"******, is it?" she said. "That's an unusual name."

It was strange to hear this woman say my name. Not the words themselves -I had become used to hearing people say it was a odd name- but the way she said it. I couldn't put my finger on it, but hearing her voice was like picturing a snake in the tall grass: coiled and ready to strike. Each word was the gleam of a cold eye, each inflection the quick dart of a tounge. Prodding. Probing.

Tasting.

I snuck a glance at the swell of her breasts, nestled in the white fabric. She caught me staring and I quickly looked away. She smiled, then, revealing perfectly straight, white teeth, almost blinding in their brightness. It was a slight smile, but I still noticed that there was an almost shark-like quality to her teeth. Just a tad too many. Just a bit too sharp.

Still, she was beautiful, and I began to fantasize about her the same way I fantasize about all beautiful women:

I wondered if she would shatter like porcelain if I hit her hard enough.

She slid out a pale hand topped with ebony-painted nails across the table and lightly touched mine. Suddenly my already huge hands felt even clumsier than normal.

"Do you mind?"

I shook my head, not trusting myself to speak.

She lifted my hand to her mouth and bit down, gently, at the base of the thumb. There was no pain on my part, only a sort of mild interest at the bright scarlet color of my blood as it seeped from the corners of her cold lips. It looked like ink. Ruby red and thick, like someone airbrushed it in. She fed for a few more seconds before relinquishing my hand. Almost reluctantly, I pulled my arm back.

She wiped at her mouth in a ladylike manner before smiling at me once more. I noticed her cheeks had gained some complexion.

"Still so young," she said. "Thank you."

I grunted something in reply that might have passed for, "You're welcome." I looked down at my hand. The wound had already healed. Only a streak of dried blood remained. I rubbed it away.

She stood up from the table, smoothing her dress as she did so. There was a swanlike quality to her movements: fluid and graceful, so unlike the dead thing that she was.

"You're an odd one, aren't you ******?" she said. "Hmm, I wonder what would happen if I offered myself to you?"

I didn't reply, terrified of what would happen either way I answered. She only laughed as she moved to the heavy wooden door and pushed it open as though it were made of paper. She beckoned me in with a slender finger. Feeling like my joints were nothing but rubber bands, I stood and entered the room.

She closed the door behind her. There was no light in the room, only a sort of echoing darkness that was almost tangible. I felt old velvet and smelled dust and sour wines.

This was it, I thought. Finally. I waited for the prick of her fangs on my neck, waited for the comforting embrace, waited for the blessed escape, waited for the blood to flee my body and my new life to begin. I heard the rustle of her dress against the stone floor as my body tensed in anticipation. She laid her hands on my shoulders, and I felt her dead breath against my skin. This was it. All these years searching for her. This was it. Immortality was so close. Eternal life was so close. My palms were sweating, my breath was ragged. I felt something warm and wet trickle down my leg.

Her lips touched the base of my neck in a gentle kiss, soft and light, like a feather landing, and in that moment I knew I loved her. She brought her mouth to my ear and whispered. There was sadness in her voice, and yet deep beneath it I thought heard her laughing at me.  There was a sudden rustling, and a rush of air, and I knew I was alone. In that crypt beneath the earth, I knew I was alone.

I curled up on the stone floor, feeling naked, embarrassed, foolish, and impossibly old. I had left my wife, my children, my career to look for her. Twenty years I had hunted her. Twenty years of my life spent on a quest to stay forever young. Twenty years wasted.

"What are you searching for?" was the first thing she had asked me when I found her.

"Life," I had said.

Still, she had kissed me. And I knew that, as the years go by, as I grow older, the memory of her lips on my skin would grow more and more precious. I'll succumb to age and time and death and dust, but the kiss will remain frozen in eternity; a single, perfect moment, shining like the jewelled eyes of a dragonfly. A moment of absolute beauty, when everything in life, if only for a fraction of a second, seemed crystal clear.

I'll look back on it as an old man and realize that it had been worth everything.

I thought of her last whispered words to me, and how heavy they felt on my ear, as though weighted down by the enormity of the truth with which they were spoken.  And I realized that there wasn't laughter in her words.

There was pity.

I thought of it, and could almost imagine her right there, kneeling beside me, saying it again.

"This is no life."

I felt the first of the tears begin to form. Eventually I would cry myself to sleep.