I must have read the story fifty times. A hundred. I just couldn’t seem to wrap my mind around the idea that Coraline was gone and it had all been for nothing. She hadn’t done a good goddamn thing with the opportunity I gave her. Not a good goddamn thing. And if that was the case, then I was a sucker for doing it. Worse, I no longer had my hopes for her or my good thoughts about my one truly selfless act to get me through the days. I think I hated her for that most of all.
There was nothing left for me. The next day I got busy dying. I called my lawyers and demanded that they waive what remained of my appeals. It didn’t take much convincing. The date was set and I looked forward to it like a kid does Christmas.
I only had a single visit my whole time on death row and it came the night before my scheduled execution. The warden himself appeared at the door to my cramped deathwatch cell to tell me.
“You’ve got a visitor, Angel.”
I watched from my sheetless single bed as the door locks geared back and a habited nun entered my cell, eyes downcast, face veiled in shadow.
“Please leave us,” she whispered to the warden.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Sister. This one’s a killer.”
She turned to him then, looked him in the eye. “Leave us.”
“Leave... ” he mumbled.
When he was gone, the door locked in place behind him, the nun turned to me and removed her coif and veil, and I found myself staring in shock at Coraline.
“Hello, lover.”
Even in the dark, I could see she was every bit as lovely as I remembered—lovelier. But there were differences; stark and disturbing ones. Always full-bodied and healthy-looking even during her heaviest periods of heroin abuse, she appeared angular and sickly thin; her skin a canvas stretched tight across a bone frame. Her dark lustrous hair, which she had obsessively styled to perfection when I knew her, was a tangled mane framing a face of almost luminescent whiteness. Perhaps worst of all, the eyes that had always seemed to brim with life now had a weary intensity, as if some greater knowledge of secrets dark and arcane had worn her soul thin.
“You’re dead. I read it in the paper.”
“You can’t believe everything you read, Mick.”
She smiled, but it wasn’t right. There was something off about her; something horrible and wrong. With the skittishness of a horse that scents a predator on the wind, I felt the sudden urge to bolt, but there was nowhere to go.
“I’ve missed you,” she said, pulling me close.
I expected the embrace to feel as fragile as she looked, but the narrow arms that corralled me felt like steel bands. I wanted to shove her away, but I resisted the temptation with the thought that any sign of fear might cause those awful arms to slam closed around me with the crushing force of a bear trap and never let go. When she finally released me I felt like a fly jounced from the web of an approaching spider.
I guess it showed on my face because she said, “What’s wrong? Aren’t you happy to see me, baby?”
She tried to pout then, but that was another thing that had changed. Coraline used to be a great pouter. World class. This was a sham. A fraud. As manufactured as a whore’s orgasm. The new Coraline was a million miles past this sort of silly schoolgirl manipulation.
“I just can’t believe you’re here,” I heard myself say.
“Of course I’m here. You don’t really think I’d let them put the man I love to death without coming to see him one last time, do you?”
“That what you came to tell me? That you still love me?”
“Partly. I’ve always loved you, Mick. A lot of things have changed for me, but not that. But I have another reason too.”
“Yeah, what’s that?”
“You gave your life for me. I haven’t forgotten that. I came to repay the favor.”
“Yeah, and exactly how do you plan on doing that?”
“I can make it so they can’t kill you.”
“Let me guess—you have a stay of execution from the governor stashed in your brassiere.”
“Why don’t you check and see?” She took my hand and pressed it down the front of the habit. The joke was on me. She wasn’t wearing a bra. Her breasts were strangely cool to the touch, but considering I hadn’t had my hands within a hundred yards of a pair in three years I wasn’t of a mind to be particular about it. Not even in her present state.
“That’s not very nun-like of you.”
“I’m afraid I’m not a very good nun. In fact, I’m not a nun at all.”
“Yeah? What are ya then?”
Coraline transformed before my eyes. Her eyes grew black with blood and her fangs distended and her jaw unhinged. Nothing can prepare you for seeing the impossible; for the realization that the world is not what you thought it was. As I backed away in abject horror, I watched as her features melted back to perfection and Coraline once again stood before me. All except for her eyes, which remained black and awful.
“Jesus.” I tried to think of a worse situation than being trapped with a monster in a locked high-security prison cell and found I couldn’t come up with one.
“Sorry, baby. Didn’t mean to startle you, but I didn’t know how else to tell you. I’m a vampire, Mick.”
“How?...”
“Look into my eyes. I’ll show you,” she said, seeming to glide across the space between us. Unable to resist, I felt myself drown in the murky depths of her black crystal-ball eyes.
It started with a call. It came from the butler of a wealthy Bel Air recluse by the name of Brasher. The butler told Coraline that his employer had heard rumors of her beauty and wished to meet her. It was late, but he offered to pay double her normal fee and to send a car for her, so she had gone. Of course she had.
Dressed in an ascot and smoking jacket, Brasher himself had met her at the door of his huge castle-like Bel Air home. He was a stooped, sickly, walking corpse of a man with yellow parchment for skin and a few spider’s web filaments for hair.
“My dear, you are every bit as lovely as I was lead to believe.” He had just the slightest hint of a European accent, and used a stained white handkerchief to dab away the flecks of blood that collected on his withered lips as he spoke.
Seeing him, Coraline had second thoughts, but she was here now and she needed the money. Besides, what danger could this broken old man be to her? She’d gone in. Of course she had.
The house was dark and drafty. Blaming ancient wiring for the lack of electric lighting, Brasher escorted Coraline up a set of stairs and down a rat’s maze of corridors by candlelight. They stopped at a study where a warm fire blazed.
Brasher directed Coraline to an antique divan and went to pour them each a snifter of brandy from the wet bar. Carrying her glass to her he said, “Tell me, my dear, do you enjoy games?”
“I suppose. Doesn’t everyone?” Coraline asked, taking the snifter and tasting the brandy.
“Not everyone, no, but I enjoy them very much. I’d like to play one with you if you’d be so inclined.”
“What sort of game?”
“A delicious one,” he said with a death-rattle of a laugh. He began to say something else, but was interrupted by a disturbing fit of racking coughing. Coraline did her best to pretend not to notice the snarled clots of blood and mucus he caught in his handkerchief and hid away.
“I must apologize. I’m afraid my health isn’t what it once was. What was I saying?”
“You were telling me about the game you wanted us to play.”
“Oh yes. The game. Are you familiar with the children’s game tag?”
Coraline looked at the old man, glass raised halfway to her mouth. “You want to play tag?”
“No. The game I have in mind is quite similar to tag however. The way it works is like this: this room will be your home base. So long as you remain in here no harm will befall you. Stay as long as you wish.” A sweet smile on his lips, Brasher pointed to the door with one tree-root hand. “But the moment you step out
side that door, the game is afoot. You try to escape from my house, and I’ll try to stop you.”
Brasher giggled.
“You’re insane.” Coraline set her drink down and moved for the door. But Brasher stepped in her way, grabbing her by her arms. Coraline tried to pull away, but to her amazement, he was much too strong for her.
“Let me go. I’m not playing any goddamn game with you.”
“But, my dear, you’re already playing.”
Releasing her, he mutated into a vampire before her eyes.
Letting out a piercing scream of horror, Coraline fled the room, trailed by Brasher’s maniacal laughter.
Coraline felt her way through the pitch-black halls, trying desperately to remember the route out, but lost her way. Terror-filled hours passed until she finally threw herself down in defeat, weeping distraughtly.
Brasher slipped up on her in silence. She never heard his approach. His first touch was as gentle as a lover’s. Crouching by her, he nuzzled in darkness.
“You’re it, my dear,” he whispered.
***
When Coraline released me from the trance I found myself covered in a thin film of perspiration, crouched and shivering against the wall of my cell, just as if I had experienced the whole ordeal first hand.
“He raped me,” she said. “He hurt me so bad, Mick. I felt him change while he was inside me. It went on forever. The longer it went on, the more violent he became, but he didn’t bite me until, you know, until the end. And even then he didn’t stop. He kept right on until he drank me all up.”
“Jesus,” I said, and that was all.
“He’s a monster. Not all of us are, but he is. He needs to die. And if you still love me at all you’ll come back with me and help me kill him.”
Since the article I’d thought my love for Coraline was gone; dried up like a puddle in an arid desert heat. Despite the fear I felt, seeing her now I knew that was wrong. It had just changed forms. My love for her might have turned to steam, but I could still feel it hanging like humidity all around.
“Why go back at all? You’re free. Safe.”
Coraline shook her head. “You don’t know him. He’ll never let me go. He’ll hunt me forever. As long as it takes. As long as he lives.”
“I still don’t see what you need me for. You’re younger than he is. Stronger.”
She shook her head. “Vampires get more powerful with age. It’s hard to fool the one who made you. They know things about you. They can’t read your mind exactly, but it’s something like that. It’s like they’re able to read your intentions. If I came within fifty feet of him with a plan in mind to kill him he’d sense it.”
“But I can do it, huh?”
“Yes, because I’ll have made you. I won’t lie to you, it’ll be dangerous. But we could do it together. I know we could.”
Reaching out, she took my hand. “What do you say, baby? You do this for me and I’ll make it so they can’t kill you tomorrow. Become like me, Mick. Then we can be together again. We could make it like it used to be.”
“Uh-huh, except for the killing people for their blood part.”
“Except for that,” she said.
It was a story as old as mankind—young unhappy woman recruits a lover to do away with her old man, all for the promise of a new life together. Only this was the Nosferatu version.
“What do I have to do?”
She smiled again now. She was getting better with practice. “Just... invite me to stay... “
My fear and anger were overwhelmed by something more primal. My love for Coraline had always been a bitter pill. I didn’t know if it was medicine or poison, but it was lodged in my throat and I was inclined to choke it down regardless. And besides, I wanted a second chance. Hell, I deserved one.
“You’re invited.”
She bent and kissed me with lips as soft and cold and red as refrigerated cherry gelatin. She moaned. Her fangs grew like twin erections around my probing tongue. Weak with love and sex and fear and death, I gave myself over to her and when the bite finally came it felt like the angry word of God.
12
Vin’s place is gun-barrel dark when I get there. I decide to poke around anyway. Call it a hunch.
I enter the back way. The wrought-iron fence is just the way I left it: mangled. I slip through carrying my little doctor’s bag. I jimmy the coved doors and step like a whisper inside. The place smells of spent meth.
I haven’t been invited this time round. Too bad for Vin once is enough.
I find him sitting in darkness on the chaise lounge in the sunken living room. Even in the dark my night-vision eyes can see that he has been roughed up. His thin upper lip is swollen and one eye is puffy as a French pastry. His heartbeat is fast. I can smell the drugs in his system.
I scrape a match and light a smoke. Vin jerks like he’s on wires and gasps and twists a light on, almost knocking it over in his hurry. He seems relieved when he sees it’s me.
“Oh, it’s you,” he says.
“It’s me,” I agree.
“You scared the Christ outa me, guy. How’d you get in?”
I stab my butt doorward.
“Oh,” he says, and blinks. He fumbles for a pair of Ray-Bans next to a glass pipe on the coffee table, puts them on. He seems to draw confidence from them. “What the fuck you doin’ here anyway? You can’t just waltz into somebody’s house like this. That’s called breaking and entering where I come from.”
“Call it whatever you want,” I say.
He stares. I stare. We stare. Vin decides to change the subject. “Leroy’s lookin’ for you, ya know that?”
“That who remodeled your face for you?”
Vin nods. “Yeah, Leroy and his fuckin’ boy. What the hell were you thinkin’, messin’ with him?”
“He messed with me first.”
“Yeah well, you pissed him off big time, guy. Big time. And you dragged me right in the shit with you. He was very, very majorly fuckin’ pissed off that I gave you his number and vouched for you. I didn’t want to do it, but I had to give you up to save my own ass.”
“Well, I’m sure you held out as long as possible.”
Vin sniffs, looks at the pipe, rules it out—for now. “Yeah. Yeah, sure, right. But they were serious, you know? Leroy’s comin’ for you. I mean, you shot his ass. Not that he prolly didn’t deserve it, but he can’t afford to just let somethin’ like that go, ya know? He’s got a rep to protect. I mean, fuck.”
“Vin, shut up and look at me.” He shuts up and looks. “I didn’t come here to talk about Leroy.”
“Well, what the fuck did you come to talk about?”
“Raya Van Cleef.”
“Aw, Jesus. We already discussed all that. I told ya everything.”
I give my head a shake. I blow smoke. “Not everything. Not about what happened between you two.”
“The fuck you talkin’ about?” He gives me the corner of his eyes behind the shades. It’s funny, it seems the dumber people are, the less good they are at playing dumb.
“You know what. The last day. The day Reesa came home and found you and her little sister together.”
“I don’t know who the fuck you been talkin’ to, guy, but that didn’t happen.”
The lie mixes with the remnants of the meth in the air, creating a smell as ugly as pedophilia.
“You raped a fourteen year-old girl, Vin.”
He shakes his head big and exaggerated-like. “No.”
“You did.”
“Fuck you. I didn’t rape no one. The little slut wanted it.”
“That right?”
“Fuckin’-A it is. You don’t know what it was like, her livin’ with us.”
“Why don’t you tell me.”
“She was always doin’ shit to try and get me horny, ya know? Walkin’ around in only a t-shirt and panties. Sitting too close on the couch. Leavin’ her door open when she was changing. Shit like that.”
“And I bet
you just hated that.”
“Look, I tried to stay away. But she threw it at me.” The stink in the air tells me Vin isn’t buying his own bullshit.
“Or maybe you were sick of all her teasing so you decided to teach her a lesson.”
“Fuck you.”
“I guess it doesn’t really matter. Either way you’re one sick son-of-a-bitch.”
Vin sneers. It looks just like his smile. “Listen to you, all high an’ mighty, but I bet if it’d been you insteada me, you’da done the same thing. The same goddamn thing.”
“Ya think?”
“Fuckin’-A I do. Maybe she’s a little young, but she was old enough to know what she was doing. Play with fire, you get burned. I mean, hell, we’re only human right?”
I shake my head. “No, Vin, that’s where you’re wrong.”
“The fuck you talkin’ about?”
“I’m talking about the fact that I’m not human and, to be honest, I don’t really think you make the grade either.”
I stoop and unlatch the strap on my satchel. Vin watches, as if noticing it for the first time. “What’s in there?”
“The vials I’m going to store your blood in,” I tell him.
Vin’s eyes get skittish the way someone’s eyes do when they realize they might be all alone in a room with a crazy person. I smell a problem brewing. I take a step closer, but I’m too far away to stop his hand from darting into a crack between couch cushions and coming out holding a jumpy-looking nine-millimeter.
“What’re you doin’, Vin?”
“What I shoulda done the last fuckin’ time you was here. You fucked up coming back, you know that?”
“All right, so I’ll leave.”
“I don’t think so, guy. No one comes into my house and threatens me. You messed me up with Leroy. Messed me up good. This’ll make it right.” Vin racks the gun.
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