Elizabeth Finn: Immortal Protector

He helped her to sit and slipped the nightgown over her head and down her body. With a strong hand on her back, easing her body down, he helped her to lie back on the bed. When her back was settled on the softness of the quilt and his body hovered above her own, she leaned to him. His mouth dropped open, and the tips of his fanged teeth glinted in the lamplight, but as her mouth moved to his, his body stilled, and with only a fraction of an inch left between them, he pulled from her and sat up straight as she collapsed back onto the bed. She was certain she should feel embarrassed, but still half-drunk, she really didn’t give a shit.

“We can’t do that.” His expression was warning, and she stilled at the harsh look on his face. She didn’t think he was angry, but she wasn’t quite sure what to think of him.

“Because you’re a vampire?” Now she’d asked for it. She always asked. It was just her thing. She annoyed people often with her incessant questions and inability to stop the dribble of one question after another, and her floodgates were opening. She was drunk after all, and that wasn’t helping her rein in her tongue.

But he smirked and chuckled quietly. “No.” He didn’t offer any elaboration, which gave Ember all the permission she needed to delve further.

“Are vampires impotent?” Holy shit! The floodgates were definitely open wide.

But he chuckled again. “No.” And again, he offered no further explanation.

“Well if you don’t have a heartbeat, how can you not be?” What could she say; she was taking Human Biology that semester.

He stood and rounded the bed. Lying beside Ember and turning his head to her, he smirked again. “Why don’t you listen and find out.”

Ember leaned up on her elbow; finding the strength in her current condition was a struggle, but she was mesmerized and far too intrigued. She dropped her head to his hard chest, resting her cheek on the soft fabric of his shirt. He smelled incredible, and another flush ran through her body. She was shaking in her weakness, and she let her weight rest against him as she listened. It was a slow and oddly inhuman beat, nothing at all like the strong lub dub she’d studied during class. And when she pulled from him with her brow wrinkling in confusion, he chuckled in amusement.

“Assumed my heart would be quiet?”

“Yes. How does it beat if you’re dead?” She was powerless to stop the questions now, and he’d given her permission; hell, he looked downright entertained at her inquisition. Odd. Most people found her annoying when she got like this.

“Dead is something of a relative term. My blood still has to circulate, and my heart still has to beat in order to make that happen … among other things…” And another smirk, this one with a very seductive lift to the side of his lip that left her warm and tingling. “My heart just beats for a very different reason than yours.” His words sounded gentle in his warm voice, but his eyes studied her in the most intense, smoldering way.

He was giving Ember no sign she was annoying him, so she opened her mouth and let it do what it did best. “If your blood circulates, why are you so pale?”

He rested his head on his arms as he studied her, and she rolled to her side to watch him. “Because my blood’s not oxygenated like yours. It circulates and keeps my tissues viable, but I don’t require oxygen in the way you do.”

“So you don’t breathe?”

“Breathing seems to be an autonomic response even vampires can’t shake. We breathe, but it becomes a far more emotional response than necessity, though it’s absolutely necessary in order to smell. One of our many heightened senses.”

“What about eating…? I mean, other than … well, blood?”

“No.”

“How is that enough? I mean if your tissues are alive…”

“I said my tissues are viable. To say they’re alive is … not entirely accurate. They’re alive in a different sense than your own, or, perhaps I should say, they’re preserved and kept in a state of stasis. That’s why we don’t age. And no, I don’t eat. I don’t have a need for food because I don’t have to make energy. I have no use for a metabolism in much the same way a cold-blooded animal requires little food because their bodies don’t create heat or energy in that way. That’s why my temperature matches my environment.”

“That doesn’t make sense.” She was always being such a petulant brat.

“Perhaps you should have paid better attention in class,” he said with a smirk and a wink. “It makes sense insomuch as it makes sense that cold-blooded animals subsist in the world. I realize it doesn’t make sense in terms of existing without oxygenated blood, but that’s where our venom and the toxin, for lack of a better word, come into play. And I won’t be delving into that one as there are few who have much understanding of where it came from, began, or even what exact mechanisms allow us to exist on nothing more than a toxin that has taken over our bodies.” He looked over to her as her tired eyes watched him, and he studied her. He was intimidating, but at the same time, she knew that he meant her no harm.

“I’m guessing you have more questions, so you may as well get them out now.”

“What about mind control? How do you do that?” Ember was tired, so tired her words were slurring, but she wanted more than anything to keep him there, keep him talking.

“It’s more like hypnosis. I can’t take a person’s memories from them. I can simply make it difficult for them to reach and access them. The memories are there; they’re just hidden, buried. You never lost the memories of me from your childhood; you simply couldn’t find them. And it only works with memories of myself. I can only bury myself from your recollection, nothing else. It’s nothing more than a defense mechanism that allows us to move through this world without being discovered. Believe it or not, humans don’t take very kindly to my species … though admittedly there is good reason for that.”

“Because you kill people?”

“I kill monsters. I don’t kill innocents.”

“But what if you couldn’t stop yourself? Like, from killing me?”

He chuckled in response to yet another line of questioning. “You watch too many movies. It doesn’t work that way. I crave blood plenty, and I depend on it to survive, but it’s like you and pizza. I may love it just as I know you love pizza, but it doesn’t mean I can’t control my desire for it.”

“You obviously haven’t seen me with pizza…” Her tone was sarcastic, just as she meant it to be, and it brought a smile to Truman’s face. “What about sunlight? Are you going to burn and turn to ash when the sun rises in a few hours?”

“Again, Hollywood has gotten the better of you. I will get a headache, I will feel weakened; if I stay out, my skin will burn, which will of course heal quickly when I return indoors. I can’t say it’s pleasant, but it isn’t earth-shattering. In fact, many of my kind hold down day jobs … perhaps not roofing a house, but you’ll see them in offices, hospitals, any profession that doesn’t leave them in perpetual sunlight.” And offering another smirk, he continued. “Anything else? I’m an open book.”

“Do you sleep?”

“I don’t technically have to, but I’m quite partial to it. I sleep nearly every day for at least a few hours. I enjoy it immensely. Now, have I satisfied your curiosity enough?” He was watching her with a calm and serious expression. She was hardly satisfied, but she nodded. Once he stood, he rounded the bed and sat at her hip as she rolled to her back and gazed lazily up to him. “Now what’s with the red hair and nose ring?”

Her cheeks burned, and she shrugged in response. It was the same response she’d given her mother when she’d let out her exasperated sigh of frustration. “Don’t like it, huh?”