by Heidi Lowe
The penny dropped, and it made the loudest clang. The pallid face. The speed. The strength. Bringing morts back to her mansion. Morts... mortals!
“You're one of them, aren't you?” I spat, pulling away from her. I put distance between us, but it never felt like enough. “A vampire.” I knew it even without her confirmation. A sinking feeling in my stomach came and wouldn't shift. How could someone technically dead be so beautiful?
“Lissa–”
“Back the fuck off.” I held up crossed fingers in front of her, but this only made her smile. I wished she wouldn't smile like that. I wanted to hate her.
“You've been watching too much television. I bet you're going to throw holy water on me next, or pieces of garlic. You should know that stuff is nonsense.”
“You touch me, you dead freak, and I'll ram a wooden stake through your heart.”
Now she laughed, shaking her head with amusement. “You should probably read up on your vampire lore. Look, I'm not going to hurt you. If I wanted to hurt you I wouldn't have brought you to my home and nursed you back to health. You're welcome, by the way.”
I felt around on my neck for bite marks, any dried specks of blood. Who knew what she'd done to me while I was sleeping?
“I didn't do that either, so you can stop checking. I only take from willing givers.” It was as if she could read my mind. Though I knew that, at least, was fiction. I was glad she couldn't, because she would have known how much I hated her just for being what she was. She would also have known how much I desired her, which would have been far worse.
“It doesn't make you any less of a monster.”
She didn't respond, though she gave the tiniest flinch at being called a monster. That baffled me. I imagined that she had been called far worse in her time.
“How did you know I was in danger? There was no one else out.”
“I was close by. In the right place at the right time.” She shrugged as though it was nothing.
“I'm not going to thank you. For all the crap your kind has put us through, you owe it to us to do something good once in a while.” I knew I sounded like a grade A asshole, but the anger at wanting her and wanting to kill her was impairing my thoughts. That and the throbbing in my head. I needed to lie down again, but I wouldn't return to her bed, not now that I knew it belonged to one of them.
“I wasn't looking for a thank you. I didn't do it for that.”
“Then why the hell did you? And don't tell me that it's because you're one of the good ones, because there's no such thing. You're all evil, incapable of being good. There must have been something in it for you.”
“I'm going to call you a cab now.” I could tell that I had gotten to her, by the agitation she was doing her best to keep hidden.
“Yeah, you do that.”
I waited for the cab outside the house, away from her. Away from her beauty. It was one of the hardest things I'd ever had to do.
“Hil?” I called when I let myself into my apartment. It was in darkness.
I switched on every light in the place because it made me feel less alone somehow. Our electricity bill was always high because of it.
Hilarie wasn't there. Of course. I found a note stuck to the refrigerator under a magnet of a bowl of grapes. Doing a double shift tonight. See you in the morning. Love Hil.
When we weren't arguing over nothing, this was the way we communicated. An impersonal note here, a text message there. If we could have had sex through notes left around the house, we would have done that too.
I slumped onto the couch – the hideous beige one that cost an arm and a leg – depressed but not surprised that my girlfriend of two-and-a-half years didn't even know something had happened to me. She was too busy, or too disinterested to know or care. I could have been dead, missing for five days, and all I would have received was a note on the refrigerator.
Or maybe she'd tried to call me to find out why I'd been gone for more than twenty-four hours without telling her?
My phone. I didn't have it. I remembered then that I'd seen my purse back at the Posey Mansion, but in my haste to leave I'd forgotten it. A reason to see the beautiful English vampire again. Would she track me down and bring it to me, or did I have to go back to her to retrieve it? Or would she have already thrown my stuff out because I'd been mean to her? And why hadn't she fed on me? Wasn't that what they did? Wasn't my blood good enough for her? Her girlfriend/business partner/jealous acquaintance had called me trash; did Jean think of me that way too?
I should have been rattled, unsettled by the fact that I'd come close to being raped and probably killed, but as I sat on that horrible, squeaky leather couch, all I could think about was Jean Posey, the beautiful vampire who had saved my life. Someone from a race I had hated since the age of twelve, after one of them killed my father. I felt like a traitor just thinking about her.
THREE
It was dawn when I heard the key turn in the front door. Hilarie was home. I'd been drifting in and out of sleep all night, back to my usual, restless pattern. She crept into our bedroom in darkness, stumbling through twilight, trying not to wake me.
I sat up and switched on the lamp.
“You're up,” she said, startled.
I could see she was tired, as she always was when she came home from work. Her blue eyes were heavy, her shoulder-length, honey-blonde hair tousled. She hadn't bothered to change out of her blue scrubs; I could smell the hospital on her. Funnily enough, I found her most sexy like this; all traces of makeup gone, overworked, natural.
“Oh my god, what happened to your head?”
I'd forgotten I still had the bandage on. She rushed to me, took my head in her hands to check the damage. Was it the doctor in her or the concerned girlfriend? I didn't know, but this was as intimate as we'd been in a long time.
“What happened?” she asked again, giving me one of her stern looks.
“I don't wanna talk about it now,” I said, and without knowing what I was doing, I pulled her closer, pulled up her top and placed rough kisses on her stomach. The smell of disinfectant was strong.
“Lissa, what are you doing?”
I trailed kisses up her chest as I held on tightly to her soft flesh. There was slight resistance as I worked my way up.
“Lis, I've just finished a double shift–”
I didn't care. Suddenly all I could think about was having her – not later, not tomorrow, now. I worked her top off while she continued to insist that she was too tired for it, but she never stopped me.
I dropped her to the bed. Her eyes were filled with confusion and lust as she stared up at me. She'd never seen me like this before. When we had sex it was usually humdrum, nothing mind-blowing or memorable. Going through the motions, some would call it.
I unfastened her bra, more grateful than I'd ever been to see her pert, petite breasts. Hungrily I took each one into my mouth, devouring them like I was running out of time. This wasn't about her, about getting her off, it was about satisfying my hunger. Her moans were a bonus.
“Ah, baby,” she moaned as I sucked harder.
Once I released her mounds, leaving wet traces of myself all over them, leaving them sore and red, I tugged off her pants and panties together and tossed them somewhere. When I lifted off my nightshirt, she reached out and cupped one of my breasts in her hand, rubbing at my teat until my nipple hardened between her fingers. But I didn't want her to touch me, I wanted to do all the touching. I swished her hand away, and she looked at me questioningly for a moment.
“What is this about?” she asked.
No answer came. I simply spread her legs wide and bore my mouth down between them, caressing her juicy sex with my tongue. I was unstoppable now, gobbling down her sweet offering without pausing to catch my breath. The moans that ripped from her throat sounded alien coming from her – loud and wild, like I'd never heard them before. After long shifts she always tasted great.
Her body writhed against my mouth as she struggled to
keep still. And just when I felt her at the edge of her orgasm, I withdrew my tongue. When she opened her eyes, I pressed my lips to hers, my tongue forceful as it wrestled with hers. My lips were still wet with her sap.
I pressed my full weight down on her, our breasts converging, squashing together, nipples rubbing. I slipped a hand between her legs and sought out her bean. We kissed breathlessly, messily, while I strummed between her legs. I caught each moan in my mouth, until the big finale when she climaxed in a loud cry.
“Now are you going to tell me what happened to your head?” she said a couple of minutes later. She lay naked on the bed, her nipples still red, thigh glistening with her wetness.
“I was attacked.”
She sat up. “What? When? By who?”
“Last night... no, the night before.”
“Two nights ago? Why are you just telling me about this now?”
“It's the first time I've seen you in two days, Hilarie.” I rolled my eyes.
“Why do I get the feeling that you're blaming me for this?”
“It's not always about you, Hilarie. God!” I shot up from the bed. Were we really going to fight about this? Why couldn't we have just screwed and fallen asleep like most couples? “I get attacked, almost raped, I'm unconscious for like God knows how long, and somehow you manage to make this about you.” I laughed humorlessly.
“I'm not making it about me, I just sense some anger coming from you, and it seems to be aimed at me.” She wrapped the bedsheet around her naked body, as though she couldn't argue effectively in the nude.
“Okay, maybe I am pissed off with you. Pissed off that you didn't even notice I was missing for over twenty-four hours.”
“So you're blaming me because I work for a living?” I knew what was coming next. We always ended up there. “Do I need to remind you that my job pays for this apartment, pays the bills, pays for everything so you get to spend all day in your studio, hiding away from getting a real job?”
“I have my own goddamn money, but you don't wanna take it. Because you couldn't stand not being in control of everything. Your apartment. Your bills. Your ugly couch!” I screamed.
And right on cue, thump, thump, thump! The apartment below us was inhabited by a lonely, middle-aged man who had a problem with noise and lesbians. Everything we did he complained about.
“I don't take your money because I'm afraid you'll never make a dime again. What happens when your one anonymous buyer decides to stop buying your paintings, huh? No one else will want them once his interest wanes, and we both know that. Then what?”
I told her to go to hell and stormed from the bedroom, my head pounding. This was why I could never win an argument against Hilarie: nine times out of ten she was right.
I'd gotten lucky a few years back when my first painting – which had taken me three years on and off to complete – sold to an anonymous buyer. I was eighteen, fresh out of the group home, broke and would have taken a hundred bucks for it. But some guy walked into the studio where it was being displayed, fell in love with it, and offered seven grand for it. After commission I took home $5600. I couldn't believe it. Over the next four years I worked my butt off, leased the studio with Petr, and sold another five paintings to the anonymous buyer, plus two more to some other people. I was able to pay off all my debts and save for a rainy day. I knew my story wasn't typical; artists struggle for years. I figure I've had so much bad luck the universe decided to give me a break. But Hilarie was right: this couldn't last forever. What if my anonymous buyer got tired of my quirky style, ran out of money or space for my work? There were so many what ifs...
Hilarie kept telling me I had to grow up, but at thirty-two, nine years older than me, she was bound to say that. She'd been saying it pretty much since the start of our relationship, back when I was twenty-one. One of these days I was going to surprise her and take her advice, but I wouldn't stick around long enough for her to see the transformation.
FOUR
As I approached the mansion, which was surrounded by immaculately preserved lawns and a long, winding driveway, I could hear my heart thudding in my ear. I couldn't shake the nauseous feeling developing in my stomach. Why was I so nervous? I was there to collect my purse and phone then hit the road. No stopping to make smalltalk with vampires, no matter how stunning they were. No matter if they saved my life.
It hadn't even occurred to me that Jean wouldn't be the one to answer the door when I knocked, though I should have known that she wouldn't be available at two in the afternoon. Daylight, duh! I really did need to refresh my knowledge of vampire lore, if only to know how to prevent an attack, or, if it ever came to it, kill one. I mean, I wasn't planning on killing anyone, but it was good to know how.
The door swung open. It wasn't the friendly maid who'd brought me breakfast the morning before. No, the face that answered was anything but friendly, and turned even more vicious when it looked at me. It was a woman. Pretty, tall, model-like in stature and pout. She looked like she woke up in a bad mood every day. She wore a flowery scarf around her neck.
“What the hell do you want?” Her eyes flashed with recognition, and venom. I instantly recognized her voice as the one that Jean was arguing with in the hallway. Robyn, wasn't it?
“Uh, hi, is Jean there?” I didn't know what else to say, but I realized then that asking the whereabouts of what I assumed was her lover was a huge mistake.
“Why the fuck do you want to know?” she hissed, looking ready to attack.
“I just... I came for–”
“I know exactly what you came for, slut!” she spat. “I've seen girls like you before. You play the innocent act and get the whole world to feel sorry for you, but you're all leeches. You think you hit the jackpot with Jean, don't you?”
“I don't know what you're talking about–”
“Bullshit! You know, I bet you planned that 'attack' the other night, didn't you? You're probably all working together to screw her out of her money.”
“I just came for my bag!” I shouted, close to hysterical. Where were all of these accusations coming from? How could this crazy bitch think I faked my attack?
“Of course you did, that's why you asked for Jean.” When she smiled it was the most sinister thing I'd ever seen. “Wait here.” She slammed the door in my face. I didn't know whether she would return or leave me standing out there forever. But moments later the door opened again, and she practically threw my purse at me.
“Look, I don't know what you think happened, but I can assure you nothing did.” I thought it best to defend myself. I didn't want her or anyone thinking I was sleeping with a blood-sucking monster. I already had the stigma of growing up in a group home – I didn't want another one. You got a name when you associated with vampires. And it stuck.
“So you're telling me you have no interest in Jean?” she asked, sounding skeptical.
“None. I just came for my bag. That's it.”
She kept her eyes narrowed at me, trying to work out whether I was telling the truth or not. Heck, I didn't know the answer to that myself. “Well, that's good. Because you don't stand a chance. What would she want with a kid like you anyway?” She laughed to herself, cutting me a filthy look. “You've got your bag. Get lost.” She slammed the door in my face again.
“Bitch!” I said to the closed door.
I checked my phone. There were a couple of pictures from my sister, April, standing in front of some Bangkok landmark I couldn't pronounce. There were also several missed calls from Petr. He'd left two desperate messages, wondering where I was and why I hadn't shown up at the studio. At least someone noticed I was missing.
When I got back to my apartment, he was waiting on the doorstep. There was a note on the refrigerator from Hilarie telling me she had gone to see her brother for the afternoon and would be back later. I screwed it up and threw it in the trash. We still hadn't spoken properly about what had happened to me.
“That's it, no more walking home alone at nig
ht,” Petr said, wagging his finger, once I'd told him about my attack. He'd offered to accompany me more times than I could count, always trying to look out for me. You wouldn't have thought it to look at him, but he had a black belt in some martial arts thing – I keep forgetting the name. He started training as a way to meet guys, and then found he loved it. “Or we get you a gun. It's totally up to you.”
I laughed. “Maybe just pepper spray. I'd probably end up shooting myself in the knee with my own gun.”
“So, what happened? Who found you?”
For some reason I felt nervous about relaying this part of the story – about my encounter with Jean.
“A lady named Jean Posey found me...”
He blinked big for effect. “No freaking way. Jean Posey the vampire? That Jean?” He leaned in, anxious and impatient for my response.
I nodded. “I woke up in her bed.” Wow, that sounded a lot more sordid than I'd intended.
“Get out of here! Is she as hot in real life as she is in her photo?” Of course he knew her, and he'd seen a picture of her. Petr and I agreed on many things, but vampire-adoration wasn't one of them. He was obsessed with them, the male ones especially. I knew he'd fooled around with a few while he lived in Hungary for a year. Had a thing for German and Swedish ones. There was a register vampires had to be on once they moved to a new town, so the townsfolk knew exactly who they were and could keep an eye on them. Like a register for sex offenders. Petr had probably seen her picture there.
I didn't want to tell him that she was the most beautiful thing I'd ever laid eyes on, and that any picture of her could never do her justice, because then he would see and hear the desire. A desire I still couldn't shake. Even as we sat there I still clung to the memory of her holding me in her arms. I could almost smell her, as though she were in the room with me.
“She's... pale.”
“Well, duh, she's a vampire. Holy hell, this is a big deal for you. This is the first time you've seen a vampire in the flesh, right?”