Hunger (20 page)
Authors: Karen E. Taylor
“An interesting concept, this starting over. But you don't need to beg, you know.” There was a pause and he gave a low chuckle. “Of course you can count on me, Deirdre. Have I ever let you down before?”
I gave a small humorless laugh. “Several times that I can think of, but that doesn't matter. All I need is a safe place to sleep tomorrow. Then I'll be on my way.”
“Deirdre, my love, I would be pleased to have you stay with me. When can I expect you?”
“I'll be there in ten minutes.” I hung up the phone.
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The Ballroom of Romance was closed and dark when I arrived. It seemed so odd, I had never seen it this way. Even before it had opened, there had been a crowd of builders and contractors working through the night. Now it had a forlorn and sinister appearance, that was not in any way alleviated by opening of the front door. Max, looking extremely disheveled, shirtless and barefooted, stood in the unlit doorway, and beckoned me in.
“Did I wake you? I'm sorry, but I wouldn't have bothered you if it wasn't crucial.”
He shrugged and led me back to his office. “It is never any bother for you.” He began to open a bottle of my favorite wine. “Would you care for a drink?”
“Yes, why not? But first, I am very hungry.”
He gave me a twisted smile. “I'm afraid I have no one available at the moment. Shall I send out? Or would you like to open my veins?”
I sat down on his couch, threw my head back and laughed. “A fair offer, I suppose, but this time I brought my own.” I reached down, unzipped the backpack and held out one of the bags.
“You are getting enterprising in your old age, Deirdre. Of course, I heard about the robbery but really had no idea you were behind it.” He took the bag from me and gingerly balanced it on his hand. “Theft doesn't seem your style.”
“I did not rob the blood bank. Tonight I dine on the generosity of our good friend Larry.”
“Larry? What the hell is he doing with stolen blood? And you saw him; he gave that to you?”
“Not actually, no. Although he once suggested we have dinner together. So I suppose you could say I decided to take him up on the invitation. Is it my fault that he wasn't at home when I called?”
“You broke into his apartment?” Max made no attempt to hide his amusement. “Moral little Deirdre? The one who is always concerned with the right and wrong of things? Shame on you, my dear. And what would Detective . . .”
“You leave him out of it.” I snarled the words and took the blood bag from his hand. “I have a very interesting story to tell you, Max. But first things first.”
I walked to the bar and selected a large glass, then walked to his desk and removed a pair of scissors from the top drawer. Clipping the end of the bag, I poured the blood into the glass and held it up admiringly to the light. “To your health.”
He had put on a shirt and was buttoning it, but stopped to watch intently while I drank. The amount in the bag was only slightly more than I would normally take from a living victim. It was not an unacceptable substitute, but by the time I reached the end of the glass, it was cool and thickening. Next time, I thought, it should be warmed. Still I tipped it back again to get the very last drop from the bottom of the glass, before I went to the bar to rinse it out and refill it with the wine Max had opened.
When I sat back down, he tucked in his shirt and glanced at the clock. “We have an hour or so before dawn, you are fed and my blood is safe, perhaps now you would like to tell me what's happening.”
In answer I reached again into the backpack and pulled out the scrapbook. “Larry has done more than provide a meal; he has also given me this.” I smiled bitterly. “At least now we know what he's been researching.”
His eyebrows raised when he saw the name on the cover. “May I?” He reached his hand out and I gave the book to him.
Slowly, Max turned the pages, reading each entry completely. At some he paused and laughed, others he read intently. He spent a lot of time on one page, not reading, just staring. I leaned over to see what it was. “Diane Gleason,” he said, meeting my eyes. “You were so young, then.”
I gave a snort of indignation. “Young? That's the second time you have referred to me as young. At that time, you must remember, I was already a hundred years old.”
“No,” he said sadly. “Your whole outlook was young. You were vibrant, carefree and utterly enticing. You did what you wanted, when you wanted and everyone else be damned. You had no ties, no ambition, just an endless lust for new horizons. What happened to that spirit?”
“If I remember correctly, it got abused by many people, including you. It was you who left, without so much as a spoken goodbye.”
“Are you still angry about that? You're the one who's so quick to remind me it was a long time ago. And we are still together, we are still friends, as you call it.”
I got up and poured us both another glass of wine. He continued his reading, acknowledging my offer of the wine with a quick gesture to the table next to his chair. I set it down and walked over to look out the window. Neither of us spoke until I saw the sky begin to lighten with the dawn.
“Max,” I began. “The sun is almost up.”
“I know, my dear.” He stood up and handed the scrapbook back to me. “We'll talk more about this tomorrow evening. You can sleep in the back lounge; no one will bother you, I promise.” He smiled and with a gallantry strange for him, held out his arm. “Come, I'll walk you home.”
He picked up my suitcase, opened the door and escorted me out, my hand lightly gripping his arm. I suddenly felt comfortable with him again, he was no threat to me. His knowledge of what I was had not impacted our relationship, perhaps it had even intensified it. True, he was not Mitch but that was for the best. There was no place for me in Mitch's life, and all the love that I felt for him would not change me. With Max, there was still, if not the spark, then a chance that we could once again.... I shook my head and wondered at the direction my thoughts were taking. I love Mitch, I asserted, no matter how badly it might all turn out.
Max smiled at me as he opened the door to the lounge. It was a sensuous, knowing smile as if he had read my thoughts of him. And perhaps he did; he was perceptive enough to pick up my body language, my renewed ease in his presence.
“Well, here we are.”
I walked in, placed the book on the couch and turned around. He carried my case in and put it on the floor. “Thank you, Max. It was good of you to take me in.”
“Think nothing of it, Deirdre.” A shadow fell over his face for only a moment before it was replaced with his usual cynical expression. “I suppose my spending the, er, day with you is out of the question?”
“I am so very tired, Max. It has been a rough night.”
“Ah, well then.” His gaze fastened on my lips and he moved toward me. I expected him to grasp me and kiss me; instead I felt his lips graze my cheek lightly. “I hope you don't mind using the couch. Sleep well.” He walked out and closed the door.
I went to the window and pulled the curtains closed. They were heavy, well-insulated and should provide the proper protection. Then, after locking the door, and opening the suitcase, I began to undress. The nightgown packed had been for Mitch's benefit, black silk, with a plunging neckline and a billowing skirt. I felt silly wearing it here, with no one to see it, but it was all I had.
Max had thoughtfully set out a blanket and a pillow on one corner of the couch. In spite of his earlier protests on the phone, I felt that he was probably pleased that I had turned to him. He had done his best to make me feel welcome and comfortable in what was an awkward situation for the both of us. I laughed when I remembered the time he had introduced himself as my Renfield to a confused victim. He was more than that to me, of course. I had never thought of him as my servant, but, and I wondered again about my thoughts in the hall, we could never rekindle our intimate relationship. Even if I had not met Mitch, I had to move on, I needed to move on, and there would be no place for Max in my future.
I looked at the phone hanging on the wall. How easy it would be to call Mitch and let him know that I was safe that all was well and that I loved him. Crossing the floor, I picked up the phone and dialed his number, but hung up before it rang. You have no place for Mitch, either, I reminded myself and lay down on the couch.
Many years of practice, many years of life had taught me that no problems could be solved in sleeplessness. Once again, I cleared my mind of all thoughts, pleasant or otherwise, and fell asleep just as the sun rose.
Chapter 15
W
hen I woke it was almost an hour to sunset. I dressed, went to the bar and opened a bottle of wine. Then I sat down and began to read Larry's scrap book.
hen I woke it was almost an hour to sunset. I dressed, went to the bar and opened a bottle of wine. Then I sat down and began to read Larry's scrap book.
The hardest page to get past was the first; that civil war photograph that I can remember being taken as vividly as if it were yesterday. Here I walked in my real life, my own time. And although I was a vampire, I did not yet think of myself as an ageless freak, a walking anachronism. It took the erosion of my soul by many years to do that, the frantic passage of time and man's progress. In this time, there was no progress, or if there was it was a slow and gentle evolution, unnoticed as days rolled one into the other. It was my era and I still ached for it.
But not for the war; although Max often laughed saying that such a time must be a paradise for vampires. I grew to know death, to live with it during this time, but I never gained acceptance of it. Each lost life was deeply mourned by me, who could never die.
They were young, younger than me; they were my lovers, my brothers. They would come to me for advice, to read me that longâawaited letter from a wife or mother. They would come to me in fear and dread, facing impending battles and skirmishes, and I would offer comfort where I could, with my body mostly, giving some of them the only chance they would have for a woman's love. Looking back, I am amazed that I had no qualms about this, being a woman of that time, marrying as a virgin and expecting no other man in my life than my husband. But he was gone and I was damned. And their need of me was great, so great that it often engulfed my own. The grasping hands, the suckling mouth, the young, strong bodies desperate for the touch of life on a field of death.
I gave what I could, and when they returned wounded, bloodied and dying I nursed them with a gentle patience. The field doctors knew that they could rely on me no matter what the situation, I had no delicacy that could be offended and strength enough for the necessary tasks.
After the first two battles, we had tents devoted to the dying and wounded. Here at night I walked, carrying a softly glowing lantern, the quiet swishing of skirts announcing my presence. For the recovering soldiers I had a smile or a soft greeting. The feverish I soothed with my cool hands and voice, sometimes reading until they fell asleep. For the dying, and it became painfully easy to recognize those who would not survive the night, I offered a release from pain and a slow draining into a quiet death. Angel they called me then, even those who in passion had called me devil and witch, with their hands entangled in my hair and their bodies joined to mine.
Out of the group photographed, only one was still alive when I left. As I traveled from camp to camp, and battle to battle, I often thought of him, wondering who would comfort him, who would ease him into death. Soon each soldiers' face became blurred for me: there were so many, so many.
Damn Larry, I thought, brushing aside the tears that were flowing. I was violated, raped by his capture of my essence on these pages. His matter-of-fact captions, the cold stating of facts, names and occupations, reduced my life to nothing but blood and death. And it had been more than that, I knew. There had been friends and laughter, good times intermingled with the bad. I turned the pages and lingered over some: a newspaper photograph of night-shift steel workers during World War II, including one Doreen Gallagher; the employment records of Deborah Garrison who worked in an all-night diner as had Diane Gleason; the police log on Dorothy Grey who made her reappearance as a prostitute in the sleepy, southern town from which Max had finally rescued her for reincarnation as Deirdre Griffin.
I had to admire Larry for his dedication to this task, even while hating him and questioning his motives. It cannot have been an easy job, tracing and tracking me through the decades. The gaps, bitterly notated by him as turning up nothing, gave me a grim laugh. Most of these were times when I went into hiding, living in some cases as an animal, dirty and homeless, occupying caves or abandoned shacks, running from my previous lives. Running, not in fear, but in regret and sadness for times and people that grew old and died. I hoped these gaps had worried him, tortured him, and stolen from him some of the satisfaction he must have felt for pinning me down so accurately.
The last page I ignored; his plans and aspirations I had already read the previous evening. I needed no reminder of the twisted mind that was trying to force me into doing something I had never done, something that I now had no wish to ever do. He would not become a vampire at my hands; I would kill or be killed before I allowed someone else to share in what he called the gift of life. For me it was nothing but a curse, an unnaturalness, a perversion of the beauty of humanity.
I closed the book, put it into my suitcase and locked it. By now the sun had set and I was free to go. Opening the door, I walked down the hall toward Max's office when suddenly I ducked into the adjoining room. From here the angry voices were audible and easy to identify. “Okay, Hunter, I'll ask it again. Where is she?”
“And I will tell you again, Detective. If she had wanted you to know, don't you think she would have told you?”
“I know she must be here, I can feel it. I must see her, you must tell me where she is. Her life is in danger . . .”
Max laughed, long and loud. “Deirdre is perfectly capable of taking care of herself, I assure you. If you only knew how ridiculously unnecessary your protection is, you would laugh too.”
“And was it ridiculous for Gwen?”
“Gwen?” Max's questioning tone was sincere; I had not had the time to tell him about Gwen.
“Deirdre's secretary. Your psycho employee drove a stake through her heart.”
“A singularly horrible way to die. But what has that got to do with Deirdre?”
Mitch's voice acquired a deadly patience as if he were speaking to a child. “Don't you understand? He means to do the same to her. He's left messages for her, taunting her, threatening her. And if he finds her she'll die, can't you see that?”
“Of course she would die, anyone would.” Max was hedging now; playing this scene coolly, uncertain of what I had revealed to Mitch. “But he has to find her first, doesn't he? She is not easy to be found, if she chooses not to be.”
“You don't care, do you? Deirdre tells me that you are her oldest and dearest friend, yet you would just stand by and let her be killed. How could you not care, not love her?”
“Love?” Max was angry now, his voice cold and frightening. “I knew it would come down to that, when you came here. You and all the others, mooning and slobbering over her, begging for an introduction, singing her praises, her beauty, her charm. She is beyond you, Greer, beyond all of you. And you could never keep her, never hold her to you for any more time than she wants to be held.” His voice quieted and sounded now more sad than angry. “Don't you think I know that? I have lived with that fact since the day we met.”
There was a long pause; then I could hear the clink of ice cubes in a glass and the pouring of a liquid. What the hell were they doing, toasting my death? Silently commemorating a woman they both loved and lost?
Mitch was the next to speak; his manner seemed different, as if over their drinks he and Max had reached some agreement. “Sorry, Hunter, I just wasn't thinking. What do you think I should do? How can I protect her if I can't find her?”
“Wait,” Max advised. “Just wait. She'll return, perhaps here, perhaps at her hotel. I assure you, she won't be hurt. Larry doesn't want her dead.”
“I wish I were as sure as you. If you hear from her, please let me know.” Another brief pause and he continued. “Here are my numbers, at the station and at home. Call anytime.”
I heard the door open and listened to Mitch's footsteps heading down the hall and out into the bar. I waited for a minute, but when they did not return I knew he was gone. I left the room and went next door to Max's office.
He was sitting at his desk and did not look up when I entered and locked the door behind me. “I trust you slept well, my dear. Your friend Mitchell Greer was looking for you.”
“So I gathered,” I said dryly. “He was quite vocal about it.”
“Ah, you heard. Then I need not relate the event in all its pathos for you, do I?”
“You did quite well, Max. Never saying too much, not letting on that you knew anything about me or my whereabouts. I found your last statements quite touching.”
“They were not meant for your ears, Deirdre.” The usual scorn was back in his voice, and his face, when he lifted it to me, held his normal smile. “But they were at least effective in removing him from my office. I assume he's still lurking around, however, so if you don't want to meet him, be careful.”
“I will.”
“Does it give you pleasure, Deirdre?” He asked it with an agreeable smile, as if asking about the weather.
“What?”
“How you manage to enslave every man you meet, with a kiss or a look or a promise. Larry is now wanted for murderâa murder that your presence caused him to commit. And as for Greer, well, you've known him for less than two weeks now, already he would kill for you or die for you. I know his type, incorruptible and clean, he cannot be bribed or coerced and would never allow his personal feelings to interfere with his job. And yet you have managed to tear him down, rip through the veneer and reduce him to an almost savage state. And you pride yourself on your morals, your conscience, on how you have never taken a life. But he will love you until the day he dies and never realize that to you it was just a pleasant way to pass the time.”
I stared at him in shock for a moment. “But, Max, I thought you knew.” I hesitated. “I was sure you could tell.”
“Tell what?”
“That I love him.”
“Love, again? First Greer and now you. And where can you hope it will lead?”
“It will lead nowhere, but I can't help the way I feel. This is real, this is now. Tomorrow can take care of itself.”
“Spare me the saccharin. I don't know what your plans are, but you may stay here as long as you wish. As one of your oldest and dearest friends, I could never deny you. Make yourself at home; I've got to get to work now.”
“Well, damn,” I said as he walked out. Nothing was turning out as I had expected.
I wanted to scream or throw something, in an effort to release the pain that Max's words had caused me. Instead I walked over and sat at his desk, glancing at the few papers on its surface, idly flipping the directory that held names and numbers of employees, suppliers and important customers. All the time my mind was racing, considering the truth of his words.
What he failed to realize, I finally decided, was that the situation was as painful for me as for anyone else. I loved and the loss of that love would hurt me deeply, perhaps even more than it would Mitch. For he could return to his life, and as he aged, the pain would lessen, eventually ceasing with his death. I, on the other hand, carried with me every loss, every love, magnified and multiplied like the links in Marley's chain.
“Damn,” I said again and jumped when the phone beside me rang.
“Ballroom of Romance,” I answered, my voice surprisingly pleasant and calm.
There was a pause at the end of the line. “Hello,” I said. “May I help you?”
“You know you can.” My pulse jumped at his voiceâhere was one at least that gave me reason to continue for a while in this life. Or gave me hope of release.
“Larry.”
“Did you get my message?”
“Yes. Did you get mine?”
“Loud and clear, Dorothy. I want to see you. I want . . .”
“I know what you want, Larry. You won't get it.”
“But you will meet with me?”
“Yes.”
His breathing quickened and I could feel his impatience over the line. “Tonight, midnight, in the cellar of the Ballroom.”
“How charmingly melodramatic, Larry. You can expect me.”
I hung up the phone. Here was the final test, I thought. Could I kill him, to protect myself and avenge a friend? Or would I allow him to take the life, that, despite my disgust and despair, I had tenaciously clung to for so many years? I checked the clockâthere were four hours to wait.
Max had left the office door open, I could hear the band begin to play, the voices of the people gathered. I walked through the kitchen, pushed open service doors and stood at the end of the bar. Mitch was still there, standing by the main entrance, his eyes scanning the dancers. I felt that the next four hours could very easily be spent watching this man who had so unexpectedly come into my life, giving me one more chance to feel my humanity.
“Wine, Miss Griffin?”
I nodded absently to the bartender, never taking my eyes from Mitch's shadowy form. The band had finished playing one of my favorite songs, and I wondered how long it would take him to find me among the crowd. The bartender brought my drink; perhaps it was the movement that called his attention to me, perhaps he could sense me the way I could him. It didn't seem to matter; he had found me, and after my flight of last night, I wanted to be found. Before the night was over, I would be a murderer in fact, or dead; these last few hours were best spent with him.
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