Blood Sisters

by Paula Guran

  I had started to dance on my slow fall from the priesthood, sneaking to Mr. Pepe’s during the week. Cole had taken ballet and yoga. The greatest trick we could pull off—her with her inexperience, I with my age, was the volcada—the falling step. Even then, it was only my years that made the feat memorable, for I looked incapable of performing it.

  Cole danced stiffly at first, her teeth set. As she began her first firuletes—a small kick with her back foot as she turned, a quick hook to my leg before going into her backwards-eights—the vampires perked up. Over the heads of the other dancers I saw them rise, drifting towards one another. Their heads tossed back and forth, scanning the crowd.

  “Shit,” Cole whispered. She grew even stiffer, faltering. I fought the urge to run. I could see them coming, their sleek, gleaming heads bobbing as they waded towards us.

  “Shit!” Cole said again. It would all be for nothing if she lost heart now.

  I could think of one thing to do.

  “Surrender,” I whispered. I pressed, my leg on hers, driving her deeper into the crowd. She resisted. Her eyes flashed to mine:

  Are you crazy, old man?

  “Surrender,” I said. Another push. “Dance.”

  At last, she did.

  I remember the smoke of that night. The smell of her fear. Other couples were prettier, evenly matched, young. None danced more earnestly. None as if their heart and soul hung in the balance. A sheen of sweat bejeweled Cole’s forehead, snaring wisps of red hair. For the first time I thought her beautiful. For the first time we moved with a single purpose, no longer at odds—porteno and American, man and woman. We moved like two determined martyrs, knowing the danger and plunging ahead to the end: volcada. The fall.

  Salida.

  When the music stopped the laughter took me by surprise. The couples stood about, applauding one another, some already drifting back to their tables. Yet the room pulsed with raucous laughter. Cole shuddered, clambering up from out finishing pose.

  Two vampires stood beside us: a man and a woman. They had been there all along.

  I realized their laughter was in my head.

  “Touching!” the female said. “How lost and tragic you are!” She bent towards me and sniffed, once, like an animal. The points of her teeth flashed.

  “Sad, sad,” said the male. “As if we would take such as you.”

  “You’re here now, aren’t you?” I flinched as Cole spoke. She stepped away from me, straight-backed and angry, her teeth very white as she matched the woman’s aggressive expression. “I know who you are, puta,” she said. “I recognize your disgusting hair.”

  The female smiled too widely for humanity. “Ash’s wife,” she said.

  Cole nodded. “Tell me where he is.”

  “I will tell you nothing, chula. Only the worthy may speak to us.” Abruptly she turned to me: a movement so fast I was shocked to find her face in mine.

  “Ave Maria, Father,” she whispered, bringing sharp-tipped nails to brush my cheek. The air she stirred smelled of decay. Her touch felt like the wriggling of a grave worm. I gagged.

  “No!” I said. Another tango was beginning, people flocking to the floor, yet they all veered away from us, sensing not to come near. A woman knocked against me, then slipped away as if I’d passed right through her.

  “I’m going to kill you,” Cole said.

  The vampires laughed. Oh, such passion! Were they speaking, or were their voices in my head again?

  “I won’t live in a world with you in it.” Cole said. “One of us is going to die.”

  We shall see.

  Their scorn filled my head, driving out their laughter. A familiar black mist descended.

  Maria, I thought. Maria.

  The image of Cole’s red stiletto followed me into a place of darkness and fire.

  Cole brought a single bag with her to Argentina. The night of our humiliation I woke on my couch to find her rummaging in the corner. From the bag, she took something I had only seen in monster movies at the Sunday matinee.

  “Show me again,” she said.

  She’d dragged my back to Mr. Pepe’s, demanding more lessons. She had another plan.

  “No,” I said. “Damn you. It’s over.”

  “I don’t accept that.”

  “They won’t take us. Besides: why would you go there, knowing he’s one of them? You will die horribly or else end up the same!”

  “I love him, Father,” Cole said. “I’m going to save him. Don’t you need to save her? Are you just going to give up now—thirty years later—and never find Maria?”

  I was livid. “How dare you speak her name?” I said. “You know nothing of us. Nothing! I wake up in the night, sweating because she is gone. In my dreams I am consumed by the fires of hell!”

  “You don’t believe in hell!” Cole screamed at me. “You don’t believe in God, or even love! You only believe in your own fear! Coward!”

  I hit her. She tripped backwards in her flame-red heels, holding a hand to her cheek. For a moment, we faced each other. Then something kindled in her eyes. She came back at me, her fingernails splayed like talons.

  “You’ve betrayed her!” she shrieked. “You stupid man! You’ve betrayed us all! My Ash! My husband! Maria!”

  We fought, dancing back and forth across the stones. Her nails clung to my shirt, jerking me. My feeble bulk strained against her. Late August heat blew around us and it began to rain. Soon we were both wet and exhausted. She slapped at me and I fought her off, trying to ignore the tears which streamed down her face, smearing her makeup, revealing how frightened and pale she really was.

  Eventually she collapsed on my chest, sobbing. The hands with which she had shaken me with clung fast to keep herself from falling.

  My heart broke so suddenly I feared a stroke. But no. My heart still beat. But it ached now. A deeper ache than I had ever known.

  We slipped down upon the rain-slicked stones, holding one another like children. The names of our lovers fell from our lips and we embraced fiercely, trying not to let the world take us, the storm spin us up into the sky.

  Eventually the rain stopped. A muggy sun emerged, making the stones steam. I rested my old, foolish head on hers and patted her bedraggled hair.

  “Do you ever think,” she said, “that the flames in your dreams aren’t really from hell? That maybe they’re simply the love you never had, burning you from the inside?”

  When I failed to respond she rested her head on my shoulder.

  “Please help me, Father,” she said. “I don’t want to burn.”

  “All right,” I said. “All right.” On that last day, some months later, we hid in La Recoleta until the silver light bloomed over the tops of the graves. Then we ventured forth into the true City of the Dead.

  Between tangos, Cole had theorized that we could simply follow the light to its source. We were only two mortals, after all. Why would they stop us?

  We came to the center of the cemetery, where the monuments towered above us like great houses. Stone angels wept into fountains. A rose window glittered in the corpse-light. Here was the source: blinding. Immense. We approached resolutely. Cole had her bag over one arm.

  I had resigned myself to whatever fate awaited me. I very much doubted we would walk away from this. They would drain us, leave us stranded on the shores of death, or else resurrect us to their soulless life. I seldom thought of this. Cole took up my days. In six months I hadn’t been alone for more than a few hours at a time.

  We stood a moment, contemplating the tomb, just visible beyond the glaring light. A watchman, had he passed, might have seen an unexplained blur as we shifted in place. We were invisible now. I knew it as I knew vampires.

  “So this is the mouth of hell,” I said.

  Cole laughed. Her hand brushed mine.

  “Thank you, Father,” she said.

  I nodded.

  We stepped into the light.

  A great, basalt tomb yawned before us, a long staircase
descending into the dark.

  “Listen,” Cole whispered.

  From the mouth came the high-pitched whine of a violin. Had I never seen a vampire, I would have known a dead man sawed those strings.

  “Come on,” Cole said. She gripped the strap of her bag with one hand and pulled me after with the other. Before I lost sight of her in the darkness, she set her jaw, light sparking in her eyes. I wondered where the source of that light was. The flash had been the color of flame.

  Stone surrounded us. We stumbled downward, following the music. It stank of must, here. Iron. Old bones. Other tunnels crossed ours. Other staircases branched away. The music lay straight ahead, always.

  Slowly, a light grew, illuminating green veins in the ancient stone. I grit my teeth, swallowing as we passed, imbedded in the stone itself, the skulls of men and women interred here in forgotten times.

  We came to a landing with a corroding granite balustrade. A great torch-lit chamber lay below us, swarming with figures. On the other side, directly facing us a labyrinth of cloisters, niches, and stairways branched and tunneled across an endless expanse of stone.

  “Ant hive,” Cole whispered.

  Helplessly, I tiptoed to the balustrade, seduced by the warren of strange shapes and stairs that led nowhere. The music swelled around us, majestic and insane, drifting up from the chamber. The dark clad bodies, writhing and tossing beneath me, cast no shadows, their actions stark in the light of the torches they had set on all sides of their hall.

  Not a hive, I thought. A kingdom.

  I started as Cole touched me.

  “Come on,” she said. “I’ve found a way down.”

  A set of craggy steps let us in at the back of the hall. The vampires remained oblivious as Cole and I clambered down. I hardly had the sense to feel afraid anymore, so intent was I on the details of their strange dwelling. Broken statues of the Virgin lay in a pile beneath a fallen arch. Cole’s high heel caught in the eye-socket of a skull.

  We made it halfway across the chamber before they noticed us. A man bending his partner over in a volcada, bared his teeth. The couple next to him stopped in the middle of la chasse. One by one they all grew still. The hellish fantasia died. Only the fires stirred.

  You are unworthy, they told us, voices cold within my mind. Why have you come?

  Cole stepped forward.

  “Ash Marcus,” she told them. “You will give him back to me.”

  As one, they smiled. Lips slid audibly across teeth.

  The unworthy are not permitted here.

  “We are not unworthy,” Cole said.

  Laughter. This time, they spoke with their minds but laughed with their mouths. I sweat as a waft of rotting breath swept over me. Cole had taken my hand and her grip was steel.

  “Let us dance!” she shouted over them. “Kill us if we displease you!”

  The laughter ceased as they pondered. Then their shoulders relaxed. The women slumped, leaning against their partners. Some of the men nodded in tandem.

  Proceed.

  “Music,” Cole said. “A tango Argentine.”

  An unseen band swept bows across strings and we began.

  Months ago, we had decided it was no longer enough to simply dance. If Cole was to rescue Ash, we would have to live our trials.

  So our tango was not sophisticated or soft or beautiful. I hadn’t even been able to practice all the firuletes because I knew I could only give most of them once. What we lacked in refinement, we made up for in terror.

  This was a tense dance, but isn’t it always? The tango is life, they say. And life is a pull and withdrawal, a tug and a rebound. Life, lived correctly, is love. So Cole and I tried to live in the music. We tried to make our last act in this or any world, one of love.

  At some point, I sensed the pricking of vampiric ears, the rustle of their clothing as we drew them in. The sounds unnerved me, filling me with images of rot. But it wasn’t them I remembered: the sense of bodies closing in around me. I remembered Cole: her face, bone white and desperate, but so brave.

  I knelt, let her kick a leg over my head before grabbing her ankle. Flesh had never felt so real to me. Her skin burned through her stockings, burrowed into my sweating palms. When we clung or fell or rocked in place, our fingernails left dents in one another’s flesh. She tore my shirt, circling me, slashing with her nails as she re-lived her loss. I could hardly contain my sob as my hands ran down her body, relating how I had loved in my youth. Across the uneven floor, strewn with the bones of fools, we fought and danced and loved back and forth. And finished: my head pressed to her belly as the strings swept to a halt.

  “I love you,” I whispered. The words simply fell out of me. Her body pulsed against my cheek, her hand caught painfully in my thin hair. In this place of death, I felt more alive than I had in thirty years.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “Get up, Father.”

  I rose, aching all over. I had sacrificed the last of my elasticity for her. I had knelt on that floor an old man. I rose decrepit.

  Cole placed her hands on my shoulders, squeezing as she looked at me. Her face glowed, flushed and beaded with sweat. I knew we had made a terrible mistake coming here. Yet only here could I have realized: what I had whispered to her belly was true.

  “Cole,” I said. Strange bodies were pressing near, heated and barely restrained. Their breath dragged at us, sucking bits of us away.

  “It’s all right,” she said again. A tear coursed down her cheek, moving quickly as it merged with her sweat. “He’s coming now,” she said. “We won.”

  “What?” I wanted her to keep looking at me. I would never live if she looked away: this light of love on her face. This euphoria. Her whole body trembled: alive. Alive.

  But not for me.

  Ash’s wife. The crowd, hovering around us, parted ranks. From a Moorish arch, three figures approached. I recognized the woman who led them.

  “Cole,” I whispered. The heat of our dancing faded rapidly, my heartbeat speeding from exertion to fear. I tried to hold on as she pulled away, heading for the woman. She’d taken the object from her bag.

  A man followed the vampire woman, and a smaller figure, but I had no time for them. The man, tall and pale, his dark hair slicked to the side, was beautiful as a sculpture. I was sure he had been even more glorious when he was alive.

  “Cole!” I cried, trotting painfully after her. She gave no heed, unaware of anyone but herself and the woman. And Ash.

  “Cole,” the vampire mocked. She held up her hand and Cole froze, grimacing.

  “No, Cole! No!” I forced myself to reach her, tugged at her arm. “It isn’t him anymore,” I said. “It isn’t him. Don’t do this.”

  “I said I would kill you,” Cole told the woman. “I meant it.”

  “Maybe you should listen to your friend,” the woman said. “Ash is ours now. Once we have taken someone, they are ours forever. Isn’t that right, Father?”

  As she spoke, the little figure behind her came forward. A dirty veil covered its face—swath after swath of yellowed net. The bridal gown might have been fashionable in my youth.

  I trembled, knowing somehow what would happen. Then the vampire flipped the veil aside and I saw a face I had not seen in thirty years.

  Earth bit my knees. I did not remember falling. The vampire led Maria towards me and she came with the tentative steps of a girl at her first communion. Her face was blank and beautiful and cold, her dark, liquid eyes taking me in without recognition.

  As I bent beneath my grief, the vampire moved towards Cole.

  “You see?” she said. “She is ours. Ash is ours. There is nothing you can do.”

  “There are ways,” Cole said again.

  I looked up just in time to see her stab the object from her purse into the woman’s empty heart.

  A gasp went through the hall. The vampire stumbled back almost comically, examining the stake in her breast with an expression of disbelief. Black blood coursed between her
breasts, slicking the earth as she wavered and fell.

  “You are unworthy of my husband,” Cole told her. “And of me.” While the vampire struggled to die, Cole stepped over her and approached the still, watchful figure of Ash. She placed her hands on either side of his face.

  “No,” I groaned. For I knew what she would do. It was what I longed to do as Maria stood over me in her sweet, corrupted beauty. How easy to beg the one you love to save you. For thirty years I had wanted Maria to come back from hell and end mine. I had put such trust in love, ascribed more power to it than to that of God. But love was dead now. It stood over me, reeking of decay.

  “Cole!” I scrambled to my feet, away from the slight form of the bride who I had once wanted more than salvation or breath. Cole stood murmuring to Ash, rubbing her radiant hair against his neck. They welcomed me with a calm look. His fingers wound greedily in her hair.

  “No, Cole,” I begged her. “Don’t do this. Don’t let him make you like them.”

  She smiled sadly. “This is what I came for, Father. For this very thing.” Something rustled behind me. White skirts trailing on the earthen floor. I wouldn’t look.

  “You found Maria,” Cole said.

  “It isn’t her.”

  “I know. Your love is different from mine. I’m not like you, Father. I want to be where Ash is. To be at his side whatever form he takes.”

  “Even death?”

  “What else is life without love?” That light was in her eyes again—the gleam with no source. This had been her plan, I realized. The whole time. Every moment.

  “Cole,” I said, forcing myself to sound reasonable, “come with me now. You were meant to be alive—to love in the sunlight.”

  “This is the purest form of love I know,” she said. “And someone must stay here, Father. Or they’ll never let you go.”

  As she spoke I felt a prickling at my back. They were behind me. The entire hall. One of their own was dead and they were filled with hunger, and rage.

  “I’ve fallen in love with you, señora,” I said, my heart dropping away from me.

  “I know. That is why I won’t let them hurt you. But you must get out, Father. Go far away.” Abruptly she addressed the hall: “Do you hear me? Let the Father go. He is unworthy of this hall—you shall not sully yourself with him!” A murmur greeted her words. I cannot say if it was agreement. Their energy was like nothing human or animal, and she had made herself its center.