"I wish that were the case," I said. "So you came back here just to tell me this?"
"No, I came to see you. I miss you. I love you."
"I thought you were in love with someone else." I sighed. "I think I'm finished with that sort of thing for a long while. It seems to be nothing but trouble. I just left the two of them arguing. They used to be in love, you know?"
"The two bloke vampires?"
"Yeah." I couldn't help it. I laughed. "Exactly." John stared at the ceiling and made jerky movements with his hands. "Homosexual vampire mutants," he intoned softly, "in Los Angeles. It really almost makes sense. If it were a movie, I'd go see it."
"So would I," I said. "Probably how I got myself into this mess."
"And you want me to help you," John said. "No. Nobody can help me. They can help me, but they're too busy either clawing each other's eyes out in a classic catfight, or they're fucking right now. Either way, they haven't got time for me and my little problems." I yawned. "I think I just wanted to go someplace that made sense, even for a little while. I just want something to make sense." I glanced up at him. "You make sense. The way I feel about you makes sense."
John stood there a moment, looking at the phone, the door, the navy blue sky out the window, then at me. I didn't want to influence him in any way, but I couldn't help thinking, Trust me. Please. He cautiously approached the couch and sat down; growing bolder, he reached out to my face. "You're cold," he said, snatching his hand away.
"That's because it's cold outside." I shrugged out of my jacket. I took his hand, placing it inside my shirt and against my side, where I knew he could feel my heart beating. "I'm not cold there, am I?"
He shook his head. "Where's your scar?" he asked in a whisper.
I looked. Of course, now my appendectomy scar was completely gone, along with my freckles. "Now do you believe me?"
His color had come back into his face, and concentrated itself in his cheeks. "Congratulations then, I guess," he breathed. "I guess you've discovered a new life form, Dr. Dempsey."
"You can't tell anyone," I said, exerting gentle pressure on his hands. I didn't want to break any bones accidentally. "You'd be putting my life in danger."
"From whom?"
I rubbed my hands together. "I kill people, John. I have to. I don't want to, and I don't mean to, and maybe someday I won't ever need to… but at this point, I've killed at least three people and maybe a fourth one. Either I'll be classified an animal, in which case they'll kill and dissect me, or I'll be classified as a human, and spend the rest of my life in jail. And when I die, they'll dissect me. And then the others will be hunted down and exterminated, and John, I care about some of these people. I haven't met a lot, but the ones I met, I… liked."
"I know it's inappropriate at a moment like this," he said, "but you're incredibly beautiful."
"I thought you'd miss my scar." I blushed.
"I do." He smiled. "And I miss your eyes."
"My eyes?"
"They're quite different, close up. They're darker. But I can still see the insides of them."
I touched his face. His cheek was marvelously smooth, marvelously rough down the side and the chin. I was shaking. "I know it's inappropriate at a moment like this," I said, focusing my eyes on his mouth, "but I really… really want—"
"Ssh," he said, and kissed me.
There was nothing that could compare with this. I didn't know how much I missed him. I had forgotten how incredibly sweet it was to make love to him. There were none of the athletics that Daniel had engaged in; I had forgotten what plain old boring sex was like with someone who I was in love with. It was marvelous. And it was completely different than when I was human; every single simple touch curled me up with pleasure. It would be fruitless to describe it; there was nothing that you don't already know about, and the things that were new I can't express.
Overwhelmed in orgasm, my body reacted in the only way it knew how; I bent over him and pierced his neck with my fangs as I felt him nearly coming beneath me. His eyes popped open and he gasped; I drew my mouth away wet with blood. He went rigid, and then lay still, eyes closing.
He was silent for a very long time. "John?" I asked worriedly. "John? John? Are you all right? Say something. Please." I wiped my lips with the back of my hand.
A slow smile spread across his face. "That was," he purred, "the best orgasm I ever had."
I rubbed the mark on his neck. "Really?" He said nothing, awash in bliss. "God, I thought I'd killed you."
"I thought you'd killed me too." He finally opened his eyes. "How'd you do that?"
"Apparently, I can't help it. I'm glad you liked it."
"It hurt at first."
"Yes, it does that. I am breaking your skin, after all."
"Do I taste good?"
"Better than nearly anything I've had." I sat up and reached for the phone on the bedside table. "I have to make a phone call."
John was too content to make any protest. I called the Saskatchewan.
"Saska'tch'wan Hotel" came a dull voice through the phone.
"Suite 900, please."
A long pause, with the purling sound of an internal phone system ringing. At last the connection was made. "Who is this?" Ricari's voice could have cut glass.
"Good, you're still awake."
"Where are you?"
I rubbed John's shoulder, pulling the covers over him. He gazed up at me from the quilts with an expression I recognized; I had seen it in Lovely's eyes, in the eyes of all of Daniel's teenage lovers. It had been in my eyes. John was mine, for as long as I wanted him. "I went to John's apartment," I said.
"Who?"
"John. John Thurbis. The man I was going to marry."
"Oh. I think I remember you mentioning that… but it didn't seem important to you, so I forgot it."
That stung. "Well, it's important to me now. He's the only person I know that isn't dead, thinks I'm dead, or hates my guts forever."
"I don't hate you," Ricari said, defending himself.
"You know what I mean. The only… human."
"Oh, Ariane." I heard him sighing on the other end, clearing his throat.
"Is Dan still there?"
"He's asleep. He sleeps too much. Like a mortal."
"He eats food too," I added.
"Lord, preserve us. He's been changed for seventy years and he hasn't given it up yet? I hope you grow out of that. It's so wasteful it makes my skin crawl."
"Maybe it's soothing."
"Soothing. Debussy is soothing. Eating is perverse."
I found myself laughing. "Orfeo, Orfeo, Orfeo, how sweet you are."
John was looking at me strangely.
"Are you coming back?" Orfeo asked.
"Yes," I said. "Not right now."
"You can't go back to that, Ariane. Leave him. You'll only drive yourself mad this way. We'll go away together, you and I, and you can learn what you need to know from me."
"I love him," I said.
"Do you love me?"
I wished he wasn't doing this. "Yes."
There was a long pause. "Is he the sort that would come with us," he asked slowly, "and not cause trouble?"
"Like me, you mean?"
He made a quiet noise that sounded like a laugh. "No. You had too much will even for that. You were trouble."
"John's another scientist. He's a physicist, so he won't have some of my, er, troublesome qualities—"
Ricari was definitely laughing now.
"—but he will question. He won't be a slave. I could never tell him what to do in the first place."
"What are you talking about?" John asked sotto voce.
"I don't know what to tell you, Ariane," Ricari said. "But we do have to go."
"Is Daniel all better?"
"He fell asleep waiting for you before I could do anything."
"He's good for about eight hours," I told him. "Look. I need to sleep myself. I'll figure out what's going on when I wake up. I'll c
ome as soon as I'm awake and alive."
I hung up, hoping he wouldn't unthinkably take off without me. Despite my cavalier attitude, I really needed Ricari; I did need to learn from him. I still didn't know half the things that even Daniel took for granted. John nudged me with his forehead. "What's the time?" he asked.
"Looks like—seven thirty-two."
"Hand me the phone," he said. "I'm going to call the Physics secretary."
"Calling in sick?"
"I'm not getting out of this bed for a while…"
I lay there and listened to him leaving a long and detailed message, with instructions for each class that he would miss and each appointment that would have to be rescheduled. Before he was finished, I had gotten up, wrapping a blanket around me.
John hung up the phone. "Where are you going?"
"I have to go to sleep," I mumbled.
"Then come here, for heaven's sake."
"I can't sleep with you."
"Why?"
"I just can't… let me sleep in the study. And don't come in."
"You're not sleeping on a couch. You're exhausted. It's bad for your back. Really, Ariane, how bad could it be?"
I looked at him. "Do you really want to ask that?"
He went pale and swallowed. "I'll sleep in the study," he offered, getting up himself. "Let me get some things so I won't disturb you."
Back in bed, I watched guiltily as he gathered up a pillow, an extra quilt, jeans and a cardigan, and a book on Da Vinci. "Promise me you won't look," I said.
"Yes," he said. "I won't look."
"Thank you for believing me."
"I can't otherwise." He shut the door gently behind him.
I was asleep before I heard him reach the other room.
* * *
Chapter Fifteen
He seemed to honor my request; when I woke up into the late evening redness, the door was still shut, and he looked up from the television with surprise as I came out. "Hi," I said.
"Was watching the news," he said, turning back. He was drinking a tall glass of scotch and ice. "Wondering if any of your handiwork was going to make the six o'clock news. It seems that a few deaths here and there don't make a damn bit of difference."
"Actually, they might have made the L.A. papers," I murmured, smoothing my hair and sitting beside him. My hair would no longer smooth down; it was a mane of deep auburn ringlets, as bouncy as telephone cords. Only its weight kept it from surrounding my face like a clown's wig. I had stood before the mirror in John's room, vowing to never cut my hair shorter than shoulder length. "Our accident, that is. It was pretty huge."
"What accident?"
"Car crash," I said with surprising calm. "A very good friend of mine was killed in it. Some other people were too."
"When was this?"
"Um, well, it was last night." And the last glimpse of Lovely's face came to me; grinning, rosy-cheeked, the dark smudge worn off his great dark eyes, his rosy lips pursed around a joint. He'd winked at me in the rearview mirror, and I'd turned away, consumed in my own thoughts.
John wiped my face with a scratchy tissue. I'd been weeping without realizing it. "I can't believe it was only last night. I can't believe all this has happened so fast."
He gently kissed my cheek. "How long have you been—"
"A vampire? Um, this is my third day."
He made a face. "What?"
"You'd have never guessed, huh?" I stood up. "I have to go, John."
"Are you coming back?"
I stopped halfway into the leather jacket. "I don't know," I said, continuing, the other arm finding its place. I pulled my hair from under the collar. "It's probably best if you never saw me again."
"You can't do this," he said. "I'm going to go crazy. Everyone will think I've snapped."
"You probably have," I replied.
"I love you—don't go. Don't go back to them. Please. Maybe this is reversible. Maybe—"
"It's not reversible, John. Any more than you could be reversed into a chimp. Just because I look superficially like a human doesn't mean that I am. I'm not. I'm different. I'm like them, and like it or not, I have to learn to be what I am now."
"Then take me with you," he said. "I don't want to… be separated from you again."
I sighed. "All right then," I said, "come with me tonight, and see if you want to come with me. I don't even know where I'm going. Come with me and see the men who got me into this."
He put on his coat and his cracked, polished black oxfords, and we went out into the street and waited for a taxi to come by. We walked a bit, stood under the brilliant red light of the Church Street Safeway sign, watching a purple cloud come down over the hill and extinguish the feeble blinking of Sutro Tower. He bent over me and kissed me on the neck, breathing so that he could watch the hairs stand up.
I watched his eyes get big as we drove into North Beach, through the sleazy streets advertising every manner of voyeurism—watching people fuck, watching people eat, watching people shop, gamble, get arrested. I paid the taxi fare with what was left of my money. John smiled at me as I compulsively lit a cigarette. "I see you haven't stopped," he commented.
"For all the good they do me." I took another lungful, then tossed the useless glowing thing into the gutter. "Let's go, we're sort of in a hurry."
The door of Ricari's suite was closed, but not locked. I entered first, listening and smelling for the two of them. John stayed close behind me, hands jammed sweating into his pockets.
They were in the bathroom. Daniel raised his head from Ricari's wrist and regarded us with bright, calculating eyes. Ricari slumped drowsily against the back of the satin-upholstered chair next to the bathtub. "Ariane brought us company," Daniel declared, his voice slick with sarcasm.
I looked behind me at John; he was very pale, and his eyes didn't seem quite focused. I steadied him to the chaise longue, where he promptly fell completely unconscious. It wasn't like John to faint, but I guess he wasn't prepared. "Good work, Dan," I snapped, loosening John's shirt collar.
Daniel, quite restored, stalked out into the front room. "Is that where you've been all this time, love-nesting with this fine English wren? Now, now, don't be selfish, let Daddy take a good long look." He pushed me out of the way with startling ease. Now that he was back to himself, Daniel was ten times stronger than I was. He bent over John carefully, his nostrils sweeping through John's scent, poked gently at John's cleanshaven cheek. "Oh, I guess he's all right. You have good taste in men, Ariane. What… lovely skin."
"Daniel, don't fuck with me," I said.
"Who's fucking with who? Who asked you to bring your boyfriend? What kind of obstacle does this throw up? Oh, I bet Ricari said it was all right. Ricari can't refuse his precious Ariane anything. If I so much as ask for a drop of blood, it's 'You're evil, Daniel, you cause so much trouble.' I ought to slit this pretty throat. That would teach you all about trouble, wouldn't it?"
Ricari had come out of the bathroom, incredibly white and lissome in a simple blue linen shirt, rolled to the elbows and open at the neck. A few crimson drops stained the collar and sleeves. "Don't make threats," Ricari said with utmost calm. "I really don't care for them."
"I don't really intend to take John along with us," I said. "I only wanted him to see this, maybe understand why he can't come. Why it's better for him to just forget about me." I smoothed his hair off his forehead, where it had grown in so long that it more than covered his face. "Not to see me again."
Daniel moved away to the other chair and sat in it, brooding handsomely. In the dim light of the perennial candles, he was the incubus again, the dissatisfied angel. Ricari looked down at John, whose eyes were moving restlessly behind his closed lids. "It might have been the right thing to do," Ricari said, "and it might not. I suppose the evening will tell. There is no way to avoid hurting him. We all hurt one another."
John opened his eyes slowly, uncomprehending. "What happened?" he mumbled.
"You passed out," I
told him.
"I did?" He had sat up and combed his hair back with his fingers before he noticed Ricari and Daniel and me all staring at him; I'm sure the effect must have been something like being a missionary in the middle of the cannibal village. He locked his arms about himself and squeezed into a corner of the chaise. "You're going to kill me, aren't you?" he asked in a very small voice.
"We don't want to kill you," Ricari said patiently.
"We can," Daniel added.
"But we won't," I said, staring Daniel down. He rolled his eyes at me. "John, this is Orfeo Ricari. That's Daniel—just Daniel. And this is John Thurbis."
"Charmed," John managed to say. I gripped his hand gently in mine, trying not to return his white-knuckled grip for fear of crushing his hand.
"I won't allow any harm to come to you," Ricari said. "Don't mind that one. He's got, as you might say, an 'attitude problem'?" He gestured. "He's been knocked off the top of the play set, and he's learning about what it's like to not be a god for a change. That is why I like to stay on the ground, yes?"
"Stuff it," said Daniel.
"You look tired, Ariane," Ricari said to me. "Do you need help?"
"It Couldn't hurt," I said.
"You're new yet. You need as much as you can stand; gets you through it sooner. Though some, like Daniel, never lose the taste for blood every night." He put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me gently from John's grip. "Don't worry, John. Daniel would never be so bold—and besides, we can see him." He herded me into the bathroom.
First, a kiss. Our mouths met; my tongue was pricked on his teeth, and he sucked the blood from that for as long as it lasted. Nipping his lip brought forth a tiny trickle, barely perceptible to the taste, but enough to drive my body insane with wanting more of it. I took him at the neck and breathed in his blood. We held each other tightly; I crushing him down, he resisting with equal force to keep us in equilibrium. I drank for what seemed like an eternity. Then he pushed my head back and I breathed air again, my blood cells fattening with oxygen. I felt high.
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