The Vampires

  “You’ll attempt to purify the tarnished memory,” Richard understood.

  Like Savannah, she was being allowed the possibility of resurrecting her trampled dreams. “Yes,” la Duquesa said. And those dreams began the process: Duke, Duke! The Duke!

  “You’ll be faithful to his memory?” Richard emphasized.

  “Yes!”

  Rev looked narrowly at the queen, as if to place her on target. He had used her before in his bid for power, he would do so again. Yet twice he had been defeated after brief, flashy victories. This time he must proceed as if through a minefield.

  “My eyes are already blind to everyone but the memory of the Duke,” la Duquesa rejected the mask Topaze had handed her. “My mourning veils are my mask; they turn all others into: Shadows. Because my beautiful Duke justified my life; he converted me from a receptacle into the object of pure love. Oh, on rainy afternoons he brought me presents, and I would give him one in return: my love. Yes, I’ll be faithful.” She sat on the throne, allowing the lover, twice slaughtered, of her imagination to seize her again, totally; locking the memories as one might lock a treasure; attempting now to bury it beyond violation by another. “Yes! Definitely!” The outline of the dream began to incarnate: “I remember now clearly: The Duke did form a kiss on his lips right after the cops shot him—when he saw me, for the last time—. . .”

  Issuing a silent, understood command, Richard’s eyes were drawing Tor forward; or so it seemed to the priest.

  The muscleman mounted the platform.

  “Your grace,” said Richard, “is this your prince?”

  22

  La Duquesa gripped the sides of the throne, as if otherwise she might sink into a dangerous ocean. Yet propelled by a greater demand, her hands rose—though haltingly—toward Tor’s massive chest. This was the closest she had allowed herself to come to a man, a sexual object, since she had cradled the dying Duke in her lap. A body, Tor stood very still before her. “My . . . fidelity . . . is on trial,’’ la Duquesa whispered a warning to herself. “The Duke was true to me!”

  A fluid game, whatever they made it, whatever each saw in the role he chose to play: That’s why they would accept it: To search among the shadows of their pasts the shadow of their destinies. Joja looked at the queen in black, so totally seized by the role, the test. And who would be her own prince?—her destiny? the actress thought with excitement and fear. And premature defiance.

  La Duquesa’s hands rested on Tor’s shoulders—lightly, not fully committed to the touch. Moving lower, her fingers became heavier. Then quickly her body became rigid, as if flushed by a powerful memory; and her fingers withdrew abruptly. She leaned back on the throne. “No,” she said. “This is not my prince. My prince is dead.”

  Her triumph over Richard, Tarah knew in disturbed, vicarious relief.

  But already Richard was directing another phase of this play. His eyes questioned Blue.

  But Blue glanced at the priest: A silent message to Richard.

  Richard nodded at Topaze.

  The midget looked up at Malissa for approval.

  She gave it: The black-choked finger pointed to the throne.

  With exaggerated quietness, Topaze stationed himself on a stool before la Duquesa; her eyes were still sealed.

  “Is this your prince, your grace?” Richard asked.

  Leaning over, Topaze whispered into the queen’s ear: “When my cock is hard, it’s—. . .”

  La Duquesa’s fingers moved forward.

  “We could go upstairs, or outside!” Topaze said; he knew that if he trapped the queen, the fact would emphasize Rev’s failure—and it would strengthen his own place in the entourage by contrast. “I have the largest—. . .”

  Now the queen’s fingers floated over the midget’s elevated body—without touching him, merely outlining his form. Rigid again, she withdrew. Again she sighed: “My prince is dead.”

  Rev laughed at the midget’s defeat.

  Fighting the rejection, “If you feel it just once, you’ll want it!” the midget shouted angrily at the queen.

  “My prince is dead,” la Duquesa said firmly.

  She was being tested again—exposed by the confession, tested by the play. Was Richard allowing the restoration of her dream? The priest attempted to find a pattern. Or was it all merely sated anarchy?

  Topaze had turned helplessly toward Malissa, trying to read her face.

  “And so she’s proved her fidelity, the purity of her reconstructed love,” Tarah said urgently to end the test with la Duquesa’s victory—as if her own fidelity would be vindicated. Fidelity? The word jarred her. Faithful to whom? Through all the encounters, the sexual bouts . . . faithful to whom?

  “Dead?” Lianne echoed the queen’s last word. “I hate death, the soul howls,” she said. “Unless it’s purified.” Looking at the queen on the throne, “Certainly she’ll find someone to bring her to life,” she formed vague words.

  To stop Karen’s reaction, a shudder, to Lianne’s words, Bravo’s fingers tightened on her shoulders.

  Rashly assuming command—sinewy tattooed body arched—Rev stood before la Duquesa. Only a spectacular triumph would restore his squashed power.

  Aware of his overwhelming, violent, sensual presence, la Duquesa leaned against the throne.

  “Is this your prince?” Mark asked.

  Within the play, the silent contract between her and Mark would finally demand the fulfillment of its terms, Joja knew. And if she could not possess Richard again, she must possess Mark.

  This time the queen’s fingers did not even reach out tentatively toward Rev. As if to shackle her hands to it, she gripped the sides of the throne. She had always given herself to those who would hurt her! “The Duke is my prince,” she said hurriedly, “and he’s dead.” Through the black veil, Rev was an ominous outline.

  Then Rev growled harshly: “Cummere, Freddy!” And his hand dropped over his groin.

  Freddy!

  The name exploded in the queen’s mind. The despised name of her childhood pulled her into a quagmire of memories, of other times. She reached quickly for the mask she had rejected earlier, and she covered her eyes with it.

  “Cummere, Freddy!” Rev commanded coldly: the voice the queen would recognize of all the savagely desirable men who had used her, hurt her cruelly, and used her again.

  “I’m not Freddy,” she said. But her voice hinted of a nervous boy’s.

  “Yeah, baby,” Rev insisted, “you are Freddy. Diggit—you’re the skinny little queer who was afraid of the studs he dug—because they’d laugh at you after they’d used you, even beat you up and rob you. But when they came back, you let them use you again!”

  “I’m la Duquesa!” the queen strengthened her dignity.

  “Freddy!” Rev clutched the name tightly.

  Malissa watched him in admiration; he would not accept defeat.

  “What . . . do . . . you . . . want . . . from . . . me?” Now completely the queen’s voice was that of an effeminate, terrified boy. Still, her body resisted even as it edged on the throne. “I’ll be faithful to the Duke!” she whispered urgent words which might save her.

  Rev crushed viciously: “You’re not faithful to no one, Freddy, because you’re no duchess—you’re just the skinny little hung-up queer Freddy. And That’s All!”

  La Duquesa dropped the mask from her face. Her eyes were wide and frightened.

  Don’t surrender! Tarah’s mind demanded.

  “Good God, stop this torture!” said Jeremy.

  “The memory of the Duke will cleanse me!” The queen covered her eyes with her hands over the veil.

  “Freddy!” Rev used the name as the fatal weapon against la Duquesa. They were all watching him. Yes, he was formidable. He could feel power. And now he thought beyond a permanent place in the entourage. Beyond a partnership with Bravo. Or anyone else. He had become one of them! Legs spread, “Blow me, Freddy!” he whispered harshly into the queen’s ear.

 
Near the throne—as if he could support her—Albert clenched his pudgy hands into round fists, but his mouth had opened automatically.

  The queen felt a silent howl within her that was the total of all the unscreamed screams of her life. With a whimper—the bare manifestation of that buried howl which acknowledged the return of Freddy—he fell on his knees before Rev.

  Looking down at him disdainfully, Rev pulled the mourning black veils savagely from Freddy’s head. The frail veils ripped with a cry.

  Freddy looked up at Rev with undisguised desire.

  “And so both the Duke and la Duquesa are dead,” Richard pronounced the requiem.

  “And Freddy lives again.” Malissa turned away.

  Contemptuously Rev withdrew from Freddy as he had from Albert.

  Freddy remained kneeling. His mind kaleidoscoped: Yellow shadowless bars! Dim gray streets! Crushed rooms coated with velvet grime! A past now the future. Only the memory of imagined love and fidelity had blocked the terrible dam of the past. Black veils tattered, dark lipstick smearing his lips like black blood, he stood up. And he looked savage. He stared at Rev. His tormentor. No—an instrument of torment. It was Richard who had led them into the deadly games. Richard’s stone-bright eyes, like funnels sucking them all into his world. His physical beauty. Richard, as unattainable as Duke. . . . To avenge the crushed dream!

  Apparently shapeless, the play was revealing a stunning inevitability about it. Aware of a growing anticipation within her, another part of Tarah knew she must stop the cascading movement.

  “Death!” A white shadow, Lianne rushed toward the erect prop to the left of the throne. Pulling the black drape, which sighed, she exposed the stake within whose hollow the long knife was buried like a final punctuation mark on the stage.

  Valerie turned from it, as if from the exposure of hidden violence.

  The stake. The knife.

  Exorcism! the priest thought suddenly, feverishly. Release the evil!

  They all stared at the knife, a symbol of power waiting to be seized. Intense whirling currents seemed to shape about the stake. Radiating into waves of hatred, into a beautifully constructed web.

  Mark’s look passed from one to the other of his father’s guests, a look carefully collecting their reactions.

  Swiftly! Lianne pulled the knife from the stake. She moved with it toward the velvet throne. Clenching the knife with both hands, she raised it high, held it poised. Now her eyes flashed about the room as if selecting a victim. With a powerful thrust of her frail body, she buried the knife into the throne.

  Paul’s hand reached automatically to touch his heart.

  “We’ll kill death!” Lianne shouted. And she plunged the knife again and again into the throne. “We’ll exorcise the greatest evil—death! Kill death!” she chanted.

  The mamaloi and the papaloi echoed: “Kill death! Kill! Death! Kill! Death!” And their own hands plunged invisible stakes into the frenzied air.

  The priest rushed to Lianne. “Stop it!” he demanded.

  Lianne crumpled to the floor. Abandoned there, the knife remained plunged into the throne. Released, Lianne stood up, frowning, as if already the scene she had enacted was lost in her mind.

  “Your evil is awesome,” the priest said to Richard.

  “And is your good awesome?” Richard asked the priest. There was a trace of weariness in his tone.

  “Is it, man? Your good—is it righteous?” Blue echoed, facing the priest.

  Valerie stared at the knife. It could tear her world.

  Jeremy turned away. From Blue. From Richard. From the deadly, hollow stake.

  “Who’ll be the next queen?” Malissa was unsated. “Perhaps a pure queen!” She walked toward Valerie. “Capable of resisting all impurity. But will she?”

  Now Paul joined his sister. She touched his hand. It was cold.

  Richard stood between Valerie and Malissa.

  “Oh?” Malissa seized his sudden reaction.

  And so did Mark.

  The most powerful ally against Richard! The thought excited Malissa with its possibilities. Mark turned against his father! But if she moved overtly to bring about the split and she was wrong, she might be crushed between them. A deliberate tactic, rehearsed by father and son, to mislead her? She would wait, and watch more keenly. . . . Her choice of Valerie had been arbitrary. It was Richard’s sudden reaction that goaded her on now: “Indeed, whom would Valerie choose?” her words knifed. “Perhaps Tor—his powerful muscles to protect her purity! Or that youngman—Blue—for the veneer of purity, with the profound knowledge of evil! But certainly hers is more than a façade. Perhaps Rev—his colorful tattoos might entertain her sense of beauty,” she laughed. Her jeweled hands formed mocking distortions of her words. “Whom would she choose?”

  Paul’s hand tightened on his sister’s. The anger on his face warned Malissa.

  But Malissa continued the taunting—and although it was directed at Valerie, it was Richard whose reaction she was determining: “Would she choose Topaze? The test of purity must be powerful!”

  Valerie saw: Their eyes: A jury about to pass judgment. On what? A crime not committed.

  Albert heard Malissa’s pounding voice—no longer words: just hammering sounds, inflections, taunts.

  “The priest!” Malissa continued relentlessly. There had been no indication of approval from Richard in her assault. Why? A postponement? Something supremely special, saved? “Who could be purer than the priest? But we’ve seen his reaction to Savannah. Yet Valerie’s purity would match his—they might save each other.”

  “Leave my sister alone,” Paul said.

  Looking at him gratefully, Valerie no longer saw the stranger that had been emerging gradually through the evening. No—she saw her brother who had shared his life with her. As if by silent signal mutually received, conveyed, their hands rose slowly toward each other’s. Palms facing, inches from the other’s, the hands paused suddenly. Then as if pulled together by a magnet, the contact was made. Their fingers linked, a chain.

  “Of course,” Malissa said ambiguously.

  Then Valerie pulled her hands away, turned her head: She faced: Lianne’s suddenly violent face.

  “Death is judgment!” Lianne pulled words from her shattered mind. Slowly she ascended the throne. She pulled out the knife she had buried there, and she dropped it to the floor.

  Carefully Richard retrieved it. He inserted it again within the hollow stake.

  Now Lianne sat on the throne. She closed her eyes. She leaned back rigidly. As if she were a corpse surrendering to its coffin.

  “The dead queen,” said Joja.

  “Whom do you choose as your prince?” came Malissa’s rapacious words at Lianne.

  Mark stood before his mother.

  Joja’s body tensed with anger. And, she acknowledged, jealousy: Was she witnessing the breaking of their unspoken contract, hers and the boy’s? Rejecting the sight—Mark erect before Lianne—Joja’s eyes fell on the stake.

  “Who is your prince, Mother?” Mark’s startling words were soft, sensual.

  “Richard,” Lianne whispered.

  Mark barely frowned.

  “The only one who can resurrect the dead queen,” Karen said aloud.

  Bravo felt those words like knives.

  Karen’s words, Lianne’s reaction—Tarah understood: They might thwart her confrontation of Richard fatally if they asserted that they had actually returned in a pilgrimage of gratitude to him. If so, she must prove that if he had “resurrected” them—if he could “resurrect” them—it was to emphasize the death of their souls, within the burning bodies. She prepared her rebuttal before the defense was stated.

  Mark did not move from where he stood before his mother—not even when Richard bent over her, his hands on her shoulders.

  Kissing her. . . .

  Valerie touched her neck. Paul. Again the stranger. Paul. Like Richard. The blue moments. Valerie remembered Lianne’s violent face. . . . Richard
kissing the woman or— . . . The words flowed out of her mind: Or sucking her blood!

  Like erect corpses, the mamaloi and the papaloi guarded the throne.

  Finally Richard moved away from Lianne.

  Still, Mark did not retreat.

  A rivalry, yes! Malissa grasped. For Lianne?!

  Lianne stood up. Her face was flushed. She stretched, she rubbed her shoulders, her breasts. And she yawned, as if awakening from a deep sleep. “I’m alive!” she said.

  It was as if the words had come from her own lips—indeed, Joja mimed them silently: I’m alive! As if she had felt the contact, vicariously, between Lianne and Richard, her own body had responded.

  Angrily, Bravo sensed Karen’s own vicarious reaction.

  “We killed death!” Lianne shouted triumphantly into the house. Her eyes, her mind—it was as if they had captured something of peace, an instant, no matter how fleeting.

  “Kill death!” chanted the black man and woman.

  Then Lianne whispered: “Richard, forgive me, please!”

  Richard’s face was inscrutable.

  “For what!” Malissa pounced on Lianne’s words. “Confessions!” she swung the game back.

  Lianne pointed at Mark. “For him!” she screamed. “Richard knew!”

  “What horrors did she witness?” the priest asked Richard.

  “Horrors?” Lianne questioned. “I Escaped!”

  “Into insanity,” Valerie knew.

  “It was you who pushed her there!” Tarah accused Richard, desperate because she knew her attack was being thwarted again. If she could use Lianne in her assault! “One of your demonic experiments—what was it, Richard?”

  “He warned me!” Lianne flung.

  “The accepted invitation to what?” the priest said aloud, the words of implied understanding surprising him—so jarring that he sought to obliterate them with anger: “This insane creature—your victim— . . .” he began accusing.

  “At least for moments of peace she rules and controls her own world. Do you?” Richard demanded fiercely.