Eternity

When the night descended upon Ibernias, I looked over at Aislin in the makeshift nightclothes. Her skin looked gray, and the dark circles under her eyes were like half-moon’s imprinted into the skin. It was as if the werewolf had already made his mark, cursed her with sleeplessness. Her hands shook as she gathered the quilt and wrapped it around herself. The draperies blew in the crisp night air and tossed her scent. I drank in the air hungrily like a starved animal, closed my eyes and tried to suppress the devil within me. This had to stop. This dangerous closeness, and the utter proximity of her enticing blood would drive me over the edge, from lover to predator. But this time with just the two of us, seemed to help her, help me. Aislin looked up into my eyes and smiled. I couldn’t help but smile back, the lips curving past the fangs that held all the venom, the danger that made my kind dangerous with just a kiss. I was ashamed of myself, ashamed of my beauty that courted women to my side and of my immortality—so easy to give, but not so easy to take. I reached up to tease my fingers through her hair. Her mouth curled into a smile. There was something in her silver-blue eyes that I couldn’t detect, couldn’t decipher. She reached out and gripped my hand, her hand squeezing like a snake’s around my fingers. Aislin curled into a ball and I felt a tremor slide down her spine, her lips moved too quickly for me to catch the words. She buried her face under her arm and her nails dug deep into my palm. She was clearly in some kind of pain, I wanted to help her but the words were lost. After a moment I heard her speak again. Her voice was so quiet, so meek. “The wolves will kill me if…” She stared down at our hands, “If they find me here…”

I sighed and tucked strands of hair behind the curve of her ear. “Shh…it’s alright, they won’t find you.” She looked up and her fingers released mine to touch my temples, drift down to my jaw line. I turned toward the touch and, from the corner of my eye, saw the moon slant across her cheek, glint like a diamond in the pupil of her eye. Her skin smelt sweet and perfumed. She closed her eyes and her hand slipped to touch my fingers. There was a shock of warmth and the wind picked up again, roused the scent. I bent to brush my lips to her cheek, the corner of her mouth—she bared her throat and I let my mouth taste the hollow. Her breath moved against it and I heard a deep sound vibrate within her throat. Had it been a growl? The candle shivered and sputtered and I reached over and snuffed it, watching the fragrant smoke drift and disappear. Aislin sat up from her place on my bed and I could see the outline of her eyes, the clear arc of her shoulder blades. I sat beside her and wrapped the quilt around her, she leaned in and a pensive silence ensued with only her breath and heartbeat to count the seconds. I sighed and felt her hand close on my arm, keeping me close. I smiled and kissed her beating throat. Her dreams would not be disturbed, never turn to horrific nightmares as long as I was nearby. I touched her mind with mine, and her thoughts poured in and overflowed. They were laced with comfort and love and gratitude, dancing and weaving in incoherent ways and means. I nestled my face into her neck and my lips briefly touched the vein. I was testing myself, testing the control I kept locked in iron chains. It strained and cried out like a vicious dog but I held it at bay. I sighed and she turned to face me, her eyes filled with trust and love. My hand pressed her face close to my heart and I felt her rest comfortably against my chest, her cheek against the crook of my neck. Her warm breath felt like a feather against my cool skin, her lips attached themselves playfully to my throat in a weak imitation of my hunting. I laughed and she bit down on the skin lightly. As she pulled away, I watched her cock her head to one side in quiet wonder. Her fingers threaded through mine and she pushed me back, my head falling on the pillow. I laughed and flipped her, her hair like a halo. In that moment I noticed something; she was nothing like Queen Morgan. The queen was like a cat starved of attention, vain and proud while Aislin was delicate, like a child; seeing the world through chaste eyes. I smiled down at her and swallowed back a sigh. Only silence was needed, not even the sound of the wind or my harp could content my heart. We lay like this for a while, her eyes never wavering from mine. Then, finally, she glanced at the window, and then at me, a question fluttering; glinting, in her eyes.

“How did the change feel Pan? The change from human into vampire?” She touched my face but I had pulled back into that memory. Of Kriagen’s teeth tearing viciously at my throat, while I writhed and screamed. Morgan’s mouth at my wrist, lips red with blood. They had come to the Jeerdlum asylum—obviously knowing of my gift to change matter into whatever I desired, and asked to see me. They killed and fed upon my three assistants, hiding the bodies. Then they set me free and changed me. I became the king’s right-hand man, changing from Jack into Pandemonium within a single night, with a hunter’s painful ritual: promises sealed in blood.

I pursed my lips and didn’t meet her eyes. Did she want to know? I sighed and stood, clasped my hands behind me. My weight shifted from foot to foot and I began to pace. “First of all if I had found a way to become human, if there was any way I could die and not have to suffer this endless perpetuity I would have done so years ago. Once you change into a vampire there’s no going back.” My words hung in the air like the smoke from the candle and rang with a certain finality that trembled in my bones. Aislin sat up, her eyes expectant. I continued. “Once a human is bitten by a vampire he or she can be in pain for several days…the poison works so slow that some victims have even committed suicide before the change was complete. The poison stops the bodily functions—the heart, the need for oxygen, circulation, the generation of eggs and sperm and…freezes the age.” I sighed, “I’ve been twenty-three for far too long.”

Aislin stood and wrapped her arms around me. I welcomed her warm human comfort. “I think I saw you once. When I first came to the asylum—and you looked different.”

“I was human then.” I replied, “Not as sane as I am now.”

“So the change helped?” Her voice seemed happy. A sadness washed over me, if I could shed tears for my past, for Aislin’s wonder, I would’ve. She didn’t want this; I wanted to discourage her hope. But all I could do was shake my head and continue, convince her that immortality wasn’t worth dying for.

“Once that’s finished, a numbness overcomes the body and sometimes it feels as if you can’t feel the ground beneath your feet. Not a dizziness but more a lack of sensation in the mind,” I glanced briefly in a mirror that was on the wall and looked down at Aislin. “That’s when the final touches come into play, the things that make you unrecognizable to the people you grew up with and make you noticed and feared in the society that once embraced you as their own. Then you’re dead. A vampire. Forever.”

Aislin looked down at her feet and I heard her exhale quietly. She sounded tired. I scooped her up into my arms and climbed back into the bed, putting her in my lap, tucking the blanket around her small body. Snuggling close to me, a sigh of contentment escaped her lips and she closed her eyes. I lay down against the pillow, stroking her hair and kissing her cheek. Her body was warm against mine and comfortable, a change to my normally cold skin. I watched her fall gently into unconsciousness and finally into dream. Her eyelids fluttered and her breathing was deep and regular. Letting my body fall into that same pattern, watching her body rise and fall, her mouth slowly lift in a smile. My curiosity grappled with my consciousness and I lingered on the edge of her dream, gazing at her dreams as they flitted and shifted. I was glad to see that her dreams were pleasant ones and let my mind separate from hers. I opened my eyes and saw her hand locked around my wrist. Had she felt me in her mind?

“Pan…?” Her voice was faint and I could see a small twitch of her mouth into a frown. I tucked a strand of hair off her brow and whispered, “I’m here love.” I smiled. Its felt good to confirm that she was mine and that I belonged to her. The prejudices that were placed between us—the victim and bloodsucker—didn’t exist but would be restored at dawn and I would be fighting again. I lay beside her and watched her sleep, softly breathing. She curled into a ball and her grip tightened on my wrist. I looked out the window, at the pinpoints of light called stars and the moon, edged with the sun’s pale light. It was quiet except for the crickets and the soft wailing of the wind. I stood and closed the window before sitting back on the bed. Aislin looked so tiny wrapped in the quilt, so vulnerable. Should I take her life in her sleep? That way I could soften the nightmares, the pain, control my bloodlust. I shut my eyes and longed to find a spear or a knife and drive it slowly and deeply into my heart. How could I be so stupid? I stood and retreated into my study shutting the door softly behind me. Leaning against it, I thought of all I’d done over the years:

I’d gone insane with my gift, and was dragged to the asylum. Was a specimen in a university, studied but never released. Acted as a servant in my own father’s home as punishment for my insanity—no father wanted a son that changed the silver spoons into snakes. Aged from boy to man. The vampires came and the aging stopped. I was a monster of blood, killing and tracking with dreams, fine tuning my gift with my senses, controlling it as it had always controlled me. I murdered the human king Salvor in his dreams, let the blood flow over my hands and laughed. Kriagen took the crown. I tracked down Damien and found him my enemy—the werewolf alpha. Found Aislin, befriended her…loved her. Out of all the things I’d done, she was the only thing that was right, that made sense.

I sighed and met the eyes of a statue, a snake coiled on a stone. Its body was made of jade and patterned with black onyx, its eyes made from ruby. I turned to the large window and watched the sunrise—only a strip of white light piercing the darkness. I yanked the curtains closed and collapsed back into the chair, covering my face with a hand. The snake stared at me, its mouth gaping; the glinting fangs of onyx with a hanging drop of ruby. Venom. Blood. I couldn’t decide what wicked liquid the fangs possessed and neither did I care. Turning away, I hopelessly tried to distract myself by organizing official papers into files, putting books back on my shelves alphabetically-- but no matter how I tried to concentrate, my thoughts kept returning to Aislin, sleeping soundly in the next room. What was she dreaming about? Thinking? Curiosity gnawed at me and I paused in my fruitless sorting to rein in my power and lock it tight within me with no luck. It sprang loose and briefly touched her mind, sweeping lightly over the edges. I peeled back the barriers and the sunlight steamed through a large window. The light curled and shone upon Aislin who sat sewing a tear in pale blue fabric, her hand moving skillfully, the needle like a silver dolphin diving in and out of the cloth. I smiled at the image and that was when I noticed something different about her. Her hair was longer, streaked with silver, and her skin was deeply wrinkled. She had aged. I gazed at her tenderly and watched her work. A tear fell down the aged Aislin’s face and I longed to brush it off.

Then the dream changed. The elder Aislin was replaced with the one I knew. She was laying in a stone room, curled up, her head covered by her arms. Something was tossed inside and I recognized the metallic clatter of a bowl. Rats scattered and squeaked and Aislin crawled over to the bowl and dipped her fingers inside. They came out red and smelling of blood. I recognized the heavy door, the cracked ceiling and walls: we were back in the Jeerdlum asylum—my cage, her home. But it didn’t seem like her home right now, she was weeping for what she’d never gained. For the life she could’ve had, for the years wasted trapped inside stone walls. I pulled myself from her minds and heard her cry out softly as if in pain. I winced and stood from my seat, watched her toss and turn from the doorframe. Something in me longed to comfort her, still her nightmares, but there was a part of me that hung back. Hesitated. But for those few seconds that I did, she woke and her eyes snapped open. Seeing me, she smiled and I went over and embraced her, holding her close to my heart.

“It’s a good thing you saw that.” She whispered, “I like to know you’re close by.”

“Good,” I smiled and buried my face in her hair, inhaling her scent. Somehow, someway, my body was adjusting to her scent like one trapped in a pillow or a piece of clothing. But this one was trapped in her skin, the smell tempting, goading me to take a bite of that sweet skin…but I ignored the instinct, ignored the thirst. It burned at the back of my throat and I could feel the rush of venom as I bent to kiss her throat. The carnal pleasure that vampires received when the blood rushed to their mouths would not be fulfilled. Not tonight, not ever if necessary. But then I would begin to see her age, as I never have. I would begin to see the silver in her hair, the creases in her skin, the loss of the childlike innocence, the gaining of wisdom that followed. I would miss it, curse the day I didn’t change her, freeze her age and not let her die. If I changed her I wouldn’t stand at her grave and weep helplessly for the soul I would’ve been able to keep.

But did she really want to travel to hell and back for me? Was I being selfish? I thought of Seth and of the age-old portrait I had kept and smiled. If Aislin wanted to stay with me then she was willing to walk through fire and ice—pain and numbness—for me. She was sacrificing her potential for an existence with me. That made me smilebut the smile, I knew, looked more like a grimace.