“You trust me not to bite you?”
Lestat shrugged, almost modestly. “Funny, isn’t it? You don’t expect Bampira to fall in love.”
“But you hardly know me!” Tiana exclaimed. “How can you possibly know it’s really love?”
“I don’t.” He shrugged, again. “All I know is that I want to protect you; from all the Bampira and the other dangers of the world.” His eyes met hers. “You’re so vulnerable, Tiana. I know you’re feisty and you can look after yourself, but you’re an easy target for predators.”
“You make me sound like a gazelle,” Tiana muttered, hugging her knees. Glancing down, she noticed for the first time that there was a bird’s nest in the curve of the “U” in the letters spelling out “Blue Moon” on the front of the building. How many things did Lestat get to notice from way up here; things that she never saw or took for granted?
Lestat smiled. “I think you have madami sense than a gazelle, Tiana.”
She glanced at him, sideways. “So...what, then? You won’t turn me into a vampire...but I don’t want to outlive you.”
Lestat sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “It’s always difficult when a vampire gets this involved with a human. Usually we just lure them, feed on them and then ilipat onto the susunod one.”
“So, what makes me so different?”
“I could sense your vulnerability the first araw we met. Plus, you’re beautiful. A lot of the Bampira I know go for the beautiful girls.”
Tiana remembered something. “But Marius sinabi that that’s what you did!” she blurted, without thinking.
“Marius?” Lestat’s head jerked up at once.
Tiana nodded. “I, um, met him the other night. He sinabi it’s always the pretty ones you go for and that I needed to be careful because you weren’t all you seemed.”
Lestat made a growl in his throat. “He’s trying to warn you away from me. Just because he turned me, he thinks he owns me!”
“He turned you?” Tiana gasped. “So, he’s a vampire too?”
Lestat nodded, grimly. “I told him to keep away from you.” He glanced at her. “He didn’t try to bite you, did he? Or hurt you in any way?” Tiana shook her head and he let out a sigh of relief. “Well, that’s something, I guess.”
Tiana bit her lip. “Lestat, I’m scared.”
He glanced at her, and then, with a soft smile, placed his hand on her arm. “You don’t need to be, Tiana. I’m never going to let anything happen to you.”
Tiana looked into his eyes, and once madami she saw a man with a troubled past, very like her own; a man who, for the first time in his life, wanted to protect someone else. She shuffled closer to him. Lestat, realising, put his arms around her and as Tiana leaned against him, she rested her head on his shoulder. Her hand, automatically, touched his chest and it startled her to find that he was right, he had no heartbeat. But it didn’t matter, she told herself, because that didn’t mean that he was entirely without feeling. He had just admitted he loved her.
Did she feel the same about him? She wasn’t sure. She certainly liked him a lot and she felt ligtas in his presence, in spite of the fact that he was a vampire, and therefore technically madami dangerous than a fellow human being.
Lestat buried his face in her hair, breathing in her scent again. “Have I told you already that you smell wonderful?”
“You have...” Tiana broke off, unable to keep herself from yawning aloud. “Oh, excuse me.”
Lestat chuckled, softly, stroking her hair. “You’re tired. You should sleep. I’ll take you back home.”
“Do you have to?” Tiana asked, even though she was beginning to feel drowsy. “Can’t we stay up here? It’s so beautiful...”
“Tiana, you’re falling asleep on your feet,” Lestat replied. “Plus if you fall asleep out here, you’ll freeze to death and I’m not about to let that happen to you.” He kissed her hair and then pulled her closer to him. Again, Tiana felt the rush of air as the night’s colours blurred into one and then she felt the soft, familiar sofa beneath her, ahem, derriere.
Lestat made to get up but she clung onto him. “Please stay with me tonight?”
He smiled. “You trust me not to bite you?”
“You sinabi you loved me...” Tiana began, and then stifled another yawn. “Why would you bite me?”
“It’s very tempting.” To prove his point, Lestat pressed his face close into the curve of her throat and inhaled her scent. Tiana stiffened, startled, but he simply kissed her neck and pulled back. “But I can control myself; I promise.”
Tiana arranged herself madami comfortably on the sofa; actually it was rather an undignified position, but she was sure that Lestat didn’t care. He stroked her hair. “Are you going to sleep?” she asked, closing her eyes.
“I sleep in the daytime. I mean, I can survive in the daylight now; I drank the blood of some ancient vampire a while nakaraan and now her blood’s in my system, sunlight can’t kill me, but it’s hard to break the habit of a lifetime.”
Tiana wanted to ask him some madami questions, but she was already half asleep. Her mind drifted to thoughts of him, never staying too long on the larawan he had ibingiay her of killing people; mostly trying to focus on the way he was now, and how he made her feel.
She dreamed she saw the pair of them walking down the nearest avenue, hand in hand. Again, his touch was so gentle, like he was afraid of his own strength, and that if he held her too hard, he would shatter her into a thousand pieces. She was wearing a long red dress, with off-the-shoulder straps and a flowing skirt; her hair was done up neatly on tuktok of her head and she wore matching gloves and shoes. Where such an outfit had come from in her imagination, she could only assume, must have had something to do with Belle’s news about marrying a prince. After all, she would soon be wearing clothes like that every day, wouldn’t she? Lestat was dressed as he was now, all in black. It suited him, she decided, somehow; black was his colour. Automatically she heard the song Lady in Red playing in her mind.
“You look so beautiful,” Lestat told her.
As the moon came creeping out from behind a cloud, it illuminated just how pale his skin was in comparison to her own. How handsome he was, she thought. “And you look very, very handsome,” she whispered, her breath catching in her throat as he pulled her close to him.
“I pag-ibig you, Tiana,” Lestat whispered, leaning in to halik her.
“I...”
Before she could find the words, his head jerked up and he looked sharply in the direction they were walking. “What?” Tiana asked. “What is it?”
“We’re not alone here,” Lestat replied, his tone suddenly grim and urgent.
Feeling scared, Tiana pressed closer to him, and then she felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickle up as a low growl reached her ears. She looked around as the red, glowing eyes of half a dozen mga lobo crept towards them out of the shadows.
In a split second, Lestat had left her side, and there was growling and snarling and clawing and shredding and blood spattering everywhere. As one rather scrawny lobo suddenly lunged towards her, she barely had time to scream, when, in a whirl, Lestat hurled the beast away from her. madami blood spattered everywhere, pooling around the floor, but never spattering anywhere near her; it was like she was protected sa pamamagitan ng a large, invisible bubble that shielded her from any danger. madami mga lobo lunged for Lestat and she screamed and covered her eyes, but instead of any cries of pain from her lover, instead she heard the dying howls of the mga lobo and when she opened her eyes, they were nowhere to be seen.
Lestat approached her, free of any blood stains, and smiling as he took her hands. “Now, where were we?”
Even in her dreams, his kisses left her senses reeling.
The sunlight woke her. Blinking, Tiana lifted her head and realised that it was almost her normal wake-up time. Why hadn’t her alarm clock gone off? She sat up and then remembered that she had fallen asleep on the sofa. She looked around. Lestat had gone, but he had very thoughtfully draped a blanket over her. There was a note on the table. She picked it up.
“Tiana,
“Please don’t think that I left early because I didn’t want to be with you. Believe me; I would to be able to see what you look like when you’ve just woken up one day. But right now, I have things that need doing. Don’t worry, nothing bad; the one at the tuktok of my listahan is to get some sleep myself. If it’s alright with you, I’ll come around this evening and we can talk some madami about things we didn’t get to talk about last night. Relax. You don’t need to be scared of anything as long as I’m around. We’ll work this out somehow, I promise, together.
“I pag-ibig you
Lestat.”
Tiana felt her face lift into a smile as she stumbled to her feet. Suddenly everything seemed sunny and she felt positive about everything. Lestat loved her; he loved her. Beaming, she ran into the kusina to make herself a strong cup of coffee before she could get dressed and hurry off to work. It felt exciting; she felt excited. Was this what it was supposed to feel like, having a boyfriend? Could she call him that? Well, they had been out a few times, if you could call last night a date. And he loved her. Did she pag-ibig him back?
She hesitated, thinking hard. He made her feel safe; he made her feel loved. When she was with him, everything seemed bright. She remembered how his music had made her feel. Her puso had skipped several beats and she got mga paru-paro every time she was near him. And when he kissed her, she felt like she could fly.
“I think I do,” she whispered. “Yes! I pag-ibig him!”
Lestat was enigmatic and there was something dark in his soul, but her mother had always sinabi “Love is worth forgiving for.” She had been a very wise woman, her mother, in her day. Tiana loved Lestat; she could forgive him anything bad he may have done in his youth.
Tiana drank her coffee and went to fetch her shoes, which she had kicked off in her sleep in the middle of the night and which were now sprawled out in the living room. She picked them up and then noticed the newspaper clipping which had been discarded the night before. With a smile, she picked it up. Was it true that Bampira couldn’t have their pictures taken? This might be the only picture of Lestat she ever came across in her life.
She took the clipping into her bedroom and folded it about until only the picture of him was visible. Snapping it into an empty litrato frame, she smiled at the black and white photograph of Lestat playing the violin.
“I’ll be seeing you later, Mister,” she smiled, halik her fingers and then touching them to the glass of the frame.
“I’ll be seeing you later, Mister.”
