Sweeter Than Wine
In one place, toward the rear of the mall, away from the road and the prying eyes of local police and the highway patrol, one of the sheets of covered-covered plywood had been loosened so that it hung by one corner and could be swung up and away to the passage of human beings.
And their motorcycles.
Inside, as it grew darker now by the minute, the traveler could smell a small fire, fed by scraps and debris that littered the place and watch its flickering, dancing glow reflected along the building’s inner walls. Vapors released from various plastics and the dried paint on the burning junk would undoubtedly shorten the lives of the fire-builders faster and more certainly than any drugs they might be using.
Drugs, poisons, and diseases in the blood of victims had never represented a problem to the traveler. Some variety of magic—or perhaps it was simply the unromantic but more scientific fact that traveler and prey were of different species—had always seemed to neutralize whatever potential threat presented itself. The Black Death, the ergot-inspired mass insanity of the Dark Ages, the waves of New World venereal disease that had swept the Old World during the Age of Discovery, the so-called Spanish Influenza, the AIDS phenomenon, none of them had meant anything at all to the traveler except easier prey.
The traveler suspected that the local authorities knew perfectly well that the property was being used this way. Better to keep these miscreants where one knew where they were, than drive them away into places where they might possibly disturb or frighten taxpayers and voters.
“Whatcha doin’ in here, slow-ped?”
The young specimen suddenly confronting the traveler was short but broad, covered with tattoos that were too new to be faded but too old to be garish. He was pierced in at least a dozen places and had shaved his head, saving only a small scalp-lock at the back, bound up in a colored cord. He was bare to the waist, except for a black leather vest that matched his trousers and bore various arcane markings, including the name and symbol of his affiliate tribal grouping, “The Reptiles”.
In one hand he held another of those “knuckle duster” knives that seemed so popular in America, this one with a long, sharp, curving blade.
Over the ages, the traveler had found scant use for weapons and never carried any. Tearing one’s enemies and prey apart with one’s naked hands and bared fangs worked as well, and was infinitely more satisfying.
At need, the traveler could quell a distant foe with casual ease, depending on superior strength and superhuman eye-hand coordination to throw a stone the size of two fists, for example, a hundred meters or more and invariably strike with deadly accuracy. No jumped-up king’s thug, no matter how well armored and mounted, had ever bested the traveler.
And, of course, on the rare occasion that the traveler felt a weapon was needed, it could always be taken from an enemy within arm’s reach.
“You’re my first,” gloated the tattooed youth, amateurishly rotating the tip of his knife in tiny circles. “This is gonna set me up!”
Wordless, the traveler reached out with a hand vastly swifter than the quickest viper and seized the young man’s extended knife hand, pulling it to the right so the youth wound up with his back to the predator.
“Hey, that’s not—!”
Reaching over the young man’s left shoulder, the traveler hooked fingers under the right side of his jaw, canted it, exposing his neck, and sank long fangs into flesh. Whatever fresh, hot blood the traveler didn’t take coursed freely down the front of the young man’s body. He managed another, rather pathetic scream—more of a whimper, really, thought the traveler, who was an expert in such matters—and fell limp. Not wanting to spoil the rest of the evening—the traveler had plans for the others of the gang—he was permitted to fall where he stood.
“What the fuck?” That from another figure, similarly attired, but older, his hair and beard beginning to show traces of gray. Standing in the sagging remains of a doorway, in one tattooed hand he held a long screwdriver, from the other swung the greasy drive chain of a motorcycle.
“He’s done Ratty!” observed another tribesman, from behind the first. Behind him, other figures had begun to pile up, the rearmost of them “old ladies”—the women, slaves and volunteers alike, of the tribe.
“Holy shit!” several of them exclaimed at once.
The traveler lifted one hand, palm up, and beckoned with crooked fingers. It was a gesture from one of the rare motion pictures that the vampire had seen—at a Budapest theater full of warm, delicious schoolgirls, crowded shoulder to shoulder, if memory served—and liked.
This will be fun.
12: DINNER IN A DUNGEON
“Good can imagine Evil; but Evil cannot
imagine Good.”—W. H. Auden
Next afternoon, when I finally woke up—Fiddlestring and I had enjoyed mudbugs and old movies into the early hours—I got up, drank some blood from the refrigerator (I should do something about feeding fresh as soon as possible, I reminded myself), ate a quick breakfast, fed the cat, whose belly was so round and taut he didn’t really care, and drove to the hospital, a little worried about what I might find there.
I needn’t have worried, as it turned out. When I elevatored to the oncology floor, Priscilla was sitting up, surrounded by her adoring family. With her were Anton, their son Patrick, and their daughter Amber. Priscilla’s color had come back, and she looked ten years younger already.
“J!” she exclaimed when she saw me standing in the door. I’d stopped off at a florist and bought her a big bouquet of black-eyed susans, their stems cradled in the fat arms of a small plaid teddy bear.
Yeah, I know.
Amber, a lithe and willowy strawberry blond, flowed from the corner she had occupied of her mother’s bed, stood on tiptoe to give me a big kiss on the cheek despite the sun block—like her brother, the girl had grown up thinking she knew what was wrong with me—then stood beside me with her arms around my neck, and turned toward her mother.
From the day she was born, she’d always been able to make me smile no matter how generally rotten things were, otherwise. I gave her a hug. But not too big. She was a grown woman, now, and my surrogate daughter.
“Hiya, Mrs. V.,” I said over the top of Amber’s head. “You look great! Have any fresh air and sunshine, yet?” Of course I had a reason—an extremely important reason—for asking her about that. By now, Patrick, in civilian clothing, had arisen from the Comfy Chair and I disdained his proffered handshake, giving him a great big hug, too, instead.
I sent the kids back to their mom, taking a couple of steps closer to the bed, myself. I nodded at Anton. He nodded back, abstractedly. The man seemed oblivious to everything but the fact, I surmised, that his Priscilla wasn’t going to die any time soon. As far as I was concerned, Anton could be as abstracted as he wanted. I didn’t blame him.
She grinned. “As a matter of fact, we just came in from the roof. Plenty of sunshine, but not very much fresh air. All we could smell was that little Vietnamese restaurant across the street, serving lunch.” She closed her eyes, remembering. “Actually, it smelled pretty good.”
I laughed. “I noticed it when I got here. Hot and sour soup—my favorite.” Basically, food is my favorite dish. “Add a big handful of crispy noodles, you’ve got the breakfast of champions. So tell me what makes you so bright and chirpy this fine afternoon? Last time I saw you—”
“Don’t remind me, please!” She grimaced. It was like the lights in the room had dimmed. “I can barely remember seeing you. It’s like a dream.”
“More like a nightmare, if I was in it.” The lights came back up again.
Anton spoke. “Nobody understands it. Two days ago, they said—you know what they said—but now it’s all but gone. ‘Spontaneous remission’, as if naming it explains it. A fucking miracle, I call it!”
Patrick made a sour face. “Now don’t get religion on us, Dad. The human body is a marvelous thing, and Mom is a pretty determined critter—”
“I am not a crit
ter, Patrick Aloysius Varick!” The boy’s real name was John Patrick, and Priscilla was laughing as she said it. I was so relieved I thought my knees were going to give out on me. She wasn’t going to die and she wasn’t going to be a vampire. Two out of two. I made a mental note to get ahold of her charts and test results, somehow, to make damned sure that she wouldn’t be requiring a second “treatment”.
I bent down to give her a peck on the cheek, stood up, and said, “Sorry to run. I have work to do this afternoon. Should I come back tonight?”
They all agreed I should. I excused myself, walked out of the room considerably lighter of heart, took the elevator down to the ground floor and the covered walkway to the tree-shaded part of the parking lot. Around the hospital and across the street, I parked again and entered Saigon Gone. A big bowl of soup and an order of Vietnamese eggrolls later, I pointed the Suburban’s blunt nose east and headed home.
***
There was mail in the box when I got back. After I garaged the car, I went through the house to the front, collected it, and took it to my desk. The usual, for the most part: bills, insurance ads, fliers from the hardware store, something from the AARP—if they only knew. On the other hand, they could probably teach me a thing or three about bloodsucking.
Fiddlestring joined me, taking the chair across the desk from me, as if he were a brand new client. He meowed a greeting at me. I meowed back.
“What do we have here?” I asked him rhetorically. There was also a fat Number 10 envelope with my name neatly hand-printed on it, but no address or stamp. I held it up to the light, which was kind of stupid, gave it a sniff—strong lilac scent, like a sachet in a little old lady’s underwear drawer—then found my letter opener, an authentic sliver of the decking of the H.M.S. Victory—and slit the top across.
“Holy shit!”
Whoever it was, they sure as hell knew how to impress a guy. Inside I discovered no fewer than two dozen twenty dollar bills—twenty-five, as it turned out, five hundred bucks even—and a note, written in the same ballpoint as the envelope, but in a nicely rounded cursive that looked feminine, and a bit foreign, for some reason. The lilac scent came from a cardboard air freshener, like you find at a filling station or automotive parts store and hang from your rear view mirror.
“Please accept this money as a retainer or down payment. I have information for you and employment. Meet me at eight o’clock at Boiling Oil, downstairs. The reservation will be in the name of Sava Savanovic.”
I’d heard that name before, somewhere.
“What’s a Sava Savonovic?” I asked Fiddlestring, but the big orange bum didn’t answer. I hadn’t forgotten the phony federale that Quinn, Quyen, and T.W. had warned me was sniffing around lately, but if this was his work, it was probably best just to confront him and get it over with quick. Besides, one person’s blood is as good as any other’s.
Boiling Oil was a fondue place between the college and downtown New Prospect, in a former industrial area undergoing gentrification. It was new and I hadn’t eaten there yet, but I’d meant to for some time. Somebody had taken an old brick factory building, erected a crenellated top along the facade, and added arched doors and a pair of cylindrical brick towers at the front corners, with conical slate roofs. All they were missing was a moat, drawbridge, and portcullis. What had once been a basement was now “Ye Dungeon”, the chicest bar in town.
Sava Savanovic. It was six o’clock already. I tucked the money back into the envelope, and the envelope into the office safe. I would take it to the restaurant in case I had to turn the job down. I called Anton to let him know I wouldn’t be showing up tonight after all, then went upstairs to shower and change my clothes, not necessarily in that order.
Fiddlestring followed me until I got into the shower.
The big sissy.
***
Boiling Oil didn’t require me to wear a necktie, but settled for my open-collared shirt, Duluth Trading Company “firehose” sports jacket with about half a billion pockets, and navy blue Dockers. Among other things, the jacket concealed my old Bianchi 9R shoulder holster in which the .38 Detective Special was slung upside-down under my left armpit.
Six rounds of Glaser Safety Slugs made up for the weakness of .38 Special. Twelve more in Safariland speedstrips added to the comfort factor.
I told the pretty girl standing at the podium near the entrance “Sava Savanovic”, resisting the urge to whisper, and feeling like what I’d really said was “swordfish”. Another cute young thing grabbed a couple of giant menus and led me on the most amazing and circuitous trek, through the restaurant, which had begun its life long ago as a burlap bag factory, down a flight of stairs, across that floor, filled with happy, chattering customers playing with small cauldrons of heated liquids, down another flight of stairs, and to a little corner booth, surrounded on two sides by glassed-in wine racks full of tilted bottles.
She lifted a four-inch circular cover in the middle of the table, exposing a small gas burner, lit the flame, took my drink order—Cuervo 1800 and a glass of lemonade—and left. I looked around. It was dark, sort of cozy, in a way that reminded one of medieval torture chambers. Other customers, mostly couples, were cooking things in oil, cheese, or a mix of kirsch and chocolate. The aromas were absolutely wonderful. Not for the first time, I wondered who I’d be enjoying them with.
I waited fifteen minutes, twenty minutes, twenty-five, growing edgier by the nanosecond. My drink came and I did it some serious damage.
And then...
I could smell her before I saw her, but it was still a life shattering surprise when she came around the corner, through the door, and sat down across from me. My heart was pounding so hard that it hurt inside my chest, and I could hear hers pounding just as hard, as well.
She smiled, pointing to the wine racks that surrounded us.
“Just like old times, isn’t it, my love?”
13: PRISONER OF HISTORY
“Neither gods nor men can foresee when an evil deed
will bear its fruit.”—Bodhidharma
Surica.
I had probably imagined this moment maybe a million times in the sixty-five years since I’d last seen her. That’s only forty-two times a day, or about twice per waking hour. Like I said, I don’t sleep much.
Surica.
Now just the sight of her, the scent of her, the sound of her voice had me paralyzed, All the things I ever thought I’d say if this day ever came were absent from my mind, leaving nothing behind but vacuum.
Surica.
“You don’t know how flattered I am that you’ve remembered me,” she said. She could hear my heart beating just as easily as I could hear hers. Neither of us was doing this particularly well, but she was ahead of me by two whole sentences, one of them with a subordinate clause.
“How could I ever forget the girl who gave me eternal life?” There was more I wanted to say, a lot more. But the waiter arrived to take our order. He would look at her, then look away, blushing, then look again. He stammered and made mistakes, so I knew two things. First, the guy wasn’t gay. Second, I wasn’t the only one she had that effect on.
Surica had chosen the basic “little black dress” of song and legend, cut low enough to show about a mile of cleavage, high enough to display her remarkable legs. The dress was shimmery, composed of big sequins or something like that, put together in horizontal rows like ancient scale armor. They moved with her, and showed off every contour of her lush, supple body. Her stockings were fairly dark, worn with four-inch black pumps, and instead of the traditional string of pearls, she wore faceted hematite, with small, simple ear baubles to match.
We ate, choosing tidbits from a stainless steel plate—beef, pork, chicken, shrimp, lobster—impaling them on a long, slender fork, plunging them into a pot of boiling oil the waiter had placed over the burner. Before that, it had been bits of bread in melted cheese.
“Of course it is not lamb haggis,” Surica laughed, “but then, what is?”
br /> She chose a pinot noir and I stuck with tequila. I hardly tasted anything I ate. I was too busy convincing myself the woman—she still looked 17—seated across the table from me was real. I could see her. I could hear her. I could smell her. But could I believe that she was really here—I might be lying in the street right now with my head crushed by a truck—and that what she had to tell me was the truth?
She put a hand on mine. We hadn’t touched each other before now. For my part, I didn’t dare, we’d never be able to come back to this restaurant. Her finger along the back of my hand felt like an electric shock.
“I know you have many questions, my love. I have questions of my own to ask. Shall we wait until later this evening, perhaps another place, to begin answering one another, or would you rather start right now?”
“Let’s start now. If we wait, we’ll be too busy to answer questions.”
She laughed, and I knew that she was still mine. Or mine again. “I have much to tell you, my love, much I hope you will believe. You can hear my heartbeat as I hear yours. I share your olfactory powers, so you will know if I lie to you. I only mention it because, where I have come from, everybody lies about everything and expects you to lie, as well.”
“I’ll believe you,” I told her, and I meant it. “Just tell me why you left, Surica, why it took 65 years to come back to me.” It felt like opening my veins and letting six decades of pain flow out on the table.
She took a deep breath and exhaled. “I don’t know why I left you there, in that village, the way I did. For all that I was 233 years old, I believe that I had never been in love before. It frightened me to have become so dependent, so quickly, upon the feelings of another person.”
She looked at me to see if I could understand and accept that. I nodded, and turned my hand over, taking her hand into mine and squeezing.
“I followed the German soldiers out of the village,” she went on, “feeding on unlucky stragglers, until I broke off to find my little airplane. She was sitting on her nose as I had left her, her propeller crumpled, her back broken, leaning against a couple of big trees, a total loss, just as I had remembered. I took a few things, an electric torch, a compass, a survival knife, a big toolbar, and then I set her afire.