Nick was waiting for her on the bed, wearing only a plush Caesar's Tahoe bathrobe. Seeing him, Betty turned shy. She handed the blood to him and hurried into the bathroom, undressed, ran the water to cover the sound of her peeing, and then slipped on her overalls again, over her bare skin.
Not quite your Victoria's Secret negligee, she knew—but then, that was another, unexpected benefit of this strange new high: confidence. She didn't recall Nick having written about that much. Of course, he was a devastatingly handsome man and might have taken his sexual attractiveness for granted.
But on Betty, a woman who'd never been sure of hers, this new drug had wrought a wonder: she could feel her sexiness from the inside out.
And when she opened the door and caught sight of Nick catching sight of her; when she sashayed over to the bed, watching his erection pushing out the front of his bathrobe as his eyes followed the heavy shifting of her breasts under the bib of the Can't Bust Em's; when she sat down cross-legged on the bed before him and he passed her the bag of blood with one hand while with the other unsnapping the brass button of one of the bib straps and freeing a breast for his widening, crimson eyes; when, in short, she understood that gay as this gorgeous man might be, down to the very core of his being, he was nonetheless hers for the night, bound to her with a bond of blood strong enough to overcome all prejudices, even those of sexual preference, then she knew she would never think of herself, of her body and her sexuality, the same way again.
As for Nick, who was soon lying on his back with his face buried between a pair of blue-veined breasts just beginning to leak sweet mother's milk, he had given up trying to make sense of the fact that every time he drank blood lately, he seemed to end up in bed with a woman. There were so many other much more important things to give up trying to make sense of, that he was just as glad to get this one out of the way.
Later, when Betty was back in the bathroom changing—into what, he hadn't a hint—he realized that he still didn't know what he was going to do tomorrow. Other than take it one day—or night—at a time, of course. He might drink blood often, or occasionally, or not at all. He might move in with Betty, or Betty and Leon might move in with him. Or neither: maybe he'd start dating again.
In fact, all he did know about the future, he realized, was that he was going to do either the right thing or the wrong thing, for either the right or the wrong reasons.
And even that uncomplicated epiphany deserted him at the sight of the Reverend Shoemaker emerging from the upstairs bathroom of the bungalow naked as the dawn except for a leather harness that fitted over her waist and thighs and supported a small, elegantly carved black dildo.
"Well, helloooo Sailor," Nick announced, abandoning further philosophical reflection for the remainder of the evening.
Three is not always a crowd—not when two of them are vampires and the third a donor. Selene lay face down on Whistler's bed, feeling the familiar light-headed rush as Whistler drank from the hollow behind her left knee, and Lourdes from the right.
But when they had pinched off the wounds and begun kissing their way up the back of her thighs, she rolled over and sat up, tugging down the hem of her flannel nightgown. "Tonight is for the God and Goddess," she reminded them. "Perhaps some other time, dearies."
"Promise?" asked Lourdes, only partially insincere: curious as she was about what it would be like to make love to the High Priestess, she was of decidedly mixed emotions about having a threesome with the other great love of her husband's life.
"The last promise I made was to myself," replied Selene. "It was not to make any more promises, and I'm going to keep it. You two have a wonderful evening."
Whistler walked her to the door. "I spoke to Nick," he whispered into her ear as they hugged goodnight. "He doesn't remember anything about… you know."
She gave him a peck on the cheek. "I didn't think so. I'd have seen it in his eyes."
"What are you two whispering about?" Lourdes called from Whistler's walk-in closet—she was browsing through his costumes.
Selene slipped out the door. Whistler locked it behind her. "Nothing, m'dear."
"C'mere, Jamey."
He poked his head into the closet.
"If I wear this—" She held up a long flannel mommy nightgown. "—will you wear these?" Daddy pajamas, light blue cotton with dark blue piping.
"And make love in them?" he said hesitantly, not quite sure if he'd caught her drift.
But he had. "Yes," she replied breathily.
"Under the covers?"
"Yes."
"With the lights out? Missionary position, no wiggling?"
"Oh yes, Jamey. Oh god, yes."
"Betty, I'm gay."
A voice in the dark: Nick and Betty lay side by side on the bed, naked in afterglow. Either would have killed for a postcoital cigarette; neither would have admitted it under torture.
"I know, Nick."
"No, really. I really, really am."
"I'm your therapist. I really, really know."
"As in, I will never be truly happy unless I'm in a sexual relationship with a man."
Betty laughed: "Yeah, right, tell me about it." Then, after a moment. "But what about blood? Can you ever be truly happy again without blood?"
But just asking the question had frightened her a little—he must have sensed it, for he took her hand in the dark. "I don't know. I used to think I did, but I don't anymore. What I do know, even now, even high, is that staying high all the time won't do it for me either—tried that: didn't work."
"Do you think there's a middle path?"
"What I think is, you have to learn to ride the Elephant. If you can beat the Elephant, then the First Step doesn't apply."
Realized we were powerless over blood. Betty thought it over—thought, and thought, and thought, then climbed out of bed, crossed to the casement window, opened it, sniffed the sweet piney air, and thought about it some more.
Finally she turned back from the window, leaving it open behind her despite the chill. Her body loved the night air—there was life to it.
"Want to face the Elephant together, this next time?" she asked Nick, climbing back under the covers. "I think maybe I could do it, if there was somebody there to remind me that it wasn't the world that was sad and dreary, but only the crash."
The bed shifted as he turned towards her—he had scooted farther under the covers, having had enough of a chill the night before to last him a lifetime. "Be crazy not to try it. The sooner the better, though, I'd imagine."
"Not too soon," she moaned.
He laughed. "Tomorrow night, then. Otherwise the Elephant'll be too big to ride."
"Bigger than the both of us?"
He thought back to that night in March—the night he had learned that he was the last recovering vampire on earth—and crawled up a little higher in the bed so that he could whisper directly into the ear of the woman who had saved his life that night, the woman who had kissed him right in the power.
"How I'll feel about it tomorrow night at this time, I haven't the slightest idea," was what he whispered. "But as of this moment, Reverend, I don't think there's an Elephant in the world too big for the both of us."
AFTERWARD
« ^
With smoking torches twisted from the hemp of the baobab tree, in their simple red cotton J. C. Penney souvenir sleeping-shirt robes, the vampires of Santa Luz came for Betty Ruth and Leon at the roughly appointed hour: a few minutes after sunset on the night of the first full moon after the three-month anniversary of Leon's birth.
Darkness, as always, fell swiftly in the courtyard in the clearing; an unearthly green glow flared and faded, then there was only the torchlight flickering across the mortared stones of the old well. Betty handed Leon to Nanny Eames, and took her seat on the lower tier of stones.
She and Leon had arrived on the Blue Goose the night before, been met by Francis, and proceeded directly to the Greathouse. There they'd been welcomed by Nanny Eames herself, who
inquired solicitously after her welfare. Nanny worried about the Drinkers out in California—she knew it was hard to be a vampire on an island without customs.
But Betty assured the old crone that it was not necessary for her to drink blood every night. In fact, she and Nick had been getting along well enough drinking blood every Friday night (Beverly had turned into the Penang's pusher-woman, but at least her prices were still reasonable, and she sold only outdated blood) and riding the Elephant together on Sunday. It was no damn fun, that Elephant—but then, neither was life entirely without blood.
And except for the weekends, their lives had gone on pretty much the same as before Leon's kidnapping. Betty had continued to attend her twelve-step meetings, and had thus far preserved all her other sobriety dates intact. This was good business as well as good mental health: the Church of the Higher Power was booked solid by the end of October, as the Great Recovery Scare of the early '90s continued to build up steam. It appeared that Reverend Shoemaker had finally landed herself in a growth industry, and she didn't want to screw it up, even if she had begun wondering, in her heart of hearts, whether perhaps some of her other drugs didn't have Elephants that might be ridden just as successfully. Not that the idea of getting shit-faced drunk was all that attractive to her, compared to the world on blood.
Nick meanwhile was working double shifts trying to service all the new clients he'd managed to land over the summer, so when Whistler invited all three of them down to Santa Luz for the full-moon ceremony in November, he'd had to beg off.
Betty, though, having decided that a free Caribbean vacation (the Winters' Night Foundation was picking up the tab) would be eminently manageable, had accepted with alacrity. She and Nick had enjoyed a blood-filled bon voyage party two nights before her departure and ridden the Elephant on the eve. And if, as Betty noted, there was still half a bag of blood left in the refrigerator when Nick drove his happy family to the airport the following afternoon; and if he decided to have a nip and go cruising across the bay—perhaps revisit the Kingdom of the Castro in search of true happiness—why, she knew, it was nobody's business but his own. And his Elephant, of course.
Betty looked up at Nanny Eames, who was smiling tenderly at the infant Leon in her arms—his Tasting would precede his mother's initiation—and watched tensely as Nanny rubbed the magic rain-forest salve into Leon's tiny instep. Beside her on the lower tier around the well, Lourdes watched just as tensely: Cora was not yet three months old—her Tasting would come in twenty-eight days—but Lourdes could imagine only too well how Betty was feeling. She took Betty's hand, and squeezed it for support.
Betty forced herself not to close her eyes as Nanny bent to her task, the baby in the crook of her left arm and a needle-thin quill tapered at both ends in her right hand. But there must not have been any pain, for the sleeping Leon barely stirred when the crone inserted the quill. Quickly Nanny brought the tiny foot to her mouth and sucked a few drops of baby-blood through the quill, then a few more.
Betty gripped Lourdes's hand tighter. "Well?" she started to ask. Whistler, flanking her on the other side, held up a forefinger. It was not a question permitted by the ritual. She had to wait—they all had to wait.
A minute passed, then another. Finally Nanny turned and smiled. "I have good news," she declared, and all the vampires of Santa Luz cheered.
So did Betty, until it occurred to her that she hadn't the slightest idea what that good news might be.
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