Blood Vivicanti (9781941240106) (8 page)

“
Where are we going?” I
asked her.

The spaceship started to
rock. Lowen and his Sleeper Devils had found us. They were outside,
clamoring to get in.

Wyn looked at Ms.
Crystobal. She opened a portal to the library.

“
We’ll distract them while
you get away,” she said.

She and Wyn stepped through
the portal and into the library.

“
Wait,” I called after them.
“Where are we going?”

Inside the library now, Wyn
and Ms. Crystobal turned to look at me.

She started to close the
portal. Slowly it shrunk inward.

“
You’re going to a place I
used to live a long time ago,” she replied, “during what you would
call the Old West. At that time it was called Junction Station,
where several railways converged.”

I searched through my
photographic memory, but I could not recall any information about
it.

“
What’s it called today?” I
asked.

Ms. Crystobal raised an
eyebrow at me just before she closed the portal. She had shrunk it
to the size of a pinhole when I heard her response.

“
You’re going,” she said,
“to the Locomotive Deadyards.”

To be continued…

Coming next in

The Blood
Vivicanti

Part 6

I left the safety of the
Locomotive Deadyards. The Red Man went with me.

I had started calling him,
“Red,” and I was beginning to enjoy his company very much. Yes, I
was glad that he was by my side. He was a good helper and
friend.

Together we flew in his
Kharetie spaceship to New Orleans.

It was the season of Mardi
Gras. The streets were thronged with parades and beads and Bacchic
festivities.

Strangely, I felt right at
home.

Red parked his spacecraft
in a warehouse packed with parade floats. It blended in
perfectly.

So did he. We walked up and
down the crowded streets of the French Quarter. People put thick
beads around his neck and kissed his cheeks because they thought
his costume was the best they’d ever seen.

I’d never seen him look so
nervous. His red cheeks blushed a deeper shade of
purple.

Only his reserve stuck out
like a sore thumb.

We spent a few days looking
for the right set of people whose blood I should drink and whose
Blood Memories I should eat.

We squatted in empty
mansions and shot gun houses. And one desperate night we slept in
one of the haunted crypts in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1.

Incidentally, a ghost woke
me up that night. She was carrying a ghostly lantern and looking
for her lost lover.

I told her to try the next
sepulcher over, the one with the stone cherubs over the
mantle.

The ghostly woman nodded
and thanked me in a wispy voice. Then she left us alone for the
rest of the night.

But she had scared Red half
out of his wits. He didn’t like the strange ways of human ghosts.
And he couldn’t get back to sleep. He was fearful that she would
return any moment to shine the ghostly light of her lantern in his
face.

I held him all night. I
stroked his bald head. My fingernails stroked his red skin. I
hummed a human lullaby.

He was so big. I was so
tiny.

It was nice to hold in my
arm such a reversal of power.

It was nice to hold him
too.

It took a few days and
nights, but soon we made a list of everyone from whom I should
drink.

The first person on the
list was my personal choice. It was an old homeless man whom I’d
seen several times.

Red did not like this
choice at all. He had learned through his own Blood Memories that
shaking his head was a great way to say, No! without saying a
word.

He was shaking his head a
lot.

But the old homeless man
impressed me, in the same way that Theo’s old man had impressed
him, all those months ago – it seemed like centuries by then. Theo
had drunk that old man’s blood because he had wanted to drink the
blood of someone who might not have been skilled in life, yet was
skilled with living.

My old homeless man was
like that. He had never been a drunk since he never drank. He
begged for money all day and all night, but he used only a little
bit of it for himself. He took most of his earnings from begging to
a small church that was in disrepair, a church begging for money to
fix a hole in the roof, and he put it in the collection box. He did
this every day, several times a day too, lest some cowardly thief
try to steal that money from him. My beggar was helping other
beggars.

I loved him for
that!

It actually happened on the
day I decided to drink his blood. A thief tried to take his money.
But I got there right in the nick of time.

Red was following me
reluctantly, his arms cross, his head still shaking, No! in
disagreement.

I caught the thief right as
he drew out his knife. I lifted him off the ground and threw him
over the nearest roof.

My old homeless man looked
at me the same way he had looked at the thief – with a kind smile
and a twinkle in his eye. Most people would have been
terrified.

“
You’re an angel,” he said
to me in an old man’s gravelly tone.

“
Maybe I’m a devil,” I
said.

“
Devils are angels,” he
said.

“
I need something from you,”
I said.

“
Will it hurt?” he
asked.

“
For a second,” I said, “and
then there will be happiness.”

“
Okay,” he said. “Take what
you need from me.”

I told him to close his
eyes. He did.

I went around behind him.
My Probiscus extended from the tip of my tongue. The shadows in my
mind would not let me forget the horror of drinking Nell’s black
blood. But the determination of my mind to destroy Lowen the Dark
Man scattered the terror of those shadows.

“
For Theo,” I said as I saw
the sweet spot on the back of the old man’s neck. But then, almost
as an afterthought, I added, “And for me too.”

I pierced the old man’s
neck and drank his blood and ate his Blood Memories.

He said, “Oh!” and then he
went limp in my arms.

No one else had ever done
that before. They usually stumbled way with a euphoric smile on
their face, remembering nothing from my pierce, except for a foggy
sense of pure pleasure.

The Blood Memories of my
old homeless man filled me. I saw the world through his eyes and I
realized that the pint that I had swallowed down was the last pint
his heart had pumped. It stopped beating the instant the tip of my
tongue slipped out from his neck.

My old homeless man died in
my arms with a contended smile on his face, but I don’t think it
was from my venom. I hadn’t released it.

For a moment I was tempted
to believe that I had killed him.

But I knew that that was
not true. The early surging of his Blood Memories told me so. His
heart simply gave out. It was just his time. It was as if it was
meant to be. Call it fate. Call it a Divine Plan. Yet I cannot
allow myself to believe that my pierce and his death were some sort
of happy accident.

Serendipity exists when
only accidents do not hurt. Otherwise it would be called a
tragedy.

The old man’s Blood
Memories went to work in me.

He had been homeless by
choice. He had no fear of death, no fear of the future, no fear at
all. He took life one day at a time, and when that was too much, he
took it one minute at a time because sometimes a whole day can be
lived in sixty fleeting seconds.

I knew that I had made the
right choice.

The old man’s Blood
Memories would be the fire that tempered all the others I would
soon swallow down and digest in my photographic memory.

I admit: I had gotten my
appetite back for blood.

It really only takes a pint
or two.

Red and I then went down
the list that we had made. It was filled with fighters and
thinkers.

Red approved it. He stopped
shaking his head.

I drank the blood of
seventeen martial artists, each skilled in a different style. There
was Kung Fu and T'ai chi and Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and Nguni Stick
Fighting and West African bare-knuckle boxing, and let’s not forget
that wonderful Canadian martial art, Defendo.

I also drank the blood of
three chess grand masters.

All those Blood Memories
were teeming within me like a perfect storm.

And I was the perfect
storm.

I was ready for a
fight.

Look for more in

The Blood
Vivicanti

Part 6

OTHER BOOKS BY
BECKET

Key the Steampunk Vampire
Girl and the Dungeon of Despair

Key the Steampunk Vampire
Girl and the Tower Tomb of Time

The Christmas
King

The Door to
Heaven

ABOUT THE
AUTHORS

BECKET

Becket has a BA in music
composition, an MA in Systematic Theology, and an MS in Industrial/
Organizational Psychology. He was a Benedictine monk for many
years. For the last nine years, he has worked as Anne Rice’s
assistant, and has spent that time learning from her. He is also
the author of
Key the Steampunk Vampire
Girl and the Dungeon of Despair
. You can
find Becket at www.becket.me

ANNE RICE

Anne Rice has written over
30 books about vampires, werewolves and other such blood drinkers.
Her works include
Interview With the
Vampire
,
The
Vampire Lestat
, and most recently
The Wolves of Midwinter
.
You can find Anne at www.annerice.com

CREDITS

Cover design

Becket

Cover photograph

Image ID: 2515504 © Ellen
C | Shutterstock

ID 10210494 © Kathy Gold |
Dreamstime.com

ID 10210620 © Kathy Gold |
Dreamstime.com