Sleep, Those Little Slices of Death

Why, precisely, the bat so deeply craved something warmed with blood to press against cold bones as he slept was a mystery. It veered very near to being a character flaw, this thirst; but, as in most of his predilections, it tasted of domination and hinted blackly at deep, dark depths of awful desire.

Perhaps he relished the instinctual tightness of sleep-stained fear, greedily drank in the soft twitches and moans that were the symptoms of dreams he would never again experience. Maybe he was drawn inexorably to the rhythmic flutter of a living heart dutifully counting out each second. Perchance the heat that bled from their veins and warmed his cool flesh eased him sweetly into the black water of his preternatural sleep. Whatever the case, when the mood struck, he held his wretched victim close to his chest the way a wolf worried a bloodied bone, his deathlike slumber undisturbed by the troubled tension in the tendons of his prey pulled near.

The omen had doubtless become accustomed to the dreaded ritual. It was impossible to predict, but the nights were inevitable that the bat would slip silent from his roost and pad, cat-like, to whatever miserable patch of shadow the boy had claimed for a bed. Entombed beneath the death-shroud of his heavy wings, he was helpless to do much more than recoil from the tepid heat of his master’s body and wait for sleep or morning to release him.

Tonight, long after the sun had dipped beneath the horizon and the shadow of dark wings had claimed their prey, the bat shifted in his sleep. His claws flexed, inadvertently deadly, and the muscles of his legs shivered. Entangled as he was under his master’s attentions and attentive to every movement, the omen was likely to be jerked from his restless dreaming by the sudden, gut-wrenching sensation of fangs at his throat.

The bat had not awakened. The move was instinctual, the compulsion to sever arteries running deeper than genetics or disease could account for, but no less horrifying to feel the cool curve of teeth against skin. He sighed softly. His breath was uncannily chill. The hoarfrost of white eyebrows shivered, as though he trembled along the thin edge of waking, before stilling once more. He settled into sleep, folded back against the omen’s body with his lips still pressed into the slender arch of his throat.

The gesture, although wholly unconscious, carried with it a keenly predatory affection. There was something intimate in the touch of his lips, the caress of his body. However, thrumming just below the surface, the movement was one of utter possession that whispered darkly,

“I live in you, in your bones, the delicate coils of your mind. I made you. I formed the thoughts you find, the moods you carry. Your blood whispers my name. Even in rebellion, you are mine.”

And this, more than anything, was apt to curl the boy’s fingers into a fist and set his teeth against each other in a silent snarl that would never be voiced. The certainty of its truth pounded against him with every cool breath from the vampire’s lips, it lived in the shadow of sleeping jaws that nestled at the hollow of his purple-scarred throat.

“Even in rebellion, you are mine. Mine.”

Even when sleep finally coerced the wretched gamin into its grasp, he seldom looked at rest. The muscles about his youthful lips never softened, nor did the joints which forced his jaw to clamp and grind release. He filled the air with the gentle music of lonely sickrooms, of dying children gasping out their final breaths. But though he might have longed for it, this child would never die.

Still, fretting was tiresome work, and even the torture of fighting for dreams against the vampire’s heart had become tolerable, easier over time. Wonderfully adaptable though it seemed he was, the threat to his scarred throat was enough to send a current a terror surging through every limb. Like a reanimated corpse he awoke, wide eyes casting a frail beam of light into the blackness before him. He did not dream deep enough to be sluggishly incoherent, he was always waiting for moments like this. And he continued to wait, swallowing softly against the sharpened points as he focused tensely into nothingness. Fabien had discovered patience, but the sigh was nearly enough to break him. It drew from a single soft, high note of terror from the back of his throat. Not discouraged, he willed his body to be still, not to struggle and squirm, but only to wait. But his heart was not easily consoled; he could feel it pounding against his tongue like a wild creature though he begged it to calm.

The terrible irony of it, the most miserable repercussion was that he sought solace through prayer. He knew no incantations that would lull the vampire back to rest; there was nothing he could chant beneath his breath in shuddering whispers. Instead, he called out to whatever unseen forces might look favourably on him, he begged to deaf ears. And when he felt his master relax against him once more, when his cold bumped skin was released, tears of gratitude pricked the corners of his eyes.
Even then he did not dare to move. Even though the sudden tension of his limbs had shifted his weight, caused the boy to crush the flow of blood through his arm, he did not even attempt to flex his fingers. His breath returned in a gush, and his nervous fingertips longed to rub tenderly into the purpled flesh of his eyelids.

Yes, he was his. Every fearful breath, every nervous twitch of an ear was somehow orchestrated from the slightest motion of the vampire’s body. But he was not yet numb, fear that melted into waxy relief soon hardened, and he hardened with it. Like a disgruntled lover he altered his position, seeking to twist his vulnerable throat away from the bat’s dreadful mouth and cold breath.

It was one small move of defiance.