It means vampire.
My Christine is a blood drinker, like the wretches who defeated me in the Wicklow church.
How did I not see it? How did my ghosts not notice any clues about her nature?
She’s very good at hiding what she is. And it makes sense now—her appetite for men, her frequent trips into the city to lure them.
Earlier this evening, I watched Christine through the mirror in her room. I have observed her daily for the past week. Ever since I became preoccupied with Raoul and failed to meet her on the night of her audition, she has been avoiding our meeting place. But I could not bear to be apart from her for too long, and my ears were hungry for even the barest murmur of her voice, so I’ve been lingering in the passage behind the walls.
I spotted Firmin Richards in the passage once, from a distance, as he leered through one of the mirrors, dick in hand. Instead of confronting him myself, I summoned one of my most terrifyingspirits—a woman with a partially crushed face and a tangle of wild hair. I made her temporarily visible to humans and sent her streaking toward Richards. Somehow, he managed to avoid screaming aloud, though the smell of his urine lingered for a while after he fled.
I don’t think he’ll be back. Which means I have the run of the secret passage and unfettered access to a view of Christine’s room whenever I like. For a human, it might be wrong to spy on her, but I am a god. Why should I not indulge myself by watching a single human girl? I deserve some fragment of personal pleasure amid this desolate existence. If she is unclothed, I turn away. But I see no harm in observing her while she lies on her bed with her phone.
While watching Christine this evening, I realized she meant to go out. The amount of makeup she puts on when she’s hunting for men is far more than she usually wears. My whole being revolted at the thought of someone else being close to her, touching her, or kissing her mouth. Unbearable. I could not allow it, so I hurried to her car and concealed myself in the back seat before she arrived. I was concerned she might see me, but she seemed too distracted to notice much.
When she arrived in the city, I followed her at a distance, and through the window of the restaurant, I saw her staring at Raoul while he played onstage. I read their faces, and I knew she planned to fuck him. Which I could not allow because, as I informed him, Christine is mine.
Once she emerged from the restaurant, I intercepted her impulsively, without planning my next move. I had some vague idea of keeping her in the alley until Raoul lost interest and left.
But my darling Christine, my sweet-voiced singer, my teachable ingenue—she turned on me, transformed into a thing of fangs and claws. She drank me down, fucked me raw, and left me sitting here,propped against a clammy brick wall, with cum on my coat and my dick exposed.
I’m already healing, thanks to my nature and her tongue, but when I move, pain spears through my injured throat. The agony is oddly bracing. It clears the fog of sated lust from my mind.
Her body sucked a violent orgasm out of me, and I feel washed clean. Exhausted and satisfied beyond belief. And in the wake of that pleasure, I’m more certain than ever of one all-consuming truth.
I need her. She must be mine,onlymine, forever.
And that copper-haired bastard, with his innocent green eyes and his delicate beauty and his poetic soul—he must leave Christine alone.
My ghosts, lingering near her desk, read the casting email as soon as she opened it and informed me of its contents. I was disappointed that Raoul did not make her the star of his musical. I will have to make sure he and everyone else in the New Orpheum Theatre understand who is truly in charge. Over the past weeks, I’ve been attaching strings to the puppets I need, and now is the time to tighten those strings and make the marionettes dance for me.
It begins with Firmin Richards. He deserves lasting punishment, and he will receive it, but for now, I need him for two things: money, since I’d rather not depend solely on the account Lloyd-Henry left me, and the reservation of Box Five for my personal use in perpetuity. In exchange, I won’t publish the evidence of Richards’s voyeurism and perversion.
I pull myself together and leave the alley, but getting back to my lair takes a while, since I have no previous experience summoning a ride. I hate downloading new apps and learning how to use them, and I despise interacting with all humans except for Christine and Raoul. It’s not that Ilikeinteracting with Raoul. It’s simply that he is surprisingly interesting. He’s a rival I might enjoy toying with fora while before I finish him off.
The driver who picks me up looks very uncertain about the mask situation. Before getting into the car, I turned up my coat collar to conceal my bloodied throat, but I think he caught a glimpse of it, because after the first greeting, he says nothing else, and he keeps darting nervous glances at me in the rearview mirror.
“Stop looking at me,” I command. “Watch the road, drive me swiftly to my destination, and our transaction will be complete. As long as you do your part, I will have no reason to harm you. Your reward will be five stars and a thirty percent tip.”
He stops looking at me after that, and when I reach the New Orpheum, I add the tip and the rating.
I take my usual route into the building through the side door. Locks are no trouble. All it takes is a sizzle of power from my fingertips, and I can bypass any card reader or lock humans can devise. Even fingerprint scanners and facial recognition are no match for me. It’s a minor triumph, a mere vestige of my former power, but it gives me a deep sense of satisfaction. I am no longer bound to the dark, locked away, chained below. I am free, and no one can prevent me from going anywhere I choose.
When I reach my lair, I strip myself and discard the mask I wore tonight. The coat will have to be cleaned. Fortunately, I have two others in a similar style.
Benedict and several other ghosts are lingering above the canal, murmuring to each other, but when I arrive, Agnes floats over to me, her pale, wispy fingers fluttering over her mouth. “Why, sir, what happened?”
“Nothing.” Snatching up my favorite half mask, I fit it into place and stalk past her to the bathroom. I lean over the sink and bathe the blood from my throat and collarbones. The wounds that Christineleft are gone, the skin as flawless as if they never existed. I run my fingertips over the place where she bit me, faintly disappointed that her sharp teeth left no scars.
The weight of what happened crashes upon me like a boulder, like the ponderous bulk of an entire mountain. I grip the edge of the sink, my head hanging low, my gaze fixed on the water running endlessly down the drain.
I did not want my first sexual encounter with Christine to be so crude and hasty. The act should have been thoughtful, magnificent, exquisitely beautiful, performed upon a luxurious bed bathed in candlelight. I feel as if I’ve lost something perfect, some ideal to which I clung, and now I must acclimate to a raw, gritty reality I can hardly bear.
I wanted her to fuck me. I joined willingly in the act. But I’m angry with myself for yielding to impulse, for rushing into a liaison that I did not plan. When I ruled as the god of death, nothing occurred without my control and command. Even my seduction of the Morrigan was a calculated move.
The only event in my existence that I never foresaw was the betrayal of the other gods. Their power was waning, their defeat imminent, and even in the throes of such decline, they found the energy to band together against me, to punish me for impregnating Fate herself and fathering the race of banshees.
My mind recalls that reality distantly, but my new heart, the one beating in a chest forged by unfamiliar magic, has no emotional tether to the Morrigan or to my ancient progeny. Thousands of years have passed between then and now. During my cursed imprisonment, I played no role in the guidance of the dead. Although my existence was linked to the Afterworld, it functioned more or less automatically, and it continues to serve its purpose even without myconscious presence.
