"Oh, Christ," Ryan said, grimacing.
"He's been tested," Lori said, thinking his disgust might be at the thought of the girl getting AIDS.
"You do that sort of thing, too?"
"Sure." She glanced meaningfully at his arm. "When I feel like it," she added.
Ryan watched the couple giving and receiving blood and felt a catch at the back of his throat. He had seen a lot of things; it wasn't as if he was so straight he was a Republican or something. But licking and sucking at bloody wounds was way beyond anything he'd witnessed before. No wonder they were all so lethargic, he thought. Maybe they weren't drugged out of their skulls, after all. Maybe they were depressed and weak from giving blood. Never mind AIDS—not that testing protected them, since the tests didn't always detect HIV in the early stages. But hadn't they ever heard of anemia? And whatever godawful thing might be in someone else's blood?
He laughed to himself, and Lori looked at him with dark eyes outlined in black eyeliner pencil.
"Most people who see this for the first time have a squeamish reaction," she said, as if to forgive him.
"But what's the philosophy behind the ritual? I mean, I know they're not doing it because they're . . . well, hungry."
She smiled and shook her head. "No, they're not hungry in the way you mean. There's no, uh, philosophy. It's like a way of life. A lifestyle. We're intimate when we share blood. We're brothers and sisters. It's a way to distinguish us from the rest, the normals. And, believe it or not, it's an incredible turn-on."
"Oh, it is, is it?"
Lori and Ryan turned at the interruption and saw Dell standing nearby, hands on her hips. She was scowling.
"Hey, Dell. What's up?" Lori said.
Ryan noticed Lori hadn't missed a beat.
"I know I shouldn't be here," Dell said to Ryan, ignoring Lori's greeting. "I wasn't invited." This she directed at Lori. "But I heard there was a party, Loden was throwing a party." She looked around and saw couples beginning to get into the bloodletting business. Ryan saw her look quickly away again.
He started to stand up to offer his seat to Dell. "Want to sit down?"
"Not on your life," she said, anger in her voice spiraling close to the surface. She faced Lori. "What made you bring him here?"
"Hey, he wanted to come." She tugged on Ryan's hand and made him sit down again.
"What's the point of all this crap?" Dell asked, angrier now.
"Call it crap if you want, but maybe you ought to wait until you're invited somewhere before you begin calling names." Lori was blowing her cool. Ryan didn't know what to say. He was really surprised to see Dell and more surprised to see her so angry. He saw some couples close to them move away and some people were beginning, to leave. Others, couples involved too deeply in their blood rituals, hadn't yet noticed Dell on the scene.
"You think this makes you a vampire?" Dell asked. "Why do any of you think you know what the hell you're doing?"
"You don't know what we know," Lori said.
"I know this. I know this kind of thing is crazy as hell. This no more makes you a vampire than wearing a jeweled crown makes Miss America the Queen of England." Dell turned to Ryan, her cheeks flushed. He saw the pupils of her eyes were dilated so that her eyes were extremely dark and intense. "Is this really what you want?"
Ryan realized suddenly why she was so angry. She liked him. Liked him enough to show up at Loden's party and make a scene on his behalf. He said, "I'm not sure what I want, Dell."
She threw her head back in exasperation. "Well, you'd better make up your mind."
"Who says it's up to you?" Lori asked.
Again Dell ignored her. She said to Ryan, "About Saturday night. . ."
He nodded, almost afraid to breathe until she finished.
"We'll go somewhere together, like you said. Somewhere there's no blood dripping all over the place." With that she turned and left the room.
"Whoa, boy," Lori said, shaking her head. "A little overwhelming, isn't she?"
Although Lori was right in a way, Ryan didn't like to hear criticism of Dell. "She's just worried, I guess."
"None of her business. As far as I can tell, you're a big boy."
Maybe so, Ryan thought, but he was glad Dell had let him know how much she cared. If she hadn't cared, she wouldn't have walked into the middle of a cult party and said the things she'd said. He thought her brave, and the logic she'd employed was impeccable.
As the night wore on, the thought of cutting himself and watching Lori drink from him was more distasteful in his mind than some little kid playing in his own excrement. Not only was it unsanitary, but it was such a taboo, almost as bad as cannibalism. It certainly wouldn't turn him on. He had to be missing something integral to the notion.
He kept silent and didn't share his doubts. He continued watching the couple and then other couples as they followed suit with blades and bloodletting. Soon, half the people at the party were down on their knees taking blood and the other half stood, giving blood.
"I think I'm going to have to leave," he whispered to Lori. She hadn't moved in long minutes, frozen in place by what was going on.
"Okay," she said, reacting slowly as if waking from a trance. "You'll get used to this later. Forget what Dell said. Most of the time we don't bring first dates to this kind of party, but I knew you'd be cool."
He was cool, all right. He was cold as a corpse. All he wanted to do was get the scent of blood out of his nostrils. He thought he was going to gag and that wouldn't make his date happy. He stood and Lori with him. She said good-bye to a few people and they left the house. Outside, in the fresh air, Ryan took a deep cleansing breath. "Maybe we should have worked our way up to this," he said.
"It's what Dell said, isn't it?"
"Not really."
She linked her arm in his as they walked to the car. "I hope I didn't scare you away. Not everyone does this. It's not like you have to or anything. It's more like you want to once you realize how close it can bring two people. Or a group of people. We're like family. We'd do anything for one another."
Ryan thought they already did anything for one another. He'd be damned if he'd take a knife to his arm, or any other part of his anatomy, and watch someone drink from him. As for being the drinkee, well, that was totally out of the question. Ugh.
He drove Lori home through the night, but all he could think about was Dell showing up at the party. He thought of her long red hair spilling around her shoulders in spirals. He thought of how her eyes had looked, deep and dark and amazingly impenetrable.
He tried to listen to Lori while she made her case for what he'd seen. He wanted to understand. He wanted to make sense of it. Finally he gave up trying and decided it was just the shock that he was working through. She'd said they all got over the initial disgust eventually. She suggested he read Bram Stoker's Dracula, and he said he would. He would, really. Read it slow, she said. Read it like you've never seen a book before and this is the first one you've ever read. I'll try, he told her, honest, I will.
"And after that," she said, "I have a whole list of new books for you to read. People are publishing books every day just for us."
"For you?"
"For the real believers."
"You don't really think you can be a vampire, do you? Dell asked that, I know. But you don't, do you?"
"Oh, of course not! But we can get close to it if we really try. We become one of the underground the books are really written for. It's a society, Ryan. If people really knew what we thought, they'd have to get a little scared. Not because we're going to turn into bats and bite their necks, but because we don't think at all about things the way they do."
He didn't think it made much sense to want to be so different you created a whole myth around yourself and you made rituals up out of the whole cloth. He didn't say it to Lori, but as far as he could determine, the kids at the party weren't a danger except maybe to themselves. He wasn't afraid of them. He wasn't lured.
&n
bsp; He would, however, read Dracula. He'd always meant to anyway. He'd just read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein last year and that had been an eye opener. The monster was nothing like he was portrayed in the movies. He expected Stoker's monster would be more interesting, too. But nothing was going to make him want to partake of blood. He was about as far from that as he was from the moon in the sky. Dell really hadn't had much faith in him if she'd thought otherwise.
When he went to kiss Lori good night before she left the car, meaning to give her a friendly little peck on the lips, she grabbed him around the neck and kissed him back so hard he found himself trying to pull away. Breathless once loose, his mouth still filled with the taste of her, he said, "That was . . . intense."
She grinned at him and said, "Yeah, wasn't it?"
He watched her enter the house before driving away. He was too stunned to leave earlier. He had really liked what she'd done. He thought he could go for an aggressive woman.
Then he thought of Dell and knew the truth. He would go out with her exclusively, if she'd let him. He had no interest in blood drinkers and cults and warped philosophies. Lori was a sweet thing and a terrific kisser, but Dell was someone he couldn't stop thinking about. He was happy she'd changed her mind about going out with him. All he needed was a chance.
~*~
Mentor took a direct route to Bette's house when he returned. She knew he was coming back. This time he would make her let him inside. He walked down the long street fronting her house, noting the small children playing in the street after dark. If only they knew what kind of creature he was, the mothers would never let their children be alone outdoors again.
Teen boys, all wearing black baseball caps with some kind of red insignia, congregated on a corner across the street. They watched him quietly, but did not move to intercept him. He projected an aura of danger their way. They might be tough little hooligans, but in each of their brains an alarm sounded that caused them to hesitate. Dallas had its share of minority gangs, and this one dominated the neighborhood.
A white man in his forties sat on a house stoop near the sidewalk. Mentor touched his thoughts and found his mind scrambled by heroin. His personality was near disintegration, and it made him angry and dangerous. As he lifted his head when Mentor neared, Mentor sent a message telepathically. Don't come near me, he told the man. You'll be sorry if you do.
Finally, Mentor was in front of Bette's walkway. He looked up to the front door and the windows. Lights glowed lemon yellow through lace-covered windows. Her car was in the drive. He telepathically searched the house and found no one there but the woman. Now he would make her invite him in, and he would finish the job he'd begun the day before.
When she answered his knock, he hit her with his strongest suggestion. Ask me in, he said to her mind. You know me as an old friend. He watched her expression change from horror to recognition and, finally, to happiness. She reached out for his hand and tugged him into the house. "I haven't seen you in so long," she said.
"And I bet you missed me, didn't you?" Mentor stepped through the doorway and closed the door behind him. He should have done it this way the first time instead of letting her see him as he really was, allowing her to understand his real intentions. He didn't like to trick them so easily, though, and unless he had to, he usually let a human face him on his own terms. But he hadn't any more time to waste on the woman.
Once they were in her small living room, he entered her mind fully. This caused her to stiffen and become as still as a statue. His own frail body also froze, waiting for his mind to return to it.
Inside Bette's skull he rifled through the area that held her lifetime of memories, shunting aside those that were too personal, those that concerned her childhood or her parents or her friends and relatives. He searched diligently for the memories that had to do with her work. She was a bright woman; he admired her and would not touch anything in her mind that would change her too much if he could help it. Of course there was always the chance of an accident when doing such delicate operations, but Mentor took special care because of the goodness he found in the woman.
It took several long minutes before he located her work memories, and then he went through them gently, stirring them this way and that until he found the exact ones he needed. She had memories from textbooks and classes taken at a university. These memories were tangled up with flashes of meetings with the man who had been in her house the night before, when he was much younger. When they both were much younger.
She had volumes of information stored about hematology and her lab work involving blood. If he ruined too many of these memories, she would never be useful as a scientist again. He meant to be careful, realizing he was trampling among stored data that she needed in order to fulfill her life's training.
And then he found what he needed to expunge. He moved through a memory of lifting a long computer printout close to her face and noticing the shipments from Strand-Catel. There was confusion surrounding these memories, like clouds shrouding a summer moon. She was not sure what the data meant and it left her befuddled. He took these memories and folded them the way one folds a newspaper, then he stuffed them behind a set of memories that dealt with other blood banks. For her to recall them again, she would have to have a traumatic brain injury that might possibly jiggle them loose, but even then it was an improbability. In other words, short of near fatal injury to her brain, she would never remember them again.
He lifted every memory he could discover that had to do with Strand-Catel and folded and stuffed until the whole inquiry she had started had been swept clean and put away in very deep storage within her brain.
On his way out of her mind, he almost tiptoed over to the area of memory that held personal data. He was tempted to look in on the love she had devoted to the man who had spent the night with her. But he knew that was snooping. It was an urge he should not indulge. What he might find there would no doubt throw him into a conflict about his own lack of a love life. It would depress him. Better to stay out of this woman's love affairs and leave before he caused some kind of accidental and irreparable damage.
He stepped out, hovered in midair just for a moment, and then reentered the skull of his old body. Just as he did, the woman collapsed forward into his arms. Her eyes were closed and he checked to see if she was breathing well. She was. She was sleeping like a newborn.
He lifted Bette and carried her to the sofa. Then he made her comfortable with a pillow under her head and smiled down at her slight body.
"You see? That wasn't so bad, was it?"
He left the house, happy that it had been so easy. He was reasonably sure he had not harmed her, except for taking away the memories that would get her into trouble with Ross. He walked down the sidewalk through the neighborhood the way he had come. The gang was gone, and the drug-addicted homeless man was missing from his stoop. Even the children had fled the street. The neighborhood seemed to have emptied, and he expected it was because they had unconsciously felt the danger he represented. They had gone inside their homes and bolted the doors. He smiled, showing his teeth. He thought how wonderful it was to be able to command this much power over not only the sweet, unassuming Bette, but a whole neighborhood of people who might not have even seen him. Without catching sight of him, their instincts knew something was walking close by that they did not want to encounter in the darkness of the night.
Mentor had seen a bus stop near the edge of the neighborhood. He decided he would take public transportation over to Ross' house to tell him the news. Mentor had not been on a bus in years, though in the past he had loved bus rides very much. Leave the driving to us, he sang in his mind. Yes, he would do that. Sit back and watch mankind moving from this place to that unaware that in their midst rode someone who, with very little effort, could mesmerize every one of them into a catatonic sleep.
He must never separate himself too far from man, he knew. He must renew his study of man and their modern ways, or he could not hope to be of
service to his youthful charges like Della Cambian.
As he rode, he watched an old Asian man fiddle with a leather pocketbook attached to his belt loop by a chain. He listened in on a conversation between two young women who seemed more interested in their dates this weekend than in anything else in the world. He moved his attention among the passengers, letting it pick up this and that observation until he wearied of their daily cares and frustrations, their minor joys and triumphs. Finally, he settled back in the seat and rested, leaving the driving to them.
~*~
Alan woke just as Mentor left Bette's house. He whispered a curse and sat straight up in the seat of his car. He gripped the wheel and gritted his teeth as he watched the old man come down the walkway and turn up the sidewalk. How could he have fallen asleep! It was as if something came over him, blowing out the candle of his awareness. It might have been because he ate too much dinner. Used to canned goods, a real meal often caused him to grow drowsy. But he would not have fallen asleep tonight, not when he had to watch Bette's house and keep her safe.
He cursed himself as a fool again and turned in his seat to watch the old man saunter down the walk beneath streetlights and crape myrtle trees that grew along the sidewalks. The street was eerily quiet, with no one else around. Had that been the stranger who'd frightened Bette the night before? Or was he just an old friend who had stopped by for a visit?
Alan was torn between rushing into the house to see about Bette or following the man who had come from her house. He decided to see about her as fast as he could. She was his primary concern. He rushed across the street and into her house. When he found her sleeping, he touched her face, felt the pulse in her wrists, and, satisfied she was all right, he hurried out the door again.
He had to follow. He was as drawn to the old man as if there were an invisible rope attached to him that was pulling him along.
He started the car and put it into gear. He turned his car around in the empty street and cruised slowly toward the old man. He had not closed in on him before he saw the man sit down on a bus stop bench. In the distance a bus lumbered toward him. Alan pulled into a parking spot at the curb and waited. He'd make another U-turn in a minute and follow the bus. Something told him he must know where the old man was going. Whether he was Bette's friend or foe, there was something magnetic about him that made Alan want to get closer to him. He was very curious about the old man's destination.
HORROR THRILLERS-A Box Set of Horror Novels Page 38
