The World on Blood

by Jonathan Nasaw

  It seems to be the same for the others: at one point I remember—I think I remember—Whistler opening the inside of an elbow, and the two of us sucking side by side like pigs at a sow, then heading back upstairs to a higher circle of hell, where we dance in the dark among the donors, the bleeders, the Tads of the world, until finally—it's late in the second set—I open that basement door to find the young Robert Morley sitting on the floor with his head pillowed on Tad's thigh, weeping.

  "Augie? What is it, Augie? What's wrong?"

  He looks up at me piteously. "It's Tad. He's got no more blood, Nicky. No more blood."

  We got away with it, of course. Vampires almost always get away with it. It's not our fault that the side-effects of our drug include supernally heightened senses and physical powers, not our fault that once Augie had gotten a grip on himself again, he and I were strong enough to suspend the now literally Deadhead between us and walk him through the crowd so casually that no one even noticed us (it looks easy in the movies, but we never could have done it if his blood had still been inside him, rather than us); that Leon was alert enough to spot us from the hill behind the last row of the amphitheater; or that Whistler was fast enough to dash down the hill to the parking lot, and return with the Jag in time for us to slide Tad into the back seat without any potentially embarrassing lag time on the sidewalk.

  And given our powers, of course, it also made perfect sense that we take advantage of them when disposing of the body.

  Perfect sense.

  So why was it, then, that I opened my eyes the following evening at sunset with a sense of horror, not just of what I had done, but of what I had become, or that when I closed my eyes I found myself reliving it again, but with a vividness that went far beyond mortal recall: lying there in my bed I felt the dead weight of Tad's corpse as we carried it through the windswept grove of trees that crowned the bluff at Land's End, and out to the very edge of the dark cliffs, heard the soft thud when we rolled him over to strip the body of any clothes that might identify him, felt his dead ankle dislocate in my hand when I tugged off his boots, heard myself counting the cadence again at the precipice, a-one and a-two and a-three and a-heave-ho, and then was forced to watch, again and again and again, as the body, its nakedness somehow accentuated, made obscene by the snow-chains we'd wrapped around and around the pale torso to weight it, flew into the air, propelled by the superhuman strength of four vampires, and soared out over the ocean, thirty, forty, fifty yards before it began cart-wheeling end over end with all four limbs splayed out and flopping…

  Nick broke off writing there—it was four in the morning, he was physically and emotionally exhausted, and he had what seemed to be a pretty powerful chapter ending. Even if it was not a chapter, and nobody was ever going to read it anyway. But it occurred to him, after he'd already appended the new file to the protected floppy, and erased the backup shadow file from the hard disk, that it was a little self-serving, ending on that note.

  Can't have that. He snatched up a pencil and a legal pad and jotted down one more paragraph:

  "Twenty minutes later, however, after a short tussle with my conscience, which had it taken the form of Jiminy Cricket would now be a greasy green spot on the kitchen linoleum, I found myself standing at the refrigerator swigging blood out of a Clamato Juice jar."

  Then, rereading it with some satisfaction, he thought: Yeah, that'll do. There's the vampire life for you. There's a truth to shame the devil.

  Chapter 6

  « ^ »

  ONE

  Nick parked the 'Vette by the side of the church and walked around behind it and up the short driveway. Betty Ruth was waiting for him out on the front porch of the parsonage. "What's up?" he called by way of greeting.

  "Good morning, Nick," she replied formally. "Thanks for coming."

  "The way you put it over the phone, it didn't seem like an optional activity." She'd awakened him from a using dream—Whistler had just handed him a bowl of brimming black blood—to tell him she had to see him right away, and no, she couldn't talk about it over the phone.

  "Can I get you some coffee?" They both noticed that she had backed away as he mounted the porch, and he found himself growing more puzzled, if not panicked, by the minute.

  "Thanks, I'm good. I stopped by Peets on the way over." He declined a wooden chair that had migrated from the kitchen—next stop would be the fireplace—and leaned back against one of the posts that held up the porch roof. "So what's up? Is this about the… the baby thing?"

  Betty was startled. "How did you know about the baby?"

  "What?"

  "Nobody knew about the baby, Nick."

  "Whew." He shook his head like a fighter who'd caught a haymaker at the opening bell. "I'm going to assume you haven't gone totally psychotic, Betty, and that we're now talking about two different babies. I don't know which one you were talking about, but I was referring to a prospective baby. Your prospective baby? Ours, maybe? Last week? Long talk? Sperm?"

  "Oh my." Betty sat down heavily on an old fan-backed rattan loveseat that looked as if it had done time on the back of an elephant. "I'm sorry, Nick—I'm still a little shaky after what happened last night."

  "Something about a baby?"

  "No, that was last week. I'm—I'm sorry, I'm making such a muddle out of this. It's just that… I'm afraid this is going to be one of the weirdest, most uncomfortable conversations I've ever had, and having weird uncomfortable conversations is part of my job description."

  "All I can say is, if the conversation has begun, I'm already lost. Maybe you should just cut to the chase."

  "The chase? Okay, the chase. What does the V in V.A. stand for?"

  To his surprise, Nick's heart did not stop. The earth did not cease turning on its axis, and neither did the birds fall screaming from the live oaks. His first instinct was to stall—he turned to face Jackson Street, and with his back to her, gripping the whitewashed railing with both hands, he said something Betty couldn't quite hear, something in either gibberish or Chinese.

  "I beg your pardon?" she replied.

  He said it again—definitely Chinese—then turned back to her, pale under his Mediterranean complexion. "That means 'This information is unworthy of another moment of your worthy consideration' in Mandarin. Useless in most Chinese restaurants, I might add."

  "You're not going to shine me on this time, Nick. Not after last night."

  "For crying out loud, Betty, I don't know what happened last night. And even if I wanted to tell you, our bylaws require a unanimous vote of the membership before any member can reveal that information."

  "Then you might want to call an emergency session before ten o'clock this morning," she said, a little shaky, but determined to hold her ground. "Because unless you convince me otherwise before then, I'll be delivering an interesting sermon at the morning service."

  "How interesting?"

  "Very interesting." They both heard the echo of their first conversation in her words. "Would you like to hear it?"

  By now, despite his lack of sleep, all of Nick's senses were alert, as if it were twenty-five years ago, back in the jungle with the Montagnards. "You bet."

  She stood and gestured towards her vacated loveseat—again she gave him a wide berth as they changed places. He managed to force a pleasant, neutral expression as he settled back into the rattan loveseat—it was the same expression he'd worn when the Montagnard chief had insisted on his presence at the Montagnard tribal banquet. Rat stew.

  Betty took his spot at the porch railing, greeted the congregation of one, which greeted her back pleasantly, and began by sketching out the events of the previous weekend, the Very Anonymous stranger, the broken doors. He felt her studying his face as she talked—he could feel the pleasant smile locking into place when she got to the part about the curiously anemic baby Doe. Mmm-mmm. Good eatin', that rat stew. And the guest of honor gets the bowl with the biggest chunks.

  "Now I've stood here before—well, not her
e, but you know what I mean—and preached that there are no accidents. But there are coincidences, so I didn't think anything more about it. Until last night, that is. Last night, after the last meeting left—it was a Very Anonymous meeting, coincidentally enough—I locked up the church behind them and went into my office to work on my sermon for this morning—not this sermon, but the sermon I was planning to deliver.

  "I finished a little before one, but before going upstairs I made the rounds, like I've been doing every night since the break-in. Everything looked okay except that somehow the clock in the smaller meeting room had been smashed—but they'd left us a note, those thoughtful Very Anonymouses: they're going to replace it."

  Nick allowed himself a sheepish look, and a shrug; Betty didn't appear to notice; he resumed his rat-eating expression.

  "But then when I went back to make sure I'd locked the double doors, I thought I heard something outside—a moaning sound. My first thought, of course, was that it was another baby—that's the only thing that made me open the door…"

  It hadn't been another baby, though. It had been a young woman in a tight black long-sleeved mini-sheath, lying on her back under the live oak in the churchyard. Her eyes were open and staring, and upon reaching her, Betty was relieved to find her breathing. She waved her hand in front of the girl's face—it took those dazed eyes a pass or two before they focused on the movement in front of them.

  "Jesus-fuck," were the young woman's first words. (Not exactly sermon-appropriate, but Betty repeated them for Nick anyway: by that point in her narration it had become increasingly obvious to her that she was only bluffing—there was no way that she'd be able to repeat this story to her congregation without losing a good half of them.) "Jesus goddamn fuck! For a minute there, right after I opened my eyes, I thought those branches were the ground, and I was hanging over them, like hanging upside down ten feet in the air. What a trip. Where's my purse?"

  Betty felt around on the lawn, and handed her the black patent-leather bag. My god, she's so young. Still got a smidge of baby fat. Sign of aging: hookers and cops look younger all the time.

  "Thanks." The girl struggled to a sitting position.

  "Did you just pass out here, or did somebody dump you?"

  "I dunno. Where's here?"

  "El Cerrito."

  "Then I been dumped, sweet cakes, 'cause that's too far to walk in these fucking heels." She snapped her purse open. "And if there ain't fifty bucks in here, I been robbed." She gave Betty a shaky wink. "If there's only fifty bucks, it's theft of services."

  Betty offered to call the cops.

  "Oh for chrissakes, lady—what planet you from? Yeah, the five-oh be a big help." Then she located the hundred-dollar bill folded carefully into her coin purse. "Scratch that, no problem, the mail has arrived."

  She tried to stand up, but her legs wouldn't support her; Betty took one of her arms and helped her to her feet. The girl wobbled and went white under her makeup, except for her cheeks, which flushed tubercular red—the effect had been garish, ghastly in the moonlight. "Jesus-fuck." But softly this time, with a note of admiration, an appreciation at the edge of consciousness.

  Rather than take her through the church, and up and down the parsonage stairs, Betty led the girl across the churchyard and around the Jackson Street side of the building. Then, feeling motherly, she helped her up the porch steps and into the parsonage kitchen.

  "Would you like a cup of tea, darling?"

  The girl looked up suspiciously. "I didn't say my name. How'd you know my name was Darlene?"

  "Darling."

  "Sorry. Naah, no tea. Just, could you call me a taxi?"

  "Of course, if that's what you want. But wouldn't you rather I drive you to the emergency room instead, let them check you out—you're not looking at all well, you know."

  "Just the cab. Please."

  It wasn't a long wait for the cab—not as long as it seemed, anyway. It would have been charitable to describe their conversation as desultory, at least until Darlene asked if it was an old building, and Betty explained that while the church had been built in the 1920s, the parsonage had not been added on until the thirties.

  "Wait a minute, did you say the church? This is a church?"

  "Yes, of course."

  "Then you must be the minister they were talking about! Well jesus-fuck. Oops, parn my french."

  "It's all right," Betty replied automatically, as Darlene started to roll up her left sleeve. Then, a delayed reaction, "The minister who was talking about?"

  "The vampires."

  "The what?"

  "You heard me." Darlene was plucking at her sleeve where it clung to the crook of her arm. "It's stuck."

  Glad for something to do, Betty ripped a paper towel from the roll over the sink, moistened it, and handed it to Darlene. "Here, maybe you can soak it loose."

  Darlene pressed the towel against the inside of her elbow; Betty watched in horror as the wet paper took on a faint pinkish tinge. "See, they took my blood." Darlene pushed the sleeve up the rest of the way: a crusty spot of dried black blood the size of a bread crumb crowned the bruise just beginning to spread out from the collapsed vein.

  "Who? Who took your blood?"

  Just then the cab honked its horn twice out on Jackson Street. "Duh! The vampires, of course." Darlene rolled down her sleeve again, grabbed her purse, and headed for the door. "The vampires took my blood. I can tell you on account of you're the minister."

  Nick's first inclination, with those last chilling words still hanging in the cool Sunday air of the porch, was to simply tell her the truth. But even if his fellow addicts' anonymity hadn't been even more sacred to him than his own, outing V.A. was still an option denied to him by the V.A. bylaws, at least until after he had a chance to address a full meeting.

  On the other hand, Betty obviously wasn't going to be put off much longer. Nick found himself thinking back to what Captain Harvey, his mentor at the Air Force Academy, had listed as the first three rules of Air Force Intelligence: "One, call in an air strike. Two, dazzle 'em with bullshit. Three, call in an air strike."

  Well, one and three are right out, he thought, reaching into his back pocket for his wallet, and extracting one of the business cards he and the other founders of V.A. had had printed for just this eventuality. He tried to decide what the appropriate tone of voice would be. Not amused—it was a serious story. But not aggrieved, either, because it was funny to be accused of being a vampire—at least if you weren't one.

  He opted for caring: he could do caring. "Good lord, Betty, I can understand your being freaked. Either one of those things—the hooker or the baby—would have freaked me out too. But I sure am glad you called me first." He held the card out at arm's length; she crossed the porch and closed her fingers over it, but he held on for a second, and caught her eye. "Understand, I'm putting the anonymity, and possibly the lives, of twelve people in your hands, so first I need your promise: you can't tell anyone else—I mean anyone."

  "I promise," she said, still holding on to her end of the card. "If you want to tell me as a minister, you've even got some First Amendment protection—what's left of it."

  "All right then. In cathedra, as it were." He let go.

  She took the card, read it—"Victims Anonymous?"—and handed it back.

  He smiled with more confidence than he felt as he replaced the card in his wallet. "Everyone in V.A. has been the victim of violence—domestic violence, stalking, that sort of thing. And for most of us it had reached the point where the stalker or the spouse had begun showing up at the more public twelve-step meetings. Remember a few years back, when a CODA meeting was attacked in the city?"

  Betty had paled visibly. "This isn't all that reassuring, Nick. What if one of your stalkers is—"

  Nick interrupted her with a dismissive laugh. "I've heard everybody's story two dozen times, and I give you my word—not a vampire among them." He hurried on. "I swear to you, Betty: your church is in absolutely no dang
er from V.A. That's why we put V.A. together, that's why we've maintained complete anonymity—no one but the members themselves even knows the group exists, much less where it meets."

  He waited, trying to gauge her reaction. He'd never had to use the cover story before. It had always sounded plausible—but then, a cover story was like an antiaircraft missile: you never knew for sure if it was going to work until you used it. And by then, of course, if it didn't, it was generally too late to do anything about it.

  TWO

  Late autumn is such a lovely time of year to be a vampire. The sun is safely down before five, so there's always time for a crepuscular pick-me-up before embarking upon one's evening adventures. It hadn't taken Lourdes more than a few days with Whistler to discover the juice bar under the bed, and soon she settled into a happy routine: wake up a little before sunset in the blacked-out bedroom, sneak a quick jolt from the stash; if she timed it right, it would just be coming on when Whistler opened his eyes at sunset.

  That was the fun part for Lourdes, lying there digging on the 'dorphins, pretending to be asleep, watching Whistler while he woke up. He was like a little boy then—so rumpled and fussy and as close to vulnerable as he ever got.

  He looked especially cute on Sunday evening, all sleepy-eyed, his yellow butch cut smashed flat on one side and poking out like Dag-wood on the other. She handed him the shotglass—he sat up in bed just high enough to drain it without spilling, then slid back down to a more bearable angle of repose. Lourdes leaned over him and delicately unbuttoned the top button of his pajamas so she could watch the blood flush rise.

  "What are you thinking about?" were his first words of the evening.