"My father," he said weakly. "I love my father."
"Then sing! Mizmor l'David."
"Mizmor l'David," Joseph sang, in a faint imitation of the cantor's voice.
"Louder, Joseph! Listen to the tune. Hashem ro'i lo echsar. Bin'ot Desheh yarbitzaini al me minuchos yinahalayni."
Joseph repeated the song, more strongly this time.
The bat turned back into a woman. "No," she whispered. "Stop!"
Lincoln blinked his eyes in surprise. As Joseph and the cantor sang, the room started to glow with a faint, yellow light. It was a soft, comforting glow, like that of the afternoon sun in a perfect blue sky.
"No," said the vampire, much more weakly. "Stop, Joseph. If I ever meant anything to you, stop." She crouched down and covered her eyes with her arm.
Noticing this, Lincoln realized that the light had distracted him. He turned his attention back to the song, and discovered with surprise that he now understood the Hebrew words. He knew what they meant, translating them instantly as they were sung.
"Gam ki aylech b'gai tsalmavet lo eir'eh ra ki atah imadi," Joseph sang.
Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me.
"Shivt'cha umishantecha haymah y'nachamuni."
Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me.
The glow became brighter, emanating from all around, but as they finished singing it started to gather around the forms of Joseph and the cantor. The light became so bright and hot that Lincoln followed the vampire's lead and shielded his eyes.
Then Lincoln heard the song change. Without any prompting from the cantor, Joseph began singing another psalm. He listened carefully.
"Omar ladoshem machsee umtsudati, elokai evtach bo, kee hu yahtseel'cha meepach yakoosh, midever havot."
I say of the Lord, my refuge and stronghold, my God in whom I trust, that He will save you from the fowler's trap, from the destructive plague.
Lincoln opened his eyes and looked over his arm. Was the light starting to move towards the vampire?
"Lo teera meepachad lailah. . ." You need not fear the terror by night. . .
The light began to coalesce around the vampire. She screamed. "Joseph! No!"
". . .meedever ba'ofel yahaloch." The plague that stalks in the darkness.
The light surrounded her completely, so brightly that her form was completely covered. Her screams became softer, muffled.
Joseph stopped singing. "Begone," the cantor and he said in unison.
Lincoln heard one more loud scream, and the light flared up, forcing him to cover his eyes again. When the light faded from beyond his arm, he looked up again, and noticed three things in succession. First, he saw Joseph, lying on his bed asleep, with all the normal color back in his face. Second, he saw the cantor holding up in front of him a silver Magen David, a Star of David.
Finally, he looked to where the vampire had last stood. All that was left of her was a pile of black dust, and a pair of sunglasses.
"Perhaps she was sent to test you, Mr. Kliman, perhaps not. I would not even guess."
It was Monday afternoon, two days later, and Lincoln had stopped by the synagogue to thank the cantor once again.
"At any rate, Cantor, it was your music that saved my son. And your Star of David. I owe you my eternal gratitude."
Cantor Gross shook his head slightly and smiled. "It was not merely my music, Mr. Kliman, but what my music represented, where it came from. As for the star of David, it has absolutely no religious significance at all. But I counted on the vampire not knowing that, and I was right. In short, I think your gratitude is well meant, but misplaced."
"Yes. Well. Cantor, I need to get back home now. I want to check on Joseph."
Lincoln turned to go, but the cantor gripped him by the arm. "Mr. Kliman, remember what we went through a few nights ago. What Joseph went through. Do not take his pseudo-conversion lightly and assume that he is now safe. The vampirism may still return."
"What do you suggest?" Lincoln asked softly.
The cantor looked him directly in the eye. "Start bringing the boy to synagogue. If you are not comfortable with this place, then bring him to one easier for you to accept. But do bring him to one. Let him build up an understanding, an appreciation of his background, his culture, his religion."
Lincoln pulled his arm away. "I'll consider it," he said, and to his surprise realized that he was speaking sincerely.
The cantor nodded. "It would be best for the boy to develop his own beliefs, his own defenses. Remember, Mr. Kliman, religion protects us from the many vampires of the world."
Lincoln nodded and walked out. It was a cold day, and he sneezed when he got outside. He reached into his coat pocket and found the yarmulka that he had been told to wear when he first entered the synagogue. He had forgotten to return it.
He looked back at the synagogue for a moment, then returned the yarmulka to his pocket and walked home. Perhaps he would find use for it soon.
Do Not Hasten to Bid Me Adieu
by Norman Partridge
Norman Partridge is a three-time Stoker Award-winner, and author of the novels Saguaro Riptide, The Ten Ounce Siesta, Slippin' into Darkness, Wildest Dreams, and Dark Harvest, which was named one of the 100 Best Books of 2006 by Publishers Weekly. Partridge's short fiction has been collected in three volumes: Mr. Fox and Other Feral Tales, Bad Intentions, and The Man with the Barbed-Wire Fists. A new collection is due out in October called Lesser Demons, which features an original vampire novella called "The Iron Dead."
This story, which first appeared in the landmark vampire anthology Love in Vein, riffs off Bram Stoker's Dracula, telling the story of Quincey Morris, the American cowboy who, along with Jonathan Harker, kills the count at the climax of the novel. "My version of the tale is different than Stoker's, and it involves Morris's Texas homecoming after the events of Dracula," Partridge said. "It's about demons old and new, on both sides of the pond."
ONE
He was done up all mysterious-like—black bandana covering half his face, black duster, black boots and hat. Traveling incognito, just like that coachman who picked up Harker at the Borgo Pass.
Yeah. As a red man might figure it, that was many moons ago. . . at the beginning of the story. Stoker's story, anyway. But that tale of mannered woe and stiff-upper-lip bravado was as crazy as the lies Texans told about Crockett and his Alamo bunch. Harker didn't exist. Leastways, the man in black had never met him.
Nobody argued sweet-told lies, though. Nobody in England, anyhow. Especially with Stoker tying things up so neat and proper, and the count gone to dust and dirt and all.
A grin wrinkled the masked man's face as he remembered the vampire crumbling to nothing finger-snap quick, like the remnants of a cow-flop campfire worried by an unbridled prairie wind. Son of a bitch must have been mucho old. Count Dracula had departed this vale of tears, gone off to suckle the devil's own tit. . .though the man in black doubted that Dracula's scientific turn of mind would allow him to believe in Old Scratch.
You could slice it fine or thick—ultimately, the fate of Count Dracula didn't make no never mind. The man in black was one hell of a long way from Whitby, and his dealings with the count seemed about as unreal as Stoker's scribblings. Leastways, that business was behind him. This was to be his story. And he was just about to slap the ribbons to it.
Slap the ribbons he did, and the horses picked up the pace. The wagon bucked over ruts, creaking like an arthritic dinosaur. Big black box jostling in the back. Tired horses sweating steam up front. West Texas sky a quilt for the night, patched blood red and bruise purple and shot through with blue-pink streaks, same color as the meat that lines a woman's heart.
And black. Thick black squares in that quilt, too. More coming every second. Awful soon, there'd be nothing but those black squares and a round white moon.
Not yet, though. The man could still see the faint outline of a town on the horizon. There was Morrisville, up ahead
, waiting in the red and purple and blue-pink shadows.
He wondered what she'd make of Morrisville. It was about as far from the stone manors of Whitby as one could possibly get. No vine-covered mysteries here. No cool salt breezes whispering from the green sea, blanketing emerald lawns, traveling lush garden paths. Not much of anything green at all. No crumbling Carfax estate, either. And no swirling fog to mask the night—everything right out in the open, just as plain as the nose on your face. A West Texas shitsplat. Cattle business, mostly. A match-stick kind of town. Wooden buildings—wind-dried, sun-bleached—that weren't much more than tinder dreading the match.
The people who lived there were the same way.
But it wasn't the town that made this place. He'd told her that. It was that big blanket of a sky, an eternal wave threatening to break over the dead dry husk of the prairie, fading darker with each turn of the wagon wheels—cresting, cresting—ready to smother the earth like a hungry thing.
Not a bigger, blacker night anywhere on the planet. When that nightwave broke, as it did all too rarely—wide and mean and full up with mad lightning and thunder—it was something to see.
He'd promised her that. He'd promised to show her the heart of a wild Texas night, the way she'd shown him the shadows of Whitby.
Not that he always kept his promises. But this one was a promise to himself as much as it was a promise to her.
He'd hidden from it for a while. Sure. In the wake of all that horror, he'd run. But finally he'd returned to Whitby, and to her. He'd returned to keep his promise.
And now he was coming home.
"Not another place like it anywhere, Miss Lucy. Damn sure not on this side of the pond, anyhow."
She didn't fake a blush or get all offended by his language, like so many of the English missies did, and he liked that. She played right with him, like she knew the game. Not just knew it, but thrived on it. "No," she said. "Nothing here could possibly resemble your Texas, Quincey P. Morris. Because no one here resembles you."
She took him by the lapels and kissed him like she was so hungry for it, like she couldn't wait another moment, and then he had her in his arms and they were moving together, off the terrace, away from the house and the party and the dry rattle of polite conversation. He was pulling her and she was pushing him and together they were going back, back into the shadows of Whitby, deep into the garden where fog settled like velvet and the air carried what for him would always be the green scent of England.
And then they were alone. The party sounds were a world away. But those sounds were nothing worth hearing—they were dead sounds compared to the music secret lovers could make. Matched with the rustle of her skirts, and the whisper of his fingers on her tender thighs, and the sweet duet of hungry lips, the sounds locked up in the big stone house were as sad and empty as the cries of the damned souls in Dr. Seward's loony bin, and he drew her away from them, and she pushed him away from them, and together they entered another world where strange shadows met, cloaking them like fringed buckskin, like gathered satin.
Buckskin and satin. It wasn't what you'd call a likely match. They'd been dancing around it for months. But now the dancing was over.
"God, I want you," he said.
She didn't say anything. There was really nothing more to say. She gave. She took. And he did the same.
He reined in the horses just short of town. Everything was black but that one circle of white hanging high in the sky.
He stepped down from the driver's box and stretched. He drew the night air deep into his lungs. The air was dry and dusty, and there wasn't anything in it that was pleasant.
He was tired. He lay down on top of the big black box in the back of the wagon and thought of her. His fingers traveled wood warped in the leaky cargo hold of a British ship. Splinters fought his callused hands, lost the battle. But he lost the war, because the dissonant rasp of rough fingers on warped wood was nothing like the music the same rough fingers could make when exploring a young woman's thighs.
He didn't give up easy, though. He searched for the memory of the green scent of England, and the music he'd made there, and shadows of satin and buckskin. He searched for the perfume of her hair, and her skin. The ready, eager perfume of her sex.
His hands traveled the wood. Scurrying like scorpions. Damn things just wouldn't give up, and he couldn't help laughing
Raindrops beaded on the box. The nightwave was breaking.
No. Not raindrops at all. Only his tears.
The sky was empty. No clouds. No rain.
No lightning.
But there was lightning in his eyes.
TWO
The morning sunlight couldn't penetrate the filthy jailhouse window. That didn't bother the man in black. He had grown to appreciate the darkness.
Sheriff Josh Muller scratched his head. "This is the damnedest thing, Quincey. You got to admit that that Stoker fella made it pretty plain in his book."
Quincey smiled. "You believe the lies that Buntline wrote about Buffalo Bill, too?"
"Shit no, Quince. But, hell, that Stoker is a silver stickpin gentleman. I thought they was different and all—"
"I used to think that. Until I got to know a few of the bastards, that is."
"Well," the sheriff said, "that may be. . .but the way it was, was. . .we all thought that you had been killed by them Transylvanian gypsies, like you was in the book."
"I've been some places, before and since. But we never got to Transylvania. Not one of us. And I ain't even feelin' poorly."
"But in the book—"
"Just how stupid are you, Josh? You believe in vampires, too? Your bowels get loose thinkin' about Count Dracula?"
"Hell, no, of course not, but—"
"Shit, Josh, I didn't mean that like a question you were supposed to answer."
"Huh?"
Quincey sighed. "Let's toss this on the fire and watch it sizzle. It's real simple—I ain't dead. I'm back. Things are gonna be just like they used to be. We can start with this here window."
Quincey Morris shot a thumb over his shoulder. The sheriff looked up and saw how dirty the window was. He grabbed a rag from his desk. "I'll take care of it, Quince."
"You don't get it," the man in black said.
"Huh?"
Again, Quincey sighed. "I ain't dead. I'm back. Things are gonna be just like they used to be. And this is Morrisville, right?"
The sheriff squinted at the words painted on the window. He wasn't a particularly fast reader—he'd been four months reading the Stoker book, and that was with his son doing most of the reading out loud. On top of that, he had to read this backwards. He started in, reading right to left: O-W-E-N-S-V-I-L-L—
That was as far as he got. Quincey Morris picked up a chair and sent it flying through the glass, and then the word wasn't there anymore.
Morris stepped through the opening and started toward his wagon. He stopped in the street, which was like a river of sunlight, turned, and squinted at the sheriff. "Get that window fixed," he said. "Before I come back."
"Where are you headed?" The words were out of Josh Muller's mouth before he could stop himself, and he flinched at the grin Morris gave him in return.
"I'm goin' home," was all he said.
There in the shadows, none of it mattered, because it was only the two of them. Two creatures from different worlds, but with hearts that were the same.
He'd come one hell of a long way to find this. Searched the world over. He'd known that he'd find it, once he went looking, same as he'd known that it was something he had to go out and find if he wanted to keep on living. His gut told him, Find it, or put a bullet in your brainpan. But he hadn't known it would feel like this. It never had before. But this time, with this person. . .she filled him up like no one else. And he figured it was the same with her. "I want you."
"I think you just had me, Mr. Morris."
Her laughter tickled his neck, warm breath washing a cool patch traced by her tongue, drawn b
y her lips. Just a bruise, but as sure and real as a brand. He belonged to her. He knew that. But he didn't know—
The words slipped out before he could think them through. "I want you, forever."
That about said it, all right.
He felt her shiver, and then her lips found his.
"Forever is a long time," she said.
They laughed about that, embracing in the shadows.
They actually laughed.
She came running out of the big house as soon as he turned in from the road. Seeing her, he didn't feel a thing. That made him happy, because in England, in the midst of everything else, he'd thought about her a lot. He'd wondered just what kind of fuel made her belly burn, and why she wasn't more honest about it, in the way of the count. He wondered why she'd never gone ahead and torn open his jugular, the way a vampire would, because she sure as hell had torn open his heart.
Selections from By Blood We Live Page 5
