Vampire Vow

by Michael Schiefelbein

  The snug kitchen smelled of bay leaves. In the living room, afghans draped sagging armchairs. From a photo above the antiquated television gazed a shiny-faced young man in a dress Marine jacket and white cap. The boards squeaked under my step as I followed a scent down a hallway. I paused, listened. Someone turned in a bed and sighed.

  The first door I came to was slightly ajar. I crept in toward a large four-poster bed in the center of the room, where I could discern a woman's weathered face. Snatching her robe from the foot of the bed, I pressed it over her mouth. Her eyes opened; she struggled and moaned; her flailing arm knocked a glass to the floor.

  "Mama! You all right?" The man's voice came from the adjacent room.

  I twisted the old woman's neck until it snapped, and hid behind the door as the hall light came on.

  "You OK, Mama?"

  When no response came from the bed, a man in a wheelchair rolled into the room, his long ponytail jiggling as he worked the wheels. "Mama?"

  Before he could discover my deed, I grabbed his shoulders and plunged my fangs into his bearded throat. He clutched my hair as blood spurted from his jugular until he lost consciousness. I drank greedily for almost ten minutes, emptying every vein of his tobacco-laced blood.

  After feeding, I surveyed the scene before me: one body slumped over in the wheelchair, the other still staring toward the door, arms stretched out like a cross. "Soon, now," I said to myself. "Soon I will stop creeping in the night, desperate for prey."

  I sped back to the edge of the woods and walked across the grounds to the monastery. As I came around to the front of the building, I caught a glimpse of a white car disappearing down the drive without its lights. I was sure it stopped behind a cluster of trees, but with dawn only half an hour away I couldn't investigate.

  My sleep was fitful. I dreamed that blood gushed again from my victim's throat, but every time I stooped to drink from the red jet, it ceased. When I sucked the musty, hairy throat, it yielded nothing. Thirst maddened me. I stalked victim after victim, but each time I caught my prey it turned into a half-familiar corpse I had drained long ago.

  The scene changed then. A golden throne rose from the midst of four six-winged creatures bulging with eyes in front and back. In the throne glowed a translucent figure whose crown of jasper and carnelian seemed an extension of the throne itself. The ruler lifted a scroll, the creatures fell to their knees, a man approached. In a white robe, his skin now alabaster, his hair like bleached fleece, the man accepted the scroll.

  "Joshu!" I screamed from the midst of a throng of people. But he did not hear.

  "Worthy is the lamb that was slain!" The crowd chanted.

  "Damn you, Joshu!" I screamed, immobilized by the bodies pressing around me. "Damn you then! Rehearse your coronation for eternity. I will live!"

  Chapter Twenty-four

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  The night after I'd preyed on the crippled man, Michael approached me after vespers and said to meet him in the weight room during the recreation period. When I asked why it couldn't wait until our usual meeting time in my cell he shook his head gravely and whispered, "We can't. I'll explain."

  "Shut the door," he said, straining to lift a bar loaded with weights.

  "They'll be suspicious." I nodded to the locker room, where several of the monks were undressing.

  "Close it, damnit!" The biceps of his fully extended arms swelled under the weight. Sweat plastered the hair on his naked chest and abdomen. "Take this."

  I placed the barbell on its rest and sat on a plastic chair, scuffed from use. Michael sat up and wiped his face with a white towel. I could smell the bleach in it, used heavily by the pathetic monk who did the laundry.

  "The federal agent talked to me today." Michael spoke in a hushed voice despite the private room.

  "Andrews?"

  "Yes. He had all kinds of questions about you, and about the two of us."

  "Why should he care about two homosexual monks? Isn't finding a serial killer enough for him?" Nonchalant, I hoisted my feet up on the other bench.

  "It's got something to do with finding Luke. He apparently knows about your relationship with him."

  "Yes, he asked me about it."

  "He wanted to know if there was anything unusual about you."

  "Unusual? In what way?"

  Michael shrugged. "Seems like he wanted to know if you indulge in some form of sadism. He seems to suspect you."

  "Of scaring Luke away from the monastery? I know that. Good agent Andrews made that clear in our chat."

  "It's more than that." Michael scooted down the bench, closer to me. He leaned over on his knees. "This is incredible, but I think he suspects you of killing Luke."

  "What!"

  "He made me show him my arms and back to prove you'd never abused me. He asked about your weird ideas, about your occult beliefs. Victor, I think he bugged your cell. That's why I wanted to talk here."

  My face and manner remained calm, while fury welled in me like electricity in a stormy sky ready to burst forth in lightning. The news confirmed my fears about the car I'd seen slip behind the trees. Michael and I were under surveillance.

  "Victor, I want the truth." Michael's eyes were unflinching in their intensity. "Did you hurt Luke more than emotionally?"

  "Why don't you ask your real question?" I shouted. "Did I kill Luke and cut him up in pieces? You think I'm the killer stalking the woods?"

  Michael remained unintimidated by my rage. "I don't think anything. I only want to hear from your own lips that you didn't harm Luke."

  I glared at him. "I thought you loved me. Do you?"

  "Yes, God help me. But I understand you, the extremes of your passions. You're capable of anything. That's what drew me to you. And your strength."

  I broke into a laugh. "I see what this is all about. I've always known it. You got Luke out of your way, just to have me for yourself. Now you have qualms of conscience. That's very unbecoming of you, Michael. I thought you were above petty scrupulosity."

  My words hit my mark, as I knew they would. He calmly studied me. "I'm not above shame."

  "Relax, Michael." I slapped his arm. "I'm not a psychopath. Unless my own life were at stake, I wouldn't waste my time killing anyone."

  Brooding, Michael stood, pulled on his T-shirt, and opened the door.

  I laughed again.

  "What?" he said, irritated.

  "You look like Judas Iscariot."

  He dismissed me with a glance and walked out.

  "It's not worth hanging yourself over," I shouted after him and broke into a fit of laughter.

  Back in my cell, I turned over the bed and pulled the books from their shelves in search of the listening device. I stood on a chair to inspect the painted pipe that ran the length of the ceiling and rummaged through the desk drawers. I was just about to fling the crucifix down after searching the back of it when I noticed the tiny case behind the bent knees of the corpus.

  The irony of my enemy's means of spying did not escape me. Not only had Joshu fled from me, but his image assisted my would-be captors.

  In that moment I craved the blood of the arrogant agent, who even now listened to my excited breathing. My fangs shot forth in anticipation as I stormed up the crypt stairs and down the winding drive. The white sedan was exactly where I expected it to be. In wrinkled starched shirts, Andrews and another agent got out of the car when they saw me approaching, both with their hands near the guns on their hips.

  "Evening, Brother Victor. Can we help you with something?" Andrews had been eating a sandwich. He dabbed his lips with a handkerchief.

  Andrew's partner was 40ish and balding, but a large, well-built man. I could have lunged at them in an instant, their blood titillated me so.

  "You've invaded my privacy, Mr. Andrews." I held out the recorder, then hurled it off into the trees. "If you want excitement, go get yourselves fucked."

  "Something right up your alley, isn't it, Brother?" Andrews sneered at me.
<
br />   His neck, rising firm and thick from his loosened collar, beckoned to me in that moment. My fangs, which had retracted, inched forward again, and only through enormous concentration could I control their growth. As I turned to avoid any more temptation, Andrews called me back.

  "Where are you from, Brother Victor?" He emphasized the word "Brother" in a mocking tone.

  I stopped and faced him.

  "You think you'll hide your tracks long?" He leaned against the car now. The other agent had relaxed too.

  "The abbot has my records. I'm sure you've already seen them."

  "Records from a monastery that no longer exists? A letter from a dead abbot?"

  I smiled at the cockiness behind his transparent ploy to goad me into desperation now that the FBI was on my trail. I swore to myself that I would have that man eventually, then retraced my steps to the monastery.

  The next day the evening news covered my most recent slayings, neighbors only that day having discovered the bodies of the crippled man and his mother. Cameras scanned the scene, the empty bed and wheelchair, the bodies being carried out in black bags. The elderly couple who had found the corpses explained that when the son hadn't emerged for his usual spins around the block, they'd knocked on the door. That failing, they'd tried without luck to reach him by phone. Then, finding the broken door in back, they ventured in.

  At this point the old woman, wearing a sweatshirt stamped with the words "Proud to be a Grandma," broke into tears. "Oh, sweet Jesus! I never seen such a thing in my life."

  Her husband, pushing up a pair of thick glasses, wrapped his arm around her.

  The lanky blond reporter asked him how long they had known the victims.

  The old man shook his head. "Mr. and Mrs. Sanders lived here when we bought the house back in '48. Jimmy came along a couple years later. Always playing soldier out in the yard here. A good boy. Took care of his mama after his daddy died." The man was too choked up to go on.

  The maudlin curiosity of the monks annoyed me, and I had no desire to watch the rest of the coverage. But to leave now, with the abbot entertaining fears about me because of the FBI's probings, would have drawn unnecessary attention to myself.

  A shot of the man's Marine photograph flashed on the screen, followed by an interview of a Paris Island officer, who attested to the soldier's dedication in boot camp and then in Vietnam, where an exploding land mine left him a paraplegic.

  When the reporter interviewed Andrews, I swore he was looking directly at me.

  "Yes, we are following some leads," he said in response to the reporter's question. He wore a navy-blue suit and a tie with neat rows of print—straight and controlled. "But we are not at liberty to discuss our suspects. We want to assure the community that we are doing everything within our power to get this fiend."

  "Is it true, Lieutenant Andrews, that the blood was drained from these victims? That the killer is a member of a vampire cult?"

  "We are not at liberty to discuss details of the investigation." Andrews's boyish face remained expressionless, his tone official.

  "Could you tell us anything about the monk from St. Thomas Monastery, Brother Luke McMahan? A missing person's report has been filed with the police. Do you suspect foul play in this case?" The eager reporter tucked her straight hair behind her ear.

  Andrews started looking impatient now. "The local police are handling that case. There is no evidence of foul play at this point."

  The subject stirred the monks to comment and sigh and chat over their cocktails. Two younger monks appeared to take out their frustration over Luke on a ping-pong ball, which they knocked mercilessly back and forth across the net. Michael glanced at me from the open window, where he'd been musing over an illuminated fountain of John the Baptist in the Jordan.

  I wanted air. Before evening prayer I strolled out to the courtyard. Daffodils had already bloomed and hedges of forsythia clustered around the oak, which had started to bud. I sat on a stone bench, closed my eyes, and inhaled the cool air stirring the skirts of my habit. No moon glowed, but even so I felt its magnetic power upon my immortal blood and reveled in the vision of the realm ever bathed in its illumination.

  This was the last time I'd be forced into a corner, waging battle against human enemies that snapped at me like dogs. I was weary of it. From Jerusalem to Athens to Nampo; from Mozambique to Brindisi in the heel of Italy to the villages of Alsace-Lorraine and the hamlets of England; I'd traveled across the globe for 2,000 years, powerful but hunted, and I was now ready for my eternal reward. This time I would not flee the region, but the mortal sphere itself.

  Chapter Twenty-five

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  Holy Week nauseated me. The scripture readings about Joshu's triumphant entry into Jerusalem (if you call 20 beggars and a handful of religious fanatics fluttering palm branches triumphant); his romanticized last supper with 12 laborers who reeked of fish; him sweating blood in Gethsemane (more palatable than saying he was ready to soil himself from fear). The early Christian movement had spun the whole train of mundane events into a myth surpassing the epic of Aeneas.

  But Good Friday revolted me the most. The rituals and readings reveling in the gore dripping from Joshu's face, hands, and feet because with it flowed his life, the prerequisite of redemption; this maudlin sentimentality perverted real passion for the sinewy man, wasting the blood that should have been lapped up as the fuel of orgasm.

  Who on this damnable earth, millennia after his death, could lust for the man Joshu?

  When I crept from my tomb the night of Good Friday, the chapel above seemed to press like a weight on my back. On their knees, amidst clouds of incense, the monks had observed the sacred hours from noon to 3—when Joshu expired—loading the vaulted space with, for me, a tangible perversion of my love.

  Now, tested and watched, I had to ascend and join their desecrating rituals.

  Purple cloth swathed every statue in the dimly lit chapel. The tabernacle door stood wide open, the ciborium of communion wafers removed to commemorate Joshu's arrest and removal from Gethsemane. The marble altar had been stripped of its linen.

  When evening service began the monks rose, black figures in the shadows. Swinging a censer by its chain, Michael led the procession down the center aisle. His bleached surplice set off his dark brows and hair, his olive complexion. His face showed his absorption in the ritual.

  The abbot brought up the rear of the procession, lifting a crucifix that was three feet tall and shrouded in purple.

  "Behold the wood of the cross," he chanted, "on which is hung our salvation."

  "Come, let us adore," responded the monks, dropping to their knees.

  The invocation and refrain were repeated twice more, each time the abbot exposing another arm or leg of the plaster corpus until, upon reaching the sanctuary, he hoisted up a crucifix completely bared.

  When the monks filed from the stalls to kiss the feet of the corpus, I fought the impulse to rush forward and crush the plaster figure. When my turn came to genuflect before the cross, while the abbot held it on the sanctuary step, I shot a glance at Michael. He stood by with a linen napkin to wipe the feet after each kiss.

  "Yes, Victor," his eyes said to me. Was he directing me to offer the ritual kiss, or was he expressing assent? If so, to what?

  I took a breath and brushed my lips against the cold feet. By the time I returned to my stall, I knew the moment had come. Michael must tour the Dark Kingdom.

  When he came to my cell just before midnight, I was sitting in the soft illumination of candles burning in all four corners of the room. Michael closed the door softly behind him and glanced around. The bed was stripped, my books packed back in the trunk. The crucifix rose from the wastebasket.

  "What's going on, Victor?" Michael wore a black sweatshirt and black jeans, a modernized habit of sorts.

  "I want to take you to the place now." I'd tipped back the chair to rest my feet on the bed.

  "The Dark Kingdom?" Michael leaned again
st the desk. "Why now?"

  "It's the right moment. Will you go?"

  He paused and studied the wall. "Strange. I feel exactly the way I did the day I entered the monastery. A step into the unknown."

  "Very appropriate." I lowered my feet and leaned forward to take his hands in mine. "Believe me, once you see it, your life will change. Immortality will mean something. Not pious garbage about eternal peace. You weren't made for peace and neither was I. Our souls are strong, violent, passionate."

  "And evil?"

  "Evil. What does that mean?" The word disgusted me. "Rebellion against the Christian god, who rules with an iron hand, twists souls into his own image and likeness, demands from them unyielding devotion to no one but him? Is that evil? What about black skies scorned by sailors as they approach the rocks, winds that strip a field of grain? Are they evil, or are they simply power? Why moralize about strength and passion?"

  "Take me," Michael said in a whisper, his dark eyes willful, excited.

  I stood and stripped off my T-shirt and sweatpants. "Come here."

  I pulled off his shirt, caressed his exquisite pectorals and biceps. Our heated lips met, our tongues pressing past each other's lips like impatient serpents entering their lairs. Then I pulled him to the bed and directed his mouth to my nipple, as Tiresia had directed me to hers centuries before monks came into being. He sucked, tenderly at first, and then as blood squirted down his throat, greedily, wantonly.

  My head spun. I abandoned myself to the movement, which took an upward turn, like the takeoff of a plane, gracefully piercing an ebony sky. Michael's position had changed now. From behind me he hugged my waist, his face against my neck, as I rocketed moonward. He moaned in delight, gasped for air.

  When we entered a sea of silver light, our momentum slowed. We floated now, over a wall, over tiled roofs gleaming under the dreamy light.