The Mammoth Book of Vampire Romance

by Trisha Telep

  Letitia kicked his shins and clawed at his eyes, but his fingers closed steadily and her vision shrank into one little ball of light and consciousness. She couldn’t scream, couldn’t get enough breath. The way he leaned towards her against the door, they could be embracing, and no one was going to . . .

  Suddenly she could breathe again. She slid to the ground panting, and watched the two men come to grips. No one could mistake this for an embrace. Her attacker, the larger and heavier man, had one hand around Nathan Court’s throat, holding him off. And Nathan’s body changed, as though he now were miming, heavier and more centred, but fast. Letitia began to inch backwards, away from their straining bodies, keeping her eyes on them. ‘Monster’, the guy hissed, “You blood-sucking –”

  Nathan opened his lips and his fangs showed clearly, a set that put her own to shame. He sank them deep into the wrist at his throat and there was no pretend about it. The attacker screamed in pain and, among the passers-by, someone yelled, “I’ve called the cops!”

  It galvanized both men. Nathan let go of the hand and drew his head back again, but her attacker’s hand now held a glinting blade and he drove it home in Nathan’s chest. Instead of reeling back, Nathan head-butted the taller man in the nose then punched him in the throat. Almost absently, his left hand pulled out the knife. There was surprisingly little blood, less than she’d seen last night.

  He was a vampire. He had blood on his mouth. She saw the tip of his tongue lick it away.

  “Letitia –” He put the knife in his pocket and kept his back to the people still watching at a distance and holding up cell phone pictures. “Call 911. You were attacked – he’s been hanging around. A bystander punched him. I wasn’t here. Clear?”

  He was a vampire. He saw she knew. “I can’t stay. It’s too close to dawn for a police station, and besides–”

  Now they heard a siren. Letitia nodded, unable to make a sound. She looked away towards the flashing light and when she looked back, he was gone. Her obvious trauma, once the police arrived moments later, convinced them more than any explanation, but by the time they drove her to the station, she had come up with one.

  She was a street performer, yes. She’s answer all their questions. With the tour, and she recited contract information. Sometimes men in the audience were drunk. Sometimes they acted out. She described the man’s actions the night before omitting Nathan. Tonight the same man had followed her from a restaurant where a journalist had been interviewing her. Yes, she had the journalist’s number at home. She’d been calling a taxi when she was attacked. She described everything except the bite and who had intervened. A stranger, she said, who’d gotten a lot more than he bargained for.

  Letitia knew that bystanders must have seen him speaking to her. He had said, she told the police, that he couldn’t get involved. Didn’t explain otherwise. Just said, “You’ll be all right now,” and took off. He might know martial arts. An effective fighter, anyway. The bite wound she didn’t know anything about, except – the guy seemed to be nuts on the subject of vampires. Kept saying she was the monster’s, uh, girlfriend. Maybe he actually believed she was a vampire. People believed all kinds of things.

  At long last they released her. She called Kip and had called the tour, and their lawyer would contact her tomorrow. Today, almost. And she was excused from performing that evening, though they hoped she’d be able to complete her contract. In an early, faint dawn she took a taxi home, and let herself into the apartment.

  The first thing she saw was the note. It was stuck with tape to the doorknob. Lettie peeled it off and locked herself in. Her heart sped up the second she opened it.

  Letitia

  Forgive me for coming here. I was in no state to cross a hotel lobby. I apologise for frightening you. I mean you no harm and I am helpless until sundown in any case. I’ll go then.

  I imagine the police will want to interview me. Tell them you’ve left me a message – and really do leave one, in case they check.

  As I told you, the article is real. I’ll email it to you and let you know when it comes out.

  I wish we’d had more time together before you found out about me. You must be very shocked and I only add to that by being here. Please use my room at the hotel – the key is on your all table – if you’ve no one to stay with today.

  I wish . . . I wish many things.

  Nathan

  She dropped the letter and darted to her bedroom. No, not there. He had better manners than to sleep in her bed like Goldilocks. She almost laughed. And, of course, he was in her costume room, along with all her personas, a sewing machine and her make-up table. He had unrolled the futon she kept in there and lay like a corpse upon it, on one side, face turned away from her. She noted that he’d drawn down the shades and pulled the curtains closed as well. Of course he had.

  She tiptoed across the room. She couldn’t help feeling as though she’d wake him. She snapped on a light and sat at her make-up mirror and looked at him. He was even more corpse-like. Eyes closed, oblivious. Vulnerable. She could call the police, stake him, roll him out in the yard, whatever she chose. He had trusted her. He had saved her.

  And thinking through this, she realized she was not afraid of Nathan Court, Yankee vampire transplanted south. What kind of woman, after all, poses as a vampire? What kind dips her fingers in the blood on a man’s shirt front in a dark doorway? Not the easily spooked.

  Letitia left the light on – wasn’t going to disturb him – and put away her costume. Then she creamed her face at the dressing table, which also reflected his motionless form. Not breathing, either. Probably didn’t eat, except blood. Was he going to need some when he woke up? Unknown whether he could have sex like in the books. Lots of unknowns.

  Cross those bridges later. She went to her room and changed into a long T-shirt and brushed her hair. Made some hot chocolate. She didn’t feel alone, the way she usually did, even though her houseguest was completely out of it. Dead to the world, in fact. She snorted into the cocoa, and then yawned.

  She set down the mug and got out spare blankets from the hall that she tucked around the curtains. Then she lay on the floor beside him, her body mirroring his. Slightly on one side, one arm under his head and half stretched out, the other curled. His body did not look relaxed into sleep. He seemed to be holding a pose impossibly long. Lettie made her own breathing minimal. The sleeping vampire: too static to perform. But she’d like to move the way he did; the suddenness and apparent lack of effort were worth her study.

  If the article was real, so was the journalist. And how different was that from an agent? They both knew what sold and dealt with marketers. She would explain that to him tonight. After he’d talked to the police. It would make sense: danger had thrown them together. You found out about each other fast that way. Got involved fast. But he’d need to sleep in the other room after tonight, so she had access to her stuff. It was going to take some rearrangement. She left the door open, brushed her teeth and got into bed, and, because she was only a temporary vampire, set the alarm for noon.

  Overbite

  Savannah Russe

  Who can say what shapes a man’s fate? In this case it was an incisor painfully split right into the gum line. The tooth was large and as dangerously pointed as an ice pick. Its owner, a slender young man with long hair, several earrings in his right ear and a dancer’s slender body, looked Goth. For that reason, Sol Tytel, dentist, figured he’d probably had it sharpened.

  You wouldn’t believe the stuff dentists see, Sol thought as he set the guy up for X-rays. Humanity is twisted.

  When Sol’s answering service had called him earlier that hot July night, a mist had risen from Gowanus Bay to spread across Brooklyn. It softened the shadows of cars and stinkweed trees under the street lights. Footsteps became muffled. Old nightmares crept along the kerbs and swirled around the drains.

  The chirping voice at the service said some guy had broken a tooth and wouldn’t go to an emergency room. Sol’s
Aunt Blanche had told the guy to call her nephew, the dentist.

  Sol’s chubby fingers tightened around the cell phone. You didn’t refuse a request from Aunt Blanche. Sol’s sister Glenda Faye once brushed off a request to pick up some smoked whitefish from a store on Eighteenth Avenue, saying she didn’t have time. Ten years later Aunt Blanche had gone through the reception line at Glenda Faye’s wedding, given the new bride her dry hand instead of a kiss and said, “So? You are still so busy you can’t spare ten minutes to help an old woman whose arthritis is killing her?”

  So Sol quickly agreed to take care of the emergency, even though it was a Saturday night, well past the witching hour. Sol didn’t really mind. He had his eye on a plasma TV out in Circuit City and mentally added up what he could bill this schlemiel. It being a date night didn’t matter either. Unwed and unattached, Sol was alone, again.

  Not that he was a loser in the game of love. Hell no. In dental school his nickname was The Driller, and it had nothing to do with dental caries. Yet for Sol, his love life had stalled and sat unmoving and the dank, empty garage of his existence. His only option at the moment was hooking up with one of the earnest 30-something Sarah-Lawrence graduates he met at Temple.

  Tits sagging, greying hair worn as a political statement, rear ends broad and soft as sofa cushions, the women had opinions about everything, from the use of feng shui for his waiting room to the dire health risks of his ordering pastrami. One by one they came to him with biological clocks ticking and dollar signs in their eyes.

  Sol Tytel did not respond. He had a desire both secret and profane that kept him from smashing the glass under the chuppah. It drove him to the news-stand at the subway station for the current issue of Playboy; it made him spend far too much on certain premium cable stations. The truth was Sol dreamed only of blue-eyed blondes with tiny noses and names like Bunny. In other words, his dark Sephardic eyes wished to behold goys, preferably naked.

  So this particular Saturday night, with a Goth-type guy dressed all in black lying prone in the dentist chair, Sol hummed a tune from Phantom of the Opera and looked at the X-rays. He decided he could save the tooth, but it was going to need a cap.

  With a practised spiel, the same one he had given dozens of times, Sol explained the situation to his emergency patient and talked about payment plans. But he also had a question. Should he replicate the point? Or could Sol take this opportunity to make the tooth look normal, cap the opposing incisor the same way and give him a nice smile?

  Sol grinned to show him his own perfect pearly whites.

  Even with his mouth stuffed with cotton, the patient let out a laugh that sounded like ice cracking. The strip of dental X-rays shook in Sol’s soft hand. That’s when Bryce Canyon, or so he called himself, told Sol he was a vampire. He needed his new eye tooth as sharp as Sol could make it – for obvious reasons.

  Sceptical, curious and at least a little fearful, Sol nevertheless maintained his professional demeanour. His mind raced. He weighed the risks, the pros and cons. Finally he spoke. “For someone such as yourself, dental health is especially critical.”

  “You’ve got that right,” Brice Canyon muttered through the cotton.

  “A person such as myself, an excellent dentist, might fill, pardon the pun, a need among your . . . your kind? Am I right?”

  Brice Canyon nodded.

  “Then perhaps we should talk,” Sol said.

  Brice Canyon, whose real name was Cormac O’Reilly, was an occasional Broadway hoofer and an ageless gigolo. Even with his senses dulled by several injections of lidocaine, he saw the profits that potentially lay in a partnership with the slubby dentist. Brice could recruit vampire patients, for a fee of course, and Sol could practise his trade with great discretion.

  “I think you need to become a vampire yourself,” Brice suggested later that night as he leaned back on a dull brown, imitation-leather sofa in Sol’s office. He stretched his long, skinny legs atop the coffee table piled high with weekly news magazines. “Business-wise, it would increase the trust factor, you know.”

  The forbidden nature of what Brice suggested sent a delicious thrill directly to Sol’s loins. He quashed the felling immediately, ashamed. “Can’t. It must be against my religion,” he answered, though not very quickly.

  “Don’t see why it would be, but then one’s perspective on piety and ancient creeds changes when one lives on the dark side,” Brice said and put his hands behind his head. He gazed at the ceiling. His face took on a sly look. “However, the sex, you know, is fantastic. Women love vampires.”

  “They do? Why?” The words sex and women acted like the siren’s song on Sol’s libido.

  Brice laughed his blood-curdling laugh once more. “We’re forbidden, sexy and need to be saved. That’s potent, dude.”

  A trembling came over Sol. “Let me sleep on it,” he said.

  But the hook had been baited. Brice knew he just had to set it.

  “Sure. But why not meet me tomorrow night and let me show you around, introduce you to some friends? See what you think.”

  “I guess there’d be no harm in that,” Sol said.

  Sol slept fitfully. The next morning, he brewed some coffee, toasted a bagel and sat in front of an edifying public affairs show on television, but his mind wandered. The thought of meeting up with this vampire rattled him. He considered the fact that he had an OK life, a little dull, but maybe he shouldn’t rock the boat. He could take a vacation to Miami and cure his current boredom instead of becoming the next Dracula.

  Yer much that Brice had told Sol intrigued him. Sol had often dreamed of possessing the sheer physical power vampires seemed to have. The transformation into a demigod – and Brice assured him he would be – promised a faster route to six-pack abs than calorie counting and working out at the gym.

  Plus, he’d have his health even if he chose to eat corned beef and pastrami daily, took up smoking Cuban cigars and relaxed every night with a potent Martini. High cholesterol and hardening of the arteries would be a thing of the past.

  And he couldn’t ignore the fact that financial success as ‘dentist to the undead’ seemed assured.

  On the other hand, the eternal life aspect didn’t grab him. Brice insisted vampires didn’t age, but Sol had an Uncle Sid who lived to be 97. Uncle Sid wasn’t a pretty sight, especially when he put on a speedo and went to the pool in the Assisted Living Compound in Ormond Beach. But his mental state was what alarmed Sol.

  “What’s living another day?” the old man had griped. “Nothing more to strive for, nothing left to conquer. No interest in women or food. I’m ready for the grave.”

  Sol worried that eternal life might prove to be a few centuries too long in the dental profession.

  But the sex part made Sol swoon. Brice had told him stories that caused him to break out in a sweat. Threesomes, group sex, anal, oral, tantric, S&M; Brice put out a smorgasbord pf exotic delicacies when it came to the ways he had done the dirty. Could Sol find the same kind of sybaritic happiness.

  Brice swore on his mother’s life that Sol could. Somewhere in his rational mind, Sol knew the word of a vampire wasn’t reliable currency, but accepting the drab reality of his life or taking a once-in-a-lifetime offer to be transformed from Sol Tytel, dentist to an uber-cool, dark, sexy, mysterious vampire seemed a no-brainer.

  Yet Sol dithered as the clock ticked off the afternoon hours, unable to make up his mind whether to venture forth into the vampire dens of the city and meet Brice – until his old friend Howie called. Howie had inherited his Upper East Side practice from his father, now retired and living in Boca Raton. Howie’s clientele included power brokers and movie stars, and when it came down to his conquests of willing women, he rubbed it in all the time.

  He’d crow with great glee: “She practically raped me. I swear to God. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. Twenty-six and gorgeous. She married some old goat and is bored out of her raven-tressed skull. What do I care if her boobs are silicone? My Go
d the woman can give a blow job,” On and On. Howie never did know when to shut up.

  That’s really what did it – Howie’s bragging. Sol buried his doubts in a dark recess of his mind and left Brooklyn promptly at sundown, determined to enjoy a night among the quick and the undead.

  Manhattan’s vampire underworld teemed with depravity, decadence and self-absorption. In that respect, it differed little from the singles scene in that same city. In other ways, it surpassed Sol’s wildest dreams – and darkest nightmares.

  Sol emerged form a yellow cab to find himself on the baking cement of the city sidewalks, the heat palpable around him. He spotted Brice lounging in a doorway, like Lucifer at the gates of hell. Perspiration erupted on Sol’s balding pate. The vampire beckoned. Sol took his step towards destiny and followed him inside a nightclub called Blood Lust, where the moment the door opened he could hear loud music blaring with a driving beat.

  Dim lighting, dark-red painted walls and a bouncer the size of an elephant greeted Sol. Anxiety griped him like a sumo-wrestler, his breath came hard and yet he found the courage to follow Brice deeper into the innards of the place.

  But what scared him most of all was the smell. It was musky, bestial and thoroughly disturbing. The patrons on the tables looked human, except when they looked up and their eyes glowed red behind the pupils. It was then that Sol realized he was no longer with his own kind.

  Some wraith-thin women drifted around a large room serving drinks, mostly Bloody Mary’s it seemed. Sol had a sinking feeling they weren’t made from tomato juice. Another frisson of fear coursed through him. Panic overwhelmed him. He turned and decided to make a dash for the door and return to the street.

  But Brice had grabbed his elbow and held him fast, pulling Sol towards the far end of the room. There, in front of a live band playing loudly, couples crowded on a small dance floor, gyrating under strobe lights of blue and red.

  “Yeah, I know. It’s retro disco,” Brice said. “Let’s get a table. What are you drinking?”