Greetings to my dear readers, do you sit alone? I do hope so. For if your fingers find your own skin and feel a need to caress… If I can stir these feeling inside you then I have done my job telling a story of erotic nights and surrendered wrists to appetites unknown. Can you feel the heat in my tale? Then let us get to the story. Where most tales start at the beginning as to let the reader adjust to the place and time their mind now is pulled into, I am going to start this story right where is gets interesting. Right in the core of passion.

Chapter one: Meeting with the Angel of Death

Silken fingertips on her skin, my hands slaves to her body. The figure of her moving in the darkness, body arched as if a cat in heat. My lips on her neck, skin hot and almost scalding. She moans and it makes me take a step back my eyes looking at the door, the bolt still in place.

"Please good sir, do not leave me like this finish what you have started." Her breathy plea.

I grinned to myself keeping my fangs just under my lips. "And what have you milady? No resistance? No way of waiting?"

She turned towards me and I saw the tears staining her pale cheeks, I would have to stop playing my games and take her to that place, a place where all the days stress dissolves. A place where I am her only love, where she is not a married girl of a poor house.

"I beg of you!" She cried.

I nodded to her and took her face in my hands, "My sweet, we cannot continue this passion, you are married and I am not one to return to the same house twice."

She fell asleep in my arms as I spoke my magic on her skin, her body sagged against me and I smiled. Why did they always have to be this difficult, I offer them a lustful fantasy and they become addicted? I sighed and placed her tenderly on her old cotton sheets.

"Goodbye milady…wake and love you husband…"

I escaped through her window and stared up at the dark night, no moon shown in the sky only a dark night with stars like diamond exceeding the blue. My cold body felt deprived and alone. I could have feed and I could have made love to the girl but without the chase and knowing I would be all she saw made me feel less apt then usual. Granted she was a beauty but it would be problematic more then helpful. I fisted my hands in my wispy brown curls, the color of chocolate. I felt the stirrings of hunger and need. This deadly hunger to be satisfied, a cursed hunger. No matter how many times I fed I would always remain empty and starved. Always feel like I needed more. Never happy with what I received or took. My dark lashes framed my needy golden eyes cupped with a hue of green.

"Get off me wench! Or I swear you'll meet God before your time."

I heard a gruff voice, which sounded heavy with liquor.

"That's too bad! Give me back my coins or I will send you to hell where you belong, you drunkard."

I perked a slender brown brow at the ladies harshly innocent voice proceeding a large bang from where the voices continued. I listened intently.

"Whore you'll pay for that."

"I already have, just trying to get you erect, you'd be better of a eunuch since you cannot do anything with it."

I heard the sound of flesh meeting flesh the sound of abuse and fighting, better leave it alone. I never did like to bother with prostitutes and patrons. It was none of my business yet…

"Shite the whore, she died on me."

Now that caught my attention, the man was a murderer, their blood was sick but always left me feeling like a saint. Hard to explain but I now had a craving to kill this man and drain him almost to the end letting him lay on his back in the street slowly leaving this world while people stared and did not attempt to help. My boots hit the cobblestone and I found a rather large man standing over a woman in a dirty yellow dress, No blood but the smell of disease and death. I caught the man in the throat my fangs sinking in just as quick as I appeared, his heart beating loudly in my ears. His blood salty and thick filling my veins as the blood flowed from his. I took his life down many years until he had maybe a few hours left. I then ripped my long fangs from his neck and let his body drop without care. I stepped over him and then over the prostitute, ready to go home since I fed I had no reason to wander, after all the dawn was fast approaching and I had a mile or so to go. A moan of pain reached my ears.

"I don't want to die yet… help me please…" The girl whispered.

Now everything in my said to let her die to walk away and leave her there, but even as my mind spit out these thoughts I picked her up and felt her weightless and broken in my arms. I got a good look at her battered face, bruises blossomed on her left cheek and around her eye, her lip was split and caked with dry blood. She opened the eye that was untouched and stared at me with eyes the color of swirling despair that color was black. I have seen many eyes and hers stood out. They were hollow as the dead but I could see a slight glint of hope and strength in them. She coughed and winced bringing me back from the depths of her painful eyes. I carried the girl to an abandoned house where I placed her broken form down on a cot left behind by previous inhabitants. She screamed in agony as I put her down. Her hand flew to her chest.

"I can't breathe too much pressure…."

I ripped her dress from her chest and stared down at her breasts which would have been a magnificent sight, their roundness and shape more beautiful then Venus herself. The creamy color and ripe little nipples a sensational sight. I gasped at the extent of colorful bruises that extended from under her breast until her rib cage ended. I slowly and without too much pressure began to feel the bones across the cage of her heart, many broken and snapped. She had only a few nights to live. I looked back up into those swirling eyes of hurt and sighed. The pain was so strong it made my heart skip a few beats. Never in all my life, or lives all 172 years had I seen such a deep mounting pain and such a small glare of light protruding from the darkness a light of hope of wanting to survive. Of wanting to be happy. I did not know why she was a girl who pleasured men for money, I did not know why her pain seemed to delve straight into my heart and I did not know why I wanted to save her. When you have been a cursed creature for as long as I had there was nothing worth saving from death, nothing worthy of attention and understanding, all people began to feel like a repeat. I couldn't count how many women begged to be with me, how many would die to be loved by me, but not once had I cared about them. This woman wounded and without the heart to carry on got to me made me feel as if I were her only chance at life.

"I am going to die aren't I?" she whispered somberly.

I didn't answer instead I hesitated, as a vampire I do not ever hesitate to be truthful.

"Its only fair, after all a whore has no life…"

She grabbed for something to relieve the pain and found my hand, she grabbed it firmly and then smiled slightly.

"Think god would let me in heaven, or am I going to be one of many in hell?"

Was she really asking this? I didn't know what to say only that I was sorry.

"Sorry"

She held onto that one word the stranger whispered and slowly began to let herself die. His hand was cold, as cold as death. Death was mounting her taking her into her grave.

"Thank you for the hand, it feels a bit easier to die when someone is sad for me." she tried to smile but failed her young mouth collapsing into a frown. Her sadness overwhelming me. Her eyes haunted my very existence.

I could cure her ailments if I bound her to my own heart's steady beat. Cleaver mistake thinking creatures of the night didn't have a heart, infact they felt more emotions then humans. Would she want this, this gift? She would not be immortal unless I willed it so… but to live? What would she have to go back to?

"If I could have lived life differently I would have been a angel." She laughed but it sounded like a tangled cry. "You know my mama died when I was young and my father sold me to an Irish man. He was kind to me…" She coughed.

"Then he died when I was 14, I turned to selling myself…"

This girl spilling her heart into my emotions so strong I felt like I had known her for years. Her sad tale was nothing new, the desperate streets had thousands of sad endings but hers crept into my heart and made the organ hurt the way she hurt.

"You know today is my birthday, 16 I am."

I blinked my green-gold eyes at her and frowned. This girl was but a child. I tried to think of the many I met with cruel fate, the many who had been too young to die but passsed anyway the ones I could have saved but let die.

"Would you care for a kiss?" The first real words I had spoken to her.

"Even on my deathbed you wish me to waken your prick?" She sounded disgusted and angry.

"I will let you get some rest, It is now dawn and I must rest…. I have been awake all night."

I turned from her harsh cynicism and broken spirit, did I have a reason to want her to believe I was different when in fact I wasn't. I had no right to try and give her the gift, no right at all. If this girl wanted to die then I would let her. I above all knew what it was like to want to die because life was cruel. I often wondered, with someone you love would it be so hard to will life within yourself? Alas love was a fleeting lie and a thing for artistic imagination. Could I grow to love her? I left the thought at that and left the room to find a tight-fitting closet or pantry of some kind. As the dawn took over the sky I fell into a deep sleep and her eyes darkening my dreams and haunting my thoughts.

I felt the stirrings of nightfall and mobilized my body. I could not get her out of my head. I went up stairs and pushed open the bedroom door, she lay still and unmoving. I rushed over to the small cot and felt for a pulse. Her pulse slow as if it might not start again for another beat. Her body was as cold as my own, which since I was death that was very cold. I grabbed her hands and placed them in mine blowing my hot breath onto them, her fingers began to warm. When I glanced at her sleeping face I became more aware, she had long raven hair to match the dark eyes, her hair was slightly curled at the ends, her lips were, if not for the cut, plump and full, she had a very sensual look about her. No wonder she was able to use her looks to get by. Her cheeks were the slightest pink I had to wonder if they were from the cold and sickness or a natural blush. She had a small sprinkle of freckles across her nose and two dimples on her cheeks. She was obviously young and very beautiful. Suddenly her eyes fluttered to life and she stared at me with those violently attractive eyes.

"What is it you find so appealing about death sir, no one else would have dared pick up a stray whore… I might've been deceased or dead." She cursed "Shite on my grave you must be mad."

Such things shouldn't have come from such a delectable mouth. I smiled as pleasantly as I could and exposed my fangs.

She covered her mouth and let a prayer rest on her lips. "Dear father in heaven, hallow be thy name…. What are you?"

I lowered my eyes and whispered, "Cursed…"

I felt a hand on my own, just as cold. "Are you going to release me Angel of Death?"

I met her eyes with mine her pain as visible as my own she reflected something inside me that yearned to free her and I smiled charmingly, "Yes I am My Lady. I am here to bring you out of this misery, to liberate you from pain and despair, to see your eyes fill with that hope that is trying so hard to get out. I am here to unshackle your very soul and unleash you."

She stared at me with a grateful look, "Tell me Angel of Death will you make it painless… I am afraid." She closed her cruel orbs and whispered. "I knew you were an Angel from the moment you looked at me with those bright eyes of yours. Fangs like a demon, you are deceiving my lord I am not worthy of your mercy."

I leaned over her and then tucked my hands under her slender form and lifted her into my arms. I pulled her into my lap and slid my hands over her stomach wanting to ease her pain. I looked down at her and wished to take away that suffering heart. To bring her back. Then I softly moved away some of her dark hair which covered the nape of her curved neck like a curtain. My tongue flicked out to meet her skin, cold as ice. I longed to put a fire inside of her body and see her feel passion the way a man and women are meant to feel, not the icy embrace of a harlot. I inhaled her scent fresh, but ill. I knew once she did not hurt she would flourish. I held her close for an instant and just hovered my mouth over her skin, was this the right thing to do? Drain away her life in a pleasurable way. I was about to kill this girl, but was it really killing if she had the stench of death wrapped around her so tight I could not breathe when so close?

Well dearest readers I hoped you enjoyed this story of passion and pain. Maybe it will not turn out the way it started, just like with life, things change and grow. Continue reading the second and last half of this story to find out what happens… you may catch yourself surprised…

Tell me did you enjoy the first chapter of this unique tale? Do you expect death or life to come of this? Give me your input my dearest reader and I shall give you an ending of endings... I will put up the second and last half along with an alternate ending if you will... because things don't always go as planned... but wouldn't it be nice to know what could have been? Stay tuned for chapter two: Released from Despair... Coming to you soon.