Count On Me

by Abigail Graham

  Then I see her. She has no eyes, only dull empty sockets. The side of her head is a bruise, and her sallow skin is twisted into a look of shock and horror that doesn’t shift when she closes the ruins of her throat to speak in an agonized rasp.

  “What about me?”

  Then I wake up.

  I bolt upright in the bed, screaming at the top of my lungs, and throw myself out of it into the floor. I’m back in the bedroom and I land on the floor with a thump and skitter away from the bed on my hand and heels. Rising, I rush for the door but it flies open before I can reach it and I fall back.

  He rushes in and slams the door behind him. He takes me up in his arms, pulling me to his chest and I bury my face against him, weeping blood. He runs his hands through my hair. For a bare moment I’m still in the dream. I can still feel. His fingertips on my scalp, his body expanding against me as he breathes, even the beat of his heart. My body moves and I run my lips over his throat, not to bite but to taste his skin.

  Then it’s over and I shove him away, hugging myself.

  “What happened? What the hell was that?”

  “You had a dream,” he says.

  “I don’t dream.”

  “Apparently, you do.”

  I look at him, in the eye. Still nothing.

  “What are you doing to me?”

  “Tell me about the dream.”

  “What are you, my psychologist?”

  “Sort of. Tell me about it.”

  “Why should it?”

  “Quid pro quo. Yes or no. I know something you’ll want to hear.”

  With a huff, I drop down on the bed. He scoots up the chair and opens his notebook on his lap, holding his pen, but I never see him write as I tell him about the dream. He listens intently. When I describe the boy in the hallway he shudders and looks away from me like he knows something. When I tell him the rest he frowns.

  “Have you ever had a nightmare before?”

  “No. When I sleep it’s just like a switch, lights off.”

  He leans back in the chair and scratches his chin. I watch his hand as his fingers itch at his skin, scraping over the fine stubble there, and when I realize I’m staring I look away, but he doesn’t. He cracks a smile.

  I smile too, but I forget why before I even know and the smile fades from my dead bloodless lips.

  “I told you. Now, what were you going to tell me?”

  “Lie down.”

  “Why…” I trail off. With a huff, I lie down and defensively cross my arms over my chest, and stare at the ceiling.

  “What do you know about souls?” he says.

  I glance over at him.

  “Only that I didn’t know what it felt like to have one until it wasn’t there anymore.”

  “It’s more complicated than that. When a vampire feeds, they take part of their victim’s soul.”

  “So the soul is in the blood?”

  “The soul is the blood. Yet it isn’t. The blood is a symbol and the thing itself at the same time. It’s complicated.”

  “So,” she said, “you take people’s souls. And you’ve been feeding me somebody’s souls when you give me that blood.”

  “Not exactly,” he said. “When you go to the blood bank and give blood, what happens?”

  I shrug. “I think they revoked my membership.”

  He laughs a little, bitterly. I can barely hear it. He rubs at his face to hide his smile.

  “Humor me. When a person gives blood, what happens?”

  “I don’t know. They put in a bag.”

  “They take some out. It grows back. Souls do the same thing. You can take part of it and the part you took grows back. That’s where people come from. Two souls give up pieces to make a seed that grows into a third.”

  I blink a few times. “So we’re all the same soul in different bodies,” I say.

  “No more than all the species of a tree are the same tree because they came from seeds of other trees,” he says. “The same, different. Anyway, people these days are careless with their souls. They rip pieces off and throw them into the void and give them away to strangers and treat them like crap, because they don’t believe they have them anymore.”

  “Very poetic,” I sigh.

  “The nosferatu is different. All feedings are fatal, the victim’s soul…”

  “Gets eaten?”

  “Maybe. I like to think part of it does but there’s too much and some of it escapes. I mean, you know this better than I do, but when the undead rips open somebody’s neck, they never get all the blood. Something definitely goes to the nosferatu, though.”

  “What about,” I swallow, “My soul?”

  He looks away.

  “When a vampire is created, a human being’s soul is bonded with an… entity. When he bit you he fed you some of his own blood. That gave you the strength to survive your own death. He put something in you and it grew by feeding on your soul, but you are what you eat. It became your soul, sort of. It’s complicated.”

  I swallow.

  Then I sit bolt upright and grab my throat.

  “Oh. Oh God. That’s what I felt. I can still feel it.”

  I can feel it. I can feel it scratching and moving in there right now. My eyes burn, like there’s tears welling up behind them.

  “Get it out,” I say, panic rising in my chest, hot and fast. Louder this time. “Get it out. Get it out of me.”

  Before I can move to claw at my own throat he’s got my wrists. He moves so fast he just blurs, wind whipping through the room, pulling my hands away from my neck as I scream get it out, get it out over and over, until he pushes me down.

  “Christine!”

  I can’t stop screaming. I want that thing out of my body. He pins me down with his weight and holds my hands to the bed, straddling me. I lay there, panting.

  Thump.

  Something moves in my chest and I freeze, no longer breathing. I felt it. I felt it.

  “W-what was that?”

  He leans down. His face fills my vision as his hot breath plays across my lips. He could kiss me if he wanted.

  I’d let him. It feels right. Like putting on a worn pair of Chuck Taylors or an old band shirt. Like walking down a wide hallway with a tall arched ceiling, full of lockers. It’s like the veil parts for a hint of a second before he sits back up and loosens his vice grip on my arms.

  “Can I let go? Promise you won’t hurt yourself.”

  “Can’t you make this thing on my neck choke me if I try?”

  “Yes. I don’t want to. You’re going to get better.”

  “You said you can’t make me human.”

  The fact that he is straddling me while we hold this conversation feels both oddly familiar and oddly energizing. He lets go of my arms. I don’t try to rip my own throat open. Or his, for that matter. I can still feel the oily touch of the collar on my throat, the way the cold metal always seems to be flowing, moving a little like it’s alive. He swings his long leg and steps off the bed and back over to his chair and he sits down, but he’s shaking. I see him force himself to stillness.

  His eyes are slits, just for a second before his pupils spread open, round out again.

  I sit up and face him.

  “Tell me the rest.”

  “There is a connection between the nosferatu master and his, ah, thrall. It’s an old word meaning slave.”

  “I know what it means.”

  “The souls the thrall consumes pass up the chain. The master gains the strength of those he kills and the strength of those his thrall kills. Their skills and memories, some people say their very being. Powerful nosferatu can raise the shades of their victims to fight for them. I prefer to think those shades are simulacra. Non-living copies.”

  “What if they’re not?”

  “Then the master consumes the souls of all he feeds on and all his children feeds on and keeps them as slaves, trapped inside him.”

  “What else can powerful vampires do?”

&nbs
p; “There’s more than one kind.”

  “I roll my eyes. Powerful nosferatu. You know what I mean.”

  “The most powerful can walk in daylight, hiding in their own shadow. They don’t need to sleep and can go years or even decades without feeding. Change their form, become mist, kill with a touch and control the minds of their enemies with a glance.”

  “Is that what I do? The mind whammy thing?”

  “All nosferatu have, the, ah, mind whammy to one degree or another, but yours is unusually strong. You’d get me if I wasn’t,” he pauses, “different.”

  “How do you if you’re a master? I mean, how do you become one? Am I one?”

  He shifts in his seat.

  “As far as I know there’s two ways. The master releases the thrall through a second feeding, an exchange of blood between them both. Or, the master dies. Then all his thralls either become masters or die, if they’re not strong enough.”

  “This thing he put inside me,” I say. “What is it?”

  He shifts uncomfortably again and looks me in the eye.

  “Do you really want to know?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t think you’re ready.”

  “But-“

  He sighs and lifts his hand. “I’ll tell you what I think you’re ready to hear. There are creatures inside us. Both of us. They’re not from around here. I mean, they’re not from this world.”

  “Earth?”

  “No, this universe. They don’t belong here. It’s hard for them to survive here. They do it by forming a symbiotic relationship with a human being, living inside them, or acting as a parasite, hollowing them out spiritually.”

  I crinkle my nose. “Eww.”

  Something flutters in the back of my head. An uncomfortable thought. It almost takes shape before I push it away.

  From the look on his face I think he knows what it is.

  “We need to go on,” he says. “I need to hear more about what happened to you. You need to tell me.”

  I nod. I might as well get it over with.

  “He liked playing with me. Dressing me up. Like a doll.”

  9

  “I don’t like that one. Take it off.”

  I had learned to guard my thoughts. Somehow I stopped from thinking that what I was wearing amounted to so little that take it off was a bit of an exaggeration.

  Or maybe I did think it, and it just amused him. Vincent sat in a white leather club chair in the bedroom and watched me put on my little fashion show, as he did every night before he took me out. He called it taking me out for a walk.

  The bloody red spot where I killed my best friend was gone. The carpet had all been ripped up and replaced, or maybe cleaned. It must have been cleaned because it was done while we were in the bed. He made me sleep with him.

  Not like that. Never like that, but I had to share his bed and if I resisted, he told me I’d be sleeping outside.

  In the sun.

  The dress I had on, if you could call it that, was all white. They were mostly white, and mostly nothing. This particular one barely covered my chest and barely covered my butt. If I bent over I’d be totally indecent, since I wasn’t allowed to wear underwear. I didn’t understand why, other than his taking amusement from my discomfort. He never touched me like that, never tried to use me in that way.

  I took off the dress. I turned away and covered up my chest with my arms before I remembered I was not allowed to hide anything from him, turned around, and stood up straight. He could feel my fear of punishment for breaking his tiny, petty rules, and the punishment was making me stand there while he studied my naked body.

  “Why are you so concerned about the meat you wear? Speak.”

  “I’m embarrassed.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t… I don’t know, I…”

  “It’s just meat.”

  “It’s not. It’s private.”

  He snorted. “What are you, a six year old? Should I hand you a doll and tell you to show me where the bad man touched you?”

  On the neck, I thought. His expression flashed to anger and I flinched, and then it twisted into amusement. His pale lips spread into a bloodless, hollow grin, like he only felt the need to smile to show me he was amused by my suffering. His grin was posed, fake, and when he forgot about it his face went back to its usual neutral, slack expression, somewhere between imperious disdain and genuine disinterest.

  “The black one.”

  I shimmied into the next dress, not sure whether to fight my modesty or embrace it. The idea of letting him mold my behavior sickened me as much as the cold ball in my stomach as my hunger grew. I hadn’t fed for three nights. He wanted me hungry for some reason. It wasn’t at the peak yet, but it was there. I looked at myself in the mirror as I adjusted the dress. This one, at least, had straps and it covered my ass, but the sides were lace from bodice to hip, so sheer it looked like I was wearing two panels of cloth glued to my front and backside.

  My hair, my skin, it was all as it was before.

  Andi was dead, but I got my looks back from ripping her throat out.

  I hate myself.

  “I have a question for you. What is the last thing you remember eating? Before I uplifted you.”

  The veil parts. It’s like he can let me remember if he wants to.

  “We stopped at the Burger King in the airport. I had a whopper with cheese, tomatoes and lettuce.”

  “No pickles?”

  “No pickles, master.”

  “Shame. I think I remember pickles. They were piquant. If you ever eat a cheeseburger again, you are to have pickles on it.”

  “Yes, Master.”

  “So, tell me, do you mourn the cow that provided the beef for your meal?”

  “No, Master.”

  “Then why do you mourn the cow you killed here?”

  “She wasn’t a cow,” I snap.

  Oh.

  Oh no.

  He rose up from his seat and strode over to me. He ran his hands up my arms and I waited. No touch of his was meant to comfort, to derive or to give pleasure. He only put his hands on me to hurt me or make me do something I didn’t want to. He’d already shown me he could just will me to do things, but he preferred wooling me around by the hair or beating me to get his point across. I trembled and looked down, terrified to meet his hollow, empty eyes. His fingernails moved over my bare skin.

  He could make them as sharp as razors if he wanted. He’d shown me.

  There was a knock on the wall. His sister stood in the doorway.

  Vincent turned away and I felt the presence of his mind slide off me, like a weight falling off my shoulders, and hoped my relief wouldn’t draw his anger. Victoria, dressed primly in the same pantsuit or one just like it, held out a stationery envelope, secured with a curled golden ribbon.

  The paper was jet black, as was the note inside it when Vincent tore it open to read the gilt calligraphy. His hand shook for a second and I felt a rush of something fly out of him, a mixture of rage and mirth falling off him like a wave of heat and washing over me.

  I stumbled a little. Victoria must have felt it too. Her head moved just a little, and the corner of her eye twitched.

  Vincent didn’t notice, or didn’t care. He slipped the paper back in the envelope.

  “I was waiting for this. I’m going. You stay here.”

  “There is work to be done. The union negotiation,” she said.

  “Whatever,” Vincent snapped. “Deal with it.”

  “Very well.” She shrugs, and leaves.

  He tapped the letter against the back of his hand.

  “That will do nicely. Black. It brings out your eyes.” He laughed softly to himself, again entirely for my benefit. “Shoes.”

  I found myself relishing the little freedom he gave me to pick my own shoes. I skipped the ankle-breaking stiletto heels he seemed to prefer and put on a pair of ballet flats.

  Vincent had a whole closet full of shoes, in
all sizes, men’s and women’s. When I picked the flats off the shelf I felt a crushing wave of horror as I recognized Andi’s Reeboks on the same shelf. I almost dropped the shoes, trembling.

  There had to be two hundred pairs in there. More.

  I pushed it out of my head. I dropped the shoes on the floor and slipped into them, and fell forward when he slapped me, and almost tripped, leaning on the dresser.

  “Careful with the shoes.”

  I swallowed against my dry throat. The cold in my middle was growing, spreading into my limbs. I stood up and held still, keeping my back straight, my posture perfect, trying not to think of balancing a book on my head lest he decide to make me actually do it and torture me if I drop the book. I stood still while he finished changing his clothes and putting on new shoes. The old might as well have come from a mannequin, they were so clean. He changed anyway.

  When he walked out of the room I rushed to follow. I was beyond needing that simple level of instruction by now. I did as I was meant to do or faced a sharp correction. I walked behind him, swaying my hips and strutting in a parody of a model’s runway gait, all five foot two of me. I ran ahead of him only to push the button and open the elevator doors, rest my hand on the inside to keep the doors from closing, and step inside after him.

  He took the key from the panel and put it in his pocket. I wasn’t allowed to touch it.

  I rode the elevator down in silence, standing beside him. I kept my hands from the rail and my eyes on the floor. When the doors opened he walked out again without glancing at me and I rushed to follow. There were gaps in my memory, like he’d eaten bits and pieces. I didn’t know if I’d been with him a week, a month, longer. It felt longer. I followed behind, and felt eyes on me. Gamblers at the tables stopped and looked up as I walked past. Looked at my legs, my butt, my breasts pressed under the fabric of my dress.

  Putting myself on display that way made me feel sick. I felt a lightness on my hand, like something was supposed to be there.