A short story, written on a whim.

Summary: After the death of the man she loved, Tess lives in a state of apathy, waiting for something or someone to jolt her from it.
Rating: 15-R
Spoilers: General NW concepts
Disclaimer: As ever, thank L. J. Smith for creating the Nightworld nad all its wonders. It's her playground: I'm just invading for a little while.

Kissing Revenge

The rain was sleeting over me, sliding down my back like gentle hands, dragging me down. It was icy on my fingers, arms flung out to catch the storm as I spun around and around and around like a drunken scarecrow.

 They must have thought I was mad, all those people flashing by in their dry, compact cars. All those people locked inside artificial worlds and artificial lives. Looking at that girl - that stupid, crazy girl twirling in the middle of a cemetery with those luscious long-stemmed red roses in her arms.

Miss you, babe.

 Guess I'll always miss you, guess I'll always be seeing spectres and hearing silence, and laying these voluptuous divine roses at your head, roses that invade the air with the promise of scarlet kisses and heady sweetness.

 I won't shed tears for you, babe. I'll drown your memory in blood, not water. I'll drown the ones who did this in their own blood, and scream your name to the heavens.

 But ah, I've been saying that so long. If I could find them, I could cut them, make them bleed for you.

 I pressed my lips to the cool marble, slippery in the drizzle, and laid the roses beneath it. Oh, so beautiful - he'd loved roses, white and red and even black, loved their velvet softness and wanton splash of colour. Hordes and hordes of them in our house - he'd buy them for me once, twice, thrice a week, and present them with that shy, dimpled smile. My rose.

 Darling - dear darling, I am the thorn, and I will snap their heartstrings. I will crush them for you.

 At last, my feet dragged back from the grave wearily. I watched the shiny black stone through the grey veil of rain, feeling it sliding down my cheeks and wriggling into my hair, cool on my ears, cold on my hands. It got everywhere, the rain, and it was there when they killed him.

 They told me he was a monster, and they laid his shrivelled, staked body at my feet like some ancient sacrifice.

And with that most awful of gifts came the  offer of comfort and care and counselling. They even had the nerve, the goddamned awful nerve to apologise. But, they had said afterwards, one death to keep safe a thousand lives...surely that was a fair price, and maybe one day I would see that.

 All I saw in the world was endless days of rain, empty of roses.

 I had hurled words at them. He had killed no one. He fed from me, only me, and he was no monster.

 One woman had laughed gently, creases curling up in her motherly face. She was middle-aged - far too old to be one of the legions of vampire-hunters my rose had spoken about once, with nothing but amusement and a little disdain.

 She had told me that if that was what I thought they meant, I was a poor blind fool.

 They left to my screaming, to curses and hatred as I hurled the broken shards of my broken heart at them. Oh god, my rose, oh god. Did they paint the pain on your face with all the art of Van Gogh, oh my lost one, I hope you didn't hurt.

 You choke my throat like vines, my darling, my darling. My strange, unearthly darling who took me from an oblivious world and set me as the sun in your darkness. Together, we found a home and build it strong about us.

 In my own house, in our house, the place that was furnished with our sweat and our tears and our kisses,  they slaughtered you. They tarnished everything you and I had made together and slathered it in blood.

 Yes, I knew what he was. I knew my rose was a vampire, and damn them, I loved him for it. I loved the inhuman light in his eyes, greener than the emerald lands of Ireland, and with that wicked tilt that belied the sheer tenderness of his smile. A beautiful mouth, soft and slim and freeing words more lovely than doves and precious than diamonds.

 I loved the shadows in your face that were alien to me as the stars of Orion - I could even love your silences deep as a grave. For all you were, for your every flaw, even when you thrust me from you in moments of pain, for all of that - I loved you dear.

 And even in death, even with his mouth so tight with pain and his eyes fallen shut, remaining closed through every breath my body would ever force out, he was exquisite. His hair still so thick, the rich dark brown that had tickled my palms, and his skin still warm. Still warm and smooth as butter...

They had rammed that piece of wood through his ribs like he was a butterfly under their pin. He was a monstrous carcass to them. But he was all my hope, and all my family, and all my life.

And when at last I lifted my gaze from that body, night had covered their crime, and I was alone. And he - he was still beautiful, and ever would be.

 Forever beautiful and forever torn from my arms. I could hold him tight in all the years to come, but he would rot in my arms until I released bones to clatter on the ground. In my memory, he would burn for a while, and then he would fade in the terrible human trick of forgetting.

 So many things already forgotten. The times when he would stride angrily from our house to go to places I knew not. Nights when I sat and waited, picking endlessly at the seconds like a spinster at her knitting. Counting my heartbeats without him, waiting for his return.

 And his fearsome anger if ever I voiced the forbidden word; death.

 He paid the price of immortality a thousand times over.

 It lurked in his eyes, like a haunting melody, like a funeral march. It was in the way he would touch me, and such terrible sadness would quiver his mouth. It was in the nights when I woke to find him watching me, the tears spilling from his eyes.

 It was in his eyes, his price - that I would die, and everyone around him would die, and he would be left to live on alone.

 "Life without change isn't any life at all," he'd murmur sadly, and then breathe in quick and sharp like he'd been stabbed, and murmur nonsense to me, pointless befuddled nonsense. "But I don't want this to change. Why do you have to die? All of them...I could choose whether they live or die, but not you. I don't want to watch you die."

 You didn't, babe. In the end you didn't - but I'm dying all the same in the shackles of my flesh, and I wish I had you to see it. I wish it was you who had this knife twisting in your heart, I wish you jumped at every sudden sound, and searched the crowds desperately in futile hope. Not me.

 "Tess!"

 I started at the stifled voice, and looked beyond the black marble to notice the boy shivering in the rain, the sunshine hair turned bronze in the torrent. His coat, a dark suede that wrapped around him to mid-thigh, was clutched tight and his voice was muffled by the thick woollen scarf flung about his neck. He lifted his nose out of the black folds to glare at me, his tan fading but still gold against the cream poloneck he wore.

 "Gods Tess!" he said angrily. "Are you trying to catch your death?"

 The thought struck a dreadful discord on my soul.

 Oh no. I'm going to catch his death, and tear them to pieces.

 "Don't you feel the cold?" he continued, and the light of his eyes was that lovely deep blue that reminded me of the deepest summer night, an indigo bliss.

 He had been good to me this past year. No reason to; we were two different worlds, he and I, but he watched over me because my rose would have wanted him to.

 "Not so much these days." I didn't like being the cause of that frustrated flicker in his eyes, but I couldn't seem to help myself. It took strength and energy to lie, and both had drained from me in that long mourning. "It doesn't matter."

 "It does," Zir told me gently, and his hand hovered over my arm as if to clutch it, but didn't. He never touched me - not since that first time. It had been a long-standing joke among our friends, though my rose had never seemed to see the humour.

 I shrugged listlessly. Water pattering onto my skin, my clothes sticky and damp.

 Zir's fangs glimmered softly in the grey light, two pearl-sculpted daggers that neither frightened nor threatened me. "You're human, Tess, and it's been a year."

 "I know it's been a goddamn year!" I flashed, and hated the shrill, jackdaw's tones. At his aghast, even hurt, expression, I felt like I'd hit a kid. "Oh, hell, I'm sorry, Zir."

 He shook his head, his hair as drenched as my own, and clinging to his clever feline face. He was all angles and curves, Zircon Orage, with those swelling round cheekbones and the big dark eyes. Only his face was lean and almost gaunt, his jaw sharp and stubborn about a mouth that was prone to sulking, but wondrously full and soft when he smiled.

 "I'm used it now, Tess," he murmured wearily. Blood lay on the tips of his fangs, but there was no ethereal glow to him. My rose bloomed when he'd fed, and it had always seemed to me that Zir did too. But now - he was only wan, fading. How odd. "Won't you at least sit down?"

 I humoured him, and we sat ourselves on the bench. It was sodden with the downpour, and creaking dangerously.

 "Tess-" he began.

 "Don't, Zir." He hadn't got my rose's height, but there was something very imposing about him sometimes. "Don't tell me I should be getting over it, and getting over him. Don't tell me I should stop thinking about revenge...just don't."

 I glanced up at his face. His eyelashes disguised the seducer's blue of his irises, and for one moment I wished I could read his eyes.

 "Did you know we were blood-brothers?" he said unexpectedly. He traced idle patterns on the wood, still trembling in the rain that made his skin shimmer with a sea-shell iridescence. "Him and me. It was - years ago. We were just kids playing at being adults, but we always promised we'd be there for each other. We'd look after each other. I let him down."

 "We both did," I muttered dully.

 His eyes met mine then, and they were heart-achingly anguished. "I can't bring him back for you, Tess. But I can bring you revenge. If you want it. I've...found the people who did it."

  Sparks shot up my veins, and I felt as if the rain was hissing into steam on my flesh. "How?"

 He bit his lip, and I understood where the blood on his teeth had come from. Dear Zir, who had been a part of my life ever since I became a part of my rose's, dear Zir who showed the world an unruly, uncaring and laughing boy, who had so many girlfriends that they blurred into an awful spinning kaleidoscope - debating over whether he should tell this to poor half-mad Tess.

 We used to be so easy, he and I. He would tease me about the roses filling the house with fragrance, and I would tease him about the electric shock he gave me the first time we met. It had been nothing much - my rose had introduced us, and I had found myself looking at this boy with a wicked, charming grin and a pretty human girl clinging to him with faint marks on her neck and vagueness in her eyes; the normal fare for Zir.

 He had leaned forward from the circle of chattering Nightpeople who had looked me over with a mixture of surprise and curiosity, and said, "So here she is at last!" With typical flamboyancy, he had kissed me on the cheek - and we had both jumped.

 "Ouch!"

 Zir had only smiled, though there was a curious glint in his eyes. "Sorry. I'm a bit static today."

 "He's had too many things rubbing against him," my rose had put in mischievously, and arched his eyebrows at the girl. "Why don't you get back to her, Zir?" A warning note in his voice - did he think the girl would start noticing her distinctly odd company?

 Zir had laughed, and turned back to his girl, though I caught him looking at me all night. But then - they all did that. The coyote shapeshifter had been most suspicious of them all, and even wanted my rose to search me for weapons. The witch had been friendly; the two werewolves cautious, but kind.

 My rose had so many friends - and I had known them all. The witches and wolves, the vampires and the shapeshifters. And they had all seen my savage, senseless grief and drifted away from me one by one. They all thought I was insane, and in the end, they went back to reality and left their mourning with me.

 Only Zir had remained. But even he was not sure.

 "Tess...do you honestly think it would help - if I killed them."

 I blinked, and the image of my rose's body, wilted and sprawled on the floor burned me. "It won't change that." I flung my hand out to the headstone, only one of a row, but one that meant more to me than all the others. "But maybe it will make me feel better."

 "Tess - Tess...there are...things you don't know about him." A tremendous struggle on his face, a rip opening in his eyes. "Maybe - they weren't so wrong."

"Zir, what are you saying? They killed him because he was a vampire! He was butchered. Slaughtered. It could have been you there."

 His lips parted, and something odd had pounced into his eyes. "Yes," he agreed, the rain streaking down his swelling cheekbones seeming almost to be tears. "Yes. But more than that. He was a vampire who did things. Things that...made people remember him. And hate him."

 The knife he had put in my back so swiftly met the one spinning in my heart, and the betrayal was so vast that my vision greyed for a heartbeat. "Zir, don't you dare try and justify what they did to me, to us! Are you on their side?"

 "Tess, Tessa-Ann-"

 "Don't call me that!" I snapped out, and hissed at him like a kitten. Shock etched itself onto his face, and his soaked eyelashes were spider's legs against his sockets as he gaped. "That was his name for me. Don't you dare use it."

 "I have more right than he did!" he snapped.

 "What?"

 "Ah, by all the gods, Tess! You're so stupid and so blind to what you just don't want to see!" His mouth was curling now, sullen and angry. "He was no angel! Do you even know what your precious rose did every day?"

 "What's that got to do with anything?" I hurled at him. The rain was slowing, though I wished it wasn't. It made to easier to shout with his familiar face blurred by the curtain of drizzle, but Zir's face was clear as sunstruck crystal now.

 He laughed, but there was only anger in it and it struck me like shards of broken glass. "Gods, Tess! He didn't tell you?"

 "No..."

 There was something grim and cold in his face; and doubt fluttered in my stomach like a loosed wren.

 "Didn't you wonder where the money came from?" he said almost gently. "Didn't he ever say anything?"

 "He..." The memory was an eagle swooping into my thoughts. "He said he'd made a killing once. And I asked how much, and he said it was beyond money."

 "Well, he was accurate, if not honest, at least." Zir's voice was sour, not its usual tiger-darkness. "Tess...he did make killings. But not financially. Personally."

 My world stood still. I inhaled, and my heart pulsed on, I exhaled, and it still throbbed, but I was frozen in this empty moment.

 "No."

 "Yes." He was breathing fast, and there was a flush to his face. One foot tapped up and down relentlessly against the earth and I realised how nervous he was.

 "No." It was impossible. My rose, with his arms full of flowers, with his tender touches, and his delicate words. How could he be something so unbelievable? "He's not a - a murderer."

 "Not in the way you mean," he agreed gently, a terrible pity in each syllable. "He didn't put the knife to their heart. But he signed the contract for their deaths. He decided they should die - and it was his name stamped on every death. It didn't matter much to him. They were just vermin, just stupid-"

 "He didn't think I was stupid!"

 Zir flinched as if I had punched him. "No, I guess he didn't. He loved you, Tess - I remember how he used to tell me that." A smile twisted his face. "God, he used to remind at every opportunity. Remind me you were his. Remind me that love was love, and no static electricity would change that."

 "Zir - what are you on about?" I was lost, hopelessly lost

 His eyes focused on me. "Nothing," he said too hastily. "He did love you, Tess, but it didn't stop him lying to you. And it didn't stop him killing the people he did. It didn't stop him at all. You were the exception, not the rule. And if it had been your name on one of those pieces of paper - he'd have signed it with a flourish."

 There was a tight pain in my throat, as though a spear had punched right through my skin and cartilage. "They said to me..." The whisper escaped, though it burned me deeply. "They said that his death was a fair price for a thousand others' lives. But I didn't...I didn't..."

 Zir turned his face from me. His hair had started to dry at the ends already, curling in, returning to its sunshine colour. "I'm sorry, Tess. Please - think about what I've said, and if you still want it then call me."

 He stood, and I reached out to grab his arm.

 He jumped violently, his eyes flashing pure silver for a split second. "Tess!"

 "How long have you known?" I said desperately. My mind seemed to be closing down, refocusing around this single salient fact. My rose...my rose had had thorns that cut so deep.

 The vampire bowed his head. "Always," he said simply.

 "Why didn't you-"

 "Because I couldn't! He didn't want me to...and if I had he would have said it was because I wanted...gods, what does it matter? He was my friend, and he wasn't perfect - but he did love you, Tess. Through everything else, he loved you."

 Silence, soft as rainfall.

 "Think about it, Tess," he said quietly, and I thought I saw pain in his eyes. Then he stooped, and kissed my nose.

 Thunder rolled in my ears, and I thought I saw lightning streak across my eyes. My heart leapt like a mad march hare, and...it was gone, whipped away. I looked up at his face, at his eyes which seemed deeper and darker than ever before. "I think I'll get in," I said huskily, emptily. "The storm's...dangerous."

 "Danger's what you make it," was all his answer.

 "Zir..." I caught him before he could go. The full mouth was gentled now, nothing but sorrowed. "Why did you stay with me? All this time - you could have gone."

 Gone to your girls - gone to your fun. Zir was meant for laughter, not dreary things like me.

 A lift of his shoulders, and his eyes falling to the floor. "Sometimes - water's more than blood," he answered, and looked up at the grey sky. "It'll get to you like nothing else. Blood stains - but water kisses."

 "You're not making any sense."

 "Maybe that's best." He turned, and I heard his words, hanging in the air. "Think about it, Tess. And either way - tell me."

~*~

I had been sitting there a long time. My empty flat. My empty life. My empty heart. All empty, and nothing would ever fill the throne where my rose had sat.

 Damn him. How could he have lied to me so?

 Ah, but if I'd known, I would have gone and he was always so afraid of that.

 I had always known I had that power over him. The power to strike fear into his eyes. And the one time I had walked out, after that stupid petty argument, he'd gone mad. Later Zir had told me he'd rung them all endlessly, demanding they all go out and look for me. And he'd even hit Zir, who had a royal sunset of a black eye for a day or two, though neither of them would tell me why.

 And when I'd come back in the evening, sweltering in summer sun and summer sweat, my rose had been huddled on the couch with all the lights off and the stereo silent, and he'd stared at me like I was heaven fallen at his feet.

 "I thought you'd gone to Zir," he said in a strange, flat voice. "And then I thought you'd gone. I'm so sorry, Tess."

 Tender reconciliation. That's what I think you call it and that was what we had that evening. He'd been promising mad things, and wouldn't let me go - and I, I was surprised at the strength of his reaction. I'd only been angry, not...not so desperately afraid.

 But he was not who I thought, and though I never wanted to see that agony in him again, if he had told me what I knew now...I would have gone. For a rose by that name would not have smelled so sweet.

Killer. No...not at all sweet.

 My thoughts trailed round like this aimlessly for hours and hours, and the only thing that shattered my reverie was the jangle of the phone.

 "Hello?"

 "Tess?" The voice was gruff, and cautious. "It's Rudy. I know I ain't called in a while, but 'figured you and me needed to talk."

 I hadn't seen the werewolf in months. Why was he calling me now - like this? "About what?"

 "'Bout Zir. He's too dumb and too wrapped up in guilt to tell you, so I figure I will. Guess you know about your rose's little hobby now?" They all called him my rose. They'd all seen the flowers he gave me, and all thought it hysterical.

 "Hardly a hobby." I shut my eyes. Tarnished. My memories of him forever blackened and soured by this. Why couldn't they have left me in peace, to my dreams of revenge, to grief, to pleasant lies. "Did he tell you what he offered to do?"

 "Kill them humans that did it? Yeah. Zir's stupid as you sometimes."

 "Thanks."

 Rudy laughed. He was never polite to his friends. Too much effort, was his lacklustre excuse. "I'm going to tell you something, Tess. And you're going to have to listen real close, and then decide what to do about it. I'm telling you because Zir won't, and all the others think I'm just sticking my snout in where it's not wanted. But I reckon you should know, because fair's fair. Your rose weren't a rose, and Zir ain't all he seems either. But your rose is dead, and I reckon he should have told you this a long time ago."

 I was intrigued. I'll admit it. It penetrated the misty numbness surrounding me, and yes, maybe I felt a little relieved to get away from the truth of my rose.

 "You want to hear it? It might make things worse."

 Despite myself, a smile caught me. "Rudy, right now, Armageddon would be a welcome diversion."

 "Well - like I said, you listen good..."

~*~

 It was raining again.

 The lintel scarce sheltered me from the torrent. This wasn't the sweet drizzle of earlier - this was water and earth at war, slamming down so hard it felt like stones hitting my shoulders. And I was in nothing but the same thin clothes I had been wearing before, but this time, the cold bit like a thousand angry mice. Even anger didn't keep me warm.

 I'd broken my promise to Zir. It wasn't the same day, or even the same week that I had finally come to tell him my decision.

It was a month on, and what Rudy had told me - ah, it had shocked me senseless. And like the fool I was, I'd run off home for a while, back to my parents' to think things out. And now...I was back. And I just had to hope he wouldn't be too angry.

 I banged my fist on the door again, louder this time, and flung my rattailed hair back, spraying water into water. Pretty place - he'd only moved in a couple of months ago. Zir had always been a high-flyer - working for some law firm and earning money enough to finance his extravagant lifestyle and then some.

 Leaning forward, I lifted the letterbox and shouted through it.

 "Zircon Orage, if you don't open this door right now, I swear I am going to kick it down!"

 Just to add emphasis, I slammed my booted foot into it with a satisfying thunk and saw a nice wide mark left in the wood. I didn't know who I was angrier with - him, my rose, or me.

 Storms. Static electricity. Danger's what you make it.

 I heard footsteps inside - someone running down the stairs.

 "What are you doing?" he demanded, swinging the door open and scrubbing at his face with his free hand. A streak of blue paint on one cheek, and he was wearing faded and ripped jeans and a scruffy grey T-shirt. "I nearly dropped paint all over the carpet-"

 He stopped, and stared at me, and I noticed the deep violet shadows under his eyes, and how pale he was now his tan was gone.

 "Pity you didn't drop it on your head," I told him sweetly, and pushed past him, into the house.

 "Tess?" Disbelieving, then he slammed the door so hard the wall rattled. "Gods, where have you been? I've been going out of my head here - I thought you'd done something crazy, or, or..."

 I faced him squarely, and glared. "I'm not the one who's been doing crazy things here, Zir."

 The deep blue eyes were bemused. His hair had paint in too, turning it into sky-pale spikes at the tips, but otherwise the same golden summery Zir I knew. "What?"

 "Soulmates? Does that ring a bell? Is there the odd klaxon going off? Are the braincells being called to church by the clanging?" I pushed him in the chest and he stepped back. The stained glass above the door laid faint patterns of red and green lancing over his hair; stop or go?

 "Oh."

 "Oh? Is that the best you can do?" I must have looked a sight, standing there dripping all over his wooden floor, my hair trailing raggedly down my back and my hands red from the cold. "I can't believe you didn't tell me!"

 "He didn't want me to," he said quietly. His eyes were losing that baffled sweetness, and filling with something altogether more hostile. "Gods, Tess, of course he didn't! He loved you - I told you that, over and over. I was always the just the sucker who fell for his best friend's girl. I would have lain down and died for either of you, and he knew that."

 "He used it," I said softly. Suddenly, so many things made sense. Why it had been Zir who my rose hit. Why he thought I'd gone there when I left him. Why Zir hadn't left me to my grief like all the others and why he never touched me. "He used you. And he used me."

 Zir shook his head. "He loved you, Tess," he said gently. "No one ever said that soulmates should be together." A faint smile, a phantom of that wicked, delightful grin curved his mouth. "Besides, we were good friends, weren't we?"

 "But..." I tried to grapple with my thoughts. "He wasn't who I thought. He lied to me. He hurt you. Maybe he hurt me - I don't know. Fine - maybe you and me weren't supposed to be together, but he could have told me."

 Zir shrugged. His face was shuttered to me. "I take it you don't want revenge now."

 I shook my head. "I don't know. I still hate those people for what they did. But..." It was a terrible thing to say. "I half hate him too. I still love him, but I hate him too." I looked at him, listening to me like he always had. "Does that make sense?"

He looked terribly weary. "More than you can believe. I...hated him sometimes." He felt silent, and I only watched him for endless minutes before he shook himself. "Well - thanks for telling me, Tess." His voice had become formal. "It was - nice of you."

 "I'm not done yet."

 He didn't say anything.

 "I realise," I said calmly, "that you might not want this. And maybe we should both move on. But...you've stuck with me for a year while I was in love with a lie, and I value our friendship." It was difficult to summon a smile under such intense scrutiny. "And...I've met this guy."

 Something flashed in his eyes - the swift, sleek silver they had been in the cemetery.

 "He's incredibly sweet," I continued gently, "and he's just the kind of guy I could fall in love with. And we've got this - special something."

 Zir's fists were clenching.

 "And he's really clueless," I said dryly, "because I'm dropping hints about as subtle as a ton of bricks because he doesn't seemed to have twigged that it's him I'm talking about."

 His eyes widened, and my world seemed to fill with the wonderful deep shade of his eyes. Indigo bliss, a colour to drown in.

 "Tess?" he said huskily.

  The way he said it - ah, maybe that was something I had been waiting to hear for years. I walked forward, and laid my hands on his elbows. His lips parted on a sigh at the touch, and I was shocked at the sensation that sprang up where our flesh met, sweet sparking tingles like the air before a storm. For one moment, his heartbeat seemed to pound in my ears, and we were not two, but one.

 "God..." my voice said dazedly. "Zircon Orage, how could you keep this secret?"

 "Tess..." he answered, and I saw some of the shadows vanish from his eyes. We were stood still, so still with only that curious sensation spinning below my ribs, like gravity had centred itself below my heart. "How could you not notice?"

 He dipped his head to stare down at me, as if he was drinking in my face. And I'll tell you, though I looked drowned, under his eyes, I was flying.

 "I'm stupid." My hands were shaking on his arms, and the sensation had become feather-light and ticklish.

 "So am I," he said ruefully. His smile glowed on his face, darling and bright; until that moment, I didn't know how I had missed it. He had always been the sun, as my rose had been the moon. He warmed me, warmed me where grief had only chilled me. "Can't we be stupid together?"

He was taller than me so I had to stand on tiptoe to reach his mouth, and I could feel that storm drawing close and gathering.

 Our lips touched-

 Lightning jumped, and I felt as though I was standing in a tropical thunderstorm, with warm water slithering over my skin and fire crackling all about. He actually fell over onto the stairs when I kissed him, and took me with him.

 "Gods, Tess," he muttered breathlessly, settling me in his arms. It felt so different to be there, yet...oh, so right. "That wasn't static." His laugh echoed in my ears. "Tess...would you...stay?"

And when he looked at me, there was no pain in his eyes at all.

~*~

 We've been together a long time now, him and me. I still tease him about electric shocks, and he always reminds me about the dent I left in his door. ("Your mother was so eager to get to me," he tells the children, "she actually left a mark in the door.")

 We live in that same house, with the stained glass above the door, and the water marks on the wooden floor from where I came in shivering from the rain. We're both a little older, but my black hair will never sprout silver, just as his eyes are still full of indigo bliss, and he always needs to touch me, as if he's making up for those five years we lost. We're the perfect family; parents, and the three incredibly sparky kids, and the dog. Only the parents are vampires and the kids are adopted, and the dog in question is Rudy, who has a house up the road but spends most of his time with us.

 Every Christmas, we give Rudy a magnum of champagne. And every week, I walk down to the cemetery, with one of the girls clinging to my hand, and lay roses on his grave. My rose. He till holds a place in my heart - he was my first love, if a false one, but some part of me cannot forgive what he did.

 And when I get in, and Zir will reach out and draw me into his arms, as he always does, to the squeals of the kids if they're there, and our snug silence if they aren't, I smile and think that perhaps this is the best revenge I could ever have had on any of them. Myself included.

 And he'll tilt his summer-struck head, and that ever playful, ever alluring smile will cross his face, and I'll stand on tiptoe to meet his lips.

 And here I am, here I'll always be. Kissing revenge.

 And damn him, he's even sweeter than my dreams.

Like it? Loathe it? Indifferent to it? Please tell me why.