I, Vampire

by Jean Marie Stine

  She didn't sound afraid, just curious. I liked that. "Nah, not that sort of a vampire. Or sangroid, I should say. Next think you know I'll be saying I'm dead." I laughed. "Yeah, no bats or wolves for me. But I can do a pretty mean cloud of mist, and I can fly like nobody's business."

  "And you can step on holy ground without any trouble?"

  "From midnight till three, for what it's worth." I shrugged. "How'd you know?"

  "Just put two and two together." She looked pensive. "Vampyr Magus Rex, right?"

  "Yeah. You're not some sort of vampire groupie, are you?"

  She shook her head. "No, far from it, just did a little research. Magus Rex is one of the rare ones. Powerful, too."

  "Lucky me."

  "Sorry," she said quickly. "It's just when something's that rare, you never think you're going to meet someone with it."

  "That's what I thought too." I didn't bother to hide the bitterness. "Lucky for everyone I'm not some power-mad nutcase like the guy who got me." The night wind blew around me, sucking away my warmth. I moved forward into the lee of the building. "The Magus Rex variant does have some perks, but having rats swarm the financial district is not my idea of a useful ability. I hate rats."

  Valerie laughed and looked back into the bar. "I notice you've got a mug rack."

  "Yep, hooks for all the regulars. There's good ale, if you're partial to that, or you can keep a mug here for, well, you wouldn't need that anyway, but some people stop by for coffee in the afternoons." I went back to the door. "At least that's what Carl said. Wouldn't know myself."

  "I understand."

  She didn't, but if there's one thing I'd learned that evening, it was that you didn't make points by being self-righteous. Everyone at the Outcast Club had fates to lament, and my curse sure wasn't the worst. Why anyone as beautiful as Valerie... Well, frankly, I was curious. "Let me introduce you to the regulars. One thing, though, since everyone's going to ask anyway: What's your curse?"

  "We all have our crosses to bear. I prefer to keep mine hidden." Valerie put her fingers lightly on my arm and I felt a thrill of warmth and pleasure. "That okay?"

  "Yeah, that's okay." I laughed and felt my fangs slide out. I let them stay; I wasn't keeping anything secret, and Valerie hadn't balked or stared once. "I'd prefer if everyone kept their crosses hidden anyway."

  Valerie laughed back and shouldered her bag. "I can understand that."

  "Good," I said, "let me introduce you around."

  It wasn't her true name or anything, but at least I got her calling card: Valerie M – I think the M stood for Maple or Marchinski or something like that, but it looked a lot more elegant and mysterious the way it was, and was a good enough key to get most crystal balls to work, so I didn't ask. I wasn't going to press my luck.

  I'd also got her to agree to a date the next evening, 'round nine. Thursdays were my night off, and with the Croquet Mallet Murderer running around, the last thing I wanted to do was stay home organizing my socks.

  Vamps have more than enough of that sort of thing as it is anyway. Being a vampire is really dull. Most normal folk – including me, before I got bit – think vampires have a great time, running around hypnotizing people by night, and sleeping in their coffins by day.

  I wish. As I guess you've figured out, hypnotizing people is really boring unless you're some sort of sicko. The flying's kinda fun, I'll admit, and the strength is a bit of a kick, but then I was used to being stronger than most everyone anyway. And turning into mist is more just plain weird than useful.

  But as for sleeping in a coffin all day, only weirdos or people with particularly nasty curses sleep in coffins, and I only wish I slept from sunup to sundown. Most of the day, when you're a vampire, you hang around in your basement apartment, organizing your sock drawer, getting a little sleep, and waiting for the sun to go down.

  I'm luckier than most vamps 'cause in a pinch, I can call up some mist and fog and a little bit of an overcast, which lets me go out 'round dawn and dusk without the nasty ol' fireball frying my ass. But then again, I live in Venice Beach, and if you think the sun is bad, you haven't had to deal with a bunch of irate sidewalk vendors and tanning gods who think you've messed up the weather. I learned early on that it was a lot better to just stay inside and organize my socks than try to deal with that. You can't hypnotize ten people at once, and even if you hypnotize one, you have to bite 'em to make it stick, and that's illegal anyway.

  I apologized to Carl for having been such a dick the night before. It was okay, though. Carl gave me the bottle of sanguine he'd forgotten to give me, and he and Charlie ribbed me a lot about my upcoming date.

  Then Carl brought in the morning paper. The police had found another body, plus croquet stake and trademark hammer and minus head. The count was up to nine.

  "Oh-Oh shit, Carl." I leaned my head forward, panting with the strain. "I want to say the name of some G- some divinity, and I can't. Do it for me."

  Carl sat down at the kitchen table, looking over the paper. "Jesus Christ," he supplied. "Mary, Mother of God."

  I winced as he said both of them and snarled instinctively, fangs coming out. But I felt a bit better for the shock. "Thanks, Carl. I … I needed that."

  He patted me on the back. "It's okay, Jack. Listen, I'll stop by the Cathedral and light a candle for you, okay? You may not be able to pray for yourself, but I can pray for the both of us."

  "And you'll need it," said Charlie from the mirror on the wall of the dinette.

  "What?" Carl said. "What do you mean, Charlie?"

  Charlie decided he'd do one of his favorite tricks then and pretended he was just an ordinary reflection, letting Carl press his nose up against the glass and curse up a blue streak. I winced a couple more times, but, as I said, in a perverse way it felt good.

  In the end, Carl had to say his goodbyes and get off to the Cathedral and then the Club to open for the day.

  I hung around until nightfall, door locked tight, then turned into mist the moment the sun went down and slipped out through the cracks.

  I don't think I'd ever bothered to keep keys since I became a vampire. I guess the mist bit was okay. I'd always been losing my keys before then, and it was nice not to have to remember them.

  Valerie, luckily, lived this side of the Ventura, in one of the nice high rises on the edge of Beverly Hills. Unfortunately, a card and an address didn't count as an invitation, and neither did "Pick me up around nine." I couldn't even get into the lobby to ring her bell. Not only didn't I have an invitation, but the landscaper had put in a bridge and an ornamental stream. Running water; one of the few examples in Los Angeles, and I had to run into it.

  It's a pain in the butt sometimes being a vampire. Lots of normal little things you can't do that regular people take for granted.

  Luckily, there were apartment numbers stenciled on the balconies for those of us who could fly, and the stream only went across the courtyard, not in a moat around the building. Of course, I still couldn't set foot on the balcony without express permission, but nothing stopped me from grabbing a handful of pebbles from the walkway, then levitating a few feet outside her apartment and pitching them at the patio door.

  I was glad, too, that I'm not the type of vamp who has to count every pebble or piece of birdseed he finds on the ground before he can pass over them, otherwise that pebbled walk would have been a nightmare. I've met a couple guys with that variant of the curse, and the only thing worse than forced anal retentiveness is the Sesame Street jokes you have to put up with.

  Me, the curse just forced to be ridiculously polite, and made me give up party crashing for the rest of my life. Of course, since I couldn't drink beer anymore, that wasn't as much of a problem. And running water, as I said, usually wasn't an issue in Los Angeles.

  After about the fourth pebble, Valerie pulled aside the curtain and looked out. A moment later she opened the sliding glass door and slipped out onto the balcony. "Jack, what are you doing out here?"

 
; I was kicking back in my imaginary lounge chair, making it look as if there were an invisible swimming pool about fifteen stories up. I waved to the ground. "Big sign down there. 'Private Property. Residents and their Invited Guests Only.' Never got a proper invitation, so I couldn't even get into the lobby. Not to mention the trouble with the pebbled path and the little stream." I grinned. "Never dated a vampire before, huh? This is about the most vamp-unfriendly building I've ever seen. And I can't set foot on your balcony until you invite me."

  Valerie gave me a strange look and began to step back through the sliding glass door. "Let me get my things. I'll meet you out front."

  The door slid shut and I heard the lock click as the drape fell down, hiding the apartment. I shrugged. She wasn't the first woman not to invite a guy in on the first date, and I'll admit even I was careful with my invitations with vampires. Having someone able to slip through your keyhole anytime he wanted wasn't the most reassuring thing in the world.

  I drifted on down and hung out in one of the trees beside the walkway. Valerie came out a couple minutes later. She was wearing this velvet dress, midnight blue, with a really wide, low collar and her hair back in a long French braid with ribbons in it.

  Like I said, that woman knew how to dress to turn a vampire on. Everything but a tattoo with arrows saying 'Bite Here,' and honestly, I'd seen those before and I thought they were kind of tacky. Valerie looked just the right type of woman for my type of vampire.

  She came down the walkway, clutching the big leather carryall which she seemed to prefer to the more usual evening bag. I waited till she was just about under me before I announced my presence. "Hiya!"

  She just about jumped out of her skin, or at least her dress, and she did drop her purse. I jumped down and picked it up for her. "Sorry," I said. "I know I'm a little big to be climbing trees, but I never can resist."

  She took her purse back, not looking at all amused. I shrugged and grinned. "I got to admit I'm a little nervous too. That nut with the croquet mallet is running around somewhere, and I don't feel very safe just standing out on the sidewalk."

  "Nut?" Valerie asked.

  "Haven't you been reading the papers?" I asked. "Some wacko with a thing against vampires is running around staking us down with croquet wickets, then whacking off the heads and leaving the mallets with the bodies."

  Valerie readjusted the strap of her shoulder bag. "Oh. Yeah, some of the vampires were talking about it at the Club."

  I grinned and I let my fangs show. "If you don't mind, I'd like to stick to well lit places with lots of people. I was thinking of Westwood."

  She looked a little disappointed, but then smiled and put her fingers on my arm. "That'd be fine."

  Valerie, as I said, lived on the edge of Beverly Hills, so there was no trouble finding a griffin, and one with a really nice chariot too. I gave Valerie a hand up and belted her in, but the griffin saw the flash of my fangs, so he didn't say anything about me just hanging out on the edge.

  We took off and I picked up one of the mantles from the back of the chariot and wrapped it around her against the night chill. Her warmth felt good against me, and it was a nice, short romantic flight to Westwood.

  The elves had really gone all out and the trees of Westwood were done up with faerie lights and elf fire, the shops and theatres in between filled with throngs of people. Just the sort of place I wanted to be on a night like this.

  The griffin landed in one of the taxi stands and I helped Valerie out and paid him. Valerie had some money out already. "I thought we were going Dutch."

  I shrugged. "I never have to pay much for cab fare, and I don't have any food bills, so just let me treat you tonight. It's nice enough to get a chance to go out with a beautiful woman."

  Valerie blushed and I felt my fangs slide out at the sight of blood. I looked away and let her take my arm, feeling her warmth as we wandered off into the crowds.

  If you've been to Westwood, I probably don't need to describe it. Lots of shops with books and clothes and musical crystals and alchemists with potions and so on. We stopped by one of those, Lily Hernandez. Lily specializes in designer sanguine and I have to say that her stuff tastes a lot better than government rations, and Lily's keeps it ready and warmed in a sand bath. Expensive as hell, fer sure, but it's great stuff, and I'd saved up enough that I could afford to splurge on a bottle and a bag of sand to keep it warm.

  I paid and turned to Valerie. "Where do you want to go for dinner?"

  "I…" She paused. "I'm sort of new to the area. I don't know many places. Nowhere too fancy."

  "Howbout the Hamburger Hamlet? I liked that when … well, when I still ate solid food."

  Valerie had a strange expression, but then shrugged and put her hand on my arm. "That sounds nice."

  The Hamlet is a great place, and's about as fancy as you can make a burger joint without getting silly. Lots of wood and red leather and this sort of feel like the Middle Ages meets 'sixties family place.

  Valerie got a mushroom burger, well done, and I got a mug for my sanguine. She looked a little put off, but it wasn't as if she hadn't seen it back at the Club, and I wasn't biting off the neck or anything like I did around Carl.

  I may just be a dumb jock, but I do have some manners. "First time dating a vampire, huh?"

  Valerie looked at the sanguine in my mug, which really was blood for all intents and purposes, then looked away. "Yeah, I guess." She glanced back, watching as I drank my alchemical blood. "Wouldn't you rather be biting me on the neck or something?"

  I grinned and licked off my blood moustache. "Sure. I wouldn't have minded biting you even before I became a vampire. But three bites – that's all it takes. And trust me, you don't want to be a vampire."

  "I'm certain of that..." she said under her breath. She probably didn't think I heard her, but I did, and I saw her give a little shudder too.

  My guess was that she was a little vampophobic and had gone all politically correct and decided to get over it by dating an actual vampire. Not that I was complaining. I took my dates where I could get them.

  Valerie finished her burger and I finished my sanguine and we made light conversation about football and the USC-UCLA rivalry. I hadn't looked at a paper all evening, and I was glad of it. The nut with the croquet mallet had probably struck again, and the last thing I wanted to do was read about someone I knew getting his or her head whacked off.

  We window-shopped a bit more after dinner, and Valerie suggested catching a show, but the last thing I wanted to do was stay in some darkened theatre while some nut ran around with a croquet stake with my name on it. I know I was getting paranoid, but my case had been written up in the papers about ten years back when Martin had decided to do the whole 'Rose Bowl Bloodbath' thing, and I made a pretty big target.

  "Why don't we go back to your place then?" Valerie asked at last.

  She wasn't a vampire, so I didn't have to worry about inviting her in if things didn't turn out right, and as I said earlier, I couldn't really blame her for not inviting me back to her place on a first date. So I shrugged. "Sure. Sounds like a plan." I levitated a few inches. "Care to fly the friendly Jack?"

  She hesitated. "Why don't we take a cab instead? It's … a little cool, and I didn't bring a jacket."

  She was vampophobic alright, but was doing a good job of hiding it. "Sure thing."

  At least horses aren't as skittish around vampires as they are around werewolves and ghosts. We were able to get cab pretty easy and take it back to Venice, and had a chance to talk a bit more on the way.

  "My work takes me lots of places," Valerie said. "London, Rome, Mexico City – all over."

  I shuddered. "I don't know which I'd rather go to less: Rome or Mexico. They stake my kind there."

  "It's the Law of the Church."

  I gave her a look. "And that makes it okay? Listen, Valerie, I don't like the idea of getting killed 'cause some senile old fart decides that I'm dead and that I don't have a soul. I may not h
ave a fetch, and I don't cast a reflection, but that's not the same thing. I'm not a Catholic, and I don't give a flying fuck what the Pope thinks. I didn't elect him."

  She smiled then. "I don't hold much with the Pope either. I'm Lutheran."

  I grinned. "Must be lapsed if you're dating a vampire."

  She smiled back. "I suppose so."

  The cab got to my apartment and dropped us off. "Just a sec'," I said and slipped in through the keyhole. I checked the place out inside. Good thing – Carl had taken the hint, and he and Charlie were nowhere to be seen. I lit up a few candles and opened the door. "Welcome," I said. "Here's hoping that you can extend the invitation to me sometime."

  Valerie didn't take the hint, but did come in, looking around the apartment. "It's … nice. Very bachelor." She reached into her purse then and did something with the door, and the next thing I knew there was a rosary dangling from the doorknob, the cross right over the keyhole.

  There was another cross in Valerie's hand, a fucking silver crucifix in fact, and I was slammed back into the wall by the thing's aura. "I'm sorry, Jack," she said. "You were probably a decent man in life, since some of that seems to have carried over into this mockery. I'm sorry I wasn't quick enough to save you this pain. But at least I'll save others from sharing your torment."

  "Holy shit," I said. "You're that nutcase."

  She was getting the croquet stake out with the other hand and her eyes were gleaming with a weird light. "I'm Sister Mary Francesca of the Order of the Blessed Resurrection, and it is my duty to see you to your rest."

  I shook my shades off and tried to lock eyes with her, but Valerie, or Sister Mary Francesca, or whatever her fucking name was, was absolutely bonkers and there was no way a vampire's Fascination could grab her attention. "Valerie!" I shouted. "Stop!"

  "Do not try to speak my name, wicked one. This is not holy ground and it is not the Witching Hour and you may not use that power against me."

  "What the fuck are you talking about?"

  Sister Mary Francesca of the Order of the Blessed Croquet Mallet walked forward, stake raised, and I think she was about to bean me with J … with the guy nailed to her cross. "Do not speak as if you do not know your power, Child of Satan! You may walk onto the holy ground of the Cathedral during the hours when the church services lie unsaid, and if you gain the steeple and read forth the names of those within the village, they will die one by one, victims to your foul power!"