Content Warning:
Blood, murder, and worse
I didn't know, the first time I sank my teeth into Syntyche's dark neck, that she was pregnant. In fairness, neither did she. Between the stress of an abusive marriage and a history of erratic periods, the few early signs of pregnancy had been easy for her to dismiss, but the taste of a woman in her second trimester is unmistakable. "Oh no," I said once my thirst for her blood diminished. "You should have told me."
"Told you what?"
In retrospect, I should have smelled it the moment I knelt between her parted thighs and breathed in the heady aroma of her lust for me, but I had been too long without feeding and I was too wrapped in anticipation of the life-rich nectar pulsing in her veins.
"This," I said, placing my palm upon her belly. Now that I was looking for it, I could see the suggestive contours that betrayed the burgeoning life within. "How far along are you?" I asked. "Four months? Five?"
Syntyche sat up abruptly, the shock echoing in her eyes her ignorance of her state. "I'm pregnant?" Her jaw tightened with displeasure, even as her hands pressed wonderingly against her belly. "It's not possible."
Of course it was possible. Her words were a last denial. That pregnancy alarmed her more than sharing a bed with a bloodthirsty vampire was unexpected and oddly endearing. Now that the bloodlust had passed, I yearned to make love to her again, and properly this time. I wanted to kiss and suck on her full, soft lips, her mouth so much more inviting than any skinny white girl's. Her breasts too demanded my touch, the memory of her large nipples between my teeth, the smell of acacia on her dark skin.
What pleasure it would be to sink my fangs into her chest. I knew each and every vein that threaded the human breast, and there are few sights more erotic than a trickle of blood curving about an aroused, swollen nipple.
But I am not one who enjoys the bitter tastes of fear and despair.
"I'll never escape him now," she said.
I shook my head. "He is the least of your worries. I'm sorry."
Syntyche frowned at me. "What do you mean?" she demanded.
"Your blood is tainted now. Your child's blood is tainted now - by my bite. Had I even suspected you were with child, I would have left you well alone, but now one of you must die for the other to live."
"No," she hissed, shoving me away from her. "Do not talk to me of death. I was a fool to let you charm me. You are a monster. Begone!"
I did not argue. I pulled my long, yellow dress on over my head, enjoying the way it rippled down my slender figure. Despite her momentary hatred of me, Syntyche's gaze followed the fabric's cascade about my curves, and lingered afterwards on my prominent nipples. "I will return in two weeks," I said, and let myself out into the night.
The hillside above the town was bright with the lights from the gold mine where Syntyche's husband worked. He would be home at dawn, which was several hours away still. Hours that I could have spent in Syntyche's arms. Days of careful seduction wasted by a cruel trick of fate. I had fed, at least, but the consequences of that feeding sat heavily in my heart.
Two weeks, I had said. It would be better - cleaner - just to kill her. Kill them both. That was the usual way of things. But that would truly make a monster of me, to kill a woman within an hour of confessing my love. The smell of her lingered still on my skin and I could not enjoy its innocence if I murdered her. Her blood still sang in my veins, a half-forgotten memory of sweeter times that were never mine.
It was her song that first called me to her. We both came alive in the evenings, she being free of the husband she detested, I free of the malevolent sun. With her husband gone to the mine, she would sing sadly of happiness, and I would awake to a darkening sky. So close to the equator, the fall of darkness was swift and soon absolute, broken only by pockets of man-made brilliance.
Night and shade are my allies. My pale skin can be startling even by starlight, and in the heart of Africa it marks me as other. Better to stay away from fires and electric lighting. Better to pass swiftly through the deepest shadows. Better to be unseen, save by a lover's eyes.
I was just passing through the region, stopping here and there, restless and curious. To stay in one place for long would inevitably arouse interest. One bloodless corpse is a mystery; two are a threat. Not that I kill often, but it does happen. If I am threatened, or if the thirst gets the better of me. Probably I would have to kill Syntyche, when all I had wanted was a few nights of passion.
Syntyche was a beautiful woman, and privileged because of it. Because she was beautiful, she had married well, and because she had married well, she was not forced to work at the mine, like so many women and children, sorting through debris in the hope of earning a dollar for some insignificant speck of gold. Privileged, yes, but cursed with an abusive husband who found more passion in the arms of weary whores than ever he did at home.
I might have pitied him for his ill luck in marrying a woman whose sensual beauty was so cruelly seductive, but whose heart yearned only for other women. Yes, I might have pitied him for marrying a lesbian, had his fists not been so quick to mar her beauty. As if somehow he could beat her into loving him instead of loathing him. And failing that, he would at least make her the mother of his children.
He was a man who deserved to die, and one that I would happily kill. One that I probably would have killed eventually, except Syntyche was pregnant and that changed everything.
But I knew none of that, the night I followed her song. The night I climbed to her balcony and stood by the open door, watching her, listening to her, falling more in love with each note, with each subtle gasp of pain. "Why are you breaking my heart?" I asked when she saw me and fell silent.
There was fear in her eyes at the sight of me, a pale-skinned stranger spying on her, but I made no move towards her. The ancient stricture held me, of course. Perhaps she understood this from the first, that I was a vampire held at bay by an insurmountable force. That she was safe so long as she was inside, and I was not.
Fear, yes, but curiosity too, for was I not the exotic and forbidden that she yearned for? Did I not in truth represent an escape from the reality that imprisoned her? She approached until the warmth of her breath could be felt against my lips, until every fascinating detail of her dark irises could be perceived, until the air between us reverberated with the pulse of her human life.
A thin gap that it was impossible for me to close. "What are you?" she asked.
"The woman who will teach you joy," I replied, unable even to kiss the soft lips that invited so.
"I know what you are," she hissed. "You are an evil spirit. Begone at once!"
