In my boudoir, Rachel had said, "Maybe your money problems are solved," and her smile warmed my insides. Maybe it was her honey-colored eyes, or the way she always stood so ramrod straight and authoritative, or maybe it was the simple fact that when she smiled-as with anything she did-she did so with such confidence that she could make a believer of an atheist. Her Cupid"s bow lips, full and luscious and kissable, slid into a sultry smirk. "Corynn wants to rob a bank."
"What? Why?"
Rachel shrugged. "Because girl"s crazy? I don"t know "why" for sure, but I do know she needs someone to keep her from s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g things up. She needs us." A hand moved along the invisible bond between our b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the ethereal cord that connected our hearts. "And the best part? If we do it right, no one gets hurt."
"No," I said, "the best part is we can stick together. Free of debt."
No matter what the shysters try to sell you otherwise, everyone has debts. Maybe some can be paid off, but most-most are too big. Too intimidating. Like Marnie"s debt.
My sister Marnie, poor thing, is in need of regular chemo to stave off the malignant cells replicating in her colon, and after her deadbeat husband lost his job and their insurance, after he finally decided to trip the light malefic out of town with a drugstore counter girl young enough to be his daughter, it fell to me to pay for them. Marnie was not long for this world, but she fought to stay. And I wanted her to stay. I didn"t talk to her, but for on the phone. I didn"t see her anymore because she would wonder why I looked so young, but I wanted for my little sister to stick around for as long as she could.
Rachel took me in her arms. Strong arms. Solid from all the weightlifting. We must have made a sight to see, though if a mirror had been around, some magical reflective surface that would break the laws of V-physics and show us our real reflections, I probably would not have looked.
I never did like myself. The image of me, I mean. My lackl.u.s.ter brown hair. A cute cut-below my ears, with back of my head shaved-could not make up for the fact that it was too thin. No body to speak of, and all the shampoo and conditioner in the world would never undo genetics. I never did like the way my stumpy arms and legs caught the light, making me look like some anthropomorphic ursine. Never liked the way my pumping iron had stolen away what little a.s.s I had. I was curved in some of the right ways, maybe. My shoulders weren"t terrible to look at. A nice set of strong shoulders was remarkable to see-case in point: Rachel"s. Mine weren"t awful, but I did not miss my reflection. Did not miss my hair vanishing in strong back lighting, revealing the curve of my skull.
And yet.
When Rachel held me, and I her, a lot of that faded. I pumped iron for years because I wanted to break myself. Wanted to destroy what I had been, to reshape the essential clay. When that did not work, I turned to other things.
Nothing worked until I saw the way Rachel looked at me. Through her eyes, I could believe myself lovable. At least for a moment. Through her touch, and the way she shivered when I touched her, I could believe a lot of things. When I heard the soft moan after our kisses broke, when we caressed each other, loving with our hands and mouths and breath, savoring the kind of magical energies that arise between two people completely in love, I could believe I was worthwhile.
We loved that night, after she told me about the plan. She had loved with me before that night, and she loved with me once more before we met up with Corynn for the job. She...we...
Her hands knew how to read me while we kissed. Our tongues moved in sensuous salsa dance rhythms. Our hands played along flesh, strumming notes as from musical instruments. Clothes mattered little. Tank tops dropped, and cargo shorts slid away with the flick of a b.u.t.ton or nudge of a zipper. We whispered love"s secret language, even as the heat flooded our chill bodies. Fangs and claws worked unspeakable magic when used correctly, and Rachel knew how deep to scratch, when to nibble or bite, whether to flick my nipple barbells with her tongue or fingerprint.
I knew how to squeeze her waist, to lift her and roll her. To slide along her body, hands and mouth ma.s.saging her as I went. I knew how hard to slap between her thighs, knew when a hiss of pleasure or a wince of pain still remained within boundaries. We had safe words, but in the moment we lost normal speech and ventured into delicate worlds beyond this coa.r.s.e place of meat and misery. Two minds joined when the bodies spoke with subliminal rhythms. Two souls, if such things existed, joined.
I knew her, my Rachel, my military brat with the nearly unnatural rosy lips and the certainly unusual freckles.
Lying side by side, my head between her legs and hers between mine, our fangs opened old channels, and the thick honey of life"s love flowed, and we drank from each other"s cups. Indivisible and magical.
When we were done, we gasped together at the tickling midnight breezes, the bank robbery had seemed not only to be a good idea, but the only idea.
I was a fool for love.
Such a fool, I could never have known that Rachel was lying to me.
There was not supposed to be a cop in the bank. Certainly not the ruddy-faced fellow with the cleft chin, p.o.r.n-star mustache, and muttonchops. A man who looked like some ball of poorly formed dough squeezed into a uniform two sizes too small. The dude with the majorly macho pistol that was almost too large for him to hold one-handed.
Corynn was not supposed to jump the gun-literally or otherwise-and rake his face to pieces. She was not supposed to open him like a Ziploc baggie and spill his perishables. She was certainly not supposed to lick him off the floor when she could not get enough from his corpse.
Fresh blood does not have a particular odor. Cut your finger and sniff it. Taste, yes; odor, no. In time, however, it dries and the stink comes. Women learn to tolerate this smell, a necessary adaptation due to the monthly curse. And still, I blanched at the thought of what this sorry sack of cop would smell like. How this area, the "hallway" between lending and customer service cubicles, would reek in a matter of hours.
Then Corynn belched and t.i.ttered and tried to pa.s.s it all off like business as usual.
There was not supposed to be a cop in the bank!
And Corynn was not supposed to be sleeping with Rachel, either, yet "supposed to" did nothing to change the facts. A cop had been there, and Corynn was doing exactly that.
Corynn was the youngest of us, and though I wish I could say I hated her on sight, I did not. Hate came over time and exposure.
When we first met, I saw Corynn as dangerous-s.e.xy. This was in no small part due to her style choices: black leather pants and biker"s boots with the stainless steel ring at the ankle held in place by thick straps, tight tops sporting antidisestablishmentarian iconography across her amble bosom, and more chains than I felt particularly comfortable around, often connecting one part of anatomy to others. All this, and the heavy makeup she wore around her eyes and mouth, which would go the way of Tammy Faye were she to get too close to a sprinkler. But there was more to her than image. She had personality to spare, a real reckless abandon, a wildness. Whenever she had one of what Rachel called her "Wower than thou" ideas, it arrived with a flash of the whites round her eyes and her slightly elongated canines.
I will never forget the time I met her.
Let me share a little something about vampires; heck, maybe even all the supernatural beings in the world: we cannot stay away from each other. Whether it"s bonds of Fate or circ.u.mstance, whether there is something to we paranormals that calls to others of our kind, no vampire can stay alone for long. Others will undoubtedly stumble through our lives, often accompanied by heaps of trouble.
That was how I met Corynn. She fell off a second-floor balcony at the Glitterama Club downtown. Fell or pushed, I will never know. Corynn and Lucifer have that in common, I suppose.
She crashed onto my table, practically into my lap, while I was making good on an early evening bite, nibbling the neck of a lovely candy striper. Enter Corynn, reeking of too much tobacco-scented perfume. Then enter a clutch of fellows with big, pointy sticks, a week"s worth of sweat stink, and, well, Corynn was not content to run away together. She wanted a chum, a pal, someone to talk to, someone to "share with," a phrase that should have tipped me off right from the get go that she was a head case.
Well, I did kind of understand that part of her. I just did not know she was such a dangerous one.
So she started hanging around me, showing up places after me, sometimes before. Appearing as if out of nowhere with a flash of eyes and teeth and an elongated "Hiiiiii."
There are friendships and there are friendships, and whatever I had with Corynn was strained at best. Our relationship developed into an ever-present discomfort while I tried to figure out a way to tell her to fall onto someone else"s lap. I had tried to infer this, but Corynn and hints were two creatures that seldom hooked up.
Rachel appeared behind me, while I was adjusting the drill"s controls. "How"s it coming?"
To my credit, I did not jump completely out of my skin. "Fifteen more seconds," I said, a little loudly to register over the whirring drill bit"s steel-on-steel screeching.
"You mad at me?"
I did not need this. I said, "No." I know I did. But her eyes told me that I actually spoke the opposite. "We don"t need to get into this right now, right here."
Corynn would have demanded we do just that. Rachel, bless her heart, did not. She said nothing. After a loud burp of steel buckling, the drill"s whirring changed tone. Gone was the screech. The door was compromised.
"We in?" Corynn asked.
"Yes," I said, dragging the drill rig back out of the way. A good tool, that. I regret leaving it behind.
Corynn tried to tug on the door, and I hid a grimace. Rachel swatted her aside as though waving away a gnat, turned the wheel on the door and tugged it open. The vault lay bare before us. Drawers full of money.
We stuffed our bags in about a quarter of the time that a mere mortal might. One of the truths of vampires, amidst the mire of c.r.a.p about turning into bats and mist and wolves-I have witnessed no transformative powers-is the simple fact that our reflexes, prowess, and strength were heightened. Not to superhuman levels, thus the reliance upon a drill rig instead of ripping a door down, but well beyond human peak.
We had the bags stuffed and Corynn was throwing a handful of hundreds into the air to watch it flutter down like ungainly confetti, and then we were on our way out.
Outside, I could hear approaching sirens. Close enough to make me sweat. If I could sweat.
"Think the tunnel is compromised?" asked Rachel.
I hoped to h.e.l.l not. "There are no other options now."
"There"s always an option," Corynn said. "We could stay and shoot it out!" I saw now that she had taken the dead cop"s pistol and stuck the long barrel through one of her belt loops. The weapon hung at an awkward angle. No way would it stay like that for long. "You"ll never take me alive, coppers!"
"We have to go," Rachel said, trying not to sound tender. She could not disguise it from me.
"If she wants to play Cagney," I said, "let her. I"m getting out through the tunnel."
"They can"t kill us with bullets," Corynn explained, "so we can chill out here like forever."
Rachel grabbed my shoulder. Gave me an imploring look. She"s your girlfriend, I wanted to snap, you deal with her! I wanted to, but I did not actually say it. One look in her eyes. At her freckles. One whiff of her shampoo and floral perfume, the lilies-heavy dragon blood scent that only she could wear with any sense of style, and I surrendered. "Sunlight," I said, "does not use bullets. Dawn is fifteen minutes out."
"Already?" Not a wower-than-thou idea, but the same flash of white eyes and canines. Was she eager to fry? Was she really that far gone?
"Yes," Rachel said, "We have to go."
"Okie doke, babe."
I could only thank all the dark that I did not eat food anymore, as it would have been all over the floor.
We ran from the vault down to the sub cellars and to the hole leading into the sublevel electrical conduits, a series of below-street-level pa.s.sages used for maintenance and such like. From there, we would scale a ladder, toss bags of cash into a waiting getaway car and drive h.e.l.l bent for shelter from the blasted daystar. That was the plan.
I expected cops in the Power Company conduit, armed with enough shotguns to blow up the world, as we emerged from the bank. When they were not present, I expected a horde of cops waiting on the street above; without even a cry of "Halt" or "Freeze" they would lay into us, their weapons making our bodies dance like dolls tossed in a steel-bladed window fan. Like the end of Bonnie and Clyde. When that did not happen, I expected the cars to screech around corners while we loaded our vehicle. I expected SWAT snipers to take headshots. I expected tanks to vomit whistling ordinance upon us. I don"t know what I expected.
I certainly did not expect to actually get away clean.
Not with Corynn in the back seat, tossing money in the air and laughing like a hyena. Not with a dead cop on the floor of the bank lobby behind us.
"You"ll want to rein Corynn in a little," I said, my hands not even shaking upon the wheel. I expected to be more nervous. I expected to be wracked with guilt.
Rachel turned around and cuffed Corynn on the shoulder. "Knock it off," she snapped. "We"re not out of danger yet."
Corynn pouted and Rachel softened, and I wanted to crawl out of my skin and away from there. I wanted to be caught, if only to not have to be around them anymore. Rachel and Corynn. To not have to see their rapport, to- Desires be d.a.m.ned, we got away.
We returned to our hideout. We even beat the daylight, for the most part. The burns we sustained were nothing permanent. They would vanish with time and blood consumption.
It was here, in the apartment building bas.e.m.e.nt we called home, when I thought we were free and clear, that the ugliest monster of all reared her head.
Dawn brings The Exhaustion, when the vampire"s body wants to simply shut down for a while. The mind remains active; there is no such thing as rest for vampires. At least, not in my experience. With enough time, a vampire can train herself to keep functioning during the day. Exposure to direct sunlight is a death sentence, but there are plenty of things to do in the daylight hours that do not require going outside.
Watching your crime on television, say.
Or watching your accomplice"s face appear on the television. Along with a host of names she has been using, all starting with the letter C.
But wait! There are more things a television could teach! That said accomplice is a trust fund baby who does not really need to rob a bank to get money.
About then, I wanted to throw the remote control through the screen. Instead, I turned all that fury on the rightful outlet. "You had a c.r.a.pload of money already? What the h.e.l.l were we doing this morning?"
Corynn shrugged. "It was fun, wasn"t it?"
"Are you out of your mind?"
"We did it for Marnie." That was Rachel"s attempt to calm me, but I could tell she was not exactly happy about the situation either. A part of me wanted to run to her, to hold her. To be held by her. To kiss and enjoy a long sweet session of lovemaking. To bury my face between her legs, in the scent of l.u.s.t.
Then, as though reading my mind, Corynn appeared behind Rachel and draped her arms over Rachel"s shoulders. "Don"t even try, love," Corynn said. "She"s lost her adventurous spirit. That"s not something you can ever get back. Oh me, oh my. My poooor cancer-ridden sissy-sis-"
Rachel spun around faster than even I could see. Shoved the reckless woman off her shoulders and slapped her across the cheek. Then Rachel"s finger pointed the way to Corynn"s eye. "Shut your mouth, Cory."
Corynn batted her eyelids. "Don"tcha love me no more?"
"No," Rachel said, voice rich with loathing. "I don"t."
Corynn tried to pa.s.s this off as meaningless. She tried not to look as though Rachel had taken a trowel to her insides, scooping out everything from her heart on down. Corynn was no actress, though. Instead of looking completely devastated, she looked simply ruined. b.l.o.o.d.y tears rolled down her cheeks.
"I"m sorry," Rachel said, and though real regret indeed colored her voice, there was no contrition to be found. The bridges were burning. Rachel was only sorry for causing Corynn pain; she was not trying to make amends.
"You did this," Corynn said, glaring daggers at me. "You b.i.t.c.h. Well, I hope you know I f.u.c.ked her." She waved a dismissive hand at Rachel. "You"re getting my sloppy f.u.c.king seconds. And I hate you both. You two are so...lousy! And I hope you"re happy with each other, because you-" Whatever followed this was not actually a word but a b.e.s.t.i.a.l roar full of rage and hatred. Her fangs were showing. Her eyes had gone red.
The fury was coming over her. The feeding fury.
I readied for her to jump at us. I thought I was ready. When she actually did jump, it caught me completely by surprise. Thank all the dark that she was jumping away from us. Running across the room and toward the door, and out of the bas.e.m.e.nt.
Up the stairs.
I said "She"s not-" at the same time Rachel said, "She wouldn"t-"
We both followed. Corynn was far enough ahead of us that she reached the building"s front door as we reached the halfway point on the stairs. She pulled the door wide open, and bathed herself in sunlight. She ignited in an instant. The light paused on her for less than a second before it pushed through, solid as fists. As bullets. And it washed onto the stairs. Onto us. We screamed, and ran back down, hoping to get inside before it was too late.
I smelled my own hair burning. My flesh. The blood in my stomach and in my dead heart. The pain...
I remember there was pain, but I cannot truly recall it. I thank the dark that I cannot. Surely such memories must vanish if only to preserve the sanity of we foolish creatures who endure, mortal or otherwise.
When Rachel dragged the bas.e.m.e.nt door shut, we collapsed and huddled in the cool shadows, whimpering and scrabbling for closeness but unable to touch. My Rachel, she called for me. She was crying and I wanted to hold her, but my body, my d.a.m.ned traitorous body, it would not let me.
We wept together, yet I never felt quite so alone.
Time came when we could eventually speak.
"Will you," Rachel asked, through sobs, "ever forgive me?"
Eventually, I said, "Yes." Even as I answered, though, I knew I would be haunted. By the deceit. By the ghost of that crazy, horrible girl. Dangerous-s.e.xy Corynn, who slept with the love of my life and very nearly destroyed me. Could I ever truly forgive Rachel when Corynn"s specter hung in the air around me, as cloying as her tobacco-scented perfume? "Yes," I said, and I knew the answer was actually much more complex. It would take time to decipher and decrypt and puzzle.
"Yes," I said. For now.
"I love you," she said.
"Yes."
Jessabel Sacchi Green "See there, Cap"n, ain"t she somethin"? Jezebel, they calls "er, but most likely she"s just plain Mabel or Hildy underneath it all."
I looked through a blur of drifting cigar smoke and shifting bodies. Maybe three or four of those figures were recognizably female, for d.a.m.ned sure not counting my own well-concealed form, but there was no doubt as to which one had sparked the old stable hand"s enthusiasm. I couldn"t see much; her back was to the door, and a rancher"s burly arms enveloped her in a most unchaste fashion as they danced, but even so there seemed to be a glow about her that drew the eye. Chestnut curls tumbled across slender shoulders, and emerald silk clung to rounded, swaying hips that promised the uttermost in carnal delights without sacrificing the least degree of elegance.
"Sure is, Bill," I agreed, "but what"s a fine piece like that doing in a place like this?"
"Plenty of business, that"s what." Bill elbowed me in the ribs. I only just managed to pivot enough to keep my bound-up tender bits from taking the full impact. When I turned back the girl swung around so that for a moment, before her partner"s bulk blocked the view, I saw her face, beautiful in spite of all its paint, not because of it.
The room swirled around me. The floor tilted. I clutched at the back of a chair, muttered an apology to the card player occupying it, and lurched back out through the swinging doors.