by Tanith Lee
He lay back, almost bored. ‘Ladies first.’
‘Oh, how sweet. Yes, then.’
As she leaned over him, he had – he afterwards told himself – a premonition. But he was too indolent to heed it.
She smelled wonderful too, new scents; fresh-baked bread and fresh-cut melon, and this perfume, and the incense smoke that had caught in her hair.
Her bite was clumsy. She hurt him and he swore.
Why put up with this? He was thinking, he would give her one minute.
He wrote, ‘Suddenly something happened to me. Unprepared – how could I be otherwise? – I was flooded, overwhelmed. The – no other word is legitimate – rapture.’
He did not, writing, compare it at all to sex. But again, probably, that was the nearest comparable thing. The tingling, surging, racing – and presently, the pleasure- gallop exploded as if it hit some crystal ceiling of the brain – a kind of orgasm. He blacked out.
When he came to, which, that first time, was only a few seconds later, she was sat back, looking at him, licking her lips.
‘Sorry I hurt you,’ she said. ‘I need them sharpened again. The teeth, I mean. But my little Chinese guy, who does it for me – he’s off someplace. He’s a great dentist , too.’
He was thinking, Is that what they feel, when I –? Dizzy and wondering, when she put her hand up to her lips. She slipped the two eye-teeth out of her mouth. They were removable caps. Her own teeth – were blunt, ordinary.
‘Did you like that, honey?’ she asked, needlessly. ‘I’ll make some coffee.’
While she was gone, somehow he found the strength to get up, and get out of the apartment.
In the elevator, he almost passed out a second time.
As he wandered across the foyer, the doorman said, ‘You don’t look too good, Mr O’Connor.’
He thought doubtless he did not.
Having no intention of going back, the next night he hunted among the bars many blocks away from the gothic building.
He took three women, and each time found he had killed them, which was a nuisance, in the matter of disposal. The last one he did not bother to hide, leaving her among the trash cans in an alley. Despite the excess of blood, he felt enervated, and depressed.
The following night he overslept, waking two hours before midnight. This was not unheard of for a vampire. But it was rare.
Vermilia.
He found himself in some nightclub, sipping a mineral water that cost seven dollars, saying her name in his head – the name he had given her.
He kept thinking about what had happened to him, with her. He was pretty sure he had also dreamed of it.
Again, vampires did dream. But not much.
He wrote, ‘I am like some little virgin bride after her first night. I infuriate myself.’
He discovered that now, when he took the blood from his prey, he did not enjoy it so much. At first, desperate for the blood, he had not noticed.
Did he, then, want the blood of Vermilia? Somehow, that thought revolted him. Almost made him, in fact, retch. Why was that? The blood of another vampire could not properly nourish. But it was not repulsive, or poisonous –
He thought of her leaning to him, and piercing his throat with the peculiar caps she needed because somehow her teeth had grown deformed and useless. He thought of the rhythm beginning, and his head went round.
He bought a bottle of Jack Daniels. Drank some. Threw up.
The next night, he threw up the blood he had taken from his prey. Twice.
He lay in the dark of his bare room, cursing her.
What was it? What had happened to him? A human might have feared some disease, but he, a vampire, was immune to such diseases. And she, a vampire, would not carry any disease.
The next night, he went to the gothic building. And in the foyer the TV-doorman turned morosely and said, ‘Hey, bud, who the hell are you?’
He stood there, made stupid. Never before had he been seen like this, when he had not meant to be.
He mumbled, ‘Number 51. The lady.’
‘Oh, who’s that?’
Who indeed?
‘She knows me.’
‘Okay, bud. No funny stuff. Get outa here.’
He walked out, and there was Vermilia, like in the best movie, dawdling toward him up the street. She wore black tonight, but her mouth was still the proper colour.
‘Honey!’ she cried. She ran and hugged him. ‘You look beat.’
They walked by the doorman, who now seemed to see neither of them.
In the elevator she jabbered about some idiotic thing, he did not grasp what she said. Why was he here – with her?
In the apartment, she lit the candles, the incense.
He stood coughing and trembling.
‘Like a beer?’
‘I’d like you to do what you did last time.’
‘Oh sure. But let’s get in the mood.’
He fell down on the sofa. She caressed him. He writhed with need and dragged her mouth to his neck. ‘Do it. For God’s sake –’
She did it.
It was the same as before. Ecstasy, racing, explosion. Out.
This time he was unconscious for an hour. She said so anyway, shaking him. ‘Come on. You always fall asleep. If you weren’t so beautiful … I need my bed. I have to be at work in the mornings.’
New stupefaction hit him only as he reeled towards the elevator. Mornings?
Three more times he went to her. Between, he was able to take a little blood, here and there. It was no longer easy to do this. Partly because he did not properly want it, and besides sometimes got sick when he had taken it. Also partly because his ability to seduce seemed strangely less. In the past, he had needed only to look, perhaps to touch or speak. That was enough. Even at the moment of impact, if there was a struggle, his great strength could subdue at once, but, more likely he could still them with a brushing of his lips, a whisper.
Now some of the prey got cold feet. Some fought with him.
And he did not have the energy to pursue these ones. And anyway, he knew, he was losing it. Losing it all.
He thought he had said to her, the third time, ‘What have you done to me, what are you?’
And she had said, ‘I’m a vampire, honey. Just like you. Only you just like to play it one way, don’t you?
But that’s fine by me. I like it best this way. Sometimes.’
More than the terrifying pleasure, it was something else that brought him back, and back. The spell. But what was the spell?
‘How old are you?’ he said.
‘You’re no gentleman,’ she said. Then she said, ‘Oh, hundreds of years, of course.’ She lied. He knew she lied.
It was worse than that. She was losing interest in him. She had by now told the doorman to let him up, but when he was with her, now, she said, ‘You might do something for me.’
What was she talking about? Exhausted he closed his eyes. Exhausted, he begged her to do what she did.
That time, when he came around, he knew she was killing him.
It had to stop.
But he was hooked.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Come tomorrow. I may have a friend here. You’ll like her.’
‘Will you –?’
‘Yes. Go on now. It’s so late. You were asleep four hours and I couldn’t wake you.’
‘You have work in the morning,’ he drearily remarked.
‘Sure do. My stinking job.’
‘But the sun,’ he said.
‘Oh, get out of here,’ she said, laughing and impatient.
Outside – he leaned on her door and then he began to see. Swimming down in the nauseated elevator, he saw more.
The doorman glared. ‘Hey, you on drugs or something, mister?’
He got to his bare room, and lay down.
Tomorrow night. He would go. He could not help himself. No-one could help him. But he thought now he understood. And tomorrow, before he left, he would write it in his book.
In case, in the future, to some other this same thing might happen, as well it might.
As well it might.
‘This is Raven,’ she said.
Raven had long black hair and a face made up white as a clown’s. At the corner of her mouth she had painted a ruby drop, but her lipstick was black.
‘My,’ said Raven, and she curtseyed to him, leering. But Raven was the same as Vermilia – the same kind and species.
Tonight it was to be different, Vermilia said. They would take off all their clothes. They took them off.
He stared at their bodies, Vermilia’s perfect, Raven’s not, both irrelevant.
In turn they ogled him.
Then they all lay down on the wide sofa. The girls drank wine, and tongued him, and all he could smell was hair and flesh and perfume and wine, and all he wanted was for them to have his blood, and he knew this time would be the last, and he cursed himself and them and the world and all his hundreds of years that had not saved him. Consumed with fear, he shook with desire.
‘He likes to be the subserve,’ said Vermilia. He hated her accent. Hated her. ‘Go on, Rave, he’ll like it.’
Raven picked up his wrist. She sank in her teeth, also caps, he supposed. The pain was horrible. He wished he could kill her. Then, it began, even so, began –
And Vermilia’s lips were on his neck, and then the bite, sharper, better – her dentist must be back in town.
Like an express train, a locomotive of fire, the surge rose up in him. He forgot he would die. Forgot he had been alive.
The fireworks erupted through gold to red and white, and to vermilion.
As his brain and heart burst, he screamed for joy.
Leaving him, Raven and Vermilia, whose true name was Sheila – but who called herself, on such nights, Flamea, which he had never bothered to learn – turned to each other.
When they were through, they got up.
‘He sleeps for hours.’
‘He’s great-looking. But what a drag.’
They left him, and went to get some chocolate cake.
While they were in the kitchen, since he had died and was a vampire, he disintegrated quickly and completely to the finest white dust, which presently blew off through the air, coating the apartment lightly, and making Sheila-Flamea sneeze for days.
Some human myths of vampires were true.
When the girls came back, they commented on his absence, and that he had rudely got up and gone.
‘But look, he left his clothes.’
They raised their brows, and shrugged.
Earlier, he had written in his book:
‘I know now. She is no vampire. She is a human. A woman playing at being a vampire. This is how she has her fun. Pretending she is our kind. Acting it out.
‘But why it should do this to me, I have no notion. Perhaps it is only me, but such a scenario may affect others of my kind in the same fashion, and to them I leave this warning.
‘We have taken the blood of humans all these millennia. Now, unknowing, they are prepared to take ours – by accident, thinking we are the same as they – or not recognising us – or not thinking there is any difference between us and them. And when they do take our blood – this may be the result. I have no answer as to why. I have no resistance to it. Perhaps it has evolved, this power, naturally. Like some virus or germ. Perhaps this is now their natural means of protecting themselves against us.’
His last lines were these:
‘Her kind have always killed my kind. That used to be with stakes and garlic, honed swords, sunlight and fire. Now, is it this way? Her kind kills my kind with … kindness.’
VHONE
I love my Vhone. Of course, I loved all my other phones too. When they got superseded, I even said a quick goodbye to them as I threw them in the waste-chute. And then each new one became my one True Love. Till the next one.
They all do fantastically useful things now, don’t they? I mean, obviously, you can make calls on them, and send messages or actual gifts, and your phone just puts in the order through BuyBuddy (You pay the same way – s’eazy) and your account gets charged. And they turn off or on the lights, the heating, the cooling, or run a bath with essences, or – anything – in your apartment, however far away you are right then. And they can take pix or make movies when you want, and play you music you want, and order you a meal or a drink for you at a grazery, or it’s delivered, anything from a steak to a Tasty, a hot Chocolaffo to a stem of white champagne. And they can give you entry to the latest game-course, or let you read something – if you have time to read anything, or show you anything or tell you anything about anything or anywhere in the whole wide world or even in outer space. And naturally a Vhone does all that too. Perfectly.
But the Vhone can do so much more.
I couldn’t quite believe the claims when I first saw the ad on my homm-comm.
Then one of my Part Time Friends showed me her Vhone. And first of all it was so chick-chiquette. Glossy black, with that single glowing golden eye – that blinks at you, or gazes at you. And its soft musical voice that can sound like any sleb you want it to – my Vhone has the voice of Claska Krak – dark as dark velvet. And then my PTF showed me another thing the Vhone will do. I couldn’t believe this right off. ‘What – do they hire someone?’ I stupidly asked. ‘But isn’t that illegal?’ ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘don’t be stupe. It’s not real. It just – seems so. I mean, like completely real.’ ‘Yes,’ I said, dazed. ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Buy one. You can afford it after your labour increment. Sure, I’d get a bite of commission, but it’s not that. I just think it’s made for you.’
And I thought about this a while, and then I put through the call to V-V-V-(Ph)One dot star. And next morning, there was my Vhone. Mine.
I didn’t quite have the courage until the fourth night after I got the Vhone.
I think I was a bit scared of being disappointed.
A bit scared, anyway.
PTF had shown me an edited recreation on her own Vhone. But such things can be faked or edited in – I’d believed, but not hard enough. Then, I did it, sent the signal. Trust me, it costs. But as they say, the best things in life are never free.
When they acknowledged the order and lit up the delivery time, which was 23 space mean time (with a prelim of 22-30), the golden eye turned a deep, deep indigo-blue.
I got ready, but mostly they do it. And at 22.23 presc, the sort of cloud stuff came and I found myself, like that girl in the story – Kinda-Bella is it? – in this designer dream-dress and shoes and jewellery, and my hair with extra hair in, and wonderful make-up. And the room had changed, like in the advert it does, and the bed was huge and white and gold, and this chandel-light floated, and champagne was poured. And then through a door that usually isn’t there, he came toward me.
Oh and he was – well, maybe a bit like Claska Krak – but, impossibly, even better – oh, I never, not even on a mile-screen – never saw anyone so absol. And he came to me, and smiled into my eyes, and handed me a silvery glass of the champagne, and spoke things to me I won’t put here, and kissed me, and kissed me, and never, never in my life – never till then – and we went to the bed, to the fantastic bed the Vhone had made, just as it had made him, only right then I forgot, and even remembering I forget he wasn’t really real – only – he was, he was – oh, he was.
When I came to I cried. I cried for ten whole minutes, and then I called up five of my PTFriends and let them see the edit-versh, and I said, You’ve just got to have a Vhone.
And now I am in love with my Vhone, and whenever I can afford to, I order up him. And oh. And oh.
So there you are. Why not you get one too, or two, so maybe you can loan one to another PTF at the special loan-a-lot rate?
Just one more thing. I almost forgot. How you recharge a Vhone. It’s unique! And, in its own way, it’s such fun, too. You’ll love it, honestly.
It’s best to do it every second day, if you can. It lets you know anyway if
it’s low, one soft little blink every three secs.
But I do it when I go to sleep. A lot of my PTs do too. You take it to lie down with you, and it rests against your neck, and then – and this is so special, so sweet – you feed it – you feed it from your own blood – and there’s nothing to pay, you see, nothing. Isn’t that special? And it’s so gentle and soft. Soft as a little soft conjure-kitten. But you can hear it softly sipping and sipping till it’s just nice and full and fully working order again. And then I sleep, and maybe it sleeps. I’ll tell you a secret, only I don’t think I’m alone in this! To me, well, it’s really like a little soft temporary baby. I love it so, and I stroke it as it feeds/recharges. And sometimes – don’t tell – I sing to it, just like they used to, back Then. Lulla-lulla-lulla – sleep pretty Vhone, and don’t you cry, and I will sing a lullabye … I love my Vhone.
I love my Vhone.
REAL AND VIRE
How tired she looks, the grey drab little female, sat there squashed among the other exhausted home-going commuters. But she was lucky to have got a seat. She knows it. The ones who must stand, they know it too. And hanging there, each by an arm, from the agonising torture straps that ribbon down from the transport’s ceiling – like the filaments of some evil insect – whenever possible, at any lurch of the rumbling vehicle, they stagger and ‘accidentally’ step on her toes, or kick her narrow little bruised feet in their shoddy footwear, as too the hapless feet of all who have been able to sit. They are, everyone, poor, these travellers – these commuters – obviously, or they would not be in this situation. Low-paid workers, putting in 12 to 16 hours per day or night (or both), six or seven days a week. It is 8 pm now, or 20 by the new compulsory clocks. The transport will reach the last station, at which the downtrodden grey female must alight, around 9 pm, provided there are no more delays or power-failures. But even now a judder goes through the vehicle. It sighs ponderously. So, it seems to say, this human rubbish thinks it is tired? What about myself, the transport? Running all day, all night, all days, all seasons – sod them. The only rest I get is when I break down. As the carriages jerk and jumble to another halt, the hanging or squash-sat commuters variously curse or moan. One man even begins to cry, but quickly stubs out his tears like the butts of the recently banned and illegal cigarettes no-one may smoke anymore, though they were filled by carrot-fibre. Just as no-one may drink anything stronger than the heavily disinfected water. Coffee, tea, alcohol have been prohibited for years; recently all sweet drinks, including fruit juice, have become criminal and unavailable. ‘Food’ of course consists of fake bread spread with an oil-derivative that is oil-less, invented meat, new vegetables that have neither texture nor flavour. Such is life in the world now.