Microsoft Word - The Mammoth Book of Vampire Romance.doc (57 page)

But she looks over at Alexander, unconsciously running his thumb along the leather cover of their guide, along a soft spot already showing there, and suddenly knows she doesn’t want to wonder with him too.

“If we didn’t have this guide, this would be unimaginable.”  She means the apartment, the shared life, the planning of the  sacrifice year after year . . . all of it.

“And that’s why we do it. We knew we’d need the proof of  the thing.” Even though proof enough was in their mingled  scents, covering every square inch or that kitchen. It smelled to  Ina like perfect madness.

“But knowing nothing more than you do now, do you think

we’d have felt the lack, like Marcus?”

A frown mars that perfect brow for a long moment as  Alexander thinks hard, considering the depth of emotion that would have to exist for a creature such as himself to feel such a thing, to care so deeply. He finally nods. More importantly, he says, he wants to remember. He believes the memories lie like stakes in the pockets of those who hunt them, no less dangerous for being hidden. Perhaps more so.

And Ina? Alexander looks at her with an expression she’s already beginning to recognize  –  one brow cocked in challenge while his chin lowers shyly  – and he asks the unanswerable.  What , of importance, does she believe?

Ina is silent for so long, light threatens the sky.

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Ina believes truth lies in the blood.

Long ago, in a time when the streets of New York were filled with cobbled streets, horse shit layering them, soapboxes cornering them, dice games hidden among them, she was a factory girl with roughened hands and a back that was beginning to bend. She remembers this clearly, this and the way the entire world seemed intent on reaffirming she was no one special  –from the foreman who would palm and pinch her for 14 hours straight, to the important men in carriages who ignored the pale, hunched girl trodding home in the gutter. Then there was the gaggle of urchins waiting for her care  when she got back home, none of them her own. The experience of her short mortal life are seared in her grey matter like an anchor into humanity and are the only ones she would willingly cut loose.

But beneath the grime and helplessness and the resentmentonly beginning to form, her blood was sweet. Or sweet enough to attract one more monstrosity into her life. She never saw him coming, and had barely felt his arm wrap around her body before the twin needles pierced her, causing her to jerk with rigour. But, in spite of the pain, that unknown immortal did not let one drop hit the pressed dirt beneath her cheek, and despite the long, insistent tugs on her life, she’d been aware that this marked her as special enough.

After that, there was nothing. There is  this morning. There is this stranger she supposedly loves. Alexander, standing across from her with a shyly raised brow.

The irony between the lack and poverty and pain, which she can remember,  and the love and joy and acceptance that she cannot, makes her want to curl into herself. The only thing that stops her is the  miracle of what she and this kindred stranger seem to have done.  They’ve created a net for themselves,

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something that suspends them not only above humanity, but  above the rest of their kind.  They live in their own universe.  How many couples, immortal or not, are able to claim the same?  Ina thinks most simply go through the motions, doing what and  who they’ve always done simply because momentum and habit  carries them that way. She believes most spouses, wouldn’t be  able to answer in the affirmative if asked if they’d choose their  partner again today. Now. This minute and moment. This  second. This life.

Monsters.

“What did his blood taste like?” she asked suddenly.

No matter that they forgot  something as vital as pure love.

They always remember the blood.

“As you’d think,” Alexander lowers himself into the leather

chair and looks away.

She knows what she thinks. It tastes like the air after the

fireworks have died. Like petrol freshly touched by flame.

Ina runs the tip of her tongue across her incisor, nodding

slowly.

“There will be no one to help us this time,” she mutters  before realizing what she’s just said. She looks at Alexander  sharply, nicking her tongue, but he’s gazing at her with  a new  look on his face.

“We posses a year to find someone else,” he says, eyes on  her lips and tongue as the puncture wound closes and she licks  the blood away. Ina feels herself go light-headed. She has  already noted that Alexander’s speech  –  he has told her he hates  to be called Alex  –  is closer to the old tongue. To her, looking at  him is like gazing at a living portrait. She has adopted the new  –

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language and style and mores and dress  –  and she wonders if he

minds.

Fuck it, she thinks and opens her mouth to ask him just that, but a child’s voice rings through the new night, sharp through the open window, though it’s at least two blocks away. Another shoots back like a bottle rocket, the sound crisp. It’s too late for them to be out, their mother should know better. You never know what lurks in the cradle of night.

“Hungry?” Alexander asks her. Is it a simple question, ot is

he concerned for her?

“No, they’re just annoying.” Ina watches him for a moment,  wonders if it’s only hunger that has him licking his lips or if the  fouled blood has affected him after all, coating his mouth with  the fumes of spent fuel.

“Stay inside,” Alexander says, rising like a sail. “I’ll go tell

them to be silent.”

“No, I’ll go with you.” Somehow she already knows she  must  stay with him every possible second. A year is a very short  time. She joins him with equal fluidity. “Besides, I like  children.”

Ina does eat in front of Alexander and he in front of her and, later, when they’re back in their kitchen, nestled among pillows with the door locked tight, she thinks that watching him feast was perhaps the most erotic thing she has ever witnessed in her life. She has gorged to the point that she might burst with one more drop, and she drapes her arm across her belly only to find  Alexander’s is already there. She touched his hand and finds it’s

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too warm as well. They have each been chasing a hunger they’re

still afraid to name.

Surely it’s not the shared blood. She decides that by tomorrow’s sunset they will be in control again. They will part.  They will inhabit their own universe.

But curling into Alexander’s too-warm side, Ina already knows this for a lie. It’s like those mortals who cheat on good spouses, opening themselves up to appetites best dampened and flesh that doesn’t belong to them. They start out in control, thinking they’ll be satisfied with just one smile, one caress, one kiss, one fuck, maybe once a year. Until their motto alters from  ‘just this once’ to ‘you only live once’.

But Ina, not even able to claim the  same, knows they’re wrong. Even without memory she knows that when it comes to the passions, once is never enough.

A hunger like this never dies.

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The Sacrifice

Reb ecca Y ork

K

ing Farral of Balacord had preyed to the gods for a  son to secure his succession. When his wife

presented him with a daughter, he named her Morgan in

defiance of her sex.

Twenty-seven years later, Morgan knew her father was still disappointed in her. He had planned to marry her off to the prince of a neighbouring kingdom to secure a military alliance.  Since they had not come to satisfactory terms, she was still unmarried and well past the age when most girls had made a match.  She knew that, in her father’s eyes, the fault was hers.

But that problem had receded  into the background now that the kingdom was under siege from the northern barbarians. Two hundred people were crammed inside the castle walls. Their food supply was dwindling, even with pitifully short rations.  And the enemy had beaten back the royal troops time and again.

As Morgan watched and worried, she came up with a desperate plan to save her people  –  if she had the courage to see it through.

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It was night when Morgan tiptoes towards the door of her

chamber.

Nedda, the old nurse who had raised her since she was a

baby, sat up on her straw pallet. “Where are you going child?”

Morgan kneeled beside the grey-haired woman. “To the

mountain stronghold we talked about.”

Nedda grabbed her skirt with a trembling hand. Her voice wheezed out of her as she spoke. “No woman has ever come back from that terrible place.”

“But I have to try it. It’s our only hope.”

“Can I change your mind?”

“No.”

Her old friend hugged her hard. “Then the gods be with you,

child.”

“And with you,” Morgan answered, feeling heartsick at this  parting, fearing she would never see her faithful guardian again.  “Go to sleep now. And when they ask you where I’ve gone, say  you don’t know.”

Stepping outside her room, she stole down the corridor, towards a small door that led to the cliff on the riverside of the fortress.

Inside the castle, the air was fetid with the stench of fear and too many people huddled together in too small a space. Outside, on the ledge above the river, the night was a welcome balm.

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She looked up to the narrow slit of a window where light shone out into the darkness. It was her father’s room, where he paced and raged over the fate of his kingdom, and maybe of his people, too. Because if they were dead, how could they serve him and pay him tribute?”

“Forgive me father,” she said, with a quaver in her voice. “I

have never pleased you. I hope I will make it up to you now.”

Quickly, she bound up her long golden hair in a net, then stripped off her clothing and stood in her shift, moonlight streaming over her slender curves. She stuffed her clothing and her sandals into the leather bag she had brought, the outside of which was smeared with grease to keep the contents dry.

Moonlight glimmered on the water far below. It was a long way down. She had never dived from  this height before, but she had seen boys dive off the cliffs into the river and she  knew the deep pool where you could hit the water and not break your body on rocks. Well, at least she hoped she knew it.

At the edge of the cliff, she looked down, her heart pounding, and her mouth as dry as old parchment. She might die in the next few minutes, but if the barbarians, the Digons, took the castle they would surely rape and murder the king’s daughter. Tonight she had a chance to choose her own fate, a choice  she had never been given by her father.

Before she could lose her nerve, she tied the bag by a cord

to her ankle, then took a deep breath and dived.

Hitting the water was like slamming into a stone wall. Then she went down into the depths of the pool, so  far that she thought she would never come up again. But she was a strong swimmer, and she kicked upwards, stroking with her arms to give herself more momentum.

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When she thought her lungs would burst, she broke the surface and dragged in a lungful of air,  then let the current carry her downstream. Away from the castle. Away from the barbarians who were determined to capture her father’s kingdom and enslave his people.

When she finally climbed out, the wind blew against her skin, raising goose-bumps. After  rubbing her arms to bring the blood to the surface, she hurried into the forest, where she pulled out the boy’s trousers, shirt and sandals she had brought.  After hiding her hair under a leather cap, she strapped a knife to a sheath at her waist and set off towards the East  –  towards the mountains where the monster dwelled.

The monster of legend  –  Garon.

She had heard whispered tales about him. And days ago, she had slipped into the room in the castle where the books were kept and read what she could. It  was said that, long ago, he had come to the aid of Balacord. And he had extracted a terrible price. Was he still alive? Would he help them again?