The World on Blood

by Jonathan Nasaw

  That disconcerting narrowing of the ruined old eyes again—another smile?—and then Nanny Eames leaned forward and gave her a quick peck on the cheek. Along with the dry powdery smell of old age, Lourdes caught another scent too: the distinctive whiff of sex, of sweat and semen and pussy juice smeared across those aged cheeks. Then, in that powdery whisper of a voice: "Wait here."

  A few seconds later Prescott emerged from the room, in boxer shorts and a build that wouldn't quit, and brushed by her on his way up the stairs; he returned with Whistler, who shrugged a beats-me in Lourdes's direction before following Prescott into Nanny's room.

  The next time the door opened—ages had passed for Lourdes, waiting in the darkened hall—the cabdriver Francis emerged, followed by a fully dressed Prescott carrying a flashlight, and Whistler. They filed down the wide front stairs, across the courtyard, through the gate in the dank-smelling portico, and out to the old Checker.

  Lourdes and Whistler got into the back seat, and Prescott climbed into the front beside Francis. "Where are we—" Lourdes began; Prescott silenced her with his finger to his lips. She took Whistler's hand as Francis started up the taxi. At a wide spot in the road a few hundred yards past the Greathouse compound Francis wrestled the Checker through a five-point turn and got them headed back in the direction they had come.

  They drove back down the dundo road in silence; in silence they rolled through the cobblestone streets of the Old Town, deserted save for the feral-looking dogs that owned the town at night.

  Then they were at the docks again—Lourdes wondered if she were being deported, but the seaplane terminal was dark and deserted now, and they passed it anyway, to stop instead at perhaps the most dilapidated of all the dilapidated piers of the Old Town docks. There was only a single ship tied up at this pier, a three-masted native sloop. Two-and-a-half-masted, rather, for the mainmast was snapped off ten feet above the debris-strewn deck.

  Dubiously she followed Whistler and Prescott down a rusting iron gangway—Francis stayed behind in the cab, his leather visor pulled stolidly down over his eyes. Prescott pointed toward the stern line on his way into the deck-level cabin. "T'row dot off when I shout to you," he told Whistler. "An' Miss Lourdes, if you'd do de same wit' de bow line when you hear de engine cyatch."

  It was not a sound she was confident of ever hearing, but the engine must have been in better shape than the rest of the tub: the motor started up with a chuffing roar. She seized the thick rope, the hemp wet and coarse against her fingers; a moment later the black water was sliding by on either side of the blunt bow.

  Lourdes turned back to watch the island falling away behind them, wondering if she had just cast off her own life along with that line, fighting panic. Were they going to throw her over the side? How well did she know any of them, even Whistler? One thing she did know about him—he had killed before.

  But no, he loved her, she told herself. Besides, her period was at least a week late—she could always tell him she might be carrying his child. All the same, she found herself measuring the distance back to shore until Santa Luz dropped out of sight below the horizon—then she started looking around for a weapon of some sort.

  Prescott shut down the engines and emerged from the cabin; Lourdes heard the splash of the anchor, and the hiss of the anchor cable playing out.

  "Lourdes," Whistler called from the stern. She made her way aft, past the cabin, hiding a length of sawed-off iron pipe behind her back. But when she reached the stern, Prescott was sitting on an upturned bucket with his sleeve rolled up past his elbow, holding a straight razor to his wrist.

  "Oh thank God," she said, dropping her weapon surreptitiously over the side, and coughing to cover the splash.

  "God ain' have a't'ing to do wit' it, miss," Prescott replied in that ringing baritone of his. "It was Nanny Eames dot took pity on you." Suddenly he sliced down with the corner of the blade; black blood welled as he held his wrist up to Lourdes's lips. She drank greedily, and relinquished his arm reluctantly. With his other hand he pinched off the wound and started to offer it to Whistler.

  Lourdes stopped him. "Oh, that won't be necessary, thank you, Prescott. Mr. Whistler doesn't need any blood."

  "I beg your pardon?" said Whistler archly.

  Her lips parted, then her teeth. "Crack 'n' Jack, Prescott—Mr. Whistler says that'll get a vampire through a bloodless night just fine."

  Underfoot the ship was coming alive, boards creaking and sighing like an old woman as it rocked in the gentle swell; overhead the stars above the Caribbean were flat and round, shimmering in a sky so plush and black and velvet that it looked to Lourdes, in the first flush of a blood high, as if it ought to have a portrait of Elvis splashed across it, to be sold at a flea market.

  TWO

  Her bosom heaved. One plump breast protruded from the torn bodice; he seized it with his hard, work-roughened hand…

  Nick laughed. It was three in the morning, and he'd caught his hacker. He was dummied on to the only terminal in use at the gene-splicing firm; he watched as the cursor darted back to the word protruded, and changed it to sprang. Nick used his security-officer override to take over the screen.

  Not much better, he typed. In the future, please obtain permission from your supervisor before using your work station for personal business. Believe me, you're not ready to give up your day job!

  He decided to give the secretary in Daly City a few minutes of privacy to save her work, and went into the bedroom to check on January. She looked heartbreakingly young, curled up on her side with her mouth open, one arm flung out carelessly so that the light of the full moon creeping in past the bedroom curtains glinted off the silver bracelet of the manacles chaining her to the bedpost.

  The screen was blank when he returned to his office. He checked the user queue—NO STATIONS LOGGED ON—and signed off, then windowed over to his accounting program to cut the final bill; it had just popped out of the LaserJet when he heard January calling his name. "Be right with you."

  "Hurry up—I have to pee, and the chain got all tangled up."

  "On my way…" He had the key to the cuffs out by the time he reached the bed; he unlocked her.

  "Thanks." She gave him a peck on the cheek. "You know what, I don't think I need the cuffs anymore—I didn't have a single bad dream."

  "If you feel you're ready."

  But Nick was dubious: he thought back to the scene that had awaited him in the motel room out by the Oakland airport, where the boy from the mosh pit had brought January on their second date. When Nick arrived, she'd been watching TV, naked as a jaybird and blitzed on Wild Turkey and arterial blood. The boy was also naked, lying on his side next to her on the bed, and obviously far from dead—he was, in fact, struggling quite vigorously against the sheets that bound him. He could not speak, though—he was gagged securely with what appeared to be his own underpants.

  It had been an accident, January had explained—a small artery in his foot where an artery had no business being, in her limited experience. "It was his own fault. He thought it was so kinky the last time, me drinking his blood. He goes, like, it really turned him on, and everything. I told him I didn't want to, but he got me drunk, and he just kept insisting, so finally I just said what the hell."

  Nick had turned to the boy, who appeared to be in his mid-twenties. "Is that true?" he asked. The boy had nodded weakly.

  She'd recognized her mistake as soon as the wound began spurting, January explained, but had shielded the boy from the sight of the wound with her body, intending to take a few sips—no sense wasting all that blood. But she'd forgotten how seductive it could be, this drinking from a spurting wound—you didn't even have to suck, just time your swallows.

  After a few minutes he'd begun struggling, but she hardly noticed.

  She found herself twisting around until she was on top of him, drinking from his foot, breasts pressed against his thighs, pressing him back against the bed with the strength of her legs, growing stronger as he grew
weaker. It wasn't until he'd stopped struggling entirely that she realized there was a problem.

  With vampiric strength, she'd been able to pinch off the wound easily enough then, but she was already so stoned on his hot blood that she couldn't tell whether he was alive or dead. She'd pulled the V.A. phone list from her wallet and dialed Beverly's number, but couldn't get past her machine. Nick's was the second number she'd tried.

  But then the boy had regained consciousness and tried to call the police—hence his bound and gagged condition. "I'm so sorry, Nick," she concluded. "I tried so hard to stay clean."

  Nick had hugged her, told her everything was going to be fine, and sent her into the bathroom to clean up as best she could.

  As soon as she'd closed the door behind her, he drew the only chair in the room up to the side of the bed and leaned down until his face was only inches from the boy's. "So you wanted to call the police, did you?" Nick said confidentially. "And what were you going to tell them? That you'd taken this underage girl with severe mental and emotional problems to a motel? Oh, I know, she looks older. That's what the last fellow said at his sentencing hearing for statutory rape. Know what they're giving out for statch now? Well trust me, you don't want to know."

  The boy was still now, listening. He was pale—might have lost as much as a few pints of blood—but other than that he'd be all right. Nick sat back in his chair, laced his hands behind his head, and sighed. "Son, all I can say is, you should thank your lucky stars you never got to make that phone call. Can I take your gag off now?"

  The boy nodded—Nick pulled the gag over his head. "I swear to God, I didn't—"

  "Shut up," said Nick, leaning forward to untie the sheets that bound the boy. "I think you're despicable, and if it wasn't for the fact that having to testify against you would set her back years in her therapy, I'd see your ass in jail. Now grab your clothes and get out of here. You've lost some blood—you might feel a little dizzy for a day or two—eat some liver—but other than that, you're luckier than you deserve to be."

  The boy was gone by the time January emerged from the bathroom. Nick helped her gather her things, and while she dressed he bundled up the bloodstained bedding and knotted sheets. These they deposited in a dumpster near the Oakland Coliseum on their way back to Berkeley.

  January had slept all day Sunday, while Nick phoned around to try and find another place for V.A. to meet. Finally he worked out a schedule with one of the senior centers in Berkeley: it was a much larger room than they needed, but as long as they were willing to pay a building monitor after nine, they could keep their Monday, Wednesday, Saturday schedule. He had debated how much to tell the others—after weighing all the factors, and all the respective anonymities involved, including Betty's pregnancy and his own part in it, he finally decided to inform them only that the minister had changed her mind about allowing them to meet in the church, inferring that she was nervous about hosting Victims Anonymous.

  January's Sunday-night handcuffs were Nick's idea—he had quite a collection of S&M gear he'd never been able to bring himself to throw away—and although January had protested that she wouldn't need them, when he'd come up to check on her the next morning—he'd bedded down on the futon in the parlor—he could see that she hadn't slept, and when he freed her from the cuffs he could tell from the scratches around the lock that she had indeed tried to pick it.

  But the meeting Monday night seemed to have done her a world of good. She told them all about her second slip. When she got to the part about smelling blood on Whistler's breath, she could feel the electricity in the room. But they had to wait until she was finished—having a roomful of people who had to listen to her until she had finished was one of recovery's major compensatory factors for January.

  After her share, predictably enough, the meeting had erupted. Augie the attorney had defended Whistler on the grounds that the evidence against him was a little thin—after all, January had drunk blood the night before for the first time in a year: she might have imagined it. Beverly, on the other hand, was all for performing an intervention on Whistler then and there—except of course he was no longer there then, but out of town.

  Nick sat out the debate, but not because he had any personal doubts that Whistler had been drinking blood—he was convinced of it. Furthermore, he was convinced that Whistler was behind Selene's depredations. Of course it was true: Selene had always been Whistler's creature. She still was, and he'd been a fool to believe otherwise. But he'd wanted to trust Whistler—they'd been friends for too long, and lovers of a sort, at least during orgies, when they were both still on blood…

  So he did his best to talk himself out of what he knew to be true in his heart. Anybody can slip, he told himself. Whistler had been overconfident, his program had been getting a little sloppy lately. So maybe he did slip—but only that once. Selene might have been telling the truth about all the rest. It was certainly easier to accept that than to believe his old friend was trying to tear down the fellowship after all they'd been through together…

  Yeah, and maybe Uncle Sam would climb out of his ass strumming "O Susanna" on the banjo. Nick had worked too hard at his recovery to pay much attention to his addict self when it spouted nonsense. So he'd listened dispiritedly to the rest of the discussion at the meeting, which ended the only way it could: when Whistler returned from his winter vacation they would confront him, during daylight hours, and offer him a choice between being tied to his bed, or voluntarily marching out into the sunlight.

  That was one of the convenient things about interventions on backsliding vampires, Nick had explained to January on the way back home: drug tests were quite unnecessary.

  And January, at least, seemed to be feeling much better after the meeting: she not only managed to fall asleep Monday night, but went off to work Tuesday morning. They had left it to her whether she would sleep at Nick's again Tuesday night or return to her residence hotel on Telegraph Avenue; she had called him from work to tell him she didn't think she was ready to be on her own yet.

  Which meant one more night on the futon for Nick. But he'd planned to be up half the night monitoring the gene-splicers anyway, so it wasn't all that much of a hardship. Besides, he liked having her around. And he did not cuff her again when she returned from the bathroom early Wednesday morning—enough of a bond had formed between them in the past few days that he felt he could trust her.

  Of course, I also thought I could trust Whistler, he mused on his way downstairs. The only thing that would appease his anger was the thought of being there when they intervened on his old buddy. Better have the lock on those cuffs checked out, he told himself. Make sure January didn't damage them any. And that chain—going to need a stronger chain than that to hold the likes of Jamey Whistler.

  THREE

  With smoking torches twisted from the hemp of the baobab tree, in simple red ceremonial robes of purest cotton from the J. C. Penney in the Island Center mall, the vampires of Santa Luz came for Lourdes at the roughly appointed hour, a few minutes after sunset on the night of the full moon.

  There was no particular order to their procession: they shuffled up the steps of the turret and surrounded her when she emerged, jostling each other like a fighter's entourage parading to the ring as they accompanied her down to the courtyard. Looking down so as not to stumble, Lourdes saw a riot of bare feet and legs casting a forest of stalky shadows. The shirts were ankle-length for most of the women, knee-length for most of the men, mid-thigh for the tallest, a scarified African-looking man with stilt-walker legs. One size fit all, none well.

  The courtyard at dusk had the soft green glow of a cavern, but darkness in these latitudes falls swiftly, and by the time the procession reached the old stone well in the center of the court, the only illumination came from the flickering torches. The courtyard had emptied except for the dozen or so vampires, ranging in age from Nanny Eames, the crone of untold years, to last month's initiate, a chubby mocha-colored lad of one-and-twenty. A young Luz
an woman stood apart with a blanket-clad bundle in her arms.

  The old well was constructed in two tiers, with the low, outer tier serving as a round stone bench; the vampires shuffled around it as if in a stately game of musical chairs, fitting the shafts of their torches into sconces set into the well before seating themselves. When only Nanny Eames of the vampires remained standing, the young woman handed over her bundle and took a few steps back. Nanny unwrapped the blankets enough for a little arm to protrude, and Lourdes's heart leapt: it was a baby, after all.

  The ritual that followed was remarkably compact, as rituals go—Nanny kissed the sleeping baby, then with the next-oldest vampire assisting, she rubbed a salve from a clay jar across the crook of the tiny elbow, and inserted a hollow quill of some sort—it looked a little like a porcupine's, but tapered at both ends.

  This was all done silently. It was not until the baby had been returned to its mother, and Nanny Eames was holding aloft a small hollowed-out gourd the size of a mogul-base lightbulb, that the old woman spoke. "Wit' dis blood," she announced, crooking a forefinger at Lourdes, then handing the gourd to her as she rose, "we now Awake de new Drinker." Then, sotto voce: "Only a sip, now."

  Lourdes tilted the gourd to her lips. The blood was hot in her mouth, warm going down. Nanny took the gourd back, motioned Lourdes back to the bench, and offered the gourd to the vampire who'd assisted her in the drawing of the blood. He was a wizened old fellow, so short his red shirt brushed the flagstones when he arose again.

  The old man took a slash, then positioned himself so that he was standing opposite Lourdes, less than an arm's length away. He gestured for her to stand up, and when she had done so—his face across from her reminded her of a wise old monkey in a storybook—he reached out, placing his right hand along the left side of her throat, where it met her shoulder, and his left hand, palm forward, between her breasts, against her heart.