The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

“Nykl! How are you, my son?”



My Father, Oralius, looked and sounded overjoyed at my and my companion’s entrance to his room. I knew it was a lie. He had never been happy at the sight of me, a weak child of his in his eyes. Always, I had been a softer caress on the senses, especially in actions, compared to His harsh and cruel hand and bitter appetites. My Father had always craved the dark and foreboding carnal cravings; even in the eyes of other sadists, both mortal and otherwise, He was as cruel and cold as a Russian winter wind that bit at one’s face with a cold heart that cared for nothing sensually pleasurable. To Him, pleasure was pain in no way desired. I had seen some of His “toys” and “pets” being carried away from His chambers, tottering on the very edge of the blade, not even held by a thread to the living world.



Oralius, originally born Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, was a god amongst the vampire kind. He was once a renowned general of the Roman army and close friend of the emperor Augustus Octavian, according to His reminiscences of His days before immortality. My Father gloried at the thought and likelihood that he was the oldest and most powerful vampire that walked the face of the earth. In two millennia, He had grown in power and intellect that mirrored His time as a mortal man in a twisted sort of way. As a mortal, He had been considered by Augusts to be the only one who could control the legions of the Roman army. When Octavian was close to passing, he married his daughter to my Father. Several years down the road, my Father had died in battle and arose the undead, a walking disease in my eyes. He turned hundreds of men into creatures of the night and created an army of the undead before killing them off, draining them of their blood and power over the years and becoming the monster that stood before me and my Sahra. He found the ultimate pleasure in the bloody battlegrounds of His roman past, and none in the softer, more intimate scenes that others found pleasing.



No, my Father was not a man of demure pleasures as I was. I sought out the more delicate side to the world and all its possibilities and He thought me a meek child in a strange and dangerous world of haunting desires of torn flesh and bone, of pain and inscrutable suffering that He saw as the true form of ecstasy; anyone could tell that no other being could find such pleasure in so ghastly of deeds that He enjoyed inflicting upon His toy of the night.



Standing at no more than five two, one would think He was no threat, but one glance at Him would prove otherwise. A long, thick sinuous painted white across his left eye with the effects of immature aging and battle made his hardened demeanor and face look demon-like. His cold blue eyes with their flecks of gold around the iris shone silver in the flickering light of the torches that lit His room. Short, black hair cut in the traditional Caesar style on top His long face was dusted with grey hair from His mortal years and flakes of dried blood gave Him the look of some old man with a hiding vicious alter-ego. His dense body with its thickly corded muscles rippled like water underneath the skin of His bare chest with a sprinkling of chocolate-colored chest hair. The red leather pants He wore were like a second skin, clinging to Him in a way that showed the hard, shapely form of his legs and compressed his groin, leaving the viewer in awe at the large bulge that strained at the seams.



“Come, my son. Sit, sit and tell me of the centuries you have spent away from my side. I have missed you so.” His cold blue orbs sparkled and twinkled that showed no hint of sorrow at my absence, but anger and hatred of what a disappointing and disrespectful Creature of the Night I had become since His turning of me. “Sit, and tell me of the adventures and journeys you have partaken. And of the,” His chilly frost eyes flicking to Sahra, “acquaintances you have met.” The way in which He spoke of my Angel of the Night, the dark glint in His eyes, the way He gazed into my Sahra’s molten emerald green eyes with her blue hair framing her tear drop face, left me fearing for my love’s safety under His portentous and omnipotent eyes. He desired her, not for her sweet and delicate china doll appearance, but His own sick and vicious ways, His need to see how far one could go beneath His cold iron grasp. So as to save Sahra from my Father’s arctic gazing, I drew His attention back to me.



“Well, Father,” I said, “I traveled across much of Europe and Asia after I left your side during the darker ages of England and the rest of Eurusia. I spent many years seeing the old sites of ancient cities, world renown and sought after libraries, including the ones in what was once Constantinople. After several decades of hiding behind bookshelves and learning all the knowledge, both forbidden and common, I felt obligated to go out and explore the world for what is was.



“I traveled to the Far East where soldiers fought with blades and the recently discovered magic black dust that was rumored to be able to move mountains and shake the earth with its power were said to exist. I found these things and many more, training with the mortal men who used their curved swords in a fashion and with skill I had not seen before, learning the art that spawned the magic powder that the Chinese used for entertainment and trade. In the thirty or so years I spent in the Eastern lands, I learned much more than what I expected to learn.



“Before the peoples of those far off cities and countries noticed my lack of aging, I traveled northward into my motherland of what is now Russia. Many things had changed since I had left there for my new afterlife amongst the darkness. Cities and their streets were becoming less and less thatch roofs and wooded plains, and more stone and tile appeared with the surrounding farmlands giving way to more villages and towns.” I was begging to think I should not divulge the many sites I had seen to the demon that had given me an eternal life of hell and ecstasy, to cope with the thought that I stole the lifeblood that pumped through those whom became my sustenance, and yet continued on.



“I traveled to Rumania and other bordering countries around my homeland, seeing sites and learning even more. By the time I left my home again, it was the year 1441, and my heart yearned to take up endless traveling again. But before I left my mother country, I claimed the ownerless inheritance my family had left for me, their only successor to the small fortune they once possessed.” Here, I took a moment to reminisce in the memory of my family and friends that had long since passed away, feeling the fangs that I possessed for the first time with a sad and longing for the nostalgic feeling I had to take me into the past and whisk me away from everything and into my large bed at the Maltoré de Wyntorr Manor of my family with its spiraling towers and wrought iron gates with my family crest upon it in sinuous lines and plaque.



Returning to my senses, I continued with, “I arrived in Rumania shortly after Prince Vlad Dracul left this world, leaving his throne open for his sons to take. Through the years, I followed the young boys Vlad and Radu, invading the Turk camps to watch over the boys as they were subjected to various torture scenes as spectators. Young Radu, the Sultan Murad II took him into his own special tutoring.” That night, when Murad took that boy in his mid-teens into his bed, sickens me to this very day, over the span of five centuries my stomach still turned at the moans of the Sultan and the muffled screams of the boy I watched like a son. I made sure my Father understood the meaning of “special tutoring”. He merely smirked and looked thoughtful as I continued.



“Years later, the once young Vlad Dracula rose to the throne he was once entitled to, killing the current prince that was one of those who claimed his father’s life, Vladislav. I was ashamed and disgusted as the next six years passed quickly with the blood of men, women and children alike running freely across the ground like a stream. He had shown such promise as a child, noble and intelligent. But his time amongst the Turks had changed him into a bloodthirsty monster. He committed atrocities that even you, my Father, would find…interesting.”



My Father, Oralius, raised His eyebrows and gave a smile of mild amusement. “I would assume so. He sounds like the kind of man that would give even me a challenge. Am I not right, Nykl?” He had asked me the question in such a way that it threw me off kilter, and I couldn’t stop myself from nodding in agreement. Before I realized my actions, my Father jumped up from the edge of his bed—the thing was large enough to hold ten, even twenty people, comfortably—and crossed the short distance separating Sahra and I from Him in less than the blinking of an immortal eye.



Sahra and I stood so quickly out of surprise that we knocked our chairs over, worried about our safety rather than manners. Sahra understood my Father’s nature without even being told or shown the character He held behind this polite façade that he had put up. I was worried for Sahra’s safety, and I sensed her own fear for herself, and me as well, due to my Father’s very presence.



My Father, His usual smug smile dancing on his cold thin lips as always, beckoned me to His side and out the door. I looked back towards my Sahra, fearful for her, but continued on with my Father, His icy hand on my shoulder. As the bloody portal closed behind us, He raised His hand and placed it on the door whilst muttering a mantra in the ancient tongues of His mortal life.



Turning back to me, I saw something in his blue eyes with their gold flecks, something familiar to me, but not in His eyes. It was…fear. He was afraid, afraid of me…But why?

The night flew past us as we drifted away over desert sands and the Sierra, my thoughts the only comfort I could offer. The only place where I believed we might be safe was within the arms of the Covene Cornix: The Coven of Raven; my sire’s own Club Dread in the city of lost angels.



I knew my father would not be very welcoming to my pet and I with such a predicament upon our plates. He would probably punish me for leaving his presence when I was too young according to the Traditions; most vampires were only allowed to leave their sire after a hundred years or more but never less. I left of my own accord, without permission, just so I could learn all I could about the world and all its knowledge, both hidden and known.



The Sierras were beginning to shrink below us as we came closer to our destination. Sahra had begun to shiver in my grasp as the chill night air rushed through our hair and began to frost our skin. We still had not eaten and my hunger was beginning to make me weak; I could barely hold us aloft.



As I felt my strength begin to wane, I saw the flashing blue lights that marked Club Dread on the Sunset Strip of Los Angeles; our fates, and lives, hanged in the bitter hands of my sire. He would not let me go unpunished for my transgressions, and he may use my love as a punishment. I could not imagine my eternity without her, nor could I stomach thinking of what treatment we may be given when we showed up at the front entrance with such a story as ours to tell.



The werecat that was the door bouncer to my father’s club recognized me and let us through without a second glance. Meeting my sister Kahli at the long bar to the side of the entrance, we were led down the black slate floor hall that would bring us to a set of winding steel stairs where my master awaited us. He knew of our arrival even before we landed in the alley behind the club, he sensed my intentions.



Opening the deep burgundy lacquered doors that closed his room from us, Sahra and I took a deep breath, and we pushed the bloody portal open to reveal my father to us, and to place our lives in the hands of the bloodiest sadist the world would ever know.

We thought wrong.



What was waiting on the other side of that door was something neither of us could comprehend. Sahra was frozen like a statue of iron, and was visibly shaking in her terror. I myself, was in a state of absolute bewilderment at the sight of the creature feeding on the bouncer who was evidently still alive, but paralyzed; it was cutting strips of his skin and eating them like a child does spaghetti, and lapping the pooling blood up like a dehydrated dog. One word stuck out in my mind, and I shivered at thought of the knowledge I possessed: Gnarl.



The putrid stench of the cadaver-like subspecies of vampire was so powerful; I felt my hunger shrink away as I stood transfixed as the Gnarl devoured the man’s entire dermis within seconds before Sahra and me. A voice was calling out to me, but it was distant, as if coming to my ears through a long tunnel some many miles away. It was only when Sahra shook me, that I recognized her voice.



“Nykl! What the hell is it? Tell me what the HELL it is, goddammit!”



The words of what I was seeing, or what I knew of such an inhuman monster amongst the monsters, never escaped my lips. The Gnarl had finished with its prey and was gazing deep into my eyes with its own. They were cloudy, as if it were blind, but it could see me as easily as one sees the sun; there was hunger in those eyes. An unfathomable emptiness lurked in its stomach, and it saw me as its second course.



I did the only thing I could at that moment of pure fright; I grabbed Sahra and ran. I dragged her by the scruff of her collar, fortuitously spilling her blouse open in my haste as we ran through the club, bouncing the many people who we ran through off of us as if flies swung at by a swatter. Sahra was struggling against my grip, attempting in vain to fix her top and have me release her. I felt that she wanted to know what I knew and why we were running, so I fed her the horrid knowledge of the infamous Gnarl.



Gnarls were, by nature, considered to be a subspecies of vampire, feeding on the blood—and occasionally flesh—of its victims to sustain its existence. What they were was more of a mystery amongst the vampire kind than a provable fact. The most accepted theory was that if the transfusion between sire and child were not properly done, the would-be newly made vampire would physically die, and come back as a revenant-like being possessed with an insatiable thirst for blood and flesh. This was the norm amongst the world’s covens when teaching vamplings how to bring one over to our form of existence, and was treated with the utmost caution. Many have failed to unearth the secrets of this creature and how it had come to exist.



One sure fact about this vile thing was that they excreted a type of poison from the tips of their lengthy claws. This excrement was said to cause temporary paralysis to the creature’s victims, but lasted long enough for it to feed. Unfortunately, no vampire since the days of Babylon and older had had such a hunger as the Gnarl.



As I finished sending this information to Sahra, for we were too busy running for our afterlives to speak, I saw her visibly set aside her worries of decency and began to run with me, instead of being pulled along. Her concern for our own existence became her primary objective.



Bursting through the back door of the club, we found ourselves in an alley as dark as pitch, our own extra-sensitive eyes straining slightly to see for some sign of the Gnarl that I was positive had caught our scent. The darkness we had long considered a safe haven for us, now seemed foreboding and dangerous to us who saw it as home. We would not be safe on the ground; Gnarls were extremely quick-footed and could easily outrun any being restricted to land; we would have to take flight and hope that our scents could be lost on the winds.



Sahra turned to me, her eyes filling with unshed tears of fear and loss. She spoke in a soft whisper to me; her voice cracked and her tears began to fall. “I’ve never done this before. I don’t think I know how.”



“It’s okay. Just hold tight to me, I will take care of you. There is no need to fear what will come to you in time. But it may hurt, since you have not experienced it yet.” In spite of my comforting words, I felt deep inside that I was far from able to promise such a thing, for we may die that very night, running from some deadly mistake made by one fatally foolish night breed. We could only hope that the winds would carry our scent away from the overly hypersensitive olfactory glands of the Gnarl. Who could know what was in store for my dear Sahra and I that night.



With her arms wrapped tightly around my neck, and mine her torso, we rose from the ground, two companions locked in lover’s embrace. As the ground beneath us fell away, the Gnarl bounded out of the doorway, the door itself slamming into the building across from it, and it looked towards the skies, seeing us drift away into the starless sky like a Will-o-the-Wisp on a midsummer zephyr.



The night flew past us as we drifted away over desert sands and the Sierra, my thoughts the only comfort I could offer. The only place where I believed we might be safe was within the arms of the Covene Cornix: The Coven of Raven; my sire’s own Club Dread in the city of lost angels.

It had just stopped raining as Sahra and I entered the new nightclub, Question Mark. It was supposed to be a place for the Goths who got bored listening to the moaning and groaning that filled up their many CDs to go to. Just the thought of being in the same building with such company and stale clove cigarette smoke swirling above our heads made me feel sick. Luckily, we weren’t there for the crowd; it had been several days since we had last fed, and the hunger was clawing at the back of our stomachs like a caged animal desperately trying to get out, so we thought, why not check this place out and get something to eat at the same time.



Light poured into the dark antechamber of the club as we entered through the doors, illuminating a short hallway leading into the main room that was packed like sardines in a can. There was a bouncer just inside the door, dressed in dark blue shirt with the club’s name on the breast and bulging all over. The shirt seemed two sizes too small. His skin was sun-darkened, rippling over the cord-like tendons in his neck and enormous arms. Turning towards my companion and me, we saw his dark eyes were that of someone street hardened and sharp of mind. A thin, sinuous scar traced down the side of his temple, making me believe evermore that he was familiar with the goings-on of the streets.



The man looked at us as if we were something entirely new and strange to him. Sahra was wearing a blouse that looked Chinese in cut and sported Hunter green designs on a burgundy palate. Her long flowing skirt danced around her like a cornfield sprite blessing a bountiful crop. Having taken her coat, she would be easily noticed in a crowd not by her dress, but by her presence.



Her hawk-like nose and short sea blue hair gave her the appearance of some sea goddess fallen from her God-head. With skin as white as polished alabaster, and features delicate enough to rival a china doll, it was hard to think she was an imposing figure at five foot three, but she could have any deity bow before her with a simple command. But it was her eyes that had enraptured thousands in the two-hundred sixteen years she had spent at my side; they were a striking jade, as if two emeralds melted in her elegant face.



I, on the other hand, was a sunset’s sire compared to her moonlit birth. My skin gleamed with an unusual tan, a golden fallen angel with hair like the blood moon on a clouded night and eyes like molten garnet and gold in a sea of darkness. I had been told by Sahra that the whites of my eyes were swallowed by the shadowy blackness when I became angry or depressed.



Tonight, I wore my authentic late-Victorian suit with my crushed wine red velvet vest and sapphire stick pin. I swept my dark cloak off without trying to make it look dramatic, but always did. Sahra had always criticized me for the effect I produced when removing it, as well as for not willing to trade it in for a decent coat; my only excuse for keeping it was that old habits died hard.



The bouncer stepped forward as we proceeded onward into the club, but was stupefied in his tracks at the quick glance Sahra gave him. I couldn’t help but smile my signature smile, a slight upturn of the corner of my mouth, at the thought of Sahra using her power of influence on the bouncer. She had always enjoyed using her powers at the most trivial of times, time after time, despite my lectures on when and when not to use them. It was as if I were speaking to a child sometimes. I shouldn’t use such an analogy since she was a child compared to me; I was nearly six hundred years old and had traveled with many “Children of the Night” in my time, teaching—and learning—many things throughout the many lifetimes I’ve lived, and I even counted my years in centuries.



Walking into the main room of the club where the thunderous beats of the heavy Goth-metal berated our hypersensitive ears with clouds of clove smoke swirling overhead and literally hundreds of people dressed in all black, trenches and band t-shirts jumping and “dancing”, we winded our way to the large bar on the opposite end of the extensive dance floor. Along the way, we were jostled, jabbed with elbows, and even nearly pushed over by the many people dancing to the booming sounds from the enormous speakers; at least, I wish we were. We actually carved a free path by urging those in our way to move far enough apart to get by without making it seem too obvious.



Approaching the bar, we found two high, stiff stools right in the middle where a sweet looking young girl with golden auburn hair down to her waist and makeup so elegantly applied it was barely noticeable even by my eyesight stood behind the bar. Taking the two available seats, the girl saw us and froze, the oh-so-sweet stench of fear and panic coming off her in waves of pleasure inducing undulations. She recognized us, and it wasn’t until I noticed that she had seen us before, that I remembered seeing her a few weeks back as Sahra and I were leaving a bar after a deliciously filling meal. She was sitting on a bus stop bench when we had exited, dabbing at our mouths with blood-stained kerchiefs to wipe off any remaining traces of the meal of which we had just partaken.



Since she was so unsettled by our appearance at her place along the bar, we decided to order drinks without waiting for her to ask; the usual white wine spritzer for Sahra, a Green Dragon for me. We were served our drinks almost immediately, and just as I was about to taste mine, when an image of my companion and I gorging ourselves on the girl flowed into my mind’s eye. With a look of what I assumed was a fatherly disapproval, I glanced at Sahra who was smiling at me with a single brow raised before she turned to the girl with a look of lust and hunger. The poor girl looked both less uncomfortable at the look she was being given, as well as a little disconcerted.



When she had walked down the bar a ways, I whispered to Sahra, though easily heard by means of our hyper human senses, “Let’s look around a bit before we let our hunger choose for us.” She merely shrugged and continued to sip her spritzer, while I showed her the memory I had of the girl from those short weeks past; I felt that she didn’t care, so long as she would be able to feed tonight. Our hungers had become increasingly unsettling as the night progressed. Our skin felt like it was beginning to catch fire, while our insides felt icy; we would have to feed soon, and deeply if we were to hold the bloodlust that raged inside of us under control. It had always been like that ever since I had turned Sahra, but never before; I had asked myself and others for a reason, any reason, as to why it was so, but I could find no answers.



We began scanning the huge dance floor for who would be our next meal, but not long into our search, I sensed, rather than smelled or saw, another creature of the night kind. When I had caught its scent on the air current from the central air system, it smelled of rot and decay, like that of a graveyard mausoleum, and it was strangely familiar to me, though I could not think of a reason why it smelled so familiar. Looking over at Sahra, I saw that she was looking at me inquiringly; she had obviously sensed what I had as well, but she didn’t know the smell from anywhere.



We tried to locate where whoever, or whatever, the smell was emanating from, but it seemed to jump across the room faster than we could track it. I could barely follow its movements because of its speed; it also didn’t help that I was racking my brain and the centuries of memories I carried, trying to think of where I remembered that putrid stench, but I could not even think of where to place my finger so that I might know.



It suddenly stopped, and Sahra and I looked straight at the door through which we had come in to see the bouncer’s feet, the same one that Sahra had frozen with a leer, disappear around the corner of the atrium wall. We were instantly at the place where he had been standing when we had walked in as a deep black velvet curtain swung down over a cleverly hidden doorway.



Glancing at one another, for we knew we may not last much longer before the bloodlust overcame us, we steadied ourselves and pushed the handless door open. We thought we were prepared for whatever might be on the other side of the door. We thought wrong.

Ghostly shadows danced across the silent bedchamber on the richer side of Pest. The room was richly decorated for an inn; gilded frames for the multitude of paintings, a French-style balcony and window, and an enormous divan adorned with a mountain of silk pillows. Sitting at the cluttered, but beautiful, white vanity in one corner was Sahra Flinn, a petite young woman whose air of explicit dignity commanded respect, staring at her stark reflection in the tall mirror, wearing a deep blue silk robe. She gazed into the unfathomable depths of her unusually colored jade eyes, the glimmering emerald orbs glowing as intensely as a blazing phoenix, the irises like two dark pools of ink at the centers of those ethereal eyes. Her curved hawk nose made her look ominous, but still kind. Many of those who had met her thought of her as a queenly figure, one to command others and be cared for, despite her independent nature.

While scrutinizing her twin in the mirror, she meticulously studied herself; the pale line of her neck with its milky skin shining like polished alabaster, her flowing red hair like a silken curtain of blood. In the eyes of her friend and companion, Nykl Dormir, a man of divine talent at writing and a master of leaving enough of his own story blank that he was very much an enigma, Sahra was as beautiful as any angel, though he would never admit his thoughts.

Sahra raised her hand and lifted the antique hair brush from the vanity, proceeding to draw it through her scarlet locks with a disciplined hand. When she had finished, she drew it back with several jade combs, leaving her hair pulled away from her face with only her bangs shadowing her sharp eyes and hawk-like nose. Examining her pouting lips, she chose a deep burgundy lipstick with a matte finish that left her lips swollen as if she had bitten them. Standing, she glided over to the wardrobe and fondled the deep green silk dress she had chosen, relishing in the smooth feel of the material that felt like water woven into cloth.

At that moment, the crystal handle of the door turned, the portal revealing a man who could be described as a fallen deity. His sun darkened skin gleamed in the darkness as if it shone with an inner light. The presence of him seemed to fill the hall behind him, his dark eyes glinting beneath his hooded brow like two beetles.

Nykl’s hair was a deeper shade of red than Sahra’s, like blood with black highlights, and fell past his shoulders in a tight fishtail braid with the front cut short. His clean shaven face was work worn and travel hardened. The paler skin of his chest showed from behind his godly white shirt, and his ankle length cloth American Victorian coat nearly blended in with his black slacks. A dark silver ring glinted on the middle finger of his left hand; the words etched into it were like dancing silhouettes on the dark metal band.

“Hello, Kit,” said Nykl in his smooth voice.

Sahra looked at him with a sly smile, a smile that spoke of mischievousness and coyness. She held up the dress without saying one word and Nykl walked across the space that separated them in three graceful strides, taking the silk dress in his hands. He rolled the garment up and held it open near Sahra’s feet. Sahra placed one hand on Nykl’s shoulder and stepped into the ring of the dress, dropping the robe she was wearing to the floor. Nykl raised the garb slowly, letting the rolled up material fall loose around his companion’s legs as he pulled it up until he reached her plentiful bust, at which Sahra turned around and he raised it the last few inches and helped her get her arms through the straps. He then buttoned up the dress, the size of the garment constricting around Sara’s lithe form and stretching just slightly over her ample buxom with the low square neck showing more than enough to erase any imagining, but not to the point of obscenity in those times. Nykl remembered when the thought of even an ankle showing was considered to be naked.

Looking over her shoulder, Sahra inquired, “Are you going to change, or are you going dressed like that?” Her voice was soft and sweetly sounding, like the song of a snow owl’s hoot. Gazing down his crow nose at Sara, Nykl smiled his signature smile, a gentle curving of his lips.

Standing now in the middle of the room, the two were silhouettes against the tender light from the hunter’s moon that filtered through the open balcony window; the scene seemed reminiscent of some long forgotten story of lovers reunited. Though they were not, many could tell they would be a couple that would shame the love shown in the story of Romeo and Juliet if they would but admit their feelings for one another.

Nykl had thought many times over that he should tell his only true friend how he felt towards her, but he felt deep within himself that to confess such emotions to Sahra would bring about naught but disaster for their unique relationship. So he went on, attempting in vain to deny what he felt, to keep his heart closed so as to keep those who he held dear from harm.

As the silence between them grew evermore longer, the elderly grandfather clock near the door rang out loudly to signal that it was eight o' clock in the evening. Glancing at the aged oak clock, Nykl sighed in a way only the elderly could and resigned himself to the room's lavatory, the shower starting up the instant the door had closed.

Wandering around the room in her elegantly flowing gown, Sahra began excavating through Nykl's open travel bag. He had only brought the one, seeing as he could survive out of it, alone, for weeks despite its diminutive size compared to Sahra's five luggage bags. She removed from the bag a remarkably unwrinkled black doctor’s suit and a nice dark shirt with a red crushed velvet vest, laying it all out on the thick comforter on the bed.

She sat on one end of the divan, flipping through a Hungarian newspaper while waiting for Nykl to finish with his shower. She did not have to wait long; as Sahra opened the paper, the water from the restroom was turned off and Nykl came striding out the door, a towel wrapped around his slim waist with steam rising off his skin like some fiery mist.

Seeing Nykl like that, the faintest trace of the tattoo that decorated his back curling over the tops of his shoulders, Sara found her heart pounding in her throat, her breath shallow and slow. Looking at the scars that traced Nykl's chest like thin, white spider webs on the pale swell of his torso made Sahra sigh with unspoken lust that felt like something more lasting. Noticing her reaction, Nykl fought the true smile that ravaged his attempts to hide from his face.

To cover the grin that was spreading across his face, Nykl turned to one of the dressers and grabbed his silver earrings and simple black quartz crystal. While putting his charms on, he called out to his companion.

"Do I get to dress myself in private, or are you going to help me like I did with your accouterment?" Nykl inquired, looking at Sara over his shoulder with a touch of his smile still dancing on his strong featured face, his eyes twinkling mischievously in the shade his dripping hair provided from the moonlight sifting in from the window. Blushing and looking down at her feet quickly, Sahra spoke softly, apparently embarrassed for her staring.

"I'll wait outside if you want," she whispered to her feet in their three inch heels with their shiny black leather. "Or, if you wanted, I could help you. What do you want me to do?"

Nykl dropped his head, soundlessly chuckling to himself. Turning, he gazed into Sahra's eyes intently, Sahra staring just as deeply into his, and he let the towel drop as he walked towards Sahra and the clothes she had chosen for him. Sahra's eyes never left Nykl's, but they did falter for a second, nearly glancing down; she had never allowed herself the glance that she so nearly took in that moment. They had been traveling across Europe for the past week, spending their vacation in several countries that seemed to call to them, and not once in all that time had she even gotten a single glance at that which she felt she wanted to see. But she had never had the chance, not like the one that Nykl had presented her this time. The desire was almost strong enough for her to throw her inhibitions away and indulge her lust right then and there.

Before Sahra could even make a sound or movement, Nykl reached around her waist and picked up the clothes she had picked out before walking back into the lavatory. As Nykl dressed, Sahra silently cursed herself for doing nothing with the opportunity she had been so clearly given from her dearest friend. Nykl did not take long getting dressed and when he emerged from the restroom, he found Sahra looking less than pleased with herself, though he did not know why, nor did he wish to inquire her sudden displeasure.

Hiding his thoughts, Nykl called out to Sahra, "Are you ready to go?" Startled, Sahra looked up, and somberly nodded. She was still feeling upset with herself for not doing what she believed she should have done.

Holding arms, the two companions strolled down the hallway of the inn, down the stairs and out to the street without incident, as far as they knew. As they waved down a passing carriage that would take them to the café they were planning to dine at, Nykl felt his hunger begin to boil his skin. He thought angrily, I must keep it at bay, I will not allow indulge it near Sahra.

Sahra never noticed the hungry look in her companion’s eyes as they pulled away in their horse-drawn carriage. Upon reaching their destination, Nykl and Sahra got out of their coach, and the hunger Nykl was experiencing grew with evermore impatience for being ignored. Sahra never suspected a thing, but noticed Nykl seemed tensed for some reason, looking all around with a determined eye and fingering something small and cylindrical in his jacket pocket. No one noticed the tiny bulge in his coat that was hiding a large bone dagger, or the knife that was stuck in the top of his left boot. Not even Sahra.

As Nykl’s ever-growing hunger froze his blood, scorched his skin, and caused his eyes to glow fiercely, he kept wondering if he would be able to go the night without feeding, or if he would have time enough to drink the tiny vial of blood he’d acquired on his way back to the tavern at which Sahra and he were staying. He thought he would not last, and thusly, feared on what, or whom he should think, he would feed; Sahra was the only one he knew who could be of clean blood, but he could not bear the thought of revealing his true nature to the only mortal that had stolen his cold, dead heart. He would rather truly die, than show himself to his secret love.

“Nykl? What’s wrong?” asked Sahra.

Nykl spun back to Sahra, worried she had noticed his growing hunger and its signs.

“Nothing,” said Nykl, a little too quickly and a tad more defensive than it should have sounded.

Sahra didn’t believe him. She began getting nervous as she snuck glances at Nykl’s continuing edgy look and felt that something was wrong. He seemed so unnerved, so worried, so…hungry. For some reason, unbeknownst to her, Sahra knew that Nykl was either experiencing or knew something she did not; she didn’t dare ask Nykl to clear up her suspicions for her.

The fire within Nykl would not be ignored, and Nykl felt its rage tell him it would wait no longer. His bloodlust took control of him as he grabbed Sahra and thrust her against the wall of an alley they were just passing. Sahra didn’t scream as Nykl pinned her against the rough brick wall, she couldn’t; Nykl had her lifted off the ground, her neck in his neck-breaking grasp. She couldn’t even find the breath to scream.

Nykl fought the raging storm that was keeping his beloved Sahra aloft by her flawlessly pale neck. He shuddered against his lust’s power over him as he sank his gleaming fangs deep into her precious neck, spilling her life blood into his parched mouth and becoming aroused at the metallic taste of her life swimming down his throat.

As Nykl’s thirst was finally quenched, he knelt over his precious Sahra, blood splattered across her buxom and the front of her dress. He felt the cooling blood that painted his chin and neck as it slowly soaked into his shirt and jacket. The fierce wound on Sahra’s neck disgusted Nykl, and he felt that he would retch at the sight of the deep bite with the tiny trickle of blood that was barely seeping from such a violent mark.

Nykl was panicking, he was afraid he had killed his precious Sahra. He did not even think as he tore at his wrist with his teeth before holding it to Sahra’s lips, hoping she would drink. She did not move the tiniest bit, not even to gag at her mouth filling with Nykl’s dark blood that was beginning to spill over the sides of those beautifully sculpted lips of hers. Defeated, depressed, and angry at himself for being unable to control his thirst, Nykl fell back on his backside, inching towards the wall opposite his now dead love, his only love.

He didn’t know how long he was sitting there, head bowed and his tears falling like the rain and mourning for Sahra’s death, but Nykl did know one thing: He would never allow himself to love another innocent soul; he could never allow that to happen, again.

Sometime later, just before dawn, Nykl woke up after having fallen asleep from the exhaustion his mourning had caused him. It wasn’t the coming dawn that had woken him, but the unseen presence of someone looking down up him with sharp eyes that had stirred him from his fitful sleep.

Not wanting to be disturbed, he merely grunted and angrily spoke his frustration at whoever was staring downward at him.

“Go away. Leave me with her.”

Nykl did not expect the heavenly voice that spoke to him like the singing of a thousand angels giving him honey-speckled kisses. The voice spoke to him in a confused tone, wondering and wonderful at the same moment.

“And just who is this ‘she’ you’re talking about. I’m here, so fuck whoever you’re thinking of.”

Nykl’s head shot up at the voice, and his bloodshot, teary eyes came into focus on a figure that he thought would never look upon his face again. Sahra was standing above him, hands on her hips and a stern expression painted across her china doll face.

Laughing, Nykl jumped up taking his beautiful angel into his embrace and beginning to cry again with tears of joy and wistfulness. Sahra was dumbfounded at Nykl’s sudden behavior after their seven years of harmonic traveling together. She had no words, but did not need them, for Nykl explained. He told her everything, about his thirst, what he had tried to control and its sudden power over him. For what seemed hours, he told Sahra everything he had hidden from her, confirming several of her suspicions. And then he told her what she had become.

Nykl expected Sahra to laugh and say he must be crazy at accusing her of being a Creature of the Night, but she surprised him by cocking her head to one side and saying, “Hmpf, I would never have guessed you were a Vrykoala. I guess you learn something new about someone everyday, huh?” Nykl was dumbstruck at this statement. But she was alive, in a way, and he was happy for that.

As the sun began to rise, Sahra and Nykl crawled beneath the covers of their room at the Dragon Fire Inn and indulged themselves in the carnal pleasures they had denied themselves while traveling along one another’s side, truly binding them forever in a way that would make one belong to the other. From that night on, they would walk the earth together, traveling to many other countries and finally end up in the west United States, walking towards a new nightclub that was said to be the best nightclub for Goths and other subcultures. The name of the club...was Question Mark…

And as they opened the double doors to the club, Nykl thanked whatever god was listening for saving his beloved Sahra from death that fateful night so many years ago.