Page 9 of We Were Eternal Once

Back then I thought such magic possible.

I sink into you, and the rush of your blood ignites my tongue. Something feral stirs within me, a rising rush that drowns out the magic of the night. I am nothing but your blood, nothing but your essence as it coats my mouth.

Your moan is an answered prayer, your fingers bruising my scalp as you cling to me. As intoxicating as your blood is, there is something else I want more. Your scent floods my senses, your need driving my fangs from you. Part of me rebels—the feral creature that wants only to conquer and eat.

But I am unlike other new vampires in this. I don’t wake with a hunger for blood too deep to sate. My needs are you—they’ve always been you.

I take your delicate flesh into my mouth, careful of my fangs. It’s a new way to explore you, with gentle kisses and slow, sumptuous sucks. I worship you as you’ve done me these last hours, drawing out pleasure after pleasure. In between, we feast on each other, blood smeared across our lips, mixing with our arousal.

This time when we wash in the river the water is maroon.

The night slips from us. The trees warn us of the coming sun. The animals of the day stretch, though they give us wide berth. The creatures of the night nest, the wolves in their den, the bats in their caves.

We must return to ours as well.

We walk hand in hand to the shack, naked. There is no one to see us and chastise us. Perhaps this is where the story of the nymphs came from? Two women hand in hand, their bellies full of blood, their sex swollen.

You lay in my grave with me, my body pressed into yours. You curl around me as the sun rises and the pull of sleep overtakes me. Your lips are on my ear, your murmurs of assurance that one day I can fight the call of the night. One day we won’t be bound by the sun for rest, and our time together will be eternal.

If only I’d known it wouldn’t be the sun that kept us apart. It would be the false goddess I loved too much to fear.

The horse sidesteps, the whites of her rolling eyes showing.

“Temperamental, flighty creature,” mumbles the man aboard the cart she pulls. He curses under his breath, his gaze returning to us only once the mare settles.

“Take care, ladies. The night is no time to travel,” the man continues. His mouth moves again, his head jerking back toward the way we came, but his words are lost to the mare’s nervous call.

“You understand why we must make haste, then,” you say.

When I awoke that evening you were in the chair again, a pile of traveling clothes at your feet. I picked your blood from under my fingernails, then kissed the bits of mine crusted on your lips.

“Are we leaving?” I asked.

“The world is wide, Melinoë. I wish for you to see it at my side.” Your fingers slid along my jaw, the pad of your thumb pressed to my lip. “But if you desire to stay near your goddess, I understand.”

You phrased it as a choice, but there was only one answer.

“Where?” I asked.

“Rome,” you replied.

Rome. I didn’t know that word, or that place.

“But first,” you said, kneeling to collect the dirt from my grave. “A vampire is strongest with the dirt of her grave. Wear this always. If you lose it, you will not know true rest until you return to the land of your birth to collect more. None is as strong as this soil.”

“How do you carry yours?” I asked. You hand me a pouch on a string to wear around my neck. I fill it with all the dirt it can hold and consider other places to stow it. What if I lost it? Should I have more places where I keep it? Must it be on my person?

Rome. Dirt. I swallowed my ignorance as I followed you into the night.

We came upon the man and his cart shortly after we found the road. I hear the beat of his heart in his chest, feel the fear from the horse as she tries to sidestep from us. Her tangy sweat, the grass on her breath as she blows angry air in our direction.

His cart has food. There is horse dung in the spokes of the wheels. I marvel over these discoveries, urging them onward. How far can I smell, see, know? Nothing is kept secret from me.

“Make haste to where?” the man asks.

“Patras,” you say. The man scoffs. You narrow your eyes, tilting your head. “Where do you journey?”

“Kirra,” he says.