The Mammoth Book Of Vampire Stories Written By Women

As the sky grew lighter, the knowledge that Remedios had unearthed with the rosary did not fade, but solidified within her, melding worries and insecurities, leaving behind a certainty from which to act.

The house lay shrouded in quiet, still as the dead. Remedios passed the rooms where Jess and Robert slept without pausing. She continued along the second-floor hallway, watching her shadow creep over the walls. Finally, she reached the master bedroom and opened the door quietly.

Inside the room the air smelled of sweat mixed with the fragrance of Mrs Richview's perfumes. Remedios stared at the couple for a moment, making her decision. Her employers lay sleeping soundly, Mrs Richview with plugs in her ears, and a mask over her eyes. Mr Richview sprawled close to the edge, on his back, snoring loudly. Remedios made her way to his side of the bed. She crouched beside him and reached out to touch gingerly the bulging blue in his neck. His breath caught for a moment. He opened his eyes and stared fearfully at her. She placed her finger to her lips and quietly whispered, " Someter ." His eyelids lowered as if he longed to return to his dreams. He turned his head, the vein an offering.

Remedios pierced it easily, quickly, naturally, like any strong animal that had learned somewhere in its life to love the taste of blood.

Remedios sat at the kitchen table, feeling refreshed. She signed her name at the bottom of the letter to her Uncle Antonio, telling him that he must use a portion of the money he took from the family as his "fee" to provide medical care to little Dolores, whose name, she reminded him, meant "pain". The pain of his failing to comply, she assured him, would not be only for Dolores, but it would become his pain as well. She would cease sending home money until he did this. And if he refused? Yes, her family would suffer. Dolores would suffer more. But he would suffer most — she would personally see to it.

She folded the letter and placed it into an envelope, sealing all their fates.

Just then, Mr Richview walked into the kitchen. "Good morning, Remedios. How are you today?" He looked tired. Bewildered.

"I am very well, Mr Richview. May I speak with you?"

"Yes, of course. About what?"

"I ask of you three things. First, I would like to visit my family for two weeks. I will need a plane ticket."

He rubbed his neck for a moment, an absent look on his face. "That can be arranged."

"Next, I must have an increase. I would like to be paid an additional hundred dollars each month."

Rather than scowling, or being even more annoyed then he had been the evening before, now Mr Richview nodded, a dreamy expression filling his face. He spoke to her respectfully, as to an equal, to Remedios, a strong person, who knew what she wanted, what was fair. "All right. I think we can find an extra hundred dollars for you each month."

"And for the last," she said, "I would like for you to deposit this new money into a bank account, like the one you told me of, that will make me a millionaire in twenty years."

She was only mildly astonished to see him nod approval. "Well, I can't promise you'll be a millionaire, but if you don't touch it, I can promise you'll have quite a bit of money. That's a wise decision, Remedios. I'll stop at the bank today and pick up the forms for you to sign so you can open an account; my accountant will make the deposits automatically, and you can go in any time and update your passbook. Once the principal increases, we can invest it in a high-yield fund. You need to be brave, take a few risks. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. It's a tough world, dog eat dog. Only the strongest survive."

"The strongest and the smartest," she said, thinking how much more sense it makes to live off the strong rather than the weak.

Miss Massingberd and the Vampire

Tina Rath

Tina Rath sold her first dark fantasy story to Catholic Fireside in 1974. Since then her short fiction has appeared in both the small and mainstream press, including Ghosts & Scholars, All Hallows, Woman's Realm, Bella and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. She has been anthologized in The Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories, The Fontana Book of Horror Stories, Midnight Never Comes, Seriously Comic Fantasy and Karl Edward Wagner's The Year's Best Horror Stories: XV. With her husband Tony she has co-written stories for Mike Ashley's Royal Whodunnits and Shakespearean Detectives, and together they run Parlour Voices, a live reading performance group .

" While I was finishing my thesis on The Vampire in Popular Fiction," explains Dr Rath, who recently received her degree from the London University, "I came to the conclusion that the vampire's cloak is an extraordinarily versatile costume: it can be worn by men or women; it can conceal and disguise, but paradoxically it can also be used for display; it can suggest the cowled monk, or the sophisticated opera-goer; it can itself be concealed, rolled up and carried unobtrusively, but as soon as it is put on it transforms the wearer .

"The vampire, which is both male and female, terrifying and alluring, similarly offers the ultimate disguise, fancy dress, fantasy — a persona that we can slip on either to hide or parade; a unisex, one-size fits all masquerade. The cloak is an ink-blot test, in which we can see our obsessions, not only our fears but also our desires for sexual potency, freedom from the restraints of gender, morality and the entire material world.

"And of course, it's not real, so when we have enjoyed our fantasy we can discard the cloak and be human again. It is hardly surprising that the vampire has an immortal appeal."

About "Miss Massingberd and the Vampire", Rath reveals: "I wrote this particular story because I live near a very beautiful, ivy-covered churchyard, which actually does have a path running through it. It was crying out for a vampire, so I gave it one."

Miss Massingberd first heard about the vampire from her fifth-formers. They were quite the silliest girls in the school, and she paid very little attention to them. Of course, she delivered her little lecture about going straight home from school, and walking in a brisk and ladylike way.

"And then no one will bother you. Human or vampire," she concluded, and confiscated all the pieces of garlic, and crosses made from broken rulers and Sellotape which seemed to have found their way into most desks in the classroom.

Now Miss Massingberd's own quickest route to school and back lay through St Elphege's churchyard. In the mornings there was no problem, but sometimes, at night, when she had been kept late by a parents' meeting, or a committee, or rehearsals for the school play, she might go the long way round. However, she was a strong-minded woman, and scorned superstitious fears. You did not, she told herself, become Head of English at the biggest comprehensive school in her area of London by allowing yourself to be easily frightened. So on that luminous autumn evening when she met the vampire herself she was taking her short cut. And she was not walking briskly either, but loitering like the silliest of her fifth-formers; breathing in the scent of burning leaves from a hidden bonfire and enjoying that strange nostalgia for a past she had never actually experienced that she always felt in autumn, when she saw the dark cloaked figure standing among the headstones.

At first she naturally supposed it was the vicar and she was passing him with a polite "Good evening", when he turned to look at her. He was quite unmistakably a vampire. The points of his canine teeth were just visible on his lower lip. And he was tall, and dark, and heartbreakingly handsome. Miss Massingberd looked at him and fell helplessly in love.

She was so taken aback by the sensation (she had never even thought of such a thing before in her life) that she stood quite still, gazing into the vampire's dark and haunted eyes. And the vampire gazed back at Miss Massingberd. It is difficult to know what might have happened if the real vicar had not ridden past them on his bicycle, calling a cheerful greeting. The vampire's eyes flashed ruby red in the light of the bicycle lamp, and he vanished into the dusk. Miss Massingberd was left, shocked and shivering, and feeling as if she had suddenly awakened out of a deep sleep.

But she could not say if she had been roused from a dream or a nightmare.

The vicar, seeing her standing looking so lost in the dusk, wheeled his bicycle around with a swish of gravel and asked her to come in for a cup of tea. He was new in the parish, and unmarried, so he was always glad to see visitors, and he knew Miss Massingberd well by sight, as vicars and schoolmistresses often sit on the same committees. Miss Massingberd was too flustered by her encounter with the vampire to refuse, and she followed him into his horrible late Victorian vicarage which seemed to have been designed for a polygamist with an unusually large extended family.

"I call it the barracks," the vicar shouted cheerfully across the echoing spaces of the entrance hall. It was paved with tiles depicting the sacrifice of Jephtha's daughter, Miss Massingberd noticed, averting her eyes hastily. "Just chuck your coat on the hallstand."

He led her into a parlour so large that the corners of the high ceiling were lost in the dimness beyond the power of a single sixty-watt bulb to dispel. The vicar lit the gas fire and recommended Miss Massingberd to sit close to it.

"It's always freezing in here," he said, "and it's worse upstairs. If you don't mind hanging on here for a moment I'll go and rustle up some tea."

Miss Massingberd sat, staring into the dark corners of the room, wondering how she came to be having tea with the vicar, instead of going home to do her marking. It was the vampire's fault, of course, but she could not blame him. Her thoughts drifted away, to moonlight, and ruined towers, and fiery eyes, becoming more and more unsuitable for a schoolmistress every moment. When the vicar came back with his tray he was surprised to see how flushed and pretty she looked in the dim light.

"Only Indian tea, I'm afraid," he said, wishing suddenly that he had something more exotic to offer her, "but there's some rather good cake."

Miss Massingberd withdrew her gaze from the darkness and smiled at the vicar. She thought she was giving him her bright, efficient, friendly, committee smile. She had no way of knowing that it was now the rapt, mysterious smile of a woman who has fallen in love with a vampire, and the vicar was taken aback. He had never realized, in all those committee meetings, how blue Miss Massingberd's eyes were, and how bright her hair. He smiled too, and fought a ridiculous and unclerical impulse to put a finger very lightly on one of those tiny coils of hair at the nape of her neck which had sprung from her severely rolled French pleat. Instead he concentrated on cutting her a piece of cake.

He started to talk sensibly about their committee, and asked Miss Massingberd her feelings on the Christmas bazaar, but Miss Massingberd simply crumbled the cake on her plate and smiled like Mona Lisa. It was not really very long before his stream of cheerful commonplace things to say began to run dry and he said, almost accusingly, "You're not eating your cake."

Miss Massingberd murmured that she was not very hungry. So the vicar, always a polite host, stood up to take the plate out of her way. Miss Massingberd, recalled to her proper social role, stood up too and smiled again and the vicar, lost and drowning in her blue eyes, kissed her.

And Miss Massingberd, having learned the trick of it, fell in love all over again.

She and the vicar were married, of course. They turned the dreadful, echoing barracks of a vicarage into a hostel for homeless families. And what with that, and the Youth Club and the Brownies and all the other parish duties, they never seemed to have a moment even to think.

Only sometimes, in the long green dusks of spring, or the short red twilights of autumn, Miss Massingberd would walk alone in the churchyard for a while. She would come back looking greatly refreshed, if a little pale, and wind a silk scarf around her throat before going to the Youth Club, or the Brownie meeting, or the Parish Council. And her husband would sigh a little, and remind her to take her iron tonic.

The Raven Bound

Freda Warrington

Beginning with A Blackbird in Silver in 1986, Freda Warrington is the author of sixteen novels exploring the realms of fantasy, vampires and the supernatural. Her vampire series A Taste of Blood Wine, A Dance in Blood Velvet and The Dark Blood of Poppies — was published by Macmillan to great acclaim in the UK, and will appear in the USA from Meisha Merlin, starting in 2001. Her 1997 sequel to Dracula, Dracula the Undead, won the Children of the Night Award for Best Gothic Novel, presented by the Dracula Society .

She has recently completed "The Jewelfire Trilogy" for Simon & Schuster's Earthlight imprint, comprising the British Fantasy Award-nominated The Amber Citadel, The Sapphire Throne and The Obsidian Tower. A new novel , Guiltless Blood, is scheduled for 2002 .

" I love the paradox of vampires," explains Warrington. " They personify things we dread, such as death or (horrors!) the dead coming back from the grave, yet also attributes we may covet, such as eternal youth, power over others, guilt-free sensuality. The possibilities offered by vampire characters are endless. Away with cardboard heroes chasing cardboard monsters! In A Taste of Blood Wine and its sequels, my characters Karl, Charlotte, Violette and their friends took me down many fascinating dark labyrinths exploring themes of love, pain, jealousy, psychology, philosophy, religion, sex I found no limit.

" ' The Raven Bound' came about when a French editor, Lea Silhol, asked me to write a story for her vampire anthology , De Sang et d'Encre. She hinted strongly that she would like to see an appearance of her favourite characters from the books, Karl and Charlotte. I had an idea all worked out until I actually put pen to paper, when something entirely unplanned came out instead! I don't know where Antoine came from, but I think he would smile at a quote in my desk diary by the writer Susan Ertz, which turned up in apposite fashion shortly after I'd written his story: 'Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon'"

I walk a tightrope above an abyss. The silver line of wire is all that keeps me from 1,000 feet of darkness yet I feel no fear. I flit across the rooftops of London like a cat, I lie flat on top of underground trains as they roar through sooty tunnels. I climb the ironwork of the Eiffel Tower and I dance upon the girders at its pinnacle, daring gravity to take me. And all of this is so dull.

Dull, because I can do it.

I move with the lightness and balance of a bird. I never fall, unless I throw myself wantonly at the ground. Then I may break bones, but my bones heal fast. It is not difficult. It will not kill me. All these wild feats bore me, for they hold no challenge, no excitement.

What is a vampire to do?

I see him in a nightclub. He could be my twin: a brooding young man with a lean and handsome face, dark hair hanging in his eyes; his eyes lovely miserable pools of shadow. How alone he looks, sitting there oblivious to the crush of bodies, the women glittering with beads and pearls. He is hunched over a glass of whisky and he raises a long, gaunt hand to his mouth, sucking hard on a cigarette stub. Dragging out its last hot rush of poisons.

"May I join you?" I say.

"If you must." His voice is a bored, English upper-class drawl. I love that.

"There is no free table." I wave to emphasize the obvious; the club is crowded, a sepia scene in a fog of smoke. "My name is Antoine Matisse."

"Rupert Wyndham-Hayes." He shakes my hand half-heartedly. His cigarette is finished so I offer him another, a slim French one from a silver case. He accepts. I light it for him — an intimate gesture and he sits back, blowing smoke in sulky pleasure. "Over from Paris, one assumes? First visit?"

"I have been here before," I reply. "London always draws me back."

He makes a sneering sound. "I should prefer to be in Paris. Funny how we always want what we haven't got."

"What is preventing you from going to Paris, Rupert?"

I look into his eyes. He doesn't seem to notice that I am not smoking. He sees something special in me, a kindred soul, someone who will understand him.

He calls the waiter and orders drinks, although I tip mine into his while he isn't looking. Presently his story comes tumbling out. A family seat in the country, a father who is proud and wealthy and mean. Mother long dead. Rupert the only son, the only child, with a vast freight of expectations on his shoulders. But he has disappointed his father in everything.

"All the things he wanted me to be — I can't do it. I was to be a scholar, an officer, a cabinet minister. Worthy of him. Married to some earl's daughter. That's how he saw me. But I let him down. I tried and failed; gods, how I tried! Finally something snapped, and I refused to dance to his tune any longer. Now he hates me. Because what I truly am is an artist. The only thing I can do, the only thing I've ever wanted to do, is to paint!"

He takes a fierce drag on his cigarette. His eyes burn with resentment.

"Isn't your father proud that you have this talent?"

"Proud?" he spits. "He despises me for it! Says I'll end up in the gutter."

"Why don't you leave?" I speak softly and I am paying more attention to the movement of his tender throat than to his words. "Go to Montmartre, be an artist. Prove the old man wrong."

"It's not that easy. There's this girl, Meg"

"Take her with you."

"That's just it. I can't. She's the gardener's daughter. My father employs her as a maid. D'you see? Not content with being a failure at everything else, I go and fall in love with a common servant. So now the old man tells me that if I don't give her up and toe the line, he'll disinherit me! And Meg's refusing to see me. Says she's afraid of my father. Damn him!"

I have not been a vampire so very long. I still recall how hopeless such dilemmas seem to humans. "That's terrible."

"Vindictive old swine! I'll lose her and I'll be penniless! He can't do this to me!"

"What will you do about it, Rupert?"

He glares down into his whisky. How alluring he looks in his wretchedness. "I wish the old bastard would die tomorrow. That would solve all my problems. I'd like to kill him!"

"Will you?"

He sighs. "If only I had the guts! But I haven't."

So I smile. I rest my hand on his, and he is too numb with whisky to feel the coldness of my fingertips. I have thought of something more interesting to do than just take him outside and drain him.

"I'll do it for you."

"What?" His eyes grow huge.

I should explain, I am poor. It seems so cheap to go through the pockets of my victims like a petty thief. I do it anyway, but it yields little reward. The wealth I crave, in order to live in the style a vampire deserves, is harder to come by.

"Give me a share of your inheritance and I'll kill him for you. No one will ever link the crime to you. Natural causes, they'll say."

His breathing quickens. His hands shake. Does he know what I am? Yes and no. Look into our eyes and a veil lifts in your mind and you step into a dream where anything is possible. "My God," he says, over and over. "My God." And at last, with a wild light in his eyes, "Yes. Quickly, Antoine, before he has a chance to change his will. Do it!"

I am standing in the garden, looking up at the house.

It's an impressive pile, but ugly. Grey-brown stone, stained and pitted by the weather, squatting in a large, bleak estate. A sweep of gravel leads to a crumbling portico. No flowerbeds to soften the walls, only prickly shrubs. It's tidy enough but no love, no imagination and no money have been lavished upon it for many a cold year.

In the autumn twilight I traverse the lawns to the rear of the house. The gardens, too, are austere and formal, with clipped hedges standing like soldiers on flat stretches of grass. But there are chestnut and elm and beech trees to add sombre grandeur to the landscape. Brown leaves are scattered on the ground. The gardener has raked them into piles and I smell that English autumn scent of bonfires and wet grass.

Somewhere behind the windows of the house sits the father, the rat in his lair, Daniel Wyndham-Hayes.

It's growing dark. Rooks are gathering in the treetops. I am taking my time, savouring the experience, when a figure in a long black overcoat steps out of the blue darkness and comes towards me.

"Antoine, what are you doing?"

It is another vampire. His name is Karl. Perhaps you know him, but if not I shall tell you that Karl is far older than me and thinks he knows everything. Imagine the face of an angel, one who felt as much bliss as guilt when he fell, and still does, every time he strikes. Amber eyes that eat you. Hair the colour of burgundy, which fascinates me, the way it looks black in shadow then turns to crimson fire in the light. That's Karl. He's like a deadly ghost, always warning me not to make the same mistakes he made.

"I am thinking that this house and garden are the manifestation of the owner's soul," I reply archly. "Will they change, when he is dead?"

"Don't do this," Karl says, shaking his head. "If you single out humans and make something special of them, you'll drive yourself mad."

"Why should it matter to you if I am driven mad?"

He puts his hand on my shoulder; and although I have always desired him, I am too irritated with him to respond. "Because you are young, and you'll only find out for yourself when it is too late. Don't become involved with humans. Keep yourself apart from them."

"Why?"

"Otherwise they will break your heart," says Karl.

They think they know it all, the older ones, but they will each tell you something different. You can't listen to them. Give them no encouragement, or they will never shut up.

We stand like a pair of ravens on the grass. Then I am stepping away from him, turning lightly as a dancer to look back at him as I head for the house. "Go to hell, Karl. I'll do what I like."

I am inside the house. The corridors are draughty and need a coat of paint. Yet Old Masters hang on the walls and I finger the gilt frames with excitement. Riches. This seems ironic, that Daniel should collect these grimy old oils for their value and yet consider his own son's potential work valueless.

Following Rupert's instructions, I find the white panelled door of the bedroom, and I go in.

The father is not as I expect.

I stand beside the bed staring down at him. With one hand I press back the bed-curtain. I am as still as a snake; if he wakes he will think someone has played a dreadful joke on him, placed a manikin with glittering eyes and waxen skin there to frighten him. But he sleeps on, alone in this big austere room. Dying embers in the grate give the walls a demonic glow. Like the rest of the house it is clean but threadbare. Daniel is hoarding his wealth. Perhaps he thinks that if he disinherits Rupert he can take it with him.

Why did I assume he would be old? Rupert is only twenty-three and this man is barely fifty, if that. And he is handsome. He has a strong face like an actor, thick chestnut and silver hair flowing back from a high forehead. His arms are muscular, the hands well-shaped on the bedcover. Even in sleep his face is taut and intelligent. I stand here admiring the aquiline sweep of his nose and the long curves of his eyelids, each with a little fan of wrinkles at the corner.

He will not be easy to kill. I expected a frail old goat in a nightcap. Not this magnificent creature, who is so full of blood and strength, a lion.

I bend over the bed. I am salivating. I touch my tongue to his neck and taste the salt of his skin, the creamy remnant of shaving soap, such a masculine perfume I am shaking with desire as I press him down with my hands, and bite.

He wakes up and roars.

I try to silence him with my hand in his mouth and he bites me in return! His teeth are lodged there in the fleshy part of my hand but I endure the pain, I don't care about it; all is swept away by the ecstasy of feeding. We lie there, biting each other. His body arches up under mine.

A scratching noise at the door.

We both freeze, like lovers caught in the act. I stop swallowing. Slowly I withdraw my fangs from the wounds. Daniel gives only a faint gasp, though the pain must be excruciating. We look at each other; the door opens; an apparition floats in.

She's wearing a thick white nightgown and she carries a candle that reflects in her eyes. "Daniel?" she whispers. "It's midnight"

I can tell from her manner that she hasn't come in response to his cry. I doubt she even heard it. No, she comes in like a thief and it's obvious that she is here by appointment. I am partly hidden by the bed curtain so I have a good look at her before she sees me.

She is lovely. Dark brown hair flowing loose over the white gown. Ah, such colours in it, the lovely strands of bronze and red. She has the sweetest face. Dark eyes and brows, a red, surprised bud of a mouth.

She's coming towards the bed. Daniel rasps, "Meg, no!" and then she sees us, sees the blood on his neck and on my mouth. The candle falls to the carpet, her hands fly to her face. She is backing towards the door crying, "Oh, God, no! Help! Murder!"

I have to stop her. I launch myself at her, pinning her to the door before she's taken two steps. I'm in a frenzy now, I must have her, I can't stop. I savour his blood still in my mouth as I bite down, and then he is swept away by the taste of Meg flooding over my tongue. Ripe and red and salty and

Her head falls back. She clings to me. It is so exquisite that I slow down and draw delicately on her until she presses her body along the whole length of me and I feel her heart pounding and the breath coming out of her in little staccato cries of amazement.

For some reason I can't kill her. My fangs slip out of the wounds they have made and I hold her close as she sighs. I haven't the energy or will to finish it. No, I like her alive. I love the heavy warmth of her body slumping against mine, and her hair soft against my wet red mouth.

We stand like that for a few minutes. Then I feel Daniel touching my shoulder. He has staggered from his bed. "Who are you?" he whispers. His big hand wanders over my arm, my shoulder blade, my spine. It slides in between me and the woman and lies warm against my ribs. He's resting against my back. The three of us, pressed together.

Well, this is cosy.

I am in the garden again when she finds me. I am pacing back and forth on the grass beneath the cold windows of the mansion with the moon staring down at me; and suddenly there is Charlotte. She steps from the shadow of a hedge to walk at my side.

"It's difficult to leave, isn't it?" she says, slipping her cool hand into mine. "What are they like, your family?"

"Interesting," I say. "Rupert, the son, is in love with the delicious housemaid, Meg. How am I to tell him that Meg slips in regularly to service the father? No wonder Daniel has forbidden Rupert to see her."

Charlotte utters a soft, sensuous laugh. "Oh, Antoine, hasn't Karl told you what a mistake it is to ask their names, to become involved in their lives? You know you shouldn't, yet you can't stop. That's always my downfall, too."

Ah now, Charlotte. She is Karl's lover and her presence is all it takes to reveal the folly of Karl's advice. Don't get involved with humans, he tells me? Hypocrite. For he took Charlotte when she was human, couldn't stop himself, couldn't leave her alone. And who could blame him? There is something of the ice-queen and something of the English rose about her. She is the perfect gold and porcelain doll with a heart of darkness. She's like a princess who ran away with the gypsies, all tawny silk and bronze lace. But ask which of them is the more dangerous, the more truly a vampire — it is Charlotte.

She is the seducer. She is the lethal one. You will never see Karl coming; he takes you swiftly and is gone before you know what happened, no promises, no apologies. But Charlotte will worship you from afar, and bring you flowers, and run away from you and come back to you, until you are so mad with love for her that you don't know which way to turn. Oh and then she'll turn on you and take you down, our lady viper, and soak your broken body with her tears.

Not that I was her victim, you understand. But I have watched her in complete admiration.

"Why must it be a downfall?" I ask, annoyed.

"Humans are so alluring, aren't they? You can't go only for one taste. You can't be like Karl just strike and never look back. You're like me, Antoine. You want to play with them, to get to know them, to love them. Is the pleasure worth the pain? I never quite know. You have to do it again and again, to see if it will be different this time."

"It's only a game to me. I don't care about them. I'm doing it for money, that's all."

"Really?" she says. "Then why couldn't you kill them? Why are you still here?"

Charlotte stands on tiptoe and presses her rosy mouth to mine; and she's gone, in a whisper of silk and lilac.

Behind this hedge I find a kitchen garden, where Meg's father lovingly grows vegetables to feed the household. Ah, now I see. He is a man who despises flowers and prettiness, loves prosaic potatoes and beans — just like his employer. The air is thick with the rot of brussels sprouts, the scent of wet churned soil and compost. Through a gap I see the cold shine of the greenhouse, and where the garden meets the servants' area of the house — the tantalizing glint of glass in the kitchen door.

When Rupert discovers that I have not killed his father, he is volcanic with rage.

We meet beneath a line of elm trees. The rooks squawk and squabble in the bare branches above us.

"You liar!" Rupert screams. "You traitor!"

He flies at me, arms going like windmills, but I hold him off. He's useless at fighting, as he is at everything. Perhaps he is a useless artist too, merely in love with the idea of brooding and suffering and being misunderstood.

"Why didn't you finish the old devil off? You only wounded him!"

"I was interrupted."

"What the hell do you mean — interrupted?"

So I tell him. Rupert rages. He paces, he punches trees, he weeps. Finally he turns to me like a man in the grip of a fatal illness, his face white and frail as the skin of a mushroom.

"This is a disaster!" he cries. "If Meg and my father are lovers, then I have nothing left to live for. They'll have a child, and I shall have no inheritance, no house, no wife — nothing!"

He flings himself at me, grabbing the lapels of my coat. I am really enjoying this.

"Kill me," he begs, tears running from his beautiful, anguished eyes. "Kill me instead."

Oh, my pleasure.

Only I can't do it.

I hold Rupert close and we are the same height so he looks into my eyes for an instant before my head goes down to his throat. He is tense, desperate for oblivion. But then the inevitable happens. He softens in my arms and clasps my head. He sighs. He forgets what he was angry about.

We are locked together, his blood running sweetly into my open mouth, his groin pressed hard against mine. And it happens. I fall in love with him.

And I'm satiated so I stop drinking; I just want to hold him against me. But I haven't taken nearly enough to kill him and he knows it.

"You bastard," he says weakly. "You liar."

He faints. I let him go. I leave him lying there, slumped on the roots of a tree, and I run. .

I don't go far. There is an ancient rose arbour halfway across the grounds, with a dry fountain and some sad-looking, mossy statues. Here I hesitate, undecided, my mind full of Rupert and Meg and Daniel. I want them so badly. I am in anguish.

Karl startles me. I am not looking where I'm going and I don't see him there in the shadow of a rose trellis. I almost step on him. He's like a statue coming to life, with fire for eyes, and if I had been human I believe I should have died of fear. He's still following me, watching me, warning me — just for the hell of it, I swear.

"Are you simply going to leave him?" He grips my arms, forcing me to meet his gaze. "You have a choice, Antoine. Go back and finish them all; or leave now, and never come back. Make a decision or this will destroy you!"

"Why don't you leave me the hell alone!" I growl, pulling free of him.

"I shall," he says coldly. "But I have seen so many of our kind sabotage their own existence through their obsession with mortals. I have even known them to kill themselves."

"Kill themselves?" The idea is shocking to me. Abhorrent. What's the use of becoming immortal only to waste it?

"As soon as I am sure that you understand, then I shall leave you to your folly."

I laugh. "Karl, do you really not see? How boring do you want our existence to be? Oh, yes, I have tried all the things that new-made vampires think will thrill them. And it does thrill, for a little while. I have climbed mountains where the cold and the lack of air would kill humans. I have swum deep in the ocean. I have thrown myself like a bird off the Eiffel Tower and walked away with a broken wrist."

"And have you not found wonder in any of this?"

"The thing is that when such feats come so easily to us, there is no point in doing them. No challenge." My voice is throaty and I hate myself for being sincere and fervent in front of Karl, but there it is. "All that's left, the only challenge, the only chance of passion" — I point across the garden at the grey-brown hulk of stone — "lies in that house."

"I disagree," says Karl, but his eyes betray him.

"If you disagree, my friend, why are you pestering me? There is no reason under the moon for you to be haunting me, except that you get some frisson of excitement from it."

Karl can find no reply to that. I dance away, quite pleased to have silenced him for once.

I am back at the house again. Moth to the flame. Of course.

I'm outside the parlour window and they are inside, sitting there by the light of an open fire and gas lamps. A brown scene, with little touches of green, red and gold. To my surprise, Rupert and his father are sitting in armchairs on opposite sides of the grate. They are not speaking but, my God! At least they are in the same room! They are sipping brandy from balloon glasses and the liquor shines like rubies in the fire-glow.

Meg is perched on a couch, sewing. She wears a simple skirt and cardigan — not the maid's uniform I expected — and her hair is coiled on her head, beautifully dishevelled. They are listening to music on the wireless — such a big box to produce such small, tinny, jaunty sounds! But this is not a scene of happy domesticity.

There is a dreadful tension between them. Even through the glass I feel it.

They're waiting for me, thinking of me. I can feel the heat of their dreams and desires. For me they would forget their quarrels, even forget their relationships to each other, just to feel my lips on them again and my fangs driving into them to lose themselves in bliss. I long to go to them. I want to feel their arms around me, and their bodies pliant under mine, and their genitals stiffening and opening like exotic flowers and their blood leaping into me, God, yes, their blood

The woman pricks herself with the needle. I watch the blood-bead swell on her finger. Then her lips close on the wound, and my desires throb like pain.

My hand is on the window

Meg looks up with her finger still pressed to the moist bud of her mouth, and sees me. I grip the frame of the sash window and push it upwards. The warmth of the room rushes to meet me and I hear her gasp, "He's here!"

The men jump to their feet. Their faces are rapt, eyes feverish, lips parted. All three of them are coming towards me and I long to stroke their hair, to feel the heat of their bodies through their clothes and taste their skin. Brooding Rupert and leonine Daniel and sensual Meg. Three golden figures in a cave of fire. "There you are," they whisper. "Come in, Antoine, come in to us."

I reach out to them, as they are reaching out to me. Our fingertips touch

Someone slams down the window between us. A hand grips my arm.

"They will suck you in," says Charlotte into my ear. "They will be your slaves and you will be theirs."

Now if it had been Karl who shut the window I should have been furious. But I can never be angry with Charlotte; not for long, anyway. In a flash I am detached and ironic. "That sounds quite appealing."

Their faces are pressed against the cold pane, staring into the twilight. Charlotte pulls me aside so they can't see us. I yield, and we walk slowly along the back of the house, with grit and soil and the debris of autumn accumulating on our shoes. A graveyard scent. I'm looking for another way in. I feel like a revenant, scratching at windows, rattling door handles.

This path leads us into the kitchen garden again. In the gloom there are rooks on the furrows, pecking at the delicious morsels

Meg's father has turned up with his digging. Will he know what his daughter does with Daniel, and with Rupert, and with me? Will he join us? An old man, smelling of sweat and earth, creating green life from the ground I should like to taste his essence.

"If you go in, they won't let you go," says Charlotte. "You won't be able to leave."

I pull her to me and kiss her neck. "I shouldn't want to leave. I love them. And you sound thrilled at the idea yourself."

She laughs. "Wasn't I right, Antoine? Yes, this is excitement. This is ecstasy. Shall I tell you why Karl is so cold? Not because he's different to us. No, it's because he's the same, he can't leave humans alone. Only he hates the consequences. Oh, I always plunge in head first, I can't help myself, I always think it will be different this time. But Karl he's the realist."

And Karl is there, as if he stepped out of thin air in the shadows. He has been waiting for us. Now he's strolling on the other side of me, his hand so affectionate upon my arm. They are guiding me away from the house, along the grassy path towards the hedge at the top of the garden and the bare trees beyond, away, towards redemption. Every step is agony.

"The trouble is, there's a price to pay," Karl tells me. "You can say 'yes' to them and you can let yourself fall; but you can't have them and keep them. They're dying, Antoine. The more you love them, the more you kill them."

"Don't think it won't hurt you, when they die," says Charlotte. "Don't imagine the pain of it won't claw your heart to pieces!"

"But if I" My voice is weak.

Charlotte knows what I'm thinking. "Yes, you could make them into vampires," she says crisply. "With a great amount of energy and will and strength, you could do that. But it won't be the same. Then you will have three cold-eyed predators, vying with you, resenting you, perhaps hating you. But your warm, moist, blood-filled lovers will be gone."

"So leave," says Karl. "Leave them now!"

We have reached the gap in the hedge. I stand there despairingly. I raise my arms in anguish and the flapping of my overcoat makes a dozen rooks rise in alarm. But one remains. It hops in circles on the grass, trailing a damaged wing. It cannot escape the earth.

I break away from Karl and Charlotte. I run back to the house and stand outside, breathing hard.

My lovers are inside, waiting for me. I can hear the blood thundering through their hearts, their red tongues moistening their lips in anticipation. I only have to turn away and they will remain like that for ever: aching for me, waiting, their lust turning to fevered agony — but alive.

Grief will, I think, be interesting.

I press my fingers to the cold glass of the kitchen door, and I go in.

Vampire King of the Goth Chicks

From the Journals of Sonja Blue

Nancy A. Collins

Nancy A. Collins currently makes her home in Atlanta, Georgia. She is the author of several novels and numerous short stories, as well as having served a two-year stint as the writer of DC Comics' Swamp Thing. The recipient of the HWA's Bram Stoker, British Fantasy Society's Icarus, and the Deathrealm Awards, her books include Sunglasses After Dark, Walking Wolf, Lynch: A Gothik Western and Avenue X and Other Dark Stories, a self-published collection of thirteen short stories the author herself selected to show off her diverse literary talents .

Her newest works include Knuckles & Tales, a Southern neo-Gothic collection illustrated by Stephen R. Bissette, and Dead Roses for a Blue Lady, a collection of Sonja Blue short fiction. The vampire Blue is also the subject of Collins's fifth and final novel with the character , Darkest Heart.

" ' Vampire King of the Goth Chicks' originally started out as the first comic book appearance of Sonja Blue," explains Collins. "Entitled 'The Real Thing', the script was commissioned by Joe R. Lansdale for Weird Business, a hefty hardback comic 'book' he was co-editing for Mojo Press back in 1995 .

"Although I was not overly thrilled with the art that ended up being used, I always liked the story, and after a couple of years I decided to translate it into prose making it the first Sonja Blue short story. The transition from comic book to prose story wasn't particularly hard for me to accomplish, since the original script for the comic story was extremely detailed."

The Red Raven is a real scum-pit. The only thing marking it as a bar is the vintage Old Crow ad in the front window and a stuttering neon sign that says lounge . The johns are always backing up and the place perpetually stinks of piss.

During the week it's just another neighbourhood dive, serving truck drivers and barflies. Not a Bukowski among them. But, since the drinks are cheap and the bartenders never check ID, the Red Raven undergoes a sea change come Friday night. The bar's clientele changes radically; growing younger and stranger, at least in physical appearance. The usual suspects that occupy the Red Raven's booths and bar stools are replaced by young men and women tricked out in black leather and so many facial piercings they resemble walking tackle boxes. Still not a Bukowski among them.

This Friday night's no different from any others. A knot of Goth kids are already gathered outside on the kerb as I arrive, plastic go-cups full of piss-warm Rolling Rock clutched in their hands as they talk among themselves. Amid all the bad Cure haircuts, heavy mascara, dead-white face powder and black lipstick, I hardly warrant a second look.

Normally I don't bother with joints like this, but I've been hearing this persistent rumour that there's a blood cult operating out of the Red Raven. I make it my business to check out such rumours for myself. Most of the time it turns out to be nothing, but occasionally there's something far more sinister at the heart of urban legends.

The interior of the Red Raven is crowded with young men and women, all of whom look far stranger and more menacing than myself. What with my black motorcycle jacket, ratty jeans, and equally tattered New York Dolls T-shirt, I'm somewhat on the conservative end of the dress code.

I wave down the bartender, who doesn't seem to consider it odd I'm sporting sunglasses after dark, and order a beer. It doesn't bother me that the glass he hands me bears visible greasy fingerprints and a smear of lipstick on the rim. After all, it's not like I'm going to drink it.

Now that I have the necessary prop, I settle in and wait. Finding out the low-down in places like this isn't that hard, really. All I've got to do is be patient and keep my ears open. Over the years I've developed a method for listening to dozens of conversations at once — sifting the meaningless ones aside without even being conscious of it most of the time, until I find the one I'm looking for. I suspect it's not unlike how a shark can pick out the frenzied splashing of a wounded fish from miles away.

" told him he could kiss my ass goodbye "

" really liked their last album "

" bitch acted like I'd done something"

". . . until next pay day? I promise you'll get it right back "

" the undead. He's the real thing "

There. That one.

I angle my head in the direction of the voice I've zeroed in on, trying not to look at them directly. There are three of them — one male and two female apparently in earnest conversation with a young woman. The two females are archetypal Goth chicks. They look to be in their late teens, early twenties, dressed in a mixture of black leather and lingerie and wearing way too much eye make-up. One is tall and willowy, her heavily applied make-up doing little to mask the bloom of acne on her cheeks. Judging from the roots of her boot-black hair, she's probably a natural dishwater blonde.

Her companion is considerably shorter and a little too pudgy for the black satin bustier she's shoehorned into. Her face is painted clown white with an ornate tattoo at the corner of her left eye, which I've been told is more in imitation of a popular comic book character than as tribute to the Egyptian gods. She's wearing a man's riding derby draped in a length of black lace that makes her look taller than she really is.

The male member of the group is tall and skinny, outfitted in a pair of leather pants held up by a monstrously ornate silver belt buckle and a leather jacket. He isn't wearing a shirt, his bare breast bone hairless and a tad sunken. He's roughly the same age as the girls, perhaps younger, constantly nodding in agreement with whatever they say, nervously flipping his lank, burgundy-coloured hair out of his face. It doesn't take me long to discern that the tall girl is called Sable, the short one in the hat Tanith, and that the boy is Serge. The girl they are talking to has close-cropped Raggedy Ann-red hair and a nose ring. She is Shawna.

Out of habit, I drop my vision into the Pretender spectrum and scan them for sign of inhuman taint. All four check out clean. Oddly, this piques my interest. I move a little closer to where they are standing huddled, so I can filter out the Marilyn Manson blaring out of the nearby juke-box.

Shawna shakes her head and smiles nervously, uncertain as to whether she's being goofed on or not. "Cmon — a real vampire?"

"We told him about you, Shawna, didn't we, Serge?" Tanith looks to the gawky youth hovering at her elbow. Serge nods his head eagerly, which necessitates his flipping his hair out of his face yet again.

"His name is Rhymer. Lord Rhymer. He's 300 years old," Sable adds breathlessly, "and he said he wanted to meet you!"

Despite her attempts at post-modern death-chic, Shawna looks like a flattered schoolgirl.

"Really?"

I can tell she's hooked as clean as a six-pound trout and that it won't take much more work on the trio's part to land their catch. The quartet of black-leather-clad young rebels quickly leave the Red Raven, scurrying off as fast as their Doc Martens can take them. I give it a couple of beats then set out after them.

As I shadow them from a distance, I can't shake the nagging feeling that something is wrong. Although I seem to have found what I've come looking for, something's not quite right about it, but I'll be damned (I know I'm being redundant) if I can say what.

In my experience, vampires avoid Goths like daylight. While their adolescent fascination with death and decadence might, at first, seem to make them natural choices as servitors, their extravagant fashion sense calls far too much attention to them. Vampires prefer their servants far more nondescript and discreet. But perhaps this Lord Rhymer, whoever he may be, is of a more modern temperament than those I've encountered in the past.

I don't know what to make of this trio who seem to be acting as his judas goats. Judging by their evident enthusiasm, perhaps "converts" is a far more accurate description than servitors. They don't seem to have the predator's gleam in their eyes, nor is there anything resembling a killer's caution in their walk or mannerisms. As they stroll down the darkened streets their chatter is more like that of mischievous children out on a lark — say t.p.ing the superintendent's front lawn or soaping the gym teacher's windows. They certainly aren't aware of the extra shadow that attached itself to them the moment they left the Red Raven with their fresh pick-up.

After a ten-minute walk they arrive at their destination: an abandoned church. Of course. It's hardly Carfax Abbey, but I suppose it will do. The church is a two-storey wooden structure boasting an old-fashioned spire, stabbing a symbolic finger in the direction of heaven.

The feeling of ill-ease rises in me again. Vampires dislike such obvious lairs. Hell, these aren't the Middle Ages. They don't have to hang out in ruined monasteries and family mausoleums any more not that there are any to be found in the US, anyhow. No, contemporary bloodsuckers prefer to dwell within warehouse lofts or abandoned industrial complexes, even condos. I tracked one dead boy to ground in an inner-city hospital that had been shut down during the Reagan administration and left to rot. I suspect I'll have to start investigating the various military bases scheduled for shutdown for signs of infestation within a year or two.

As I watch the little group troop inside the church, there is only one thing I know for certain: if I want to know what's going down here, I better get inside. I circle around the building, keeping to the darkest shadows, my senses alert for signs of the usual sentinels that guard a vampire's lair, such as ogres and renfields. Normally vampires prefer to keep their bases covered. Ogres for physical protection, renfields warped psychics — to protect them against psionic attacks from rival bloodsuckers.

I reach out with my mind as I climb up the side of the church, trying to pick up the garbled snarl of ogre-thought or the telltale dead space of shielded minds that accompany renfields, but all my sonar picks up is the excited heat of the foursome I trailed from the Red Raven and a slightly more complex signal from deeper inside the church. Curiouser and curiouser.

The spire doesn't house a bell, just a rusting Korean War-era public address system dangling from frayed wires. As it is, there is barely enough room for a man to stand, much less ring, but at least the trapdoor isn't locked. It opens with a tight squeal of disused hinges, but nothing stirs in the shadows at the foot of the ladder below. Within seconds I find myself with the best seat in the house, crouched in the rafters spanning the nave.

The interior of the church looks appropriately atmospheric. What pews remain are in disarray, the hymnals tumbled from their racks and spilled across the floor. Saints, apostles and prophets state down from the windows, gesturing with upraised shepherd's crooks or hands bent into the sign of benediction. I lift my own mirrored gaze to the mullion window located above and behind the pulpit. It depicts a snowy lamb kneeling on a field of green and framed against a cloudless sky, in which a shining disc is suspended. The large brass cross just below the sheep-window has been inverted, in keeping with the desecration motif.

The only light is provided by a pair of heavy cathedral-style candelabra, each bristling with over a hundred dripping red and black candles, flanking either side of the pulpit. The Goth kids from the Red Raven gather at the chancel rail, their faces turned towards the pulpit situated above the black-velvet-draped altar.

"Where is he?" whispers Shawna, her voice surprisingly loud in the empty church.

"Don't worry," Tanith assures her. "He'll be here."

As if on cue, there is the smell of ozone and a gout of purplish smoke arises from behind the pulpit. Shawna gives a little squeal of surprise despite herself and takes an involuntary step backward, only to find her way blocked by the others.

A deep, highly cultured masculine voice booms forth. "Good evening, my children. I bid you welcome to my abode, and that you enter gladly and of your own free will."

The smoke clears, revealing a tall man dressed in tight-fitting black satin pants, a black silk poet's shirt, black leather English riding boots, and a long black opera cape with a red silk lining. His hair is long and dark, pulled back into a loose ponytail by a red satin ribbon. His skin is as white as milk in a saucer, his eyes reflecting red in the dim candlelight. Lord Rhymer has finally elected to make his appearance.

Serge smiles nervously at his demon lord and steps forward, gesturing to Shawna as Tanith and Sable watch expectantly. "W-we did as you asked, master. We brought you the girl."

Lord Rhymer smiles slightly, his eyes narrowing at the sight of her.

"Ah, yesss . The new girl."

Shawna stands there gaping up at the vampire lord as if he were Jim Morrison, Robert Smith and Danzig rolled into one. She starts, gasping more in surprise than fright, as Rhymer addresses her directly.

"Your name is Shawna, is it not?"

"Y-yes." Her voice is so tiny it makes her sound like a little girl. But there is nothing childlike in the lust dancing in her eyes.

Lord Rhymerholds out a pale hand to the trembling young woman. His fingernails are long and pointed and lacquered black. He smiles reassuringly, his voice calm and strong, designed to sway those of weaker nature.

"Come to me, Shawna. Come to me, so that I might kiss you."

A touch of apprehension crosses the girl's face. She hesitates, glancing at the others, who close in about her even tighter than before.

"I I don't know."

Rhymer narrows his blood-red eyes, intensifying his stare. His voice grows sterner, revealing its cold edge. " Come to me, Shawna."

All the tension in her seems to drain away and Shawna's eyes grow even more vacant than before, if possible. She moves forward, slowly mounting the stairs to the pulpit. Rhymer holds his arms out to greet her.

"That's it, my dear. Come to me as you have dreamed, so many times before" Rhymer steps forward to meet her, the cape outstretched between his arms like the wings of a giant bat. His smile widens and his mouth opens, exposing pearly white fangs dripping saliva. His voice has been made husky by lust. "Come to me, my bride"

Shawna grimaces in pain/pleasure as Rhymer's fangs penetrate her throat. Even from my shadowy perch above it all I can smell the sharp tang of blood, and feel a dark stirring at the base of my brain, which I quickly push aside. I don't need that kind of trouble — not now. Still, I find it hard to look away from the tableau below me.

Rhymer holds Shawna tight against him. She whimpers as if on the verge of orgasm. The blood rolling down her throat and dripping into the pale swell of her cleavage is as sticky and dark as spilled molasses.

Rhymer draws back, smiling smugly as he wipes the blood off his chin. "It is done. You are now bound to me by blood and the strength of my immortal will."

Shawna's lids flutter and she seems to have a little trouble focusing her eyes. She touches her bloodied neck and stares at her red-stained finger for a long moment. "Wow" She steps back, a dazed, post-orgasmic look on her face. She staggers slightly as she moves to rejoin the others, one hand still clamped over her bruised and bleeding throat. Tanith and Sable eagerly step forward to help their new sister, their hands quickly disappearing up her skirt as they steady her, cooing encouragement in soothing voices.

"Welcome to the family, Shawna," Sable whispers, kissing first her cheek, then tonguing her earlobe.

"You're one of us, now and for ever," Tanith purrs, giving Shawna a probing kiss while scooping her breasts free of her blouse. Sable presses even closer, licking at the blood smearing Shawna's neck. Serge stands off to one side, nervously chewing a thumbnail and occasionally brushing his forelock out of his face. Every few seconds his eyes flicker from the girls to Lord Rhymer, who stands in the pulpit, smiling and nodding his approval. After a few more moments of groping and gasping, the three women begin undressing one another in earnest, their moans soon mixed with nervous giggles. Black leather and lace drop away, revealing black fish-net stockings and garter belts and crotchless underwear. At the sight of Shawna's pubic thatch mousy brown, as opposed to her fluorescent red locks — Serge's eyes widen and his nostrils flare. He looks to Rhymer, who nods and gestures languidly with one taloned hand that the boy has his permission to join the orgy.

Serge fumbles with his ornate silver belt buckle, which hits the wooden floor with a solid clunk ! I lift an eyebrow in surprise. While Serge is thin to the point of emaciation, I must admit the boy's hung like a stallion. Sable mutters something into Serge's ear that makes him laugh just before he plants his lips against her own blood-smeared mouth. Tanith, her eyes heavy-lidded and her lips pulled into a lascivious grin, reaches around from behind to stroke him to full erection.

Serge breaks free of his embrace with Sable and turns to lift Shawna in his arms, carrying her to the black-draped altar, the other girls quickly joining in. There is much biting and raking of exposed flesh with fingernails. Soon they are a mass of writhing naked flesh, giggling and moaning and grunting, the slap of flesh against flesh filling the silent church. And overseeing it all from his place of power is Lord Rhymer, his crimson eyes twinkling in the candlelight as he watches his followers cavorting below him. To his credit, Serge proves himself tireless, energetically rutting with all three girls in various combinations for hours on end.

It isn't until the stained-glass windows of the church begin to lighten with the coming dawn that it finally comes to an end. The moment Rhymer notices the light coming through one of the windows the smile disappears from his face.

" Enough !" he thunders, causing the others to halt in mid-fuck. "The sun will soon be upon me! It is time for you to leave, my children!"

The Goths pull themselves off and out of each other without a word of complaint and begin to struggle back into their clothes. Once they're dressed they waste no time hurrying off, taking pains not to look one another in the eye. It is all I can do to suppress a groan of relief as the last of the blood cultists lurches out of the building. I thought those losers were never going to leave!

I check my own watch against the shadows sliding across the floor below me. Now would be a good time to pay a social call on their so-called "master". I hope he's in the mood for a little chat before beddy-bye.

Lord Rhymer yawns as he makes his way down the basement stairs. What with the candelabra he's holding and the flowing opera cloak, I'm reminded of Lugosi's Dracula. But then, Bela Lugosi is dead.

The basement runs the length of the building above it, with a poured concrete floor. Stacks of old hymnals, folding chairs and mouldering choir robes have been pushed into the corners. A rosewood casket with a maroon velvet lining rests atop a pair of sawhorses in the middle of the room. An old-fashioned steamer trunk stands on end nearby.

I watch the vampire lord set the candelabra down and, still yawning, unhook his cape and carefully drape it atop the trunk. If he senses my presence, here in the shadows, he gives no evidence of it in his manner. Smiling crookedly, I deliberately scrape my boot heel against the concrete floor. My smile becomes a grin when he spins around, eyes bugging in fear.

"What —? Who's there?"

He blinks, genuinely surprised to see me standing to one side of the open casket balanced atop the sawhorse. I'd already caught the tell-tale smell of it when I first entered the basement, but a quick glance into the casket confirms what I already knew: it's lined with earth. I reach inside and lift a handful of dirt, allowing it to spill between my splayed fingers. I look up and meet Rhymer's scarlet gaze.

"Okay, buddy, what the hell are you trying to pull here?"

Rhymer squares his shoulders and pulls himself up to his full height, hissing and exposing his fangs, hooking his fingers into talons. His red eyes glint in the dim light like those of a cornered animal.

I am not impressed.

"Can the Christopher Lee act, asshole! I'm not some Goth chick tripping her brains out! You're not fooling me for one moment!" I kick the sawhorses out from under the casket, sending it tumbling to the floor, spilling its layer of soil. Rhymer gasps, his eyes darting from the ruined coffin to me and back and again. "Only humans think vampires need to sleep on a layer of their home soil!"

Rhymer tries to regain the momentum by pointing a trembling finger at me, doing his best to sound menacing. "You have defiled the resting place of Rhymer, Lord of the Undead! And for that, woman, you will pay with your life!"

"Oh yeah?" I sneer. "Buddy, I knew Dracula — and, believe me, you ain't him!"

I move on him so fast it's like blinking. One moment I'm halfway across the room, the next I'm standing over him, his blood dripping from my knuckles. Rhymer's lying on the basement floor, dazed and wiping at his gushing mouth and nose. A set of dentures, complete with fangs, lies on the floor beside him. I nudge the upper plate with the toe of my boot, shaking my head in disgust.

"Just what I thought: fake fangs! And the eyes are contact lenses, right? I bet the nails are theatrical quality press-ons, too"

Rhymer tries to scuttle away from me like a crab, but he's much too slow. I grab him by the ruff of his poet's shirt, pulling him to his feet with one quick motion that causes him to yelp in alarm.

"What the fuck are you playing at here? Are you running some kind of scam on these Goth kids?"

Rhymer opens his mouth and although his lips are moving there's no sound coming out. At first I think he's so scared he's not able to speak — then I realize he's a serious stutterer when he's not a vampire.

"I'm n-not a con m-man, if that's what y-you're thinking. I'm n-not doing it for m-money!"

"If it's not for money, then why?" Not that I haven't known his motivation from the moment I first laid eyes on him. But I want to hear it from his own lips before I make my decision.

"All m-my life I've been an outsider. N-no one ever p-paid any attention to m-me. N-not even m-my own p-parents. N-no one ever took me seriously. I was a j-joke and everyone k-knew it. The only p-place where I could escape from being m-me was at the m-movies. I really admired the v-vampires in the m-movies. They were d-different, too. But n-no one m-made fun of them or ignored them. They were p-powerful and p-people were afraid of them. They c-could m-make w-women do whatever they w-wanted.

"W-when my p-parents died a c-couple of years ago, they left m-me a lot of m-money. So m-much I'd n-never have to work again. An hour after their funeral I w-went to a dentist and had all m-my upper teeth removed and the dentures m-made.

"I always w-wanted to be a v-vampire and now I had the c-chance to live m-my d-dreams. So I b-bought this old church and's-started hanging out at the Red Raven, looking for the right type of g-girls.

"T-Tanith was the first. Then came S-sable. The rest w-was easy. They w-wanted m-me to b-be real so b-badly, I didn't even have to p-pretend that m-much. B-but then things started to g-get out of hand. They w-wanted m-me t-to — you know p-put my thing in them. B-but m-my thing c-can't get hard. N-not with other p-people. I told them it w-was because I w-was undead. So we f-found S-serge. I-I like to w-watch."

Rhymer fixes one of his rapidly blackening eyes on me. His fear is beginning to give way to curiosity. "B-but w-what difference is any of this to y-you? Are y-you a family m-member? One of S-serge's ex g-girlfriends?"

I can't help but laugh as I let go of him, careful to place myself between Rhymer and the exit. He staggers backward and quickly, if inelegantly, puts distance between us. He flinches at the sound of my laughter as if it were a physical blow.

"I knew there was something fishy going on when I spotted the belt buckle on the Goth studmuffin. No self-respecting dead boy in his right mind would let that chunk of silver within a half-mile of his person! And all that hocus-pocus with the smoke and the Black Sabbat folderol! All of it a rank amateur's impression of what vampires and vampirism is all about, cobbled together from Hammer films and Anton Levy paperbacks! You really are a pathetic little twisted piece of crap, Rhymer — or whatever the hell your real name is! You surround yourself with the icons of darkness and play at damnation; but you don't recognize the real thing even when it steps forward and bloodies your fuckin' nose!"

Rhymer stands there for a long moment, then his eyes suddenly widen and he gasps aloud, like a man who has walked into a room and seen someone he has believed long dead. Clearly overcome, he drops to his feet before me, his bloodstained lips quivering uncontrollably.

"You're real!"

"Get up," I growl, flashing a glimpse of fang.

Instead of inspiring fear in Rhymer, all this does is cause him to cry out even louder than before. He is now actually grovelling, pawing at my boots as he blubbers.

"At last! I k-knew if I w-waited long enough, one of y-you w-would finally come!"

"I said get up , you little toadeater!" I kick him away, but it does no good. Rhymer crawls back on his belly, as fast as a lizard on a hot rock. I was afraid something like this would happen.

"I'll do anything you w-want give you anything you n-need!" He grabs the cuffs of my jeans, tugging insistently. "B-bite me! Drink my b-blood! Pleeease ! M-make me like you!"

As I look down at this wretched human who has lived a life so stunted, his one driving passion is to become a walking dead man, I feel my memory slide back across the years, to the night a foolish young girl, made giddy by the excitement that comes with the pursuit of forbidden pleasures and made stupid by the romance of danger, allowed herself to be lured away from the safety of the herd. I remember how she found herself alone with a blood-eyed monster that hid behind the face of a handsome, smooth-talking stranger. I remember how her nude, blood-smeared body was hurled from the speeding car and tossed in the gutter and left for dead. I remember how she was far from dead. I remember how she was me.

I can feel myself trembling like I've got a high fever. My disgust has become anger, and I've never been very good at controlling my anger. And part of me — a dark, dangerous part — has no desire ever to learn.

I try hard to keep a grip on myself, but it's not easy. In the past when I've been overwhelmed by my anger I've tried to make sure I only vent it at those I consider worthy of such murderous rage. Such as vampires. Real ones, that is. Like myself. But sometimes well, sometimes I lose it. Like now.

"You want to be like me?"

I kick the grovelling little turd so hard that ribs splinter as he flies across the basement floor and collides with the wall. He cries out, but it doesn't exactly sound like pain.

"You stupid bastard! I don't even want to be like me !"

I tear the mirrored sunglasses away, and Rhymer's eyes widen as he sees my own. They look nothing like his scarlet-tinted contact lenses. There is no white, no corona — merely seas of solid blood boasting vertical slits that open and close, like those of a snake, depending on the strength of the light. The church basement is very gloomy, so my pupils are dilated wide — like those of a shark rising from the sunless depths to savage a luckless swimmer.

Rhymer lifts a hand to block out the sight of me as I advance on him, his trembling delight now replaced by genuine, 100 per cent monkey-brain fear. For the first time he seems to realize that he is in the presence of a monster.

"Please don't hurt me, mistress! Forgive me!"

I don't know what else he might have said to try and avoid his fate, because his head comes off in my hands right about then.

For a brief second Rhymer's hands still flutter in their futile attempt to beg my favour, then there is a spurt of scarlet from the neck stump, not unlike that from a spitting fountain, as his still-beating heart sends a stream of blood to where the brain would normally be. I quickly side-step the gruesome spray without letting go of my trophy.

Turning away from Rhymer's still-twitching corpse, I step over the ruins of the antique coffin and its payload. No doubt the dirt had been imported from the Balkans — perhaps Moldavia or even Transylvania. I shake my head in amazement that such old wives' tales are still in circulation and given validity by so many.

As I head up the stairs, Rhymer's head tucked under my arm, I pause one last time to survey what is left of the would-be vampire king of the Goth chicks. Man, what a mess. Glad I'm not the one who has to clean it up.

This isn't the first vampire-wanna-be I've run into, but I've got to admit he had the best scam. The Goth chicks wanted the real thing and he gave them what they thought they wanted, even down to retro-fitting the church with theatrical trapdoors and magician's flashpots. And they bought into the bullshit because it made them feel special, it made them feel real, and, most importantly, it made them feel alive . Poor, stupid bastards. To them it's all black leather, lovebites and tacky chrome jewellery; where everyone is eternally young and beautiful and no one can ever hurt you ever again.

Like hell.

As for Rhymer, he wanted the real thing as badly as the Goths. Perhaps even more so. He'd spent his entire life aspiring to monstrosity; hoping that given time his heart-felt mimicry of the damned would either turn him into what he longed to be thorough sympathetic magic, or that his actions would eventually draw the attention of the creatures of the night he worshipped so ardently. As, indeed, it had. I was the real thing all right; big as life and twice as ugly.

But I was hardly the bloodsucking seductress Rhymer had been dreaming of all those years. There was no way he could know that his little trick would lure forth not just a vampire but a vampire-slayer as well.

You see, my unique and unwanted predicament has denied me many things: the ability to age, to love, to feel life quicken within me. And in retaliation against this unwished-for transformation, I've spent decades denying the monster inside me; trying — however futilely — to turn my back on the horror that is the Other who dwells in the dark side of my soul. However, there is one pleasure, and one alone, I allow myself to indulge. And that is killing vampires

And those that would become them.

Dawn is well under way by the time I re-enter the nave. The whitewashed walls are dappled with light dyed blue, green and red by the stained glass. I take a couple of steps backward, then drop-kick Rhymer's head right through the Lamb-of-God window.

The birds are chirping happily away in the trees, greeting the coming day with their morning songs, as I push open the wide double doors of the church. A stray dog with matted fur and slats for ribs is already sniffing Rhymer's ruined noggin where it has landed in the high weeds. The cur lifts its muzzle and automatically growls, but as I draw closer it flattens its ears and tucks its tail between its legs and quickly scurries off. Dogs are smart. They know what is and isn't of the natural world — even if humans don't.

Last night was a bust, as far as I'm concerned. When I go out hunting I prefer bringing down actual game, not faux predators. Still, I wish I could hang around and see the look on the faces of Rhymer's groupies when they find out what's happened to their "master". That'd be good for a chuckle or two.

No one can say I don't have a sense of humour about these things.

Just His Type

Storm Constantine

Storm Constantine lives in the Midlands of England with her husband Jim and nine cats. The author of seventeen novels that span the genres of science fiction, horror and fantasy, she has also co-written non-fiction titles on Egyptian feline goddesses and esoteric psychology, as well as numerous short stories.

Her recent works include the "Magravandias Chronicles", a fantasy trilogy whose second volume , The Crown of Silence, was published in 2000, and Silverheart, a novel co-written with Michael Moorcock .

" When I was researching my novel Stalking Tender Prey," recalls the author, "which was primarily about the legends of fallen angels, it seemed clear to me that the vampire myths might also have stemmed from the same origins .

"The Biblical rendition of the fallen angels derived from earlier myths from Sumeria, which perhaps came from times earlier than that. The old stories seem tantalizingly to suggest that the image of winged beings grew from memories of a real race of flesh and blood, who were vulture shamans. The idea of them having wings could derive from the fact that in their rituals they wore the wings of griffin vultures around their shoulders. (Ancient remains of these wings have been found in caves in the Middle East, along with bones and other evidence of ritual.) Drinking the blood of both animals and humans is something the fallen angels were accused of doing, and this may well have been part of their shamanic rites.

" It wasn't really appropriate to include this aspect of the myth in Stalking Tender Prey, so I was glad to be given the opportunity to explore it in the story for this anthology ."

The trouble was she was just his type. Sitting at the back of the stuffy pub function room, her eyes fixed upon him, she commanded his attention, apparently without effort. He could tell she was tall, because her head was the highest on the row. Her hands were clasped in her lap and she was dressed in black.

She had come to watch the famous historical investigator and author, Noah Johnson, deliver a lecture. He found he was playing to her alone throughout the evening. He knew the talk, "Vampires in Myth and History", off by heart, having delivered it countless times before. He updated it constantly, but essentially it was the same old stuff: colourful but careful. He was selective about what he gave the punters. He knew how to please a mixed crowd.

The regular meetings, "Enigmas of History," were going well. He ran it once a fortnight in the upstairs room of his local pub, the Gun and Duck, and now had a regular attendance of around fifty people. Sometimes, he had to turn some away. More than fifty and the front row started fainting. He'd started it to augment his writing income, for the periods when funds were slack — a downside of any writer's life. But it was going so well, he had planned more events; outdoors, now that summer was coming. Sarah would have loved all this. But he mustn't think about her now. She was no longer part of his life.

Noah's friend and assistant, Gary, dimmed the lights in preparation for the slide show. Some of the audience were fanning themselves with the handouts Gary's girlfriend, Abby, had placed on every seat prior to the meeting. The windows were open, but did little to improve the air quality in the room.

One by one, the slides slipped across the screen: illustrations copied from ancient texts, photographs Noah had taken himself while investigating in far corners of obscure eastern European countries. Some of them had been reproduced in Noah's bestselling book, The Search for Nosferatu . The subject no longer captivated him: he'd done it and it was over, but the public were always hungry for it. Noah had moved on to other things and was currently researching his next book, which was concerned with the mythical landscape of the remote Scottish islands, and how the strange ancient structures there might have come to be built.

When the lights came back on, Noah's eyes were drawn immediately to the girl on the back row. He half expected to see that she'd left. That would be just his luck, but no, there she was, sitting straight and demure, gazing at him from beneath downcast lashes, a slight smile on her lips.

He began to answer questions from the audience, but was anxious to keep it short tonight. If people wanted to air their opinions, which most of them did, especially the regulars, they could continue in the bar downstairs. He interrupted a woman as she was speaking. "Hey, it's too hot up here. Shall we move down?"

Most of them would go home, but the ones who saw themselves as the core of his group would remain until closing time. It was only nine o'clock.

People started getting out of their seats, apparently as eager as he was to escape the hot function room. The woman who'd been interrupted looked crestfallen, somewhat confused.

Gary and Abby began clearing up, gathering the dropped leaflets, packing away the slide equipment. "Good turnout," Gary said.

"You could hire a bigger place," Abby suggested. "You'd still pack it."

Noah was looking at the crowd shuffling out. He saw that the girl in black had remained in her seat. He smiled at her and she stood up. He went towards her.

"Excuse me, Mr Johnson, would you mind if I asked you something?"

"Of course not," he said. "Come down to the bar. We usually stay on for a few drinks."

"Thank you."

He put his arm behind her proprietorially to guide her to the door.

"Thanks, Noah!" Abby called behind him. "We'll just finish off, shall we?"

He grinned back at her and she shook her head in mock disapproval. Abby was used to him and he knew how much he could get away with.

Downstairs, punters insisted on buying Noah drinks, but he bought one for the girl himself. "I haven't seen you here before," he said, leaning on the bar.

She pulled a face. Her features were delicate, mobile. "No, I've only just moved here. It was great to discover this group, especially that it's run by you. I've got all your books."

He laughed. "Thanks." In his mind, he could hear Abby's warning cry of: "Noah! She's a fan, okay? For God's sake, be careful."

The girl brushed strands of dark hair from her eyes. Her well-shaped lips were painted perfectly in a dark purple. Her dress was of black lace and velvet, down to the floor. She was virtually the same height he was. "I'm Lara, by the way. Lara Hoskins."

Noah handed her a vodka and tonic. When she took it from him, he saw that her lace cuffs came right down to her fingers. The nails were painted black. "So, what did you want to ask me?" He was conscious of the eyes of his core group upon him, their resentment at a newcomer monopolizing him. Normally, this was the time for Noah to hold court.

"Well, I have to admit it was the subject of the talk tonight that most attracted me," Lara said. She laughed nervously. "Not that I wouldn't have come anyway, of course"

"And?"

"Why don't you talk about the origins of the vampire myth?"

"I do. You heard it."

She was silent for a moment. "I think we both know there's more to it than that."

"Essentially, it's European, although there are parallels in Mesopotamian and Judaic mythology."

"But where do those myths come from?"

"There are recurrent themes in every mythology. People the world over have the same fears, the same desires. There's no reason to think the vampire myth comes from a single root source."

"But in Nosferatu , you implied differently."

"What are you getting at?" Noah said, grinning. "Don't tell me you're a vampire searching for your roots!"

A vampire would certainly not colour up the way she did then. "I have a serious interest in the subject," she said. "I'd hoped you'd take me seriously too."

"Look," he said. "If you want the truth, I think people can become obsessed with certain myths, especially the vampire ones. It's dangerous."

"How?" She looked hungry.

"Any obsession is dangerous. I don't like to encourage it." He was thinking of Sarah. Her face was before his eyes, sad and despairing.

"What happened?" Lara asked in a low voice. It was as if she knew already.

He could tell her easily. She could be his confessor. "I knew someone," he began. Then a hand slapped his back.

"Hey!" It was Abby. "Don't tell me you haven't got drinks in for us!" She smiled at Lara. "He treats us like lackeys!"

"Sorry," Noah said. He turned to attract the attention of the barman.

For the rest of the evening Abby refused to leave Noah's side. He knew why. Abby knew him too well. She was good company and gave no indication to Lara that she was suspicious of her, but Noah was well aware of his friend's feelings.

After last orders, when the group was breaking up, Noah said to Lara, "There's an event next Sunday. We're going on a tour of local ancient sites, churches, springs and so on. Should be quite a convoy. Would you like to come?"

"Well" Lara put her empty glass down on the bar. "Might be difficult. I don't have transport."

"I could pick you up," said Noah.

"Great!" Lara opened her bag and rummaged in it. "I'll give you my address. What time?"

"Oh, about midday."

"It'll cost a tenner," said Abby, somewhat darkly.

"Good value," Lara said, taking the lid off a fountain pen.

Outside, in the car park, Abby started on Noah. "What are you up to?" she demanded. "I thought you'd decided to leave punters well alone."

"What do you mean?" Noah countered, fiddling with his keys.

"I mean that you fancy her. It's obvious. But you've been down this road many times before. You know where it leads."

"She's just coming to the event," Noah said. "What's wrong with that? Lots of other people are going and they're all punters as well."

Abby folded her arms belligerently across her chest. "I'm not stupid!"

"Give him a break, will you," Gary snapped.

Abby was not to be deterred. "She's a fan, Gary, and she's got her sights set. There's something a bit odd about her. I can just feel it."

"He's a grown man," Gary said in a tired voice. "For Christ's sake, Ab, you sound like his bloody mother."

"I'm the nearest he has to that," Abby said, getting into the front passenger seat of Noah's car.

For the next few days, Noah couldn't stop thinking about Lara Hoskins. Abby was wrong to be so suspicious. Of course, he had met Sarah at a lecture, long before he'd begun the regular meetings, and perhaps this was why Abby was so scared for him. He'd dated lots of girls since, some of them plucked from the "Enigmas of History" group, and he was the first to admit that none of them had worked out particularly well, but he was sure this was different. Lara was bright and had an enquiring mind. There were no warning signs. Her hands had been steady on her glass all evening. She'd been open and sociable.

By Sunday morning he was buzzing with anticipation, and spent more time than usual on his appearance. Lara was probably about ten years younger than him, in her mid-twenties by the look of her, but that didn't matter. He looked young for his age. All his life, women had flocked to him.

When he drew up outside her house, she came through the front door before he'd even turned off the engine. She was dressed in black jeans and T-shirt, with a black hooded fleece tied around her waist, presumably in case it got cold later. Her long black hair was caught up in a severe ponytail but swished provocatively around her head and shoulders as she ran down the short drive to the road. She was as slim as a boy and looked athletic. Noah's heart turned over. She was gorgeous.

"Hi!" she said breathlessly as she virtually threw herself into the car. She smelled strongly of an oriental yet floral scent.

"Hi," Noah echoed. "I like a woman who's ready on time."

Lara laughed. It was a bright, free sound, devoid of artifice. Of course, she'd been ready for hours.

When they arrived at the meeting point, Noah was pleased to see there was a good turnout about seven packed cars. Abby was going round collecting money and distributing maps.

At each site they visited, Noah had the group sit down and meditate to see if they could pick up any information from the past, such as what the site might have been used for in ancient times. He never did this at the indoor meetings. This was his select group, with whom he was prepared to try more "weird stuff, as some referred to it. During the meditation, Lara saw a great deal of detailed and pertinent imagery. "I think you're psychic," Noah told her privately.

"Oh, I know that ," she said.

"You couldn't be more perfect," Noah said.

Lara smiled. "When can we continue our conversation?"

"Later. How about dinner?"

"Sounds great."

Noah had to lose Abby and Gary for the evening, which was not easy. He didn't want Abby to know he was taking Lara out, sure that she would insist that she and Gary went with him. Fortunately, they'd brought their own car that day, so at the last site Noah whisked Lara off quickly, virtually without saying goodbye to anybody. He knew he'd have to pay for it later and could anticipate Abby's terse message that would be waiting on his answerphone when he got home. But for the time being, he didn't give a damn. Both he and Lara were giggling as his car skidded away in a cloud of dust and gravel.

"Why do I get the feeling we're playing truant?" Lara asked.

"Sometimes, I want a bit of privacy, that's all," Noah answered. "The trouble with these events is that people want it to carry on till all hours. Sometimes, that's fine, but tonight" He glanced at her and she smiled.

He took her to a Thai restaurant he'd never visited before, secure in the knowledge that none of the group would track him there. The food was rather lacklustre, but it didn't matter, because Lara was sitting opposite him and her smile seemed to enfold him in a hazy golden mist. They were both high on the sense of being secret conspirators. They were high on the potential of what might happen later.

Lara seemed content to listen to Noah talk about his new book, and it wasn't until the coffee arrived that she broached the subject she'd brought up after the meeting last Tuesday. "Why did you react so badly to my question?"

"I don't think I did. Some things I just steer clear of."

"So what's the story behind it?" She took a sip of coffee, smiled disarmingly. "Or is it a secret?"

Noah leaned back in his chair. "It's no secret. If you become part of the core group — and I'm sure you will — anyone would tell you about it. Basically, while I was writing Nosferatu I was involved in more than the obvious method of research. The problem came from that."

Lara put her head to one side. "What do you mean?"

"You saw what we did today. People are keen on the psychic stuff. On one level, it's harmless, and most people never go beyond that. But on another, it isn't. Sitting outside an old church and trying to visualise images of the past can't hurt anyone, because it's dead and gone. It's nothing more than a psychic photograph. But other things, well, they're more alive, still around, so to speak."

Lara laughed, lit a cigarette. "Are you trying to tell me that you contacted a vampire psychically?"

Noah hesitated for a moment. Part of him didn't want to say more, but Lara's wide eyes were fixed upon him with a bright, intelligent gaze. He felt safe with her. "I worked with a girl called Sarah. People don't realize it, but a lot of the information in my books comes from what I call 'inspired' sources, from psychics. Most of what I find out can't be used in a serious book, because it can't be checked out and verified as fact, but it gives me a feel for and understanding of the subject. Sarah was my assistant and also my partner. She was very psychic."

" Was," Lara said, her chin resting on her hands. Smoke curled around her in slow tendrils. "That sounds ominous."

"Let's just say that I was interested in the origin of the vampire myth, like you are. I'd investigated all the legends of blood-drinking demons, from medieval Europe right back to Sumerian times. Somewhere along the way, the flavour of the subject changed." He gestured with both hands. "It's difficult to describe, but the idea of the vampire as unfortunate undead — perhaps a victim of their circumstances — mutated into the idea that the original vampires were very much alive and that their vampirism was by choice, a necessary facet of their belief system."

Lara nodded enthusiastically. "That's my thought also."

"It all seemed very academic to us. We called them the vulture people, a shamanic tribe who indulged in blood drinking and sacrifice. Sarah picked up some interesting stuff that pointed us in the direction of certain ancient sites in Turkey. The imagery she saw could be verified. These places existed and there was archaeological evidence that a shamanic culture existed there, who had worshipped vultures. They believed that drinking blood gave them superhuman abilities. Whether that was true or not, we thought that other tribes would probably have regarded them as supernatural, as demons, even, because of their bloodthirsty habits. We believed that there was a diaspora and that factions of this tribe might have moved gradually into Europe, eventually giving rise to the vampire legend.

"Every evening, I'd have Sarah go into a kind of trance, guiding her further and further back into the past, seeking the true story. It seemed we were meant to discover all this, to make the link. The vulture people became more real for us: powerful shamans, who used the rites of blood to change their world. As time went on, Sarah started to get jumpy about it. She said she sensed little dark things that scuttled in the folds of these creatures' vulture wing robes, that they had begun to touch her. She wanted to stop, but I persuaded her otherwise. I thought we were getting close to something that would prove my theory incontrovertibly. We had to continue. But then, one night, Sarah brought something back with her."

There was a silence, while Lara took a long, meditative draw on her cigarette. Then she said, "And Sarah couldn't cope?"

Noah pressed the fingers of one hand briefly against his eyes. He could hear her screams even now. "It was too overwhelming, too alien . We always did these sessions by the light of one candle, so we couldn't see much, but it was as if the night just surged into the room. We were surrounded by a presence, not evil exactly, but beyond good and evil. It was amoral, and we were nothing to it. Even I could sense it, and I'm no great psychic. In moments, I realized how we'd been playing with something inconceivably huge and beyond us, something immeasurably powerful. We'd pulled at its skirts too insistently and now it had noticed us."

"What happened?"

"Well, once Sarah started screaming, I just leaped up and put the lights on. If something really had been there, it disappeared." He finished off the warm lager left in his glass and shook his head. "Sarah was writhing on the floor. I didn't know what to do. The noises were hideous. In the end, I slapped her. It's what you're supposed to do, isn't it? And she kind of came out of it. But even if the thing had gone, it left a taint behind."

"Did it kill her?" Lara asked bluntly.

Noah detected a faint note of scorn in her voice. "No, no. Of course not. Sarah was an experienced psychic, but she was damaged by what she'd felt and seen. It changed her and there was nothing I could do about it. Nothing. She became paranoid, jealous and afraid. It destroyed us."

"It wasn't your fault," Lara said, reaching out to touch one of Noah's hands.

He laughed cynically. "They all said that, but it's not true. I was so eager to discover the truth, I didn't think about the dangers. I just kept pushing and pushing. After we split up, Sarah lost her job. She just lost it, big-time. The last I heard she'd admitted herself to hospital. She dropped all her old friends."

"It wasn't your fault," Lara insisted. "Sarah just wasn't strong enough."

"She was," Noah said. " It was stronger than both of us."

"I don't believe that."

"You weren't there. Even as a writer, I don't have the words to describe to you how terrible that night was, how real the entity that came to us. This wasn't Christopher Lee in a silk cape, Lara. This wasn't a nice, safe little meditation like all those we did today. This was the most raw and primeval energy; it could snuff you out like that!" He snapped his fingers before her face, but she did not flinch.

"I want it," she said.

He laughed shakily. "What?"

"It's what I want. I need to know the truth. I'm not afraid."

Noah raised his hands and shook his head emphatically. "No. You don't know what you're asking for. The vampires you're so enamoured of, they're just fashion accessories, a romantic myth. You don't want the truth of it, believe me."

"How dare you!" Lara snapped. "You make me sound like some stupid little girl who's just into looking weird. I'm not enamoured by anything." She thumped her chest with a closed fist. "I've lived with this stuff all my life, felt it tugging at the corners of my mind, trying to make itself known to me. Their carrion smell has always been strong to my senses. When I read Nosferatu , I thought I'd found someone who would understand, who wouldn't think I was mad." She put her hands against her head, scraped them through her sleek, confined hair, pulling strands of it free. "If you really are so against it, why did you put all those coy clues in the book?"

Noah thought she now looked demented, with her hair beginning to fall over her face, a hectic flush along her cheekbones and those wild, wide eyes. But she was breathtakingly beautiful and, in those moments, he could believe she was as strong as she claimed to be. "You'd better tell me what you mean by saying you've lived with it," he said.

Lara ducked her head in assent and then summoned a waiter to order more drinks.

"No," Noah said. "I'm driving. Let's get the bill. We can talk at my place."

They were silent in the car on the drive home. Lara sat with her hands folded in her lap, staring through the windscreen. Noah wondered what he was doing. He guessed what would come. In was as inexorable as a tidal wave, and he could already see it massing on the horizon. He could stop it now, take her home.

They passed the turn-off that would lead to her road. His hands tightened on the steering wheel. In ten minutes, he was parking the car outside his house.

Inside, Lara wandered around the living-room, touching lightly the ancient artefacts that clustered on every available surface. Sarah had collected most of them, but hadn't wanted to take them with her when she left. She hadn't taken anything, or exercised her rights to have half of the house. She'd just wanted out, to cast off any vestige of her life with Noah, desperate to live in the here and now, in safe mundanity. But it was denied her. No one else should go to the place where Sarah was. No one.

Noah made coffee in the vast silent kitchen, where modern appliances gleamed on the spotless work surfaces. Sarah had had the kitchen installed, paid for it herself. The cutlery and crockery Noah had used for his lunch still lay in the sink, but generally he kept the house tidy out of respect for her, as if she were still around in an etheric kind of way, and might disapprove of clutter and mess. On the way back to the living-room, he took a bottle of brandy and two huge globe glasses out of his liquor cupboard and placed them on to the tray next to the cafetière and mugs.

Lara was curled up in the big leather armchair by the hearth and had lit the log-effect gas fire. She had also managed to find the tiny ashtray that Noah kept reluctantly for guests. "You're so lucky," she said, as Noah came into the room. "This place is great. Tons of books and things. How many bedrooms has it got?"

"Five," Noah answered.

"I'm in the wrong job!" Lara said, laughing. She seemed just like an ordinary girl now, gamine and flirtatious.

Noah set down the tray on the coffee table and set about pouring drinks. "We got this place for a song," he said, rather apologetically. "It was a dump. Sarah did it up." He looked around the room. "It's worth a bit now, of course, but all I'd need is a couple of bad years and I'd have to sell it. Writing is not the millionaire's game it's made out to be, you know."

"I'm surprised to hear you say that," Lara said.

"Most people are. They think we all live like Jackie Collins."

"No, I meant that you know how to change fate, how to make things happen. Why don't you use it for yourself, so that you don't get any of those 'bad years'?"

"You've lost me," Noah said, pushing a glass of brandy and a coffee across the table towards her. "I'm a writer, a researcher, not a bloody magician!"

Lara smiled, turning in her fingers a lock of hair that hung beside her face. "Oh, come on! What about the 'weird stuff'?"

"If I knew how to meditate money into existence, I'd be rich. But I don't. I just use the 'weird stuff' to delve into the past."

"But the vulture people knew how to change their world. You said so."

"Strangely enough, I have no compelling desire to drink blood and murder people." He was enjoying their exchange, sure that the undercurrent was sexual.

Lara picked up the brandy globe. "You've contacted them," she said. "How many people have done that? If you weren't scared shitless, you could use that energy for yourself." Slowly, sensuously, she drained her glass.

Noah knelt back on his heels, his hands braced against his thighs. "I think you are a dangerous young woman," he said.

"You wouldn't have to kill anybody," she said, holding out her glass for more brandy. "I'm sure the smallest of blood sacrifices would do."

Noah poured out a generous measure of the golden liquor. "I'm not going back there, Lara. I got burned and sensibly pay attention to what hurts. You don't put your hand in the fire twice."

"When people have no fear, they can walk across red-hot coals," Lara said. "I'm scared of madmen with knives, and perverts hiding in alleys. I'm scared of people, because they're shit. But etheric entities don't frighten me. They don't have hands of flesh and blood. They can't fire a gun. The only way they can hurt you is through fear, your own mind. You must know that."

Noah hesitated. He could feel the conviction pulsing from Lara's body. "You are a witch," he said and took a long drink of his brandy. It burned his throat, felt good.

Her eyes were hooded now. "Take me there, Noah. I'm not afraid to go alone and I won't freak you out by having the screaming heebie-jeebies. Just take me there."

"Why?" he said.

"Because they want you to," she said. "I've heard their voices whispering in my dreams since I was a child. I've seen their shadows in the curtains of my bedroom every night. I've felt their carrion breath on my face in the dark. I'm one of them, Noah. Not in this life perhaps, but know them. I want to go home."

The silence in the room was absolute and the atmosphere had become still and watchful, like vulture shamans. It was as if Lara had already conjured something into being through the passion of her words. There was no way he could disbelieve her. She looked remarkably sane, but driven. He could not speak.

"I'm not some sick cow who wants to drink blood," Lara said in a conversational tone. "I don't have a black bedroom or collect horror films. I don't want to be a vampire in the traditional sense. I just need to know what it is that has been trying to get through to me, that's all." She smiled. "God, I must sound mad. What else do I have to say to convince you I'm not?"

He stared at her, wrestling with himself, thinking of Sarah.

"I'm a bloody good psychic," she said mischievously, cocking her head to the side. "You can always use one of those, can't you?"

"Then why do you need me? If you're that good, do it yourself."

"You have the map," she said. "You are the guide. It's that simple." She adopted a mock-serious tone. "I'll look after you, Noah, don't worry. You'll be perfectly safe."

His meditation room was at the back of the house on the second floor, overlooking fields and a small wood. As he'd always done with Sarah, he kept the curtains open and lit a single candle. His heart was beating fast, but not through fear. He was not sure exactly what he felt. As he prepared to light some loose incense, to help conjure the right atmosphere, Lara said, "Have you got a pin?"

"What?"

"To prick our fingers. We should put our blood into the incense."

"Lara"

" Noah . . . ! " She was laughing at him.

It took some minutes to find a pin, by which time Lara had consumed another globe of brandy. Noah himself was beginning to feel the effects of the alcohol. Perhaps it was numbing his sense of apprehension. He let Lara prick his thumb and squeeze a bright droplet of blood from the wound, which she shook into the incense. Then she put his thumb into her warm mouth and sucked it. "Scared?" she said.

"Horrified."

She pricked her own thumb, but didn't offer to let him taste her blood. It was a slight disappointment.

Lara lay down on the rug before the cold hearth, while Noah sat cross-legged beside her, and took her gently into a light trance. The words were soporific. His own eyelids began to droop. He led her back through time, made her watch the centuries fall away, until he told her to visualize herself standing at the mouth of a cave amid high, wind-sculpted crags. Beyond the threshold, all was dark.

"This is the Shanidar Cave," he murmured. "Home of the vulture people. Walk into it."

He paused, listening to her light breathing. "Tell me what you see," he said.

"Darkness," she replied. Her brow had creased into a frown. "But I can smell"

She would say blood, he thought.

"Flowers," she said faintly. "Everywhere, flowers. They've placed them over the bones. I see them. So many bones. There are wings"

"Is anyone there with you?"

"Yes." Her voice was like that of a child, young and tremulous.

"Do you want to leave?" Noah said. "You can leave at any time."

"No. He knows me. He wants to give me something."

"What?"

"The talking bone"

"What does he look like?"

Suddenly Lara gasped, her eyes flew open and she sat bolt upright. Noah reached out to steady her. "It's okay," he said.

She turned her head slowly and when she spoke, her voice was deep and rasping. "Keep me not from her, son of Lamech. Her laughter filled the mountains and bowed the heads of the wild beasts. Shame took her from me. Shame!"

Noah could smell carrion, the reek of her breath.

Abruptly, Lara sighed and fell back gracefully on to the floor.

"Lara," Noah breathed, leaning over her. "Lara. Are you all right?"

She laughed and wriggled her body on the rug. "Oh, yes ." Without opening her eyes, she reached up for him, dragged him down. When he kissed her, he tasted brandy, the flame of it.

"Thank you," she murmured, between kisses. "Thank you."

Her skin was hot beneath his hand, exuding the last warmth of her perfume. He made love to her where she lay, wondering if she was fully in this world or not. It didn't matter. She was a dream come to life, a woman who could walk alone into the dark and come back laughing and smelling of flowers.

Afterwards, she lay naked beside him, smoking a cigarette. "What the hell was there to be scared of?" she said. "Have I brought anything back with me? No. And believe me, I willed it."

Noah lay on his side, stroking her taut belly. "What did it — he — look like?"

She grimaced. "Pretty much how you'd think. At first, he was crouched down, wrapped in this immense cloak of black feathers. It looked like it had been made from the whole wings of a single vulture. I could just see the slits of his eyes peering over the top. He looked like a vulture himself like a vampire! Although he was crouched down, I could tell he was a giant; magnificent, wise and savage."

"That's pretty powerful imagery," Noah said.

"Then he stood up and opened his cloak of wings. Beneath it, he was dressed in animal skins. His body was covered in some kind of paint, but it wasn't blood. There were patterns in it like primitive cave paintings. He did have bones in his hair and wore a necklace of bones. Bird bones, I think. You'll be pleased to know he had pointy teeth. All of them."

"Filed down?"

"Probably." She took a fierce draw of her cigarette. "Oh, I don't know. Maybe I saw what I wanted to see, or was influenced by what you said earlier."

"What about what he said through you?"

"I don't know. It was as if he'd known me before, obviously. He seemed to know you too, in a way. Lamech was the father of Noah in biblical myth, wasn't he?"

Noah nodded, uncomfortable with the idea that the entity might be aware of him.

"If the whole thing wasn't subjective," Lara said, "maybe I lived in his time once. Maybe we were lovers. I certainly felt really horny when I came out of it."

"He doesn't sound very attractive!"

Lara stubbed out her cigarette and reached for Noah's crotch. "Oh, but he was! Beautiful, in fact. His eyes were amazing, this deep piercing blue. Christ, I wanted him to possess me. Utterly. It was the archetypal thing." She laughed huskily. "I'd have been quite happy for him to sink his teeth into me."

Noah leaned over and nipped the skin of her throat. "Come on, let's go to bed. It's getting cold in here."

They made love several more times. Noah felt euphoric, hardly daring to believe a woman such as this could come into his life. She was full of humour and warmth, serious about her ability yet amusingly irreverent. She was uninhibited, open, mysterious and fey. A witch woman. A priestess.

"Where have you been all my life?" Noah said.

"I bet you say that to all the girls," she replied, and they giggled like children at the stupid clichés for several minutes.

About four o'clock, Lara said she was tired and turned on to her side in the bed. Noah studied her for some time, drinking in each detail of her smooth contours, the spill of dark hair upon the pillow. He passed his hand in the air above her body, and she squirmed and made a sound of pleasure as if she felt him stroking her aura.

"Beauty," he whispered. "Love." He lay down to sleep, closing his eyes with the after-image of her white flesh burning in his mind.

Waking came with a shock in the grey of pre-dawn twilight.

He was aware at once of cold, and saw that the bed beside him was empty. A terrified pang of loss coursed through him, then he saw her clothes still draped on the pale wicker chair by the window and told himself she had gone to the bathroom, or else to get herself a drink.

He lay on his back and pulled the duvet over his chilled torso. A hiss in the corner of the room made him start.

"Lara?"

He sat up. Most of the room was still in shadow, but he thought he could make out a dark shape hunched in the corner near his clothes rail. "Lara"

He reached to turn on the bedside lamp, but the switch did not respond. The bulb must have gone.

Again, a hiss, low and sibilant.

Something moved in the shadows, sidled forward. He saw the eyes clearly first: a deep piercing blue. She was naked and had covered herself in what looked like dark paint, which was possible because there were a few tins left in the garage. Her hair was wild and straw-like, filled with a sticky substance. Her tongue protruded unnaturally from her mouth, like that of the destroyer goddess, Kali. Her teeth could not possibly be pointed. There were no tools in his house she could have used to do that. She hissed and stamped with one foot.

"Lara."

He got out of bed slowly. This was so different to the time before with Sarah. Lara wasn't screaming. She wasn't raving or weeping.

Her eyes followed him as he skirted the room.

He held out his hands in the universal gesture of peace. "Lara, wake up. You're dreaming. It's not real. Lara."

She made a threatening lunge towards him, growled and stamped both feet. He jumped back. It was unreal. He couldn't feel anything, because it was so unreal.

The night had come into the room. Not darkness, but the essence of night, the absence of light. The cold of the earth before the first dawn rose.

"Lara"

She came for him then, scuttling with crablike speed across the room. She grabbed him by the shoulders and he felt the sharp prick of her fingernails. She stank of rotten meat and there was a crust around her lips. She was bleeding from the mouth. Her teeth were filed away to ragged points.

What pain she must be in. What pain

He fought back. This wasn't Lara. This was the darkness he had hidden from for so long. Perhaps it had always been here, lurking in the shadows of his house, in his memories.

She was so strong, like a tigress. She pushed him back on to the bed and straddled him. Her breasts looked heavier than they had been earlier, scored with the marks of her own fingernails. She uttered a shriek and lunged for his neck.

He should be afraid, shouldn't he? This thing , this monstrous abomination dredged from the primal soup, was feasting on him, tearing at his flesh, kneading his skin with its claws, sucking the life from him. It stank of hell. Yet he was aroused by it. He wanted her and she let him do it, her body bucking in frenzy.

And he saw it then, the tunnel into history. The rivers of blood that carried the memories of humanity. It is within all of us, he thought. We have tamed it and dressed it up in a silk suit. We have made it dead. We have contained it in books and films and lascivious dreams. We have contained it in nightmares. But ultimately, it is within us all the time. And it is alive, pulsing, warm and wet, stinking of musk and spoiled meat.

Lara wasn't stronger than Sarah. The opposite was true. Because Sarah had rejected this. It was what she had seen and felt and had never spoken of. The search for Nosferatu didn't begin in the grave, but in the reptile brain, the primordial remnant of beast within every human mind. It was demonic. It was divine.

In the late morning, with bright sunshine coming into the kitchen, they were politely formal with each other. She said she had badly chipped a tooth falling over in the dark. They didn't talk about how she'd decorated her body. The mess in the kitchen had been cleaned up by the time he had come downstairs and she was freshly showered, smelling of his patchouli body wash. She joked about her loathing of dentists as she carefully drank hot coffee. He made toast, then apologized and offered something softer: scrambled eggs perhaps? She wasn't hungry, she said.

He rubbed his neck. "Ah well"

She had to go to work at two. Worked part-time in a local shop. Perhaps she could get an emergency dental appointment before she went in.

He had work to do too. The book would be late to his publishers otherwise. Nice day, though.

Yes, nice day.

At the door, she pecked his cheek in a brief kiss. "We must do this again," she said.

"Must we?" Many words hung unspoken between them.

She smiled. She looked very tired and there were purple rings beneath her eyes. "I think I got what I wanted. Didn't you?"

"Lara"

"You can call me. Or not," she said. "I don't need you now, Noah, but I kind of like you."

He watched her run down the path to the road. She had rejected a lift. He leaned his forehead on the door frame. Once your eyes are open, you can never close them. Sarah knew this.

He shouldn't see Lara again. He should attempt to forget all that had occurred. They'd been drunk. She'd broken one tooth, that's all. It had been less than he'd imagined. As if to remind him otherwise, his neck twinged painfully. He felt light-headed, sick, suddenly able to imagine the future, the long, slow, agonising stretch of it, the descent into realms he dared not think about.

He shouldn't see her again. But she was just his type, wasn't she? Just his type.

Prince of Flowers

Elizabeth Hand

Elizabeth Hand lives on the coast of Maine. She is the author of six novels, including Winterlong., Glimmering, Waking the Moon and Black Light, as well as the story collection Last Summer at Mars Hill. She has also written the novelizations for films such as 12 Monkeys, The X Files movie Fight the Future, Anna and the King and The Affair of the Necklace.

With Paul Witcover, she created and wrote the 1990s DC Comics' series Anima, and she is a regular contributor to the Washington Post Book World and Village Voice Literary Supplement. At present she is completing a novel called The Master Stroke. Her novels and short fiction have received the Nebula, World Fantasy, James M. Tiptree Jr and Mythopeic Society Awards .

" This was my first published story," reveals the author, "bought by Tappan King for The Twilight Zone Magazine in 1987; it appeared early in 1988. In a phone conversation, Tappan said that I would be a good writer for the 1990s, because my work had 'heart and also sharp little teeth' .

"At the time I was living in Washington, DC, and working at the Smithsonian Institution. The demonic puppet of the title was something I bought on my lunch hour one afternoon, walking from the Mall to a dim little shop called the Artifactory. I fell in love with the puppet and paid fifty dollars for it, a huge chunk of my meagre paycheque; but when I brought it back to my cubicle at the National Air and Space Museum I announced that it would bring me luck. It did: shortly thereafter I wrote the story, and even though it took a year or so, I finally sold it."

Helen's first assignment on the inventory project was to the Department of Worms. For two weeks she paced the narrow alleys between immense tiers of glass cabinets, opening endless drawers of freeze-dried invertebrates and tagging each with an acquisition number. Occasionally she glimpsed other figures, drab as herself in government-issue smocks, grey shadows stalking through the murky corridors. They waved at her but seldom spoke, except to ask directions; everyone got lost in the museum.

Helen loved the hours lost in wandering the labyrinth of storage rooms, research labs, chilly vaults crammed with effigies of Yanomano Indians and stuffed jaguars. Soon she could identify each department by its smell: acrid dust from the feathered pelts in Ornithology; the cloying reek of fenugreek and syrup in Mammalogy's roach traps; fish and formaldehyde in Icthyology. Her favourite was Palaeontology, an annex where the air smelled damp and clean, as though beneath the marble floors trickled hidden water, undiscovered caves, mammoth bones to match those stored above. When her two weeks in Worms ended she was sent to Palaeo, where she delighted in the skeletons strewn atop cabinets like forgotten toys, disembodied skulls glaring from behind wastebaskets and bookshelves. She found a fabrosaurus ischium wrapped in brown paper and labelled in crayon; beside it a huge hand-hewn crate dated 1886 and marked Wyoming megosaur. It had never been opened. Some mornings she sat with a small mound of fossils before her, fitting the pieces together with the aid of a Victorian monograph. Hours passed in total silence, weeks when she saw only three or four people, curators slouching in and out of their research cubicles. On Fridays, when she dropped off her inventory sheets, they smiled. Occasionally even remembered her name. But mostly she was left alone, sorting cartons of bone and shale, prying apart frail skeletons of extinct fish as though they were stacks of newsprint.

Once, almost without thinking, she slipped a fossil fish into the pocket of her smock. The fossil was the length of her hand, as perfectly formed as a fresh beech leaf. All day she fingered it, tracing the imprint of bone and scale. In the bathroom later she wrapped it in paper towels and hid it in her purse to bring home. After that she started taking things.

At a downtown hobby shop she bought little brass and lucite stands to display them in her apartment. No one else ever saw them. She simply liked to look at them alone.

Her next transfer was to Mineralogy, where she counted misshapen meteorites and uncut gems. Gems bored her, although she took a chunk of petrified wood and a handful of unpolished amethysts and put them in her bathroom. A month later she was permanently assigned to Anthropology.

The Anthropology Department was in the most remote corner of the museum; its proximity to the boiler room made it warmer than the Natural Sciences wing, the air redolent of spice woods and exotic unguents used to polish arrowheads and axe-shafts. The ceiling reared so high overhead that the rickety lamps swayed slightly in draughts that Helen longed to feel. The constant subtle motion of the lamps sent flickering waves of light across the floor. Raised arms of Balinese statues seemed to undulate, and points of light winked behind the empty eyeholes of feathered masks.

Everywhere loomed shelves stacked with smooth ivory and gaudily beaded bracelets and neck-rings. Helen crouched in corners loading her arms with bangles until her wrists ached from their weight. She unearthed dusty, lurid figures of temple demons and cleaned them, polished hollow cheeks and lapis eyes before stapling a number to each figure. A corner piled with tipi poles hid an abandoned desk that she claimed and decorated with mummy photographs and a ceramic coffee mug. In the top drawer she stored her cassette tapes and, beneath her handbag, a number of obsidian arrowheads. While it was never officially designated as her desk, she was annoyed one morning to find a young man tilted backward in the chair, shuffling through her tapes.

"Hello," he greeted her cheerfully. Helen winced and nodded coolly. "These your tapes? I'll borrow this one some day, haven't got the album yet. Leo Bryant"

"Helen," she replied bluntly. "I think there's an empty desk down by the slit-gongs."

"Thanks, I just started. You a curator?"

Helen shook her head, rearranging the cassettes on the desk. "No. Inventory project." Pointedly she moved his knapsack to the floor.

"Me, too. Maybe we can work together some time."

She glanced at his earnest face and smiled. "I like to work alone, thanks." He looked hurt, and she added, "Nothing personal — I just like it that way. I'm sure we'll run into each other. Nice to meet you, Leo." She grabbed a stack of inventory sheets and walked away down the corridor.

They met for coffee one morning. After a few weeks they met almost every morning, sometimes even for lunch outside on the Mall. During the day Leo wandered over from his cubicle in Ethnology to pass on departmental gossip. Sometimes they had a drink after work, but never often enough to invite gossip themselves. Helen was happy with this arrangement, the curators delighted to have such a worker quiet, without ambition, punctual. Everyone except Leo left her to herself.

Late one afternoon Helen turned at the wrong corner and found herself in a small cul-de-sac between stacks of crates that cut off light and air. She yawned, breathing the faint must of cinnamon bark as she traced her path on a crumpled inventory map. This narrow alley was unmarked; the adjoining corridors contained Malaysian artefacts, batik tools, long teak boxes of gongs. Fallen crates, clumsily hewn cartons overflowing with straw were scattered on the floor. Splintered panels snagged her sleeves as she edged her way down the aisle. A sweet musk hung about these cartons, the languorous essence of unknown blossoms.

At the end of the cul-de-sac an entire row of crates had toppled, as though the weight of time had finally pitched them to the floor. Helen squatted and chose a box at random, a broad flat package like a portfolio. She pried the lid off to find a stack of leather cut-outs curling with age, like desiccated cloth. She drew one carefully from the pile, frowning as its edges disintegrated at her touch. A shadow puppet, so fantastically elaborate that she couldn't tell if it was male or female; it scarcely looked human. Light glimmered through the grotesque latticework as Helen jerked it back and forth, its pale shadow dancing across the wall. Then the puppet split and crumbled into brittle curlicues that formed strange hieroglyphics on the black marble floor. Swearing softly, Helen replaced the lid, then jammed the box back into the shadows. Her fingers brushed another crate, of smooth polished mahogany. It had a comfortable heft as she pulled it into her lap. Each corner of the narrow lid was fixed with a large, square-headed nail. Helen yanked these out and set each upright in a row.

As she opened the box, dried flowers, seeds and wood shavings cascaded into her lap. She inhaled, closing her eyes, and imagined blue water and firelight, sweet-smelling seeds exploding in the embers. She sneezed and opened her eyes to a cloud of dust wafting from the crate like smoke. Very carefully she worked her fingers into the fragrant excelsior, kneading the petals gently until she grasped something brittle and solid. She drew this out in a flurry of dead flowers.

It was a puppet: not a toy, but a gorgeously costumed figure, spindly arms clattering with glass and bone circlets, batik robes heavy with embroidery and beadwork. Long whittled pegs formed its torso and arms and the rods that swivelled it back and forth, so that its robes rippled tremulously, like a swallowtail's wings. Held at arm's length it gazed scornfully down at Helen, its face glinting with gilt paint. Sinuous vines twisted around each jointed arm. Flowers glowed within the rich threads of its robe, orchids blossoming in the folds of indigo cloth.

Loveliest of all was its face, the curve of cheeks and chin so gracefully arched it might have been cast in gold rather than coaxed from wood. Helen brushed it with a finger: the glossy white paint gleamed as though still wet. She touched the carmine bow that formed its mouth, traced the jet-black lashes stippled across its brow, like a regiment of ants. The smooth wood felt warm to her touch as she stroked it with her fingertips. A courtesan might have perfected its sphinx's smile; but in the tide of petals Helen discovered a slip of paper covered with spidery characters. Beneath the straggling script another hand had shaped clumsy block letters spelling out the name prince of flowers .

Once, perhaps, an imperial concubine had entertained herself with its fey posturing, and so passed the wet silences of a long green season. For the rest of the afternoon it was Helen's toy.

She posed it and sent its robes dancing in the twilit room, the frail arms and tiny wrists twitching in a marionette's waltz.

Behind her a voice called, "Helen?"

"Leo," she murmured. "Look what I found."

He hunched beside her to peer at the figure. "Beautiful. Is that what you're on now? Balinese artefacts?"

She shrugged. "Is that what it is? I didn't know." She glanced down the dark rows of cabinets and sighed. "I probably shouldn't be here. It's just so hot" She stretched and yawned as Leo slid the puppet from her hands.

"Can I see it?" He twisted it until its head spun and the stiff arms flittered. "Wild. Like one of those dancers in The King and I ." He played with it absently, hypnotized by the swirling robes. When he stopped, the puppet jerked abruptly upright, its blank eyes staring at Helen.

"Be careful," she warned, kneading her smock between her thumbs. "It's got to be a hundred years old." She held out her hands and Leo returned it, bemused.

"It's wild, whatever it is." He stood and stretched. "I'm going to get a soda. Want to come?"

"I better get back to what I was working on. I'm supposed to finish the Burmese section this week." Casually she set the puppet in its box, brushed the dried flowers from her lap and stood.

"Sure you don't want a soda or something?" Leo hedged plaintively, snapping his ID badge against his chest. "You said you were hot."

"No thanks," Helen smiled wanly. "I'll take a raincheck. Tomorrow."

Peeved, Leo muttered and stalked off. When his silhouette faded away she turned and quickly pulled the box into a dim corner. There she emptied her handbag and arranged the puppet at its bottom, wrapping Kleenex about its arms and face. Hairbrush, wallet, lipstick: all thrown back into her purse, hiding the puppet beneath their clutter. She repacked the crate with its sad array of blossoms, hammering the lid back with her shoe. Then she scrabbled in the corner on her knees until she located a space between stacks of cartons. With a resounding crack the empty box struck the wall, and Helen grinned as she kicked more boxes to fill the gap. Years from now another inventory technician would discover it and wonder, as she had countless times, what had once been inside the empty carton.

When she crowded into the elevator that afternoon the leather handle of her purse stuck to her palm like wet rope. She shifted the bag casually as more people stepped on at each floor, heart pounding as she called goodbye to the curator for Indo-Asian Studies passing in the lobby. Imaginary prison gates loomed and crumbled behind Helen as she strode through the columned doors and into the summer street.

All the way home she smiled triumphantly, clutching her handbag to her chest. As she fumbled at the front door for her keys a fresh burst of scent rose from the recesses of her purse. Inside, another scent overpowered this faint perfume the thick reek of creosote, rotting fruit, unwashed clothes. Musty and hot and dark as the museum's dreariest basement, the only two windows faced on to the street. Traffic ground past, piping bluish exhaust through the screens. A grimy mirror reflected shabby chairs, an end table with lopsided lamp: furniture filched from college dormitories or reclaimed from the corner dumpster. No paintings graced the pocked walls, blotched with the crushed remains of roaches and silverfish.

But beautiful things shone here, gleaming from windowsill and cracked Formica counters: the limp frond of a fossil fern, etched in obsidian glossy as wet tar; a whorled nautilus like a tiny whirlpool impaled upon a brass stand. In the centre of a splintered coffee table was the imprint of a foot-long dragonfly's wing embedded in limestone, its filigreed scales a shattered prism.

Corners heaped with lemur skulls and slabs of petrified wood. The exquisite cone shells of poisonous molluscs. Mounds of green and golden iridescent beetles, like the coinage of a distant country. Patches of linoleum scattered with shark's teeth and arrowheads; a tiny skull anchoring a handful of emerald plumes that waved in the breeze like a sea-fan. Helen surveyed it all critically, noting with mild surprise a luminous pink geode; she'd forgotten that one. Then she set to work.

In a few minutes she'd removed everything from her bag and rolled the geode under a chair. She unwrapped the puppet on the table, peeling tissue from its brittle arms and finally twisting the long strand of white paper from its head, until she stood ankle-deep in a drift of tissue. The puppet's supporting rod slid neatly into the mouth of an empty beer bottle, and she arranged it so that the glass was hidden by its robes and the imperious face tilted upward, staring at the bug-flecked ceiling.

Helen squinted appraisingly, rearranged the feathers about the puppet, shoring them up with the carapaces of scarab beetles: still it looked all wrong. Beside the small proud figure, the fossils were muddy remains, the nautilus a bit of sea wrack. A breeze shifted the puppet's robes, knocking the scarabs to the floor, and before she knew it Helen had crushed them, the little emerald shells splintering to grey dust beneath her heel. She sighed in exasperation: all her pretty things suddenly looked so mean. She moved the puppet to the windowsill, to another table, and finally into her bedroom. No corner of the flat could hold it without seeming even grimier than before. Helen swiped at cobwebs above the doorway before setting the puppet on her bedstand and collapsing with a sigh on to her mattress.

In the half-light of the windowless bedroom the figure was not so resplendent. Disappointed, Helen straightened its robes yet again. As she tugged the cloth into place, two violet petals, each the size of her pinky nail, slipped between her fingers. She rolled the tiny blossoms between her palms, surprised at how damp and fresh they felt, how they breathed a scent like ozone, or seawater. Thoughtfully she rubbed the violets until only a gritty pellet remained between her fingers.

Flowers, she thought, and recalled the name on the paper she'd found. The haughty figure wanted flowers.

Grabbing her key and a rusty pair of scissors, she ran outside. Thirty minutes later she returned, laden with blossoms: torn branches of crepe myrtle frothing pink and white, drooping tongues of honeysuckle, overblown white roses snipped from a neighbour's yard; chicory fading like a handful of blue stars. She dropped them all at the foot of the bed and then searched the kitchen until she found a dusty wine carafe and some empty jars. Once these were rinsed and filled with water she made a number of unruly bouquets, then placed them all around the puppet, so that its pale head nodded amid a cloud of white and mauve and frail green.

Helen slumped back on the bed, grinning with approval. Bottles trapped the wavering pools of light and cast shimmering reflections across the walls. The crepe myrtle sent the palest mauve cloud on to the ceiling, blurring the jungle shadows of the honeysuckle.

Helen's head blurred, as well. She yawned, drowsy from the thick scents of roses, cloying honeysuckle, all the languor of summer nodding in an afternoon. She fell quickly asleep, lulled by the breeze in the stolen garden and the dozy burr of a lost bumblebee.

Once, her sleep broke. A breath of motion against her shoulder — mosquito? spider? centipede? — then a tiny lancing pain, the touch of invisible legs or wings, and it was gone. Helen grimaced, scratched, staggered up and into the bathroom. Her bleary reflection showed a swollen bite on her shoulder. It tingled, and a drop of blood pearled at her touch. She put on a nightshirt, checked her bed for spiders, then tumbled back to sleep.

Much later she woke to a sound: once, twice, like the resonant plank of a stone tossed into a well. Then a slow melancholy note: another well, a larger stone striking its dark surface. Helen moaned, turning on to her side. Fainter echoes joined these first sounds, plangent tones sweet as rain in the mouth. Her ears rang with this steady pulse, until suddenly she clenched her hands and stiffened, concentrating on the noise.

From wall to ceiling to floor the thrumming echo bounced; grew louder, diminished, droned to a whisper. It did not stop. Helen sat up, bracing herself against the wall, the last shards of sleep fallen from her. Her hand slipped and very slowly she drew it towards her face. It was wet. Between her fingers glistened a web of water, looping like silver twine down her wrist until it was lost in the blue-veined valley of her elbow. Helen shook her head in disbelief and stared up at the ceiling. From one end of the room to the other stretched a filament of water, like a hairline fracture. As she watched, the filament snapped and a single warm drop splashed her temple. Helen swore and slid to the edge of the mattress, then stopped.

At first she thought the vases had fallen to the floor, strewing flowers everywhere. But the bottles remained on the bedstand, their blossoms casting ragged silhouettes in the dark. More flowers were scattered about the bottles: violets, crimson roses, a tendril rampant with tiny fluted petals. Flowers cascaded to the floor, nestled amid folds of dirty clothes. Helen plucked an orchid from the linoleum, blinking in amazement. Like a wavering pink flame it glowed, the feathery pistils staining her fingertips bright yellow. Absently Helen brushed the pollen on to her thigh, scraping her leg with a hangnail.

That small pain jarred her awake. She dropped the orchid. For the first time it didn't feel like a dream. The room was hot, humid as though moist towels pressed against her face. As she stared at her thigh the bright fingerprint, yellow as a crocus, melted and dissolved as sweat broke on her skin. She stepped forward, the orchid bursting beneath her heel like a ripe grape. A sickly smell rose from the broken flower. Each breath she took was heavy, as with rain, and she choked. The rims of her nostrils were wet. She sneezed, inhaling warm water. Water streamed down her cheeks and she drew her hand slowly upward, to brush the water from her eyes. She could move it no further than her lap. She looked down, silently mouthing bewilderment as she shook her head.

Another hand grasped her wrist, a hand delicate and limp as a cut iris wand, so small that she scarcely felt its touch open her pulse. Inside her skull the blood thrummed counterpoint to the gamelan , gongs echoing the throb and beat of her heart. The little hand disappeared. Helen staggered backward on to the bed, frantically scrambling for the light switch. In the darkness, something crept across the rippling bedsheets.

When she screamed her mouth was stuffed with roses, orchids, the corner of her pillowcase. Tiny hands pinched her nostrils shut and forced more flowers between her lips until she lay still, gagging on aromatic petals. From the rumpled bedclothes reared a shadow, child-size, grinning. Livid shoots of green and yellow encircled its spindly arms and the sheets whispered like rain as it crawled towards her. Like a great mantis it dragged itself forward on its long arms, the rough cloth of its robe catching between her knees, its white teeth glittering. She clawed through the sheets, trying to dash it against the wall. But she could not move. Flowers spilled from her mouth when she tried to scream, soft fingers of orchids sliding down her throat as she flailed at the bedclothes.

And the clanging of the gongs did not cease: not when the tiny hands pattered over her breasts; not when the tiny mouth hissed in her ear. Needle teeth pierced her shoulder as a long tongue unfurled and lapped there, flicking blood on to the blossoms wreathed about her neck. Only when the slender shadow withdrew and the terrible, terrible dreams began did the gamelans grow silent.

Nine thirty came, long after Helen usually met Leo in the cafeteria. He waited, drinking an entire pot of coffee before he gave up and wandered downstairs, piqued that she hadn't shown up for breakfast.

In the same narrow hallway behind the Malaysian arftefacts he discovered her, crouched over a pair of tapered wooden crates. For a long moment he watched her, and almost turned back without saying anything. Her hair was dirty, twisted into a sloppy bun, and the hunch of her shoulders hinted at exhaustion. But before he could leave, she turned to face him, clutching the boxes to her chest.

"Rough night?" croaked Leo. A scarf tied around her neck didn't hide the bruises there. Her mouth was swollen, her eyes soft and shadowed with sleeplessness. He knew she must see people, men, boyfriends. But she had never mentioned anyone, never spoke of weekend trips or vacations. Suddenly he felt betrayed, and spun away to leave.

"Leo," murmured Helen, absently stroking the crate. "I can't talk right now. I got in so late. I'm kind of busy."

"I guess so." He laughed uncertainly, but stopped before turning the corner to see her pry open the lid of the box, head bent so that he could not tell what it was she found inside.

A week passed. Leo refused to call her. He timed his forays to the cafeteria to avoid meeting her there. He left work late so he wouldn't see her in the elevator. Every day he expected to see her at his desk, find a telephone message scrawled on his memo pad. But she never appeared.

Another week went by. Leo ran into the curator for Indo-Asian Studies by the elevator.

"Have you seen Helen this week?" she asked, and Leo actually blushed at mention of her name.

"No," he mumbled. "Not for a while, really."

"Guess she's sick." The curator shrugged and stepped on to the elevator. Leo rode all the way down to the basement and roamed the corridors for an hour, dropping by the Anthropology office. No Helen, no messages from her at the desk.

He wandered back down the hall, pausing in the corridor where he had last seen her. A row of boxes had collapsed and he kicked at the cartons, idly knelt and read the names on the packing crates as if they held a clue to Helen's sudden change. Labels in Sanskrit, Vietnamese, Chinese, English, crumbling beside baggage labels and exotic postage stamps and scrawled descriptions of contents, wajang goleh, he read. Beneath was scribbled puppets. He squatted on the floor, staring at the bank of crates, then half-heartedly started to read each label. Maybe she'd find him there. Perhaps she'd been sick, had a doctor's appointment. She might be late again.

A long box rattled when he shifted it. kris , read the label, and he peeked inside to find an ornate sword. A heavier box bore the legend sanghyang: spirit puppet . And another that seemed to be empty, embellished with a flowing script: sekar mas , and the clumsy translation prince of flowers .

He slammed the last box against the wall and heard the dull creak of splintering wood. She would not be in today. She hadn't been in for two weeks.

That night he called her.

"Hello?"

Helen's voice; at least a man hadn't answered.

"Helen. How you doing? It's Leo."

"Leo." She coughed and he heard someone in the background. "It's you."

"Right," he said dryly, then waited for an apology, her embarrassed laugh, another cough that would be followed by an invented catalogue of hay fever, colds, flu. But she said nothing. He listened carefully and realized it wasn't a voice he had heard in the background but a constant stir of sound, like a fan, or running water. "Helen? You okay?"

A long pause. "Sure. Sure I'm okay." Her voice faded and he heard a high, piping note.

"You got a bird, Helen?"

"What?"

He shifted the phone to his other ear, shoving it closer to his head so he could hear better. "A bird. There's this funny voice, it sounds like you got a bird or something."

"No," replied Helen slowly. "I don't have a bird. There's nothing wrong with my phone." He could hear her moving around her apartment, the background noises rising and falling but never silent. "Leo, I can't talk now. I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"

"Tomorrow?" he exploded. "I haven't seen you in two weeks!"

She coughed and said, "Well, I'm sorry. I've been busy. I'll see you tomorrow. Bye."

He started to argue, but the phone was already dead.

She didn't come in the next day. At three o'clock he went to the Anthropology Department and asked the secretary if Helen had been in that morning.

"No," she answered, shaking her head. "And they've got her down as AWOL. She hasn't been in all week." She hesitated before whispering. "Leo, she hasn't looked very good lately. You think maybe" Her voice died and she shrugged, "Who knows," and turned to answer the phone.

He left work early, walking his bicycle up the garage ramp and wheeling it to the right, towards Helen's neighbourhood. He was fuming, but a silver of fear had worked its way-through his anger. He had almost gone to her supervisor; almost phoned Helen first. Instead, he pedalled quickly down Pennsylvania Avenue, skirting the first lanes of rush-hour traffic. Union Station loomed a few blocks ahead. He recalled an article in yesterday's Post : vandals had destroyed the rose garden in front of the station. He detoured through the bus lane that circled the building and skimmed around the desecrated garden, shaking his head and staring back in dismay. All the roses: gone. Someone had lopped each bloom from its stem. In spots the cobblestones were littered with mounds of blossoms, brown with decay. Here and there dead flowers still dangled from hacked stems. Swearing in disgust, Leo made a final loop, nearly skidding into a bus as he looked back at the plundered garden. Then he headed towards Helen's apartment building a few blocks north.

Her windows were dark. Even from the street the curtains looked filthy, as though dirt and exhaust had matted them to the glass. Leo stood on the kerb and stared at the blank eyes of each apartment window gaping in the stark concrete façade.

Who would want to live here? he thought, ashamed. He should have come sooner. Shame froze into apprehension and the faintest icy sheath of fear. Hurriedly he locked his bike to a parking meter and approached her window, standing on tiptoe to peer inside. Nothing. The discoloured curtains hid the rooms from him like clouds of ivory smoke. He tapped once, tentatively; then, emboldened by silence, rapped for several minutes, squinting to see any movement inside.

Still nothing. Leo swore out loud and shoved his hands into his pockets, wondering lamely what to do. Call the police? Next of kin? He winced at the thought: as if she couldn't do that herself. Helen had always made it clear that she enjoyed being on her own. But the broken glass beneath his sneakers, windblown newspapers tugging at the bottom steps; the whole unkempt neighbourhood denied that. Why here? he thought angrily; and then he was taking the steps two at a time, kicking bottles and burger wrappers out of his path.

He waited by the door for five minutes before a teenage boy ran out. Leo barely caught the door before it slammed behind him. Inside, a fluorescent light hung askew from the ceiling, buzzing like a wasp. Helen's was the first door to the right. Circulars from convenience stores drifted on the floor, and on the far wall was a bank of mailboxes. One was ajar, stuffed with unclaimed bills and magazines. More envelopes piled on the steps. Each bore Helen's name.

His knocking went unanswered; but he thought he heard someone moving inside.

"Helen," he called softly. "It's Leo. You okay?"

He knocked harder, called her name, finally pounded with both fists. Still nothing. He should leave; he should call the police. Better still, forget ever coming here. But he was here, now; the police would question him no matter what; the curator for Indo-Asian Studies would look at him askance. Leo bit his lip and tested the doorknob. Locked; but the wood gave way slightly as he leaned against it. He rattled the knob and braced himself to kick the door in.

He didn't have to. In his hand the knob twisted and the door swung inward, so abruptly that he fell inside. The door banged shut behind him. He glanced across the room, looking for her; but all he saw was grey light, the gauzy shadows cast by gritty curtains. Then he breathed in, gagging, and pulled his sleeve to his mouth until he gasped through the cotton. He backed towards the door, slipping on something dank, like piles of wet clothing. He glanced at his feet and grunted in disgust.

Roses. They were everywhere: heaps of rotting flowers, broken branches, leaves stripped from bushes, an entire small ficus tree tossed into the corner. He forgot Helen, turned to grab the doorknob and tripped on an uprooted azalea. He fell, clawing at the wall to balance himself. His palms splayed against the plaster and slid as though the surface was still wet. Then, staring upward he saw that it was wet. Water streamed from the ceiling, flowing down the wall to soak his shirt cuffs. Leo moaned. His knees buckled as he sank, arms flailing, into the mass of decaying blossoms. Their stench suffocated him; his eyes watered as he retched and tried to stagger back to his feet.

Then he heard something, like a bell, or a telephone; then another faint sound, like an animal scratching overhead. Carefully he twisted to stare upward, trying not to betray himself by moving too fast. Something skittered across the ceiling, and Leo's stomach turned dizzily. What could be up there? A second blur dashed to join the first; golden eyes stared down at him, unblinking.

Geckos, he thought frantically. She had pet geckos. She has pet geckos. Jesus.

She couldn't be here. It was too hot, the stench horrible: putrid water, decaying plants, water everywhere. His trousers were soaked from where he had fallen, his knees ached from kneeling in a trough of water pooling against the wall. The floor had warped and more flowers protruded from cracks between the linoleum, brown fronds of iris and rotting honeysuckle. From another room trickled the sound of water dripping steadily, as though a tap were running.

He had to get out. He'd leave the door open — police, a landlord. Someone would call for help. But he couldn't reach the door. He couldn't stand. His feet skated across the slick tiles as his hands tore uselessly through wads of petals. It grew darker. Golden bands rippled across the floor as sunlight filtered through the grey curtains. Leo dragged himself through rotting leaves, his clothes sopping, tugging aside mats of greenery and broken branches. His leg ached where he'd fallen on it and his hands stung, pricked by unseen thorns.

Something brushed against his fingers and he forced himself to look down, shuddering. A shattered nautilus left a thin red line across his hand, the sharp fragments gilded by the dying light. As he looked around he noticed other things, myriad small objects caught in the morass of rotting flowers like a nightmarish ebb tide on the linoleum floor. Agates and feathered masks; bird of paradise plumes encrusted with mud; cracked skulls and bones and cloth of gold. He recognized the carved puppet Helen had been playing with that afternoon in the Indonesian corridor, its headdress glittering in the twilight. About its neck was strung a plait of flowers, amber and cerulean blossoms glowing like phosphorescence among the ruins.

Through the room echoed a dull clang. Leo jerked to his knees, relieved. Surely someone had knocked? But the sound came from somewhere behind him, and was echoed in another, harsher, note. As this second bell died he heard the geckos' feet pattering as they fled across the ceiling. A louder note rang out, the windowpanes vibrating to the sound as though wind-battered. In the corner the leaves of the ficus turned as if to welcome rain, and the rosebushes stirred.

Leo heard something else, then: a small sound like a cat stretching to wakefulness. Now both of his legs ached, and he had to pull himself forward on his hands and elbows, striving to reach the front door. The clanging grew louder, more resonant. A higher tone echoed it monotonously, like the echo of rain in a well. Leo glanced over his shoulder to the empty doorway that led to the kitchen, the dark mouth of the hallway to Helen's bedroom. Something moved there.

At his elbow moved something else and he struck at it feebly, knocking the puppet across the floor. Uncomprehending, he stared after it, then cowered as he watched the ceiling, wondering if one of the geckos had crept down beside him.

There was no gecko. When Leo glanced back at the puppet it was moving across the floor towards him, pulling itself forward on its long slender arms.

The gongs thundered now. A shape humped across the room, something large enough to blot out the empty doorway behind it. Before he was blinded by petals, Leo saw that it was a shrunken figure, a woman whose elongated arms clutched broken branches to propel herself, legs dragging uselessly through the tangled leaves. About her swayed a host of brilliant figures no bigger than dolls. They had roped her neck and hands with wreaths of flowers and scattered blossoms on to the floor about them. Like a flock of chattering butterflies they surged towards him, tiny hands outstretched, their long tongues unfurling like crimson pistils, and the gongs rang like golden bells as they gathered about him to feed.

Services Rendered

Louise Cooper

Louise Cooper has been writing stories since she was old enough to control a pencil. Her first novel , The Book of Paradox, was published when she was twenty-one, and since then she has had more than fifty books published. These include the Time Master Trilogy and its two spin-off trilogies , Chaos Gate and Star Shadow. More recently she has written a young adult trilogy set in the same world : Daughter of Storms, The Dark Caller and Keepers of Light.

Other adult fantasy titles include the eight-volume Indigo series and the stand-alone novels Mirage, The King's Demon, Sacrament of Night, Our Lady of the Snow and The Summer Witch. For children, Cooper has written a series of nine books (plus a Christmas special) titled Creatures, spooky tales with an animal theme published by Scholastic. She is currently working on a more "mainstream" adult novel (though still with supernatural overtones) and a venture into an alternative-history tale .

"I haven't the faintest notion how this story came into my head," admits the author. "It just did. One moment I was racking my brain for a plot that would make for a slightly different twist on the vampire theme; the next, the complete idea was sitting grinning in my mind. That's unusual for me.

The theme of Services Rendered' came from a question that I find endlessly fascinating: how an ordinary, down-to-earth human being reacts when faced with the apparently impossible, especially so when that 'impossibility' combines something terrifying (possibly), repellent (probably) and dangerous (potentially) with the lure of a 'dream come true' scenario.

"As for vampires I've yet to encounter one of the classical kind outside of a movie screen, and I sincerely hope it stays that way. But there are individuals whose effect on those around them has something in common with the vampire of legend: who seem to attach themselves to others and take nourishment from their energies. I saw Carmine as one of these individuals, in addition to her more 'traditional' qualities. Even vampires, if they exist, must surely have their hopes and fears and dreams, like any ordinary person.

" However you define that "

The cultured female voice at the other end of the phone line said, "I saw your advertisement in Alternatives . It's possible that I might be able to help."

The sick lurch of hope had become all too familiar over the last few months, and Penny tried to ignore it and keep her mind neutral. "I see. What uh exactly would you be suggesting?"

There was a slight pause. Then: "I'd guess from your tone that you've had other calls, yes? But nothing worth while came of them?"

"You could say that." Hope turned sour as she recalled them: two fringe herbalists, a crystal healer, a woman trying to sell her a "magic luck talisman" complete with a Your Personal Love Rhythms chart. Oh, and the crank who had banged on about Jesus and the wages of sin, until she had sworn at him and slammed the receiver down. The magazine had advised her, when she placed the advert, not to include her home number. Desperate needs, though, called for desperate measures.

"Look," Penny said, "if you're marketing some new miracle cure, then"

"Oh, no. It's nothing like that, I assure you; what I could offer is entirely practical, and entirely effective. The only caveat is that the patient must be prepared to accept certain side effects."

Hope began to creep back. Words such as "patient" and "side effects" were reassuring; they had a ring of orthodoxy.

"May I ask you a question?" said the woman.

Penny snapped back from the tangent her thoughts had abruptly taken. "Yes; yes, please do."

"You obviously couldn't go into detail in the advertisement. It's your husband who's ill?"

"Yes."

"And the doctors say that well, that there's nothing more they can do?"

"Yes." The GP; tests; the specialist; more tests; that loathsome hospital Penny breathed deeply and carefully to knock the tremor out of her voice. "It's incurable, and it's progressive. Over the last two years we've tried everything, but it didn't And now now, he might have a couple of months, but the doctors say that" Something caught in her throat; she turned her head aside from the receiver and tried to clear it.

"That there's no hope," the woman gently finished the sentence for her." I understand. I'm so sorry."

"Thank you," Penny said tightly.

"So, then. I think I can help you, if you want me to. But I'd prefer to talk about it face to face."

Penny's cynicism had begun to come back in a reaction to the last few moments, and she demanded, "Why? That's the sort of thing the evangelists do: worm an invitation, then start on their conversion technique. Only last week I answered the doorbell and there were some bloody"

"Please. I promise you, I am not an evangelist in any shape or form. Far from it. But what I need to explain really does need a personal meeting."

Penny looked down the length of the hall. The thin February daylight made everything look bleak and depressing; the stairs were deeply shadowed, and David was lying up there in their bedroom, drugged to the eyeballs with painkillers, hardly knowing her, hardly knowing anything.

"All right," she said on an outward rush of breath. "When, and where?"

"It's best if I come to your house, I think. Would this evening be convenient?"

"Yes." Face the thing quickly. If it's yet another disappointment, better to have it over with . Feeling that the situation wasn't quite real, Penny gave her address and agreed on 7:00 p.m.

"I don't know your name," she added.

"Oh, of course. It's Smith. Carmine Smith."

Penny didn't believe that, and she didn't believe that the woman could be of any use at all. But what did it matter? There was nothing left to lose.

Carmine Smith was probably in her early forties, elegant in classically understated dark clothes and expensive black silk coat. Her hair, too, was dark, cut in a young, gamine style that suited her perfectly. Her eyes were subtly made up, but she wore no lipstick.

"Thank you," she said, taking the coffee (black, no sugar) that Penny handed to her. She looked around the room, assessing it, her expression inscrutable. Then she asked, "Is your husband at home?"

Penny nodded. "They said there was no point his staying in hospital. They need the beds, and there's nothing"

"Of course. Could I see him?"

Penny became defensive. "He's probably asleep. He sleeps a lot, and even when he's awake he's vague. He couldn't tell you much."

"All the same, if I could just look in?" Carmine's eyes were very intense.

Penny hesitated, then shrugged.

They climbed the stairs. Carmine walked noiselessly, which Penny found faintly unsettling. She fancied that if she were to turn her head she would find nobody at all behind her, and that this whole encounter was a delusion.

David, as she had predicted, was asleep. Carmine moved to the bed and stood gazing down at him by the soft light of the bedside lamp, while Penny, who no longer liked to look at her husband too often, hovered by the window.

At length Carmine said quietly, "He's very handsome."

"Yes." Or was, before he couldn't eat properly any more and started to waste away .

"How old is he?"

"Forty-six." Penny moved restlessly. "Look, I don't want to wake him. You've seen him now; if we're going to talk, I'd prefer to do it downstairs."

"Of course." Carmine led the way out with a confidence that she hadn't exhibited before, as if in the space of a few seconds she had observed, considered and come to a decision. Back in the sitting-room she sat in what had always been David's favourite chair, sipped her coffee, then set the cup down and looked directly at Penny.

"I can bring him back to you," she said.

A crawling, electrical sensation went through Penny's entire body and she stared, disbelieving. "How?"

Carmine studied her own hands where they lay in her lap. "This is the hard part, Mrs Blythe. The part you're going to find difficult to accept."

"You mentioned side effects"

"Yes, yes; but I'm not talking about those, not yet." She inhaled deeply. "Perhaps it's best if I put it bluntly, rather than beating about the bush. I can restore your husband to you, whole and healthy, stronger than he has ever been before. Because I can make him immortal."

There was a brief, lacerating silence: then Penny stood up.

"Get out of my house," she said. "Now."

"Mrs Blythe"

" Now ," Penny repeated ferociously. "People like you you're sick . I suppose you find it funny , do you, playing your jokes, having your laughs at someone else's expense? Some kind of turn-on, is it?" She strode to the door, wrenched it open. "Get out !"

Carmine was also on her feet now, but she didn't leave. "Mrs Blythe, I'm serious!" She sounded almost angry, and Penny turned, thumping a clenched fist against the edge of the door.

"Oh, she's serious ! So it's not a sick joke; she really believes it! God give me strength !" She swung round again. "What kind of moron do you take me for? And what kind of moron are you? Immortality , she says! You're in some cult, right? Well, I'll tell you right now, Ms Smith, or whatever your real name is, you have been brainwashed, and I'm not listening to another moment of this crap!"

" Mrs Blythe ," said Carmine, and something in her voice made Penny stop.

"Mrs Blythe, I do not belong to any cult or other organization. But I am immortal, and I am offering your husband the chance to be the same, because it's the only alternative he has to dying. You see, I'm a vampire."

Penny pressed her forehead against the door frame and started to laugh. The laughter became hysterical, then turned into gulping, hiccuping sobs; then she threw anything movable within her reach at Carmine, screaming abuse. Carmine avoided the missiles and waited calmly for the worst of the storm to pass.

When it did, and Penny was slumped on her haunches against the wall with both hands covering her face, she asked, "Have you got a mirror?"

Penny raised her head and stared, but she didn't speak. Looking past her through the open door, Carmine saw an oval mirror hanging in the hall. She fetched it, and crouched down at Penny's side.

"Look in the glass," she said.

Too drained to argue, Penny looked. She saw her own red-eyed, dishevelled reflection, decided that she resembled an unhealthy pig and even in extremity felt shamed. Then her brain caught up as she took in Carmine's image beside hers. In the mirror, Carmine had no face. She was nothing more than a vague, grey blur, as if an isolated patch of fog had floated in and settled at Penny's shoulder. The fog dimly suggested a humanlike shape, and there might have been a fading hint of features shrouded somewhere in it, but that was all.

"The superstition that we're invisible in mirrors isn't quite accurate," said Carmine mildly, "but it's close enough." She stood up, saving the glass as Penny's numb fingers lost their grip on it, and stepped back a pace or two, to show that she meant no threat. "What else can I do to convince you?"

Very slowly, Penny's head came up. She looked shocked, confused, and there was a witless, corpse-like grin on her face. "Garlic," she said. "Vampires can't stand garlic. And they turn to dust if sunlight touches them." She flung a swift glance towards the window, but the curtains were closed. It was dark outside. She had forgotten that.

"Not true," Carmine told her. "Personally I adore garlic. And sunlight well, we find it debilitating, and our skin tends to burn more easily than most people's, but it doesn't do any lasting damage."

Penny persisted. "Coffins, then. They sleep in coffins ."

"Again, not true. I did try it once, when I was a child, but one night was enough to make me see sense. Beds are far more comfortable." Carmine smiled wryly. "It's Chinese Whispers, isn't it? Stories become exaggerated and distorted as they're passed from one person to another, until you end up with a mixture of fact and fiction. That's how the folklore about us grew up over the centuries."

"Centuries" Penny repeated dully, then uttered a peculiar little bark of a laugh. "How old are you?"

"Far older than any woman wants to admit to. In my case the condition's hereditary. It's another myth, by the way, that vampires can only be made, not born — either is possible. Which brings us back to David"

" No ," said Penny.

"Mrs Blythe"

" No . Anyway, I don't believe any of this."

"You mean, you don't want to believe it. Look at me. Please. Just so that I can show you something."

Her teeth, of course. The canines were abnormally long; not outright Dracula fangs, but certainly very pronounced. They looked sharp, too.

Penny giggled stupidly, and Carmine said, "If you still won't believe, then there's only one other way I can prove my bona fides."

The giggling stopped and Penny eyed her suspiciously. "What's that?"

"Begin the treatment." Carmine raised her gaze meaningfully upwards, in the direction of the bedroom. "And before you shout at me again, consider: I can't do anything to damage him, because he's already terminally damaged. So what have you got to lose?"

Penny's rational self — what was left of it — said: this is completely insane. I'm talking to a woman who claims to be a vampire, and claims she can give David his life back by turning him into one, too. And part of me wants that ludicrous impossibility to be true, because anything's better than losing him, and so here I stand on the verge of saying, yes, go ahead, then; let's see if you really can do it !

She heard herself say aloud: "Go ahead, then. Let's see if you really can do it." She turned away from Carmine and stared at the wall. "As you said, what have I got to lose? The most likely scenario is that you're barking mad, and you'll jump around and shout mumbo-jumbo, and nothing will happen. But okay. Why not? I wouldn't have put that ad in pleading for a cure if I hadn't been ready to try just about anything." She stopped then, and frowned. "What will you actually do?"

"Bite him," said Carmine levelly. "That part of the myth is accurate. The first session won't do much he'll need several but it will set the ball rolling, so to speak. You might even find his health starts to improve straight away."

"Sure." Penny waved a hand. Unreal. Maybe I've flipped, and it isn't happening at all. What the hell ? "Go on, then. Yes. Go on."

Carmine wouldn't let Penny accompany her upstairs. They argued about that, but in the end Penny gave way. Instead she paced the hall, listening but hearing nothing, until footsteps moved overhead to the bathroom. There was a splashing of water, then Carmine came back down the staircase.

"Is that it?" Penny asked. She had half expected to see some change in the woman. But apart from the fact that her cheeks looked a little less pale than before, there was nothing discernible.

"For the time being," Carmine told her. "I'll go now. See how he is over the next forty-eight hours."

She took her coat from the hook and started to put it on. "Wait," Penny said.

"Yes?"

"Why are you doing this? I mean, — if what you claim is true, and you are a a" She couldn't quite bring herself to utter the word." There's got to be something in it for you."

"There is," said Carmine. "Money."

It was the last answer Penny had expected, and she blinked, thrown. "What?"

Carmine shrugged. "Everyone has to earn a living. If your husband improves, and you decide to go on with the treatment, then I'll expect you to pay me a fee."

"What sort of a fee?"

"I usually charge ten thousand. That's assuming the treatment is completed; if you decide to stop at any stage, we'll work out a percentage."

"Ten thousand ?"

"I don't wish to be rude," said Carmine, "but what price would you put on your husband's future?"

When one thought about it, it was, of course, a perfectly reasonable business deal. The car had cost twice that, and the market value of the house was in a different league altogether. As Carmine pointed out, what price David's future? None the less, in her naivety Penny had assumed that Carmine must be motivated by some unspecified altruism, and to find out that she was as hard-nosed as any showroom salesman or estate agent was something of a shock.

"It's" She laughed, choked, collected herself. "It's not exactly the NHS rate, is it?"

"No," Carmine agreed. The outer edges of her mouth twitched faintly. "Strictly private, I'm afraid."

The car could go. It must still be worth at least eight thousand. Two more wouldn't be impossible to find.

"All right," Penny said. " If it works." She pressed her knuckles to her brow. "I don't believe I'm doing this."

Carmine produced a silver-edged business card. "My office number's on it," she said. "Call me the day after tomorrow, and we'll take it from there."

Penny looked at the card. " 'Carmine Smith, Consultant' That's what you call yourself, is it?"

"It's a useful word. Covers a multitude of sins." The hint of a smile increased and became faintly wicked. "Goodnight, Penny. I may call you Penny now? We'll speak soon."

She saw herself out.

David Blythe did not wake that evening, but slept through the night, as peacefully as a child, without the aid of drugs. With movies in mind, Penny examined his neck for puncture marks. She found nothing, and went to bed in the adjoining room, where she had long periods of uneasy wakefulness with bouts of bad dreams between them.

David woke shortly after seven, and told her that he was feeling very little pain. The smallest hint of colour alleviated the grey of illness in his face. He slept again through the morning. At lunchtime he ate half a bowl of soup, and didn't vomit it back. Then he slept again, ate a little more, and had a second peaceful night.

By the following morning Penny had forgotten the forty-eight-hour agreement and at 10:00 a.m. she was dialling the number on Carmine Smith's card.

"He's better," she said in a tiny, frightened voice. "I don't understand, and I almost daren't believe it, but he's so much better!"

"Yes," said Carmine, with a certain satisfaction. "Ten thousand, then?"

"Ten thousand," Penny repeated. "Oh, God, yes ."

She came to the house four more times. On each occasion the routine was the same: coffee first, then the walk upstairs leaving Penny nervously pacing, then the bathroom, then goodbye. Once she did accept a glass of Burgundy after her visit to the bedroom, but that was all. As yet she had asked for no payment, and when Penny tentatively raised the subject she only shook her head and said that she preferred to take her fee on completion. Either she was trusting, Penny decided, or her clients would be too frightened to try to renege on the agreement.

At Carmine's insistence, David knew nothing of what was going on. Though his health was rapidly improving he still slept a great deal, so the visits were timed accordingly. Penny eased her conscience by telling herself that, had he been consulted, David would have gladly chosen anything as an alternative to death.

Then one evening, as they sipped their ritual coffee, Carmine said that tonight's visit would be her last.

Penny's hand and cup stopped midway to her mouth. "Why? What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong." Carmine set her own cup down. "It's simply that the initial stage of the cure is complete. It's time for the second and final stage."

She was gazing steadily at Penny, and with an inner curling sensation Penny realized that she had not prepared herself for this. Carmine had explained — or tried to — the nature and the consequences of what would eventually happen to David. The way he would live. The way he would eat. The heightened energy; the fact that he would not age but remain as he was for well, in theory for ever. Penny had pretended to listen, but in fact Carmine's words had flowed through her and past her without taking hold in her mind. She hadn't wanted to know the details; all that had mattered to her was that David was slowly but surely gaining his life back.

Now, though, the reality of the situation hit her with a jolt that made her feel sick. Tonight, if Carmine had her way, David would become what she was. A vampire. Penny believed in vampires now. Carmine claimed to be such a creature, and in the light of the miracle that had been wrought, how could she doubt anything that Carmine said?

Vampire . "I" Then, finding the pronoun utterly pointless, she fell silent. Carmine did not drink any more coffee; she merely waited, and at last Penny found a semblance of a question.

"What will you do?"

"What I've done before." Carmine's voice was quiet, soothing; irrationally, the tone of it reassured. "But to a greater degree. I'd rather not tell you the details; they might upset you, and there are some things that we find uncomfortable to expose to those who aren't of our kind."

David. Vampire . "Will you hurt him?"

"Not at all. I guarantee it."

My husband . Then Penny faced the question she really wanted to ask; the only one that mattered. "Will he die ?"

She thought Carmine might fudge that one, possibly out of delicacy or kindness, or for more obscure reasons. She didn't. She said, as casually as if referring to the workings of a car engine, "Technically, yes. He'll be out — that is, not breathing — for something like twelve hours; then he'll wake and" She spread her hands. "That's it."

It. My husband, undead. A vampire

"Oh, one warning," Carmine added. "Twelve hours is a long time to wait; it'll probably feel more like twelve days to you. You could easily panic and think that something's gone wrong, but you must not be tempted to act on that fear. If you call a doctor, an ambulance, anything like that, the consequences will be disastrous, and I am not exaggerating." One hand, resting on the arm of her chair, clenched, as though an unpleasant memory had risen. "Imagine it, Penny. A dead man who suddenly and inexplicably returns to life. Believe me, you do not want to condemn David, and yourself, to facing the results of that!"

Penny nodded. She was feeling worse with every moment, and suddenly she found herself on the verge of changing her mind, ordering Carmine out of the house as she had done at their first encounter.

"I'm afraid," Carmine said softly, "that it's a little late for that."

Penny stared. "How do you"

"Know what you're thinking? Don't worry, I'm not telepathic. It's simply all there in your face; cold feet, the last-minute doubts; it's always the same. But you can't turn back. He's already too far down the line, and if it stops now, he'll die sooner and more unkindly than he would have done if this had never begun." She stood up. "So, with your permission"

Penny's face was a frozen sculpture. She nodded, once, barely perceptibly, and Carmine silently left the room.

She was gone longer than usual, and when she returned Penny had not been pacing but still sat motionless in her chair.

"Twelve hours," Carmine said. Her cheeks were flushed and there was an excited, faintly feverish look in her eyes. "For his sake and yours, please remember what I said and don't panic."

Penny didn't look at her but fumbled for her handbag on the floor near her feet. "I'd better" She swallowed. The car was sold, the money was in the bank. She wanted rid of it. "Will you take a cheque?"

"Of course." While Penny wrote, her hand shaking, Carmine put her coat on. "Thank you," she said. The cheque disappeared into a small black leather wallet. "Oh, and if you need me again, just phone. It's inclusive; no extra charge."

"Need you?" Penny demanded sharply. "For what?"

"Well you may already have worked out how to do it, in which case there's no problem," said Carmine. "But if you haven't" Her shoulders lifted in an eloquent but slightly self-effacing way. "You might want some help when you have to break the news of what we've done to David."

Penny sat beside her husband's bed, her gaze fixed glassily on his face, her body and mind numb. David wasn't breathing, and she had got through nearly half a bottle of vodka, and if Carmine's calculation was right there were still nine more hours to endure before his chest would move and his eyes would open and look at her, and she would have to tell him the truth. She didn't know how she would do it, and she wished that she had the barefaced gall to pray for guidance. But she didn't, and so waiting the hours away with the help of the vodka bottle seemed the only viable option.

At midnight she was asleep, slumped forward with her face on the bed, in a posture that would give her a diabolical backache by morning. At 7:45 a.m. a sound and a movement disturbed her, and she raised her head blearily. Her eyes wouldn't focus properly at first, but after a second or two David's face registered.

He was awake. He was sitting up. And he was hungry .

"Champagne." Carmine produced a bag with a refinedly understated logo and presented it to Penny. "To mark the occasion and celebrate a happy outcome."

The champagne was expensive and already chilled to the perfect temperature, both of which made Penny feel faintly inadequate. She said thank you too gushingly, but before she could make any move to open the bottle David took it from her. "Let me, darling. You know what you're like; you'll struggle with it and then it'll go off bang and we'll lose half the contents before we even start."

The remark stung but Penny didn't want to show it. She returned a stiff smile, fetched glasses, watched as the cork came out with nothing more than a soft hiss and the champagne bubbled into the bowls. Carmine was given the first glass (naturally enough; she was a guest), Penny the second.

"Well, then." David raised the third glass. "To all of us." But he was looking at Carmine as he said it.

Carmine smiled warmly. They drank, then a constrained silence crept in.

Penny said, "I'll see how the food's coming along"

All right , she told herself in the kitchen. This is still very new to him and she's been more than helpful; in fact I very much doubt if we could have coped without her. So stop resenting her, and stop being paranoid . Lecture over. If she repeated it often enough, the message would get through eventually. There was no cause to be suspicious.

She started to prepare the food, trying to concentrate on the filleted sole she had prepared for herself and not dwell too much on what David and Carmine were to eat. Only a desire not to alienate David had stopped her from staggering mealtimes so that they no longer sat together at the dinner table. She frankly couldn't bear to watch him; she had always been squeamish about red meat, and in the past their meals had majored on fish, chicken or vegetarian dishes. All that had changed now, and if David's diet wasn't as grotesque as legend, it was still bad enough. And the way he ate; the speed, the relish of it Meat, and especially beef or veal, either totally raw or so rare that the blood still ran and congealed on his plate, and fish only in the form of sushi. He enjoyed jugged hare, if the local butcher could provide one complete with blood. (When the butcher did, Penny had put her foot down and told David that he must cook it himself.) No vegetables whatever; no fruit or cereals or grains. Oh, and the daily breakfast of raw eggs and black pudding, of course. Alcohol wasn't a problem, though he had a marked preference for the heavier red wines, and he did not get drunk no matter how much he put away.

Tonight, with two of David's kind to cater for, Penny had forced herself to provide fillet steak (cooking omitted), with a creamy and plentiful pepper sauce that she could pour on before serving, to mask the look and the smell. Vegetables would also be served, but only she herself would touch them; ditto the tiramisu she had prepared for dessert.

She was not looking forward to this evening. During the early, difficult stage (she smiled humourlessly at that piece of litotes) Carmine had been a rock to her, a mediator and ally in the painful process of getting David through the initial shock and enabling him to come to terms with what he had become. That nightmare was over now, though, and the idea that Carmine should come to dinner on a purely social basis — thus shifting the relationship between the three of them from the professional to the personal — dismayed Penny. She did not want Carmine as a friend. The woman unnerved her (understandably), and now that she was no longer needed, Penny would have vastly preferred never to set eyes on her again.

David, though, had argued that one invitation was the very least they could do to thank Carmine. Anything less would be downright rude, he had said, and considering that without her intervention Penny would now be a widow, he found her attitude hard to understand, and more than a little disappointing. He had expected better of her. Feeling like a petty-minded schoolgirl, Penny had flushed and capitulated and spent the rest of the day torn between feelings of shame and guilt, and fervent hopes that Carmine would decline the invitation. But Carmine had not declined, so the motions must be gone through, and David would be pleased, and when it was over she could, with luck, bid Carmine a final adieu .

The meal progressed in decorous, civilized style, only marred for Penny (if one overlooked the actual content of the food) by the amount of wine that David and Carmine drank. It wasn't that she really minded, Penny told herself. It wasn't as if either of them became drunk or obnoxious. But Carmine's contribution was only the one bottle of champagne; they had paid for the rest, and considering that ten thousand pounds of their money was now sitting in her bank account

She pushed the thought away. The matter of the money was niggling at her too often for comfort, and she reminded herself that, as Carmine had said at the time, what price her husband's future? David had been a v had been what he was for four months now, and even in her meanest moments Penny had to acknowledge that the condition had its advantages. Take the sex, for instance. Through their married life he had never had a high sex drive; it had been a bone of contention at times, and once his illness set in, any question of conjugal rights had gone straight out of the window. Penny had never complained, naturally, but she had suffered a lot of frustration. Not so now. Now, David was tireless . Inventive, too, and so keen that in fact his demands were starting to become exhausting and just a little tedious. Ice cream is delectable, but too much makes you sick

Penny pushed that thought away, too, and tried to shake her mind out of its bout of self-pity. What did the money matter, or the small irritations? David was alive (well but no: don't go down that path) , strong, and guaranteed to remain that way for

The word hit her suddenly and hard. For ever. David wasn't going to age. As years passed, he would remain exactly as he was tonight, while she

"Penny?" Carmine's voice snapped the chain of the horror rising in her. "Is anything wrong?"

Oh, no; of course nothing's wrong. Only that I'm such a cretin that I've only just started to consider the implications of immortality ! "No," Penny said, in such a peculiarly strangled voice that she gave the complete lie to the statement. "No, I — something stuck in my throat, I think."

She might have imagined it, but Penny thought Carmine and David exchanged a very private look. "Not a fishbone, I hope?" Carmine said solicitously. "They can be dangerous. Can I"

"No!" She swallowed. "Thank you. It's gone now." She took a large and unladylike swig from her wineglass, and this time distinctly saw David raise an eyebrow.

"More, darling?" No trace of disapproval in his voice; but he was good at hiding things. Always had been, now she thought about it.

"Yes. Thanks." Defiantly she emptied the refilled glass in one, challenging him to make any comment. He didn't.

"It was a lovely meal, Penny," Carmine said, possibly to ease the sudden sharp change in the atmosphere.

"Absolutely," David concurred before Penny could think of a reply. "We must do it again, mustn't we?"

Penny opened her mouth to snap "Must we?", but had the wit to close it again before anything came out. David offered Carmine coffee, and when Penny showed no sign of volunteering to make it, he headed to the kitchen to do it himself. Penny watched him go (tall, slim; that old tendency to put on weight had quite gone, and he looked extremely handsome these days) and as he disappeared, a question sprang into her mind. It was a spin-off from the immortality thing (she was feeling calmer about that, though doubtless it would come back and hit her again later), and suddenly she wanted, extremely badly, to know the answer.

She turned to Carmine. "May I ask you something?"

"Of course." Carmine inclined her head in a way that made Penny wonder if she was being patronized. Third thought to push away .

"It's about children."

"Ah." Carmine's expression grew wary. "I've been wondering if that would come up."

Penny bristled, though not visibly. "I think it's a natural enough concern. Whatever David might"

"You didn't have children before. Was that choice, or ?"

"Choice, of course." Her hackles were rising by the moment and she wished she had not begun this conversation. Too late for regret, though, and with determination she collected herself. "It's a perfectly straightforward question. Can we?"

Carmine said, "No."

Penny's bravado and aggression collapsed. "Why not?"

Carmine's eyes held a world of sympathy, even if Penny was unwilling to acknowledge it. "It's a harsh fact of his — our — condition," she said. "A vampire can procreate — naturally, or our kind would have died out in the earliest days; maybe never even have evolved in the first place when you think about it logically. Chickens and eggs, you know" She saw Penny's face become very tight, and quickly let the metaphor drop. "I was born what I am, and I could make a child with any man, mortal or otherwise. David, though, was not born what he is, and when the condition isn't hereditary, the rules are different. He could only father a child on a woman who was vampire born. But with you, it isn't possible."

Penny's mind spun off into space, and her lungs seemed to be clogging up with something murky and angry and bitter. "So," she said, " you could have a child with my husband, but I can't."

What did that pause signify? Anything? Nothing? At length Carmine did answer. "Yes. Theoretically."

Theoretically . Penny asked, "Have you had any children?"

Carmine broke eye contact and looked away. It was the first time Penny had ever known her to do that. "Yes."

Penny's bitterness was growing, and with it a desperate desire to strike out, to hurt , because she was hurting and she wanted Carmine to suffer along with her. "Where are they now?" she demanded.

The second pause was longer than the first. Then: "One," Carmine said, apparently without emotion, "is in New York. Or was, the last time I heard anything of him. He's a heroin addict, and he wants to die of it, but he can't, because of what he is. The other" — her voice caught momentarily — "did die, though she was the one who didn't want to. Ironic, yes? But it was a long time ago, and a long way east of here, and people believed in us then, so when she made a serious tactical mistake they" She coughed. "Well, you know how the legend runs. The method of killing us is one of the facts that hasn't been distorted."

Penny stared, fascination creeping in despite herself. "A stake through the heart?" she prompted softly.

Carmine nodded. Her face had tightened, taking on the look of a fixed clay mask. "It doesn't actually have to be a stake," she said. "Anything will do, as long as it pierces far enough. In her case"

"Your daughter?"

Carmine swallowed. "My daughter, yes. In her case it was a — a kitchen knife. Just a kitchen knife."

David came back then. "Coffee's brewing," he began cheerfully, then saw Carmine's tension, the expression on Penny's face. "What is it?" His tone became sharp. "What's happened?"

Penny mouthed " tell you later" but he didn't see it; his attention was on Carmine. She, however, straightened her shoulders and smiled up at him. "Nothing to concern you," she said lightly. "Women's talk, that's all. David, when we've had coffee I really must go. It's been a lovely evening, but I have to be up tomorrow; I've got an early appointment."

Penny wanted to say bitchily, "Another ten grand in the bank?" but held her tongue. This wasn't the moment for scoring points; in a few minutes more Carmine would be out of here. She disciplined herself to make polite and superficially pleasant small talk while the coffee was enjoyed and they all had a cognac, then David fetched Carmine's coat and walked her to her car. Penny watched covertly from the window, but it was too dark to see what sort of car she had. Something expensive, no doubt. She could afford it, couldn't she? And why was a simple farewell taking so long? What were they doing ?

When David did return (six minutes: Penny had counted) she was washing up with a pointed amount of noise and splashing. Before his illness, he had promised to buy her a dishwasher. Out of the question now, of course. They couldn't afford it. As she slammed another plate into the rack he came up behind her and slid his hands around her waist.

"Leave that. I'll do it in the morning." His lips touched the back of her neck. "Come to bed."

Oh, God, not again . "I'm tired," she said. "Let's give it a miss tonight, shall we?"

He laughed. "No way. I want you. Come on, darling; I'm not taking no for an answer."

You never do, do you ? Penny pulled a face that he couldn't see, and sighed. No point in arguing; she would waste more time and energy that way than by giving him what he wanted, yet again. She pulled off her rubber gloves, dumped them on the draining board and went with him up the stairs.

David always fell soundly asleep after sex, and when she was certain of not disturbing him Penny got up and went into the bathroom. Switching on the small vanity light she faced her reflection in the mirror above the washbasin. On first impression she was pretty good for forty-three, but she wasn't in a mood to be optimistic, and she studied herself more closely and critically. Proto-crow's feet at the borders of her eyes. Lines developing at the corners of her mouth. Chin starting to sag; barely noticeable yet but she could see it. She wasn't a natural blonde, so couldn't tell if there were any traces of grey in her hair yet. Grey was distinguishing in a man, ageing in a woman. Carmine wasn't grey, was she?

Carmine could have his child. I can't.

It wasn't that she wanted children. Never had, really; she wasn't the maternal type. But the principle of the thing was different, and the thought that Carmine and David were capable of doing what she and David weren't made her very, very angry. It also led, quite naturally from the perspective of this dissatisfied moment, to the conclusion that if they could , they just might . That tonight, she had possibly witnessed the opening gambits of a sexual affair. Or even if she hadn't, that the potential was there.

Potential — or inevitability? Penny leaned closer still to the mirror, dissecting her image now. Even if lines and grey hair weren't yet worth worrying about, that would change soon enough. Think forward three years; five; ten . In ten years she would be fifty-three. In fifteen, sixty would be looming on her horizon, but David would still be exactly as he was tonight: youthful, energetic, handsome. What would he want with a sixty-year-old wife? She would be a turn-off, an embarrassment, and that would be the end of it, marriage over, goodbye.

David was no fool; he must have considered the long-term future. Maybe he had even discussed it with Carmine, in some private conversation that Penny knew nothing about? Penny's stomach churned at the thought of him talking to Carmine, possibly meeting Carmine, when she was not present to play chaperone. Or gooseberry. Remember how he kept looking at her tonight. Are they already having an affair ? Are they ?

Suddenly she felt tainted, and with the feeling came an overwhelming urge to walk back into the bedroom, shake David forcibly awake and confront him with her suspicions. Or to go to the phone, key Carmine's number and demand the truth from her. Yes: that was the better option. Because if there was an affair David would lie about it, and she was too vulnerable to his charm not to be taken in. If Carmine lied, Penny would not be fooled. Yes. The better option. In the morning, when David had left for work, she would do it.

Penny did not make the planned phone call. For by morning, she had thought of a new idea; so radical that at first it shocked her and she mentally hid from it, finding a hundred reasons why it was utterly out of the question. Through the first half of the day, though, the reasons seemed somehow to break down of their own accord, until by mid-afternoon they were gone, leaving in their place the same kind of queasy, heart-racing excitement that young children feel on the night before Christmas when nothing can persuade them to sleep.

With an hour to go before David came home, she summoned the courage to ring Carmine.

Carmine said, "No. I'm sorry, Penny, but I just won't do it." With her world collapsing around her Penny screamed down the phone. "Why not , damn you? You were eager enough to do it for David; what's the bloody difference all of a sudden?" She sucked in a huge, painful breath. "I know it's all business to you, but I can find the money, I'll"

"Penny, listen to me! Have you talked to David about this?"

"No, I haven't!"

"Then I think you should. And I also think I know what he'll say."

Penny saw red. "David's not my bloody owner — I make my own decisions! And how the hell would you know what he'd say? Telepathic, are you? Or are you so cosy with my husband these days that you know him better than I do?"

"I'm not saying that. I'm only saying"

" What are you saying? Tell me the truth, for once!"

"I'm trying to. The circumstances aren't the same , Penny. David was terminally ill, and what I did for him was the only alternative to death. It isn't like that with you. You're healthy and with a long, normal life ahead of you. It isn't — it wouldn't be right to turn you into"

"But I want it!" Then with a great effort Penny brought herself under control. Keep your temper. Reason with her . "Look. I've thought it through, I have no doubts, and I can get the money. Don't you want another ten thousand?"

Carmine gave a strange little laugh. "Money doesn't come into it. You could offer me half a million and I'd turn it down. The plain fact is, I will not do this for any living soul unless there is a very, very good reason indeed."

"And my reason isn't good enough."

"No. Frankly, it isn't."

"I see. So you're happy to give David your gift, but you won't consider giving it to me."

"It isn't like that, Penny."

"No, I'm sure it isn't." Then something dawned, and Penny wondered why on earth she hadn't thought of it before. "Well, I won't bother you again, then. I'll ask my husband to do it for me instead. He is my husband, after all. Which is something you seem to conveniently forget when it suits you."

There was a sharp pause. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Work it out, Carmine. You're intelligent enough." Penny was completely calm now. Yes, David can do it. Fool I am: I needn't even have made this call . Coolly, she added, "I won't take up any more of your time. Oh, one last thing. You're not welcome in this house from now on."

She didn't hang up immediately; she wanted to hear and savour Carmine's reaction. There was a short silence.

Then Carmine said, "Message understood. But before you go, it's only fair to tell you that David can't help you. Even if he agreed to it — which I frankly doubt — he doesn't possess the ability. Only those who are born to the club, as you might say, can initiate new members. Goodbye, Penny. I think I feel rather sorry for you."

Carmine was the one to break the connection.

Penny did not tell David about the phone call, and she did not ask him to do what she wanted. Instead, she kept the memory of the conversation locked privately in her mind, picking over every detail until it festered like a sore that wouldn't heal. David can't . Was that true, or had Carmine lied for her own purposes? I doubt if he would agree . How did she know what David would or wouldn't agree to? Discussed it, had they? How often? How intimately? Your reason isn't good enough . Carmine Smith, aka God. Well, the motive was obvious, wasn't it? Wives get in the way of affairs, and the last thing Carmine and David would want was Penny joining the club, as Carmine had put it. Penny would cramp their style. Penny would be a damned nuisance. So she must be prevented from joining, mustn't she? Provided Penny stayed in the ranks of ordinary mortals, Carmine and David need only wait a few years — nothing, to them — until Penny began seriously to age, then faded, withered and finally dropped out of the picture altogether. Problem solved: until then they could simply carry on their liaison behind her back.