Shadow Phantoms - H.P. Mallory Page 0,10
had stolen my heart years ago, adding another important piece to the puzzle with which I was fooling myself. But the blood was always a giveaway. No one tasted like Bryn. No one I had found yet, at least. I supposed I would keep searching as there was no other option.
It is something that always seems to surprise mortals, but to a vampire, blood is blood. There is no gourmet selection, no hemoglobin-friendly wine list, no vampires saying, ‘Do you have the AB negative? The ’53 I think’. Such does not happen. I am afraid you all taste quite the same to us.
Except for Bryn.
Perhaps it was owing to the fact that she was an Elemental—though I had sampled others of her kind and found them to be nothing special. Perhaps it was simply because I loved her and the exquisite taste of her blood was all in my head. No, such could not be the case because her blood had also allowed me to go about in the daylight. Whatever the reason, the realization remained the same—no woman could compare to Bryn. Try though I did to find one who could.
I should, at this point, stress that, for all this talk of ‘lost loves’ and so on, my hellion was not dead. She was very much alive. But, quite unfortunately, I was dead to her. Of course, to be tiresomely literal, as a vampire I am always dead, not only to her but to everyone. But such is not what I meant. I meant the phrase in a much more metaphorical sense. I was dead and I was dead to her.
Bryn and I had parted company some ten years ago. Her choice, not mine.
I pulled back from the woman’s throat, licking my lips clean of her blood.
“You don’t have to stop, Sinjin.” Some humans have a positive fetish for being drunk by vampires. It can be very unhealthy for them (in fact fatal) and it requires a certain amount of self-control on the part of the vampire.
“No. I do not want to hurt you, Bryn.” The word was out of my mouth before I could stop myself.
“Denise,” she corrected me.
“Of course. My apologies.” I got up from the couch on which we had been lying together, turning away from her, not wanting her to see the sadness in my eyes. Or the weakness.
“You can call me Bryn if you want.”
“That would be ridiculous, would it not?”
“You can call me anything you like.”
I turned back to find that she had, with impressive swiftness, disrobed and now stood naked before me. No wonder I had lighted on this young woman. She really did look like Bryn; the honey brown hair; big blue eyes; athletic, honed body. Well, she was almost like Bryn, but not quite.
“You can have me, if you want.”
I nodded. “That is accurate.”
It was sweet of her to offer, but having drunk her blood, I could now exercise some control over her, and she would do as I asked. If I were to ask. But, I would not.
I will not say the thought did not cross my mind. Vampire I may be, but I was still a man, and standing before me was the most desirable woman I had ever seen. More accurately; standing before me was a facsimile of the most desirable woman I had ever seen. This Denise looked like Bryn, sounded like Bryn, for all I knew she would make love like Bryn. But she was not Bryn.
“Get dressed.”
There had been no one since Bryn. Not for ten years now. For a vampire, ten years can seem like the blinking of an eye, but let me assure you that, vampire or not, ten years without sex, without love, does not seem like the blinking of an eye. So many times I had gone out with the express intention of picking up a woman and screwing her brains out—such would not be difficult; I was unnecessarily handsome, charming, charismatic, physically superb and stallion-like where it counted. So many times I had considered taking the next logical step with one of the parade of Bryn-a-likes I had found in the last decade. Most, like Denise, had made their own feelings on the subject clear. I wanted to (part of me really wanted to), but something always held me back.
It was foolish. It was not as if Bryn was living in austere celibacy (the thought of her with another man made red rage flash through my mind), but I