Love and Whiskers

by Olivia Myers

  “At the school?”

  “Yes.”

  “And did you speak with her?”

  Was it possible that Cerise knew what had happened between them? Imogen shuddered for fear. All of her confidence was leaving her. She felt incredibly weak. “Yes,” she said quietly.

  “Did she mention anything she was doing afterwards? Or about where she was going?”

  “Oh, Cerise!” Imogen cried. “What happened? Why are you asking me all of this?”

  “Answer me.”

  The coldness of the vampire’s voice stung Imogen into submission. Before she knew it, she was pouring forth all of the details of the evening, from her meeting with Lucille to what she’d been told afterwards, about the exercise. She was not visibly affected by what Imogen said about what had transpired between her and Lucille, but when she mentioned what Lucille had said about her headmaster,the vampire tilted her head and sighed.

  “This is trouble,” she whispered.

  “I’m so sorry, Cerise,” Imogen began.

  “No, pet, no. You were outmatched. What strength did you expect to have over a wolverine?”

  “But it was still a betrayal,” Imogen said weakly.

  “The semantics don’t mean anything to me,” Cerise said. “You were alone and defenseless. I’m just happy to see you alive. You’re lucky you were alone with one of the muzzled ones. Many others haven’t fared so well as you.”

  “What do you mean?” Imogen said, seeing the concern in Cerise’s face.

  “I mean that you’re lucky to be alive. There’s been a murder tonight.”

  “Murder!” Imogen shrieked.

  “We’ve already cleared the place,” Cerise went on without noticing Imogen. “We made a phony call about a fire. Everyone else is safe. But it was one of my girls,” Cerise bowed her head. “Darla. She did a few shifts to afford a few bites, here and there. I think you might have known her.”

  Darla had been majestic, as pale as Cerise and with a proud, shapely Nordic face and enormous breasts. She had been good friends with Helena and Imogen had known her for years. There had always been something smoldering and severe about her, but Imogen never would have guessed that the girl was a vampire. A dead vampire, now.

  Imogen was silent for a time, and then she finally opened her mouth. “Do you think it was a wolf?”

  “There’s no question.” The words came down like a hammer.

  “But surely not Lucille. Not any of the students. They wouldn’t hurt anyone innocent.”

  “No,” Cerise admitted to Imogen’s surprise. “Not any of the girls. This was coordinated and precise. Professional. There was hardly any mess at all.”

  It took no stretch of the imagination to understand what Cerise was saying. It was there, the undercurrent of each comment. This was an attack.

  “Darling,” Cerise said gently, becoming tender. “Can you tell me just one more thing?”

  “It’s too horrible,” Imogen whispered. “They came peacefully. They’re innocent.”

  “I need to know,” said Cerise, “if Lucille ever mentioned a man named Victor Mundi.”

  “No,” Imogen said quickly. Cerise’s perfect brow raised in confusion.

  “No,” she reaffirmed. “I’ve never heard the name.”

  “I’m not looking for a name. Did Lucille ever mention a leader, a teacher? Who’s directing all of these new girls at St. Nocturnes?”

  “Only a headmaster,” Imogen said blankly. “But Lucille was confident in him. She called him a genius. If he’d just been some murdering animal she never would have talked about him that way.”

  “But she admired him.” Cerise sighed. “You’ve told me what I didn’t want to hear, my pet. Victor Mundi is a very dangerous man.”

  “But it could have just been an isolated attack!” Imogen wanted to scream. “Maybe something just got out of hand. Maybe…” she tried to speak but found no more excuses.

  “My pet,” Cerise stroked Imogen’s cheek, wet with tears, and drew her to her chest. “You don’t have experience in these things as I do. I know it’s overwhelming. I know it’s unfair. But your young wolverines are being led by a psychopath—I recognized him the moment you told me Lucille’s words. It’s not the first time I’ve heard of him spoken this way.”

  Cerise became quiet and Imogen listened intently. She caught a hesitation in what the vampire was saying, as though she was unsure of her words or unsure of whether she really wanted to say them. It was the first time Imogen had ever seen her like this, and it filled her with fear and pity.

  “Cerise,” she said. “How do you know this?”

  And slowly, haltingly, Cerise untwisted the knot of her confession.

  Years ago, during the coldest winter on record in some Godforsaken, war-torn town in the Austrian alps, when Cerise wore the face of a girl slightly younger but much abused by the violence, a man named Victor Mundi had offered her a piece of bread. He hadn’t known then that she wasn’t human—that she wasn’t starved for the taste of food but the lifeblood of sustenance. He came to know in time, but Cerise’s powers of intuition and observation were impeccably keen, and they did not fail her in this instance. She knew right away that he was inhuman, and dangerous.

  The nights in the mountains were colder and clearer than anywhere else, and the moon shone blisteringly clear. The first night in the home of her benefactor—just a hovel—Cerise shivered beneath the loose floorboards of her hiding place, her scent camouflaged with ash. Mundi had transformed and hunted as one wild, mangled into the hideous form of something half-human and half-wolf, intent wholly on sniffing out his prey.

  In the morning he’d returned to his senses but Cerise was wary of him. She knew that his animal nature was unpredictable and would have torn her apart had she been unfortunate enough to be discovered.

  Yet she had no other options but to stay with him at this time, living in fear that one night she would be discovered and torn to ribbons. For years she lived like this, steeling herself, keeping vigilant and under constant defense. And she was not wholly unrewarded. Mundi, for all of his terror, was tender towards her. Under partially obscured moons, when the animal lurking within him did not completely eclipse his human nature, he stole into the dense woods and hunted foxes and deer for Cerise to dine on later. Their relationship—marked by mutual fear, for Cerise could just have easily opened his neck while he slept—was bound together by an even stronger fear of the unknown that whirled about them, the fog of war twisting even familiar shapes into hideous, nightmarish figures.

  “And then,” Cerise concluded, “Mundi became too dangerous.”

  “Too dangerous?”

  “After the war, when fear no longer held us together. His revenge began to take him over. Before we met he’d been living far away in the countryside, with his pack and with a community of superstitious villagers. They never harmed a soul, but one day the villagers had it in mind that living with a group of shape shifters was too precarious. There was a massacre. Only Mundi escaped.”

  “But that’s horrible!”

  “Horrible.” Cerise nodded. “But the revenge he took later was more horrible still. Years passed. After we parted, he began to form a new pack completely devoted to his revenge against humans. You know how hypnotizing a wolverine can be. Mundi was too convincing to resist. He inspired countless innocents to countless crimes, and then like a fog, he vanished.

  “Darling,” Cerise purred, kissing away the tears running down Imogen’s cheeks. “It’s painful to learn, darling, but it is more painful to ignore. I loved Victor once, or I thought I loved him. He was a God to me. He saved me, but he also had the power to destroy me whenever he wished. But I must face my past with Victor, and I cannot afford to think of what might happen if we ignore the threat now. I think Victor, the Headmaster, is planning something. We cannot afford to look the other way. Now, we need information.”

  “But I don’t want to get mixed up in this,” Imogen said. “I don’t have any ex
perience here, Cerise! I don’t want to be your spy. I just want the simple things—friends, books, school.”

  Exhausted, she collapsed in Cerise’s arms and let the vampire rub her shoulders and her back, smoothing her over with her icy, tender hands. The contact felt good after the roughness she’d experienced with Lucille. Here in Cerise’s arms, the arms she’d forsaken for the impulsiveness of desire, she felt herself free. Not the pleasure of sensual abandon, but the warmth of marrying herself to the body of another.

  With tear-flecked eyes she looked into Cerise’s face and wordlessly begged that there be no more words about wolverines, or warlords.

  Cerise read the desire and instantly she became soft. She stroked a strand of hair that had become loose and kissed Imogen on the forehead. Imogen hugged her girlfriend close, hugged the icy body like a life preserver, and stroked the tender outline of her lips, touching them gently with her own. Cerise cracked her mouth into a little smile and returned the delicate kiss.

  This wasn’t the power struggle and the submission that Imogen had felt earlier. As Imogen held the vampire with her kiss and slowly unzipped her long, black dress, she became more and more conscious of the self she saw mirrored back in her by the vampire. They were a part of one another. Even their bodies, Cerise’s chilled as ice and Imogen’s hot as quickening blood, were as two halves to the same whole.

  Imogen caressed Cerise’s skin, marble white and perfect as it gave way to her touch like the surface of a lake. The ripples were shivers. Hungering to get closer to the sensation, Imogen spooned the naked body to her own and cupped the perfect breasts with her hands, kissing her delicate and sensitive ear.

  Cerise breathed in little gasps and flipped her body around so that Imogen’s tongue could carve new territory down her throat and down her breasts, until it drew wet little circles on the flat, panting belly.

  “Kiss me, darling,” Cerise whispered as Imogen’s tongue went lower and lower. Obediently, she returned to the vampire’s wide-open mouth, filling each crevice with her tongue. But her naked thighs were gripping Cerise’s own, and the mouths of their clits kissed each other each time Imogen slid forward. Covertly she put a hand down and began to massage Cerise’s vagina with two delicate fingers.

  Faster she slid, and more deeply the kisses became. Imogen opened her mouth and let the thrill of the movement fill her, let the thrill of absorbing this other body into hers fill her fit to burst. She arched up and cupped her own breasts in a spasm of delight as Cerise worked her fingers inside Imogen and massaged the thin, delicate wall inside her.

  “I love you, I love you,” Imogen gasped with each new burst of pleasure. It was her own soul answering her from beneath: her own half. How had she betrayed such perfection? How had she ever been misled? What was the life of impulse compared to this full and perfect existence which could send her into such a spectacular frenzy of sensation?

  “Oh my love,” she gasped, grasping the back of Cerise’s neck and pulling her into a thick, passionate kiss. “Never let me go, my love. Never.”

  In a dreamlike state of happy bliss the night passed for Imogen. So removed from reality did it seem to her, so perfect that believing in it was almost too much pleasure, that the firm reality of day and the confrontation Imogen knew she must have with Lucille brought her a terrible pain.

  But there were no alternatives. Cerise had made it more than clear to her the night before that it was imperative to find Mundi and stop him before his plans could go any further. They needed information about where he could be found, and Lucille was the only one who had any idea of his whereabouts. But would Lucille even say anything?

  Throughout the day Imogen racked her mind about how best to bring up the issue. Yet the firm weight of her mission pressed against her mind, clouding her judgment and filling her thoughts with the horrible event of the night before.

  Her mother knew nothing about what happened, but somehow this only made it worse for Imogen. She felt as though she was keeping someone else’s terrible secret.

  She passed through her classes and her after school poetry club meeting in a daze. She regarded Henry Cowper and thought how absurd, how small a thing it was to read poems when there might be people dying around her, and she would not exercise any power to prevent it. She was not courageous, she admitted to herself. She was not clever. She could not be underhanded.

  “Again?” Agatha’s voice, filled with annoyance and venom, jerked Imogen out of her funk. “I swear those bitches are only here because they knew we would be here.”

  “They’re just looking for a place to go,” shy Alice whispered, eyes bowed.

  They were at the same café they’d visited the week before. Imogen looked up and shivered at the sight of Lucille with the twins, loud, pealing laughter cutting through the silence, the same as ever. Like déjà vu.

  But there was a kind of bliss and abandon in the way the girls laughed that Imogen had not noticed before. Now, she understood it. For the girls, nothing else existed apart from the sensation before them: the helpless abandon to mirth and happiness. They could not help it. It was nature.

  And what kind of monster would turn that nature against them? Who would manipulate so simple a mind to fit something as wretched as personal revenge? Imogen’s heart quickened. She knew what she needed to do.

  “I’ll go and say something,” she said, and rose.

  Lucille did not see Imogen until she was nearly at the table, and only then did her face spread into a broad and rather clumsy smile, rows of pearly teeth like little suns.

  “We’re being loud, huh?” she said, grinning at Imogen’s formality.

  “Mind if I sit down?”

  “It’s a free table, baby.” Lucille took a stool from an adjoining table and set it down. Imogen sat demurely, crossing her legs.

  “I just wanted to say that,” she said. She halted, began again. “That—well—you’re not bothering me.”

  The other two girls chuckled. Imogen sounded foolish. She knew it and pressed on. “And actually, I don’t think it’d be such a bad idea for us to meet up sometime. We have a poetry club and, well, I know you like to talk about books.”

  The girls ceased laughing. Imogen was speaking with complete earnestness and in it there was a disarming pride they couldn’t help but respect.

  “Books,” Lucille said with a grin. She twisted in her chair to see the faces of her two companions. Just like a pack animal.

  “I think we could do that,” Lucille agreed. “But none of that candy-land romantic crap. You girls need to mix it up a bit. Y’all like the Beats?”

  “You mean, like, Jack Kerouac?”

  “I mean the guys who really shook shit up! Kerouac, sure. But Ginsberg. Ferlinghetti. Cummings. The motherfuckers who really knew the language. Could rip it apart like a V-8 and Picasso it back together. There’s a whole world outside of a sonnet, ya know.”

  “Okay,” Imogen smiled. She put out her hand. Lucille’s embraced it.

  “Deal.”

  The girls behind Lucille visibly relaxed and then got up to use the restroom. They hadn’t known what to expect by the confrontation and were standing guard over Lucille in case anything unexpected happened. The tension had relaxed now.

  “But I wanted to ask you something else,” Imogen ventured.

  “Shoot.”

  “Your headmaster,” she began. Lucille stiffened. “What’s he like?”

  “He’s the most ingenious man I’ve ever met,” Lucille said. It sounded so automatic Imogen wondered whether the answer was performed, whether it’d been ingrained before Lucille had even been asked the question.

  “But where does he come from? What kind of man is he?” she pressed. “He sounds interesting, from what I’ve heard you say. That’s the only reason I’m asking,” she put in quickly, careful not to raise too much curiosity.

  “Really, I don’t know,” Lucille said. “He keeps most of that to himself. He’s a private guy, you know. Spends most of his time i
nside. Talks in whispers. Why?” She cracked laughter. “You want to meet him or something?”

  “Yes,” Imogen said. It hadn’t been the admittance Lucille had expected. “Yes, I want to meet him.”

  “But, you can’t,” Lucille said simply. “I mean, he’d never agree to it.”

  “But I’m just a student,” Imogen said innocently. “I just want the chance. He’s faculty at the school now, right? So I should have the opportunity.”

  “It’s a private thing, Imogen,” Lucille said. “He speaks…with his own kind.”

  “With wolverines, you mean.” The word caused Lucille to stiffen and look around, as though she was expecting someone to be listening to their conversation.

  “But there won’t be any harm in it,” Imogen pressed. “Why don’t you let me ask him myself? He won’t turn away an interested student.”

  “Imogen,” Lucille spoke. Her voice was low and defensive, and came out as a growl. Imogen knew that she had crossed into dangerous territory. “I don’t know why you’re interested in the headmaster,” Lucille began. “Maybe you simply want to meet him.” She leaned forward and fixed Imogen with a cold and cloudy stare. “But for some reason, I don’t trust you.”

  “Lucille,” she began but the other girl cut her short.

  “I think I can imagine what you’re going to say now. But I have a question for you first. Even if you saw the headmaster, what would you say? Why all this sudden interest?”

  “It’s just interest,” Imogen said and tried to laugh, but the sound came out strained and uncomfortable.

  For a long time Lucille kept her eyes fixed on Imogen’s, trying to prize out whatever secrets lurked behind. The moments crept by slowly and Imogen felt her skin go warm with beaded sweat.

  “Maybe it is,” she said at last. “Maybe it’s only interest.” The words trailed off. Imogen waited, breathless and frightened.

  And suddenly, the familiar grin broke Lucille’s broad face. She clapped a hand on Imogen’s shoulder. “No one looks more trustworthy than you, Imogen,” she said, laughing. “You have the most innocent face in the world. But I wished you would have asked me about the headmaster sooner.”