Carpathian Vampire, When You've Never Known Love

  *

  Jaklin and Mikhail took Alex back to their flat. When they entered, Alex asked them to keep the lights off. Enough streetlight filtered in through the windows, and she liked the dark shadows and soft glow of their faces in pale light. They had one large bed in the middle of the room. The three of them lay down on it facing each other.

  "What we're into," Alex said, "has cosmic implications. I've heard that vampires, since they are immortal, are at the cutting edge of civilization. But I also sensed great evil when I was among them."

  "Even having seen them, what makes you believe they were vampires?" asked Mikhail. Mikhail had inquisitiveness with a touch of pessimism, a sense of not quite knowing what was happening. Alex wondered what lay beyond that eternal question that was always lurking beneath his speech. That sense of confusion made him tentative and he defer to Jaklin. This guy was irresistible, yet she sense that he was frustrated at never knowing quite what he wanted, never sure enough of himself to make a move. Alex had never been able to read her friends as she could these two. It wasn't part of her skill set until she became a vampire.

  She also told them of Velinar and Catalin, although she left out the part about them being divine, but she did say that they seemed to appear out of nowhere. "I was bitten," she said, "and wondered if I'd become a vampire too. But a friend of my grandmother's, Father Zosimos from the Monastery, has proven that I'm alright. See? I wear a cross. Yet, something about me is off kilter," she said. "Stefan said so. And he's right."

  "You are different, Missy," said Jaklin with a sheepish smile that betrayed her goth stature. "But it's such a wonderful difference."

  "This afternoon, I went into the mountains, and I found a cave in the side of a cliff. It was an entrance to a vampire cavern. That's where I met Emelia and Rutfen. I met others there, too, normal people who claimed to be vampires. They seemed nice and trust-worthy, and yet, something evil is at work there, at work in the world, and its leader is a great vampire called Alucius Kardasian, or Alu Kard for short."

  "This world is really getting strange," said Mikhail.

  "Well," said Alex, "I'm about to make it even stranger. I had a discussion with my grandmother and learned that I'm also a descendant of the Cantacuzene family."

  Both of them moved in closer to Alex. She could feel their breath on her face.

  "We're cousins. Distant cousins for real."

  As her voice slowly trailed off, the sound merging into the room's shadows, Alex felt a tingle of excitement ripple through her.

  "So we really are sensing something. We're kissing cousins."

  The faint light from the window glistened off Jaklin's cheeks, and they seemed to glow in the dark. The smell of her breath was like a fine Chablis, Mikhail's, a rich Bordeaux. The three so close together, talking had a mesmerizing affect on her. She remembered kissing each of them two nights before. They edged closer, and their voices became quieter, almost a whisper.

  And then it happened.

  Alex kissed Mikhail. His lips, the taste of his mouth, produced a longing in her that she'd never before felt. They lingered with their tongues barely touching, savoring the presence of their faces together. When they separated, she turned her head just a little and saw Jaklin, so very close. She kissed her too, and the tips of their tongues again touched as they had two nights before, and she felt her head spin.

  Jaklin took Alex's face in her hand and pulled her closer, stuck her tongue deep inside her mouth. At the same time, she felt Mikhail kiss her neck. She pulled away from Jaklin and watched Mikhail kiss her. Alex wedged her face in with theirs and her cheeks touched both. She placed her lips on theirs, and with her tongue, she felt the inside of both their mouths.

  Alex moved her body around until her legs touched Jaklin's. Then Jaklin turned on her side, and Alex slid her leg underneath Jaklin's skirt and between her thighs. She was hot and moist. Alex put her hands underneath Jaklin's blouse and unsnapped her bra, then moved her hand around to her breasts, those gorgeous breasts, felt her nipples with her finger tips.

  They stopped for a second listening the each other breathe. And then the two girls went to work on Mikhail. Alex felt the taught hardness of his body, the tense muscles, put her hand down his pants, unbuttoned them. The smooth softness of Jaklin's body, the silky sweetness, buttery taste of her skin, the lemon freshness of Mikhail.

  "Are you two ready for this?" asked Jaklin. "Yes," answered Alex and Mikhail simultaneously.

  And then their clothes were off, and they were in each other's arms. Alex loved everything she tasted, sucked everything she could get into her mouth, relished every crease she could get her tongue into. She felt Mikhail enter her. Her muscles tightened about him, and he groaned.

  Alex had never been loved. She was so consumed by the affection, the way her body yielded to them, craved them, that she just let herself go, and it was as if she'd been trained for that one event all her life. She knew what she wanted, how to get it, and instinctively what they needed, craved, and how to send them to elevated heights of ecstasy.

  While Alex devoured them, she felt a faint craving for blood, and felt obscurely achy. But this was minuscule compared to her sexual desire. Alex's passion kept propelling higher and higher. Their bodies didn't even seem to belong to themselves but to some communal, genderless corporeality. The soft pliable flesh of a breast, the taught prickliness of a nipple, the pulsing toughness of a phallus. Kissing her, kissing him. Him on top of her, in her. Kissing her while he was in her. Making him groan, her sigh.

  Afterward, they talked in the dark.

  "I am different than I've ever been," Alex said. "I have more to tell you, but can't just yet. I'm still changing."

  "Individually, we're no different from other people," said Jaklin. "But together, we are something quite different, something extraordinary."

  Alex remembered what Catalin said about living a myth. "I know," she said. "It's as though together, we have a purpose, and our lives take on a mythical existence. Without both of you, my life is empty, and I don't know who I am. Around you, I become myself, as if living my true life. This is not life as usual."