Blood Sisters

by Paula Guran

  “Go,” he repeated. No reassuring smile, no farewell embrace. “We’re fine. We’ve been doing just fine.”

  “I can’t,” I begin to say, but my daughter kicked me into action. You can, she assured me with a jab to the ribs. You will.

  “You sure he’s asleep?”

  Harley shrugged.

  Without another word I slipped from the room, the key warm and slippery with sweat. I can’t thank you, I wanted to finish, but didn’t. Such thanks would be too much for what Harl hadn’t done. Too little for what he had.

  That evening, I watched the sun set.

  Its vibrant colors reduced my eyes to slits. The ochres and golds mirrored the late summer fields; the highway’s black line the only sign of what was ground, what sky. I ran towards the road, towards the light. Tried to shake away the darkness. Tried to stop looking over my shoulder, to stop imagining Mister Pérouse appearing, disappearing, appearing. Tried to erase images of Harley luring Jacques away from the front door, and Arianne to his bed. His manipulation, their hunger: a whiff of his lukewarm skin all the bait he needed to secure my escape.

  Headlights in the distance spurred me on. I moved as fast as I could, forced to stop and catch my breath too frequently. Even I knew the highway belonged to truckers at night: if I missed this one, another would be along sooner or later. I couldn’t afford it to be later.

  Dry air scraped in and out of my lungs as I ran. Every tuft of chickweed, every patch of wild wheat seemed to hide my master. I didn’t stop at the freeway’s edge—lifting a thumb was too subtle for my needs. I staggered onto the road, waited on the painted division between lanes. Solid white double lines: no passing. A good omen, I hoped.

  The hiss of hydraulic brakes accompanied by blinding headlights. I scurried to the driver’s side, knelt like a supplicant. Wasn’t refused.

  “Where you headed, darlin’?” The trucker nodded as I mentioned the crossroads between our acreage and Kaintuck town. “I know it,” he said, lending me a hand getting into the cab, squeezing my fingers as though making sure I was solid. “Buckle up.”

  He turned the radio on, whistled through tobacco-stained teeth along with four hours of country and western tunes. Once, he offered me water and half an egg salad sandwich, both of which I gratefully accepted. Otherwise, the bulge of my belly, the dried blood on my dress, or the anxious scowl on my face kept his eyes on the road, hands firmly on the wheel. When we reached my stop, I had no payment to give him but a smile. He took it kindly then returned it twofold.

  “Take care now,” he said. “And good luck.”

  “Thanks.” The croak of my voice was lost in the drone of bullfrogs and crickets; the chorus of my childhood. The adrenaline that had sustained me all night left my body in a rush, and exhaustion flooded in. As the truck’s taillights winked out over the horizon, I stumbled into a ditch by the roadside, immersed in familiar, foreign sounds. Five kilometers separated me from my family’s doorstep, but it might as well have been a million. Every part of me cried out for rest.

  I slumped to the ground. With both feet plunged in murky water pooling in the dip of the trench, my face and arms scratched to bits by thistles and long grass, and my back twisted on hard soil, I slept.

  I woke hot and thirsty. The sun was a half a hand’s width above the hills; the dried grass waving above me scant protection from its harsh rays. I was too exposed: the top of my head felt like it was on fire. Already the water at my feet had dwindled to muck—I scooped up as much as I could, coated my face and hair in it. More mud than liquid, it wasn’t fit for drinking. So with a sandpaper tongue and black slop dripping down my back, I started the final leg of my journey home, wishing I had one of Ma’s bonnets.

  My thoughts wandered as I walked. Would raccoons have infested the house? What if it had burned down? Would there be anything left for me to return to? Would Mister Pérouse have beaten me there? Most of all, would my blood-rags, hidden in jars all these years, still be safe? The urge to destroy them quickened my pace.

  In and out, I thought. Break all blood-ties. Don’t let master sniff them out…

  I knew I couldn’t stay. But it was important I see the place, see that something had remained. That all wasn’t lost.

  The baby was restless. My stomach didn’t stop churning until I got to the familiar wooden fence. Until I followed it to the open gate, rusted but still intact. Until I saw the birches and cedars unscathed by axe or fire. Until I reached the yard and the house. Both worse for years of neglect, but both whole. Both there.

  I released a pent-up breath.

  Home.

  The front lock held, which surprised me. I rattled at the doorknob, but the noise only inspired a scurrying inside. A stir of scrabbling feet.

  Raccoons, I thought, relieved. Or squirrels. I could handle vermin and I could handle a barred door. These were the least of all evils I’d envisaged. At the back of the house, my bedroom window was slightly ajar. I had no praise for useless gods, just gratitude to the carpenter who’d constructed frames prone to contracting in the heat. After jimmying it with a stick, the glass slid easily in its tracks. The casement was low—any higher and I don’t think I could’ve managed it. My entrance wasn’t graceful, but it did the job.

  Inside, the air was close and rich with decay. Fluorescent orange splotches of possum piss dotted the sheets and area rugs; brown pellets covered every flat surface and led like a breadcrumb trail out of the room. Slumbering and still, the house wrapped me in its embrace. I walked down the hall carefully, quietly, lest I wake it. The living room was darker than whiskey dregs. My feet crunched across the floorboards, snapping and popping on unseen twigs. At the far side, I stubbed my toe on the corner of the woodstove—it never felt so good letting loose a blue streak of curses.

  Heavy woolen curtains, three layers deep, were draped in front of the windows. These were … new? I fumbled at the unexpected fabric, trying to recognize it, trying to situate it in my memory of this room. Light streamed in through the windows the night they came. I searched for the split between panels. Light streamed in through the windows the night Ma died. In the end, I felt my way to the edge: the material was fastened to the wall with staples or pins. Furious, I dug through the layers, through the metal. How dare they? I thought, tearing to unveil Ma’s picture window. How dare they.

  “The light! Close it, close it!”

  Her voice was a hot poker up my spine. I jumped and spun to see Ma cowering on the couch. She crab-walked into the shadows, looking at me between strands of lank hair. Her figure was wizened beyond recognition. Bones protruded from her chest and shoulders, visible through her threadbare gown. The curve of her stomach was the inverse of mine, despite the litter of rabbit and cat bones on the floor. She continued to plead that I cover the windows—I responded by standing and staring. Her mouth, double-fanged like a panther’s, stretched wide; it unleashed a wail of illness and starvation that sent me scaling a rickety chair. Hooking darkness and silence back into place.

  Despite my efforts thin shafts of light oozed in, sluggish with dust. Ma’s eyes were glassy as she moaned, “Stop haunting me.” Knees pulled to her chest, she rocked back and forth mumbling, “Oh Ada, oh my Ada. Jesus Christ, stop haunting me.”

  Ice water ran through my veins. “I’m here, Ma.” She continued her mantra, her rocking. “Ma, I’m here.” I hurried to her, arms outstretched. “I’m home. Look: I’m home. I’m home.”

  “Liar!” The force of her anger was enough to give me whiplash. “That’s what you always say—and it just ain’t true, Ada. It ain’t true…”

  My knees buckled and I dropped to the couch. “No, Ma.” I spoke softly to keep the tremble from my voice. She looked at me sideways, sniffed and tasted the air. “Liar.”

  “That’s the hunger talking, not you.” I inched closer, gently laid my hand on her shoulder. I wanted to pull her to me, to fill the gaps between her bones with my tears. But I recognized the look on her face: Mister Pérouse wore it each time
my bloods drew near. “Look at me.”

  She turned away.

  “Look at me.” I cradled her chin in my hand, not pressing too hard for fear of breaking her. Forced her to see me. To accept me as real. Thinking of the jars I’d kept stacked beneath the front porch, I repeated, “I’m here, Ma. I’m here, and I’ll feed you.”

  Her hallucinations must’ve never made such an offer. She blinked slowly, focusing her gaze.

  “Ada,” she croaked. When she frowned the tips of her teeth caught on her bottom lip, distorting her mouth in a maniac’s grimace. I wondered which of her fangs would produce the milk, the blood. Which ones I should drain first. She looked down, stared at my belly—her expression frozen between joy and horror. Saliva wet on her lips.

  “Oh, Ada.” She got up, searched for something on the coffee table, on the armchair, the dining hutch. “Oh, Ada. My baby.”

  “I kept my blood-rags safe, like you said.” I twisted in my seat, followed her bewildering progress from room to room. “You can have them—might not be fresh, but—they’re yours. You’ll feel better once you’ve eaten.”

  Dishes smashed in the kitchen, pots and pans clanging as Ma pushed them aside.

  “I remember exactly where I hid them,” I continued, clearing a path to the front door. “Just outside—”

  “No!” Ma raced over, clasping a hammer. “Don’t leave.” Her eyes were wild, her breathing frantic. “I swear I ain’t never gonna touch a drop from you—from neither of y’all. Them bloods ain’t mine, baby. They’s yers. All I ask is for you to stay. I swear to God.”

  And before I could stop her, she kept her promise. Twice the hammer connected with her mouth, an unholy collision of flesh and iron. “Don’t leave me alone.”

  Her words bubbled red as she spat shards of teeth on the floor.

  Banjo gathers Ma’s few belongings, I collect mine. There’s nothing more for us to say: no apologies, no forgiveness. One’s not his to give, the other’s not mine to request. For now, that’s enough.

  We wait until nightfall to bundle Ma into Banjo’s truck, swaddled in the first cloak she ever sewed: hooded black felt, fringed in elaborate lace. The iron tang of her injury follows us outside. I brush it away with the flies.

  “Keep safe,” Banjo says, handing me a shotgun and a pouch of ammunition. From its heft, it’s filled with enough lead to last until doomsday. Messy bullets, these. The thought of testing them on Mister Pérouse makes me smile. I keep one eye on the horizon, but neither my master nor my father show by the time we say our goodbyes. I check Ma’s seatbelt, kiss her forehead, and swear I’ll visit soon.

  Her words are muffled but I can hear the smile behind them. “That’s what you always say, Ada.”

  No point in waiting until morning; I’ve grown accustomed to night. Before I leave, I take one last tour of the house. I don’t take anything more than I can carry: a sleeping bag and tarp, a good coat, one of Banjo’s old packs. A sackful of Ma’s finer creations to sell or to cherish—at this stage, I’m not sure which.

  Her boots, good as new. Comfortable on my swollen feet.

  I tip the candles we lit in the sitting room, wait to make sure they catch. The carpets, curtains, couches wick the eager fire, spread it rumor-fast. Soon the whole house is ablaze. Walking out, I leave the door open.

  My lungs stretch full with fresh air.

  Flames gnaw at the veranda, chew away the front porch. As I hike down the driveway, I can hear jars shattering, popping. I smile. None will find them now. The heat of my past is warm on my back; before me is only darkness. Gusts of fiery wind urge me forward and I comply. It’s time to move. I won’t go far; just far enough to be both here and away. To stay alive and reacquaint myself with this land; its lore and its language. Maybe I’ll study Ma’s pieces, teach myself to sew. And when my daughter is born and can wield the right tools, maybe I’ll teach her too. With each stitch she’ll discover our history: Ma’s and mine. Hers. A child made for darkness, she’ll be my shadow as I walk across fields drenched in sun. Wherever we end up, when she’s draped in suits of our making, my girl will know where she belongs.

  And when it’s time, be it a dozen years from now or sixty, she’ll know where to bury her blood.

  FATHER PEÑA’S LAST DANCE

  Hannah Strom-Martin

  Hannah Strom-Martin’s fiction has appeared in Realms of Fantasy, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, OnSpec, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, and the anthology Amazons: Sexy Tales of Strong Women. With Erin Underwood she is the co-editor of Futuredaze: An Anthology of YA Science Fiction. She currently resides in Northern California and attempts to blog at www.nocommonplace.wordpress.com.

  The Argentine tango is a sensuous, passionate dance; to combine it with vampires is understandable. There is ardor in “Father Peña’s Last Dance,” but that does not always guarantee romance …

  The woman finally approached me across from La Recoleta Cemetery, following me to my table at Munich—the least tourist-infested café on Restaurant Row. I fancied her a porteno. Her hair, red as lipstick, was wound in perfect, bushy coils about her face. Her clothes had come from the best shops. Her sunglasses made an insect of her, but also a movie star: Audrey Hepburn without the softness. As she approached it seemed the mad sounds of Sunday tourism faded. Suddenly I was Mr. Bogart, watching my latest deadly siren approach through the wisps of cigarette smoke, the endless strains of tango music. The tango never stops in Buenos Aires. It goes on and on and we all dance to it in our time, helplessly drawn when fate initiates the cabezazo.

  For as long as I knew her, she wore red. Not always a bright, traffic-light hue, though on that first day it was indeed the blood-colored flash of her linen dress which alerted me to her presence among the tombs. She wore pale pink once, like the stain left on butcher’s wrap. Later she wore a sleek maroon sweater, fine and soft, covering her from throat to wrist against the encroaching gulf winds. Secretly, I called her Pandora, for hers was a red of unlocking. Of drive and of searching. You don’t understand me yet, but you will.

  “Maté,” she told the waitress, and sat across from me as if we were old friends. I knew she was a tourist, then. And American. But she had none of a tourist’s awkwardness. She looked at me directly, her gaze discernable even through her enormous glasses. I folded my hands and smiled at her, but for a moment my old heart fluttered beneath its fat. It was noon. She could not have been one of them, yet she had their stillness. I imagined her ears beneath the gorgeous fall of hair perking like a listening dog’s.

  “Father Peña,” she said.

  Cautiously, I nodded.

  “I’m sorry for haunting you,” she said. “However, you of all people must know it takes a long time to trust.”

  “What can I do for you, señora?”

  She smiled: red and nearly mocking.

  “Have you seen the lights in the cemetery, Father?” she asked.

  I grew dizzy for a moment. Had the record player skipped? No. People didn’t use records any more. The disc, then? Perhaps I’d simply aged ten years, finally lost my hearing along with my sanity. Sixty-four years in the city and no one had ever mentioned the lights. How could this woman, this outsider, know of them?

  I nearly rose to go.

  The woman’s hard, hungry face softened abruptly into something like pity.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  I laughed. Words failed.

  “I’m Cole,” she said. She extended her hand and her nails were also hard and red. “We have some friends in common.”

  “Friends?”

  “Or enemies. But such things are not safe to speak of in the open.”

  I looked at my coffee, feeling suddenly I was being sucked down into a whirlpool. When had I become so old, so frightened? Thirty years since Maria, and only now did I feel I was truly slipping into darkness. “Safe,” I whispered. “No, señora. Not safe.”

  Her red-tipped hand descended on mine, her flesh warm and dry as sunbaked stone.


  “I understand,” she said.

  On their wedding night Cole’s husband was taken by a vampire.

  Cole and Ash were making love, the doors of their balcony open upon a summer night. The vampire drifted in from the terrace, a silent, slow-motion horror. Cole watched the gauzy curtains grow pregnant with its shape, wondering how the cloth could swell without a breeze. Then the vampire emerged. Before Cole could reconcile its floating figure, her new husband’s unawareness, and the scream, half pleasure, half fear, building in her throat, the creature—a woman—descended on Ash’s back.

  Ash’s eyes widened. The last sound Cole had of him was a gasp that might have been the sound his body made as he disappeared out the window. Cole tried to follow but the vampire had done something to the room. Trying to get out of bed, Cole fell into a black fog, only waking when the afternoon sun began to burn her skin the following day.

  Though his shirts and razor, trouser socks and shoes, remained in his conspicuously present suitcases, the police said Ash had run away. Their questions were ceaseless: Had he angered the government? Had he faked his own death? (This man who had spoken of children. This man who had picked out the plot where he and Cole would build their home.)

  No, Cole said. No, no, no. Someone had been in the room that night. Ash had been kidnapped.

  Later, when she had numbed herself with wine and marijuana, Cole remembered Ash’s last business trip. From a hotel room in Buenos Aires he had written her a message on his computer:

  The city doesn’t sleep until dawn. The clubs and bars only really begin to pump around 3 a.m. Our hotel is in La Recoleta—near the “City of the Dead.” I roam there with Kevin all night while he tries to buy drinks for the girls on their mopeds.

  The women are stunning, but never as stunning as you, chula. One tried to get me to tango with her two nights ago. I passed her on to Kevin but she kept smiling at me.

  Buenos Aires. It was the last stumbling block in his smoothly paved life. A girl. A cemetery. It didn’t bode well.