Undead - One Foot In The Grave Part 19

I pulled back the covers and crawled under them.

After all, tomorrow was another day. . . .

I fluffed my pillow with my fist.. . . or night. . .

I closed my eyes.

. . . and maybe I'd go back to Tara.

"Oh, fiddle-de-dee," I murmured. And fell asleep.

Now the darkness of the barn is merciful.

I can see the cow, lying on its side. See the great gash that has opened up its belly. Slats of dusty sunbeams bisect the spill of entrails, but most of the gore and details are still lost in the darkness.

I hesitate at the edge of a red tidal pool that trickles toward my feet. A hand grasps my arm and I turn to see the silhouette of a man brandis.h.i.+ng a b.l.o.o.d.y knife.

I came awake, gasping for air, my stomach cramping me into a sitting position. In that long moment of leaving the dream behind, I was partially blind, partially deaf: I did not notice movement or sound until a voice spoke.

"You were having a nightmare."

I didn't jump or flinch: nothing was as frightening as that half-buried memory that crept closer and closer each time I closed my eyes.

A woman sat at the edge of my bed. In the darkness I had only her voice and vague outline to serve for clues.

Jennifer?

I looked again, something subtle s.h.i.+fting at the back of my eyes. The bedroom's topography was now evident in patterned greyscale, the furniture layout in dark blue and grey geometric shapes. The woman, herself, flickered like a bright flame: white surrounded by concentric layers of yellow then orange then red in a vague, humanoid shape. I s.h.i.+vered as I realized that my night vision was evolving into an infrared targeting system.

"Who is it?" I asked carefully.

"Deirdre." She reached out and a warm hand caressed my cool, clammy forehead.

Deirdre? "What are you doing here?"

"I am here to take care of you. Think of me as your nurse."

"I don't need a nurse."

"You're still weak and your wound is not entirely healed. The Doman says that this a difficult and dangerous time for you. I want to help."

"I don't need help. I need rest. Why don't you run along and spend your time with-" I caught myself. I was about to say "with Damien" when I remembered that her vampire lover was dead, murdered by the same hitmen who had nearly killed me. "-I'm sorry."

She reached over and switched on the bedside lamp, b.u.mping my vision back into normal mode.

Most so-called redheads actually favor the orange spectrum. Here, hair, lips and nails were the color of blood, deep red and vibrant in hue. Alabaster skin with no visible flaws. China blue eyes, made bluer by the sheen of tears and the shadows of sleepless nights, looked back at me, through me, beyond me.

"He loved me, you know," she said. "He really loved me."

And who could blame him? I thought.

"You're probably thinking that I'm a beautiful woman-why wouldn't he?" she said.

All this and psychic abilities, too.

"Beauty is overrated." She laughed. It was a short, half-hearted thing. "Oh, I know that it's just the sort of thing that beautiful people sometimes say and it sounds incredibly self-centered and boorish. But it is a wall between us. A mask. A facade."

She was rattling. It was obviously an old argument for her and I made no reply: she had anunderstandable need to talk.

"Give me your foot," she said.

I stared at her. "What?"

"I'm your nurse and this is phase one of your therapy. Besides, it gives me something to do." She gave me a hard look. "I've had nothing to do for four days. I need to do something. Anything." She blinked. "So give me your foot."

I extended my right foot and she took it into her warm grasp. I was reminded again of the widening difference in our body temperatures.

"We live in a world that values beauty, rewards it as if it were a virtue or the product of great labor and achievement. It can be, I suppose," she said, sighing, working her thumbs up the sole of my foot.

"But it's mostly the result of good genes."

Her fingers worked their way around and over my instep, moving toward my ankle. There her thumb ma.s.saged the outer perimeter, the juncture of the talus and the end of the fibula: my attention began to slide a little.

"Don't get me wrong," she continued, "I'm not whining about what a burden it is to be attractive. I'm just pointing out that a lot of people will treat you like meat or like art or like all their fondest fantasies or the embodiment of their own lack of self-esteem. When you find someone who treats you like a real person, it can be special."

"That's how it was with Damien," I said.

Deirdre nodded. "Here." She pushed on my leg. "Roll over and let me do your back."

"Therapy." I sighed and complied. Maybe she would get to the other foot later.

"He had lived long enough to have gotten past the value systems that most men apply when looking at a woman. He looked at me and saw . . . me. Not just a face or a body. He looked at me as a man and saw more than just s.e.x or a trophy. And he looked at me as a vampire and saw more than just food and drink. He . . . saw . . . me!" Her voice was decidedly unsteady.

A long silence ensued while she worked her hands up and down my spine.

"So, how did you meet?"

"At the library. Late one night, just before closing. I went there by chance that particular night. It turned out that he was there on a regular basis-three or four evenings a week. He said it was a sign: he was reading Keats and looked up and saw me."

" 'Endymion'?" I asked, trying to visualize a vampire with a library card.

"Yes. How did you know?"

" 'A thing of beauty is a joy forever: its loveliness increases; it will never pa.s.s into nothingness.' "

I nodded into my pillow. "It was a sign."

"Well, I was attracted by his beauty, too. We're all tied to that prejudicial first glance. It's the second look and the third that weighs us and our value systems."

"Was it difficult? Loving someone who was old before you were young and would remain young long after you were old?"

"We never had the time to find out. A few years: what is that in the scheme of human lifetimes, much less those of immortals? He tried to bring me over. . ."

"Over?""I asked. I wanted to live forever. Who wouldn't? But it wasn't just selfishness on my part. I wanted us to be together. I didn't want him tied to a woman whose body grew older and more infirm as the years pa.s.sed. And I wanted to share his life, his world. . . ."

"You wanted to become a vampire," I said.

"More for him than for anything else. And he agreed, even knowing it might well mean the end of pa.s.sion for us."

"The end of pa.s.sion?"

She worked on my shoulders before answering. "A coldness sets in when you become undead. Not just a coldness of the flesh, though that is particularly evident, but a more subtle coldness, as well. s.e.xual gratification becomes a pale subst.i.tute for the gratification of blood and many male vampires become impotent unless they couple while in the act of feeding. They-male and female-are drawn to us for the warmth of our flesh as well as the nourishment of our blood. It is rare that the wampyr experience real pa.s.sion with one another. Marriages or relations.h.i.+ps that predate their transformations rarely survive as anything more than intellectual alliances."

"But Damien was willing to make you into what he had become and risk that." I didn't phrase it as a question.

"He felt it would be best for me, if not for us. He was willing to risk that wonderful intensity that we had found in one another. . . ."

"But he wasn't able to-to-bring you over."

"No.

"We tried everything." I felt the shrug of her shoulders telegraphed through her hands. "For some it is enough to be bitten just once. Others do not change until there have been many feedings. An exchange of blood-once thought to be foolproof in pa.s.sing the condition-isn't. Damien gave me his blood many times. It came to nothing. The only other possibility was that life was too strong to permit the unlife to take hold: that he would have to drink of me until life was no longer a barrier."

"You would have to die."

"Yes," she said. "And he wouldn't permit that. There was no certainty to the theory and he refused to risk losing me for all time." She gave a short, sharp, bitter laugh. "He was worried about losing me!"

There was nothing I could say that wouldn't sound trite or ba.n.a.l, so I lay there and let her work her fingers up and down my back. Impotence now joined insanity on the list of potential deficits to my transformation. But the skill of her fingers and the weariness of my own not yet recovered body conspired against any further contemplation.

My mind drifted and, to my shame, I dozed.

"I need your help!" he says.

So focused am I on the b.l.o.o.d.y knife that he has to repeat himself, shouting the second time.

He tugs on my arm with his other hand and pulls me into the growing puddle of blood. The cow struggles weakly, producing crosscurrents to the feeble tides that are clocked by its failing bovine heart.

There is something else, now; here, in the darkness, beside the dying beast. A dark shape surrounded by a lake of red and the spangled beams of slotted sunlight, huddled in the darkest part of the barn. It s.h.i.+fts and hisses. And smells of woodsmoke and burned pork.

"Take off your s.h.i.+rt and lie down!" the man commands. A beam of sunlight bounces back from the blade of the b.l.o.o.d.y knife and dazzles me. Though he loosens his grip upon my arm I can no longer see well enough to evade him.

Something s.h.i.+fts on the ground, near my feet, and the cow bellows fearfully.

A miasma of death and terror rises up from the blood, thick and choking. I do not want to be here,to do this thing!

I am afraid for my life! And for more than my life. . . .

But gall and bitterness and dread have seized my heart, my mind, my limbs, and I cannot find the ability to do anything beyond what I am told. I do not remember taking off my s.h.i.+rt. I can hardly bear to think about lowering myself into the visceral stew that clots the earth, here. But I am sitting now, staring up at the dark silhouette of the man with the b.l.o.o.d.y knife. I put my hand out to steady myself and something cold and wet and hungry comes up out of the blood-spattered ground to grasp my arm in an iron grip!

I sobbed and sobbed, trying to purge my heart, my very soul of the sludge of terror and shame. The gory mud of that barn floor still seemed to cling to me here, more than a year later and a half a continent away. Chilled to the marrow, I clung to the warm softness as if my life depended on it.

But my lungs needed air and, at last, I had to lift my face from the folds of warm terry cloth to catch my breath. I looked up into an angel's face: compa.s.sionate blue eyes and perfect features with radiant skin, framed by hair the color of holy fire.

Deirdre.

She was kneeling on the bed, holding me as I wept against her shoulder.

I struggled to compose myself. To pull away. "I'm sorry," I said. "It was just a nightmare."

She refused to release me from her embrace. "Is that what you still think it is? A simple nightmare?"

"I'm okay now," I said, trying to rea.s.sure myself more than her.

"You're not okay," she whispered, bringing her cheek to mine. "You've been to the grave and back-not just once, but twice. You've not only lost your own life, but the lives of those you love." Her arms tightened around me. "I want to help. I'm here for you."

I embraced her in return, as much to keep my balance as to reciprocate her kindness. That's when I noticed that she was wearing my robe.

And that someone had replaced the lamplight with candlelight while I slept.

I turned my head to look at her. Her face turned to mine. Our lips met.

We kissed.

I should have enjoyed it. I understood enough about death and loss to know that we sometimes seek oblivion in physical distraction. That we hold back the darkness with life-affirming acts of procreation.

And that, as Harry Chapin used to sing, "loving anyone was a better place to be."

Still. . . "Why?" I asked, as she released my lips.

"We can help each other," she whispered. "Maybe heal each other a little." Her hand came up and caressed my face. "You need me. Need what I can give you. What I can do for you.

"And I need you. I need you to need me," she continued with a look of desperation. "Let me stay with you. Let me do this for you." She reached down and pulled the sash on the robe. It fell open and I felt my protests die on my lips.

My mind schismed: it had been a year. Jennifer was dead. . . .

Is she?

She must be. The dead don't- Don't what? Come back? Sunder their graves? Rise from their coffins?

If she's alive, why is she hiding in the shadows? Why doesn't she come to me?

I don't know, the old morality monitor whispered, but G.o.d wouldn't like it. . . .

The fear, the uncertainty was washed away on a sudden flood of anger.

G.o.d lets my wife and little girl die in an awful car crash and spares me so I can slowly turn into a monster: do you think I really give a d.a.m.n what G.o.d likes? I slid my hands from her arms to her sides, felt the splay of ribs beneath silky muscles, the warmth of human flesh. I opened my mouth to speak and she leaned forward, parting her own lips again: I felt the inquiry of a tongue. The tension building in all of my muscles.