by Tanith Lee
Not to breast or groin, but stroking over the fibre of her psychic life.
Her head jerked up, the crimsoned glass in her grip.
And before she could turn to see, the girl in black from the queue set her hand (physical, only that) lightly on Ruby Sin’s shoulder.
‘Hey, don’t be startled. Or do you like to be startled, little no-talk bunny, eh?’
Chloe looked down her blunt nose at the dance area beyond the inner doors.
‘That guy,’ she said, ‘is up on the gallery.’
‘What guy?’ Barry was still busy disposing of the ‘Nurofen’ abstracted from the blue-haired goth. ‘Don’t he know,’ mused Barry, ‘that he can get all this in there – and only in there?’
‘E, you mean? Is that what they are?’
‘I don’t even know what these tabs are – Christ, maybe they are painkillers …’
‘He’s just up there,’ said Chloe.
‘What are you on about?’
‘The guy what came in earlier – the one who came in before we opened. Hank let him in before he went off – said this guy knows Frank Collins.’
Barry patted his pocket, where the initials of the security firm were emblazoned. FRC, for Frank Roland Collins. ‘Well, if Collins said okay, it’s okay.’
‘Don’t like him,’ said Chloe. ‘Don’t like the guy. Something. Trouble.’
Barry too squinted through the doors. In the fractured lights he took a moment to locate the man Chloe was bothered about.
Tall, all in black, as most of them were. Long black hair, a flood of it, like a woman’s … pale face leaded in by probably mascaraed black eyes and eyebrows.
Chloe, squat as a tank with muscles, still maintained an active imagination, apparently. But even so, Barry went out of the front doors to check with Zara and Chick. Just in case.
Sue read the book first. She found it dense and almost difficult, to begin with. Then the vampiric sequences of Stoker’s rogue masterpiece of transmogrified sex, began to quicken her. Why had she wanted to read it in the first place? Someone must have said something. Ten years after, recalling everything else, neither Sue nor Ruby Sin could remember.
Almost a month later she realised – or heard – about the film. Not the earlier versions of Dracula, but something more contemporary.
‘Dad, there’s this video I want to see.’
Oliver Wyatt had peered at her with impatient indulgence over some report he was studying. ‘What did you say?’
‘There’s a movie – a film I’d like to watch, Dad.’
‘Well, tell your mother.’
‘I did. She won’t let me.’
‘Why not?’ Absently now.
‘She said it’s too old for me. But it isn’t. I’ve read the book.’
‘A schoolbook, is it?’
Sue had not, then, learned properly to lie to her parents. Had never thought she had to.
‘No.’
‘What’s it called?’
Sue told him.
His look. A look initially of surprise, then scornful amusement. And then of sombre disapproval.
‘No, Sue. That’s not one for you.’
She had tried to argue.
Oliver lost his temper, threw down his papers and got up, looming there in his study like a big tanned pig in a suit. ‘You will not argue with me. I’ve told you, it’s inappropriate. Besides being utter rubbish. I suggest you go and get on with your homework, Sue. That’s where you need to concentrate your energies, believe me, or you’re going to amount to nothing. Is that what you want?’
Cowed, distressed – for even by then, she still bowed to parental authority perforce, and to the unknown ambiguous future, during which she must become ‘adult’ and ‘responsible’ – Sue Wyatt lowered her head and slunk away.
In her room, with its Jane-chosen floral prints and curtains, and frilled-over bed, among the ancient toys that could no longer help her, she got out her maths homework. The questions might have been written in French – another subject she never managed, either, to grasp. She cried. Then she went and looked in her mirror.
She saw a young, ugly girl, with tear-reddened eyes.
She was (feebly?) angry with herself, and with all the rest of them.
That night she woke up at some vague hour of morning with one of the sharp cramps her periods caused when starting. Fumbling to the bathroom, and then for aspirin in the bedside drawer, Sue rehearsed other means to acquire a forbidden film.
‘I told you. This one don’t talk.’
‘Course she will. With me. Won’t you, bunny?’
Ruby Sin looked at the girl in white, the girl in masculine black.
Through her transcendental Friday-night equilibrium, a worm of panic began to ooze. (The unknown touch on her soul – muddled now, fading away …)
What did they want, these girls?
At school … Sue had been bullied. Oh, rarely a physical assault – or, if one occurred, no more than a pinch, a slap, someone spitting into her eye: That’s for this … This is for that … They could frighten her so easily with threats and name-calling, insults and subtle promises, blows were largely redundant.
She had always been bullied. At the infants’ school, eight years old, Sue, crying with horror at the thought of more terror in the morning, had reduced Jane to running her to school in the bright blue car. Then marching into the head’s office – Jane marched, Sue, like a convict, marched.
‘This can’t go on, Mr Mayberry.’
‘But it’s nothing, Mrs Wyatt. She has to toughen up a bit. Has the child any marks on her? No? Well, then.’
And presently thereafter, in the so-called playground: ‘You went to see Fartberries, didn’t you?’ Slap, pinch, etc.
Sue had only, briefly, ever had one friend, a colourless studious bore called Clare, that nobody ever bothered to bully because she was too limp.
This now, however this, under the fractal lights and the beat of drums, of all things reminded Ruby Sin of Sue Wyatt’s childhood coercion. She realised the two girls had cornered her, in just that same way, and were now driving her back along a wall, people obligingly making room for them to pass.
Ruby Sin turned abruptly, and walked off across the dance floor.
The white and black girls, one frowning, one smiling, went after her.
‘Look, she don’t dance neither.’
‘Yes, she will.’
Black Sequins seized Ruby Sin’s wrist and forced her arm awkwardly upward in a dancer’s movement.
‘You need to loosen up.’
Arm dropped again, Ruby Sin watched her tormentors as they circled round her like two young wolves.
She was suddenly truly afraid. As if, despite everything, she were Sue stood here.
Real life, always less lovely, less wanted, more terrible than fantasy, had hunted for and found her. Unforgivably here.
Why should she have thought herself exempt? It had happened before. Happened most definitely on that night ten years ago – that first Dracula night.
Now they were leading her, despite her resistance, off the dance floor, between the bolts of synthetic lighting, the writhing and swaying figures, the blade-edged shadows of things that did not look possible, and were not.
Ruby Sin gripped her glass. They were in an alcove, just off the floor, out of the lights.
Sequins was leaning forward, kissing Ruby Sin’s neck, while the girl in white held Ruby Sin’s arms, casually, ready to be firm.
‘Want to be a donor tonight, little vampire bunny?’
Even in the half dark, Ruby Sin saw the glint of metal and glass. It was a syringe ejecting from a plastic wrap.
‘In my bootstrap – clever, yes? But see, still quite clean.’
Too fast for the girl in white, who had thought the victim quiescent, even complacent, Ruby Sin’s right hand sprang forward. Vodka and Cherry-Red splashed into Sequins’ face and eyes. The syringe fell. Someone trod on it with a splintering crunch. The girl in white screamed, like
an actress in a horror movie of the 1960s. Perhaps she was practiced.
The scream was violent enough that it reached the nearest dancers seen over the music and the beat. Heads turned, eager or disdainful.
Ruby Sin and the girl in white struggled, and Ruby Sin’s enamel nails opened three long clawings across the screamer’s cheek, so now she shrieked.
Up on his rostrum the deejay swayed, lethargic, noting nothing, lost in ear-protected sound. But the bar staff had glimpsed the fracas, and a button was pressed.
Out in the foyer a fiery light erupted like freshest blood.
‘Here we go,’ said Barry, and shouldered through the doors.
There had been a large ceramic bowl on the Wyatt hall table, both bowl and table carefully dusted by the cleaning woman. In the bowl lay most of the family plastic, aside, naturally, from credit cards.
Sue flipped through the cards for library and various memberships, until she found the one for Epic Videos.
Wearing her Saturday non-school clothes and shoes, her face powdered as her parents now permitted, she entered the store one evening when she was supposedly meeting the long-discarded Clare for a walk.
At first Sue failed to find the movie. Then she did find it on a special display. The pictures on the box alone filled her with an incoherent, nearly panicky excitement.
But she kept her (fake) cool quite well. The rude younger man, who never bothered with anyone, was at the till, as Sue had hoped. He didn’t bat an eyelid at her choice, nor her mother’s card. Though when she paid cash, he short-changed her, which Sue discovered only later.
It scarcely mattered. She had the film, hidden in her bag. It was hers for three whole nights.
The best thing of all had happened, too.
Jane and Oliver were going up to town tomorrow. It was a Friday, and they were intending to shop, as Jane insisted, for Christmas presents. But really it was only October, and they would be visiting some gallery they had been invited to, perhaps having lunch, and later decidedly having dinner somewhere expensive.
‘We won’t be back until after 1am, I shouldn’t think,’ Jane had said. ‘We’re taking your father’s car, so he can’t drink, but never mind,’ spangled Jane, who – not allowed to drive Oliver’s Merc – could drink herself silly and no doubt would.
(There had been other giggly nights like that. Sue had overheard them; she would have had to have been deaf not to. Oliver staying a while downstairs to catch up via the whiskey decanter. Then noises in the bedroom along the corridor. Sue knew what they were doing. All those bizarre little educative books had informed her – without understanding, of course. It wasn’t that the sounds of the Wyatts in full rut scared Sue. They simply appalled her, that was all.)
But she had no thought of any of that. She smiled and wished her mother and father a lovely day and evening, quite warmly promised she would spend at least two and a half hours on her homework, and would be in bed by 10 pm.
She was, better late than never, learning how to lie.
Ruby Sin found she had been taken prisoner again. These arms felt inhumanly hard and irresistible. The breasted chest her spine was pressed to was almost as hard.
Chloe said, with icy menace, ‘Relax. Good. That’s it.’
But not letting go.
Then they were out in the foyer.
Zara had the black sequins girl by one arm only, and Barry stood over the assemblage glowering, while the girl in white-no-longer dripped incarnadine on him.
Barry proclaimed, ‘You’re all going out. Okay? And you’re all barred. No trouble. It’ll hurt you more than us.’
‘That bitch started it –’ (Sequins.)
‘Too bad.’
The inner doors behind them moved. ‘Stop,’ someone said. It was a command.
Barry looked sidelong.
Everyone had turned. Even Ruby Sin (hung on the cross of Chloe), her slender muscles splitting at the tug of Chloe’s tank-top torso.
Ruby Sin … she saw …
Her eyes dropped shut like those of a doll. For a second she sagged, and only Chloe’s Rottweiler frame held her.
But then Ruby Sin’s eyes flew wider than wide. A blind woman given sight, she stared. For He was there. He had come here.
He spoke again, in a tonelessly musical voice. ‘Let her go.’
Barry lunged.
Barry was good, but somehow not so good, not tonight. The tall, black-haired man was neither floored nor in custody, and somehow Barry was down on one knee.
Only for a second. But it counted.
‘No,’ said the young man with long black hair, to Barry, to all of them. ‘Don’t. None of you would like it.’
Chloe said, ‘It’s him, off the gallery. Says he knows Frank Collins. I told you.’
‘I do,’ said the young man. ‘Why don’t you call him? Say, Anduin.’
‘What?’
‘A-N-D-U-I-N. Me. I think you’d better. You might not want to make Frank angry.’
Chick was there. ‘I’ll do it. Anduin, you say?’
‘Yes.’ He stood by the doors, and behind him the light went on exploding, and the dark haemorrhaging over all.
‘It’s all right,’ he said softly, looking into her eyes.
Ruby Sin found she was shaking. Chloe had lessened her hold.
The sequined and shimmer-white girls quarrelled. Tears and blood rolled down the scratched face.
Sue would have been distressed by what she had done in self-defence – for, once or twice, in self-defence, she had done things. Ruby Sin, however, was sinless.
Chick had gone out on the pavement, away from some of the noise. He was talking on his mobile. Then listening. Then: ‘What? He’s who? Okay, Mr Collins. Sure, Mr Collins. Right.’
Chick re-entered and looked at Zara. Nodded.
Zara took hold of both the girl in black and the girl in white and seemed to lift both of them off their feet. They were slung out of the front doors of the club. They huddled like orphans under the blue glare of The Family Axe, hissing and calling: It was her … was her …
But the club doors shut again, and Chick and Barry stood in front of the man who had named himself Anduin, and Chloe still kept her grip on Ruby Sin.
Until through the blaze of music there was the abrupt undercurrent of a car screeching around a corner and drawing up outside.
‘Jesus, ’s him,’ said Chick.
The night parted, then with a rush the doors. A big man, in heavy and gym-honed middle age, pushed through, two others at his back.
His head was covered with short thick hair and his eyes by an a-physical lens like vitreous.
He glanced at the bouncers, then directly at the young man in black.
Frank Roland Collins said something in another language, which could have been Russian. This took his crew by surprise, but not the young man, who answered in two or three unknown, alien words.
Frank turned to Chick.
‘Didn’t know I had any foreign, did ya?’
‘No, Mr Collins.’
‘One word I want ya ter learn.’
‘Yes, Mr Collins?’
‘All of yer. Scarabae. He, this gentlemen, is one of the Scarabae. Right?’
They nodded. He made each of them, bemusedly, repeat the name. Then Frank walked over to the young man, who, Frank alone was aware, might well be much, much older than Frank himself. ‘My apologies, Anduin.’
‘Accepted. But tell your woman to let go of mine.’
‘Clo,’ said Frank, ‘do as the gentleman says.’
Chloe let Ruby Sin go.
Ruby Sin put out her hand on the air, to catch something to steady herself. But the air was empty. Then she discovered that the black-clad shape, the black eyes of Anduin, now held her up.
‘Did you both want to go back inside, Anduin?’ asked Frank Roland Collins politely.
‘No.’
‘I hope you’ll forgive my people. Forgive ’em, eh, they know not what they fuckin’ do.’
&nbs
p; ‘We’re leaving,’ said Anduin.
He walked across to Ruby Sin, and Chick hurried to open a door.
‘Come back anytime,’ said Frank. ‘Free admission. Drinks on the house.’
‘Thank you,’ said Anduin.
When the doors had closed behind him and the girl with long black hair, Frank drew the pewter brandy flask out of his jacket. Normally he never did that, not during a night when he was patrolling his clubs.
‘Jesus Christ,’ he said to Chick. ‘One more go like that, I’ll need me fuckin’ heart pills.’
‘Who was he?’
‘You don’t wanna know. Just remember that name.’
‘Scarab-bye.’
‘Scarab-bee. Scarabae. Just fuckin’ remember.’
She had scratched one of the bullies in the playground. About a quarter inch above the eyes – there had been quite a scene, Jane summoned to the school, and so on. It was all apparently Sue’s fault. Somehow, if she had felt she must, she should have defended herself in some more honourable, even more feminine way.
‘She may have to be suspended, Mrs Wyatt. We can’t have this sort of thing. The other girl could have lost an eye.’
Sue had felt fear and awful remorse (which Jane’s subsequent lecture fuelled). But also a weird, secret delight. It was that year she was 14.
And the bully failed to attack Sue again. It was the last time any of them bullied her, although she still had no friends.
Later, of course, there had been greater crimes, the last one of which (and the one that ten years after, still continued) was when Sue Wyatt started to blackmail her father.
‘My family is an old one.’
They were walking through the London streets. It was late, after 2 am. Ruby Sin could not be sure how long they had walked, nor which direction they had taken, took.
The sky stayed milky, and the neons painted rainbow colours on the upper storeys of the city. Here, there were few people on the streets. But they had come into a district where the street lamps were pale gold, rather than Martian orange, and the shadows lay violet on dry paving. All the night was vampiric now.