Vampires: The Recent Undead Part 44

There's one sitting next to me where I stand on deck. I've been considering him casually since we started out from Lisbon two days ago. Balding-lots of testosterone. From England-skin that lovely rose-flooded milkiness they get in these Northern lat.i.tudes. Wife weak with sea-sickness before we left the harbor.

Now I'm afraid. I'm pregnant, and this monkey is far, far too tempting. He reaches up with a long, possessive arm and pulls me down beside him. He doesn't care who sees. He wants them to see.

I do care. I ought to leave, to come for him later, when he's alone.

He leans over to nuzzle my ear, masking the sound of the wind and the waves with his noisy breath and blood. Canvas snaps, flapping loose from the frame of a nearby chair. The gulls come and make their cries, high and wheedling. Strollers on the deck below have brought table sc.r.a.ps to feed them. Little beggars. They s.n.a.t.c.h what is offered from the air: a crust of someone's sandwich, a crisp, a bit of pink tomato. They feed flying in the light, which reveals the beautiful separateness of all things. While I must go below.

I take him to my cabin. He has his own, since his wife, even on dry land, is a semi-invalid, and they can well afford it. But the two adjoin, so I take him to mine, because there will be noise. I even say that's why I want to go there, and he smiles. He's so sure I'll be the source of that noise.

We take off our clothes in the dark, stuffy room. I could have a better one, if I wanted. But this cabin, so low down, is more isolated. Insulated by emptiness on either side.

I have removed my gla.s.ses. My eyes are adjusted now and I can see how self-conscious he is without his clothes. He b.u.mps against the bed and sits down, then fumbles for the light switch. I kneel on the floor in front of him and make him stop. It's easy. I let my tongues relax and wrap around his p.e.n.i.s, which is a good size, not too big. Things are going well, considering.

Then, amazingly, he resists. An unusually strong-minded monkey, this one. He pushes me away by my shoulders, slides his hands into my armpits and lifts. He's trying to get me to sit on him, he mumbles how he's always wanted to do it this way. The soft hairs covering his legs brush the backs of my thighs, my calves, as I obediently slide my knees up beside his hips. He rolls his p.e.n.i.s against my pubic bone in a practiced move, which might excite me if I had a c.l.i.toris. He makes me taste his antiseptic, minty lips, the breath between them laden with the odors of coffee, sugar, flour, eggs. Breakfast. Then he pushes me away again, grappling me into position. He is strong, but I could fight him. I don't. I want this. I need it. I have given up trying to make myself be careful and use my mouth.

He does scream. I do too, and shout Oh G.o.d, I'm coming, I'm coming, so if anyone hears us they'll stay away. It lasts a little long for an o.r.g.a.s.m, but after a couple of minutes he stops thras.h.i.+ng on the bed and lies still, deflating. I pump and pump. The rosy goodness suffuses me, warming my womb. When I'm done I fall into a dream, sliding slowly off the monkey and curling up next to him on the soiled sheets.

D. is with me and we're on a mountain in Costa Rica, in the seven-sided house he had them build. He tries to tell me why it's better, how the design dissipates the energy of earthquakes, which are common, but I am looking at the green, a green so very green I think my eyes will turn to emeralds before the sun has set. Behind a distant peak it goes, but the green does not go with it. Instead the valleys brim with green darkness, leaf-filled shadows expanding and thickening, clotting up the night with a truer, deeper green.

I realize my companion has been silent for some time. "D.," I say, "it's good to be here, really here. Do you know what I mean?" He nods and touches the back of my neck. His sensitivity to the moment must be, in large part, responsible for the lengthiness of his life. Nine hundred years without even a half-hearted attempt at suicide. That's good, for a male. Soon he will be fully mature.

I find myself kissing him. Our tongues separate, then twine, like las.h.i.+ng vines.

No force is applied on either side, but slowly we grow closer, closer. I am penetrated by the breeze coming through the open window, sharp as citrus; by the fine, probing mouths of flying insects, frustrated in their search for food. By D.'s tongues, too, delicately drawn along my skin, down, down, in, and piercing the membrane over my womb's entrance in an empty, reflexive action. Or I a.s.sume the action's emptiness, in the moment. And as I return to the moment, dreaming.

Knowing this a.s.sumption is wrong disturbs my sleep.

I wake. The monkey's corpse reeks of feces and the barest beginnings of decay. No blood-that's all mine now, mine and my offspring's.

D.'s offspring, too. Precocious D., fertile a good century before it might have been expected. When my membrane thinned and tore, I should have known. But this is my first pregnancy. Not until I noticed other signs did I fathom the truth of my condition, so rare among us. And by then I had boarded the s.h.i.+p, and it was too late.

I could have consumed the blood of a year's supply of monkeys, if I'd had the cavities to store so much, and still that would be barely enough to satisfy me one month in this state.

Anxiously I examine myself once again, to be sure. Nipples dark and hard. v.a.g.i.n.al dentata p.r.o.nounced-the normally flat triangular flaps are erect again with hunger, even so soon after my recent, reckless meal.

H. told me many visits ago that the blood volume of an average female monkey increases by fifty percent in the early stages of her pregnancy.

I'm not used to having to work these sorts of things out, but I try to come up with a plan for disposing of the monkey's remains. Although I concentrate, my head is filled with aimless, rootless thoughts. Perfume ads. Nursery rhymes. Three, six, nine, the goose drank wine. The monkey chewed tobacco on the street car line. I remember watching one of them, a small one, a female, jumping rope. The gla.s.s of shattered bottles glittered in the sun and she sang fiercely, breathlessly, as she leapt and fell, leapt and fell. The line broke, the monkey got choked. This is really very bad. And they all went to heaven in a little rowboat.

The sad thing is, I have no choice. Even if I managed to escape suspicion in the matter of this monkey's death, the next stop is an island. Madeira. Entirely as problematic as a cruise s.h.i.+p.

So I spend an hour being charming, a few minutes being devious in cramped, unlovely s.p.a.ces, several more waiting near the lifeboat I've selected. Then everything's all right again.

It's not that I don't care about the monkeys. I'm genuinely sorry that so many have to die, especially when it's such a waste. I manage to salvage quite a few pa.s.sengers and a handful of the crew. Not the boilermaster, nor his mate, so no one knows I have any idea about the cause of the explosion. Even in memory it's tremendous, the most profound sound; much more ringing and metallic than any volcano. The dark, messy, crowded events preceding it fade in its majestic wake.

A stiff breeze keeps most of the smoke to our south. Rainbows of oil and bobbing detritus surround us, carried here on contrary currents. Each is unique: each random pattern, each odd, useless object brings its own ineffable message to the moment. Removed from context, these fragments of enameled metal, plastic, and wood, charred and reshaped by the forces I have unleashed, are sweetly new.

I wish I could show D. I know how deeply he understands these sorts of things. It is this that makes me sure he will live long, unlike so many other males. So many I have loved. As the coast of Africa comes into view, sh.o.r.ebirds soaring over whitecapped waves, I am buoyed by confidence. He will live many, many more years. Centuries. Long enough to witness the thousand births of each and every child I carry within my womb.

Castle in the Desert: Anno Dracula 1977.

Kim Newman.

What if Dracula defeated Van Helsing, married Queen Victoria, and established a new world order? Kim Newman invented this alternate history in 1992 with a short story that was expanded into novel Anno Dracula (which brilliantly added Jack the Ripper, Mycroft Holmes, and other fascinating elements to the mix). He continued the tale through the first World War in The b.l.o.o.d.y Red Baron (1995), Judgment of Tears: Anno Dracula 1959 (1998), and in several stories and novellas, including "Castle in the Desert: Anno Dracula 1977." You'll find the nameless narrator of the story bears more than a pa.s.sing resemblance to Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe. The altruistic vampire is Genevieve Dieudonne, who appears (sometimes as a variant character) in other Newman/Yeovil works.

Newman's other fiction includes The Night Mayor, Bad Dreams, Jago, The Quorum, Life's Lottery, Back in the USSA (with Eugene Byrne), and The Man From the Diogenes Club under his own name. As Jack Yeovil he wrote The Vampire Genevieve and Orgy of the Blood Parasites. Newman's nonfiction books include Nightmare Movies, Ghastly Beyond Belief (with Neil Gaiman), and Horror: 100 Best Books (with Stephen Jones). He has written and broadcast widely on a range of topics, and scripted for radio and television. Stories "Week Woman" and "Ubermensch" have been adapted into an episode of the TV series The Hunger and an Australian short film. His official website, Dr Shade's Laboratory, can be found at www.johnnyalucard.com. His current publications are expanded reissues of the Anno Dracula series and The Hound of the d'Urbervilles and a much-expanded edition of Nightmare Movies.

The man who had married my wife cried when he told me how she died. Junior-Smith Ohlrig, Jr., of the oil and copper Ohlrigs-hadn't held on to Linda much longer than I had, but their marriage had gone one better than ours by producing a daughter.

Whatever relation you are to a person who was once married to one of your parents, Racquel Loring Ohlrig was to me. In Southern California, it's such a common family tie you'd think there'd be a neat little name for it, pre-father or potential-parent. The last time I'd seen her was at the Poodle Springs bungalow her mother had given me in lieu of alimony. Thirteen or fourteen going on a hundred and eight, with a micro-halter top and frayed jean shorts, stretch of still-chubby tummy in between, honey-colored hair past the small of her back, an underlip that couldn't stop pouting without surgery, binary star sungla.s.ses and a leather headband with Aztec symbols. She looked like a preschooler dressed up as a squaw for a costume party, but had the vocabulary of a sailor in Tijuana and the glittery eyes of a magpie with three convictions for aggravated burglary. She'd asked for money, to gas up her boyfriend's "sickle," and took my television (no great loss) while I was in the atrium telephoning her mother. In parting, she scrawled "f.u.c.k you, piggy-dad" in red lipstick on a Spanish mirror. Piggy-dad, that was me. She still had prep-school penmans.h.i.+p, with curly-tails on her ys and a star over the i.

Last I'd heard, the boyfriend was gone with the rest of the Wild Angels and Racquel was back with Linda, taking penicillin shots and going with someone in a rock band.

Now things were serious.

"My little girl," Junior kept repeating, "my little girl . . . "

He meant Racquel.

"They took her away from me," he said. "The vipers."

All our lives, we've known about the vampires, if only from books and movies. Los Angeles was the last place they were likely to settle. After all, California is famous for suns.h.i.+ne. Vipers would frazzle like burgers on a grill. Now, it was changing. And not just because of affordable prescription sungla.s.ses.

The dam broke in 1959, about the time Linda was serving me papers, when someone in Europe finally destroyed Dracula. Apparently, all vipers remembered who they were biting when they heard the news. It was down to the Count that so many of them lived openly in the world, but his continued unlife-and acknowledged position as King of the Cats-kept them in the coffin, confined to joyless regions of the old world like Transylvania and England. With the wicked old witch dead, they didn't have to stay on the plantation any longer. They spread.

The first vipers in California were elegant European predators, flush with centuried fortunes and keen with red thirsts. In the early '60s, they bought up real estate, movie studios, talent agencies (cue lots of gags), orange groves, restaurant franchises, ocean-front properties, parent companies. Then their get began to appear: American vampires, new-borns with wild streaks. Just as I quit the private detective business for the second time, bled-dry bodies turned up all over town as turf wars erupted and were settled out of court. For some reason, drained corpses were often dumped on golf courses. Vipers made more vipers, but they also made viper-killers-including such noted humanitarians as Charles Manson-and created new segments of the entertainment and produce industries. Vampire dietary requirements opened up whole new possibilities for butchers and hookers.'

As the Vietnam War escalated, things went quiet on the viper front. Word was that the elders of the community began ruthless policing of their own kind. Besides, the cops were more worried about draft dodgers and peace-freak protesters. Now, vampires were just another variety of Los Angeles fruitcake. Hundred-coffin mausolea were opening up along the Strip, peddling shelter from the sun at five bucks a day. A swathe of Bay City, boundaried by dried-up ca.n.a.ls, was starting to be called Little Carpathia, a ghetto for the poor suckers who didn't make it up to castles and estates in Beverly Hills. I had nothing real against vipers, apart from a deep-in-the-gut crawly distrust it was impossible for anyone of my generation-the WWII guys-to quell entirely. Linda's death, though, hit me harder than I thought I could be hit, a full-force ulcer-bursting right to the gut. Ten years into my latest retirement, I was at war.

To celebrate the bicentennial year, I'd moved from Poodle Springs back into my old Los Angeles apartment. I was nearer the bartenders and medical pract.i.tioners to whom I was sole support. These days, I knocked about, boring youngsters in the profession with the Sternwood case or the Lady in the Lake, doing light sub-contract work for Lew Archer-digging up family records at county courthouses-or Jim Rockford. All the cops I knew were retired, dead or purged by Chief Exley, and I hadn't had any pull with the D.A.'s office since Bernie Ohls's final stroke. I admitted I was a relic, but so long as my lungs and liver behaved at least eight hours a day I was determined not to be a shambling relic.

I was seriously trying to cut down on the Camels, but the damage was done back in the puff-happy '40s when no one outside the cigarette industry knew nicotine was worse for you than heroin. I told people I was drinking less, but never really kept score. There were times, like now, when Scotch was the only soldier that could complete the mission.

Junior, as he talked, drank faster than I did. His light tan suit was the worse for a soaking, and had been worn until dry, wrinkling and staining around the saggy shape of its owner. His s.h.i.+rtfront had ragged tears where he had caught on something.

Since his remarriage to a woman nearer Racquel's age than Linda's, Junior had been a fading presence in the lives of his ex-wife and daughter (ex-daughter?). I couldn't tell how much of his story was from experience and how much filtered through what others had told him. It was no news that Racquel was running with another bad crowd, the Anti-Life Equation. They weren't all vipers, Junior said, but some, the ringleaders, were. Racquel, it appears, got off on being bitten. Not something I wanted to know, but it hardly came as a surprise. With the motorcycle boy, who went by the name of Heavenly Blues but liked his friends to address him as "Mr. President," she was sporting a selection of bruises that didn't look like they'd come from taking a bad spill off the pillion of his hog. For tax purposes, the Anti-Life Equation was somewhere between religious and political. I had never heard of them, but it's impossible to keep up with all the latest cults.

Two days ago, at his office-Junior made a pretense of still running the company, though he had to clear every paper clip purchase with Riyadh and Tokyo-he'd taken a phone call from his daughter. Racquel sounded agitated and terrified, and claimed she'd made a break with the ALE, who wanted to sacrifice her to some elder vampire. She needed money-that same old refrain, haunting me again-to make a dash for Hawaii or, oddly, the Philippines (she thought she'd be safe in a Catholic country, which suggested she'd never been to one). Junior, tower of flab, had written a check, but his new wife, smart doll, talked him out of sending it. Last night, at home, he had gotten another call from Racquel, hysterical this time, with screaming and other background effects. They were coming for her, she said. The call was cut off.

To his credit, Junior ignored his lawfully-married flight attendant and drove over to Linda's place in Poodle Springs, the big house where I'd been uncomfortable. He found the doors open, the house extensively trashed and no sign of Racquel. Linda was at the bottom of the kidney-shaped swimming pool, bitten all over, eyes white. To set a seal on the killing, someone had driven an iron spike through her forehead. A croquet mallet floated above her. I realized he had gone into the pool fully-dressed and hauled Linda out. Strictly speaking, that was violating the crime scene but I would be the last person to complain.

He had called the cops, who were very concerned. Then, he'd driven to the city to see me. It's not up to me to say whether that qualified as a smart move or not.

"This Anti-Life Equation?" I asked Junior, feeling like a shamus again. "Did it come with any names?"

"I'm not even sure it's called that. Racquel mostly used just the initials, ALE. I think it was Anti-Life Element once. Or Anti-Love. Their guru or nabob or whatever he calls himself is some kind of hippie Rasputin. He's one of them, a viper. His name is Khorda. Someone over at one of the studios-Traeger or Mill or one of those kids, maybe Bruckheimer-fed this Khorda some money on an option, but it was never-never stuff. So far as I know, they never killed anyone before."

Junior cried again and put his arms around me. I smelled chlorine on his ragged s.h.i.+rt. I felt all his weight bearing me down, and was afraid I'd break, be no use to him at all. My bones are brittle these days. I patted his back, which made neither of us feel any better. At last, he let me go and wiped his face on a wet handkerchief.

"The police are fine people," he said. He got no argument from me. "Poodle Springs has the lowest crime rate in the state. Every contact I've had with the PSPD has been cordial, and I've always been impressed with their efficiency and courtesy."

The Poodle Springs Police Department were real tigers when it came to finding lost kittens and discreetly removing drunken ex-spouses from floodlit front lawns. You can trust me on this.

"But they aren't good with murder," I said. "Or vipers."

Junior nodded. "That's just it. They aren't. I know you're retired. G.o.d, you must be I don't know how old. But you used to be connected. Linda told me how you met, about the Wade-Lennox case. I can't even begin to imagine how you could've figured out that tangle. For her, you've got to help. Racquel is still alive. They didn't kill her when they killed her mother. They just took her. I want my little girl back safe and sound. The police don't know Racquel. Well, they do . . . and that's the problem. They said they were taking the kidnap seriously, but I saw in their eyes that they knew about Racquel and the bikers and the hippies. They think she's run off with another bunch of freaks. It's only my word that Racquel was even at the house. I keep thinking of my little girl, of sands running out. Desert sands. You've got to help us. You've just got to."

I didn't make promises, but I asked questions.

"Racquel said the ALE wanted to sacrifice her? As in tossed into a volcano to appease the G.o.ds?"

"She used a bunch of words. 'Elevate' was one. They all meant 'kill.' Blood sacrifice, that's what she was afraid of. Those vipers want my little girl's blood."

"Junior, I have to ask, so don't explode. You're sure Racquel isn't a part of this?"

Junior made fists, like a big boy about to get whipped by someone half his size. Then it got through to the back of his brain. I wasn't making a.s.sumptions like the PSPD, I was asking an important question, forcing him to prove himself to me.

"If you'd heard her on the phone, you'd know. She was terrified. Remember when she wanted to be an actress? Set her heart on it, nagged for lessons and screen tests. She was-what?-eleven or twelve? Cute as a bug, but froze under the lights. She's no actress. She can't fake anything. She can't tell a lie without it being written all over her. You know that as well as anyone else. My daughter isn't a perfect person, but she's a kid. She'll straighten out. She's got her mom's iron in her."

I followed his reasoning. It made sense. The only person Racquel had ever fooled was her father, and him only because he let himself be fooled out of guilt. She'd never have come to me for gas money if Junior were still giving in to his princess's every whim. And he was right- I'd seen Racquel Ohlrig (who had wanted to call herself Amber Valentine) act, and she was on the Sonny Tufts side of plain rotten.

"Khorda," I said, more to myself than Junior. "That's a start. I'll do what I can."

Mojave Wells could hardly claim to come to life after dark, but when the blond viper slid out of the desert dusk, all four living people in the diner-Mom and Pop behind the counter, a trucker and me on stools-turned to look. She smiled as if used to the attention but deeming herself unworthy of it, and walked between the empty tables.

The girl wore a white silk minidress belted on her hips with interlocking steel rings, a blue scarf that kept her hair out of the way, and square black sungla.s.ses. Pa.s.sing from purple twilight to fizzing blue-white neon, her skin was white to the point of colorlessness, her lips naturally scarlet, her hair pale blond. She might have been Racquel's age or G.o.d's.

I had come to the desert to find vampires. Here was one.

She sat at the end of the counter, by herself. I sneaked a look. She was framed against the "No Vipers" sign lettered on the window. Mom and Pop-probably younger than me, I admit-made no move to throw her out on her behind, but also didn't ask for her order.

"Get the little lady whatever she wants and put it on my check," said the trucker. The few square inches of his face not covered by salt-and-pepper beard were worn leather, the texture and color of his cowboy hat.

"Thank you very much, but I'll pay for myself."

Her voice was soft and clear, with a long-ago ghost of an accent. Italian or Spanish or French.

"R.D., you know we don't accommodate vipers," said Mom. "No offense, ma'am, you look nice enough, but we've had bad ones through here. And out at the castle."

Mom nodded at the sign and the girl swivelled on her stool. She genuinely noticed it for the first time and the tiniest flush came to her cheeks.

Almost apologetically, she suggested, "You probably don't have the fare I need?"

"No, ma'am, we don't."

She slipped off her stool and stood up. Relief poured out of Mom like sweat.

R.D., the trucker, reached out for the viper's slender, bare arm, for a reason I doubt he could explain. He was a big man, not slow on the draw. However, when his fingers got to where the girl had been when his brain sparked the impulse to touch, she was somewhere else.

"Touchy," commented R.D.

"No offense," she said.

"I've got the fare you need," said the trucker, standing up. He scratched his throat through beard.

"I'm not that thirsty."

"A man might take that unkindly."

"If you know such a man, give him my condolences."

"R.D.," said Mom. "Take this outside. I don't want my place busted up."

"I'm leaving," said R.D., dropping dollars by his coffee cup and cleaned plate. "I'll be honored to see you in the parking lot, Missy Touchy."

"My name is Genevieve," she said, "accent grave on the third e."

R.D. put on his cowboy hat. The viper darted close to him and lightning-touched his forehead. The effect was something like the Vulcan nerve pinch. The light in his eyes went out. She deftly sat him down at a table, like a floppy rag doll. A yellow toy duck squirted out of the top pocket of his denim jacket and thumped against a plastic ketchup tomato in an unheard-of mating ritual.

"I am sorry," she said to the room. "I have been driving for a long time and could not face having to cripple this man. I hope you will explain this to him when he wakes up. He'll ache for a few days, but an icepack will help."

Mom nodded. Pop had his hands out of sight, presumably on a shotgun or a baseball bat.

"For whatever offense my kind has given you in the past, you have my apologies. One thing, though: your sign-the word 'viper.' I hear it more and more as I travel west, and it strikes me as insulting. 'No Vampire Fare on Offer' will convey your message, without provoking less gentle vipers than myself." She looked mock-sternly at the couple, with a hint of fang. Pop pulled his hold-out pacifier and I tensed, expecting fireworks. He raised a gaudy Day of the Dead crucifix on a lamp-flex, a glowing-eyed Christ crowned by th.o.r.n.y lightbulbs.

"h.e.l.lo, Jesus," said Genevieve, then added, to Pop: "Sorry, sir, but I'm not that kind of girl."

She did the fast-flit thing again and was at the door.

"Aren't you going to take your trophy?" I asked.

She turned, looked at me for the first time, and lowered her gla.s.ses. Green-red eyes like neons. I could see why she kept on the lens caps. Otherwise, she'd pick up a train of mesmerized conquests.

I held up the toy and squeezed. It gave a quack.

"Rubber Duck," said Mom, with reverence. "That's his CB handle."

"He'll need new initials," I said.

I flew the duck across the room and Genevieve took it out of the air, an angel in the outfield. She made it quack, experimentally. When she laughed, she looked the way Racquel ought to have looked. Not just innocent, but solemn and funny at the same time.

R.D. began moaning in his sleep.