Ange De Aang

Ch 1: Red Roses

By: Helena F. Lupin

I suppose there are many names for what we might be. Some call us vampires. Others call us shifters, lycans or werewolves. Some would call us Incubi or Sirens. There are more, but those are the ones that stand out most in my particular memory. I am of a magnanimous nature, and so I let slide all those less then worthy names for what we really are. As for as my memory serves me I’ve known of but two such as we, my brother and myself. It was upon the dusk of our twenty-first birthday that the shabby and shallow little world around us meant no more. I remember it so well.

What was it? A few hundred years ago, not so many when you have more yet to look forward to. It gave me a sort of pleasure to watch my brother, Alaire, in the gardens around our home. Alaire has always been the more gentle of us two, the more merciful. He is the one who remembers the lullaby our mother once sang to us, I barely recall the tune of it. I had been sitting in one of the studies, lazing in a chair, ignoring the book before me in favor of watching him cut roses, blood red roses. They complimented him somehow, and I had always said so. I think that was why he tended them so well, so that they came out in full, perfect bloom.

He was a slender, not an inch above five eight, like myself, his silhouette all I could catch in the fading sunlight. But I know his features well, they are my double after all. Fine and smooth, flowing beneath satin skin that held a golden quality on it’s pale surface, shimmering. His hair, thick gold that curled just the slightest around his face and shoulders. He always had a black ribbon to hold it back, but somehow strands always worked loose. I never bothered to put my back. Eyes of a deep, soulful chocolate, a coppery ring around the pupil that trailed outward and a golden honey sheen over it all. My eyes, though just the same, were always so much colder.

We both held grace of a significant measure, we always had. I sat and I watched, one palm cradling my chin. He was kneeling before the long vine of roses that twisted up the garden wall, snipping away as if that were all that mattered. And to him, it might have been at the moment. I knew he had walked out in nothing more then riding pants and a loose shirt, the creamy color of the pants and the white shirt were memorably with his complexion. I never can recall what I was mussing about at that moment, perhaps it was about the party that was still ongoing in the hall that our parents had arranged, we had not been inclined to stay, maybe it was something more, but I remember how quickly it forgot it the instant I saw my brother jump and fall back onto his backside.

For a moment I had no clue what had made him react so, but then my eyes, having always been sharper then most, fell upon it. A dark, nasty little creature slithering away from the roots of the rose vines. I do not know how I get to him so quickly, perhaps I flew. It would not surprise me if I had. He sat there, one hand on the ground, scratched from catching himself, and the other held up, looking at his wrist where that vile little serpent had dared to strike him. By the time I was at his side, scooping him up into my arms, the poison was already burning through him, his heart pumping it swiftly through his body, destroying itself.

He looked up at me, I could almost see myself mirrored in his slowly turning glassy eyes. It was a sin. A pure and utter sin what I did next. Perhaps it was the final marking in a deal made with the devil, maybe it was meant to happen all along. I will never know I suspect. I moved to one of the benches in the garden, sitting down lightly with him in my lap, catching his wrist lightly, looking at the two thin rivers of blood for so long I wondered vaguely if he had died by the time I put my lips against it. He lived though, enough to make a small, shocked sound at my action.

It was exuberance in it’s finest extravagance moment. Utopia be damned, just as we two. Euphoria and entrapment all there in the blood on the tip of my tongue. I sucked, then set my teeth to his skin and bit, tearing. The sound he made sounded far from wounded or pained. Silk lips touched the pulse of my throat, then struck. How long we sat there, partaking of one another is anyone’s guess. When our mouths pulled back in gasps it was darkness now, candles light within our home giving us enough light through the windows to see one another vaguely. Our lips clashed, fighting for a long moment. We were enamored with one another and the taste of scarlet. When I bit his lower lip he whimpered, it was that sound that made it possible for me to stop first.

We breathed hard for a moment, lips but an inch apart. It was that night that we massacred our guests together. Seduction reigned as we drew away one person after another to dark alcoves and secret hallways, and the warmth of essence flowed as we finished them. When those left began to notice so many missing, we gave in and simply rushed into the fray. Even now I’m surprised we were able to take so many. I suppose we owe it to the fact that our home was in the middle of no where. Those who got out never got far.

And all that red staining our home, the floors and walls, it was...enticing to us. We drank as if we had found ambrosia and then again we took from one another. Do not assume for a moment that I had sex with my twin. I am not so mentally deformed. He was far gone with it, I was not. I stopped him when he wanted more, I carried him to his room and stayed with him the rest of the night. He does not remember that night, the night of our...transformation. I am glad. He is too kind a soul to have been so cold for those few hours, to have taken so many lives. When he at last found a fevered sleep I cleansed him of blood and left him curled in clean sheets.

After that night we found that no longer in sunlight could we live. We may still enter in the fading light of dusk, but no sooner. The light does burn us, it is not a fiery reaction, but it is still not pleasant. We were possessed that fateful night and changed forever. It was the next night that brought Hell. My brother was terrified with the bodies that we had left everywhere. I could not have that. I took what I dared of our fortune, packed what little we needed in clothing, and we took one of the carriages. The horses were skittish of course, seemingly afraid of us, but did not falter from their task of travel.

To this day I take great care that my brother be happy. I will never bring someone to him for him to feed of that wonderful essence we both so love. I drain them away into a glass for him. We in a way need this crimson life, but we can go without it as well. It keep from simply going into a savage uproar around the mortals we live among we must take from one or two of them a year at least. It lasts that long. But still we can smell it, sense it, taste it on the wind. Oh well, no matter. We have made it this far, have we not? From France to modern day New York City. Alaire is now my only, my Ange De Aang, which means Blood Angel.

In such a city of sin what is one like myself supposed to do besides feed?