He set his elbow on the table and rested his chin in his palm. He seemed to be studying Julia’s face for her reaction to all this information. She knew she felt a bit crestfallen and confused, and imagined she looked it.
“My dear,” he said, appearing only mildly sympathetic. “What did you expect? That there’d be an abandoned castle waiting for you with a closet full of sexy gowns, and you’d feed by inviting the neighbors over for dinner?”
“Well…”
“My point is, it doesn’t work that way. You’re going to have to learn and obey the rules. In fact, you’re going to have to find a way to support yourself just as you did when you were alive.”
“Support myself?”
“You have to have a place to live, yes? So you will have to earn money to pay your rent, utilities, other expenses.”
Julia was beginning to panic. “I just thought…”
“That immortality was all it was going to take? You’ve seen too many bad movies. Even vampires have expenses, and money doesn’t grow on trees.”
“I thought I’d just be able to get what I needed.”
“From whom?”
“The people I bite?” Julia suggested, weakly.
“Rob your victims? Well, that is a classic. And I’m not telling you not to check your prey’s pockets, but people don’t carry much cash these days, and other people’s credit cards will eventually get you caught. It’s a hard way to make ends meet.”
“So, you mean you work?” Julia was astounded. “Doing what?”
Another shrug. This time it mimed self-deprecation. “Well, I write.”
“Books?”
“Among other things. I’m very well published.”
“I imagine you write horror stories, right? Like Stephen King?”
Aeron paused, as if deciding how best to explain himself. Instead, he reached into his jacket and pulled out a battered paperback. He pushed it toward Julia with the tip of his finger. The cover had an illustration of a wounded knight with drawn sword, defending a woman and small boy from two attackers.
“No,” he began. “I write…”
Julia peered down at the cover. “Historical Romance!” she chortled. She reached for the book, her giggle turning into a laugh. “A vampire who writes romance? You must be kidding!”
Aeron bridled. “It’s not romance,” he said. “It’s a story about people being caught up in the riptide of war. This knight gives his word…” Seeing Julia’s face, he stopped. “The cover of that one always gives people the wrong impression,” he muttered into a gulp of Scotch. “It’s historical fiction. I’ve been translated into a dozen languages—they turned one of my books into a video game and there’s a comic book coming out…”
“Really?” Julia pressed her napkin to her lips to suppress another outburst. “I’m very impressed.”
Aeron glowered. “Being a writer doesn’t make me any less dangerous, you know.”
“I’m sure not,” Julia reassured him.
“You have a lot to learn,” he told her. “Survival is an art when you’re a vampire. I sired you—a tremendous lapse in judgment on my part, by the way—but I’m willing to teach you what you need to know. If you don’t want my help, just say so and I’ll leave you to your fate.”
Julia was contrite. “I’m sorry Aeron, I do need your help. It’s just that it’s not at all like I expected it to be.”
“In my experience,” the vampire leaned forward to look directly into Julia’s eyes, “being dead never is.”
* * * *
Julia woke, unsettled. After almost six months as a vampire she’d slipped naturally into the diurnal rhythms of sleeping out the day, and being up all night. She no longer needed an alarm clock. Her body told her when the sun had dropped below the horizon and the moon begun its rise. She was beginning to see this as a parallel to her own existence. The moon that lit her night was only a pale reflection of the sun, as she was now only a pale reflection of life. This change from life to death had caused her passion and her talent to become thin and anemic. Even though her veins throbbed with hardy corpuscles, they came from the blood of others—people who lived in the sun. It depressed her.
Pulling on her clothes, Julia thought about how she would spend her night. There were long hours ahead of her without much to do. Her evenings had become a repetitive process of rise, stalk, feed, sulk, sleep—rinse and repeat. She could hardly wait to drag that routine into eternity.
She moved into her living room, drawn inexorably to circle the easel near the window as she’d done almost every night since wakening as a vampire. The painting on it drew her like a magnet. She had been unable to finish it when alive, why had she presumed she would be able to finish it after she was dead? She brushed her fingers across its uneven surface, tracing the path of sunlight she’d painted into it. She’d been good, inspired even, her career just taking off. She’d had a talent for capturing the warm brilliance of the day. Now the sun-filled landscape mocked her. It contained a light she would never paint again. She’d chosen immortality, and with it darkness, relieved only by artificial light and the harsh coldness of the moon. She had no desire to put her brush to that.
She sighed. Aeron had warned her that this transformation was less romantic than it seemed. But he hadn’t warned her that it would also be the death of inspiration.
If she couldn’t paint how would she make a living? Her disability payments had run out because she couldn’t go back to the doctor to get the documentation she needed to have them renewed. The blood inside her was no longer her own, and the lack of a heartbeat would definitely come as a shock to anyone who examined her. She desperately needed to find a steady, paying job. Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be anything else she was good at.
A day job was, of course, out of the question. And well-paying night shifts tended to be things Julia wasn’t trained to do—computer programming, bartending, nursing. Telemarketing, which had helped pay her way through art school, was an almost dead industry thanks to the “no-call” list. She’d even tried working for a phone sex line. The ad she’d answered said; “Earn big $$$ at home! Flex hrs,” but her first few customers had hung up on her. When he fired her, the manager told her her problem was she didn’t sound sincere enough.
Her last try had been as a waitress at the all-night diner down the street. The hours were ideal; the uniform was an embarrassment in pink nylon, with the added indignity of having its cost deducted from her first check. The customers turned out to be rude, smelly and often drunk, high, or both. The meager tips were split with the cook, who took what he wanted, leaving the waitstaff to squabble over the rest.
One night, after a tiff with a customer that ended in a brief flash of fangs, she’d just walked out. Her rent was now three months behind, and she was lighting the apartment with candles. She was also doing everything she could to avoid Sergie, the building super, who was stalking the halls looking for her, threatening eviction.
The sound of footsteps so late at night made Julia turn toward the door. Keys rattled in the lock. She’d forgotten to put on the chain! The super’s fat bulk pushed its way into the apartment.
“So, you are finally here,” he growled, his accent adding menace to his demand. “I want my rent!”
“Y-you can’t just come in here without knocking!” Julia stammered. She’d ignored his pounding on the door during the day, and he’d obviously decided to try to catch her after most normal tenants would be home, in bed.
Sergie slammed the door behind him, making her jump. She was trapped now that he was inside her apartment.
“You can’t stay here without you pay rent!” he sneered. “Pay up or I put you out on street.”
“I…I get paid tomorrow.” Julia lied. “I can give it to you then.”
“No tomorrow, now.” The super’s accent thickened. “You think I’m born yesterday?”
“I’ve just had sort of a hard time lately. Being sick…”
“You don’t
look sick to me…out all hours of the day and night. I bet you got money in here somewhere.” His eyes began to dart around the room. Julia was sure he was about to start going through the apartment, looking for cash.
“I don’t, really!”
The super’s piggy eyes narrowed and Julia watched as a thought formed across his Cro-Magnon brow. “You know, Sergie like you. He understand sometimes girls don’t have money. You could be nice to him, eh? Maybe he discount rent.”
Julia was appalled. “No.”
Sergie moved closer. His body odor, and whatever he’d eaten for dinner, overwhelmed Julia’s unfortunately heightened sense of smell. Backing away from him, she tripped over the couch, and sprawled flat on her back on the cushions. Sergie took this as an invitation. He was on top of her in an instant, pulling at her clothes, covering her mouth with his wet, rubbery lips.
This was more than Julia could stomach. Her face, her teeth made a rapid transformation. This time it had nothing to do with a desire for food, but survival. Snarling, she bucked and clawed at the super, shoving his disgusting face to the side, sinking her fangs into his repulsive, sweaty neck. Even then his struggles wouldn’t stop. He began to curse at her, Russian and English obscenities slurring together as his voice rose in volume.
The neighbors! Julia thought. What if she couldn’t subdue him? She gathered her strength and gave one last, desperate shove, rolling him over on to the floor. He began to bellow. Still astride, she grabbed his head and with a quick twist, snapped his neck.
Getting shakily to her feet, Julia looked down at the super’s body. It lay on her rug like an obscene, beached whale, throat torn, head at an unnatural angle. She was panting and shaking, blouse covered in blood. She tore the offensive garment off, flinging it onto the body, and fled into the bathroom.
Turning on both taps, she washed her hands several times, then threw handfuls of cold water into her face and onto her chest, trying to dampen her panic and clean off the super’s loathsome blood. As she put on a clean t-shirt she tried to listen to the building. No one seemed to have been disturbed by the noise in 4C. Mrs. Grunewald in the apartment next door was half-deaf, and even if she had heard something, this was New York—no one wanted to get involved.
Taking a deep breath, Julia went back into the living room to confront the true enormity of her problem—not only had she killed a well-known building employee in her own apartment, she now had his two hundred and fifty pound corpse to dispose of.
She tried to think. All of Aeron’s warnings kept coming back to her. All of the rules; and worse, all of the consequences. This was not going to be easy. Even if she got the super downstairs undetected what was she going to do with him? She could put him back in his apartment, but when the police finally found him they would know it was an “unusual” death. Even if they couldn’t trace it back to her, she was putting her community at risk. And that was a problem all by itself.
Suddenly, something Aeron had told her the very first night he’d taken her out flashed into her brain with startling clarity: The Sweepers!
Julia picked up her cell phone. Thank God she still had a signal, her service hadn’t been turned off—yet. With shaking fingers, she rifled her purse looking for the phone number. She hadn’t destroyed it as she’d been told to, but this time the omission was on her side. She pulled out the grubby napkin. Aeron had said emergencies only, but she was sure even he would think this qualified.
The phone was answered immediately with a terse “Yes.”
“I—I, um…” Julia stammered.
“Julia?” the voice asked. It had a slight British accent.
Julia was shocked, then struck by a new wave of fear.
“How do you know my name?” She whispered.
“Caller I.D.” The voice answered, impatiently. “You’re Aeron’s new girl, yes?”
“I have an emergency,” Julia blurted.” He’s…”
“Stop!” the voice ordered. “Where are you?”
“My apartment,” Julia answered in a small voice.
“Floor?”
“Four.”
“Doorman?”
“Yes.”
“Too risky,” the voice said. “Can you bring your package down to the basement?”
Julia looked over at the super’s bloated bulk. “I guess so.”
“Twenty minutes. Alley door. If you’re not there we won’t wait.”
“Okay,” Julia said. “I’ll manage—somehow.” But she was talking to dead air.
Standing over the super, Julia did a quick assessment. It was well after midnight. Most of the tenants in the rent-controlled building were old and probably asleep. If she made it down the hall, the likelihood of running into someone in the elevator was fairly slim. If the night man heard the car going down to the basement he’d just think it was Sergie returning to his own apartment from some emergency errand on another floor—he was probably asleep at the desk anyway. There was blood on the rug, but not too much. It, the blouse, and one throw pillow on the couch would all have to go, but perhaps that was part of the solution.
Julia moved the coffee table and pushed back the couch. Grabbing the side of the rug nearest the body she began to roll it over the corpse and her other telltale items. The rug was old and fairly flexible, the super was not. Turning him over and over was like heaving a sack of cement uphill. Luckily, the old rug covered him from head to foot with room on the ends to spare. Unfortunately, the super’s bulk made the dusty cylinder look like a Persian snake that had just swallowed a particularly large rat. Julia stepped back and gave it a critical appraisal. It would have to do.
Taking hold of the end nearest the door she began to tug on the rug. As she pulled it across the floor, the other end brushed against an unfortunately situated floor lamp, which began to sway and totter like a cartoon drunk. Frozen, Julia watched as it described a perfect circle before falling to the bare floor with a crash. Julia’s hand flew instinctively to cover her ears as if she could block out the noise that had already happened. A broomstick, or more likely a cane, started to pound against the ceiling below her. “Sorry,” she called. “Sorry.” Her voice barely above a whisper. She was sure the entire building had pricked up their ears, waiting for the next sound. She stood perfectly still for a moment—willing everyone she’d awakened to go back to sleep. This wasn’t a vampire talent, it was just a very fervent wish on her part.
Finally, she peeked out the door, looking left and right. Nobody in the hall. She began to drag her burden over the threshold. If someone saw her, she thought, she might be able to claim she was taking an old rug down to the dumpster. If the person was half-blind and totally stupid that might work.
As a vampire, Julia had extra strength, but this was 250 pounds of dead weight, plus a rug that was really hard to hang on to. She was soon puffing and panting with effort, her breathing more of a homage to panic and exertion than a necessity, and she wasn’t even halfway there yet. She dug her fingers deeper into the worn pile and gave an extra tug. The pain almost brought her to her knees. Letting the rug drop, she jammed the fingers of one hand into her mouth. It wasn’t only because they were causing her excruciating pain, but because she needed to stop the whimper her vocal cords were trying so hard to produce. After a few seconds she felt calm enough to examine the hand. She’d torn off two fingernails below the quick, and bent a third in half. She clamped her teeth together and tore off the one that still dangled, and put it in her pocket. Looking over her shoulder, she gave a silent groan—it was still at least twenty feet to the elevator door. Every moment she spent in the hall brought her closer to being caught, and put her farther away from making it to the basement in time to meet the Sweepers.
I’m tough! She told herself. I’m a vampire. Risk and pain mean nothing to me—grrr! The grrr didn’t sound that convincing even inside Julia’s head, but she bent over and took hold of the rug again. Since her heart didn’t beat anymore, Julia concentrated on the pounding fear in her head to set t
he cadence for the backward tugs she was making toward her goal. She’d never been this scared. Maybe her brain was about to explode. Aeron had warned her that if she was caught and put in jail, exposure to daylight would kill her. Maybe, she thought. The moon had its good points after all.
Reaching the elevator at last, she pushed the down button. A cheery DING! announced the car’s arrival. Julia winced. The sound was very loud in the quiet corridor.
Grabbing the rug again, she backed into the car. The elevator doors began to bounce open and shut against the super’s lumpy outline as she wrestled the rug into the small space. She finally had to jerk one end of it up into a corner to get the doors to close, then crawl over the rest to push the button for the basement. Luckily she’d discovered, as had most of the other the tenants in the building, that if you kept your finger on the button for the floor you wanted, the elevator wouldn’t stop anywhere else. The trick was a marriage of New York manners and early 20th century technology at its finest. It was also one more break in her favor. As the car started to descend, she could hear the quavering voice of her elderly neighbor asking the empty hallway, “Who’s there?”
The ride seemed to take forever. When the doors finally opened in the basement, Julia practically threw herself into the hallway. She prayed that no geriatric insomniacs had decided to do their laundry in the middle of the night. Mr. Goldstein in 2B did tend to wander the halls at all hours, but his memory was almost totally shot, poor man. Whoever found him generally led him back to his apartment, put him in his chair and turned on the television. He was happy to sit there until morning when his wife woke up and could keep an eye on him.
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