The interior of the barn is dark.
Its only illumination comes from sniglets of sunlight shining through small gaps in the walls and roof, projecting galactic maps on the black, earthen floor. A fresh billow of smoke roils overhead and the galaxy at my feet dims as if swallowed by some vast, dark nebula.
I hesitate on the threshold, my eyes straining to see into the unknown, my nostrils flaring at an unpleasant smell . . . an old smell.
A dead smell—
I came awake quickly for a change.
My watch on the nightstand said that it was 10:53. a.m. or p.m.? It was one of those rare occasions that I regretted not switching to digital.
I closed my eyes for a moment and, once again, some arcane sense kicked in, telling me that the sun was up: a.m. Most of the Doman's "people" would be sleeping now with only a skeleton crew on duty.
Now that conjured an interesting image. . . .
I used the bedside control to fold me up to a sitting position. As the cat scrambled to safety, I considered my options. As in Henley's Invictus, I had always aspired to be "the master of my fate, the captain of my soul." Lately, I hadn't done much better than "cabin boy." It was time to make some changes.
It was time to take matters into my own hands.
It was time to go to the bathroom before I did anything else.
I tossed the covers aside, swung my legs over the side of the mattress, and was confronted with my first major obstacle: unhooking the Texas-sized catheter.
When it was done I pulled the ruined pillow from my teeth and spat out a mouthful of feathers. A wooden stake through the heart might mean certain death, but now I knew that there were worse things.
I wobbled to my feet and lurched over to the tiny, standing closet for a robe and slippers. Then, more comfortably attired, feeling more alert and less drafty, I shuffled down the empty ward and out into the hallway in search of the bathroom.
Fortunately, it wasn't far and there was no one about to herd me back to bed.
There was a single shower stall and I washed up after I was done. It felt good to be clean again. It felt even better to be up, out of bed, and doing something that wasn't required and monitored by somebody else.
Wiping the condensation from the mirror, I stared at my vague, ghostlike reflection. Concentrate! I thought. I am here! I exist! As I stood there, leaning over the sink and propping myself up with trembling arms, I force-fed the concept of my corporal reality into my resisting mind.
Slowly, my mirror image took on greater solidity.
I was thinner, now, and there were shadows beneath my eyes. My flesh had a pallid, almost transparent appearance: I looked half dead.
But the scar that circled my throat was already fading. Maybe I was getting better. Or undeader.
I'm ready for my close-up, now, Mr. DeMille.
Another thought occurred.
If the disappearance of my reflection was truly tied to psychological and psionic feedback, why had it started to fade back before I actually knew that I was becoming a vampire? Had my subconscious caught on several weeks before the truth was accepted by my conscious mind? I had a list of questions for Dr. Mooncloud when she got back.
If I was still here. . . .
A wave of vertigo rolled over me and I clutched at the countertop to steady myself. Time to be getting back in bed.
My own bed, I decided.
Except that bed and the suite that I occupied was just as much the Doman's property as the hospital bed I had just vacated. It seemed there was nothing I could truly call my own anymore. Not even my life.
Any question of escape was finally gone. I would be leaving. Soon. But first I needed to concentrate on getting well and learning as much as I could about the mutations that were changing me, body and brain. I rebelted my robe and opened the door, deciding that I was going to have to display a more complacent and cooperative attitude until I had what I needed and was ready to leave.
"Ready to leave?" Suki was standing there, outside the bathroom door, with a wheelchair ready and waiting.
"Um," I said.
She took my hand. "It's time to get you back up and on your feet," she said, paradoxically pushing me down into the seat. "Feet up." She adjusted the footrests under my slippers. "Ready?"
"For what?"
"Here we go." She started off down the hall. We went past the hospital area and on down to the elevator.
The doors opened and its diminutive operator leaned forward on his high stool. "Fräulein Suki, Herr Csejthe; Grüsse."
"Guten Tag, Herr Hinzelmann," Suki said.
"Guten Morgen," I muttered.
"Und wie befinden wir sich?" the hütchen asked me as he pulled the levers and we started up.
"Well, Hinzie," I groused, "judging by the way I feel and the way you look, I'd say that 'we' are both in trouble."
Suki leaned over and murmured, "Never let a good line go to waste, do you?" To the old house sprite she said: "Ignore him, Hinzie; he's cranky when he hasn't had enough."
"Enough?" I tried to twist my head to look at her. "Enough what?"
"Er tut mir leid."
"Well, don't be," I said. "It may be true that I am a little—cranky—right now. But I am on the mend." I slumped in the wheelchair. "Thank you for asking."
"Bitte sehr," he said primly. "And you, Fräulein Suki," he continued. "What has you up at this ungodly hour of the morning?"
"Him," she said as the elevator came to a stop. "The Doman said he's taking too long to heal. So, we've decided to kick him out of the hospital, back into his own bed, and go to the next phase of treatment."
"Und wie steht es mit Deirdre?"
"I don't know," she said, helping me maneuver the chair out of the antique lift. "Only time will tell."
"Christopher!" It didn't sound like my name at first; it sounded more like an ancient door on rusty hinges. Then I saw the seamed and wart-riddled features of the house chamberlain. She smiled a terrible smile: while sharks have three rows of teeth, the aguane barely qualified as having one, yet the effect was similar.
"Basa-Andrée," I said, trying to smile back and desperately hoping that she wouldn't try to hug me or wish me a speedy recovery through any other tactile means.
"Good to see ye up and about, lad!" She came toward me, but her attention shifted to Suki. " 'Tis all done, milady; even as himself requested."
"Thank you, Basa," she said. "Is the package in place?"
"I understand that it is on its way."
"Good."
The aguane turned back to me. "Is there anything I can get for you, my boy?"
"Yeah, hang a 'do not disturb' sign on my door for the next forty-eight hours."
"Ah, you're a wonder, laddie-buck," she cackled. " 'tis already a done deal."
Suki wheeled me on down the hall until we came to my door. Basa-Andrée opened it with a key from a prodigious ring and Suki pushed me inside.
Though the lights were off, she easily navigated the chair through the darkened apartment, bringing me into the bedroom. I waved off any assistance as I clambered out of the wheelchair and sat on the edge of the bed.
"Is there anything I can get you?"
I started to say no and send her on her way, but then I remembered my research. "As a matter of fact, there is." I quickly explained my needs in terms of establishing a common database of information. "So, at this point I primarily need a good PC with plenty of hard disk space, a modem, and a good scanner with OCR software."
"I think we can provide you with something in those areas." She sat on the bed, next to me. "Chris. . . ."
"Yes?"
"You—" she hesitated "—you have a lot of anger in you."
A flip response didn't come readily to mind, so I just nodded.
"Terrible things have happened to you. Terrible things have been done to you. You have a right to be angry."
No arguments here.
"But you are not alone. Most of us under the Doman's protection are here because terrible things have been done to us, too. We are all prisoners here. We are trapped by the nature of what we have become. And most of us did not ask to become what we are."
And what are we? I wondered.
"We are victims," she said. "Victims who are trying to survive as best we can, without producing more victims in that day-after-day process."
"Practically impossible, isn't it?" I said.
"Yes. Yes, it is. Nature is one vast food chain and life feeds upon life. Here, in the Northwest, the Doman insists that we take nothing except by invitation, use only what we need, and waste nothing. We practice a higher morality than most of the world at large."
"You shear the sheep and spare the lambs," I said.
"We are all sheep," she said, rising, "and all flesh is grass."
"You're mixing your metaphors."
She folded the wheelchair and left it by the doorway. "I know that you are angry. Your body has been violated by changes that you cannot reconcile with the life you knew, the life that society has taught and molded you to live. Now you must face new truths, new laws that the world hides from all but a handful of humanity.
"We did not make you this way. We did not choose this path for you. We cannot help the fact that your body now requires blood for sustenance. But it is an implacable law that Nature assigns to your changed circumstances. Resist it, fight it if you will, but do not blame those of us that share the curse and seek to help you learn the new rules of survival."
I was suddenly ashamed.
"I must sleep now." She smiled from the doorway. "I will see you tonight if you have rested well. In the meantime, try to do those things which will help you to heal. Rest now. And later . . . drink deep."
And she was gone.
I sat there for a while, thinking about what she had said. Constructive anger, properly focused was one thing. Throwing tantrums was something else, again. I would still leave when the opportunity came. But perhaps I did have friends here. Perhaps there were those who did not carry their own motives like a hidden dagger.
But I wouldn't think any more about it, right now.
I untied the robe and dropped it on the floor.
No. I'd think about it tomorrow. . . .
I pulled back the covers and crawled under them.
After all, tomorrow was another day. . . .
I fluffed my pillow with my fist.
. . . or night. . .
I closed my eyes.
. . . and maybe I'd go back to Tara.
"Oh, fiddle-de-dee," I murmured. And fell asleep.
Now the darkness of the barn is merciful.
I can see the cow, lying on its side. See the great gash that has opened up its belly. Slats of dusty sunbeams bisect the spill of entrails, but most of the gore and details are still lost in the darkness.
I hesitate at the edge of a red tidal pool that trickles toward my feet. A hand grasps my arm and I turn to see the silhouette of a man brandishing a bloody knife.
I came awake, gasping for air, my stomach cramping me into a sitting position. In that long moment of leaving the dream behind, I was partially blind, partially deaf: I did not notice movement or sound until a voice spoke.
"You were having a nightmare."
I didn't jump or flinch: nothing was as frightening as that half-buried memory that crept closer and closer each time I closed my eyes.
A woman sat at the edge of my bed. In the darkness I had only her voice and vague outline to serve for clues.
Jennifer?
I looked again, something subtle shifting at the back of my eyes. The bedroom's topography was now evident in patterned greyscale, the furniture layout in dark blue and grey geometric shapes. The woman, herself, flickered like a bright flame: white surrounded by concentric layers of yellow then orange then red in a vague, humanoid shape. I shivered as I realized that my night vision was evolving into an infrared targeting system.
"Who is it?" I asked carefully.
"Deirdre." She reached out and a warm hand caressed my cool, clammy forehead.
Deirdre? "What are you doing here?"
"I am here to take care of you. Think of me as your nurse."
"I don't need a nurse."
"You're still weak and your wound is not entirely healed. The Doman says that this a difficult and dangerous time for you. I want to help."
"I don't need help. I need rest. Why don't you run along and spend your time with—" I caught myself. I was about to say "with Damien" when I remembered that her vampire lover was dead, murdered by the same hitmen who had nearly killed me. "—I'm sorry."
She reached over and switched on the bedside lamp, bumping my vision back into normal mode.
Most so-called redheads actually favor the orange spectrum. Here, hair, lips and nails were the color of blood, deep red and vibrant in hue. Alabaster skin with no visible flaws. China blue eyes, made bluer by the sheen of tears and the shadows of sleepless nights, looked back at me, through me, beyond me.
"He loved me, you know," she said. "He really loved me."
And who could blame him? I thought.
"You're probably thinking that I'm a beautiful woman—why wouldn't he?" she said.
All this and psychic abilities, too.
"Beauty is overrated." She laughed. It was a short, half-hearted thing. "Oh, I know that it's just the sort of thing that beautiful people sometimes say and it sounds incredibly self-centered and boorish. But it is a wall between us. A mask. A façade."
She was rattling. It was obviously an old argument for her and I made no reply: she had an understandable need to talk.
"Give me your foot," she said.
I stared at her. "What?"
"I'm your nurse and this is phase one of your therapy. Besides, it gives me something to do." She gave me a hard look. "I've had nothing to do for four days. I need to do something. Anything." She blinked. "So give me your foot."
I extended my right foot and she took it into her warm grasp. I was reminded again of the widening difference in our body temperatures.
"We live in a world that values beauty, rewards it as if it were a virtue or the product of great labor and achievement. It can be, I suppose," she said, sighing, working her thumbs up the sole of my foot. "But it's mostly the result of good genes."
Her fingers worked their way around and over my instep, moving toward my ankle. There her thumb massaged the outer perimeter, the juncture of the talus and the end of the fibula: my attention began to slide a little.
"Don't get me wrong," she continued, "I'm not whining about what a burden it is to be attractive. I'm just pointing out that a lot of people will treat you like meat or like art or like all their fondest fantasies or the embodiment of their own lack of self-esteem. When you find someone who treats you like a real person, it can be special."
"That's how it was with Damien," I said.
Deirdre nodded. "Here." She pushed on my leg. "Roll over and let me do your back."
"Therapy." I sighed and complied. Maybe she would get to the other foot later.
"He had lived long enough to have gotten past the value systems that most men apply when looking at a woman. He looked at me and saw . . . me. Not just a face or a body. He looked at me as a man and saw more than just sex or a trophy. And he looked at me as a vampire and saw more than just food and drink. He . . . saw . . . me!" Her voice was decidedly unsteady.
A long silence ensued while she worked her hands up and down my spine.
"So, how did you meet?"
"At the library. Late one night, just before closing. I went there by chance that particular night. It turned out that he was there on a regular basis—three or four evenings a week. He said it was a sign: he was reading Keats and looked up and saw me."
" 'Endymion'?" I asked, trying to visualize a vampire with a library card.
"Yes. How did you know?"
" 'A thing of beauty is a joy forever:
its loveliness increases; it will never
pass into nothingness.' "
I nodded into my pillow. "It was a sign."
"Well, I was attracted by his beauty, too. We're all tied to that prejudicial first glance. It's the second look and the third that weighs us and our value systems."
"Was it difficult? Loving someone who was old before you were young and would remain young long after you were old?"
"We never had the time to find out. A few years: what is that in the scheme of human lifetimes, much less those of immortals? He tried to bring me over. . ."
"Over?"
"I asked. I wanted to live forever. Who wouldn't? But it wasn't just selfishness on my part. I wanted us to be together. I didn't want him tied to a woman whose body grew older and more infirm as the years passed. And I wanted to share his life, his world. . . ."
"You wanted to become a vampire," I said.
"More for him than for anything else. And he agreed, even knowing it might well mean the end of passion for us."
"The end of passion?"
She worked on my shoulders before answering. "A coldness sets in when you become undead. Not just a coldness of the flesh, though that is particularly evident, but a more subtle coldness, as well. Sexual gratification becomes a pale substitute for the gratification of blood and many male vampires become impotent unless they couple while in the act of feeding. They—male and female—are drawn to us for the warmth of our flesh as well as the nourishment of our blood. It is rare that the wampyr experience real passion with one another. Marriages or relationships that predate their transformations rarely survive as anything more than intellectual alliances."
"But Damien was willing to make you into what he had become and risk that." I didn't phrase it as a question.
"He felt it would be best for me, if not for us. He was willing to risk that wonderful intensity that we had found in one another. . . ."
"But he wasn't able to—to—bring you over."
"No.
"We tried everything." I felt the shrug of her shoulders telegraphed through her hands. "For some it is enough to be bitten just once. Others do not change until there have been many feedings. An exchange of blood—once thought to be foolproof in passing the condition—isn't. Damien gave me his blood many times. It came to nothing. The only other possibility was that life was too strong to permit the unlife to take hold: that he would have to drink of me until life was no longer a barrier."
"You would have to die."
"Yes," she said. "And he wouldn't permit that. There was no certainty to the theory and he refused to risk losing me for all time." She gave a short, sharp, bitter laugh. "He was worried about losing me!"
There was nothing I could say that wouldn't sound trite or banal, so I lay there and let her work her fingers up and down my back. Impotence now joined insanity on the list of potential deficits to my transformation. But the skill of her fingers and the weariness of my own not yet recovered body conspired against any further contemplation.
My mind drifted and, to my shame, I dozed.
"I need your help!" he says.
So focused am I on the bloody knife that he has to repeat himself, shouting the second time.
He tugs on my arm with his other hand and pulls me into the growing puddle of blood. The cow struggles weakly, producing crosscurrents to the feeble tides that are clocked by its failing bovine heart.
There is something else, now; here, in the darkness, beside the dying beast. A dark shape surrounded by a lake of red and the spangled beams of slotted sunlight, huddled in the darkest part of the barn. It shifts and hisses. And smells of woodsmoke and burned pork.
"Take off your shirt and lie down!" the man commands. A beam of sunlight bounces back from the blade of the bloody knife and dazzles me. Though he loosens his grip upon my arm I can no longer see well enough to evade him.
Something shifts on the ground, near my feet, and the cow bellows fearfully.
A miasma of death and terror rises up from the blood, thick and choking. I do not want to be here, to do this thing!
I am afraid for my life! And for more than my life. . . .
But gall and bitterness and dread have seized my heart, my mind, my limbs, and I cannot find the ability to do anything beyond what I am told. I do not remember taking off my shirt. I can hardly bear to think about lowering myself into the visceral stew that clots the earth, here. But I am sitting now, staring up at the dark silhouette of the man with the bloody knife. I put my hand out to steady myself and something cold and wet and hungry comes up out of the blood-spattered ground to grasp my arm in an iron grip!
I sobbed and sobbed, trying to purge my heart, my very soul of the sludge of terror and shame. The gory mud of that barn floor still seemed to cling to me here, more than a year later and a half a continent away. Chilled to the marrow, I clung to the warm softness as if my life depended on it.
But my lungs needed air and, at last, I had to lift my face from the folds of warm terry cloth to catch my breath. I looked up into an angel's face: compassionate blue eyes and perfect features with radiant skin, framed by hair the color of holy fire.
Deirdre.
She was kneeling on the bed, holding me as I wept against her shoulder.
I struggled to compose myself. To pull away. "I'm sorry," I said. "It was just a nightmare."
She refused to release me from her embrace. "Is that what you still think it is? A simple nightmare?"
"I'm okay now," I said, trying to reassure myself more than her.
"You're not okay," she whispered, bringing her cheek to mine. "You've been to the grave and back—not just once, but twice. You've not only lost your own life, but the lives of those you love." Her arms tightened around me. "I want to help. I'm here for you."
I embraced her in return, as much to keep my balance as to reciprocate her kindness. That's when I noticed that she was wearing my robe.
And that someone had replaced the lamplight with candlelight while I slept.
I turned my head to look at her. Her face turned to mine. Our lips met.
We kissed.
I should have enjoyed it. I understood enough about death and loss to know that we sometimes seek oblivion in physical distraction. That we hold back the darkness with life-affirming acts of procreation.
And that, as Harry Chapin used to sing, "loving anyone was a better place to be."
Still. . . "Why?" I asked, as she released my lips.
"We can help each other," she whispered. "Maybe heal each other a little." Her hand came up and caressed my face. "You need me. Need what I can give you. What I can do for you.
"And I need you. I need you to need me," she continued with a look of desperation. "Let me stay with you. Let me do this for you." She reached down and pulled the sash on the robe. It fell open and I felt my protests die on my lips.
My mind schismed: it had been a year. Jennifer was dead. . . .
Is she?
She must be. The dead don't—
Don't what? Come back? Sunder their graves? Rise from their coffins?
If she's alive, why is she hiding in the shadows? Why doesn't she come to me?
I don't know, the old morality monitor whispered, but God wouldn't like it. . . .
The fear, the uncertainty was washed away on a sudden flood of anger.
God lets my wife and little girl die in an awful car crash and spares me so I can slowly turn into a monster: do you think I really give a damn what God likes?
I slid my hands from her arms to her sides, felt the splay of ribs beneath silky muscles, the warmth of human flesh. I opened my mouth to speak and she leaned forward, parting her own lips again: I felt the inquiry of a tongue. The tension building in all of my muscles.
I experienced a curious heat flush throughout my entire body as she fell back and pulled me down with her. Now I was on top, pinning her down to the bed with the weight of my body, my hands grasping her wrists. I stared down at her, taking it all in: the throbbing pulse at the base of her creamy throat, her breasts now slightly flattened and lolling indolently to either side, the rise and fall of her stomach, the warm, firm feel of her flesh, waiting, anticipating. . .
"Love's mysteries in souls do grow," Donne penned in "The Ecstasy," "But yet the body is his book."
Harlequin, take me away.
"Take me," she murmured.
"No." I said it without conviction.
"Don't you want me?"
Oh God, yes! I wanted her like nothing I had ever wanted before. But. . .
"It isn't sex," I said hoarsely.
"I know," she whispered. "Sex is just foreplay for the real thing."
It was a lust worse than concupiscence. It was appetite beyond lust. It was the Hunger.
"Bite me," she commanded.
And I might have. Surrendered right then and there. But: "I can't." I had not grown the necessary fangs. I came up on my knees, gasping for air and for need.
"You can." She sat up and fumbled in the pocket of the robe. "Here." She handed me a familiar box. I opened it and stared at the dental appliance with its gleaming, razor-sharp fangs. "Put it on." She handed a small tube of dental adhesive to me.
It was silly.
It was sick.
"Put it on." Her voice was thick with need. "Now." Her tone, insistent, commanding. Pleading. "Please!"
I was without the will to resist her. I did as she bade me, trying to bury the likeness of other memories—other times, other occasions, when I had to suspend passion and fumble to put something on. . . .
She shrugged the robe from her shoulders and leaned toward me. "Please," she whispered. "I need this as much as you do. More!"
Her hand was behind me head, pulling me down and toward her. Her shoulder rose to meet my lips. "Bite me!"
Had I been more experienced, less reluctant, I would have done it quickly. Instead, I opened my mouth as if to kiss the smooth flesh over the trapezius muscle, catching her collarbone with my lower jaw. As I felt the points of the teeth meet the resistance of skin, I hesitated, then brought my arms around her, my right hand cradling the back of her head. She stiffened, tilting her head back as the fangs dimpled her flesh. As the points broke the skin, she sighed. Tilting her head back, as I eased deeper into her shoulder, she shuddered. I could tell now that the slowness of the penetration was more painful, yet she seemed glad of it, welcoming the hurt.
As the blood welled up into my mouth she pushed against me with a languid movement. "Harder," she breathed into my ear. "Suck me. Drink me."
The heat of her flesh was like the sun, warming me, driving the winter from my bones. I could smell her, the perfume of skin and fragrance of perspiration and secret things filled my head like an olfactory intoxicant. The press of her breasts against my chest carried the stroke of each heartbeat into my own flesh with a maddening, rhythmic caress.
And the blood. . .
It filled my mouth like warm, meaty honey. I swallowed and it poured down my throat like boiling wine, sizzling and bubbling and burning a path to my very core. A furnace opened deep within me, filling me with divine brightness.
"Harder," she hissed, clinging to me with a frightening strength. "Bite me again. Harder, deeper."
I pulled back, tearing the wound a little. "I don't want to hurt you!"
"I want you to hurt me! I need you to hurt me!" She arched her back and pulled my head lower. "Bite me! Here!"
I pressed my face to her glorious flesh; became blind.
And obedient.
There were no dreams this time: I slept like the dead. The nightmare came when I finally awoke.
Blood.
I came to myself lying in a pool of red. But there was no barn, no dying beast, no knife-wielding madman. I was in my room, on my bed.
Deirdre was beside me.
She lay in quiet repose, face tranquil, eyes closed, lips locked in a gentle smile. Her ivory skin seemed all the whiter, now, marked with red blooms where she had urged my kisses and surrounded by sheets, stained the color of her lips and hair. One arm was tucked up under the pillow, the other plunged beneath a corner of the bedclothes that lapped at her side like a tide rolling out at sunset.
There had come a moment of lucidity in the midst of the passion, the madness, when I had paused, my mouth dripping, to ask, "Why?"
"I told you that I came to nurse you back to health," she had gasped. And then pulled me back to her breast to do just that.
Perhaps I had known the answer to my question even better than she. But all I could think of was the heat of her flesh, warming me like a hearth fire.
I reached down to cover her the rest of her nakedness, touched her shoulder.
It was cold.
And I knew.
Perhaps I had known in that moment when she first came to me. But I went through the pantomime, anyway: I searched for a pulse at her throat, pulled back eyelids, prodded pressure points. She was cold, lifeless. An empty husk, its former contents drained and flown.
The warmth that she had so recently gifted me was suddenly gone.
As I reached down to reclose her eyes, I tried to recall the passage from Endymion.
But all I could remember were the words of Archibald MacLeish:
Beauty is that Medusa's head
which men go armed to seek and sever.
It is most deadly when most dead,
and dead will stare and sting forever.