The Vampire Sextette

by Marvin Kaye

  abandoned, his hands on her making her into his instrument, making her utter

  sounds, noises, making her come over and over. And she, too, liked this best. She

  liked to do nothing, simply to be made to respond, and so give way. In some

  other life she might have become the ideal fanatic, falling before the godhead in fits

  whose real, spurious nature only the most sceptical could ever suspect.

  Conversely, partnered with a more selfish and less accomplished lover, with an

  ignorant Justus, for example, she might have been forced to do more, learned

  more, liked less. But that now was hypothetical.

  A breeze whispered at the window. (What does it say?)

  That dream she had had. What had that been? Was it her husband? No, it had

  been a man with black skin. But she had seen no one so black. A blackness

  without any translucence, with no blood inside it.

  Antoinelle drifted, in a sort of trance.

  She had wandered into a huge room with a wooden floor. The only thing in it

  was a piano. The air was full of a rapturous smell, like blossom, something which

  bloomed yet burned.

  She ran her fingers over the piano. The notes sounded clearly, but each was a

  voice. A genderless yet sexual voice, crying out as she touched it—now softly,

  excitedly, now harsh and demanding and desperate.

  She was lying on the beach below the Island. The sea was coming in, wave by

  wave—glissandi—each one the ripples of the wire harp-strings under the piano lid,

  or keys rippling as fingers scattered touches across them.

  Antoinelle had drained Gregers Vonderjan of all he might give her. She had

  sucked him dry of everything but his blood. It was his own fault, exalting in his

  power over her, wanting to make her a doll that would dance on his fingers' end,

  penis's end, power's end.

  Her eyes opened, and, against the glass windows, she saw the piano standing,

  its lids lifted, its keys gleaming like appetite, black and white.

  Should she get up and play music on it? The keys would feel like skin.

  Then she knew that if she only lay still, the piano would come to her. She was

  its instrument, as she had been Vonderjan's.

  The curtain blew. The piano shifted, and moved, but as it did so, its shape

  altered. Now it was not only a piano, but an animal.

  (Notes: Pianimal.)

  It was a beast. And then it melted and stood up, and the form it had taken now

  was that of a man.

  Stronn walked around the courtyard, around its corners, past the dry Spanish

  fountain. Tonight the husks of flowers scratched in the bowl, and sounded like

  water. Or else nocturnal lizards darted about there.

  There was only one light he could see in Gregers Vonderjan's big house, the

  few candles left undoused in the salon.

  The orange trees on the gallery smelled bittersweet.

  Stronn did not want to go to bed. He was wide awake. In the old days, he

  might have had a game of cards with some of the blacks, or even with Vonderjan.

  But those times had ceased to be.

  He had thought he heard the white horse earlier, its shod hoofs going along the

  track between the rhododendrons. But now there was no sign of it. Doubtless one

  of the people on the Island would catch the horse and keep it. As for the other

  animal, the one said to have escaped from a passing ship, Stronn did not really

  think it existed, or if it did, it would be something of no great importance.

  Now and then he heard the tinkling noise of hudja bells the people had hung on

  the banana trees. Then a fragment like piano music, but it was the bells again.

  Some nights the sea breathed as loudly up here as in the bay. Or a shout from one

  of the huts two miles off might seem just over a wall.

  He could hear the vrouw, certainly. But he was used to hearing that. Her

  squeaks and yowls, fetching off as Vonderjan shafted her. But she was a slut. The

  way she had come in tonight proved it, in her bedclothes. And she had never given

  the meester a son, not even tried to give him a child, like the missus (Uteka) had

  that time, only she had lost it, but she was never very healthy.

  A low, thin wind blew along the cane fields, and Stronn could smell the coffee

  trees and the hairy odour of kayar.

  He went out of the yard, carrying his gun, thinking he was still looking for the

  white horse.

  A statue of black obsidian might look like this, polished like this.

  The faint luminescence of night, with its storm choked within it, is behind the

  figure. Starlight describes the outline of it, but only as it turns, moving towards

  her, do details of its forward surface catch any illumination.

  Yet too, all the while, adapting to the camouflage of its environment, it grows

  subtly more human, that is, more recognizable.

  For not entirely—remotely—human is it.

  Does she comprehend?

  From the head, a black pelt of hair waterfalls away around it, folding down its

  back like a cloak.

  The wide flat pectorals are coined each side three times. It is six-nippled, like a

  panther.

  Its legs move, columnar, heavily muscled and immensely vital, capable of great

  leaps and astonishing bounds, but walking, they give it the grace of a dancer.

  At first there seems to be nothing at its groin, just as it seems to have no

  features set into its face… except that the light had slid, once, twice, on the long

  rows of perfect teeth.

  But now it is at the bed's foot, and out of the dark it has evolved, or made

  itself whole.

  A man's face.

  The face of a handsome Justus, and of a Vonderjan in his stellar youth. A face

  of improbable mythic beauty, and opening in it, hike two vents revealing the inner

  burning core of it, eyes of grey ice, which each blaze like the planet Venus.

  She can see now, it has four upper arms. They, too, are strong and muscular,

  also beautiful, like the dancer's legs.

  The penis is large and upright, without a sheath, the black lotus bulb on a thick

  black stem. No change of shade. (No light, no inner blood.) Only the mercuryflame inside it, which only the eyes show.

  Several of the side teeth, up and down, are pointed sharply. The tongue is

  black. The inside of the mouth is black. And the four black shapely hands, with

  their twenty long, flexible fingers, have palms that are black as the death of light.

  It bends towards Antoinelle. It has the smell of night and of the Island, and of

  the sea. And also the scent of hothouse flowers, that came out of the piano. And a

  carnivorous smell, like fresh meat.

  It stands there, looking at her, as she lies on the bed.

  And on the floor, emerging from the pelt that falls from its head, the long black

  tail strokes softly now this way, now that way.

  Then the first pair of hands stretch over onto the bed, and after them the

  second pair, and fluidly it lifts itself and pours itself forward up the sheet, and up

  over the body of the girl, looking down at her as it does so, from its water-pale

  eyes. And its smooth body rasps on her legs, as it advances, and the big hard firm

  organ knocks on her thighs, hot as the body is cool.

  He walked behind her, obedient and terrified. The Island frightened him, but it

  was mo
re than that. Nanetta was now like his mother (when she was young and

  slim, dominant and brutal). Once she turned, glaring at him, with the eyes of a

  lynx. " Hush."

  "But I—" he started to say, and she shook her head again, raging at him

  without words.

  She trod so noiselessly on her bare feet, which were the indigo colour of the

  sky in its darkness. And he blundered, try as he would.

  The forest held them in its tentacles. The top-heavy plantains loomed, their

  blades of black-bronze sometimes quivering. Tree limbs like enormous plaited

  snakes rolled upwards. Occasionally, mystically, he thought, he heard the sea.

  She was taking him to her people, who grasped what menaced them, its value if

  not its actual being, and could keep them safe.

  Barefoot and stripped of her jewels, she was attempting to go back into the

  knowingness of her innocence and her beginnings. But he had always been

  overaware and a fool.

  They came into a glade of wild tamarinds—could it be called that? A glade? It

  was an aperture among the trees, but only because trees had been cut down. There

  was an altar, very low, with frangipani flowers, scented like confectionary, and

  something killed that had been picked clean. The hudja bells chimed from a nearby

  bough, the first he had seen. They sounded like the sistra of ancient Egypt, as the

  cane fields had recalled to him the notion of a temple.

  Nanetta bowed to the altar and went on, and he found he had crossed himself,

  just as he had done when a boy in church.

  It made him feel better, doing that, as if he had quickly thrown up and got rid

  of some poison in his heart.

  Vau l'eau, Vonderjan thought. Which meant, going downstream, to wrack and

  ruin.

  He could not sleep, and turned on his side to stare out through the window.

  The stars were so unnaturally clear. Bleumaneer was in the eye of the storm, the

  aperture at its centre. When this passed, weather would resume, the ever threatening presence of tempest.

  He thought of the white horse, galloping about the Island, down its long

  stairways of hills and rock and forest, to the shore.

  Half asleep, despite his insomnia, there was now a split second when he saw

  the keys of a piano, descending like the levels of many black and white terraces.

  Then he was fully awake again.

  Vonderjan got up. He reached for the bottle of schnapps, and found it was

  empty.

  Perhaps he should go to her bed. She might have changed her mind. No, he

  did not want her tonight. He did not want anything, except to be left in peace.

  It seemed to him that after all he would be glad to be rid of every bit of it. His

  wealth, his manipulative powers. To live here alone, as the house fell gradually

  apart, without servants, or any authority or commitments. And without Anna.

  Had he been glad when Uteka eventually died? Yes, she had suffered so. And

  he had never known her. She was like a book he had meant to read, had begun to

  read several times, only to put it aside, unable to remember those pages he had

  already laboriously gone through.

  With Anna it was easy, but then, she was not a book at all. She was a demon

  he had himself invented (Vonderjan did not realize this, that even for a moment, he

  thought in this way), an oasis, after Uteka's sexual desert, and so, like any fantasy,

  she could be sloughed at once. He had masturbated over her long enough, this

  too-young girl, with her serpentine body (apple tree and tempting snake together),

  and her idealized pleas always for more.

  Now he wanted to leave the banquet table. To get up and go away and sleep

  and grow old, without such distractions.

  He thought he could hear her, though. Hear her fast starved feeding breathing,

  and for once, this did not arouse him. And in any case it might not be Anna, but

  only the gasping of the sea, hurling herself far away, on the rocks and beaches of

  the Island.

  It—he—paints her lips with its long and slender tongue, which is black. Then it

  paints the inside of her mouth. The tongue is very narrow, sensitive, incites her

  gums, making her want to yawn, except that is not what she needs to do—but she

  stretches her body irresistibly.

  The first set of hands settles on her breasts.

  The second set of hands on her rib cage.

  Something flicks, flicks, between her thighs… not the staff of the penis, but

  something more like a second tongue…

  Antoinelle's legs open, and her head falls back. She makes a sound, but it is a

  bestial grunting that almost offends her, yet there is no room in her body or mind

  for that.

  "No—" she tries to say.

  The no means yes, in the case of Antoinelle. It is addressed, not to her partner,

  but to normal life, anything that may intrude, and warns Don't interrupt.

  The black tongue wends, waking nerves of taste and smell in the roof of her

  mouth. She scents lakoum, pepper, ambergris, and myrrh.

  The lower tongue, which may be some extra weapon of the tail, licks at a point

  of flame it has discovered, fixing a triangle with the fire-points of her breasts.

  He—it—slips into her, forces into her, bulging and huge as thunder.

  And the tail grasps her, muscular as any of its limbs, and, thick as the phallus,

  also penetrates her.

  The thing holds Antoinelle as she detonates about it, faints and cascades into

  darkness.

  Not until she begins to revive does it do more.

  The terror is, she comes to already primed, more than eager, her body

  spangled with frantic need, as if the first cataclysm were only… foreplay.

  And now the creature moves, riding her and making her ride, and they gallop

  down the night, and Antoinelle grins and shrieks, clinging to its obsidian form, her

  hands slipping, gripping. And as the second detonation begins, its face leaves her

  face, her mouth, and grows itself faceless and only mouth. And the mouth half

  rings her throat, a crescent moon, and the many side teeth pierce her, both the

  veins of her neck.

  A necklace of emeralds was nothing to this.

  Antoinelle drops from one precipice to another. She screams, and her screams

  crash through the house called Blue View, like sheets of blue glass breaking.

  It holds her. As her consciousness again goes out, it holds her very tight.

  And somewhere in the limbo where she swirls, fire on oil, guttering but not

  quenched, Antoinelle is raucously laughing with triumph at finding this other one,

  not her parasite, but her twin. Able to devour her as she devours, able to eat her

  alive as she has eaten or tried to eat others alive. But where Antoinelle has bled

  them out, this only drinks. It wastes nothing, not even Antoinelle.

  More— more—She can never have enough.

  Then it tickles her with flame so she thrashes and yelps. Its fangs fastened in

  her, it bears her on, fastened in turn to it.

  She is arched like a bridge, carrying the travelling shadow on her body. Pinned

  together, in eclipse, these dancers.

  More—

  It gives her more. And indescribably yet more.

  If she were any longer human, she would be split and eviscerated, and her

  spine snapped along its centre three time
s.

  Her hands have fast hold of it. Which—it or she—is the most tenacious?

  Where it travels, so will she.

  But for all the more, there is no more thought. If ever there was thought.

  When she was fourteen, she saw all this, in her prophetic mirror, saw what she

  was made for and must have.

  Perhaps many thousands of us are only that, victim or predator,

  interchangeable.

  Seen from above: Antoinelle is scarcely visible. Just the edges of her flailing

  feet, her contorted forehead and glistening strands of hair. And her clutching

  claws. (Shockingly, she makes the sounds of a pig, grunting, snorting.)

  The rest of her is covered by darkness, by something most like a manta ray out

  of the sea, or some black amoeba.

  Then she is growling and grunting so loudly, on and on, that the looking glass

  breaks on her toilette table as if unable to stand the sound, while out in the night

  forest birds shrill and fly away.

  More—always more. Don't stop—Never stop.

  There is no need to stop. It has killed her, she is dead, she is re-alive and death

  is lost on her, she is all she has ever wished to be—nothing.

  "Dearest… are you awake?"

  He lifts his head from his arm. He has slept.

  "What is it?" Who are you? Has she ever called him dear before?

  "Here I am," she says, whoever she is. But she is his Anna.

  He does not want her. Never wanted her.

  He thinks she is wearing the emerald necklace, something burning about her

  throat. She is white as bone. And her dark eyes… have paled to Venus eyes,

  watching him.

  "I'm sorry," he says. "Perhaps later."

  "I know."

  Vonderjan falls asleep again quickly, lying on his back. Then Antoinelle slides

  up on top of him. She is not heavy, but he is; it impedes his breathing, her little

  weight.

  Finally she puts her face to his, her mouth over his.

  She smothers him mostly with her face, closing off his nostrils with the

  pressure of her cheek, and one narrow hand, and her mouth sidelong to his, and

  her breasts on his heart.

  He does not wake again. At last his body spasms sluggishly, like the last death

  throe of orgasm. Nothing else.

  After his breathing has ended, still she lies there, Venus-eyed, and the dawn

  begins to come. Antoinelle casts a black, black shadow. Like all shadows, it is