Last Bitten(16)

“No, no . . . you cannot ask this. You cannot use your Last Bitten request just to die. Please don’t do this to me, please.” Johnny knelt down next to her and took her in his arms rocking back and forth. “Is it not enough that I love you? Is it not enough that I waited for you for twenty years? All this time my lonely heart has bled. You are all I have thought about. You have consumed me.”

“This is my request, and it’s too late now. You should have just let me go.”

Johnny fell back against the hard, unwelcome marble. He looked at Bruce; he looked at Emelle. They had nothing for him. The crowd inched closer as they all knew their place now in that wedding of weddings. The terms had been set. Nia would be put to death, and they would all make sure it happened. Emelle hid her smile, hid her happiness, and dragged Nia to the center of the room, where the green lights danced a dance of endings.





I’m being tested. Is this what Bruce hinted at in the car? What would I choose if it was revealed to me who I really was? Of all the memories Johnny could have picked and he picked that one. Is he in on it too? Is death the right choice, or should I reign as Queen—Queen of the Emerald Night?

Nia watched the porcelain faces, hundreds of pairs of ivory fangs ready to feed. She’d seen this before, she’d participated herself in such horror fairs. The blood of a Queen would be better than anything any of them had ever tasted—blood like nectar. The sheer power of it would seer through their veins, as if they were alive again. She could smell their angst, their wants, and their starvation for something, anything to give them all a glimpse of what they once had so long ago.

Being alive again had been simple but glorious now that Nia knew exactly what it was she had witnessed. She thought of her little job at the coffee shop, frothing hearts in lattes, scrounging for tips so she could buy that one pair of shoes, smiling at her regulars whom she had come to memorize . . . every order and the exact time they would frequent the place, which glittered with yellow lights and fake violet posies.

University had delivered more ups than downs. She was failing her statistics class, but excelled in all else—math just wasn’t her thing. She wanted romance, and there was romance in history, foreign language, and astronomy. She understood now exactly why she hadn’t fallen hard for anyone in particular; there was only Johnny, trapped there in the recesses of her human mind. He was the dark figure that had frequented her dreams of desire, the headless man, the man that gave her everything she wanted in sleep. The dreams were so real. They were real.

Ignoring the group that was about to pounce, she eyed Johnny, who now kneeled before the gothic altar and the cloaked figure. They were speaking in the primordial tongue forged from their vampiric demigods eternities ago. Unable to discern what they were saying, she saw her husband shake his head in a defiant manner then stand angrily—fists in a bunch.

What is it about Johnny that gets me so? She thought hard, knew the memory was there, deep inside. Come on, come on. You know you can remember . . . you know that you can. How did you meet your Johnny; why is he “the one”? Think . . .

The answer flashed in her mind just before her the first set of fangs sunk into her flesh—awful, purple eyes smiling while sucking her life away. The hungry hoard pinned her to the ground. Oh, they took their time and they shared. It was agonizing. She knew she deserved it for all the heinous things she had done in her past. It was time to repent. The old memory came forth as the pain deepened simply because she had been turned originally under a sense of agonizing pain and torture, during a time of black death—the bubonic plague.



She glanced down in memory at her gangrenous fingers, at the ripe old age of twenty, married to a fat, sweaty tavern owner named Sal. She had wished she was dead—the horrible things he made her do at night, traded by her own mother for a little coin. The Great Plague was last of the black death and had washed London down just like the rest of Europe, and Nia had done all she could to catch the bloody horror. She got her wish, and Sal had given her the boot—freedom at a cost.

Nearing the end of it all, she found herself milling about the fire-ridden city. Frankincense filling the air, she wafted alone with the smoke, till she met him on her last hours. He went by John then. He was just a simple John, and the two of them had leaned up against one another, trapped down the end of a dank alley—total strangers surrounded by squeals of rats and blackened bubo’ed bodies. They had not uttered a single word between the two them, just kept each other warm as the Grim Reaper paid them a visit.

But it wasn’t that Grim Reaper; it was another creature entirely. Death did open its door, and out stepped Johnny and Nia, born to the pits of hell where blood spews from the fountain of life. He was her beginning and she was his; they fell in love, eye to eye, hand in hand, souls spent from their bodies entwining as one, locked away in His place, unable to fight as the creature fed upon their bodies and returned a single drop of his own blood to each of them. That same creature, their creator, stood before Johnny at the altar: Daddy Dearest.