A Vampayre Christmas

Jasmine loved Christmas - the chill in the air as it wove through her clear and powerful lungs; the lights that in their magical illumination lent mystery and charm to a tarnished city tableaux.  And the music, the music that had called her back to life after her parents' tragic death.  She had stopped speaking but music beckoned her from beyond the throbbing void and she'd responded.  She sang to heal herself and when she'd realized that her talent was epic, she sang to heal others.

She walked backstage during the intermission of the Christmas concert at the American Opera Center.  Major donors and benefactors sat with self-satisfied contentment in the audience.  Gemstones and furs were encapsulated by the theatre's light and held, for a moment, suspended in a perfect moment in time.

Luca waited in her dressing room.  Jasmine had just sung his new composition, a sensual and haunting rendition of "Oh Holy Night".  The music caressed her lips, tongue and lungs.  It filled her body with such completion that she'd imagined a world where people loved one another, gave generously of their time and resources - a world without guns and automatic weapons and the deaths of children, who were the closest to heaven. Children and animals, she thought, the unsullied.

Luca's violet eyes stopped her breath as he searched her golden eyes.  His lips curved in a congratulatory smile, his right lip tilted slightly higher than the left.  The cleft in his chin firm and deep. His arms found her immediately and he inhaled the tender scent of her body, the exhilaration from her performance and her more sensual, darker notes that caused his body to strengthen and formed his resolve to protect her above all else.  Jasmine, for him, was sacred.

The dressing room door rushed open and a frosty current of air froze the room.  Phisto's powerful presence filled the space.  And the two powerful beings consumed all of the air and energy so that remaining in their presence was insupportable.  Jasmine understood that they disliked each other. But she had no knowledge of the feud that had begun during the Renaissance and which was about to consume them all.

"You were  a magical storm, my darling.  The audience wants more of you.  Come, you don't have time to tally with nonsense the intermission will soon be over.  I want you to rest."

"Your conducting was superb, Phisto.  Thank you."

"You inspire me, my dear.  We will do great things together."  Though he didn't look at Jasmine as he spoke, his cobalt eyes challenged Luca.

"She will be prepared for the second half of the program.  I will deliver her safely to the stage." Luca said in a still, deadly voice.

"You have done your part, composer.  She has brought the notes on a page to life.  I have helped her to bring your notations to life.  Now it is time that she and I prepare for the remainder of her triumph."

"Are  you dismissing me?"

"If you want to call it that.  Go play with your notes.  We have music to make."

Luca's eyes pulsed deep purple and his right hand clenched and unclenched as he absorbed Phisto's words.  He stepped forward, his powerful shoulders moving gracefully beneath the exquisitely tailored Armani tuxedo.

"It is you who are superfluous.  Her talent needs no instruction though you are intent on taking credit for her success."

"Careful composer.  You and I have business but now is not the time."

Luca closed his eyes briefly and focused intently on an inner vision.  Phisto grasped and fell onto the coach where Jasmine had rested earlier.  He grew pale and shook his head as though to dislodge an unbearable sound.

A battle was being waged that Christmas Eve.  Visions of angels and saviors had been demolished.  All that remained was the feral scent of two immortal beings who would fight to the death to avenge their past and to accompany Jasmine through her mortal life.

Vampayre's Revenge

Jasmine had had an accident at the audition at the American Opera Center earlier that day.  Luca had taken her to the hospital, holding her in his arms, inhaling the poignant fragrant delicacy of her being.  Her sounds, still, even then, were filled with a gentle compassion.  Jasmine had called his name between her pain filled breaths.  He saw Jasmine's wise hazel eyes when she'd been his wife, Fiora, during the Italian Renaissance.

He'd carried her through the crowds on a large feast day.  They'd finished a performance and the Italians, overcome with emotions, had reached for her.  They were likely to tear her delicate person apart, he'd thought as he lifted her easily and carried her steadily through the cheering throng.

Luca had been filled with gratitude that day as he held her against his racing heart.  Fiora's golden highlighted hair fell across his arms in a long delicate braid that had been woven with seed pearls and flowers.  Fiora's patrons had finally accepted him as a suitable partner.  His newfound musical stature had reassured their greedy natures and they'd consented to their marriage.  They were preparing a meal for them later that day.  His mentor,Cesco, and patron, Vincenzo di Medici, had been invited, no doubt, to also raise her patrons'  stature.

Luca's mind filled with the scents and memories that had fed him these past five hundred years.  While he'd waited for Fiora to return to him, or for death.  But Vampayres were allowed release only when their soul's mission had been completed.  He'd yet to succeed in the fourth trial which would allow him to leave his human body and ascend to higher realms. But he'd not wanted to leave before reuniting with Fiora.  He was man and arch-angel.  Demon and avenging spirit with Christ's compassion and Lucifer's temper and arrogance.  He'd many trials to yet overcome.

Phisto, his beta-noir, his dark night, wanted to destroy Jasmine and bend her talent to the service of his greater fame and fortune.  Luca could not allow that.  And so the demon that he'd created, out of fear, and misguided compassion, as a young Vampayre, had survived and lived to destroy Luca and those whom he loved.  He hadn't loved anyone these many years on earth, apart from Fiora, Cesco and now Jasmine.  He'd heard her sound before she auditioned at the American Opera Center and he knew that the fourth trial was upon him.

He knew that Phisto had manipulated the accident that broke Jasmine's beautiful right hand. It had been his invitation to the final conflict.  Phisto had known that he would get Luca's attention by hurting Jasmine. And he had.  Luca's infinite vision and powers were now trained solely on Phisto.  How could he destroy him if he couldn't love him.  Love was the only weapon that bought that demon to his knees.  Love and gratitude were his only weapons, despite his inhuman strength and gifts.

He prayed and waited for the love to return to his heart.  Now he wanted revenge.  A Vampayre's revenge.

Vampayre Lovers

They walk in beauty like a patch of midnight briefly illumined by the moon.  They are archangels and men.  Vampayres, like humans, have free will and, like humans, struggle with the weight of that particular responsibility.  But they are also archangels who live in the center of passion's fury and integrity's forgiving sword.  They are like an intensified soul twin who has known and experienced your essence for centuries, and who still loves you beyond human capacity.

Jasmine and Luca experience each other in a way that makes my body flush as if the secret petals of my essence have just felt the touch of the sun.   Luca has loved Jasmine through the centuries and is now faced with losing her to his intrepid enemy, Vampire, Phisto.  Their feud has survived hundreds of years as they rose in stature as eminent classical musicians.  

Luca hears each persons' music and vibrations.  He lives in a world buoyant with sound and through the elements of their music, deeply understands human thoughts and motives. Luca's gifts led him to become a preeminent composer whose name today lingers in every music lovers' conversation.  Phisto was tempted by the penetrating power of the orchestra and the desire to control it, and so he became a famous conductor.  Jasmine entered their sphere as a student at the American Opera Center, gifted beyond comprehension, with a voice that heals.

I think of the warrior's path that my love life has become.  I have struggled with shadow men and phantom lovers who could never quite summon the courage to love me the way that I need to be loved.  But when I see Jasmine and Luca together, I know that other elements and other connections exist beyond the outskirts of my limited imagination.  Luca's eyes are a true red violet.  They deepen or lighten according to his emotions.  Luca's eyes immobilize me.  I feel that he has known our Creator and danced with the divinities of the world.  What destiny has bought them together? And I wonder if my destiny has a creature such as he to move with the currents of my soul.  

I never feel as alone as when I face the raw fragility of their love.  Yet the vision also lends a comforting belief that I can continue to live in a world where this, at least, exists.  But I notice how Phisto's cobalt eyes slither over their movements and relationship.  I know that they have but little time before a price is exacted for the joy that they have known.

Game of Thrones - Who will take the Ascendancy? Vampayre? Vampire?

I began to think that it was time to leave New York and to go back to the monks who had trained me so many years ago, eons it seemed.  They taught me to live on the spiritual energy of breath, or prana.  Since I’d lost my beloved wife, Fiora, and I was no longer human, music became my only passion, my life.  So I hadn’t anticipated the way that Jasmine’s scent, how she smiled, sang, and looked had tempted and awakened me, though I should have.  I should have remembered that temptation fed on the complacent soul.  I had become so confident that I’d conquered my true nature that I had almost forgotten that I was a Vampayre. Almost. 

           Vampayres fed on human breath and sucked their victims’ oxygen until they lay drained and dead.  I vowed to destroy my life as an eminent composer before I could get close enough to harm Jasmine or expose her to my particular passion for human breath.  I paused to consider my nature.  After all as a Vampayre, I had exceptional gifts.  We were essentially spiritual creatures, half angel and half man, but like all souls, we Vampayres struggled with free will, but we also possessed extraordinary abilities to charm humans, which challenged their free will.  We had unnatural physical beauty and epic sexual magnetism.  Vampayres were often seduced by music and usually had other worldly musical talents amongst others.  I’ve explained my ability to hear and interpret humans’ sound vibrations.  My abilities extended to animals and other creatures, like Phisto.

           Let me finish, for our gifts are many.  Vampayres also have full, sensual lips and excel at kissing.  Kissing was the more compassionate way that we could kill our victims.  Expertly and gently at first, we would caress their lips with ours and penetrate their mouths until we suffocated them by sucking all of their breath.  Their deaths were essentially pleasant though, for we filled their heads with beautiful music that had accompanied them through their lives.  We lured and consoled them with their individual sound vibration that lulled them into blissful, hypnotic states.  They went peacefully, blissfully even towards death’s caress.

           Beware though, we were also vicious when betrayed and would do anything, anything, to protect our loved ones.  And we Vampayres were also capable of killing in more painful and far less gentle ways.

            But our eyes, our eyes were extraordinary.  They reflected the level of our spiritual development and changed with our growth.  During the past five hundred years my eyes had turned a violet color that deepened or lightened with my state of spiritual attunement.  I had advanced tremendously for this color was associated with one of the highest levels of spiritual attainment.  My eye color also indicated psychic power of attunement with self as well as intuitive, visionary, futuristic, idealistic, artistic and magical gifts.

Violet Destiny Chapter One - Death by Music

Violet Destiny

Jasmine

            When I awaken this summer morning in Venice, I have no premonition that I will be fighting for my life before tomorrow’s dawn; or that my mentor and friend, plans to kill me.  Memories of the last eight pain filled years, like a pale puckered scar, remind me that I have been able to heal, through music and love.  Music has always saved me, I think. 

            Several hours later, before the violet dawn flushes a new day, I walk into the American Opera Center theatre, in New York, to meet my lover, but really, the stage has been set for my death.

            I rush into the theatre, only thinking about his arms and his kiss.  I halt briefly noting that hundreds of candles have been lit and the stage set for Violetta’s death scene in La Traviata.

            I call to my lover and my voice echoes in the acoustical theatre then fades into silence.  I have one thought, and that is to run, but despite my instincts, I still hope that my beloved waits for me there, and my legs move slowly towards the exit.  Then his arms encircle my waist and his breath, heavy with the rich scent of the 1787 Bordeaux Chateaux Lafitte that we shared in better times, you could say, tickles my ear.  Immediately I accept that something has gone desperately wrong. 

            “Ah but you were expecting the other one.  Sorry to disappoint my dear.  But you will see that I am the better choice.  I offer the better life.”

            “You just startled me,” I choke through my throat that is closing with fear. “Come, are you chastising me for missing a rehearsal?  Did I forget something?” I chide lightly, even though the words stick in my throat and my mouth is dry.

            “Nothing has been forgotten.  This is the most important night of your life.  Tonight, you will truly be immortal.  I offer you this, and fame.  What girl has had such an offer?”

            He turns me so that I face his well-known face.  I recognize the dark stubble that ripples along his angular jaw, and a wave of dark chocolate hair that falls into his cobalt eyes, that are now steely. 

            “I’ve been traveling all day. It’s wonderful to see you, really.  Can’t we continue this tomorrow?” I ask.
            “Tomorrow is a day for beginnings, but tonight is for endings.  Say goodbye to the mediocrity that shadows every step that humans take.  Au Revoir to servitude, and fear and folly.  Tonight, you will become the queen of your life, and mine.  Together we will rule the operatic stages of the world.  Just a brief time of pain and an eternity of song and power will follow.”  He touches his cold lips to mine and I feel ice bubbles run throughout my body.

             “Come, my dear.  Have a drink with me.  There is no need to hurry.  I have wanted to taste you since I first smelled your blood.  It is quite magnificent, you know, like your voice.”

            He leads me to the stage and I sink onto Violetta’s deathbed, praying that it will not be mine.

            “I offer a toast, to our new union. We will reign forever, Целую, (Tseylulu).”

            I flinch at his pet name for me that translates as ‘I kiss you.’ He often shouted that during our rehearsals over the past year, but now his vocal caress pounds in my ears, like a Lady Gaga recording that is poorly synced.  I am determined to hold onto another melody, one that was written for me.

            “I sought him who my soul loveth: I held him and I would not let him go.”  The phrase from the Bible’s Song of Solomon races through my mind.  So, I am to be this monster’s immortal bride or destroy the other man who has become my soul.  This totally bites, I think and then choke back hysterical laughter.

            I don’t answer and my silence enrages him.  I feel a rush of wind flying past me, but it is I who fly across the stage where the demon hurls me.  My body feels mangled and the harsh stage floor thuds against my head before I lose consciousness.  The last thing I hear is my beloved’s music.  It comes to me as through a mist.  I hold onto that.  I will take that to my death. “Questo il mio momento finale,” I think of the aria that my love wrote for me, the aria that I was cast to sing in the New York premier of his opera, on this same stage, and another stabbing pain rocks my body.  And so I will not die alone, or in vain.  My love and his music will survive.  And the world will be a better place for that…

            

Violet Scars - Prologue

Prologue

             If I am to save Wendy and myself I must get to the island of the dead before midnight. Phisto, the conductor, has his cobalt eyes trained on my every movement now that I know what he wants.  I inhale deeply and sing the fifth lied in Mahler’s Ruckert lieder, “Ich bin der welt abhanden gekommen,” for my third encore.  As I sing the exquisitely painful words,

            “I am dead to the world's tumult,

             And I rest in a quiet realm!

             I live alone in my heaven,

             In my love and in my song!

the now familiar scent of lavender blooms and fills the packed church.  The audience seems to fall into a trance as they turn dreamily to identify the source.  They discreetly sniff themselves before they check out their neighbors. But I know the source of the heady fragrance.  And I feel that this is the last time that I can sing this piece, broken-hearted as I am.  This is a bitch, I think.  All I want to do is sing my last encore and then slip into my soft jeans and glide over the black waters of the canal that will take me to his resting place.  I want to lie on the cool earth beside his sepulcher to see if he is the man that’s been obsessing my thoughts and actions, or if it was some mad fantasy.  I move quickly after the curtain calls because I know that Phisto will be following me.  He suspects my love and my intentions.  I don’t have much time and I need him to believe that I want his insane future as much as he.  As if I think.

            “I’m wiped tonight.  I’m not up to dealing with a bunch of hysterical Italians. Please explain for me.” Then I touch the conductor’s lips so that he is not suspicious.

            “I love you.” I say and calculate how much time I have while I wait for Phisto’s response for he is always punctilious.

He pauses, such a drama queen I think impatiently, because I feel the weight of each lost second.  Then he traces my jaw and moves his hand down the curve of my neck to the top of my right breast.  His touch freezes my skin, but I miss something else, the sensation of

fire that follows.  Did he ever do that to me or did I just imagine it?

            “You were brilliant.  Your voice has grown like a mighty warrior’s prowess, now you are the most powerful weapon on the stage. It’s a battle field my dear.  Don’t let the gowns and sparkling jewels fool you.” He touches the yellow diamond necklace that he gave me, now nestled in my throat, where I feel my rapid pulse. I see that his eyes are fixed there.  He is mesmerized by the frenetic dance that he sees.

            “I’ll be refreshed and waiting for you later, love.”  I turn and look over my bare shoulder, “I’ll have my answer for you then, love.  You won’t be disappointed.”

            I turn and head towards my dressing area but see that his SNAKE waits for me.  Not tonight I think and slip into the ladies room. I’ll have to go in my concert gown.  Not exactly the comfort that I was looking for, but it will have to do.  Wendy is waiting for me outside.  We don’t have much time.  It’s almost midnight, the last half hour of November 2, the day that the Italians make pilgrimages to the Isola di San Michele where their dead are buried.

            I’ve bribed a gondolier who finally agreed, after intensive haggling, to take me to the island of the dead.  The Italians are very superstitious and no living person is allowed to step onto the island after the sun has set.

            “Affrettatevi signorina. Non possiamo ritardare. Avete il resto dei soldi?           

            I hand him the balance of the money and kick off my heels and step onto the rocking gondola. And now I will cross over to the island to view the sepulcher of the man that I love, and whom I am now sure, has returned my love.  The sky is a lush black but the wind begins to gust and a flash of lightening scars the sky the darkest violet. So he realizes that I’ve slipped away and he is angry, I think.  I shiver in the Fall Italian air and pull my hooded black velvet cape more closely to my body.  I know that I love his music and perhaps that is all of him that I will ever have. And I acknowledge that it has, in some ways, been enough.

            “Chill Wen, this was your idea.”

            “One thing in theory,” she says and huddles against me as the gondola bucks in the angry winds.”

            The gondolier begins to lose it and yammers about the weather and how we have disturbed the dead.  I hand him another 250 euros and tell him to calm down.  I barely hop off the gondola with my heels in my left hand, before he pushes off. Another flash of lightening illumines his terrified face as he makes the sign of the cross against his straining chest.  I panic then because without him we are stranded here until morning.  I reach for Wendy’s hand, it is cold and she is uncharacteristically quiet.  I can see her fear as well as her determination.  My black sequined gown glows in the eerie night shadows and I think that I must look like the bride of some demon. Better this than the bride of the other one, I think.  Wendy and I switch on our flashlights and consult the hand scrawled map that the gondolier had given me earlier.  It directs us to Luca’s grave.

            I abandon my shoes entirely and my Donna Karan stockings hold up valiantly before they tear against a stone. 

            “Ouch, this is like some bad 1930’s horror flick,” I say

            “Yes, but then we’d have a film crew and they’d have some freakin transportation back to the living.”

            “Good point.  Stop, do you smell that?
            “What are you… you mean the”

            “Yes the musky lavender scent.  He is here.  Dead nor not, he will protect us.  I’d bet my life on it.”

            “Uh, news flash, you are betting our lives on it.”

            “It’s okay, Wen. Promise.  I wouldn’t put you in danger.”

            She squeezes my hand and we follow the map with our flashlights trained in the same direction.  This is the path that will lead me to him, finally, after a year has passed and another Fall is upon us.

            “This must be it,” I say and move the flashlight to read the name on the massive ornate mausoleum.

            “There it is, Cantanta.”  Wendy screams.

            As for me, I’m filled with warmth and terror.  What if I’ve been wrong? What if he was just a brilliant composer who fed my fantasies, and somehow triggered my post-traumatic stress disorder that I’d suffered from after my parents were killed?  I pull myself together and raise my flashlight.  Someone has affixed photos of him to the sheer surface of the stone.  Those eyes, those lips.  My body feels heavy and it’s difficult to move, but perhaps it is only the weight of my longing.  Then I see something else, a bouquet of purple flowers, they are fresh so someone must have left them earlier today.  I can’t identify them but they fill me with dread and I almost drop my flashlight.

            I turn to choke down the bile in my throat when I feel him, as close to me as my skin.  My body seems to have no bones and melds in perfect symmetry with his.  His lips caress my ear and his sound is a melody that seems to interpret the jumble in my soul.  He speaks of love, but I know that doesn’t exist.  Those whom I have loved are now dead.  Only memories remain, like dried blood on a white carpet, a dark scar against a once unsullied tapestry, now ruined forever.

            “We will never be parted again.” His voice caresses my throat.

            I turn my mouth towards his lips. Since he won’t stop lying, I silence his voice.

            He takes my face between his well-formed, muscular hands and I glimpse the violet in his eyes before I close mine.  He covers my mouth with his and even though death invades our private moment, I feel as though I am no stranger here.  My mind fills with the sound of his aria, the one that now forever links us in fame’s fickle web. His arms hold my weight as I drift on the beauty that he created.  The sound and his kiss deepen until I gasp for air.  But I make no effort to retreat.  He is what I have longed for and since I can not find him in life, I will follow him through death.  

            There is not much time left and I struggle to tell him that I love him, that I have always loved him.  And I close my eyes welcoming the serenity that will follow. 

But we are torn apart and I realize, as my lungs fill with sweet air, that he is fighting for our lives.  The soft earth is covered in blood.  But I don’t want to fight anymore.  I want to follow him to a world beyond this.  I want the calm that will silence the voices and the loss. I want to make sure that Wendy is safe and then, I want to go home.