Missi would never tell Duke for as long as she lived…. but seeing him take flight actually had her in chills over what he was.
A vampire.
A creature of the night.
From the highest tower of his castle, she saw him step onto the window ledge. His top hat tumbled off his head behind him, knocked back by the top of the window hole. He unlatched the key from his neck and his cape slipped off his shoulders. His hands hovered in the air, reaching out for something unknown before him. Then he took a nose dive off the window ledge.
For an instant, Missi assumed suicide and stepped forward to stop the attempt. However, she recalled that he was a lot tougher than he appeared and worst comes to worst, she could always resurrect him. So she held herself back and watched. Something deep inside her delighting in seeing him fall to his doom.
Instead, his fall was slowing down, almost as if he was floating on his descent down. His eyes glowed red in the night and his grin stretched so far that it tore his face in half. His fangs grew, the rest of his teeth becoming more jagged and longer. She might have sworn that his teeth extended past his chin, but his arms crossed over his face in a twisted embrace. His white spindly claws stretched and contorted into sharp hooks. His arms sprung open, revealing a bat with a mouthful of sharp teeth and a wingspan so large that it seemed to obscure the skies. He was beyond recognition, flying over the trees and around the castle roof tops.
She gripped the cane tighter, prepared to take him down if he came flying at her. He didn’t. Instead he seemed to pay her no mind. He dipped and dove in the air, flying high up to the moon and then free falling down only to open his wings just a few feet from the ground and swerving upwards.
She envied his freedom of flying. In her human days, Missi had not been the most athletic. Too many times of falling off the rope in gym class had cured her of any determination to improve her physical prowess. Now as a vampire, Missi hardly had any fear of falling down endless tunnels and rabbit holes.
Why did she not fly? It should not be any different from falling and it appeared that Duke was falling and flying. Aerodynamics? The wind catching under his wings? She should be able to figure out, couldn’t she?
She had taken to vampire life like a fish to water.
Why should flying be any different?
Flying was different. Somehow, there was no spell for flying in the library. No spell to conjure wings. No spell to transfigure into a bat. No spell to float. It was as if whoever had written these books decided that flight was something so natural for vampires, that there was no need for an instruction manual. Missi wondered if there was a book out in the world that had instructions on how to walk. Maybe she could summon her shadow to fly her? But it wouldn’t be the same as Duke had done. He had just fallen out of the window and transformed before her very eyes and started to fly. No he hadn’t just fallen. He had slowed his fall. A spell to control gravity perhaps?
She scanned the shelves for another book on controlling forces.
“Once a nerd, always a nerd, I suppose.” He said so matter of factly.
She turned to face him.
He leaned against the door frame, arms crossed over each other just as one leg crossed over the other. His hat was tilted over his face and hid away a red eye.
“I guess old habit die hard.” he chuckled.
“What do you want, Duke?” Missi hissed. She was not in the mood to deal with him at the moment. That smug bastard. What was he smiling about?
“It’s been a week since you’ve done anything to me. Except for the fact that I know you constantly plot my death, anyone else might have thought that you’ve grown tired of me.” He moved off of the door frame and came into the library with swagger.
“When am I never not tired of you, Duke?” Missi asked in false sweetness.
In greater sweetness, he replied, “I suppose it was when you decided to bring me back from the dead, my dear.”
She hissed at him, swiping at the air between them with her claws. “I only brought you back from the dead to say fuck you!” she corrected him.
He was directly in front of her. He leaned in over her. “Are you sure it wasn’t to fuck you?”
With her other hand, she reached up to tear his face off. He recoiled back, narrowly missing her nails.
She took to watching him now.
Her disguise was a book in her lap.
His frequency of flying increased.
Although she told herself that she was focused on seeing his process to how he started flying, her eyes would still wander to watch his acrobatics in the sky. Seeing him flying, she longed ever more to fly. Was it because it was a human dream to fly? Or was it because he was capable of it?
Out in the woods surrounding the castle, she could only hear his wings flapping. Occasionally the leaves of the tree in which she sat rustling. Now she heard the sound of his wings approaching closer. He didn’t stop next to her on the branch she was sitting at.
He settled on the opposite side of the tree at a branch level to hers. There was a poof of smoke and he returned to his original form, hanging upside down on the branch by his knees.
She turned a page of her book, going from pretending to reading to actually reading.
“Aw… you think I don’t notice you looking at me?”
She stiffened, surprised at how observant he had been.
“I’m trying to decide whether I should have you stuffed and mounted in your bat form or this form. Honestly, I can’t tell which form is the most gruesome.”
“You have a murderous glare in your eyes when you plot my death.” he pointed out. “There’s something else there… longing?”
She turned another page of her book.
“Not for me, of course. You long for me just as much as I long for you. Tell me, Missi. What is it you want?”
“Your head on a silver platter.” she said.
“That I can’t help you with.” he shrugged.
He unhooked his legs from the branch and floated down to the ground. Once he was upright, he headed back to the castle.
“I want to fly.” she answered him.
He turned around, looking over his shoulder. “You want to fly?”
She searched for any jeering or callous humour in his expression but found none.
“Don’t you know how to fly?”
She shook her head. “I wouldn’t be sitting here if I knew how.”
He snorted. Then he bent in half, clutching his stomach. Then he threw his head back and laughed like she had told him the funniest joke in the world. Indignant at his laughter, she jumped down from the tree, but not before swinging the cane at his head.
He fell back to the ground, rubbing the side of his head. “You can’t blame me for laughing. What kind of vampire can’t fly?”
“What kind of vampire gets killed because he was too busy thinking with the head between his legs?” He got up, brushing the dirt from his clothes.
“Keep that up, won’t you.”
He didn’t walk away. He stood, as if waiting for her to do something next. Did he want an apology? An offer? A trade? She didn’t know how long they stood at a standstill like that for, but she knew it was not for long. Nor could they afford to do this for long. Sunrise was a few hours away.
“Please.” she began. “Please show me how to fly.”
“… Alright.” He held his hand out to her. Both of them were shocked at his answer, more so he appeared surprised at himself for even agreeing.
Caution told her to be careful but Rational reminded her that she still had magic. If he let her fall, she could always summon her shadow and kill him after.
She took his head, momentarily mesmerized at seeing how small her hand was in his grip.
He motioned for her to come closer, an arm wrapped around behind her to push her into him.
“Stand on my feet.”
She obeyed.
She felt him rise off the ground. Instinctively, she wrapped an arm around him, not wanting to fall. His hand let go of hers and carried her off his feet so that he held her to his chest like she was a child to him.
His nose brushed by her cheek and she turned her face away from his. Higher and higher, they rose from the ground. A weight grew in her stomach. He was going to drop her.
“Missi” Duke murmured. She stayed motionless in his embrace. And suddenly, the two of them were falling.
Exhilaration and fear seized her heart, but she never closed her eyes.
She saw him smile, fangs poking under his lips.
She couldn’t help but smile back too.
“Never thought I’d see you falling for me!”
She shook her head, “Don’t you mean with you?”
The entire night, he never let go of her.
The next night, she stepped off the ledge of the tallest tower window and disappeared in a cloud of bats.
TheOriginalGodsGirlRachel 