by Casey Lane
She fell forward on impact, her hands going out in front of her.
I wasn’t worried she’d be hurt. The earth was cold and soft. It gave under the sudden press of her palms.
A swell of cicadas blurred the night around us. It was as if we’d stepped into a riot. The only thing squealing louder than the cicadas were perhaps the frogs lining the pond. I loved this pond, really more of a small lake. I loved how the moonlight glowed on its gently lapping surface. I loved watching the surrounding cat tails and tall grass sway in the breeze.
She covered her nose with her hand, and I knew then she could smell it. Death. The cloistering stench of hot, rotting meat. Ah, well. Can’t have everything, can we?
“Where are we?” she asked, in a small voice.
“I am not one for idle conversation,” I said. “Instead of trying to convince you of who I am or what I am, I simply thought I would show you. It will save us time.”
I pitched my voice perfectly over the crying loons and croaking frogs and incessant cicadas. I spoke straight into her mind so I could be sure she heard me.
“You wanted to show me what you are,” she said.
She skipped right over the who part. I suppose I deserved that. I did fly her roughly thirty miles through the night sky.
Her mind took inventory and settled upon the idea of shock. She concluded that she must be in shock, because she’d been in shock before. Jimmy, her first husband drove them home drunk from the bar one rainy night and they had an accident. He’d taken a ninety degree turn in their red little pickup, and the steering wheel had snapped first left and then right before it began to spin. The next thing she knew, she was no longer on the passenger side, but crumpled on top of Jimmy on the driver’s side as it slid backward through a ditch, grass and weeds whipping past the cracked glass.
For her, the oddest part of all was when the car had stopped moving, it flipped back onto all fours, all on its own. Once it did, they shared a tight, breathless, insane laugh.
I wondered how much more insane that laughter would have been if she’d known I was the one who’d righted the truck for her. I couldn’t have her dying in a ditch, after all. I had other plans.
And it seemed like that plan would ripen now, at this very moment, if I didn’t do something. If I didn’t find some way to slow it down.
Something moved in the brush to my left. I knew how I must’ve looked to her: one moment there, the next gone. A white specter disappearing in the moonlight. I heard the soft gasp of surprise from her lips as I reappeared, a wild, gray rabbit kicking in my arms.
It’s white tufted feet kicked at me as it tried to free itself from my grip.
Sorry little friend, I thought. It’s you or her. And probably still her.
“What are you—” she began.
I sank my elongated teeth into the rabbit’s throat.
I ripped at the fur. I wasn’t trying to be savage or cruel, but you try drinking blood through a mat of fur tickling the back of your throat. So I tore off a patch and drank.
Blood spilled down the front of the rabbit’s chest, the shining white hair darkening. Wet sucking sounds accompanied the wild kicking, but they faltered and became sporadic. The rabbit didn’t make a sound, but Lettie did. A growing moan of horror echoed in the hollow of her throat.
I tossed the rabbit away before it could grow cold in my grip. I don’t like touching them once they’ve gone cold. The limp body sailed through the night into the trees. Something would cart it away. A fox or badger. Something would be grateful for the easy meal, even if it had to get close enough to me to reach it.
He’s the worst thing out here, Lettie thought.
“That isn’t very nice, Ms. Cole,” I said. “Do you really know me so well as to pass judgment?”
“You’re a vampire,” she said but it sounded like the beginning of a sentence, not the whole thought, and yet she stopped there.
A vampire. A vampire.
The word rose through the shock of her mind and repeated itself on a loop. Her eyes remained as wide has half dollars, her shoulders trembling.
A vampire…a vampire…a vampire…
I supposed I could blame the books for that. In books, if something drank blood, then it was a vampire. It didn’t matter if it also ate your soul or tore you to shreds, blood-drinking was a vampire thing.
“Do you want to know what I am?” I asked. “Or do you want to know my plans for you?”
I enjoyed the kickstart panic of her heart. “Both. If you’re going to kill me, at least tell me why and who you are.”
I said nothing to that.
She was trying not to fidget, I could tell. “Are you a vampire?”
“A vampire. A demon. Homo eroticus…” I sneered. “Does it matter?”
“It matters to me,” she insisted.
I smiled at that. I couldn’t help it. Her attempt to control the conversation and put forward the best possible version of herself—all of it thrilled me. How would she have felt if she’d known I’d already touched her soft skin? That I knew every filthy thought and cruel desire flitting behind those hazel eyes?
“Call me a vampire if you want,” I said and slipped my hands into my pockets.
“Why did you bring me here?” She pulled herself to standing. Then she bent forward to brush the dirt from her knees but never took her eyes off me. “Is this where you kill and dump your bodies?”
Because you’re going to kill me. She was intuitive. I credited her survival thus far to it. Lettie herself would have never believed she had such instincts. She would’ve pointed out her marriages, both of them, to men who liked to hit her and drink and fuck around with other women. She would point out that she’d been foolish enough to return to Georgia when the second was carted off to prison.
But she’d been twenty-two with a baby and no job. And that was the Cole thing to do, wasn’t it? Her brother Merek had brought his second wife, Danielle, there. Charley, Lettie’s older sister, had never left at all.
Her mother and Hennessey had made it easy. They acted as if Kai, their first grandchild, was a sack of gold rather than a chubby-cheeked girl with ash blonde curls. Besides, the truth was much simpler than all that—she had nowhere else she could go, and that in itself was a terrible decision, wasn’t it? Leaving herself no options? One horrible decision after another, leading up to the one where she stepped out onto a dark porch for a smoke and into the arms of a hungry vampire.
And I was hungry for her. The rabbit hadn’t slaked my blood rage nearly as much as I needed it to. I’d groomed her for this moment for so long—I’d hate for something as simple as blood lust make me careless.
“When you are as old as I am,” I said, sucking at the blood on my teeth. “You know a great many ways to hide bodies. You don’t need to take someone into the woods to do it.”
“That wasn’t what I asked,” she said. She was determined not to die like the rabbit, feet twitching in the grass.
It’s what you want. He’s only giving you what you want, her mind said. How close to the core of it she was.
The idea of dying here, in this cacophonic country dark while looking up into the stars filled her with peace. Yes, she thought. No more dealing with my mother. No more heroin. None of it. Kai might wonder where I’ve gone. But she cut her strings to me long ago. Lettie admired her for that, for leaving her ungrateful mother behind in a way she’d never been able to do herself.
Logic said she should be resentful.
But for all the cold hate that filled her heart, she had none of it for Kai. Interesting.
“Are you going to make it that easy?” I asked.
“What?”
“To kill you?” I was trying not to sound as disappointed as I felt.
“Are you going to kill me?”
“That is up to you.”
“What’s the point in fighting if you are faster and stronger?”
I regarded her. The dirt smudged against her cheek. The dark circles I c
ould see even in the moonlight, telling me a great deal about the chronic lack of sleep she’d suffered. “Do you think your daughter would make the same reply?”
No, she almost said. No, she would stand and she would hurl rocks at you. She would jump into the lake and swim. She’d rip off one of these tree limbs and try to plunge it through your heart.
“Then why wouldn’t you put up a fight?”
Lettie said nothing. She let the swell of cicada song fill the air between us.
“Most of your thoughts are about your daughter,” I said and took a step toward her. Only the softest crush of grass sounded beneath my boots. And that’s only what he wants you to hear, a voice in her head said. If he didn’t want you to hear a twig snap, a twig wouldn’t snap. “You miss her, but you are glad she’s gone. How odd.”
“I want her far away from all this.”
“But you miss her.”
She sneered. “Of course, I miss her. I’m her mother.”
“Then why not see her? Why haven’t you left your mother’s house and gone to her?”
Voices, as strong as the loon’s cry answered in her own head. Because she doesn’t want to see me. Because I don’t want her to see me. Not like this. It’s been years and those years haven’t been kind. What would Kai think if she saw me? She’d say, this is what you get. I told you to leave them. I told you that house was a toxic hell hole. You have no one to blame but yourself.
“Kai has nothing to do with this,” she said, and again I marveled at how often humans think one thing but say another. The fear crawled up her throat again, but with it another emotion I hadn’t expected. A burning rage. It took me a moment to place it.
“I am not interested in your daughter,” I said, and the rage evaporated. Even at this moment she feared more for others than for herself.
“But you’re interested in me.”
“Yes,” I said. I could hardly deny it now. “Yes, I am very interested in you.”
A question danced on the tip of her tongue. It was a dangerous question. I waited for her to speak it aloud. “To kill me or …”
“Or fuck you?” I felt my smile twist, turn devilish. “Why not both?”
She sucked in a breath, and I couldn’t help but laugh. My side ached with it. I said, “I’ve never taken a woman against her will.”
“Like hell you haven’t,” she said. “What do you call what just happened to me?”
Touché, but we would spend all night like this if I didn’t speed it along. And it was more than the coming sun that I had to consider. My thirst rose with every passing moment. I kept catching myself watching the pulse in her neck, kept imagining that first flood of hot blood on my tongue, always a little surprising in its force when I sank my teeth into her. “You have a choice, Lettie Cole.”
“What choice?”
“Be my victim, or choose another to take your place,” I said.
The pulse in her throat skipped.
“I am old and I am hungry,” I said. “I will take a life to sustain my own. But I will offer you a choice: forfeit yours to my thirst or choose another who would take your place.”
“Not Kai,” she said, without thinking. “Never Kai.”
“Never,” I taunted her. She made it too easy. “Surely you can think of someone else.”
I listened to that thunderous pulse, felt my desire rise for her. “Could it be anyone? Anyone off the street?”
“I do not care who you choose,” I said. “It makes no difference to me.”
“How long do I have to decide?”
Another long, luxurious laugh. For the first time, I bared my fangs in the moonlight. “So pragmatic, Lettie Cole. You do surprise me.”
A hand covered her mouth. She looked from my fangs to my face. Finally, she managed, “How long?”
“I will visit you twice more,” I said. Because why not? When this was over and she was dead, what else would I have to entertain me? “On the third night, I will take you or another.”
Her hand dropped. “But if I give you someone else, and you kill them, I could be blamed for that. The world is full of cameras.” She pointed a tobacco-stained finger up at the stars. “Satellites and shit. I can’t just pick anybody off the street. Someone will see me.”
Shame filled her. Was that all she was worried about? Going to jail? Or was it the idea of trying to explain to Kai that this once—only this once—her poor decisions weren’t the result of drinking or men, but that for once she chose herself, her own life over someone else’s.
Her face burned red even in the dark. She looked on the edge of crying full-blown tears.
No. The only thing I hated more than waking up in a cemetery with a rat on my face was when my dinner cried. It soured the blood.
One step and I closed the distance between us. I lifted her into my arms, forcing her to come up onto her toes. I pinned her against my body, knowing she must find it as hard and cold as a corpse’s body. I kissed her, felt her lips tremble on mine, and thought, Damn, I was too slow. But she didn’t cry. Instead, she swooned.
I bit her.
I could have blocked the pain from her mind, the swift sharp sting that I remembered all too well, no matter the millennia, since my own life was forfeit, but I thought Lettie would appreciate it. She understood pain in a way that few did. I didn’t deny her that.
She flinched in my arms. She turned away, but this only tore open the puncture wounds more. She cried out. I moaned, my voice vibrating against her throat. The sound of it made her soften against me. There was something in the bite that paralyzed and rendered the victim weak. It was a useful trick. But the real trick would be not to lose myself in the blood lust pulling me down into the hypnotic rhythm of her heart.
I have a choice. You said I had time. Her mind bleated frantically as I drank her down. She called me a beast as I lifted her into the air.
Oh, you have time, I thought, sending my voice sliding into her cold mental chamber. And she did. We were only just beginning.
Chapter Five
I watched her sleep for a long time after. Her brother approached the room at one point, and with a simple thought, I sent him away. It is a trick that vampires must master straight away, a slight clouding of the mind in order to hide our feedings. And this magic worked, and blessedly I was left alone with her, free to watch her sleep undisturbed.
A night breeze flew through the open window, ruffling the covers. An owl hooted in the trees. Her mother’s soft snore was labored. Another month for that one, I thought. Maybe less. And Lettie Cole slept on, enjoying a sleep more peaceful than any she had in her life.
Some of them did not survive the trick I was about to perform. In fact, most of them did not. Here I was, trying to discern which she might be. No matter. What had begun could not be stopped. I would see it through, no matter how tragic the ending.
I suspected the worst part would be when I buried her.
Chapter Six
During the day, I dreamed of her, if what I did during the day could be called dreaming. It was like watching a television. My mind went out, ricocheted off the antennae, and settled on a channel.
The Lettie Channel.
Because of what I’d started, I was able to enter her mind more completely than I ever had before. I was able to forget myself for a moment and just be Lettie. I’d known others of my kind to work this trick, to wield their servants when the sun was high, because they could not move their own bodies.
But Lettie was my first lesson in this magic. And yet, I found I couldn’t resist. The moment I found her, felt her wake, I slipped inside.
The very first thing Lettie did when she woke in her bed was to put her hand between her legs. Nothing. A line from one of Kai’s childhood books sprang to mind. Nothing stirs, not even a mouse.
She was disappointed. She wondered if she should have parted her legs and made her interest clear.
Maybe next time, she thought and swung her feet off the side of her bed.
&
nbsp; “Lettie! Lettie Jean! Why you do this to an old woman?” her mother called from the next room. “Gonna let an old woman starve in her bed?”
Her heart rocketed in her chest, kicking wildly the way that rabbit’s foot had twitched in those pale hands.
I took this moment to play with her thoughts. To bend her reality just to see if I could.
It was a dream, I whispered. Just a dream. No strange man showed up last night. No strange man flew you through the air to his secret dumping ground by the lake.
The swell of cicada song, the crying loons and croaking frogs at the water’s edge—all of it had been a dream.
Yes, her thoughts echoed. Some crazy dream.
She groped for the silver cigarette case on the side of the bed and flipped it open. Empty. Damn. She’d have to roll first thing in the morning, and there was nothing quite so horrible as waking in the morning to find the cigarette case empty. It was hard to find the patience to roll tobacco into those thin white sheets of paper while her head buzzed and her fingers shook with need.
Beneath the cigarette case was a book, turned over so that its pages were pinned apart in lieu of a bookmark.
Yes, I urged. Look at it. What did you read last? I wondered how deep I could go. Could I even make her see what I wanted her to see on the page?
She lifted the book and read the top of the page.
He’d only been back in the city one night. Tall, handsome, and hungry. He’d travelled far, and before the dust even had a chance to dry on his black boots, he was there, at her door, knocking to be let in.
I love her, he thought. I love her, and if she doesn’t say yes, I’ll take her anyway.
“Lettie Jean! Goddamn you!” Her mother cried, and the wall echoed with a sudden, wild thumping. Her mother’s small fist banged at the plaster where their two rooms joined.
The magic slipped and my hold on Lettie with it.
