I took Rachel up on that refill. I needed it. But don't get me wrong, I'm not an alcoholic. Alcohol has no effect on me — it just gives me something to do while I'm out, something to concentrate on other than blood and the thirst. Sometimes it's harder than others, like now. Shay's had been the wrong place to go to forget about Wendy.
There was another vampire in the place, at least one. I didn't know where exactly, but he was there. I could feel it. It's like sharks — one vampire alone is usually okay, but if others are nearby, each one's thirst will affect them all, increasing the buzz of the blood around them and their need for it, like an addiction that makes it hard to think about anything but your next drink, your next fix. Vampires tend to avoid each other — alone, they can be clever and canny, but together they get blood-crazed and stupid and sloppy.
I was starting to get it bad — there was a crimson haze over everything, and the murmur I heard wasn't the crowd but their pulses, throbbing loudly enough to overwhelm ordinary sound, the sweet call of the blood tugging at me, making my throat dry and hot and my hands and feet cold.
"Look," Rachel said, low and husky. She brushed my hand — hers was warm, very warm. "There's something I've been wanting to tell you."
"Not tonight, huh, Rache," I said, running my knuckles across her arm. "I'm just not in the mood for confessions right now."
She jerked back as if struck, and the blood rushed to her face — this time in embarrassment rather than arousal. Tight-lipped, she fled for the other end of the bar. I put a twenty by my glass and left. If I was starting to think about confessions again, it was going to be one of the bad nights.
I left the blood-haze behind in Shay's, but couldn't just shuck off the state it had left me in. I was aroused and jangly, a hot ache in my throat and a dull throbbing pain at the back of my teeth. I needed blood, but that wasn't the problem — I had six jars of plasma in the fridge. What I felt went beyond thirst.
The blood of the living is a constant temptation, but I've never surrendered. When I (What? Emerged? Arose? Awakened?) in a Dumpster off Bleecker five years ago and felt my humanity sloughing off like a childhood memory, I swore I'd never forget, never succumb to this perverse state, as if by force of will I could keep at least a shred of what it felt like to be alive. A modern vampire, that's me. Sensitive. No mess, no fuss. Well-behaved. The AA meetings help a lot, the feeling that I'm not alone, that others have a constant craving and can control it. One day at a time, like the Big Book says — that's how I do it. There are troublesome nights, sure, but I just stay home with my plasma and read some Austen, some Eliot, something that affirms the innate dignity of man, and I get through. No, the thirst isn't the real curse. Not by a long shot.
A couple of girls passed me in Village uniform — black skintights, black leather and crucifix earrings. The crucifixes hit hard. The pain didn't bother me — I deserve it when I'm like this. It was the thought of the needle spearing through their lobes, the momentary pain, the small welling of blood that followed. They were too absorbed in their conversation to see me, and for that I was grateful. After they passed, however, I could still sense them, a twin nimbus of heat and life pulsing with energy and release. I wanted to turn back, to go after them. I forced myself to walk onward.
I was seven blocks away from my apartment building and the streets were busy, a small knot of people at every intersection, waiting to cross. Most nights I can handle it — a breast nudging my arm as a woman squeezes by here, a thigh brushing mine there, the momentary flash of eyes and lips and throat and flesh — but tonight I couldn't shut it out, the pulses hammering at me in syncopation, buffeting me from heartbeat to heartbeat. The blood-haze returned, and the sense of the passersby lingered after them, mingling in an undertow of desire that threatened to sweep me off my feet and pull me along. I hunched deeper into my jacket, warding it off, concentrating on my feet, on each individual step.
Up ahead a couple of women in wool overcoats stood behind a rickety card table, hawking animal-rights literature and begging signatures. They frowned at me as I approached, and I welcomed the distraction of their scorn. My jacket always attracts their attention. It's an ostrich-hide flight jacket, imported from South Africa, and it reeks of political incorrectness. I'm not insensitive to their message — but it eases something in me to be near something dead, particularly something that died in pain. Whenever I hear about a company being boycotted, I write for catalogs. I have a fabulous collection of objectionable shoes, belts, cuff links and tie tacks, and I often wish raccoon coats hadn't gone out of style for men. I'm not proud of it, but if it keeps me from feasting on the living, it's worthwhile.
As I approached, the frowns disappeared and the younger, more vulnerable of the women smiled tentatively at me. I suppressed the urge to backhand her into the wall (though the image of the rough concrete tearing a gash in her scalp and the blood mixing with her lustrous auburn hair flashed into my mind and took a long time to fade). Even if I can't see my reflection any longer, I know what I look like. I'm nothing special, never was. I never made women melt, never was particularly desirable. My love life was unenviable at best — oh, I had relationships, but they were never easy, never solid — and I'm no different now than I was then. Except, of course, that I'm a vampire — and vampires draw women like dog shit draws flies. And what a piece of self-knowledge that is — I'm sexually irresistible to women because I've been damned to hell. It's not even like they want me because I'm rich or famous. That I could deal with — at least that might be something I earned. But this — these deeply felt, seductive smiles on the faces of women who would have had nothing to do with me in life — it isn't me they're smiling at at all, it's the curse. It's insulting to me, degrading to them and it never, never ends.
I reached my building, but it no longer seemed to be a construction of stone, wood and masonry, glass and mortar. Instead, it was a living thing, pulsing with pockets of life, each individual blood-signature intimately familiar to me, the smell and rhythm of them, nightly visitors, old temptations. The crimson glow behind that window was Mrs. Wintour, behind that one Anna Berkowitz and her niece Brenda. My inflamed senses faultlessly registered who was home and who was out, longtime tenant or relative newcomer. They also told me I had a visitor.
She waited by my door, clutching her coat around her in the chilly hallway. Her pulse was sluggish, but she saw me and it jolted to life, her eyes lighting up and her skin taking on a rosier tone.
The ache in my teeth was like a knife. "Kate, you should be at home. You shouldn't be here. You should be with Tim, asleep."
"I couldn't stay away." She looked away, then back, defiance in her eyes. She set her lips in a determined line and I knew what was coming. She'd done it before.
"Kate, no — " But she opened the coat. She was naked underneath, as I knew she would be. Her body gleamed in the dim light, but it wasn't just her body I saw. I could see the blood racing up and down under her skin and my hands ached to trace it. It collected, taunting me, in the hollows of her pelvis, in her nipples, her lips. Heat poured from her and I knew I couldn't resist. My good intentions vanished, my need exploding in a crimson fog behind my eyes.
She must have seen it, because as I took a half-step forward, she gave a little cry and leapt, her arms wrapping around my neck, her body flattening against mine. I buried my face in her throat, the powerful flow of her jugular enfolding me, begging for the release of my teeth. I held back, instead tasting her with lips and tongue, the salt tang of her sweat and the musk of her perfume filling my senses, masking momentarily the siren call of her blood.