The World on Blood

by Jonathan Nasaw

  After blood, breakfast—Catherine Bailey wheeled in a cart, and she and Nanny (Selene was in Bolinas) joined Lourdes for some calorie loading.

  Whistler meanwhile had developed a sunset ritual of his own. This Friday, as he'd done every evening since Midsummer, he mixed up a pitcher of his special St. Thomas Extra Dry formulation (on Santa Luz this had involved pouring half a bottle of Tanqueray into a shaker, then waving the shaker in the general direction of the island of St. Thomas, where, presumably, it being the cocktail hour, someone would be opening a bottle of vermouth), and drank it with a blood chaser out on the lawn.

  He was alone this evening. If any of his buddies had happened to be up at the lodge, they'd have been welcome to join him, but he was surprised to find how little he needed the company. Whistler, too, was finding impending parenthood an astoundingly effective antidote to the weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable blues.

  Plans would be spinning in his head from the moment he opened his eyes in the evening: remodeling the lodge, putting in playrooms for the kid, childproofing the dock; or renovating the villa in Greece; or finding a grand old vampire house in the Garden District in New Orleans and living there a few months of the year, flying down to Santa Luz for the full moon celebrations.

  It didn't matter whether any of it happened, he knew: what counted was that for the first time in years he had something to look forward to besides revenge, or his next drink of blood.

  And while he missed making love to Lourdes (the Midsummer encounter had been their last: Nanny Parish's orders), the couple had worked out a rather civilized arrangement. Whistler was allowed to have a prostitute every night—a surrogate, Sherman had suggested she be called. Lourdes's only rule was, never the same woman twice, poor boy.

  He lowered himself into one of the redwood chaises, poured himself a martini, set the pitcher down on the grass beside him, and drank to the retreating sun. Just for the hell of it, he decided, he'd ask for a big woman tonight. What was it the Viscount used to call them? He pictured Vy buried under an enormous barmaid he used to smuggle into his ground-floor room in the front quad. The Viscount had always preferred ground-floor rooms for his dates. "Otherwise they sweat so, climbing the stairs."

  Ah yes, fifteen-stoners. Vy only fucked men (of any size), or fifteen-stone women. "It takes a great deal of jiggle to make up for the lack of a penis, doncha know."

  Funny, it didn't hurt as much anymore, thinking about the Viscount. Time, Whistler supposed. And a sense of completion after Midsummer. Besides, the old reprobate would probably have been long dead by now anyway—stabbed in the back by one of his rough trade. Or smothered in his sleep by one of his fifteen-stoners.

  Whistler reached into the pocket of his rust-colored silk sport jacket for the flask he'd bought in town to replace the one he'd given to Nick, tilted it to his lips, took a mouthful, held it, savoring the edge on it before swallowing. It was Catherine's blood—unlike Selene, she was a meat eater, and he could taste the difference. Not that he preferred one to the other.

  "Some nights, you just crave meat," he said aloud, then laughed, delighted at the workings of his subconscious mind on blood. "Yes, definitely a fifteen-stone woman tonight!"

  The Creature stirred—Whistler addressed it. "Oh, you approve of that, do you?" He took another swig. "And do you have any suggestions as to age or race?"

  THREE

  Nick was wide awake at midnight on Friday, monitoring the system of a software designer firm in Marin—they only made games, but then, games were big business, and somebody had been hacking at their system. Nick wasn't so much concerned with catching whoever it was (that just took up his time and the client's money, and rarely resulted in successful prosecution anyway: the laws were still being written, and full of holes as a junior programmer's first project), as letting them know that he knew that they were there—that was usually enough to send most crackers on to easier prey.

  If not, then he'd have a battle on his hands. He found himself almost looking forward to the possibility—another archenemy for the Silver Surfer. Anything to get this Elephant off his back. He remembered writing about the Elephant in his Fourth Step back in December, but had forgotten what it actually felt like to have Jumbo sitting on your soul every morning when you awoke. He was back up to a two-meeting-a-day habit, and it was barely keeping his head above water.

  When the doorbell rang, he thought at first it was one of his sponsorees. He signed off his computer and started downstairs barefoot, in jeans and a Reggae Explosion T-shirt from Hawaii; on his way down he noticed a cobweb in the far corner of the stairwell ceiling. Have to have somebody in, he thought. Nick liked his house spotless, and his twelve-step connections had always ensured him of an endless supply of inexpensive housecleaners. There were half a dozen in Marijuana Anonymous alone—potheads with attention-deficit disorders that left them unfit for Mcjobs involving deep fryers.

  He peered through the peephole he had installed in the front door (not just a peephole, a Securit-Eye Vue-Hole—which was a lot like a peephole, only it cost forty bucks more), then hurriedly threw back the dead bolt and started to open the door.

  January slipped through before he'd finished opening it. "You can stay on one condition," he warned her, by way of greeting. "Don't offer me any blood."

  She laughed and held up her thermos—they were brushing against each other in the vestibule—he seized her by the waist to put her out the door. She laughed again and spun out of his grasp. "Yeah, sure. Good thinking, Nick. I'm high on blood, and you're not. Like you're really gonna throw me out."

  He followed her to the kitchen. "Where's the little glasses?" She was opening the cabinets one after the other. "Ah, here we go." She took out a pair of octagonal juice glasses and placed them on the table built into the breakfast nook that overlooked the falling hillside, then sat down and filled both glasses. "Guaranteed one hundred percent non-lethal harvesting," she told him proudly. "The Glasgow Kiss!"

  "Why are you doing this, January?"

  "Jeez, I at least expected a congratulations." Pouting, she slid his glass across the table towards him. "I'm doing it because you want me to."

  "I don't." He overturned the glass deliberately, the neat-freak in him protesting every bit as loudly as the vampire.

  January jumped to her feet with a shout as the blood rolled towards her—it was thick, with a surface tension halfway between water and mercury. "Fuck you, Nick, I can make you drink it."

  It took all the self-control he could muster not to grab for a paper towel. "Yes you can, January. And then you'll have a drinking buddy for a night. What you won't have is a friend."

  January looked down at the spreading puddle of blood on the table, then up at Nick, then down at the blood again. "You asshole." More in resignation than anger. "Got a straw?"

  Nick came to two conclusions after January was gone. First, that he could be around blood without drinking it; second, that he couldn't cut himself off from January completely. Not only would that be a battle that the Silver Surfer might not be able to win, but a lot of people might be endangered during the course of it. Not just January's victims (some or all of whom might die if he weren't around to encourage her pursuit of less mortal methods of procuring blood), but possibly Betty as well: it wasn't hard to picture January following him all the way to the door of the parsonage.

  Which led him to a third conclusion: that there was no way, at this point, that he could tell Betty about January, not after having omitted her entirely from his previous, ostensibly complete, confession on Monday night.

  No, the old I wasn't telling you the whole truth the last time I told you that I hadn't told you the whole truth the time before but was telling you the whole truth now, but now I'm really telling you the whole truth junkie rap just wasn't going to go over again, not a third (or was it a fourth?) time.

  There was no way around it but to try and juggle the two women, never letting either one find out he was spending time with the other. He sighed�
��what a predicament for a gay man. Good thing he had no sex drive away from blood: he'd never be able to find the time.

  And as for what he'd do once the baby was born, once he had a son (amniocentesis had assured them) to serve as a hostage to fortune, he had no idea. Whatever it took to protect him, he imagined, with another sigh. Whatever it took.

  Chapter 7

  « ^ »

  ONE

  Even Selene was caught up in the excitement of Lourdes's pregnancy. It helped that the younger woman seemed to genuinely regard her as a mother figure—Selene had even started to give her lessons in Wicca practice.

  And having such a dramatic embodiment of a fertility goddess around the house had made the celebration of Lammas, also known as Lughnasath, on the eve of August, particularly rewarding this year: the witches and female vampires had taken over the keeping room Friday night for a birth ritual, while the men, personifying the Corn King, had agreed to sacrifice themselves for the Harvest, to accept the ritual sentence of death, that they might begin their journey to the Underworld.

  It was a sacrifice the Corn Gods accepted a good deal more enthusiastically than customary, as the Underworld had apparently been moved to the Gold Dust Hotel and Casino for the evening of July 31, and Whistler was handing out hundred-dollar chips like Quaaludes.

  Technically, the Corn Gods weren't supposed to return until the autumn equinox, so since Lourdes would be having none of him anyway, Whistler had agreed to take part of the symbolic burden on his shoulders: he spent the night (his night, which is to say, the following day) in the penthouse suite with a three-thousand-dollar-a-night (-day) hooker named Lois (possibly) who had been flown in from Vegas for the occasion, and bore such a startling resemblance to the late Jayne Mansfield that he kept expecting her head to fall off at any moment.

  His presence wasn't missed at the Manor. He returned after sunset Saturday night, entering the lodge via the back door; on his way up to see Lourdes he passed Catherine and Selene in the kitchen, where they were engaged in a dangerous conspiracy to put some added poundage on the mother-to-be, per Nanny Parish's instructions.

  A dangerous conspiracy to their own figures, that is: besides stocking the evening breakfast cart with high-calorie entrees like eggs Benedict and Belgian waffles, and pastries like cheese Danish, rugelach stuffed with almond paste, or flaky baklava dripping with honey, Catherine had taught Josephina to prepare lumpia, the little Filipino spring rolls that Lourdes's grandmother used to make.

  Lucky thing Lourdes only has another month to go, Whistler thought on his way up the stairs to the south wing. Else we'd have a whole houseful of fifteen-stone women by winter.

  "Hello, my darling!" he called through Lourdes's open door. The south wing was quiet, even though it was a Saturday night and the weekend of a Greater Sabbat, and the rest of the Manor was bustling with Coven and Penang guests in addition to the Luzan staff Whistler had imported for their discretion and smooth, full-bodied drinkability. (Also because they would have worked free, being in effect slaves, but Selene had put the kibosh on that little efficiency.)

  "Hi Corn God. How was the Underworld?" Lourdes greeted him.

  "Hades. Sheer Hades."

  "I bet." She sat up a little higher in her enormous bed, and offered him her cheek to kiss. "Did the Creature miss me?"

  "We thought of you the whole time." He gave her a peck, then pulled the rocker over to the side of the bed.

  "Want to feel her kicking?" She took his hand and placed it on her belly.

  "There… no, wait, there. Am I right?"

  "Yeah, that was a good one."

  "But what's this 'her' business?"

  "Selene told me last night."

  Just then they heard the clank of the elevator at the end of the hall; when Selene and Catherine arrived with the breakfast cart, Whistler asked the High Priestess how she knew that his son was going to be a daughter.

  "Not difficult at all—for a witch," was the reply. "There's a woman in Petaluma who can sex chickens while they're still in the egg—compared to that, human babies are a snap."

  "But you're sure?"

  "Jamey, you can bet the farm on it."

  "Never mind betting the farm—can I paint the nursery?"

  "Pink as a virgin's nipples, dearie."

  " 'So it shall be written, so it shall be done!' "

  TWO

  The sun had set at 8:18 PDT on that Lughnasath evening, the first of August. January was already awake, watching a Get Smart rerun on the Nickelodeon channel. With the money she had been wheedling from Nick every week on her promise (kept, so far) to use only non-lethal harvesting methods, as well as the occasional wallet or bankroll that came her way as a by-product of hunting, she had moved down the hall to a better room, one with a kitchenette (hot plate, sink, and a knee-high refrigerator) and cable TV.

  What she really needed was a car—it was getting harder and harder to catch her customary quarry. Six weeks of preying on the weakest, drunkest, or craziest denizens of Telegraph Avenue and People's Park had winnowed down the local population with Darwinian rigor: the loners were cunning and watchful, the weak herded together.

  Besides, while they'd been an ideal population for killing, most of the non-lethal methods of procuring blood were useless on them: they were impervious to blackmail, sob stories, or subtle trickery. But unless she could talk Nick into lending her the Corvette (fat chance) the best she could do was to expand her hunting grounds.

  When her favorite Get Smart—the one with Hymie the Robot—had ended, she dressed in a new ribbed poorboy blouse over black jeans, threw her purse over her shoulder, and once out the door, instead of heading toward People's Park she set her course for the University of California.

  It was a sweet summer night; even out on Telegraph Avenue, which was rapidly becoming the Skid Row of Berkeley, the air was still sunset-fresh and tinged with violet. January strode north with the traffic, past the boarded-up storefronts, stopping only when she reached Sather Gate. There she took the last swig from her thermos, and found herself a bench just off the path where she could eye the summer students until her hunting instincts took over.

  The college kids—how young they seemed to her, how fresh and plump compared to her customary prey. It seemed as if their blood would be especially juicy. She recapped her thermos, closed her eyes, and settled back to wait for the blood to come on.

  For her, the first symptom was always the same: a sweet feeling in her bones, spreading outwards from the marrow. When the tingle reached her skin, she would open her eyes without attempting to focus on any particular individual, and let her eyes select a victim. How they chose, she never knew, but they were rarely wrong. Eventually a figure would come into focus, one figure only out of the crowd, and that figure she would pursue the way a lioness stalked a single antelope through the distracting herd, faithfully, unswervingly, forsaking all others, however tempting or vulnerable.

  This evening when she allowed her eyes to open, they settled on a blocky Chinese boy. January hopped off the bench and began tracking him at a distance. She followed him all the way to the BART station on Shattuck, where she lost him when the ticket machine rejected one of her crumpled dollar bills after another.

  Fuck, she thought. I bet he would of been good, too. She trudged back to campus, mindful that she'd lost nearly half an hour of prime hunting time—if she didn't find someone in the next hour, she'd lose her edge entirely.

  Back on the bench, she closed her eyes again, and opened them slowly. Another Chinese. (Not necessarily racism, despite her history with Wayne: the Chinese were simply the largest minority at Cal—and there was no majority.)

  A girl this time. Well helloooo Honey. Reminded her of Duke's girlfriend in Doonesbury. Same little round glasses, same tragic haircut. Short steps. No hip action whatsoever, January noticed, following this one a little closer than she'd followed the first one, as she pitter-pattered towards the Student Union. Couldn't afford to lose her.

 
But she did—to a half dozen other Chinese students. Probably a study group, thought January bitterly, returning to her bench. On Saturday night! No wonder they're gonna rule the world. This time when she closed her eyes she felt the bench jar, and when she opened them found herself sitting next to a pale, spotty white girl in loopy carpenter pants and an oversized T-shirt, who turned to her and glowered. "Almost chickened out, eh?"

  "What?" January was careful not to meet her eyes.

  "We were supposed to meet at nine-thirty. I got here five minutes early, just in time to see you leave. You're not a Duggie, are you?"

  "A what?" January had found her night shades in her purse. Blue-blockers—the amber lenses disguised the red. She put them on before turning to her bench mate, who turned away.

  "Dyke Until Graduation. It's so P.C. now—where were they all when I was getting tortured in high school? The last woman that answered my ad was just experimenting."

  "Your ad, right."

  "You are Jill?"

  "Sure."

  The other young woman pursed her lips and nodded her head slowly, as if reaching a decision, then stuck out her hand. "What the hell, at least you came back. Hi Jill, I'm Patti. Want to go get a cup of coffee?"

  "Cup of somep'n, anyway," said January, trying not to smile—for some reason, her smile often seemed to alarm her prey.

  THREE

  After a month and a half of juggling, Nick had a new respect for philandering heterosexual males. How they could manage to keep two women happy and also find the time for sex, he couldn't imagine. Take this Saturday—he and Betty had gone to their Lamaze class at the clinic in Richmond, then driven back to El Cerrito to open up for, and attend, the early A.A. meeting at the CHP, and then he'd taken her out to dinner at the Cape Cod in Albany to satisfy her sudden craving for sea bass.