“You know, I used to date a boy in high-school just like him.”

Cara’s cat like features perfected her green-eyed stare. Gazing out upon the crowded dance floor, watching the gyrating, perspiring bodies weave and bob away the troubles of low pay, glutted administrative jobs and a world tearing apart their parental implanted belief system set a fascinated glow to her luminous eyes.

Watching people her own age thrash about, sweating off makeup and deodorant to banging music and flashing lights left her half philosophical, half angry. The laughing, hysterical crowd before us would wake up to faces they had not seen before and discuss how to increase their sexual performance in a calm, matter-of-fact manner over coffee in a watery grey morning just before another day’s work.

Watching Cara, I worried for her. She took any slight directed toward me as personal. The hours of discussion melted from her mind; as a plain person I am looked over, snubbed and ridiculed. The fact did not distress me and in some places in the world, mostly Europe, my plain jane looks gave me an advantaged over the flamboyant. Here in the United States, my demeanor and my looks did not please. Despite my not being offended Cara’s green eyes gave her away, she was angry.

Cara’s flashing green eyes, her emotion and frankly her laughable sense of injustice drew me to her side, broke me down and weakened me so much that I told her my secrets. When we first met in a darkened alley, she rushed forward to defend me from harm. Glad for the opportunity to study her hunter like prowess, I sense to this day a recklessness about her. The surrounding atmosphere didn’t matter to me; it was a means to an end. To Cara, the crowd warranted a chance to avenge what she deemed the downtrodden. I disliked the loud, disconcerting music, but Cara thrived on it and I thrived on her expression and her perfect green eyes.

“I thought you too old for high-school remembrances,” I said, not focused on comment but on her emerald glow. Wanting her focus to remain upon the man who had just rejected me for another partner, concentrating on the thrum and throb of her calculating emotions, I felt the lift of anticipation.

“What sort of remark is that?” she asked.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I shrugged and looked away; her question shocking me into disappointing depletion. Perhaps her understanding of me was quickening. Her wrath directed toward me may be interesting. An undercurrent of electric anger between us may enhance an already welcomed partnership… or not. I felt an uptick in my sense of smell and taste when faced with the unpredictable.

The world had long left me flat and rather despondent, Cara surprised and kept me off center. She chose me, selected me, stalked me after our first encounter when she attempted to come to my rescue. I could have left her long ago or perished at her hands, but I allowed her to capture me, so I captured her. Narrowing her eyes, she speechlessly demanded a better answer of me. Looking away, focusing on some other salient point of interest, I countered her childish demand; “You seem timeless, too old for the nonsense of high school and all its silliness.”

“I endured like all the rest of these poor slobs,” she said with a shrug, immediately losing interest in the conversation.

My mind goes dark when confronting the mundane 21st century. Her response disappointed me, and it wasn’t the first time. Hating the hardened soldier, or bitter martyr tone she took, I shook my head in rejection to her response. Knowing the music or what passed as music to these craven and luckless lot I turned to scan the crowded dance floor. I felt the night funneling into dawn and the thought of time wearied me. Teaching Cara to understand that there were better places, stronger people, higher planes of existence than the jungle of despondency she insisted upon, seemed impossible. I returned my focus on my more basic needs and gazed about the long lines of lythe young people about me.

Reading me, connecting to my more basic wants, she looked toward the bar where most men leaned, gazing out at the dance floor; their faces reflecting the flashing lights that glared from the ceiling, floor and walls of the club. Her pristine skin and darkly painted lips attracted the man who had rejected me only moments ago.

When will you allow yourself culture? When will you pull yourself out of these pits? I longed to ask her these questions. Maybe some day.

Facing me again, unaware of my disgruntled emotions, she wore a wicked smile on her face, “Are you worried I’ll turn to extreme tattooing and piercings?” Mocking me was her only defense against the instinct she had in knowing she offended me. Warning her against taunting me with deadly earnestness, she would bring up my threat of having nothing more to do with her if she marred her beauty with smears of unnatural color upon her skin. Barbaric. Narrowing my eyes in her direction, she seemed about to say something more but laughed instead, as if realizing she was about to say too much.

“So what was this boy in high school like?” I asked, annoyed at myself for lowering our conversation to meet her needs and rescuing her from any further embarrassment with me. We both acknowledged our personal needs to each other and there were times I felt cheated by my surrender to her. The man whom she gave a coaxing look moments ago moved slowly toward our small table.

“Oh, you know. After we kissed for the first time and I found him wanting, he went about with any girl who would have him. He wanted none except me, but something inside him drove him to show me how happy he was; how very much happier he was with her or her or even her than with me.” Cara shrugged, looking around again with perfect timing. The man was before her.

It was my turn to laugh, and I did so. I almost felt a joy hammering with the loud, stubborn beat of electronic music which pumped throughout the hellish club. I looked again at the man now dancing with Cara. So simple; we easily catch the certain soul in any trap.

Watching him gyrated and swirl around Cara and looking oh so handsome on the crowded floor and in the flashing light, an animal exultation surged through my body. Examining myself and searching for any falsehood within myself, the thought of my share of the man did not disappoint me. I did not resent Cara’s powers as her beauty did not reflect against time. Did my relationship with Cara draw me down to the level of animal attraction? Yes. Most assuredly. I looked at the man again, his catlike movements and his masculinity exuding out of every flash of demonic light. He could enhance the beauty of the woman he danced with, but the beauty seemed to return to him; keeping what his ego demanded underscoring his selfishness and self-serving nature. I determined to capture his stolen beauty.

Cara’s perfect green eyes connected with me for a moment. In a burst of energy she lifted her long slender arms and danced as if around an ancient camp fire. She felt my determination.

I left the club. I moved into the icy night seeking silence. Cara’s laugher and feigned giddiness warned me of her approach. I pushed forth my desire, and she stumbled against the man she was with. I knew she felt my presence.

She wasted no time in pulling men to her need. I waited, for I understood she had needs too. I regretted their excursions weakened him but when he understood what I was; he put up satisfying resistance. Cara’s fascinated stare baffled him as he sank away into nonexistence.

“You won’t ever feed on me, will you?” she asked. Her partner tonight was more determined than most; more from disbelief that any harm dare touch him than from out-and-out fear.

“You must invite me, Cara.” I said. Her weariness allowed satisfaction from my answer. The invite she will not question which is 21st century style – so literal. So very literal.