Page 3 of Illuminated

Still, I was breathing loudly, and my heart was racing. I tried to turn my head to the left. There was the outline of the third person there, sprawled on the ground.

“Don’t,” he said, and put his right hand on my shoulder. His left was still keeping the door shut. “Don’t look at them. Look at me.” He made me turn, and when we were face-to-face, he made me look up at him by pulling my chin toward him with his hand. Against the stubble I’d grown over the past two days, I was keenly aware of his touch. I looked up.

The only light I had was the flashlight, and such little illumination can play tricks on the mind. His irises did look completely black. Pupilless. His lips appeared red, flushed.

When he looked at me, I felt as if something warm washed over me, not unlike taking very strong pain medication and the world around you becoming cotton-wrapped.Do not move. Stay right where you are, don’t look at them, and calm down, he said, but his lips didn’t move at all.

Only when his eyes left me did I realize that they had pulled me with the great force of something that was far larger than myself, far stronger than anything I’d ever known. I wanted to move. I wanted to leave, but I couldn’t. My breathing calmed.

He left me standing there, stepping out of my field of vision.

I was frozen. However, I wanted to see what he was doing. Through stubbornness or strength, I did manage to slightly turn my head, roll my eyes that way, and look. He was bent over the man that had been on the floor to the left of the door. The man on the floor was still moving, struggling now, it looked like.

The long-haired man was whispering to the one on the floor. I couldn’t make out any of his words, nor what the man on the floor said in return. He did try to reach for the rifle he had dropped, though. A strong hand with glass-like fingernails pinned his arm before it could reach the weapon, and after more whispering, the dark-haired man tore into the other’s throat. The man on the floor spasmed as he died, and there was no doubt at all that the dark-haired man was drinking his blood straight from his neck.

This should have upset me, but I remained calm -- unnaturally calm.

When the one on the floor stilled, the other got back to his feet, turned. He must’ve wiped his mouth or either have mastered the skill of feasting cleanly, because apart from the color in his lips, there was no blood visible there. Even the deep cuts he had sported all over his face when he’d been on the cross had healed to scabs, really just flakes of copper still clinging here and there. I couldn’t even see the smallest trace of scars. And in spite of the dried blood, his face was beautiful, framed by that dark, straight hair. There was a part inside of me that itched to take a picture.

“You are of strong will,” he said, sounding almost like he approved. He closed the distance between him and me, pulled my face to look at him so I wouldn’t look at the dead guy on the floor. “I’ll not force it again, you have my word on that, too.”

As he said it, the calmness that had washed over me drained away as quickly as it had settled, and I could move again. I took a step back.

“What… what…”

His hand still held my face, and his other hand was on my back now, keeping me from running. He could pull me close and have my blood in a heartbeat, just like he’d had the others’.

“I am very sorry that you had to see this. I do think I owe you a conversation, but not in this place of death. Hand me your car keys.”

When I didn’t move at all, his hands washed over me, felt my pants. It was just the lightest touch, but when he also smiled down at me, I think I might have blushed.

I chalked that up to… something else, anything, because nothing about what had happened here was blush worthy. He was beautiful, yes, and I might have fantasized over him if he’d been a model, but… not in this situation.

He pulled the keys from my jeans, and my phone as well. Then, he turned me around, his arm still on my back. He opened the church door and walked me outside to where the moon still shone, and the gravestones still lay silent. The night had noticed nothing, and nothing that had happened had changed the darkness.

“You parked down the path, did you not? I heard you, and thought it was them coming back with their exorcist,” he said. He brushed the remnants of dried blood off his face now, and under it, the skin was completely unmarked by the violence that had dyed it back on the cross.

“Exorcist?” I said.

“Silly superstition, really. It’s not the words or the signs that do any damage, but cuts will bleed and bones will break. Do let’s go. You are a photographer, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Why come here?”

“I… abandoned places. I’m taking pictures of abandoned places.” I walked alongside him as if I were in a daze, past the tombstones and down the path. The insects sang all around us. Shock. That was it. I was in shock. I clutched my camera, wishing it could take me back to three pictures ago.

“At night?”

“That’s… I was late. I stopped at a café.”

I felt his eyes on me.

We reached the car, and it beeped to life when he used the fob. He opened the passenger side for me, and I looked over his shoulder, considered running as soon as he got to the driver’s side. He noticed.

He locked me in his gaze. “You can try to run, but I am faster. You must have guessed. What do you think I am?”

My lip trembled before I spoke. “Vampire,” I said with a small voice.

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