"That's good, Jan. That's real good." Hypothermia and baby-blood—it's a wonder she didn't see the whole goddamn cast of Hair. "What can I do to get you to come back with me? I've got to turn back soon—this water's too cold, even on blood."
"You could fuck me. Face to face with your eyes open, the way you fucked her." She paddled a little closer.
"Honey, this water's so cold, I couldn't find my dick with tweezers."
"Just hug me, then." She was within arm's reach.
"And you'll come back with me?" Face to face.
"Not exactly." She slipped her arms around him and drew him close; there was no appreciable difference in temperature between her pebbled skin and the water of the lake. "I want you to come with me," she whispered into his ear, wrapping her legs around his waist.
"Where?"
"To see Glory." She kissed him—then her arms tightened convulsively, driving the air out of him with a rush.
A moment of blackness—suddenly they were underwater. Nick's hands were free; he wrenched her arms from around him and drove for the surface, breached it, gasping, while a fathom down, January flailed her arms wildly until she bumped against one of his legs, then wrapped both hands around an ankle, and tugged. He kicked her in the head with the heel of his free foot as hard as he could against the resistance of the water, kicked again and again until her grip weakened.
One last blow and he was free. Free, but disoriented—rather than risk swimming further from shore, he spun around wildly, trying to spot the little beach where he'd entered the lake. He saw a figure swimming towards him—it was still pretty far away—all he could make out was a little white ball of a head bobbing halfway between him and the shore.
Then came a roar behind him as January broke the surface—she was all over him, hands and arms slapping, grabbing frantically, legs kicking. She clamped onto his back; he tried to reach around and throw her over his head, but jiujitsu was useless in the water.
Twisting around to face her, Nick forced the heel of his hand under her jaw, and began levering her head back. But her hands were clawing for his eyes; as he drew his head back, she managed to get both hands around his throat.
He had to let go of her face then, to grab at her wrists, but she had air now, and he had none—his eyes were open, but everything was going black except for the starry pinpoints of light streaking across his vision. As he struggled to bring his feet up and force her away with his legs, suddenly there was a hideous rolling, popping sound, like somebody cracking ten knuckles at once, or twisting a sheet of inch-thick bubble wrap between both hands.
The hands around Nick's throat had gone limp. He gasped for air, and sucked in a lungful of icy water. Choking, sinking, he was grabbed from the front again—but this time the hands were under his armpits, buoying him up. He opened his eyes: it was Whistler, his head wrapped in a bloodstained makeshift turban that had come half undone, and was trailing behind him in the water like a gauzy winding sheet.
You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din, was Nick's last thought before he lost consciousness, and slipped back under the shining black surface of the lake.
SIX
Selene hadn't even bothered trying to talk Whistler out of going after Nick and January. After using three rolls of gauze and two of hypoaller-genic (also, unfortunately, hypoadhesive) tape to provide his skull with at least a little cushioning against a second concussion, she gave him a peck on the cheek, and started him off on the trail of blood that led up the cellar stairs, through the back door, and towards the neighboring alder wood.
That one of the three of them would not be returning to Whistler Manor, Selene had little doubt: after all, the two births promised by the runes had already taken place. But she was too busy for more than a perfunctory prayer to the Norns as she hurried out to meet the guests and staff returning in limos and cabs from the casinos to the south.
Fortunately, Catherine had been among the first carload from the Horizon; she took over the job of organizing the cleanup while Selene hurried back to the nursery suite, where Augie Fetterman was still standing watch outside Lourdes's door; down the hall Cheese Louise in all her vastness guarded the back entrance to the nursery.
"They kicked me out," said Augie mournfully, opening the door for Selene. "One little comment about Titzapoppin', and they kicked me out."
Titzapoppin, indeed, thought Selene, locking the door behind her. For Lourdes was nursing Cora in the window seat with her vanilla satin bed jacket around her waist; in the Nantucket rocker Plum Rose sucked greedily at Nanny Parish; and there on Lourde's enormous bed Leon was hard at work at an engorged breast.
That the owner of that blue-veined breast was a vampire would have been obvious to Selene from the vampire blush of the chest and throat alone; when the new mother opened her eyes to see who had intruded upon her nursing bliss, they were crimson as well, and Selene had to force back a gasp—she'd had no forewarning from Nick.
Lourdes did the honors from the window seat, with a full sense of occasion. "Reverend Betty Ruth Shoemaker, meet the High Priestess Selene of the Coven of Wicca. High Priestess Selene, this is the Reverend Betty Ruth Shoemaker, minister of the Church of the Higher Power."
"And a vampire, apparently," said Selene, recovering quickly. "I had no idea."
"Neither did she," replied Lourdes. "How's Whistler?"
"Fine when he left. Not so much as a headache."
"When he left?"
"He and Nick have gone after January." Selene turned back to Betty. Over the years, she had seen a few vampires lose their virginity—it was normally the sweetest thing to watch the way their eyes opened like a three-year-old toddling down the stairs on Christmas morning. "How are you doing, dearie?"
But Betty was still dazed from the sensation of nursing—she had nearly cried out with orgasmic surprise a few minutes before, when her milk had first let down, and though she was trying to grapple with the larger issues looming over the horizon, she couldn't quite get past the physicality of it all. If nursing feels this good, had been the thought going through her mind when Selene entered, sex must be absolutely unbearable.
Oddly enough, Selene's seemingly innocuous question took her completely by surprise, as if she'd been asked to name the fourteenth president. Betty shrugged as demonstratively as she could without setting her occupied breast jiggling out of Leon's greedy grasp. "Remember the Fire-sign Theater?"
"Oh-oh, boomer alert," remarked Lourdes.
Betty ignored her. "Well, I feel like…" She deepened her voice, trying to sound like Walter Cronkite on acid: " 'Everything you know, is wrong!' "
How very Zen, Selene was about to reply, when Lourdes waved wildly from the window seat, put a warning forefinger to her lips when she'd got their attention, and then cupped a hand to her ear. A moment later Selene heard the shouting from the lawn, crossed to the western window, unlatched it, and threw it open.
"Little help down here," Whistler was shouting. But even shouting, he kept his voice at a civilized tennis, anyone? pitch: he might have been calling for his ball from an adjacent court, rather than standing naked and dripping on the lawn, with Nick's limp body in his arms.
As Selene watched, Lourdes and Betty crowding the window behind her, others came running to Whistler's aid—vampires first, with their superior speed, Henderson and Toshi from around the side of the house, Beverly and Sandy from the parking lot; then the front door opened, casting an angular patch of yellow light on the deep green grass, and Catherine hurried out with the cordless phone at her ear, followed by several witches, Josephina, and two of the houseboys.
"Nick!" called Betty, despairingly. Leon had begun to howl, and as Selene hurried out the door and down the stairs she could hear Cora and Plum Rose joining the choir.
Chapter 10
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ONE
Whistler Manor was quiet on the evening of the autumn equinox—as quiet as it ever got on a sabbat. Whistler had been all for going on with the ceremony as if nothing had happe
ned, but Selene had put her pointy little foot down.
"We've had a death here, Jamey," she informed him in his bedroom Monday evening shortly after sunset. "It may have been a convenient death for you, but it was a death nonetheless, and by the Great Horned God, we're going to treat it with the respect it deserves."
Whistler, having learned decades before never to mess with the Great Horned God, could only spread his hands in surrender. "It's not as if we're going to ignore it—there's the plan for the foun—"
She cut him off. "That's for your conscience."
"And this is for yours."
"Fine. I'll take it."
Which left Whistler back at the point of his original surrender. He changed the subject. "Do you think our newest Drinker will be staying over for the equinox celebration?"
"I don't know—she didn't say anything last night. How do you think she's taking it?"
"If I know Nick, right up the—"
But Selene cut him off again, this time with the aid of a raised, bushy eyebrow—even though she suspected the Great Horned God might have approved the sentiment. "I meant about being a vampire."
"She seemed chipper enough when she went off to bed."
Selene had another question: "How much does Nick know?"
Whistler thought it over. He was still in bed, not yet high—but of course, being Whistler, he was not yet sober, either. "Hard to say. He knows January's dead, and he knows she tried to take him with her. He also knows we got the body out—it was all he kept saying when he came to—that we couldn't leave her down there. Whether he knows the rest is anybody's guess."
By 'the rest' Whistler meant of course the unutterable fact that January had not died from drowning—that when he had finally located the body, in about fifty feet of water (and it had been a grueling two hours' work, diving again and again into that cold blackness with a feeble scuba diver's torch—only a vampire could have managed it), the head had been turned the wrong way around.
Not that he regretted what he'd done, having had little enough choice in the matter if he'd wanted to save Nick. And the manner of her death, while hideous-sounding, had been remarkably quick, and presumably painless.
Still, that noise when he'd broken her neck, and that quick glimpse of her face, made all the more horrible by the fact that he was still positioned behind her in the water (had she still been sentient?… had those eyes been staring into his own?… lord, he hoped not) were not anything he'd ever want to think about straight.
Ah well, little danger of that, thought Whistler, reaching a long arm under the bed, and feeling around for the handle to the little refrigerator containing his Clamato jar.
"Have you told Lourdes?" Selene asked him after he'd drunk, when the color had returned to his face.
"Of course not. And I don't want her ever knowing. Cora, either. You're the only one I've told, and lord knows I wouldn't have told you if I thought I had a chance in hell of keeping it from you."
She acknowledged the compliment. "You're a wise man, dearie. But a guilty secret in Nick's hands is about as safe as a pint of blood in yours. You'd better find out for sure what he knows—and the Reverend Shoemaker, as well."
"I have great hopes for the Reverend," Whistler replied, climbing out of bed, but for Selene's sake adjusting the folds of his nightshirt to conceal the burgeoning Creature. "Not only do I have the feeling that she would make a valued addition to the Penang, should she so choose, but she might even manage to knock Nick off his high horse occasionally."
Selene laughed. "Nick and his high horse? You know what I think, Jamey?"
"No, but I suppose you're—"
"I think if you'd reached January first, you'd have done exactly what he did—tried to save her." Whistler started to protest; she cut him off again. "Not only that, I think if Nick had been in your position, he'd have done exactly what you did."
"Save me, you mean? Or kill her?" Whistler's turn to laugh, on his way into the bathroom. "Either way, now you've gone and insulted both of us."
TWO
Betty and Nick had not made love that morning, despite Whistler's crude assumption. Nick had accepted blood from the others the night before, but only until his body had recovered from the hypothermia. After that, he and Betty had retreated to the bungalow, changed into borrowed sleepwear—a Cheese Louise flannel nightgown for Betty and a pair of Whistler's paisley pajamas for Nick—and had spent the rest of the night, and half the morning, simply talking.
And this time there had been no need for him to promise that this time he was telling the whole truth, etc., etc. He had talked until his strength was gone, refusing more blood but accepting a few Quaaludes around eight o'clock, and had fallen asleep by nine.
No sedatives for Betty, though: she had an infant to nurse. Afterwards, she had remembered to make some calls back to El Cerrito, to be sure that church affairs would be taken care of in her absence. A few white lies—Leon fallen ill, but in no danger—and it was done: the church ladies, bless their hearts, would go ahead with the healing circle in Betty's absence later that morning, and see that the building was open for meetings, and locked at night, until her return.
At first she felt a little guilty about lying, but then she realized that the truth would have been equally unkind.
Could you cover the church for a few days, Ellen? I'm stuck up in Tahoe… Oh, nothing serious—vampire kidnapped my baby, and then I found out I'm a vampire too. Bye-bye, hon, talk to you later. And there was a silver lining: she understood suddenly why Nick had been forced to lie to her so often during the past year—if she'd been hanging on to any lingering resentment over his having misled her, it was surely gone by now.
Pastoral responsibilities handled, Betty found that sleep came to her more easily than she'd imagined, the six hours between 10 A.M. and 4 P.M. representing the longest period of uninterrupted slumber the new mother had known since giving birth back in August.
In fact she'd found herself wondering, as Leon did his level best to suck both breasts dry upon awakening that afternoon, whether her milk was somehow fortified, now that she was a vampire—after all, he'd always been such a fussy eater before, and had never slept as long as four hours in a single session.
And after he'd uttered an ecstatic burp and fallen cheerfully back to sleep chortling at the ceiling, she'd decided in the affirmative—to her confusion, if not outright dismay. It wasn't fair, this blood. Drugs were supposed to ruin your health and wreck your life—that was the Second Step, the lynchpin of twelve-step thinking: Realized our lives were unmanageable. But all this drug had done so far was give her nursing orgasms while curing her baby of colic. That seemed manageable enough for the Reverend Betty Ruth.
Then the Elephant arrived. She didn't recognize it at first, Nick having given the pachyderm relatively short shrift in My Life on Blood. It started as a vague dissatisfaction with the ceiling—she was lying on her back, and it occurred to her that she'd never seen a drearier ceiling in her life—and soon extended to the entire room, which had seemed so charming to her only a few hours before.
So distasteful had the room become, that after checking on Leon one more time and finding no pleasure even in his gnomic sleeping visage, she fled downstairs in her nightgown. But the little parlor of the bungalow was not much of an improvement—nothing but walls and furniture and a Monet (or was it Manet? didn't seem worth the effort required to cross the room to check out the vowel in the signature).
She opened the door and stepped outside, but found that the little wood that had seemed so magical last night had lost its luster in the daylight. Trees, dirt—surely Mother Nature was vastly overrated. "It's only the drug," Betty tried to tell herself; that was a classic treatment technique for acid bummers. "Only the drug, only the drug…" But of course it wasn't the drug at all: Betty's problem was, the drug had worn off.
Since that truth was no easier to live with, she hurriedly changed her mantra: "It's only the crash, it's only the crash." With a heavy heart,
she turned back from the dreary wood. Then it occurred to her as she trudged back up the stairs—and this was perhaps the worst shock of all—that maybe the problem wasn't the crash, either. Maybe the problem was the world.
"What if it's the world that's sad and—oh Goddess, it's true: 'All the world is sad and dreary'—and I never knew it until I'd seen it on blood."
And then her heart was worse than heavy, it was practically broken as she found herself kneeling by the trundle bed, looking down at Leon, and feeling… nothing.
Nothing, not a goddamn thing. Just another dreary little creature of flesh and bone. Then she looked past Leon's trundle bed, noticed the cabinet built into the side of the king-size bed, and knew somehow as she reached for the chrome handle that behind that little door lay the answer to her immediate problem.
It was a refrigerator, of course, and inside it was a 32-oz Clamato Juice jar. And while it wouldn't be quite accurate to say that Betty had reached for the jar, twisted open the top, and taken a hearty swig almost before she knew it, it would be equally inaccurate to attribute her actions to a conscious decision, and downright misleading to call them the end result of a carefully reasoned moral choice.
Nor, at the time, had her bending of the elbow represented a considered rejection of twelve-step principles, or of her life to date, or even a preference for a life on blood over a life of sobriety. And although sober she'd have rejected whatever mentation had gone on 'twixt Clamato jar and lip as specious, once the blood hit her stomach Betty recalled clearly that even in recovery she'd always thought that NarcAnons who refused pain medication after surgery were downright silly. There'd never been a doubt in her mind that if she'd been rescued from an Alpine blizzard by a St. Bernard, she'd have sucked the life-giving brandy out of that cask in a New York minute, and the hell with a sobriety date.
So between pain and no pain, it was no contest. Blame it on the Elephant, was her last sober thought; then she was high on blood, and the concept of assigning blame for her bliss was, well, inconceivable. Especially after Leon awoke pink-cheeked and chortling again, and fed upon her with such a hearty appetite that he would have drained her dry, had not her mammaries been producing vampire milk at such a rapid rate that she could practically hear it gurgling into her breasts.
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