Addiction

Part 3

Oh my God, Daniel, I thought rousing from my memories, and again there was that strange, but meanwhile familiar feeling of constriction in my chest. It started so perfectly that night! What happened then that drew us apart?

Little things at first. Trivial remarks. Careless gestures. Traitorous glances.

I should have known, should have recognized these first treacherous signs. After all, Daniel was not the first mortal with whom I had shared my life. No, that's not true! I never shared anything with anyone of them - neither my feelings, nor my blood. The only thing I was desperately craving for, like a starving man hungers for bread, was their liveliness. I not only wanted to drink up their blood, but suck up all their energy, their frantic will to live. I so desperately wanted to be alive again.

With Daniel, however, it was different. It was not only his recklessness and impetuosity that was almost infectious or his total lack of awe in face of the truly terrifying creature I should have been for him.

The truth was Daniel had touched my heart.

But although I loved him, I made mistakes, crucial mistakes as I know now.

First of all, I shouldn't have introduced him to that jet-set way of living. Since our first meeting I had chased Daniel around the globe, so one might have thought we would have decided putting up residence at one single place for a longer period of time. But somehow we had become so accustomed to change cities by the week that we continued that frenzied travelling. Today in Hong Kong, tomorrow in Sydney, then back to the States only return to Europe a few months later to spend the summer at the Mediterranean.

I showered him with riches: high-priced watches, designer clothes, a speedboat, a black Ferrari, what on earth was good and precious. Not that these possessions actually meant very much to him. Daniel is someone who is completely at ease when travelling let say through the Gobi desert with a backpack only, living on water and a bowl of rice a day. From working as a freelance reporter he knew quite well how it is not to know whether you can pay the rent at the end of the month. Therefore, it often astounded me how effortlessly he adapted to this new lifestyle, acting as if it was nothing unusual for him to have numerous servants at his disposal each of them only waiting to fulfil his wishes.

As I was there all the time to grant him everything he desired, well, almost everything ...

In fact, all these material possessions were not essential to him, they only made him more aware of the transient state of his own existence. "Look at this beautiful China vase. What is it, Ming Dynasty, Tang Dynasty?" he once said, lifting the delicate porcelain from its place on a pedestal. "Whatever," he remarked indifferently and let it deliberately drop from his hands so that the priceless object split up into a thousand pieces.

"Don't look at me like this, sweetheart," he sneered. "This is what has happened to my life ... this is all that's left of me, a countless number of jagged pieces, that will never be whole again." He shrugged his shoulders. "But what does it matter? After all, this vase may be precious, but it's interchangeable. You can easily replace it, as you can replace me. Isn't it so, Armand?"

How bitter tasted these words and how they hurt me. Still, I should have given him some sort of confirmation that this comparison lacked all substance, was completely warped indeed. True, he was infinitely precious to me, but I would never consider him as an object and positively not as someone who could ever be substituted. I should have tried to explain my feelings then, but while I was still struggling for the right words, he had already got up and left the room.

Another missed chance.

Perhaps I shouldn't have started those little sensual experiments with other mortals that aroused Daniel and me likewise. I liked to watch him bed those men or women and I knew he, too, liked me to watch. And it's certainly not true that all these people only fell for me.

I remember one evening we spent at the Ramblas in Barcelona. Daniel had been waiting for me in one of the many street side cafes, obviously too long, for when I finally showed up around midnight he and a dark-haired beauty were engaged in the most animated discussion consisting of a wild mixture of English and Spanish scraps, the major part of this conversation, however, being of a non-verbal nature with glances and gestures easily conveying what couldn't be expressed with words.

So it didn't come as a surprise that later that night the three of us ended up in our hotel suite, Daniel and the girl a little drunk from too many glasses of cava and I drunk on the sight of them making love on that large old oak table we at other times used for our poker sessions.

While working the girl as if in a trance, Daniel's eyes never left mine, as if it was me whose body he kissed and caressed. And I couldn't turn my eyes away from him, couldn't get enough of looking at his slender body, moving with lascivious grace, tiny beads of sweat forming between his shoulders, that delicious scent of mortal arousal clinging to him. But what excited me even more was listing to those sounds of heavy breathing. Ah, I knew him so well, my love, when he had come thus far, I could tell he was only a few breaths away from heaven. How I loved, when I made love to him, to keep him hanging on that fine edge for seconds that could open out into a small eternity until he was almost pleading for the final release.

I smiled when Daniel, with an imperceptible move of his head, beckoned me to join them, being only too willing to comply with his command ...

But of course, he seldom saw those men or women a second time. We never established lasting contacts or even friendships. After all, how could that have been possible? We both kept a secret.

In the end, I fear, these encounters only embittered Daniel, added to the notion that for me he was just another mortal to play with, easily to be replaced, " a toy for some years, perhaps for a decade" as he termed it, nothing more.

Ah, modern sensibility ... ! I come from a time when sexuality was not so complicated as it seems nowadays - and although mortals speak a lot of "free love", they have a bad conscience when they actually practice it, as deep down in their hearts they keep searching for the one and only.

But, after all, is our kind so different when it comes to that?

The worst mistake, however, I most probably made was to let him taste my blood.

Naturally, when we made love I drank from him, often, very often, but some drops only, and much of it was returned when I came, spending myself within him. That extra boost of my blood would make Daniel climax fiercely, sending violent spasms through his body. And he would call out my name then.

It was wrong, however.

I should have known better.

These small, but powerful infusions of my blood changed him completely, made him see the world around him with different eyes. And made him hunger for more. What I gave him was never enough.

It is true what he accused me of, that I made him an addict. Our blood is a powerful drug. But what he didn't realize I had become addicted as well. To him. I simply could not let him go.

In those moments I became aware that, all of a sudden, the pendulum had started to swing in the opposite direction. The years of bliss and happiness were over, and while at the beginning it had seemed as if the whole wide world was open to us, I now felt trapped.

Sometimes, late at night when I lay next to him, listening to his silent heartbeat, I almost hated him. Hated him for being the living proof that after five hundred years of this unnatural existence I was still human, for what else did we share but an all too human love affair with all its trivial ups and downs? Hated him for making me feel dependent, me who had sworn to myself that I would never again need anyone and nor love anyone.

There were instants when I thought: "Kill him, right now, while he sleeps and that's the end of it!"

But I couldn't. I never could have done it, for killing him would have been my death sentence, too.

So we went on, hovering between sheer rapture at times and absolute misery at others.

Of course, Daniel sensed that my feelings for him had changed and that unnerved him even further. However, his ways of expressing that could vary greatly: at times he would act as if he couldn't care less. "Here comes my love," he would sneer ironically. "Just look at him, isn't he spectacular? What is it that draws him to this paltry mortal that is me? Why can't you simply admit that you're just as fed up with me as I'm with you?"

At other times, Daniel openly defied me, flirting like anything with other mortals under my very eyes. Kissing them. Making love to them, as he once did with two young men he had picked up on the Greek island where we had spent some time. And this time, when Daniel looked at me while resting against one of the boys who had wrapped his legs around him and was embracing him from behind while the other one was on his knees between Daniel's opened legs, sucking and licking and kissing my lover's most tender flesh, there was a scornful smile on Daniel's lips and the violet of his eyes was sharp like glass. That time, of course, he would not ask me to join in.

Otherwise, this tableau of sensual pleasures would have excited me, but at that moment it filled me with unspeakable rage, the wrath I felt rising inside of me, threatening to choke me. "I should kill you, all of you". I flung a silent threatening message at him, incensed. "I couldn't care less," Daniel hissed under his breath and closed his eyes.

Somehow, I could cope with all this, but there was one incident that made me feel the amount of his despair that I will never forget. We had travelled to Lhasa, the former residence of the Dalai Lama, as Daniel had wanted to see this ancient city which even until the last century had been forbidden to foreigners.

I still remember the evening when we were on a stone plateau high above the city, down below us the tiny stone buildings huddled next to each other, and above us the stars sparking brightly in the thin and chilly night air. From a distance the wind carried the subdued metallic sounds of the far-off temple bells towards us. We sat there and looked at the distant silhouette of the mountains, majestic, awe-inspiring in their hostile splendour.

"Isn't it strange?" Daniel whispered. "These mountains, they were here a long time before us and they will still be there when we were long dead and gone. No, wrong, excuse me, when I am gone."

What should I have answered him then? I wanted to put my arm around him and pull him closer, but he wouldn't let me. He looked at me for a long, long time and it almost broke my heart when I saw the pain and the hopelessness and the sadness in his eyes. He sighed and turned away.

"But why should I wait so long?" he said all of a sudden, got up and stepped up to the edge of the plateau. He looked up at the sky and then back to me, his gaze unreadable, clouded.

He stretched his arms out wide as if he wanted to embrace the world for one instant.

"You wouldn't catch me, if I fell? Or would you?" And with these words he leaned himself backwards as if there was a wall behind him, but, of course, there was nothing, just an empty space, and let himself fall into the void.

I gasped and for a split second I was paralysed with shock, but then I reacted, almost instinctively and at preternatural speed, and shot down to get hold of him.

I have never asked Daniel afterwards whether he was actually aware that I could lift myself up into the air since I hardly ever use this power. In fact, it took all my strength and concentration in this crucial moment to clutch his hand, bring our mutual descend to a halt and move us safely back to the plateau. It was a matter of seconds only, but when I think back on it, it is as if I experienced these moments in slow motion. The shock, the wind in my ears, the feeling of falling down and down, eerie cries reverberating in my mind, and finally the sudden sensation of getting hold of Daniel's hand.

Only when I laid Daniel gently down on the stony ground the normal pace of time set in again.

He still was in a state of shock, his face distorted, his body rigid. I gathered him in my arms and hugged him, caressing his hair, his face and held him close again while trying to soothe him, murmuring incoherent words of comfort.

"Daniel," I almost cried out. "Daniel, I would never let you fall. Can't you see this? I love you with all my heart. I don't want to lose you!"

He opened his eyes, his voice was almost inaudible. "Then hold me, angelo. Just hold me as if you'd never let me go!"