A Light to Starve By

by Axel Taiari

  Six minutes later he is still unconscious, naked and gagged with duct tape, bound tight with power cables taken from various appliances. I am on the couch, leaking precious blood I can’t afford to lose. Look at the wound: dark red overflowing, thin ribbons of putrid smoke unwrapping themselves, the enchanted silver bullet dissolving then corrupting the nearby flesh a necrotized black. Leave the projectile lodged there for too long, and the dying tissue will propagate to the rest of my body. I unsheathe my claws, bite my tongue and dig into the wound. Head submerged in a thickening fog but I persist, digging around, deeper, deeper until I feel the silver’s combustive lips nibble at my fingertips, charring the calluses. I let out a growl and fish the bullet out in one swift move, toss it across the room and then tear a cushion apart, wrap the ruined cloth around the wound. I rest on the couch until I manage to shiver off the chaos. I do my best to get up to take care of the hunter, but the effort shatters my balance, and before I can ease back down a total eclipse drags me away from the world and engulfs my brain in darkness.

  I met Lucille on the sixth of May, nineteen sixty-eight. The students were striking and rioting all over Paris, burning trash cans, crusading for their rights. More than six hundred students and three hundred policemen were hurt during the ensuing fights while I fell in love in the deepest bowels of a noisome bar called l’Alchémiste. We were both enrolled in university, but had ditched classes for the past semester in search of something more. I was a painter, self-proclaimed struggling artist. She studied languages, Spanish and Latin, quit school when she became fluent in both and decided to spend her days reading instead. Mutual friends introduced us. Eight hours and an untold number of pints later, she was dry-humping me outside the bar while I sat against a building door. She kissed me as dawn rose over the shattered city. She followed me home. Six years later, I left a letter on our shared bed that ended with, I am unable to love you anymore, and abandoned our house forever. Thirty-four years later, I still remember how it felt to hold her while petals of time withered around our bed.

  Cognizance washes over me in arrhythmic rip tides. An ocean of petrol first, then distant waves of my own breathing carrying me closer to reality’s shores, but my consciousness begs for more sleep, for it all to stop and I pass out again, until my blackout shipwrecks itself upon the jagged reefs of suffering chanting in my shoulder. My eyes trudge open and I puzzle the world back together, connect the dots, the house, the fight, the hunger and the danger jump-start my fight-or-flight instinct, glands dispatching a blistering blast of adrenaline that torpedoes through my veins and propels me from the couch.

  A bucket of freezing cold water slaps the hunter. Blood pours down his destroyed face and leaks from unseen wounds seep beneath his torn black t-shirt. He can scarcely keep his eyes open. The broken arms and injuries he suffered would send a common man into shock. I crouch in front of him, rip off the duct tape.

  Where is she?

  He drools. I grab him by the cheeks then use one of my claws to puncture his leg, the sudden pain unhinging his eyelids, fleshy curtains unraveling rolled-over eyeballs.

  Where is she, I repeat. Every muscle in my system rattle from the adrenaline, each spasm and twitch making me more aware, more alive. Angrier.

  The hunter stays mute, so my claw goes deeper into his leg until it tickles bone. He clenches his teeth and sweat pearls emerge on his skin, his conscience crawling back into focus.

  The woman who lives here. Where is she?

  Gone, the hunter says with a shaky voice.

  Gone where? What are you doing here?

  The son of a bitch actually forces himself to smile and this is my cue to break his little finger. A moan escapes from his throat.

  You have nine more of those. You also have toes, a penis, and various orifices I can play with for days on end. Where is she?

  I was left behind to look for more evidence. Piss-easy job, right. Low priority. Night shift, he laughs. Shit shift. The...others took her earlier tonight.

  Her? Why?

  Why do you care, vamp? She your grandma or something?

  His thumb snaps in half. More screaming.

  Eight left. It’s impressive training you got, holy man. But crack another joke, and I’ll crack another finger. Why did your people take her?

  The hunter should be in no condition to handle more damage. He looks deader than I do. He groans and whispers, associating...with vampires.

  Bullshit, she’s been living alone for years. She doesn’t even have human friends, much less vampires.

  The hunter looks around, his head lolling but his senses still tethered to his surroundings, scampering to find a possible way out. I grab his cheeks again and force him to stare at me. Talk, I say.

  She...she kept strange hours...new neighbors reported her, she never slept at night and we paid a visit. Found diary in her room. Fang-banger in her youth, was in love with one of you animals. You believe that? He grins, revealing crimson-enameled gums and pulverized teeth.

  Where did you take her?

  He spits in my face, a mixture of saliva and blood, the red nectar so fresh my belly immediately rumbles and I can feel my bowels contracting.

  Hungry, vamp? He laughs, blood snail-trailing down his chin. Have a taste, I’m dying one way or the other, anyway.

  Another finger gone, then another one, then another one, a rapid-fire chain of crunches as easy as breaking twigs. His entire left arm and hand now useless. He is weeping and mumbling, half delirious from the agony, stumbling through a prayer that goes, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.

  I was born Catholic, so spare me, I tell him. Time is of the essence. Let’s move on to other parts of your body. Where do we start?

  I tried, for a few weeks. I snuck out at night, fed, then came back to our bed. I went out in the sun, coating my skin with hydrating lotions and creams. A well-fed vampire can fake everything. Dinner involved stuffing food I couldn’t taste down my throat. Life carried on for her as if nothing happened, while each tick of the clock made me more aware of the decay inside me.

  And how do you tell the woman you want to grow old with that you never will? That you have changed, someone has cursed you with a gift you never wanted. You are nothing but an animal, damned to spend the rest of his existence sucking the life out of others. How do you stay young for eternity while she ages by your side? What of children? Vampire-human offspring die inside the womb, or come into the world as ghoulish mutants, freaks doomed to turn summer sky blue within hours of childbirth. How do you hide everything about what you are, and pretend you are who you were? How do you tell her that when you are making love, you are plagued by horrible fantasies where you bite into one of her arteries and suck her dry?

  You don’t.

  You pack your bags, chew off those plastic wings and toss your mock halo in the mud. You leave with a heart so full of guilt it very well may rot, and give her a chance to be happy with anyone, anything but you.

  Half past eleven under a rusted full moon and I’m throwing up bile in the gutter. Being so close to so much blood has taken its toll on me, every inch of my flesh commandeering me to go back in and slurp up the leftover gore. When I’m done, I wipe the sick away with a sleeve and light up a cigarette. Then I call David. He has no phone in his house - part of the old habits, but always hears the public pay phone right below his window. A series of boring tones until he finally picks up, not pronouncing a word, just listening.

  David, it’s me. I need your help.

  Told you I got no blood, brother.

  They have her. They have Lucille. Meet me at Tolbiac. Get any help you can. If what you told me about the hunters is true, then you and whoever you bring can feed as much as you want.

  David grunts and hangs up.

  I left the hunter’s body in the bathtub, mutilated and dislocated. Only took a couple of hours to break him down. Burrow deep under a man’s flesh and secrets will come flowing out,
too many of them to remember, spectral memories haunting the limbs and begging to be exorcized. He confessed his sins, sexual acts, fantasies about succubae, throwing stones at helpless toads by a pond when he was younger, and I let the words hum past me and only retained an address of where they hold her. Temporary confinement while they look further into her past and decide her fate. Meaning a simple apartment, not a Church outpost. Low security, a couple of hunters at least, and possibly a chipped mentalist, one of many Judases who traded their freedom for the ability to live in cities again, in exchange for a control chip implanted smack dab in the middle of their oversensitive cortex.

  So yes, I left his body in the bathtub - but still alive. After he told me what I needed to hear, I made sure to smash his cell phone to guarantee myself a few hours of peace. Either he will slowly bleed out in the tub, or his brothers will find him and finish the job before they track me down. When he understood what I was doing, he began thrashing around in his own juices, blabbering nonsense, sobbing and moaning like an infant between bouts of finish it, finish it, oh god don’t leave me here they’ll kill me they’ll kill me they, but I slammed the door and left the house, muting his cries for help and sealing his fate. Whatever the Church has in store for him is worse than I could ever offer.

  During the long two hours spent investigating his nerve endings, every second meant locking horns with my demons. My psyche and digestive system banded together, hijacking my common sense and mouth, whispering, you know he’s right, and David told you hunters aren’t vaccinated. Drink him. It’s been so long.

  The only thing pulling me back from the abyss was the thought of Lucille. If I tasted the hunter’s blood and David’s potential fact turned out to be anything but, I would be left hemorrhaging on the floor while she was left alone, kilometers away. I owe her too much to give in to my hunger. So I saw my gruesome work to completion, and tied a knot in my guts until I could finally leave.

  The years waltzed by after I left Lucille. A garbled strand of seasons where I learned about myself, my kind. Clans ruled the nights. Werewolves and warlocks were our only terror. We raided forests and sewers to win a war that never ended. Met David. Made friends. Lost friends, too many to count. Some clans offered to take me in, but I had no desire for this kind of family. Drank blood every day, sometimes more than once. Consumed myself with guilt, then learned to conceal it underneath my ribcage.

  And each night found me dropping by our house to watch over her. The light she left on became my anchor. Through the windows I saw her cry into the telephone, stare at the television set with vacant eyes, break vases and silverware in fits of rage. She tried to forge a new life, eventually. Met a man. He seemed nice. They spent their evenings having fiery sex while I bawled and clenched my fists so hard my palms squirted blood. Still the lights came on every night while he snored. She appeared to be happy for a time, until he backhanded her one whiskey-fueled night. She came out in the garden, sat among the azaleas in the starlight, displaying herself. Her ravishing face glowed purple with bruises. Dawn found the man’s wasted corpse breezing down the Seine, veins hollowed out and an infinity of knife-wounds emblazoned on his flesh. After that, she seemed to give up on the idea of finding love again. Friends stopped coming around, Lucille’s heartbreak too heavy to witness. And still the light beckoned me every night while her youth deserted her.

  Purchase another pack of cigs, chain-smoke outside of Tolbiac station, one step away from Paris’ very own Chinatown. On Avenue d’Italie, a perpetual flurry of cars flash by below an oily night sky made of stark black clouds. A deluge of neon lights from endless fast-food chains waging civil war flood my eyes. The long avenue is a telltale sign of the twenty-first century: fast food, temp agency, fast food, hip clothing store, bank, temp agency, fast food, pharmacy, fast food, unemployment agency. Repeat ad nauseam until the avenue takes you to the périphérique and out of the city.

  I discreetly check my shoulder wound by patting it through my jacket. Still hurts, but not anywhere close to what it was earlier. David shows up twenty minutes later sporting a heavy black duffel coat that makes him look as nimble as a tank. Two young ones follow in his footsteps, wearing hooded sweatshirts and skinny black jeans saran-wrapping their legs. The both of them can’t be older than twenty, but they reek of worm food.

  David nods at me and says, this here’s Abel and Cain.

  You’ve gotta be shitting me, I say.

  Hey man, says the one on the left. I’m Abel. Smaller than the other, rail-thin, greasy black hair in a ponytail, crooked teeth and a pretty boyish face. You got a few cigarettes for us?

  Where you gonna store them, I reply. Those jeans don’t even let you walk properly.

  Hey dude, says the other, built like a golem, buzz-cut, obviously the alpha male. We’re here to help, okay.

  Who the fuck are these clowns, David? I tell you to bring help and you get me children with nicknames. It’s adorable, but these kids are gonna die tonight.

  Cain and Abel look at each other, grinning.

  David moves closer to me and says, you think any clan would try to take on any hunter’s nest? Please. Plus half of them probably have deals with the government. It’s either them or no one.

  I drag David a bit further away, while Cain and Abel step inside a bar to buy smokes, giggling to themselves. I’m not taking them with me.

  David laughs, rolling his one good eye. They’re hungry and young, armed and dumb, and they think they’re invincible. If you don’t take them, they’ll follow you all the way anyway.

  What about you Dave, why are you coming?

  Just testing my theory. No one will believe the Pure’s rumors, bunch of crazy cannibalistic bastards they are. But assuming these kids taste hunters tonight and survive, then a new market opens up for me. Hunter’s blood would be a big thing, especially if it has any special property.

  I reply, this wouldn’t have anything to do with the mentalist they may have with them.

  David lights up a Camel, inhales, says nothing, so we bathe in the silence and let the smoke uncoil around us.

  What are you going to do about Lucille, he asks.

  I don’t know.

  She’s untreated, isn’t she? No vaccine?

  Either you or those boys try to touch her, and you will feel my wrath.

  David says, I know what she means to you, don’t worry. Boys might be a problem, though I doubt it - I guaranteed them the hunters were drinkable.

  I take one last drag of the cigarette then toss it at my feet before it hits me. Shit, I tell David, these kids are your sacrificial lambs. Food tasters and meat shields?

  He looks up at the herds of clouds trotting past the obsidian sky and says, oh, the things we do for survival.

  How I was turned into a vampire is meaningless. It was a random act of violence on a drunken weekend, no different from the incessant rapes and murders that occupy the evening news. I stumbled out of the bar after a night out with my friends, my throat stupefied to numbness from too many tequila shots. I was headed home to Lucille, until someone grabbed me in a lightless alley. Never really saw his face. I could smell death on him, and he giggled as he stole my life away. Then the fucker made me drink his own blood, gashed his wrist open and held it over my mouth. He let it drip down my throat, like feeding a newborn. He cradled me while singing a lullaby. He planted a goodbye kiss on my lips, whispered merci and vanished. I awoke in the gutter at sunrise, morning dew clinging to my skin. I went home feeling ashamed of my drunken antics, not really remembering much. I was annoyed at what I believed to be a severe hangover, and Lucille laughed it off. Nightmares came to me a few days after that, bearing shards of memories from that lost night. My usual breakfast cereals and milk left me unimpressed. Later on I walked by a butcher’s shop. I stopped and found myself drooling and panting at plump slabs of bloody meat. My skin would not stop tingling. I knew something was wrong, then.

  The address divulged by the hunter lays only ten minutes away, down a rot
ten street devoid of parked cars. The four of us stand in front of the five-stories building, facing a coded door.

  Which floor, asks Cain.

  Fifth.

  Got the code?

  I nod.

  David unbuttons his coat and hands me a gun, a six shot older than the both of us, and says, at the end of the day, they’re only humans. Toss it aside when it’s empty.

  Abel and Cain hug each other for a brief instant, then remove Uzis from their respective zip-up hoodies. We’re ready, they say in unison.

  I enter the code, and we’re in.

  Up the stairs, not speaking, walking fast on feline soles and soon enough we face the door. Press my ear against the wood, faraway chatter echoing through.

  I nod to David. The brothers stand back. David removes a shotgun from his coat and coolly blasts away the lock, the first shot of the night head splitting loud, and we both kick the door in, light from inside inundating the hallway. Abel and Cain rush swift past us like wraiths, and we follow. From down the hall on the left, a voice warns, we got vamps, send back up, hu- but the sound of his voice gets cut off by a streak of gunshots barking from everywhere in the flat. I run past the kitchen while David stomps into the living room, a vague form waiting for him there, but he can handle himself. I open doors, peer inside, empty, move on to the next one. From another room, Abel screams fuck you while Cain laughs at the percussion of gunfire. Last door in the hallway is locked but I destroy the goddamn thing with a furious slam and I’m into the room, and there she is, tied up on a chair, looking at me in her nightgown but something, someone blindsides me and I bounce against the wall on my hurt shoulder, crying out as I do so. Cold metal pokes my temple but I duck, weave to the side and drill a solid punch into the hunter’s kidney, robbing the wind from him. I grab his wrist while his shot goes off then with my other hand place my own weapon against his thorax, and pull the trigger three times. He stumbles back all blood and blank confusion then crumples to the floor. I rush over to Lucille, her eyes still fixated on me. I kneel next to her while the dissonance of violence swells up in the other rooms.