Voice of the Blood

by Jemiah Jefferson

  "What's the matter?" I whispered.

  "Nora," Chloe said softly to me.

  "What about her?" I could tell by the set stillness of Lovely's and Mimsy's back that they were listening intently, without looking like they were.

  Chloe looked up at me, shaking her head. Her lips, without lipstick, held their dark stain, the full lower lip chapped from biting. "She and Daniel went to the desert," she said, and that was all.

  "Oh, well," Lovely said heavily.

  "What does that mean?" I whispered.

  Mimsy and Lovely both shrugged. I looked at Chloe, but she also just shook her head and wouldn't say any more, and she looked away to the moon, which had now sunk partially below the edge of the building. We never saw Nora again.

  When I asked Daniel about it two safe weeks later, he stretched beside me and yawned. "Oh, that," he said. "Well, she had begun to grate on my nerves, and the nerves of everyone around me, and so I asked her to tell me what she wanted next. I told her all her alternatives. She was a fuckin' speed freak, and she was totally unhappy. She's always been totally unhappy. She chose a drive to the desert."

  "Is that your convenient euphemism for killing someone?" My Southern upbringing stood me well here; my voice never rose above a bedroom softness.

  Daniel responded well to it. He shifted me around so that I was resting on the plane of his body, my elbows dangling down his ribs and my breasts pressed against his belly. He opened his legs and my knees fell down between his thighs, and he closed the thighs, trapping me gently. "I can kill someone anytime I want," he said. "Anywhere. The desert is simply more spiritual."

  "And was this her choice? To die?"

  "Eventually," he said, smiling.

  "Did you drain her?" I said, growing aroused despite myself. His body leached a kind of decadent warmth into me; I was always aware that this heat that came from him was the burning bodies of human beings. But his skin was like the finest velvet, his nipples always hard and ready to be pinched, bitten, suckled. His penis rose sluggishly, thickly, against me.

  "We made love, out in the open. Once she felt her pleasure, and had time to enjoy the feeling, I broke her neck. I slit her neck the long way. Drank the blood as it poured out in streams. I fucked her again as she died." He raised his eyebrows innocently at me. "She'd told me to."

  "And?"

  "I buried her in the sand, in her blue velvet gown. It was very beautiful."

  His cock was very hard now, straining against my navel, as if trying to fuck me abdominally. With his hands he fondled my buttocks, separating them, stroking in the dampness down the hollow. When I didn't say anything, he pulled me up, slid me until his cock was bent under me, pulsing unevenly against my cunt and my anus. Finally I said drowsily, "I can't fuck you again."

  "The hell you can't. Didn't you like the way I sang last night? Cavorted around like Valentino on LSD?"

  "You waved your dick at the audience."

  "They've seen dicks before."

  I began to laugh. "My decadent angel," he murmured, reaching over for the carved earthenware pot of solidified olive oil and smearing a handful of it, instantly melting, onto his penis, "you've become so very much like me, in all the best ways." With a modicum of slithering and adjusting, he mounted me, like a butterfly on a display case, onto his cock, spearing with a terrible ease into my ass. I stopped about halfway, my toes curling with the effort. "Just bear down. Yes. That way. We used to fuck this way, Orfeo Ricari and I. He would climb on top of me and he'd have that look on his face—yes, that look exactly. Yes. It's almost as if I have him back. Did you ever have that urge? That… overwhelming urge to fuck Orfeo Ricari right in that… sweet little ass of his?"

  "You're killing me."

  "Did you or did you not?"

  "Of course I did," I said through gritted teeth.

  He was smiling as calmly as a Buddha. "Had enough? Girls have no stamina."

  "Just… too much."

  The sensation of him sliding backward out of me was in fact so intensely pleasurable that I came, and he made an executive decision not to stop, but to keep slipping with great care into and out of me until my orgasm had spun itself out. When he had finally stopped, I rolled over and curled up on my side. Daniel laid his chin against the curve of my side. "You know what you look like?" he asked. He took one hand from under my chin and bent it back so that I could touch his cock; it was thick, slimy, throbbing. "You look like you're thinking that if you experience this much pleasure, you have to balance it with pain somehow. Am I right?"

  I didn't say anything.

  He moved my floppy arm back and forth to stroke himself off. "I can see it in your face. Catholic guilt. Karmic guilt. It's kind of the same."

  "Daniel, I'm not a fucking Catholic. I'm not Ricari." I yanked my arm back. "Fucking me is not fucking him." But the thought of that slight whip of a young man, painfully caught on this insatiable member, made my knees turn to water.

  "Don't get coy with me. I know. I can see it. OK, so you're not a Catholic. You're a scientist. A rationalist. Cause and effect—pleasure begets pain. Right?" He hissed suddenly in my ear. "Well, bloodylocks, I'm here to tell you that you don't have to be bound by a rational means at all. No need to find cause and effect at all. Pleasure without guilt! Without fear! There is no meaning in any of this—just a bundle of neurons firing at random. Random configurations of cells. Tell me if I've lost you in there somewhere."

  "Necrophiliac," I mumbled into my arm. "Buggerer."

  Daniel chuckled in surprise and delight. "Well, I've never buggered a dead body before. I suppose there's a first time for everything." Daniel playfully bit me, with his incisors only; and he turned me over to face him. In the semidarkness of nightfall, he glowed like fine paper. "Ariane! Don't go into a mood. Should I have asked first?"

  I laughed at him sitting up concerned, his still-hard cock standing at attention between his hipbones, and I pulled him over on top of me and guided him into my wet cunt. I locked my legs tightly around his waist. He gasped, even more surprised and very pleased, shuddering as I rammed against him as hard as I could. I ground out through gritted teeth, drowning out the earnest strains of Mozart coming from outside, "You monster… you fucking monster…"

  Lovely gave me a back rub later that night.

  We were at Chloe's; she and Mimsy were out doing something entirely unrelated to vampires. She claimed it was good for their relationship. Lovely and I were watching the very, very, very late movie—Foxes, starring the young Jodie Foster, about a group of rebellious, overmature teenagers in L.A. in 1980. "I've seen this on late-night TV about a hundred times," I said, sighing as Lovely rubbed cold aloe vera into the bruises on my ass. "I love this flick. I would be up all night studying for a final or a paper, and Foxes would always come on. I love the scene where they go to see KISS."

  "KISS are cool," Lovely said. "I always went as one of the members of KISS for Halloween every year—the only time of year I could wear makeup and not get beaten up for it."

  He dug a little too hard and I hissed breath between my teeth. "Ouchie."

  "Sorry, darling. More wine?"

  "You can have the rest."

  His hands paused on me while he sucked away the last few centimeters on the bottle. "You have to get over being scared by Daniel," Lovely said.

  "I'm not scared of Daniel. It's myself that scares me."

  "Don't scare yourself either. Just flow with it."

  "No pun intended." I smiled to myself. "Honey, that feels so, so good. If I could give you a medal and some cash prizes, I would." I was, in fact, aroused by the touch of his small, perfect, youthful hands, so innocent of claws, skillful at massage.

  Lovely laughed quietly. "I'll tell you something," he said. "I'll tell you about how Daniel and I hunt."

  They did it once or twice a week. Daniel and Lovely's little social outing. Lovely always came back from these sessions quiet, sometimes rather bruised and bitten-over, always freshly showered and fragrant w
ith the smell of Dr. Bronner's almond-scented soap. He would slide into the alcove, cover up, and go to sleep without his usual "Hello, darling."

  "I'll tell you about the last time we went out," Lovely said, returning to his work, this time on my lumbar curve, where the muscles were spasming, shortened by Daniel's brutal, goaded thrusts. "We went to a leather bar in Santa Monica. The real hardcore deal—slings, sub-dom, handcuffs on the bar, all that kind of tired shit. I'm not that impressed, but I guessed Daniel had something in mind, so I kept my mouth shut. And we were all tricked out as master and slave that night too; he had me in the collar and leash, and he was wearing that black suit of his. He bought me a girlie drink and he started scanning the place.

  "Eventually he poked me and whispered in my ear. 'See that leatherman over there,' he said to me. I looked—guy looked like the leatherman in the Village People, I shit you not. He had a big handlebar mustache, leather cap, bondage top, chaps, motorcycle boots—I was soooo over that type by the time I was, like, fifteen. But Daniel seemed really amused by him. He said to me, 'Why'n't you go over there and tell him I said that I told you to go suck his cock.' So I was like, uh, OK, and I go over to the leatherman, really obviously sent over by Daniel. And I go, just like he said, 'My lover really wants to see me suck your cock. Can I?' And the guy thinks for a minute that I'm bullshitting him, but then he's like, 'OK!' I mean, this is the kind of hardcore bar where some guys were over in another corner, fucking on the pool table. I mean, the light over it was broken, but still.

  "So the guy, like, shakes out his dick, and I go down on him, right?"

  "Lovely, Lovely, wait a minute, hang on here. You just start whaling on this skanky leatherman without knowing jack shit about him?"

  Lovely arched his eyebrow, confused. "Well, yeah, of course," he said.

  "Whatever. Go on."

  "I mean, he didn't look too grungy, he tasted like dick, you know. I'm like, it's a cock, I'll suck it if I feel like it. The guy's obviously impressed by my technique—I give the best head in the world, I'm proud to announce. Finally, after a while, Daniel comes over and says, 'What do you think of my little friend?' And the leatherman's like, 'Jesus fucking Christ.' And Daniel's all like, something like, 'You wanna… get out of here? I can get us a room.' Or something like that… and the leatherman just like can't believe his fucking luck. So, like, Daniel gives him the address of some no-tell motel, and we leave, and we tell him to meet us there in an hour, and bring some rubbers. Daniel's not stupid. Leathermen are often pretty stupid, but Daniel never is. He just won't be seen leaving somewhere with one of his kills. He'd rather kill them in public than leave with them and have them turn up dead later.

  "So we go to this hotel room, and Daniel does me up pretty good, gives me some poppers and some more drinks, and he tastes some of my blood so he can get a little convincingly fucked up, and we fool around for a while and see if the leatherman comes or not. Sometimes this trick works, sometimes it doesn't—a lot of the time the guy freaks and doesn't show up. That's fine too. Daniel and I just have a high old time with the dirty movies and the free ice.

  "But this leatherman, this. Village Person, he shows up! And he brings the condoms too! What a guy. And Daniel tells him the score; he wants the leatherman to suck me off, then he wants him to fuck me while I suck Daniel… one of these complicated things. He's like, Sure… So leatherman sucks my cock, which is interesting because I never get sucked, I'm always doing it myself; and Daniel's kind of slowly undressing, touching himself. He's really coming across as wasted. I'm impressed. So I come, no big deal, and then we start the whole circus; the leatherman and his big fat cock fucking me on the edge of the bed, and Daniel kneeling in front of me while I suck him. This goes on and on… it's kind of cool… I'm wrecked on the poppers and the rubber feels pretty good all stretchy inside me… and I'm, like, I don't want this leatherman coming inside me anyway.

  "So Daniel comes in my mouth, and the leatherman still isn't done—the rubber probably—and Daniel creeps off the bed and circles back around the leatherman, caressing him a little bit, maybe teasing him that Daniel's going to fuck him next. And suddenly I hear this 'rip!' and 'argh!' and then this hot, sticky splash on my back. I look over my shoulder—and Daniel's ripped his throat wide open and is sucking out the blood. The leatherman is dying, and he's still inside me, and I can feel him coming and pissing and thrashing… and I just kind of slide across the bed away from him. Daniel's an efficient drinker—I don't know if you've ever seen him kill—but he wastes as little as possible. I've seen him drink what must have been fifteen, sixteen pints a night. He just sticks onto the wound, drinking and drinking, way faster than either of us could. It's like he's just absorbing it. And he looks so good when he's done—he looks just like he must have when he was alive, so pink, so soft around the edges. We almost always make love afterwards." Lovely paused to light a cigarette, which hung suspended at the corner of his rosebud mouth. "This time we didn't, we were both really spent. We just took our shower in the motel room bathroom, washed up with Dr. Bronner's 'cos it kills the smell of blood the best without being obvious about it, got in the car, and went to Denny's for coffee and pie. That was last Tuesday."

  "And you do this once a week," I said.

  "I do it with him once a week. He does it on his own practically every single day."

  I shook my head. "It's a wonder there are any leathermen left in Los Angeles," I muttered.

  "Well, you know, it's not always leathermen. He kills anybody. Cabbies, bums, pimps, housewives, Rottweilers, ushers at the movie theater… They all taste good to him. There's billions of people in the world and, like, a hundred million in L.A. alone. I don't think he's going to hurt the population much." Lovely briskly slapped my behind. "Turn over, I'm gonna do your thighs. Back feel better?"

  "Much." I stared at the glitter ceiling. "You know, he killed Nora."

  "I knew he was going to," Lovely said.

  "Aren't you afraid you'll displease him one of these days and he'll kill you?"

  "Nope," Lovely said calmly. "He's promised me. Two and a half more years, and he's going to make sure I die exactly the way I want to die. How many people ever get to choose that? Nobody really. And it's not like suicide; I'm not doing it because I'm unhappy. It's just the best way to die I could ever conceive of. That's an incredible luxury."

  "I'm still afraid he's going to kill me one of these days," I said in a small voice.

  "Ariane, Ariane, sweetie darling, has Daniel ever even gotten angry at you?"

  I had to admit that he hadn't.

  "All he does is adore you. Jesus, he's never going to kill you unless you fucking beg him to do it—and probably not even then. You don't understand how lonely Daniel gets. He's really, really old. He has to surround himself with people, but he doesn't make connections of lasting depth. Not to him! To him fifteen years is a casual acquaintance. I think he's wanting to make another, to keep him company for good." Lovely's eyes were huge and earnest. "He wants a lover and a confidante and an ally and an equal. Girl, you are so dense!"

  "Why would he want me?" I mumbled.

  "I don't know," Lovely said, his voice halting with honesty. "I think he wants me too, but I don't want to go. I don't even want to turn twenty-five, let alone three hundred and fifty."

  I turned over onto my side again to think, feeling my slightly sore bowels tug and move inside me. Remembering Daniel's violation made my whole body throb gently, my nipples hard against Chloe's terry-cloth robe. Lovely gave up the massage and curled up beside me, occasionally flicking at his cigarette. Should I even dare to want such a tiling? Did I dare to eat this particular peach? I had thought that Ricari had cured me of the urge to immortality, but the idea again swelled inside me. To be with Daniel forever… to stop feeling like his inferior and truly understand him, understand Ricari's immense pain… how wonderful could that be? I didn't bother to see the end of Foxes, where Cherie Currie gets into the car wreck and dies in the hospital; I already
knew how the movie ended. Lovely stayed up, though, watching the screen with his eyes wide.

  * * *

  Chapter Ten

  Subjects D. B. (hemophagius) and A. D. (sapiens)

  D. B. Blood pressure: (before feeding) 40/30 (after feeding) 200/160

  A. D. Blood pressure: 120/82

  20mg sapiens blood added to 20mg hemophagius blood. Blood mixture increases in temperature to 43°C, darkens in color. Volume decreases almost immediately (≤0.1 sec) to a final total of 21 mg.

  Observation of this process under microscope (that shitty Radio Shack thing turned up to maximum, which is about 500x) shows the vampire thrombocytes becoming phagocytic, which I've never heard of happening. It's as though the vampire blood cells eat the human blood cells. They gobble them up and produce more microcytic RBCs, releasing a tremendous amount of energy in the process. I have a feeling ATP is involved here, and I don't know where that comes from—experience, I guess. It generally all comes down to ATP, especially since "becoming a vampire by blood exchange" doesn't quite seem to explain how it works. Ugh, I've got to get some sleep.

  I watched Daniel taking photographs of all the children who lived at the Rotting Hall. Photo-studio-style, he draped some broken furniture with a dark cloth, posed each subject, and snapped a few shots while Rodan, a new friend he'd picked up cruising, adjusted an umbrella lamp slightly. Lovely posed simply and demurely, wearing nothing but a strip of black cloth wound around his groin; Chloe leaned forward in a classic fifties cleavage shot; the Asian twins, Joey and Blue, entwined intimately together. "What's all this for?" I asked, leaning against the wall.

  Daniel paused to put on a new album. "I'm making a photo book," he said. "You're next, Ariane. Jump up on there and sit still."