Archive for January, 2011

But Sharing is Caring

Posted in Fiction, Vampirony with tags , on January 26, 2011 by vampirony

Looking like a statue frozen and expressionless, Skovajsa waited across the street from the Deli, hidden within the tree line, for some sort of sign. About an hour after he began his vigil, a young blond man of medium height stepped out the door to the office on the top floor of the building.

“There he is,” Oksana, wearing a very expensive version of her previous garish outfit, stepped forward, purring. She focused on Skovajsa, her face enraptured that she had reason to be this close again, sure that her reward would be great with the information she had revealed to him. She reached out newly painted nails of glossy, glittery red to touch his arm.

While Skovajsa turned to look robotically at Oksana, the man in question disappeared in a streak across the sky. Skovajsa’s complete lack of emotional response to Oksana’s touch forced her to let her hand slide from him and Skovajsa returned his gaze to the building. The doorway was now empty.

“Hmm,” was all he uttered and he breathed in deeply, sensing powerful waves of energy emanating from the building.

Oksana felt cheated that he didn’t offer her praise but when she looked back at the building, she noticed the obvious. “Where did he go?”

“Disappeared. Through shadows. Or stealth.”

There was cunning and conniving in his tone that Oksana readily recognized. Maybe this would lead to reward after all. She narrowed her eyes, tilting her head looking up at him. He was tall, handsome, powerful. Everything she wanted in a man. And he owned property, including that shit hole she knew as her family’s Russian deli. When she had first laid eyes on him several months ago when he’d taken over the loans her family owed, he was, by his very presence, intimidating her grandmother.

That alone would’ve inspired her admiration.

She had tried to talk to him then but her grandmother had forbid her. And then the community Orthodox priest had come to minister to her. It meant this stranger, dark and foreboding, had power that her family feared she might be drawn to. And she was. She had obsessed about him, wondering when he might notice her, intrigued that the few times he did visit, he came in a shiny black Escalade and only at night, when the shop had just closed.

But he never noticed her. So she made her own luck. About a month ago, when he was talking to her grandmother, she had gone outside to his car and left him a note inside the car, in the driver’s controls. It was the business card of a nightclub she liked to visit in Pioneer Square where she had written on the back: “I know who you are. Come at midnight.”

She had gone to the club for three straight nights waiting for him to show, dressed in her best. She ignored all the other men who tried to paw at her, not wanting him to arrive and see her with anyone else. Then early one morning, after the clubs had closed, she was about to board the bus back to Bellevue, disappointed when a voice called to her.

“Why don’t I give you a ride?”

Back at his condo, he had told her he’d watched her, wondered what she meant. She told him she knew he was a man, a big man, a powerful man. He proceeded to show her otherwise.

The fact that he was this powerful creature bothered her little. In fact, it made her love her even more. She worshipped everything about him. How insignificant everyone else in the world seemed when he was this beast, this god. He was Vampire! She loved it when he said it, meant it, and then sunk his teeth into her to prove it. She wanted that power all to herself, wanted to become one with him, wanted to do what he did.

So one night in the throes of sex, she had bit him, hard, drawing blood. He’d thrown her across the room. She begged for forgiveness, groveled that she just wanted more of him. Even how he had thrown her thrilled her. Such strength. And it was all hers now. Well, if not now, it would soon be. He would be all hers. It would only take a little while.

He had seemed perplexed by her devotion. But he was like any other man to her. He had invited her back, the next night and the next. The right amount of flattering and seduction convinced him she was his to enjoy and command. Then, after letting him drink from her until she felt dizzy and empty, she had asked if she could bite him again and he seemed eager to let her try.

The biting had led to bleeding, the bleeding had led to this beautiful, dark place where she could hear his heart beat and imagine she could see the years that folded out behind him in his long unnatural life. Her heart collapsed under the weight of unimaginable and horrific ecstasy.

She had started to convulse and ultimately expired.

She didn’t fault him for disposing of her body. He hadn’t expected her to die. He had been surprised, shocked even, when it had happened and shock must’ve driven his actions. He had been equally shocked this evening to have her call his private line, asking him to meet her back at the deli. Confusion had to have been his primary emotion because he had first hung up on her.

“There are others here like you.”

That had grabbed his attention when she had called him back and had to leave a message.

And now he turned his head to look back down at her. Whatever he wanted was what she wanted. And now she knew that others like him were important to him.

He cupped her cheek in a very practiced way.

“You’ve done well, copil. A very powerful and providential find.”

She lowered her eyes, smiling, swaying in sensuous pride. Yes! A reward was due her. She had struggled the last few weeks, finding substance, fighting the itches under her skin. She had managed a few random feedings but they had been horribly messy. But a few credit card purchases later from that businessman or that geek savant and her clothes were getting more to her liking.

She looked up at him through her lashes. His face was expressionless. It must be hard for him, she thought, to open up again after he had thought she’d been lost to him. He dropped his hand and turned back to the deli building. He considered it for a moment before beginning to walk in the opposite direction.

“What will we do next?”

He paused, as if he’d forgotten she was there. He was such a thoughtful man.

“Come with me, copil. We should finish our relation.”

Back at his place, she found out exactly the nature of his thoughts. He valued her find and not really her. He had summed it up nicely for her right before ripping her throat open.

“I am Vampire. I do not share.”

Bastard, she thought as her life expired yet again.

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DJB: Memoirs, Volume 3: Housecleaning

Posted in Fiction, Vampirony with tags , , , , on January 14, 2011 by vampirony

Didn’t know what happened to me, my mind was all a jumble. I had to get out of there, head bursting suddenly with places and faces and none of it made sense as to why. I grabbed the lemons. At the time, didn’t know why, just seemed important.

Grabbed the kid’s jacket and out fell the Book. Old, worn, leather, excellent craftsmanship. Fingers brushed it as if familiar. All went quiet in my mind and I remembered one singular memory: My heart in anguish as I wandered the desert alone at night. Something about blood in the sand. But the memory teased me, wouldn’t come back fully formed and the moment my skin broke contact with the book, the torrent of other lives began knocking around in my head again like so many rubber balls.

I stuffed the lemons in the pockets and I fled. Couldn’t remember how I’d wound up in such a desperate state but my impulse was to go to ground, get to the safety of my lair, try to stop the tempest in the teacup that was my skull.

I flew out of there. I never do that, not with such abandon. One moment I was standing at the doorway, the next I was at my balcony. The speed at which I had traveled only served to create more confusion but I had enough current presence of mind to push the door open and get inside.

I made my way directly to my study, pulling all my books off the shelf, aimlessly. I couldn’t focus on what I wanted but I kept searching. There was an annoying chirping coming from my pocket. I took out this cold piece of black, vibrating plastic, held it out in front of me. I closed my eyes for a moment. The memory of it was there, being pummeled by strange and grandiose vistas, snowy mountains stretching high into the sky, buildings clinging to these pillars. I pushed the mountains away, recoiled from the sands, antlers trimmed in fur and lace, dread and more dread, the smell of jasmine in her hair…

Calm returned. I opened my eyes. “Cell phone,” I spoke out loud.

The words on the screen said Morena. My brain remembered what the phone was and vaguely who Morena was but also did not want to currently pursue it. I finger hit a button to silence the machine and I looked back to the shelves of books. It looked much like the reception area mess.

The sense of now was returning to me. I wanted one of my journals which all seemed to stubbornly remain intact on their shelf. Volume One: mostly my human life and as much as I could remember of how I became Vampire. Volume Two: My wanderings throughout Europe and Asia. Volume Three: My life in the New World. My fingers went between Volumes One and Two. There was a gap of time in my recollections between the first two volumes. It could have been caused by folding memories too deeply or some injury which had taken me some time to recover from while I wandered.

But a new explanation dawned as keenly as the memory of anguish felt so deeply upon touching familiar pages of another book that looked exactly like mine. She laid here, between these volumes, the memory of her so fraught with peril that I had sought to wipe it out of existence. I had folded her away without talisman or gesture so that as I aged and folded more memories on top of her, she would be compressed into nothingness, out of my reach. Or so I had thought.

I had never once considered that the gift of a book of mine long ago would have undone centuries of forgetting. That a simple caress would replace the folding gesture that had become reflex and second nature to me. And that’s why I had run. I was not ready for any of this. The first memory to rise up out of the abyss was that of tormented loss. And with it, an insatiable panic.

Vessels within my chest contracted and when I placed a hand there, I found it covered in blood. Glancing down, I remembered the fight with her Halfling. My flight had exacerbated the injuries to full wounds that now needed attention. I stuffed a hand into my pocket, bringing out the lemon. I let my nails grow to pierce the rind and then stretched back my head, squeezing the juice into my open mouth.

Radiant light roared inside my mind before I blinked into darkness.

When I came to later, I was lying on the floor. As I shifted up to my elbows, I noticed my chest had started to heal. In all my vampire life, I could never remember healing from anything other than blood. I repeated the same with the other lemon, went lights out again.

This time, there was a brief smile of a memory there for me right before I awakened. A curve of skin. A dimple. My chest had completely healed and was now itchy with scar tissue. Scars. It felt so odd to have scars. I scratched and instantly drew blood from the purple skin. The panic began to grow. I had closed off this part of my life long ago; the muscles needed to tend to it had atrophied.

The cell phone chirped again. A message.

R u alright. U left ur shirt.

I laid my head back on the floor. She’d liked that shirt. I’d caught her eying it with keen, unprofessional interest. The panic began to ease, if just enough to let me breathe. I focused on my breath and somewhere, underneath layers of memories, I heard her voice, soft in volume but firm in belief: It’s going to be alright. I’m here to help you.

Hours have passed and I’m scribing again, sorting through the memories that have been unsettled. Some of them force me to reread my journal to fold them back but some, I leave open to me, questions suddenly raised all over again. If I cannot trust my own memories, than what does this immortal life amount to?

One thing is certain: her book is no ordinary tome. It was crafted from the best leather, lovingly made by hand with sycamore maple and vellum, the pages imbued with ink in a special process that allowed the scribe to bring the ink to rise up from the page rather than just adding ink on top of it. There was more than a little magic folded into the making of that book, straddling the edge of alchemy and science. It was intended to hold memories.

And as certain as I am that I crafted that book for her, I am unable to remember who she was to me except to know that her memory is a void in my own history. And whatever ancient science enabled the peculiar abilities of these books of mine, it was past to me from her.

She taught me to read. She taught me to write. She taught me to fold my memories. Something as simple as her mere gesture, one that I had repeated ever since in my own folding process, had broken open a torrent of disconnected memories that had been carefully stored away.

My powers were changing, manifesting in strange ways that threatened everything I had known for years. There was no telling how the Conclave would react to these daylight abilities, usually only reserved for our South American relations. There was heightened Vampire activity in the area that needed to be handled. Valerian and his dealings with the Conclave were becoming ever more complicated and tense.

But this woman held more power over me than I ever allowed anyone anymore and that frightened me more than all the rest.

It sent my pulse hammering. And I think I secretly liked it.

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