by Rice, Anne
“Who are you calling a sleaze, kid?” demanded the man with mock gentleness, the fragrance of the brandy thickening. “That’s some big vocabulary you have for such a little body. How old are you, kid? How the Hell did you get into this country? You go around in that nightgown all the time?”
“Yeah, sure, just call me Lawrence of Arabia,” said Benji. “Sybelle, come over here.”
I didn’t want her to come. I wanted her as far away from this as possible. She didn’t move, and I was very glad of it.
“I like my clothes,” Benji chattered on. Puff of sweet cigarette smoke. “I should dress like kids in this place, I suppose, in blue jeans? As if. My people dressed like this when Mohammed was in the desert.”
“Nothing like progress,” said the man with a deep throaty laugh.
He approached the bed with quick crisp steps. The scent of blood was so rich I could feel the pores of my burnt skin opening for it.
I used the tiniest part of my strength to form a telepathic picture of him through their eyes—a tall brown-eyed man, sallow white skin, gaunt cheeks, receding brown hair, in a handmade Italian suit of shining black silk with flashing diamond cufflinks on his rich linen. He was antsy, fingers working at his sides, almost unable to stand still, his brain a riot of dizzy humor, cynicism and crazed curiosity. His eyes were greedy and playful. The ruthlessness underscored all, and there seemed in him a strong streak of genuine drug-nourished insanity. He wore his murders as proudly as he wore his princely suit and the shiny brown boots on his feet.
Sybelle came near the bed, the sharp sweet scent of her pure flesh mingling with the heavier richer scent of the man. But it was his blood I savored, his blood that brought the juices up into my parched mouth. I could barely keep from making a sigh beneath the covers. I felt my limbs about to dance right out of their painful paralysis.
The villain was sizing up the place, glancing left and right through open doors, listening for other voices, debating whether he should search this fancy overstuffed and rambling hotel apartment before he did anything else. His fingers would not be still. In a flash of wordless thought, I caught the quick realization that he’d snorted the cocaine Benji had brought, and he wanted more immediately.
“My, but you are a beautiful young lady,” he said to Sybelle.
“Do you want me to lift the cover?” she asked.
I could smell the small handgun that was jammed in his high black leather boot, and the other gun, very fancy and modern, a distinctly different collection of metallic scents, in the holster under his arm. I could smell cash on him too, that unmistakable stale smell of filthy paper money.
“Come on, you chicken, buster?” asked Benji. “You want me to pull back the cover? Say when. You’re gonna be real surprised, believe me!”
“There’s no body under there,” he said with a sneer. “Why don’t we sit down and have a little talk? This isn’t really your place, is it? I think you children need a little paternal guidance.”
“The body’s all burnt up,” said Benji. “Don’t get sick now.”
“Burnt up!” said the man.
It was Sybelle’s long hand that suddenly whipped the coverlet back. The cool air skidded across my skin. I stared up at the man who drew back, a half-strangled growl caught in his throat.
“For the love of God!”
My body sprang up, drawn by the plump fountain of blood like a hideous puppet on a score of whipping strings. I flailed against him, then anchored my burnt fingernails hard into his neck and wrapped the other arm around him in an agonizing embrace, my tongue flashing at the blood that spilled from the claw marks as I drew in and, ignoring the blazing pain in my face, opened my mouth wide and sank my fangs.
Now I had him.
His height, his strength, his powerful shoulders, his huge hands clamping to my hurt flesh, none of this could help him. I had him. I drew up the first thick swallow of blood and thought I would swoon. But my body wasn’t about to allow it. My body had locked to him as if I were a thing of voracious tentacles.
At once, his crazed and luminous thoughts drew me down into a glitzy swirl of New York images, of careless cruelty and grotesque horror, of rampant drug-driven energy and sinister hilarity. I let the images flood me. I couldn’t go for the quick death. I had to have every drop of blood inside him, and for that the heart must pump and pump; the heart must not give up.
If I had ever tasted blood this strong, this sweet and salty, I had no memory of it; there was no way in which memory could record such deliciousness, the absolute rapture of thirst slaked, of hunger cured, of loneliness dissolved in this hot and intimate embrace, in which the sound of my own seething, straining breath would have horrified me if I had cared about it.
Such a noise I made, such a dreadful feasting noise. My fingers massaged his thick muscles, my nostrils were pressed into his pampered soap-scented skin.
“Hmmm, love you, wouldn’t hurt you for the world, you feel it, it’s sweet, isn’t it?” I whispered to him over the shallows of gorgeous blood. “Hmmm, yes, so sweet, better than the finest brandy, hmmm …”
In his shock and disbelief, he suddenly let go utterly, surrendering to the delirium that I stoked with each word. I ripped at his neck, widening the wound, rupturing the artery more fully. The blood gushed anew.
An exquisite shiver ran down my back; it ran down the backs of my arms, and down my buttocks and legs. It was pain and pleasure commingled as the hot and lively blood forced itself into the microfibers of my shriveled flesh, as it plumped the muscles beneath the roasted skin, as it sank into the very marrow of my bones. More, I had to have more.
“Stay alive, you don’t want to die, no, stay alive,” I crooned, rubbing my fingers up through his hair, feeling that they were fingers now, not the pterodactyl digits they’d been moments before. Oh, they were hot; it was the fire all over again, it was the fire blazing in my scorched limbs, this time death had to come, I couldn’t bear this any longer, but a pinnacle had been reached, and now it was past and a great soothing ache rushed through me.
My face was pumped and teeming, my mouth full again and again, and my throat now swallowing without effort.
“Ah, yes, alive, you’re so strong, so wonderfully strong …” I whispered. “Hmmm, no, don’t go … not yet, it’s not time.”
His knees buckled. He sank slowly to the carpet, and I with him, pulling him gently over with me against the side of the bed, and then letting him fall beside me, so that we lay like lovers entangled. There was more, much more, more than ever I could have drunk in my regular state, more than ever I could have wanted.
Even on those rare occasions when I was a fledgling and greedy and new, and had taken two or three victims a night, I had never drunk so deeply from any one of them. I was now into the dark tasty dregs, pulling out the very vessels themselves in sweet clots that dissolved on my tongue.
“Oh, you are so precious, yes, yes.”
But his heart could take no more. It was slowing to a lethal irretrievable pace. I closed my teeth on the skin of his face and ripped it open over his forehead, lapping at the rich tangle of bleeding vessels that covered his skull. There was so much blood here, so much blood behind the tissues of the face. I sucked up the fibers, and then spit them out bloodless and white, watching them drop to the floor like so much slop.
I wanted the heart and the brain. I had seen the ancients take it. I knew how. I’d seen the Roman Pandora once reach right into the chest.
I went for it. Astonished to see my hand fully formed though dark brown in color, I made my fingers rigid like a deadly spade and drove it into him, tearing linen and cracking breastbone, and then reaching his soft entrails until I had the heart and held it as I’d seen Pandora hold it. I drank from it. Oh, it had plenty of blood. This was magnificent. I sucked it to pulp and then let it fall.
I lay as still as he, at his side, my right hand on the back of his neck, my head bowed against his chest, my breath coming in heavy sighs. The blood dan
ced in me. I felt my arms and legs jerking. Spasms ran through me, so that the sight of his white dead carcass blinkered in my gaze. The room flashed on and off.
“Oh, what a sweet brother,” I whispered. “Sweet, sweet brother.” I rolled on my back. I could hear the roar of his blood in my very ears, feel it moving over my scalp, feel it tingling in my cheeks and in the palms of my hands. Oh, good, too good, too lusciously good.
“Bad guy, hmmm?” It was Benji’s voice, far away in the world of the living.
Far away in another realm where pianos ought to be played, and little boys should dance, they stood, the two like painted cutout figures against the swimming light of the room, merely gazing at me, he the little desert rogue with his fancy black cigarette, puffing away and smacking his lips and raising his eyebrows, and she merely floating it seemed, resolute and thoughtful as before, unshocked, untouched perhaps.
I sat up and pulled up my knees. I rose to my feet, with only a quick handhold on the side of the bed to steady myself. I stood naked looking at her.
Her eyes were filled with a deep rich gray light, and she smiled as she looked at me.
“Oh, magnificent,” she whispered.
“Magnificent?” I said. I lifted my hands and pushed my hair back off my face. “Show me to the glass. Hurry. I’m thirsting. I’m thirsting again already.”
It had begun, this was no lie. In a stupor of shock I stared into the mirror. I had seen such ruined specimens as this before, but each of us is ruined in our own way, and I, for alchemical reasons I couldn’t proclaim, was a dark brown creature, the very perfect color of chocolate, with remarkably white opal eyes set with reddish-brown pupils. The nipples of my chest were black as raisins. My cheeks were painfully gaunt, my ribs perfectly defined beneath my shiny skin, and the veins, the veins that were so full of sizzling action, stood like ropes along my arms and the calves of my legs. My hair, of course, had never seemed so lustrous, so full, so much a thing of youth and natural beneficence.
I opened my mouth. I ached with thirst. All the awakened flesh sang with thirst or cursed me with it. It was as if a thousand crushed and muted cells were now chanting for blood.
“I have to have more. I have to. Stay away from me.” I hurried past Benji, who all but danced at my side.
“What do you want, what can I do? I’ll get another one.”
“No, I’ll get him for myself.” I fell on the victim and slipped loose his silk tie. I quickly undid the buttons of his shirt.
Benji fell at once to unbuckling his belt. Sybelle, on her knees, tugged at his boots.
“The gun, beware of the gun,” I said in alarm. “Sybelle, back away from him.”
“I see the gun,” she said reprovingly. She laid it aside carefully, as if it were a freshly caught fish and might flop from her hands. She peeled off his socks. “Armand, these clothes,” she said, “they’re too big.”
“Benji, you have shoes?” I asked. “My feet are small.”
I stood up and hastily put on the shirt, fastening the buttons with a speed that dazzled them.
“Don’t watch me, get the shoes,” I said. I pulled on the trousers, zipped them up, and with Sybelle’s quick fingers to help, buckled the flapping leather belt. I pulled it as tight as I could. This would do.
She crouched before me, her dress a huge flowered circle of prettiness around her, as she rolled the pant legs over my brown bare feet.
I had slipped my hands through his fancy linked shirt cuffs without ever disturbing them.
Benji threw down the black dress shoes, fine Bally pumps, never even worn by him, divine little wretch. Sybelle held one sock for my foot. Benji gathered up the other.
When I put on the coat it was done. The sweet tingling in my veins had stopped. It was pain again, it was beginning to roar, as if I were threaded with fire, and the witch with the needle pulled on the thread, hard, to make me quiver.
“A towel, my dears, something old, common. No, don’t, not in this day and age, don’t think of it.”
Full of loathing I gazed down at his livid flesh. He lay staring dully at the ceiling, the soft tiny hair in his nostrils very black against his drained and awful skin, his teeth yellow above his colorless lip. The hair on his chest was a matted swarm in the sweat of his death, and against the giant gaping slit lay the pulp that had been his heart, ah, this was the evil evidence which must be shut from the eyes of the world on general principles.
I reached down and slipped the ruins of his heart back into the cavity of his chest. I spit upon the wound and rubbed it with my fingers.
Benji gasped. “Look at it heal, Sybelle,” he cried.
“Just barely,” I said. “He’s too cold, too empty.” I looked about. There lay the man’s wallet, papers, a bag in leather, lots of green bills in a fancy silver clip. I gathered all this up. I stuffed the folded money in one pocket, and all else in the other. What else did he have? Cigarette, a deadly switchblade knife, and the guns, ah, yes, the guns.
Into my coat pockets I put these items.
Swallowing my nausea, I reached down and scooped him up, horrid flaccid white man in his pitiable silk shorts and fancy gold wristwatch. My old strength was indeed coming back. He was heavy, but I could easily heave him over my shoulder.
“What will you do, where will you go?” Sybelle cried. “Armand, you can’t leave us.”
“You’ll come back!” said Benji. “Here, gimme that watch, don’t throw away that man’s watch.”
“Sshhh, Benji,” Sybelle whispered. “You know damned good and well I’ve bought you the finest watches. Don’t touch him. Armand, what can we do now to help you?” She drew close to me. “Look!” she said pointing to the dangling arm of the corpse which hung just below my right elbow. “He has manicured nails. How amazing.”
“Oh, yeah, he always took very good care of himself,” said Benji. “You know the watch is worth five thousand dollars.”
“Hush up about the watch,” she said. “We don’t want his things.” She looked at me again. “Armand, even now you’re still changing. Your face, it’s getting fuller.”
“Yes, and it hurts,” I said. “Wait for me. Prepare a dark room for me. I’ll come back as soon as I’ve fed. I have to feed now, feed and feed to heal the scars that are left. Open the door for me.”
“Let me see if there’s anyone out there,” said Benji with a quick dutiful rush to the door.
I went out into the hallway, easily carrying the poor corpse, its white arms hanging down, swinging and banging against me just a little.
What a sight I was in these big clothes. I must have looked like a mad poetical schoolboy who had raided the thrift stores for the finest threads and was off now in fancy new shoes to search out the rock bands.
“There isn’t anyone out here, my little friend,” I said. “It’s three of the clock and the hotel’s asleep. And if reason serves me right, that’s the door of the fire stairs there, at the very end of the hall, correct? There isn’t anyone in the fire stairs either.”
“Oh, clever Armand, you delight me!” he said. He narrowed his little black eyes. He jumped up and down soundlessly on the hallway carpet. “Give me the watch!” he whispered.
“No,” I said. “She’s right. She’s rich, and so am I, and so are you. Don’t be a beggar.”
“Armand, we’ll wait for you,” said Sybelle in the doorframe. “Benji, come inside immediately.”
“Oh, listen to her now, how she wakes up! How she talks! ‘Benji, come inside,’ she says. Hey, sweetheart, don’t you have something to do just now, like perhaps play the piano?”
She gave a tiny burst of laughter in spite of herself. I smiled. What a strange pair they were. They did not believe their own eyes. But that was typical enough in this century. I wondered when they would start to see, and having seen, start screaming.
“Goodbye, sweet loves,” I said. “Be ready for me.”
“Armand, you will come back.” Her eyes were full of tears. “You promise me.”
I was stunned. “Sybelle,” I said. “What is it that women want so often to hear and wait so long to hear it? I love you.”
I left them, racing down the stairs, hefting him to the other shoulder when the weight on the one side became too hurtful. The pain passed over me in waves. The shock of the outside cold air was scalding.
“Feed,” I whispered. And what was I to do with him? He was far too naked to carry down Fifth Avenue.
I slipped off his watch because it was the only identification on him left, and almost vomiting with revulsion from my closeness to these fetid remains, I dragged him by one hand after me very fast through the back alley, and then across a small street, and down another sidewalk.
I ran into the face of the icy wind, not stopping to observe those few hulking shapes that hobbled by in the wet darkness, or to take stock of the one car that crept along on the shining wet asphalt.
Within seconds I had covered two blocks, and finding a likely alleyway, with a high gate to keep out the beggars of the night, I quickly mounted the bars and flung his carcass to the very far end of it. Down into the melting snow he fell. I was rid of him.
Now I had to have blood. There was no time for the old game, the game of drawing out those who wanted to die, those who truly craved my embrace, those in love already with the far country of death of which they knew nothing.
I had to shuffle and stumble along, the mark, in my floppy silk jacket and rolled pants, long hair veiling my face, poor dazzled kid, perfect for your knife, your gun, your fist.
It didn’t take long.
The first was a drunken, sauntering wretch who plied me with questions before he revealed the flashing blade and went to sink it into me. I pushed him up against the side of the building, and fed like a glutton.
The next was a common desperate youth, full of festering sores, who had killed twice before for the heroin he needed as badly as I needed the doomed blood inside him.