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Dani liked it a little rough; she was mature enough to admit that. And Armand – Armand liked to take Dani apart piece by piece, then stand and demand she get dressed immediately for the opera, or whatever.
“Good,” the vampire said, leaning forward to kiss her, quickly. “Now, get up. Time to go.”
“Goddamn, boss,” Dani said, breathy. She fell back against the bed, smiling, and watched Armand walk into the bathroom. “You treat me like a whore, sometimes.”
Armand just scowled. “Don’t be ridiculous. Whores aren’t treated half so nicely.”
Before Dani could apologize or ask about it, she left, zipping out the room in a blur of color. The bathroom faucet was still running.
Dani fell back against the bed, ran a hand over her face. She wondered if it would ever end, if she would ever know what buttons to press with Armand, what made her tick.
It was their regular whirlwind, when Armand returned. Dani was dragged around to shows, bars, libraries, sports matches, until she’d forgotten all about Armand’s abrupt departure.
But she was tired, always so tired, and she found herself drinking more and more when they went out, caring less and less. Why should she care? She knew Armand would protect her from any creeps in the club. And then she would go home with the biggest creep of them all, the five-hundred-year-old corpse who still got carded at the bar.
“Time to go, lover?” Armand asked, warm lips close to her ear.
Dani shuddered, letting her eyes fall closed. So warm, boss. You kill someone?
A hand stroked her hip, and Armand’s face was amused, when she opened her eyes. “I’ve been with you the whole night, lover. Do you suppose my arms are so long, to hold you gently in one hand and immobilize a victim with another?”
She laughed. It was funny, wasn’t it? Then she kept laughing, hiccupping and dizzy, until Armand pulled her through the crowd, out into the cold night air.
She leaned against the vampire, pressed her nose into her neck. “Hmm,” she mumbled, happily. She nosed at the too-smooth skin, opened her mouth and sucked a kiss that would never bruise. “Love you, boss,” she said, wrapping her arms around Armand.
Armand leaned back against her, made a pleased noise. She was distracted, though, her eyes scanning the road before them.
“What is it?”
“Nothing to worry about,” Armand said, turning in her arms. She smiled a little, smoothed her hand over Dani’s hair. “Nothing at all.”
A lie, but Dani was used to lies. She just hummed, unconcerned. “Who turned you into a vampire?”
Armand let out a laugh, surprised at the abruptness of it. “What?”
Dani twisted her hands into Armand’s shirt, met her eyes. “I’m serious. It’s a serious question.”
“Why?” she asked, brow arched. Her expressions were comical, sometimes, exaggerated like a cartoon. “Are you planning to seek him out?”
She shook her head, then stopped when it made her vision blur. “No,” she said, brow furrowing. “I just –” How to explain it? How could she? I just wanna know you, boss. I feel like I don’t know you at all, sometimes.
Armand drew back, her face falling. “Why do you say such things? Don’t be wretched, Danielle.”
Frustrated, she sighed. “You never tell me anything! How am I supposed to –”
“Of course you don’t know me at all,” Armand hissed, tearing herself from Dani’s arms. “Eight years? A mere blip in human history. What is eight years, to a vampire?”
She stepped back, and Dani felt warning bells go off in her head. She stepped forward, to catch her, but Armand had already gone, stormed off into the night.
Dani sighed, let her head fall back. She looked at the moon, wondered idly if there were werewolves out there, somewhere. Was some poor, lovesick idiot on the other side of the world trailing after a werewolf? Did the werewolf love her back, love her enough?
She went back into the bar, not knowing what else to do. Armand would come back, sooner or later. Hopefully sooner. Either way, Dani wanted another drink.
“Back already?” the bartender asked, laughing a little.
She shook her head, unamused. “Bourbon. Ice.”
He peered at her, then pulled a glass from behind the bar.
Someone tried to talk to her, but she ignored them. It wasn’t Armand. Another drink, then another. Her vision was becoming unsteady, no matter how much she adjusted her glasses, and the little curl of frustration in her belly had grown into all-out anger.
When some guy put his sweaty hand on her shoulder, crooned into he ear, “Let me help you home, baby,” Dani growled and swung around to face him.
“Oh, just fuck off,” she said, then clocked him with her fist.
“Hey, hey!” the bartender hollered, flapping a towel at them. “No fighting in my bar. Get the fuck out or I’m calling the cops.”
The guy she’d hit sat up, spitting on the floor, and lunged for her. He was a slight man, just taller than Armand, and Dani used every inch to her advantage. She was doing pretty well, too, or it sure seemed like it, until big hands grabbed her shirt, and next thing she knew, she was on her ass in the alleyway, sitting in vomit and cigarette butts, no doubt. The idiot was shoved out after her, and fell to his knees in a puddle.
“I’ll fucking kill you,” the guy spat, standing and heading towards her. “You fucking bitch!”
She laughed, harshly, and stood, trying to get her feet under her. Her sense of balance was shot to shit; the adrenaline rush only did so much. “I’d like – I’d like to see you try!”
Something happened, then, but she couldn’t follow it. She swung at the guy, missed, and nearly fell over from the momentum of it. Then, all of a sudden, she was being held up, someone else’s hands around her wrists. “Hey – who the – let me go, hey, fuck you!”
She turned to look behind her, saw some big guy in a flannel, then felt a hand on her waist, another roughly gripping the waistband of her jeans. She kicked forward, automatically, and swung her head back to look. “Oh fuck off!”
The first guy doubled over, groaning, from Dani’s kick.
Something dropped from the sky, then, like fucking Batman, and did something too quick for Dani’s eyes to follow. The hands released her wrists, and she felt warm liquid splatter across the back of her neck. The guy in front of her had fallen with a strangled gasp, one hand clutching at his neck. He lay there, twitching, in a growing pool of his own blood, until he finally went still.
There was a second noise, a loud thud behind her. Dani jumped a little, turned. Armand stood by the body, staring dispassionately down at it. Her mouth and chin were red, dripping. Dani stepped back a little, stumbled over some loose stone, and fell to the ground.
Armand walked around to the second body, nudged him with her shoe.
Dani followed her gaze, all that blood on the ground. It was running in little rivulets towards her. “Wasted it,” she said, a little numb. Her lip was swollen, making it hard to talk. She probed at it with her tongue, found that it was split. Her eye, too, was aching and slowly swelling. It would be black and blue tomorrow, no doubt. She hoped she wasn’t missing any teeth.
Armand used her foot to turn the man over, show Dani his face. He didn’t look too good either, even discounting that he was, you know, dead. She’d done a number on him, held her own in the fight before he’d found a buddy to join in. And his neck – God, his neck. She had to look away.
Armand spit onto his face. “I wouldn’t let his blood touch my tongue if he was the last mortal on earth.” She walked over to Dani, face blank. “Get up.”
Dani let herself be hauled up, roughly.
“Do you know what they wanted to do to you?” Armand asked, eyes hard. She dragged an arm across her face, ridding herself of most of the gore.
Dani pulled her sleeve down, used it to wipe the blood from her nose. She shrugged. “I can put two and two together, yeah.”
Armand bared her teeth, a flash of white gone in an instant, before her face was blank once more. She released Dani’s arm, balled her hands into fists at her side. Her eyes raked over Dani, taking her in. She raised her hand, thumb split and bleeding, and swiped it over Dani’s lip, her eyebrow. She felt the flesh begin to knit itself together.
“Thanks,” she said, quietly.
“Drink,” Armand said, turning her arm over and using her other hand to gouge a tear in her wrist. “Your organs are bleeding.”
Dani bent her head, sealed her swollen lips to the vampire’s wrist.
Through the blood, she saw flashes, little bits of memory. Small hands scrabbling against tiles, the nails cracked and bloody. Pain, everywhere below her navel. Arms, impossibly large, holding her down. Her eyes looking down over a child’s flat and hairless body, her body. A faceless man, half naked and aggressive. Another face, like an angel in the light, holding out a hand.
It faded. “What…”
Armand withdrew her wrist, face still blank. “Come, beloved. We are going home.”
Back in their own home, Armand herded Dani into the bathroom, stripped her of her filthy clothing, and pushed her into the bathtub, filling quickly with hot water. Then Armand stripped, too, crawled in with her. Her knees were tucked against her chest, so that Dani’s legs fit on either side of her hips.
She flexed her feet, curling them around Armand’s hips, and leaned back. There was soap in the water, some ridiculously expensive soap made of hand-pressed rose oil, or something. The tub was full, so she reached out, shut the tap off. “It’s nice,” she said, trailing her hand through the water. “Thanks.”
“You’re drunk,” Armand said, quietly. She sat like a statue, like some kind of strange marble statue in the bathtub.
Dani shrugged. “Yeah,” she agreed. “I know. Will you come lay with me?”
Armand glared at her for a moment, then crawled forward, inhumanly elegant, and draped herself over Dani. She pushed her face into Dani’s neck, her feet into Dani’s shins, her pubic bone against Dani’s, like she was trying to make them merge into one person.
“I am,” Armand said, plucking the thought from her head.
Dani wrapped her arms around her. “I’m fine.”
“But you might not have been.”
I know how to avoid that forever, Dani thought, how to make it so that no human could ever pose a threat to me. She decided not to say it, but Armand tensed in her arms, hearing the thought before Dani could banish it. “Sorry,” she muttered.
“I was fifteen when my maker rescued me from a brothel,” Armand said, abruptly. “And seventeen when he made me what I am now.”
Dani didn’t say anything for a very long time. She thought of the memories she’d seen, those childish little hands scrambling for purchase on the tiles. “And you…”
“I don’t know,” Armand said, pulling the question from her mind. “I don’t remember how long I was there. I was just a child, though, when I was taken.”
Dani rubbed hands over her back, warming her. “I’m sorry,” she said, though it felt shallow. Inadequate.
“He didn’t want to kill me,” Armand said, into her neck. “He did it because I was dying. I won’t do it to you. I can’t. Don’t ask this of me, beloved.”
Dani found herself asking, “Were you lovers?” She recalled his face, the brief memory. He was handsome enough, she supposed. He’d looked older.
Armand sat up. Her face was streaked with red. “Let’s speak of something else.”
It was Armand who brought it up again, surprisingly. Weeks later, people-watching at a café, Armand said, “I’m sorry we can’t die together.”
“What?” Dani asked, a little nervously.
Armand held up the book she was looking at, some large book with full-page glossy photos of Pompeii. “These two were found like this,” she said, pointing to the page on the left. “In their last moments, they held tightly together.”
Dani felt her heart soften, just a little. She moved to sit beside Armand, threw an arm over her shoulders. “Only you would think that’s romantic, boss.”
Armand’s brow furrowed, deeply. “Isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Dani agreed, then kissed her. “I mean, I would rather not die at all, but if I had to –” another kiss “– I’d rather it’d be with you.”
Maybe she shouldn’t have said that. Armand got weirdly obsessed with the idea, and would bring it up at random times.
At a restaurant, with her ankle hooked around Dani’s, she cocked her head, asking, “Would you rather we die before you eat, so that the ash would preserve your meal, or after, so that you might enjoy a last meal?”
Walking through the park, she looped her arm through Dani’s, leaned her head on her shoulder. “I think this might be a nice place to die,” she said, glancing around. “Only, we would make better figures if we were seated, or lying down.”
At the opera, half on Dani’s lap, she waited until the intermission to say, “I would like to die at the opera. They would find us like this, together like this, and wonder if we often went to the opera together.”
In their bed, naked and curled around Dani, she said, “These could be our last moments, lover. Or these –” and her hand slid down between Dani’s legs, brought her to orgasm while she spoke of how they would die.
It was getting weird. Maybe it had already been weird; Dani didn’t have a good frame of reference, these days.
“Come, Dani,” Armand said, one evening.
Dani sat up, yawning, and rubbed at her eyes. “Where are we going?”
“Nowhere,” Armand said, already walking towards the balcony. “No need to dress. Come, to the roof.”
She stopped in the doorway, bewildered. “The roof?”
“Yes, lover, the roof,” Armand called, through the open doors. “Come.”
Dani sighed, wishing briefly for one normal night, one night in which she could sit and have coffee and wake up with the paper, or a book. Then she followed Armand onto the balcony, bare-footed and still in her pajamas. The vampire had dragged a chair over, used it as leverage to climb up onto the roof.
“You could have flown,” she said, squinting at the chair.
“Yes,” Armand agreed, leaning over to extend a hand. “But you can’t. Come.”
Dani obeyed, of course, climbing up after her and taking her hand so the vampire could haul her up over the edge of the roof. The tiles were uneven and rough under her feet, and she wobbled, when she stood up. Armand steadied her, then gestured for her to follow.
They walked to the highest point, then sat. “Look,” Armand said, gesturing.
Dani followed her hand, pushing her glasses higher on her nose. “Wow, yeah. You can see the whole island from here.”
Armand leaned against her, humming contentedly. “And the boats.”
She loved the boats. “And the boats,” Dani agreed, grinning. “We should add a sailing club. You ever sailed?”
The vampire thought about it. “Once, maybe. I don’t remember.”
“We’ll get you on a small sailboat,” Dani said, then pointed. “We could put it there, a designated marina. People don’t sail as much, down here. Not like up in New England. Too many idiots with big, expensive yachts.”
Armand hummed again, then leaned back, dragging Dani with her, until they were laying down, flat against the slight incline of the roof. Armand shuffled closer, turning to throw an arm across Dani’s waist and hook a leg around hers.
“Little octopus,” Dani said, grinning. She reached down, pulled Armand’s leg higher, closer. She left her hand there, tracing patterns across her thigh.
“This would be nice,” Armand said, turning her head to look up.
Dani looked up too, at the stars. For as bright as the Night Island was, Armand had ruled that all the lights had to be angled downward, so as not to outshine the stars. Dani was grateful for it, now. It was beautiful, as many stars in the sky as she’d seen from the absolute wilderness. “What would be nice? The sailing club?”
“If we died here, like this,” Armand said, holding her a little tighter. “It would be nice.”
Dani glanced down at her, then back up at the stars. “Do you know any of them? The stars?”
Armand smiled, like that was funny. “I was given a Renaissance education, Dani. Of course I know the stars.”
“I don’t,” Dani said. “Show me?”
Armand began to point them out, offering the names she’d learned so long ago, Italian and Greek and Latin.
Dani listened, but knew she would forget most of it. She tried to remember, though, tried to commit Armand’s face to memory. How much time was there, in a single human life? How long before Armand lay on these tiles alone, staring at the same stars? She held her a little tighter, fingers digging in to the meat of her thigh. She tried to imagine it, for a moment. The ash, the fire. Hundreds or thousands of years later, archaeologists digging them up. Feeling sorry for the poor souls who’d been stuck in the fire, but perhaps grateful that these two, at least, had known love.
She shivered, though it wasn’t cold, and Armand’s hand ran over her waist, cold but soothing, and slid up to settle over her sternum, feeling her heartbeat. “You aren’t listening anymore, beloved.”
“Sorry,” Dani said, quietly. “I just…”
“Oh,” Armand said, eyes widening a little. The hand at Dani’s sternum pressed a little harder. She turned, her face against Dani’s neck.
Dani’s hand came up to the back of her head, fingers running gently through her hair. “To die as lovers may,” she muttered, recalling the line highlighted twice-over in her secondhand copy of Carmilla. “To die together, so that they may live together.”