Before she could move again and shake her head, he was there, turning her around, and biting her neck, with teeth so sharp, she believed him a devil. Blood spurt into his mouth. He started slurping greedily until he sensed she was on the verge of losing consciousness, her heartbeat almost faint enough to stop.
"You fooled me," he growled. She did not hear him.
When she regained consciousness, he held her up with one hand, stared coldly into her eyes. And burst out laughing, the sound echoing in the dark wooden barn. She tasted blood on her tongue. The pain had left her clavicle. Her neck didn't even feel sore. Until he bit again, pushing her against a wall, a hand over her mouth to muffle her potential screams.
The last time she drank his blood, she understood the kind of devil he was. One who walked the earth forever, preferably at night, feeding on the blood of humans.
"And when you'll have fed for the first time, you will really have become like me."
* * * * * * *
Lesson 101 of Vampiric Lore for Antoine turned out to be on cruelty, when it comes to feeding……. The fledgling's first meal, selected by her sire, turned out to be a young farm girl whose innocence was just a mere memory in the hay, and whose eyes had struck a chord in Antoine's heart. What's cruelty at mealtime when you have eternity to love and lust, and the smell of blood is one with power to overrun your will.
In terms of sire, Antoine turned out to be lucky. His protector and mentor taught her everything she needed to know, and even some more. She became Prinz Anton, travelling with his uncle the Count of Amalia, both from an old and rich family whose credentials involved royalties in several countries. They spent years traveling throughout Europe, enjoying the hospitality of the nobility and sowing decadence in their wake. The Count would feed on young men; the prinz would feast on young women.
The vampire taught his progeny how to feed, how to pass as human and also how to have sex with a dildo. He taught her languages, literature, mathematics, politics, astronomy, some astrology and more music. From humble peasant to aristocrat in one step.
A few decades of outrageous, amoral luxuries later, the Count of Amalia was destroyed in a rare moment of carelessness.
* * * * * *
Prinz Anton was on the run. Even night felt hostile. Every shadow seemed to hide a dangerous foe. Suddenly alone, she was no longer aware of her vampiric powers. Fear inhabited her mind. She was afraid that the simple peasants who had found out her mentor, would capture her and destroy her, too. She had forgotten how fast she could run and was now running. The irony of fight or flight. She had forgotten she was able to fly and thus easily cross the political borders to another country way before dawn. To another country where no one knew her real nature. She was not aware of how many miles she had already covered, nor was she aware of her pursuers having given up. She was too terrified. An animal terror that increased multifold when a foreign body suddenly slammed her to the ground, breaking her momentum.
It took a while to the violet eyes, where sadness and power were swimming together, to freeze the panic in the green eyes. It took a while for the soft, husky voice to soothe the young vampire's mind.
"Hush, fledgling. You are safe now." The delicate, manicured hand gently caressed the disheveled hair. Prinz Anton's body eventually relaxed in the iron embrace of the other vampire, relaxed and fell into a mesmerized slumber.
She had dark, curly hair, long, but pinned together at the back of her head. Her face was pale despite having already fed that night, contrasting more dramatically with her red lips. She was wearing all the trappings of the mid-nineteenth century fashion inflicted on women. She picked up the sleepy fledgling in her arms with no effort. As light as a feather.
Toni woke up the next night, in an unknown crypt, feeling hungry and unsafe. A female vampire of amazing beauty was standing next to the stone coffin. She radiated great power. Toni felt outnumbered, but the face portrayed no threat, just grief. At her feet, Toni saw an unconscious young girl.
"Feed. We shall talk afterward."
Malvina was Amalia's sister. They had been sired centuries ago, just after the fall and decay of the Roman Empire, and watched civilizations rise and crumble all around the planet. Together, then separately.
"We were both so stubborn. We raged against each other so many times. It was……. painful. We agreed to wander the world our separate ways. On occasions, we would meet and the festivities would destroy entire hamlets." Her alluring lips drew a wistful smile. "Oh, he could be so headstrong! The bloody fool!"
* * * * * * *
Under Malvina's protection, Prinz Anton became Antonio. They traveled to the motherland of the British Empire, where they set out to delight the high society, Malvina with her singing, Antonio with his piano skills, in London and other main cities across the British Isles. The opera singer and her young brother became so popular that even Queen Victoria invited them to her palace. Malvina, very diplomatically, explained that her voice was very sensitive to the air of the daytime and her majesty would certainly gain more enjoyment from an evening performance.
Vampires they met on their path would immediately cower in front of the ancient one and ran if left the opportunity.
They traveled through Eastern Europe and Russia. During the few decades they spent together, Malvina completed Antonio's education with finances, independence, and how to make love without a dildo.
* * * * * * *
At the dawn of the twentieth century, Antonio found herself on her own, as Malvina had promised it would happen. On the eve of World War I, Antonio took an apprenticeship with a luthier in Como, at the foot of the Italian Alps. She had learned to control her hunger and last a few nights without feeding. She was a master of disguise and knew how to blend in. She was a powerful vampire in front of which most of her kind would cower. She had not only been sired by Amalia, she had also tasted Malvina's blood.
After a few years in Northern Italy, having mastered her craft, she became Antony and resumed her wanderings, still passing as a young man, throughout the European continent. She had abandoned the lute decades ago in favour of the piano and the violin, and while in Como added the guitar to her collection of eclectic skills. Learning could be so easy to a vampire, especially when from such a bloodline as Antony's.
In the early 30's, she crossed the Bering Strait and reached North America. Soon she found herself apprenticing again, this time in California, on time to witness the "Frying Pan" –the first electric guitar– being produced by the Rickenbacker team, still a far cry from the popular instrument it was about to become. Looking like such an alluring young man, she elected to feed on every lovely film star of female gender passing her way. Satisfaction was generally mutual.
She arrived in New York before the beginning of World War II and started playing piano in small jazz clubs. Throughout the war, her pale alter ego dodged drafting, pleading poor health and coughing. This, of course, never prevented her from feeding on the delicious jazz singers she accompanied on stage.
* * * * * * *
By 1950, she was back in California, this time in the small town of Fullertown, hanging out in the Fender factories, watching with curiosity the development of solid-body electric guitars. The next year, she was one of the musicians testing the first Telecasters and Stratocasters.
Her wanderings in the 20th century were very much connected with guitars and she enjoyed this coincidence to the hilt. By the late 60's, when she stumbled into the Ovation Company in Connecticut, she had moved on through blues and tried her hand, but not her voice, to rock 'n' roll. She was still passing as a man, now shortening her first name to Tony, and from the shadows contributed to the evolution of the first electro-acoustic Ovation guitar, the Balladeer unveiled to the market in 1970. She realised she preferred the electric, solid-body version and even built her own.
1977 did not just witness the rise of the punk movement; it also started the chronicle of the short-lived, but iconic rock band Hell For Leather. Tony, as and
rogynous-looking as ever, was the front person of the power trio, singing with a voice that no one could pin down as male or female, playing mean metal riffs on a custom-built electric guitar of a design no one had ever seen before. The late seventies were golden and the music outrageously arrogant. As suddenly as Hell For Leather had started their rocket-climb to stardom, they disbanded. The 80's had to contend without them and without solving the mystery of the voice's gender, despite many claims. Toni especially enjoyed the hermaphrodite theory, and returned underground.
CHAPTER EIGHT
"A-Plus. Oh, at last! Some full-bodied vintage stuff." (Lilith Silver in "Razor Blade Smile" 1998)
Joy's eyes bore into Sid's, from the sockets of her expressionless and generally pale face. Eventually, she carefully enunciated her reply:
"Since when do you care?" What she wanted tonight was Sid's tasty menstrual blood, not the University Challenge or the Spanish Inquisition.
Sid looked away, uncomfortable, but unresentful. She understood the vampire's reaction. Her direct questions were similar to an invasion of privacy, especially when Joy had only one thing on her mind and Sid knew her own desire.
On the other hand, the vampire could understand the newly expressed curiosity. Any human would be curious, even more if a writer. Actually, she found amusing the fact that the green mohican had resisted the temptation so long, so long for a human. She considered having her bloody way there and then, unrestrained, rip the black T-shirt away, tear up the tattooed flesh of the fragile neck (every neck is fragile), and greedily feast on the warm spurting blood. She sighed, gently biting her lower lip, fangs now flashing, a softer expression in her eyes, and looked away. Bloody Death, she thought.
Sid stood up to walk away from the sofa, but Joy's authoritative hand stopped her.
"I'm hungry."
Her facial expression was both a snarl and a smile. Sid stared back at the fire in Joy's dark eyes. Right on cue, a light bulb gave up the ghost and shed dimness in the living room. The only light was now coming from the lampposts outside on the street, behind Sid. Sid didn't notice.
Sid's curiosity had been direct; Joy decided her hunger should be direct, too. Eyes riveted to the brown irises, she let her hand fall down in a caressing motion. She could feel something inside Sid pulling at her, like a gentle tug. She recognized the feeding intent. She was also aware of Sid's ignorance and lack of control over the psychic attempt. She let it be, the writer was such a harmless predator, and refocused on her own hunger.
Fingers unfastening the trappings separating her from dinner, she wondered how Sid could be so fearless, how Sid could sit there, unflinching, when so many of her victims, one-night-stands and other donors, those who had had the privilege to know about her real nature, had expressed fear, or in some rare cases a feverish anticipation.
Sid vaguely noticed the unexpected angle of the light bathing her front room but paid it no mind, she felt too aroused by the touch of this undead.
* * * * * * *
Later, Joy unfolded her body, stretched with satisfaction, and turned her back to the street. Sid sighed deeply and opened her eyes, sated, too, relaxed and restored. She looked at her front room and only when she spotted the unlit light bulb, hardly blurred, realized her night vision was exceptionally good, but Joy left her no time to ponder over this new mystery. She started talking, a bitter edge in her voice, while Sid zipped up her trousers in a successful attempt at decency.
"If you were to ask every vampire if they chose their existence, and they were to answer truthfully, you would find out that most of them never asked for their life to be turned upside down and destroyed. The vampire who made me was so ancient that I can only suppose he had seen over a millennium of civilisations come and go. He was an arrogant and abusive bastard. This arrogance turned out to be his demise. I destroyed him." She snarled with anger. Her abrupt silence triggered an eyebrow-raising from Sid. Joy walked a few steps before resuming.
"A vampire's existence is generally solitary because a vampire is a predator, a territorial and selfish predator. Older vampires can be most dangerous. They often destroy young blood drinkers, not even for sport or fun, they do it because they can and they like watching a fledgling coward at their feet. Most often than not, vampires kill each other on sight. They are very competitive." She laughed suddenly. "Can you imagine a Vampire Convention? It would be mayhem and slaughter!" Behind features rippling with cruel laughter, Joy remembered that there were possibly two other vampires in town. Toni, powerful, older and unreadable; and probably Dee-Dee, very young, but almost as powerful as her maker, and probably still very angry. Enough for a very gory convention if reunited in the same venue.
"Where do vampires come from? If Transylvania was, it was only a pit stop. The general belief is Egypt. However, don't take my word for it, I'm no scholar. Anne Rice's theory is quite compelling. I sometimes wonder how she got so many details right.
"Do vampires spend the daytime in coffins? And in crypts? Very gothic, but not necessarily the case. I have a round bed in a lightproof room somewhere in London. Vampires' healing powers? Oh yes, we do heal quickly. It's absurd, I know, but it's true. Usual means of killing don't work. Except maybe if you aim something big and long at the heart. Absurd too and I've never tried it myself so I cannot totally guarantee it. The possibility of destroying a vampire with fire and sunlight? I've seen it happen. Do they turn into ashes? When it comes to fire, I can definitely say yes. But it's true for anything else. Sunlight? Yes, it works. Do not believe everything they show you on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". Josh Whedon has never met a vampire, but he's got some imagination. Does every vampire fly? No." A silence ensued, making a point. Sid's eyes, that she was now carefully avoiding, questioned some more. Joy went on:
"As a vampire, I am just a little bit over a century old. I do not socialize with other vampires, they rarely come my way and I don't get on with them anyway. Besides, vampires don't necessarily stay in the same place very long. Some of us can be a bit messy when we feed. Or deliberately messy," she conceded, wondering for how many years she'd been in London now. "We don't necessarily want to attract attention from humans. We're not interested in public and legal recognition like in Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake novels."
Joy felt restless now. She also felt worried. She needed to see for herself if Dee-Dee was back in London too or not.
"Ok, I'm bored now. You wanna know more about vampires? You wanna know what is reality and what is literature? Have you got a DVD player?"
Surprised, Sid scratched one freshly shaved side of her head before answering: "I think I've got one in a closet."
"Get it out for tomorrow night. I've got this little gem on DVD. The guy who wrote it is surprisingly accurate on a few facts. I always wondered if he ever had a chat with a vampire." She smiled: "Like Christian Slater in ‘Interview with A Vampire’."
* * * * * * *
Sid had spent her day writing. She had gone against her habit of writing short to favour a novel. As usual, she had no idea about its main plot, and even less about its outcome. She knew enough about the main character to start and had twenty scribbled pages peppered with badly crossed T's and randomly dotted I's by sundown. She also knew that if she had knowledge of every detail between Alpha and Omega, she would never write it. Thus, confident in her wisdom, she had never learned ancient Greek.
By the time Joy showed up at her open window, TV and DVD player were taking center-stage in the front room. Sid didn't own many DVD's. She was more likely to borrow. The rare movies lining up on one shelf were more like essential references of various kinds: "Nightbreed" (albeit the North American DVD region, that she could only watched at some friend's house), ‘Shadow of the Vampire’, ‘House of Frankenstein’ (a pirate copy someone had downloaded from the internet), ‘The Lost Boys’, ‘Interview with a Vampire’, "Tsui Hark's Vampire Hunters’ (internet piracy again), ‘The Colour Purple’ (a pirate copy from her local market) and Second Look, of course. ‘Flatl
iners’, ‘Strange Days’ and ‘Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café’ were on loan from Jessie.
"Now," Joy said, sticking ‘Razor Blade Smile’, a low-budget movie bred and raised in the UK, into the DVD player a while later. "Let's introduce you to Lilith Silver, the vampire female James Bond. And pay attention. The guy who made this movie is more clued-up than his more famous peers."
The movie started in black and white, relating how the heroine had been turned into a vampire, back in a time of daily horse-riding and pistol duels. The villain was a scarred face going by the name of Sethan Blake. Cue to modern times, in colour. Our heroine Lilith Silver is an assassin known as the Angel of Death. Her favorite hangout, in between hit jobs, is darkling venue the Transilvania Bar.
"Cool place," Joy commented with a hint of nostalgia in her voice. "It was great for easy pickups. Now, open your ears wide: it is time for Lesson 101."
On cue, Lilith Silver set about educating the goths sharing her table, and more especially the young woman sporting upper fangs and know-it-all attitude, trashing mythical beliefs one after the other.
Vampires couldn't shapeshift. Nope, no turning into mist, not even into bats. Joy surprised Sid by bursting out laughing and almost rolling on the floor, at the black and white sight of a Hallowe'en rubber bat dangling from the ceiling of a cellar.
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