The young woman finally came to the spot where the headstone of one significant in months past had been
planted into the earth. She knelt before it, bowing low and slipping the low-hanging hood of her cloak back over her head to reveal a delicate braiding of dark hair as she straightened once more. Kyla looked for a long while at the stone which bore the name of Alexander Thomas Witherspoon, the lover she'd cherished the most deeply and who had been lost to her after a terrible fire at his residence some weeks ago. The air of the immediate area she was in still held that aroma of freshly turned earth, even though some time had passed and budding grasses had begun to sprout up around the grave site. She inhaled deeply the warmth of the night and threw her head back to
regard the sky briefly, raising her hands up to her face to caress the soft pale flesh.
"My love," she whispered, "were it not for the tragedy of our fates, we would be eternally bound by desires beyond human reason."
When she lowered her eyes to the headstone again, she reached out a hand and placed her fingers upon the cold marble, for a moment shutting her eyes and focusing her inner sight on her lover. He was still as handsome as he'd been the night before the accident, when she'd laid in bed beside him and spoke of devotion the likes of which no mortal had ever comprehended. She remembered how earnestly she'd wanted him and how passionately her heart had pounded at the taste of his vital essence. Like the finest vintage from the fields, she had known the taste of the hot blood that had driven them together in the first place.
The long moments of meditation passed, she reached out for the shovel she'd brought with her to the graveyard and began to dig away at the stamped-down dirt separating her from her destiny. She dug quickly and with great determination, pausing only to sink into the shadows when she suspected possible watching eyes falling upon her. But only the souls of the dead could see her now as she violated the resting place of one of their own and was consumed by not sorrow, but some twisted purpose unknown to most. With a growing pile of wormy earth building up beside the neat pit she'd dug for herself, she had finally hit the solid lid of Alexander's silver casket. The shovel was set aside as she lowered herself onto the lid until she straddled it.
With little effort, she managed to pry half the lid open, revealing the greying features of the young man whose body had been sold to the elements to refurnish through decay nature's order. This decay was quite apparent in the stench that wafted up into her nostrils as she leaned in to place a loving kiss on his forehead. But nausea from such things was not common for her. The kiss was softly pressed into the slowly rotting flesh. Kyla was finally able to maneuver her body into the casket itself, her thighs squeezing the softening sides of her dead lover. From
the small black velvet pouch tied to the belt around her waist, she pulled a tiny silver dagger and held it out before her.
"I call upon the night in this Ritual of the Bound Heart," she murmured in Latin, "to summon from shadows a passion through dark art."
She held out the palm of her left hand upturned to the sky as she slowly and deeply ran the sharp blade from the base of her index finger to the heel of her hand. "With a drop of my blood ..." The cut was held over the lips of the corpse as a few light drops of blood trickled onto them. "With a kiss to behold ..." She leaned forward again and planted a much deeper kiss on the bloodied lips, slithering her tongue in between the stiff flaps of dead flesh and tapping against the teeth. Though hardly being reciprocated by him, it was as passionate a kiss as any she'd given to her lover in life. She cherished its pleasure slowly and pictured in her mind that the kiss was bringing him back to her in the mortal realm.
She held up the dagger above her head, pointing it at the stars above her, and continued, "By spectral dawn, I'll have captured thy soul. Return to me through sorcerous shade, not halted by death nor by quickened blade."
She undid the buttons of the long gauzy black dress she'd worn underneath the long cloak and bared her naked body to the warm night. The suit of Alexander Witherspoon was pulled open to admit her fully, baring the remains of what had been known to her in his existence as the brawny chest and the center of his masculinity which had been strategically straddled between her bare thighs. She grasped both of his arms and pinned them down to the sides of the casket as she leaned in close to where her lips almost touched his again and whispered, "Arise, lover. Your mistress is here."
A deep and chilling mist had been stirring around the grave as Kyla's ritual had granted her closeness with her beloved. With the drops of the blood on his lips, it had begun to take shape and to move all around her as she continued with the kiss. When finally she bent in to awaken him, the mist circled down around her and engulfed the two of them in the icy chill of death. As she stared at his face, the eyelids fluttered open and blinked until they had focused on hers. The body of Alexander Witherspoon coughed and jolted, exciting the young woman all the
more as she held him down with her strength and looked hard into his glassy eyes.
"Kyla," he gasped in the hoarse voice of one dead for almost a month.
She smiled. "Sleep well?" She cocked her head to the side.
"What ... what am I doing here?" The eyes darted this way and that, struggling desperately to gain awareness of the whereabouts of the body's new home. The muscles in his arms and legs were atrophied, causing his struggling to be all the more enfeebled and exciting.
"You've perished, my dear ... in the fire. Don't you recall?" She landed a light and sudden peck on his lips. "Oh, how I've missed you. I was afraid you'd left me for good." As a lover would smile to one not seen in a while, her smile was anything but warm and welcoming. It was devilish, mirroring the wicked light in her eyes that flashed her intentions. "We've much to do yet, Alexander. You're not rid of me like you thought."
She pressed her naked breasts against the cold bare skin of his chest and moaned as her fingers ran through over his face and through his hair, pulling it out in clumps as her fierce passions took hold and heated her from the inside. "I have missed you so. Why won't you hold me now? Why won't you love me, Alexander?"