Jeremy aimed his bike for the small grassy
area between the two apartment buildings. He shifted the pedal backward,
applied the brake and slowed enough to step off the bike, lay it on the exact
spot he wanted and hit the ground running, shifting the half full newspaper bag
further back on his hip.
"Perfect!" he whispered, and
rounded the corner into the still sleeping apartment building’s courtyard. Six
papers to throw here, out the back, through the alley over to the next
building, throw eight more, then back to his waiting bike.
Jeremy ran to the center of the small
complex, gathering a handful of papers from inside the cloth bag as he ran. He
stopped at the same spot he had stopped every morning for the last two years,
and standing in the darkness, winged the papers at his customer's porches.
Whump . . . whump . . . whump. The papers landed on the damp concrete exactly
in front of the doors.
For the hundredth time, he reminded himself
to bring plastic bags tomorrow morning, especially if the air was as wet as
now. October mornings in San Diego weren't usually so damp, even this close to
the beach.
Thinking about it made him think about
January, and the miserable rainy mornings that made up that whole month, a
depressing thought he quickly dismissed from his mind, concentrating instead on
getting the last two papers up over the railing onto the second floor. Old Mrs.
Nash and that new guy, the one he had only collected from once so far. What was
his name? Aaron Michaels.
Yeah, that was it. He remembered the guy had
counted out the last two and a half dollars of the $14.00 bill in quarters;
exactly $14.00 and not even one cent for a tip.
He watched his last shot expectantly, the
one for Michaels. It sailed up over the railing, clearing it by inches, and
arced downward, banging loudly against the cheapskate's door.
Happy wake-up time,
motherfucker.
Jeremy smiled, took a moment to breathe in
the cool night air, and took off again, headed for the rear entrance to the
apartments.
Emerging onto the sidewalk in front of the
alley, he stepped off the short curb onto the parking apron, running between
the tenants’ parked cars. He purposely banged his paper bag against the side of
Michaels’ Camaro convertible, surprised to see that the top was down. He
thought about stopping to take a leak on the cheapskate's white leather
upholstery, in the same instant deciding against it, and then came to a
skidding halt alongside the powder blue sports car.
He almost rubbed his eyes, he was so
astonished at what he saw. Laying on the tiny back seat of the Camaro was the
most beautiful, long legged woman Jeremy had ever seen, huddled to her long
frame on the small perch. She was sound asleep.
Long blonde hair spilled across her face,
the strands stirring lightly with each breath. One arm curled up, forearm
resting on her forehead, shading her eyes from the glare of the streetlight,
the other hung limp at her side, resting on the floorboard. Her chest swelled
with each breath, large breasts riding up under the white knit top that ended
inches short of the waistband of her short black miniskirt.
But it was the hem of her skirt that
attracted Jeremy's eyes now. To fit those long white legs into the cramped back
seat, she had drawn them up, one thigh resting against the backrest of the
seat, the other dangling as limply as her arm.
He bent down a little to improve his view
and caught sight of the whole area between her slim thighs, white panties
against creamy white skin. He strained forward, leaning into the Camaro, and
glimpsed strands of pubic hair curling out around the elastic leg bands.
Was it blonde, like the hair on her head? He
couldn't tell. The hem of her skirt cast just enough of a shadow to keep the
true color hidden.
But, he was seeing it! He thought he could
make out the outline of the lips of her sex through the tight stretched
material. He was overwhelmed with the desire to touch her there, at the same
time petrified with the prospect of waking her.
Probably just some drunk beach
chick passed out in the first open car she could find, said the voice of desire growing inside of
him. I could probably stick my whole hand
inside of her and she wouldn't even know it.
He had done it before, a year ago. He had
come upon a woman passed out on a bus stop bench long after the last bus had
run. He had seen her many times before stumbling up Noewport Avenue, nearly ran
into her once when she poured out on the sidewalk coming out of the Pacific
Shores Lounge.
She was at least fifty and a little on the
heavy side. The way she slumped down on the bench had made her dress ride up to
the tops of her laddered stockings.
She hadn't even stirred when he slipped his
hand up under her dress and pried her panties aside to play with her. In fact,
she hardly even knew what was going on when he roused her enough to stand her
up, telling her he was going to help her get home, but instead helping her to
stagger behind a nearby clump of bushes.
Once they were both hidden from the street,
he rifled her purse, pocketing the few bills and a couple of credit cards, and
then pushed her down on the grass.
"Wai' a minute . . . whas goin'
on?" was all she managed to say before passing out again, and Jeremy
rolled her over on her belly and yanked her dress up around her waist.
He left her there when he was finished,
doubled over the pillow he had made of her coat and purse, dress hiked up over
her bare rump, panties down around her knees, still snoring.
He grinned now, remembering that night. Probably the nastiest thing I ever did.
But this was no barfly. This was the most
gorgeous woman he had ever seen. And this wasn't some park bench, either. This
was the back seat of one of his customer's cars. If he touched her and she
screamed, he would have the whole complex up and chasing after him.
"But, shit, she's gorgeous!" he
told himself, slipping the strap of the newspaper bag off his shoulder and
easing it to the ground, knowing he was at least going to try. Then, reaching
out, he nudged the woman's knee.
"Ma'am?" His voice just a whisper.
There was no response from the sleeping woman.
"Ma'am? You gotta wake up, Ma'am. It's
not safe for you to be sleeping out here in the open. This ain't the greatest
neighborhood, you know”. He nudged her knee again.
Still, she did not stir.
See? he reassured himself, reaching for the door
handle. He was feeling confident now, sure he could get in, cop a quick feel,
and get out without waking the sleeping woman. Besides, he was bigger and
stronger than she was.
At fourteen, he was already six feet tall
and weighed a little more than one hundred fifty pounds. If she woke up, he
would just deal with it. As drunk as she must be, she wouldn't put up much of a
fight.
"I might even decide to fuck her,”
He pulled on the car door with both hands,
opening it noiselessly until it stopped on its hinge, then slowly stepping up
into the floorboard of the backseat, careful not to brush her leg, leaning over
her.
"Ma'am?" He nudged her shoulder
now. "It's time to wake up."
But she didn't wake up, let out a long, slow
breath that made Jeremy reel back from the stench.
"Man! You been drinking something
nasty,” he said, the terrible odor reassuring him that she was just a drunk,
and deserved whatever happened to her for being stupid enough to pass out
before she got home.
He decided that she was too clean and well
dressed to be a regular at this, certainly not a homeless drunk. Not at all
like the one he and his homies had found sleeping in the dumpster a couple of
months back. He was remembering how they had thrown a lit gas rag into the
dumpster and then jammed a stick into the hasp of the dumpster lid. That old
fucker woke up with quite a start, once the flames got to him, and he made that
big metal dumpster dance all around the alley before he was finally quiet.
Watching her face for any sign of waking, he
crouched over her and rested his hand flat against her stomach.
No movement.
Slowly, he slid his hand down her belly and
then over the mound of her pubis to the bottom of her skirt. Then, up under her
skirt until he was touching her high on the inside of her thigh.
Her skin felt like ice from the cool night
air. He squeezed her hard thigh once then dove his fingers for the crotch of
her panties, prying underneath and into the tangle of her pubic hair.
Still, she didn't move. His fingers traced
along the folds of her sex, parting the matted hair, and then one, two fingers
penetrated her, searching for her warm, wet insides.
But she wasn't warm inside. Once he had his
finger buried inside of her, he realized how cold she was. Terribly cold. And
even though he worked his finger back and forth in her, she wasn't at all wet.
"She's like a fuckin' corpse,” he
murmured.
That was when she opened her eyes. In that
instant, staring into her long dead eyes, Jeremy knew she was a corpse, and
something far worse.
Her thighs clamped together just as he
jerked his hand back, trapping him in a cold vice of steel. He felt the bones
of his wrist rasping together when she clenched her muscles there, the pain
shooting all the way up his arm.
Before he could cry out, she had him by the
throat, cutting off his air with cold, bony fingers. Her long fingernails dug
into the soft flesh of his neck and Jeremy felt the hot trickle of his own
blood around her fingers.
"Still think I'm gorgeous,
Jeremy?" she asked, smiling to reveal the two long canines.
"Do you want to do to me what you did
to that old woman?" she laughed, teasing him.
He stared at her open mouth, at the two long
glistening teeth, and knew he was going to die, knew all of the movies he had
ever seen and all of the stories he had ever heard about vampires were true,
after all. But the thing he knew most was that he had brought himself to this
end. All of the terrible things he had done in his short life had accumulated
like a debt overdue, and this beautiful vampire had come to collect.
He
didn't even struggle when she pulled him down, licking his neck through the
lattice of her fingers, the tip of her tongue slithering around to find his
pulsing jugular vein.
“Ah...sweet Jeremy,” she whispered,
"Give us a taste, little boy,” and sank her teeth into his throat.
There was only a moment's sharp pain, and
then the lips and tongue that had felt so cold were suddenly warm. It felt good
to give in to her.
Not good like he used to feel when he was a
little boy coming out of Sunday school. Good like the time behind the bushes
when he stood there buttoning his pants and looking down at the drunken woman.
Good like the way the old drunk's muffled screams from inside the dumpster had
helped to clear his clouded mind, all of his anger and frustration washed away by
the cleansing fire.
He was remembering all of the bad things he
had done that had felt so good, flashing by like pieces of a dream, when he
noticed a very bright light behind him.
Jeremy turned to the light, and then had to
turn away because of its intensity. And now he was up above, looking down at
himself cradled between the vampire’s thighs.
She was slowly rocking him in her arms and
nursing at the wound in his neck. But he didn't care about that anymore. All he
cared about was the light. He had to go to the light.
Rising up higher and higher until he could
no longer make out the details of the two figures in the backseat of the car,
he turned again toward the light.
This time he could bear the intensity of it,
and he moved toward it.
He was in a tunnel now, a long, beautiful
tunnel. He knew he had to go through the tunnel to get to the light. But he
wasn't afraid. Someone would be there to help him find his way and protect him
while he made his journey through the beautiful tunnel. He didn't know who, but
he knew they would be there, and he felt safe. The walls were made of shiny
stones, and it seemed he knew each of the stones, as if the stones were beings
from his past, from his life.
"That's it! There are people here with
me. My Granma and my Uncle Wilbur are here with me," and the beginning of
the light was only a little bit further now.
They both took him by the hand and led him
toward the light, his grandmother smiling at him the way she used to when he
was a little boy and she was still alive.
Then she seemed to notice something about
him, something she didn't like, and her smile turned to a grimace.
"Jeremy!" Granma said to him.
"What's that mark on your neck?"
"It's nothing, Granma. Really, it's
nothing. Let's hurry and go to the light."
And now Granma was weeping, and old Uncle
Wilbur was shaking his head.
"You can't come with us, Jeremy,” Uncle
Wilbur was saying. "You have to go back down there,” pointing back down
the tunnel toward the darkness.
"But I don't belong there anymore,
Uncle Wilbur. I belong here with you,” Jeremy was weeping now. He knew now what
the light was, and he knew what was waiting for him in the darkness, too.
Granma was sniffing back her tears,
composing herself to speak. But, when she spoke, it wasn't his Granma anymore.
It was a man, a very old man.
"You are marked for all eternity and
can never come into the light. You are doomed to wander the earth, apart from
your body, to never know peace and never to rest."
The old man and his Uncle Wilbur turned from
him and moved into the light, their silhouettes slowly fading away until they
were gone, absorbed by its intensity. An unseen force struck Jeremy in the
chest, and he flew backward down the tunnel. He picked himself up, trembling
and alone in the tunnel. He felt terribly cold. Looking down, he saw that he
was naked.
He looked around, a frantic feeling in his
throat telling him he wasn't alone. All the shiny stones were changing. Where
once they had been beautiful, now they were hideous to see, covered with an
oozing slime.
Some of them were even alive, their slippery
surfaces reflecting the terrible faces of all manners of demons and monsters
inside. And they were whispering to him.
"You're with us now, Jeremy,” they
said. "No more pretty light for you, little boy,” and the surfaces of the
stones became portholes out of which the creatures started to emerge, pulling
themselves out of their cramped vaults, stretching and growing into huge and
gruesome shapes.
The woman from the bus stop was there,
crawling out of one of the bottom chambers. Her dress was still hiked up over
her rump, and once she had struggled uncertainly to her feet, she made a
drunken effort at modesty, trying in vain to tug it down over her plump hips,
except she had grown a long reptilian tail. It protruded from her rump and
dangled down to drag the floor, whipping back and forth in the slime. It wasn't
the only new equipment she had, either. In front, a long penis jutted out from
the juncture of her thighs.
"You know. I caught pneumonia that
night, Jeremy,” she said. "I died a week later. You shouldn't have left me
lying there, half naked and my coat underneath me."
She clucked her tongue and wagged a finger
at him. She grasped her new equipment at its base and waved it at him.
"It's your turn to bend over now,
little boy,” she said, grinning at him.
The old drunk was there, too, his body
charred and blackened, his clothes hanging in scorched strips from where they
clung to his brittle flesh. He rolled and scooted out of his chamber, leaving
shards of his burned body to litter the slimy floor of the tunnel.
He straightened up, skin creaking and
cracking, and looked at Jeremy, smiling.
"I got something for you, son,” he
giggled, holding a lighter under an old oily rag. "Payback’s a
motherfucker, ain't it, boy?" and tossed the lit rag at the boy.
Jeremy jumped back, the rag landing at his
feet. One of the old drunk's fingers still clung to it, writhing where the
flames seared it.
He looked up at the two creatures standing
in front of him, exaggerated caricatures of the people he had wronged. Behind
them gathered an army of unspeakable things, misshapen heads peeking over the
shoulders of the two in front.
"Come on, Jeremy,” the woman said,
waving her outsized penis at him. "Let's have some fun,” and the army of
creatures began advancing down the tunnel toward him.
Jeremy ran, running away from the monsters
and running away from the light. They were chasing after him, laughing and
cursing him, and he ran faster, his feet slipping and sliding as he tried to get
traction in the slime that had oozed down from the stones to cover the floor.
He fell. His hands stretched out to break
his fall but slid helplessly on the filthy floor, and he landed hard on his
face. They were on him before he could get up. Their laughs and screams filled
his ears, blocking out his own screams of fear that quickly turned to screams
of agony.
The woman fell hard against his back, and he
felt the searing pain of her entry. She grunted, shoving into him, and her long
tail whipped around, lashing his thighs and outstretched arms with razor sharp
barbs that tore at his flesh.
The
old man had retrieved the burning rag and now approached him from the front on
hands and knees. "You know, when my hair caught on fire, I could feel my
brain cooking inside my skull,” he said matter of factly. "Tell me if it
feels the same to you,” and he methodically set the fringes of Jeremy's hair
ablaze, moving the rag from place to place each time the hair caught and
burned.
"I want to die... I want to
die..." he cried out. A voice, strong and loud cut through all of the
laughter of his tormentors and his own screams of pain. "You are dead,
Jeremy, and this is just the beginning..."
And then he was back in the alley, running
and running, past the Camaro, where the vampire was still feeding on his
lifeless body, out into the street at the end of the alley, right into the path
of an oncoming car. He froze, like a deer in headlights, instinctively throwing
up his arms, and braced for the impact.
But there was none. One moment the car was
inches away from him, and the next it was past him, moving on down the street,
and he was still standing there, arms raised in a desperate effort to protect
himself.
He looked down at his legs, sure they should
be bloody mangled stumps after impacting the front of the car. But there was
nothing there. He held up his hands in front of his face. But there were no
hands, no arms to see. He wasn't there.
From a long way off, he heard the mingled
laughter of the demons that had tormented him and chased him out of the tunnel.
Jeremy started running again.
Lydia sucked at the jagged wound she had
torn in the young boy's neck, feeling her limbs growing warmer and more
powerful as his blood flowed into her mouth.
He had given into her so easily, barely
resisting when she pulled him to her.
But then, they all did. She was careful in
her selection of victims, picking and stalking those that had much to die for,
much to atone for.
Once she found one like this boy she
carefully planted the seeds of submission in their minds. In the weeks she had
been stalking him, every time she saw in his thoughts one of the many wicked
things he had done in his short life, she buried a small suggestion in there,
along with that vivid memory, that some day soon he would have to atone.
A seed so small it wasn't even a conscious
part of the memory. It just lay there, another dormant wrinkle in the gray mass
of his brain, waiting for the right stimulus to become part of the memory of
his atrocities.
That was why she had made him think about
all of those things in the moment of the attack; brought all of those images to
his mind, along with the idea that this was how he must pay for those sins. Pay
with his blood. Pay with his life. And the part that made her smile, made her
lips curl back around the pulsing wound, was that he felt - he believed - this
idea of atonement came from inside himself and not from her. The seeds she had
nourished over the weeks had blossomed into the belief that he was damned, and
this was his just punishment.
They were all such fools. Almost all of her
victims went this way. Didn't they know their filthy God would forgive them?
Isn't that what their grubby little priests told them, that their God was a
forgiving God? Didn't they know even the least attempt to resist could save
their immortal souls? Were they really so easily duped by a little trickery of
the mind when eternity was at stake?
Yes, they were. Time and again, for more
than fifty years, she had been leading her victims to this end. Cheating them
of eternal rest and cheating the terrible light of another soul.
It made her feel good and it made her feel
strong.
She bit deeper into the boy's neck, tearing
the flesh open more, and then gashing a longer opening in the jugular with the
razor sharp edge of her canines. He was dying, and the blood was coming slower
now. She could feel the beat of his heart getting slower and fainter, until it
was just an anemic imitation of what had been, just a moment before, a young,
strong organ.
And then he died.
The light had opened up above them, and
Lydia felt his soul separating from the corpse she held in her arms and between
her legs. His dead fingers were still trapped inside of her and she wiggled her
hips, pressing them deeper into her warming flesh, relishing the moment of
cheating the light, of cheating Him.
Now she had to suck at the wound to make the
blood come. There was no longer any pressure behind it and it needed coaxing to
come into her mouth. She squeezed his corpse in her strong arms, feeling the
bones inside of him crack, and was rewarded with another gush of his lifeblood.
Busy as she was wringing the last few drops
from her night's feast, she almost didn't see the shadow of his spirit racing
back down the alley, fleeing from the light. It was only a momentary blur in
the corner of her eye.
She pulled her face away from the corpse,
peering down the alley, and saw him come to a halt in the middle of the street,
saw the car pass through the shadow of his spirit. She focused her keen vision
to see beyond this world and into the other world she was also a part of. She
could make out the shocked look on his face. And then he started running again,
running aimlessly into the early morning darkness.
"Now he's beginning to understand what
has happened to him,” she thought.
Pleased with the new evil she had made, she
threw back her head to laugh at the last glimmers of the disappearing light
above her.
That's when she saw him standing there.
He was sleeping on the couch, his head right
next to the front door, and the hollow sound of the newspaper thudding against
it woke Aaron from a restless sleep.
"Gotta get a new bed,” he mumbled,
rolling over on the hard cushions and trying to forget the intrusion into his
troubled sleep. But it was no use. The cushions had shifted under him as he
rolled, the center one popping out and bouncing to the floor.
"Damn!" he hissed, throwing back
his cover and rolling to follow the cushion off the couch. He crawled to his
hands and knees and then stood, swaying this way and that, his feet tangled in
the sweaty blanket. Tired and frustrated, he kicked to free himself and
stumbled away from the pile, catching himself with one hand on the doorknob
before he fell.
"Gotta get a new bed,” he said again,
and then, "Yeah, as soon as I win the lottery.
"The problems of money and not having
enough poked their ugly heads around the corner of his mind, and he
instinctively shooed them away, preferring the much more depressing and
self-pitying problems of losing his girlfriend, which sprang back into his head
as soon as he had chased the money things away.
"That's better,” he said. "Now
there’s a more hopeless ache. After all, I can always earn more money."
The end of his relationship with Angela was
not something he could do anything about. She was intelligent, beautiful, goal
oriented, extremely faithful to her Catholic faith, and was looking for a hell
of a lot more in a relationship than he was able to give.
That was why they had parted ways. The same
things in her that made her able to accomplish everything she had ever set out
to do, coupled with her deep sense of compassion, is what had made their
relationship possible in the first place. He was her reclamation project for
the summer; her handsome, aging, recovering drug addict, romantic summer
interlude.
They had met at the end of his second month
of clean time, and all that was in his mind the moment before he met her was,
"Sixty days. Sixty days." The mantra was something his sponsor kept
telling him would lead him to failure.
"You ain't got sixty fuckin' days, yet,
motherfucker,” David would say. "As of right now you got," and he'd
fill in the blank with the days, hours and minutes since the last time he had
put a needle in his arm.
"You keep thinkin' sixty fuckin' days
and you'll be bangin' fuckin' dope tomorrow, motherfucker." Like most of
the people at the meetings, "fuck" and its redundancies was David's
favorite word.
But he didn't hold it against him or the
others. No matter how rough their speech was, and no matter how they dressed -
just like they did when they were high, only bathed and laundered - or what
kind of dead-end job most of them filled to pay the bills, they had something
he didn't have, and wanted desperately; clean time.
Meeting Angela was like a breath of fresh
air in a room that had been closed up for too long. She was young and alive.
Full of the energy of youth and channeled into such clean and wholesome
pursuits.
He had fallen in love with her in a matter
of days. That's when he knew he had to tell her he was a drug addict. Just
because he had quit putting heroin in his veins didn't change that.
At first, he thought she understood what
that meant. But, as the days passed, and he reached sixty, and then ninety, and
then one hundred and eighty days, she seemed to grow impatient with him. She
started hinting his job wasn't good enough for him. Started hinting he was too
smart to be digging postholes, setting posts and stretching rolls of chain link
fence. Then, she was telling him it was time to move on, acting like the last
six months had been some kind of vacation for him.
That's when he admitted to himself she
didn't have a clue about him.
She didn't understand that it was all he
could do to get up and make it to that job every day, and come home and fight
the urge to go out and find dope all night long. Then get up and do it all over
again.
She thought all you did was quit shooting
dope, build a few fences for muscle tone, then buy a couple of suits and return
to the Real World. She couldn't see he was light years away from being able to
handle that kind of pressure. Just the thought of deadlines, meetings, computer
literacy, and all that came with it left him in a cold sweat with the urge to
hit the streets and find sweet salvation.
It didn't matter he was about two species
more evolved than the fence contractor he labored for. It didn't matter what
books he read.
All that mattered was today he didn't bang
dope. If that was too much, then at least for the next hour he wasn't going to
bang dope. Any more stress than knowing how many post holes were yet to be dug
before the posts could be set, or how much of each paycheck had to be set aside
for rent - his only recurring debt - would probably put him back on the
streets.
When he finally sat her down and had
finished explaining it to her in very exacting detail, she had actually blinked
and pulled her head back, startled. He could see in her eyes that she was
seeing him the way he really was for the very first time, and he felt ashamed.
He had been hiding behind the facade of the
tragic intellectual who had succumb to one of the diseases of choice of their
society. Now, she saw him as he really was; a junkie. A junkie who would vomit
blood all over your walls if you let him get off in your living room. That's
what years of "the rush" did to you. At first, you just threw up.
Later, when you were serious about your addiction, food wasn't all that
important anymore. But "the rush" still had to be fed, and so the
little blood vessels in your throat ruptured from the constant retching, and
then you were spewing blood and bile.
She just sat there, staring at him for the
longest time, Then she got up and left, without a word.
That had been three days ago, and he hadn't
heard from her since. She was gone. She wasn't coming back.
Angela had gone back to the world of the
living and her beach fling with the guy in suspended animation was over.
They had made love only once. It was a
present to him the night they got together after the meeting where his sponsor
had given him his six month chip. They had ended up back at his place, in his
bed. He was shocked when he realized he was making love with a twenty eight
year old virgin.
He wished now she had kept her virginity.
Since she had walked out, every time he touched the bed they made love in his
mind flooded with the images of it. He had tried changing the sheets, and then
the blankets and bedspread. But nothing helped. She was still in his bed. It
had gotten to where he only went into the bedroom to change clothes.
"Okay, Aaron, it's time to think about
something else,” he told himself, and turned the little chrome button that
unlocked the door, twisted the handle and opened it just enough to let the
paper leaning against it slide across the threshold.
As soon as he bent down to pick it up, the
moment he touched it, he knew something was wrong.
"This is his last newspaper,” the voice
inside his head told him.
He knew without asking that it didn't mean
the last newspaper of the night, or the last newspaper in his bag. It meant it
was the last newspaper his paperboy was ever going to throw.
Aaron opened the door wide and stepped out
onto the second story walkway that ran the whole length of his apartment
building.
"That's where he stood when he threw
this paper,” he told himself, looking down at the spot where Jeremy had stood
moments before. His eyes followed the path Jeremy had taken out between the two
buildings that made up his complex.
He walked the few steps to the end of the
walkway and looked out to the alley.
"Shit! I forgot to put the top up on
the Camaro." He was thinking what a mess the wet night air was going to
make of his upholstery when he saw them moving in the backseat of the car.
He squinted to make out the shapes. Yes, it
was Jeremy, alright. With some long legged blonde. And he had his hand up under
her skirt and she was kissing his neck.
"That little creep. In the backseat of
my car!" He was about to call out to them, tell them to get the hell out
of there. But the words caught in his throat.
Something told him not to.
"Watch,” the voice in his head said.
"You're his only witness."
He peered into the night, his eyes slowly
adjusting to darkness. She wasn't kissing him. But she couldn't be doing what
he thought she was doing.
He could see Jeremy's face, turned away from
the woman. The look on his face was one of resignation. There was something
else about the boy's face that made it look strangely unfamiliar. He struggled
to define the look. Lifeless. The paperboy's face looked so pale, so drained of
color.
His face was drained of blood.
"My God!" he whispered, recoiling
from the railing and stepping back into the shadow of the awning. He wanted to
run back into his apartment, slam the door, and bury his head in the blankets.
But he knew he couldn't.
"I'm his only witness,” he told
himself, and forced his eyes to see what his mind refused to believe; the woman
was holding Jeremy to her and drinking his blood.
Aaron could see the red smear on his neck
and on her lips. He could see her cheeks puffing and then drawing in, and her
throat working as she took gulp after gulp of his blood.
A question started to frame in his mind, but
the voice inside answered before it was fully formed.
"What kind of..."
"A vampire."
"There's no such thing as..."
"Then what is it doing to the
boy?"
"I don't know..."
"Yes, you do. It's drinking his blood.
He is going to die and there's nothing you can do to stop it. But you have to
stay here and watch and be witness to this. So you can..."
The voice trailed off.
"So I can what?"
"I don't know..."
It pulled its head back for an instant, and
Aaron saw the flash of its long bloody teeth before it bit viciously into the
paperboy's throat again, tearing at the gaping wound. Its long tongue slithered
out, lapping up the blood that poured from the enlarged wound. Then it fastened
its mouth once more to the dying boy's neck.
Aaron felt his stomach flip flop and the
bile rise up in his throat. The urge to vomit reminded him of the rush, and he
suddenly found himself wondering where he could connect this time of the
morning.
"Stop it.” He shook his head and forced
his mind back to the moment.
It was squeezing the boy. Aaron heard the
bones cracking and saw the boy's face fill with color for a moment before the
vampire drained him again, its mouth puffing out, filling once again, and then
swallowing.
Finally, it finished with him, and pulled
back from his ripped throat, craning its neck to look down the alley. It seemed
amused by something, a smirk on its bloody lips, and then it threw back its
head, as if to laugh. But it didn't laugh. It just stared into the shadows
where he stood, no longer hidden.
It was a man. A man about six feet tall,
maybe one hundred eighty pounds. Short hair, graying at the temples.
He was standing back in the shadows in his
boxers holding a newspaper in his hand.
He had seen everything. Lydia knew he had
seen by the look of revulsion and disbelief on his face.
"I should have thought about that.”
There were bound to be early risers sitting up waiting for the newspaper.
"I should have just swooped down and plucked the boy off of his bicycle in
the street."
But then, there would have been no tempting
him. No opportunity for his dark side to emerge.
No soul stolen from the light. No joy in the
kill. Besides, her senses should have alerted her there was someone lurking in
the shadows up there. In fifty years, no human had ever passed unnoticed. How
did this one escape her senses? No matter. Now she just had to tidy up the
details and get on with the night.
The man would have to die. No time to seduce
this victim. Just fly up there over the rail before he has a chance to react,
grab him by the throat before he has a chance to scream, and break his neck.
Aaron felt frozen in place. He knew it had
seen him, was watching him, and he wanted desperately to move. But he couldn't.
He thought about the dogs he had stared down in the neighborhoods where they
built the fences. If you let them see your fear, then they had you. He wondered
if that worked against vampires.
He felt it reaching out for him with its
mind.
"Who are you?" He found himself
yearning to respond, but struggled to let the question go unanswered.
"Why can't I feel you, stranger?"
Aaron heard the questions and felt her
probing, trying to get inside of him. He willed his mind to go blank, something
he had been doing since he was a child, whenever the need had arisen.
Then it spoke to his mind again.
"I want you to stand there and wait for
me. I have something very special I want to share with you, but you must wait for
me."
He heard the words, and for a part of a
second, he welcomed their soft, haunting quality. The beginning of a warm, safe
sensation enveloped him.
Aaron saw it slide out from under the boy's
body and fly up into the air. It was to the height of the landing where he
stood, and then it rushed forward, arms outstretched to embrace him.
It was already over the railing, rushing
through the short space to get to him. It held out its arms to him as a mother
might to a lost child, and the look on its face reminded him of cherubs in
museum paintings.
But in the last instant before it clutched
him, he shrugged off the warmth of its words, realizing that embracing it would
mean his death. The soft cherubs features faded and he saw the blood smeared
all over its mouth and chin, and the long fangs it couldn't hide so short a
time after feeding, and it occurred to him that it had floated weightlessly up
from the backseat of his car to come to him, and reality came flooding back.
Aaron ducked under its outstretched arms,
cut to the left and ran for the open door. His heart was pounding in his chest
so hard he was sure it would explode before he got inside of the apartment, or
before it landed on his back and ripped out his throat.
Lydia was stunned by his quickness. She
hadn't used all of her speed because she didn't think it was necessary. No
mortal had ever broken the trance of her spells. Not in fifty years of hunting.
Her feet hit the landing and she turned on her heels toward the fleeing man. It
would be close, but…
Her arm stretched out for him, fingernails
morphing to long claws that almost touched his back before he was inside. She
jerked her hand back as he swung the door shut, slamming it in her face.
The rage of being foiled by this human began
to boil up inside of her, but was quickly supplanted by The Pain. That’s what
they called it.
Not two inches from her nose, bolted to the
wooden door, was a silver crucifix. Not the ornamental kind, either. Lydia knew
from the burning knife of pain that shot through her brain that this one had
been blessed by that pig in Rome.
She recoiled in fear, her hands flying up to
cover her face, and turned away from the door.
"I must collect myself,” she thought.
"I must gather my wits and get inside there so I can finish this."
She caused the fog to boil up around her,
and she directed it to cover the window next to the apartment’s door. Once
there was a thick bank of it and she had prepared herself, she called him to
the window from the picture in her mind of him standing there behind the door,
trembling. Her magic was strong, and now that she had taken time to prepare
herself, she knew he would do what she asked.
She saw him move toward the window and saw
him looking into the fog, and she stepped into the mist and up to the window.
Aaron stood with his back against the door,
trying to get his breathing under control.
This wasn't happening. This just wasn't
happening. Any moment, he expected someone to yell, "Cut!" and see
Bela Lugosi lead the vampire on his front porch off to makeup.
"I'm safe in here, right? Let's
see...", he wracked his brain for every detail of every book he'd ever
read and every movie he’d ever seen about vampires.
"That's right. They can't cross a
threshold unless they're invited." He remembered the crucifix nailed to
the door, the one Angela had given to him and insisted he hang on the door
"to protect you from sin”, she had said. He had done it, but more to
please his girlfriend than for the protection.
"It's blessed by the Pope,” she had
proudly proclaimed.
He remembered the image that had conjured up
to him; the old man of the church walking into a roomful of crosses and vaguely
waving his hand at them and mumbling "bless you" in Latin.
He wasn't thinking that now. He was, in
fact, thinking about dropping down on his knees and thanking God in Heaven for
creating a Catholic church so there would be a Pope to bless the cross he had
hung on his door to placate his girlfriend.
In that moment, a lifetime of agnosticism
that had grown into a firm faith in atheism was wiped away. If there were
vampires on earth, his mind automatically reasoned, there was definitely God in
Heaven.
"But the immediate problem is more one
of survival than the philosophical arguments to prove or disprove the existence
of God,” he reminded himself. Whenever he became excited or afraid, the smug
intellectual emerged, shooting quips from the hip. It was automatic, and had
been the cause of many a bar room scrape in the days before he gave up the
bars, when a moment’s silence would have better fended off the insults of a
drunken rowdy. Instead, the words would just tumble out of his mouth, leaving
the average bar room aggressor with nothing to say and no option but to take
the first swing.
He stepped away from the door and rushed
over to look out of the window above his bed on the couch.
He expected to see her standing there,
jimmying with the window lock or something, but all he saw outside of his
window was a thick white mist. He hadn't seen fog that thick even in San
Francisco, and rightly guessed the vampire was responsible. She stepped out of
the fog and up to the glass. Aaron jumped back.
"Let me in,” she pleaded, her lips
moving to mouth the words, but the sounds carried from her mind through the
glass to his.
"Take that horrible cross off of your
door and let me come inside with you." Her eyes pleaded with him.
"I...I...No, I can't,” he mumbled, not
at all sure he couldn't, only following some deep instinct that told him to
keep her outside.
She was so beautiful. He had never seen anyone
so beautiful before in all of his life. Her eyes were a deep blue, making him
forget how they had been two glowing red coals when she looked up at him from
the car.
Staring at those seductive eyes, he forgot
about the car, and about Jeremy. All he knew focused on the beautiful secrets
hidden inside of those eyes, secrets she was promising to share with him if he
would just open the door.
Such a small thing to do. Just open the
door.
Aaron looked down at her body, admiring the
swell of her firm breasts under the knit top.
"Is that what you want?" she
asked, her hands pulling the clingy top up over her breasts, exposing them to
him, and then cupped them in her hands, as if holding them out, offering them
to him.
"Let me come inside with you and I'll
let you have all of my pleasures. I can make you feel things you never knew
were possible." She pressed herself against the window, squashing her
chest on the cold glass.
He stared transfixed at her perfect breasts,
and felt himself begin to grow hard. He wanted her, wanted her like he had
never wanted any woman before in his life. He knew it would be special with
her, that there were secrets of her body no other woman had ever possessed. All
he had to do was open the door.
She squeezed her breasts again, rubbing her
hard nipples against the glass, doing a slow dance for him. That's when he
noticed her claws.
Staring at her long, talon-like fingers, he
slowly began to remember all he had seen, and how she had tried to attack him
on the porch. It was as if he had been trapped under black water, and he was
slowly swimming back up, following the light of truth until he broke through to
the surface, filling his lungs with the clean, crisp air of reality.
He smiled at her, knowing her game was up.
"I'm sure there's a lot you could show
me,” he said to her, folding his arms over his chest. "And I'm sure you
have many, many 'secrets' to share. But, you know, I think I've seen the whole
show, down in the backseat of the car.
“I've gotta tell you, while I am thoroughly impressed,
I'm really not interested. Not to mention the fact I’m already involved with
someone else. So, why don't you go to Hell?"
She had forgotten about her claws. Her
fingernails had instinctively morphed into the vampire's talons when she had
reached out for him outside the door. She had remembered to wipe away all of
the blood from her kill, and calmed down enough for the vampire's fire to go
out of her eyes. But she had forgotten about her claws, and that is what broke
her spell.
The rage rose inside of her. It boiled up
and out of every pore in her body. She wanted to smash the glass between them,
grab this human garbage with her talons and tear him into little tiny pieces.
But she couldn't. The fire came back into her eyes, extinguishing the clear
blue she had been born with, and her fangs grew long and pointed, dripping
saliva and blood. A piece of a name escaped from his shrouded mind.
"Ann...no, Angela. Yes, that's her
name, isn't it? The one you're so deeply involved with?" She saw the
surprise in his face that she had been able to read his mind. He didn't know
she had guessed at the second half of the name, or that now that he was
alerted, his thoughts were even more of an enigma to her.
"I'll have to go visit Angela when I'm
done with you. Believe me when I tell you your girlfriend will be dead before
the sun rises,” she lied, hoping to break his concentration with fear and
doubt.
The man staggered back away from the window,
realizing the mistake he had made. "I'm making jokes with a vampire,” he
said, shaking his head from side to side, as if that would clear his head, as
if that would lessen the pressure she exerted to penetrate his mind. He began
repeating the Lord's Prayer.
Lydia recoiled in disgust and flew into a
rage.
"You fool of a human!" she hissed
at him. "I will have you. I will have your blood and I will rip your body
apart, one small piece at a time before you die. No one has ever defied me, and
I swear by Satan you will not be the first."
She spat a bloody clot onto the glass.
"Hide behind your trinkets and prayers
for now, foolish little man. But make no mistake, I'll be back for you, every
night until I have you. And for every night that you escape me, someone you
know will die, beginning with your precious Angela."
Her anger began to subside once she had made
her threats, and her features softened, more and more, until she knew that it
was the beautiful and forever young woman that stood facing him again.
"Oh, just one more thing before I
go."
The casual tone of her voice caught him off
guard, just as she had planned. He stopped praying and looked at her.
She stared back, deep into his eyes,
concentrating all of her power into the next two words.
"Forget...Sleep..." and she faded
back into the mist and was gone.
She watched his eyes fluttering shut, the
strength of her suggestions overpowering him. She stepped back into the mist
and watched him as he stared, puzzled, out the window. Then he shook his head,
no longer caring about the fog, and fumbled his way to the couch where he lay
down and fell fast asleep.
"Oh, the things I will do to him!"
she hissed, walking away from his door. She used the stairs this time, in case
any of his neighbors might see her fly down from the landing.
The last thing she wanted was more
complications. This man had already caused her enough to last into tomorrow
night.
She had never left a loose end like this
before, in all of her years of hunting, and she didn't like doing it now. But
there was no choice.
"Besides, he won't remember anything
until he opens his door tomorrow night when I knock. It will probably all come
back to him when he sees me, but then it will be too late." She was
thinking how surprised he would look when he opened the door and she reached in
and grabbed him by the throat. "I won't have to cross his stinking
threshold for that,” she mused.
She reached the bottom of the steps and
started down the sidewalk to where she had left the boy's body, and then
stopped.
"Damn. I don't even know his
name." She stood for a moment wondering how important it would be, knowing
his name. What if he wasn't home tomorrow night? What if she had to go looking
for him?
Normally, if someone she was stalking was
anywhere in the city, she would be able to sense where they were and go to
them. She hadn't had much luck with this one, though, trying to read his mind.
She might actually have to ask someone where she could find him. That was
something she had never had to do before.
There was a strength about him that she
didn't understand. He had a power she had never encountered before. It gave her
an odd sensation in the pit of her stomach and made the hair on the back of her
neck tingly. She shrugged the feeling away, unsure what it was.
It was nothing more than the first inkling
of fear, something she had not experienced since being born as a vampire.
How would she learn his name?
She started laughing. "It's easy,” she
chided herself. "You just have to think like a human."
She walked over to the mailbox and read his
name off of the label next to his apartment number.
"Aaron Michaels." She looked up at
the apartment where her prey slept. "I'll see you tomorrow night,
Aaron."
Once back at the Camaro, she reached into
the back seat, plunged her talons into the back of the corpse, wrapping her
fingers around its spine, and lifted its sagging weight as if toting a gym bag.
She scooped up the paper bag in her other hand and flew straight up into the
dark sky.
The ocean was only a block away from where
she had killed, and she made for it now, in a hurry to be skimming over the
water's surface. Along the way, she let go of the paper bag, hearing it thud
onto a rooftop below. Then, she was out over the water. She flew a few miles
offshore and began to dispose of the body, absently ripping chunks of flesh
away and tossing it down to the dark water. This was how she disposed with most
all of her kills, feeding the fish, which would later be caught off of the
pier, or by some sport fishing boat, and then eaten by people who might turn
out to be her next prey. She was usually quite amused by this circle of death,
but not tonight.
Her mind was still back at the apartment
landing, going over every tiny detail of her encounter with this strange human.
To begin with, why hadn't she sensed him
watching while she was feeding? That had never happened before. And the way he
broke her spell and escaped into the apartment. The bad luck of the crucifix on
the door. The way he had refused her entry when she had tried to seduce him.
That had been her fault, forgetting about
her claws. But no, not entirely. No other human that far under her spell would
have noticed if she had grown horns and a tail at that point. How was it that
such a small thing brought him out of it so completely?
It was the way he had taunted her that had
so completely enraged her. She might have just made him forget and even let him
live if he had at least collapsed in fear.
There was nothing to be gained by killing a
righteous man. The light would accept him with heralds and trumpets, mocking
her attempt to do evil.
Yet, he knew she was a vampire and he stood
there and made fun of her. The memory of it caused the rage to well up in her
again, and she twisted wildly in the air, giving vent to a horrible scream that
shattered the silence of the night. All that was left of the paperboy's body
was his head and the trailing shreds of his spine clasped in her hand.
She swung the head around in a great arc,
still twisting and somersaulting across the sky, and let loose. It rocketed
away from her, disappearing into the darkness.
Eventually, she began to calm down, and hung
in the air, breathing hard from her exertion.
What would she do about this Aaron Michaels?
Finally, it came to her. She felt calm and in control of her world again.
"Alexander. Alexander
will know what to do."
