  Instead I focused on where I was going.  I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and looked around.  I couldn’t remember which direction the apartment was—I never had a knack for finding my way around.  That was when I saw them. 
         There were three of them, two men and a woman, all dressed in dark, inconspicuous clothing.  Two of them were on the sidewalk coming towards me; one man from where I was heading, the other from where I’d been.  They moved differently than the other humans swarming the streets; everyone else, myself included, moved with purpose, but these two moved casually, carefully.  The woman stood directly across the street, watching me from behind a pair of sunglasses.  I tried to act like I didn’t notice them and nonchalantly looked behind me.  There was only an empty alleyway.  I knew it wasn’t the best idea, but I could see our building through the gap.  If he gave me anything, he gave me protection.  I walked in. 
         I was halfway through the alley when one of the men dropped down in front of me.  I stumbled to a stop.  I tried to turn back, but the woman and other man were already there.  I felt something smash into the side of my head.  I was thrown face first into the wall and I heard a sickening crunch.  My entire head exploded in pain.  A strange warmth spread over my face as I tried to catch my breath.  I caught a brief flash of the busy sidewalk.  No one even glanced in my direction.  A hand latched onto my throat and spun me around. 
         My attackers were standing shoulder to shoulder in a half-circle around me.  All three were vampires.  I should have known.  I’d been around him for three months now; surely I knew a vampire when I saw one.  My heart slowed. 
They weren’t humans.  Humans couldn’t harm me; I couldn’t even harm myself.  Vampires were the only ones who could end my suffering.  If these guys killed me, I would be free from the curse I bore.
         “Well, well, well.  We’ve got us a pretty one,” said the man with his hand at my throat.  I supposed that by the way the other two crowded him, he was in charge.  Still clutching my throat, he slammed me against the wall again.  There was another burst of pain as the back of my head broke open like an egg.
         “Please,” I begged.  They were dragging this out a lot longer than I wanted them to.  I wanted it over.  I wanted them to stop stalling and finish this.  But they all just laughed.  They thought I pleaded for my life; I could see it in their eyes. 
         “Oh,” the woman murmured in mock pity, “Don’t fret, mon chère.  We promise to make it quick.”  The vampires cackled at my misery.  They moved closer and I closed my eyes, happily waiting for the end.
         “Hands off, Leland.  The girl is mine.” 
         My eyes popped open at the voice.  The vampires were looking towards the west end of the alley.  I, too, looked out of the corner of my eye.  A familiar silhouette stood at the edge of the sidewalk, watching us. 
         Damn it.
         “Well, hello, Micah.  It’s been a while since we’ve seen you.  Care to join us for dinner?” my captor, Leland, said with a smile.  His hand tightened around my throat, almost completely cutting off my airway.  I started to choke, and I clawed at his fingers. 
         “I’ll say it again since you were too stupid to listen the first time,” Micah said, sauntering closer.  “The girl is mine.”
         “Come, friend.  We meant no harm.  We’re very sorry to have disrupted your hunt, but you know what they say, ‘finder’s keepers’.  And, well, we found, we keep.” 
         Micah chuckled.  “No…friend.  You still do not understand.” 
         Suddenly Micah was by my side, his hand gripping Leland’s wrist, squeezing until Leland cried out in pain and released me.  I touched my throat and leaned against the brick wall, trying to restore my breathing to normal.  Micah grabbed my arm; at first I thought it was because I was so close to passing out that I could barely stand, but then I felt a cool, soothing sensation spread from his hand and dull the pain.  Micah stood protectively, possessively, between me and the other vampires. 
         “You see, Leland, when I say she’s mine, I mean she belongs to me.”  Micah lifted the hand that wasn’t holding me up and swept the hair from my left shoulder, revealing the black ouroboros tattoo.
         “Mon dieu!” the woman gasped.  “A slave?”
         “Slave is such a horrible word, Victoire.”  Micah smirked.  “I prefer to call her my consort.” 
         “But, my young friend,” Leland said with a wicked grin.  “What is the point?  She is but a human, and her life span is short and meaningless.  What could she have to offer you?”
         Micah’s hand tightened around my arm.  I knew what he was thinking about and I blushed.  “Actually, she is quite useful.  She brings me prey, and I may control her if she resists.  She also does not age and she may only die at the hands of our kind.  Now I would love to stay and chat, but as you can see, my consort needs medical attention.”  With that, and no goodbye, Micah lifted me into his arms and ran back to his building.  He’d carried me while running before and I never got over the rush of adrenaline from traveling so quickly. 
         He took me through the parking garage beneath the building and up the service elevator.  I don’t know how he got the front door open, but I was suddenly surrounded by the familiar interior of my room.  He put me down on the bed and went into my bathroom.  He came back with a wet towel and sat by my side. 
         “Now you know why you’re not supposed to go anywhere without me,” he murmured.
         Gently, uncommonly so, he dabbed at the drying blood on my face and back of my head.  All I could do was stare at him.  His face was expressionless, but there was something in his turquoise eyes that I didn’t recognize.  He touched each of the cuts on my head and the pain was replaced by soreness as the gashes slowly closed up.  He gingerly laid his middle and index fingers on my nose and I sucked in a sharp breath as it snapped back into place. 
         “I’m sorry,” Micah murmured, and he wasn’t just saying words. 
         He means it, I realized with shock. 
         “I should have been there sooner, before they could hurt you.  I felt your fear, but the sun was still up, and I cared more about the slight chance that I would come in contact with its light than your safety,” he said.
         I remained silent.
         “Why are you giving me that look?” Micah demanded, exasperatedly.  It seemed that my confusion was plain on my face.
         “It’s just,” I stammered.  “This is…so unlike you.  You’ve never cared if something hurt me before.  You’ve hurt me, physically and mentally.  You’ve made me kill for you.”
         Micah lifted his hand and I flinched, waiting for him to strike like he always did.  Instead, he placed it under my chin and made me look at him.  His eyes searched my face before he finally spoke.
         “You need rest to fully heal.  Go to sleep,” he said, standing. 
         I watched him walk across the hall to the trash chute and dump the bloodied towel down the bottomless shaft.  Before he could turn around and change his mind about what to do with me, I lay back on the lush pillows and slipped into a blissful limbo.

***

         Micah stood next to the twin-size bed.  Outside the window the sky was slowly beginning to lighten.  He could feel his muscles, sensing the coming sun, begin to ache as they always did in the predawn, but he continued to watch Arianne.  He hadn’t left her side, or taken his eyes off of her, since she’d fallen asleep the night before.  She lay on her stomach with one leg hiked up, a position she commonly slept in he realized, her arms curled beneath the pillows.  Her unruly auburn curls lay sprawled across her back and draped over her neck.  Her face was peaceful. 
         He thought back to what she’d said right before she’d gone to sleep.  He’d been acting differently, as if he cared about her well-being.  He’d shown her the compassion he’d been feeling for weeks now.  In all of the time they’d been around each other, without either of them realizing it, Arianne had been teaching him how to be human again.  He had to admit, it scared him a little.  It had been half a millennia since he’d felt these emotions.  It had been even less since he’d cared for someone like he did Arianne. 
         She shifted slightly in her sleep and he tensed, but she settled back down, a small smile playing at the corners of her pink lips.  She was so beautiful; he couldn’t help but grin foolishly.  Her smile possessed innocence, just like it did the very first day he saw her.  He knew that he’d hurt her; he’d seen it in her eyes every time she was forced to bring him prey, every time she looked at him.  Micah wanted nothing more than to give her the freedom she desired, but after the night’s events it was impossible.  Leland knew about her now.  He’d seen how protective Micah was of her and Micah had stupidly revealed that their kind were the only ones who could take her life.  It was almost certain that Leland would come after Arianne again, and Micah could only protect her if he still had a claim on her, otherwise she’d just be another piece of meat.
         The eastern sky had reddened.  Micah quickly closed the curtains and returned to Arianne’s side.  He didn’t need to sleep.  Besides, he was too afraid, just as he had been since these feelings first took him over.  He didn’t want to let them.  There was no guarantee that he would still feel this way when next he woke.  There was every possibility that this was temporary and the monster would return. 
         As daylight came and the sun drifted lazily across the sky, Micah stood resolute at Arianne’s bedside.  With the possibility of Leland on the hunt and of Micah slipping back into darkness hanging over both his and Arianne’s heads, Micah gave himself this one day to love her.