Best New Vampire Tales (Vol.1)
Page 26
“The light is the force of mind. Ultimately it is the only light we have in this darkling universe. It is my light.”
I turned to face her. She had removed her veil. I took her in my arms and we began to waltz to silent music. How can I describe her face, a face that has the beauty of a thousand moonlit nights? Or the eyes of a blue not of your earth, for it is such a blue that can only be imagined? Or her hyacinthine black hair, whose luster suggests another spectrum––an anti-light whose unknown colors could only be spread by a prism whose angles are unknown to man?
All of this and so much more was she.
“None of this is real, is it?” I asked.
“No. Not in the way you mean real,” she said. “This is imagination alone. This is the insubstantial. Yet alter anything here, and those things in that other world which are symbols of here are altered proportionally.”
We waltzed and waltzed, stone walls and dark windows spun.
“I am the goddess of this place. I am the source and the Form of all dream lovers. I am real as long as I am loved.”
“You are Inanna?”
“I have any name you want to give me.”
“And how long would you keep that name? How long would you be faithful?”
“I will be faithful as long as you live, devoted to you absolutely. My love and lust would be as absolute as could be imagined by anyone, anywhere. For I am the Form of the dream lover.”
“And when I died?’
“I would spirit your body here, to lay in the endless lands of insubstantiality. Your bones would join the millions, and I would become the old woman wandering the earth till another was chosen. One that could see me and my illusions.”
“Would you remember me, out of your millions of lovers?”
“No.” she said, and I could feel my sleeping twitch with agony, but I did not awaken. She continued, “No, but while we loved the rain of inspiration would fall upon your race. While you struggled to add another line to my poem, a thousand poets would be born. While your blood itself boiled away the idea of Love would become more perfect.”
I awoke and I thought of her. I pictured myself crazed and bloodless, trying to live one more day so that I could dream one more night.
I could put it aside. I could throw away the microfilm and delete my computer files. I hadn’t taken a vacation in a couple of years. I could go to Vegas, blow some of that money I’d socked away since my divorce. I could get drunk and go to a cathouse. I could …
I wasn’t even fooling myself. Tomorrow I’d shave and bathe, and put on a clean suit. I’d get up early so I could catch breakfast at a restaurant downtown where I’d have beef steak and eggs Florentine to build up my blood.
And I would read Henry Salt’s unfinished sonnet and start to work on the fourteenth line.
(For Lilith)
Flotsam
SCOTT HARPER
I once thought I controlled time, could make it move and flow according to the caprices of my will. Now, time has become an enemy, more cold and brutal and implacable than any I have faced in my long existence.
My limbs feel like iron, cold morning iron that has endured a chilly alpine night complete with frost and snow. Face down, bobbing along in the waves like the jettison I have become, disoriented and imprisoned by the running waters of the ocean. The days are the worst, of course; the unrelenting sun searing through the remnants of my once-fine clothing, crisping the dead skin underneath. The onset of night brings with it some minor relief, but my body weakens and slowly rots with each passing day that I do not feed. My hair has fallen out. The few brief glimpses I catch of my hands and forearms reveal a body reduced to little more than an emaciated patchwork of burnt, leathery skin. Gulls and other carrion feeders have gathered in the waters around me, pecking away small pieces of flesh from my neck and back, while fish nibble away at my stomach from underneath.
I try to scream, but have no breath. Rank seawater fills my mouth, invades my throat and lungs. I attempt to swim, but have no strength. I fancy myself one of the damned in Dante’s ninth circle, frozen solid and unmoving in a lake. I can vaguely recall a time when others labeled me damned as well, people I then considered foolish and beneath my notice. Now, as I am tossed about on the waves, I wonder who was the fool really was?
Consciousness ebbs and flows during the day like the tides. An old, familiar hunger not fed in days accompanies the cold. It fills my every waking moment and haunts my dreams …
* * *
I lie back in the bed as she leans over me, her skin so white it glows, absorbing light, an aura of darkness surrounding her. She mounts me with cat-like grace, her tight stomach brushing mine. Her small breasts hang down and rest on my chest, the softness of her touch exciting me. I breathe rapidly, inhaling her scent, almost panting. Her face floats toward me with blue eyes both cold and hungry, her black hair streaming behind. I reach up to satisfy my lust, but she brushes my hands away with casual ease. She is in charge of this moment, my life in her hands.
I hold my breath as she caresses my neck, stroking my fevered pulse with the lightest touch. I feel her kiss, intimate and deep and deadly, on the same place she has been caressing. My eyes flare open and for a brief moment the world becomes more intense, all my senses more heightened than they had been through my whole life of living with them. A final, all-consuming sensory overload. My body is slowly dying, drained of life and blood, and this intensity represents my mind’s way of clinging to life’s memories. I let it wash over me. Her lips are so cold; not smooth as I expect but more scaly like a fish. They grate on my skin and pull away. I feel it again and jerk away, startled by swarms of silver flashes spinning all around me, diving in again to pick, pick, pick at my flesh. Not my maker, but my reality …
* * *
The gulls scatter as I feebly heave my body about, the blood reveries of a dead man temporarily interrupted. The birds return to their feast as soon as my energy gives out and my struggles cease. My mind wanders, lulled as the sun’s heat inexorably cooks my brain. Reality and recollection, substance and dream mix and become one.
* * *
Images flash before me. Some are rapid and easily dismissed. Others I choose to draw out and explore further, turning over and over, looking for new angles of incite, like rereading a familiar book on a lazy Sunday afternoon. I am transformed, physically and emotionally, no longer a discarded, emaciated skeleton bobbing hopelessly on the water. Fine clothing adorns me, indicative of class and breeding. Long, chestnut brown hair flows down over the wide shoulders of a muscular physique. My skin is pale, but neither sallow nor thin, my lips full and red. And my eyes … they burn with a fierce red intensity, a sureness of power no living man could ever duplicate.
She is there as well, of course. She becomes my dark mother, bringing me across the plane of death with care and precision, my heart stilled, lungs empty, my lifeblood coating her lips. She returns the blood to me, mixed with her own, revitalizing a corpse shell, her willpower grasping my departing soul and refusing to let it go.
Her eyes fill my vision as I rise from the bed that has become a grave and embrace her with unnatural fervor, our first blood kiss, a clash of lip and fang and tongue. She pledges between moans to school me in the ways of her night world. I moan in return. My sharp nails tear into the skin of her back as I feel truly alive for the first time.
Time becomes a vast whirlpool, images of unlife tossed about and jumbled together without chronology. I see myself accepting my new form of existence, coping with and reveling in it. Altering my body, taking to the sky with wings as dark as the night, soaring underneath the moon’s brilliance. Chasing the slow human prey she finds, more deadly than any African lion, knocking them to the ground with frightening ease and feasting on them. Engaging witch hunters and churchmen in battles of wit and intrigue and mortal pawns spanning decades. Sparring with wolfmen for supremacy of the woods, engaging the fierce beasts in combat, tooth to tooth, talon to talon. Noting her look of ap
proval and pride as I raise high the head of a loup-garou, his animal blood coating my proud fang teeth.
Some of the memories exhilarate me and are welcomed. Others come unsolicited, like a tax collector or a spurned lover at the front door, causing uncertainty and angst.
We are back in the same room, her room, where she sired me. I see her move away from me, rage and disappointment vying for control of her features, her face turning away.
“I’m sorry,” I say, but bloody tears have already appeared in her eyes.
“How could you?” she accuses. “I made you to be with me always.” She looks at the bed that stands between us, the same bed where we made love for the first time all those years ago. The bed where I gave up my humanity to become something both more and less than a man.
“I no longer need you. I’ve outgrown you. You limit me.” The words come out harshly, but the thing I’ve become has no compassion, has no care save for his own needs. I feel neither gratitude nor hate toward her. “I’m leaving.”
My words enrage her further. She reacts uncharacteristically, striking out, smashing the nightstand like so much kindling. I ignore her outburst.
“I’ve booked passage on a ship leaving tomorrow. I’ve made arrangements for my belongings to be delivered prior to my departure. There’s no need for any involvement on your part. And you don’t need to know where I’m going.”
She laughs, her fang teeth unsheathed, the blood tears streaking down her face. “Have you learned nothing in your time with me? You share my blood. I’ll always know where you are. The sea is our enemy. We cross it only when we must, and only after taking the necessary precautions. Storms are at their worst at this time of year, and you cannot feed. The shipping companies keep very accurate manifests. Missing passengers will be noticed and cause unrest.”
“And still I will leave,” I say matter-of-factly.
“And without me you will die. Again,” she warns. I laugh and leave.
* * *
I never knew what caused the ship to sink. I was awakened in my daytime slumber by a thunderous crash, the movement of the ship smashing my coffin and heaving me out onto the cargo deck floor. I struggled to consciousness underneath a rising mountain of water, being pushed and pulled about by inexorable icy currents. I fought back with all the unnatural strength at my command, but soon found myself exhausted by the elemental purity of the ocean waters. After a short period of time I floated to the surface, weak and spent and unmoving, just another of the hundreds of other carcasses scattered amongst the ship’s wreckage, littering the silent sea.
I wait now for the bliss of final obliteration. A dead damned thing, I cannot drown, nor can I burn entirely while half submerged in water. The gulls and fish consume my flesh at an agonizingly slow pace. Only the complete destruction of my remains will free what little remains of my soul.
There was a time when I sought to avoid death at all costs, when I found the concept of my own mortality alarming. I eventually went to the extent of making love to a dead creature in order to avoid that mortality, allowing her to drink my blood and ensnare my soul. Now I would welcome the finality of true death. Perhaps, if there indeed is a deity, it has chosen to extract recompense from me for all the lives of its creations I have snuffed out over these many years. If so, I can only begin to imagine how long this unliving hell will continue.
At first I do not notice the tugging on my boots, caught up as I am in my dazed reveries. A stronger pull wakes me from my languor. I note briefly that the sun has set, the night’s coolness slightly invigorating my tired frame. A small measure of comfort, a familiar affinity with the darkness sets in.
A powerful grip attaches to my legs just below the calves and pulls me with astonishing force below the waves. I both feel and hear the bones break. The grip takes me downward for a short period of time, then releases. A sense of the utter, terrifying depth of the ocean below envelops me. I see the colossal form of a shark as it swims out from underneath, its black body large enough to eclipse the moonlight. It rounds with extraordinary swiftness for such a large creature. I see its clown eyes set just above an enormous mouth lined with row after row of deadly teeth. The leviathan’s jaws encircle my torso with unerring precision, shattering ribs and puncturing skin. It begins to dive. I feel the crushing pressure of the ocean increase as the beast swims deeper and deeper.
I feel no fear at this point, having died once before already. A portion of the man that remains buried deep within this undead corpse wishes to be consumed, to finally end this nightmare existence. The shark’s penetrating teeth remind me of my human death beneath the teeth of my maker. A trail of black ichor seeps from my torso wounds, trailing upward behind the shark’s tail. The creature’s eyes are closed as it begins to shake me in its immense jaws.
Ancient survival instincts come to the fore, strengthened by a fevered desire to prevent my maker’s dire predictions from coming true. Despite my weakness, despite the suffocating weight of the water, I summon the strength to dig my hands, now adorned with black claws, into the fleshy area around the shark’s gills. I begin to methodically tear chunks of red flesh from the huge creature.
The shark reacts predictably to the pain, opening wide its massive maw. The wake pushes me out of the beast’s jaws. I manage to hang on by one hand to an open wound I have inflicted as the shark dives deeper, attempting to escape. I plant both hands into the wound and pull. The tough hide and muscle give way with frightening ease. Blood fills the water, blinding me. My lips pull back in a mirthless smile, teeth exposed.
I bury my face in the wound, gulping down seawater and the shark’s gamy life fluids. My tongue digs deep into the meat and gristle, my throat swallows, greedy for more. The ice that has invaded my body dissipates some as strength returns. I am overcome by a steadily increasing sense of invigoration and repletion as I continue to vacuum out the beast’s lifeblood. I fail to notice as the shark eventually slows its dive, stops, then begins to float upside down.
The shark’s life energy has become my own. My burnt, emaciated skin has healed and become whole, hair now covering my head. Strength and power flood now muscular limbs and torso. I now am no longer a corpse, but a man. A man with a name.
Zecheriah. My name is Zecheriah.
The knowledge does me little good, for despite my newfound strength the sea still imprisons me. The shark has floated to the surface, now belly up. I manage to push my head out of the water and attempt scramble up onto the top of the corpse, but find little purchase.
Boundless rage fills my heart. Still unable to escape this torment. To have the raw power to tear apart a giant killing machine, but at the same time be unable to pull myself a short distance out of water? Alive, but not truly alive. Such were the inexplicable contradictions of the “life” I had chosen. Still unable to put the lie to my maker’s words of warning. I scream again. This time air fills my dead lungs, and my cries travel unanswered into the night.
I begin to wonder if I can truly can die. Perhaps at some point I will sink to the bottom, paralyzed by cold and disoriented, but conscious … forever. The strength of the shark’s blood is short-lived, sucked out by the icy running water. Confusion settles in, periods of lucidity become shorter and shorter, intertwined with memories of an undying woman.
I am aroused from my stupors by the thunderous echo of a gunshot. A bloodless wound opens up on the shark’s white belly. I hear male voices speaking behind me and attempt to twist my head to see their source. More gunshots. This time my body bucks under the impact, shots tearing through my waterlogged torso. I feel sharp metal slam through my back and push out from my chest. I am hauled unceremoniously away from the dead shark, out of the water and onto the deck of as ship.
I find myself on an antiquated wooden vessel, the planks and railings caked in grime and sea salt. A gibbous moon shines over masts outfitted with flat sails, as there are no drafts in the early evening. Dark, malodorous forms surround me. Their dress and mannerisms suggest they
are brigands of some sort. Drawn to carnage like vultures to carrion, they have begun looting the corpses left in the wake of my ship’s disaster. Perhaps they were the cause of the wreck. I make out at least ten of them, armed with an array of knives, swords, clubs, and firearms. A large hook attached to a long wooden pole pierces my torso. I have been gaffed like a common fish.
A massive African with a scarred, heavily muscled physique approaches me. He pins my head to the deck, a boot thrust into my neck, and extracts the gaff with a wet sucking sound. Two of his colleagues approach. Thinking me dead, they rifle through the remains of my clothing.
The fire inside me is rekindled. Anger about my condition. Hatred for my maker. Rage against the recent indignities I’d been forced to endure. These and other frustrations explode at once as I retaliate with inhuman ferocity. Within the span of a heartbeat the throats of the pickpockets are ruptured in a spray of blood and sundered windpipe. The other brigands attack. I feel the impact of blows from fists and clubs, ignore cuts and thrusts from knives and swords. I become a virtual hurricane, sweeping through the pirates in an orgy of shattered skulls, broken necks, and torn-out hearts. One brave soul points a pistol at my head and fires. White-hot pain floods my vision as the shot shatters my skull, sending a mist of black ichor into the air. I stumble but quickly recover as the wound heals almost instantaneously, bones knitting, flesh reforming. Her blood has made me strong, ungodly resilient. I grab the man by the front of his oily shirt, lifting him effortlessly into the air with but a single hand, and sling him over the rail. He screams as he is torn apart by a horde of smaller sharks, newly arrived and feeding on the remains of the one I had killed.