Poppy Z. Brite - 1992 - Lost Souls (47 page)

 
          
“I
begged her to see one of the back-alley surgeons, to have the child removed as
one would excise a cancer, but she refused. By that time she was half-mad with
fear. It would know, she insisted. It is too late. It has already started
eating me—I can feel it churning inside me, shredding my womb ….

 
          
“So
Richelle took a little stiletto that she sometimes wore in her boot—to slit her
lovers’ veins, of course, though she could use her teeth when she wanted to.
She had very sharp teeth.

 
          
Teeth
that could give pleasure as well as pain.

 
          
“She
tried to cut the child out of her body. I found it in the ruins of her belly,
half-hidden behind coils of entrails; it was
shrivelled
,
bloody, long dead. It was still tiny, as large as a red bean. But I found it
because her fingers were cupped around it. She had been trying to pull it out.
She did not want to die with it still inside her.”

 
          
Ghost’s
mind was rocketing in too many directions, rebounding off the walls of his
skull.

 
          
A
voice in his head was saying, Wait a second, wait a second. Maybe we need to
think some more about this business of killer vampire babies that eat their way
out of their mothers’ wombs.

 
          
Maybe
we need to think a whole LOT about it. That voice was still faint, but getting
louder.

 
          
At
last Ghost was about half-drunk on the sherry too. Apparently it was strong
stuff if you could keep it down. So he was able to keep his voice steady when
he said, “I don’t get it. Richelle was your friend. How come you’re afraid of
them now?”

 
          
Arkady
lowered his eyelids. “You might say I have a bone to pick with them now.

 
          
You
guessed right, Ghost. Ashley’s lovers were vampires. A different sort of
vampire.

 
          
They
appreciate the taste of blood but do not need it. They feed on willing souls;
they come into your dreams and try to find a niche in your brain; but they are
real, and if you let them in, they will destroy you as surely as any
bloodsucker. These were Ashley’s lovers. The lovers who killed him.”

 
          
“Where
are they now?” asked Ghost.

 
          
“They
took no blood from Ashley, but they sucked from him something just as vital,”

 
          
Arkady
went on, apparently unhearing. “They sucked his youth, his beauty. That is what
they live upon; they only feed on the lovely. They left him a husk. Ashley
could never have lived without his beauty; the nerves of his skin ran to his
soul—”

 
          
He
stopped, sighed, shook his head. “They are beautiful too,” he said. “They took
all of Ashley’s beauty, and their own beauty remains. They rejuvenate it often.
And I cannot tell you why I let them live upstairs. Perhaps I hope that one day
I will have my chance for revenge.

 
          
Perhaps
I am simply too afraid of them to refuse them anything.”

 
          
Ghost’s
thoughts still ricocheted. His skull felt too fragile; his mind might burst it.
He put a hand to his forehead, and his palm came away damp with sweat. It was
the sherry, the stuffy room. But more than anything it was the tales Arkady had
told.

 
          
Terrible
love that sucked away beauty, that could invade your dreams; babies that could
only be born in blood and agony. What can we do? he wanted to ask Arkady. How
can we help our friend now, before the vampires tear her apart inside and out?

 
          
But
he couldn’t say that. Not in front of Steve.

 
          
And
he was pretty sure he already knew the answer.

 
          
Nothing
awoke to bright afternoon sunlight filtered through dirty glass and dusty
window shades. He could see only a pair of indistinct humps beside him, and for
a moment reality did another of those slow giddy rolls: he recognized no part
of this place. He had never seen it before. There were no stars on the ceiling
as in his old room, no thrumming of wheels and rich smell of old bloodstains as
in the van.

 
          
He
hitched himself up on his elbows and blew a limp sheaf of hair away from his
eyes.

 
          
To
his left curled Zillah, deep in his catlike sleep. On his right slept
Christian, laid out straight, narrow, immensely long, his eyes and mouth shut
tight. Molochai and Twig must be on the floor, cuddled in some comer. Nothing
couldn’t see them, but he thought he heard their breathing, deep and moist.

 
          
He
yawned, licked his lips. What was that taste in his mouth? Fuzzy and rancid and
somehow green …

 
          
Nothing’s
eyes had begun to slip shut. Now they flew open again. He pushed the covers
away, scrambled over Zillah, ran to the window. He stood for a moment with the
shade-pull in his hand, wondering what he would see outside, hoping it hadn’t
all been a drunken dream.

 
          
The
shade clattered up. No one else in the room stirred. Nothing pressed his face
to the window. Below him lay a narrow alley strewn with broken glass that
sparkled in the sunlight, and beyond that stretched a vista of bright streets.
Royal? Bourbon? Dimly he remembered names from last night, magic talismanic
names, names of streets where anything might happen.

 
          
He
saw tiny dark shops that beckoned to him, and he knew how they would smell—cool
and dank and spicy, full of weird treasures. He saw wrought-iron balconies hung
with colored flags that fluttered and winked like some silken sea. He saw
gleaming whitewashed retaining walls spotted with soft brick-red where the
paint had peeled away, and behind them, crumbling buildings that must surely
house spiral staircases, palely lit ballrooms, secret chambers whose walls were
stained with the leavings of blood sacrifice.

 
          
It
was real, it was there, it was his. New Orleans. He had made it all the way
from the false home of his childhood to the true city of his birth, to the
wondrous glittering French Quarter, to the very room where he had emerged
between
Jessy’s
blood-slicked thighs.

 
          
Christian
had arrived before them and secured their lodging. The bar—the legendary bar
where Zillah had met Jessy, had made love to her among the dusty cases of wine
and liquor—was closed, its windows boarded up, but Christian’s room was still
empty and he had no trouble renting it again. The landlady showed it to a
prospective taker or two, Christian said with a glimmer of amusement, but they
told her it smelled funny.

 
          
The
room of his birth. The thought made Nothing turn away from the window and stare
into the dimness of the room. His eyes flicked from shadow to shadow. He
wondered if the wraith of his mother would drift out of a corner, whispering to
him: You killed me, my baby. In this room you killed me. On this very floor.

 
          
But
whatever wraiths lived here were silent. Nothing crouched to examine the
threadbare carpet, but if the stains of his gory birth remained, he could not
see them in this half-light.

 
          
He
decided not to wake the others. He wanted to explore the strange but somehow
familiar maze of streets by himself. A small thrill of anarchy went through him
as he tore a page out of his notebook and wrote a message to Zillah: Back by
tonight was all it said. He signed it, the point of his ‘t’ a dagger, the tail
of his ‘g’ an extravagant loop. This was the name Christian had given him, the
name that undeniably belonged to him now. He would write it every chance he
got. He signed the note again, then a third time, making the letters sprawl
wildly across the page: Nothing, Nothing, Nothing. In this room Christian had
held him all blood-slimed, had given him his name. Now he would go out and discover
the streets that were his home.

 
          
When
his sneakers hit the cement, it was as if the whole of the French Quarter
jarred through his bones. Last night in the hazy hours after their arrival, he
had been dazzled by the carnival of Bourbon Street, drunk on Chartreuse. Now,
sober and clear-headed in watery afternoon sunlight, he wanted to bound through
these old streets shouting I’m here, I’m here! He wanted to embrace each ornate
lamppost and street sign, to fly from every balcony. The French Quarter was his,
every ancient brick, every heady drop of it.

 
          
He
pulled a pair of cheap sunglasses from his coat pocket and put them on. He’d
taken to swiping them from convenience stores and gas stations in lieu of Lucky
Strikes, which he’d almost stopped smoking. The cigarettes just didn’t taste
good anymore. His newest pair of shades had small round frames with
rainbow-mirrored lenses; they made him feel like John Lennon in his
trippier
days. It was good to keep a couple of pairs of
sunglasses on you all the time. Daylight didn’t hurt him and the others as it
did Christian, but it could give them a headache that pulsed red and maddening
behind the eyes.

 
          
Nothing
wandered the streets and the sidewalks for hours. A string of purple Mardi Gras
beads was draped over a wrought-iron gatepost, left over from the carnival in
the spring, a garland to welcome him home. He fastened it around his throat.

 
          
He
visited St. Louis Cathedral with its dizzy vaulted ceilings and its thousand
votive candles flickering in stained-glass light. In the cathedral’s gift shop
he palmed a rosary and added it to the beads around his neck; the two strands
jangled against each other, then nestled together in an uneasy camaraderie of
sacred and profane.

 
          
He
sat at the Cafe du Monde and sipped a cup of coffee shot through with hot
steaming milk. He wandered to the top of the levee and looked down upon the
surging brown river. My mother’s bones lie there, he told himself. And they do
not rest, they drift and break apart and come back together year by year, and
they never rest.

 
          
When
shadows began to stretch across the sidewalks and tired eyes watched his
progress past the doorways of the bars, Nothing retraced his steps toward
Christian’s room. The others would be ready to wake by now. Christian might
accompany them on their rounds tonight, or might find some other way to amuse
himself, since he no longer needed a job. “We get money in other ways,” Zillah
had told him coolly when he proposed going back to work at some bar.

 
          
They
would descend upon the French Quarter, reeling from bar to bar, singing down
Bourbon Street with their arms around one another’s shoulders. In the company
of Molochai, Twig, and Zillah, Nothing was served drinks without a second
glance. The taste of Chartreuse was magical, fragrant and heady beyond
imagining; yet somehow it also tasted natural to him, as if he had been weaned
on the blazing green liqueur. Already it felt as if they had been here forever.

 
          
And
all the bloodstreams here were sure to be sweet. With a shock, Nothing realized
how hungry he was. The memory of Laine’s blood gave him no guilt now. He
remembered only how rich it had tasted, its heat, the way it had pumped into
his mouth with the beat of life itself. But now Laine’s death felt like
something that had happened a long time ago. Too long ago.

 
          
Since
then, there had been those drifters in Missing Mile, and the child. They had
been easier. When he found out how Molochai, Twig, and Zillah filed their teeth
to make them sharp, Nothing had sharpened his too. Now he liked to run his
tongue over them, teasing the small points. But not even the kid from Violin
Road had tasted as sweet as Laine. In the French Quarter all blood would taste
alcoholic, purple….

 
          
Yes,
tonight they would surely go out for blood.

 
          
Now
he was almost home. Some small rational part of his mind wondered how he was
able to walk these streets so easily. But he could not really think it strange.
He had dreamed of this city, of roaming these streets. A glittering map of the
French Quarter seemed to unfold in his head, half-imagined and half-remembered,
as clear as the burn of Chartreuse. He swung around a lamppost, and his coat
floated out in an undulating circle of black silk.