In the meantime, and despite all my complaining regarding the people in this city being fake, I was a hypocrite. Because despite my best efforts, and for obvious reasons, I had to live in a masquerade, forced to stay away, engulfed by the eternal darkness of an existence I could not dare to share with the woman I wanted. And because of it, I had to bear witness to how she gave herself, body and soul, to another man.
I was, indeed, in the right city.
Chapter 50
A Matter of Faith and Trust
August 5, 2004
Miami
I had to come.
Flying long distances, in this case from New York to Miami, so fast always uses up much of my strength. I made it right after 11:00 p.m. In complete silence, I landed in the back of the beach house and immediately found my way inside.
Wearing all black, as I always do when flying, I became one with the semidarkness of the place. My sense of smell guided me to where she was—sleeping on the couch with the TV on. I walked slowly toward, contemplating the expression on her. She looked so sweet and at peace. Then saw traces of eyeliner on her cheeks.
She had been crying, a lot.
I got her phone call that evening, just around half past five. Stephen had broken up with her, and she was very sad and was in desperate need of a friend. After almost three years, I was beginning to think that the guy had changed his ways and had become committed to her. Instead, his insecurities got the best of him, and he had taken to blaming Lucy for things that could only be justified by an immature jealousy. He had dropped the old “I need time by myself to figure things out” bomb, and her heart was shattered. It was hard for me to see her like that.
I was only weeks away from a long-overdue trip to Mexico. I was looking forward to spending the rest of the year over there before returning to Miami when her phone call made me forget everything else and make the leap in less than six hours from New York to Miami. My body was trembling furiously from the effort of challenging gravity, and my brain was going crazy, demanding blood; but she needed me here. I couldn’t refuse. For once, the thirst would have to wait.
“Lucy,” I called out her name softly.
She opened her eyes. It took her only a fraction of a second to recognize me; and when she did, she immediately teared up. I kneel next to her. She reached out for me and buried her head in my chest, allowing me to hold her tightly. I could feel, as much as hear, her sobbing. I felt dizzy, like my heart was going to stop and faint but no, I couldn’t. She needed me.
I could feel her tears seeping through my shirt, and I closed my eyes, wishing I had the power to take her pain away. I felt her warmth and her heartbeat, and I made her pain mine. Slowly, our bodies came back down to the couch. She tried to explain what Stephen said between her cries. Her thoughts opened up to me, sharing her sadness in a way I rarely felt, but easily reminded me of my own. We held each other for a long time. Eventually, she fell asleep. My vampire eyes found her face, and I planted a kiss on her forehead. I held her tight in my arms, wishing with all my heart that I could somehow bring back her happiness.
Hours later, burdened by all the care in the world, I got up from the couch, picked her up, and carried her with ease to her bedroom. Without waking her up, I lowered her onto the bed and covered her with a blanket. Then I walked outside, looking out toward the city, desperate to sate my thirst.
*****
I returned to the house around 5:30 a.m.
That previous night, I needed more than one victim to satisfy my thirst. It took me awhile to find the right people, but I eventually zeroed in on a nice single mother and her two sons over in Cooper City. I went after the kids first, making sure their deaths were quick, then the mother. With her, I took my time, making sure she was completely drained. Now their bodies lay somewhere in the depths of the dark waters of the Atlantic.
How many had I thrown into its depths? Why bother burying or burning corpses when you have the ocean as your accomplice? It took me less than twenty minutes flying east, at least one hundred miles into the ocean before letting them fall. By the time their bodies hit the water, I was on my way back to the beach house. It never ceases to amaze me how easy it is to hide my deeds.
All my senses alerted me to the imminent sunrise, and instinctively, my eyes cast about for the dark horizon. There was nothing, just darkness but still could feel it, something, crawling up.
Lucy was still in her room, where I had left her. I made sure she was secure, and then I made my way to the guest room. There, I felt Stephen’s scent. I turned to the closet and opened it. I found part of his clothing on the hangers. Their scent, Lucy’s and his, was everywhere. They had been here numerous times. The unmistakable odor of sweat and body fluids was too much for me to handle. The notion of their lovemaking throughout the years made me angry. I needed to get out of the house before the sun came up, but I also did not want to leave Lucy alone. I swallowed my pride and did my very best to change into clean clothes. I placed the dirty ones in a corner of the closet, to make room for Stephen’s.
Afterward, I went to bed, hating every second. There heard the sun rising up. I kept my eyes open for as long as I could, watching the traces of the new day through the small spaces between the slats of the window blinds. My eyelids grew heavy, and I knew that soon I would be snug deep in the nothingness. I thought about Stephen and swore to myself that he would regret the moment he was born.
Then complete darkness.
*******
I opened my eyes right after 5:00 p.m. and instinctively oriented myself to the room. The blinds were pulled down, effectively keeping out the last traces of sunlight. On the night table next to the bed, there was a tray with a paper on it. It was a note from Lucy, telling me that she was going to be at school but would be back after 6:00 p.m. How convenient, I thought.
Lucy was in her last year of college. However, anyone keeping tabs and doing the math would have noticed that at almost thirty years of age, her last year of college was six years too late.
She was eager to find a direction in her life. I tried to help as much as possible; but in reality, I couldn’t do much because age, as has always been the case, was an issue. She was nineteen when we met, and I looked like twenty-eight. Now a decade later, she was about to turn thirty, and I had to grow a beard to look somewhat older.
I had stayed with her in this same beach house the first three years, and I saw how my company created a balance in her life. But when I realized that sooner or later she would grow suspicious of my “great genes,” I made the decision to move back east to Extreme City New York.
Jason didn’t like that at all, but that’s another story.
Immortality is not easy.
I’ve encountered the occasional curious soul who, for some reason or another, had figured out what I am, and a few of them have had the courage to approach me and ask for immortality.
I try to remember how it felt before I knew my fate and right after I did. Before turning, I was reckless, a rebel, a thief, and an assassin; but was also mortal and every breath I took was precious. Immortality changed all that. The moment you realize that everything you know and everyone you love will cease to be is the moment you start to truly understand the reality of an eternal life.
Lucy was a smart woman, and I think that by then, she knew my secret. I mean, how much longer do you think a being like me can keep the secret of his true self while living with a mortal?
However, she was deliciously discreet with me and elegantly disregarded any questions she might have had about my nocturnal activities. In the beginning, I could tell my escapades worried her; but after some time, they became irrelevant to us. What mattered was that we were always there for each other; anything beyond that was inconsequential.
In our friendship, I had always been alone; and I knew it hurt her to see me like that. My loneliness annoyed her, and she couldn’t understand it; but that’s the reality of immortality. The eternal existence of an immortal is at the core of the relationships he pursues, the companions he keeps; and when they are gone, we immortals truly grieve those whom we have chosen as our friends and/or lovers. Sometimes the grief lasts for years, decades even; and for some, getting close to anyone again is almost an impossibility.
We were made in pairs, says the legend. That’s if you believe in legends . . .
I completely understood Lucy’s need to have a companion she could relate to. It bothered me that it wasn’t me, but I also acknowledged that she deserved a man of her time.
It is a matter of trust when you decide to make yourself vulnerable and let someone into your heart. It is a matter of faith when you believe that the other person will treasure and protect that trust.
If you had asked me back then about trust, I would have told you that trust was meant to be broken, and faith a matter of perspective, but that’s just me.
Lucy chose to make herself vulnerable to someone she was predestined to want—no, crave would be the right word. Lucy was a woman, but in some ways, she thought like a man. Men are visual, women are emotional. At least that’s what science says. It is not rare for men to have pictures, photos, and posters of the subject of his attention all over the place. Lucy was like that, always posting pictures of male models in her room walls—something about the power of positive thinking or some nonsense like that. And then Stephen, who was exactly what she craved physically, showed up in her life.
As though following a bad script, they got together, two attractive young people in the city of plastic beauty. There was a lot of intense lust, a lot of fun. And then life followed. Before she met him, we used to spend much of our time together, but I was no fool. I knew very well I couldn’t offer her anything more than immortality as a vampire. I also knew then, as I know now, that Lucy was not a killer. Life as a vampire would be a living hell for someone like her.
Like I said before, I was suspicious of Stephen for personal reasons, but also because I knew his type quite well: we were very much the same.
Maybe this knowledge made me feel a dark combination of joy and anger that someone like him had finally ended up with someone like her. The only two reasons why I didn’t intervene were that I respected her and thought, and still think, that she needed to experience these kinds of emotions in order to grow.
I had witnessed on more than one occasion how she had broken the hearts of many men and just kept going each time, as though nothing had ever happened. It was during those times that I played with the idea of turning her; but in time, I understood that what I took as a detachment from human emotions was, in fact, immaturity mixed with ego.
Then I realized how lost she really was. She had adopted his life—his friends, his tastes, and his interests. It was sad how she was losing herself, willingly, in his world. The man had friends to spare; there was no club they didn’t visit, no hotel they didn’t stay in, and their nights out on the town were epic. More and more, she became like him. That was when I first noticed a gap in her behavior. There was something missing, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I observed all this from a distance, not wanting to be a factor in what I knew would be the outcome.
She had no chance whatsoever with Stephen, whose charms, looks, and career interest easily made him a nocturnal creature; and just like me, he could also be quite creative. I couldn’t help using my willpower on him most of the times we spoke. That was how I got him to tell me what was really in his heart; that was how I found out how insecure he was about everything.
There I was, controlling his thoughts while he kept going and going about how “money people” would open their pockets because he knew what was missing in the hospitality business.
I have no problem admitting my disdain for those who lack ambition, and I know that not everyone can be a leader; but I can’t help not liking followers, and I was not going to encourage this man and his efforts to become a glorified man-maid.
To add insult to injury, I had to put up with the fact that Lucy was actually working on his business logo. One day I watched her drawing the damn thing, trying to make it as perfect as possible. Many thoughts crossed my mind, but I was not going to stop her. What she had with him was way too good to end. I stood in silence watching her work on his project. All the while, I couldn’t stop thinking what a waste of her talent and potential this undertaking was.
She took a “break” from school—first to work and then to rest. In reality, she couldn’t find enough time to be with him. She lost track of her own path and couldn’t find the motivation to follow through on her own work. Meanwhile, he kept moving forward, away from her, keeping his options open.
Why couldn’t she see where all this was heading?
Lucy burned all her bridges. She stopped calling old friends, and not even I could grab her attention for more than the mandatory five minutes. It was not uncommon to leave her a message and never get a callback; but as long that happened, I knew everything was OK. That was why when she did finally call, I immediately got worried.
She gave up everything for him, and now that they were no longer together, all doors were closed. Even worse, being part of the same social circle meant that sooner or later, she would cross paths with him.