Sips of Blood (32 page)

Keith's hands shook against the sheet-covered
mattress, the rapid movements causing a muffled incessant shuffling
noise. His eyes blinked, and she saw a tear run down his left
cheek.

"Oh so touching. I wish I could feel for you.
Unfortunately for you, that tear means nothing to me. You're just
an old man who's in the way of my sweeping your son off to Paris
with me." Marie's fingers tightened on Keith's jaw.

Keith issued a gurgle, and saliva began
running out the side of his mouth, streaking down his chin to fall
lightly on Marie's index finger.

"Hurt, does it?" Marie squeezed harder, and
the pop of collapsing bone filled the room. Marie took her hand
away, noting the prints of her fingers and the caving-in of flesh.
"Tell me, Keith, what makes you hold on to life? Fear of oblivion?
Fear of retribution? You are scared to die; I can see it in those
misty old eyes. I can hear it when you take a breath. You scratch
at the sheets, hoping to recapture the old freedoms you once had.
Walking. Standing. Talking." She brushed back a few strands of gray
hair from Keith's forehead. "I bet you were a handsome man once.
But that had to be long ago. Long ago when your pretty wife wanted
to make a baby with you." Marie swept back the blankets that
covered Keith's body. "You been losing weight? The gut seems
flatter. I bet these old muscles are turning to gristle," she said
while kneading his arms.

Slowly Marie started to undo the buttons on
Keith's pajama top. The pajama was new, the sizing still stiffening
the cotton material.

"White is not your color, Keith. You're way
too pale for white."

Marie leaned down to whisper in Keith's ear.
"In what color do you want to be laid out? Has Wil been through
your closet yet to select an appropriate suit? He probably doesn't
have the money to buy you a new one. But it doesn't matter, because
it won't be Wil's problem. We'll leave you for the mailman to find.
When the smell because overwhelming, I'm sure he'll either
investigate or call in the police. I guess by then there won't be
enough solid flesh to fit into a suit."

Marie kissed his cheek.

"Good bye, you old bastard."

She lowered her lips and rested on the
carotid drumming in his neck. The thrumming aroused her. She sensed
a slight smell of Wil, either left from his touch or due to the
genes both men shared. Closing her eyes, she visualized Wil, the
last time she had fed him, the ashen odor of his flesh drifting in
and out of her memory. When she touched Keith's chest, she touched
the hideous blisters that had percolated across Wil's flesh. Her
scratching nails caught hold of Keith's chest hair, different from
the crisp edges of Wil's wounded flesh, but still something to claw
at while she prepared not to give of her own blood, but to take
Keith's.

Her wet tongue slid along the pulsing beat of
his heart. Another mournful gurgle. The brushing of his fingers
against the sheet sent a vibration reaching out to the knee that
Marie rested on the bed.

"Wil," she uttered, and with force she bit
down on inviting flesh.

* * *

Wil sat under the shade of an old willow
tree. As a boy he would sit here and do his homework or dream.
There weren't any dreams left in him. He stared vacantly before
him, a mind blanked by pain and loss.

The flesh on his chest was healing
miraculously fast. Hardly a splotch stained his chest. The pain had
eased quickly after Marie had given him her blood. He bit down on
his own tongue for a taste of blood. Lately he had been doing such
things as licking a wound on his finger. When he nicked his father
while shaving the old man, Wil had almost drunk of his father. The
temptation had shaken Wil enough that he had left the house and had
come out here near the stream and the tired old willows.

Blood leaked slowly into his mouth. The taste
was metallic and sweeter than when he was a child. 'Gross out,'
children would scream when one caught another sucking his own
blood. 'Gross out.' Not anymore. Now he found pleasure in blood,
pleasure in the taste, smell, texture, color.

His father needed him. The old man had stared
up into his son's eyes after being nicked by the blade. Stared,
attempting to communicate something, and all Wil could do was flee
from the house. Unlock their eye contact and flee. He hadn't even
seen to the nick on his father's face.

Wil pulled away from the trunk of the tree,
sparking feathery sensations across his healing flesh. With some
amount of pain he stood. His bare feet began striding through the
grass, heading back to the house. Had his father fallen asleep?
Perhaps he should allow his old man to grow a full bushy beard,
become a Rip Van Winkle.

As he came around from the back of the house,
he noticed Marie's car. His pace quickened. He picked the
lightweight white cotton shirt off the porch's railing and put it
on while exhaling a sigh. He buttoned merely two buttons so that
his father, if he could understand, would not see the healing
burns.

Opening the door, Wil staggered under the
spell of blood. His mouth watered, his skin came alive with pain
and pleasure. The scent filled the room, but was not of the
room.

"Oh, my God!" His legs stumbled toward his
father's bedroom, reaching his hands out to push open the closed
door.

Marie looked up at Wil from his father's bed,
her mouth smeared with blood, her fingers streaked with the
browning stain, her teeth shining under the tinting. Giddy as if
drunk on champagne, Marie giggled and beckoned to Wil.

His father lay still, the blue eyes staring
up at the ceiling, the mouth agape.

"What the hell have you done?"

Wil rushed to the bed, roughly took hold of
Marie's shoulders, and pushed her to the floor.

He checked his father for a pulse. None.
Hardly any blood leaked from the wound; she had almost drained his
father dry. His stomach roiled at his own instincts. He wanted to
taste his father. Taste the blood. Taste the salty sick flesh.

"Damn you," he yelled, turning away from his
father to look for Marie.

She had managed to lift herself off the floor
and was rounding the bed to leave, he had no doubt.

"Bitch!"

He rushed her, swinging out his right fist to
catch her right jaw in a powerful sweep.

Marie fell to the floor. Her head lay
lopsided on her neck. Her attempts to move her head only showed how
little control she had. Wil realized he must have broken her neck.
He watched her arms and legs flounder, heard her whisper his name,
saw the pleading in her eyes as he backed away from her and
returned to his father.

Chapter 57

Sade stiffened in pain. His innards were
being ripped apart. His skin lay open, exposed to the mangling
hands that twisted his intestines.

He dropped the man from whom he had been
drinking to look down at his chest and abdomen. They were still
whole. He saw only the matte black of his suit.

"Liliana," he whispered. "Liliana," he
called. "Liliana!" he shouted. "Liliana!" he shouted again and his
mouth twisted into a scream and he ran toward the old section of
the cemetery.

He sensed her odor, her life.

"Ma petite chérie!"

"Mon enfant!"

Her life shimmered in the air, wavering in
and out of existence.

A block of trees before him waved with the
movement of beings scurrying, lapping, and teasing his sight.

"Mon enfant,"
he mumbled, falling to
his knees at the edge of the cluster of trees. His sight had
momentarily been blinded. Dead meat, rotted meat scented the air.
Animal sounds screeched in his ears.

"Liliana," he whispered, smelling the air for
her life.

Too weak to stand, he crawled forward,
feeling the spongy, soggy moss beneath his hands. Twigs bruised his
skin and leaves became glued to his hands.

"S'il te plaît,
Liliana."

He did not feel the life of the little girl
who had grown into a beautiful woman. The one who had driven his
sleepless nights, the one of whom he had dreamt while locked in the
Bastille.

Vague forms hustled out of his way, but he
ignored them.

"Liliana,
mon enfant."

The forms began to disappear, except for a
solitary shade who sat in a tree, writhing among the branches and
leaves. Clawing and sucking at flesh, it did not seem to notice
Sade.

"Donnez-moi ma fille!"

The shade trembled, allowing the meat to
slide from its skeletal hands.

The lower part of an arm fell to the ground,
brushing the side of Sade's left cheek. The chill of blood wet his
cheek. A single drop rolled down his quivering flesh. Dead weight
falling on leaves. Dead weight indenting the earthen layer before
him.

Sade looked down to see the lower portion of
a slender feminine arm. The jagged flesh had been ripped at the
elbow, the arm white, sticky waves of faded blood marring the
freshness of the skin.

"Mon enfant."

Seconds spoiled the air about him, informing
him slowly of her destruction.

"Liliana."

His stomach roiled.

"Ma petite chérie."

He threw himself back on his haunches and
reached his hands out to touch the remains before him. Icy as his
flesh, but an empty cold that does not preserve the flesh, instead
allows the flesh to decay.

His niece, his child, his woman, his lover.
Gone. A life taken by loveless husks intent on feeding their own
appetites.

A shiver of leaves and twigs behind him. Sade
turned in fury with Liliana's appendage raised high above his head
as if to signal the
casus belli.
In a single leap he was on
his feet and standing before Cecelia. Her eyes wide, she took the
opportunity of his frozen tableau to take a step backward.

"Louis?"

His eyes focused on his newly born lover. Her
clothes, rent and blood-stained, flapped in a breeze. Her mouth was
smudged with shed life. He watched her lips form his name. How many
times? He could not hear, for the rush inside his head sent waves
of pain resounding through his thoughts.

His fingers intertwined with his niece's, her
fingers becoming unyielding while he felt his own flesh turned into
a lover's touch.

Sade turned his back on Cecelia and faced the
wood. Falling to his knees, he wished he could pray to Liliana and
beg her forgiveness, beg her to return once more to him.

Sade lowered her hand to his lips and kissed
her palm. He turn the hand over and saw the ring he had given her.
A marriage only briefly consummated. He slid the ring off her
finger and laid the arm on a bed of leaves. Raising the ring
skyward, he saw the quarter moon peaking between the limbs of the
trees.

With whom could he share his love?

"Are you going to bay at the moon now?"
Cecelia's question shattered the quietness of his thoughts.

Sade returned the ring to his own finger and
stood, knowing that there was no longer any reason to tolerate
La Maîtresse.

"And the villain leaves peacefully! And divine
lightning strikes him not!"

Justine

by the

Marquis de Sade

Chapter 58

"Who was she?"

Sade felt Cecelia's eyes staring at him.

"It was Liliana's arm, wasn't it?"

He knew this child reveled in her rival's
death, but he could not fault her for the jealously. Now Cecelia
and he belonged to each other. There existed no third party to
dampen his passion for his newest... He could not allow the word
love
to be spoken, even in his thoughts. His newest what?
Passion. Yes. His newest passion.

"She's dead, isn't she?"

Sade drove faster, heading for
La
Maîtresse'
s house. Headlights flashed on passing objects.
Occasionally he noticed a broken fence, a ramshackle barn, a
signpost that simply blurred by.

"Are we going back to your house?"

The Jaguar held the road, taking turns with
ease, turns that he had memorized late at night in fits of passion
when he decided to bring a victim to the dungeon. Innuendo had
encouraged the drive, small talk had filled the air in the car,
small talk and nervous hand movements covering the victim's
anticipation.

"You said we would leave for Europe right
away."

Right after his visit to his
mother-in-law.

A house came into view on the left side of
the road. Sade glanced casually, taking in the tired porch, the old
Cadillac parked to the side of the house, and Marie's car at the
foot of the driveway.

Sade stomped the brakes, and the car spun
several times. He heard a high-pitched scream sound from the
passenger seat. He regained control of the car and parked it
immediately behind his mother-in-law's car.

"Why are we stopping here, for Christ’s
sake?"

"Stay in the car, Cecelia. Wait for me. Don't
leave the car. You don't want to be seen." Sade looked over at the
girl and immediately swept her off the seat and onto the floor.
"Stay out of sight."

If she protested, he didn't hear. Instead his
mind reached out to the house, seeking the existence he meant to
destroy. He slammed the car door behind him. Inside the house a
weakened Marie waited in fear. He sensed the sickening odor of
decaying flesh, wounded, fighting, scrambling about wanting escape,
but trapped.

Sade laughed, allowing his presence to be
announced in the vibrations of the air that separated him from
Marie.

"I'm closing in," he whispered, knowing that
night breathed his words inside her head.

* * *

"Stay still. What the hell's wrong that you
can't be still until I can check your condition?" Wil approached
Marie and she struck out, ravishing the air with her nails, missing
Wil completely. "Damn, I'm not trying to hurt you anymore."