Fantasy

by Rich Horton

  Not me. In the years I had spent undead, I had imagined all sorts of things, including my own destruction, possibly at the hands of some young, hungry zealot with garlic on his breath and a stake he pretended wasn’t bigger than his dick, maybe by some rival who would coldcock me and leave me stranded in the desert just before sunrise (you don’t know how lethal spite can be till you’ve met a vampire with issues and a grudge).

  I had also imagined AIDS mutating and jumping the natural/ supernatural barrier to lay waste to all of us in a way even more unspeakable than it did to humans. There were those who insisted this had already happened, but they could never come up with any solid examples, only vague stories involving the cousin of a daughter of a friend-of-a-friend who overheard someone on an all-night bus telling someone else about it. Which just goes to show you that where urban legends are concerned, the undead can be as gullible as any­one.

  And this had to be an urban legend, this notion of there being a cure for the cure, I thought, watching Grace watch me. Her expression was a mixture of fondness and speculation but underneath I was picking up a definite air of urgency. Her eyes were too bright; she was sitting too far forward and looking at me much too intently.

  I put the empty glass down and started to pour myself another. Like that, her hand was covering the top of the glass. “Am I right?” she asked. “You miss it as much as I do?”

  I pulled the glass out from under her hand and refilled it. “Why do you care so much?” I asked, sitting well back out of her reach. “Is this some kind of bonding stuff or is there more to it?”

  She smiled with half her mouth. “You must have heard the rumors.”

  “I’ve heard a lot of rumors about a lot of things. You’ll have to be more specific.”

  “The rumors about there being a way to reverse the cure,” she said, sounding a bit impatient now. “Did you believe them?”

  I shrugged with one shoulder. “I believe there’s a sucker born every minute. But reborn every minute? That I’m not so sure about.”

  “You’re wise. But I know for a fact that in spite of what the medical establishment says, it’s real.”

  I took another long drink of water. “I’m still getting Nigerian spam, so obviously there are still enough people falling for it in spite of the fact that it was exposed as a scam about a hundred years ago.”

  “In the early twentieth century?” Grace laughed. “Before World War I? The history books seem to have missed it.”

  “I meant computer years. You know, like dog years, only a whole lot faster.”

  “As opposed to vampire years. Which aren’t.”

  I shrugged again. “Depends on who you ask.”

  “How many years were you under?”

  “More bonding stuff?”

  “I guess. Yeah, sure, why not. That and I’m curious.”

  “How long were you under?” I asked.

  “I asked you first.”

  “I know, but you’re the one who wants to bond. You show me yours and I’ll show you mine. It’s the least you can do after getting me so smashed.”

  “Touché,” Grace said, looking a bit embarrassed. “For me, it was about thirty years, and I loved every minute of it. Especially the eighties.”

  “I can understand that. Back in the eighties, you could hardly tell the difference between them and us.” I smiled.

  “Yeah. That whole greed-is-good thing.” Her smile was wistful. “Okay, your turn. Were you undead longer than that?”

  I nodded.

  “How much longer?”

  “Quite a bit.”

  “How much is ‘quite a bit’?”

  “In computer years? Or dog years?”

  “Come on,” she said. I could see she was getting impatient again and trying not to show it. “You said you’d tell me.”

  “About a hundred years.”

  For the first time, she looked unnerved. “Not computer years.”

  “Or dog years.”

  “Christ.” She winced, and I couldn’t help laughing a little.

  “Still get a twinge every time you mention the deity?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “I’ve been avoiding it for so long that I honestly can’t tell you the last time I took the deity’s name in vain. Old habits die hard and some don’t die at all, even in rehab.”

  “How polite your conversation must be.” She chuckled. “And when did they cure you?”

  I leaned an elbow on the table. “Damn, I always have to think about that one. Let’s see… Who’s president?”

  She mentioned a name that sounded vaguely familiar.

  “Right,” I said. “First term or second?”

  “Are you kidding?” She grimaced.

  I shook my head. “About five or six years ago. Maybe seven. Call it less than ten, but more than six. Sorry I can’t be more precise than that. I lost a lot of time in rehab. Years, as a matter of fact.”

  “Really?” Her amber eyes widened. “Why was that?”

  “It was a lot tougher for some of us. Past the half century mark, you’re what they call an ‘urban feral.’ I was that twice over.”

  “What did they do to you?”

  “What didn’t they do.” I gave a short laugh. “Drugs, behavior modification, therapy. Anger management. More drugs. The power of positive thinking. Still more drugs. Cosmetic orthodonture.”

  “What?”

  “Just kidding about that last one.” I grinned, baring my teeth and touching each canine with the tip of my tongue. “I used to ask the doctors if they were going to make me wear braces. Most of them didn’t get the joke.”

  “Maybe they couldn’t imagine you could joke,” Grace said, sounding almost formal now.

  For over a hundred years, I’ve been reading people, and although I can no longer do it on the virtually telepathic level the way I did before I was cured, I can still match the indicator to the mood; people are people are people are always people, and a century of experience will make you almost as virtually telepathic as any vampire. Which is how I knew that my new best friend was thinking that bringing me here for her sales pitch about the cure reversal was maybe not the best idea she’d had lately. I couldn’t blame her. I’d have felt the same in her shoes. Old vampires are trouble for everyone, living and undead alike. They tend to be loose cannons at best and at worst, your, uh, worst nightmare. Poor Grace was afraid I was the latter. I could all but read her thoughts like scrolling subtitles in her amber eyes: if what I had just told her about myself was true, then I must have already been approached by someone peddling the cure for the cure. So why hadn’t I gone for it and what was I going to do now?

  “You’re afraid I’ll turn you in. You and all of your like-minded friends.” I made a small gesture that took in the whole room. There were considerably more people in it now than when I had first come to. Or maybe I was just more aware of them.

  “It did occur to me.” She licked her lips. “I’ve never met anyone as old as you.”

  “Yeah, I get that a lot.” I looked around. At the next table, two ­couples were openly staring at me with identical hungry expressions, gripping each other’s hands so tightly that their knuckles were white. Behind them, a young woman knelt on her chair so she could see me over their heads, while the seven other people at the table with her craned their necks. My gaze traveled on past a number of other ­curious people and came to rest on the bartender, who paused in the middle of mixing something tropical to give me a friendly wave.

  “Is that what you’re going to do?” Grace prodded. “Turn us in?”

  I turned to look at her. “Sure I will. I’m only too happy to admit that’s the plan so you and your fellow wannabes can all jump me at once and squash me like a bug.”

  “Used-to-bes,” one of the men at the next table corrected me loudly.

  I gave him my most cheerful grin. “Has-beens.”

  He actually started to get up out of his chair to go for me, but his partner and the o
ther couple managed to pull him down again. It took them some effort.

  “That was uncalled-for,” Grace scolded me.

  “Sorry, but a straight line like that is just asking for it.” I winked at him, which made him angrier. “What’s his problem, anyway,” I asked Grace. “Brain tumor? Testicular cancer? Or just HIV positive?”

  “‘Just’ HIV positive.” Grace made a disgusted noise. “Tell me, would you say you were ‘just’ HIV positive? Or is that all it is when you can afford the drugs?”

  “Don’t ask me. I’m completely uninsured, and I failed to start any sort of savings plan before I was turned, so I have no money in the bank at all. Which means I can’t afford the extortionate fee for this famous cure reversal of yours, either. And it is extortionate, isn’t it? I can’t imagine that it wouldn’t be.” Pause. “Unless you guys have some kind of major group discount going?”

  “It’s more of a payment plan,” Grace said.

  “Turn now, pay later?”

  She nodded, looking unhappy at the way I’d put it.

  “So why haven’t you all just gone ahead and taken the cure already? Don’t tell me you’ve all got cold feet.”

  “Nobody’s got cold feet,” said the woman sitting next to the angry man at the next table. “It won’t work unless you want eternal life, and we all do.” Pause. “But we have to get three groups of thirteen. We’ve only got two groups of thirteen and one twelve.”

  I almost burst out laughing. “And why do you need three groups of thirteen?”

  “It has to do with our sire’s religion,” Grace said. “It’s a ceremonial thing, I think.”

  Now I did laugh, though I managed to make it more of a chuckle. “You mean your sire-to-be. Assuming you get your three groups. Which you will if I sign up.”

  Grace nodded.

  “So how much are we talking about per person?”

  “Twenty thousand.”

  I laughed. “You can forget me, then. I don’t have twenty, period.”

  “But it’s only five hundred up front, the rest payable in installments.”

  “Oh, right, I forgot. Turn now, pay later.”

  Grace made another unhappy face. “For immortality, it’s cheap at twice the price.”

  She really believed it. So did everyone else in the room. It made me want to believe it as well. Hell, I’m only human.

  “I’d like to have a word with this sire-to-be of yours before I decide one way or another,” I said. “He’s on the premises, isn’t he?”

  “She doesn’t see anyone,” Grace said.

  “No? I bet she’d see me.”

  “And why is that?”

  “You’re forgetting how old I am. She and I are probably old blood buddies. For all I know, I might be her sire. Or she might be mine.”

  Grace drew back, and I could see she wasn’t sure how she felt about this possibility.

  “Come on,” I said, nudging her foot with mine. “I might even be able to shave a few bucks off the price for you.”

  You could have heard a pin drop—or a heart beat—while Grace thought it over. Finally, she stood up and slipped a keycard out of the back pocket of her designer jeans (she really did miss the eighties). “She’s in the VIP room.”

  I hadn’t really thought I was going to see anyone I knew, but when the door opened and I saw Mistral “Misty” Van Owen, I damn near jumped out of my skin.

  “Jesus Mañana!” I blurted, pronouncing the first word ‘hay-soos’ to undercut the sting (foreign languages are handy in more ways than one). “I thought you were dead!”

  Misty didn’t so much stand up as she half-slithered, half-levitated from the sofa where she was lounging in full dominatrix drag, right down to the spiked collar around her neck and the black satin corset. Her hair was snow white, tied up with leather strips so it fell around her head at different levels. I think the idea was to evoke the rich grace of palomino tails but all I could think of were scalps, especially with those custom contact lenses—her pupils were as pale and luminous as moonstones—and the blood red lips. It was all a bit much even for a drama queen like Misty.

  “Well, well, if it isn’t Diamond Lil. I heard you were alive,” she said in the kind of deep contralto calculated to make the strong weak and the weak dissolve. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “As if you didn’t know. Come on, Misty, are you expecting me to believe that you don’t have the whole place bugged?”

  Misty made a dismissive motion with both hands. Her long nails were a deeper red than her lips, the color of arterial blood (what else?). “Technology disgusts me. My senses tell me what I need to know. The rest is noise.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” I said, laughing a little.

  “Be my guest. What’ll you have?”

  “Whatever you’re having. As long as it’s liquid.”

  Misty’s perfect features puckered with pity. “Darling, I didn’t think you could drink blood now that you’re cured.”

  “Oh, I can still drink it,” I said, doing my best to sound blasé. “It just doesn’t taste very good anymore.”

  Her laughter tinkled like cut-glass chimes. I swear she must have worked for centuries to get it to sound like that. “Sure you wouldn’t rather have gravy?”

  I gave her a look and she laughed again.

  “I hear that’s what they’re serving in all the support group meetings now to help recovering vampires deal with their craving for the taste.” She glided over to a small but elaborate wet bar crowded with bottles and fancy decanters. Fancy cut-glass decanters; she probably used them to keep her laugh in tune in her off hours. “They say extra salty beef gravy is as close as you can get to recreating the savory flavor blood has for us. Is that true?”

  “Some people swear by it,” I said, watching her swan around behind the bar. “Unfortunately, it’s also extremely bad for the blood pressure.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” she said, holding up a silver gravy boat and looking distressed. She dipped down below the bar briefly and came up with a shiny chrome thermal pitcher. “What about beef bouil­lon? Or I think there’s some half-gelled consommé in the fridge—”

  “No, thanks. I hate that shit. No offense.”

  Now she looked put-upon. “Well, what can I offer you? Besides blood,” she added firmly. “It’s not that I don’t like to share, you understand, it’s just that giving you blood is tantamount to pouring it down the drain. No offense.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of wasting your supply,” I said. “Do you have any tomato juice?”

  She tilted her head, prettily apologetic.

  “How about Bloody Mary mix, then?”

  She was pleased to serve me a tall, slender glass garnished with a stick of celery and a tiny umbrella. “Extra salt?” she asked. “Or do you need to watch your blood pressure?”

  “No, I’m fine and no, I’m fine.” I mirrored her I’m-so-polite smile back at her as she led me over to the sofa where she had been lounging. “Apparently, I have the blood pressure of a sixteen-year-old girl.”

  “Oh, but really now, don’t you think you ought to let that poor girl go? Her parents must be worried sick about her.”

  I grinned. “Still almost witty after all these years.”

  We sat down simultaneously, Misty shifting at the last moment so that she was right up against me, hip to hip and thigh to thigh. I drew back a little. “Hey, lover, if you’re going to get that close, I’ll thank you to take off that collar. I’m as kinky as the next girl but I draw the line at shish kebab.”

  Misty’s smile intensified. “Oh, no, lover. You may be as kinky as the last girl but not as kinky as the next girl. Not hardly. If you see what I mean.” Her pupils shifted suddenly and the black dots in the center of the moonstones elongated to slits. “See?”

  “Yeah. Hard to miss.” I took a big sip of Bloody Mary mix, positioning the glass so that the bottom rose directly in her face. “What have you got there, animated lenses or the latest breakth
rough in vampire plastic surgery?”

  “How badly do you want to know?” she asked teasingly.

  “I’ll get back to you on that.”

  Misty leaned over and picked up a large chalice sitting on the end table to her left. Misty had always had a real thing for chalices, claimed blood didn’t taste anywhere nearly as good out of anything else, even the original vessel. “Can you give me some idea of when you might get tired of dancing around? I mean, time is passing. I don’t mind so much—I’m going to be around forever, but you’re not.”

  “You’re the one who’s dressed to dance, Misty. I just woke up and found me here.”

  “On the cold yada-yada-yada, yeah, I know that one.” She raised the chalice in a toast. “If only we could get to the people who deserve forever before it was too late.”

  “And if you could, do you really think they’d all jump at the chance to be undead?”

  “I think it would be nice if they had the choice.” She sipped from the chalice and then licked sticky red-black from her lips. “I was pro-choice before it was fashionable, don’t you know.”

  “Does that mean you’re going to give me a choice? As to how—or if—I leave here,” I added in response to her puzzled expression.

  She ran a finger along one of the spikes sticking out of her collar without saying anything.

  “Why the hell do you want to reverse the cure anyway? It doesn’t make any sense.” I took another long drink of Bloody Mary mix. “The more vampires there are, the more competition there is for the food supply.”

  “We’re social creatures,” Misty said. “We like being in groups. The more, the merrier. Surely you noticed that during your own time.”

  “So? That’s not exactly a mystery. If you want to eat, you have to go where the people are, and the more, the merrier.”

  Misty nodded. “Fun, isn’t it? The socializing is almost as important as the blood.” She held the chalice under her nose and inhaled with a dreamy expression, like a human enjoying the bouquet of a particularly good wine. And in a way, it is a bit like that. If I had still been a vampire myself, I’d have been able to identify the blood group from the aroma instead of steeling myself against the stink.