I sat back and wiped my mouth.
Mimsy was dead. His lips were the grayish violet that had not yet come into fashion as a lipstick, his skin as colorless as Daniel's in sleep.
I sat there for a while and digested his blood. It wasn't quite the same as eating food; I could feel it immediately soaking through the lining of my stomach and racing through my veins. Mimsy looked peaceful, at least; he didn't have a gaping wound where a slender white throat used to be; the marks of my teeth were solidly outlined in his neck, just below the jaw. It was pretty obvious what had happened to him.
I felt a chill of rising anxiety. I had to get out of there. I found some of my clothes that were hidden away in the darkest corner—a dress and some underwear and a pair of shoes—and put them on over my stinking, peeling skin. My hair was a mass of clotted blood and my fingernails were sticky with it, but there was no time to think of tidiness. I needed to find Daniel.
As I was ducking to leave the alcove, I bumped against a warm, sweet-smelling form, scratchy with black lace. "Oh! Jesus, you scared me!" Chloe laughed and put her hand to her breasts. "I thought I saw Mi—Ariane?"
A thought leapt out of her head at me, almost visible—it shot between my eyes and into my head, voiceless but distinctly hers and not mine. She's still alive, the mixture didn't take, Daniel and she's been changed, it didn't work, she's still alive. "Ariane?" she said again, fearfully.
"What do you mean, I'm still alive?" I said, my voice a sickening hoarse croak. I sounded monstrous.
"I didn't say anything," she said.
"I thought—you thought it," I stuttered, "you thought it, I heard it, you—what didn't work?"
Chloe began backing away from me, shaking her head. I could smell her fear, feel it coursing through my skin. It galvanized me. I followed her, hemming her against the wall. "What, what are you talking about?" she said. "Please, Ariane, don't."
"What didn't work?" I demanded, putting one arm on either side of her. "What didn't work?"
She swallowed with difficulty. "I guess it's too late now," she said. "Don't kill me. You weren't supposed to survive the wine. I poisoned it—an overdose of the anesthetic. You were supposed to be dead in less than a minute. Before Daniel could give you his blood."
"Why?" I put one hand on her shoulder and squeezed it, for something to do with my restless hands. The joint collapsed under the pressure with a heavy dull pop. Chloe screamed and crumpled, but I caught her before she could fall to the floor. She was half hysterical with pain. "Why did you want to kill me?"
"I didn't want to lose him!"
"So you'd kill me instead? I thought you were my friend!"
"I am your friend!" She had bitten her tongue, and the blood trickled out the side of her mouth.
With a tenderness that sickened me as I did it, I bent my head and kissed the trickle away. Her tears filled my mouth with the blood. The combination was incredible; it made my heart sing. She cried more quietly now, in less pain.
Her blood spread thinly through my mouth, mostly just taste, but a few glimmers of her thoughts, too. That predominant sharp, sour flavor had to be adrenaline, and with it, the state-dependent memory of when she had been in so much pain before. A brilliant, sharp flash of Risa, on her knees in the middle of that funeral-home decor that was the Revikoff's parlor, sobbing heartbrokenly and not caring who saw her, even the naive and confused stranger Chloe, until Daniel turned Chloe away murmuring, "She just had to kill her only human friend. Don't worry, she'll get over it." And then Lovely, abruptly vomiting into his lap in a restaurant, pushing his plate away muttering under his breath, "There was shit everywhere. Pouring out a hole in his belly. Shit everywhere, there's nothing but shit everywhere." And then Daniel himself, holding Chloe and kissing her, telling her he'd never let her go, holding her tighter and tighter until Chloe couldn't breathe to scream, even as she felt her ribs snapping inside her body like so many popsicle sticks.
Chloe had stood vigil over my unconscious body in the Rotting Hall infirmary, telling herself that there was no way that both she and I could survive Daniel, that someday, probably sooner rather than later, one of us would be dead. "I didn't want to see you as unhappy as the others," she explained through sobs and hiccups. "I thought—I thought it would be kinder…"
"There's no point in lying to me now; you know that," I said gently, brushing her hair from her face. "You wanted me dead. And you were probably right to do what you did. I only wish it had worked. Now, where is Daniel?"
"I don't know… he's probably poisoned too… but it won't kill him. He'll never forgive me for this, though—he'll—"
"Well," I said, letting her rest on the floor, holding her useless arm, "you killed me, I killed Mimsy. He's dead. I drank him. I didn't mean to… I didn't want to… I'm so sorry…"
"Oh, God. Ariane. Do it," she pled. "I can't"—can't live—"not without Daniel. Not without Mimsy. Not without everything. Help me."
"I don't want to hurt you," I begged. "I don't want to hurt anyone."
"You won't be hurting anyone," she said, forcing a smile. "I'm going into shock—do it now while I can still appreciate it."
"Oh, Chloe," I sighed, and knelt beside her. In the sixty seconds she had allotted for the end of my life, I left her limp, poetically slumped and white and drying against the wall. My hands left bloody streaks on the wood next to her head, and I tore myself away reluctantly from the fascinating glister of the patterns in the moisture.
I knew I wasn't going to be able to come back.
I began to walk to Daniel's apartment, then to run. Running was good. I could charge along so fast that people in cars couldn't see me, a dark specter blazing through the early evening gloom. I passed people walking on the street, listened with grim pleasure to their confusion.
But it made me tired, and soon the terrible hunger was consuming me again, eating me away from inside. I burnt blood like mammals burnt glucose. After a mile or so, I stopped, bent double in a parking lot, clutching my empty gut and retching. I thought furiously, Daniel, help me, you fucker; you got me into this. Help me. Help me, somebody, anybody, I don't care.
I stumbled on, weeping bitterly, stopping every few blocks or so to pant air that wouldn't help me, to double over, sick as a dog. At last I couldn't go on anymore; I sank down onto a bus bench, round so that you can't lie on it, and cried tears that burned.
A big car swept so close by me that I could taste the foul exhaust, and I cursed it for leaving me alone, for being able to sweep by without taking notice of the fact that I was dying so fast that I could feel it. I had drawn my knees to my chest, huddling in perfect balance on the top of the curve, when the car returned, doing thirty miles an hour in reverse, until it was stopped in front of me.
A pale face with dark hollows for eyes and a multicolored forelock peeked out the passenger side window. "Jesus, get the fuck into the car, Ariane!"
I almost couldn't unfold myself for long enough to get up and take a closer look. It was my boy Lovely, his human scent almost overpowering me even at a distance. Still doubled over, I crept closer, opened the door, and fell inside.
"Jesus Christ," he said, driving away, foot to the floor. "It's happened, hasn't it."
"What has?" I said, in between moans of distress.
"I'll pull over in a minute," he replied. "You look like shit."
"I'm going to die," I told him, groaning, my head against the cold lock of the dashboard. "Everything's gone wrong… I… I killed Mimsy and Chloe."
"I know," he said, his lips drawn tight. "I was just there."
"Please don't hate me," I begged him, afraid to touch him for fear of killing him. "I didn't mean to do it. I was only going to have a little. I couldn't stop myself. And Chloe—"
"Never mind. I could never hate you," he said softly. He reached out for me and touched my shoulder. Immediately he snatched his hand back. "God, you're so cold! There's, like, this static charge on your skin—"
"It's my hair growing back�
�� my muscles… it hurts so much."
"It's OK," he soothed. "It's OK."
In the darkness under palm trees he stopped the car and held out his wrist to me. "I'll stop you," he whispered. "Take some. I'll be all right."
Glancing nervously up at him, I bent my head and tried to bite through him with my teeth. They were sharp enough now, and they broke his skin with ease; his Mood flowed slow and warm into my mouth. Oh, it was terrible. The blood never even reached my stomach; my mouth absorbed it like a sponge, like my entire body was a huge capillary gorging itself. I had never experienced such pure pleasure and relief in my life. I wanted to take all of him.
Too soon, Lovely tore his arm back from me and pressed his wrist under his arm. "Ouch! Enough, enough, already, OK? You're gonna break my arm." He lowered his head between his knees. "You've got to learn to control that shit."
I could see better, felt stronger. "I can't," I said, tears rising to my eyes again. "It's too good. I need too much."
"Yeah, well, you can't get it all from me, or I won't have any left for myself. We'll do something, all right? I know you were trying to get to Daniel's place. I'm looking for him too. We're all looking for him." Lovely cautiously examined his wound. It was closing, and the bleeding had stopped. He started the car again.
"Do you know what happened to him?" I asked.
"Nobody does. We've been calling him on his cell phone all day and all night, and it says that it's out of service. I haven't seen him for a long time—days now."
"How long was I—in there?"
"I would guess about twenty-two hours… which makes sense. I saw what you did to the bathroom. Pretty fucking amazing." He was smiling again already. "So how was it?"
"All I have to say is, don't. Don't do it. It sucks." I tried to run my fingers through my hair, but couldn't get my fingers through the mess. "It's like having your entire body eaten away with sulfuric acid. Everything—everything—I don't want to talk about it. Thinking about it makes me want to puke. I don't know how anyone survives it."
His eyes were starry. "Wow."
"Wow, bullshit." I was starting to recover my wits, and already I was thinking about it on a physiological basis. It seemed, then, that Daniel's blood was a violent poison, a corrosive, that destroyed my human body cells. But then how was I whole now? I wasn't sure what I looked like under the crust of my own dried blood. I was itching like crazy, but I knew if I scratched, I would tear my skin off.
"Are you better now? Did my blood help?"
"Yeah, it did. I can think straight now, finally. But I don't think I can ever listen to the Beatles ever again."
"How's that?"
I laughed quietly. "I'll tell you later."
In less than ten minutes we pulled into the street of Daniel's apartment. Lovely helped me out of the car, but I didn't need it; I could stand erect without cramps, and my legs were sure underneath me. Lovely stood a moment and gazed at me. "You look so cool right now," he murmured. "You look like something out of Night of the Living Dead."
"You're crazy," I muttered, walking up the courtyard. He shook his head and skipped after me.
Lovely unlocked the door and poked his head inside. "Daniel? You in here?" he called. I brushed past him and marched inside. If Daniel was here, he was going to get a god-almighty kick in the nuts. I stopped in the front room and looked around—he was here. I could feel him. He was very faint, but present, like a worry in my thoughts.
We found him in the bedroom closet, in the fetal position. Blood trickled out of his mouth to join a dark pool of half-dried, mingled blood and saliva under his head. All thoughts of how hungry I was, how much I hated his tape, or anything else fled in an instant. I cried out his name and knelt beside him, feeling his neck for a pulse.
He wasn't dead. He wasn't even unconscious. He turned dilated, glassy eyes at me, then at Lovely. Then he closed them again. "Schlicht," he whispered. "Bitte." My shout had hurt his ears.
Lovely offered his wrist, still freshly marked. "Daniel, take it," he offered, his eyes overflowing with tears. "I don't care."
"Nein." Daniel gagged and spat more blood onto the dark carpet. With great difficulty, he gasped out, "It—won't help."
Lovely and I glanced at each other with trepidation. "Let's get him into bed," Lovely murmured.
I was surprised at how light he was, and how hot. He was flushed, sweating slightly as we dragged and carried him up to his black leather daybed. He collapsed onto it, limp, then curled back into his fetal ball, arms locked around his bare knees. I brushed his hair from his forehead. "What happened to you?" I asked.
"Poison," he said, smiling very slightly. His gums were very pale. Shock. I grabbed a leather coat from the closet and covered him with it. "The drug, the anesthetic drug. I took too much of it into myself; That traitorious bitch Chloe. I'm going to break her spine. And I gave you more blood than I could spare."
"Can't you just hunt?" Lovely asked, crestfallen.
"I need stronger blood than what you human cattle can give me," Daniel hissed. He had a laughing lit and tried to curl himself tighter.
"Can't you—call somebody?" Lovely fidgeted.
"Don't be stupid," Daniel said. "It's my own fault. No one in their right mind… it would be good for the others if I simply cease to exist. More for them. Only an idiot would make another vampire in this world. Only an idiot."
"Leave him alone," I said softly.
Lovely and I went out into the living room. Lovely lit a cigarette for me, and I inhaled deeply, intending to savor the nicotine rush that would inevitably follow a twenty-nine-hour cigarette fast—and nothing happened. I felt my lungs expand, felt blood rush in to fill the tiny sacs there; then I felt them take the nicotine, and then it was gone. It was almost exactly the same sensation as taking a breath of dirty air. "It doesn't work anymore," I sighed.
"What?"
"Cigarettes."
Lovely looked even more dismayed, wiping the tears off his cheeks. "I'm sorry."
I smoked the rest anyway. "I have to take a shower," I said, standing up.
"Aren't you going to save him?"
"Save him? How?"
Lovely gestured toward me with the cigarette lighter, then lit himself another one. "You're a vampire," he said. "Give him some of your blood."
"I don't think I have any to spare," I said.
"So you won't help him?"
"And kill myself? I've already died once today because of him. No, thanks."
Lovely said nothing. He blew a few crooked smoke rings in the other direction.
"All right, martyr boy. But I'm taking a shower first."
I remained in the shower for a long time, watching the reconsitituted blood flow down the drain in a dark spiral. My hair took forever to wash, but even when the last chunks had been cleaned from it, I stood under the hot water with my eyes closed, absorbing the smell of the expensive soap, the water, even the tiles and the metal slides of the shower door. I could hear Lovely in the other room—pacing back and forth, looking in on Daniel, his mind a cloud of worry and impatience and guilt and grief. He really wanted to get stoned, but he didn't have any weed on him—it was all back in the room with Mimsy's body and Chloe outside propped up like a busted Raggedy Ann doll, bloody saliva streaking down in a tributary between her flawless white breasts. I saw it in his mind like a blurry snapshot. He finally settled on a bottle of Midori liqueur that Daniel kept on his mantelpiece because the syrupy green color almost matched his eyes. I heard Daniel too, even more strongly, the wordless anger and agonizing pain that drove all the sense from his mind. I would have liked to send him a comforting thought, but I was pissed off; pissed at how wrong he had gotten this, this simplest of acts, and put me in the position of having to, perhaps, give up my life to cover his ass. All I could think was, You idiot, you fucking idiot, you can't do anything right. This is what you deserve.
I came out of the shower at last and toweled myself dry, then came naked into the bedroom where Dani
el lay, insensate and suffering, and Lovely stood, too wound up to sit, chaining yet another cigarette off his last one, and flinging the butt into the wastebasket. He gave me the once-over. "Wow," he said again.
"What now?"
"Look at yourself," he said.
I turned and glanced into the mirror. It was the ideal Ariane—well, perhaps not ideal, but a hell of a sight better than I'd looked in my life. I was somewhat thinner, and my skin was an absolutely perfect even tone all over, the color of pure cocoa butter. My neck was longer, my hands were longer, my feet were more arched, even my breasts were perky. "Jeez," I remarked. "I don't even have any scars."
"Get dressed," Lovely said, unable to suppress a smile. He threw me a clean black T-shirt and a pair of jeans that I'd left there recently. Wordlessly, I put them on, and wound my hair behind my head.
Daniel opened his eyes. "What are you doing?"
I sat on me floor beside the daybed and held out my arm. "Try it," I said.
"I don't think—"
"Try it, or Lovely's going to guilt-trip me to death." I looked over at Lovely, and felt Daniel's hot, uneven breath draw up the fine hairs on my skin. "When I die, do you at least promise to make me a saint?"
"Who's guilt-tripping who?" Lovely drawled.
Daniel sank his teeth into the inner side of my elbow. It hurt like bejeezus, and I was indelicate about vocalizing that fact. He took a deep swallow, then another one, and then lay back onto the daybed, breathing hard. He was able to stretch himself out now, but he continued to shiver and sweat. He lay there for a moment, eyes closed, licking his lips.
I felt faint. I was glad that I had chosen to sit down. The pain traveled up from the crook of my arm into my heart, my belly, and soon I was curled up the way Daniel had been, moaning helplessly.
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