HERDING THE LAMB

Elders warn not to roam around alone when the day is over. Terrible things could happen under the moonlight these days, they say, because night is no more than a curtain painted black, meant to hide the unexpected.

But she ain’t scared, and remains there on the rooftop again, not too far from home, staring around while the night starts to crawl above her. Half of the bright white sphere shyly leans over storm dragging clouds, which slowly approach from a fading horizon on their way to the ocean.

Cold wind freezes everything around, bringing up clear traces of many souls lying beneath her feet. The faint moans of a couple, while making love on a couch in a flat nearby, attract her attention. Down below her stone–cold feet a couple fights whilst their children cry at their argument. A sudden gust whirls her hair before something quickly dives in the shades.

Enough for the girl to realize she is not alone.

—Who are you?— she asks to the darkness .It takes a moment to hear a smooth laughter:

—Good girl– says the silhouette. It smiles, and the pale light of the moon lines a sharp tooth stiffing a dead lower lip.

She steps back as he steps  towards her, leaving the shadows where he was hiding. But the shadows seem not to leave him, somehow. Atmosphere fills up with the bittersweet stink of death, and all sounds  shut at once, leaving the place in absolute silence.

–Don’t you know who I am?–.Though his smile she notices a glimpse of infinite sadness. He tells that he’s been alone for a thousand years. Offers her to join him for the long night where pain and fear are no more. Asks her to become the nightmare of many. A true goddess, for just a few drops of life and the gift of a last heartbeat.

–No– she says – go away!–, and keeps moving backwards until she reaches the opposite rail. The girl understands there’s no chance to run away. The vampire stops where she was a moment ago, and observes the people passing by on the way home. Then looks back at her, and rage whips a face kept young for centuries. He rushes over the girl, grabbing her neck with bony cold fingers, lifting her up in the air.

They say that fear heightens senses.That would be the case except for one thing: she does not look scared at all. He realizes about it too late, as the full moon raises above the clouds for an instant. She shifts quickly, as a sweet quivering mouth turns into deadly saw-shaped jaws, and the long black hair starts to spread all over her changing animal body. Her neck grows so strong that the immortal cannot hold her anymore. He is the one who tries to escape now. But she grabs him on the run and holds him by his spine, crushing his ribs, ripping his rotten flesh. Slams his body on the floor, tearing a sibylline scream out of him. He crawls pathetically, willing to scape. It seems that there is pain and fear in his world after all, she thinks. One only precise bite cracks his front, and the threaten, if it ever was, is gone.

She chews the bone while the quiet body at her feet turns into ashes, and slowly disappears, whipped by the winds of the imminent storm.Then leans out from the rooftop rail, and howls his victory to the moon. She can hear no noise, but surely can smell the fear of the lamb. Soon others join her song from the heights of the nearest buildings.
She never stays too far from the pack when the day is over because, as the elders warn, night is no more than a curtain painted black, meant to hide the unexpected.