Lost Souls

by Poppy Z. Brite - (ebook by Undead)

  Zillah looked around appreciatively, then sensed that Twig had gone quivering and taut beside him. He followed Twig’s eyes and saw a lone dark-skinned girl at the back of the restaurant sweeping the carpet with an electric vacuum. She had not yet heard them over the noise of the machine.

  As Twig watched, the girl raised her arm and pulled her heavy black hair back over one shoulder. The movement wafted a cloud of her scent to him. He could smell the oil of her hair, the sweat of her armpits, the odors of grease and spice and sandalwood that were a part of her being. And he could smell the dusky blood beneath the skin, hot and peppery, as exotic as all India. Her blood would taste of chili and almonds, of cardamom, of rosewater.

  He motioned to the other two, and they slid forward, moving as one creature, fused in this act of killing. The girl turned and flung up her hands, but Twig’s mouth stopped her cry, and they fell upon her. As Zillah grasped her head between his strong hands and twisted her neck to an impossible angle, as Molochai burrowed under her long cotton skirt and bit into his favorite spot, Twig cracked the bones of the girl’s throat between his teeth and tasted spice.

  * * * * *

  They drove back to the hotel sometime in the hazy zone between very late and very early. Twig’s eyes were glazed; with an effort he focused on the road. Molochai lay with his head in Zillah’s lap nibbling a little sugared cake he had found in the kitchen of the restaurant.

  Zillah’s wine bottles were full now. He had topped them off with vodka from the restaurant’s bar. The bar had been well stocked, and he had found a bottle of peppered Stolichnaya. It would blend well with the girl’s spicy blood. This hot red cache would be a treat later on, during the long dry stretch between here and New Orleans.

  They passed a nightclub. Children postured on the sidewalk, waving their spidery hands, tracking the van with their black-smudged eyes. A snatch of sepulchral song floated in their wake. Bauhaus.

  Zillah tilted his head to one side and smiled. “Listen to them—the children of the night,” he said. “What music they make!”

  9

  When Christian turned away from the river, Wallace was there, several feet away, watching him. Wallace had seen him with the boy. Christian’s first emotion was not anger or fear but shame, terrible fiery shame. Wallace had caught him at his most secret, most vulnerable moment, and Christian wanted to sink to the ground and cover himself, to shut his eyes tight, to vanish. He pulled his cloak around him and stared at Wallace, feeling his eyes grow colder, knowing he must not panic.

  The moonlight ravaged Wallace’s face. The hollows beneath his eyes grew deeper, the lines bracketing his mouth more harsh. The silver cross at his throat gleamed, and his hand went to it. “Vampire,” he said, spitting the word out, making it ugly. “Filthy, cursed thing—”

  “You knew,” said Christian. “The story you told me—it was all made up. You didn’t find her diary. You weren’t suddenly seized with a desire to see her after such a long time. You knew.”

  Wallace’s eyes glittered, dark, never leaving Christian’s. “I did.”

  “Then why?” Christian spread his arms in a gesture of bewilderment; the cloak billowed around him, made him seem immensely tall. Wallace, perhaps misunderstanding the gesture, took a step backward. “Why now? If you knew then, why are you following me after fifteen years?”

  “I knew then,” Wallace told him. “After Jessy disappeared, I began going to your bar, watching you, and I knew. I came to believe. And I knew what you had done to my daughter.” He hadn’t answered the question.

  But Jessy wasn’t even dead then, Christian thought, confused. He is wrong. She must have been alive still, living upstairs, gazing out my window all day and pulling me into her body at night—

  “You look very much the proper vampire, Christian,” Wallace went on, and Christian wondered whether he was supposed to take that as a compliment. “But I still could not quite believe. I was unsure. My religion does not acknowledge the supernatural. It considers such matters unholy, and consequently it ignores them. So one night I waited until you closed your bar down, .and when you went out, I followed you. I saw you speak to a boy near Jackson Square, a young boy. with long hair who wore beads around his neck. I followed the two of you to the river, and here I saw you—I saw you do what you did to the other boy tonight. And I wondered how many other children you had put in the river, and I thought of Jessy’s body sinking out of sight there, in that cold brown water—” Wallace’s voice broke.

  Yes, Jessy, thought Christian. I put Jessy in the river. But that was later, after the baby came. And I didn’t kill her, I wouldn’t have killed her—In an instant he realized who had killed Jessy. Zillah had, with the seduction of his hands and his lips, with his fertile seed. Or so Wallace would see it. Christian imagined himself trying to explain the events of that Mardi Gras to Wallace: He planted his child in her womb, and by the time the baby tore her apart inside, he was far, far away. But that night was so bloody, and oh so green…

  No. Wallace would not understand the drunkenness that comes with blood or the light in the Mardi Gras sky. He would see only the image of Zillah’s hands on Jessy’s fragile body. He would picture Zillah writhing atop Jessy, stifling her screams with his tongue. The blame would be taken away from Christian, and Wallace would no longer want to kill him. He would want Zillah’s blood.

  Zillah, with those languid, graceful hands, with those glowing green eyes, and the rest of that loud happy trio Christian had not seen for fifteen years, though he had looked for them every night of every March” Gras when the bright costumes staggered in and the laughter was high and drunken and the liquor flowed in the gutters. The only ones of his kind Christian had seen for so many years, more years than he wanted to remember, and the youngest, wildest, finest ones he had ever known.

  No, Wallace could not be allowed to go after Molochai, Twig, and Zillah. He would never be able to find them—they might be anywhere in the world, anywhere they could find liquor, sweets, and blood—and if by some chance he did find them, they would laugh in his face as they killed him.

  But Christian would not give Wallace even a wisp of a chance. He would deal with Wallace himself, and he would protect his kind. He did not love what he did, but for too long he had been alone in doing it. Wallace’s blood would spill for Molochai’s sticky smile, for the cleverness of Twig’s foxlike face, for Zillah’s luminescent green eyes.

  “All right,” he said. “You knew then. Why did you wait? Why have you come to me now?”

  “I was afraid of you then.”

  Christian nodded and took a step toward Wallace. Wallace didn’t back away this time.

  “I have no reason to fear you anymore.” Wallace shut his eyes, then opened them. “You are a godless thing, and you will die for that. Fifteen years ago I did not have the courage to avenge Jessy, but nothing else matters to me now.” He unfastened the crucifix from his throat and stepped toward Christian, brandishing it at the end of its chain. “Begone from the face of God’s earth, foul creature, thing of night, sucker at Death’s teat—”

  Christian shook his head sadly. He did not laugh, but there was a trace of amused contempt in his eyes. Wallace stopped chanting and lowered his arm. The crucifix swung from his hand, shimmering when the moonlight caught it.

  “You are a fool,” said Christian. “You are a fool, and your myths are wrong. If you touched me with that, it would not burn me. It would not blacken my skin. It would not poison my essence. I have nothing against your Christ. I am sure his blood tasted as sweet as anyone else’s.”

  Christian imagined Wallace waving a crucifix in the faces of Molochai, Twig, and Zillah. Those children, he thought, would laugh this silly old man into his grave.

  “Undead soul,” said Wallace, not quite steadily.

  “No. I am alive. I was born as you were born.” Well, not quite. Christian thought of the mother he had never seen, wondered whether he had left her as torn and bloody as Jessy had been. “I am not th
e creature of your myths. I did not rise from the grave. I have never been one of your race, Wallace Creech—I am of a different one.”

  Now Christian was smiling, letting the sharp tips of his teeth show; it was an icy smile, masking his lust. Wallace, no matter how ineffective, was a danger, a threat. And that meant Christian should kill him now and let him follow his daughter into the river where their bones might drift together in the intimacy Wallace seemed to long for.

  Still smiling, gazing steadily into the depths of Wallace’s eyes, Christian stepped forward and rested his hands on the old man’s stooped shoulders. Wallace stared back as if hypnotized, but Christian could feel the man’s muscles pulled painfully tight, tense to the point of trembling.

  Christian lowered his head and brushed his lips against Wallace’s throat. And suddenly he found himself wishing that all the ancient human myths were true. He had seen no others of his kind in fifteen years, since Molochai, Twig, and Zillah appeared by some Mardi Gras magic and left again when the sun set on Ash Wednesday. Christian wished he had the power that the legends ascribed to him. He wished his victims could rise again and run with him, others of his kind to share the smell of the streets past midnight, the long hot days with the shades drawn, the taste of the sweet fresh blood. Even Wallace would do, even old tired Wallace with the pain in his eyes. He put his mouth against Wallace’s throat. The skin there was dry, loose; it smelled of age. He bit down and tasted blood for the second time that night….

  But it was bitter, it was foul, and he spat it back against Wallace’s throat and gagged. Christian’s nostrils flared. He had not detected it before, under the stinging mist of whiskey and sorrow, but now it was obvious, strong, and rank. The smell of sickness, deep rotting sickness that rioted through Wallace’s body, as wet and brown as the smell of the river. Some virulent disease, probably a cancer. The taste was corruption in his mouth.

  If that had been all, Christian could have fled or fought. He was very strong, surely stronger than Wallace. But a second later the nausea hit him, worse than the drunken sickness brought on by the Chartreuse, worse than the sharp immediacy of that pain. It knocked him down, and he lay as still as he could, languid with shock, trying not to move for fear of increasing the nausea. He felt his stomach convulsing, and he fought to keep the boy’s blood down. He did not want to relinquish that.

  Through the haze of sickness he was aware of Wallace pulling something from behind his back, something that had been tucked into the waistband of his trousers. The object caught the moon and became a thing of pure light, a slim pistol shining white and silver.

  He saw Wallace taking aim and closed his eyes. Then the night exploded and pain slammed into Christian’s chest. He could not breathe. He felt the hot pellet of lead tunnelling into him, through him. He kept his eyes closed so that he would not have to see the triumph on Wallace’s face.

  His last thought before the pain and the sickness washed his mind away was one of regret: Three hundred and eighty-three years… such a very long time… he should have been beautiful… not this sad, old, tired man… he should have been lovely.

  10

  Nothing hurried through the circle of brilliance made by a streetlight and slipped into the deserted darkness again. He pulled his raincoat around him (O sensuous black silk, as erotic as the touch of someone else’s skin!) and hoisted his heavy backpack on his shoulder.

  His passage was hidden by luxuriant hedges and the shadows they cast on verdant lawns, by sleek cars parked at the curb. Even if his parents missed him now, they’d never be able to find him. He had a sudden vision of them cruising the dark streets in his mother’s Volvo, calling his name, waving a bottle of good whiskey to lure him home.

  He was forcing himself to be absolutely silent, making a game of it so that he would not have to think too hard about what he had left behind. His room and all the things in it. Most of his tapes, most of his books, all his records and old toys and the stars on his ceiling. He thought of the stars still glowing there, lonely pinpoints of light above his empty bed, and he wondered if he would ever again sleep beneath a ceiling of painted yellow stars. Tears pressed against the backs of his eyes. He chewed his lower lip, hugged himself tight, and waited for the wave of loneliness to subside. Not even two blocks away and already homesick. This time tomorrow, alone on some Greyhound in the night, he might be a real mess.

  He unzipped his backpack and felt around inside. He had brought only the bare essentials: his collection of Dylan Thomas’s poems, his notebook, the note stolen from his mother’s drawer that would tell his family who he was when he found them, his Walkman, and as many tapes as he had been able to cram in. He would honor the backpack well; it would never have to lug schoolbooks again.

  His fingers found the Walkman and the edge of a cassette tape. He didn’t care what he listened to. He just wanted to hear something, something to carry him away, to blot out his thoughts for a while. He knew he didn’t really have to watch for his parents. They’d never miss him. He had heard them come in sometime after ten, boozed up on expensive wine and stuffed with French food, arguing about him. “You want him to follow any asinine whim that catches his fancy,” Father had said, and Mother replied, “He has to find himself,” but she didn’t sound as serene as usual. They’d gone into their bedroom and shut the door. Nothing lay in bed and thought about going south where he could follow his whims, asinine or not. Where no one would ever have to argue about him again.

  He put on the Lost Souls? cassette. The music was soft and wailing, the singer’s voice pulling him down south, down along the ways the trains travelled, down through the green land. Nothing wondered whether these musicians might be his family, his long-lost brothers. He thought again of the eerie-sounding town where they lived. Maybe he would go there.

  What the hell, he decided, and lit a cigarette. Its red firefly glow would pick him out of the darkness if anyone was looking for him. But no one was. He knew that. Even if his parents missed him, they would figure he’d sneaked out to party with his friends. We’ll cancel his allowance for a week, they’d say, and then they’d roll over and sleep their dreamless sleep. When he didn’t come home the next day, they would call the police and set up a halfhearted search for him, but perhaps they would be secretly relieved. Now they could live their comfortable lives with no strange son to look at them and silently judge them. Now they need no longer wonder what they had raised, why their child had disappointed them so, whether they might have been happier if he had not been left on their doorstep that cold morning. Now he was on the road. He would smoke Lucky Strikes and wander, and he would find his home. He was on his way already.

  Skittle’s was almost empty when Nothing walked in. The cuffs of his jeans were wet with night-dew. The fresh cut on his wrist throbbed in time with his heartbeat. He saw Jack in a corner booth with four other kids, two boys and two girls. One of the boys was Laine. The table was littered with empty wax cups and half-eaten pizza, the ashtray choked with butts.

  Nothing looked at Jack. “Can you still drive me to Columbia?”

  “I said I would, dude. Since when do I go back on my word? I need the five dollars if you have it.” Nothing handed him a bill, and Jack tucked it into his pack of Marlboros.

  “I have to be at the bus station by one,” Nothing said pointedly. “The bus leaves then.”

  Jack heaved a great sigh. “Okay. Okay. Let’s peel out.” He stood up, the chains on his boots jangling.

  The others stood too. Laine slipped out of the booth and pressed up close to Nothing. His breath, sweet with cloves, tickled Nothing’s ear. “Where are you gonna go?”

  “I don’t know. South.”

  “How come you didn’t tell me?”

  “I didn’t know until tonight.”

  Laine took Nothing’s hand between both of his, twined his fingers into Nothing’s. “Ycu should’ve called me. I would have gone with you. I hate it here too.”

  Nothing looked at Laine. Laine’s lips were s
meared with black lipstick; his feathery white-blond hair hid his eyes. Nothing wanted to brush the hair away, but he couldn’t. He slid his hand out of Laine’s and shoved it into the pocket of his jeans. “I thought you were going out with Julie,” he said.

  Laine shrugged, an unconcerned, eloquent gesture. “We broke up. She’s such a damn poser.”

  “She’s all right,” said Nothing. “She gave me her Lost Souls? tape.”

  “Yeah, well, she never listened to it anyway. She doesn’t listen to anything but English fashion bands.” Laine sneered. Nothing wondered whether Julie had dumped Laine this afternoon, or possibly even earlier tonight. The wounds seemed fresh.

  If Laine wanted Nothing to lick them, though, he was out of luck. Laine wasn’t getting an invitation to go south with him. No way. Nothing was leaving all this behind tonight—the school, the parents, and this goddamn pizza joint where the kids sat and smoked and talked about how great their lives would be if only they lived anywhere but here.

  Jack and the others were heading for the parking lot. Laine grabbed Nothing’s hand and pulled him along. “You don’t want to get left, do you? You’re getting the hell out of here!” Laine’s voice was exalted, envious.

  The ride to Columbia seemed to take no time at all. Guardrails, underpasses, dead orange sodium lights flashed past at a great speed. Skinny Puppy played on Jack’s tape deck, so loud that the notes were mangled beyond recognition. Someone passed around a flask of cheap vodka, and Jack drank most of it in one long gurgling swallow—like the Irishman chauffeur in a story Nothing had read, Jack could not drive unless he was blind drunk.