The Silver Kiss

by Annette Curtis Klause

  But I loved the music. Wild and free, tunes went on and on, meandering out to the moon and beyond. I danced to the throbbing music by myself, arms waving, eyes closed, and pretended to be moved by life. I floated through the laughter, music, and excitement of the night in a dark bubble of my own making, and it was cold inside, very cold, but the less that was known of me, the safer I was. In my stolen bell-bottom jeans and flowered shirts, I looked just like them but I never would be, and I doubted that their precious, shallow love would save me if they knew.

  In the day, I had to have my sleep, and in an alley behind a row of shabby Victorian houses, I’d found my den—an abandoned garage with crumbled gingerbread trim. Perhaps it was a stable once. I covered the windows with old blankets I stole from revelers in the park, and stuffed the chinks in the wood with newspaper to keep out the damaging light. Under the floorboards beneath my bed I kept a suitcase with all that was valuable to me: a meager portion of my native soil, without which I could not sleep, and a painted portrait of those I once held dear. I curled above that suitcase every day, in a deep, sodden coma, too full of rich human blood to bother with the rats that shared my home.

  It was there, one misty morning, groggy with the need to sleep off excess, that I found the cat.

  It must have squeezed under the ill-fitting doors looking for shelter from the damp night air. Woken by my return, it crouched on my pile of blankets in a dusty corner behind a stack of old tires and stared warily at me.

  “Lucky for you I’ve had my dinner, tabby,” I said. “Now off with you.”

  It should have been scared, animals ran from me, but instead it hissed.

  Somehow, the absurdity made me laugh.

  My laughter made it crouch lower, and its ears flattened. It edged away, and I saw how skinny it was, and weak. For a second I remembered crawling in the forest newly made, starving, and too stunned to know that blood was now my food. Just then, one of the occasional rats chose to make an ill-advised dash across the floor. I don’t know why I did it, curiosity perhaps, but I snatched the squealing rat up. I tore the creature open with my teeth and tossed it near the cat. The cat flinched but didn’t run.

  “Well, there you are, puss,” I said. “Food with your lodging. What are you waiting for?”

  Slowly it crept from the shadows and finally sniffed the corpse. I could see then it was female. It didn’t take her long to recognize a meal, and she wolfed the rat meat down so fast, I feared she would vomit.

  “Steady on,” I warned. “I don’t care to share my den with cat puke.”

  When she’d finished I flung the remnants under the door and stuffed the crack with an old coat. Ignoring the cat, I sank to my bed and took my crimson sleep.

  The cat shot out the door the next evening as soon as it was opened, not surprising, as she had managed to spend the entire night without soiling the floor. I didn’t expect to see her again.

  I was wrong. She was there in the jingle-jangle morning I’d heard the band sing of the night before. She sat by my front door with an expectant look on her little tabby face. What could I do? I found her another rat.

  The routine became a habit. Dawn. Cat. Rat. Then she slept in a corner of my den. “But don’t get used to it,” I told her. “I’ll be moving on soon.”

  Perhaps because I spent all my time avoiding conversation with humans, I soon found myself confiding in the cat. I only shared a few words at first. “Good morning,” I’d say. “Found a plump brunette at the Quicksilver concert. How was your night?” Soon I surrendered more details. “Last night’s girlfriend was an Airplane fan,” I might begin. “I thought she’d give in easily, but she’d traded her brains for LSD, and my charms didn’t work on her. She screamed when I bit her and I’m afraid I overreacted. I was really sorry afterward, cat. Honestly. I had to drop her in the bay so no one would find her.”

  It was such a relief to confess.

  The cat was wary at first. She wanted the meat, but she kept her distance, eyeing me suspiciously as if trying to place what kind of creature I was. Perhaps I smelled of death; perhaps I smelled of nothing known to her. Her aloofness saddened me. Was my only intimacy with those who lived to be when draining the very source of that life? A foolish question, for I knew that to be true. Nevertheless, I made a game of befriending her.

  My words brought her near, yet she was shy of my touch. She ducked from my first advances, and danced on the shadow tip of my embrace, but I didn’t give up. I wooed her like a lover. Each day she lingered longer within reach, and I held myself in check. Each day her little ribs became less obvious, and she trembled less. I remember the electric crackle of joy the first time she let me stroke her head.

  Soon, like a fool, I named the beast. Grimalkin, I called her—a witch’s cat’s name, but I’m close enough to a witch in most minds, I suppose. Stroking her became my delight—and hers. I had forgotten how a purr could buzz in one’s fingers like summer. She slept at the foot of my bed.

  One morning I came home to find a mouse upon my pillow. “And now you are the provider?” I asked her as she wound between my legs. The bursting fullness in my chest was fleeting, but frightened me. I readied for sleep briskly, paying her no more heed. When I woke in the evening, I found her curled against my stomach. “Why?” I asked. “You will find no warmth there.” But the fullness was back and wouldn’t be ignored. It was I who took warmth from her.

  The summer danced on, the music played, and the generous girls came and went. I tried to be careful, I truly did, but excess was all around, and I became prey to it, too. I had spent almost three hundred years in trying to control the lust, I had even tried to exist on the blood of beasts alone, and now one hedonistic summer had undone me. I found it harder and harder to stop in time. If I took too much, at least they died gently, I consoled myself, at least they felt no pain. I refused to feed on their terror like others of my kind, but feed I must, so under an August moon I romanced a girl, all fringes and swirling skirts, that I’d lured out from the bands and the smoky air of the dance hall called the Fillmore.

  “What’s your favorite band?” she asked.

  “The Grateful Dead,” I answered. Christ, I was almost getting a sense of humor.

  “I’m not a runaway,” she told me when I asked. “I live in Mountain View with my mom, and sister, and three old cats.”

  “I have a cat, too,” I said, surprising myself.

  I soon was sorry. My admission provoked an avalanche of anecdotes. “Enough!” I said, finally losing patience, and drew her to me, my gaze on her neck, my gums itching.

  “Ooh! You remind me of that Doors singer, Jim Morrison,” she said. “Beautiful and scary at the same time.”

  I decided she was more intelligent than most. “You are beautiful, too,” I whispered, trailing my fingers down her cheek, capturing her eyes with mine.

  She relaxed into my arms, surrendering to the spell I wove, and I took her throat. “The stars are swirling,” she said vaguely as I sipped gently on her blood. “Did you give me some drugs or something?” She giggled weakly. “But I’d remember, wouldn’t …” Her voice trailed off into a sigh. I allowed myself to tumble into the lake of dreams with her, drowning, drowning in the sweet froth of her life, and I would have finished her in that glorious haze, drained her of the nectar that sustained me, except I remembered the three old cats, and all of a sudden I couldn’t go on. Ashamed, I left her there in Golden Gate Park to wake with the dawn and wonder if someone had slipped some acid in her drink.

  Grimalkin wasn’t waiting at the garage door. After half a summer of the same routine, she wasn’t there. I tried to shrug off the disappointment. It had to happen sooner or later—either she would leave or I would. Maybe she was delayed by a mouse, I told myself, but not believing it. I hesitated over whether to block the crack under the door, but common sense won out and I grabbed for the dusty old coat. A day out won’t harm her, I thought, but a touch of sunlight would certainly harm me.

  She was alrea
dy curled on my bed.

  “Grimalkin! Trickster!” I exclaimed. The joy of seeing her surprised me into laughter. Who would have thought? I made ready for bed hastily with a smile on my face.

  When I woke in the evening, she was still in the same spot. “Wake up, lazybones,” I said over my shoulder, but her only response was a slight opening of her eyelids.

  “What ails you, puss?” I asked, rolling over to stroke her. She trembled. “Ah, yes, I’m very cold,” I said, making it a joke. Then I noticed the slime around her mouth and found it was possible to be colder still.

  I smelled a rankness in the air I hadn’t noticed in the morning. Before I identified the source, Grimalkin showed me. She wobbled to her feet, staggered a few steps, and vomited on my blanket. She collapsed again and lay there panting.

  I panicked.

  I, who had lived by my wits for centuries and could mesmerize or crush with my strength; I, who could fly with wings through the night, or drift like mist; I, who thought I was above the laws of nature, didn’t know what to do for a little sick cat.

  I swept her into my arms and took to the streets. I had no money and didn’t know where to go. I would have to ask for help. Did these people who danced all night and had no job I knew of have doctors who healed for the sake of love? If anyone knew, it would be in Haight-Ashbury, the kaleidoscope heart of the alternate city.

  I ran to a head shop on Haight, which I knew was open until midnight. Wrinkling my nose against the overwhelming stench of incense and patchouli oil, I pushed past the browsers around the comic book racks and the bulletin board, to the far end of a glass display case full of pipes, roach clips, and other drug paraphernalia. The girl at the counter was almost hidden by racks dripping with multicolored scarves and beads.

  “Where do the sick go?” I asked her urgently.

  She stared at me blankly for a moment, and I would have grabbed her if my arms had not been full.

  “The free clinic, man.” I turned to see a young man with a bushy black beard, holding a flyer up for me to read the address.

  “The doctors volunteer,” he said. “It’s for the street kids who don’t have money.”

  I thanked him and hurried out.

  “Stay cool!” I heard him call after me—advice or a meaningless salute, I don’t know.

  The clinic was in the basement of a church. That stopped me cold. I stood there staring at the looming facade, a sinking feeling in my gut. I must have held my cat too tight. She squeaked in pain. That decided me. But as soon as I crossed the threshold I felt my insides crush together in fear.

  A motley assortment of young people sat in the rows of ancient straight-backed wooden chairs, or lounged in the few tattered armchairs that sat on the cloudy linoleum floor.

  “Dude’s got a cat,” a youth in a purple shirt said to no one in particular, and giggled irrelevantly.

  A shivering boy with large black pupils was led past me by his friends. Too much LSD or mescaline, I guessed. “You’ll be safe here,” I heard one friend say. “They’ll give you something to bring you down.”

  “They never call the police,” said the other.

  The girl at the table looked over her square, pink-lensed glasses at me. “Whatcha here for?” she asked, pen hovering ready over a printed form.

  I held out Grimalkin.

  “Cat sick?” she asked, the space between her eyebrows creasing with concern.

  I nodded, still unable to speak.

  “Bummer,” she said. “I dunno, tho’. We don’t do pets.”

  I folded Grimalkin back to my chest, and swallowed a scream. The weight of the crucifix somewhere over my head seemed to bear down on me and take away my thoughts. I didn’t know the question to ask next.

  The girl did, however. “Jerry,” she called through a door to her right. “Where do we send people with cats?”

  A tall young man in a white coat over jeans and T-shirt poked his head through the door. He looked me over and winced. “You sure it’s not you that needs the help?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  He sighed and came over. “Hi, baby,” he said to Grimalkin, gently stroking her head. “It’s okay, it’s just Dr. Jerry. I’ve got two like you at home.”

  Unlike so many, he then looked me in the eyes. I saw compassion there and, for a moment, it took the weight from my chest.

  “Listen … uh … sorry, what’s your name?” he asked.

  “Simon,” I answered before I could help it.

  “Simon,” he repeated, and I felt a slight shock as someone spoke my true name to me for the first time in years. “I don’t know anything about sick animals. I don’t even know what the normal heart rate of a cat is, but I know a vet,” he said, “a friend. She lives near. I’ll call her. Maybe she’ll come over.”

  I waited in that clammy basement, stroking my cat, overhearing words like clap, knocked up, bad trip, and pain. Someone cried loudly in another room for a while. Patients went in the back, emerged again, and left. Others came in from the street to take their places.

  “You’ll be better, ’Malkin,” I whispered to my cat over and over. “You’ll be fine, little queen.” I warned away the talkative with venom in my eyes.

  A black woman in a long print dress came through the front door. She wore bangles and short, sculpted hair like a fine, dark dandelion. She scanned the room, then approached me purposefully. Why me? I wanted to flee, but it was too important to stay.

  “I’m Avis,” she said, sitting down beside me. “Jerry called me about your cat. Let me see.”

  This was the vet, then. Reluctantly I let her take Grimalkin on her lap as the skin on my back twitched from the scrutiny of the bored and curious. The cat lay limply in a hammock of bright fabric as Avis prodded and probed. The vet lifted Grimalkin’s lips and studied her gums.

  “I’m afraid you have a really sick kitty,” Avis finally said.

  I know that, I thought angrily. I know that. But the words wouldn’t leave my lips.

  The vet patted my knee as if she read my thoughts and understood. “Her kidneys are enlarged,” Avis continued. “And she’s in shock. My best guess is that she’s been poisoned.”

  I rose to my feet faster than a mortal, ready to kill whoever would dare, and the vet cringed, surprise and fear on her face. “N-not on purpose,” she stammered. “Something she found. Like antifreeze. It’s sweet, cats like it, but it causes permanent damage.”

  Antifreeze. I thought of the cans I’d moved to a corner of my den when I first took possession. It was possible. Why the hell hadn’t I thrown them away?

  A tremor passed through Grimalkin’s body, and the cat let out a yowl, causing me to drop to my knees. Avis let me reclaim her. “I’m sorry. I think she’s dying of kidney failure,” the vet said gently as I buried my face in Grimalkin’s fur.

  “There’s nothing you can do?” I asked, raising hopeless eyes, already knowing the answer.

  Avis shook her head. “It’s best now to put her out of her pain. I can take care of it if you like—no charge.”

  “No!” I cried. And I ran from there, ran all the way home.

  Back in my den, I held Grimalkin in my arms. She was alternately stiff, then limp, racked by tremors.

  I couldn’t save her, and I couldn’t turn her into one such as me, even if I wanted to; there was only one thing I could give her—peace.

  I had calmed wild animals in my time—soothed them a little so I could feed—but I had never turned my full power to mesmerize upon a beast. I wasn’t even sure I could. But now was the time to try. I could lull her to sleep slowly and peacefully, lure her into gentle dreams and let her go to a place where I could never follow. Trapped in this world, I would never walk a long, white tunnel and find her waiting. I would live centuries more and never see her again. At least her blood would make her part of me. A mote of her would live in me awhile.

  It hurt to unsheathe my fangs—it had never hurt before.

  I held her close, and ro
cked her, and whispered love until I heard a tiny purr. “Brave girl,” I said. “Brave, brave, sweet girl.” Then I bent my head as if in prayer.

  I didn’t mind the fur in my mouth, it was precious to me, but the first taste of blood nearly choked me. I carried on, anyway, and wove the spell. It didn’t take long. She relaxed against me, she kneaded my chest, for a moment her purr grew large, and then it was gone. The blood ceased to flow, and she was but a shell.

  I hadn’t known that I could cry.

  It was time to move on, I knew that now. I had to go far from this place that had seduced me. If not for a little cat, I would have become the demon I had fought so long not to be. But she had ruined me. No matter where I went, I would yearn for love now I remembered what it was, and where would anyone such as I find love again?

  THE SILVER KISS

  1

  Zoë

  The house was empty. Zoë knew as soon as she walked through the front door. Only a clock ticking in the kitchen challenged the silence.

  Fear uncurled within her. Mommy, she thought like a child. Is it the hospital again—or worse? She dropped her schoolbag in the hall, forgetting the open door, and walked slowly into the kitchen, afraid of what message might await her. There was a note on the refrigerator: