Title: "Moonlight Revelations"

We met in the shadowed quiet of Saint Cordelia’s Chapel, late enough that the city’s hush had soaked into the stones. I stood before the altar, dust motes floating gold in the scrap of candlelight I’d lit for bravery. Rain tapped at the high stained-glass—barely alive, like it could rain on forever and nobody would ever notice.

She wrapped herself in darkness as she stepped in, long coat billowing gently at her ankles. Her beauty was eclipsed only by the uncanny light in her eyes, moon-silver even now. She smiled—an expression as careful as a glass blade.

I felt my pulse shuffle in my throat.

“You asked me here,” she said, and her voice was music stretched almost thin enough to break. “I so seldom get invitations.”

I swallowed, eyes on her, but I didn’t step back. “You must have known I’d recognize you. I’ve seen you often, always at dusk. You don’t cast a reflection in the vestry mirror. And the old women’s rosaries tangle when you walk past.”

She regarded me for a moment, then glided closer—her movement smooth, unnatural, as if untethered from the usual weight of the world. My skin prickled where her gaze swept me, and yet there was a comfort in the way she regarded me not as prey, but as a question.

“What makes you so eager to prove that a monster is real?” she murmured.

I stretched out my hand, palm up—steady, though my heartbeat raced. The candle’s nervous light glinted on the silver Saint Cordelia medal at my wrist.

“You’re the answer to a question I’ve carried since I was a child,” I said. “I saw my mother with marks under her hair one night. I thought I imagined things, at the time. Now I know why I always felt the way I do around you—this...familiarity.”

She hovered by my side, her presence unnervingly soft, hands carved from shadow and patience. She studied my wrist, veins blue and vulnerable beneath the skin.

“You’re not afraid?” she asked, quiet—a wisp of breath in the dark.

“Not of you. Of never knowing, always wondering what the touch of the night truly feels like.” My laugh came out lighter than I’d expected. “Curiosity is a stronger thing than fear.”

Her finger traced my pulse, learning the shape of my life. “It will hurt,” she warned.

“Let me feel it. All of it.”

She bent mercifully, cradling my hand in both her own. Her lips were cooler than stone, soft as a secret. She hesitated—an elegy in restraint—before letting her fangs prickle gently against my skin. I felt her breath, chill and ancient, mingled with the faint incense of lilies left over from morning Mass.

When her fangs pressed in—a featherweight prick, precise and slow—I braced for agony. Instead, a subtle warmth rippled from the wound, like slipping into a hot bath after winter’s cold. Pins and needles, a soft fizzing under my skin, and then something heavier: a pulling, not just of blood but of memory, of breath and buried longing. My lips parted on a gasp, more at how intensely present I felt than any pain.

She drank in silence, her eyes closed, reverent. The ache was gentle and strange, an ache that tangled pleasure with vulnerability, that loosened knots I hadn’t known had formed beneath my soul.

“Taste?” she asked, voice distant.

“Yes,” I whispered, and thought I heard her make a sound, as if mourning an old lover, as if the comfort of letting go surprised her, too.

She drew back and pressed her tongue to the wound—a cool, miraculous balm. The bleeding stopped instantly. I felt both exhausted and alive, skin humming with secrets.

“Why?” she asked. “Why trust me?”

I watched the flicker of reflected candlelight in her eyes. “Because sometimes the terror in our stories isn’t as cruel as the loneliness in our lives. Because I’ve watched you passing, always alone, always careful. Because I wanted to feel seen, even if it meant baring myself in ways I never imagined. Because I believe you were as hungry for gentleness as you were for sustenance.”

She studied me a moment—centuries’ worth of sadness and gratitude in her smile.

“Humans are braver than stories suggest,” she murmured.

“Or perhaps more foolish,” I said, returning her smile with my own pale one.

She brushed a thumb across the inside of my wrist, tracing the place where her history had joined with mine. “Your mother was right to keep me secret. It is safer to pretend the night means nothing more than rest.”

“Maybe it can mean awakening, too.” My voice trembled, defiant.

When she left, dawn seeped into the chapel’s edges. I watched the ancient doors close on her silhouette, feeling not diminished but remade, my blood singing a new and restless hymn—a mystery revealed not in teeth and shadow, but in the quiet mercy she showed as she drank, and the gentleness I’d carried in offering her that trust.

This story was generated by user beno.billy with assistance by one of OpenAI’s large-scale language-generation model; prompts used to help generate the story are shown below.

Images were generated with OpenAI's AI system, DALL·E 2, or uploaded by the user.

AI Prompts