He hurried away, and used the last of his money to rent a cheap room. He did the Cutting and lay in bed for several days. He finally ventured out because he was hungry. He found a job in a café, washing dishes and cleaning.
One night, tired and discouraged, he dared to drink more of the Blood, hoping that it would clear his head. Indeed, he immediately remembered overhearing a conversation between two merchants in the cafe. He hadn’t thought anything of it at the time, but in his enhanced state, he realized it presented an opportunity.
He managed to be on the right street corner when it happened. He rushed to the merchant’s aid, helping him fight off a band of thieves. In gratitude, the man gave Heinrich a job in his countinghouse.
When Heinrich drank the Blood of the Succubus, his thoughts became clear and concise. He found he could analyze financial markets and make snap decisions that were almost always right. So between the drinking of the Blood and the Cutting, he wrote quick notes to himself: invest in such and such a stock, sell such and such a company. It was surprisingly simple. In between, he followed the market trends and business news sections religiously. Heinrich turned his small salary into enough of a fortune to strike off on his own.
The more Blood he drank, the harder it became to do the Cutting.
Where were the Succubae?
He kept a low profile, declining to live like the rich man he was. He discovered he had a talent for language; he already knew some German and, with the help of the Blood, he quickly became fluent. At night, while working in the refugee centers in the French zone as a translator, he studied French.
It was then that he learned of the concentration camps. Overnight, his opinion of his German heritage changed. He changed his last name to Bartok. He was a Czech now, to anyone who asked.
Above all, he listened for rumors of the Succubae. This postwar confusion was the kind of chaos they liked and that they would take advantage of.
Did he want to find them? Or did he want to hide from them?
Heinrich wasn’t sure. He knew he wasn’t ready to confront them yet. Before he’d left home, he had demolished the house, making sure the entrance to the caves was buried. He’d marked which piles of rubble to look under if he ever needed to come back. He had kept ownership of the land. He’d left most of the journals and almost all of the Blood behind. On his journey west, he took only the four bottles he’d dragged through the caves with him. His father’s journal was still readable, though the paper had expanded, making the book twice as thick.
Where were the Succubae?
It was the horrendous brutality of the concentration camps that most reminded him of them, and he was certain they were involved somehow.
But if so, they had made their escape.
The Daughters of Lilith would want to be as far away from the scene of their atrocities as possible, he thought. They were probably across the ocean by now, hiding in South America, or in the big cities of the U.S.A. He began to relax just a little, to talk to his coworkers, to make friends. He was able to sleep at night and not look over his shoulder every second.
The Blood drew them, it was true, but only if he used it.
And so, as time went on and there was no word of them, Heinrich decided to take a chance.
As an experiment, he drank an entire bottle of the Blood, begging forgiveness from his ancestors for using so much of the precious fluid. But he needed to know what it could do. He chose a small village in rural France for the experiment and rented a loft there.
He didn’t sleep for a day. He scribbled long, complicated instructions to himself in notebooks (which later made no sense). He went out into the countryside and toppled a tree a full eight inches thick. He lifted a boulder bigger than he was; he jumped to the top of a small cliff; he regressed several years so that he looked like a very healthy, solid fifteen-year-old boy.
His genitals came back, bigger and better than ever. His cock doubled in size. He masturbated a dozen times a day and visited the prostitutes on the corner. Not that he needed to pay for it—he exuded so much sexual magnetism, he merely needed to crook his finger at the most frigid housewife on the street and she would follow him gladly.
After a week, he reluctantly did the Cutting.
Just in time, as it turned out.
He sucked a fingertip’s worth of Blood and fell into bed. He awoke from an erotic dream. It was a memory of his first time, a prostitute in Prague who had followed him afterward even after the Cutting, refusing to believe that a man so virile wasn’t interested in her anymore. The dream didn’t dissipate upon awakening. Despite the Cutting, he felt desire.
He jumped up from the bed and opened the curtains a crack.
The Succubus was in the street. It was the blonde one, the one he called the Goddess. She approached a man as if to offer him sex, but after looking into his eyes, she went on to the next man. The first man cried out in frustration, looking ready to strike her. She put out her hand, and he dropped to his knees.
It was the Blood. She sensed Heinrich’s nearness, just as he sensed hers.
All these years he’d searched for her, and here she was; yet he was suddenly aware how unprepared he was.
She was searching for him, confused that the sexual energy that had led her to this town, to this very street had suddenly disappeared.
Heinrich closed the curtains and made sure the door was locked, as if that would do any good. He spent the night awake, trying not to let his thoughts stray. In the morning, she was gone.
It was a close call.
They hunted him, just as he hunted them, both looking for a moment of weakness. Somehow they knew he existed, as if he were the shadow to their brightness. He felt their hate even more strongly than their desire. If they ever caught him, he suspected even his self-mutilation wouldn’t be enough to save him. They’d suck the life right out of him.
He never used more than a few drops of the Blood at a time after that.
***
Heinrich wandered Europe, and with a feeling of inevitability, ended up back in France. He could never quite get the accent right, but he became fluent, and found a job teaching the German and Czech languages in a small school in a rural area outside Paris.
One of the other teachers was a young woman named Adele, who taught English. He didn’t really pay much attention to her at first. She was a few years older and plump, and he just assumed she was married.
“Guten morgen,” she said to him one morning in the teacher’s lounge as they guzzled their last cups of coffee before confronting their students.
“Sprechen sie Deusch?” he asked, surprised.
“Nein,” she answered, laughing. She switched to French. “But I would like to learn German.”
“And I would like to learn English,” he answered.
“That’s swell,” she said, and he recognized it as an expression he’d heard American soldiers use.
They made a date to meet at a café and practice with each other. Adele was funny and light-hearted, but Heinrich was wary. It wasn’t until they were together all evening that he realized she was just as she appeared on the surface, sweet natured and kind.
“How did you learn to speak English so well?” he asked.
For the first time since he’d met her, Adele frowned. She looked away, out into the street, and didn’t answer for a long time. He waited.
Finally, she turned back to him with a smile. “You listen so well. You’re quiet when you need to be.”
I have spent my whole life alone, he wanted to say, but decided not to burden her with it. So far they hadn’t talked about their pasts, as if in unspoken agreement that it was a subject to be avoided.
It turned out Adele lived above the café they were sitting in, which was why the owners had let them stay past closing. Finally, Heinrich got up to leave. It seemed to him when they parted that she expected a kiss. He pretended not to notice and walked away. When he reached the corner, he looked back. She was standing in the window, watc
hing him.
That night, as he went to bed, he thought of her. He was still Cut, so there should have been no desire, and yet his imagination filled in what he couldn’t feel physically.
The next morning, he learned that his instincts were right. Adele wasn’t married, but she was engaged to Bertrand, another teacher, a blustery man with thick black hair covering his body. He was an ox of a man. Midway through the morning, he caught Heinrich in the hallway, lifting him physically from the floor and slamming him against the wall.
“Stay away from her, Bartok,” he growled. He dropped Heinrich, who lost his footing and sprawled face first onto the floor. He looked up to see Adele’s horrified face. Bertrand took her arm and led her away, and she went with him.
The next day, Heinrich stayed in his classroom. But as he left for the night, he passed two other staff members, who were laughing. They stopped when he looked at them.
If this had been a playground dispute between two boys, he would have stepped in as a teacher to resolve the conflict. But one of the two scoffers had been the school principal. Heinrich realized he was alone. If nothing changed, he’d be isolated. Worse, he’d never talk to Adele again.
He drank a half bottle of Blood the next morning. He jumped at every sound, his head jerking around as if he was on the hunt. He managed to make it through his morning classes, though the students looked at him strangely.
When the bell rang for lunch, Heinrich made his way to the small table in the corner of the yard where Adele always ate lunch.
She frowned when he approached, half rising before sitting back down. The other two women teachers there excused themselves.
“You mustn’t talk to me,” she said. “Bertrand is jealous.”
“Does he have reason to be?”
She searched his face, as if she would find the answer there. Then she nodded.
“Yes,” she said softly. “I have wanted to get away from Bertrand for some time, but until you came along, I felt it safer just to stay.”
He sat down next to her. “Tell me.”
“I lost someone in the war, an Englishman. That’s how I learned the language. Bertrand was…there after I got the news. He was kind to me, at first.”
Heinrich sensed Bertrand coming before he even entered the courtyard, as if he could feel the air move and the ground shake. He stood up, his arms at his sides.
Bertrand kept coming, raising his right arm for a giant swing at Heinrich’s head. It seemed as if the fist came at Heinrich in slow motion, and he waited until the last moment before moving his head just enough for it to miss. Bertrand’s momentum carried his fist all the way into the table, and he howled.
Adele jumped up from the table, her hand to her mouth. “Don’t hurt him, Bertrand!” she screamed.
The big man was totally exposed. Heinrich could have slammed his body with punches, but again he waited, arms at his sides, for Bertrand to gather himself. The Blood sang in Heinrich’s veins, and it was as if it was whispering, “Kill him…kill him.”
If Adele hadn’t been watching, it might have turned out differently. But Heinrich simply moved out of the way of Bertrand’s second lunge, only this time he pushed his off-balance attacker slightly in his most exposed spot. Bertrand fell, his head slamming against the table, and he slumped to the ground, unconscious.
“Did you even touch him?” Adele asked. “I don’t know what just happened!”
“He’s a big man,” Heinrich murmured. “Clumsy, I guess.”
Adele wasn’t rushing to Bertrand’s side. Instead, she stepped around the table, moving toward Heinrich. He took her in his arms.
They left the school together that night after somehow managing to teach the rest of their classes. They went to her house, which she shared with two other teachers who knew enough to stay away. They made love, and the same Blood that had given Heinrich such speed and strength now lent him tenderness that answered her every need, until she was crying out in pleasure.
They were married within days. The principal who had done nothing to help Heinrich was the best man.
Bertrand got a transfer to a different school, out of town.
The Blood was starting to wear off. Heinrich made love a little more awkwardly on his wedding night, and Adele seemed almost relieved.
“So you are human,” she murmured happily.
In the morning, Heinrich went back to his room. He picked up one of the knives. I will have an “accident,” he thought. There was the familiar sensation of the sharp blade against his genitals. Then he set it down.
I will be quiet and I will stay a man. But I will not drink the Blood.
Chapter 18
On Jeremy’s second trip to the bathroom, he noticed something different. He’d barely looked in the mirror Saturday morning, just done the necessary before rolling into bed at dawn. So it was late Saturday afternoon by the time he noticed anything.
Since infancy, he’d had a large white scar over his right eye (well, maybe not that large, but he always noticed it), which had come from a football hitting him square in the face.
It was gone.
He rubbed the skin, trying to figure out where the scar had gone, how it might be obscured. He’d gotten a bit of a tan out in the woods, but not enough to hide it. Besides, scars don’t tan, and dirt and grime don’t stick to them as much.
He ran his tongue over the broken tooth that had bugged him for months and that he always checked whenever there was a mirror nearby to see if the crack was any bigger. He really wasn’t looking forward to getting a crown.
The crack was gone. Jeremy pulled his lip up with his fingers, trying to get a better look, but his tongue was the most sensitive indicator, and it was saying there wasn’t a crack, not even a little one.
He stared into the mirror for a moment. Damned if he didn’t look a little younger somehow, maybe a little like he’d looked last year at this time, before he’d gotten his growth spurt. But he was, if anything, even taller. He took a pencil out of the drawer and went over to the doorway where he marked his increasing height. Sure enough, he was an inch taller. He flexed his arm, and it seemed kind of muscly, though he’d never thought of himself that way before.
Finally, he pulled down his pants, pointed his rear end at the mirror, and looked at his backside. He’d sat on a pencil in the fourth grade, and the tip had broken off and remained a little lump lodged in there ever since.
It was gone. In fact, every imperfection was gone.
“I’m perfect,” he said into the mirror. His voice sounder deeper. He laughed. The muscles, the height, the deeper voice—that could all be explained, but the mended tooth and vanished scars? How the hell did that happen? It was impossible…
…just like Cathy’s face in the tent leering down at him was impossible. He shuddered into the mirror at these thoughts and made a face. He had extraordinary energy all day, despite staying in his room, pacing, talking to himself, writing down his thoughts, reading at a frantic pace.
And it had all started when the blood from Cathy’s bloody broken nose had dripped into his mouth.
There was loud knocking at his door. He pulled on some cutoff jeans and flung it open, expecting his sister, Marty, whose knock he recognized.
Marty was standing there, but so was Lucinda.
“Wow, brother of mine,” Marty said. “When did you start showing off? In fact, since when could you show off?”
“Sorry,” he muttered, grabbing a shirt that hung from chair.
“Don’t get dressed on my account,” Lucinda said, grinning. “If the girls at Bend High knew you looked like that, they wouldn’t…” She stopped, suddenly realizing that she’d backed herself in a corner.
“Wouldn’t what?” Marty said, unwilling to bail her out. “Wouldn’t think he was such a nerd? Don’t let the body fool you; he’s still a nerd.”
“No argument from me,” Jeremy said. Marty smirked and Lucinda giggled while Jeremy pulled the shirt over his head.
�
�Someday you’re going to have to tell me what’s going on, Jermy,” Marty said.
“It’s hard to explain,” he started to say.
“Whatever,” Marty interrupted cheerfully. “I’ve got homework to do. You know me, a real squid.” She gave him a wink—or maybe it was Lucinda she was aiming for, or maybe both—before leaving the room and slamming the door.
Lucinda gave Jeremy a little smile, then hesitated, staring around the room. Jeremy grimaced as he realized there was nowhere for her to sit. He scooped the dirty clothes off his desk chair, dropping them in the empty hamper. He looked around, suddenly aware his room was a disaster.
She sat down. Jeremy tried to think of something to say.
“How did the camping trip go?” she asked quietly.
He flushed as he kicked some more dirty laundry toward the hamper. “We came home early. It didn’t go so well.”
“No?” Lucinda couldn’t hide her relief. “I…I guess that’s too bad.”
“Not really,” Jeremy said. “She wasn’t who I thought she was.”
“Really?”
“Oh, she’s nothing like she looks, believe me,” he said.
“Good, because I have something to show you.”
Lucinda pulled a piece of neon yellow paper out of her pocket. She unfolded it and handed it to Jeremy. He instantly recognized the girl in the black and white sketch. It was Cathy—without the hair and the heavy makeup, but it was definitely her.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “Where did you get this?”
“Someone was handing them out at school.”
“What does it meant?”
“It means you should call the number on the poster,” Lucinda said. “Better yet, let’s go to the hotel, tell them in person.”
So someone else thought something was wrong about Cathy. Jeremy stared out the window, wondering. Was he really ready to turn on Cathy so completely?
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