Voice of the Blood

by Jemiah Jefferson

  "Me? But I don't want my picture taken. I look like shit."

  "Nonsense. Cooperate." He gestured at me with one set of lacquered claws. "Just a few minutes. I'm really almost done with the photography. Then I'm going to treat the pictures and do the layout. I'm on a deadline."

  So I sat down and consented to being photographed. "A deadline?" I said, blinking just after the flash.

  "I have a gallery all ready to show my pictures, if I can finish them by next week." Nora set it up months ago and I forgot all about it. I always overextend myself. "Mimsy! Mimsy, get in here, I need a picture of you, and then I'm done." Daniel adjusted the lamp himself. "I'll show you something in a minute, Ariane."

  Once he had rewound all his film, dismantled the lamp, and paid Rodan a hundred bucks, Daniel led me up into his office. He opened his desk drawer and leafed through a pile of 8x10 black and white prints. At last he found one and put it in front of me, under the light.

  It was shot inside a car, a body sprawled in the backseat, spattered and soaked with something dark like black glossy paint. I held up the picture, recognizing the mane of spiraling, flyaway hair. "That's me," I said.

  "That is the moment when I fell in love with you," Daniel murmured, kissing the lobe of my skull behind the ear. "You were so beautiful, so vulnerable. Stinking of blood. You were so lost inside, so confused, not angry at all, just… you needed me."

  "And you're gonna publish that?"

  He nodded. "I think it's a beautiful photo."

  It was. "No," I said frustrated. "You do not have my permission. What other kind of—of pictures do you have in there? Maybe your last picture of Nora?"

  Daniel smiled crookedly. "I wish I'd thought of that. Sweetheart, come on. I'll treat the picture so that—so that it's nicer. Really. Please let me, it's just an obscure little gallery, you'll be a star. Please. Please do it for me."

  I sighed. "You don't have my permission," I said, "but I bet you're going to do it anyway."

  "I promise it won't be horrible. I swear. It's art."

  Daniel played his last performance in the glass-brick club the week after my twenty-fifth birthday; he played a whole lot of very loud industrial noise, and ended the set by tying a razor blade to a piece of fishing line, swallowing it, singing a verse or two while the blood ran out the corners of his mouth, and then amid the horrified screams of everyone present (including myself), proceeding to yank the razor blade back out of his esophagus, spattering the front row with fine crimson specks. Needless to say, he was not asked back for another show.

  The next week, after he had been made rather famous in the L.A. underground press for this little sideshow, his exhibition of photographs opened at the Graber Gallery in Hollywood, and he invited any and all members of the press. He and his band, and a few other kids, sat around on pure-white couches and chairs, wearing pure-white clothing. Everyone else had their faces painted mime-white. Daniel did not, of course, and his face was slightly less white, in contrast, and he painted his lips his customary crimson red. Photographers crowded around the group, and the art press knelt at Daniel's feet asking him questions. I hung at the back with Chloe, both of us conspicuous in our black, eating sandwiches and drinking the complimentary champagne.

  The questions drilled through the clattering of camera shutters. Daniel held court like a slightly dissipated, elegant duke. "So was your performance at the Gibbet real?"

  "I don't know, what do you think?"

  "Are you a real vampire?"

  "Yes."

  "What do you say to your critics who say you're just a dilettante, calling on all the most popular artistic movements of the twentieth century?"

  "I say, for heaven's sake, get a life, art isn't made to be criticized. Read some fucking Dali."

  "Where were you born?"

  "Outer space."

  The photos were beautiful and bizarre. He had cut and pasted different parts of the photos together, as well as making collages with cardboard tampon boxes, broken red glass, and newspaper clippings about murders and accidents. Some of the photos he left intact; the one of Lovely sitting in a stiff, formal pose in his wee loincloth, and the simple pose of me in the Rotting Hall, somewhat slouched, cigarette burning between my fingers. I looked like a tough, cynical bitch having a pensive moment; like a sophisticated high school dropout. "That's a great picture," Chloe said to me, startling me.

  "I don't like photos," I said, rubbing the goose pimples off my arms. "I don't like this spectacle. Doesn't seem… safe, somehow…"

  She put her warm arm around me and led me away. "It's gonna be OK. You worry too much."

  The week after, Daniel sprawled in his office at the Rotting Hall, surrounded by L.A. art papers from the most marginal zines to the glossy professionals, extremely pleased with himself, talking on the phone. I lay on his bed running over my test results, craving my lab facilities back at the Loony Geek Farm. I never thought I'd miss that place; fortunately, the homesickness came in slow waves that were easily muddled.

  He hung up the phone at last, pouring another glass of Orangina soda. "Well, I was right," he said to me. "I'm not an exile. Do you have Ricari's mailing address? I'd love to send him a copy of these rags and see what he thinks."

  "He's probably still at the Saskatchewan Hotel in North Beach," I murmured, then turned on my side to look at him. "What do you mean, you're not an exile?"

  "Well, I told the print press that I'm a real vampire, but I just talked to the Revikoffs, and they don't seem to mind at all."

  "Who are the Revikoffs?"

  "Old friends. Emphasis on old. They'd like to meet you, in fact. They're very interested in your scientific experiments."

  "Others? Really? You mentioned my work to them?"

  "Of course. The Revikoffs make me look like the uninhibited teenager that I really am. Alex was made in the late nineteenth century, and Risa about thirty years behind him." Daniel picked up his favorite magazine, a cyberpunkish ultra-glossy crowded with balloonish fonts, and fingered the photographs of himself, relaxing majestically in his white linen suit. "Part of your gradual immersion. I find the transition isn't so painful if you're eased into the lifestyle, get a couple of friends who know where you're at, you know. Lovely's already met Sam Rifkin, who's an old queer who spent most of his formative years in Morocco… they got along great."

  "I don't think Lovely wants to be a vampire, Dan," I said slowly.

  "Nonsense. He'll do as I say. He'll change his mind once he's there." He cocked an eyebrow at me. "Don't tell me you're chickening out."

  "I never chicken out," I retorted. "I may decide not to, but I don't—"

  "Ah, don't get peeved, sweetheart. I was only teasing." He dropped his glossy print narcissus and curled up next to me on the mattress. "You still love this disgusting old degenerate?" he asked softly, curling his finger around my ear.

  "Like I can help it. Can't live without you." I kissed him to let him know that I meant it.

  "Getting anywhere on the antibody problem? Or the strength problem?"

  "Not too much—I'm not that big on biophysics. I can only guess its something in the resilience and toughness of the bones and tendons involved… you've basically got the strength of an insect, proportionally."

  "God, I love it when you talk dirty to me. Call me an insect again!"

  I let him know that he was not immune to tickling. He was particularly susceptible, in fact—sometimes his shrieking and thrashing accidentally left bruises on me. "Don't complain. You'll inherit the earth, you locust."

  "A plague of me upon the land. Ha!" He jumped up. "Do you want to go visit the Revikoffs? Risa said they'd be home tonight. I'm sure they wouldn't mind a couple of visitors. You'll absolutely have to take off that T-shirt and jeans, though, honey. They're pretty conservative."

  "What do they want, a diamond tiara and evening gown?" I griped.

  "Part of the reason why I like them is that they wouldn't mind if you did show up dressed like that. I miss that ki
nd of thing. Come on, put on that gray dress I first brought you."

  Washed, with makeup, and clad in gray, I accompanied Daniel into the verdant hills of Brentwood (stopping first for a Taco Bell run), winding around the complicated roads without a single stoplight. "I feel like I'm being taken to the secret rendezvous," I said. "There's no way I could find my way back here."

  "That's deliberate, I'm sure," Daniel said, tossing his taco wrappers into the back seat. "The Revikoffs like their privacy. I don't know why they don't just move to Montana or Arkansas or something, where nobody would think to look for them."

  "Is there a reason why they're so…" I was going to say paranoid, but amended it to "Secretive?"

  He knew what I meant anyway. His smooth rice-paper face crimped in a smirk. "You know, the usual list of crimes… murdering heads of state, embezzling millions from the Soviet government… nothing major."

  "Where'd you get your money, Daniel?"

  Of all the obnoxious questions I asked him every day, I had never yet asked this. He was quiet for a moment, eyes trained carefully on the road, his fingers uneasily flexing on the leather-wrapped steering wheel, and at last he answered me. "Well, technically, I'm still alive. I had put a bit of money in the bank just after Ricari transformed me—his advice. Not very much money, mind you, not much more than any burgher might put away to build an indoor toilet for his summer house. It's still there, quite safe and happy; I transferred it to Switzerland just before the war, and it's weathered many political storms there, letting the gnomes toss a few more deutschemarks on it now and again. The interest alone is punching seven figures." He yawned. "And some of it I stole from Ricari."

  "Daniel."

  "Well, he was giving it to me for so long I felt entitled to it. Call it paternity. He'll never miss it, the stingy bastard, he's worth God knows what, under twenty different names, probably. And some of it I acquired through charm… or through what you might call public service."

  "Your little side business as a pimp exterminator?"

  "They carry huge sums of cash upon their person. Thank me, sweetheart; that's where your French fry money comes from, huh? You know I'm a scoundrel." He'd just seen Empire Strikes Back again recently, and he'd taken a shine to that word. "Get used to it. Naughty deeds come easily; you're not exactly part of the moral majority yourself."

  "I wasn't passing judgment."

  "Sure, baby," he said. "Hey, we're here." In the moonlight a white-painted wrought-iron gate gleamed like struts of bone. Unlike half the movie/TV/ sports stars who lived in this area of Los Angeles, the house itself wasn't hidden up a winding drive beyond the gate; a white and dark Tudor was plainly visible up a short, wide gravel drive. Daniel leaned out the car door and punched a code into a lighted security grid, and the gate swung open slowly and in perfect silence. Indeed, in Brentwood all was silence except for the humming of Dolores's overblown engine and the discreet anarchy of Diamond Dogs on the car stereo.

  We ditched the car in the driveway, and I followed the skipping Daniel to the front door. A slight young Latino girl, dressed in a white dress and whiter apron, peeked her head out the door. She blinked at us without saying anything. "We're here to visit Alex and Risa," Daniel said. "They're expecting us."

  The girl didn't seem to be inclined to believe him and didn't budge, but a low masculine voice came out of the house as if carried on the wind. "Carmen, he's all right. Let them in."

  She bowed her head and silently let us pass.

  The house was a vivid contrast to the charming but chaotic squalor of Verfaulenhalle; equally Gothic in its way, the foyer was a short hall of walnut lined with small sitting-room paintings of nobility and white votive candles fluttering in the breeze we let in. The front room was dark, curtained, vast, elegant; white jacquard settees, hardwood floor lined with a dark blue runner, a huge showcase filled with tiny, expensive things that glittered faintly in the candlelight. I nervously took Daniel's hand. It gave me no comfort; his fingers curled around mine, unusually icy and skeletal. "Hey, Alex," he called out into the nothingness. The girl had vanished silently behind us as we'd come through the door.

  "I'm in the kitchen, Daniel. I expected you'd want a drink."

  There were no lights on in the kitchen either. A smallish, slender figure clinked glasses, leaning easily against the polished counter. "Vodka all right?"

  Daniel laughed. "As long as you don't mind if I offer you hefeweizen when you come to visit me next, Alexander."

  "You know I don't drink, Daniel."

  "This is Ariane," Daniel said, offering me up.

  "Pleased to meet you," I murmured, stifling the urge to curtsy. "I hope you don't think I'm too forward, but would you mind a little light, so I don't feel like I'm facing the Great Unknown?"

  "Ah, but you are, my darling." Obligingly he flicked a tiny switch, and a blue-tinted night-light lit up at the outlet beside the sink. Alexander Revikoff was perhaps a bit taller than I, dressed simply and expensively; his hairline and the slight crow's feet around his eyes placed him at about forty. He was not particularly handsome, but the cast of his features gave his face a kind of wistful gravity. "A Southerner. Let me guess. Georgia?"

  "New Orleans," I said.

  "Forgive me. I'm terrible at accent identification, frankly." He handed Daniel a cut-glass tumbler of colorless fluid. "Do you drink vodka?" he asked me.

  "Among other things."

  Daniel and Revikoff traded a smile. "Yes," Revikoff said.

  "You're talking about me," I suspected.

  The Russian's smile was trained on me. "Yes," he admitted. "Forgive me. Not really talking, Daniel and I are not that close. There was merely a feeling of pride, and a reply of approval. I think you'll be fine."

  I took my shot of vodka. It was bitingly cold, syrupy; it tasted faintly of grass clippings. "Polish, isn't it?" I guessed. "Zobrovka?"

  "Not that brand, but made in the same way, with zobrovka herbs." The Russian vampire placed his hand on my shoulder. Interestingly, his claws were clipped short, blunt, just to the tip of the pale-pink vein in the center. The claws were layered keratin, about a millimeter thick. It looked uncomfortable. "You'll do. Come downstairs, meet Risa. She's a little more stimulating than I." He guided me to the back staircase, Daniel 'following behind us with the vodka bottle in hand. "In the end I am simply a boring old man. I always have been. Risa is the light between us."

  Downstairs was an extensive game room with billiards, swords of all kinds, pistols hung in show racks; Risa was playing darts by candlelight, tossing bull's-eye after neat bull's-eye. She was taller than Alex, round-shouldered, skin a luminous white, hair very close-cropped with a stylish messiness. She looked up and bellowed with pleasure at the sight of Daniel, and he picked her up and kissed her and swung her around, not letting go of the vodka bottle. "My angel!" she cried. "How good of you to come! Please, give me a taste of that vodka, it took me a whole afternoon to find it."

  Alex Revikoff retained me in the stairwell. "Her name is Elisabeta," he explained to me, running his fingers along the wood grain in the walls. "She's thirty. Or she would be. Or she was." His pale, glass-ornament-blue eyes watched Risa and Daniel pawing and kissing and chattering to each other. "She adores Daniel. We met him when he first came to Los Angeles in 1957. He came for the beatniks. Risa also adored the Beats, and they ended up in the same filthy cafes together listening to infernal bongo music and worse poetry."

  "Did they have an affair?" I guessed.

  "I wouldn't say an affair. Affairs are for soap operas. Adultery is for the Bible. She brought Daniel home to stay with us as her lover."

  "Weren't you upset?"

  "I was confused. My wife, who I adored, was bright again after fifteen, twenty years of unhappiness. We traveled the world trying to find a place that would make her happy. She liked Hollywood films, so we moved to Hollywood in the end. But she was so melancholy all the time. This life was a terrible weight upon her, the knowledge of what she'd done, what she had
endured so that we could be together. I cannot express… I cannot imagine… how it must be, to follow the one you love into death. She never said to me that she thought she'd made a mistake—how could she? But she was simply quietly miserable for years. Then she met Daniel." Revikoff patted my shoulder gently with his unsettling hand. "Suddenly she was alive again, the way she was before I changed her. She was full of light and love, not just for Daniel and her beatniks, but for me. Daniel wasn't serious about her. She knew that. She didn't mind."

  "That Daniel," I said. "He's like a shot in the ass."

  "Pardon?"

  "Just an expression."

  He frowned, and then smiled at me. His expressions were so very strange—they reminded me of Ricari, and at first I had thought it was simply Old World charm. Then it became clear that this man hardly ever drank blood. His skin reacted, not fluidly like a human's, or like Daniel's ordinarily, but suddenly, friendly lines appearing on his forehead instantly. His smiles were mechanical. As gentle as he was, I didn't want him touching me anymore, and I excused myself and joined Daniel and Risa downstairs at the red couches next to the billiards table.

  "Here's our little sister." Daniel made room for me next to him on the couch, topping off my shot glass with vodka. "Risa, this is Ariane; Ariane, Risa. I was just remarking to Risa how much their names have changed since I knew them. Alex used to be Sascha, and you used to be Beata. I'm glad he's not Sascha anymore, he's much more mellow now. Right, Alex?"

  "Mellow is not an adjective that should be applied to people," Alex said, coming slowly down the stairs. He sat on the second-to-last stair and stayed there.

  "Do, you play darts?" Risa asked me.

  "Not too well," I admitted.

  "How about archery? I have targets set up in the back. I love archery—anything involving targets!" She had a great big smile and very long, polished white fangs. "I'm an excellent shot. I always have been. Anyone else for moonlight archery practice?" She jumped up off the couch. "Anyone?"

  "Go on, Ariane," Daniel said.

  "Uh…"

  "You'll be all right, I promise," Daniel said.