Poppy Z. Brite - 1992 - Lost Souls (14 page)

 
          
Zillah
put a tiny silver ankh through his earlobe. The other two wore large dangling
crucifixes in their ears.

 
          
Twig,
smearing on eyeliner in front of the bathroom mirror, found a raw red crescent
on his chest. “You bit me,” he complained to Molochai. “I’m bleeding.”

 
          
Molochai,
still half-naked, came closer and licked the blood from Twig’s chest.

 
          
When
Twig’s nipple puckered at the touch of the rough tongue, Molochai snapped at
it.

 
          
“I’m
hungry,” he said, and this time there was something in his voice that told them
he would not be satisfied with sweets and chocolate.

 
          
When
the sun set, Zillah sent the valet to get their van. They drove to Georgetown,
taking wrong turns, being stopped by streets that suddenly turned one-way,
weaving around and around traffic circles, swaying against each other every
time the van navigated a curve. They had drunk more champagne back at the
hotel, and by this time they were too blasted to care whether they got lost.

 
          
By
persistence and luck they arrived in Georgetown before midnight. The sidewalks
swarmed with people: tourists out for a big night, students wearing school
sweatshirts, a group of black kids with roller skates and stocking caps
spray-painting arcane graffiti on a wall. Molochai pressed his face to the
window. “‘Fresh,” he read before the van was past.

 
          
Twig
licked his lips. “They better be.”

 
          
“
Trendies
.” Zillah waved his black-nailed hand in an elegant
gesture of dismissal.

 
          
“
Trendies
, all of them. We’ll find better ones later, after
these are home in bed.”

 
          
They
parked beside a fire hydrant. Zillah took a satchel full of empty wine bottles
from the back of the van and gave them to Twig to carry.

 
          
Molochai
looked at the block of shops. A lingerie boutique, a newsstand, a vegetarian
café. It might have been a street in any city in America. “There’s no magic in
this town,” he complained.

 
          
Zillah
touched Molochai’s lips with the tip of a sharp nail. “There’s magic in every
bloodstream.”

 
          
Molochai
nodded sullenly. He was hungry again. There might be magic in every
bloodstream, but the bloodstreams in the French Quarter were tastier.

 
          
It
was Twig who found the girl. He had a nose for Indian curry. The window was
painted CALCUTTA PALACE in a flowing strange script. Below it a sign said
CLOSED, but the door swung open when Twig pushed at it. The inside of the
restaurant was decorated like some fantastic far eastern fairy tale: red silk
drooping from the ceiling, purple velvet covering the walls, tables lacquered
in black and gold.

 
          
Zillah
looked around appreciatively, then sensed that Twig had gone quivering and taut
beside him. He followed Twig’s eyes and saw a lone dark-skinned girl at the
back of the restaurant sweeping the carpet with an electric vacuum. She had not
yet heard them over the noise of the machine.

 
          
As
Twig watched, the girl raised her arm and pulled her heavy black hair back over
one shoulder. The movement wafted a cloud of her
scent
to him. He could smell the oil of her hair, the sweat of her armpits, the odors
of grease and spice and sandalwood that were a part of her being. And he could
smell the dusky blood beneath the skin, hot and peppery, as exotic as all
India. Her blood would taste of chili and almonds, of cardamom, of rosewater.

 
          
He
motioned to the other two, and they slid forward, moving as one creature, fused
in this act of killing. The girl turned and flung up her hands, but Twig’s
mouth stopped her cry, and they fell upon her. As Zillah grasped her head
between his strong hands and twisted her neck to an impossible angle, as
Molochai burrowed under her long cotton skirt and bit into his favorite spot,
Twig cracked the bones of the girl’s throat between his teeth and tasted spice.

 
          
They
drove back to the hotel sometime in the hazy zone between very late and very
early.

 
          
Twig’s
eyes were glazed; with an effort he focused on the road. Molochai lay with his
head in Zillah’s lap nibbling a little sugared cake he had found in the kitchen
of the restaurant.

 
          
Zillah’s
wine bottles were full now. He had topped them off with vodka from the
restaurant’s bar. The bar had been well stocked, and he had found a bottle of
peppered Stolichnaya. It would blend weft with the girl’s spicy blood. This hot
red cache would be a treat later on, during the long dry stretch between here
and New Orleans.

 
          
They
passed a nightclub. Children postured on the sidewalk, waving their spidery
hands, tracking the van with their black-smudged eyes. A snatch of sepulchral
song floated in their wake. Bauhaus.

 
          
Zillah
tilted his head to one side and smiled. “Listen to them-the children of the
night,” he said. “What music they make!”

 
          
When
Christian turned away from the river, Wallace was there, several feet away,
watching him. Wallace had seen him with the boy.

 
          
Christian’s
first emotion was not anger or fear but shame, terrible fiery shame.

 
          
Wallace
had caught him at his most secret, most vulnerable moment, and Christian wanted
to sink to the ground and cover himself, to shut his eyes tight, to vanish. He
pulled his cloak around him and stared at Wallace, feeling his eyes grow
colder, knowing he must not panic.

 
          
The
moonlight ravaged Wallace’s face. The hollows beneath his eyes grew deeper, the
lines bracketing his mouth more harsh. The silver cross at his throat gleamed,
and his hand went to it. “Vampire,” he said, spitting the word out, making it
ugly. “Filthy, cursed thing–”

 
          
“You
knew,” said Christian. “The story you told me—it was all made up. You didn’t
find her diary. You weren’t suddenly seized with a desire to see her after such
a long time. You knew.”

 
          
Wallace’s
eyes glittered, dark, never leaving Christian’s. “I did.”

 
          
“Then
why?” Christian spread his arms in a gesture of bewilderment; the cloak
billowed around him, made him seem immensely tall. Wallace, perhaps
misunderstanding the gesture, took a step backward. “Why now? If you knew then,
why are you following me after fifteen years?”

 
          
“I
knew then,” Wallace told him. “After Jessy disappeared, I began going to your
bar, watching you, and I knew. I came to believe. And I knew what you had done
to my daughter.”

 
          
He
hadn’t answered the question.

 
          
But
Jessy wasn’t even dead then, Christian thought, confused. He is wrong. She must
have been alive still, living upstairs, gazing out my window all day and
pulling me into her body at night—

 
          
“You
look very much the proper vampire, Christian,” Wallace went on, and Christian
wondered whether he was supposed to take that as a compliment. “But I still
could not quite believe. I was unsure. My religion does not acknowledge the
supernatural.

 
          
It
considers such matters unholy, and consequently it ignores them. So one night I
waited until you closed your bar down, and when you went out, I followed you. I
saw you speak to a boy near Jackson Square, a young boy with long hair who wore
beads around his neck. I followed the two of you to the river, and here I saw
you—I saw you do what you did to the other boy tonight. And I wondered how many
other children you had put in the river, and I thought of
Jessy’s
body sinking out of sight there, in that cold brown water–”

 
          
Wallace’s
voice broke.

 
          
Yes,
Jessy, thought Christian. I put Jessy in the river. But that was later, after
the baby came. And I didn’t kill her, I wouldn’t have killed her— In an instant
he realized who had killed Jessy. Zillah had, with the seduction of his hands
and his lips, with his fertile seed. Or so Wallace would see it. Christian
imagined himself trying to explain the events of that Mardi Gras to Wallace: He
planted his child in her womb, and by the time the baby tore her apart inside,
he was far, far away. But that night was so bloody, and oh so green …

 
          
No.
Wallace would not understand the drunkenness that comes with blood or the light
in the Mardi Gras sky. He would see only the image of Zillah’s hands on
Jessy’s
fragile body. He would picture Zillah writhing atop
Jessy, stifling her screams with his tongue. The blame would be taken away from
Christian, and Wallace would no longer want to kill him. He would want Zillah’s
blood.

 
          
Zillah,
with those languid, graceful hands, with those glowing green eyes, and the rest
of that loud happy trio Christian had not seen for fifteen years, though he had
looked for them every night of every Mardi Gras when the bright costumes
staggered in and the laughter was high and drunken and the liquor flowed in the
gutters. The only ones of his kind Christian had seen for so many years, more
years than he wanted to remember, and the youngest, wildest, finest ones he had
ever known.

 
          
No,
Wallace could not be allowed to go after Molochai, Twig, and Zillah. He would
never be able to find them—they might be anywhere in the world, anywhere they
could find liquor, sweets, and blood—and if by some chance he did find them,
they would laugh in his face as they killed him.

 
          
But
Christian would not give Wallace even a wisp of a chance. He would deal with
Wallace himself, and he would protect his kind. He did not love what he did,
but for too long he had been alone in doing it. Wallace’s blood would spill for
Molochai’s sticky smile, for the cleverness of Twig’s
foxlike
face, for Zillah’s luminescent green eyes.

 
          
“All
right,” he said. “You knew then. Why did you wait? Why have you come to me
now?”

 
          
“I
was afraid of you then.”

 
          
Christian
nodded and took a step toward Wallace. Wallace didn’t back away this time.

 
          
“I
have no reason to fear you anymore.” Wallace shut his eyes, then opened them.

 
          
“‘You
are a godless thing, and you will die for that. Fifteen years ago I did not
have the courage to avenge Jessy, but nothing else matters to me now.” He
unfastened the crucifix from his throat and stepped toward Christian,
brandishing it at the end of its chain. “
Begone
from
the face of God’s earth, foul creature, thing of night, sucker at Death’s
teat—”

 
          
Christian
shook his head sadly. He did not laugh, but there was a trace of amused
contempt in his eyes. Wallace stopped chanting and lowered his arm. The
crucifix swung from his hand, shimmering when the moonlight caught it.

 
          
“You
are a fool,” said Christian. “You are a fool, and your myths are wrong. If you
touched me with that, it would not burn me. It would not blacken my skin. It
would not poison my essence. I have nothing against your Christ. I am sure his
blood tasted as sweet as anyone else’s.”

 
          
Christian
imagined Wallace waving a crucifix in the faces of Molochai, Twig, and Zillah.

 
          
Those
children, he thought, would laugh this silly old man into his grave.

 
          
“Undead
soul,” said Wallace, not quite steadily.

 
          
“No.
I am alive. I was born as you were born.” Well, not quite. Christian thought of
the mother he had never seen, wondered whether he had left her as torn and
bloody as Jessy had been. “I am not the creature of your myths. I did not rise
from the grave. I have never been one of your race, Wallace Creech—I am of a
different one.”