It scurried in my throat, scratching me with sharp little legs. It was the hollow in my belly. When I glanced over and looked one of those gamblers in the eyes the scratchy thing whispered secrets in my ear. Showed me things. It told me his name was Salvatore Giamatti and he was from Los Angeles. It told me he knew his wife was cheating so for revenge he took their retirement fund and told her he was on a work trip to the Great Lakes and went to Las Vegas instead. He’d already put eight hundred on the hard six and last night he paid a doe-eyed streetwalker who said her name was Crystal to ride him.
I hated him. The thing inside me hated him, too. It whispered nasty things in my ear.
Like, he doesn’t deserve to live.
I wanted it to shut up. I didn’t want to know things in people’s eyes. So I stared at Vincent’s back as he walked through the casino. The crowd parted around him. He never said ‘excuse me’ or sidestepped. He cut through the people like a knife. They looked his way without looking at him and moved, changed course to avoid him without ever so much as glancing as his direction, shied away. An old woman mindlessly churning a one-armed bandit shuddered as we passed and crossed herself, but as soon as we were by it was like she forgot about it and looked right through me.
After he walked straight through the casino floor, Vincent stepped outside to turn and greet the valet attendant with hollow cordiality. The way the lights from the other side of the glass played on his skin made him almost look alive when he smiled at her.
When she ran back up with his keys he grinned at her and brushed her hand with his in taking them.
“Aren’t you a little peach,” he said to her, “Maybe I’ll dance at your wedding.”
A stab of cold dread shook through me as he walked over to his car, parked first by the doors. It cost a fortune and I hated it. All white, of course. I had to get my own door and drop into the passenger’s seat and press my legs shut and try not to hug myself as he backed out, whipped the car around and took off at obscene speed through the garage, then down the ramp. As he pulled onto the Strip he cut off a pickup truck full of college boys in their popped collars, and the driver flipped him off. With the windows down I could hear their jeers.
“If I weren’t on an agenda tonight, I’d make them eat their own tongues. The shadow has passed over those.”
“Yes, Master.”
I stare at the road. The veil parts and he let me remember the drive with Andi, the awe I felt at all the lights and motion. Now it just makes me sick.
Sick and hungry. It just takes a glimpse and I could feel the man on the streetcorner. The thing in my belly felt him too, but he was gone too fast for it to whisper its obscenities in my ear, and for that I was thankful. I didn’t look at anybody else as he drove the length of the Strip until it was just Las Vegas Boulevard in the urban sprawl space between Strip and Downtown, the casinos on Freemont Street looming in the distance, growing closer.
I knew the route. I knew the hotel when we pulled in.
We stayed here.
This was our hotel.
He looked over at me.
“Surprise.”
I didn’t say anything. Better not to. Instead I stood up and rushed to open his door, keeping my eyes on the ground. He gave the key to the valet and walked into the casino.
It all came back to me when I saw the lobby, the attendant at the desk. He turned and walked through the casino floor. It was the same as before, the world parted around him and I scurried to stay in his wake. I was as invisible as he was visible, drawn along behind him. When he stepped up to the elevator he presented his invitation to the man standing beside it, who took it and examined it through tiny spectacles.
“My lord. You are expected.”
He nodded and stepped into the elevator. An attendant inside turned a key and the doors closed, and the ascent began.
Vincent turned to me.
“You’re curious. Very well. We are attending a gathering under the rules of our Covenant. The details are not relevant to you, but this is a formal meeting and certain protocols are observed. Do what I say when I say or you will be terribly chastised. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Master.”
“Very good.”
The elevator stopped. The doors opened. Vincent stepped out and I was careful to remain two steps behind, eyes downcast.
This penthouse was five times bigger than his. The elevator opened onto a kind of raised loft, connected to the expansive floor below by a grand staircase. For all the fear of burning in sunlight, these things like their windows. Everywhere was glass, even the ceiling, and the windows were open in many places. Hot desert breeze wafted through the air conditioned air in a display of excess and vanity.
People mingled below us on the main floor. People and things.
Vincent jogged lightly down the steps. At the bottom he met a woman in a black evening gown at least fifty years out of style. Her hair was jet black but otherwise she was like him. Hard and waxy at the same time, a fake person, a corpse that got up and walked around with hollow rusty eyes. I saw her and knew I looked the same and it made me sick inside. I wanted to cry but I was too dead for it.
They exchanged an old world greeting- kisses on the cheek, a brief hug totally devoid of anything that even mimicked affection. Vincent stepped back and bowed slightly and a glance told me to do the same. I almost did, but instead I curtsied, which I knew how to do for some reason even though it was incredibly awkward in my slutty dress. Vincent’s eyebrow quirked up. He almost seemed impressed by the gesture.
“Lady Elizabeta, my thrall… name?”
“Christine,” I murmur.
“Yes, that’s it. Christine.”
She took my hand. Her fingers were as cold as ice and I could have sworn I felt something move under her skin, like her fingers weren’t jointed quite the right way. Her eyes were worse than him. I could feel her paging through my mind, like someone leafing through a book they found on the subway.
“My, you’ve been brutal with this one. I find myself surprised she remembers her name. May I?”
She was not asking me. Vincent nodded and she took my face in her hands, tipping my eyes up to meet hers. She tilted my head this way and that, patted my side, slapped my butt.
“This one has a lot of potential. I would ask where you found her, but I already know.”
“Quite.”
“It is rather an insult bringing her here. Brazen, I must say. I would be impressed if I didn’t feel bound to eat your heart. I see no gift. By what right do you claim protection as guests?”
“My gift is this,” said Vincent. “My thrall to use as you will on the condition that she be returned to me unharmed at the conclusion of festivities.”
“You’re learning,” said Elizabeta, nodding in approval. “I am as impressed as I am enraged. Get out of my sight.”
Vincent nodded to her and stepped off into the party, if that was what it was. I moved to follow.
“Not you,” she said. “You heard him. You’re mine.”
10
I didn’t speak. I wasn’t that stupid, I hoped.
Turns out I didn’t need to.
It wasn’t like when Vincent did it. When Elizabeta picked through my head I could feel it like, a bug walking on my scalp. I trembled as she went through my memories, what was left of them. She was actually shorter than I was by an inch or two. Her hair was a wig. Beneath it her skin was as pale and smooth as an egg. It wasn’t a good wig. She didn’t seem to particularly care. I know she knew what I was thinking but she ignored it.
“He hasn’t taught you anything. These youngsters don’t understand the finer points of their gifts. What has he told you?”
“To obey,” I said.
“There are formalities when speaking to me, but you don’t know them, so I will forgive you. Vincent hopes you’ll anger me and I will lash out at you.”
She eyed me. There was something voracious in her gaze. She was utterly alien in a way that even Vi
ncent wasn’t. I didn’t dare look her in the eye.
“I can read your mind, but I prefer that you give voice to your thoughts. It pleases me to converse. Speak.”
“Yes. Should I call you master?”
“No, I am not your master. Just speak.”
“What hasn’t he told me?”
“The most elementary facts of your nature,” she said. “You seem to be laboring under the false impression that you were a human being. You were no such thing.”
“I don’t understand.”
She smiled. I shuddered at the sight. She touched my shoulder.
“You think you are a woman named Christine. You believe it. You are not. This is the first lesson wise undead teach their progeny. You were born the night he turned you. Nothing more, nothing less. The feelings and memories that disturb you are like hairs left on borrowed clothes. They mean something to one who wore them first, not you. You have this Christine’s body, but you are not her. You are new to the world. That woman is dead.”
I stopped walking and stood there, mounting dread flooding through my body.
No. No, that wasn’t true. I was Christine. I had to be.
The little voice murmured in my ear. If I was, why couldn’t I remember being her?
“You are to fear neither noose nor blade nor arrow, but the touch of the sun or open flame is your undoing. Know this. Fear these things. For us there is only the truth death. When we die we return to the nothing from which were born, and never were.”
“I want to go home,” I said, softly.
“You are home. If I was capable of empathy I would wish a gentler master on you, but it amuses me to see Vincent try and beat you down. I expect you’ll kill him one day.”
I felt a flush at that. A real flush. The last memory of anger.
“Gird your thoughts, child. He senses them now, though by taking you on as a servant I can obscure them ever so slightly. He knows I told you something that fostered hope in you, not the details. I should not be so cruel. He will know later when you tell him and he will not be kind when he learns.”
“Why is this insulting to you?” I said, trying to change the subject.
“You came to rest in my territory,” she said. “Downtown is mine. Vincent poached you and that other one. I know about her.”
She knew about Andi. Would that mean she knew about… I tried to stop myself but the thought was there before I knew to try.
“Walk with me.”
Keeping two steps behind, I followed her to the window. The view would have been breathtaking but I just didn’t care anymore. I’m not sure she did, either. She took a glass of wine from a passing tray and held it in her hand but never drank from it and eventually put it down, and moved around the room, never speaking to anyone. I tried not to look at the other guests.
“We rank ourselves by age. I am very old by today’s standards. I first wore this flesh first four hundred years ago. Almost exactly.”
I stumbled.
Four hundred years, of this.
“It goes by so fast you’ll hardly realize it. I gloried in my turning, but even those who do not quickly learn to adjust. At least by my standards. The first fifty years or so will be difficult. You will cling to the morality of beasts, convinced that the cattle beneath our feet deserve to roam freely and lead out their meaningless lives. In time you will come to see that they are no different from the cattle they themselves feed on, that the meat left behind in their passing is no more important than the excreta they themselves flush away. They’re just food. You’re not.”
Fifty years. Fifty years of this?
“Am I going to get older?”
Her reaction was completely neutral. “I assume you mean, will you age? Not as humans do. Hair color goes first, then hair itself. Otherwise your body will remain much as it is, assuming you continue to feed. I know you’ve seen what the ravages of thirst can rage on us. Vincent showed you when he cast you into the fire.”
“I don’t want this.”
“I know. Your suffering is amusing. Perhaps Vincent was right not to correct your misunderstandings about your nature.”
“How can you think it’s funny?”
She stopped and looked at me.
“Because it is. Humans are born from nothing, eat, shit, rut and suffer for a few brief years, then return to nothing, having meant nothing. We at least have the potential for eternity even if very few of us reach it. What humans crave most is denied them and given to us.”
There was a wry irony to her tone.
I didn’t want to listen to her anymore. So I looked around. That was a mistake.
There were more like Vincent at this party. More vampires. I could pick them out easily. They moved like puppets, unnatural, their movements either too smooth or too jerky. Their chests were frozen, their eyes dead. They looked like me.
Most still had their hair. Vincent had to be old, I realized, for all the color to leach out of his, unless he bleached it on purpose. That was silly. They had to have a way of knowing who was older without something like that.
People roamed the penthouse. They were barely dressed, if they were dressed at all. I saw a vampire take a girl by the back of the neck and lead her away, down a hallway to a bedroom, walled off from the rest.
“Feeding is a somewhat private thing for some of us,” Elizabeta noted, plucking the thoughts from my mind.
Private, but not quiet. The screaming cut through the soft sound of cordial conversations for a moment, but was quickly ignored. The living people just wandered around. When I looked into one of their eyes it was like running my hand over invisible sandpaper. There was just nothing, like his brain had been hollowed out, leaving him to wander with a placid, slightly bemused expression.
There were other things, too.
I saw it wander through the room. The vampires treated it the way the humans treated them. It was like watching Vincent walk through the casino. The thing shambling through the gathering was dressed in filthy clothes, stained with what could have been blood. It wore coveralls and a hooded sweatshirt and a jacket over that. It had the hood up, but when it turned my way Elizabeta pulled me aside before I saw what was under it.
Something slid over my back, cold, like a block of ice rolling across my shoulders. It was looking at me.
“What is-“
“Do not ask. Do not speak to it or acknowledge it in any way.”
“Why-“
“Because I cannot make it leave. It will come and go as it pleases. Do not engage it and it will not engage you. That is all.”
I pointedly averted my gaze from the thing in the coveralls. There was plenty to look at. Others I picked out as not human. Their movements were just wrong. One came up behind me as I stood next to Elizabeta, leaned over me and sniffed me. He was huge, almost seven feet tall and half as broad, powerfully built in a hulking v-shape. He looked like he’d never shaved or cut his hair and crawled out of some book about mountain men before putting on a surprisingly well fitted bespoke suit in an English cut.
“This one must be fresh,” he rumbled. “I almost took her for feeding stock.”
“She’s not mine,” Elizabeta said. There was a hint of resentment in her tone. She put it there on purpose, molded it. This thing didn’t resent anything.
She thought me a look, and smirked. She was probably proud of being a thing.
“Vincent’s, then.”
“Yes.”
He reached over with a huge hand and played with a lock of my hair. I froze. He let out a long chuffing breath and it stank, like rotten meat and acid. A predatory smell, like a dog’s breath amplified by a thousand, or more.
“Shame. I’d have had fun with you.”
He let go of me and I let out a breath.
“Stop that,” said Elizabeta. “You don’t need to breathe.”
“I don’t need not to.”
She tilted her head to one side. “Point. In time you’ll forget how. I have.”
“What was that guy?”
“That matter is complicated. Be glad you’re dead. His kind only eat the living.”
I swallowed.
“Stop that,” she said, drolly. “Oh, never mind. You’re too fresh. Still, I’d ride you harder if you were mine.”
She touched my chin. “It would be harder on you in some ways, yet easier in others. When I still raised thralls I made them comfortable, taught them, nurtured them to live as rulers of the Earth. I would treasure you. Feeling your sorrow as you watch your beauty fade, exulting in your joy as you reach for eternity. Founding a kingdom for you or snuffing you out when you reached to usurp me. You know he’ll kill you soon. I’ve never seen one of Vincent’s thralls last more than six months.”
I gripped the sides of my dress to stop my hands from trembling.
“It’s not fair.”
“No, but then, neither is anything else. Come with me. It’s time.”
She ascended the staircase and stood at the railing in front of the elevator, overlooking the guests. I took my place behind her, and nervously watched the crowd below. She was about to speak when she saw what I did, her gaze drawn by reading my mind, maybe.
Vincent was talking to the thing in the dirty clothes. Conversing with it, laughing. It just stood there staring at him, but he paused in the conversation as if it was answering. I felt something move on my back, like needles raking up my spine. Vincent cracked a smile as he spoke but a thin trickle of dark blood slid down his cheek, like a tear. He looked up at Elizabeta and raised his glass of untouched wine and stepped past the creature.
“Interesting. What’s he up to?”
“I don’t know.”
“Of course you don’t,” she said. “You’re a toy to him, not a confidant.”
She rapped her knuckles three times on the railing and the room went silent. Rising to her full, unimpressive height, she looked down her nose as the things assembled below her.
“My honored guests, by ancient tradition it is time for the presentation of guest-gifts. You have partaken of my board and bread but each of you has offered me a gift and I am honor bound to offer one in exchange, and do so happily,” said a creature without anything like happiness in her, “and with great pride. In lieu of an individual gift of baubles or trinkets I instead present to you an evening’s entertainment. Form a circle, please.”
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