Vampires: The Recent Undead (35 page)

It depends on if my grandmas got raped by the right sort of invaders?

Pretty much.

I’ll die otherwise, won’t I?

Yes. But that shouldn’t be why you choose to become a blood drinker, a nightwalker, an exile from every part of the daylight world.

It really isn’t all that bad being a vampire, but there are difficulties and the lifestyle should not be glamorized for potential newbies. No matter how much you want to share a coffin with them.

Can I stay with you if I change?

My heart sang at his question. And, oh, how my fangs ached!

Yes, I told him. For as long as you want. Forever if you want.

Forever sounds good to me. Do it.

Remember that it might not take. That—

Shut up and bite me.

I couldn’t argue with that. So I did.

And I’d never had a rush like it in all my years of sucking the good stuff! I couldn’t count the orgasms that shook me before every drop of him was flowing inside me.

I didn’t have to share my blood with him. Some sort of enzyme in my saliva was transferred to him from the bite and the enzyme would trigger the change if it was going to happen. But, just in case, I bit my wrist and poured a few drops of my blood into his mouth. Not that he was capable of swallowing. At this point he was essentially dead. He’d either get better or I’d have to dispose of his body in a way that the marks on his throat would never be seen.

I didn’t want to think about disposal. I didn’t want to think of him ever being dead. I held his limp body and felt it grow heavier and colder and worried and cried those disgusting blood-drenched vampire tears. I don’t know for how long. Long enough for my mood to turn bleak and heartbroken.

Long enough for me to be aware that the sun would be up in an hour or so.

There’s an almost physical pressure on the skin the closer daylight comes. Normally I’d be starting to think about getting to cover. Instead, I vowed I’d stay here and let the sun take me if he didn’t come around before the end of the night. I didn’t care if my ashes blew away so far there wouldn’t be anything left of me. Perhaps the fire that took me would burn him as well, and our ashes would blend together.

Sentimental, aren’t you?

I heard the thought but it took a long time before I came out of my grief enough to realize that the voice wasn’t my imagination.

“You’re alive!”

Don’t shout. I have a hangover. That’s not right. My throat hurts. I’m thirsty. My mouth tastes like sweet copper.

“That’s my blood. You’re alive,” I repeated, the words whispered in his ear as I helped him sit up. “You’re a vampire.”

“I guess the right Cossacks raped my grandmas.”

His voice was a rough croak, but the most delicious sound I’d ever heard. He struggled to his feet, and insisted on giving me his hand to help me up. Living or dead, he was always a gentleman. When I was on my feet his arms came around me. He was weak enough that I ended up holding him up as we embraced.

“We could dance like this forever,” he said.

I sighed romantically. “We could.” I looked around. “We could if the sun wasn’t coming up soon. We need to get out of here.”

He cupped my cheek and looked at me with his new night vision. “You’re as beautiful as I dreamed you were, my Stella. Thank you—for saving me, thank you for being with me now and forever.”

There’s no way a girl can’t respond to that. I kissed him, and he kissed back and it was real and deep and better than any dream.

After a while he lifted his head and gave a dry, hacking cough. “S-sorry. Thirsty.”

I put my arm around his waist and helped him toward the garden door. “I know just the place where we can get a beer. Now that you’ve changed you can find it on your own.”

“I’d rather go with you.”

You have no idea how much this meant to me.

Tiana met us outside the cafeteria and guided us along her secret route out of the hospital and away from the crowd. He noticed all the fuss as we drove away, he and I squeezed into the trunk of Tiana’s car.

“You have no idea how happy I am to leave the celebrity era of my life behind,” he told me.

“You’ll miss acting.”

“I’ll think of a way to get back to it. Do vampires work? Do I need a job?”

“I’m a real estate mogul. You can live off me. Wait—” I’d remembered Anton. “The place we’re heading, the Alhambra Club, needs a bartender. I know the owner.” That would be me. “If you’re interested.”

We were squeezed in pretty tightly, but he managed to pull me closer. “Does this place have a dance floor?”

I laughed, happier than I’d ever imagine I could be. “It will when we’re done with it if that’s what you want,” I promised.

“I think dancing—being—with you is all I ever wanted.”

“Me too.” I couldn’t stop the girlish giggle from escaping. “I guess this is a real—”

“Hollywood ending,” he finished, not having to be psychic to know what I was thinking.

A TRICK OF THE DARK

Tina Rath

This haunting tale takes us back to the period between two World Wars when chrome was shockingly modern, a young man might be thought to be an anarchist if he went about with long curly hair and wore no hat, and the best a young woman in poor health could hope for was to stay home in bed and await her demise . . . or perhaps not.

Tina Rath gained her doctorate from London University with a thesis on
The Vampire in Popular Fiction
and her MA with a dissertation on
The Vampire in the Theatre.
She has made radio and television appearances and lectured on vampires and other aspects of Gothic literature for various groups and societies. Her fiction has been published in periodicals such as
All Hallows, Ghosts and Scholars, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Supernatural Tales 16, Visionary Tongue,
and
Weird Tales.
Anthology appearances include
Strange Tales, Exotic Gothic 3,
and
The Mammoth Book of Vampires.
She edited the anthology
Conventional Vampires
for the Dracula Society in 2003.

“What job finishes just at sunset?”

Margaret jumped slightly. “What a weird question, darling. Park keeper, I suppose.” Something made her turn to look at her daughter. She was propped up against her pillows, looking, Margaret thought guiltily, about ten years old. She must keep remembering, she told herself fiercely, that Maddie was nineteen. This silly heart-thing, as she called it, was keeping her in bed for much longer than they ever thought it would, but it couldn’t stop her growing up . . . she must listen to her, and talk to her like a grown-up.

Intending to do just that she went to sit on the edge of the bed. It was covered with a glossy pink eiderdown, embroidered with fat pink and mauve peonies. The lamp on Maddie’s bed-side table had a rosy shade, Maddie was wearing a pink bed jacket, lovingly crocheted by her grandmother, and Maddie’s pale blond hair was tied back with a pink ribbon . . . but in the midst of this plethora of pink Maddie’s face looked pale and peaky. The words of a story she had read to Maddie once—how many years ago?—came back to her: “Peak and pine, peak and pine.” It was about a changeling child who never thrived, but lay in the cradle, crying and fretting, peaking and pining . . . in the end the creature had gone back to its own people, and, she supposed that the healthy child had somehow got back to his mother, but she couldn’t remember. Margaret shivered, wondering why people thought such horrid stories were suitable for children.

“What made you wonder who finishes work at sunset?” she asked.

“Oh—nothing,” Maddie looked oddly shy, as she might have done if her mother had asked her about a boy who had partnered her at tennis, or asked her to a dance. If such a thing could ever have happened. She played with the pink ribbons at her neck and a little, a very little colour crept into that pale face. “It’s just—well—I can’t read all day, or—” She hesitated and Margaret mentally filled in the gap. She had her embroidery, her knitting, those huge complicated jigsaws that her friends were so good about finding for her, a notebook for jotting down those funny little verses that someone was going to ask someone’s uncle about publishing . . . but all that couldn’t keep her occupied all day.

“Sometimes I just look out of the window,” she said.

“Oh, darling . . . ” She couldn’t bear to think of her daughter just lying there—just looking out of the window. “Why don’t you call me when you get bored? We could have some lovely talks. Or I could telephone Bunty or Cissie or—” it’s getting quite autumnal after all, she thought, and Maddie’s friends won’t be out so much, playing tennis, or swimming or . . . You couldn’t expect them to sit for hours in a sick-room. They dashed in, tanned and breathless from their games and bicycle rides, or windblown and glowing from a winter walk, and dropped off a jigsaw or a new novel . . . and went away.

“I don’t mind, Mummy,” Maddie was saying. “It’s amazing what you can see, even in a quiet street like this. I mean, that’s why I like this room. Because you can see out.”

Margaret looked out of the window. Yes. You could see a stretch of pavement, a bit of Mrs. Creswell’s hedge, a lamppost, the post box and Mrs. Monkton’s gate. It was not precisely an enticing view, and she exclaimed, “Oh, darling!” again.

“You’d be amazed who visits Mrs. Monkton in the afternoons,” Maddie said demurely.

“Good heavens, who—” Margaret exclaimed, but Maddie gave a reassuringly naughty giggle.

“That would be telling! You’ll have to sit up here one afternoon and watch for yourself.”

“I might,” Margaret said. But how could she? There was always so much to do downstairs, letters to write, shopping to do, and cook to deal with. (Life to get on with?) She too, she realized, dropped in on Maddie, left her with things to sustain or amuse her. And went away.

“Perhaps we could move you downstairs, darling,” she said. But that would be so difficult. The doctor had absolutely forbidden Maddie to use the stairs, so how on earth could they manage what Margaret could only, even in the privacy of her thoughts, call
the bathroom problem
? Too shame-making for Maddie to have to ask to be carried up the stairs every time she needed—and who was there to do it during the day? Maddie was very light—much too light—but her mother knew that she could not lift her let alone carry her by herself.

“But you can’t see anything from the sitting room,” Maddie said.

“Oh darling—” Margaret realized she was going to have to leave Maddie alone again. Her husband would be home soon and she was beginning to have serious doubts about the advisability of re-heating the fish-pie . . . She must have a quick word with Cook about cheese omelettes. If only Cook wasn’t so bad with eggs . . . “What’s this about sunset anyway?” she said briskly.

“Sunset comes a bit earlier every day,” Maddie said. “And just at sunset a man walks down the street.”

“The same man, every night?” Margaret asked.

“The same man, always just after sunset,” Maddie confirmed.

“Perhaps he’s a postman?” Margaret suggested.

“Then he’d wear a uniform,” Maddie said patiently. “And the same if he was a park-keeper I suppose—they wear uniform too, don’t they. Besides he doesn’t look like a postman.”

“So—what does he look like?”

“It’s hard to explain,” Maddie struggled for the right words, “but—can you imagine a beautiful skull?”

“What! What a horrible idea!” Margaret stood up, clutching the gray foulard at her bosom. “Maddie, if you began talking like this I shall call Dr. Whiston. I don’t care if he doesn’t like coming out after dinner. Skull-headed men walking past the house every night indeed!”

Maddie pouted. “I didn’t say that. It’s just that his face is very—sculptured. You can see the bones under the skin, especially the cheekbones. It just made me think—he must even have a beautiful skull.”

“And how is he dressed?” Margaret asked faintly.

“A white shirt and a sort of loose black coat,” Maddie said. “And he has quite long curly black hair. I think he might be a student.”

“No hat?” her mother asked, scandalized. “He sounds more like an anarchist! Really, Maddie, I wonder if I should go and have a word with the policeman on the corner and tell him a suspicious character has been hanging about outside the house.”

“No, Mother!” Maddie sounded so anguished that her mother hastily laid a calming hand on her forehead.

“Now, darling, don’t upset yourself. You must remember what the doctor said. Of course I won’t call him if you don’t want me to, or the policeman. That was a joke, darling! But you mustn’t get yourself upset like this . . . Oh dear, your forehead feels quite clammy. Here, take one of your tablets. I’ll get you a glass of water.”

And in her very real anxiety for her daughter, worries about the fish pie and well-founded doubts about the substitute omelettes, Margaret almost forgot about the stranger. Almost but not quite. A meeting with Mrs. Monkton one evening when they had both hurried out to catch the last post and met in front of the post-box, reminded her and she found herself asking if Mrs. Monkton had noticed anyone “hanging about.”

“A young man,” that lady exclaimed with a flash of what Margaret decided was rather indecent excitement, “but darling, there are no young men left.” Margaret raised a hand in mute protest only to have brushed aside by Mrs. Monkton. “Well, not nearly enough to go round anyway. I expect this one was waiting for Elsie.”

Elsie worked for both Mrs. Monkton and Margaret, coming in several times a week to do “the rough,” the cleaning that was beneath Margaret’s cook and Mrs. Monkton’s extremely superior maid. She was a handsome girl, with, it was rumored, an obliging disposition, who would never have been allowed across the threshold of a respectable household when Margaret was young. But nowadays . . . Mrs. Monkton’s suggestion did set Margaret’s mind at rest. A hatless young man—yes, he must be waiting for Elsie. She might “have a word” with the girl about the propriety of encouraging young men to hang about the street for her, but, on the other hand, she might not . . . She hurried back home.