But what was I thinking? “We can’t ever have children,” I told him.
“Okay,” he said and lowered his hot body over mine.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I stood in a bright, humming bathroom, looking in the mirror, trying to find a way to cover the bite wound on my neck. Damon had used his pocketknife after I’d screamed, but there were still some open places where his dull teeth had torn my skin.
Makeup wouldn’t do the job, and I’d only brought spring clothes with me, no turtlenecks or scarves. I had a jacket but the collar wouldn’t stay up. I’d have to put a bandage over it and say I’d had an allergic reaction to a wasp sting, or something equally lame. Maybe everyone would think it was a bad hickey.
I dropped the blood-soaked washcloth into the sink. “Damon,” I called.
He made an indistinct noise from the other room so I stepped around the corner. He was lying naked and spread-eagled on the bed, just as I’d left him, spent and staring at the ceiling. His lips were still red with my blood.
“I need you to go get me some bandages and stuff.”
“Sure,” he said, but he didn’t twitch so much as his big toe.
“I’m jumping in the shower.”
This time he didn’t bother with a response. He was probably asleep, I didn’t bother to check - I was worried about my injury. I decided I could wash it again real good with soap and get the disinfectant later. But, god, how was I going to explain it? I didn’t have a devious mind. I couldn’t think up good lies.
The situation had me upset, but I couldn’t be angry with Damon, not after I’d gone insane with lust and begged him to do it. With full awareness, I had exposed my neck for him and brushed my hair out of the way, as he’d leaned over me with that sharp blade and wild eyes. I’d been crazy, but fully aware. And it had paid off, this time, since he’d given me the most mind-blowing, soul-searing, orgasmic experience of my life. We must have disturbed the entire fourth floor with our noise.
Oddly, the exchange had had opposite effects on us. He was completely wasted and I felt wired. I should have been the drowsy one - I was the one injured and low on blood. But I felt like moving too fast, talking too fast, and thinking too fast. I wanted to run stairs.
Forcing myself to stay calm caused my nerves and muscles to cramp and burn. I thought a hot shower would help.
I’d just finished washing my hair when Damon stepped into the tub and pulled me into his arms. He turned my chin and tried to examine the wound in the poor lighting.
“I tried not to,” he said and hugged me gently. “But I couldn’t help it. I was possessed.”
“I’m all right.”
He picked up my razor off the edge of the tub and studied how best to cut his wrist with the protected blade.
“Don’t,” I said. Now that I wasn’t controlled by lust anymore, I didn’t want to give in to my perverse cravings.
He glanced at me with shining eyes. “You’ll be rejuvenated.”
I stepped back from him, until I saw the enticing red river dripping off his wrist, falling wasted into the flow of water. He caught my hand and pulled, and I went, mesmerized by the intense craving I’d fought for so very long.
“It’s all right,” his melodic voice soothed. “Hurry.”
Heat and steam and the mystical darkness of water trapped me inside a world surreal and beautiful. I couldn’t resist any longer.
I clamped onto his wrist and drank, acutely aware of his hand stroking my hair, and the nerve endings in my head suddenly coming alive, so bright. At first, I couldn’t find more than a faint taste, then I found the flow and sucked and his blood ran over my tongue and down my throat. A wave of cold heat flowed throughout my body and my feet prickled and tingled. I swallowed the trickles that ran over my tongue until he pulled on my chin and maneuvered his wrist from my mouth.
And that was when the beauty faded and hard water slapped me in the face. The hum of the bathroom sounded institutional. The white of the walls looked puritanical and threatening. Damon tied a white washcloth around his wrist and pulled it tight using his teeth while I stood swaying, staring indifferently.
I tried to look at him but his shape blurred and my knees turned to sponge cake. My mouth was full of glue. Damon caught me before I hit the floor of the tub and supported me when I insisted on rinsing my mouth.
Tears flowed with water down the drain and nausea swirled violently in my stomach. I wasn’t just crazy, I was perverted. Debauched. Disgusting. I was worse than Mama. So much worse.
Damon carried me wet from the shower to the bed and lay with me, petting me and saying that everything really was all right. That we were meant to be this way, because we weren’t like humans. We were vampires, and what we’d done was perfectly natural and right, and even necessary.
We’d be like the original six and never tell anyone. We’d be safe together. Forever.
I cried with shame even after my body began to feel shiny and alive with energy. I didn’t want to be like Mama. I didn’t want to be like that. And I was terrified of being put in a ‘place.’ I’d been in those places - I could imagine what it would be like. I could imagine all too well. I was prepared to kill myself first. And I could do it - I knew that now. But I didn’t want to die. I’d finally found love for the first time in my life. I was backed into a corner.
I cried until I thought my tears would turn red, until I finally heard Damon begging, “Stop, please stop, you’re killing me. It’s not wrong. It can’t be. We’re glorious. Believe me.”
I stopped crying, because I’d run out of steam, and because the distress in his eyes disturbed me. “I’m done,” I told him with a garbled voice, and brushed at the wet strands stuck all over my face. “I’m better.”
He pulled me into his arms again. “We’re okay,” he whispered in my ear. “Everything’s okay. It’s not as bad as it seems, I promise. It just seems that way. I swear I won’t let anything bad happen.”
“I know. I believe you.”
But I was lying and Damon was wrong. Dr. Sanderson would have said so if he’d been here. Damon would ruin my mind and break my heart. He would drag me down into his hellfire pit of insanity and never let me leave.
But with his strength and heat surrounding me, and with a new sense of euphoria forcing me into a languid stretch that lifted my back off the mattress, I really didn’t care. I wanted to go with him to hell.
***
We’d agreed to take Mama and Aunt Cynthia out to dinner that evening. At the apartment, we went right in, since the door was unlocked, and found them in the kitchen. When we stepped into the doorway they both stared at Damon and me like we’d burst in with guns.
Mama was the first to respond. “What’s happening?” Her eyes widened in terror. “Who’s coming?”
“Nothing and nobody, Mama,” I told her with my most sincere voice. “I’m just on vacation and having a good time. Everything’s fine.”
She didn’t really believe me, but Aunt Cynthia relaxed and gave Mama a knowing smile, fully believing mine and Damon’s sinister glow was the result of an afternoon of ordinary sex.
“What happened to you two?” Aunt Cynthia asked, nodding to the large flesh-colored bandage on my neck, and the one on Damon’s wrist. I’d kept my hair pulled forward over my shoulders, but apparently that hadn’t been enough.
“Some guy tried to mug us in the park,” Damon said. “He didn’t get anything except a black eye.”
“My god!” Aunt Cynthia said. “Are you all right? Did you call the police?”
I stared at Damon, alarmed by his ability to tell such outrageous lies and make them seem real. In his messed up mind, he probably did remember such an ordeal taking place.
“Yeah,” he said. “They took a description but he was long gone by then.”
“Well, my god,” Aunt Cynthia breathed. “Did he cut y’all or something? Which park was it?”
Damon held up his wrist. “Naw, they’re just scratches. No big deal.”
>
“Well, no wonder you both look excited. Sit down.”
“Liar, liar, pants on fire,” Mama whispered, staring at me hard with interest.
“I’m starving to death!” I said. “Let’s go!”
The evening went reasonably well. Mama was unhappy all through the meal because they served rolls instead of biscuits, but she didn’t cause a scene. And Damon and I managed to draw curious stares from less than half the patronage.
I knew we looked odd. I’d stopped into the bathroom to see why people seemed to be staring, and the two women at the sinks also stared and hurried out. Physically, I looked normal, but there was something different about my eyes. They were too rounded and I couldn’t make them narrow enough to appear normal. And I felt as if I were emitting laser beams. I could feel my energy bouncing off the walls back at myself.
I was high as a kite on a windy spring day.
Damon was equally euphoric, except he was proud of his intoxication and had no interest in trying to appear normal. Not that he ever did. Tonight he was everybody’s best friend, buying drinks for those who kept glancing at us, and calling to our waiter by name in a loud voice.
My voice was also too loud and after Cynthia frowned at me and said, “You don’t have to yell, Maggie, I can hear you just fine,” I tried to keep a low profile by holding my gaze downward and keeping my mouth shut.
But Aunt Cynthia was sitting too close to be fooled.
As we were leaving the restaurant, she grabbed hold of my arm and we fell in behind Mama and Damon. “Are you doing drugs?” she asked.
“Of course not,” I answered.
She wouldn’t let go of my arm. “Are you sure he’s treating you right?”
I nodded, a little angered by her presumption. Who was she to tell me what to do or who to see? She ran off and abandoned me when I needed her most. When Mama needed her the most. I gave her a painfully fake smile. “Everything’s fine. Just like it’s always been.”
Pulling away, I trotted up to walk beside Damon. He put his arm around my shoulders and glanced back at Aunt Cynthia, then gave me a warm kiss on the temple. “We’re not like them,” he whispered in my ear.
***
Mama was exhausted after supper, so no one bothered with talk about checking out the nightlife. Damon and I dropped off the two party-poopers and went to have our own brand of fun.
After stopping in at a drugstore for disinfectant, bandages and razorblades, we went back to the hotel and indulged our madness. Using a clean new razorblade, we mixed our blood together with the homemade red wine Damon had brought. We took turns sipping from a plastic hotel cup. It seemed like a good time to discuss our future.
I wanted to discuss our relationship, because I wondered how many years we might have before we completely went insane. I wanted to make some plans. But he wanted to talk about the old folks and the mystery he’d stirred up about them.
I was a little more open to the idea of uncovering Gram’s secrets now that my own life had turned so unexpectedly bizarre. I knew it would make me feel better if I knew that Gram had once been like Mama, Damon and me. If she had been, then she was proof that we could get well. She’d been normal as long as I’d known her. Chester, Bella and Verna Jarvis were normal, too.
Though, I didn’t have much hope that we would uncover any hidden secrets. Too many years had gone by and we didn’t have enough clues.
“How long do you think we have before you turn into your dad and I turn into my mom?” I asked.
“We’ll never be like them,” he said.
“I figure we’ve got a good ten years before we have to be committed. We won’t have anyone to take care of us.”
“We’ll run off and hide in the mountains,” he said, letting me have the last sip. “I won’t let them take you away from me and lock us up. I’ll kill us both first.”
I turned and lay back, wanting to rest my head on his lap until the room stopped its slow spinning. My mind still worked efficiently, though, and I was intrigued by the idea. “We could do that, I guess. Run to the mountains.” I added with a laugh, “not kill ourselves. If we aren’t around people, no one will know how bad we are. We could go to Alaska or somewhere and live like the Vietnam vets who went insane. I saw a documentary once.”
Damon stared down at me with wide upside down eyes. “Let’s go home and corner Verna Jarvis and force her to tell us the truth.”
“What?” I sat up, and then had to wait a moment for the room to settle. “We just got here. I thought we were on vacation.”
“She’s an old lady living alone, she won’t fuck with me. She’ll tell me the truth and then keep her mouth shut.”
“I don’t want to threaten her, Damon,” I pleaded. “She used to babysit me. She’ll think I’ve lost control. She’s my next door neighbor. She’s Gram’s best friend. She might have a heart attack.”
His face turned red and he chewed on the insides of his cheeks for a little while. “I’m running out of time, Maggie,” he finally said. “Can’t you see?”
I could see, and was upset to see he was able to recognize the seriousness of his condition. Mama had never been able to admit her problems. It was always everyone else who was strange and dangerous.
“But how will learning the truth help anything? Let’s enjoy life while we can. We only have ten good years left.”
He grabbed me by the shoulders and stared at me wide-eyed. “Let’s go back in time,” he said.
“Huh?”
He frowned, blinking rapidly. “No, never mind. That didn’t work.”
“Let’s go downstairs and sit in the lobby,” I suggested. I thought it might be best if we got out of the room and stopped brooding and bleeding. My high was kicking in and I didn’t want to waste the evening bored silly in our room. “It’s like being in a mansion. It feels really cool and exciting.”
“That sounds good,” he said.
But once we were downstairs, I realized the idea was a mistake. Damon became too affectionate for the good tastes of the hotel, and I noticed an employee giving us dirty looks. I tore his hand from my inner thigh and his lips from my neck and suggested we go upstairs.
“I own this hotel,” he declared, driving his hand between my legs again.
When my shirt went up around my neck, I looked up to see to men standing there, glaring at us. I kicked and pushed and finally freed myself enough to get my shirt pulled down.
Damon stood when he saw the men. “Who said you could look at her?” he demanded, sauntering arrogantly toward a man who appeared to be the hotel manager. I couldn’t quite tell. My vision was blurred from humiliation and adrenaline. Hotel guests were standing around gawking.
I pulled on Damon’s hand just as he gave the man a threatening push on the shoulder, hard enough to send the man stumbling backward. Damon must have seen the urgent plea in my eyes because he backed off and declared, loud enough that his rich voice reverberated off the expansive lobby walls, that the hotel was run by a bunch of fascist fucks.
They were nice enough to let us pack our bags without a fuss, and my little excursion through first-class was over. I hadn’t even had the chance to sleep in that nice big bed.
We arrived at Aunt Cynthia’s just as they were getting ready for bed. Arrangements were altered and Mama slept with Aunt Cynthia. Damon and I spent the night on a sofa bed with a bar in our backs.
***
Sometime in the middle of the night I woke from my light, uncomfortable sleep to find Damon sitting up, staring down at me.
He turned on a blinding lamp and said, “Look at me.”
I sat up, trying to focus and figure out what was happening.
“I’m really sorry,” he said.
I rested against the cushions and rubbed my eyes. “It’s all right. I’m used to public humiliation. Mama, remember. She had a horrible fit in the bank one time and had to be arrested. That was much worse. At least no one knows us here.”
“I ruined your vacation.”
/>
“No, you didn’t. I thought you handled the whole thing really well. We’ll be better off here, anyway. It feels safer.”
His eyes darkened suddenly, and glazed, and he groaned, “Please, kill me.”
I stared at him for a long moment, because the grim voice I’d just heard wasn’t Damon’s. It was his voice, but darker somehow, hollow and distant.
“Damon?”
“I love you,” he said with his own voice, and fearful eyes.
I held out my arms to him. “I love you, too. Everything’s all right.”
He came to me and rested his head against my chest. His arms closed tightly around my waist. His heart was racing. I could feel the pounding against my chest. He was burning hot again.
I stroked his hair from his sweaty forehead and tried to calm him by humming a soothing tune. Soon, the tension in his body eased and he rubbed my arm imploringly.
“I’m hearing them already,” he said with a soft voice.
“The voices?”
He let out a long, miserable groan.
I held him tighter, wondering what to do. He wasn’t like Mama in every way. He let me touch him, for one, and that confused me in terms of dealing with his illness. Mama was extremely protective of her personal space and didn’t want anyone touching her – ever. With her, everything was handled from a distance. And Damon seemed to be aware of the changes taking place in him. To this day, Mama wouldn’t admit anything was wrong with her.
Damon seemed to be asking for help. Then a thought occurred to me. “Are you supposed to drink with your medication? Maybe the wine caused some kind of reaction.”
He looked up, squinting as if some deep, pressing thought had come to mind.
“Damon, didn’t they put you on any medication?”
“I don’t need anything,” he said, settling down again. “I’m perfect.”
“Do you hear the voices often?” I asked gently.
“Some. More than before. Just don’t leave me. Everyone leaves once they see me. Once they see the truth.”
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