Lost in the Shadows

Chapter 16

                   

'I want to tell you a story,' Niko said in his soft, sing-song voice, gently clinking a cup of fresh coffee down in front of Star as he slid into the booth opposite her. The scent was comfortingly familiar and Star found her hands sliding around the mug out of habit.

                'David will be here soon,' she said, glancing nervously around the dimly lit room. Little had changed since the last time she had been here, though a new corkboard had been put up on the far wall and had been obscenely plastered with missing posters. The sight turned her stomach.

                'Oh, don't worry about David. Even if he did turn up to spoil our fun, he wouldn't be able to get inside.' He chuckled and took a drink of his own hot coffee. 'You know little of our kind, I see. Your – friend – has educated you not at all, bella.'

                'Don't call me that,' Star complained.

                'Why? You are as beautiful as your name. This I told you before. So beautiful in fact now that I have seen you again, I am seriously considering whether I should not keep you for myself instead of killing you as the sacrificial lamb you are. That may drive a thorn deep in David's side, to see you at my feet instead of his.' Niko grinned, leaning forwards as though conspiring with Star who pressed herself against the dark green vinyl of the booth in an attempt to keep her distance. 'But as I was saying,' Niko continued, shaking his head a little to clear it of thoughts of the beautiful girl kneeling at his feet – there would be time enough for that. 'We won't be interrupted by any of your friends because one stipulation of our kind, one of only a few, is that we cannot enter a place unless we have been specifically invited and I am certainly not likely to invite them. Not yet, anyway.' His beautifully white teeth gave Star the creeps and she lifted her cup to drink in an attempt to keep him from seeing how her hands shook.

                'Tell me the story then,' Star said, setting her cup back down, hoping to stall him enough from whatever he had planned for her until she could at least try and work out a plan of what to do next, her heart sinking as she processed the fact that David was unlikely to burst in any moment to save her. This was something she would have to do herself. Niko seemed eager to talk, happily chatty now that it seemed to him she was entirely at his mercy, sure of hours and hours ahead of them so it seemed like a good idea to play on that until she could think straight.

                'Ah yes,' Niko grinned again, resting one hand lightly on his chest as though touched she had remembered the start of their conversation. 'Let me take you to a place far from here, a land of gentle hills covered with lush vineyards and olive groves, soaked by the glorious Mediterranean sunshine. In a shallow little valley imagine now, if you will, a cool little hollow protected by the fierce heat by a cluster of lemon trees. Their scent hanging sharp on the warm breeze. A wide turquoise pool, it's surface broken only by a smooth grey rock, stretches out amongst the green grass deep in those shadows and a small white villa lies just behind this scene, its windows shuttered tight from that burning sun. It was there that I lived with my mate, a human girl, like you.

                She was as beautiful as the moon rising on the silvered surface of a lake, with hair as black as night and eyes just as fathomless – again, like you. We lived in shadows, she sacrificed her love of the sun for me, to join me in my world of darkness and light up my life like Diana. I loved her because after so many hundreds of years of walking alone, she chose to walk beside me. But she didn't know who – what - I was. Somehow, for a year or so, I managed to keep that side of me hidden. I suppressed my appetite during the hours she slept, because no matter how hard she tried to walk forever beside me, her humanness would sometimes slip in between us and she would sleep late, late into the night.'