Annie of the Undead

by Varian Wolf

  “He’s a vampire.”

  The old lady with the newspaper laughed out loud, and somehow I doubted it was from the funnies.

  I put down my fork. Coming from Yoki, I shouldn’t have been surprised. She was bound to come to the vampire thing eventually, but somehow I had still lost my appetite.

  The man who’d been so rapt to Yoki’s every word looked away nervously when I snarled at him.

  “You’re worse than nuts,” I said, “You’re cracked nuts.”

  She looked brightly at me, “So you’re the one that gets the vampire, eh? After all my pining and you not even caring, thank you very much.”

  “I should really be going…”

  “Is he handsome? Oh, of course he is.” She countered herself. “All vampires are handsome, the Queen Anne taught us that much…Well, is he?”

  “Jesus Christ!” I exclaimed in exasperation.

  He started yapping.

  “Yes. Okay? Yes. The man who owns the McLaren –who I would not call my boyfriend, by the way, is, as far as I’m concerned, very handsome.”

  “Ooh! I knew it! What does he look like?”

  “Sort of like Al Pacino around forty, but taller.”

  “Hhhm. Not my type. Too forty, too Pacino. Does he have long hair?” She asked with renewed hope after the initial disappointment.

  “Hardly, but he has a beard.”

  “Oh, but vampires aren’t supposed to have facial hair,” she objected.

  “Why?”

  “Because they’re not supposed to be oversexed but elegant and effeminate.”

  “You should meet more vampires.”

  “I have long thought so myself.”

  “Here’s your bill,” said the waitress, setting it down.

  “Mind getting this one?”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, I don’t carry money.”

  “You don’t carry money.”

  “No. Usually the boys pay for things. I just forgot to bring one of them today, I suppose.”

  I looked around. The food was gone. The conversation had gone too far, and everyone in the little place had been entertained at my expense. I’d tipped the house thirty-five bucks of Miguel’s money, and I hadn’t even paid the bill yet –for both of us. I wadded up my napkin and placed it on my empty plate.

  “Yoki,” I said very calmly, “I am going to have to kill you now.”

  “That sounds jolly fun, but could you drive me home first?”

  “But you have a car outside.”

  “Yes, but it sputtered to a stop just as I pulled up. It won’t start again. I tried. Jeanne has a truck. I called her, and she said she’d tow it to the shop this evening after school.”

  “Wait for her,” I grated.

  I laid down a twenty and stood up.

  “The food was excellent,” I said to the cook as I headed for the door.

  “Ya’ll come back now,” he replied.

  Yoki followed me out the door.

  I turned on her before I got to the car.

  “Don’t even try.”

  “But I never got to address our reason for convening today.”

  “You’d better do it here, because you are not getting in my car.”

  “All right then,” she said, looking hurt, which surprised me –I hadn’t known she could be hurt. She had seemed to be made of rubber. “I just wanted to tell you how much we all admired your decorum last night. We were all wrecks, but you stayed so calm, and you got us out of there so efficiently, and tucked us all in a cab when there wasn’t room enough for you. We all thought it quite noble. And I would personally like to thank you again for fighting that fool for me and Jesus at the gym. You didn’t have to do that, just like you didn’t have to help us last night. You’re a warrior and a leader –not to mention a brilliant Grand Prix runner. You’re quite an Amazon, Annie. If you ever decide to come over to humankind’s side, we’ll surely be the better for having you.”

  With that, she dropped Jesus to the ground and lead him off by his pink leash into the silent, sun-baked streets of what I would later come to know was the Ninth Ward, one of the places Lucas, in his grief, had tried to tell me about. Hands in pockets, chin held high, and chains jingling, Yoki Hayashi went her way.

  I got inside the cockpit and drove back to the Quarter, thinking about pushups and side-bends and the dream of reaching a thousand crunches.

  I stepped out of the car before the Banana Grove to find a fresh scattering of debris on the street that said Stanley, Hector, and Esmeralda had been up to their shenanigans again. Old Man was sweeping the sidewalk, and once again didn’t acknowledge my existence. The cars parked up and down the street and the rowdy music coming from inside the Grove said that an evening get-together was just getting underway. I just didn’t feel like going inside. Instead, I started walking, back into the Quarter. The late afternoon sun slanted down streets casting the kind of shadows that meant cold this time of year in Michigan. But here, it was eighty-five in the shade, and all kinds of humid.

  I passed the old man who handed out Good Mister Goodwin buttons and little disposable American flags every day. He didn’t try to give me one this time. I passed the house where the drug dealer lived and did what he called work. I passed the place where Jesus Christ had almost killed me that first night I’d started running again. I was a lot fitter now. Now he wouldn’t catch me. I passed happy teenagers and a little girl in a yellow dress, one hand attached to her mother and the other to a fast-melting strawberry-pink ice cream cone.

  On a corner was an undersized, overstocked everything store, the way New Orleans is an everything city. They sold mostly curios and souvenirs, but they had also some candy, bottled juice, necessities like toothpaste and deodorant (the latter for some reason under lock and key), and a few utility items dressed up with a little New Orleans flare, for instance, a floor lamp with a shade dripping with strings of glass beads, and a cinnamon-scented, artsy-looking broom.

  I bought the broom.

  On my way out the door, I ran into a man. He was younger than me, taller, and very thin, with brown skin, an angular face, and blue eyes. He wore a gray T-shirt and frayed jeans covered with dust, bits of dried plaster, and paint. His hair was long and black and unkempt. He had been looking down and hadn’t seen me as we’d both been going through the narrow doorway in opposite directions, and he consequently knocked the newly-purchased broom right out of my hands.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  He picked up the broom before I could and handed it to me, but when I took it from his hands, for a moment he didn’t move out of my way. He stood there, staring at me glassily, and I thought I saw his nostrils flare. Then, he remembered himself, and he stepped out of my way, his head down again as he moved off, as though the world around him was no more than shadows on the wall.

  I stepped outside and continued down the street, utterly unaware that I had just had what would turn out to be the single most fateful encounter of my entire life. Yes, maybe even more than my crossing paths with Vampire Miguel. But all that comes later. For now, I simply thought, clumsy ass, and rode my broom down the street.

  When I got back to the inn, the laughter inside was louder, and the door and windows had been propped open to let in the evening air. Apparently the natives could feel the temperature difference somewhere between incredibly hot and almost as hot. I couldn’t.

  Old Man was still at his labors. Swish, swish, swish… He did not look at me as I approached. Urn in arm and nubby broom in hand, he remained in his own little world.

  “Old Man,” I said, “I got you a new broom, if you want it.”

  Swish, swish, swish…

  “Right.”

  I leaned it against one of the pillars and headed back across the street to the car to get what was left of my gear from the gym.

  “That was a kind thing to do.”

  I startled, big time. Those words were so familiar. They were the words that had begun this whole strange chang
e of circumstances in my life. They were the words that had been said by my vampire on the cold, dark night that he had invited me to join his life, if not yet his unlife.

  But this time, they were not being said by my vampire.

  I turned around to face this ambiguous new threat, and then it wasn’t so ambiguous.

  It was Vampire Andy.

  “Oh, did I scare you, little boxer, little paramilitary brat? Little GI Jane?”

  He looked at the McLaren, whistled. He ran his hand over the sleek black surface of the hood.

  “Wow, new model. Sexy new lines. I like it. I’ll have to buy a couple. Where did you get yours? I didn’t realize there was a dealer in Hazard County…Unless, of course, it isn’t yours at all.”

  How was he here? It was still daylight. Fading, indirect, but still daylight. He was wearing shades and a jacket, but… I glanced up and own the street with just my eyes. Old Man was gone. There wasn’t a person in sight.

  “Are you expecting someone? A mutual acquaintance, perhaps? Don’t. He won’t be getting up for about…” He looked at his flashy several-thousand-dollar watch, “thirty-two more minutes. So what am I doing here this time of day? You’d know the answer to that if he’d told you anything about us, if he really intended to make you one of us.”

  He took off his shades. I watched him squint against the light, watched him scowl from some weird mixture of pleasure and pain.

  “You were up all day. Up and out, with the mortals. So many friends. That’s not very immortal behavior, you know.”

  “What the hell is this, Andy? You trying to intimidate me? Threaten those kids? ‘Cause you know he’s gonna hear about it. And if anything happens to me you know he’s gonna know about it. He’s not as stupid as you.”

  He took a step closer –a lion on two legs, closing in on me.

  “But what can he do about it?” Andy smiled darkly, “I’ve known him for over two hundred years, and how long have you known him? Two months? Two weeks? You don’t really know him at all. He would never, ever touch me, not over something like you, especially not after what I did for him last night.”

  “And how much consolation would that be? Knowing you’d gotten me, when for the rest of eternity the object of your desire would never so much as look at your pale ass again? I’m not afraid of you, and I’ll tell you why. Because your age hasn’t made you a good enough actor to hide from me what’s really important to you. You’d have fun killing me, for sure, but it wouldn’t last. What you really want is Miguel. You want him so bad he dumped your ass and you still crossed oceans to bail him out of hot water, and if you kill me, if you ride that power trip, you can kiss your wet dreams goodbye, because they won’t be undead. They’ll just be plain dead.”

  “He planned to kill you, you know, if you hadn’t killed those witches.”

  That was meant to be some kind of revelation for me. I answered the statement with as much surprise as I felt.

  “Maybe I should thank their widows.”

  I opened the trunk and pulled out my gym bag, giving Vampire Andy full view of my back.

  “You’re full of spunk. He always liked that, but if he changes you, don’t expect the honeymoon to last forever. One night, he will leave you, just as he did me. You’ll be alone. Forever.”

  I turned back around. It was my turn to smile.

  “That’s okay. No man is my whole world. This little GI Jane, she’ll just keep troopin’. Maybe you could learn a thing or two from her.”

  I turned away.

  “This isn’t over, you tragic little half-trash.”

  Apparently he was one of those always-gets-the-last-word types. I just kept walking.

  When I reached the Banana Grove door, Jonathon was standing in it. He greeted me with woozy glee.

  “Ooh, invite him in!” said Jonathon, peering past me, “Oh, wait, he’s gone. Who was that tall drink of brandy?”

  There was really only one honest answer.

  “An asshole.”

  Night fell, and Miguel did not come. I wondered where he was. He was probably hunting. It was early in the evening, or was it late in the day? I was tired, and I wasn’t sure what time it was to me. Was I supposed to be collapsing into bed or just getting going? I’d been awake all day and half the previous night. The day before that I had slept until evening. I’d been going nocturnal, and then backpedaled. What was going on with me?

  I did five hundred crunches. I was a machine. I surprised myself. I’d only been working out now…How long was it? It felt like a lifetime.

  When I finished, I didn’t know what else to do, so I showered. I still didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to go out, but I didn’t want to be in the room, so I wrapped a towel around myself and went out and sat on the iron staircase that wound its way up from the courtyard. A party ensued below. All the doors to the courtyard were open, and people were milling about in the moody light, chatting, laughing together, trying in vain to do the pop-and-lock justice to the sounds of Outkast. Lucas was down there, arm in arm with another man. They traded a tender, lingering kiss, then laughed as Hector and a young woman, barely dressed in a short green sundress that had found its way half off of her breasts, careened into the courtyard and began whirling in circles like two kindergartners. They lost their balance and fell down, laughing hysterically. The old woman from Raleigh made the mistake of getting too close, and Hector nearly dragged her down with them. They all looked so happy.

  I sighed and rubbed my shoulders. Was it cold? Why was I shivering?

  Then I felt a cold hand on my own.

  Miguel sat down behind me, wrapping his arms around me and inhaled my hair. I immediately knew it was him and not Andy. I just knew.

  He had not fed this evening. He had come straight to me.

  “Why don’t you go down to them?”

  “I don’t play well with others.”

  “Can you play with me?”

  “Maybe, but I thought fighting with you would be a lot more fun. Andy threatened me tonight.”

  “He is that way.”

  “I don’t see how you ever had it for him.”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “Yeah, over two centuries. Just how old are you, Miguel?”

  His cold breath brushed my cheek.

  “I knew the tsarina before the tsar knew her.”

  “The who and the what?”

  “I knew the Medicis before they were known.”

  “I’m not real up on the history of dairy products.”

  He ran his cold hands down and up my arms.

  “I knew Ishmael Valdez before the Church knew what he had done.”

  “Okay, now I have just no idea who that is.”

  He moved his hands up my neck to the back of my head.

  “I knew Vlad Dracula before the world knew him.”

  “Wait, you knew who-oooooh…”

  His perfect nails were massaging my scalp, and if you’ve ever had braids you know that when he started doing that nothing else in the world mattered. The Banana Boys and their guests were living it up below, and there was a war going on in Iraq, and global warming was killing the polar bears, and I was mostly naked with a really old dead guy, and none of it mattered, because he was scratching my head. Scratching…my…head.

  “Why don’t we go up there,” he said, looking up to the roof and directing my head to do the same, “and investigate this matter more fully?”

  “What? The roof…?”

  He scratched.

  “…The roof sounds fine.”

  He stood up, lifted me in his arms, and I felt the velocity that I had felt that night he’d carried me out of the snow and into another life, only this time I wasn’t beat up and frostbitten and miserable, and this time I trusted him.

  We landed on the roof, and he set me on my feet, but he held me. I teetered on the edge in my bare feet, looking down on the revelers three stories below, seeing Hector and the girl in the green dress with a squeal t
umble into the outdoor hot tub. Then Vampire Miguel pulled me a step toward him.

  His lips lingered near mine. His hand slid beneath the towel and around my waist.

  “I thought vampires didn’t have sex.”

  “We have other talents.”

  His fingertips followed the curve of my spine.

  “And other interests.”

  He breathed against my neck, “Yes.”

  He had not yet fed tonight. He had come directly to me.

  “But…don’t you have,” he traced the edge of my jaw with the edge of one nail, “…self-control issues? How do I know you won’t suck me down to the shell like an oyster and throw me away?”

  “You have no conception of my self-control.”

  “Andy become unlovable now that you have his blood?”

  He gripped me hard and kissed me on the mouth.

  It was the deepest, longest, hardest, and, I am convinced, only real kiss I had up to that very moment ever experienced, and he didn’t even cut me.

  Then, he abruptly let me go –completely let me go. I lost my balance and almost fell to my premature death, but at the very last moment, he caught me by the hand. He let me teeter there, cooling my heels in midair, with an evil grin on his toothy face.

  “This…” I gasped, “is where Roy…regrets keeping a tiger for a pet. I’ve learned my lesson…I’ve learned my lesson.”

  He drew me back in.

  Our eyes locked. There was only one cure for a ruffian like this. With my free hand, I ripped off the towel and let it drop over the edge. Then I dove into my tiger and spent the next two hours not trying to tame him but show him that this tigress had a few talents of her own.

  He showed me a few of his too, and they were magnificent.

  9

  Silence is a Virtue

  Miguel took less of my blood than donation people take, and it hurt even less. His teeth were like razors, and the slit he made in my arm with one healed so well you can’t even see the scar from it. He did not drink from my neck. I didn’t think to ask why, but I later learned that going for the jugular is for him the killing stroke, and that is one way he controls his actions, through routine and long practice. If I’d known about the jugular thing earlier, I would have been a little more realistically edgy about all that hovering around my neck he’d been doing.