Imogen and the Immortal

Author's Note: This story was written for, and based on an idea by, John Doe. As such, it deviates somewhat from my normal style, but the usual warning applies. If any of the tags make you uncomfortable, the story is unlikely to please you.

Imogen and the Immortal

In the lamp's light, the face that stared back at her seemed that of a stranger, and Imogen chided herself for the silliness of the idea. One could not change from girl to woman in the space of a day, and yet it seemed to her the alluring lady in the mirror could not be the Imogen she had always known, the haughty, tempestuous viscount's daughter who had so desperately longed to be grown.

But grown she was, her form declaring it in the snug, daringly-low cut bodice of her sapphire gown, while about her neck her maid settled a silver choker that had been a gift from her fiancée, and as such, another reminder of the adult world she was about to enter.

Imogen raised lace-bedecked hand to the cold sapphire at the center of the choker, as much a symbol of Frederick's affection as of his wealth. She knew well the depth of the Bowdler coffers, having lived with that family for nigh on fourteen years, and marveled often at her good fortune to have first been raised as the orphaned ward of such kind and generous souls, and now to be marrying into the family.

'How blessed you are, my lady,' Nellie murmured appreciatively as she regarded her charge in the mirror. 'Hardly a year after your debut, and you've caught the finest man of them all.'

'You are, perhaps, a little biased, Nellie,' Imogen responded, 'having helped raise the man in question.'

'True,' the older woman smiled indulgently. She swept back Imogen's thick auburn hair, gathering the tresses in a silver clasp behind her head, whence it spilled across her shoulders in long rich curls that shone autumn shades in the lamp's caress. 'Ah, would that your mother could see you.'

Imogen shared that wish. She wondered what her parents would have made of the young woman she'd become, what they would have thought of her match with Frederick. She remembered little of Elizabeth and Vernon, borne away by smallpox along with their infant son so many years before. She recalled soft auburn hair, like her own, and a scent that she caught sometimes in the evenings in high summer when she walked through the gardens, the perfume of some elusive flower.

Elizabeth had been beautiful, Lady Bowdler always said, but then Lady Bowdler had been her dearest friend and would never have spoken an ill word of the deceased Elizabeth. Only sometimes, carefully phrased, she made known her regret that her friend had married somewhat beneath her station, when there had been 'other interested parties, perhaps better suited'.

Imogen examined the delicate face in the mirror, the fine brows, proudly arched above the cornflower eyes, the small nose and full lips. Frederick had once whispered to her that she had a mouth made for kissing, and her cheeks flushed at the memory, though their explorations had gone no further than those few stolen kisses. She wondered whether those were her mother's full, curved lips, her mother's high cheekbones, for everyone also told her that her eyes were her father's.

A knock on the door drew her from her reverie, and Nellie began hurrying about with the final touches as Lady Bowdler swept in, plump yet graceful in a gown of peach silk. She brandished a fine creamy lace fan, the high color of her cheeks hinting at the cup or two of wine she'd enjoyed in her own early celebration of her ward's birthday.

'It's time, my dear,' she declared, then gave an appreciative gasp as Imogen came to her feet for the lady's inspection. 'Oh Imogen,' she breathed, 'where did my little Jenny go? You are the spitting image of your mother.' She snatched a handkerchief from her bosom and dabbed at her eyes, and Imogen kissed the woman affectionately on the cheek.

As her skirts were straightened and perfume spritzed, Imogen gave a final twirl before the mirror, then she and the lady Bowdler swept from the room to join the festivities.

***

The cacophony of the ballroom spilled from the open doors onto the veranda and the garden beyond. Cassius had loved such music once, in another time, in another life, when he had been the Marquess of Felvar, yet now the high notes of the fiddle grated on his nerves. They were frayed enough already from the hour he'd spent listening to the vapid conversations of the revelers. No lady dared approach him without proper introduction, but they hovered nearby and spoke in raised voices so that he was forced to hear the dull details of their lives. The lords were no better. Half a dozen had come to make his acquaintance, pretending at illusory connections; had they not seen him at so-and-so's a fortnight ago? Was he not at that lord's summer house in July? He ignored them all, and affronted, they wandered away. He knew his glamour drew them, yet if he let it slip then all hell would break lose as they saw him for what he was.

The music died down, the dancing slowed, and Cassius drifted into the ballroom with the others. From the back of the crowd, he watched the staircase that descended into the room, a wide marble feature covered in scarlet carpet. Along its length glided an angel.

For a moment the human in him surfaced. He drew breath, sharply, at the sight of her. Elizabeth. Dead, they had said. He'd seen the grave, and yet... She was as finely made as he remembered. Of average height, her form soft yet lithe, made for dancing, he'd always thought. But her breasts and hips had been shaped to torment men, curving generously before meeting again the more slender lines of her delicate waist, her long pale calves. But the latter were only a memory. He watched her now, bedecked in a gown of midnight blue, and felt himself stir at the thought of her warm flesh. He could see the pale swell of her breasts above the tight, low neckline, a daring cut, perfectly suited to displaying the beauty of her form.

She stepped slowly, gracefully down the staircase, one lace-gloved hand trailing lightly along the bannister as her gaze swept the ballroom. The hair was a shade darker than he recalled, a deeper auburn than the golden red of his recollections. His eyes trailed from the curls to the sapphire that gleamed at her throat, to the delicate chin, and came to rest upon those lips that always seemed as though they had but recently been kissed. His tongue flicked across his own lips, and he forced himself to look away from that coy mouth to the gaze again. Her eyes met his own black visage. She looked into his soul, it seemed, and he knew, then, that it was not she, for this woman was younger, her eyes wider and blue where Elizabeth's had been a deep brown. She looked quickly away from him, blushing at whatever hint of his arousal she read on his face, his emotions naked despite the glamour that hid the truth of his form.

When she reached the bottom of the stairs, a tall young man came forward, a fine lording with curling golden hair. He took her hand in his and a murmur passed through the crowd as they came to stand beside Lord Bowdler. None could doubt the announcement the senior Lord Bowdler was about to make.

The shorter man, Frederick's father, cleared his throat, and a hush fell over the crowd. Cassius felt his patience nearing its limit. He had come to see Elizabeth's daughter, and now that he had done, he wished only to devour her in the multitude of ways his monstrous body demanded.

'My dear friends, it is an honor and a privilege to have you at our celebration this night,' Lord Bowdler said, his curling moustache bobbing as he spoke. 'We have gathered to celebrate the birth of dear Imogen, who seems to have blossomed overnight into the beauty you see before you.' He waited for their applause to die down before he continued with his announcement, 'Though turning eighteen is cause enough for celebration, there is another matter for which I beg the raising of your glasses.'

But Cassius heard no more. A red haze seemed to cloud his vision as his mind made the calculation. It had been eighteen years and a fortnight since he had set out for Transylvania. Eighteen years and a month since he had bid his love goodbye and set out to assist in the excavations at those terrible ruins. He and Elizabeth had never lain together. A fine lady of impeccable morals, she had insisted that they wait until they were legally wed. And yet, here stood Elizabeth's daughter, all of eighteen years old, and thus conceived less than a month after his departure...

The rage built in him, and he felt the last vestiges of his humanity slip away. He strode out into the night, struggling to maintain the illusion around his form. His monstrous body trembled with the need for destruction. How he wished he could meet Elizabeth now, how he longed to take out his frustrations on the one who had caused all this.

Had it not been for her lavish lifestyle, for her imperious ways, he would never have gone on that dig. A childhood friend, Enoch, had managed to convince him of the riches to be found in those ruins, and Cassius had gone, hoping to return a wealthy man. Always Elizabeth and her father had seemed to look down on him for his lack of fortune, if not his lack of title, and he had vowed to return from Transylvania a changed man.

He had. Enoch was dead, his bones resting in the depths of a now-abandoned archaeological site, and Cassius had returned with the curse of vampirism, turned by a dreadful creature that was closer to the stone gargoyles in the gardens than the gaunt, pale men in the fireside tales. He had lain beneath the rubble of the ruins for nearly a score years before plunderers had stumbled into that lair and accidentally revived him. Their bones, too, now lay in that dark place.

Despite the curse that plagued him, Cassius had thought only of returning to his beloved. He had known that there was a chance she would have moved on. Eighteen years was a long time to wait, and yet he'd clung to the vestiges of hope that she might be there still, in her father's house, waiting for them to embark together on that journey of matrimony. No words could describe his heartache when he had learned that Elizabeth and her husband, Cassius's own best friend, had been lost to smallpox years before. Yet the story he told himself was that they had waited years for his return, their long, lonely vigil eventually driving them into one another's arms.

The auburn-haired woman at the foot of the stairs betrayed that narrative, and blew instead on the embers of rage that simmered in him, so that his need for vengeance became a blaze that could not be denied. Seething, he imagined what he would have done to Elizabeth, had she still been alive. He saw her face in his mind's eye, but before he could play out the scenario, the face changed ever so subtly and became instead her daughter's.

Yes. He could not revenge himself on the parents, but he could claim the daughter. He had centuries if not millennia before him, and he could revenge himself on the entire bloodline if he so pleased. The thought stirred his blood. As sometimes occurred with his newfound powers, he was granted a vision of a much older Imogen, a tall dark-eyed daughter at her side. He groaned with desire.

For weeks he'd been hiding in his lair, hoping to catch sight of Elizabeth and Vernon's child. A child, he had expected, never dreaming of the delectable creature at the center of the night's celebrations. His lair lay in readiness for the taking of a virgin. He'd thought to draw one from the party, some wallflower who'd be all too easy to enthrall. His plans had changed, and the visions his prescience now granted him pleased him very well, indeed.

An hour later, he watched Imogen make her way towards the patio. Her colour was high, her thirst evident as she gulped down another glass of wine. Friends stopped to congratulate her, and she laughed at something they said, her lovely face animated as she offered her own witty observation. They were drawn to her, much as they had been drawn to him, but she needed no dark power to exert her pull; he felt it himself, watching her, and his hunger grew.

He stood in the garden, never taking his eyes from her through the open doors. She was a little breathless, still, from the dancing, and her breasts strained against her bodice with every breath.

Come to the garden, he spoke to her mind. She straightened, stopping mid-sentence, and her companions watched her with puzzlement as she turned away and walked out into the night, but no one followed her, repelled now by the same force he used to lure her away.

He made his way to a secluded alcove he'd found earlier between hedges, where a stone bench stood amongst beds of deep crimson roses. No lanterns hung here to cast light on this place of trysts, but the moon was full, and she stepped into its glow, the goddess Selene incarnate.

Her eyes were fogged with his enchantment, but there burned in them a spark of awareness, as though Imogen watched from some far-off place as her body moved towards the shadowy man. They were near enough the house to hear the music clearly, and it was a slow melody that filled the air, a lover's lament. He held out his arm to her and knew what she saw: the dashing lord with his salt and pepper hair slicked back. But his body thrummed at the truth of their contact: her small hand, lace-clad, resting on the arm of a beast.

In her bewitchment, she saw the debonair lord as another partner come to claim a dance, and she brought her body close to his as the waltz dictated. But he pulled her closer as they began to sway, his claw easily enclosing her white-clad hand, while his other hand around her body forced her tightly against him, much closer than was seemly.

Had there been a watcher to this meeting, and had they been impervious to his powers, they would have beheld a strange scene indeed: in the silvery moonlight, to the tune of a slow song of romance, a maiden danced with a monster. Her soft form and porcelain beauty stood in stark contrast to the grotesque creature that was he. In his human life he had been tall, now the curse had made his form even taller, and grotesquely thick with muscle. The face was the terrible countenance of a gargoyle, or a bat, the nose flat and the eyes small and dark, deep-set. His mouth was a wide parting of his pale, grey flesh, showing rows of pointed teeth like yellowed daggers.

Imogen saw none of this. Her breasts pressed against his stomach, her head tipped back to gaze up at him. To her eyes the long, matted tresses that hung from his hideous head were the fine, silken strands of a dapper lord. She did not see the strange, pointed, bat-like ears, did not sense that the hands that held her were far larger than any human's could ever be. She did not feel the sharp points of his filthy claws, nor take heed of the bat-like wings that grew from his back, their massive span ending in sharply curling talons. She saw only one more man in an endless series of dance-partners.

Feeling her breasts against his bare chest, Cassius's arousal grew, and he pressed his hardness against the softness of her abdomen, forcing her to feel the pulsing heat of his desire beneath the thin rags that were his only covering. The need to take her there and then was almost overpowering, and when her lips parted in a small 'o' of surprise, he descended on them with a desperate hunger, his vile tongue seeking the depths of her mouth while the hand behind her back dropped to grip her by the buttock, sharp claws digging into her flesh despite the layers of fabric between them.

She did not struggle; lost to his spell she stood immobile under his ministrations, her mouth warm but still against the ghastly coldness of his own. His other claw reached into the front of her gown, beneath the sapphire silk and the soft chemise, and his nails dug into the pale globe of her breast.

'Imogen?' called a man's voice, very near. Cassius would have stripped the fabric from her chest, that he might set his mouth to the peak of her breast, had not that voice interrupted him. Snarling low, he thrust the woman from him and stepped back into the cover of darkness. In his wake, Imogen stood blinking, dazed, so that when Frederick found her she startled as though caught daydreaming.

'Sweetling, what are you doing out here?' he asked, grasping her by the arms. 'You're freezing cold, come back inside.' And he rubbed her arms to bring warmth to them as he led her away, waiting for an answer to his question, an answer she did not have. For the creature had slipped from her mind as easily as he'd melded into shadows, and she was left only a deep sense of wrongness, yet no recollection to explain it. Behind her, the shadows lay empty, unmoving, for the monster they'd hidden had moved on. Elsewhere, he waited.

***

An hour after midnight, a scant hour after the last of the guests had left, Imogen startled awake in the dark of night. She had been dreaming of a figure in shadows, watching her as she slept. Heart racing, she clutched a hand to her chest where she had dreamt a monster had laid its claw upon her. Her skin was cold, covered in gooseflesh, and she was about to reach for the folded coverlet at the foot of her bed, when a voice spoke from the darkness.

'Go back to sleep,' Cassius bade her, and her limbs slackened so that she fell back upon the bed, doll-like, eyes fluttering shut.

Scant light slipped in between the heavy drapes at the window, yet he needed no light to see her, to take in every detail of her face and form as he came to stand by the bed. He drew the sheet away from her body and drank in the sight of her, the way her long white nightgown clung to the curve of her breasts and hips. Moments before her waking, she had thrashed against his seeking hand, and the hem of the gown had ridden up, revealing the pale flesh of her thighs, so much more than he had ever seen of her mother. For the second time that evening, he found himself growing hard, his beastly nature demanding that he impale this soft form upon his member immediately.

But he would not have her, not yet. He lifted her into his arms, her head lolling against his shoulder. He would keep himself from spreading her there and then, yet could not resist tasting the prize he held against his monstrous form. One clawed finger drew down the silvery white silk at her breast, and he snarled in frustration at the sight of her perfection. Her breasts were generous, her nipples small and pert in the chill of night. Lustily he bent his head to a peak, seizing it between his teeth, his tongue flicking against it. The clasp of his teeth was powerful, and she moaned in pain, unable to draw herself from the spell of slumber.

Impulsively he slipped one hand between her legs where they rested against his stomach. His grip of her was awkward, but the curse of his form was not without its benefits, so that he scarcely felt the weight of her body now held clasped in the circle of his left arm, the crook of one knee resting in his hand. The other hand came to rest on her mound, and his coarse, clawed finger plunged into the patch of curls that grew there, parting her lips, pressing over her clitoris in hurried exploration, making her body jolt against him as though lightning had coursed through her. He pressed on, seeking her opening, and brought his maw to her lips, his tongue forcing its way into her mouth just his thick gnarled digit slipped into her body. He did not push deeply, not as deeply as his tongue explored, for he sought only proof of her chasteness, and found it as his finger brushed against the thin membrane that prevented further passage.

His blood surged, his need for her every bit as desperate as the hunger that plagued his immortal life. He pulled aside the drapes and stepped through the window into the cool night air beyond the third-story room, his wings unfurling and flapping a steady beat to carry them higher.