Sheena, page 8
Although I could always hear and feel her, I didn’t often see her-but that night I did. That night, she came to me vividly, in all her posthumous glory. Her face was pale but her lips were purple and her black hair shone as it tumbled vibrantly about her shoulders. She was dressed for the grave, in a shroud that had once been white, but the night had infected the filmy fabric, filling it with darkness and the stars.
The lust in her eyes was limitless, but when she settled upon me and lowered her head to feed she was as light as a cloud and as dainty as a moth.
When I first threw my arms around her, I hardly dared to hug her, for fear that she would break or dissolve into mist, but I felt the thrill in her flesh as she lapped the blood from the horizontal well, and I felt the force of her caresses, as she ran her delicate fingers over my face and my neck, my hips and my thighs.
When we kissed, she nipped my Up between her teeth to prove that I wasn’t dreaming. I needed the reassurance, because I needed to know that the ecstasy was real and not just a product of my wishful mind. Sheena had assured me that even the everyday was supernatural, and we’d had our moments of ecstasy while she was still imperfectly incarnate, but the supernatural is at its best when it’s bold and blatant, and ecstasy achieves its greatest heights when it’s properly unfettered. To get the best from a vampire lover, you have to do more than dream. You have to overcome your fear of true commitment.
When I came, Sheena absorbed the milky fluid as easily as she’d absorbed the rich claret that flowed from the gash beneath my nipple.
It’s traditional for supernatural visitors to prove their reality by leaving behind some physical token of their presence, and Sheena did that, too, but it was the substance that she took to nourish her own fugitive solidity that provided the firmer proof to me. It didn’t make sense, but I knew that she was way beyond sense now, as truly supernatural as any creature that had ever defied the crippling demands of mortality.
She had always been a vampire, but I never had before. The final proof of the preciousness of our love would be the future we would share, once we were united in nature and in purpose.
When she had had her fill of me, she lingered, as only the most loving vampire can or will. She let me run my hands over her body and look into her fabulous eyes. As I looked, it seemed to me that I could see through her eyes, into the dark essence of her emotion and intelligence, where her lust for blood, life, and eternity was manifest in the tortured energies swirling around the event horizon of her appetites. The display was alight not merely with all the colours of the Adantean rainbow but with others not yet manifest in any of the lives that she and I had lived.
One day, I know, we’ll find the identities that would allow us to perceive those colours, and more besides.
That night, with all my heart, I wanted to be free, especially of myself-but I knew that the kind of freedom I wanted was the kind that had to be won, and that the winning of it wouldn’t be easy.
Silence fell while we held each other, but it didn’t break the spell. Sheena still lay upon me, her head cradled on my shoulder, the weight of her slender torso pressed against my heart, and her legs parted to either side of my lumpen thighs. She was so very peaceful, now that she had fed, that I could have rolled us over and pinned her down, and threatened to detain her until morning, but she would have laughed at me, because vampires can’t be caught like that.
“There’s no hurry,” she whispered when she caught the stray thought. “We have all the time in the world.”
I know that-but sometimes it’s hard to be patient. Sometimes, when you hold a vampire lover in your arms, you want it to go on-if not forever, at least until the sun comes up. But vampires are definitely creatures of the night, even though the notion that they crumble to dust in sunlight is something the movies made up to provide their tall tales with some sort of closure.
“When will I see you again?” I asked, although I knew she wouldn’t give me a specific answer.
“Another time,” she said.
That’s where I’m headed, for now and always.
I truly believe that I’ll get there. I’m changed and I’m changing, and it’s only a matter of feeding the muse until she forgives me for the time it took to see her for what she really is, and to understand what I really am, even if I’ll never be able to see it hi a mirror.
The inhabitants of other times saw more in light than we can see, and they heard more in music than we can hear.
There’s not much we can do to compensate for that, but we should all do what we can. We can all try our utmost not to think the way other people think, not to do the things other people do, not to like the things that other people like, and not to want the things that other people want. We can all feed the creatures of the night, and hope that whichever of them deigns to accept our loving offerings will eventually set us free, in one or another of the nine secret ways that only muses know.
Sheena told me her secret even before she died: that the only way to get a true appreciation of what it means to be alive is to die a thousand times. Until I’ve lived and lost a million joyful moments, I can’t begin to know what such moments are really worth-and that’s not the kind of task you can rush.
I’m working on it, but I know that even with her to help me, it’ll take a lot longer than a single lifetime.
Another time?
If only.
Brian Stableford, Sheena
