"You are beautiful and I welcome you as my wife, my light, the other part of my soul." He leaned down and his sharp teeth grazed my neck.
I gasped and clung to him when they pierced my skin. The familiar sensual pleasure washed over me. I felt as though I'd dove into a hot pool. The warmth wrapped around me and lapped against my flesh, enticing me to a deep, dark sleep. My skin shivered with the delight of his drawing my blood, enticing my life from me with the slow care of a lover. His hand reached up and brushed against my thin shirt, pushing it upward to reveal my bra. I pressed closer to him, but he pulled away and lapped at the blood that streamed from the two wounds in my neck.
"Delicious," he murmured against my skin.
"Please don't stop," I whispered.
He chuckled. "I have not yet begun," he replied.
Dmitri pulled off my shirt and his own, and pressed his hard, cool chest against my flesh. A heat burned between my thighs, and I moaned and clutched at him. My hands clung to his smooth, cool back as he nestled himself between my legs. He left a blazing trail of hot kisses down my throat and latched onto the wounds. He suckled me slowly, teasing me and driving me mad. The ache inside of me grew stronger. My body felt alive and yet not. I was trapped between a world of pleasure and a world of darkness, and knew only the depth of his lust and love for me.
I rubbed my hips against his. He shuddered and pulled away from me. His burning eyes peered down at me through the darkness of the room. His tongue flicked out to lap up the droplets of my blood on his red lips. "What innocence in your blood. I will take that innocence for myself," he whispered.
I didn't struggle as he tore the remaining my clothes from my body. In a moment I lay naked beneath him. My heaving breasts tantalized him and my body craved his attentions. He hovered over me, a dark shadow of lust incarnate. His eyes devoured my body, taking in all of me. He allowed one of his hands to glide over my hips and up my side to catch one of my breasts. His fingers toyed with me, teasing my sensitive bud and heightening the sweet ache inside me.
"Please," I groaned.
He needed only that little bit of encouragement. In a half second he thrust his thick, stiff member into my hot core. I groaned and squirmed beneath him, but he grabbed my hips and held me still. He penetrated me again and again as we rutted in a wild ecstasy of passion. I grasped his cool back and my cries filled the tomb with my joy, my bliss. Each thrust filled me. We were as one, a single body demanding satisfaction for our carnal desires.
My muscles tightened. I felt myself nearing the end. Dmitri thrust faster as my walls around him began to twitch and tremble. At the last he bit down hard on my neck. I gasped as more ripples of hot pleasure swept through me. I was overwhelmed by the sensual waves that consumed me body and soul. My hands clawed at his back, clinging to him in the hopes we could stay like this forever.
Forever was a long time, though, and as he took my blood he took my strength. My hold on his back weakened. I felt a dizziness slip into my mind. My head fell back and my breathing grew shallow. The warmth inside me fled, and I was left with only the feel of him inside me, penetrating me between my thighs and at my neck.
He lifted his head and his red eyes looked down on me in pity and ecstasy. He raised a hand and stroked my temple. "Sleep now, my precious one, my new one. When you awake I will be here to guide you," he whispered.
Then I knew darkness, but when I awoke I knew he would be waiting there for me. We would begin our new life together, and it would be one filled with countless nights and passion.
Chapter 9
Time passed, I don't know how many hours, or even days, it was. I knew only the darkness that encompassed me, that wrapped me in its soft, cool arms and held me tight. It never wanted to let me go, but I slowly awakened to something else in this strange dark world. There was a far off sound. Someone was calling me.
"Mary. Mary."
I knew that voice. I loved that voice. It beckoned me away from the darkness.
I tore myself from those gentle arms and rushed forward. There was nothing around, but I stumbled through the dark following the voice. It would lead the way, and as I raced onward I noticed a shimmering orb of light ahead. It was beautiful and painful to behold. The voice came from there, so I sped on. The orb grew until it stretched to the size of a door. I reached out for the door. The voice kept calling me, urging me onward. The brightness burned me, but I didn't care.
I gasped and sat up. There was darkness so deep I thought I was blind. I flailed my arms searching for something to grasp and another pair of arms caught mine and wrapped around me. "Be calm. Be still," a voice whispered. It was the voice, the one from my dream. Dmitri's voice.
I blinked, and slowly the shadows faded and my vision returned. I beheld the treasure chamber in its rubbled state. When I tried to breathe I found there was little air left to take in, and I also realized I didn't need it. My lungs no longer worked, and my heart no longer beat.
"How are you feeling?" Dmitri asked me.
I shivered and closed my eyes. "Cold," I whispered.
He pulled me closer to him. There was a little warmth to his body. I noticed my clothes were back on me. "That can be remedied, but for now relax. Your change has shocked your body and it still needs time to acclimate," he told me.
"So I'm. . .I'm really dead?" I wondered.
"Undead. A creature of shadows," he corrected me.
I glanced around the dark room and my eyes grew accustomed to the shadows. Details became clear and I was no longer afraid. "So what now?" I asked him.
"Now we wait for your powers to surface, and then we make our escape," he replied.
"And then?" The future was more uncertain than it had ever been in my life. My plans of a steady job and career were gone. Even my ability to stand in the sun was gone. I whimpered and pressed closer to him.
"We will travel far from here, but first we must retrieve my other treasure," he told me.
I frowned and glanced over my shoulder at him. "Other treasure?"
He chuckled. "Do you believe I would have gone to all this trouble with this tomb and had all my treasures buried here?" he returned.
"I guess not," I replied.
"I didn't trust the sorcerer who gave me this life to let all of my treasures remain with me, so I had a large part deposited in a secret chest a few miles past the village," he explained.
I tilted my head back to look at the ceiling. "What about the professor and the others?" I asked him.
"What of them?" he wondered.
I frowned and bit my lip. My long teeth bit into my skin and a thin line of blood slipped down my chin. "He betrayed me. He left me here to die because he got scared."
There was a pause from Dmitri, and when he spoke his voice was calm, quiet. "You wish revenge on him?" he guessed.
"I. . .I don't know what I wish. I just know I'm mad at him and-well, and hungry," I admitted. There was an incessant gnawing at my stomach that enough vampire movies had told me was my craving for blood.
"It would better if we attacked no one in the area. If we did then they would know we survived the ceiling collapse," he pointed out.
I cringed. The hunger inside of me protested with a loud growl. "Not even a bit of a snack?"
He chuckled. "No, not even a single bite," he insisted.
I hung my head. "This is going to be a long night," I muttered. A thought hit me and I furrowed my brow. "What night is this, anyway? How long was I asleep?"
"You slept for a day. The sun set ten minutes ago," he told me.
"And now we're supposed to escape here as some sort of shadow?" I guessed.
"Yes. The shadows are our protection and our disguise. We are able to step into them and remain there until we choose to reveal ourselves," he replied.
"So I can do that right now?" I asked him.
"Perhaps. There is one way to find out," he answered. He stood and helped me to my fight. I swayed, but he held me steady.
"I don't know if I
can turn in a circle, much less turn into a shadow," I mused.
He smiled, set me against his sarcophagus, and stepped away. "It will come naturally. Merely focus on the spot you wish to step into, and do it," he encouraged me.
Dmitri walked over to the wall opposite the coffin. His feet stepped into the darkest shadows created by the treasures and disappeared as though they were swallowed by the presence of those same shadows. He reached the wall and slipped into the dark cracked beneath the stones. It was like his body was covered in a dark blanket, and then thinned and twisted into the crevices. In a moment he stepped out, but only partially. He offered me his hand.
"Are you ready?" he asked me.
I glanced around the stuffy, dark room and eagerly pushed off from the coffin. "I thought you'd never ask," I teased.
I grasped his hand and he pulled me toward the shadows behind him. As the hard stone came closer my human instincts told me this was going to hurt, and I shut my eyes against the pain. There was nothing but a slight chill and then silence. It was as though every noise in the world was shut out. I cracked open an eye and saw before me the deep darkness of my dreams, but this time Dmitri stood at my side. Behind us was the treasure room and there was a distinct line between the dark world in which I stood and the floor of the tomb. I turned around and reached out my hand. It slipped through the barrier between worlds with that distinct coolness. I wiggled my fingers in the tomb, and pulled my hand back into darkness.
Then I gave my expert analysis on this amazing phenomenon. "That is so weird," I commented.
Dmitri chuckled. "Yes, it is strange, but wonderful in its beauty," he added.
"Yeah, I guess, but how do we get out of here? Do we just go back the way we came in?" I wondered.
"We look for the cracks of light," he told me. I watched as he reached up and brushed his hands over us. It was as though he brushed aside dirt that didn't fall because his fingers revealed small cracks of light in the darkness. "These cracks are in the ceiling of the tomb. They will lead us outside," he explained.
"So we do what? Climb into the ceiling?" I guessed.
"Not exactly."
He turned so we faced each other and grasped my hands in his own. I gasped when I felt my feet leave the solid, albeit shadowed, ground and we flew up to the cracks. They broadened and opened to allow us through, and as they did the world above the tomb was revealed to us. There was the dig site and the trees, and the hills that surrounded the valley. We slipped from the ground like, well, shadows, and hovered over the earth for a moment before we slowly lowered to the dirt.
I glanced down at the ground in awe as Dmitri released my hands. My feet tapped the ground searching for the invisible cracks which had allowed us up here, but they were gone from my sight. "How'd you do that?" I asked him.
"We merely slipped through the shadows of the earth. Never forget that even in the darkest and deepest dungeon escape can be found in the earth," he instructed me.
"And we can fly any time we want?" I inquired.
"Only to travel through the shadows. In clear skies such as these we are trapped on the ground as any human," he replied.
"Not even as bats?" I wondered.
He raised an eyebrow. "Bats? No, we cannot change our form into bats. That is mere fiction written by an author with a wild imagination," he told me.
"Damn. . ." I mumbled.
"Don't dwell on the disappointments. Enjoy the beauty of the night," he advised. Dmitri glanced up at the sky and held his hand upward into the air above him. "Is this not a beautiful night? Can you not feel the cool breeze on your skin and hear the wolves as they howl to one another?"
I paused and listened for the howls. Far off I did hear the din of the nocturnal creatures as they hunted in their packs. "Can we talk to them?" I wondered.
"In a lower sense, yes. They will understand our commands, but we can only understand the tone of their growls," Dmitri explained.
The childish possibility of a companion wolf slipped into my mind, but I shook it out. There would be safer times to ponder future pets. "You said your other treasures were on the far side of the village? How do we get there?"
"We will go around your former campsite and go through the wooded paths up the hills to the village," he replied. "Come, follow me," he instructed, and led me in the direction of the camp.
Chapter 10
I hurried after him and recalled the many miles of hiking needed to get to the village. "Walking all the way?" I wondered.
"You are too weak to attempt the transformation into a wolf," he countered.
I stopped and blinked at him as he walked on ahead. He stopped and turned to see what was the matter. "Into a wolf?" I repeated.
He smiled and bowed his head. "Into a wolf," he agreed.
Things were looking up. I was so giddy at this perk that I nearly clapped my hands together. Instead I clasped them together and moved to stand in front of Dmitri. "Please show me how. Please?" I tried my best puppy dog eyes on him hoping the red color wouldn't diminish the effect.
"Very well, but then we must hurry. The night will not last forever," he reminded me.
Dmitri took a step back away from me and I stumbled backwards myself when shadows rose from the ground. They seemed to come from the cracks in the earth and enveloped Dmitri in their tendrils. They covered him completely, and when they receded his form also shrank. At four feet from the ground a gray-furred head appeared from the shadows followed by the rest of a wolf body. There was the sleek fur over the well-muscled body, the bushy tail, and the large paws with the sharp claws. The giant wolf stared at me with golden eyes and wagged its tail.
Dmitri was one giant plush toy. I smiled and knelt down to brush my hand over his smooth, sleek fur. It was as soft as silk, and twice as thick. Dmitri leaned forward and nuzzled his long snout into my neck. His wet nose tickled me, and I laughed and pushed him away. "You're beautiful," I complimented him.
I was almost disappointed when the shadows sprang from the ground and in a second transformed him back to his kneeling human form. "It's been a long while since I attempted that form. I'm glad to say I am not-" He whipped his head toward the direction of the camp and frowned.
I looked between him and the site and back. "What? What is it?" I asked him.
"We are not alone," he whispered.
On cue a dozen flashlights clicked on atop the hill that separated the camp from the dig site. The beams trapped us in their circles of light, and I hissed and backed up. Dmitri stepped in front of me and blocked most of the harsh light. I peered around Dmitri and recognized many of the faces who peered at us from the hill. One was the professor, his face stern and dark pouches under his eyes. Around him was a mixture of villagers and my former classmates. Stacy was among them. She wore a thick scarf around her neck and in her hand was a sharpened stake. Others held thick sticks, and looked at us with a mixture of horror and deadly intentions. It was amazing how quickly people turned on you when you became a bloodsucking fiend.
Two of the people climbed down the rock-littered hillside and walked toward us. One was the professor, and the other as the old villager, the one who warned us about the tomb. The old villager held a bowl in one hand and a small rattle in the other. The professor shone a flashlight on us, and in his other hand was a gun pointed at us. I doubted the bullets in the chambers were made of the usual lead. Tucked into his waistband were a few short, sharp sticks. This wasn't the welcome-back party.
As they approached the villager began to mumble a few words, words that pained me though I didn't understand the language. I clapped my hands over my ears to shut the sound of his voice out, and Dmitri reached behind him and pulled me against his back. He was stiff and his hand trembled as he clutched onto me.
"Silence!" Dmitri commanded the villager, but the man continued his strange prayers. He shook the rattle and the sound broke through my hands and sent shivers of pain down my body. It was as though a million pins were slowly digging into my skin
.
I grabbed onto his coat and yanked. "The earth!" I reminded him.
Dmitri swung around and wrapped his arms around me. The dark shadows of the earth rose up from the ground and swallowed us in its soft, cool embrace. The darkness silenced the man's chanting and stopped the pain. The ground beneath us disappeared and it felt as though we fell far enough to cover ourselves. Then our feet struck solid ground, or rather shadows. We stood again in the blessed dark world.
I leaned against Dmitri and shuddered. My voice was hoarse and quiet. "What did they try to do to us?" I whispered.
"The spell the man chanted was meant to freeze us so they could destroy us," he explained. "Fortunately for us he is ill-trained in the abilities of his ancestor and spoke the words very poorly."
I glanced around at the shadows. "Can we reach your treasure from here?" I asked him.
"From this place? No. The shadows allow us to pass through walls and the ground, but I wouldn't advise long travel. We may become lost and be forced above-ground in a house or cemetery," he told me.
"Will crosses hurt us?" I wondered.
"They are painful to look at for us, but they cannot physically injure us," he replied.
Options were looking thin. "So what do we do?"
"We will travel for a time beneath the ground, but arise as soon as we feel it is safe," he explained.
We walked slowly through the darkness with only the thin cracks above us to give us comfort. I wondered what the others were doing. Perhaps Ed was at the camp sharpening the stakes they'd use against us, and Stacy would remain among the followers of the professor and the village elder. My only comfort was she didn't have good aim and would probably stake my bladder before she staked my heart.
Dmitri stopped and glanced up. "We will try here," he suggested.
I followed his gaze. The cracks in the dark ceiling looked like they always had. "How do you know?" I inquired.
"I don't. We will have to rely on our luck," he replied.
"Um, my luck isn't too great," I informed him.
He looked down at me and smiled. "Then we will rely on mine. I have lived this long. I doubt your professor and the inexperienced magician will destroy me."