Nocturnal (The Noctalis Chronicles 1)

“So you're an angel vampire.” Weird, weird, weird.

“The words don't matter.”

“I think they do.” I draw my knees up to my chest.

“We prefer the term noctalis.” He takes a step toward me. I try not to flinch, but fail.

“Let me see your teeth.” He doesn't look at me like I'm crazy. Instead he bares them at me in what is almost a snarl. They are a little pointy, but not overly so.

“You don't have fangs.” The room is absolutely freezing, but I'm sweating.

“I do not. My body is the same as it was when I died.” I flinch at the last word. Of course, I know you have to die to become a vampire. Everyone knows that. It's another thing to have someone standing in front of you telling you that it actually happened to them.

“Except for the gigantic wings.” I motion to them.

“Except for those,” he says, glancing at them over his shoulder. The light shivers off them. I wonder what he wears on Halloween.

“This is crazy.” I slam my forehead into my knees. I didn't want to hear any more. It's too much. His words fly around my brain, twisting and turning, clawing and tearing at me. I want to slam my head against something harder. Break it open so the words will spill out and go somewhere else. I can't contain them all. My mother is going to die. Peter is a vampire. Sort of. Gah!

“You said you would believe me.” His voice cracks through the storm like a bolt of lightning. I put my head up and look at him. His eyes burn through the room. Bending down, he retrieves his shirt. I've been so distracted by the wings I haven't even bothered to look at the rest of him. The tearing sounds again, and the wings are gone.

“I will leave you now. I suspect you don't want to see me again.” Somehow he gets the shirt over his head in such a way that only male models in cologne ads can. I finally look at his bare chest. Nice. Very nice.

“I never said that.” He pauses for a moment. A pause of surprise. Then his head goes to the side. I'm really starting to like it when he does that. It's one of the only times I can see his eyes without the interference from his hair.

“Would you meet me again? In the graveyard?”

“Yes.” My voice asserts itself before I have a moment to think. I think my brain abandoned me after the wings busted out.

“Then I will see you tomorrow night. Goodbye, Ava.” He turns to leave, but I want him to stay. I scramble to my feet. He turns and then faces me again. I've never seen him waffle before.

“I enjoyed the book you left for me. Neil Gaiman. He is a gifted writer.” My head struggles to understand what he's talking about. It takes a few seconds. Right, books.

“Yeah, I know. I thought it would be funny, since we always meet in the graveyard. I have some of his other books, if you want to try them.” I back up, still a little hesitant. He moves toward me, slowly. My mind is still on what I've seen, but he is somehow real and in my room and tracing the spines of my books, stopping and reaching for another Neil Gaiman title. I stare at his back, trying to see any remnant of the wings. His fingers reach for a book. Stardust this time.

“Goodnight, Ava.” He tucks the book under his arm and climbs out the window, smooth as sliding a hand across silk. Now I know why his movements seem so strange. Un-human. Because he is. He is not human.

“Goodbye, Peter.” Before I can blink, he's gone. I run to the window, my eyes rake the sky to see where he's gone. Nothing. It's too dark for me to see anything. I close the window before melting to the floor, all the air in my lungs expelling in a whoosh. I throw my head back, banging it on the wall. The stars on my ceiling stare at me. I close my eyes, struggling to regain my composure. So far, it's not working. All I can see are those wings bursting from his back. Hear that tearing noise. I just... can't...

I spend the rest of the night sitting on my bed, trying to process what happened, which is futile, since this isn't like finding out your friend is in the closet, or they're pregnant. Those things could happen, logically. This, not so much. Instead of sitting on my floor and continuing to freak out all night, I take action.

I grab a pen and a notebook that I like to scribble on when I have ideas in the middle of the night and start making a list.

How do you go out in the daytime?

Why didn't you drink my blood?

When did you die?

Do you hate garlic?

Coffins?

Crosses?

Is any of that stuff true?

How do you become a... Noctalis?

Why did you want to die?

How do you kill one of you?

What is it like to fly?

Do you all have wings?

I chew on my pen, absorbed in coming up with my Q&A. It's not like he's going to answer any of them, but I can hope.

My eyelids start drooping as the sky lightens. I wish he'd done this on a weekend, so I don't have to worry about being alert tomorrow. I'll have to insert a caffeine drip in my veins pretty soon just so I can function.

Peter isn't human. The phrase runs over in my head, followed by something else.

It doesn't matter.

***

I showed myself to her this evening. Unfurled my wings in her bedroom, just enough that I could stretch them out, careful not to knock anything over.

I watched her watch me. She swore, words I'd never heard her use. She asked me if I was an angel. It made me want to laugh, if I remembered how.

The legends of angels were based on us. Those paintings on ceilings and frescoes and mosaics and hundreds of pictures are of men with wings. We were responsible for many of the legends of supernatural creatures, vampires and angels included.

Her fingers trembled as she touched them. I could feel the tiny movements as she stroked the feathers. A human touched me by choice. Extraordinary.

Her pounding heart filled the room, drowned me in the sound. The room was steeped in her scent. Warm and fresh. I still wanted her, but in a different way. I wanted to take her and smell her and lick the salt from her skin. I wanted her to be still, listen to the sound of her body. I wanted to watch her heart pump through her skin. I wanted her alive. I wanted to bask in the glow of her skin, of her humanity. That was what attracted us. We didn't want just the blood. We wanted what came with it. We wanted the light of life. The blood was the only way to try and get a little of it. Just a taste, but it was never enough. Even she wouldn't be enough.

She fired questions at me like bullets. I didn't share much with her. Not as much as she wanted. Not all that I knew, all that I was. If I was going to kill her, I didn't want her taking parts of me with her. She drank in my answers like water. Soaked them up. I watched them seep into her skin, becoming a part of her. I'd changed her, I knew that.