The Gift (Part Three)

She gripped the curtain helplessly as she listened. Her windows were closed and bolted shut. He stood across the street, his features shrouded in darkness. His voice was intimate as a whisper and she could hear him as clearly as though he was standing by her side.

“Jocelyn, please understand,” he compelled. “I need to eat, to survive. I didn’t intend to kill her. I haven’t taken a life in centuries. I was experiencing your emotions as well as my own and I got swept away. But I did not hurt her. 

You’d have felt her pain, her fear, if there had been any. That amazing gift of yours doesn’t lie to you does it, Jocelyn? Just as you know I am not lying to you.”

Yes, Jocelyn thought, yes, he’s telling the truth. He doesn’t kill for food or sport, the woman was an accident and she’d died peacefully, but that means I’m partially responsible for her death.

“No, Dearest, you are not.” He said.

She didn’t question that he could hear her thoughts. When you lived as she did, with other people’s thoughts and emotions hijacking your mind without invitation, you wouldn’t question another’s ability. She did question why this was happening to her.

“It was fate that you happened into that car at just that moment. Fate has brought us together. I’ve been alone for so long, Jocelyn. Can’t you feel how lonely my soul is? How I hunger for you?”

She didn’t know if he had a soul, she wasn’t sure she had one, but something pulled to her, called to her, made her ache and yearn and hunger. She felt it in her head, in her heart and, yes, deep down in her sex. A need to be felt, to be touched, to be tasted. 

“I feel that too, keenly. We can give each other all of that and more for an eternity. Let me in, my Dear. You have to invite me in. That much of the myth is true. You have to let me in.” He paused, “In every sense.”

Vampire, she thought for the first time. She didn’t doubt it after what she experienced that evening. Fear galloped through the need swirling in her gut and chased away the hunger clawing at her. Jocelyn stepped away from the window and let the curtain fall, shrouding her from sight. She felt the sting of her resignation reflected back at her.

“I won’t give up. We are meant.” She ignored him and shut off the light. She returned to her bed and though she knew the effort would not keep him from the corners of her mind, she closed her eyes and turned her back to the window. “Fine, my Love, sleep now. But you will dream of me, this I promise you. You’ll dream, not just of me, but of us and all that we are going to give each other.”

Jocelyn slid into slumber on a whisper, a name:  “Gabriel.”