“Then, one night, I briefly broke through the dreams.” His grip tightened as he talked. “And I found myself clutched to the breast of my elegant host.” He couldn’t look at her now, while he told her this. He didn’t want to see the disgust he felt echoed on her face. “There was sharp pain at my throat where his head lay. I started to struggle and to make noise, even then misinterpreting his actions, my young manhood offended. He pulled away and hit me. He looked furious. It wasn’t the look of a sane man. His face was flushed, his eyes were red, and blood smeared his mouth. Then he saw the fear in me, and his lips drew back in a delighted snarl—they revealed dripping yellowed fangs.”
Zoë pulled her hands from Simon with a squeak of protest and rubbed her fingers. Simon glanced in surprise at his own hands, yet continued speaking.
“ ‘Perhaps I was too enthusiastic tonight,’ the man said, his anger turning to amusement. There are a few nights left in you yet, I should not ruin them.’ He left me screaming hoarsely but too weak to move. I must have fainted.
“I awoke to find the boy there beside me. I cringed away. The soup will return your strength for only so long,’ he said matter-of-factly, ‘and that time has passed. If you wish to escape my master, then further actions are necessary.’
“ ‘What?’ I whispered, hope rising. But then I was suspicious. ‘Why?’
“ ‘Because he beats me. Because he holds from me what I desire. Because I hate him. Is that enough? I am tired of doing his dirty work and luring prey like you to his den, because he’s so disgustingly old and jaded, it bores him to do it himself.’
“It would save my life, so I nodded acceptance, and the boy told me his plan. ‘He cannot feast upon his own. If I make you like him, he cannot kill you.’
“I did not think it possible to be sicker than I already was, but my stomach heaved.” Simon grimaced, feeling sick at the memory. “I struggled to rise. ‘No!’ I tried to cry, but it came out as a frightened squeak.
“ ‘Do you want to die?’ he whispered fiercely. ‘It’s your only choice.’ I couldn’t speak. ‘It’s not so bad,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to be a beast like him. He made me, and I’m not awful, am I?’ I moved as far away from him as I could on that tiny bed. He reached for me anxiously. ‘You don’t have to prey on humans; animals suffice. You eat animals anyway.’ I tried to shake free of him, but he held tighter. ‘It’s your only chance,’ he insisted. He stroked my clammy brow and smiled. ‘I could change you anyway, against your will, but I wouldn’t want to do that. I wouldn’t want to force you. I want to save your life.’ He repeatedly stroked my brow, lulling me, and I relaxed and foolishly took comfort in it. ‘I want to save your life,’ he repeated. ‘He’ll kill you!’
“And, Zoë, I was so frightened, so weak, and so afraid of dying, I ignored the screaming inside of me, and believed his lies. Heaven help me, I said yes.”
Simon felt her warm hand on his and realized he had not been seeing this room at all. His eyes focused on Zoë, and he felt ashamed at the compassion on her face. It was a second before he could speak again.
“He opened my shirt. I didn’t know what to expect. Quickly, he sliced my chest with a clawlike nail. I whimpered—then I saw his fangs and gave up hope. He was torturing me. He was like the other. But he swiftly snicked his own wrist and held it to my chest. Our blood mingled there as I stared down in disbelief. ‘To make sure,’ he said, and held out his wrist to me. I looked at him uncomprehendingly. ‘Suck,’ he said, and I jerked my head away. But he grasped my hair with a grip beyond the strength of a child and forced my head around. ‘For your life,’ he hissed. And choking back the bile, I drank his blood, while he lapped mine up directly above my heart. I sucked till he pulled his wrist away.
“That is the way our kind are born, Zoë. It takes the sharing of blood. Our victims, when they’re drained, well—they’re just dead. They don’t rise again. Not unless, in their final weakness, they share the blood of one of the damned.
“While I watched in horror, the boy held his arm out for me to see as the blood dried and flaked off, the skin curled back together with a will of its own, the cut on his wrist sealed, and the scar faded away into nothing. ‘No one can hurt you now,’ he said.
“And it’s true, Zoë. No matter what has happened to me, the only scar I have is the one he gave me.”
“Show me,” Zoë said, challenging him.
Simon smiled sadly. He slipped the jacket off in a creaking of leather and pulled the T-shirt over his head, tousling his hair. Zoë ran a burning finger along the scar, from above his left nipple in a streak to his right ribs. He closed his eyes. Her touch seared his marble-cold flesh deliciously, and his nipples hardened; he was aware of the cold even more because of her. He pulled her to him. Take away my cold, he thought. Make me warm again. She trembled, and he thought perhaps it was not from fear, but because she had never been held to a man’s naked chest before. Yet she wrapped her arms around him. How long, he thought, since a beautiful girl trembled for me alone, and not because of my power to hypnotize. He continued his story, holding her tight against the cold.
“I crashed into a dark and dreamless sleep; the sort of sleep where a person loses contact with his very existence. I think that was when I died.
“When I woke up again, I had changed. I felt as if a cold sun were glowing within me and growing larger. With it came power. All through that day anger built in me, as my strength grew. The animal side of me was rising. Finally, I lay there rigid, staring at the ceiling, awaiting my tormentor, not knowing yet what I would do, and terrified by my rage.
“The door finally squeaked open, and I feigned sleep, not knowing what else to do. The man came to me where I lay, and I heard his breath rasping greedily as he bent to me. His weight on the bed rolled me against him. When he put his loathed face to my neck, I was mindlessly ready to strangle him, but his fangs sank into my vein, paralyzing me for that moment. But then he wrenched back. He spat. He snarled. He pushed himself off the bed with a force that shattered the frame, and threw me against the wall. ‘Boy!’ he screamed, whirling to face the door. ‘Boy! What have you done?’
“I pulled myself across the broken bed toward him as the boy came hurtling through the door with a look of glee on his face. ‘Despicable puppy,’ my captor said. ‘You dare defy me?’ He lurched for the boy, and the beast broke through in me.” Simon saw that other room again and felt that surge of hate. “I looked around madly for a weapon and snatched what was at hand. Stumbling from the bed, I flung myself at him. I ran him through with a shard from the ruined bedpost.” Simon felt Zoë shudder as she made a sound of disgust. “He fell to the floor, jerking and twitching. His dark wig slid from his head, revealing frosty hair. His skin fell in. He shrank. He writhed. Finally he lay still, a shriveled monkey of a thing, scarcely human.
“The boy kicked the corpse and grinned. ‘How clever,’ he said. ‘Much better than what I had in mind.’ I was shaking so badly, I could hardly spare much amazement for his words.” Simon paused, aware of how tightly Zoë held him. ‘I’m rich now,’ the boy said. ‘The fool willed me all his goods, never expecting me to inherit, of course. The servants will get rid of this—I have already promised them much for their loyalty. We will have a fine time together, Simon.’
“This was the first time he had used my name. I did not remember telling it. ‘Why together?’ I asked. ‘Why me?’ And he answered, ‘When you look like a child, you need a protector, someone who stands as a guardian in others’ eyes. Who better than one’s own brother?’ “
Zoë released Simon and sat back. “Christopher,” she said.
He nodded.
“I thought so.” Yet she looked shocked.
“Yes, it all fell into place—who the man was, who this child, if I could profane the word, was.” Simon turned from Zoë. He would hate even more telling the next part. He placed his hands lightly on the coffee table and continued, head bowed, feeling the ice rise again within him.
“ ‘You will get stronger,’ Christopher told me, ‘but the color will fade from you as your blood changes. Your heart will cease to beat, yet, nevertheless, your blood will crawl through your veins. You will take in air out of habit only; you will need it to speak but not to live. And you will shun the day and its burning rays, because the daylight is for the living and the sun rejects us. You will live by night. But what power you will have! The power to suck the very essence of life itself and bend others to your will. You will live a long, long time—time enough to accumulate wealth and to afford many pleasures. We will be good together, Simon. You won’t be like Mother.’
“ ‘What do you mean?’ I demanded, dreading the answer.
“And Christopher told me. ‘Wulfram wanted me to kill her to prove I was loyal to him. I didn’t like it much and offered her a chance. But she turned from me. She didn’t love me anymore.’
“ ‘Mother?’ I said, softly at first, in shock. ‘You killed Mother?’ I asked louder. Then, ‘Mother!’ I screamed.”
Zoë shrieked and jerked back. The table had cracked. The glass was rimed with frost. Simon shook.
“I hurled myself at him, but I was slammed to the ground. I didn’t expect it from one his size. He grinned at me and gloated. ‘As I said, you will grow stronger—but not now. I am the strong one now.’ He turned.
“ ‘Oh, who do you desire for your first meal?’ he asked casually over his shoulder as he left. ‘Shall I bring home your favorite girl from that tavern of yours?’
“I pulled myself from the floor. ‘You said animals.’
“ ‘I lied,’ he said through the crack of the door. It closed, and I heard him slide a bolt home outside. It was then I realized what I had done.
“I stumbled frantically around that room looking for another way out, but there was no other door. I wrenched down drapery, meaning to flee through a window, but found none, just blank wall. I pummeled the locked door with useless fists and battered my shoulder against it, to no avail. I even tried to dig through the wall with a spoon, but the room had to be underground, with rock behind the plaster, for all the impression I made. I gave up, exhausted, and flung myself back on the shattered bed. I was trapped, and damned, with only a hideous corpse for company. Maybe that was when I started to go mad.”
Simon suddenly noticed the table and removed his hands. There were no cuts.
“He brought me a girl that night, a cringing young thing. I refused to go near her. ‘You will.’ He laughed and dragged her away.
“Yet night after night I refused, and he grew angrier each time. But I was growing weaker, and every time he brought me the offering it was harder to resist. Finally, he brought her in bound, and slashed her throat with a kitchen knife so the blood would run freely. He took his fill in front of me until his ploy worked, and the smell of fresh blood drove me wild. I made a mess of it while Christopher laughed and laughed, as if it were a great joke. But the joke was on him, for he’d given me the power to overcome him. To his surprise I knocked him aside and ran from that room, from that detested house, out into the streets.
“I ran and ran.
“I remember retching in an alley, wiping my mouth over and over with the only thing I wore, a ragged, blood-soaked shirt. But after that my mind broke with the guilt and disgust.
“I must have found my way to the outskirts of the city, to the fields, then to the woods. I don’t know how I survived. Don’t ask me what I did, because I have few memories of that time. I became a mindless animal. I did find that Christopher was right after all. You can survive on animals for a time, but it never satisfies—the hunger is never totally sated, it never leaves you, and it hurts. I know I killed people when I could find them, and anything else when I could not.
“It was years until my senses began to come back, and I made my way into the world of men again. By that time I was used to the killing, but never to the disgust afterward. As my memory returned, I swore to avenge myself on Christopher, for my mother’s sake—for mine.
“I have followed him for many years.”
“How did you trace him after all that time?” Zoë asked.
Simon smiled sadly. “It was easy, really. I followed reports of a certain type of violence—girls disappearing or found mutilated. Three times I even came face-to-face with him. I almost had him in London in the eighteen eighties, but he got away.”
“How did you get here?”
“I came over in the thirties. An ocean-liner murder reported in the paper tipped me off. I was terribly sick all the way.”
Zoë shook her head, “No, I mean this town.”
“Oh.…There was a mysterious spate of deaths at an orphanage. I had lost Christopher’s trail a year before. He had left such a disquietingly obvious trail of child pornography, it was as if he were taunting me, but suddenly there was no more evidence; the trail dead-ended just when I was getting close. The orphanage was the first clue since then.
“I went there. I had trouble at first, but because of my resemblance to Christopher, finally one of the administrators talked to me. I didn’t know what story he’d told, but I said we were separated by the courts, and he’d run away from a foster home. I explained that he wasn’t always very truthful, but that if I could just see him, I was sure we could set everything straight. She was kind but firm. This was impossible; he had gone to a home, and without any papers to prove my claim, there was nothing she could do. Why didn’t I have my social worker contact her? I don’t know what she thought I was up to, but I don’t think she believed me one bit.
“I left as if crushed, but she had invited me into her office, so I could go back. I returned that night, through a crack in her window frame, and read her files. I found out where he was, then I came here.
“I’ve been watching him, Zoë. I’ve seen what he does. You don’t want to let him roam free in your town. He drinks their blood, Zoë.”
“Like you?”
“But, Zoë, he doesn’t have to kill them. Not like that.”
“You’ve never killed anyone?” Her eyes were piercing.
Simon picked up his T-shirt and twisted it in his hands. “I told you I did. You know I did.” Then he grabbed her hand. “But I don’t have to. I can control it. He doesn’t even try. He enjoys the kill.”
Zoë took the T-shirt from him and smoothed it on her lap. “You can control it?”
“Yes, I’ve done it. I’ve lulled them into a gentle mist and sipped them slowly, then left them with breath.”
He didn’t mention the times he’d failed, when it had been so long since he’d tasted human blood that he couldn’t pull away, and had fallen into that mist along with his prey, and floated there, awakening ages later with a cold empty shell in his arms. It was always more satisfying to the end, and he’d often wondered if his kind fed as much upon the dying as upon the blood. Christopher seemed to relish it more than the blood.
“What about that crucifix?” Zoë asked. “Was it hurting you?”
“Oh, no.” He rubbed at his arm guiltily, as if it itched, an excuse to avert his eyes. “Just an old wives’ tale. You can’t believe everything you read. It was tasteless, that’s all.” What’s wrong with me, he wondered. I thought I’d decided to trust her. Still, it felt frighteningly stupid to give someone a weapon against him.
“Simon?” Zoë touched his arm. “Where are your fangs?”
She looked as if she pitied him. Did she still think him a mad, hungry boy from the streets? “They can’t just appear. They have to be stimulated by the smell or the promise of blood. Shall I show you?” he said half jokingly.
He reached for her and saw a spark of fear in her eyes. It excited him and urged him on. Ah, she believes just a little, he thought. Yet she folded into him and laid her head on his shoulder. She stroked his arm. Sweet warmth. Sweet, searing heat.
“Poor Simon. What can I believe?”
Her throat throbbed with life near his mouth, and the gentle, warm smell of her made him giddy. He fought it
briefly, but it was no good; she was too near, too inviting. The fangs slid from their sheaths. “Believe this,” he whispered, and kissed her neck softly. “And this, and this.” Then he kissed her with the sharp, sleek kiss, the silver kiss, so swift and true, and razor sharp, and her warmth was flowing into him. He could feel it seeping through his body—warmth, sweet warmth.
She uttered a small, surprised cry and fought him for a second, but he stroked her hair and caressed her. I won’t hurt you, he thought. Little bird, little dear. I won’t hurt you. And she moaned and slipped her arms around him. It was the tender ecstasy of the kissed that he could send her with his touch. It throbbed through his fingers, through his arms, through his chest, like the blood through her veins. It thrummed a rhythm in him that he shared with her. She sighed, her breath came harder, and he felt himself falling. I must stop now, he thought. But I can’t stop. He held her closer still, as if he could never let go. He couldn’t let go.
Yet he did. Gasping, he firmly pushed her away. They stared at each other muzzily.
“I can stop if I want,” he whispered hoarsely.
She blushed, then touched her neck and looked at the droplets of blood on her fingers wonderingly. “But it was … I mean, it wasn’t terrible. It was … I don’t know.”
He wanted to kiss her again. “It can be terrible. He makes it terrible. I can make it sweet.” He took her hand, and the throbbing began deep inside him once more. I can stop, he thought as he reached for her.
The phone rang. They both jumped.
Zoë pushed him away and went to answer it. “My mother,” she said, almost apologizing.
He heard Zoë pick up the phone in the hall. She answered as if frightened, but then her tone changed to one of surprise. “Lorraine! Hi! You did? She told you? Uh-huh. Yeah.” There was hesitancy in her voice. “Yeah, I guess I was.” Was that relief? “No, I was busy. Yeah. Trick-or-treaters.” Her voice was warmer, as if she was ready to talk much more, but she must have remembered him. “Listen, I’ve got something to finish up. Can I call you back later? Okay. Bye.” She hung up.