By Blood We Live

by John Joseph Adams

  "Lady, stop talking in riddles," he said, now grabbing her arm again as he roughly set down his glass.

  "You aren't ready for the truth. . . ask yourself, didn't you find it strange that you couldn't see me on the monitors? The moment I saw you pushing the young dealer in my direction, with you dressed in security staff black, I figured that the technology had betrayed me."

  "What the fuck is going on, lady?"

  She inclined her head toward the mirror behind the bar, motioning toward it with her chin. "I don't show up in reflections, mirrored surfaces, or even in photographs. I don't exist, but I do exist. I don't appear dangerous, but I'm deadly. And I'm so much older than you think. But I'm not evil, although everything you've been taught says that I am. . . even though some like me definitely are. You and I are the same, rogues, an enigma, cloaked in pain and invisible to most others. We cull the herds, you and I, in our own way; we keep the beasts away from the innocent. Be careful tonight—it's getting late, I need to go."

  His hand had fallen away from her arm as his jaw went slack. He didn't offer protest as he stared in the mirror and she stood and walked away, too stunned to immediately gather himself. By the time his body and mind caught up to each other, allowing him to toss a twenty on the bar and dash out the door to find her, she was gone.

  But a black Escalade careened over the curb, its door opened before he could draw his weapon, and beefy hands had him. Duct tape went over his mouth; nylon cuffed his wrists as the vehicle sped to a deserted section of beach. Hardened eyes told him Odette hadn't lied. How could he have been so stupid!

  His shoulder collided with the ground, the searing pain racing through his skeleton. A pair of dead, young eyes stared at him, open, glassy. . . the kid was only twenty-six. Hell, he was only thirty-seven. Struggling just made the men around him laugh. Trying to speak made them draw their weapons.

  "Take the tape off and lemme hear what this sonofabitch has to say," Lou growled, leveling a nine millimeter toward Tony's face. "We've known you were a cop for months."

  Another henchman ripped off the tape. Tony took a huge inhale, and then began shouting, spittle flying.

  "Fuck you!" he yelled out, trying to sit up. "You kill my pregnant wife and think I'm not coming for you? You kill my partner and think there'd be no retribution?" Chest heaving, death eminent, he refused to beg them, wanted them to know that he'd take this grudge with him to hell and back. "I'll haunt you motherfuckers! This ain't over!"

  The men around him laughed and shook their heads.

  "Sorry, I ain't superstitious," one said.

  "Yeah, me neither," Lou said, shrugging his shoulders and poking out his barrel chest. "But sorry about the wife, little bitch wasn't supposed to be at the house when it blew. Our bad."

  "I'll kill you!" Tony shouted.

  "Yeah, we're so scared," Lou said, and then squeezed the trigger twice.

  The back of his head exploded in pain and colors for a second and then everything went dark. There was no light, no sound; he could no longer feel the sand or the wind. The chill of the night air was gone. He'd failed. It was so quick, a blink of time. He was floating and weeping inside his shattered mind. Pressure at his throat made his muscles twitch. Something tightened around him and then became light, making him feel like he was flying away. Time stood still and yet he could feel its passage. Water now pelted his body, his forehead rested against something soft. He opened his eyes slowly to a dark angel, the shower spray blurring his vision.

  Butter-cream-soft hands traced his back; cinnamon-hued breasts cushioned his chest as his knees buckled. A warm mouth sought his in a tender kiss. He had to be in heaven, because he'd just left hell on the beach. Everything was now surreal. His stomach churned and then pain soon gripped him, making him stagger backward to claw the wall, his wail an agonized echo that bounced off the tiles.

  "I tried but got there too late to save the boy, that young dealer. They are animals," a familiar voice murmured. "You must eat to regain your strength, and then heal today. . . tonight we will work together."

  Frantic, he looked around at the exquisite marble and gold fixtures, and then his gaze settled on Odette. "Where am I?"

  "At my home, far away from them."

  "You saved me?" he panted. "The last thing I remember is Lou unloaded two slugs into the back of my head." Tony's hand gingerly touched his skull and then when he felt no wound, panicked.

  "I perceived that you wanted to live more than anything else, in order to avenge this travesty of justice."

  "I did, but. . . but how?" He stepped out of the walk-in shower, bumping into the glass and staggering to the far side of the spacious bathroom. "I heard the shots, felt the impact, passed out. How in the fuck don't I have a huge hole in my head!" He looked around, noticing something was missing. "Where's the mirror? Where's the goddamned mirror, Odette!"

  "I don't have any in the mansion," she said calmly, turning off the water and covering her nudity with a large, white Turkish towel. "They upset me."

  "Why! What's going on?"

  She tossed him a towel and watched him grab it swiftly. "I'm sorry, it was the only way to save you. But once you eat, you'll understand all."

  "Eat? Eat! Are you insane?" He wound the towel around his waist and struggled to stand without the aid of the double sink. "I'm not hungry, I'm about to lose my mind. My brains just got blown out, but I'm not dead, this ain't a hospital, and I don't know why I'm even alive." Pain doubled him over again.

  "You're not. Eat," she whispered, offering him her wrist.

  He seemed confused, and then became horrified as her French manicured finger broke the skin and fangs filled his mouth at the first sight of her blood.

  Tears stung his eyes but the scent of blood saturated the bathroom, drawing him to her beyond his control. He closed his eyes as he took her arm and brought it to his lips, her fingers threading through his hair, petting him as he greedily suckled, colors staining the inside of his lids, pleasure careening through his system until he could stand it no more. He threw his head back and released a moan. Her embrace opened the floodgate on years of hurt along with a torrent of tears.

  Sobs of remorse choked him, a tender mouth swallowed them away. Velvet tresses were in his fist, his fingers wending their way through dripping curls. Hands so graceful, so soft removed pain from his aura with each gentle caress until towels fell away and skin burned against skin. This woman had saved him, had pulled his essence of existence away from the blackness. He had another chance to complete the mission he'd begun. Her story exploded inside his mind and he wept for her as his story entered her and she wept for him, their honesty becoming raw passion that slammed against the walls and melted down to body-slicked heat on the towel-strewn floor.

  The storm of emotions and pleasure was so swift that it left them both breathless. He stared down at her, tracing the edge of her beautiful brows and then cradled her cheek.

  "Why did you come back for me?" he murmured, still out of breath.

  "Because you were a keeper. I found you after a very long search. A nobleman. . . and it has been centuries since I'd found someone worth saving." A gentle smile eased out of hiding on her face. "Plus, I so badly wanted a Vodka martini."

  He paused to catch his breath, his mind laboring under the new knowledge it had just received. "What they did to you was unforgivable."

  "I became what I am, much like you did tonight," she murmured, touching his cheek, her smile fading. "Someone cared enough about me to give me another chance and I loved him for that. . . and for whom he was."

  He understood what Odette was telling him, he loved Meghan that way. But it was becoming so difficult to hold onto the memory or to nurse it to life.

  "Imagine after more than two hundred years. . . the memories fade and all you have left is the pain." Her stare was so hypnotic, so open, and for all that she was and all that she had done, she possessed serenity.

  "I have to finish this, tomorrow night, then I can move on.
"

  "I know you have to redress what happened to you," she said quietly, briefly closing her eyes. "Just as one day I'll route out the rest of those in the coven that participated in the coup against Alfonse."

  "I know," he murmured, moving against her slowly and now appreciating the unhurried pleasure of their union. She was a beautiful woman, but there was something beyond that, something still so genuine inside her very being. It had been so long since he'd witnessed that or had allowed himself to experience the possibility it existed beyond Meghan. The fact that he felt the way he did almost seemed like a betrayal.

  "It's not a betrayal," Odette murmured, brushing his mouth with hers. "They would have wanted us to go on, to thrive, and not merely survive. If we exist tortured, then the others have also won."

  A gasp escaped him as Odette's slick sheath tightened around him. He studied her face as he loved her slowly, kissing her throat, then her breasts, paying delicate homage to her erect Hershey nipples with tiny suckles until she moaned. Satiny legs encircled his waist as she arched and offered him her throat. The strike into her jugular was swift but tender, her gasp sending a shudder through him that made him cry out.

  The night wore on, their lovemaking an anthem, to survival, to renewal, that took them from the floor of the vast bathroom to the sprawl of her king-sized bed. He watched semi-dazed as the steel door to the basement sanctuary closed and pure darkness surrounded them, but yet he could still see.

  "Rest," she whispered. "Later tonight will be ours. We have the benefit now of time, power, and stealth."

  He pulled her against his chest in the darkness, finding it new that no heartbeats meshed and only cool skin now touched. The heat was gone, but not his loyalty to the one who'd saved him. The seeds of a long-time love had been planted. One that wouldn't grow old, one that understood him more than the former love of his life ever had, one that shared his altruism and even his dark side.

  "I'm glad you found me," he said quietly. "I didn't want to die."

  She nodded and kissed his chest. "I am glad, too. This is rare. . . it is magic."

  "Finders keepers." For the first time in years, he closed his eyes with a smile.

  They entered the casino just as they had left, but no monitors could perceive them. Old Stan looked at Tony and then glanced away.

  "Wait here," he said to Odette. "I have to clear this up."

  She nodded and perused the floor watching as her lover tried to make an old man understand. But that was pointless, people believed what they wanted to. Finally, she saw Tony hail her with a slight lift of his jaw.

  "Ask Odette," he said calmly, placing a hand on Stan's shoulder.

  She already knew the direction of the conversation. "He didn't kill the young dealer, they did. Tony used to work for the feds."

  Stan straightened. "Then get the fuck away from me, would ya!" He spoke through his teeth. "I don't wanna wind up like that kid, and I don't wanna know what's going on—but I don't want them to see me ever talking to you."

  Tony nodded. "No problem, you live well."

  Odette took his arm. "There is much I have to teach you about the use of your power."

  "Just get me up into the security area without them seeing me."

  "Vapor?" she said with a wide grin. "Follow me to the shadows. You just don't do that on an open casino floor in polite company."

  She took his hand and then pulled him into an alcove, kissing him passionately as passersby glanced at them once, and then they were gone.

  Drifting replaced body weight, and then vents became passageways. Silence echoed all around him until Odette's voice entered his head.

  Bullets will hurt but not kill you. However, the rage is controlling you right now, you must control the rage. Decide before you go in there whether or not you want to rip them to shreds with your bare hands and start an entirely crazy investigation, or if you want to just shoot them all so that it looks like a human-on-human crime.

  Before he could answer her, he was standing inside the room and could feel her presence invisibly monitoring his first foray as a vampire.

  They were eating take-out from the restaurants below. Laughter filled the room, total entitlement to joy surrounded them like his life and death and that of an innocent kid's never matter, never happened. They didn't even see him.

  "I told you I would haunt you," Tony said in a low growl.

  "Oh, shit!" Lou jumped up and grabbed his gun.

  Four henchmen cursed and scrambled for weapons.

  "I thought you whacked this bastard!" Fat Joe shouted.

  In that moment, Tony decided. He didn't want to shoot them. Hand-to-hand combat just felt too good. Ripping Lou's arm out of its socket and then shooting him in the head, just felt like the right thing to do. But wisdom and vampire speed prevailed, as he unloaded his clip.

  "Feed before you leave," Odette said, materializing behind him. "Or else, it's a waste."

  They sat hand in hand under the stars on a bench watching the surf. A thousand questions pummeled his mind but he was grateful he didn't have to verbalize any of them for her to understand.

  "It is a sexy, glorious emotion, revenge, but just like sex with a lover you don't love, once you climax, it all feels so hollow."

  He nodded. Leave it to a woman to so eloquently define what was raging within him. "Now what?" he whispered. "There are so many more of them, so many I could go after, and will. . . but it all seems so pointless."

  She laid her head on his shoulder. "This is why I haven't destabilized the coven. After I repaid Gustav for what he'd done to Alfonse, I sadly realized, it would never bring him back." Her soft palm stroked his chest as she looked out to the moon. "Alfonse and I decimated the town back in Haiti before we left that fateful night of my making. We settled all old debts, but in the end, none of that made us feel better beyond the moment of the blood-letting."

  "Sorta like a crack high. . . for the moment it's an adrenaline rush like you cannot believe, and then. . ."

  "And then you crash."

  He stared at her. "So how do you go on living now?"

  "As time passes you'll realize that the greatest thing you have is someone to share that passage of time with. . . for what felt like eons I focused on the ugliness so much that I could never see the beauty of life. Once I died I forgot how to do that."

  "I had forgotten that while I was still living," he said in a sad murmur.

  "I have seen the dawn of so much, though. . . cars, telephones, airplanes; I could go on and on. But also wars."

  He smiled, and then chuckled sadly. "So, what do we do, become philanthropists?"

  She smiled and shrugged. "Why not. We can be whatever we want to be, can right wrongs, can help or hurt. What do you want to be?"

  "I don't want to hurt people," he said quietly, his voice so sad that it drew her.

  She stared into his eyes and nodded, touching his lips with one finger. "Enough lessons for one night. Enough vengeance for one era. Let us focus on beauty."

  He took her mouth in a slow dissolve of pleasure. He was her greatest find, something precious that she would vow to keep, and she knew that she was that for him. The irony of that truth not lost on either of them.

  After the Stone Age

  by Brian Stableford

  Brian Stableford's latest novels, all new this year, include Sherlock Holmes and the Vampires of Eternity, The Dragon Man, and The Moment of Truth. He is well-known in vampire circles for his novels The Hunger and Ecstasy of Vampires, The Empire of Fear, and Young Blood, and for his translations of French author Paul Féval, père's nineteenth-century works of vampire fiction (which pre-date Bram Stoker's Dracula). He has also authored many other novels and French translations, as well as numerous works of non-fiction about science fiction.

  About vampire fiction, Stableford says: "It's probably popular because it imagines a kind of charisma, a subspecies of angst and an insidious variety of violence of which humans are incapable, thus providing a temporary
distraction from the charismatic void, ineffably tedious angst and mere brutality that constitute the quotidian human condition. I became interested in it when the history of the subgenre took an interesting turn in the 1970s, when assumptions of monstrosity formerly taken more-or-less for granted were challenged and interrogated in various quirky ways, presumably reflecting—albeit in a distorting mirror—contemporary sociological shifts in attitudes to sexuality."

  This tale, which first appeared in the BBC's Cult Vampire Magazine, is about the potential utility of vampirism as a "natural" substitute for liposuction.

  Mina had tried them all: WeightWatchers, Conley, grapefruit, Atkins, hypnotherapy and pumping iron. On the day she decided, after three grueling months, that the Stone Age diet was doing her more harm than good—just like all the rest—she felt that she had hit rock bottom in the abyss of despair. She clocked in at sixteen stone five pounds, just six pounds lighter than the day she had embarked on the Stone Age with such steely determination. By the end of March she would doubtless crack the seventeen stone barrier, going in the wrong direction.