A Drop of Scarlet, page 20
part #4 of Voice of Blood Series
I let my voice trail away. Her eyes blinked rapidly, and her throat swelled as she swallowed; she grinned, and the expression was strange on her, stretchy, something deeply unfamiliar. “Oh, man, that’s . . .” she started to say. Her mind formed, really bitter, but her tongue produced no sounds.
She shook her head loosely, not trying to convey anything by it as a gesture, but more reflexively, like she was trying to scratch her ear with her shoulder. Her wet lips had gone bright red underneath the thinning smudge of black lipstick and her heart beat so hard I couldn’t hear anything else.
I leaned over her and grasped her neck between my hands, lowering my fangs to the massive, throbbing pulse, and found that my teeth easily punctured the skin and locked onto the artery. I could taste something almond-like in her blood, corrosively bitter and astringent, but it was nothing like the peculiar chemical flavor that I’d come to accept, even crave when I knew it was out of reach. Her heart shoved the blood into my mouth, then, suddenly, slowed to a vague spasm, then stopped altogether. I lifted my head and looked down at her. I had barely bitten her forty seconds ago, but her heart had fallen still, and her eyes rapidly dulled.
I wrapped the wound in her neck with my scarf, and sat on the floor beside her chair, waiting for the secondary build-up of Orchid inside me, but the rush never came, only the same bitter taste in the blood. Even the blood itself was thin and ineffective; it was greasy with adrenaline, but lacking in richness and roundness. What was it that Ariane had said about Orchid and how it interfered with the blood’s ability to carry oxygen? I couldn’t remember now. I stared at the dead girl, and decided that I ought not to waste the nourishment in her body, even if it was incomplete and foul to the tongue.
While in the midst of draining her still-warm veins, I caught an image of John, still on the bridge, but heading back toward this side of town, his stride first tentative, then determined. Psych, he thought, Psych’s gone; something happened to Psych. I’ve got to get to her. He locked onto my position, and all sorts of cruel and vicious thoughts crowded into his head.
I directed my thoughts toward both Alexander and Varlet. Get back here now. Fly if you must, Alexander Vassilyevich, but don’t leave me to face the psychotic by myself.
Unfortunately, my husband was much farther away than John. I was still alone in the suite with the girl’s corpse when John appeared on the balcony, staring menacingly through the sliding glass doors. I took my time getting up to let him in, but not through any desire to make him suffer.
“I’m really sorry,” I said to him. “I didn’t know.”
“You,” he breathed, not furiously, but sadly, cynically. “You gave her a compound containing potassium cyanide and you claim you didn’t know what it would do to her?”
“Orchid . . .” I whispered.
“Yes, I know. It controlled you,” he sighed heavily. Turning away from me he knelt in front of the chair where the girl sprawled, boneless but relaxed, like a melancholy rag doll. With most of her blood gone, her skin had the texture of dirty white wax. “I’m sorry, Psych,” he whispered to her, grasping her cold hands, rubbing them gently between his palms, trying without hope to warm her again. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
I had the strength to resist him if he attacked me, but he never did; he just sat, rubbing her hands and apologizing to her, a tear running from the corner of each eye and coursing down his nose to the slightly upturned tip. He didn’t even turn his head when Alexander and Varlet burst in through the front door. They both stared at John, at the girl’s immobile, stiffening body, and then at me.
“I made a mistake,” I said, and realized that I was weeping, too.
“Yes,” said John unexpectedly, “you did. I believe that it would be only right to pay for your damages.” He rose from the floor and slowly approached Varlet.
Varlet’s face blanched, and he stared in panic at Alexander. “What’s he talking about?”
“He’s right,” I whispered. “I’m sorry.”
“Did she suffer?” John demanded, still staring at Varlet. “You’d better hope she didn’t.”
I shook my head. Alexander came and wrapped his arms around me, and I didn’t know if I was grateful to him for that or not, because with his embrace, and the warmth and strength of his body holding me up, no matter what I’d done, I began to sob.
John sent it to me. I, who was so old and powerful, felt myself blasted by an immense wave of grief and remorse, and I cried so hard I couldn’t catch my breath and felt close to fainting. Meanwhile, John gripped Varlet by one shoulder and marched him out of the room, Varlet struck dumb by the force of John’s will, held silent by Alexander’s control, the leg of his pants soaking wet with terrified piss.
It was some time before I could calm my crying to the point where Alexander and I could take the girl’s body out. We brought it to her home (John had burned the location into my mind like a cattle brand as he frog-marched Varlet away) and lay the soft, heavy corpse gently on a woven-plastic lawn chair that already held the shape of her body. I was stricken. I almost wished that her guardians would wake up, catch us, and sound an alarm; but then what would happen to Alexander, who had so patiently handled the girl, driven the car himself though he barely remembered how, and still spared time to kiss the top of my head?
I could be quite certain that Varlet suffered more than the girl; whatever that poor man felt was sent to me, the deep pinch of John’s teeth on his neck, the stabbing pains in Varlet’s stomach as his blood was sucked away so rapidly that all his muscles cramped, his regrets, his confusion, his resignation.
The worst part, though, the absolute worst, was lying in bed with Alexander, dawn spilling pink and violet all along the edge of the sky, and even though my eyes were closed and I felt sleep closing its claws on me, I knew my husband was gazing down on me and slowly shaking his head.
XIV
A SUBTLE EQUATION
JADZIA KOPERNIK
As soon as Arthur left, I missed him. He was my oldest friend who was still around. Seeing him again after a space of decades had made me giddy with memories of the Paris that no longer existed. His smile shone out from the back window of a taxicab, and then the taxi disappeared up the road, and a part inside me curled up tight like a night-flower at dawn. It was almost as if gravity itself had increased, weighing my shoulders down. I tried to shake it off, trying to wish him well out there on his journey with all that Orchid, but I couldn’t keep myself from worrying. There were vampires out there, undoubtedly more than I had imagined, and it was a fairly safe bet that every single one of them now knew of the existence of Orchid, if not its specific effects. And while Arthur Chicot could have shaken the hand of the fifth King Henry of England (if he’d had any desire to do so), there undoubtedly existed creatures older than he, and my mind painted terrible pictures of the kinds of physical and psychic violence that a thousand-year-old vampire might visit upon poor Arthur to seize the drug. Arthur could be killed—killed forever, that timeless fellow. Still, that could have happened at any time, anyway.
The difference was, there had never been any reason to kill him before.
The Virginian and the Indian were leaving, too, as laden with Orchid as Arthur had been. All three of them had been pressed into service, each carrying half a liter of the compound; they were to deliver it to certain interested parties who had been sending Ariane enormous sums of money. As far as I know, she had set no price, but the eager vampires’ guesses were outlandish. She didn’t specifically tell me how much, but one night, she carelessly handed me a roll of hundreddollar bills as thick as her fist and mumbled to me to see if I could make some change out of it; if I couldn’t, just hang onto it. I tried not to stare at the money. I had been well paid for walking up and down a narrow plank in six-inch heels and a hobble skirt, but this was absurd.
She had no time to spend any of the money that was being sent to her. Her modest kitchen table held piles of currency. The floors were littered with opened cardboard boxes of 5cc insulin syringes and glass sample vials. I tried to do her a favor by tidying up, but the slowly spreading disaster was impossible to contain. It was easier, anyhow, to just shoot down a triple-oughtfour or two and chase it with a blood pack, or go downtown and get it hot and on the hoof. The mess wasn’t going anywhere and there was stuff to do.
I took it upon myself to spend some of Ariane’s money buying her a new wardrobe, but without bringing her with me to fit her in anything, I could only buy off the rack, with wild guesses about her exact proportions, how she felt about certain fabrics, and that sort of thing. I imagined that she was very sensitive and loved her comfort, as she seemed to favor things like old jeans and velvet. Her clothes didn’t pinch her body; at best they cuddled it, holding it tightly and gently. I looked all over for a duplicate of her pinkish suede jacket, but came up empty-handed, coming back with nothing other than the wrong thing. I was certain that she didn’t notice my efforts, locked inside her own head as she was.
It was strange to be at her house without John being there. I always dropped by in the early evening, just out of habit, but John hadn’t been around for a while. I couldn’t understand it; upon the untimely death of a friend, I’d want to spend as much time in bed with my lover as possible. Then again, perhaps he was wise to isolate himself. With the help of the Orchid, his mind was absolutely opaque. He had effectively vanished. But I could still feel him, his presence coming through strong, so he couldn’t have been very far away. I wished that I could have been there to warn him not to get too attached to people, especially not very young people, especially not children, especially not troubled children, and absolutely not little girls. He was a man of strange, deep attachments, which offended his sense of innate British stoicism. That led to an open rebellion against that stoicism, the symbol of old men, old sexist England. But emotional distance wasn’t always such a bad thing.
Still, his situation was complex and heartbreaking, and no amount of stiff upper lip could prepare a man for that—only experience. If he lived through the next year, he’d survive. The fact that he was still alive at all gave me hope every night I woke up. I had no desire to lose any more friends.
With both of them gone so much, I spent a lot of time at the house by myself, or talking with Leland Quary, who delivered ten hand-rolled cigarettes to Ariane every night. The Virginian was an odd one—on the one hand filled with a kind of Buddhist calm, and on the other, full of superstitions so ancient I didn’t understand most of them. He never stayed long, never wanting to “impose” his presence, only to touch his hat and deliver the cigarettes, and make a polite amount of small talk.
While everyone was gone, I went into her bedroom closet and found a couple of pairs of her trousers, so I could more accurately size the clothes I wanted to buy for her. I was distracted by the disheveled bed. The image of Ariane and John locked together there, clutched in the height of passion, flashed in my thoughts, and I dropped the pants and hurried from the room as fast as I could. The hallway wasn’t much better, nor was the study; they had really fucked all over this house.
Ariane and Ricari had, too.
I staggered over to one of the chairs in the study and seated myself on it. I usually didn’t get impressions of the past from places, but at times it was overwhelming, especially if someone else happened to be thinking of that place at the same time, their minds tugged along by my visual journey. It was an alarming phenomenon, hard to fake my way through, that projected déjà vu that wasn’t mine. So many vampire minds all gathered so closely together, all our minds, all of us so close to Ariane, had an amplifying effect. That was why we isolated ourselves. After a while the vampire may learn to despise even her most beloved, as she always feels what the beloved feels, and that is a weapon that no love can withstand forever.
Not without a break. A hundred years was good.
I was still in the study musing when Ariane returned home at 3:15. There was plenty of darkness still left in the night; the winter nights were long. In fact, this was an early return for her. I wondered guiltily if she’d caught me peeking and come home to give me a piece of her mind.
Nothing of the sort registered when I popped my head into the kitchen to inform her of my continued presence. “You wanna help me get some things out of the car?” she asked, setting down a pair of fiberglassand-metal boxes onto the kitchen counter. “I want this to happen fast.”
Between the two of us we got the other eight enormously heavy boxes in one trip. “Ten days of whole blood, six liters of plasma, and five liters of Orchid,” Ariane described, already sliding the bags into their racks in the refrigerator.
“Five liters? Jesus.”
“I’ve got a lot to send.”
“You’re like Superfly,” I said with a laugh. “You should get a massive gold goblet studded with diamonds to drink your blood from.”
“And take away the pleasure of drinking it straight from the bag? Please.” She laughed, too, but uneasily. “Has John been around since I left?” I shook my head no, with a rueful grimace. She bit her lip, murmuring, “I just hope he has enough Orchid. I really don’t want him to stop taking it just yet. I don’t know yet if he can ever stop.” She put the Orchid into the bottom of the refrigerator, five slim, shiny vacuum bottles, then paused with the door open and her hand on the cap of one bottle. “Well, I’d like to have some, since I’ve actually got a couple of hours to relax. Would you like some of the new batch?”
“Is it a different formulation?”
“No, the same as last time.”
“Good; I liked the last batch a lot.”
“Me too.”
We each took a double dose. I had come to enjoy the poisonous flavor of it under my tongue. Of course we didn’t have to put it under our tongues; all of the tissue lining our mouths was as permeable as the rest. Still, it was ritualistic. Ariane offered me a bag of blood, but I demurred, not wanting to add bitterness to bitterness.
We went to the study and sat on the rug side by side, sighing to ourselves.
“I was in your room earlier,” I suddenly confessed. “I’m sorry. I’ve been trying to buy you some new clothes, but I wasn’t sure what size you wore.”
Her eyes were soft and hazy, shining a little in the darkness. “Well, that’s okay. I wear size ten most of the time. And, like, a medium shirt. But it really depends.”
I burst out, “I couldn’t stop thinking about you and Orfeo. You know. Fucking. Is there anywhere in this house where you didn’t do it with him?”
She blinked, a bit shocked, and I sensed that she was thinking of Orfeo, too, thinking of the similarities between Daniel and me. “We never did it in the kitchen,” she said after a moment’s reflection. “But . . . yeah.”
“I don’t blame you,” I said, “I used to bang him like crazy when we were together. That’s what he was for in the first place. That’s why he was brought to me. He was supposed to be a quick cock fix, then breakfast. But then I liked him.”
“He didn’t talk about you a whole lot,” Ariane said with a rusty, disbelieving laugh. “It was like it hurt him to talk about you. When he did, though, I could tell that he never stopped loving you, even though he tried to deny it.”
“That little liar.” I gave into my lassitude, and lay back against the carpet, sighing with pleasure as I relaxed completely. It was infectious, as I’d hoped, and Ariane soon followed suit, actually moaning a little, giggling at herself. I turned onto my side, facing her, and she faced back, her fingers massaging and plucking at the nap of the carpet. She wanted to touch me, but couldn’t allow herself to do it.
I made the move for her. Just a slow, snaking slide of my arm across the rug toward her, my fingers making contact with the inside of her wrist, my touch featherlight, almost tickling her milk-soft skin. The fine hairs on her arms drew up, causing a cascade of goose pimples to run over her, and her cheeks blushed a very faint peach-rose, like the first definite sign of dawn.
When our skin made contact, I realized that I had not ever really known her, only the surface of her, only other’s impressions of her, including her own. She did not know herself at all. She was much more fragile than I imagined, a frightened, delicate creature, imbued with whole dimensions of power that overwhelmed her with their intensity, and without providing answers to any of her dilemmas. Her mind was not well insulated against others, and she could easily be carried away and made to feel things from a source outside herself. She was also much stronger than I had imagined, tough and resilient at the core, but she didn’t yet trust herself, not enough to relax.
And I? I was starving for a kiss.
It didn’t mean anything. I just liked her.
Her mouth made no resistance against mine; she didn’t stiffen or try to move away. Her voluptuous lips were as dry and yielding as silk velvet. I slid my fingers up her arm and moved closer against her, almost dizzy myself at the feel of her breasts pressing against mine, and opened her lips with mine, wetting those dry lips with my tongue, then pressing forward, hungry.
Her arms stayed where they were, even when I lay my hand against her shirted belly, and edged up the hem of her blouse so that I could stroke the bare skin of her torso. She was thinking of Orfeo, clasping Orfeo’s backside to draw him deeper into her, as we were on the rug in the darkness, with the sound of the rain starting up again, heavy and noisy against the water in the fountain outside. I thought of Orfeo, too, but briefly; Ariane was here, and she was new. Her mouth was still cold from the blood she had drunk. Her breasts heaved a little as my hand passed over them. She wore no bra under her ruby-colored top, and her nipple quickly became erect under my fingertips. My claws snagged against the fabric, and I wanted to take her shirt off and really see the beautiful breasts I was touching, but to do that I would have had to break the kiss, and I was not yet willing to do that. My blood thrummed heavily between my legs. I wanted to take off my pants before I got the crotch all sticky. Again, I resisted. I hadn’t gotten enough of the kiss yet.
