The World on Blood

by Jonathan Nasaw

  The thermos blood was old—she'd have to hunt tonight—but it was working. She felt the world sharpening around her as the glow of the blood warmed her from the bones out. "I'm on my feet, Nick," she said. "And hunting twice a week. And right now you're giving me two hundred dollars a week. Even without a high school diploma, I can work out the math."

  "What are you saying?"

  Blpblpblpblpb. She blew a raspberry as she recapped the thermos. "And you a college graduate. I'm saying, if for two hundred bucks a week I get blood your way twice, then for one hundred bucks a week I only get blood your way once."

  "And the second time you hunt, it's your way?"

  "Attaboy. But don't feel bad—it's not like you'll be killing somebody every week—just that you won't be paying me not to." She put her thermos away, and turned back to her burger. "Funny how, if you're eating, blood makes you hungrier, and if you aren't, it makes it so you're not even hungry in the first place."

  Nick stood up. "Thanks for making it easier for me, Jan. I'd appreciate it if you'd stay as far away from me as possible from this point on."

  She took off her blue-blockers, and fixed him with a blood red stare. "Sure Nick. I really give a shit what you'd appreciate. But at least you're not bullshitting me about being my friend any more, when we both know I was just the prize in your big fight with Whistler."

  It's not true, Nick started to say. Then he realized that it might well have been—and that he didn't really care either way. He threw a twenty down on the table, and walked out.

  Shaking with anger, but still hungry, January finished her Hula burger, and about half of Nick's Greek, then left, heading towards the U.C. campus. But when she reached Telegraph Avenue she turned left instead, striding through the night towards People's Park; in the doorway of yet another abandoned storefront near the corner of Channing and Telegraph, crumpled at an angle that left no doubt that the occupant was either asleep or unconscious, lay a footless sleeping bag with a pair of battered boots sticking out of one end and a ragged straw cowboy hat at the other.

  January hopped over it without slowing her stride, but halfway up the block she ducked into the doorway of a bank to take her nearly empty Star Trek thermos out of her roomy overcoat pocket. She drained the last slash for a burst of strength before turning back, scooping the wino (or winette) out of the doorway, sleeping bag and all, swinging the bundle over her shoulder—it was astonishingly light to contain a human being—and racing up Channing towards the east end of People's Park, where there was still enough privacy to do what she had to do.

  It was a man, as it turned out when January unwrapped him in the shadows of the bushes. She should have recognized him by the straw cowboy hat with the bedraggled feathers—it was old Hoopa Joe, who'd been panhandling around People's for years, and was so undernourished by now that he felt hollow. Fortunately, he wasn't—he was full of blood, and so drunk he didn't wake up until several seconds after January had pulled from her pocket a small longshoreman's hook with the inner edge of the tip honed sharp as a fishhook—stolen from the Copy Shoppe, where it had been used for opening cartons and bales of paper—and slit his throat from just below one ear to just below the other.

  January didn't mind that puzzled stare—she'd seen the look before. There seemed to be only a few expressions available to humans as they watched, or felt, their lifeblood draining, or spurting, into a thermos held under their slit throats—anger, astonishment, curiosity—but this simple puzzled look was the most common, although January couldn't remember anyone who'd awakened so late in the process, and had consequently been so completely puzzled.

  But only for a few more seconds—then the light, such as it was, went out of the dark eyes, and the heart stopped beating, and as the blood stopped spurting January had to elevate the corpse with one arm under the lower torso while trying with her other hand to position, then steady, the thermos under the failing trickle until it was filled to the top, and the dark blood spilling over.

  Then, carefully, with the thermos held level, she drank from the brim like a woman sipping scorching coffee, screwed the top of the thermos down, and slid it back into her overcoat pocket as her strength surged again from the fresh blood. With a series of compact, violent down-strokes she hacked at the neck with the hook until first the hat and then the head came free. She grabbed the latter by the convenient ponytail and swung it around her head, spattering blood, until it was whirling so fast it was a blur even to her, and then let it go in the general direction of Emeryville.

  It was a pretty cool trick that she'd conceived of in those first bloodless V.A. days, when all she could think about was blood, and all she could do about it was think. See, they'd find the body minus the head, and if they noticed it was missing a lot of blood, they'd figure it had been killed someplace else and brought to the park. The head minus the body they'd find God knows where, and think God knows what.

  Or should I say, Higher Power knows what? She left the park at full speed, then slowed to a walk as she strolled back down towards Telegraph, laughing out loud at her own joke.

  SIX

  Lourdes's water broke around eleven-thirty in the evening on Friday, the twenty-eighth of August. The labor lasted less than two hours—short for a first child, long by vampire standards, but still relatively painless: Lourdes was allotted a thimbleful of blood at every contraction, and was so high when the time came to push that Nanny Parish had to warn her not to push with all her might, or little Corazon would have made her entrance into the world launched across the room like the human cannonball in the circus.

  Occurring as it had on a weekend night at Whistler Manor, Cora's was one of the best-attended births this side of the royal family. Afterwards they all laughed and wept—the greatest laughter coming when Whistler called for something with which to cut the umbilical, and—snick, snick, snick—was instantly surrounded by proffered vampire blades of every description, knives, razors, scalpels.

  He had managed to locate his own antique razor with the mother-of-pearl handle in his pocket, however, and waved the blade over the flame of a Bic to sterilize it. Nanny Parish showed him where to cut, and then tied the knot while Whistler handed round Cuban cigars of a brand so exclusive even Fidel couldn't get them.

  "Anybody lights one of those in here has to deal with me," Selene announced, then slapped her forehead in dismay. "I forgot to check my watch. Did anyone get the exact time of birth?"

  August Fetterman's moment followed: "One forty-three a.m., Pacific Daylight Time," he reported sonorously, trying not to sound too pleased with himself.

  Selene nodded appreciatively. "A Virgo."

  "And born in the summertime, appropriately enough," added Augie out of one side of his mouth; the other side now contained the cigar, still in its wrapper, pointing jauntily toward the ceiling.

  "Oh?" Cheese Louise gave him the straight line.

  "Her daddy couldn't be richer, and her ma is definitely good looking."

  "Thank you, Augie," said Lourdes wanly.

  Whistler hadn't heard any of this—he was holding his daughter in his arms for the first time. And vampire or no vampire, he was a parent now: shortsighted, tunnel-visioned, and obsessed.

  Later, after the mess had been cleaned up, the bedding changed, the afterbirth placed in the refrigerator in a square casserole-size Tupper-ware container (unlabeled: woe betide the unwary seeker after leftovers)

  for subsequent ritual planting, and Lourdes and Cora sequestered for a nap, a strange urge came over Whistler, alone in his own bedroom, and without a second thought he gave in to it.

  After all, it occurred to him as he reached for his bedside phone and dialed Berkeley information, what was the use of being the luckiest man in the world if you couldn't give in to even the strangest of urges without thinking twice?

  The call came in on Nick's business line, jolting him awake in his ergonomic office chair. He had fallen asleep monitoring a hackers' bulletin board, and picked up the receiver without
thinking about it. "Santos."

  "Hullo, Nick."

  Nick's first instinct was to hang up—the Silver Surfer was a little too busy at the moment to take on any more cosmic battles—but then for that very reason Nick decided to hear what his old archenemy had to say. "Whistler," he replied carefully.

  "The very same. And the very different—I'm a father now. Lourdes just had the baby about an hour ago."

  Caught off guard, Nick pictured a little brown Whistler baby, and almost smiled in spite of himself. "Congratulations. Boy or girl?"

  "A little girl named Corazon. Cora, for short. And yours?"

  Nick felt a stab of fear. "My what?"

  "Your baby? With the Reverend Shoemaker? Surely you haven't forgotten."

  "No, no—I just…"

  But Whistler was on to him. "For heaven's sake, man, do you think I'm threatening your baby? A new father myself?"

  "Then why did you call?"

  Whistler sighed audibly, to let Nick know that his feelings had been hurt. "It just seemed like a good time to call old friends."

  "We were that once, weren't we?" said Nick, almost sadly.

  "Yes, we were."

  Nick thought it over. "I don't know, Whistler. You understand I think what you did to V.A. was monstrously evil? I'm not even talking about what you had done to me—and don't tell me it was all Selene's idea, because I won't buy it."

  Whistler's turn to think it over. "Before we end up back at square one, Nick, is it possible for you to understand that I feel just as strongly that what you and Leon did, both to myself and to the others, was also monstrously evil?"

  "That you believe it? Yes, I suppose so."

  "Good. Do you remember your Blake?"

  "We didn't study at lot of Blake at the Academy, Jamey."

  "Allow me to quote a relevant passage from a lesser-known poem entitled 'My Spectre Around Me Night and Day': Throughout all Eternity/I forgive you, you forgive me."

  The pause that followed was surprisingly unstrained—it was if they had each decided to take a moment to think things over. Nick spoke first. "A boy. Leon."

  "Well that's a lucky—" Whistler broke off the sentence. A lucky thing, he'd been about to say. A life for a life, and all that—but he'd remembered just in time that Nick didn't know anything about Leon Stanton's murder. "—boy, I'm sure. When was he born?"

  "August first. He's supposed to be coming home from the hospital tomorrow."

  "He's all right, though?" There was no mistaking Whistler's concern.

  "He's fine. He was a month premature—they just wanted to make sure his lungs were fully developed."

  "I'm so glad. And the new mother?"

  "Doing fine."

  "Excellent, excellent." Another pause. "Have you heard from January?" Whistler had—indirectly: Sherman had clipped a news article about a headless body in People's Park for him—but didn't want to bring it up if Nick hadn't seen it.

  He hadn't. "We had a falling-out a few weeks ago—haven't seen her since. I gave up all the rest of my sponsorees, too—decided my own sobriety was about all I could handle."

  "I take it you're on the wagon again, then?"

  " 'One day at a time.' And I take it you're not?"

  "Wrecked as the Hesperus, high as the Union Jack, stoned as—"

  "I've got the picture." Nick phrased the next thought carefully. "I don't want you to get me wrong, what I said about my own sobriety. I mean, if you ever want to quit, if there's any way I could help, I'd want you to call me."

  "I shouldn't think it likely. But yes, Nick, I will. I couldn't think of anyone else I'd call instead. And how about you? If you ever decide to start drinking blood again, will you call me?"

  Another dead minute over the long-distance wires. "Same answer. I can't see it ever happening, but yeah. Yeah, Jamey, I suppose I would."

  "Good. Well, I'm glad I gave in to my impulse to call you, Nick. Kiss little Leon hello to the world from his Uncle Whistler. They'll be twenty-tens, you know."

  "Beg pardon?"

  "Twenty-tens. I don't want to shock you, Nick, but our children will be graduating high school in the year 2010."

  "Damn. We're gonna be in our sixties, with kids in high school?"

  "Yes, Nick. So you'd better get your beauty sleep while you can—you're going to need it."

  "You too—you've got a year or so on me, if I recall correctly."

  Whistler decided not to remind him that thanks to blood, he himself would be aging at a much slower rate than Nick would. "And feeling every minute of it. Good night, old friend. Don't forget to kiss little Leon for me."

  "Good night to you too, Jamey. And kiss Cora for me."

  After hanging up, Nick signed off the hackers' bulletin board and began surfing the Internet for some sort of poetry or literary bulletin board. Eventually he found, not just a general board, but an actual listing for the Blake Society, in England. He hacked his way in and posted a query—when he woke up the next morning it had been answered. Some kindly Brit with the nom-de-net of Gryffon had typed in the entire text of "My Spectre Around Me Night and Day," which, although it may have been a minor poem, was certainly not a short one.

  Nick found Whistler's quote on the second page down:

  And throughout all Eternity

  I forgive you, you forgive me.

  As our dear Redeemer said:

  'This the Wine, and this the Bread.'

  He printed it out, along with one other verse, the first of the poem:

  My Spectre around me night and day

  Like a wild beast guards my way;

  My Emanation far within

  Weeps incessantly for my sin.

  Not a bad description of a vampire, thought Nick. Even a recovering one.

  Chapter 8

  « ^ »

  ONE

  While Whistler was gratified by the ease with which Lourdes had slipped into the role of Lady of the Manor as if to the Manor born, he found it no less admirable that she somehow seemed to be governing entirely without portfolio.

  Catherine Bailey, for instance, had taken to bringing her notebook up along with the breakfast cart every evening, and while Lourdes nursed Cora in the window seat and Nanny Parish suckled Plum Rose in the Nantucket rocker, the three women would chat about the following night's menu. No one had ever told her to report to Lourdes, certainly not Whistler, yet by mid-September it would have been as unthinkable for Catherine to cook a meal that had not been approved by Lourdes as it would have been for Nanny Parish to take Cora out for a stroll without bringing her to her mother first to have her outfit checked out. (And oh, did Cora have outfits!)

  So when it came time to plan the autumnal equinox celebration (it wouldn't be a simple holiday, either: some of the Coven and Penang would arrive as early as Friday evening, but since the equinox would not take place until 8:00 a.m. on the twenty-second, the ceremony itself couldn't begin until after midnight on Tuesday), it was to Lourde's window seat throne that Selene came with her notebook to plan room assignments, that Cheese Louise and Catherine came to discuss catering, and that Josephina reported to address housekeeping arrangements.

  By Saturday night, the corridor outside her suite resembled the route to and from the royal bedchamber, with constant courtier traffic, and Whistler's admiration was growing a little strained. "I haven't spent ten uninterrupted minutes with my wife in two weeks," he announced, shooing Josephina from the room.

  Lourdes finished nursing Cora, and handed her over to Nanny Parish to be burped. "You're exaggerating again, Jamey. That hummer this morning took at least twenty minutes." She had in fact been putting Whistler off since Cora's birth. Come the equinox ritual, when the Corn King returned to claim Persephone and carry her back to the Underworld with him, Lourdes was determined that the conquering hero, now Lord of the Underworld, would notice no diminution of pleasure upon coupling with his Queen, no slackness in Persephone's silky sheath.

  To this end, she had been performing her vagin
al exercises diligently for the intervening three weeks, and using a salve that Nanny Parish had brought with her from Santa Luz.

  Whistler passed a palm over his yellow hair, rippling it like a field of overripe wheat—that was about as much frustration as he ever let himself show, but Lourdes recognized the signs. "Maybe you'd better give us a few minutes, Nanny."

  The Luzan woman bustled off. "Come, Cora. We gon' to see Plum Rose, now. We know when we ain' wanted someplace." With a sniff she closed the nursery door behind her.

  Lourdes edged closer to the window and patted the sill beside her. "Bring it right on over here, my Lord of the Underworld. You're looking awful handsome tonight."

  He hopped up onto the window seat. "Thank you, m'dear." There was a part of Whistler that would have enjoyed wearing evening clothes to the casinos, the way they do in Monte Carlo, but in Tahoe it would have been de trop (in Tahoe, shirts that buttoned were de trop, and a necktie entirely out of the question), so he'd settled for a tropic-tan pongee shirt, casually pleated tailored slacks with his ourobouros belt, Topsiders with no socks, and Italian sunglasses that cost more than most Italian motorbikes. "But I'd prefer if you didn't manage me quite as diligently as the rest of the staff."

  "No you wouldn't," she replied matter-of-factly. "You just don't want to know about it."

  "Close—I want to be able to pretend I don't know about it—a willing suspension of disbelief, so to speak. And while we're on the subject, I'd like to ask of you the same courtesy Selene has always extended me: I don't mind you trying out your Wicca spells on me—I've always rather enjoyed them—but I do want to be know about it in advance. If you want controls and blind studies, kindly use the servants."

  Lourdes had gone very still as he talked, and kept her eyes fixed on the view when she replied. "My Wicca lessons—you knew about my Wicca lessons? Did Selene—"