Hunger

by Karen E. Taylor

  “He’s ours now, my little one,” the cynical voice in my mind prodded. “Don’t wait too long.”

  I did not. So desperate was I for this man that I issued last call almost immediately. My invitation to him to stay and help close up was met with unabashed approval from his friends, and soon we were alone.

  I locked the door, dimmed the lights, and walked back across the room. He joined me behind the bar as I was counting the money in the register. “Aren’t you afraid I might steal that?” he questioned with a crooked smile as he helped himself to another glass of port.

  I laughed, low and sensually, as I put the night’s profits in the safe. “There’s not enough here to even be tempting.” I gave him a warm, appraising glance. “And somehow I don’t think that you’re interested in my money.”

  “You sure are right about that, babe.” He crossed over to me and put an arm around my waist. “When you’re finished here, let’s go back to my place.” He mentioned the name of his hotel and I nodded my agreement, leaning closer to him.

  His grip tightened. “I don’t think I caught your name . . .”

  “Dorothy . . . ah, just Dorothy. And yours?”

  “Oh, I get it. No last names, right? Then I’m Robert, Robbie to my friends.”

  “It’s wonderful to meet you, Robbie. You’ll never know how much.”

  “But I’ll bet I can guess.” He pulled me closer and kissed me; my teeth grazed his lip, drawing one intoxicating drop of blood. I savored it and probed with my tongue for more. My hands were wrapped about his waist. I slid my nails slowly up his spine and he shivered, took his mouth away from mine, and looked down at me.

  “God.” He was breathing heavily, and small beads of sweat appeared on his brow. “You really want this bad, don’t you?”

  I moaned in answer, and his face grew fierce, full of passion. His hands grasped my waist and he lifted me onto the narrow counter behind the bar, pushing against me forcefully and insistently until I encircled his body with my legs.

  He kissed me again and slid his hand down the back of my jeans, kneading the flesh of my lower back. His skin was so warm, so alive. I had to have him now.

  “Wait,” the voice inside urged. “Let’s play a little first.”

  “I don’t want to wait,” I protested aloud, and reached up to loosen his tie and unbutton his shirt.

  “Neither do I.” He lifted my sweater over my head and threw it on the floor. While he nuzzled my breasts, he struggled unsuccessfully to untie my apron. With an exasperated sigh he spun it around on my waist and began to unfasten my jeans. I pulled his shirt off and he ground his groin into mine. Putting my tongue to his skin, I traced a delicate path to his neck and gently nibbled there while he eased my pants down around my knees.

  There was a pounding in my head and my gums tingled, signaling the growth of my canines. I was ready; it had been too long, entirely too long. The pounding increased, louder and more demanding.

  Abruptly, he pulled away; I lost my balance and lurched up against him.

  “What was that?” His voice was angry, suspicious.

  “Nothing,” I purred, wrapping my arms tightly around his neck. “Come back to me, make love to me.”

  “No way,” he said, wresting himself away from me and putting his clothing back into order. “There’s someone at the door.”

  “They’ll go away. I need you, Robbie.”

  “Forget it.”

  I was trembling with my unsatisfied need. Quickly I fastened my jeans, put my sweater back on, and walked over to him, where he was putting on his coat. Gently, I laid my hand on his arm and rubbed my head on his sleeve. “Robbie, please, what’s wrong? We can go somewhere else if you like, please . . . you can’t leave me like this.”

  The knocking at the door continued, more urgent now.

  “Nothing doing, babe. I’ve heard about this scam before. How much would it have taken to pay off that guy out there—the witness to your ‘rape’—five hundred, maybe an even thousand? No thanks, you may be the sexiest bitch I’ve seen in this country, but you’re still too rich for my blood.” He pushed me away from him and opened the door. “She’s all yours, pal,” he said to the figure standing hesitantly in the doorway. “I barely touched her.”

  “Damn,” I swore under my breath as the door slammed. The little bell jangled, discordant in my ears. I rubbed my hands along my jeans. “Well?” I addressed the man whose shadowed face was unrecognizable, even to me. “This had better be damned important.”

  “Deirdre?” The voice sounded embarrassed, and vaguely familiar. “What was that all about?” He stepped forward into the dim light of the room.

  Instantly, I knew who he was—the mysterious Yank visitor that Pete had told me about, whose name and number were on a crumpled piece of paper in my apron pocket. And it was not Mitch. Disappointed at that realization, I understood that my dread at meeting him again would have been overruled by my strong desire to see him, hold him, make love to him one more time.

  “Hello, Chris,” I said to the man who had inherited Mitch’s features and build. He had aged in two years, I thought; lines of worry creased his face and he looked like he hadn’t slept in weeks.

  “Deirdre, it is you, isn’t it? I barely recognize you.”

  “Yes, it is I, in the flesh,” I said with no trace of a smile. Were my changes so apparent, even in the darkness? My hair was still almost black, but I had let it grow to its original length. That could not have made much of a difference to him. And although I had not aged, I knew that my mirror revealed me to be harder, coarser, debased somehow by my inhuman instincts.

  “Your eyes look funny, they’re . . . well, they’re almost glowing.” I could hear fear in his voice, a reluctance that had never been there before.

  “Don’t be silly, Chris. The light in here is deceptive.” I reached over and turned on one of the switches behind the bar. “There now,” I said reassuringly, squinting slightly against the glare, “is that better?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.” He paused for a moment, and when he continued, his tone was slightly sullen. “I hope I didn’t interrupt something important. That guy sure shot out of here like a bullet. And do you always wear your apron backward?”

  I reached down to my waist, twitching the apron around to its proper position, but ignored the unspoken questions about Robbie’s presence. “Would you like a drink? On the house, of course.” I smiled at him, but he refused to meet my eyes.

  “Sure, why not? I’ll have a beer.”

  I motioned him to a table. “Sit down,” I said, opening two bottles of beer from the refrigerator, “and I’ll join you.”

  He watched me intently as I walked out from behind the bar and sat down next to him. Without a word he took the bottle from me and drank, quickly and furtively, as if to fortify himself against some dire event. His hands, I noticed with surprise, were shaking. But then, so were mine.

  “Now, maybe you would like to tell me how you came to be here and how you knew where to find me. Did your father send you?” The emotion I tried to disguise in my voice was not just frustration over the interrupted feeding.

  “No.” His voice sounded choked, overhung with anger and grief. “No, he didn’t send me. But I found your address while I was sorting through his papers and knew that I should come to see you . . .”

  My heart sank. He was dead. I could feel it. I could see it in Chris’s face. Jesus, I wailed inside, Mitch is dead. He died and I could have stopped it, but I didn’t. I had the power to keep him with me forever, and I did nothing.

  “Mitch is dead.” My voice, flat and toneless, did nothing to express the despair that the stating of those words caused.

  “Oh, no,” Chris was quick to protest. “It’s not that, honest. It’s just that, well, he’s bad off, Deirdre. I don’t know what’s wrong, nobody does. But I think he’s dying.” He took one more drink of his beer, then set the bottle back on the table softly. His eyes finally held mine and his voice, so much
like Mitch’s, fell gently on my ears.

  “And I think that only you can save him. You must save him, Deirdre. Come back to him.”

  Chapter 2

  “So”—I motioned Chris to a seat on the dark-patterned sofa in what I once would have called my parlor—“what exactly is wrong with him?”

  My voice wavered on the last word, and he looked up at me with a start. He had been occupied in studying the room; I could almost see it through his eyes. The furnishings were pleasant enough, though somber in tone—the room large and well-proportioned, the windows draped in heavy burgundy velvet. But the room itself was impersonal, no photographs or mementoes were displayed, as if its inhabitant had no life. It was a cold room, silent and dreary, like the rest of the house, with the feel, if not the actual appearance, of emptiness and decay. A fitting residence for one of my kind, I thought, but gave him a small, forced laugh.

  “Pretty dreary, isn’t it?”

  He shrugged. “No, it’s very nice, really. Just not what I imagined.” Chris still seemed uncomfortable with me or with his mission, I couldn’t tell which. Perhaps it was just embarrassment at meeting his father’s lover after two years, at being alone with me, in this house, lacking Mitch’s presence.

  I did the best I could to make him feel at home. “You know, Chris, I hurried you out of the bar and over here without giving you a chance for another drink, or maybe a meal. Are you hungry?”

  He gave me a quick smile, reminiscent of the younger man I knew. “Yeah, you know me, always hungry. How about you—”

  He stopped abruptly and the smile dropped from his face, replaced by a painful grimace.

  I covered his embarrassment. “I haven’t been shopping for food in several days, but I could probably find something . . .”

  “Deirdre, you don’t have to do this.”

  “But you’re my guest; I want to make you comfortable.”

  “No, I mean you don’t have to lie to me, pretend to be something you aren’t.” He look at me then, and the knowledge of what I was seemed to reflect in his eyes.

  I took a few steps back, retreating closer to the doorway, not wanting to threaten him in any way. “So, he told you. And made you believe it.”

  He jumped up from the couch, his hands clenched. “Yes, I believed it. I had to believe it. It’s true, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, Chris, unfortunately, it is all true. But I fail to see how any of this will help your father. You say he is dying; can you tell me why?”

  “Dammit, Deirdre, don’t you understand?” He screamed his anger at me, and I withdrew from him further. “I already told you, no one knows what’s wrong. If anyone knew why, they would stop it.” Suddenly his anger was replaced with sadness; he sat back down on the couch with a flop and lowered his voice. “Shit, the last time I saw him, he didn’t even know who I was. Just sat there in the crazy ward, humming some old song, in his damned institutional pajamas, his damned institutional slippers. He won’t even talk about it anymore; it’s like he’s already given up, already let them devour him, from the inside out.”

  “Who?”

  He gave me a cool, intent stare so like his father’s, I wanted to cry.

  “The ones like you, of course. The other vampires.”

  He fell silent and rested his head in his hands, rubbing his eyelids. When he finally looked up at me, his face was flushed. He had said the word with such vehemence that it seemed an obscenity echoing in the room. Perhaps it was obscene to him; it was to me. I stood within the doorway and regarded him solemnly.

  “There are no others like me. There was only Max, and he’s dead.” Even as I said it, my voice wavered and the doubts I had felt over the past two years began to reassert themselves. Was Max really dead or had he somehow survived? The thought was absurd. I knew he had died; he had died by my hand. Had I not felt his life drain from him, slowly and painfully? His presence in my current existence was spiritual only. My dreams and visions of him were merely mental aberrations, a guilty conscience, my own self-induced punishment for his murder.

  Tense and nervous, I gripped the doorframe, my nails gouging out pieces of the woodwork. “No,” I said now with more conviction. “Max is dead and buried. He can’t be the cause.”

  Chris wasn’t listening to me, wrapped up as he was in his own thoughts. “Dad used to visit his grave, did you know that?” He gave me no time to respond, but continued bitterly. “But how could you know? You very conveniently disappeared off the face of the earth. Oh, I know why you did it.” He gave me a quelling look to forestall the protest I had begun to make. “Even Dad said he understood your feelings. I guess you can justify anything if you try hard enough.”

  He paused as a distracted look entered his eyes and a sad smile of reminiscence crossed his face. “He used to go there every day and read the tombstone you so generously provided. He even made sure that your daily gift of roses was received. Dad always said that as long as those kept coming, he knew you were still alive and might come back someday.”

  I edged slowly into the room and sat down in a chair facing him. He barely noticed my presence. Nervously, I plunged a hand into my apron pocket, came upon the half-smoked pack of cigarettes, and lit one without thinking, simply to give my trembling hands something to do. Chris looked over at me, and his small smile disappeared.

  “All those roses for that dead son of a bitch, and nothing for my father, not even a letter or a call. He loved you, Deirdre, loved you more than you’ll ever know or deserve, and you gave him nothing.”

  Nothing. I sat and considered his words as I smoked my cigarette. How simple the situation must seem to him from his perspective of youth. Reality was much more complicated than Chris wanted to see; the moral and ethical reasons that drove me to this country, the decisions of life, death, and immortality were more important than my petty loves.

  “Love be damned.” Max’s voice rang inside my head. “We’re hungry. Take him,” the seductive tones urged. “He’s young, healthy, and would make excellent sport. His blood is rich, his skin tender. We must feed now.”

  I crushed out my cigarette and stood up, moving slowly toward Chris. He raised his eyes to mine, and was caught in my gaze. I walked over to him, gripped his shirt-sleeves, and pulled him off the couch. We were so close that I could see the throbbing of the veins in his throat, smell the salty odor of his sweat and blood.

  “Yes,” the voice hissed. “Yes.”

  His eyes began to glaze over. “Chris”—the whispered words seemed to force themselves from my throat as I reached one hand up to stroke his cheek—“did your father not warn you of vampires? Or are all Greers born idiots, thinking to tame the supernatural with their talk of love? It didn’t work with your father and it will not work for you. And you, my dear boy, will pay the penalty he owes me.”

  That dark voice, echoing in this room, startled me. Did I speak the words? I couldn’t tell from Chris’s appearance, for although his eyes were opened wide in terror, his gaze was uncomprehending. His fright could easily be due to my proximity or his contact with the inhumanity of my stare, which suspended him—a prisoner to my hunger. With an extreme effort of will I drew my eyes away from him and closed them tightly, to seal the death and corruption inside.

  As his labored breathing began to return to normal, I stood, blind and swaying, still holding on to his shirt. Finally I eased my eyes open and caught his bewildered stare. “No,” I said, shaking my head, my voice muffled slightly by the growth of my teeth. “No, I will not.”

  I released him, and moving to the window, pulled open the heavy draperies. Just a glimpse of the dark night streets helped to soothe my nerves and calm my internal tremors. I knew then that it was not just Mitch who was being devoured from within. Perhaps with my return, we could both be healed.

  “Deirdre?” He sounded hesitant and confused, obviously with no memory of what had just occurred. “What’s wrong?”

  I pressed my hands against the cool glass and sighed. “Nothing, Chr
is. Do you have a return ticket?”

  His answering nod was reflected in the window; I turned around and gave him a weak smile. “Cash it in. I’ll make arrangements for us both.”

  “Then you’ll come back? You’ll help Dad?” The sadness that had haunted him all evening was replaced suddenly by a look of hope, of happiness.

  I wished fervently that I could capture some of his youthful optimism. “Yes,” I said deliberately, “although I can’t promise that I’ll be able to help or cure him. But I will come back.”

  I was not sufficiently recovered or prepared for his headlong rush across the room and his exuberant embrace. “Thank you,” he said into my ear. “Thank you.”

  I took a deep breath and held it, then pushed him away from me, so quickly that he stumbled, grasping the top of a chair for support.

  “Never, never do that again,” I spat out at him through my bared teeth.

  His eyes widened at the sight of my canines, and he paled. “I’m sorry . . . I didn’t think . . .”

  “You had better start thinking.” My voice was harsher than I intended, and he cringed. “You interrupted my feeding tonight and I’m hungry, very hungry. You must understand who you have recruited for your cause. I am not an angel of mercy, but an angel of death. Don’t forget that, ever.”

  He nodded and looked at me helplessly. “What should I do?”

  “Tonight, go back to your hotel room and lock your door. Get a good night’s sleep and call me tomorrow at sunset. We’ll make our plans then.”

  He walked to the door, removed his coat from the rack, and put it on. The dejected slope of his shoulders wrung my heart. I hadn’t meant to be so hard on him.