"The priest will be right out," she said.
"A priest?"
She didn't answer, merely smiled, turned and left me at a brisk walk. If my legs weren't shaking so bad, I would have been right next to her.
Was I supposed to walk in or wait?
Before I could decide, the door opened. I half expected a dark cavern of a room but to my surprise, bright lights spilled into the corridor. A man stood before me dressed in a black business suit with a surprising red and yellow striped tie.
I expected a funeral director, I guess.
"Marcie?"
I nodded.
"You've come for your counseling session?"
Again, I nodded.
He held out his hand and I took it, surprised at his coldness or that my hand felt warm against his. The last vestige of my humanity? Or was he a vampire?
He helped me stand and I hesitated in the doorway. I felt weaker than before and wondered if I needed blood. I hadn’t been given anything to eat for the last three days and I was hungry.
The chapel had an artificially lit stained-glass wall at one end, garish yellows and oranges depicting a rising sun. In front of the stained glass was a podium and on either side of a wide aisle, straight-backed pews.
Sitting in the front pew on the right side was my mother, stone faced. To her right was my father, a man I hadn’t seen for years. To her left and separated by a little space was my grandmother, Nonnie, her white hair wrapped in a braid atop her head, her posture straight shouldered as she stared at the stained glass.
Before I could question their presence, he led me to the front pew on the left side of the aisle.
"You're probably wondering why your family is here," he said.
I nodded. Not one of them looked at me.
Did they know what I'd become? Was the reason for the counseling session to make me realize I would watch them die as I lived forever?
My longevity was the one thing about which I was certain. Doug, for example, was two hundred years old, but he admitted his age with a bit of shame. From what I understood the older you were the more powerful you became. Two hundred years was infancy in the vampire world.
What the hell would sex with a thousand year old vampire be like? Would it kill me?
"If you'll have a seat," the man said, smiling at me. His canines were exceptionally long, his brown eyes sparkling as if he and I shared a secret joke. A secret vampire joke.
All these people in such a closed space.
Should I warn my family?
CHAPTER FOUR
You can’t judge a vampire by his fangs
My father glanced up, saw me, then looked away. Okay then.
I sat, folding my hands together, grateful I’d been allowed to dress. I couldn't imagine attending this "counseling session" attired in my backless hospital gown. Still, the stretchy top and jeans hardly seemed appropriate. I needed to be dressed for work: blazer/jacket over blouse/top with skirt/pants. I'm a firm believer in separates.
"You're a priest?" I asked.
The question summoned another smile.
“No," he said. "I am, if you will, your facilitator. Your mentor. My name is Niccolo Maddock.”
"I am the priest," said a voice in the back of the room. I turned my head to see a snowy haired gentleman walking up the aisle. In his hand, he held a thick leather bound Bible. When he stopped in front of me, I wondered if the Bible was supposed to be dangerous to me now. Would I disintegrate into a pile of ash if I touched it?
He thrust the book at me and said, "Put your left hand on the Bible and raise your right hand."
I hesitated, then did as he asked. I didn’t crumble into nothingness. When my right hand was raised, he stared at me, his blue eyes somber and distant.
"Do you solemnly swear what you say in this session is the truth and nothing but the truth, so help you, God?”
Everyone seemed to take a long breath as silence hung in the air. I've never been religious, but I had the feeling lying would be a dangerous thing to do.
"I do," I said.
He nodded and removed the Bible from beneath my left hand, folding his arms around it.
"So be it," he said and nodded to the vampire.
If Doug was only two hundred years old, this man had to be much older. What gave me that impression wasn't his appearance as much as the calm surrounding him. The air was still, heavy, almost portentous. (I was an English major, can you tell?) He didn't appear flustered when the priest moved to his side, even reaching out and taking the Bible from him to place it on the podium.
"Why is my family here?" I asked.
“In due time, Marcie."
My mentor and the priest conferred on the other side of the podium. I've been told vampires have heightened senses, but all I was experiencing was a human confusion. I couldn't hear them speak which annoyed me. I didn't know why I was here especially with my family sitting on the other side of the room ignoring me, but I wasn’t getting a good feeling about this.
Finally, they broke up, the priest heading for the podium, while the vampire came to stand in front of me.
"We're waiting for one other person before we begin," he said. He smiled, closed mouthed, which was no doubt meant to be reassuring. It wasn't.
Before I could ask another question, the priest turned and faced me.
"Do you believe in God, Marcie Montgomery?" he asked.
Did I believe in God? We lived in a secular world, one in which mention of God wasn't politically correct. I hadn't been to church in ages and was a little embarrassed to admit I occasionally used the name of God in vain. But I’d made it to the age of thirty-three without having a thunderbolt hurled in my direction, unless you count being turned into a vampire. Maybe God was off doing other things instead of messing with me.
Thanks to the priest, He might be reminded to take an interest in me.
How did one believe in God and also believe in vampires? Evidently the priest didn’t feel any kind of duplicity because he stood there with an intent look on his face.
"Yes," I said, wishing my voice was stronger, more certain.
The priest looked away, sighed and looked back at me, his face arranged into sorrowful lines.
"Yes," I said, stronger this time. "I do believe in God."
"Do you believe in your own divinity?"
What the hell did that mean?
As if sensing my confusion the vampire stepped forward. "What he means is, Marcie, do you believe you are a creature of God. That God made you?"
I thought it was more a question of my mother and father getting together, but now was not the time for levity.
"I suppose so."
Again I got a sorrowful look from the priest. I’d blown it as far as he was concerned.
"Why?"
Neither of them bothered to answer me.
The door opened and in strode Doug, looking as unconcerned as if he were going to buy socks. I doubted he purchased anything on his own. All of his female admirers provided what he wanted. All he needed to do was send out a signal, like a mental homing beacon and the next day he was surfeited in whatever he required.
I guess it was one of the advantages of being a vampire.
Did female vampires had the same power? For that matter, what about sexual partners? Were we able to attract anyone we wanted? Being a vampire was looking up.
My mentor smiled.
Could he read my thoughts?
Doug moved to sit beside me, but halted in mid-crouch. He and the senior vampire exchanged a long look before Doug bowed his head once and moved to sit in the pew behind me.
"We are ready to begin," the priest said.
I looked back at Doug intending to level him with a nasty comment. But something caught my attention in the corner of the room. A gurney sat there, a sheet covering a mound of something.
I was not getting a good feeling.
"Marcie Montgomery," the priest said, "you have been condemned to be a vampire. Whoso
ever has done this to you?"
Doug abruptly stood. "I turned her, Father."
"Did you have the authority to do so?" The priest glanced at my mentor.
Doug bowed his head, Beta vampire in the presence of an Alpha. "I did not have approval, Father. It was an accident. I claim in aestu tempore."
"The heat of the moment," the Alpha vampire said, speaking to me.
It certainly had been. But I wasn't about to talk about my sex life in front of my parents and my grandmother. That would be like forcing me to publicly admit I'd once wore Hello Kitty underpants. Some things were better left unsaid.
"Is this correct?" the priest asked.
"Do I have to answer?" I asked, keeping my gaze carefully averted from the right side of the room.
"You have vowed to tell the truth."
Oh hell.
"It was a very passionate interlude, Father. What else do you want me to tell you?"
"Did you ask to be turned?"
My eyes widened. "Hell, no." Oops. "Sorry, Father, but no."
"Is this true?" he asked Doug.
Doug nodded.
"You are forgiven," the senior vampire said, staring at Doug. Doug bowed his head again, abruptly turned and left the chapel.
Who were they to forgive him quite so easily? Wasn't that my prerogative? He'd done this without my consent or even my understanding. Maybe I didn't want to drink blood for the rest of eternity. Maybe I didn't want to fear the sun.
What other vampire lore did I need to learn and quickly?
There wasn't anything egalitarian about the world in which I lived. Prejudice had shifted a little. Now no one cared about the color of your skin as long as you were one hundred percent human. If you'd been changed, if you were a vampire, you were treated to subtle and not so subtle discrimination.
Maybe that's why vampires were so careful about not turning humans. Or maybe they didn't want to corrupt their own bloodline.
I was, as much as I disliked it, an in aestu tempore. A flippin' mistake.
CHAPTER FIVE
Big vampire is watching
As I sat there in the supercharged atmosphere I realized the future wasn't going to be easy for me. I would face a great deal of prejudice and as a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant female, I'd been exempt from it.
Granted, there were still men at work who were sexist, but even those were few and far between. If someone said something out of line they were sent to sensitivity training, with the upshot we were all very, very sensitive.
But being anti-vampire was still acceptable.
"Do you believe in heaven, Marcie?" the priest asked.
I blinked at him several times trying to see the meaning behind the question.
"I don't know," I said, remembering my vow to tell the truth. "I guess I've never thought about it very much."
The priest sent an irritated look toward my parents.
The stained-glass window behind the podium began to change. The sun with its bright orange and yellow rays was transforming to a dark blue screen with white tendrils, almost like a Microsoft Windows start up screen.
The priest walked to the right side of the room and the senior vampire moved to the left. Each of them turned, looking at each other, presenting a side view to the rest of us.
I had the oddest thought that we were watching a play called Good Against Evil and they’d met often in this exact spot.
The feeling I was being judged was even stronger now as the screen darkened even further. A pinpoint of light, like a single star shining in the heavens, appeared in the middle. Another joined it and another then yet another until there was a circle of light surrounding the bolder spot, like a constellation around the North Star.
"What you're looking at," the priest said, "is what heaven would look like to you if there was a heaven."
Startled, I turned my head to look at him.
"Isn't there?"
"That is not for me to answer," he said calmly. "Nor for you to know."
I glanced over at the vampire who only shook his head.
"The concept of heaven is one you have to accept, Marcie. You either believe, or you don't."
"If I believe," I said staring at the midnight blue screen with the crown of light, "then what am I seeing? God and a bunch of souls?"
"The Almighty gives you a certain latitude to believe what you see based on what you believe. No one can see what you see."
"What if I saw a tiger?"
The priest's smile thinned until it looked brittle. "Then you see a tiger. If God allowed you to see it."
Evidently, I was supposed to believe in heaven. I hadn't lied. I hadn't given it much thought up until now.
"What if I don't know?"
"This is not the time for doubt."
What did they want from me? Some type of definitive answer for something I'd rarely considered? I was only thirty-three. Who the hell contemplates heaven when they're thirty-three?
"I don't understand what you want of me," I said.
Abruptly, the screen turned back to the stained glass.
"If you believe in heaven, Marcie, there might be one. But if you don't, you will never find heaven."
Was I supposed to get some meaning out of that?
"Why are we even talking about heaven?"
"Because you have a choice to make," the priest said. He turned to look at my family. "If you choose to end the existence forced upon you there might be heaven as a reward."
My stomach iced over.
"End my existence?" Wasn't I already dead, in a manner of speaking?
Both men nodded.
"Your family would grieve for you. Their prayers might aid you in achieving heaven.”
He didn’t know my family.
The priest's gaze swerved to me. "You will not know until you choose. Most people are willing to take the chance of heaven rather than to live in an eternity of hell." He took a deep breath. "If you decide against the choice of heaven, child, you will never be able to rescind it. Nor will the choice ever be given you again."
"Or," the vampire interjected, "you can live forever. You can ignore the priest babbling about theology and simply not let it concern you."
I remained silent for a very long time, minutes in which I stared at the priest and the vampire.
"So, what you're telling me is that if I decide to live forever, I'll never know about eternity and if I decide to die now there may or may not be eternity? What kind of three card monty is that?"
“It’s the choice," the priest said, his lips pressed together tightly.
I knew, with a sudden clarity, what the gurney in the back of the room was for. Somehow, they would take my life, even the immortal life newly granted me by Horny Doug. If I chose, I would not leave this room a vampire, but as a mortal human who'd died by misadventure. Poor dumb Marcie, who loved the smell of caramel and cloves enough to be gnawed on by a vampire.
I studied the faces of my family one by one and what I saw in them should have shocked and horrified me. They would much rather I died then become a vampire. I accepted the knowledge, along with something else. If I chose to live – if I could use that expression – it would be without any contact with them.
When my gaze returned to the vampire, he nodded, as if he understood. Worse, as if he pitied me my understanding.
"Will I have a consciousness in heaven, Father? Will I even know I've attained heaven?"
"Those questions are not for me to answer."
"Yet you want me to choose based on a theory? An hypothesis?"
"Faith, child."
"Death and dishonor, Father. You want me to choose death and honor rather than life and dishonor?"
"It's not life!" My mother said, standing. She stared at me as if I'd never been cradled in the warmth of her body. "Don't you understand, Marcie? You're a freak! An aberration! You're already dead!"
There, another part of the choice, to live with sure and certain hatred. Oh, it was tamped down and leg
islated, but make no mistake, we were in the middle of the fifties, vampirically speaking.
If I could reach Doug I would strangle him.
Let him find heaven.
CHAPTER SIX
Call a vampire a vampire
"I think it's a lousy choice," I said, half to myself.
"Such is the nature of faith, my child," the priest said.
I absolutely hated it when older men got all avuncular with me.
Here was the unvarnished truth, as my father used to say – the same father who hadn't looked in my direction since I'd entered the room. But, then, he hadn’t paid me much attention since my parent’s divorce. Well, Dad, the pure unvarnished truth was I didn't want to die.
Yes, I know. I was, technically, already dead. But I still felt like me. I could feel my heart beating, albeit slower than usual. How much you want to bet I didn't get Grampa Dave's problem of high blood pressure? I could touch myself and feel my skin. Granted, I was a little colder than I'd been, but I could still feel myself wiggling my toes inside my sneakers.
In heaven, if there was a heaven, would I know myself to be me? Or simply one more dot of light? Or were those kind of thoughts prohibited by heaven's occupants? Were all the people who'd died and gone to heaven part of the great unwashed consciousness? Did the "me" die to become the collective "we"?
I hadn't finished being me yet.
Without saying a word, the priest looked away, avoiding the vampire's smile.
"You've chosen, then," the vampire said and it seemed as if his voice filled the room, pushing down the puny human sighs greeting his words.
I nodded.
For long moments, I sat there, watching as the people I loved repudiate me by leaving the chapel without a word or a look. The priest joined them, leaving the vampire alone with me.
"You'll be hungry, then," he said.
For the last few days only one thing had been different about me. I still had the same body functions. I still got bad breath in the morning. My hair was still on the oily side and I still had ugly feet.
No, the only thing different was that I hadn’t eaten since I woke up.
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