A Drop of Scarlet, page 25
part #4 of Voice of Blood Series
XVII
YOU MAKE IT SOUND SO CLINICAL
MARGARET WILLIAMS
I missed a day of work.
I didn’t feel sick—well, no sicker than usual, which wasn’t bad enough to keep me at home. But I didn’t get up. I didn’t call in and let anyone know that I wouldn’t be there. I just lay there, in bed in the dark, all day and all night, not sleeping, not lighting the candle. I just drifted, never thinking of anything in particular, like I was on hold.
The weird thing was, Ariane didn’t seem to have noticed. The next night she never brought it up once. I wanted to mention it to her, but couldn’t bring myself to do it.
There was a lot I wanted to talk about that just slipped away when I was around her. It was like having my tongue literally held by gentle but uncompromising fingers. If I wanted to blather emptily about the hot gossip going on in my history class, or about what music I was listening to, or what I’d had for dinner, I could talk myself blue in the face, even if Ariane never responded past a grunt of amusement or a derisive snort. But I knew she was actually listening to me then, even if she had nothing to say about it. But if I tried to mention John, or her past at NCIT, or ask if we were going to continue our original research, my tongue felt thick, and sometimes I had bad fits of coughing, or I’d suddenly be aware of a process finishing across the lab that I had to jump up and attend to. Five minutes later, I’d remember that I was going to talk to her about something, but I could never remember specifically what it was.
I began to concentrate on remembering to ask her about that time she’d showed up at my place in the middle of the night, making a tiny tick mark with my thumbnail on the edge of my desk every time I thought about it, so that I’d remember even if I did get distracted. And all of a sudden there was nothing to say down in the lab. I’d send out some bottles for shipment or load up blood packs into the refrigerators, and not a single word could make it out of my mouth. The edge of my desk began to look like rats were gnawing on it.
It seemed to be hard on Ariane, too, at the same time. She was constantly scrunching her hair really hard in her fists, gazing into space, or grimacing as if she were in pain. When she caught me looking, she’d smile a little, sadly, guiltily maybe. A pretty smile of shame.
I hoped she didn’t feel guilty about the poisoning. That was just an occupational risk, and it was my own fault that our antidote kit was incomplete—that was part of my responsibility as lab assistant. I was just grateful that she had gotten me to the hospital. But nobody had seen anything, and nobody could tell me anything at the hospital other than I’d been brought in by Dr. Dempsey, not by ambulance. Which meant that she’d carried me all the way down the hall and up the elevator and all the way to the parking lot by herself. She just didn’t look like she was buff enough to lift a woman at least three inches taller and twenty pounds heavier, let alone carry her all that way. She must have plopped me in a wheeled office chair and scooted me along; if I’d been dragged I would have been covered in superficial scrapes and cuts.
When Uncle Stan found out about my trip to the hospital, he got pretty upset, and left a furious voice mail on the office’s line demanding a private meeting with Ariane. When I met him for coffee the day after the scheduled meeting, I asked him how it went.
“How what went? Oh, the meeting. It was fine,” he said. His eyes were vague. You’d have to know him as well as I did to notice, but it was unmistakable to me.
“It was fine?” I repeated dubiously.
“Yeah, why? She gave you a good review. By the way, remember to call your mom; she practically talked my ear off last night complaining that you never call her anymore. You used to call her all the time when you lived in San Francisco.”
I was going to retort that I had no life when I was there, but found myself silent again, realizing that I had even less of a life here. I mean, I tried; I went out to Tubby’s and the Imperial every once in a while, and had a drink and danced a little, but it didn’t feel like a life. My life was in the lab. The rest of it was just killing time.
My life was Ariane.
I wanted to quit and go back to Vegas, where at least the sun came out once in a while, get away from all this darkness and obfuscation; but to be able to quit I’d have to tell her.
Who was I trying to kid? I’d never be able to leave her. There was never any other project but this one.
At the end of the week, Ariane put her hand on my shoulder and looked into my eyes. “I have something really important to discuss with you,” she said. “Would you be able to meet me for a drink tomorrow night at ten? I’ve heard they’re closing the Hotel Entr’acte, and I want to have a drink at the hotel bar one last time before it’s gone. It’s a nice little place, and they’re only open until eleven, so I won’t keep you long. Do you have plans that I’m ruining?”
“I never have plans that serious,” I said, my voice sounding odd in the humming stillness of the office. “Ten? Sure.”
She broke eye contact, patted my shoulder, and half turned away. “Don’t worry,” she said with a forced laugh. “I’m not going to fire you or anything. You’ve been a great help to me. I don’t know what I would have done without you.”
I hadn’t even thought about the possibility that she might fire me, and it threw me for a minute, and I didn’t thank her for the compliment. She arched her eyebrows and gave me a searching look, which I couldn’t reciprocate. Now that I wasn’t looking into her eyes, I found myself grateful, and dreading the next time she got me. I was prey and my eyes were vulnerable.
“I wonder if—Ariane, what was up that night you came over?” It all came out in a rush, like I’d punched myself in the stomach without even being aware of it. I studied her reflection in the curved glass of the computer monitor; she was looking at me, and she hadn’t blinked or gasped or anything of the sort. It was enough for me to feel like a complete idiot for even asking.
She’d make a great card shark in the casinos, with a poker face that good.
My skin began to crawl, my head ached, and I had a sudden urge to urinate. I took a deep breath, and willed these sensations to go away; they couldn’t possibly be real, not all of them happening at once.
Ariane sighed, breaking my concentration, but the headache and the pissing urge went away, leaving only a hyper-awareness of my clothing against my skin. “I apologize for that,” she said. “I’ve just been under a lot of stress. I had a fight at home that made me have to leave the house. You know how, when you’re so incredibly furious—especially when you know good and well in your heart that it’s over something stupid and trivial—you just have to get the fuck out of there?” Her laugh staggered, but I couldn’t tell from where I sat if she was shaken with amusement or restrained sobbing. Yeah, probably both. I wouldn’t turn around. “And I went out without my coat.”
“And you came all the way down by my house,” I said.
“Yeah, I was really mad,” Ariane explained. “I’m sorry. I promise I won’t do anything like that again. It’s not like me at all.”
“What I don’t understand is how I knew you were coming,” I pressed on. “Even before you rang the bell. Like, five minutes before. I woke up and thought ‘Better get up—Ariane is coming. Better be ready to let her in.’ Isn’t that weird?”
“Yeah,” said Ariane, her voice suddenly flat, “that is weird. I’ll see you at ten.” Like shutting a book. What had we been talking about? It was late and I was drowsy and my forehead was sore, like I’d been hitting it gently against a wall for an hour. I finished up what I was doing and grabbed my coat and went home.
That morning, I slept marvelously well, like I’d been rolled up in a black velvet curtain.
I had never noticed the existence of the Entr’acte before, as it was in an area of downtown that, while it was only a few blocks away from my apartment, I had never really thought to visit. I might have ridden my bike past the concrete-and-brick edifice half a dozen times without actually seeing it, concentrating harder on avoiding the skinny metal tracks of the light rail line that ran alongside it. When I went through the vintage-furnished lobby to get to the bar, I saw no hotel guests, only sleepy-looking clerks behind the desk who paid no attention to me. The bar had only one other customer, his gaze riveted to the TV screen mounted on the wall, broadcasting a brutal overtime basketball battle. But the bartender said hello to me, and Ariane was already there, sitting alone, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette and staring at her reflection in the mirror.
The sight of her reflection calmed me immensely, and I smiled and sat down. “Hi, thanks for coming,” she said. “I hope my smoking doesn’t bother you too much.”
“I never knew you smoked,” I replied.
“I don’t know why I bother . . . it’s a completely pointless nervous habit. But pointless habits really come in handy sometimes. Would you like one?” She indicated a filigreed silver case next to her glass. “They’re definitely the best tobacco I’ve ever smoked, for what it’s worth.”
I considered refusing, but agreed and took one anyway. It made me cough. “Sorry, I’m just used to filters,” I said. “I’m sure it’s really good.”
She just looked at me, studying me, smoke hazing the air between us. Her skin was incredibly pale, a translucent honey so light that she seemed to glow. “Margaret,” she said, “what I need to tell you is very difficult to explain. But I think that you deserve to know what’s going on. You deserve a choice.”
The bartender chose that moment to approach. “Evening, ladies. What would you like?” he asked pleasantly.
My blood turned to anxious ice. “Do you have any one-fifty-one rum?” I asked. When he told me they did, I ordered a shot. Ariane didn’t order anything; in fact, it didn’t look like she had ever ordered anything, as only a glass of ice water sat untouched on a napkin in front of her. “What’s going on?”
“I created the pseudo-molifaxone for a reason,” Ariane said. “I made it to treat John.” I didn’t say anything, and she glanced up at the bartender bringing my rum as if he were trampling on a bed of flowers. I took a big swallow of the liquor, gasping as it hit my already rough throat, and relit the stub of the cigarette I had given up on. It was easier on the second try.
Ariane continued, “Because it was my fault that he ended up the way he did.”
“What way?”
“Well . . .” She made a face. “Schizotypal. And . . . not human.”
I laughed, but quietly. “What are you talking about? Being mentally ill isn’t that bad.”
“Margaret,” she whispered intently. “We’re not. Human. You’ve noticed. There’s no way for you not to notice.”
At the edges of her glistening, wine-red lips, her canine teeth looked long and sharp. No. Were. They were long and sharp.
She kept talking, although I wished that she wouldn’t. “I was changed a little more than ten years ago. John was a few days after me. I made him—I changed him. I had to do it to save his life. He’d been attacked, he was bleeding to death, and I did the best I could, with . . . with the help of . . . of the first one I’d met. But it didn’t go quite right . . .”
“The ‘one.’ ‘Made.’ ‘Changed.’ This doesn’t make any sense. Are you talking about . . . But that’s not real—that doesn’t exist. That’s not real, is it?” I babbled. To stop myself, I gulped the rest of my rum, and my head went swimmy from the fumes. “That’s a fantasy. That’s fiction.”
“I’m sitting right here,” Ariane said, stretching out her fingers to pick up another cigarette. Her finger-nails didn’t have any colored polish on them, like they usually did, but instead were some dull gray-white color. The bones in her fingers looked as long and fragile as glass straws. I looked up at her face, and she gave me an exaggerated grin-snarl, displaying those canine teeth, top and bottom, maybe a millimeter longer, a few degrees more pointed; but those tiny differences were everything. My throat slammed shut and my eyes burned; I think I would have started to weep, but the smoke had dried me out.
“So why is he crazy, and—and not you?” I stammered.
“He didn’t get enough blood,” she explained. “We were in too much of a hurry. It’s a very precise process, and the slightest error will either cause death or interfere with the re-creation of neural connections in the brain.” She gave me a little smile. “It’s difficult to explain—let me show you.”
I tried to say, “No,” but it was too late; I was seeing it in my mind, like I was standing right there, in the past—in someone else’s past—and I didn’t want to see it, I didn’t want to know. Ghoulish, emaciated men with burning eyes and skin like white wax, and everywhere, in everything, sexual and emotional desire beyond anything I could have possibly imagined. Maria and George begat Orfeo begat Daniel begat Ariane; Ariane and Orfeo begat John. Maria was dead and Ariane had never seen her, so her imagining of her was vague, like a blurry photograph. Daniel was dead and she could still remember the touch of his hands like he was there in the bar with us.
“Oh, my God,” I whispered. “But I can see you in the mirror. It’s not real. I’ve been hypnotized.”
“You have been,” Ariane said, “but now you’re not anymore. I snapped my fingers and woke you up. We have the ability to communicate telepathically and to influence . . . humans.” She grimaced. “This ability allows us to survive among humans. We can hide ourselves, make it seem like everything’s normal and okay. That ability gets stronger if we ever exchange fluids with one of you.”
“Did we?” My voice came out as a faint rasp.
She nodded, eyes downcast. “I ingested your blood on two separate occasions,” she admitted.
I scoffed at the word ingested. “You make it sound so clinical,” I spat. “Why don’t you just call it what it is?”
She didn’t respond to my anger, her face still smooth and sad, like she had been through this so many times in her mind that she was numb to it now. “I offer you the choice now,” Ariane said, “to join us. I can make you. I can save your life. The radiation from the heavy potassium’s already given you thyroid cancer. You’re not going to make it otherwise. I’m sorry, but this doesn’t have to be the end of the line.”
“What?” I said, jumping from my chair and clutching my throat. Even the guy at the bar watching the game looked over, and the bartender took a cautious step toward the gap between the bottles and the bar.
Ariane slowly, gracefully, lifted her hand and let it drift back down to the table, like a leaf settling onto the ground, and the bartender and sports fan moved back to their original configurations, then sat, motionless, waiting for direction.
I stared at Ariane, shaking my head, trying to gulp away the sticky dryness in my throat, knowing that the overwhelming urge to pee was no longer an illusion. I had no interest in speaking to her. The answer was no. Simple as that. She got her answer; inside my head, I was screaming it. No.
The vampire made no move to stand up, just kept watching me, and her expression would have been heartbreaking if she hadn’t been a bizarre, impossible, blood-drinking monster. She looked so normal for a second, like a sad, defeated young student, so young, as young as I was, like she’d just been dumped, but knowing that it was because of her own mistake.
How could she? How dare she have feelings? She? It! Masquerading as a human being so that it could keep me as its slave! The two men just stood there, eyes vacant, on hold.
Just like I had been.
I turned and ran out of the bar, rushing away with my guts churning. Out on the street, the cold air slapped me in the face, and I put my hand against the brick wall next to the glass doors to steady myself as I puked up the rum. It burned twice as much coming up as it had going down, and something about the repulsive and painful action really brought me back to myself. I no longer felt dizzy. I could breathe. The change from how I had felt earlier that day was amazing, from how I’d felt ever since moving to this fucked-up town. The range of her telepathic influence staggered me. She had controlled me twenty-four hours a day since I’d first seen her. She controlled everyone she saw. Except John. It had been obvious that he was outside her control. But of course, he was one of them, too. Christ, it all made so much sense.
I ran as fast as I could back home, but it was hard; I was bone-tired, and my legs and arms felt like they had twenty pounds of lead strapped to each one. I needed to get to a hospital and have them check out my thyroid, see if she had been bullshitting me about the cancer. But first, I needed to call the police.
But even more first, before doing anything else, I needed to get the hell out of town. They’d probably be mad that I told on them. I knew where Ariane lived; even though I’d seen no one when I was there, I imagined swarms of them, sliding half-invisibly across the lawn and climbing up from the cellar with mud clinging to their bloodless skins. Once I called the police, they’d go over there with silver bullets and flamethrowers and destroy them.
Jesus, of course she had late office hours. She had OMI in the palm of her hand. None of them suspected anything. Stupid academics and their tolerance for eccentricities; who knew how many people had already died?
My hands shook so badly that I dropped my keys four times, once after I’d already opened the foyer door. By the time I was inside my apartment I had started crying; big, thick, rum puke-flavored sobs of sheer terror. I went to the kitchen and poured a glass of water, took a gulp, and cried a little bit more because it felt good to wash myself from the inside. I caught my distorted reflection in the mirrored surface of the water tap; the only thing that was recognizable was the hair. The fucking hair. I resolved to dye it as soon as I was back in Vegas, and if that layered ruby-scarlet couldn’t be dyed over, I’d shave it off. To hell with bioscience; I’d work slinging hash in a truck stop. I’d turn tricks. I’d become a hermit. I didn’t know if it would help me forget what I’d seen, what I knew, but I’d give it a try.
