Page 5 of Kentucky Nights
“I miss you. I hate living what I have left of my life without you.” I skim my finger down the glass of the photo frame, wishing it were her skin.
I have somewhere between twenty to fifty years left before I finally die. My two hundred years will be up, and I’ll turn to ash, ceasing to exist just like I should have all those years ago. I’ll finally get to be with Daphne in the afterlife—if a place like that exists for a monster like me.
I’ve lived too damn long to keep track of all the time I have been alive. The years, weeks, months, minutes, and seconds mean nothing to me. I have an estimate of changes to the world due to the evolution of society—if you want to call it evolution.
This timeline is quite peculiar.
I tend to keep to myself as much as possible now, which is another reason why I can’t remember my age. I’m old. I know that much, but I don’t look a day over forty—the age I was turned. That I do remember.
After what happened with Audrey, I told myself I was going to fade into existence. I thought that was what she would hate the most. I wanted my life to spite her in every way possible for stealing my ability to die when I was meant to.
The oceans are warmer now. The air is more polluted. The people are angrier. Love for anything in life that brings joy seems to be harder to find.
That’s when I had my epiphany.
My maker would absolutely hate it if I fell in love again—like how I wanted before she changed me.
Somewhere between the years of I-killed-everyone-I-came-across to isolating- myself-on-my-ranch, I met the woman in the photo sitting on my mantle.
And her name was Daphne.
The past:sometime in the 1900s
I never left home. I have mystified every single person, not to question why I never age. It takes a lot of work with young couples having babies and growing their families, but I was able to wait a couple of decades before I had to pull out the only trick I have in my vampire book.
If I have to live as this creature, I’m not going to inconvenience myself by moving every few decades. That’s not what I wanted when I was human, and it hasn’t changed since becoming a vampire.
No, I wasn’t about to leave my home when there was a simple solution to fix it, but I’m happy. I love being nestled away on hundreds of acres of land where people can’t bother me.
I only come to town when I need more stock in hay, feed, and blood. I keep my head down and my Stetson low so no one will notice me. That’s hard to do when a man like me is on a horse like Romeo. He’s a large, muscular Friesian with a pitch-black hide and a long, curly mane to match, which ladies often fawn over when they see him.
What no one knows is that Romeo is a vampire too. It wasn’t easy making the decision to turn him, but around twenty years ago, he was shot for having an injured leg. The owner had left him to die in agony, and I couldn’t allow him to suffer.
I had used my vampire speed to get to him, and when I pressed my hand on his thick neck, I could hear his thoughts. I ended up getting one of those ‘gifts’ Audrey had warned me about.
“I don’t want to die.”
His big black eyes stared at me, a tear escaping from the inky pools. I could feel his pain, and it was a feeling I never wanted to experience again.
I was selfish in that moment. I had been alone, learning how to be a vampire on my own, and never coming across another like me. I was lonely for a companion. I sliced my palm open with my fangs, opened his mouth, and squeezed my hand into a fist to allow a few drops of blood to land on his tongue.
I stroked his neck, doing my best to calm him in his biggest moment of fear.“I have to kill you now if you want to be by my side for whatever time I have left. You like the name Romeo, by chance?”
I was a big fan of Shakespeare.
“Save me,”he begged.
I wrapped my arms around his neck, my heart at my throat.“It will only hurt for a second, I promise,”I told him.
Romeo nudged me, almost as if he were urging me to do it.
With my new strength, I snapped his neck, and his limp head fell into my lap. I laid him on the ground and stepped away to give him space. His neck cracked into place, aligning his cervical spine again. He reared back on his hind legs and tossed his two front legs in the air, neighing louder than the thunder rolling above us. The gunshot wound stitched itself back together, leaving him reborn into the monster I’ve been fighting like hell to accept.
His eyes bled from black to scarlet. His face became sunken and more skeletal. Fangs gleamed in the sun as he reared his head back and neighed, feeling the power of his new life.
The only thing I remember thinking was,“How the hell do I feed a vampire horse? What was I thinking?”
Over the years, Romeo and I have learned that his eyes stay red, and he likes to hunt in the woods by himself. He eats other animals, ranging from squirrels to deer, only a few times a week. He’s self-sufficient.
