Sweeter Than Wine

  “By then I had had some time to think, and it was my intention to return to you. But a series of unforeseen events occurred, preventing it. My squadron members, all female, had seen me go down, of course, and because their missions frequently carried them over the crash site, never gave up looking for me. They saw the fire. The British Army, warned that I suffered a disease that limited me to night missions—”

  “Were they vampires, too? Your squadron members?” I was reminded that I’d never yet encountered another vampire, except for lovely Surica.

  “No, just Romanians and unusually understanding. The British found me in the forest and returned me to my unit. When the Nazi government in Romania collapsed, we all went home—only to be swept up by the Soviets.”

  By then, I was halfway home, myself, in the hold of a Lithuanian freighter.

  Surica continued. “I was sent to a ‘special’ prison, an ancient stone fortress high in the southwestern Carpathian Mountains, but deep down in a chasm where the direct rays of the sun reached perhaps only two hours a day in what passed there for summer. In addition, the region was densely wooded with dark evergreens, the old fortress lost in a kind of perpetual twilight. They were keeping other prisoners there, but they held me and a dozen others in the lowest dungeon of the place, and let us up and out to exercise for perhaps an hour each week.”

  The waiter came by to see if we needed anything. I ordered some of that chocolate stuff and another round of Cuervo and lemonade. Surica claimed she didn’t want dessert, as women will, but had more wine.

  “It was cold in that place, my love,” she said, unconsciously holding her hands over the burner and rubbing them together. “So cold that the surface of the water in the trough they gave us froze and had to be broken every morning. So cold that I could feel my heart and pulse slow. But that was certainly not going to kill me. There was very little food, and the water I mentioned was not good, but I could survive no matter what lived in it, and there were small animals—but you don’t want to hear of that. I don’t like thinking of it, even now.”

  I chuckled, having eaten rats in that ship I’d stowed away on, and nearly went into some kind of suspended animation myself, thanks to the cold. The only bright spot—if you want to call it that—was that a crewman would show up every day, on inspection rounds, so I didn’t lack for fresh blood. But I kept my mouth shut, not wanting to interrupt.

  “The others on that level, who shared a large cell with me, were not vampires. I believe that my captors expected me to feed on them, and perhaps even communicate what I was to them. Because I had no other choice, I took a little blood, a few milliliters at a time, and did not infect them, not at first. They died, one by one—no, I did not kill them, it was the cold, starvation, and filth—but in the end, I tried to help them, giving them small amounts of my own blood. In the end, they all died anyway, leaving only me to suffer, all alone. And in many ways, that was far worse than any other kind of privation.

  “I believe that the Communists knew what I was all along and were preserving me to see if I might be ‘weaponized’ in some way. After my cellmates were gone, a failed experiment, if I was correct, a number of ‘volunteers’ were sent to feed me, children of local farmers, mostly, a different individual every day. I received a little news that way, although I chose not to believe most of it. Assassinated leaders I could accept, but people walking on the Moon? I gave a bit of myself to my ‘victims’, leaving them with happy, if totally false memories.

  “Finally, as the guards grew increasingly lax and slovenly—I didn’t know for certain that the government was collapsing, but I had begun suspecting it—I was able to escape when they brought me a new ‘victim’.

  “Overpowering the single dungeon guard, I quickly took the stairs and killed the second in command of the place, drinking him as dry as I could before I snapped his neck. His office safe yielded to me in a matter of seconds—you could hear the ancient tumblers fall all the way across the room. Inside I discovered a lot of useless paper money, watches, rings, and other jewelry they’d stolen from their unfortunate prisoners.

  “There was a bit of gold in small, crudely-cast bars. I hated to think where it might have come from; these Communist thugs were every bit as bad as the Nazis had been. But I took it anyway, as I would need it. And—I couldn’t believe it after all these years—my own personal service pistol, well greased and still in its flapped military holster, complete with its spare magazine. The new regime, I learned later, used an entirely different issue sidearm and cartridge, but in this badly neglected backwater, the old ammunition was still issued.

  “There were half a dozen boxes in the safe.

  “Fearing what they had heard of me, I suppose, the rest of the prison staff, no more than a dozen, had fled. I was aware that the officer I’d killed was only filling in for the commander, and reasoned that his superior—the Warden—had departed, as well. I took what warm winter clothing and other things I wanted—food was important; I knew I wouldn’t need credentials—opened up all of the cell doors to let my fellow prisoners out, and then urged them to scatter in all directions.

  “Many of them wouldn’t go, but huddled in their cells, afraid.

  “But following my own advice, I headed southwest, to the nearest airfield, or, failing that, the Black Sea. I soon learned that there had been a revolution against the Communist regime, and the year was 1989.

  “I had been a captive for 45 years.”

  14: DARKNESS AND DEATH

  “Destroy the seed of evil, or it will grow up to your ruin.”—Aesop

  Visibly trying to shake off the memory of her ordeal, Surica said, “Now you will take me home—I have seen your home, of course; it is very nice—make love to me, and I will tell you of a problem that I have.”

  “A problem that you have?” I repeated, not too bright.

  “Not now,” she breathed. “Afterward.”

  She paid the bill in cash and I let her. We got up from the little table. She held out a shawl or light scarf that I hadn’t noticed before. It was black and sheer and sparkly. She turned and I draped it across her smooth, white shoulders. Then she picked up a handbag that matched the whole outfit, and we found our way across the restaurant and upstairs—it was practically a religious experience, watching her negotiate the steps in those heels—and out into the parking lot.

  I’d brought the Cruiser. Surica had come in a cab, she told me.

  At a spot on the sidewalk where the shadow of a tree provided us a little privacy from the streetlight, she turned to me, threw her arms around my neck and kissed me passionately and deeply. I returned the kiss, seizing her around her slender waist. For a while we were lost in time and space, both of us remembering what had happened between us sixty-five years ago, both of us anticipating what was going to happen now.

  At last we broke for air like a couple of teenagers, still hungry for each other. Surica smiled and patted my coat on the left-hand side, under my arm. “J Gifford, Private Eye. Only you weren’t J Gifford back in France, were you? Is that your roscoe or are you just glad to see me?”

  “If I’m showing it there, we’ve got a problem. Yes, I’m glad to see you, but that is my roscoe. Also my gat, my heater, my piece, and my strap. What’ve you got, weighing down the corner of your bag like that?”

  She grinned. “My old service pistol. It suits me and I’m used to it.” She stopped and looked around. It was later than I realized and the parking lot was nearly empty. “Is that your car? It’s really cute!”

  “Just what every macho American male wants to hear—his car is cute.” As I was letting her into the passenger side, like a gentleman, she whispered something in my ear that every macho American male would give several semi-important body parts to hear, and then nibbled my earlobe.

  Once we were in the car, I turned and pulled her to me as much as the damned unromantic bucket seats would permit. I kissed her for a long, long time, touched her face—there were tears streaming down her cheek
s—and I explored again the first part of her that I’d ever touched. Full and firm. I reached beneath the top of her dress and discovered that she wasn’t wearing a bra. She closed her eyes and moaned into my mouth as I rolled her nipple between my thumb and forefinger.

  Whatever it was we’d had in that wine cellar in France, apparently we still had it. I was either in heaven—or a hell of a lot of trouble.

  Either way, it was going to be a very long drive home.

  ***

  If I were to describe exactly what happened between Surica and me over the next several hours, this would be a very different kind of story—one much better suited to some of the shadier reaches of the Internet. Or the kind of bookstores they set up in abandoned gas stations.

  From the first moment we had met, back in that French wine cellar, there had been no barriers between us, nothing held back, nothing denied. It was no different now, sixty-five years later. Whatever it was that filled me with energy and passion at the faintest touch of her skin, the least smell of her fragrance, the least sound of her voice, and the least sight of her face and body, it had not faded over the better part of a century. In fact it seemed stronger than ever before.

  I had never understood what it was that Surica saw (or felt or heard or smelled) in me. It was a miracle that this small town boy from rural Illinois didn’t want to question or inspect out of fear of destroying it, like a particularly beautiful and fragile soap bubble. As far as I could tell (and I can tell a lot farther than the average individual), she was as happy as I was and that was all I needed to know.

  There are only so many things that two individuals can do with one another, and we did each and every one of them, and then did them all again. We would have bought the t-shirt if there had been one. Being a vampire means never having to say you’re not quite ready yet, dear. The flesh has many fewer limits, and the mind and heart, no limits at all.

  ***

  At some point, one of us said, “Think we’d better find somewhere to feed?” It wasn’t clear which one of us it was until Surica answered me.

  “Where do you usually go?” She propped her head up on one of her hands, resting on her elbow. The result was extremely scenic. There had been a little minor erotic bloodletting—vampires do that, you know—the sheets were a mess. I’d be buying a lot of bleach from now on.

  “Meaning, who do I usually bite? Or is that ‘whom’?” I wasn’t ready to introduce Surica yet to Anton and his family—I wondered how Priscilla was doing—and that was the last way I wanted to do it. But what I said was, “I guess I forgot to tell you that I don’t bite.”

  Wincing, she rubbed a couple of places on her throat and breasts. “I thought that you were biting pretty well a little while ago, Mr. Gifford.”

  “That’s different.” I described the process, Vacutainers, hypos, including giving the victim back a little of my blood. When I’d first arrived in New Prospect, I’d looked for winos, alley lurkers, bag ladies, and other such people, but it was always so depressing, and without passing any judgment, I always felt I was extending a life of misery.

  She considered it for a moment. “That’s very clever, J. And much neater. I wish that I’d thought of it. So where should we go for ‘breakfast’?”

  I confessed that I didn’t have a good idea, explaining about my friends, and that I wanted her to meet them in a different context, first.

  “When I’m in a strange town,” she suggested, “I always go the library.”

  I lifted a heavy strand of her deep auburn hair from her face, where it crossed one lovely brown eye and put it back in place. “The library?”

  “For the most part,” she nodded, flopping the strand back across her face, “the people you meet there are clean and relatively free of diseases.”

  “You’re pretty clever, yourself, Miss Fieraru. Do you do it in the stacks?”

  “My love, you know I’ll do it with you anywhere—oh, you mean feeding. No, I wait until somebody goes the bathroom and I follow her in. Normally it’s women. Men, if the thirst is on me. It’s over in a moment.”

  I blinked. “You don’t mean you—”

  “Kill them? Absolutely not, my darling. They feed me and then they forget, just as yours do. Most probably I don’t take any more blood for sustenance than you do. It’s unnecessary to kill people. They don’t deserve that. And leaving a trail of dead bodies for no good reason is what got most vampires hunted down and killed in centuries past.”

  “Centuries past. Surica, have you ever met another vampire?”

  “To speak to? Only one. He’s the problem I need to talk to you about...”

  “The one who sired you?” I admit I’d taken the expression from TV.

  “I don’t know who sired me, J. I don’t understand how the biology works. Perhaps you do. It is entirely possible there was more than one.”

  “More than one sire—but how—”

  “Be patient, my love, and I will tell you. The year, as you know, was 1728. I was on the way to an arranged marriage in Serbia, to a very rich, very fat, very old man. I was but a girl of seventeen, and it was a marriage of which I wanted no part. Nevertheless, both of my parents insisted, as it would end certain financial difficulties they were having, and it would enhance the family’s prestige in our part of Romania.”

  “Nice folks.”

  “They were people of their times, no more, no less. Their only asset, their daughter, at seventeen was threatening to become an old maid. Besides, they told me, my fiance, whom I had never met, was old and might not impose upon me too much. And besides that, he might die soon.”

  “Like I said, nice folks.”

  “Our traveling party, consisting of two coaches, two drivers and two footmen, two ladies’ maids and four heavily armed outriders, was compelled to stop in the darkest heart of the forest one night because there was no hospitality within easy traveling time. Once we had settled in, we were attacked without warning by bandits—vampire bandits.”

  I didn’t know what to say, and so I nodded. She went on.

  “Our male servants, all of our outriders, drivers, and footmen, discharged their various weapons at the bandits, utterly to no avail. The same was true, as well, of my father, with his brace of little silver Scottish pistols. They were all killed immediately, in that unnecessary, ugly manner I abhor, as the women were compelled to watch.”

  I put a hand on hers. Her tear-rimmed eyes were full of horror.

  “They took their time with the women, by turns raping and feeding upon them, abusing them in other ways, passing them back and forth among themselves. Having seen my father brutally killed, now I watched my mother die, as well, savaged for the amusement of the animals using her, unable to bear the humiliation of it and live. I recall it only in flashes, bits and pieces, as I was being used exactly the same way, myself.”

  “One girl, my mother’s maid, had particularly large breasts. They bit into her nipples as she screamed, and suckled her blood, fed from her like babies, as a kind of terrible joke, until daylight finally forced them back into the black depths of the forest whence they had come.”

  “They killed the poor girl and left her lying, discarded, where they had repeatedly used her. I was supposed to have been killed, too. They certainly left me for dead, drained and defiled, face down like a broken doll in a deep pile of moldy leaves at the base of an ancient tree.”

  “I awoke to find that the sunlight was hurting me and, being a Romanian, I knew precisely what that meant. The coaches had been destroyed, smashed apart, used by the bandits to fuel their festive bonfire. Salvaging what I could of our scattered belongings, I covered my nakedness and made my way, by night, along the road to my fiance’s estate—we had been more than halfway there when we were attacked—until I ran into a company of men, sent to discover why we had not yet arrived.”

  By then, my outward wounds had already begun healing. My inner wounds would require more time. Having told the men what befell us—leaving out only the pa
rt about vampires—I traveled back with them to tell their master the same story. Give him his due, he married me, just as he had sworn he would, but he never touched me, never made a single demand upon me of any kind. It could simply be that he was old and incapable. Or it could be that, having been gang-raped in that vile forest, I was now in some way unclean, tainted by the evil that everywhere had penetrated my body and spent itself inside me. It was just as well, however. It was years—decades, actually—before I could begin to contemplate being intimate with anyone, under any circumstances.”

  “The old man died before the year was out. He had found ways, in a benighted day and age where women were not permitted to inherit or own property, to leave everything that he possessed to me. Once assured of this legacy, I assembled a group of soldiers—mercenaries—and, equipped with sword, main gauche, and a pair of long, large-caliber, double-barreled flintlock pistols, in all of which I had spent the whole year training, rode at their head back toward that dark forest road.

  “Each of us carried only ammunition cast laboriously from pure silver. Our edged weapons, too, were chased in the metal that kills vampires.

  “Presenting ourselves to the eyes and ears of the wood as harmless travelers, we built our camp one night and waited. When the vampires came, we sprang our trap, and when we were through, there were thirty man-sized heaps of ash upon the ground, and half of my mercenaries lay dead, as well. Raking through the piles of ash—the mercenaries refused to do it—I discovered bits of jewelry and other personal effects that had once belonged to my mother and father, or to their servants.

  “At last they—and their daughter, as well—had been revenged.

  “We buried our fallen and departed.”