by Lucy Smoke
“Fine. I suppose everyone should get to determine what they want to be called.”
Somewhere in the back recess of her mind, she heard her father’s voice calling her Ruthie. She’d loved it. And she’d thought it fabulous when Ben had said it in the dream she’d had of him.
She cleared her throat. “Did you want something?”
“Do you? I keep finding you staring at my grandmother’s house.”
“It’s the candles actually. It’s been such a long time since I’ve seen Hanukkah candles. I’m a bit like the moth to the flame, I’m afraid.”
He sighed, and she heard his heart beat too fast. If such a thing were still possible, she was sure her stomach would turn at the thought of how much sicker he was today. “They are nice. I sat around and watched the kids play. They were so excited to light them so they could open their gifts.”
“The gift giving is really an American thing. Or maybe it was simply something my family did not do.”
He laughed, showing perfectly straight white teeth. “I keep forgetting that you’re a Jewish vampire.”
“It’s okay. You shouldn’t remember me at all, so that alone is enough of a surprise.”
Looking at him, even in his tired, ill state made her remember her dream. She wished his eyes danced like he had at the beginning of her fantasy. What was the point of being human if it all ended like this?
Her eyes found the glowing candles again before she turned back to him. “To answer your question from earlier, the one that had two meanings—when you asked me what I was doing here—I will never kill any member of your family. Even if I sit out here every day for the rest of eternity. I don’t kill. Not since I learned how I could feed without doing it.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You don’t end lives?”
“No.” She took two steps back and then abruptly stopped. She hadn’t retreated since she’d been made a vampire. Why was she doing so now?
“Ruth, I have to tell you that there is someone looking for you. He’s a vampire hunter of some sort. My family thinks he’s a nut.”
She nodded. “I have seen him.”
“What?”
“I told you I have seen him before. I know this man.”
“Then you shouldn’t still be here. You should run and hide.”
She smiled. Perhaps she should let her fangs drop down and show him exactly why she never did those things. “I’m fine. He won’t catch me.”
“But he knows you’re here.”
Shaking her head, she moved toward him again. “No, he suspects I’m here. He’s never seen me.”
“How can you be sure?”
“You are the first human I’ve ever met who can see me, communicate with me, without becoming enthralled. He wouldn’t get within two feet of me before I would convince him he didn’t want to do what he thought he wanted to do.”
“Oh.” She watched the muscles in his neck work as he swallowed. “Then I guess I worried for nothing.”
“You worried?” She walked to him until she stood right in front of him. “Why?”
“Because I thought he could hurt you.”
“I’m already dead.”
He shook his head, raising his hand to touch her cheek. “You feel pretty alive to me.”
“I’m warm because I just fed.”
He didn’t remove his hand. “What do you feel like when you haven’t?”
“Cold.” She moved his hand to press it to where her heart should have been beating. “See, no heartbeat. I’m not alive. I just exist, even as I should not.”
“Well…” His smile was wry as he took her hand and pressed it to his heart. She could feel its faltering beat beneath her hand. “Mine doesn’t work so well either.”
She smiled at his joke. “At least it’s still beating.”
“It’s not even mine. I had a transplant when I was fifteen.”
“When they put it in your body, it became yours.”
Taking her hand, he kissed it, and she gasped. It was such a formal gesture. Something men had done in her day but did not do now.
“You’re awfully sentimental for a vampire.” He smiled. “I suppose it is my heart, but it is failing.”
“It’s so unfair that humans live and die as they do. You go through your days with the end encroaching with every breath you take.”
He nodded. “I take it back, you’re a pessimist.”
“Maybe I’m a sentimental pessimist.”
His smile faltered. “Can I ask you something?”
“You can ask. I don’t promise to answer.”
Ruth couldn’t believe this was happening. What was she doing standing on this lawn, talking to this dying man as if she was like him?
“Who did this to you?”
She was not confused by what he meant by that. He wanted to know how she had become a vampire. In her long years, she had only told other vampires. It was a bit like sharing old war wounds. Everyone had a story. Almost no one was happy that it happened to them, but neither were they upset. Those sorts of feelings about vampirism disappeared almost immediately after the change. You were what you were. You accepted it as your condition.
But, as was evident by the fact that she existed, some vampires did have the strange desire to share their state of existence with others. They couldn’t seem to control themselves. She’d asked one once why he made other vampires. He’d shrugged and told her that every few years, he was absolutely compelled to make another vampire.
So far, she’d not been inflicted with the need.
“My family hid from the Nazis for two years beneath a neighbor’s barn in rural Poland.”
He sucked in his breath. “You were alive during World War II?”
“Yes, I am old enough to be your grandmother.”
His gaze travelled her body, and she shivered. “You don’t look like my grandmother.”
“I will always look this way.” She continued, “Eventually, the Nazis found us. We were being transported to wherever it was they were taking us. I assume a concentration camp. I had been separated from my family. I was with other women my age.”
She could see it as she spoke the words to Ben. “The truck overturned, and I was thrown. Bleeding, I thought to run. I don’t remember exactly what happened after that. My blood must have attracted the vampire. My next memory is of being as I am.”
“So, let me see if I have this straight. You were hunted by the Nazis and killed by a vampire.”
“Yes.”
“Ruth, you should be twitching and crying all the time.”
“As a vampire, I do not feel human emotions as you feel them.”
Except towards you.
She almost said it aloud and was glad when she didn’t. This man, he did things to her she couldn’t allow to continue. He would be dead, maybe by the morning, and she’d have to go on living for eternity. None of this was okay. She let go of him and stepped back.
He cocked his head to the side in question. “Ruth?”
“You’re lighting me up inside, Ben, like those candles your family is lighting every night. I can’t let it continue. I’m a creature of the dark.”
3
Benjamin lay back in the recliner that had been his grandfather’s favorite. Even though his mother’s father was long since deceased, the piece of furniture was forever referred to as ‘grandpa’s chair.’
His nieces and nephew ran through the room, holding bubbles sent to them in the mail from their Aunt Sandra. His mother’s sister had always been good at remembering Jennifer and Ben as children, and it looked like it had travelled on to the next generation as well.
He kept waiting for his mother to tell the kids they had to go outside to use the bubbles, as she told him when he was the same age. When it didn’t happen, he decided rules for grandchildren were apparently different. He’d never even heard his mother raise her voice to them.
Jennifer walked to his chair and sat down on the arm of it. “You look tired.”<
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“I’m dying. I’m going to look tired from now until my heart finally gives out.”
His sister sighed and rubbed her forehead. He reached out and grabbed her arm. “I’m sorry. I will try not to mention my upcoming demise. I know it upsets you.”
“I don’t think you do. I don’t think you have any idea the hole that will form in this family when you are not here anymore.” She sniffed. “But it’s your death, and if you want to talk about it, go ahead.”
He grinned as he poked her with his index finger. “Thanks for your permission, sis.”
She snorted. “Shut up.”
He sighed, stretching his arms out over his head. “The irony here is that I finally met a woman.” He looked across the room at his grandmother, who sat in a folding chair watching the kids and their bubbles. “A Jewish woman.”
Sort of.
Jenny gasped. “You did?”
“Yep.”
“Where did you meet her?”
“Actually, I was standing around and she found me.”
He sat up a little bit as he looked out the window. The sun was finally going down. He’d been watching for it all day. Sundown meant Ruth would be up. Of course, if she decided not to come tonight, it wasn’t like he could go and find her.
She’d run away so fast the night before. One second, she had been there, the next, she’d been gone.
His grandmother stood up. “Hanukkah time.”
The kids shrieked and ran for the table that held the menorah. They said the prayer as his mother lit the candles one at a time. He wasn’t religious, never had been. But he liked the gathering of his family around. Some of his strongest memories as a child were the times they all spent together.
He wondered what Ruth thought about when she remembered her human life. Did she think about it at all? She’d said that he was lighting her up inside. Well, she’d done the same to him. All of a sudden, there was something to look forward to doing at the end of the day. It wasn’t exactly fair to him either. His life was ending. Every day, he was weaker. Except for brief trips to the bathroom, he hadn’t been out of his chair all day.
Even his grandmother, with whom they didn’t discuss his death, had to have noticed how bad off he was.
He clenched his hand into a fist. He’d made his peace, albeit a rocky one, with what was going to happen to him. Now he was going to have regrets, and all of them centered on the idea that he wouldn’t get more time to get to know Ruth.
Of course, she had nothing but time. She’d told him twice she’d never change. Did that mean it irked her to look forever twenty-two? What did it mean to be a vampire?
These were things he wanted to know. And also, admittedly, he wanted to know if her lips were as soft as her skin, if she sighed when she kissed, if her dark eyes would flare with passion were they ever to make love.
Now the last bit was something he would never know, and maybe that was the biggest regret of all. He leaned forward, holding his head in his hands. There was no doubt about it, the whole thing sucked.
Jenny’s hand on his shoulder caught his attention. “Are you okay?”
He nodded and smiled as he lifted his head. Her eyes were more than concerned, they were terrified. Suddenly, he couldn’t breathe, and it had nothing to do with his heart. Sometimes love could be stifling, especially when you couldn’t do anything to make the other person feel better. “I need some air. I’ve been inside all day.”
“Oh.” She looked down at her hands. “Is that a good idea?”
He stood up, pretending to feel stronger than he actually did. “It’s not a bad one.”
“Do you want some company?”
Shaking his head, he kept walking. “No thanks.”
Making it through the front door, he shivered. It was colder than the others nights had been. No matter, he was pretty good at ignoring it.
What really bothered him was the running thought that plagued his mind about whether or not Ruth would consider making him a vampire. It was a silly notion, and yet even knowing that, he couldn’t seem to stop himself from considering it.
In some ways, the idea disgusted him. Did he want to drink blood? No. He’d had enough time in hospitals to see the stuff up close and personal. If you weren’t careful, it was messy and could end up all over the floor after some badly prepared nurse didn’t put the line in correctly for the transfusion you were supposed to be getting.
Shaking his head, he pushed away the memory.
He also didn’t relish the idea of having to be violent. Ruth didn’t come off that way, but that didn’t mean that despite her claims of not killing anyone, she wasn’t actually running around committing atrocious acts in her spare time. Rubbing his nose and sniffing as he shivered, he acknowledged that he really didn’t think she was doing that.
His reasons for thinking the way he did were more emotional than logical. He just felt like she was safe.
All of those unhappy thoughts aside, he relished the idea of getting forever with Ruth. An eternity of gazing in her brown depths, of knowing her secrets, of making her happy. And yes, of being truly strong and not getting well only to get sick again. He could imagine it in his mind.
They could stand together, hand in hand, on his favorite beach in Santa Monica, the one he’d had to sit still on for the last year and not move around too much for fear of passing out. It would be night, but hell, he didn’t care. The moon over the ocean was just as beautiful as the sun.
He’d teach her to surf. Well, he’d teach her as well as he could. The bits of time when he’d been healthy enough to really take advantage of surfing had not made him an expert on the subject. He sighed. It would be amazing.
“Penny for your thoughts.”
He looked up, not surprised to see her but shocked that she’d snuck up on him tonight. “Looks like it was your turn to catch me by surprise.”
The ocean wasn’t the only thing to look beautiful by moonlight. Ruth’s brown eyes winked from her serene face like a lighthouse calling lost ships to safety. In this case, he was the drowning sailor desperate to find land.
“I’m a vampire. I’m supposed to be able to do it. The fact that you can is…odd.”
He nodded. He had no explanation to make sense of the fact that he could sneak up on her.
“I wasn’t sure you would come tonight. I thought you told me I lit you up inside too much.”
“You do.”
He stood up, even though it was hard. Maybe it was pathetic, but he didn’t want to look weak to her, even if he was. The appearance, in this moment, mattered to him.
“Then what are you doing here?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know.” She took a silent step forward. The grass didn’t even seem to move beneath her feet. “If you didn’t think I’d come, why did you wait outside? This is not good weather for you to be running around in.”
“I’m dying, I’m hardly running. It doesn’t matter what weather I spend the time I have left in.”
He shook his head. He didn’t want to talk about this. He didn’t want to be dying for the minutes he had left with her. He wanted to tell her about his fantasy of surfing in moonlight.
A flash caught his attention, and he turned. It was the Hanukkah candles in the window. Four tonight. He’d seen them being lit inside just minutes ago and not given them much thought. Out here, they looked ethereal.
Ruth stepped forward and took his hand. He jumped, startled by the unexpected contact, and his heart skipped three beats. Looking at their two joined hands together, they didn’t seem like two different creatures. He felt like a man holding a woman’s hand in the cold winter night. He brought their hands to his mouth and kissed the top of hers. She was warm.
Closing his eyes against the sense, he finally spoke. “Did you just feed?”
“Yes.”
“When you feed, is it violent?”
She laughed, and he opened his eyes. “No. It’s simple. I approach, they fall under enthrallment—w
ell, everyone but you does. Then I feed, I leave, they wake up. They have no memory of it.”
“And then what do you do for the rest of the night?”
Not letting go of her hand, he moved it from his mouth until it hung by his side.
“I wander.”
What? “All night?”
“Well, I used to go to vampire bars, for a while. I got tired of that.”
“Wait.” He squeezed her hand. “Did you say vampire bars?”
“We have places we go to socialize. Some people use them as a means of trapping prey.”
Prey. “You mean humans?”
“Yes. Humans are our prey.”
“Am I your prey?”
“No, you’re different.”
It amazed him that she talked about this and showed no emotion about it at all. It was like he might discuss eating meat versus being a vegetarian. But in her case, she was talking about…well, him.
She looked down at the ground and pulled her hand away. Ah-ha, she wasn’t completely unaffected by what they were talking about. It might just be a general sense of discomfort, but she wasn’t immune.
For some reason, that was hugely important to Ben. It meant she felt things. He’d already suspected she did. Ruth was drawn to the candles, to memories she denied caring very much about, and she’d grabbed his hand. She felt. Vampires, well at least this vampire, were not cold, unfeeling eating machines.
He wanted to laugh aloud. His assumption had been correct. These were small elements of proof to back up what he’d been instinctually sure of. She took a step away.
Damn. He’d been quiet too long. She was leaving. “Wait.”
“I need to keep going. I can’t stay here.”
“On your wanderings?”
She nodded. “Exactly.”
“Tell me more about the vampire bars.”
“Why?” She put hands on her hips. “They upset you before.”
He had to talk his way out of this. “Thinking of humans as prey was hard for me. I still want to hear. If you go to bars, that must mean vampires socialize.”
“We are by nature solitary. Occasionally, we do need to see others of our kind. It’s like a compulsion that comes over us.” She stared at the candles and then at the sky. Anywhere, he noted, except at him. “Some of travel two by two.”