“The superstition that we’re invisible in mirrors isn’t quite accurate,” said Carmine mildly, “but it’s close enough.” She stood up, saving the glass as Penny’s numb fingers lost their grip on it, and stepped back a pace or two, to show that she meant no threat. “What else can I do to convince you?”
Very slowly, Penny’s head came up. She looked shocked, confused, and there was a witless, corpselike grin on her face. “Garlic,” she said. “Vampires can’t stand garlic. And they turn to dust if sunlight touches them.” She flung a swift glance toward the window, but the curtains were closed. It was dark outside. She had forgotten that.
“Not true,” Carmine told her. “Personally I adore garlic. And sunlight … well, we find it debilitating, and our skin tends to burn more easily than most people’s, but it doesn’t do any lasting damage.”
Penny persisted. “Coffins, then. They sleep in coffins.”
“Again, not true. I did try it once, when I was a child, but one night was enough to make me see sense. Beds are far more comfortable.” Carmine smiled wryly. “It’s Chinese Whispers, isn’t it? Stories become exaggerated and distorted as they’re passed from one person to another, until you end up with a mixture of fact and fiction. That’s how the folklore about us grew up over the centuries.”
“Centuries …” Penny repeated dully, then uttered a peculiar little bark of a laugh. “How old are you?”
“Far older than any woman wants to admit to. In my case the condition’s hereditary. It’s another myth, by the way, that vampires can only be made, not born—either is possible. Which brings us back to David—”
“No,” said Penny.
“Mrs. Blythe—”
“No. Anyway, I don’t believe any of this.”
“You mean, you don’t want to believe it. Look at me. Please. Just so that I can show you something.”
Her teeth, of course. The canines were abnormally long; not outright Dracula fangs, but certainly very pronounced. They looked sharp, too.
Penny giggled stupidly, and Carmine said, “If you still won’t believe, then there’s only one other way I can prove my bona fides.”
The giggling stopped and Penny eyed her suspiciously. “What’s that?”
“Begin the treatment.” Carmine raised her gaze meaningfully upward, in the direction of the bedroom. “And before you shout at me again, consider: I can’t do anything to damage him, because he’s already terminally damaged. So what have you got to lose?”
Penny’s rational self—what was left of it—said: this is completely insane. I’m talking to a woman who claims to be a vampire, and claims she can give David his life back by turning him into one, too. And part of me wants that ludicrous impossibility to be true, because anything’s better than losing him, and so here I stand on the verge of saying, yes, go ahead, then; let’s see if you really can do it!
She heard herself say aloud: “Go ahead, then. Let’s see if you really can do it.” She turned away from Carmine and stared at the wall. “As you said, what have I got to lose? The most likely scenario is that you’re barking mad, and you’ll jump around and shout mumbo-jumbo, and nothing will happen. But okay. Why not? I wouldn’t have put that ad in pleading for a cure if I hadn’t been ready to try just about anything.” She stopped then, and frowned. “What will you actually do?”
“Bite him,” said Carmine levelly. “That part of the myth is accurate. The first session won’t do much—he’ll need several—but it will set the ball rolling, so to speak. You might even find his health starts to improve straight away.”
“Sure.” Penny waved a hand. Unreal. Maybe I’ve flipped, and it isn’t happening at all. What the hell? “Go on, then. Yes. Go on.”
Carmine wouldn’t let Penny accompany her upstairs. They argued about that, but in the end Penny gave way. Instead she paced the hall, listening but hearing nothing, until footsteps moved overhead to the bathroom. There was a splashing of water, then Carmine came back down the staircase.
“Is that it?” Penny asked. She had half-expected to see some change in the woman. But apart from the fact that her cheeks looked a little less pale than before, there was nothing discernible.
“For the time being,” Carmine told her. “I’ll go now. See how he is over the next forty-eight hours.”
She took her coat from the hook and started to put it on. “Wait,” Penny said.
“Yes?”
“Why are you doing this? I mean—if what you claim is true, and you are a … a …” She couldn’t quite bring herself to utter the word. “… there’s got to be something in it for you.”
“There is,” said Carmine. “Money.”
It was the last answer Penny had expected, and she blinked, thrown. “What?”
Carmine shrugged. “Everyone has to earn a living. If your husband improves, and you decide to go on with the treatment, then I’ll expect you to pay me a fee.”
“What sort of a fee?”
“I usually charge ten thousand. That’s assuming the treatment is completed; if you decide to stop at any stage, we’ll work out a percentage.”
“Ten … thousand …?”
“I don’t wish to be rude,” said Carmine, “but what price would you put on your husband’s future?”
When one thought about it, it was, of course, a perfectly reasonable business deal. The car had cost twice that, and the market value of the house was in a different league altogether. As Carmine pointed out, what price for David’s future? Nonetheless, in her naïvety Penny had assumed that Carmine must be motivated by some unspecified altruism, and to find out that she was as hard-nosed as any showroom salesman or estate agent was something of a shock.
“It’s—” She laughed, choked, collected herself. “It’s not exactly the NHS rate, is it?”
“No,” Carmine agreed. The outer edges of her mouth twitched faintly. “Strictly private, I’m afraid.”
The car could go. It must still be worth at least eight thousand. Two more wouldn’t be impossible to find.
“All right,” Penny said. “If it works.” She pressed her knuckles to her brow. “I don’t believe I’m doing this.”
Carmine produced a silver-edged business card. “My office number’s on it,” she said. “Call me the day after tomorrow, and we’ll take it from there.”
Penny looked at the card. “‘Carmine Smith, Consultant’ … That’s what you call yourself, is it?”
“It’s a useful word. Covers a multitude of sins.” The hint of a smile increased and became faintly wicked. “Good night, Penny. I may call you Penny now? We’ll speak soon.”
She saw herself out.
David Blythe did not wake that evening, but slept through the night, as peacefully as a child, without the aid of drugs. With movies in mind, Penny examined his neck for puncture marks. She found nothing, and went to bed in the adjoining room, where she had long periods of uneasy wakefulness with bouts of bad dreams between them.
David woke shortly after seven, and told her that he was feeling very little pain. The smallest hint of color alleviated the gray of illness in his face. He slept again through the morning. At lunchtime he ate half a bowl of soup, and didn’t vomit it back. Then he slept again, ate a little more, and had a second peaceful night.
By the following morning Penny had forgotten the forty-eight-hour agreement and at 10:00 a.m. she was dialing the number on Carmine Smith’s card.
“He’s better,” she said in a tiny, frightened voice. “I don’t understand, and I almost daren’t believe it, but he’s so much better!”
“Yes,” said Carmine, with a certain satisfaction. “Ten thousand, then?”
“Ten thousand,” Penny repeated. “Oh God, yes.”
She came to the house four more times. On each occasion the routine was the same: coffee first, then the walk upstairs leaving Penny nervously pacing, then the bathroom, then goodbye. Once she did accept a glass of Burgundy after her visit to the bedroom, but that was all. As yet she had asked for
no payment, and when Penny tentatively raised the subject she only shook her head and said that she preferred to take her fee on completion. Either she was trusting, Penny decided, or her clients would be too frightened to try to renege on the agreement.
At Carmine’s insistence, David knew nothing of what was going on. Though his health was rapidly improving he still slept a great deal, so the visits were timed accordingly. Penny eased her conscience by telling herself that, had he been consulted, David would have gladly chosen anything as an alternative to death.
Then one evening, as they sipped their ritual coffee, Carmine said that tonight’s visit would be her last.
Penny’s hand and cup stopped midway to her mouth. “Why? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.” Carmine set her own cup down. “It’s simply that the initial stage of the cure is complete. It’s time for the second and final stage.”
She was gazing steadily at Penny, and with an inner curling sensation Penny realized that she had not prepared herself for this. Carmine had explained—or tried to—the nature and the consequences of what would eventually happen to David. The way he would live. The way he would eat. The heightened energy; the fact that he would not age but remain as he was for … well, in theory forever. Penny had pretended to listen, but in fact Carmine’s words had flowed through her and past her without taking hold in her mind. She hadn’t wanted to know the details; all that had mattered to her was that David was slowly but surely gaining his life back.
Now, though, the reality of the situation hit her with a jolt that made her feel sick. Tonight, if Carmine had her way, David would become what she was. A vampire. Penny believed in vampires now. Carmine claimed to be such a creature, and in the light of the miracle that had been wrought, how could she doubt anything that Carmine said?
Vampire. “I …” Then, finding the pronoun utterly pointless, she fell silent. Carmine did not drink any more coffee; she merely waited, and at last Penny found a semblance of a question.
“What … will you do?”
“What I’ve done before.” Carmine’s voice was quiet, soothing; irrationally, the tone of it reassured. “But to a greater degree. I’d rather not tell you the details; they might upset you, and there are some things that we … find uncomfortable to expose to those who aren’t of our kind.”
David. Vampire. “Will you hurt him?”
“Not at all. I guarantee it.”
My husband. Then Penny faced the question she really wanted to ask; the only one that mattered. “Will he … die …?”
She thought Carmine might fudge that one, possibly out of delicacy or kindness, or for more obscure reasons. She didn’t. She said, as casually as if referring to the workings of a car engine, “Technically, yes. He’ll be out—that is, not breathing—for something like twelve hours; then he’ll wake and—” She spread her hands. “That’s it.”
It. My husband, undead. A vampire …
“Oh, one warning,” Carmine added. “Twelve hours is a long time to wait; it’ll probably feel more like twelve days to you. You could easily panic and think that something’s gone wrong, but you must not be tempted to act on that fear. If you call a doctor, an ambulance, anything like that, the consequences will be disastrous, and I am not exaggerating.” One hand, resting on the arm of her chair, clenched, as though an unpleasant memory had risen. “Imagine it, Penny. A dead man who suddenly and inexplicably returns to life. Believe me, you do not want to condemn David, and yourself, to facing the results of that!”
Penny nodded. She was feeling worse with every moment, and suddenly she found herself on the verge of changing her mind, ordering Carmine out of the house as she had done at their first encounter.
“I’m afraid,” Carmine said softly, “that it’s a little late for that.”
Penny stared. “How do you—”
“Know what you’re thinking? Don’t worry, I’m not telepathic. It’s simply all there in your face—cold feet, the last-minute doubts; it’s always the same. But you can’t turn back. He’s already too far down the line, and if it stops now, he’ll die sooner and more unkindly than he would have done if this had never begun.” She stood up. “So, with your permission …”
Penny’s face was a frozen sculpture. She nodded, once, barely perceptibly, and Carmine silently left the room.
She was gone longer than usual, and when she returned Penny had not been pacing but still sat motionless in her chair.
“Twelve hours,” Carmine said. Her cheeks were flushed and there was an excited, faintly feverish look in her eyes. “For his sake and yours, please remember what I said and don’t panic.”
Penny didn’t look at her but fumbled for her handbag on the floor near her feet. “I’d better …” She swallowed. The car was sold, the money was in the bank. She wanted rid of it. “Will you take a check …?”
“Of course.” While Penny wrote, her hand shaking, Carmine put her coat on. “Thank you,” she said. The check disappeared into a small black leather wallet. “Oh, and if you need me again, just phone. It’s inclusive; no extra charge.”
“Need you?” Penny demanded sharply. “For what?”
“Well … you may already have worked out how to do it, in which case there’s no problem,” said Carmine. “But if you haven’t …” Her shoulders lifted in an eloquent but slightly self-effacing way. “You might want some help when you have to break the news of what we’ve done to David.”
Penny sat beside her husband’s bed, her gaze fixed glassily on his face, her body and mind numb. David wasn’t breathing, and she had gotten through nearly half a bottle of vodka, and if Carmine’s calculation was right there were still nine more hours to endure before his chest would move and his eyes would open and look at her, and she would have to tell him the truth. She didn’t know how she would do it, and she wished that she had the barefaced gall to pray for guidance. But she didn’t, and so waiting the hours away with the help of the vodka bottle seemed the only viable option.
At midnight she was asleep, slumped forward with her face on the bed, in a posture that would give her a diabolical backache by morning. At 7:45 a.m. a sound and a movement disturbed her, and she raised her head blearily. Her eyes wouldn’t focus properly at first, but after a second or two David’s face registered.
He was awake. He was sitting up. And he was hungry.
“Champagne.” Carmine produced a bag with a refinedly understated logo and presented it to Penny. “To mark the occasion and celebrate a happy outcome.”
The champagne was expensive and already chilled to the perfect temperature, both of which made Penny feel faintly inadequate. She said thank you too gushingly, but before she could make any move to open the bottle David took it from her. “Let me, darling. You know what you’re like; you’ll struggle with it and then it’ll go off bang and we’ll lose half the contents before we even start.”
The remark stung, but Penny didn’t want to show it. She returned a stiff smile, fetched glasses, watched as the cork came out with nothing more than a soft hiss and the champagne bubbled into the bowls. Carmine was given the first glass (naturally enough; she was a guest), Penny the second.
“Well, then.” David raised the third glass. “To all of us.” But he was looking at Carmine as he said it.
Carmine smiled warmly. They drank, then a constrained silence crept in.
Penny said, “I’ll see how the food’s coming along …”
All right, she told herself in the kitchen. This is still very new to him and she’s been more than helpful; in fact I very much doubt if we could have coped without her. So stop resenting her, and stop being paranoid. Lecture over. If she repeated it often enough, the message would get through eventually. There was no cause to be suspicious.
She started to prepare the food, trying to concentrate on the filleted sole she had prepared for herself and not dwell too much on what David and Carmine were to eat. Only a desire not to alienate David had stopped her from staggering mealtime
s so that they no longer sat together at the dinner table. She frankly couldn’t bear to watch him; she had always been squeamish about red meat, and in the past their meals had majored on fish, chicken, or vegetarian dishes. All that had changed now, and if David’s diet wasn’t as grotesque as legend, it was still bad enough. And the way he ate; the speed, the relish of it … Meat, and especially beef or veal, either totally raw or so rare that the blood still ran and congealed on his plate, and fish only in the form of sushi. He enjoyed jugged hare, if the local butcher could provide one complete with blood. (When the butcher did, Penny had put her foot down and told David that he must cook it himself.) No vegetables whatsoever; no fruit or cereals or grains. Oh, and the daily breakfast of raw eggs and black pudding, of course. Alcohol wasn’t a problem, though he had a marked preference for the heavier red wines, and he did not get drunk no matter how much he put away.
Tonight, with two of David’s kind to cater for, Penny had forced herself to provide fillet steak (cooking omitted), with a creamy and plentiful pepper sauce that she could pour on before serving, to mask the look and the smell. Vegetables would also be served, but only she herself would touch them; ditto the tiramisu she had prepared for dessert.
She was not looking forward to this evening. During the early, difficult stage (she smiled humorlessly at that piece of litotes) Carmine had been a rock to her, a mediator and ally in the painful process of getting David through the initial shock and enabling him to come to terms with what he had become. That nightmare was over now, though, and the idea that Carmine should come to dinner on a purely social basis—thus shifting the relationship between the three of them from the professional to the personal—dismayed Penny. She did not want Carmine as a friend. The woman unnerved her (understandably), and now that she was no longer needed, Penny would have vastly preferred never to set eyes on her again.
David, though, had argued that one invitation was the very least they could do to thank Carmine. Anything less would be downright rude, he had said, and considering that without her intervention Penny would now be a widow, he found her attitude hard to understand, and more than a little disappointing. He had expected better of her. Feeling like a petty-minded schoolgirl, Penny had flushed and capitulated and spent the rest of the day torn between feelings of shame and guilt, and fervent hopes that Carmine would decline the invitation. But Carmine had not declined, so the motions must be gone through, and David would be pleased; and when it was over she could, with luck, bid Carmine a final adieu.
The Mammoth Book of Vampire Stories by Women Page 20
