The World on Blood

by Jonathan Nasaw

  "I don't imagine I could have gotten much higher anyway," I said to Leon. I was standing at the railing with the blanket thrown over my shoulders. A couple had appeared on the balcony next door: the florid gentleman probably owned a Pontiac dealership; the lady had that mummified Polly Bergen Turtle-Wax look.

  "Try to stick with the present tense," he suggested as we tugged our chairs back inside and closed the sliding glass door. "Don't bail out now."

  "Bail out? Baby, the plane has already gone down. In flames." I told him about the footsteps charging up the stairs, Mandy going off like an air-raid siren, Augie bellowing at the door. Me, I'm out the window: I slide inelegantly on my heels down the tiled roof—racketa-tacketa—jump the last ten feet and land lightly. A whole shitload of people are charging up the narrow path to the bungalow—to my eyes it's your basic Frankenstein mob, only without the torches. I cut through the woods, moving so fast it's like I don't even have to dodge the trees: they just seem to slide on out of the way like images in a negative, white against black.

  I circle all the way around the bungalow, and behind the main lodge, enter through the back door, past the water-closet, through the kitchen, down the corridor, and up the staircase to my own room. I can hear them running around out there shouting to each other—part of me wants to go back out and show myself to them, just to taunt them: I can't believe they could actually catch me. I even roll a joint and smoke it on the window ledge, looking out over the lawn and the shallow beach to the lake beyond.

  Leisurely, I stub the roach out on the sill, swing my legs back into the room, and see a vampire reflected in the full-length mirror on the back of the door. He looks like shit, frankly. Narrowing my eyes, I hop off the window seat and cross the room; the vampire narrows his eyes and crosses the mirror-room towards me; we meet at the cold glass pane of his world, and stare at each other: blood is smeared over his face—even his brow is splashed with red gouts of coagulating blood—and the neck of his navy sweatshirt sags from the weight of the blood which has soaked it black.

  "Well, you've gone and done it now, old sport," I tell him—or he tells me. We hang our heads in mock abashment, and then, slowly, raise them again, looking each other over from feet to face until our eyes meet. You talkin' a me?, we ask each other. You talkin' a me?

  Then we share a smirk, because of course we both know the answer to that question: There's nobody else heee-eeere.

  "When they rushed the door of my room I went out the window again—a higher window, this time, a longer racketa-tacketa down the tiles, same ten-foot jump—vampire Olympics—I absolutely stuck the landing. Then a short run down the sloping lawn to the dock with the mob at my heels, and—"

  "Present—"

  But Leon, I wanted to say, it didn't happen in the present tense. See, time more or less stopped when I met my eyes in that mirror, and the full horror of the baby-blood high hit me. Of course, I say full horror: the fact is, the horror was that there was no horror: only me: only the blood-smeared monster in the mirror.

  No value judgment there, y'understand. We attach words to things so that we can differentiate them from other things, and a monster wasn't a bad thing to be: no worse than a human, any more than an owl is worse than a mouse.

  No, monster was as apt a word as any for this rather messy creature smirking at me in the mirror: that wasn't the trouble: the trouble was, he was no more Nicky from Greektown, or Captain Santos of Air Force Intelligence, or Nicolas San Georgiou the author than he was the man in the moon, and when they came through the door it was with a lift of his monstrous heart that he leapt through the open window; if he'd had a cape he would by god have gathered the corners in his outstretched hands as he rackety-tacked down the tiles so that he might have unfurled it like bat-wings when he jumped.

  Monsters like that sort of thing: most villains tend toward the banal, but monsters are permitted drama. At any rate, I certainly could have used a cape when I was standing at the edge of the dock with my back to the water. Fangs would have come in handy, too: I could have hissed, and bared them with my cape raised on high. I must say, though, that for a mob that had me cornered, the assembly was not behaving in a terribly mob-like manner—mobs must never plead, anymore than monsters, but I was hearing things like It's all right, Nick. Please, Nick, just calm down, just take it easy, nobody's going to hurt you.

  Pitiful, eh? I didn't stay around to hear anymore—monsters hate weakness: it makes them angry. Or thirsty, and we didn't want that, did we? Capeless, fangless, I could only shake my head in disgust, and turn…

  "… and dive. There's not the slightest doubt in my mind I could have swum the lake, but now I hear the splash behind me, labored strokes—the Viscount. I could easily outdistance him, but I slow down, tread water with my back to him, and at the touch of his hand on my shoulder I turn, grab both his hands in mine as if to twirl him at arm's length. 'Let's see who can hold his breath the longest,' I say, my fingers tightening on his forearms. Know what his last words were?"

  Leon shook his head.

  "Me either, 'cause he would have had to say them back on the dock. I remember the monster's, though."

  "Tell me."

  "Ring around the rosie,

  Pocket full of posie,

  Ashes, ashes, all fall down."

  TWO

  Whistler lay on his back on the bed that took up half the cabin of the Lear he'd chartered for their two-stage flight to Miami. Flying east wasn't easy for a vampire—you had to leave California right after sunset if you wanted to be sure of reaching the other coast before sunrise. Winter was easier, but Whistler still liked to break the journey into two stages just to be on the safe side.

  They were somewhere over Oklahoma by now, and he was stark naked, the Creature pointing straight up. Lourdes, kimono-clad, stroked it thoughtfully with her hand curled into a relaxed fist. "You're different than most men your age, you know," she informed him.

  He reached into his leather RAF kitbag for a small squeeze bottle of coconut oil. "Know a lot about men my age, do you?"

  You'd be surprised, she thought, but "Girls talk" was what she said as she held her hand out, palm up; he squeezed a few drops of oil onto it.

  "And what do the girls say?"

  She began to stroke the Creature—it was almost purring. "They say that when most men get around fifty, instead of getting hard, they just get heavy. A girl can work with it, but it just ain't the same. They say."

  Her fist tightened. "You, on the other hand…" She forced the Creature back against his oiled white belly, then released it: boinng.

  Lourdes wiped her hands on the sheets and took a sip from a slim pewter thermos full of blood. "Here's to the fellowship!" The plane banked gently to the right; through the Plexiglas oval of the window the clouds below were mounded black seas, and the stars were fat and round, pulsing softly like stars do on blood.

  She handed Whistler the thermos—rather than drink from the mouth of it, he sat up and poured himself a shot in a silver-rimmed glass. "To the fellowship. For however long they have left, poor bastards."

  "I've still never been able to figure out how they ever got it off the ground," Lourdes mused as he lay back down and she resumed her gentle stroking. "What did Selene mean, one brick at a time? Did they just start out by kidnapping people one by one, Nick and that other guy, whatsisname?"

  "Leon," said Whistler. It was quite a moment for him: she would be the first person other than Selene to learn the truth about Leon's death. "His name was Leon Stanton, and he was my best friend, up to the very moment I threw him over that guardrail."

  Lourdes's hand never missed a beat. "No shit?"

  He shook his head sadly, hiding his elation. "No shit. It was the old joke: one moment he's admiring the view, and the next he's part of it. I don't imagine he really believed I was going to do it until the last possible moment—never even screamed until he was halfway down."

  "Talk to me, baby." Excited by the turn the conversation was taking, s
he grabbed the Creature tightly and climbed on; holding it inside her with one hand at first, she lay down on top of Whistler, then propped her weight up on her elbows. As long as he stayed hard, he'd stay in. And she meant for him to stay hard—it added something to the conversation.

  "It was a few months after they'd so subtly persuaded me to join them by tying me to my bed. The others were growing impatient with attending A.A. and N.A. and M.A meetings, and using euphemisms for blood. I was rather comfortable with it, myself, but then, I was still using."

  "So why didn't they just start their own meeting?"

  Beneath her, Whistler spread his fingers modestly across his bare chest. "Yours truly kept pointing out to them, as often as necessary, that to start a new twelve-step program with integrity, one needs permission from Alcoholics Anonymous. They're rather generous with their permission, but one does have to tell them what addiction it is one is going to be Anonymous about. None of them were willing to do that, but neither were they willing to lie to A.A., or simply bootleg the program. They do tend to hamstring themselves with their integrity, these twelve-steppers.

  "Then Leon called me one night to announce that he couldn't take it anymore—that he was going to save himself, and the rest of us, by getting it over with, by being the first to go public. 'How public?' I asked him.

  "Oprah, was his reply."

  "Ooo!" Lourdes was so horrified she nearly let the Creature slip out of her; she reached behind her and circled the base of it with thumb and forefinger, stroking it to full hardness inside her while he continued.

  "I know. Would have been quite some show. The aftermath alone would have made the Salem witch trials look like an Easter egg hunt. 'Talked to any of the others?' I asked.

  " 'No,' he said.

  " 'If you do, I'll kill myself,' I said.

  " 'Don't do that,' he said.

  " 'I will, I'm on my way to the bridge right now,' I said.

  " 'Wait,' he said.

  " 'I'm gone,' I said.

  " 'I'll meet you,' he said.

  " 'Come alone,' I said."

  Whistler reached inside Lourdes's kimono with his hands crossed, so that each palm cupped her opposite breast. She raised herself up to give him more room: it felt good, this trick of his, like suddenly being caressed by a whole different set of hands.

  "Still can't bring myself to call it murder," he went on. "More a case of self-defense. Life without blood isn't worth living: who threatens my blood, threatens my life."

  Now he put his arms around her and pulled her tightly against him; they lay there, scarcely moving. "I told Nick and the others that Leon had killed himself in despair—that he felt he couldn't stay off blood—that he told me he'd rather be dead. I convinced them that all our lives were at stake, and that we had to start V.A. right away, permission or not. Told them A.A. would understand."

  Through her breast she felt the rumble of his voice; in her ear she heard his whisper; and when the angle was just right, the head of the Creature brushed the sweet spot inside. "You went from talking them out of V.A. into talking them into it?" When she spoke her voice was husky, and she was surprised at how hot this was making her: there was something so sweetly twisted about having a conversation like this with a man's cock deep inside you.

  "The idea of someone's going public had put a bit of a fright into me. I realized that if I could convince them to start a Vampires Anonymous, I could use the anonymity to my own purposes: we wrote into the bylaws that none of us could go public, or even tell another individual, without the unanimous consent of the fellowship."

  She raised herself up on her elbows again. "But that doesn't explain why they all gave up blood in the first place."

  "Step One: 'Our lives were unmanageable.' Personally, I've always thought of that as a sort of inside joke. After all, everyone's life is unmanageable. Frog race. Bump your ass every step." He gave a little upthrust with his hips for emphasis; she let her weight down so her breasts were pressed against his chest again. "Then factor in the particular problems that come with being a vampire—trying to earn a living 'twixt dusk and dawn, never seeing the sun. Not just the sun—children—how often do we see a child, for instance, you and I?"

  "Mmmmhhmm."

  "And as for someone like Sherman—back then his relationship with Catherine was shaky, his practice suffering. They took to calling on him around sunset—Nick and Leon would show up all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and having convinced themselves, by dint of constant repetition and reinforcement, that their own lives were now manageable, they were able to assure him that his would be, too, if only he would give up blood.

  "The technique is the same for all cults—join us, and you'll be happy like we are. All you have to do is give up blood, or worship Jim Jones, or join the Party, or give Werner Erhard a thousand dollars."

  "Whmmm?"

  "Wern—never mind. Not important. One weekend when Catherine was away at a meeting of the coven—Candlemas, I believe it was—they talked Sherman into agreeing to let them perform an intervention on him. And then when they had him hooked, there were three of them, three bright-eyed and bushy-tailed my-life-is-manageable examples of the value of giving up blood, to work on little Sandy. And then there were four, and so on and so forth—the thing snowballed, or rather dominoed, with the Penang falling one by one until only I was left.

  "By then they had brought the twelve-step logic to its inescapable conclusion: Addiction is insane, therefore addicts are insane. Drinking blood is irrational, therefore the decision to drink blood can never be rational. Catch-twenty-two: If one doesn't agree one is insane and in need of treatment, then one is by definition insane, and in need of treatment."

  "So they tied you to your bed."

  "Yes. I was the first sailor they ever press-ganged."

  "Ooo, sounds kinky." She grabbed his wrists, and they played their little wrestling game again; once more it ended with Whistler on top, and Lourdes stretched out on her back, hands crossed at the wrist over her head.

  "It wasn't," said Whistler decisively. "And that's the real reason they talked themselves into it: despite all protestations to the contrary, twelve-steppers just can't stand to see anybody having fun."

  "I don't know—my mother was a drunk. I think she'd of been better off in A.A."

  She began grinding her hips against him; he let go of her wrists. "Drunks only think they're having fun, m'dear. Vampires really are."

  They began making love in earnest again, and were still at it when the pilot informed them over the intercom that he was beginning his descent into Dallas/Fort Worth. "By the way, Mr. Whistler, ma'am, did I tell you Mick Jagger leased the plane just before you?"

  "No you didn't," Whistler snapped, switching on the talk switch next to the speaker in the headboard. "And to tell you the truth, I'd just as soon not have known." Angrily, he switched off the intercom again, then turned back to Lourdes. "I've never forgiven the sons of bitches for throwing poor Brian out of the band."

  "That was one of the original guys in the Stones, hunh?"

  "Yes, Brian Jones."

  "I heard they had him killed, Mick and Keith."

  "Oh no."

  "You said that like you know."

  "Second hand—I'd already been deported by then. But I have it on good authority—" He switched to a cockney accent. "—that it was baby-blood wot done 'im in. Rather like Nick, I was told, except that it was Brian who drowned, and not my informant."

  "Like Nick, huh?" She already knew the story about Nick and the Viscount, and of course had seen Selene's throat, had run her fingers wonderingly over the angry flesh of her scar. "Just couldn't handle it?"

  "Not a problem you're ever likely to have, m'dear," he said, grinning down at her. "Now let's gird our loins and fasten our seatbelts. The vampires of Dallas await. There are only a few of them, so far as I know, but what they lack in numbers, they more than make up for in enthusiasm."

  Lourdes had crawled over to the window to see if she
could catch a glimpse of Dallas from the sky, but the sight of her on all fours proved irresistible to Whistler: as she looked out upon the lights of Dallas rising up from the dark plains to greet them, she felt the Creature nudging its questing head against the tender swollen lips of her sex from behind.

  Then it was in her, and the front of Whistler's long-boned thighs were pressed against the back of hers, and his long arms had reached around and under her dangling breasts, but an agonizing millimeter or so too low, so that her swollen nipples were barely brushing against them. And every time she would lower her trunk, her breasts yearning to be held tightly, he would pull them away, until finally, in desperation, she grabbed his hands with her own to force them against her breasts.

  Whistler sensed the orgasm beginning to build inside her—he arched his fingers so that only the fingertips were touching her, a circle of pressure all the way around the outside of each aureole, tightening, tightening from below until his fingertips were pressed against the hard place deep inside her breasts at the very root of the nipples, pulsing to the rhythm of her orgasm.

  As Whistler groaned and the Creature throbbed and spurted deep inside her, she realized that they'd just touched down in Dallas. Even the O's are bigger in Texas, she thought wonderingly.

  THREE

  After Betty had paged down that last time, the screen had gone blank and the computer had beeped anxiously. Moments later Nick appeared in the doorway. Betty gestured to the screen, and he crossed the room to look over her shoulder. "Did you see a dotted line first?"

  "Right after 'ashes, ashes, all fall down.' "

  He winced, hearing the words. "Then you're done. That's as far as I've gotten." Betty scooted her chair away from the machine; Nick reached across her to switch the monitor off. It flashed white in the darkness—in the brief glare he appeared exhausted, the skin over his cheekbones opaque, like wax paper that had been crumpled and smoothed again.