The roads were dark when I found my way back to the city. I found the tavern and barged inside. Many eyes turned to me, a well dressed woman entering alone. I scoured the room not seeing Alexander anywhere. The whore he had been with that night sat laughing on another man’s lap. Ignoring the taunts, jeers and come-hithers' from the men, I strode over to the woman. “I need to see you.” I stared at her.

The laughing woman looked at me. “I don’t service women.” She turned back continuing to laugh which angered me.

“I need to talk with you about your business.” Again her head turned in my direction.

“Thinking of joining the ranks?” Her eyebrows rose as she slid off the man’s lap. She told them she would be back amid groans of protest. The man she had been sitting on spoke. “I’ll pay you triple if you come back with her.” He sneered in my direction. I kept my eyes on the girl and guided her to the alley where she serviced Alexander the night before. “So what, your man leave you for another woman and now you need employment?”

I shook my head, suddenly embarrassed. “I want to know where I can find Alexander.” My voice wavered only slightly.

“So you can take my best customer? I don’t think I will.” She turned to leave but I grabbed her arm before she could get away.

“You will tell me!”

She laughed. “What you gonna give me in return?”

“Your life!” Frustrated I showed my teeth and managed to stifle her cries with my hand. “I will let you live if you tell me where I can find him.”

The fear in her eyes charged me and I thought nothing of snapping her neck after she told me where to find Alexander. I left her body in the alley and made my way through the streets thinking it was a rash decision to kill the whore, I should have let her live long enough to walk me to his place.

Eventually I found the place and was a bit disappointed by the appearance. Alexander seemed to me that he should be in a grand house. I did not know at that moment that though only the wealthy could afford such decorative items, craftsmen were paid barely above the cost of materials to make their art, and were only paid after the commission was complete.

Too scared to move forward, I only stood in the street looking up at his building.

“Lost?” a familiar voice whispered in my ear. I still do not know how, to this day, he snuck up on me then. One thing Victor made sure to teach me was to feel the approach of others. I turned to face the man I’d been looking for, but I could not speak, something about him tired my tongue.

“What brings you down this way?” he spoke louder and in a different tone I noticed others on the street nearby. I believed this banter was for the sake of those around us.

“I wish to have a painting done.” I hope I sounded dignified and convincing to the strangers.

“Would you care to see a sampling of my work to see if I am indeed the painter you wish to commission?” He held his arm out towards the door and put the other behind me, guiding me inside.

I stepped inside his shabby quarters and gasped at the condition. I had grown accustomed to my luxuries, for his house was a dump to me then, but thinking on it now I would have found the three room flat very fancy compared to all my other rooms I had in the past.

A large workroom with a few chairs was the first room we came into. There were a couple windows and a few easels set up with cloth thrown over the canvases. Paint seemed to be everywhere but really was probably on the cloth and the floor around the easels. The chairs were wood with small padding, nothing like I was used to lately.

I could feel him pull my arms through the workshop and through the area that served as the kitchen. A fireplace that looked as if a fire had never been built in it sat with a single pot unused.

“I am popular and eat at other houses often.” Alexander answered my unasked question. He continued to guide me through until we reached the backroom. A bed was in the corner but there was no other furniture. “This is where I keep all the paintings of my women.” He smiled as he watched me look around the room. There were small, medium and large paintings of women from all walks of life. Some where fully clothed sitting on one of the chairs in the workshop, a few were completely undressed lounging on the bed from this room.

“Have you to all these women what you did last night to that whore?”

He laughed before he responded. “No, I love women, they intrigue me and what could be more beautiful to look at? If you look, the whore from last night is no where to be found. Though some women are nude I did not sleep with them save two.”

I wondered which two when something caught my eye. I moved closer, the woman looking back at me had two piercing green eyes and long auburn hair. “I don’t understand.”

“Something about you intrigued me, I stayed up to work on this but I was hoping I would run into you again so that I could complete my work.” He moved closer to me. “Will you let me finish?”

I was speechless, to have a man lavish attention in this manner, I ate it up and nodded. He picked up the canvas and moved back through the kitchen. I followed him timidly; unsure of what would happen next. He pulled one of the chairs closer and had me sit.

“Now you will have to sit still, will you be able to handle that?” He asked a playful smile on his lips.

I nodded and he made a disappointed noise. I could hear the laughter in his voice. “You moved.” He chuckled and asked if I was ready, when I sat motionless he smiled and turned to the canvas.

Hours later he put his brush down and nodded. “I think that will do.” He turned to me and held his arms out. “Now we should get you home.” I shook my head.

“I don’t live in town.”

“Then we should get you back to where you are staying. Your… husband… must be worried about you by now.”

I laughed at the though of Benjamin being my husband. “That man is only a traveling companion and I left him out on the road to come back here.” I gazed in his eyes hoping he would invite me to stay.

He was quiet as if pondering something. “You didn’t just come to see paintings after all, did you?”

I shook my head and continued to hold his eyes. He stepped forward and placed his hand behind my head pulling me closer he pressed his lips to my own. I pulled back slightly startled. In my sixty years I’d never felt that sensation before, it was almost as intoxicating as biting through flesh. I was instantly afraid I would never get the feeling again. I was afraid that he would see my teeth and figure out what took many only seconds to realize when they saw them the first time. I covered my mouth and tried to turn and flee. Alexander managed to grab hold of me before I could leave.

“I thought that was what you wanted.” He said his voice suddenly afraid; with my status he could be ruined. It’s what he was thinking I knew, but of course he did not know how I achieved my status and that I could ruin no ones reputation. I turned back and spoke keeping my mouth as small as I could.

“I’ve just never…”

“Been kissed?” He asked.

I shook my head as he moved closer and kissed me again. My lips tingled with what could only be excitement. His tongue flickered out of his mouth and across my lips. It was as if my body knew the response, opening my lips to receive his tongue. His hands started to wander my body like they wandered the whore’s body the night before. He pressed himself closer to my body, I could feel him, and then I felt something pressing into my hip. I pulled away and gasped, I knew what I felt, and I was not that ignorant to the male body. Claudette had told me what went on between a man and a woman, but I’d never experienced any of these feelings.

“Wait.” I started. “I…”

“Do not worry. I won’t do anything you don’t want me to. Just tell me when you want to stop.” He moved towards me again. This time I did not stop him or move away. We ended up back in the room adorned with women’s faces lying on his bed together. I was in awe of his man that gave me a feeling I never had before. I knew then that I would do everything in my power to get him to want to be with me as a vampire.

*****

The door to the flat Alexander and I shared slammed open ad then closed again. I jumped from the bed, I’d grown accustomed to living in his rooms, and I did not want to find something more suitable for fear of Alexander finding out my secret before I was ready to tell him. We had not grown tired of each other in the year we’d spent together. I knew of his straying but I could not fault him that when I was keeping a secret from him as well.

“What’s wrong?” I asked quickly from across the room.

“Everybody wants a painting by a famous ‘name’ and I…” he laughed “do not have a name they are familiar with. But I can make new paintings. They all want art done by some one who can not create more art, someone dead!” He threw himself onto a chair and dropped his head in his hands.

Finally! I thought. Alexander had given me an opening in which to make the proposal that had been on my lips for the last few months.

“I can help make your work famous and desired.” I could tell when Alexander looked at me that there was a glint in my eye, for the first time fear spread on his face.

“You going to strangle me with your bare hands.” He laughed trying to get me to laugh as well, hoping that the glint I knew was there was only a joke. He stopped laughing when I did not join him and he fixed my unflinching gaze. “You aren’t serious are you?”

I laughed and I could see the tension melt from his frame. “I do not have to strangle you.” I smiled. “There is another way I can make you dead to the world, but keep you alive at the same time.”

Alexander looked at me, my full smile shown for the first time in year. His eyes fell on my teeth and he looked confused. “You don’t mean the rumors about you are true?”

“Rumors?” I questioned him.

“Well yes, I hear them on the street; you are a creature of the night. You live off of blood.” I couldn’t believe that heart of yours carried evil inside.

“I don’t live off of blood; you have seen me eat a meal. But sometimes yes, blood is a most refreshing drink.” I was past trying to hide, if he was going to run now he was not the man I thought he was and I would simply take his blood so that a part of him would be with me always.

He gasped slightly at me, but then sat back his chair thinking. “I would be dead, people would want my art, yet I could stay with you.”

I nodded holding my smile.

“Is there something I have to do before you can turn me?” He asked quickly standing and moving to my side grabbing hold of my hands.

“There is nothing, if you are ready we can do it now or would you rather in public so that people can see your dead body?”

Without talking we moved into the street where there were sure to be people walking by at some point. I preformed the ceremony, making sure nobody saw the final steps that would ensure Alexander rising again. I told him he would have to lie dead for awhile for others to believe. I also convinced him that when he was turned he would have to come back and pretend to be a relative of his so that he could sell his artwork.

I moved quickly away and watched the scene unfold. When the cart to haul his dead body came and went I followed quietly. I watched them bury him and rushed to the fresh grave quickly and pushed the dirt aside. He opened his eyes and looked at me anew, “Everything is so different!” He exclaimed as he rose.

We took each other and held tightly kissing under the moonlight. “Now let’s find a better place to call our own.” I whispered holding him tight. I felt that I was finally happy. I had a mate, someone to be with me always. Someone who could not die, I felt complete. It was only a matter of time before things would fall apart, it was this lesson that Alexander taught me later.