A solitary figure walked the nearly deserted cobblestone streets of Montmartre. There had been a time, not so very long ago, when the village meandered lazily through its days just waiting for the night to fall so that it could truly come to life. But all that stopped when the Moulin Rouge, the red thriving bloodline of Montmartre, closed the year before.

The Moulin Rouge and its Sparkling Diamond both died of consumption. The Bohemian Movement that had made Montmartre its capital had its heart broken that night. The world moved on as if nothing had happened, even though it was obvious that something fundamental had changed. Nothing would ever be the same again, especially for this lonely wraith, haunting the avenues of its past. For as the village was reborn to the focus of daytime existence, this creature was reborn to the world of the nocturnal; the same world she had been stolen from. But as in the external world, something fundamental had changed within her.

A loud and familiar laugh echoed from further up the street, causing her to draw her cloak closer around her and slip back against a darkened shop porch. The click of high heels on the stones grew louder until the bright moonlight illuminated the skin of a woman made unnaturally whiter by the cheap caked-on makeup she wore. Starkly black hair framed her garishly made up face. The blurry focus of her eyes revealed her inebriated condition to the blue eyes that watched from the shadows.

As the drunken woman passed the porch, she stopped, peering into the darkness. Though she could see nothing, she could tell something was wrong, fundamentally wrong. "Who's there? Come on, out with it. Show yourself!"

The cloaked figure stepped out of the shadows and pushed back its hood, revealing a curtain of vibrant red hair and skin made unnaturally whiter by virtue of her no longer being natural. "Satine?" The brunette's eyes widened in shock.

An elegant smile formed on the lips of the former concubine. "Hello Nini."

"But you ...you died! I saw you myself!" Nini backed across the narrow street until her back came up against the building opposite.

"I did. And I'd tell you all about it. But I'd hate to spoil the experience for you."

Before Nini could move, or even inhale to scream, Satine's perfect lips curled back to reveal vicious-looking fangs and she was upon the dark-haired woman. Her teeth sank into the flesh of Nini's neck, warm blood flowing into her mouth and sustaining this new life she now lived.

Once she'd drunk her fill, she dropped Nini's corpse to the ground and walked off in the direction of the ruins of the Moulin Rouge. And nothing would ever be the same again.

Satine sat on the steps of the deserted Moulin Rouge, those that had once run behind her Elephant apartment. Tearful eyes looked up to the darkened window of one of the neighboring buildings; a window next to a large red sign. Her mind filled with memories of the exquisitely beautiful dark-haired boy that she had given herself to, in every way possible, in that very room. "{ If you hear me, if you see a shadow of light. It's a child lost long ago, emerging from the night. If you know me, if you do, remember our dreams and take me back to yesterday before I had to leave. }"

She stood, descending the stairs, the wind tossing her hair about like a living flame trailing her passage. "{ We always dreamed as one. We danced until we used up all the sun. No endings, forever free, no harm could come to you and me. }"

As her face grew wetter, she realized that this was the first time she had really cried since she had come to be this thing that she was. "{ How I long to see you. How I long to dance ...again. }"

As if in answer to her words, a light came on in the room she stood gazing at. Almost as soon as it was there, it had vanished again. For a moment, she wondered if she had in fact imagined it. But she knew that she hadn't and something inside her told her that if there was anyone still living in that room, it would be Christian.

"{ We always dreamed as one. We danced until we used up all the sun. No endings, forever free, no harm could come to you and me. How I long to see you. How I long to dance ...again. }"

She started for the ground level door to the building but then stopped. She didn't want him to know what had become of her. She didn't want to rip apart a life he had probably only just pieced back together. Satine walked back to her steps and then stopped again. What would it hurt for her to slip in for a few moments as he slept? She would gladly have given up even this new existence for just the chance to touch his skin again and brush her lips against his own. Quietly, she once again headed for the door.

Satine crept up the interior stairs so as not to wake any of the building's other inhabitants. She reached Christian's door and silently turned the knob. Her heart soared with hope as the door opened with no resistance. Christian had never been one for locked doors.

She quickly entered and shut the door behind her, as quietly as was possible. She saw the room, the typewriter on the desk near the window, her birdcage in the corner with a cloth draped over it. It was all she could do not to wail out loud. Not trusting herself, she clamped her hand over her mouth and turned toward the bed. The bright moonlight served her well once more that night as it landed gently over the sleeping face of her beloved Christian.

Tears fell past her long lashes and she lightly sat on the edge of his bed. Her trembling hand reached out and touched the soft raven wisps of hair that fell upon his cheek. At the contact, he groaned a little in his sleep and she could not repress a sob.

Green-blue eyes fluttered open with a start. Satine gasped and backed away from the bed. "Satine?" His voice was hoarse from sleep and he rubbed at his eyes.

Frightened, she backed across the room and said nothing.

"Satine?! Wait! Oh God. Please God if this is a dream don't ever let me wake up."

"Don't say things like that Christian." She cursed herself inwardly and turned away from him.

"Satine? Are you real? You can't be real. Are ...are you real?"

Crying, she turned once more to face him. "I'm real Christian. That is at least... I'm really here."

He threw off the bedcovers and put on the light. She did not disappear as he had feared. The joy nearly glowed in him. "But... but the consumption?"

"It wasn't consumption... it was..."

"Dear God. My God. Did we bury you alive?"

"No. No you didn't bury me alive."

He rushed forward, touching her arm tentatively. When she did not vanish, he encompassed her in his arms. "Satine, I don't understand."

"Is it important that you do?"

"No. No all that's important is that you're here. That we have each other again." She could feel his warm tears on the skin of her neck. He kissed her jawline. "Darling, you're so cold. Come under the covers with me. Let me warm you."

"You... you can't. I must go."

"NO! No you mustn't! Not ever again! Don't leave me Satine. I couldn't bear it. Not again."

"It's not safe."

"I don't care. I don't care. Just don't go."

"Christian please..."

"How can I be dreaming? You feel so real. Chilled from the night air and solid in my arms. But this is the way all my dreams have ended since... You always leave. You always leave."

Satine was crying anew. "You don't understand." She pulled back to look into his eyes. He allowed this but refused to release her arms in case she would try to leave. "I am still the girl who fell in love with you Christian. But I'm no longer the girl you fell in love with. I'm... I'm not human."

Confusion was evident in his expression. "Satine?"

"I was attacked a few weeks before we met. Chocolat found me in the alley behind the Moulin Rouge. I was unconscious and bleeding. They took me back and cleaned me up. I didn't remember much of what had happened and fortunately the only damage that seemed to be done were two small cuts on my neck which healed very quickly. After that, Chocolat always kept an eye on me when I went out. I think I scared 10 years off the poor sweet man's life."

Christian swept a lock of hair from Satine's face. "He left Montmartre with China Doll the week after you..." He fell quiet, not allowing himself to say that she died; to do so seemed ridiculous anyway. After all this time, she was here before him, alive by some miracle.

"I didn't realize the significance of that incident until..." Her moist eyes locked on his own. "Christian, I was not suffering from consumption as the doctor said. I was... changing."

"Changing?"

She nodded slowly. "Into what I am now."

"What's that?"

She blinked the tears from her eyes and looked down to the floor in seeming concentration. When she met his gaze again, he noticed lightening-strike patterns of violet laced throughout her ocean blue eyes. She ever-so-slightly lifted the perfect curve of her lips to reveal two elongated fangs where her canines normally were.

She saw the shock in his face but not the disgust she'd expected. Though her heart swelled at the reminder of just how deep his love ran for her, that he could accept her even as a monster, it was quickly calmed by the knowledge that leaving without him had just become a much more difficult task.

Satine lowered her eyes, willing herself to relax for a moment. The violet streaks in her eyes as well as the fangs were gone again by the time she looked back into Christian's face.

"I understand now."

"Then you know why I have to leave."

"No. Satine, did you really think it would make a difference to me?"

She smiled and touched his face. "Not really, but part of me had hoped it would. You can't come with me Christian and I can't stay here with you."

"Why?"

"Christian, sometimes I go hungry for nights at a time... sometimes even weeks. While it's true that this existence will not end from hunger, at least I don't think it will, the hungrier I am the less discriminating my instincts allow me to be. Your warm blood next to me would be too much of a temptation in the leaner times."

"Then... make me like you are," he said.

"No. You're so very alive. Don't ask me to take that from you. I love you Christian. I will always. But I have to go." She broke free of his grip and moved toward the door.

He reached out and took hold of her once more, reeling her back to face him. "I haven't been full of life Satine. Not since you left. I've been full of death. Locked in this room reliving the moment I lost you over and over again until I thought tonight that I had finally gone mad. I could feel you. I could feel your presence and it burned through me like I was seeing you for the first time all over again. I thought I had gone crazy. And then I woke to find you here. Now I don't care if I am crazy as long as you're part of the delusion I live in. And I don't care about my soul or winding up in heaven or hell or.... I lived in heaven when I was with you. I've lived in hell this past year in mourning you. Satine, there is no heaven and hell anymore, there is only us. There is only our love."

She kissed his lips and stroked his hair. "My beautiful sweet poet. I would do anything to heal your heart. But... I will not stop its beating. I just can't do that. I'm sorry." Again, she turned to go.

Panic and despair welled up inside Christian and his breathing increased at the same pace as his desperation. He fixed his stare to the cascade of red hair as his beloved reached for the doorknob.

"{ Come into these arms again and lay your body down. The rhythm of this trembling heart is beating like a drum. It beats for you. It bleeds for you. It knows not how it sounds. For it is the drum of drums, it is the song of songs. }"

Satine froze and bit her lip. She was determined not to look at him, determined not to be dissuaded from saving his life. But she had not heard him sing since the night she died and she found that no power she could muster would move her away from that cherished voice.

"{ Once I had the rarest rose that ever deigned to bloom. Cruel winter chilled the bud and stole my flower too soon. Oh loneliness. Oh hopelessness. To search the ends of time. For there is in all the world no greater love than mine. }"

Her hand now rested on the knob not as a means of escape but as a means of support. When they first met, she was his as soon as he began to sing to her and allowed her that precious glimpse inside his soul. She could feel her determination crumbling with each word that passed his lips. His fingers on her hair caused her to bite back a whimper. His voice softened now as if he was shushing her with a lullaby.

"{ Love. Oh Love. Oh Love. Still falls the rain. {" She turned to him finally and saw tears flowing from his eyes.

She wiped them away with her thumbs as she cupped his cheeks. "{ Still falls the rain, }" she answered.

"{ Be mine forever. }" He whispered and then kissed her.

When they broke the kiss, he smiled at her and continued. "{ Let me be the only one to keep you from the cold. Now the floor of hell is lain with stars of brightest gold. They shine for you. They shine for you. They burn for all to see. Come into these arms again and set this spirit free. }"

They kissed again and then she held him tightly, her lips brushing against his neck. "Come what may," she whispered just before she sank her teeth into his skin. He moaned slightly but only held her tighter. She drank him into her as they fell to the floor together, still wrapped in each other's arms.

The End

"To Dance Again" by Dee Carstensen (VR.5 Soundtrack)

"Love Song For A Vampire" by Annie Lennox (Bram Stoker's Dracula Soundtrack)