“I did wonder about that,” she confessed.
“When I first changed, the hunger was as it is now. If I had not been very lucky, I would probably have been caught and destroyed. That is no doubt the root of the stories that are so prevalent in my old lands. A newly made vampire abandons all caution in the search for blood, often returning to his own family in blind need. Most were caught and given a true death soon after they awoke.
“Are there many vampires?”
“Not to my knowledge. I have only known two—she who created me and . . . one other. But there may be more.”
“Can you make someone a vampire? Or does it happen automatically?”
“It is a conscious thing. A choice, at least on my part. I have never done it.”
“Why not?”
“It is not something to do lightly. Every new vampire would increase my own danger of exposure and I would prefer not to perish for another’s carelessness. And those I met who did long for my state were hardly the type of person with whom I cared to share eternity. The truth is, we are a solitary lot. It does not do for us to forget that.” She heard irony in his tone and the bitter pain gliding, sharklike, beneath it. Ardeth felt the sudden pang of sympathetic sorrow, wondering for the first time what it was like to have almost a century pass in a moment’s rest, to face a life that could go on forever, if only under the pale light of the moon. But to live it always alone. She had always thought of herself as a solitary person, who enjoyed the quiet of the library, the peace of her own apartment. But there had been friends, and Sara, and the expectation of love someday.
“How did you end up in Toronto? Was it just next on the map?” she asked, to keep away both their sorrows.
“I suppose so. I had never been to North America . . . a month-long sea voyage was not something to be contemplated lightly. But Europe had grown . . . hard for me to bear . . . and I needed to put it far behind me.”
“I imagine Toronto must have seemed very provincial to you.”
“Oh yes. But I needed its routine, its simplicity. It was very easy to survive here. It was a good place for careful men—it bred them, rewarded them. So it and I suited well.”
“Toronto the Good. We still call it that, with a kind of embarrassed pride, I think. All our politicians wish we were New York, but without the crime and the garbage,” Ardeth said and caught the edge of his half-smile.
“New York. I have never been there. I remember when the Dutch bought it from the Indians however.” The reality of his age hit her, the fact that all the things she had read of and studied he had touched and felt, that the worlds she had so carefully reconstructed for essays and exams had been the ones in which he lived and breathed.
“Tell me,” she said suddenly, as eagerly, as desperately, as he had once commanded her. Rozokov glanced at her curiously. “Tell me what the world was like, what you’ve seen. God, do you realize that half the historians in the world would kill for a chance to talk to you.” She stopped suddenly, her stomach dropping sickeningly as she realized what she had said. Would they die for it? Would you? a voice asked mockingly in her mind. Will you?
“Ardeth . . .” Rozokov’s voice caught her, dragged her back to look at him. “Eyewitness accounts from vampires do not hold much academic weight, I am afraid. I have received more than one lecture from a learned professor for presuming to question his version of the truth.”
“It doesn’t matter. I just want to know,” she said, the sudden terror over. I do want to know, she told herself fiercely, to escape the suspicion that she clung to the irrational belief that their recited histories could somehow hold back the future, like Scheherazade holding back the executioner’s axe.
Deliberately, she drowned herself in his stories of the places he’d been—Europe, the East, Africa. He was an eloquent storyteller, patiently accommodating her interruptions of “but that isn’t what . . .” and “are you sure?” There were things he would not discuss, times and places dismissed in a manner that told her nothing except that those memories must hurt him. He had had his share of narrow escapes, such as the time he had been inadvertently stranded in the Spain of the Inquisition, and his share of pleasures, like hearing Bach’s Mass in B Minor for the first time ever.
“Was it easier being a vampire in the sixteenth century or the Victorian age?” Ardeth asked curiously.
“All ages have their own dangers. The world was larger, more unknown, in my youth, but it believed in my kind. In the 1800s, the world was far more organized, but the belief in rational science was so strong that I would surely have had to turn myself into a bat in order to convince anyone that I was not merely some lunatic who believed he was a vampire. Of course,” he mused, with a faint smile, “there was a brief, difficult period when vampires seemed all the rage in penny dreadfuls and the like. That infernal book by that Irish author was the worst of them all.”
“You mean Dracula?”
“Exactly. Suddenly to be Eastern European and of noble birth was enough to make you the object of considerable suspicion, or, at least, considerable interest.”
“That’s still very popular. I read it for Victorian fiction class. The professor explained that vampirism was a metaphor,” Ardeth said, with a sudden, giddy smile.
“A metaphor,” Rozokov echoed with quiet amusement.
“For . . . oh yeah, ‘dangerous unfettered sexuality,’” she explained, then regretted it, for it called up the image of his head bent over her outstretched arm, the memory of his mouth on her palm.
“Ah.” There was a long pause. “Then it seems I should be right at home in this new age. From your description, it seems to be rather more liberal than the last time in which I lived.”
“Well, it was, I suppose. AIDS has changed a lot of that.” At his curious glance, she continued. “It’s a disease that’s transmitted by bodily fluids, usually through sex, or by sharing needles for drugs. It’s fatal.”
“I am immune to most diseases now, however I shall keep that in mind,” Rozokov said seriously and Ardeth eyed him for a moment, certain that he was teasing her in some manner, though his face remained solemn. She started to yawn, then tried to catch and cover it. “You should sleep,” he said.
She thought of protesting that she was not tired, then yawned again and abandoned that idea. It was easier to just lie back down and close her eyes, to surrender to the bone-deep weariness that claimed her. The darkness was warm and gentle, enfolding her so softly she barely noticed when it wiped all thought from her mind.
Chapter 10
Ardeth crouched beside her cot, washing her face and hair with water from the jug she had kept after her breakfast. She shrugged off her shirt and looked down at herself. The nightly loss of blood had begun to show; her arms were thinner and her ribs were etched in high relief below her breasts. What a way to lose weight, she thought with the absurd, detached humour that was becoming easier each day.
She splashed the water up onto her arms. Had he woken up and now watched her, she wondered, but refused to look, not even before she reached back to unhook her bra and let it fall. It didn’t matter anymore, all her former modesty and self-consciousness about her body. She felt as if all the layers of conventions of the outside world, the rules she had obediently, even slavishly, followed were being peeled away. Where had all her careful conformities got her, after all. To this state, crouched half-naked in a dungeon, her world reduced to twice daily meals and the ritual offering of her blood to the vampire.
Ardeth scrubbed at her shoulders and breasts, trying to ignore the itch between her shoulder blades that gave her the feeling she was being watched. She had not heard the vampire move; she thought that he was still asleep. He had been dragged from his stupor an hour earlier by Wilkens, who supervised another brief, perfunctory feeding. When it was done, Rozokov had returned to his cot and vanished back into sleep.
There was a sound from the door and she froze, hands
poised to scoop more water from the jug. As the door began to open, she seized her shirt and pulled it on, turning her back as her fingers fumbled with the buttons. Her bra she tucked under the mattress, unwilling to let whoever was descending the stairs see it.
When she turned around, Peterson was at the door of the cell, carrying her dinner tray. Tonight he was wearing a T-shirt bearing the logo of the heavy-metal band Megadeth.
Ardeth stepped forward to receive the tray through the slot but stopped as Peterson opened the door and slipped into the cell with her. “Here’s your dinner,” he said, then set the tray down on the floor. His eyes never left her.
He wants you. The thought flared through her and she knew with blinding clarity that it was now, the moment she had not believed would come, that chance she feared she would not recognize.
“Thanks.” The smile felt like a grotesque mask but she held it in place. She glanced down at the tray. Steak this time, supplemented with pills. “What are those?”
“Vitamins.” When she looked doubtful, he said cruelly, “Look, it’s vitamins. Roias says you have to last another couple of days.”
Ardeth felt the blood drain from her face at the words. She knew, had known from the first night, that she was not to live. But this was the first time any of them had said so straight out.
She was aware that Peterson was still in the cell, that the moment had not passed yet, that the chance was still there. She let her knees bend as if in weakness, settling herself down by the tray. The utensils were all plastic but the tray itself was metal, hard enough to hurt. She looked up at him. “How many others have there been?”
“Four, including the last one—the other night.”
“What . . .” she began, then took a deep breath to steady herself, “happened to them . . . after?”
“We took them out to the woods and put stakes through their hearts and buried them.”
“Stakes?”
“Yeah. Roias told us to,” he said, watching her with eyes almost as bright as Rozokov’s. “I took the last two. It was funny you know, how they got more beautiful at the end. Like you.” Ardeth felt her heart contract but she could not look away from his face. “I’ve watched you, getting more and more beautiful,” Peterson whispered, crouching beside her. “Your skin is cool.” It was all a mask, that youthful friendliness that had made him seem less frightening than the others. It was a shell of normality that only seemed normal in comparison to Roias’s dark and subtle sadism and Wilkens’s gleeful brutality. But Peterson was the darkest, the most subtle of them all.
“You’re almost gone now, just another night or two. Then I’ll take your body out and put it on the ground. Then take off your shirt,” his fingers fumbled with the buttons, “and put the stake right here. . . .”
“No,” Ardeth whispered and the tray came up in her hands, aimed at his head. The narrow metal edge struck his cheek and rocked him back. She swung again before he could find his balance and the panic-driven blow seemed to stun him. The keys, just get his keys, the cold voice of reason whispered behind her fear. She scrabbled in his pocket, found the cool, jangling metal and lurched to her feet, staggering towards the door.
Hands caught her before she reached it, spinning her around to take a blow that sent her sprawling back across the cot. Her head struck the wall and the world spun into sparks and darkness. When her senses cleared, she felt Peterson’s weight across her. He was tearing at her clothing, kissing her still mouth desperately.
Ardeth twisted her head away in revulsion and started to struggle. The sound of their breathing echoed through the dungeon, pounding in her ears. Even if she’d been healthy, it would have taken all her strength, and considerable luck, to hold him off. But she was weakened by blood loss, and in a moment he had torn open her shirt and tugged her jeans and briefs down to her ankles.
For a few moments Peterson contented himself with exploring her naked body to murmured declarations of pleasure at her coolness, at the stark bars of her ribs beneath her breasts. When at last he reached down to unzip his own jeans, Ardeth made one last attempt to push him away. He swore, her sudden action destroying the illusion her passivity had created, and his open-handed blow rocked her senses again.
Distantly she felt him forcing her thighs apart, heard his panting breaths and her own faint whimpers. Then she heard the slow, echoing rumble of the vampire’s snarl.
Peterson froze, poised over her, and with her clearing vision, she saw him struggling not to glance up into the next cell. Ardeth started to twist her head to look, but Peterson’s hand tightened in her hair and held her still. “No,” he whispered harshly and thrust down on her. Ardeth screamed as his hard flesh rammed against her, missing her closed entrance.
The vampire said something sharply, in a guttural, snarling tongue, and Peterson’s gaze lifted to the next cell before he could help himself.
Ardeth lay still, her head immobilized by Peterson’s grip, and watched the blood leave his face. His erection wilted against her thigh. Then, cursing in sobbing breaths, he flung himself from her and scrambled from the cell, hastily locking it behind him. He didn’t bother to do up his jeans until he was on the stairs.
Shaking, Ardeth turned her head to look at Rozokov. He was staring after Peterson, eyes glowing fierce and crimson with contempt. His lips curled back from their bright fangs. Was that what Peterson had seen, the primordial savagery that looked on his own perversion with cynical contempt? Had that ancient, knowing glance withered his erection and driven him in terror from the cell?
With a faint cry, she turned away, curling into a tight ball on the cot, clutching her arms across her breasts. “Ardeth.” Her name was a whisper, the vampire’s voice tentative and almost fearful. “Child, I am sorry. I did not know what to do to stop him.” What was he talking about, Ardeth wondered. He had stopped him. The voice was an intrusion on the safe, numb world of her withdrawal and it annoyed her. She pushed her face against the cot as if to block it out. She shivered, the chill seeping into her naked skin, but took perverse pleasure in the discomfort, letting the shudders of cold replace the luxury of sobs.
“Ardeth?” the voice came back again. “Are you hurt?” She supposed she must be. Her cheek stung from where Peterson had hit her, and her scalp from the steady drag on her hair. There might be other places too, but perhaps if she didn’t move they would let her be.
There was a long silence, then she felt something brush the top of her head. The contact brought memories of the last hands on her body and she jerked up, away from whatever had touched her. Rozokov was crouched in the corner of his cell, body pressed to the bars, arm extended as far as it would reach. His hand rested on the end of her cot. When she met his gaze, he drew his hand back and sat away from the bars.
“Ardeth.”
She shook her head to keep his voice out of her consciousness. “Leave me alone.”
“No.”
“Why not?” She kept her face turned away, staring down into the deserted cells beside her, knowing she should ignore him, that questions would only lead to answers, and eventually she would have to acknowledge the reality of it all again.
“Because I know what you are feeling. Withdrawal is easy; so is despair. But there is no point in it. You showed me that.”
“Maybe I was wrong. What else is there?”
“It will change nothing.”
“Will hope? I tried that once already.” She looked at him then, a brief, bitter glance.
“Surely hope is easier to bear than misery.”
“What is this? ‘Zen and the art of dying gracefully’? I was just assaulted by a necrophiliac. Am I supposed to find hope in that?”
“No. But you could find other things. Anger. Hatred.”
“Is that what kept you so sane?” She despised the bitter cruelty in her voice, but could not help herself. Rozokov shook his head, unwounded.
“No. But it kept me
alive. Until you came to make me sane again.”
“Do you thank me for that? Maybe this would be easier to take if we were both crazy.”
“Perhaps it would. But it is not over yet. Madness may have kept me alive for a purpose my sanity will find.” His voice was so solemn that Ardeth could not help her laughter.
“I don’t believe this. I’m sitting here, half-naked, nearly raped, discussing Philosophy 101 with a vampire.”
“At least it made you laugh.” She glanced over at him. Rozokov was smiling faintly, with an air of patient amusement.
“So it did. Of course, I’ve never seen you laugh.”
“I have had nothing to laugh about in the last month. But we do laugh, believe me. In the end, we are no less human than we ever were. Whatever we had in us as mortals, we have as vampires. It is only the proportion, and the expression, of those things that sometimes differ.”
“I suppose being a vampire isn’t so bad then,” Ardeth said slowly, reaching down to tug her underwear back over her hips.
“It is not an easy life.” There was no irony in his tone, only a faint edge of warning.
“But it is life.”
“It is life,” Rozokov conceded.
Ardeth tried to do up her blouse. Most of the buttons had popped off and the ones that remained barely held it closed. She was too tired to care. She leaned her head back against the wall. They were going to kill her, just like all the others. Just like Tony and Conrad. They would put her arm through the bars one last time and Rozokov, no matter how gently he did it, or how much pleasure he gave her, would drain her dry.
It was impossible to believe in escape now. Peterson might keep the secret of her attempt along with the secret of her own perversion but the moment when the future might have changed was gone. She had tried and failed and now the chance would never come again.
The Night Inside Page 10