Broken Glass & Hidden Dreams

It was just another night on the job in Lakeview for Angela. The crescent moon was high in the night sky, waning behind some silver silhouetted cirrus clouds. A single star was clearly visible, the others hidden behind the murky, water-like sky. It was approximately eleven o'clock, and Angela was on her way home from the cemetery where she had dusted a group of four vampires.

As she walked, her boots caused a resounding echo off the side of the brick buildings that lined the sidewalk, she had the strange sensation that she was not alone. Her natural senses intensified then, causing her hearing to become impervious. The distant hoot of an owl could be heard, nothing else - no footsteps besides her own, no cars, cell phones, radios, or street vendors. She was oblivious as to who or what was following her.

For a while, she kept a steady pace, attempting to push the thoughts of someone or something following her to the back of her mind, but before long, the feeling became too much to handle. She stopped in her tracks, sure that some being was pursuing her, and stood frozen, continuing to face forward.

"Look," Angela said, sharply, "all I want is to be left alone. I'm going home, and I really don't feel like any more confrontations tonight. So, let's get this over with, shall we?" In one fluid movement, she pulled the wooden stake out of her boot and turned to face her stalker.

Nothing.

Not a soul could be seen or heard by Angela's keen vision or sight. Confusion swept through her as her hand with the stake in it hung motionlessly in the air, ready to strike the brute vampire she was sure was following her.

Slowly, she lowered her arm, stuck the stake back in her boot, let her shoulders slump, and turned back around with a sigh. What she saw in front of her caused the sigh to get caught in her throat, cutting off her air supply. There, only inches in front of her, stood a male vampire. Finally catching her breath, Angela narrowed her eyes at the creature, still not seeing him clearly.

She let her eyes trace his entire stature. He looked young, mid-twenties at the most, but looks can be deceiving, and, by the way he held himself, Angela guessed he'd been around much longer. The thing she found odd about him was his face. Unlike most vampires she encountered on a nightly bases, his face was soft, rested, all except for his lips.

His lips were curled softly up at the corners, creating a bit of a smirk; his eyes were burning emeralds against the black night, so piercing and beautiful, yet Angela could see the fierceness and danger behind them as well.

He was absolutely exquisitely beautiful in every way. Everything about him was inviting, enticing, and deadly. Angela knew these were the features of a savage animal, one that killed without remorse, but this wasn't the brute vampire she had been expecting; this vampire was unlike any other she had met thus far in her small existence.

The vampire's chest fell, indicating that he was ... 'Breathing?' Angela thought.

His eyes glanced quickly in the direction of hers, and his lips curled slightly more, his eyebrows rising minutely, hinting amusal.

"Hello," he said, his voice as rich and smooth as honey. His eyes were piercing into hers. She'd heard many vampires' voices in her years, but just as everything else about this particular vampire, it was different - sweater - and ten times more inviting and intense.

What are you doing, Angela screamed at herself internally. Dust him and go home!

No! a stronger voice inside her head replied.

Why was it that she couldn't do what she was literally born to do? Why couldn't she just grab the stake from her boot and dust him?

The vampire ignored the confused look, representing some deep, internal conflict, on her face. "Now, tell me, what is an innocent..." The look on her face changed in an instant from confusion to anger and frustration. He paused at this sight, then continued. "Maybe not so innocent young woman, such as yourself doing taking a stroll by herself at night? And especially on this side of town?"

Angela opened her mouth to speak, but words would not come. "Cat got your tongue," he questioned as he leaned in slightly. The scent of his breath was intoxicatingly sweet; it sent her mind swirling. When she came back down to Earth, she stared once more into those piercing green eyes.

She shook her head to try and clear her mind, working only to an extent. Her voice came out a bit mumbled and vague. "Look, I just want to go home. I," she stammered. "I know what you are!" The vampire's face changed from a look of amusal to that of curiosity. "Oh do you?" he said snidely. "And what, prey tell, am I," he asked.

"Well, you're a vampire, duh," she exclaimed. The look of amusal returned to his face. He leaned even closer and lowered his voice. "You know nothing," he said, still staring into her eyes. Then he moved for the first time except for the subtle leans and twitches of his face.

He side-stepped her, moving slowly until he was behind her. As he moved around her, he let a finger draw her soft blonde hair off her shoulder like a curtain, exposing her tender neck.

"So soft," he said smoothly. "So delicate," his voice becoming more and more like the sweetest honey.

She was frozen, as immobile as a marble statue. The voice in her mind was screaming at her to move, to grab her stake, to do something, but she couldn't. She was completely entranced by him.

He leaned in until his lips were only centimeters from her ear, his head hovering over her shoulder. "Do you want to end me? Put a stake through my heart and watch me turn to dust?"

She wanted to say yes, to turn around to face him once more so that she could scream in his face 'Yes!' but she knew she couldn't, so she didn't even bother opening her mouth. Instead, she clenched her teeth, causing her jaw to flex.

He was so close now that he felt her entire body tense. This made the smirk on his face broaden. "I know, but don't worry, I'm going to give you a choice," he said as if delighted. She turned her head slightly to the left so that out of the corner of her eye, she could see his face. "You can either welcome death," he paused for dramatic effect, "or you can face a new life," he paused once more. "In death," he continued a moment later, his voice a whisper in her ear. His breath was cold, causing her to shiver.

He noticed this movement, and whispered once more in her ear, "Oh, you won't have to worry about the night's chill once you begin your new life, if you so choose to do so. It's not like we cannot feel the cold, we simply do not feel it as you do. It is a different, more heightened sense, almost like the equivalent of your taste. Indeed," he paused briefly to put a ghostly hand upon her shoulder, "it's as if we taste the cold."

As the girl still stood frozen in her place, the vampire moved once again until he was in front of her, staring into her eyes that bore a frightened look, and yet, as he stared and took in the scene before him, he saw something else in those eyes. What was it? Curiosity? The mere thought of this was enough to cause a slight laugh to escape the vampire's soft, red stained lips. "Now that is something I was not expecting," he exclaimed.

At the sound of his menacing and deathly laugh and the words that followed, Angela's eyes widened with shock, terror, and wonder.

"What," she stammered, shifting her eyes around her nervously as if confused.

"Ah, but I saw the look of curiosity in your eyes," he said, leaning slightly forward, as he had before, but this time with an eager desire to know about what she was curious.

She adverted her eyes as so not to look at him. "I think you're mistaken," she whispered so quietly that only his ears could hear.

The vampire tilted his head just slightly to the side, stuck two fingers under her chin, barely touching her, and gently lifted her head to look at him. She kept her eyes adverted. Briefly, she allowed herself a glance at him, but when her eyes met his, they stayed locked there, transfixed.

"No," he said. "I do not believe I am." For a moment, they both stood there, the only movement being the subtle rise and fall of their chests.

"I," she muttered, then paused, hesitant to say whatever it was she was thinking.

The vampire waited, appearing completely calm and relaxed, yet anxiously waiting her answer. It was now him who was curious. After a while of complete silence, except the beat of their hearts, the vampire spoke in his most kind, alluring, and seductive voice. "I would very much like to know what you were on the verge of saying," he said as his smoldering eyes pierced hers.

An exasperated sigh escaped Angela's lungs. "I," she stammered once again. A brief pause followed, but she couldn't resist him. "I was wondering... what it's like." The vampire's brows raised, a look of surprise covering his face.

He fixed his face back to that of his normal, charming stature. "You wish to know what it is like to be me?"

---

I remember that night so clearly, as if it were yesterday, even if it was hundreds of years ago. We stood there for hours as I told Angela of the vampire ways, and how I personally chose to live. I explained to her that life in death was being more alive than the mere human ever is, and eventually Angela revealed to me that she'd never wanted to be a slayer, that she was forced into it, and after a while had learned to accept it, but when I offered her the choice, she couldn't refuse. She was wise beyond her years. She knew that my offer was the way out, and that she could begin a new life, free from everything, and she could finally live the way she wanted to. I offered her that freedom and she gladly accepted it, after some simple persuasion, of course.

I drained her of blood until the last drop and let her drink from me in return, and after a while, she awoke, more alive than ever before.

It's all ancient history from there, really, until the night I found her in a cemetery, after I'd warned her against going out alone. A slayer never really gets off the hook with us vampire kind, even if they become one of us. Personal vendettas had still been held, and they finally caught up to her.

When I came home and found her gone, I ran to where I knew she would be, which was the cemetery, but I was too late, and for that, I will forever blame myself. Her limbs were literally ripped from her body, and there was very little life left in her. I held her in my arms until she exhaled her final breath and her fragile and weak heart, once so strong, ceased to beat.

My revenge was swift. Every vampire that had anything to do with her death was dead within a weak. Some had fled to the far corners of the Earth, for they knew that her and I had a bond so far beyond anything that had ever been recorded in books of history. They knew I would come for them, and they were waiting when I found them, but their attempts at rebuttal were pathetic.

For hundreds of years I moped around the Earth, bitter about my lover's death, searching for a way to bring her back, but there was none.

Finally, I found Lestat, and I am once again happy, happier than I have been in a very long time.

Last night, I flew back to Lakeview, California, where Angela is buried, and said my goodbyes, then flew back to Paris, and proposed to Lestat.

He said yes.

-smiles-