Angel of Vengeance (11 page)

She was a wonder on the stand. She cried on cue and told the sympathetic jury what a monster I was, how frightened she had been, how horribly scarred she was from the terrible ordeal, how sorry she was to have been involved in any way. By the end of her testimony, even I was half convinced I’d done it.

The vote was unanimous. Guilty. No surprise there. In fact, the only surprise of the whole trial came during the sentencing phase when it took jurors only twenty-eight minutes to decide to give me death. It was a record for that time.

As they lead me out past Coraline, I stared deep into those acetylene-torch eyes. The look in them was a violent twister of love and sorrow and relief. I stared until they pulled me out of that courtroom and I couldn’t stare any more.

Then I went and waited to die.

Time on San Quentin’s death row unfolds slowly. That would seem to be a good thing considering what awaits you at the end of the line, but it’s not. Knowing what’s coming only drives home the futility of the never-ending days. Days stacked on weeks stacked on months stacked on years like a house of cards and just as pointless.

All that time, I never heard so much as a single word from Coraline. Not a call. Not a letter. What I got was nothing and lots of it. I’m sure a lot of guys would have been sore about that, all things considered, but I didn’t blame her any. I was glad of it, if you want to know the truth. I had not given up all I’d given up so she could waste her life pining for the dead. I wanted her to live. During the endless, countless hours of nothing to see and nothing to do, I created whole lives for her. I imagined her cleaned up and using her looks and talent working in the pictures, or traveling the world, seeing sights I’d never see, or raising a family with some average Joe who treated her like she hung the moon. You see, it didn’t matter what to me, just so long as she was doing something with my sacrifice. Anything. It didn’t seem much to ask.

I guess it was though.

Toward the end of 1945—November if I recall—I noticed a small article in the week-old copy of the
Times
I’d managed to get my hands on. The story explained how workers at the city dump had found the partially-nude body of a young woman. The body had later been identified as belonging to one Coraline Angel, the same Coraline Angel who had made the papers as an unwilling accomplice in the scandalous murder of producer Roy Mcardle. A heroin addict and prostitute, it was speculated that she had overdosed in one of the many east Los Angeles flophouses that had cropped up since the war and been disposed of by the other junkies hoping to avoid trouble with the law.

I must have read the story fifty times. A hundred. I just couldn’t seem to wrap my mind around the idea that Coraline was gone and it had all been for nothing. She hadn’t done a good goddamn thing with the opportunity I gave her. Not a good goddamn thing. And if that was the case, then I was a sucker for doing it. Worse, I no longer had my hopes for her or my good thoughts about my one truly selfless act to get me through the days. I think I hated her for that most of all.

There was nothing left for me. The next day I got busy dying. I called my lawyers and demanded that they waive what remained of my appeals. It didn’t take much convincing. The date was set and I looked forward to it like a kid does Christmas.

I only had a single visit my whole time on death row and it came the night before my scheduled execution. The warden himself appeared at the door to my cramped deathwatch cell to tell me.

“You’ve got a visitor, Angel.”

I watched from my sheetless single bed as the door locks geared back and a habited nun entered my cell, eyes downcast, face veiled in shadow.

“Please leave us,” she whispered to the warden.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Sister. This one’s a killer.”

She turned to him then, looked him in the eye. “Leave us.”

“Leave... ” he mumbled.

When he was gone, the door locked in place behind him, the nun turned to me and removed her coif and veil, and I found myself staring in shock at Coraline.

“Hello, lover.”

Even in the dark, I could see she was every bit as lovely as I remembered—lovelier. But there were differences; stark and disturbing ones. Always full-bodied and healthy-looking even during her heaviest periods of heroin abuse, she appeared angular and sickly thin; her skin a canvas stretched tight across a bone frame. Her dark lustrous hair, which she had obsessively styled to perfection when I knew her, was a tangled mane framing a face of almost luminescent whiteness. Perhaps worst of all, the eyes that had always seemed to brim with life now had a weary intensity, as if some greater knowledge of secrets dark and arcane had worn her soul thin.

“You’re dead. I read it in the paper.”

“You can’t believe everything you read, Mick.”

She smiled, but it wasn’t right. There was something off about her; something horrible and wrong. With the skittishness of a horse that scents a predator on the wind, I felt the sudden urge to bolt, but there was nowhere to go.

“I’ve missed you,” she said, pulling me close.

I expected the embrace to feel as fragile as she looked, but the narrow arms that corralled me felt like steel bands. I wanted to shove her away, but I resisted the temptation with the thought that any sign of fear might cause those awful arms to slam closed around me with the crushing force of a bear trap and never let go. When she finally released me I felt like a fly jounced from the web of an approaching spider.

I guess it showed on my face because she said, “What’s wrong? Aren’t you happy to see me, baby?”

She tried to pout then, but that was another thing that had changed. Coraline used to be a great pouter. World class. This was a sham. A fraud. As manufactured as a whore’s orgasm. The new Coraline was a million miles past this sort of silly schoolgirl manipulation.

“I just can’t believe you’re here,” I heard myself say.

“Of course I’m here. You don’t really think I’d let them put the man I love to death without coming to see him one last time, do you?”

“That what you came to tell me? That you still love me?”

“Partly. I’ve always loved you, Mick. A lot of things have changed for me, but not that. But I have another reason too.”

“Yeah, what’s that?”

“You gave your life for me. I haven’t forgotten that. I came to repay the favor.”

“Yeah, and exactly how do you plan on doing that?”

“I can make it so they can’t kill you.”

“Let me guess—you have a stay of execution from the governor stashed in your brassiere.”

“Why don’t you check and see?” She took my hand and pressed it down the front of the habit. The joke was on me. She wasn’t wearing a bra. Her breasts were strangely cool to the touch, but considering I hadn’t had my hands within a hundred yards of a pair in three years I wasn’t of a mind to be particular about it. Not even in her present state.

“That’s not very nun-like of you.”

“I’m afraid I’m not a very good nun. In fact, I’m not a nun at all.”

“Yeah? What are ya then?”

Coraline transformed before my eyes. Her eyes grew black with blood and her fangs distended and her jaw unhinged. Nothing can prepare you for seeing the impossible; for the realization that the world is not what you thought it was. As I backed away in abject horror, I watched as her features melted back to perfection and Coraline once again stood before me. All except for her eyes, which remained black and awful.

“Jesus.” I tried to think of a worse situation than being trapped with a monster in a locked high-security prison cell and found I couldn’t come up with one.

“Sorry, baby. Didn’t mean to startle you, but I didn’t know how else to tell you. I’m a vampire, Mick.”

“How?...”

“Look into my eyes. I’ll show you,” she said, seeming to glide across the space between us. Unable to resist, I felt myself drown in the murky depths of her black crystal-ball eyes.

It started with a call. It came from the butler of a wealthy Bel Air recluse by the name of Brasher. The butler told Coraline that his employer had heard rumors of her beauty and wished to meet her. It was late, but he offered to pay double her normal fee and to send a car for her, so she had gone. Of course she had.

Dressed in an ascot and smoking jacket, Brasher himself had met her at the door of his huge castle-like Bel Air home. He was a stooped, sickly, walking corpse of a man with yellow parchment for skin and a few spider’s web filaments for hair.

“My dear, you are every bit as lovely as I was lead to believe.” He had just the slightest hint of a European accent, and used a stained white handkerchief to dab away the flecks of blood that collected on his withered lips as he spoke.

Seeing him, Coraline had second thoughts, but she was here now and she needed the money. Besides, what danger could this broken old man be to her? She’d gone in. Of course she had.

The house was dark and drafty. Blaming ancient wiring for the lack of electric lighting, Brasher escorted Coraline up a set of stairs and down a rat’s maze of corridors by candlelight. They stopped at a study where a warm fire blazed.

Brasher directed Coraline to an antique divan and went to pour them each a snifter of brandy from the wet bar. Carrying her glass to her he said, “Tell me, my dear, do you enjoy games?”

“I suppose. Doesn’t everyone?” Coraline asked, taking the snifter and tasting the brandy.

“Not everyone, no, but I enjoy them very much. I’d like to play one with you if you’d be so inclined.”

“What sort of game?”

“A delicious one,” he said with a death-rattle of a laugh. He began to say something else, but was interrupted by a disturbing fit of racking coughing. Coraline did her best to pretend not to notice the snarled clots of blood and mucus he caught in his handkerchief and hid away.

“I must apologize. I’m afraid my health isn’t what it once was. What was I saying?”

“You were telling me about the game you wanted us to play.”

“Oh yes. The game. Are you familiar with the children’s game tag?”

Coraline looked at the old man, glass raised halfway to her mouth. “You want to play tag?”

“No. The game I have in mind is quite similar to tag however. The way it works is like this: this room will be your home base. So long as you remain in here no harm will befall you. Stay as long as you wish.” A sweet smile on his lips, Brasher pointed to the door with one tree-root hand. “But the moment you step outside that door, the game is afoot. You try to escape from my house, and I’ll try to stop you.”

Brasher giggled.

“You’re insane.” Coraline set her drink down and moved for the door. But Brasher stepped in her way, grabbing her by her arms. Coraline tried to pull away, but to her amazement, he was much too strong for her.

“Let me go. I’m not playing any goddamn game with you.”

“But, my dear, you’re already playing.”

Releasing her, he mutated into a vampire before her eyes.

Letting out a piercing scream of horror, Coraline fled the room, trailed by Brasher’s maniacal laughter.

Coraline felt her way through the pitch-black halls, trying desperately to remember the route out, but lost her way. Terror-filled hours passed until she finally threw herself down in defeat, weeping distraughtly.

Brasher slipped up on her in silence. She never heard his approach. His first touch was as gentle as a lover’s. Crouching by her, he nuzzled in darkness.

“You’re it, my dear,” he whispered.

***

When Coraline released me from the trance I found myself covered in a thin film of perspiration, crouched and shivering against the wall of my cell, just as if I had experienced the whole ordeal first hand.

“He raped me,” she said. “He hurt me so bad, Mick. I felt him change while he was inside me. It went on forever. The longer it went on, the more violent he became, but he didn’t bite me until, you know, until the end. And even then he didn’t stop. He kept right on until he drank me all up.”

“Jesus,” I said, and that was all.

“He’s a monster. Not all of us are, but he is. He needs to die. And if you still love me at all you’ll come back with me and help me kill him.”

Since the article I’d thought my love for Coraline was gone; dried up like a puddle in an arid desert heat. Despite the fear I felt, seeing her now I knew that was wrong. It had just changed forms. My love for her might have turned to steam, but I could still feel it hanging like humidity all around.

“Why go back at all? You’re free. Safe.”

Coraline shook her head. “You don’t know him. He’ll never let me go. He’ll hunt me forever. As long as it takes. As long as he lives.”

“I still don’t see what you need me for. You’re younger than he is. Stronger.”

She shook her head. “Vampires get more powerful with age. It’s hard to fool the one who made you. They know things about you. They can’t read your mind exactly, but it’s something like that. It’s like they’re able to read your intentions. If I came within fifty feet of him with a plan in mind to kill him he’d sense it.”

“But I can do it, huh?”

“Yes, because I’ll have made you. I won’t lie to you, it’ll be dangerous. But we could do it together. I know we could.”

Reaching out, she took my hand. “What do you say, baby? You do this for me and I’ll make it so they can’t kill you tomorrow. Become like me, Mick. Then we can be together again. We could make it like it used to be.”

“Uh-huh, except for the killing people for their blood part.”

“Except for that,” she said.

It was a story as old as mankind—young unhappy woman recruits a lover to do away with her old man, all for the promise of a new life together. Only this was the Nosferatu version.

“What do I have to do?”

She smiled again now. She was getting better with practice. “Just... invite me to stay... “

My fear and anger were overwhelmed by something more primal. My love for Coraline had always been a bitter pill. I didn’t know if it was medicine or poison, but it was lodged in my throat and I was inclined to choke it down regardless. And besides, I wanted a second chance. Hell, I deserved one.