The Contessa sat in the darkened elevator, staring at the control panel for a long moment, before punching the button.
Phaedra grabbed the top drawer of the bedroom dresser and yanked it out, sending crotchless panties and Wonder Bras flying in every direction. She flipped the drawer over, revealing the manila envelope taped to its bottom. Inside the envelope were numerous identity papers, passports, and documents made out in the various names the Contessa had used over the years. Exactly which pseudonym they would be using to flee the country would be decided later.
Phaedra stuffed the envelope inside a leather satchel, then hurried over to the red leather ottoman and removed its padded lid. Inside the hollowed out footrest was a metal strongbox containing two hundred thousand dollars in bundled currency, a number of credit cards, seven gold Rolex watches, and various pieces of male jewelry they had yet to convert into ready cash. Still, it was enough to take them somewhere far away. The French Riviera, perhaps, maybe the Golden Triangle. Anywhere but here.
As she lifted the strongbox from its hiding place, she was surprised to hear the sound of the Contessa's private elevator coming to a stop. She turned and saw the Contessa wheeling herself out of the converted dumbwaiter.
Cursing under her breath, she put aside what she was doing and strode forward, trying her best to keep the panic from showing in her face. "Why aren't you downstairs?"
"I can't leave," the Contessa replied, shaking her head.
Phaedra knelt so she could look her mistress in the face, placing a soft, young hand on the Contessa's withered shoulder. "Why can't you leave?"
"Because it's time for my bath," the Contessa said matter-of-factly, her gnarled hand closing on Phaedra's throat, its grip as tight and inescapable as death's.
There was no mistaking Red Velvet Manor for anything else, even from a distance. The red curtains, lit from behind, caused the windows to glow like the eyes of an animal.
Sonja cut the headlights as she came up the long, winding drive approaching the house. She could see the Boxter in which the renfield had made her escape earlier by the side of the house, the driver's-side door still hanging open. She pulled up behind the sports car, blocking its path. She twitched her right arm, cupping her hand so it caught the switchblade as it dropped from its hidden sheath within the sleeve.
The front door was standing slightly ajar, the light from the foyer spilling across the front veranda. Sonja frowned and glanced up at the second-floor windows. Her prey was still here. She could feel it. The question was why?
It had taken Sonja twenty minutes to find this place. The renfield, the one called Phaedra, had that advantage, on top of a good five-minute lead. She cautiously pushed the front door, but it swung open without incident. She stepped inside the grand foyer, eyeing the decor for hidden trip wires or skulking bodyguards. There were none.
She tilted her head, allowing her mirrored sunglasses to slide to the end of her nose, and dropped her vision into the occult spectrum. What had been empty air a moment before was filled with dark energies that seethed like heat shadows cast against a summer sidewalk.
Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed men dressed in old-fashioned evening clothes, brandy snifters in their hands, watching a large dog mount a naked woman. But it couldn't be a dog, because it had hands. As Sonja turned to get a better look, the shades flickered and disappeared.
Sonja shook her head. She had to keep her guard up and not allow herself to be distracted by shadows. Even though the Contessa might be crippled, she hadn't gotten to be four centuries old on just luck and blood.
Sonja started up the grand staircase, scanning the doors that lined the second floor. They all seemed to be locked save for the one at the end, which stood slightly ajar. She nudged that door all the way open with the toe of her boot. The interior of the room was dark, save for a sliver of light from the half-open bathroom door that fell across the floor, illuminating the bloodred carpet.
"Do not be so hesitant, my dear," said the Contessa from somewhere inside the darkened room. "You have nothing to fear from me."
"Forgive me if I do not believe you," Sonja replied as she crossed the threshold.
The Contessa sat propped up against the padded headboard of a large oval-shaped bed, dressed in a red velvet robe trimmed with monkey fur. Her hair spilled over her shoulders and across the red satin pillows like ink from an overturned bottle. Her skin was milky white and as smooth as alabaster, unmarred by age or imperfection. Her delicate, long-fingered hands were folded in her lap, cradling what looked like the remote control for a TV set.
Sonja glanced about, probing the shadows for signs of an ambush, but all she saw were a pair of prosthetic legs draped over a nearby chair like a pair of empty pants.
"Where is she, witch?"
"She?" the Contessa asked, arching an eyebrow.
"The renfield."
The Contessa pointed with the remote control in the direction of the bathroom door, which stood slightly ajar. Sonja gave it a wary push, and it swung all the way open on its hinges, revealing Phaedra—born into the world as Faye Alice Baker—hung by her heels over the marble tub, her throat slit from ear to ear like a summer hog. The sight didn't surprise Sonja; after all, she had caught the scent of blood the moment she entered the house.
"I hated having to do that," the Contessa said, turning the remote control she held over and over again in her hands. "Really I did. But I had no choice. There was no point in running away again. I knew it, and so did Phaedra, although she could not bring herself to admit it. It wouldn't be fair to her, leaving her on her own… What would she do without me? I did her a kindness, really."
"So you put her down, rather than leave her to face life without you. How altruistic of you. I notice you didn't let her blood go to waste."
"I will meet eternity in no skin but this one."
"Once a vain, psychotic bitch, always a vain, psychotic bitch, eh? Put down the remote, old woman. I'll be as quick about this as I can."
The Contessa shook her head in defiance. "No! I refuse to die at the hands of a monster such as you! My family once strode the world as kings! What right does a lowborn freak of nature such as yourself have to destroy me? I was Made by my own hand, and by my own hand shall I be Unmade!"
The Contessa pointed the remote at the heavy velvet drapes and pushed the button a final time. The curtains parted like those of a stage, and the first rays of the rising sun spilled across the room. Both women instinctively lifted their arms to shield their faces from the sunlight, but only one burst into flames.
The Contessa screamed as her skin and hair caught fire, the flames quickly spreading to her gown and bedclothes. Sonja backed away, both repulsed and fascinated as the ancient vampire's flesh bubbled and melted, dripping from her bones like wax from a candle. Within seconds the Contessa had been reduced to a thrashing skeleton, and yet she continued to scream.
The fire, having consumed the bed, quickly spread to the red velvet wallpaper. The walls ignited like dry kindling, and suddenly the entire room was ablaze. Sonja leapt through the curtain of fire and smoke that swallowed the door, rolling as she hit the hallway floor in order to extinguish the flames clinging to her jacket. The hair on the right side of her head was burned to the scalp and heat blisters were rising across her back, but she barely noticed.
The interior of the mansion was already filling with heavy, acrid smoke. As she hurried down the stairs towards the front door, Sonja felt a chill on her spine. Someone, or something, was watching her. She turned and saw what looked like a tall man the color of shadow standing on the landing above her, watching her with eyes made of fire.
Sonja ran out the front door and all the way to her car, throwing it into gear the second the engine turned over. She was halfway down the drive before she bothered to close the door. She didn't know why the old blood-witch's patron had chosen to lay low, and she didn't care. Vampire slaying was one thing, but demon hunting was a whole other ball game.
Inside the funeral pyre that once was known as Red Velvet Manor, a shadow shaped like a man stood in the grand foyer and laughed as the grandfather clock with the zodiac face struck thirteen. Upon the final strike, a pillar of fire punched through the roof, and the final visitor to its gilded halls closed its burning front door behind him.
* * *
BRIAN STABLEFORD
Sheena
Brian Stableford is a prolific writer living in Reading, England. His fiftieth novel (and seventy-fifth book), Year Zero, appeared in June 2000, close on the heels of The Fountains of Youth, which is the third volume in a future-history science-fiction series that began in 1998 with Inherit the Earth. Earlier novels include The Empire of Fear, Young Blood, and The Hunger and Ecstasy of Vampires. In 1999, he was the recipient of the Science Fiction Research Association's Pilgrim Award for his contributions to SF scholarship. His other awards include the SFRA's Pioneer Award (1996), the Distinguished Scholarship Award of the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (1987), and the J. Lloyd Eaton Award (1987). His recent nonfiction includes Yesteryear's Bestsellers and Glorious Perversity: The Decline and Fall of Literary Decadence. "Sheena" is a story that I privately consider third-stage romanticism; when you've lost faith in love and still have to live and live and live, you might as well believe in the nonbelievable…
N.B. A glossary of British "localisms" provided by the author begins on page 187.
IF I'D HAD a quid for every time I heard the old joke beginning, "What do you say to a sociology graduate?," I wouldn't have had to get a stopgap job at all, but nobody pays you a wage to listen to put-downs. Anyway, it's not true—not any more. Ever since the minimum wage came in, fast-food outlets are deeply reluctant to hire anyone who qualifies for it. The sacred right to be on the wrong end of orders for a Big Mac and fries is now reserved to seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds. Because I was twenty-one when I left university, I had no alternative but to raise my sights.
Fortunately, the introduction of the minimum wage coincided with the wildfire spread of call centres, which allowed me to cash in on the only asset I had—apart, of course, from my sociology degree. Although I was born and bred just off Easterly Road and never had an elocution lesson in my life, my accent isn't nearly as thick as it might have been. I'd learned to suppress it even further while I was doing my three years at the uni; paradoxical as it may seem, the only way for a Leeds lad to fit in at the local wastepaper factory is to ape the manners and mores of the southern majority. When I left home I got a flat in Harehills Lane, not to be just a bus ride away from Mum and the sibs—although that's what I told them—but because it allowed me to tell my new friends that I lived in Dorset. It was a waste of irony, of course. None of them ever thought for an instant that I might mean the posh southern county, and some of them even knew where its humbler namesake was. "Oh, yeah," they'd say smugly. "Out past St James's and the Corporation Cemetery." I might have done better simply to tell the smartarses that I'd been to school in Dorset, saving the revelation that I meant Thorn Walk Secondary for a punch line.
The people at the call centre weren't, of course, allowed to say that one of the qualifications for the job was a posher voice than most people who'd go for that kind of a job possessed. Their ads only specified a "good telephone manner"—but I could do politeness and patience, too, even though I wasn't female. Ninety percent of the front liners were lasses, perhaps because a "good telephone manner" is one of those things that most females develop naturally in their teenage years, like bulimia, PMT, and deodorant addiction. Lads don't usually develop a "good telephone manner" because boys take an essentially utilitarian view of the phone, making short and functional calls, whereas lasses find a perverse kind of intimacy in the form and touch of a plastic receiver which delivers gossip as if by magic. Not that I was a common or garden male chauvinist, of course, even before I changed—we northern scum don't always conform to stereotype.
All call centres are pretty much alike, although the one on Scott Hall Road where I went to work seemed distinctly incestuous, by virtue of the fact that we were fielding queries on behalf of a firm that made, installed, and customized all kinds of telephone equipment, up to and including call centres. Although there was only one other graduate in my intake and two already on the strength it was stopgap work for practically everyone who manned the phones, because people can take only so much of a job which involves dealing sensitively with boorish clients who are confused or angry before they're put on hold and twice as bad afterwards. We got calls from customers who were resentful because they were too stupid to follow the instructions telling them how to work their kit, customers who were livid because the kit couldn't do what they wanted it to, and customers who were incandescent because they thought they'd been overcharged—that was about it. Although I did two weeks' basic training in the kinds of products the company sold, the only advice I was allowed to give was script-based stuff that didn't get much more sophisticated than "have you checked that the unit's plugged in?" My job was to take down details of problems so that I could refer them to the appropriate technical staff or accounts department, with profuse assurances that somebody would phone back shortly with real help.
I didn't expect the work to be difficult, and it wasn't, but it was peculiarly taxing to have to maintain a polite front in the face of such relentless incompetence and hostility. Apart from the fact that the money was enough to feed me, pay the rent, and nibble away at my overdraft, the job's main advantage was the flexible shift system. This allowed me to vary my hours—taking time out to attend interviews for real jobs whenever they came up—and made overtime easily available if I wanted it. There was a period when I thought there was an even greater advantage—the fact that females were in such a large majority that no shift ever had more than three blokes working alongside twenty nubile females—but I soon learned better. In a competitive environment like that, I thought at first, even a sweeper with lead boots could score at regular intervals, but it didn't take long to encounter the downside of the situation.
It wasn't that the lasses weren't up for it. Quite the reverse, in fact. I doubt that there was one among them who hadn't lost her virginity at thirteen and taken to the sport like a duck to water, but they certainly didn't play by the rules I'd got used to at the uni. Maybe it was a side effect of the working environment and maybe it was just a sign of the times, but the great majority didn't bother with "dating" or "relationships" at all. What they did were "girls' nights out," on which they'd go out in gaggles of eight or ten, drinking like fish and laughing like lunatics with one another, until the time came to go home—at which time, if they happened to fancy a shag, they'd just pick some bloke at random and drag him off. It was easy to arrange to be one of the blokes—the slags weren't at all shy about inviting their male colleagues to join them on their riotous nights off, and if you stuck with them all night you were absolutely guaranteed to cop off with someone—but there was a price to be paid. I tagged along only once before I realised exactly why the other lads at work were so reluctant to accept any invitations from their female workmates.
The problem with being a male hanger-on on a girls' night out in Leeds is that it's rather like being a male stripper at a hen party—in fact, you have to be bloody careful that it doesn't turn out exactly like that. You're the butt of all the banter, and the talk gets filthier with every unit of alcohol that's sunk—and we're talking double figures by eight o'clock—so the suggestive remarks, the lewd questions, and the probing fingers become increasingly intrusive and increasingly aggressive. It's not just that they're mimicking what they see as the essential features of lad culture—which would be more than bad enough, believe me—but that while they're doing it they feel that they're getting their own back for thousands of years of indignity heaped upon their mothers, grandmothers, and so on, all the way back to Eve. Because of that aspect, lasses don't go over the top in the kind of relaxed, natural way that their male counterparts do; in over-the-top
terms, every girls' night out is the second day of the Somme, and the troops sure as hell aren't in any mood for taking prisoners. I suppose it isn't so bad if you can just grit your teeth and wait for the payoff at the end, even though you don't get to choose which of the witches will eventually take you home, but for anyone with an ounce of sensibility the path to that consummation is way too thorny. Even for blokes, pull-a-pig contests are pretty tacky, but when lasses start, it gets positively disgusting. After two hours of listening to those kinds of reminiscences and hypotheticals, no man alive can get any kind of kick out of scoring, even if it happens to be the one he actually fancies who eventually drags him off. No matter what she whispers in his ear when they're finally alone, he always feels like a prize porker ripe for the Polaroid laugh track.
All of which is beside the point, really—except that it's the context that explains exactly how and why I became fascinated by Sheena Howell. She seemed to be the only lass on the various shifts who never went on girls' nights out and never indulged in any of the ritual humiliations that gave the others such insane delight.
You might think that as an obvious singleton Sheena would be the prime target of all the lads who'd ever been battered and bruised by a night out with one or other of the gaggles, but she wasn't. The others thought she was "too weird."
When I asked one of the old hands, Jez, how Sheena had come to have this reputation, when she seemed so inoffensive, he filled me in readily enough.
"She's dressed for work right now," he said, "but those are her civvies. She's a Goth—nights out she wears nothing but black, hair in spikes, eyes made up like fireworks. Wouldn't be so bad if it were only the outfit, but she's a vampire Goth—not just an Anne Rice fan, though that'd be bad enough, but a full-blown pretender. Says she learned to hypnotise herself so she could access her past lives, and maybe she did, because she surely doesn't seem to be living in the present. A mate of mine who knew her years ago told me her name's really Susan—they all make up names, although they usually pick something classier than Sheena. She's seriously crazy, and a bit feeble to boot—takes more time off than the others. Bad legs, apparently."
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