N o t a n A n g e l . . .

'..I'm not just a pretty face..but
then, you're not really an
a n g e l, a r e y o u?'

Delicate though the entire affair was, the bliss they shared between just them two did not last long. She was released back to her people bearing Kaleb's mark upon her neck and his symbol splattered in blood upon once pristine silks of white. And while the Nile refused to flood its banks once more, the message from the dark God was clear - she was not to be touched or harmed, because she was marked as His.

Yet as time passed, he summoned her from her home once more for a second meeting, and for once she was uncertain. There had been talk about the wound on her neck when she was first released from the temple, and there was an unease amidst the people where before there was only mindless devotion. Yet the common thread was the same: had they been worshiping an ilkati? A demon who, by her own description to the people, needed to steal the blood and life of others to survive? Surely Kaleb would have told her if he weren't a God, though. Surely he would not lie to her, his Priestess, his Chosen. And yet she saw what the animals looked like after left in the temple. There was nothing gentle or divine about the bloody tears in their necks..

Uncertainty was enough to keep her away, as thoughts attempted to pore over what she knew of the dark beauty, as gentle and angelic as he had been toward her. That was when the warnings came; vibrant, surreal dreams that alternately coaxed and, with a firm but gentle hand, threatened. One night, she awoke standing at the edge of the massive cliff that towered over the small gorge in which their homes were built, as though a hard thought would push her over the edge. She had never been one to sleepwalk, and in that instant she knew the purest form of terror. If he couldn't have her - if she didn't give herself over to him fully and willingly, he would see her dead. She knew it, as she knew the sun would rise again.

That was, in effect, the last straw for her. With a sorrowful farewell to Taman, she packed what little she owned and set out on a journey eastward and north, heading for the ocean and the ships that awaited her at the scattered tradesports. Out of sight, out of mind.. and she was hoping rather vehemently that she was leaving the fallen angel far in her wake. Hoping that he would no longer care to haunt her dreams. And yet, there was no escape. Every city and oasis was haunted by his presence; strangers that bore his face, yet at second glance were no more than grizled desert travelers. The wind bore his throaty murmurs, their gentle touch trailing through her hair mimicking the play of his fingers upon her cheek. Inescapable, and it drove her still further, running from a fear that had no name, stemming from the base instinct that touched every human being alive: fear of the dark. Fear of the unknown.

    The fact of the matter was, some very small and cold part of her knew she would never find release. When he found her again, it was at the small village of El Faiyum.. but evasion forced him to follow her northward, trailing her through Memphis and Tanta, all the way to Alexandria. She never saw him.. but she knew he was there. Whether waiting for a more opportune moment, or simply feeding like a leech off the fear that was now an ingrained phobia, he never showed his face until they reached the city by the sea. It was there that he cornered her in the room of the small inn within which she stayed, his words gentle and rolling as a summer swell of ocean, one cluttered by seductive riptides whose downward pull was so difficult to fight.

     "Why do you run from me?" It was the first time she had heard his voice, a rough, cultured roll of syllables that seemed to rub over her skin like velvet, touching and caressing things without a thought that most would not have been able to touch even with their hands.

     "Ilkati. Demon." She returned stridently, withdrawing to the corner of the room furthest from the door, the bed at her fore and window to her left. As though she could simply fling doctine at him to drive him from her room. But he did just the opposite.. drawing closer with a depth to perfectly vivid sights of cerulean. It was as though they were opening up.. drawing her in and down.. she shook herself sharply, dropping her gaze away and glaring at the line of his jaw. It was no easy task to appear angry and menacing while not looking someone in the eyes, but it was that or be rolled by his mind again. And last time that had happened, she'd awoken to drinking his blood.

    "I am not a demon, child. I am as natural as you are, simply a rung higher on the food chain. But I mean you no harm, I swear it." She shook her head, a sharp motion that sent faintly navy-violet sheened strands of othrewise liquid obsidian swinging. She didn't want to listen to him speak.. didn't want to feel him settling feet away from her. He moved with a predator's grace - all fluid shifts and rippling curves.

    "Why do you not leave me be? I have done nothing to offend you, never denied your wishes." There was something perilously close to breaking in her voice.. a tangible weakness that was bearing far too much weight. When his hand trailed along her cheek, attempting to tilt her chin back, she shuddered.. a reaction that remained, to her, perfectly inexplicable. Lids fell in a pained press to her cheeks as he tilted her chin up and to one side, his lips moving like a touch of satin over the exposed flesh. You have done nothing wrong, angel. If anything, this is a gift in return for your devotion these many years. I wish to share with you what I am. I need you by my side. She tensed as she felt him move a handspan back, eyes opening instinctively to eye his actions but, instead, meeting with those twins of deepest twilight. Instantly, she felt will and tension dissolve away in the tremulous warmth ( and yet, it was so very cold..) of his mind's touch.

    The next morning found her tucked in bed, marks on her neck and a copper tang upon her tongue.

When she walked outside that day, the sunlight stung her. She gazed at the lily white tone of her hand, and the first prickle of new fear washed over her. The heat, the sun, the desert.. it was smothering, as though she were no longer permitted to stand within the daylight's soft touch. Swallowing tears she could never allow to escape, she never waited to see if Kaleb would return to her. She set out for Damietta, and took one of the larger seafaring vessels to Neapoli on the Grecian peninsula of Peloponnese. Still, he touched her dreams.. woke her on the edge of a scream time and again with the sheets tangled about her slight form, forehead drenched with sweat, and body craving a touch with a wonton abandon and need she had never before known. She would see him dead if he didn't drive her mad first. But that wasn't his design.. it never had been.

   But something had changed in Kaleb while in America; when he found her that night to place the final seal of his Kiss upon her, his temper was possessed of a short wick, and her desperate refusals sparked violence. When he was done with her, forcing her death and feeding her the unlife in his veins to complete the four-tiered transformation, he left her there. She was so convinced she didn't need him, and he gave her that wish. Leaving the young, minutes-old fledgling to either live or die in an alley by the docks while he vanished to the shadows not to be seen again for centuries. His last words to her had been a cross between a strange sentimentality and an oddly misplaced bitterness; for what, she would never know.

    You have your wish, my love, free of me at last. But you will not forget me, nor I you, for my blood now runs your veins and gives to you this new life. Amaranth is your name, now; Amara, `undying beauty`, and the amaranth, a bond among our kind forged of dominance and submission. You will always be mine, Amara, no matter what age you reach. Never forget that, for I'll find you again someday, once you have accepted who and what you now are.

    She would never know whether or not she would have survived the night if left to her own devices; she was found by another, one of her own that at the time far outranked her in years spent in such a state of existance. Arden, as she came to know his name to be, had discovered her while out on patrol for what she came to understand to be the resident vampire clan within the city, and he took her back with him to be tended and nursed back to some state resembling sanity and health. Athough what health was for an abomination such as herself, she didn't care to know. Months found her shunning food, comfort, aid and conversation with any of those who had grown to be her new family. She looked strange among them, to be sure.. an exotic even among vampiric tastes with a honey-toned skin that not even the most perfect tan could produce, sights of vivid amethyst and hair the color of pooled, molten onyx. But she wanted nothing to do with the Eclipse Clan. Not until Nemure.

    Nemure was a vampire pressing into his eight century, and had governed the Eclipse as its guiding hand for almost half that time. Yet despite his age, he seemed to understand Amaranth's reluctance, her distrust of any and all of vampire kind. He taught her the difference in herself after her Syring - namely, that there was none. She was herself, and no fangs or need for that delectible sanguine fluid could change that. She could move to her own morals and rules so long as she learned to survive. And with that firm, steady hand of wisdom as guidance, Amara learned to flourish.

    But there lay a new threat in the city, one that struck in a blinding flash and left them all dazed in its wake. Nemure was killed in an attack by the White Blade, a conclave of vampire hunters that were later hunted down and slaughtered by a pack of lukoi (wolf lycanthropes) whom they had also attacked earlier in the year. With his dying breath, Nemure turned the Eclipse over to Amara.. asking her, nay, begging that she continue on the legacy of nonviolence within it. Of all the vampires present, he believed only she possessed the leadership and wisdom necessary.. even being hardly over fifty years in her new life. It left many bitter - Ciren, the eldest, perhaps most of all. He would grow to challenge almost anything the younger femme suggested or ordered, as though by saying black, she guaranteed he would say white. The future was grim, and yet she would never forget the final promise of her Syre.

    He would seek her out again, someday. And heavens help her for that meeting..

He followed her halfway around the world as she fled to the states, and fgave her the third blood bond in Scituate, in what would be modern day Massachusettes. It was in Scituate that he fully took her.. her mind, her blood and - in a slough of passion and violence in equal kind - her body. Perhaps fitting that his virgin priestess hand her purity as her sacrifice to him, or perhaps it was simply his own twisted sense of irony was at work.

She didn't know the name of the city into which she numbly stumbled that dark eve; smaller than most, but there was an undercurrent of life to it that was difficult to ignore. But it was not of her own volition that she sensed such things - the bonds between herself and the fallen angel (or was it.. risen demon?) gave her far more acute awareness of such things than she had ever possessed of her own accord, even in spite of the Egyptian teachings of life and death.