4. All Roads
All Roads
When I awake, I am reborn.
I am not hot, I am not cold—yet I can feel everything. There are worms beneath me, toiling through the rocky soil. They dig and bury, their movements sending vibrations through the soil of my grave. I know every pebble, every stick, every speck of dust that touches my skin.
I’ve never felt so alive, even though I am dead.
Dirt cascades off me as I sit up, my eyes blinking open to my new life. The shack is bright, illuminated by my new vision. There are no shadows in which I can’t see, there is no place for anyone to hide. The rat that scurries, a human that cowers—I will see it all.
And then there’s you. You sit in a chair made of sticks holding a book, and I am struck with how mundane it is. You, an eternal being who can create immortals, a goddess amongst the common folk—sitting in that ridiculous chair. I laugh and your gaze snaps to mine, a single eyebrow lifted.
“Funny dreams?” you ask.
“I did not dream,” I say.
“No, and you never will again.” You close your book and stand, approaching me with measured steps. “Because there is no reason to dream anymore. Anything you can desire, it will be yours. It will be ours.”
I stand, covered with dirt. I am unworthy of you like this, making you sit in this squalid shack while I sleep. You should have temples erected to you, forget the hollow gods the people serve. If they saw you as I did, if they knew you as I did, they’d understand they put their faith in lies.
And yet they’ve no name for you, no knowledge that you exist. That we exist.
Then you kiss me and I am falling. Your lips are soft, strong. Your tongue works my mouth open to taste me, to slide along my new elongated teeth. I shudder into you, wanting to bite you, to taste you. I want to feel our dead hearts pressed against each other like the night you turned me.
Then I taste dirt, and I remember how unworthy I am.
“Come,” you say, stepping back. “I have a change of clothes, there is a river not far from here.”
I follow you through the olive trees to a river.
I do not know how far we walk, my gaze eternally tracking the world around me.
An errant breeze stirs the boughs above me, their whispers a new language to me.
What else had my mortal ears failed to hear?
What other secrets does the valley hold, the river, the world?
What is outside of the temple on the hill and the olive trees below it?
I step into the water, waiting for the shock of cold that never comes. The river washes the dirt free, and I radiate maroon. No—not maroon. The intensity of my new vision distorts colors, the mud like blood in the water.
Your hand is on my chin, forcing me to look at you. You kiss the furrow between my brow, leading me step by step into the water until it is to my waist. You stand taller, the water trailing between your legs, exactly where I wish to be.
“Let me,” you say softly. You pull my dress from over my head and throw the ruined thing onto the bank. I turn to watch where it lands but you grab my chin again, bringing my focus wholly on you.
“Close your eyes,” you whisper.
I obey. I always obey you.
“Good, psiche mou.” My soul.
Your hands explore the reaches of me—tender but firm, cleaning the last vestiges of my life.
Once I emerge from this water, I will no longer be the me of before, the rat of the temple.
I will be yours—your soul. I feel more and more like Melinoe with every pass of the soap.
I cannot describe the smell, I don’t have the words.
All I know is oil and ash, a strigil to scrape myself clean.
The soap leaves my skin soft and supple, the hair on my arms rising at your touch.
We step deeper into the water until it is at my shoulders, just my head above the stream. I tilt my head back, my eyes still closed, letting the running water wash me free. We stand there for eternity it seems, your fingers cleaning the last of my grave from my face, my ears, my mouth.
Then we are on the bank, my head in your lap, my hair combed by the lazy stream. Your fingers move through the knots and brambles there, picking them apiece bit by bit. There is no hurry, there is no rush.
We have time eternal, you and I.
Your fingers massage my scalp, and I think this is the best day of my life.
Was this what I missed scurrying about the temple?
Is this what the rich experience? Was this the love the songs of our gods spoke of?
The endless poetry and tragedies written about great loves that conquer kingdoms for the chance to gaze upon the face of their beloved.
What would I have done for you, in that moment? What would I have done for you for centuries to come?
Vienna. Paris. New York. Paris. Vienna. New York. Paris. Paris.
I am naked, the moon on my skin, the trees overhead whispering their secrets.
“The night is so loud,” I say.
“The world will be so loud,” you say. “I will teach you many things. How to quiet it, how to hunt, how to survive. But most of all, I will teach you how to live.”
I had to die to live.
I turn in your lap, my lips against your thigh. I test my new teeth against your flesh, the softest prick. You don’t stop me as I slide them into your leg, tasting the beads that collect there. My tongue laves them, whimpering when they disappear after just a few moments.
“I will show you where the vessels lie,” you say, your voice thick. I sit up to look at you, worried I’ve angered you. “Here,” you say, tracing your fingers up your inner thighs, nearing that apex I long to taste.
“A good spot to hide your bite,” you breathe, parting your thighs for me. “Go ahead.”
I lower myself once more, my gaze lingering on the prize I really want. But I want you to feel as I did when you fed from me. I want to study you the way the scholars study their texts, to know you the way the sailor knows the storms.
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, Melinoe. 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.
Kirra. I know that word. It is the port by which the pilgrims to the temple start. The walk is short, only several hours by foot.
“We will ride with you,” you say, pushing your skirt aside.
“Got coin?” he asks.
I have nothing but a bag of dirt around my neck and the stolen clothes on my body. I look to you, ready to say that I can walk, that I am ready for our journey together, even if by foot.
But your face is unrecognizable.
Your red eyes pulse, gems glistening from a dark pit. They lock on the man, fixed with an intensity that draws me up short. Your lips part and your voice is melodic, cloying, slipping through the air like incense smoke.
“You will take us at no charge,” you say. My skin prickles, the hair on my neck standing on end. My body bows to you, drawn by the power in your voice. It sings through our shared blood, a draw on my will.
“I will take you at no charge,” he echoes. When the horse shies again he doesn’t move to correct her, the reins loose in his hands.
“You will make no mention of seeing us,” you continue.
“I saw no one on my journey to Kirra,” he says.
Your eyes temper as they turn on me. I hold my breath, waiting for the next strike. Will it land on me? Instead, you smile and extend your hand. I take it, following you into the back of the cart.
The man clucks and the horse plods on to Kirra.
“How did you do that?” I ask. You lean against the food in the cart and turn your attention on the road behind us.
“I will teach you many things, things you never dreamed yourself capable of. I will teach you to hunt humans and have them forget they’ve been bitten,” you say.
“Make them forget?” I ask.
You turn to me, pushing a lack of hair behind my ear. “Yes, psiche mou. It is how we stay alive. Come, enjoy the road. We’ve a long journey ahead of us.”
A casual use of such a power. The hair on my arms doesn’t lay flat, even as I rest my head on your shoulder. The olive trees disappear behind us.