Vampires (23 page)

And she cowered over against her door waiting to die.

Only...

Only she knew that he wasn't going to kill her. Not here, anyway. Not right now. And...

And his stomach was hurting him, she thought. He rubbed it, hard, as he drove, constantly kneading it with his free hand. And the thought of this, the dream of his vulnerability, was like the tiniest slice of hope.

Hope for what, she didn't know. She only knew that he could be hurt and she couldn't take her eyes off his kneading and that's when he spotted her doing that and snorted with disdainful fury and jerked the Cadillac to a skidding stop on the side of the freeway, grabbing her with his right hand and dragging her across the seat to him and with his left hand ripping his shirt open and- And the wound was closed.

“It itches, you stupid little mite!” he barked shaking her head with a handful of her hair. “It doesn't hurt! It itches!”

And then, when she just stared blankly at him, he reached up and grabbed the rearview mirror and tore it lose from the front windshield. He slammed her cheek up next to his and held the mirror in front of her eyes and.

And he wasn't there.

She could feel him, his hand in her hair against her skull, his cheek pressing into hers-she could see that, she could see the impression his cheek was making against hers iii the mirror.

But he wasn't there!

And then... And then he sort of was. Sort of. Outlines, flashes, traces of his features when he moved. He wasn't completely invisible. But. . . But.

And then he dropped the mirror and turned and bored his eyes into hers and opened wide his mouth and the fangs were growing out.

“Vampire, mite!” he hissed that awful hiss. “VAMPIRE!”

And his mouth went wider and the fangs grew longer toward her and his features went red and demonic and unholy and she screamed a scream of hopeless irrefutable terror and all was black and dark.

The next night she signed everything over to him. The stocks, the bonds, the CDs, the cash, the houses.. . everything. Full power of attorney.

Ross, the vampire, owned her.

After that, things started happening pretty fast.

First, Ross decided to redecorate.

Soft things. Sickly-sweet, tender-to-the-touch things. Tasteless things. Expensive things. Gone were the great broad antique leather sofas from the library. He replaced them with silk-pillowed lounges. And he replaced the tapestries, some centuries old, with what looked to Davette like red satin bedsheets.

Ross actually did take the time to sit down and show her his new “motif.” It looked like a cross between a sultan's harem and a Colorado Gold Rush Whorehouse. “No-Class” Ross's true colors were, quite literally, coming through.

He fired all the servants Aunt Vicky had retained for years. He replaced them with a handful of gray-faced, dull-witted, self-loathing slobs. It always amazed Davette how they simply could not seem to tidy up. No matter how rich and expensive their uniforms, no matter how much care and attention was paid to their appearances-their hair was always razor-cut, their faces always shaved, fingernails always clean-they still looked like unmade beds. Their jackets, however well pressed and tailored, never quite seemed to fit. And their starched white shirts never managed to stay tucked in for over a minute or two.

Davette had no idea where Ross had found these people who knew he was a vampire and still wanted to work for him. And she didn't want to know. Still, Ross managed t~ replace the entire staff in one single evening. He also managed to get a terrific amount of the redecoration done that first night- all the library, most of the main living room. An army of preened and primped men of all ages showed up to handle the work, all blatantly homosexual and each clearly enraptured by Ross's slightest notice of them.

In the midst of this, still in her bathrobe, Davette sat drinking vodka on the rocks and watching these dreadful people reshape her universe. It was all so distant somehow, as if this really weren't her house and Aunt Vicky weren't really dead and one morning she'd wake up...

No. Best not to get too detailed and lose the fantasy.

So she just sat and drank some more and waited for the scurrying trolls to leave. Which they did about midnight. Not because they were finished. But because Ross couldn't wait one more minute to try out his new playhouse. He dismissed the workers and went out to hunt.

Ross returned soon, just after two, wi4~h two couples driven in a limousine of their own. The four were well dressed and cultured and wildly, happily, drunk and friendly, the two men in their early forties, their wives a few years younger, and they laughed and laughed as they came tripping through the front door following Ross and they laughed as they got their drinks and they laughed some more when one of the ladies caught a heel on the edge of Ross's new red carpet and when Ross made some comment about Demon Rum they laughed some more and one of the men raised his glass and said, “I'll drink to that!” And they all laughed a lot at that and then Ross apologized for the unsecured rug, explaining that he was in the midst of redecorating and one of the women, who could not have known that the whorish red carpet was Ross's idea, picked up an edge of it and said, “Better hurry!”

And all four laughed longest and hardest at that until they realized Ross was not laughing at all. Davette was thirty feet away and above them, hidden in a shadowy recess, still wearing her bathrobe, still drinking her vodka, and she could not only see but feel the change in Ross. His coldness and anger, instantaneous, eruptive, seem to sphere out from him to the high walls of the living room and back, and the two couples, as the wave passed through them, caught their breaths and their faces went slack and pale.

And then Ross was all smiles and laughing one second later, his face animated and gracious and gregarious and endearing. And Davette watched the four stare and exchange uncertain, uneasy looks. But this passed because they had just been having such a good time and Ross was so charming, after all and . .

And what was this? A game! How fun!

And Ross was everywhere among them, laughing, making them laugh and oh, yes! we're going to play a game, a drinking game, but we need one nondrinker, and somehow they were persuaded to fetch their chauffeur in while Ross and an ash-faced servant rolled out the plastic tarp left by the painters to cover the new red rug. The women had to take off their high heels, to keep from making holes in the plastic, and there Ross was, on his knees, to assist them and oh, the comments and the sly exchanged looks and the oleho's as he performed this sensual task.

But then all was ready for the game and Ross personally positioned everyone, including the chauffeur, at just the right place on the plastic tarp after first taking their glasses from their hands. And one of the men groaned and said, “I thought this was a drinking game!” and Ross smiled a sly smile and, “It is! It is! You'll see!” and then he had one last person to position, the loveliest of the women, the only name Davette had caught from her perch, Evelyn, whose long black dress suited her so. Ross took her by the shoulders and stepped her over to the center of the tarp, the exact center, and then, with everyone smiling and laughing, turned her once more with her shoulders, turned her around so that her smiling faced his and slit a gaping gash in her throat with the edges of his long fingernails.

The blood fountained from her severed arteries and Ross had an impish moment to catch some of it in his mouth before turning and doing the same thing to her husband who simply stood there staring, with no chance to react. The second husband had enough time to open his mouth to protest, to raise an arm to object before Ross's vise-grip closed his throat and spinal cord forever. The second woman screamed a high-pitched scream before Ross grabbed her around the waist with his left hand and slammed his right fist into the center of her chest so hard she died, hemorrhaging, before her limp body had reached the plastic tarp.

Ross killed the chauffeur with another blow of the fist, straight down atop the man's skull. Davette heard it crack.

And then the feeding. The servants, panting the obvious repulsive sexual fervor, began scurrying about lifting the edges of the plastic to drain the blood into an enormous urn while Ross himself clamped a hand over Evelyn's still-spouting arteries. Then he lifted her body into his arms and positioned the throat within reach.

And then, before removing his palm from the wound, he turned and looked straight at Davette, straight at her, knowing all along she had been there, knowing her, knowing everything. Davette had time to gasp and put a drunken hand to her mouth before she heard the words, heard the Voice, slicing into her shadows.

“Entertained?” purred the vampire, before removing his hand and plunging his fangs into crimson.

Davette had been wondering what had happened to Kitty. She hadn't seen her for weeks. Now she wondered no:

more.

She knew.

And she knew the rest.

I'm dead too, she thought.

Soon, I'm dead.

And then the doorbell rang.

“Get rid of them!” hissed Ross's bloody mouth.

It was not so easy. Pough, Ross's main slug, went dutifully to the front entrance, checked through the eyehole, and opened the door to dismiss whoever was there. Davette heard his voice briefly. Then, for several long seconds, heard nothing.

Then Pough reappeared. His face was, even for him, ashen. His eyes were wide and bright.

And fearful.

“Master.. .” he all but whined.

Ross put down Evelyn's body and stood up. He eyed:

Pough menacingly for an instant, then opened his mouth to speak.

But... “Ross!” sounded out from the front entrance and all present were silent.

“Ross Stewart!” then sounded out. And again, as before, it was from another Voice.

Davette watched Ross start toward the sound, then stop, find something to wipe his mouth, then continue. He paused at the step to the entryway and Davette felt sure he wanted to turn and look to her. For what? For reassurance?

Maybe.

Then he was out the front door and it closed behind him.

When she awoke, late the next afternoon, she found someone had put her in her bed. Her first thought was of the look on Ross's face as he had stepped toward the door But her second was the look he'd had as he'd raised his fangs from the feast.

He had been drunk. On the blood.

Dinner on the terrace just after sunset. Candlelight, flowers, fine wine. Just the two of them. Just Davette eating. Ross wore a tuxedo and Davette, under orders, wore her glittering best.

And that part had made her feel better. Not dressing up. Ross often made her dress up. He liked to look at her, liked to show her off. Liked to make her strip. No, it wasn't the dressing up. It was that it didn't take two hours to do it like it usually had.

Because she would.. . just.., sit.. . there.., in front of her dressing table and she would reach for something, a comb or a brush or some perfume? Maybe? And.., by the time.. . her. . . her hand had. . . reached.

out.. . for it... she had.., forgotten what it was she was reaching for.

And then she would have to just sit there for a second until she remembered what she had been trying to do and to do that she would have to look in the mirror to see what was still undone and she hated looking at herself these days, hated it so much it would often make her cry and. . . And she was too tired to cry, too exhausted, too drained.

So she would just slump there and the dry sobs would rock her shoulders for a while. Sand-blasted by horror and fear and shame.

And then it would be time to continue getting dressed. And she would sit herself up, and reach for something, reach fast, before she forgot, and sometimes she missed and Pough spent a lot of time cleaning up broken bottles.

But tonight had been. . . okay. Not great, not the way she used to feel. But better.

Then she knew.

He hadn't bitten her in a week.

I'm recovering, she realized. I'm coming back.

And then she thought, looking directly at him, Whom do I kill first? Him or me?

He had started talking about high school. Not just about the school but about old friends from school and old events and old dances and parties and the way they used to dress and how everyone from those days was doing-well or:

poorly-and how much he thought of them and how much he missed them and.

And on and on and it came to her, suddenly, what he was trying to do.

And she also knew why:

Ross was scared.

The other Voice had scared him, made him realize he was not all-powerful to everyone, just to mortals. So he was retreating, now, back to the mortal he held most firmly in his palm. And pretending she really wanted to be there.

It was disgusting.

And worse, much, much worse, it was effective.

For Ross had turned up the heat again, the distant warmth of his Voice. His looks had become more pointed, his gestures more graceful and casually touching. And despite her best efforts to remember her hatred and fear, she was giving in to the vampire's magic.

When he reached out a perfect white hand to gently palm her chin she managed to mutter “damn you” before his skin touched hers and her breath caught and the awful wicked excitement stirred within her, fluttered from deep within, sprinkling up her arms and through her shoulders and...

And she did just what he said to do:

She stood up, in front of the servant-slugs, in front of:

Pough, and slipped her dress off, exposing her naked body underneath. And she did slide her manicured nails along her:

hips and thighs and she did tease her diamond-hard nipples and...

And oh God! but she enjoyed it as much as ever before, enjoyed the wanton, whorish nastiness of it all, the shameful,? rutting depravity of it all.

She loved it, God help her.

But even more, she loved his laying her, with her eager consent, across the top of the quickly cleared dining table and opening her thighs to his exquisite, monstrous, bite. And she loved the sounds she streaked up through the leaves and clouds at the moon.