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!"
"I will go," I said with a sigh. "But you will summon me again tomorrow, and the day after, and nothing short of a kiss will satisfy either one of us."
"Begone!" she cried, loud enough for all her neighbours to hear, and I leapt away into the night before I could be seen - but Syntyche stood watch on that balcony for an hour, a dark silhouette, and it wasn't fear that kept her there.
*
A made vampire is forever the age she was when turned, and in the dead of sleep she reverts to that physical form. Some control, however, is possible, and it is said that the very oldest vampires can indeed assume the form of a wolf or a giant bat. Whether it could ever extend to incorporeal forms, such as a mist, I very much doubt. The change is more than glamour, but takes strength of will to achieve and maintain.
I can make my skin dark and my hair black, and can pass as a local for a while. I can change my features enough to pass unrecognised, or indeed to be mistaken for some specific other. The effort of such transformations is wearying, but often necessary. A white girl travelling by herself between villages cannot escape notice. A young, black man with a notable bulge in his shorts and muscles instead of breasts, however, has nothing to fear.
Nothing to fear save the coming of dawn and the need for somewhere secure to sleep. I do not awaken easily, not while the sun is in the sky. Too many times I have been woken by its violence, some unthinking interloper believing light and fresh air would revive me.
I suppose there are benefits to being a man, but there is little pleasure in it. I am a woman who loves women who love women, and though a man's part is occasionally useful in that, the rest of a man is not. One does not need to be a man to fuck like one.
*
I returned as promised. A mere two weeks had passed. In northern Europe, two weeks is enough to turn Spring into glorious Summer. It is enough to turn the flames of Autumn into barren Winter. In the heart of Africa, there is little to mark the passage of time. The heat is relentless, the humidity too, the days and nights are unchanging in length, and the extremes of poverty are constant. But the colours are vibrant and the soul is rich.
Syntyche's belly had expanded in clear advertisement of her condition, but in her eyes there was nothing of the joy of impending motherhood. "Do you believe me yet?" I asked.
She had seen me at once, the moment I stepped through the balcony window, an entrance I much preferred to the door. I sensed relief in her at the sight of me, none of the anger with which she had banished me. I sensed fresh bruises too, the way her arms flinched away from my caresses. "I hate him," she whispered. "I cannot even leave the house now. He fears I will find some way to rid myself of it."
Such a sourness in her voice. It. The thing inside her.
I knelt before her, parting the blue silk of her dressing gown and pressing my lips to her rounding belly. "You must," I said, "if you wish to live. No human mother has ever survived the birth of a vampire child. Already it is consuming more of you than it should." I pressed my nose between her thighs, breathing in the raw aroma of her cunt. The smell of her pregnancy was faint, but distinctive. "A boy," I said.
Syntyche pushed me away. "I don't want it. I don't care what it is. Boy, girl, human, demon, I don't care. Can't you help me? Take me away from here? Away from him!"
Still on my knees, I looked up at her. The dressing gown was still parted, held open by the thrust of her breasts. Like a goddess she towered over me, rage in her dark eyes, her pulse strong. She smelled divine. In one swift move I was on my feet and pushing her backwards, backwards into her bedroom, down onto her bed. Holding her by an ankle to keep her legs wide apart, I tore away her pink, lace panties and spread her labia.
Syntyche recovered well, her shock at this rough treatment giving way to laughter. She continued to laugh quietly as I bent and kissed her thigh, tracing the path of the great saphenous vein with my lips as my thumb caressed her exposed clit. "If I make you like me," I murmured, "you will belong to me more surely than you ever belonged to him."
