Extract

(photo by Grande Ombre)

She bled for me. As I lay next to her, watching my body change, rejoicing in every bit of immortality that seeped inside me, the mattress underneath us soaked with the blood that her pores desperately vomited. Her head turned towards me, our hands still clutching and smiled at me.

“Don't be afraid, It will be over soon. Come closer...come, I know you are thirsty...feed on it. It's too much of a good thing.. don't let it go to waste.”

I pulled myself above her face and kissed her eyes. So sweet her blood was, it awoke a fire in me I never knew existed. I ran my tongue over her eyelids, her cheeks, her arms and legs. I sealed her mouth on mine and sucked hard. She gave me a small bite on my lip and I felt her body shake with laughter.

“Don't move, stay still.” I said “I don't want to hurt you”

“You can't hurt me. You saved me”she said and she coughed up more blood. Then a terrible sound came from her chest making her whole body convulse, like a landslide, a cracking sound and then her chest started to rise and fall rhythmically.
“Look...I need to breathe again..” she sighed and her eyes filled with blood.

Just then, my heart stopped. My greatest fear and horror materialising inside me.

I banged my chest with my fist as hard as I could though I knew it would never start again.

“Anna....Anna..wake up!” I shook her half-sleeping body. “It stopped, my heart stopped..”
She opened a set of heavy lids and looked at me from a dark crack underneath them.
“You gave your pulse to me, remember?” She pulled my hand above her breast and there indeed I could fill her heart pumping blood again.

“It's done” she said and let her eyes fall close. “Now, I need to sleep.”

I stood on the soaked mattress and looked down on her bloody body and ordered my feet away. The soles of my feet left the surface of the bed and I hovered.

(This is an extract from my book Venetian Red which has finally been completed and is in need of a blood- loving publisher who will set it free.)