Vampire Night

by Alice Bell

  * * *

  I watched her go down the boardwalk. From the tilt of her head I wondered if she was crying and I wanted to see the tears glistening in her big eyes.

  I followed a block behind. When she reached her car, she fumbled with her keys and dropped them. She got down on her hands and knees on the sidewalk. I felt a predatory rush. I was beside her in a flash. “Come on. Get up,” I held out my hand.

  But she shook her head. “My keys.”

  I gazed down at the sparkly clips in her bright hair, the brown roots along her tender part. I fished her keys from the gutter and offered my hand again but she ignored me. I watched her get to her feet. She reached for the keys but I slid them in my pocket. “I’ll drive,” I said.

  “I’m not drunk,” she said.

  “So?” She was drunk.

  “So give me my keys.”

  “Get them yourself.” I knew she wouldn’t.

  As I drove, she hunched in the passenger seat, facing the window. “Turn here,” she said. “Make a left up at the next street.” After a few blocks, she started crying, swiping at her tears in a sneaky way, like I wouldn’t notice. A couple of times I veered across the center line from staring.

  I said, “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  We waited at her gate.

  She took a shaky breath. “I don’t know why I have to cry all the time. I hate being a crier. Maybe I am drunk. It was the worst day… unbelievable. This other teacher is such a bitch. She goes out of her way to humiliate me. And I—I just make it easy for her.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “It’s like I walk straight into her trap every time.”

  “So you’re a teacher.” Was that what the books were for?

  “I must look awful,” she said.

  Black darkened her eyes, making them all the more blue. Dark tracks ran down her face. She was a hot mess and I wanted to devour her. A tear trembled on her cheek. I leaned over and kissed it, wanting to feel her salty pain on my lips. A shudder went through her body.

  Time slowed. I felt her eyelashes brushing against my face. When the gate opened, I drove through it.

  * * *

  Inside she lit the fire and candles.

  I found it pitiful and lovely, the way she clung to her rituals, as if they would save her. I cast a glance at her piano, remembering how I’d enjoyed watching her play when she didn’t know I was there.

  She followed my gaze. “Do you play?” she asked.

  I flexed my hands, looking at them. It seemed I’d been forced to learn as a child. I also had a sudden memory of scraping a bow across a violin. “No,” I said.

  She cocked her head. “That was amazing the way you recited from Tristessa... do you have photographic memory?”

  I wasn’t in the habit of answering probing questions but I shrugged. “I guess so.” Then, to change the subject, I said, “Do you play the piano?” Even though I already knew she did. She played like someone with a gift.

  “I don’t read music,” she said. “I play by ear.”

  She showed me her record collection, everything from the Sex Pistols’ only album to Lucinda Williams, Foo Fighters and Muse. Many of the bands I knew. A few others, like Deer Tick, I didn’t. Disjointed images flitted at the edge of my consciousness.

  “How long have you been collecting?” I said.

  Her pouty mouth turned up at the corners. “Since I was seven. I like old-school alternative. This was my grandmother’s,” she ran her hand over the shiny wood of the cabinet.

  “She’s gone?” I said.

  “Yes.” Grief washed over her.

  “Were you close?”

  She ignored me, sorting through her records, as if looking for something. Her hands were tiny with those sad bitten-down nails painted pink.

  “I loved her more than anything,” she said, after a while. Her words hung in the air.

  “Was your grandmother like you?”

  “No… I take after my mother. Destined to go off the deep end. She’s dead too…” She found the record she wanted and put it on the turn table. Nirvana blared from hidden speakers. She turned down the volume. When she wouldn’t look at me, I tilted her chin.

  Her pulse beat in her throat.

  “Is that why you cry?” I said softly.

  She tried to look away but I held her chin, forcing her to meet my gaze.

  I felt the full power of her sadness.

  Her face turned white. Even her lips were pale and trembling. She had never looked more beautiful.

  I cupped her face with both hands and devoured the intensity of her blue gaze, so unnaturally bright in the dark smear of her make-up. I took in her baby lips, her soft round cheeks.

  Kurt Cobain’s tortured voice cried, “My girl, my girl… don’t lie to me…”

  Flames on the candles leaped bright orange. The fire crackled and turned red, like the sun going down.

  “You can tell me anything, Scarlett. Whatever it is that makes you cry.” But I didn’t care about her tragic secrets. I just wanted to feel her pain. I was drunk with it, wanting more.

  She touched my arm. Her eyes glimmered, and an alien pain sliced through me—guilt.

  I dropped my hands and took a step back, confused.

  There was a sound in my ears, like humming.

  I’m sorry, Scarlett. I’m so sorry.

  I didn’t know why I was sorry. Not really, except that I was hurting her. The realization gave me vertigo, as if the earth could crumble and I would drop down into a dark abyss.

  She went to the sofa and unlaced her boots. When she took them off, she lined them up, toes pointing away. Her lips moved ever so slightly. There was a palpable energy in the room, like a clock ticking.

  I wondered why there wasn’t a clock. These old houses always had clocks, the kind you wound up every day and I could just see Scarlett tending to that ritual. But the only clock was the one she wore on her slender wrist.

  When she curled up on the sofa, she accidentally flashed me her black lace panties before tugging down her skirt. The sight brought me back to my senses. I didn’t like feeling weak and afraid of whatever waited with its cavernous jaws.

  Get what you came for, Devon.

  I knew she was a virgin. The certainty of her virginity was like her pulse, whispering inside me.

  Why wear sexy lingerie and a short skirt to a sleazy bar if you’re a virgin? It was false advertising. But I smiled, remembering the old joke: Would you really want your heavenly reward to be a whole harem of virgins if you could have just one slut?

  Better make her my slut, I thought. “I saw your poster about your cat, Alceste,” I said. “Did he run away?”

  “I guess so. He doesn’t like people. That’s why I named him Alceste. You know, The Misanthrope? By Moliere?”

  “Sure,” I said. She was such a nerd. And completely oblivious to the fact that I’d just taken mercy on her. How did she survive in the world?

  “He’s probably dead… like everyone else in my life,” she sounded morose, worried about an old cat. I thought she should go out and get a better looking cat, a sweet cuddly thing.

  I went around the sofa to sit next to her.

  I ran my hand up her leg, unhooking her stocking. I stroked the velvet flesh behind her knee. She watched me. Her pleasure stole over me.

  Leaning close, I licked her pulse. Her breath turned shallow. A sheen of sweat glistened at her temples. She watched from partly lowered lids.

  I touched her where she’d never been touched, except maybe by her own hand.

  Gently, I pushed her thighs apart. I slipped off her panties and had to kneel on the floor to reach her with my mouth. She gasped and rocked forward. Her thighs began to tremble. I spread her legs further.

  I tried to keep it slow but she raced ahead, unstoppable.

  She arched her back and cried out.

  I stood up and pressed her down into the sofa cushions so she was reclined. I sat next to her again
. When her eyes opened, I stared into her blue irises and listened to her heartbeat as it slowed.

  She reached for my hand. “You’re so beautiful,” she said.

  “That’s my line,” I said.

  “Please don’t go…”

  “I won’t,” I said, and I sat with her, watching as her eyelids grew heavy.

  I stayed with her until she fell asleep.

  Outside, a wind started up. Cold blew in, snuffing out the fire and candles. I tensed, thinking I heard a door creak open.

  At the sound of footsteps, I jerked my gaze to the doorway. But no one was there.

  FIVE

  Zadie

  For years, Zadie traveled the world searching for her sire Inka and always, always for Devon. The other Vampires she met were strangers to her. There were too many cultural differences and often a language barrier.

  In Europe Vampires were afraid. Angel soldiers had become blood thirsty, killing more Vampires than they captured.

  On her knees, Zadie prayed. “Mother Yshtan, whose might no god approaches. My heart is not glad. My sickness is great. Oh my lady, help me find the ones I seek and keep them safe until we meet again.”

  She went back to where she felt most at home—Coffeen Sanitarium, that glittering castle of madness where she fed on the potent dreams of insane humans.

  Devon

  In the wee hours of the morning, Scarlett’s neighborhood was quiet. I stood by her gate, thinking how different it was from downtown where sirens wailed and neon signs flashed all night.

  I lived in the heart of China Town, in an abandoned brick building that reeked of faded glamour. When I first got to town, I naturally gravitated to the nightlife, and I used to pass by the building often. One night, I stopped and looked up at its boarded windows. It was a grandiose old place, not in too bad of shape. I couldn’t resist breaking the lock on the front door and walking in.

  A spiral staircase wound its way toward a domed skylight. Looking up from the dusty marbled foyer, I saw the night sky burning red through the petals of a stained glass rose and I thought it would be a good place to stay for a while.

  I gave myself a tour and found a bed in one of the rooms, still made up. A couple of nights later, I took off the moldy bedding and put on a new set of sheets I’d swiped from a department store. The mattress was saggy and the bed creaked but I just needed a place to sleep and get my bearings. There was a weathered velour sofa on the second floor. It faced the street. A few times I sat on it, looking out the window at nothing much.

  As I got more comfortable, I brought in a movie projector and hung a screen. I carried an old generator up from the basement for the sole purpose of watching movies. I didn’t need electricity for anything else. I turned the sofa around, and got a kick out of laying on it while the projector spun old films. Though the movies had yet to spark any human memories, they numbed the clawing emptiness of my life.

  At first, my illegal presence went unnoticed. I didn’t use lights and covered the window on movie nights. I’d replaced the locks on all the doors and came and went through the tunnel. I showered at a health spa uptown where no one ever questioned my membership. I took in quite a few of the luxuries there. But eventually the police showed up at my building. I’d figured it was only a matter of time.

  I’d been sleeping and woke to the sound of steps on the stoop, voices. I sat up on the musty bed. When the cops clamored inside, I leapt to my feet and pulled on my jeans and boots, a ratty Fisherman’s sweater, and went out the window.

  I jumped off the fire escape to land silently in the alley.

  Luckily, it had been winter and the light was thin. The sky was bullet gray. Still, I’d grown weak waiting for the police to leave.

  While I’d waited, a woman came out to put something in the dumpster. She wore a shorty silk robe and furry slippers. Her thighs blushed from the cold. She smiled at me. I wanted to call her over but there wasn’t time, so I turned and started walking the twenty blocks to the other side of the tunnel.

  Later that night, after hooking up with a couple of cheerleaders at a frat party, I wandered around the superstore, looking at electronics. I felt I knew how to use them, the same way I’d known my name was Devon Slaughter. Or had been.

  I used to be a person.

  That night, I came away with a couple of burner phones and a laptop. I winked at the Rent-A-Cop on my way out. After I penetrated the files at City Hall and established myself as the legal owner of 1975 Irving Street, my life got boring again. Having supernatural abilities and women throwing themselves at me like I was James Bond was a big fat zero in my book.

  I was worse off than Tristessa, the junkie. At least she was the epitome of sadness. I was a black hole.

  I gazed at Scarlett’s house. Candlelight warmed the windows.

  I thought of her antiques and all those vinyl records, the fact that she didn’t carry a cell phone even just for emergencies. I wondered about her disdain of technology. Was it a phobia? I was struck with a dim flicker of pity at the likelihood of that being the case.

  And I thought of the night I might have changed her tire for the sole purpose of being nice. What if her vulnerability, the fact that she was so ill-equipped to handle the casual cruelties of life, had the power to rekindle my humanity?

  The idea excited me and propelled me back inside her house.

  I gazed at her as she slept, curled up on the sofa, and marveled at the feelings of tenderness she evoked in me. I leaned down and breathed in her sweet scent, before brushing the lobe of her ear with my lips.

  And then I went around the house, touching her things.

  I found a dress on the floor in her bathroom. She wasn’t very tidy, though her shoes were lined up in the closet upstairs and her make-up in the medicine cabinet was carefully arranged with the labels facing out.

  She had seven different shades of mascara from midnight blue to charcoal. A single bottle of aspirin had only a few tablets left.

  The nail polish on her vanity was grouped by color—reds, blues, and black.

  There was a series of oil paintings in the hall featuring a blonde with a face like Scarlett’s; all soft contours, poochy lips and big sad eyes. Her dead mother? Or her grandmother? Jesus, the poor kid really was all alone.

  The wallpaper in her bedroom was printed with crimson roses. I ran my fingers over the raised edges, marveling at how bright the world was becoming before my eyes, like a Technicolor movie.

  Ah, her bed. It was sprawling King, strewn with big white lacy pillows. The alarm clock on her nightstand had a dial radio, which blew my mind a little. Who knew how many eras I’d missed in the unsolved mystery of my personal nightmare. But even I, relic that I might possibly be, felt like I’d gone back in time. On her other nightstand I discovered two pink cubes of dice showing snake eyes. Was this another ritual of Scarlett’s?

  The brush on her dresser was full of red hairs. I found her lingerie in the top drawer. It was soft, like her skin. My fingers struck something hard, a plastic bottle containing Lexapro, which sounded like a piece of gym equipment. The bottle was full.

  I put everything back the way I’d found it.

  Downstairs I rifled through her records. Bands like Radiohead, Violent Femmes and The Smashing Pumpkins reminded me of the girl again, the one with long legs. Dark images played across my mind like ghosts.

  I sat on the sofa and watched Scarlett sleep until it started to get light outside. I had the strangest premonition Scarlett was in danger, though from what, I didn’t know.

  SIX

  Zadie

  One night, in early spring, Zadie woke to footsteps in the corridor outside her room at the sanitarium.

  She was tucked under the covers, her limbs heavy from slumber. When the steps stopped at her door, she bolted upright. Just as she caught Inka’s scent, the lock snapped and the door swung open.

  “Inka,” she sprang out of bed, overcome with joy to see her sire. Her next emotion was fear, as Inka’s eyes
locked on hers. Before Zadie knew what was happening, Inka flew at her. Zadie threw up her arms in defense but she was no match for her centuries old sire. Inka tossed Zadie onto the bed with ease and pinned her wrists.

  A million questions ping-ponged in Zadie’s mind, the most important being: Am I in trouble? But Inka laughed and kissed Zadie on both cheeks. “Are you glad to see me?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “I had a hell of a time finding you… holed up in here like a crazy person. Not a very glamorous disguise.” A smile curved at Inka’s lips, before she settled on the bed, her back against the wall, ankles crossed.

  She wore jeans and biker boots, a fashionably distressed leather jacket. She’d shorn off her long black locks. The cut illuminated the perfect oval of her face. She oozed sex appeal.

  Zadie sat up, her wrists burning where Inka had gripped them.

  “I heard you made it out,” Inka said. “In good time too.” She gave Zadie a meaningful glance. “Did you name-drop me in the realm?” Her eyes shone with expectation.

  “Of course,” Zadie said. “Vampires worship you there.”

  Inka beamed. The compliment made her gentle. “I’ve been searching high and low for you, my darling. To the ends of the earth. I couldn’t stop until I found you.”

  Zadie didn’t believe Inka had spent their whole time apart searching for her. She would have appeared long ago, if that were true. And Zadie realized she held it against Inka a tiny bit. Inka had abandoned her in Nicaragua. Thrown Zadie to the Angels.

  Yet, hadn’t Inka put herself in danger to warn Zadie that night?

  Getting captured was Zadie’s own fault.

  I was stupid.

  Inka intuited her thoughts. “That’s right, Zadie. You screwed the pooch in Nicaragua. In more ways than one.” Her tone was low and even, but still scathing. Inka’s mood shifted as easily as the wind across the desert. “Devon almost got away from us,” she said. “Had it not been for me, that is.”

  Shame swept over Zadie. She yearned to make Inka proud. Her duty, as Inka’s offspring, was to reflect Inka’s perfection back at her. Inka deserved nothing less in exchange for the gift of immortality.