The vampire sat as if posing for a portrait no one alive could paint, still and precise, but with the menace of something that could move faster than thought. The lamplight found him greedily: hair dark, styled as if for a photograph in a glossy magazine, skin so pale it reflected, body narrow at the waist and cruelly balanced at the shoulders. He looked thirty—no more, no less—as though time itself had been stopped mid-breath to admire its own work.
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Across from him, Dr. Caldwell adjusted his legs, pen tapping once, twice, too loud in the quiet. He told himself it was posture. He told himself it was habit. The truth was more humiliating: he crossed his legs to hide what his body announced, to mask the heat that had risen against every rule he had written for himself. I am not attracted to men, never have been, never— and yet the thought trailed away, denied by his pulse, which leapt and hammered, more insistent than reason.
“You said you no longer know who you are,” Caldwell managed, voice thin.
“I said,” the vampire corrected, his smile thin and learned, “that I know too well. A creature condemned to watch every idea collapse under its own weight. Once, I believed in God, then in His adversary, then in art, in love, in revolution, in blood as sacrament. Each promise burns bright and then gutters. I remain. Imagine it, doctor: a man with all the endings stolen from him.”
Caldwell’s pen slipped, rolled to the carpet, a small indignity. He bent but did not pick it up. His gaze had lifted, unbidden, to the curve of the vampire’s mouth. Clinical fascination, he lied to himself. Nothing more.
The air carried something sharp, metallic. Iron. He thought of blood before he admitted it. The urge rose in him suddenly—open the window, let in night air, clear the stench, clear his head. But to move would be to reveal the tightening in his trousers, the shame of it, the erection that betrayed him before his patient. So he stayed still, cheeks hot, hands trembling over the notepad.
“Ah,” the vampire said softly, leaning closer. “I hear it now. A bell tolling in your chest. Faster, louder. That rhythm—you can’t disguise it. I used to kneel in churches just to hear such bells.”
“I don’t—” Caldwell began, but stopped. What argument could he make against his own body? He wanted to end the session, wanted to flee, wanted to surrender—he could not decide which.
The vampire tilted his head. “Strange, isn’t it? You’re moved, though you deny it. You feel desire mocking the very laws you’ve written for yourself. Odd little rules of identity. Do you know what I’ve learned in centuries, doctor? Desire always wins. Always.”
A silence, broken only by the clock’s tick. Caldwell shifted, pulse racing. The smell thickened, coppery, inescapable. He realized his patient was not merely speaking of crisis—he was the crisis, incarnate.
The vampire’s hand reached for his wrist, cold as marble, and Caldwell knew then that nothing in his textbooks had prepared him. The teeth came swift.
It was not pain. Not at first. It was a drowning in sensation, a collapse of meaning. His back arched, eyes widening, his breath breaking in rapture and terror. Pleasure and agony twisted, inseparable. For a moment his eyes glittered as if in ecstasy, the soul startled from its prison.
And then, silence. The pen lay ink-sprawled on the rug. Caldwell slumped, undone. His body still wore its shirt tucked neat, shoulders hunched, soft belly folded—the ordinary frame of a man who had tried all his life to keep himself hidden, now revealed and emptied.
The vampire rose. Wiped his mouth with a precision almost genteel. Straightened the chair.
The phone on the desk rang. The vampire regarded it, amused. He had seen Caldwell press the speaker button earlier in the session, so he did the same.
“Doctor?” A man’s voice, hesitant. “It’s Daniel. I’m early. Is now a bad time?”
The vampire smoothed his cuffs and spoke as though nothing had happened. “Not at all. Please, come in. I’m covering for Dr. Caldwell tonight.”
He ended the call. For a moment he stood still, as if considering his role. Then, with unhurried precision, he slipped the blazer from his shoulders. The lining whispered faintly as it left him. He crossed to Caldwell’s coat rack and hung the garment with almost reverent care, a valet at the end of a performance. The jacket swayed once, lightly, as though it retained some memory of its former owner.
Turning back, he reached for his tie. With an easy tug, he loosened the knot, drawing the strip of silk from his throat. He folded it neatly across the desk, a faint smile ghosting his lips as if amused by the banality of the gesture. Then he unfastened the first two buttons of his shirt. A pale triangle of collarbone and chest caught the lamplight—an imitation of relaxation, of human fatigue, though no such thing touched him.
Satisfied, the vampire adjusted his cuffs again and lowered himself into Caldwell’s chair. His hands folded neatly in his lap. The framed degrees glimmered faintly on the walls, the lamplight throwing long shadows across the rug where the pen still bled ink.
The office smelled of iron and ink. The vampire leaned back, expression calm, patient, every inch the professional. Outside, a footstep in the hall. Another heartbeat approaching.
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He leaned back, and waited in the dark.
