THE SECRET THAT SAVES_SSH, IT'S A SECRET BLOGFEST ENTRY

{"We dance round in a ring and suppose,

While the secret sits in the center and knows."

- Robert Frost.}

Some of have emailed me, saying my secret entry doesn't fit the rules of the "SSh, It's A Secret" Blogest :

(http://summersvoice.blogspot.com/2010/08/shh-its-secret-blogfest.html )

And they were disappointed. So here is another that stars my fallen angel heroine :

THE SECRET THAT SAVES

The vampire sneered without moving a muscle of his face. A real feat. I was impressed.

His voice was a slap in words. I forced a smile. Maybe my skirt was too short. Maybe I might give a damn. But not in this life.

"A fallen angel who is an atheist? Isn't that an oxymoron?"

"I wouldn't know. I'm not the moron at this table."

The face that frowned at me wasn't his real one. Poetic justice. Mine that he saw wasn't my real one either.

In the 21st century, everything was illusion. Why should the faces we showed each other be any different? The vampire was saved by the secret of the illusion of the face he saw.

He put down the drink he had been pretending to sip. The look he was giving me would have stopped my wristwatch if I had been wearing one.

But when you look thirty and lived centuries, keeping time is just a bad joke.

I sipped my lemon water and looked out over the Danube. It was fall in Budapest. I smiled, and that should have warned the vampire.

My name was Fallen, too. And so was my nature. And my species, if you believed legend, which I didn't.

I didn't believe in much of anything, except lies and lust. They were the only two constants in my world.

His deep-set eyes flicked to the top two unbuttoned buttons on my silk blouse. "Are you sexually active?"

How odd the words that end a life.

"No, I just lie there, sport."

I dropped the illusion. The secret died. So did the vampire as he turned to a statue of salt.

I rose from the table, wrapping the secret back around my face. Moving into the shadows, I smiled as the screaming started.
***