Dark Changeling

by Margaret Carter

  He flushed when she offhandedly unbuttoned her blouse. Her willingness to be “marked” at all surprised him, but he co-operated when she drew his head down on her breast, her fingers twined in his hair. She sighed with pleasure as he lapped blood from the superficial incision his teeth inflicted just above her bra line. How could she enjoy this now, after fighting so furiously the previous time? He told himself to stop being so relentlessly analytic. Now that he knew what he could and couldn't expect from this union, he enjoyed it, too.

  Careful not to take enough to weaken her, he withdrew after only a few minutes. He had no urge to go further. Not that contact with Sylvia didn't ignite a tingling warmth in his loins, but he felt the same heat throughout his body, radiating from the point where his mouth touched her skin. Nor did Sylvia show a desire for anything more intimate.

  Nevertheless, curiosity impelled him to ask, “You mentioned mating?”

  “Oh, we can't do that. I'm not in heat—I'm a little too young for it.” Before he could question this bizarre statement, she added, “We can still play around, though.”

  She kissed him, licking her own blood off his lips. Then her mouth wandered down to his neck. He went rigid, his hands tightening on her arms. She looked up to meet his eyes. “What's wrong?”

  “I thought you were—”

  “I was. Don't you want—?” His shuttered gaze answered her. She pulled free of his grip. “You'd better get going. Didn't you say you needed to get to bed early?”

  A chill reflecting surface rebuffed his attempt to read the emotion behind her sudden aloofness. “If I've offended you, it wasn't intentional.”

  “I know.” She forced a smile. “Don't worry about it. You'll understand later. Now go.”

  * * * *

  IN THE NEXT couple of weeks Roger enjoyed Sylvia's com-panionship without any progress toward unraveling the riddle she presented. She played the guitar, he learned, singing songs by sixties folk-rock performers. Her favorites were selections from the Kingston Trio. She delighted in tormenting Roger with “M.T.A.” and the saga of poor old Charlie.

  “That song doesn't even make sense as humor,” Roger once protested. “His wife can't have handed him a sandwich through the window; those windows don't open.”

  “Oh, Roger, can't you just relax and enjoy a joke?” She switched to “The Ballad of Lizzie Borden.” After five choruses on the impropriety of dismembering one's parents in the state of Massachusetts, he was ready to do anything to shut her up.Including “hunt,” he thought.So much for my plan to cut back on blood-drinking. He decided to view these few weeks as a carnival before the fast he resolved to impose on himself once he settled in Maryland.

  She maintained her “vampire” persona with remarkable con-sistency; never once did he see her eat. He had read articles about people, obsessed with that novel by Anne Rice, who claimed to be “real” vampires, avoiding daylight, dressing in black, and consuming blood. But never had he heard of anyone who lived the pose as thoroughly as Sylvia did. On Friday and Saturday nights, and often in mid-week as well, they cruised the highways north of Boston in search of victims. Sometimes they prowled coffeehouses, choosing their prey from among students listening to folk singers and poetry readings.

  More often than not, he remained a detached spectator of what he considered Sylvia's gluttony. He knew that on week nights, when he was usually too tense and exhausted to be a stimulating companion, she hunted alone, feeding every other night. Roger, who functioned more or less contentedly on a biweekly ration, viewed that indulgence as dangerously reckless. He didn't even care for the term “feeding,” which seemed like an evasive euphemism to him.

  “So what would you call it?” Sylvia asked him when he raised that objection one evening at her apartment. “Sometimes we refer to it as ‘scoring.'”

  “I like that even less,” he said.

  She poured two glasses of Chablis and handed him one. “Okay, how about ‘making love'? I have a feeling you'd really hate that one.”

  “You're absolutely right. It would be sheer hypocrisy.”

  “So? Aren't most homo saps—ephemerals—being hypo-critical when they use it that way?”

  “I had no idea you were a cynic at heart.”

  Sylvia shrugged. “Love is a human concept. I have only the foggiest idea of how to recognize it. So you categorize our feeding as some kind of perversion—maybe the right term should be ‘getting a fix.'”

  “That may be accurate,” he conceded, “but I'm coward enough not to want to think of it that way.”

  “The trouble with you,” she said, folding her arms in exasperation, “is that you don't want to think of it at all. You might as well just say ‘doing it,’ like a teeny-bopper talking about sex.” She raised clinked her glass against his. “Here's to ‘it'—as often as possible.”

  Later that same night, with one of her Joan Baez tapes playing in the background, Sylvia asked him when he had first realized he was different.

  “For as long as I can remember, I perceived auras—or imagined I did. By the age of six I learned not to mention the colored lights I saw around people. My parents accused me of ‘making up stories.’ After a while I doubted the evidence of my own eyes. After all, nobody else could see those haloes of light.”

  “Well, I can, so quit doubting yourself,” she said briskly. “What about sensing emotions?”

  “From childhood, I could tell when people were lying. I embarrassed the hell out of Mother and Dad several times before I learned to keep my mouth shut.”

  Sylvia giggled, “I bet you did.”

  “But I didn't start feeling other people's emotions intensely—or imagining them—until I was about fourteen. It came on gradually.”

  “Okay, that's the normal age for it. And then we develop the need to absorb life-force from ephemerals by, you might say, soaking up strong emotion. That happens before the bloodlust hits. How about you?”

  Damn, how does she do that?With Sylvia's uncanny guesses, it was all too easy to forget that most of what they were discussing had to be pure fantasy. “Soaking up strong emotion—interesting way to put it. Yes, I did—still do—have experiences like that. It started with girls, when I began dating.”

  “No surprise there,” she said.

  “I've never had sexual intercourse.” The embarrassment he felt at confessing that lack surprised him. “At that age I was capable of ejaculation, but good Catholic boys didn't ‘go all the way’ with nice girls. And the brothers in charge of my prep school made sure we didn't have much chance to meet the other kind.”

  Sylvia shook her head. “A vampire at a parochial school—I'm having a lot of trouble with that picture. So if you didn't go all the way, what did you do?”

  Roger smiled reminiscently. “Nice girls, under the right conditions, could indulge in heavy petting—a concept you're probably too young to remember.”

  “I've heard of it. I wasn't allowed to associate with humans until my teens, but I'm notthatout of touch with their culture.”

  “It happened the first time at one of those ghastly dances they arranged for us....”

  Roger had been fifteen. He'd felt no urge to taste the girl's blood, but neither had he felt a drive toward the acts the older boys bragged about.

  He'd been at a dance hosted by the girls’ finishing school down the road. Too young and introverted to have a date of his own, Roger had gone stag, like most of the boys in his grade. If the headmaster hadn't required all the students to attend the dance, as part of their education in the social graces, Roger would have stayed away. Already his empathic powers had developed enough that crowds made him uncomfortable. Suf-fering through the evening in the stuffy room, redolent of nervous sweat and heavy cologne, he took his turn at dancing with a succession of unattached young ladies.

  Eventually he found himself waltzing with a petite brunette who wore less perfume than the others and hadn't nibbled on the garlic-flavored salami hors-d'oeuvres whose odor nauseated him. By that
time, after ten, he began to feel downright sick from the crowding and the smells. Sensing emotions was still new to him, and he had none of the precarious control he'd later developed. The barrage of alien passions sometimes made him suspect he was losing his mind. After his parents’ response to his other odd perceptions, he knew better than to mention this new problem.

  He persuaded his dancing partner to step outside for a few minutes of fresh air. Sensing the blend of amusement and nervousness in her, he guessed, from what he'd overheard from his more experienced peers, that she suspected him of ulterior motives. More from curiosity than lust, he'd kissed her. The memory of her mint-flavored lips, the fragrance of her corsage, and the silken fabric of her powder-blue evening gown came vividly back to him.

  He'd drawn back from the kiss to gaze into her eyes, half expecting her to retreat in alarm or indignation. Instead, she stared dreamily at him for a full minute—and then, standing on tiptoe, wrapped her arms around his neck to pull his face down to hers.

  Suddenly her arousal flooded over him.So this is what the fellows were talking about! Instinct guided his hands over her body, tracing a fiery path from one erogenous zone to the next, guided by her burgeoning excitement. His lips never left hers while his fingers discovered the core of her feminine heat. His whole being echoed the cataclysmic vibrations of her climax.

  As soon as they caught their breath, he escorted her inside and handed her over to another partner. The girl didn't speak to Roger, behaving as if she were floating in a daze. He found, to his surprise, that the throng around him had become bearable. He felt refreshed, energized. Even if he had been more outgoing, he would have known better than to tell any of his classmates about the experience. Upon reflection, he recognized that it differed from the sexual exploits the other boys reveled in trading at their locker-room bull sessions....

  After he told Sylvia about this incident, she said, “With all that going on, you didn't have a clue that you weren't an ordinary teenager?”

  “Don't you understand?” Given her obtuseness about so many everyday facets of social interaction, he could halfway believe she wasn't human, after all. “I couldn't tell anyone about those incidents, so I had no reality test. For all I knew, I was losing my mind. That fear, in fact, was what first got me interested in psychology.”

  “So what about drinking blood? I'd have expected you to feel that need within a year or two.”

  “No, it didn't happen until my early twenties, during my residency at Mass General.” Even now, the memory made his stomach knot with anxiety. “It was—terrible. I denied the urge as long as possible, tried to convince myself it was anything but—what it was. I stuffed myself with raw meat, bone marrow, anything to stifle that craving for—whatever.”

  Sylvia stared at him, wide-eyed. “I can't imagine how awful that must have been. I always knew what I was, and when my bloodlust started, it meant I was growing up.”

  Recalling the turmoil he'd suffered, Roger almost wished he could share her fantasy of vampirism.

  “About the same time, I lost the capacity for—sexual release. Not that I noticed it right away, being an exhausted, overworked resident—” He smiled grimly. “But when I finally re-alized I had become inexplicably and permanently impotent—”

  “Now, that part I can't understand at all. I mean, ephemerals have to settle for short, localized climaxes. Why would you want to be limited that way? For us, it's so muchmore."

  Her words roused an unwelcome heat in the pit of his sto-mach. He poured himself a fresh glass of wine and gulped half of it at once. “Well, I didn't know about the—compensations—at the time. And I can't share your belief that it's all perfectly natural.”

  “It's natural for us. You aren't some kind of depraved pervert; you're just taking what you need. As for the human-type sex, have you missed it?”

  “Well—” He had to concede that the rush he enjoyed when he tasted the blood of a properly stimulated victim far surpassed his memory of masturbating to climax. On the other hand, how well could he rely on that memory?

  “See what I mean?” She raised her glass with a triumphant flourish. “Why do you keep fighting your nature, trying to set new records on how long you can go without? You're driving yourself crazy for nothing. After all, ephemerals were made to feed us. Why else would they taste so delicious?”

  The appeasement of Sylvia's voracious appetite left many hours unaccounted for, hours spent hiking through the woods or driving up the coast to walk over deserted seaside beaches at midnight. They spent one weekend exploring rural Maine, searching, as Sylvia put it, “for Stephen King landmarks. Wouldn't it be neat to stumble across ‘Salem's Lot?”

  “No, thank you,” Roger said. “I read that book, too—the vampires were cremateden masse , remember?”

  “In real life we know better than to make ourselves that conspicuous.”

  “Real life?” He arched a skeptical eyebrow at her. “Odd choice of phrase. Stipulating it's true, for the sake of argument, where do vampires congregate in real life, if not in small New England towns?”

  “Mostly we don't. Congregate, that is. We're solitary predators. Give up, Roger, I'm not allowed to talk about it.” Sylvia consistently met Roger's questions with similar non-answers or light retorts. He clung to the assumption that her unwillingness to provide him with specific data masked the fact that no real data existed.

  “Introduce me to your former friend—the other vampire you claim is haunting Boston,” he challenged her on one occasion.

  Sylvia immediately turned serious. “You don't want to meet him. I wasn't lying when I said he'd committed those murders. He's an outlaw.” Not another word would she volunteer. Roger wished he could persuade her to speak more freely; suppose she actually did know the killer's identity, even if she harbored delusions about his nature?But if I got a name from her, how could I explain it to O'Toole? First things first; get the information, stop the slaughter, and then figure out how to handle the detective.

  The only other source of tension between them was Sylvia's unfulfilled wish to taste Roger's blood. Though she didn't ask outright, he knew she wanted it. She had allowed him to drink from her, enjoyed it. Why couldn't he reciprocate? He saw the silent question in her eyes and had no answer for it, even in his own mind. He knew only that the fathomless need he sensed in her frightened him; he felt if she opened his veins, she would drain his life away.

  A new shock hit him the night she talked him into experimenting with his psychic powers. “There's so much more you should be able to do,” she said, curled up next to him on her living room couch. “Reading emotions and controlling people's minds is just the beginning.”

  “What do you have in mind?” said Roger, stroking Katrina, who sprawled limply across his knees. “Telekinesis? Levitation? Walking through walls?”

  “Go ahead, laugh it up,” she said. “I want to teach you how to—I guess you'd say, create a psychic disguise. It's an extension of the mind-control you've mastered on your own. Projecting an illusion can be not only useful but fun. And since you do have the hypnotic talent, you should be able to pick this up.”

  “How do you mean? Like a hologram?”

  “No, no, I mean makingyourself look different.” She stood up, facing Roger. “It's a self-protective technique, like camou-flage. I can make people see me as a wolf, a panther—” she smiled sardonically—"even a bat. But the easiest is what you might call psychic invisibility.” Her outline blurred. She rippled like an image on water and vanished.

  Chapter 5

  JESUS, MARY, and Joseph! She disappeared into thin air!Roger almost crossed himself before he remembered that would upset Sylvia.This can't be literally supernatural, but it's as close as I ever want to get.

  He watched in stunned silence until she reappeared. “Good God—how in the name of all that's holy—?”

  He felt her delight in his astonishment. “I just made you see me differently. You should be able to handle that—go ahead, try. I'
d love to see what you're capable of.” She lifted the cat out of his lap.

  Is that why the legends say vampires can dissolve into mist?"How?”

  With a frown Sylvia said, “I don't know how to teach you, not the way my advisor taught me. If we were bonded—” She stood up. “You need feedback from another person. You wouldn't see your own reflection fade from the mirror.” For a moment her eyes clouded. “I used to, but I got over that. Now all that's left is the fear of crosses.”

  When she beckoned him to stand opposite her, he complied. “Look into my eyes, Roger. I'll be your mirror. Try to feel what I feel when I do it.” She faded into transparency again. Now that Roger was expecting the illusion, he could almost penetrate it; a faint outline of her form teased his vision. Sylvia shimmered back into view and said, “Now you.”

  He imagined weaving a curtain around himself to deflect rays of light, shaping a pocket of opacity to veil himself from her eyes. He fixed his gaze on those red-gleaming eyes, seeking confirmation of his skill. For a second he fell into a whirlpool of double vision, viewing Sylvia's half-naked body, outlined by the glow of her aura, yet simultaneously seeing himself through her eyes, his body enveloped in shadow. His eyes smoldered back at hers.

  “Yes—yes!” she whispered. “Oh, Roger, that's outstanding for a first try.” She groped for his hand. When their fingers brushed, he felt the illusion dissolve.

  He clutched her fingers like a drowning man. “Thank you—I think. If I really did what you claim you saw. As you said, I can't see myself vanish.” When the initial shock faded, he flashed on an image of the crowd cheering for the nude Emperor's “new clothes.” “For all I know, you're convincing me I can do this for your own purposes.”

  “Oh, come on, Roger! Why would I lie? What possible rea-son could I have for working a scam on you?”

  True, he couldn't think of a plausible motive. She had plenty of money and didn't need anything from him. “All right, maybe there's something to all this. Maybe we share some obscure con-genital syndrome. We might even be distantly related.”