Count On Me

by Abigail Graham

  “Is there something in this?”

  “Just blood.”

  “Where does it come from?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s given willingly. No one is hurt in the process.”

  I look at the frigid plastic bag in my hands and shudder. I need it. The thirst is roiling in my belly, but as I bring it up to pull off the cap I can’t help but stare at the dark red. Finally I force myself to snap it open with my teeth and gulp it down, squeezing so it goes down that much faster. It pours cold down my throat and churns in my stomach. The usual disgust is there, but I feel like I’m going to be sick.

  “Is my mother here?”

  He’s watching me intently.

  “Yes. She is.”

  “She s-saw me?”

  “Yes,” he says, softly.

  I crack. That’s the right word. I just break, and the sobs start. He leaps up from his chair and rushes to the bed, and sits beside me. When he sinks into the mattress I fall against him naturally, casually, with a feeling of familiarity that almost breaks through the sorrow. He puts his arm around me and I don’t fight it. More than that. I plunge my face into his chest and sob and he takes me in his arms and just lets me.

  “What’s wrong?” he says, finally, as he smoothes my hair out of my face.

  “Not like this,” I whimper. “Don’t let her see me like this.”

  “She already has.”

  I sob all that much harder.

  “She still loves you. More than anything. Your life is still here, Christine. We’re still here for you.”

  “We?”

  “You too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why? Who are you?”

  He swallows. I can feel his throat move when he rests his chin on my head.

  “We’re working on that. You have to come to it on your own. I can’t just tell you. I wish you knew how much I need to.”

  “Who else? What h-happened to Andi’s family?”

  He sits up and leans away from me.

  “I need to know. Please.”

  “You’re still a missing person’s case, but… we’ll come to that later.”

  “Come to what?”

  “Nothing. Andi was found six weeks after the two of you disappeared.”

  “Found how,” I say.

  “In,” I can hear him choking up, “In a landfill. They just threw her away. Police wrote it off. Young girl goes to Vegas, gets high, falls in with the wrong crowd. When they found her they used that as an excuse to stop looking for you.”

  The crying starts anew, soft and quiet. I swipe at my cheeks and my hand comes away pink.

  I freeze, staring at it. It’s like water mixed with blood. Salt water. Real tears.

  He rises and heads to the bathroom. He comes back with a warm, damp cloth and sits beside me, turning me to face him. I don’t protest as he dabs my cheeks with the cloth and wipes my hands, working the cloth between my fingers.

  “I don’t understand what’s happening to me.”

  “I know. There will come a time when I can explain everything. I need you to trust me.”

  “You hurt me. You burnt me with the sun.”

  “I know. I didn’t want to. There is no other way, but we’re getting closer. You need to remember. Tell me what you can remember next.”

  I lean on him, and I tell him.

  12

  I’m not sure how I got back from the party. Vincent must have brought me back to the penthouse. The next thing I remember is waking up, after spending the day on the floor at the foot of the bed, not that it matters where I ‘slept.’

  I sat up, and waited for orders. Vincent stepped off the bed. He never bothered with the sheets or blankets, they were for show. He did not yawn or act in any way human. He barely noticed me at all as he went about his routine of cleaning his teeth and changing his clothes. I knelt there and stared at the floor. There was still a crust of blood on my chin.

  “Clean yourself up. Then go to my sister. I’m going out. You are not.”

  He left me. I looked up as he stepped out into the hall.

  Pausing there, he looked back over his shoulder.

  “Your silly little mind is still open to me. Any thoughts of rebellion and you will be disciplined.”

  I knelt there for a time, then got up and went to clean up. It was worse than I thought. I stopped and stared at myself in the mirror, whimpering. I was covered in gore. There was stuff stuck in my teeth, hair or cloth or both clinging to my nails. I stuffed my clothes down the laundry chute and got in the shower.

  The hot water swept the dried blood away in clots and I watched it swirl around the drain. It looked like chocolate sauce. The heat of the water gave me nothing, and when the water ran clear I shut it off.

  Left to choose my own outfit I put on the most modest thing I could find, and it still made me look like a streetwalker. I didn’t bother with shoes. I wandered out into the penthouse, wondering what Victoria would do to me. I had a terrible certainty that she hated me. She never looked at me, never spoke to me. When she talked to her brother she pretended I wasn’t there, but she was always taking a glance at me here or there, from the corner of her eye. I couldn’t feel her presence at all. She was a walking blank, a void in the world around her.

  As if conjured by my thoughts, she stepped out of the elevator.

  I approached her, eyes downcast.

  “Master says I must go to you.”

  Victoria sized me up. I looked up at her through my lashes. I couldn’t help it. She would be pretty if she put on makeup and let her hair down, and wore the right clothes. She either wanted to look mannish or flat out didn’t care. After examining me for a moment, she cocked her head.

  “Interesting. Very well. Follow.”

  She walked around to the other side of the penthouse. I followed, two steps behind, very carefully keeping my eyes on her heels. She pushed open a door into an austere room. Filing cabinets along one wall and a plain, cheap desk were the only furniture, the desk graced by a phone and laptop computer. Victoria sat down in the chair and left me to stand, so I stood by the door with my hands folded in front of my hips and looked down at the floor.

  “He sent you to annoy me. He’s probably going to find another one.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Nothing for you to be sorry for. You don’t want to be here. I see that.”

  I said nothing.

  “I’m not playing a psychological game with you. Relax. I’d offer you a chair but I have none.”

  I fidgeted on my feet.

  “You’re wondering what I’m doing.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Managing the hotel. My brother is bored by it.”

  “Oh. Do you like it?”

  “Yes, I do. It brings me pleasure to organize things and manage accounts. It is diverting. A change comes over us as we age and begin to understand that these bodies were not made for epicurean pleasures. Do you know what epicurean means?”

  “Yes.”

  “Interesting. Educated people are so very rare these days. Most think epicureanism is a skin disease. Vincent usually prefers the dumb ones. Their idiotic answers to his questions amuse him.”

  She shifted in the chair.

  “I hate dealing with unions. My dealers are demanding a wage increase. Payroll is the largest expense of any operation. Do you know this?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can’t read your mind as Vincent can, but I can sense your emotional state.” She turned away from the computer. “I would like to give you a piece of advice.”

  I shrugged.

  “Give it up. You’re not Christine anymore. You may call yourself that. You look like her, you feel like her, you have some of her memories, but you are not her. She is dead. Now you have her body. Give up that connection to your past and you will survive this.”

  Her look was so intense I had to meet it, and I had to dare to
ask her.

  “Is that what you did?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you become a vampire?”

  “My father,” she said. “We were a family of silver miners. That is why we were here. Riches and power were not enough for him. He wanted more. He traveled the world, leaving my brother and myself to manage his estates. I did the managing, Vincent whored and debauched himself and took the credit. Even then I was cleaning up after him.

  “Father came back after six years. He came in a blacked out coach that arrived at night, and would not see us until the sun fell again the next day. He saw Vincent first. I had to wait a week to see him.”

  “Then what?”

  She leaned her hand on her chin.

  “Vincent held me down while my father gnawed my throat open. I screamed and begged him to stop, probably as you did. I struggled in vain, I felt the pain of death. Nothing hurts like bleeding out, does it?”

  “No,” I whisper.

  “Then he fed me his blood, and like you became Vincent’s thrall, I became his. Vincent gloried in his ascension, for a while. I did not.”

  “Why?”

  “He took something from you, didn’t he? A ring.”

  I nodded.

  “He took mine, too. I am not going to lie to you and tell you there was a great romance or any real affection between my fiancee and myself, but he was kind to me and cordial and I think he would have indulged my interests when we were married. I had a passion for maths even then. I was a very dry sort of person, and so was he. We complimented each other. As was the custom of the time for people of means, I… saved myself for him. I think he would have served that need adequately, too. I think I could have loved him if I…”

  She trailed off and looked away.

  “Listen to me. Ignoring my own advice. When I realized what I just told you were the thoughts and memories of a dead woman, I was free. The changes to our bodies help.”

  “Changes?”

  She shrugged. “You’re fresh. You might still be able to, ah, function. I cannot. Neither can Vincent. When that set in, he changed. He was very attached to his masculinity, as they might say. He began to express it in other ways. He was much harsher on his first thralls than he has been on you. The things he did to them would make you walk out to meet the sun lest you suffer the same fate.”

  I swallowed.

  “Small comfort, I supposed. Now he has changed again. Turning you was a mistake.”

  “Why?”

  She eyed me.

  I looked at the floor. “He took me from that other one’s territory, right? Something like that.”

  “We have an understanding. This part of the world is one of the few where our kind can operate so openly and deliberately. Vincent has disturbed a well established and comfortable system by provoking a much older and more powerful vampire. This much you understand, yes?”

  “I do.”

  “He wanted her to kill you.”

  I shifted on my feet. “Why?”

  “He’d have a grievance against her and could challenge her. I’m afraid Vincent has reached the end of a vampire’s life cycle. He’s started caring about politics.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “We like to waggle our fingers at each other and play Dracula. Elizabeta’s business holdings are spiraling around a drain and she doesn’t even know it. She’s too busy dealing with Vincent’s provocations. That’s why she invited him to that gathering. She was hoping he’d give her adequate provocation to kill him. See how it works?”

  “He met with something there. A thing in a hood.”

  Even for someone as white as marble, Victoria went pale.

  “What?”

  “I don’t know what it was. It was all dressed up in dirty clothes.”

  Her throat bobbed.

  “I see.”

  “Why did you tell me all that stuff about yourself?”

  She leaned back in the chair. It creaked a little. She tucked her lip under her teeth. Victoria had buck teeth. Just a little bit. There was something oddly human in the gesture, and she must have noticed, because she made her face perfectly still. Then she reached into her pocket and pulled out a folded piece of laminated paper and crisply unfolded it on the desk. I stepped over and turned it around so I could read it.

  I almost hit the floor.

  Printed on the paper was my own picture. I looked into my own eyes. There was somebody next to me. Somebody I knew, somebody important. We were smiling. The sun was behind our heads, making everything a little too dark. Sunglasses perched on my forehead. He had a sunburn. I could see the strap of a bathing suit on my shoulder. He was playing with it, and I was just starting to notice, and moving to bat his hand away.

  Lifting the page from the desk, I read aloud.

  “Find Christine.”

  They were offering a quarter million dollar reward for information leading to my rescue.

  Six months. I’d been missing for six months. I folded the paper and Victoria snatched it from me.

  “I found that stuck to a telephone pole. There are more.”

  “They’re looking for me?”

  She leaned back and pocketed the page, and looked up at me. She met my eyes.

  “Yes, and they might find you. Take advice from someone who knows. Let them go.”

  “But-“

  “That girl is dead,” said Victoria. “She’s better that way.”

  “I still don’t understand why you’re helping me.”

  She folded her hands in her lap.

  “Who says I’m helping you?”

  Behind me, the elevator doors opened. Vincent stormed out.

  “Thrall!”

  I rushed back into the living room and stood rigid, hands at my sides, eyes on the floor while he stalked around the room, strutting like a general in an old painting. He never looked at me once, but circled the room, sniffing the air.

  “I grow restless. Tonight, we hunt.”

  My stomach sank. He meant kill somebody.

  How many had I killed already? I couldn’t even remember. Everything was a haze. Vincent drew closer to me, looming over me.

  “Come. Now.”

  He moved, and I followed. Back down to the casino floor. It was different now. People didn’t just move away, they shied away. I saw one of them stop where they were and leave. An old lady playing the one armed bandit clutched her chest and leaned against it as his shadow passed over her. It might have been his imagination, but the light threw a long shadow as he passed and it was wrong. Too dark, the wrong shape.

  Snatching his keys away from the attendant without a word, he strode over to the car and barely gave me time to close my door before he backed out and raced down the ramp and right out onto the highway. His lips pulled back over his teeth and I dared to look him in the face.

  There was something wrong. His skin was tighter, not paler but more waxy, translucent. I watched his jawline. Something moved under his skin.

  “Eyes down, thrall.”

  I snapped my gaze to the floor.

  “Yes, Master.”

  He kept driving. He blew through a red light, ignored a horn to my right. I looked over and saw a flash of headlights that almost clipped the side of the car as we rammed through the intersection. I gripped the hem of my skirt and looked at my feet and wondered what would happen if we wrecked. Vincent just started laughing, and sped up. There was something sliding off him in waves, like oil. He was deranged.

  We were headed downtown, towards the flashing lights. I looked over without raising my eyes. We were going to the other vampire’s territory again.

  Vincent said nothing. He just turned off and circled around. The street was blocked off to motor traffic, so he couldn’t turn down there. He wound down a few streets more, where the atmosphere was less savory, not to well lit and populated. He stopped when he spotted a girl walking down the sidewalk, hugging herself against the chill. Spike heels, a barely there dress, too muc
h makeup. It hit me when I realized what she was.

  Throwing the door open, Vincent stepped out and grabbed her arm.

  She screamed.

  A man came running. Just a guy in a Western-style shirt and jeans. Vincent gave him a contemptuous look and flicked out his arm. His fist might as well have been marble. It didn’t just catch the running man in the jaw, his face caved in with a sickening crunch, and he toppled to the ground in a boneless heap. Vincent stared into the girl’s eyes and her screams died slowly, like her brain just melted. He dragged her around and opened my door, and shoved her onto my lap.

  The door clapped shut. He moved to the driver’s seat but stopped.

  Crouching, he shoved his fingers in the ruins of the pimp’s face, walked to the brick wall fronting the sidewalk, and smeared a witchy-looking glyph onto the whitewashed brick and licked his fingers clean.

  “Bleh. Ate too much red meat.”

  He sat down, closed the door, and pulled off, leaving me to hold the squirming girl in my lap.

  “Where am I?” she said, softly. “What’s happening?”

  Vincent’s voice was gentle, soothing. “Nothing so terrible, pet. It’ll be over soon. Ease your mind.”

  “Okay,” she slurred.

  He wove through traffic and I wondered how he avoided getting pulled over. Probably the same way he was able to take me without anyone noticing. We careened down Las Vegas Boulevard, swerving and jerking between the cars, me with a passenger on my lap.

  Vincent didn’t laugh, just stared, grimly. If I wasn’t careful not to breathe around him I’d have been holding my breath until he pulled back into the parking garage. He got out, tossed the keys at a valet without looking, and walked inside. I was left to push the girl out of the car and lead her inside.

  It was like her mind was jelly. I had to put my hands on her shoulders and lead her.

  I stopped short of the door.

  He was going to feed on her. Kill her. I was helping him.

  My hands fell to my sides.

  I turned her around.