December 18, 2008
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Night Hunter
When the lights turned down for the night and everything fell into quiet, the last person awake went about his nightly task of hunting his unsuspecting prey. The medieval gothic mansion fell into a state of restlessness until the deed was done. Cold stone slipped into shadow and he found what he was looking for in one of the rooms. The best ears couldn’t have heard the door open and shut again as he entered the bedroom. Plush red carpet hid the sound of his gliding step.
Decorated in black and blood red, the room was one of his favorites. Black silk curtains looped around the four-poster bed; black silk drapes hung from the windows. He stared down at the sleeping beauty before him. He thought the red bedspread made her lips seem pale in comparison. If he closed his eyes, he could picture the color of hers: green, with little blue flecks in them. A single black candle lit up little space in the room, but it didn’t matter; he didn’t need it. His eyes could see just as easily in the dark as in the light.
His trance of the hunt made him focus solely on the woman lying on the bed. Life ceased to exist in this room. Any other time, he conveniently forgot its existence. The image before him would last in his mind, as all the others had. Her blond hair fanned out around her, the black lingerie made her skin pale and almost luminescent. He took one last look before he gracefully sat beside her. His movements were elegant, full of ease and practice. He bent down, and whispered soothing words in her ear. He told her that everything would be okay and she would feel no pain. He kept his promise as he bit into her jugular, and he felt her pulse speed up, then slowly fade away as he drank her warm blood. Gently, he laid her limp body onto the bed, just as he had found her. As an accomplished hunter, he left no mess; no blood spilling from her wounds or his own lips. He tenderly kissed her forehead, and stood up. He blew out the black candle much as he blew out the candle of her life, and as quietly as he came, he left.
❦
Vincent Del Francesi gripped the wrought iron railing so hard he almost broke it. His knuckles were white from the force. His mind was reeling and he could barely see through the red haze. He whirled around in a fury and went into the house to get his paints. It was the only thing that calmed him down. His hands were steady as his set up the easel and put a fresh canvas upon it. He painted the sea, as he did so many times. It was so angry tonight. Waves were crashing onto the rocks below with roaring ferocity.
He always felt this way after he hunted. He hated what he did, what he was. He’d have to throw her body in the sea before morning, but he couldn’t bring himself to face what he’d done just yet. He had to paint it out first, with almost frenzied strokes on the canvas. When he finished, he stepped back to study at his work. What he saw unnerved him to the core of his very being. His eyes had moved to that spot in the sea before he’d taken the painting in as a whole. There, in the middle of the sea, was her face. It was the face of the woman he’d just murdered. Every time he stole someone’s life, he painted. And every time he painted, he unknowingly painted the face of the woman whose life he’d stolen.
It had been so long ago that he’d been a young man, a boy really, in the streets of Rome, trying to earn food for pay by painting portraits. He had been skilled, but not many in those times could afford to spare anything for their portrait. Then one day came Francesca Frencisi. It had been dusk, the sun just setting. Vincent had been packing up his paints when she glided up to him like an angel from heaven. She was so beautiful; all he could do was stare. She asked him to paint her in her home. If only he’d known then what she was. He would have run in the opposite direction. But he was innocent to her plans, and agreed to go to her home.
The word vampire tasted like acid on his tongue, an acrid burning that never went away. He gathered his paints and put them away. He glanced at the painting once more, with disgust and regret mixing in the fresh blood in his body. He took it away and put it in the room with all the others. He never looked in this room either. It was storage for his other life, the one he neglects to mention at dinner parties and social galas. It was this life that he kept a secret, a dark and dangerous secret that could never get out. He locked the door and didn’t look back.
