Annie of the Undead

by Varian Wolf

  After a moment, and a strong compulsion to gag, I ceased drinking and tried to draw back. But Miguel pushed me back against his flesh and commanded once more, “Drink.”

  I sucked again, and this time, he let me go. I lay on the grass coughing, blood smeared on my face.

  Miguel sat on the earth beside me. I coughed and wiped my face.

  “Missed you too,” I said.

  “You are ready,” he replied, his voice strangely resonant, even for him.

  “That’s good. I’d hate to suck at this.”

  “Ha.”

  “You know, you smell like all the people you’ve killed.”

  “Humans, beasts. Many were needed to prepare,” he answered with a voice that sounded like two people singing in perfect harmony. “It is time.”

  His hand rested on mine, and I felt the borrowed heat within him. It was strange indeed. Last night had been the final time I would ever warm his flesh.

  “I need not remind you of the danger.”

  No.

  “Think of a signal for me, a word that you can say after which there can be no going back, one that you would not say casually.”

  I thought about that.

  “Skittles.”

  “Skittles?”

  “Sk…” I’d better not say it. “They’re a candy. They’re disgusting, but they had this advertisement a few years ago where this guy follows a fairy to a rainbow and he sticks his face in, but it freaks him out too much, and he hesitates. When he goes for seconds the rainbow is gone. He missed his chance.”

  “Clever advertising.”

  “If you say so.”

  “You remembered it.”

  “Yeah, but it didn’t make me buy them. Those froufrou fairies can keep their damned candy. I’ll be too busy infiltrating their rainbow. I won’t miss my chance.”

  “Your signal is well chosen.”

  “Miguel?”

  “Yes?”

  “You’ve got a kind of God-voice going on. Will you come into the light, so I can see you?”

  “Yes.”

  We walked up out of the shadows to the lighted patio and I beheld the creature that was Miguel.

  As my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw Miguel as I had never before seen him. Even the previous night’s thorough feeding could not compare with what he had done this night. He had gorged so completely, that every last vein beneath the surface of his skin stood out a dark wine red, the color of blood that has been transformed within a vampire’s body. His lips were so flooded with burgundy that blood could almost have dripped from them. The whites of his eyes were awash in changed blood, and those peculiar irises seemed to radiate several layers of depth, straight down into his soul. The little bite wound I had put in his arm, I noticed, was already healed.

  And there was a mien about him that was more than unearthly. It was as different from the vampire to which I had become accustomed as that vampire was from a human. He was so still, so incomprehensibly comported, that it seemed he might just dissolve into thin air at once, as though he could not be a solid thing, but of ethereal substance, to be snatched into another world without a moment’s notice. And when he smiled at me, revealing gums laid like red velvet over a fanged row of teeth that flashed like alabaster pearls, I nearly cried. The faultless fluidity of his movements, the terrifying beauty of him, hinted of things so far beyond me that I could not begin to comprehend their nature. For the first time, I was fully gripped by the true pain of my mortality, that no matter how close I got to the rainbow, no matter that I took it to my very bed, I could never enter it as I was.

  Moved beyond words –a rare thing in my life, I took both his hands in mine. He knew my answer.

  13

  Death is the Maiden

  We headed into the night for the last time as a girl and her vampire. Miguel carried me, because, after that night, I would not need wheels to traverse great distances. I would not need to be carried home. After that night, I would run by his side. I too would scale walls like Spiderman, leap tall buildings in a single bound. Well, maybe not quite.

  My mind churned on some of the thought processes of a person facing imminent death. There was so much living that I would miss out on, even if I did survive. I would never taste escargot (at least, I’d never like it). I would never get invited to the Playboy Mansion or the White House. I would never get pregnant. I would never get arrested again or stuck with a shiv or wasted in a drive-by. I would never get dentures. My skin would never wrinkle with sun damage and age, and my ovaries would never deplete and send my body into the throws of menopause, leaving me “Angry” Granny Eastwood, living off food stamps and sitting on her porch, throwing flower pots at neighborhood kids for stepping on her tulips. …On second thought, maybe there wasn’t a lot of living I wanted to do, except maybe getting my teeth straightened. That would have been nice. I would have liked to have nice teeth for eternity.

  But none of that was to be. This one change would supersede all of it. This clean, swift end would deprive me of straight teeth and spare me the gruesome, lingering death that claimed most humans. I would never confront sickness, old age, or the question of whether anything lies beyond the final threshold of a mortal death. Perhaps one day I would perish at the hands of one of my own immortal people, but that was an end far beyond my vision. It wasn’t a bad trade off. Not too bad at all.

  A new creature would be born when the human met its end, and I was ready. If ever anyone was ready, it was me. So what if I hadn’t made it to one thousand crunches? My vampire had said my stomach looked like a cheese grater.

  We went across rooftops and fences and roads, out past the sprawl of the city until no engines roared in the distance and the city was only a vast glow above the trees. Miguel had chosen a quiet place in the country for me to die, somewhere down by the bayou. I knew not which or where. Amidst the primeval tangle of sweet gum, cypress, and hackberry was our clearing. Tarzan-esque vines draped the trees, and tall cattails spread out from the shore in droves, nodding their fat seed heads and stiff leaves in the gentle night breeze.

  Miguel set me down in the soft wild plants and earth, in the shadow of a mammoth magnolia tree whose leafy branches swept all the way to the ground. The spot was a raised slope, not a common thing so close to the water in the bayous near New Orleans. It was the sort of earth that would have been constantly saturated with water under normal climate conditions, supporting low-growing, semi-aquatic vegetation and massive cypress trees whose knees jabbed out of the earth like a garden of stakes in a vampire’s nightmare. Old runnels in the earth told of the spring that must lay dormant beneath the clay at its summit, but in that year of drought the ground was spongy and dry. It was a place of perfect natural beauty, unadulterated by the hand of man.

  Due to the lengthy drought, the mosquitoes were not bad, which means only a few dozen whizzed about on whining wings, trying to sink their needles into my skin. I stood in the pale light of the nearly full moon and breathed in the perfume of the vegetation, the bayou, and the earth. Yes, this was where it should happen. This place was not of concrete, glass, and metal, of honking horns, angry neighbors, and jail cells. This was a good place to die.

  The plaintive bleat of a goat drew my attention. Beneath the largest of the cypresses were tethered three little creatures in the darkness, two dark, and one piebald. Their bright eyes glittered in the moonlight. I knew their purpose. They stood in a row like three little Happy Meals. Miguel had brought them. He had prepared the place that our scene would play out and filled himself to his greatest strength that he might have enough changed blood to pass his legacy to me.

  He stood beside me in silence, giving me whatever time I needed. I watched the moonlight shimmer on the placid waters.

  “Shouldn’t we be concerned about large aquatic beasties with lots of teeth dragging us in for a death roll?”

  I had never seen a gator, but they didn’t sound like pleasant neighbors.

  “I will not let them harm
you.”

  His voice rolled like thunder over the space between us. He stood then in silence beside me, waiting.

  Clearly, he was not going to force me into anything. I must count down to zero, I must utter the code word, or the mission would be a no go. And once I did that, there was no turning back. There was no plan B, no abort. And when I fell, there was a very real chance that I might never get up again.

  I liked waiting about as much as I liked politics. There would be no long warm-up in the moonlight for me. No, sir. I stripped off my clothes and laid them neatly upon the broad side of an old, fallen tree. I came back to Miguel and stood naked in the dark before him, fending off the other creatures come for my blood.

  Miguel then disrobed himself, until he stood before me, every inch of his profound inhumanity exposed to me. His beauty was thorough, consuming. He stood solid as an atlantid. His eyes refracted the moonlight like intricately cut gemstones, glancing silver in shards from their depths.

  There I was, mortal as could be, a creature hardly enough noticed by its own kind for twenty-six years for them to shove me back into the dust in which I’d scrabbled most of my life. In a few short years the sands of time would have buried all trace of my passage, but for my savior, my lover, my vampire.

  In the emotion of the moment, my brain tripped over words. I touched his face. There was but one thing left to say.

  “Skittles.”

  He bore me to the ground in one swift motion. The impact was gentle as could be, but his press was implacable. I felt the cool clover against the skin of my back, and the next instant his teeth were at my throat. He was going for the jugular. I felt the sharp fangs penetrate and the cold incisors clamp down on my flesh. I winced at the pain but at first uttered neither cry nor whimper. I had endured more severe pain in silence before.

  But the sensation of his lips pressed tight against my throat, his wet tongue undulating as he sucked draughts from the core of my body, was unspeakably strange. I felt the first hint of weakness drawing near, lightheadedness though I was lying down, the desperation of my fast-beating heart. Too much, my body warned. Too fast. Enough! Enough!

  I panicked. I fought back, tried to rise. Steel arms pinned my wrists to the earth above my head. That implacable mouth secured my head. I might as well have been struggling against the foundations of a mountain.

  I kicked my feet against the soil, struggled as I could, gasped some desperate cry. He must let me go. Let go! But there was no escape. Within seconds I had weakened beyond the ability to resist. I lay limp, barely feeling myself breathe, my consciousness dimmed to some shadowy place not far from insensibility. I gazed up at the stars with the knowledge that there was no fighting death now. The battle was lost.

  “Drink, Annie! Drink now!” came the unnatural voice through my haze of dying.

  Miguel put his arm against my mouth. I could feel a wound there, the blood oozing.

  “Drink! Drink!”

  Terror had gripped me, but conditioning kicked in. I tried to drink, but there came no blood. Miguel was so well-fed that the wound was already healing. I clenched his flesh in my teeth and ripped with all my waning strength.

  I took one swallow, then another. The thick fluid filled my mouth and went down. The flavor was almost unbearable, added to the nausea of my weakened state. It was liquid iron, salty, ripe, and overwhelming. It was something no human was meant to ingest. I was weak, and it did not flow into my mouth, but came when I sucked.

  “Faster, Annie! Drink faster!”

  I tried to obey, gurgling and choking on the abhorrent stuff.

  My assailant took away his arm and thrust a fresh wound into my mouth, some other body part. He shoved hard.

  “Drink more! Keep drinking!”

  I tried. I sucked, and sucked. His merciless hand at the back of my head shoved my head hard against the source with more urgent commands to drink! Drink!

  And I drank and drank.

  But I was so weak. So sick. I coughed, gagged. I couldn’t, absolutely couldn’t go on. Blood came out of my nose until I could not breathe, then I gasped through my mouth and coughed up blood all over the place. I felt sickness churn my inside in revolt at the unnatural substance I had taken it in such great quantity. Blood vomit was rising in my throat. My abdomen heaved to disgorge the poison inside me.

  He shoved my jaw shut, clamped an iron hand over my mouth as my stomach convulsed. Though my sight was blurry from loss of blood and the tears in my eyes, I could see the determination on his face, the hard look of the man who was killing me. I panicked, continued to gag against an impenetrable barrier.

  He shoved my head back into the ground, and came down with dagger teeth bared. I think I struggled, but there was neither energy nor strength in my efforts. I was already too far gone. He tore into my throat and this time opened the jugular fully. I felt the dreadful pain of a bodily invasion that would prove fatal. I felt the heat of my blood spurting out at intervals with the futile beating of my heart. I even felt the relentless draughts, my killer’s throat swallowing against mine, which went rhythmically with the slackening pace of my dying heart.

  There was no vital juice left to thrust through my veins. My once cold skin went numb until I could no longer feel the wetness of the blood that covered me, no longer feel the warm earth at my back. Then I couldn’t feel the core of my substance. All sense was gone. I was blind and bodiless.

  At some intangible instant, I passed a threshold, after the pain and toil for life had slipped away, where all I felt was acceptance. I felt more than thought that it was all right to die, because that is how everything ends.

  Then, even that slipped away, and I was gone…

  For what Miguel later said was about six seconds.

  It’s a delicate, dangerous game making a new vampire, but once the change begins, it is inexorable. A human has died and a specter is soon to be born. The change seizes you quick and then lasts for hours. You quake with unspeakable agony, as the magical blood poisons every cell in your body, taking it over from the inside out like a supernatural virus.

  Dying is way easier than this. At first you feel nothing, a symptom of death, but as your tissues change you are wracked with simultaneous nausea, spasmodic muscle contractions, and intense pain throughout every fiber of your being. It’s a trip and a half.

  While all that’s happening, your brain goes to static. I guess it’s sort of like sticking your head in a really big light socket…or maybe like getting executed by a wet sponge to the head.

  Then, all at once, it hits you. At the pivotal, final moment, there is an explosion of the senses and awareness. You are assaulted by odors so powerful it’s like the things you smell are being rammed right up your nose. Your ears are filled with a cacophony of sound that vibrates your being like you’re sitting on the subwoofer at a metal concert, as though large munitions are being detonated in your ears. What you see, when you finally dare to open your eyes, is another world. Everything seems to have slowed down, because you have speeded up. Color, detail, and movement –even the most miniscule, hold Mesmer’s authority over you. It’s a cliché these days, but you have been reborn, and cannot at first fathom the new world around you.

  But within minutes, your new neural wiring –though wiring is a poor word for the gestalt of your new mind, catches up, and you begin to make sense of all that assails you. You begin to feel the truth of what it means to be a vampire.

  Maybe there is no human frame of reference that can be applied to existence as a vampire. Maybe there are not words to describe the experience. Or maybe I just have a really bad vocabulary. But I went through all I’ve described that night, and I came out the other side as something without equal on this earth. My humanity became for me in an instant as vague and incomprehensible as a human’s earliest memories of childhood. Once that shift is made, watch out…because that’s when the thirst comes.

  I hardly comprehended my need. I rose into a sort of sitting position, driven by a craving
so intense I thought it would kill me. I felt myself withering inside, dying of my need.

  I only dimly understood the source of the furry black creature that was thrust into my arms. Its scent filled my nostrils, my throat, my being. There was no thought, no waiting. I did not grip it with my hands, only plunged my face to its furry, exposed neck. The most powerful instinct of my new composition took hold. I sank my fangs deep into the flesh, through hair and hide, to the coursing river of life beneath.

  No fried chicken rapture could compare with this. No hunger, no thirst, no sexual desire, no love or lust or longing in the mortal repertoire comes close. As I drank I felt my entire purpose of existence fulfilled. I felt indescribable joy, juxtaposed with the insatiable need for more of that which brought such bliss.

  I drank and drank, until there was nothing left to take. Then I tore into the carcass in my need for more. Immediately disgusted, I cast the spent thing aside and looked about for more. For the first time, I saw the Other, the vampire who had made me what I was. Here was the one who had given me the thirst, my invaluable gift and my curse. His eyes pierced me like spears of ice, for I was blood of his blood and part of him.

  In his clutches were two more creatures full of delicious blood, blood that came to my nostrils through the very air, as though I had drunk them already. He held one out to me, and I took it, burying my teeth into it and finishing it as I had the last. I cast it aside as casually as the one before it.

  Only then did my thirst slacken. It was not gone, and I did not fathom that it could be ever again, but my thoughts began to come clearer, and the world spun into focus.

  I beheld Miguel. I tasted him through the air. He was cool and delicious as nothing else could be. He was my blood, and I was his. It was as though we could communicate through our thirst, as though some invisible current flowed between us, two creatures not of this world, bound by mutual desire.