Dawn was still on the stage, packing up some mini disks or doing whatever she usually did after a gig. Sid looked at her with shortsighted, brown eyes, unable to guess, feeling shy and nervous, the wolf and the whale debating about the best possible next step.
There was something she wanted to know, so much that she didn’t care about the crowd around her. She knew about Terri’s hugs, Terri being as generous with her hugs as her voice was powerful. And Terri was a great hugger. She hugged strong, but not tight. The best hugger in town. What about Dawn? The keyboard player was so elusive. Suddenly, Sid had to know, she had to find out. Now. There and then. But Dawn was too reserved a person to hug groupies after a 2-minute chat. Only one way for Sid to get a hug. The anti-depressants giving her a wackier than usual sense of humour, she could have explained herself as a student researching, analyzing, comparing, cataloguing hugs.
Sid selected the direct approach. She walked onto the stage she would have loved to share with Second Look.
“Dawn?”
“Yes?” The musician turned to Sid with a smile.
“Could you do me a favour?”
“Sure!”
“Could you give me a hug?”
The smile took an amused turn and Dawn made the step necessary to close her arms around Sid. The embrace was honest, with a softness invading Sid’s heart. The writer felt a sudden desire to protect the musician from whatever harm would ever come her way. It was overwhelming. Dawn withdrew after a hug too brief for Sid, unaware of Sid’s emotions.
* * * * * * *
Sid Wasgo was unwilling to write openly in her diary about her feelings for Dawn, her chaotic hormones. A few next entries read as follow:
“I have enough illusions to corrupt me for a lifetime
Illusions born out of excessive enthusiasm
Anything could be so much better than isolation”
“I got it all wrong my entire life and I still don’t get it. It took me a lifetime to get my rhythm together. It took me a lifetime to understand the value of my voice. And I’m still nowhere.”
“Dreamed someone I knew went for breast reduction. People’s grapevine spat it out as double mastectomy. I went into a shop and the woman at the counter said “You’re the one with the double mastectomy” and looked at my chest. Everyone in the shop looked at my chest. “Oh no,” she said, “it’s not you.” I got very pissed-off with their attitude and shouted that SHE had gone for breast reduction, not double mastectomy. But I would go for double mastectomy.”
“Let me give you the moon and the stars
Let me give you the song they won’t let me write
Let me give you the world and the sun
Let me give you the dream they won’t let me have”
“By the way, Terri was in my dream last night and I was great at roller-skating.”
“Dawn was in my dream last night. Can’t remember the details now [I know it was a “tired” dream because last night I fell asleep while listening to SL’s CD and in the dream I put on the T-shirt that in so-called reality I had left on one of the pillows for the night but anyway], we went walking together, Dawn to her car and me to my motorbike, talking.”
“So many vampires in my dream, an endless parade. They couldn’t care less about me. I was a total laughing stock because whenever I tried to stake one of them, I’d miss the heart. At the end, when I caught up with Sharon my team leader [Dr Lewis from “ER”], my team had apparently been decimated. I had to stake Sharon because she had been turned into a vampire. I woke up feeling like a failure.”
“Loneliness is the price for lack of knowledge.”
“Second Look in my dream. We were at Terri’s ranch. While Terri was explaining something to do with horses to someone else, Dawn’s left hand was caressing my hips under a blanket. No comment.”
CHAPTER TEN
He hadn’t given Jasmine the chance to say good-bye. For all her relatives knew, she was dead. She had been ill, weakening, wasting away, and then she had disappeared. They probably explained her vanishing act as a moment of dementia.
She did mind. Life had been fun and inconsequential. Born during the second half of the nineteenth century to a bourgeois but aristocratic couple, she had married a rich, handsome and extremely eligible bachelor at the very dawn of the next century. They were the most talked about couple in society; they looked so suitable to each other. And they were. Jasmine’s husband had other tastes in the bedroom and was more than happy to let her enjoy her personal choices.
The Stranger didn’t ask her if it was ok, he was used to take whatever he fancied. And he fancied Jasmine all right. He had a fetish for long, dark hair and matching eyes. She was her type more perfectly than anyone he had encountered.
She was the queen of every ball, favouring luxurious gowns of green and purple silk that enhanced her natural beauty. Dancing partners were queuing, women were jealous. She would waltz until first light, and the Stranger would watch, hunger biting inside more fiercely every night.
Jasmine had enjoyed her life of pleasures, the lack of responsibilities, the attentions of dashing young men, her husband’s courteous friendship, and the male and female lovers. Ahh, her lovers. Some of the men enjoyed perusing her wardrobe and trying out her make-up, for some kinky and fancy cross-dressing. Some of the women would try out her husband’s outfits for similar reasons. It was the dawn of the twentieth century, she had money and freedom; she was, by her own standard definitions, happy. She was about to turn 29, but didn’t look a day over 20. Life was grand.
Until the attractive Stranger danced with her and crushed everything.
Her husband, her parents, her children, her family, were certainly dutifully mourning her now. She missed them. She missed her turbulent twin children, her effeminate husband, her supercilious aunt, each and every relative, no matter how irritating she used to experience them.
She hated the Stranger for changing her, for imposing his will upon her, for making her feel so powerless. No good-byes. She wasn’t dead, she wasn’t alive. If she was to try and see her family again, they would believe her a ghost, a spirit of evil. The Stranger had made her at his image. She was now a creature of the night. A vampire.
The night he took her away he laughed at her anger, held her wrists tight while she would try and kick him. He enjoyed the taste of her blood, the soft warmth of her skin. He relished in tearing her pale green gown to shreds. But her first taste of his blood gave him more ecstasy than he had ever dreamed of. Holding her long, dark, silky hair in the firm grip of his strong hand, the strength of an ancient vampire, he had pulled her unwilling mouth to the newly open wound on his chest, over his heart wildly pulsing with her blood and the sensual details of her memories. He had pressed her face to his flushed skin, while listening to the roaring of blood in his ears.
A rivulet of blood had made its way between her weakened lips and onto her tongue. She found herself drinking greedily, greed increasing in intensity, as she was regaining her strength.
He moaned, the draining of his blood a masochistic pleasure. Her sudden physical rejection of him shocked him. But vampires don’t breathe. Even though, he coughed with surprise, and laughed. She was so full of promises. His fangs tore another helping of her jugular. Her body pressed against hard stone, her fists pounded his back with her new strength. But his avid feeding was again stealing her memories, her life force, bringing her back to the edge, the invisible boundary between life and death, her heart still beating, harder and so weakly all together.
When he brought her mouth back to the bleeding opening of his heart, she didn’t fight. Already too far gone into the Change to resist its completion. She drank his memories, not really understanding these images of people now dead, cities long forgotten, wars and travels in faraway countries. But she felt the power, its increase over the centuries. And the intensity of her anger grew to mightier proportions that she would have ever thought possible.
With the back of one hand, Jasmine sen
t the stranger flying across the yard. The wall cracked under the violent assault. He laughed again and before she could jump away -and what a mighty jump it would have been-, he was back on top of her, with a speed unknown to any living being.
“You are mine now, forever mine.” His mouth had twisted into a cruel smile and kissed her angry lips, hard, deep, unforgiving. “Let us go and feed. It is time for your first lesson, Fledgling!”
His laughter had echoed in the night, akin to the laughter of a mad man escaping into the full moon.
* * * * * * *
With great reluctance, she learned the ropes of her new existence, the full scope of her powers, the speed and the strength. She saw the Stranger recoil from the greedy tongues of the fire, and the weightless fingers of the sunlight. She took flight with him through moonless nights and acquainted herself with her natal soil. She discovered the sharpness of her new teeth, the pleasure of warm blood cascading down her throat. The coppery variations from sweet to sour, bitter to stale, slimy to bland, thin to thick. She got used to the overpowering need driving her to hunt and kill, to seduce with a hypnotic stare and feed on life itself. She found his coffin rather uncomfortable despite the soft velvet lining, and rather too crowded with his crushing bulk.
During the first five years of their intimate acquaintance, even when out of his sight, she knew he was still watching her. He indulged her need to visit her children who thought her just a beautiful and sweet dream.
She was just a toy, some plaything he would enjoy bending this way or that way, because it amused him to see her suffer and anger. Despite her supernatural strength, her attempts at fighting back were futile. He had the strength of a vampire who had seen empires fall under the sheer weight of their greed. He was so ancient that he had never bothered telling her any of his names because none could encompass his whole being.
He reveled in her growing hate for him, her increasing anger and resentment. She was but a mere fledgling and he was almighty. She despised herself for not resisting his magnetic attraction.
The night he seduced her husband and delighted in draining him from his blood, Jasmine remembered she did mind having been forcibly taken away from her life, she did mind her children not having their mother anymore, she did mind the Stranger keeping her under his thumb and on constant tiptoes. She swore to the full moon that the monster would suffer and pay the heaviest price she could bill him.
* * * * * * *
The Stranger was, to say the least, a rich vampire. He owned a few properties dotting the country and he enjoyed touring them when London and Edinburgh brought him look-a-like victims night after night. His manor in Cornwall stood just at the edge of a tiny village and looked like a picture right out of the middle ages with peasants to match. Superstitions a bonus that Jasmine was willing to use and manipulate.
Her face had the pale and deathly shine of a vampire freshly raised. They looked at her and they saw a beautiful young woman with long, dark hair, pure and virginal in her white, long dress. They looked into her dark, innocent eyes and they saw a woman endangered by evil. Evil being the noble man from the gloomy manor at the edge of the village. They picked up torches lit with purifying fire and walked to the Stranger’s property. Dusk was nigh but they couldn’t guess the threat. Jasmine, the hems of her dress laden with natal soil, gave them way.
The flames licked at the orange horizon. Smoke darkening the last rays of the setting sun.
When the stranger’s eyes snapped open, the smell of burning walls and drapes was still only a flutter barely tickling his sensitive nostrils. The cracking noises of the fire a deafening roar in his acute ears. But it was already too late.
The blazing creature who ran out of the burning manor, screaming and writhing with rage and pain, struck the crowd of villagers assembled for the impromptu show with sudden panic. The Stranger stood motionless for only the briefest second, enough to locate Jasmine at the far end of the crowd, enough for Jasmine to sense the reeling agony, the unbelieving feeling of betrayal. She kicked off her pumps and ran into the village, faster than any villagers’ eyes would ever be able to follow, like a flash of light. The Stranger hot and flaming on her trail. Kindling villagers in his path.
By the time she emerged at the other end, the village was ablaze and the sun had ruefully cast a last ray at the unprotected vampire. The Stranger was slowly decomposing. Jasmine ran into the nearby forest.
When she encountered the wolves, adrenaline left her and she let herself slide down to the ground. The tallest and greyest animal cautiously approached her. His yellow eyes avoiding hers, he crouched as low as he could, offering his throat to her mercy. The other animals were shuffling on their spot, uncertainly watching, silently yelping.
After a moment worth a thousand shuddering eternities, the vampire’s hand swiftly grabbed the animal’s vulnerable throat, forcing a gargling sound out of his jaws, forcing fear into his cunning eyes, forcing his gaze into her mesmerizing stare. Cruelty gave sharpness to her facial features.
When she released the alpha male, he cowered a few feet away, turned to the nearest wolf and growled at him. Some more snarling and cowering later, they took her to a dark cave in the secret recesses of the forest, and before dawn, they brought her a victim, a human child, to satiate her ravenous hunger.
* * * * * * *
The following year, her now grown-up son died in a riding accident. She visited her daughter and cried with her. Tears of blood in vague candlelight.
* * * * * * *
She waded namelessly through the next decade, loneliness, anger and resentment, her faithful companions. Wearing black by day and night to enhance her cruelty, to avoid the sight of blood stains on her clothes, the reminders of constant killing. Killing to forget that even so powerful, she was powerless at retrieving her past life.
In the thirties she became Judith and enjoyed preying on the bourgeoisie. It was a time of discovery. In the forties, she emigrated to the United States of America, land of promise and opulence. She mingled with the Italian and Irish communities, feeding on their eagerness and fiery tempers. In the sixties, as Jade, she got her predatory share of the sexual revolution and welcomed the first mini-skirts. Then she started to miss the narrowness of Europe and the old families. She traveled back to London in time to witness the rise and fall of Punk. Early eighties, she felt at home with the New Romantics. They were gothic enough to “play vampire” with her. She changed her long hair for the more attractive mane of black and white strands.
But life as a vampire had grown stale, making her yawn from dusk to dawn. Her daily slumbers had shrunken. She had taken on rising earlier than the mythical Lestat de Lioncourt and getting out of her dark retreat before dusk, skimming Chinatown, high heels laden with natal soil. But she wouldn’t withdraw into the ground. She had read about this onset of depression in Anne Rice’s strangely well-documented chronicles. It was not her time yet. But she felt bored, utterly bored. After only a century as an undead. She felt so chillingly lonely.
She had renamed herself Joy and started haunting new scenes. The musical underworld crawling with drugs and misery.
She acquired new tastes and started to favour indie rock. There was this one band she couldn’t help coming back to. Two women with incredible charisma. Their name was Second Look. She would have left after a few feedings. The band wasn’t as underground as her usual territories, the trail of bloodless corpses she so enjoyed leaving behind had attracted New Scotland Yard’s attention and their D. I. Madison’s incompetent skills. She would have left if, if only, some weirdo weirder than the usual brand, hadn’t danced into her visual field. A lone writer with a green mohican and Native American tattoos spilling down her shirtsleeves and her trousers legs. An average-size and lean woman competing for the band’s attention.
While Sid’s shortsightedness was an added reason for obnoxious paparazzi habits, it was an unexpected impediment for Joy’s hypnotic stare. The creature of the night had grown to expect human being
s to be boringly predictable and wear spectacles or contact lenses when shortsighted or longsighted. Blind people were mistakenly safe from her predatory activities. Ah. The writer suddenly stood out in the crowd, unbelievably tall and attractive. An obsessive beacon. An exciting prey. Sparkling life and adding contrast of shades and lights to Joy’s decidedly routine existence.
Bitter and cruel, angry and resentful, the vampire wanted the writer’s blood more than anyone else’s. There she was, a worthy prey. One who was not after Joy’s attention, one who was not into buying her drinks or lighting her cigarettes. A prey who seemed immune to her hypnotic stare…….
INTERLUDE (By courtesy of the author Sid Wasgo)
CONTROL
It was an accident. I swear: I never intended to kill Sweet Jane.
She was always so quiet. With such sweetness in her eyes. When her blonde hair was not covering them, that is. She would have made my heart melt with just one of her smiles. I guess that’s why I picked up my camera again: to collect her smiles, some of the greatest smiles on Earth. Yeah, ok, I’d do anything for a woman’s smile; it’s my greatest weakness.
With Red Reb, it was a whole different kettle of fish. It didn’t mean I wanted Reb dead. No, I wanted her friendship. You see, we were so alike. E.g.: we were both drummers. But, she was the best. She was so wild on her drum kit, her red hair flying all over the place. Ok, maybe I was jealous. Let’s face it: they were part of a successful band.
Don’t blame me, or the hell with blame, it’s too late now, I can’t undo what I’ve done. Listen or read, let me explain. I’m not saying that life has been tougher on me. I’m saying that it’s part of the package: I’m a genius with an IQ so high that I can’t be bothered with Mensa. I’ve got the sensitivity to match. You know, or if you don’t know, let me tell you: the highest incidence of alcoholism in groups is among Mensa people. What about drugs then, you ask? Call me a junkie. I’ve been on prescribed drugs for a year. I begged the psychiatrist to give me the antidepressants and she reluctantly agreed. I couldn’t keep the beast within under control anymore. I was becoming dangerous, not just to myself, but other people too. I told her only the basic spiel: various childhood abuses, various suicide attempts, lifetime depression. But the beast within, it’s my secret. So, I am multi-talented, but in this world, talent is not enough. I haven’t got the cunning of a businessperson. I can’t be bothered with money.
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