by Various
“All right,” I said, unsure of what the girl meant.
She went on her way to a room across from her parents’ and closed the door.
As I waited on the corner of two busy streets, I thought over this chance meeting. Something in me wanted that child, wanted it for my own, not as fodder, not as a toy or a thing to be owned and controlled like my mentor had kept me. Her small hands and expressive face drifted in and out of my thoughts.
Two blocks down, an old man swayed and stumbled. He looked like the usual homeless subject, one no one would miss. I didn’t particularly crave his kind this night, but a mark was a mark and an easy one was better than none at all. I pushed away from the streetlight I leaned on and started toward him. His hands buried in his coat, he staggered into the alley.
As mist, I reached him, hovering while he hacked out a foul cough, crumpled, and heaved for breath. His face rose.
I took my shape so he could see me before I stole away his soul.
Greasy gray hairs hung over his cloudy eyes. Blind.
Seating myself beside him, I placed my arm over his shoulder. I didn’t lunge at first, but sat there and listened to the soft mutterings of his madness. It stilled me. Rory died soon after feeding from a deranged man. I didn’t want that. Not yet.
He pulled his hands from his trench coat, cackling as a puppy’s face appeared from the folds. The dog yipped and growled at me.
“Take him,” the man muttered. “Found him in a dumpster. Thrown away like trash. The other two were dead. I can’t feed him. They throw them all away. Throw me away. Take him.”
I reached out.
The puppy leaped free from the man’s hold.
I cradled it in my arms and left the guy to live. Sparing someone for the first time since Karada enabled me to hope again. I kept my days in a roomy house on Fifth. The owners were on vacation for two more weeks. The dog peed on the tile. I cleaned it for lack of anything better to do. I hadn’t eaten, and I hungered still, but for the time being, I had a task. The dog needed a home. I needed a family.
A little girl needed a guardian angel for her mother.
I washed the mutt in the custom shower and held him in my lap in the corner of the tiled place, picking off fleas. The dog had huge paws and sharp, little teeth. He bit my arms time and again. I played with him afterward. Together, we ran up and down the wide hall of the house. He skidded a lot. The puppy made me laugh. I felt good. At dawn, the two of us climbed into the four-post bed and snuggled close, vampire and dog, two strange companions indeed.
I knew I couldn’t keep him. I moved too much, never in one place for long. So I took him to the place I wanted to be most, to the perfect home with the perfect family. At midnight, I entered Tommy’s apartment and crept into his daughter’s room. With a gentle shake to her shoulder, she woke. I’d left my wings in place to make the fantasy real.
“Do you like dogs?” I asked her.
“Oh yes,” she replied, her eyes big and round. She snatched him away from me, the one warmth I had, and hugged him. The dog nibbled at her ear until she squealed with delight.
“Shh,” I warned. “Don’t want to wake your mom and dad yet.”
“Will they let me keep him?”
I shrugged. “Tell your dad it’s from his guardian angel, a special gift for his little girl. Don’t tell him you saw me. You must promise, or I’ll take the dog back.”
“I promise, angel, I do. I won’t tell.”
“Good girl.” I stood. “Now get some rest. I’ll close your door so he won’t destroy the house.”
Just before I left, she asked, “Did you find Mommy’s angel yet?”
“Not yet. I’m still looking.”
I shut the door.
I should have left the apartment altogether, gone on a good long hunt and filled myself with the heat of blood and the crisp flavor of memories only passed by the theft of a soul, but I had to see my Tommy. The master bedroom door, ajar, beckoned. I gave in to my own temptation.
This night his wife’s face lay nestled on his chest, one of her arms over his abdomen.
I crept closer.
I drew my fingers to my lips, kissed them, and in a heartrending motion of irony, touched them to his lips.
He moaned.
I retreated.
At the front door as I left, I heard my name whispered in his bedroom, “Angela.”
Chills slithered along my spine. I swallowed my heart and left, vowing to stay away. I didn’t belong here. Bringing the dog was a stupid idea. I’d interfered. If I did things like this, what more would I do?
Was I becoming what my old lover had been? A stalker of children? Could I steal Tommy away from his perfect life like Rory did to me, like Karada did? I wanted to do it, I admit. I craved his kisses, his arms about me. I needed that safety, that hope.
On the rooftop of Morenci Apartments, I pondered taking my own life. I could lie on the roof until the sun claimed me. Burn away in a blistering scorch of pain until my body turned to ash and I was naught but a memory. Only the child would know me and think me a being of goodness and light. Tommy surely thought me a fickle woman who had abandoned him. My father, an unknown to me, probably didn’t think of me at all.
In all my short life, I’d never been anyone of consequence. With my chances stolen from me, I’d suffered and endured, but I felt like I had yet to live, to really taste what life meant. The possibility of eternity spanned across the red sky. I counted the few stars I could see.
Once more, I vowed not to kill. I would drink but not take life. For years I had subsisted on nothing in the mausoleum. I could train myself to live on a little more in my freedom.
I vowed that if I gave in, I would let the sun take me. And so I started over that night. I got down on my knees and prayed to God who never answered me. I asked for forgiveness for all the lives I’d taken. I asked for hope. I asked for love.
My wings enfolded me in a feathery embrace, and for the smallest of moments, I saw possibilities for me. A child longed for an angel. I must be that angel for her. I must find a way. Taking a cleansing breath, I stood and ran for the edge. I jumped high and flew, promising myself never to fall again.
Chapter Fifteen
The Dead Place
I visited Serena many nights. Most of them, I steered clear of her father’s bedroom in favor of petting the dog. She named him Mark. I don’t know why. He knew me and never barked when I made my visits. I guess three months had passed since I brought her the dog when the child asked me about her mother’s angel again.
“Why does your mother need an angel? She has you and your daddy. What more is there she needs?” I sat at the edge of the bed, one hand ruffling Mark’s fur and feeling jealous of Tommy’s wife.
“Mommy’s going to the Dead Place. She has cancer real bad. She told me to pray for her.” The little girl sniffled but refused to cry. The strength in her eyes let me know that this had been going on for a long time.
“Did she go to a doctor?” I asked, concerned.
“A lot of doctors. She took a lot of medicines that made her really sick. She doesn’t want to take them anymore. She’s tired a lot.”
“I’m sorry,” I answered, unsure yet of how to feel. My jealousy faded, replaced by a sick sense of remorse. “My mother went to the Dead Place, too. I was older than you when it happened.”
“Did you cry?” she whispered, leaning closer to me.
“Yes, I did. I had someone to look after me, though. He took care of me after my mother died. Do you want me to take care of you like that?” I didn’t mean it like Rory had, but she was scared. She needed someone. She needed an angel.
“Yes,” she said and opened her blankets to let me in. She scooted to the wall and together the two of us squeezed onto her small twin bed. “If I get scared at night, I want you to be here to protect me. After Mommy goes to the Dead Place, I want you to still visit me. I won’t have her anymore to help me tie my shoes.”
“Okay,” I pr
omised. “I can help you with that.”
Serena curled up beside me and fell asleep, one small hand on mine. I wished I could help her mother now. This child didn’t deserve to lose her mother, a woman who cared, a woman who loved her.
And Tommy didn’t deserve to lose his wife.
Before dawn, I crept into her parents’ room to stare down at Genevieve Davis. I had hated her from the moment I saw her, and I’d never even met her. She looked well enough in sleep, peaceful even. I brushed my fingers over her hair. She mumbled in her sleep. “Don’t die,” I whispered. “You can’t die yet. You’re too young. You have a daughter and a husband who needs you.”
She rolled over.
I withdrew my hand.
The sky lightened behind the curtains. It was time to go.
I flew to the west side that night. I’d taken a room in a cheap motel for a while. It was a good place to flop and it was temporary. Lying on the worn mattress in my darkened room, I wondered if being a vampire was actually not a curse. I could turn Genevieve. I could make her like me. The cancer would stop.
But what about her future?
What about Serena?
“She doesn’t need a vampire for a mother.” I pulled the blanket over myself and slipped into the darkness of sleep. Sometimes I dreamed, most times of late, I did not.
The following night I returned to Serena’s room only to find it empty. Her little closet door hung open, missing most of her dresses.
Tommy and Genevieve’s room was in disarray, the closet stripped, the bed unmade. Something had happened. I knew what it was—I felt powerless and useless. Somewhere out there, a little girl waited for a guardian angel. And I didn’t know where she could be. She needed me.
I needed to be needed.
I thumbed through a stack of medical bills on Tommy’s desk. Each one I bypassed revealed another step of his wife’s journey to the Dead Place. Scans, treatments, grim test results. She was closer to death than I had thought.
I waited in the apartment, beneath Serena’s bed. Each night no one returned I would sink lower into my sadness. My heart ached for this little family torn apart. For three weeks, no one came home. When the front door opened late one night, I expected the dog to sniff me out and lick my face. I waited for him.
But he never came.
Keys jingled and slammed against the counter in the kitchen.
My eyebrows knitted. Tommy had come home. I smelled his scent. I heard his familiar heartbeat. But he was alone. Any other time, I might have been excited over this prospect, but the pain in the silence did not bring me any joy.
Something crashed onto the floor. Pottery, a dish, I couldn’t be sure. Then another and another.
Silence again.
I edged out from beneath the bed in the little girl’s room, thinking I should leave and let him alone with his sorrow. Seeing me would do Tommy no good at all. I peered out in the hall and didn’t find him in the main room. Creeping in silence, I made my way to the front door.
The silence kept dragging out—long, empty.
I opened the front door, Tommy’s heartbeat in the back of my thoughts.
Thump-bump, thump-bump, thump-bump…silence.
I held my breath, half in and half out of the doorway, reminded of the moment our child’s heartbeat stopped.
“Tommy?” I whispered, turning.
Silence utter and complete.
I swallowed and darted down the hall to the master bedroom. He wasn’t there. Reason tried to argue that he’d probably gone out and I’d not heard him. I approached the closed bathroom door.
Silence still.
“Tommy.”
I turned the lock with my mind. It made no sense to lock the bathroom door if he was alone in the house. I opened it to see inside.
He lay face down on the floor, an empty pill bottle by his outstretched hand. On the counter by Genevieve’s basket of lipsticks, he’d left a note.
“Tommy!” I screamed.
I flipped him over.
Drool and foam laced his bottom lip. His eyes stared past me, seeing nothing. “Oh my God! No!”
My first thought was to drain him, to turn him into a vampire like me. I bowed my head, my lips inches from his neck. Rory took me without my consent. He stole me and used me as much as he cherished me.
I loved Tommy Davis. I cherished him, but I couldn’t do the same thing to him.
Sitting up, I pawed at his shirt, horrified at what I might have done. Hands pressed down on his chest. His aura remained, a blue-black mass of energy lingering around his body. He wasn’t dead, yet.
I pushed, trying to remember the rhythm I’d learned in health class so many years ago, knowing I couldn’t possibly be doing it right. I rested my ear against his chest. His lungs drew in a thick gasp of air. His heart pumped once, twice, the thrumming weak at best.
“You can’t die!” I shouted, anger replacing my fear. “You can’t leave her. Not now!”
I tore off my shirt and used it to wipe his mouth. His eyes, still wide, rolled from side to side unseeing. His heartbeat stuttered. I panicked. Paramedics might not arrive in time.
Heaving him up, I carried Tommy from the bathroom, through the hall and up the elevator to the roof. There I willed my wings to span out from my back. They were huge now, monstrous, black-feathered appendages that let me carry victims long distances without much effort when need be. His weight pressed to my chest, a slight burden to me with my unholy strength, I ran and took to the air, carrying him toward Central Hospital and what I hoped would be a second chance for him.
In the parking lot, I willed my wings to dissipate. My body reabsorbed them as I hurried toward the ambulance entrance. The sliding doors parted. A nurse gaped at me, surprised no doubt by the strange picture I made, a topless black woman with bloody streaks across her cheeks carrying in an unconscious man twice her size.
“He tried to kill himself,” I blurted. “Please, help him.”
They placed him on a stretcher and took him away from me. I stood by the admittance counter, my arms crossed over my bare chest, my heart racing, and the tears staining my face faster than I could wipe them away.
The young woman at the desk took his name. I knew his address, his parents’ names but not their phone numbers. “Richard Davis is his brother,” I told her. “He still lives in the city. He’ll be in the phone book.”
The woman nodded, reached under the counter, and slid a hospital sheet forward. “You want to cover up?” she asked in a low voice, her smile warm, her eyes revealing a perplexed curiosity.
“Yes, yes thank you.” I draped the sheet over myself and signed the form she presented.
“And your relationship to him?”
“I’m his...friend,” I said. “I haven’t seen him for years, just dropped by to see how things were.” I stared down at the floor. “His wife died of cancer a few weeks ago. I think that’s why he did this.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” the woman replied.
For hours, I waited with no word. When twilight came, I gave my name to the new attendant at the desk and the phone number to Tommy’s apartment. I couldn’t risk sleeping in the hospital.
Starved and frightened for Tommy’s life, I accosted a man outside the apartment in the backstreets. I think he may have been the janitor. His warm blood filled me. Just at the edge, a place of lust I knew well when feeding, I stopped, sealed his wound, and stole away his memory of me.
In Serena’s room, I slept beneath the bed once more, my dreams turned to nightmares. In them I wailed inside the mausoleum, imprisoned for all time. No one heard my cries. No one came to rescue me.
The phone rang.
I crawled out to answer it.
“Hello?”
“Angela? Is it really you?”
The voice sounded familiar, almost like Tommy’s but rougher.
“Um, yeah, sorry. I was sleeping. Who’s this?”
“It’s Rich.”
“Richard? God, Richar
d. Are you at the hospital? Did they call you? How’s Tommy?”
“He’s all right. Stabilized.” He cleared his throat. “Um, geez, Angela, how the hell did…I mean I don’t understand what happened.”
“Where’s Serena?” I asked, remembering my promise to her.
“She’s with my parents. We haven’t told her anything yet. Um, I didn’t know you knew about Serena. I thought my brother hadn’t heard from you since he found out you were pregnant.”
I didn’t know what to say, what lies to offer for having left Tommy and made him worry for so long. “I’m sorry,” I murmured. “So sorry for everything. I didn’t want to hurt him.”
“Yeah, I didn’t think you would. Look, so, um, do I have a niece or a nephew?”
It still hurt, even after all this time. “I lost the baby.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. You didn’t know.” I sat down on the couch and stared at the blank TV. “So, did he wake up yet?”
“No, not yet. I’m staying with him. How’d you get him here, Angela? One of the nurses told me a bunch of crap about a half-naked woman carrying him.”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Well, God, I found him in his bathroom. He was unconscious. I—I did chest compressions…”
Someone else’s voice sounded close by Richard.
“Hang on,” he said and muffled the mouthpiece.
“Hey, Angela, do you think you can come down here?”
I peeked out the window. The sun had just set. “Yeah, I’ll be right there. Is he…”
“He’s awake. He’s asking for you.”
Chapter Sixteen
Reruns
The hospital smelled like bleach, a faint odor which always reminded me of the day after my mom died. Richard held my hand and guided me down the long corridor of rooms. He looked different with his hair cropped short and a goatee. He looked older. “So, um, what do you do now? Still in a band?” I asked.
He chuckled. “No, nothing like that. I manage a bookstore.”
“Oh. That’s a career change.”
“Yeah.”
We walked along in awkward silence before stopping at a closed door. “Here it is. You ready for this?” he asked.