not caring if my dress got wet, and closed my eyes, enjoying the sting of the salt spray against my face. Why had this vampire never communed with the night? I raised my eyes to the stars and moon, laughing out loud at my rebellion. I spun in circles, holding my arms stretched wide to embrace the darkness, faster and faster, a tiny cyclone. Delirious abandon! Blessed freedom, to fly alone in the night free of the falconer!
Fragrance hung heavy in the air. Male. I turned toward the scent. The hairs rose on the back of my neck as I got a better whiff. Danger. Something was wrong, it wasn’t Ethan’s scent and there was more than one.
I stood dead still, listening to the whisper of footsteps and heartbeats, the slightest shifting and crunching in the sand. One, two, no three— closing in quickly. Panicking, I ran toward the steps as fast as my legs could carry me. At full speed, I’d beat a gazelle, but they were cheetahs and easily overtook me in that short distance. Remembering Ethan always cautioned to show no fear, I froze as they surrounded, appalled and amazed by their appearance.
All three had the look of pubescent boys, thirteen or fourteen, but spared the awkwardness of early adolescence, graceful, their enchanting, unblemished faces polished marble. All were somewhat raggedly dressed in the manner of street kids. Glittering eyes watched me curiously as they speculated in Italian where I’d come from and who I belonged to. Their circle around me tightened. Laughter tinkled like crystal bells. I felt like Wendy in a very bizarre part of Neverland. Ethan said this ancient world wasn’t the one I’d left behind. Nothing was sacred to these monsters, certainly not childhood. On each was a small mark behind the left ear, of the she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus.
Their eyes were ancient and expressions hungry. I backed away slowly, preparing to flee. The leader inclined his head and the others moved in closer. Pack hunters.
The leader sprang and clapped his hand over my mouth, dragging me away. In spite of his size he was much stronger. I struggled against him with all my power. His grip tightened nearly crushing my chest. Gasping desperately for air, I clawed at his bare arms, leaving long, raw tracks streaming with blood. He yelped.
Something large ran toward us at full speed. The other two took flight, leaving the leader holding me at the water’s edge. Ethan’s enraged roar filled the air. “Vermin!”
My captor dropped me abruptly. Salt water stung my nostrils and throat. I came up sputtering to see Ethan grasping him by his slender throat and holding him up to his icy gaze. The boy’s eyes bulged out of his skull as Ethan’s hand closed tighter over his windpipe.
“Ethan, for God’s sake let him go!”
“Mia, stay out of this!” Ethan growled, as he began to twist the boy’s head around the neck like a light bulb. The boy screamed, struggling vainly as his neck ripped open with a sickening crunch of bone and moist tearing of flesh. Tendons wriggled, bloody spaghetti, as the head came loose. Blood spurted everywhere splashing us both. Terror stricken eyes glared from the lifeless boy’s head, the once sweet mouth frozen in a grimace. Ethan grasped the head by the hair and held it over his open mouth, gulping down the rain of blood and then to my revulsion raised the body to his lips to suck the remaining blood from the raw stump.
He stood, a panting animal, licking thick crimson clots from his lips, covered in sweat and rusty red smears, his thick dark hair plastered to his skull. “How dare you disobey!” He struck me hard across the mouth. I fell to the ground, sheltering my body with my hands. “They’d have dragged you off and violated you again and again. They’re the lowest of the low, sewer rats, castoffs!”
“Gaius did this! Little boys, for crissakes, Ethan!”
“They were never innocent.” He turned away and went about the business of burying the body, covering it with sand and rock.
“Did you have to kill him?”
He looked at me as shocked as if I’d suggested we go sunbathing the next day. “It’s customary, a matter of honor.”
“Honor is shit to me! You cling to these absurd notions as if they still meant something! It’s bullshit, Ethan! Gaius is nothing but a disgusting pedophile! We should sleep in coffins and haunt graveyards because we are ghouls. You think I can I