Poppy Z. Brite - 1992 - Lost Souls (26 page)

 
          
“What
happened to you?”

 
          
“I
left the day after you did. When we dropped you off at the bus station, I
realized you were the only thing in my life that wasn’t bullshit. You were the
only one of that whole crowd I ever cared about. I had to get out of there too.
I didn’t know if I’d ever find you, but I had to try.”

 
          
Laine
kissed him again, timidly touching Nothing’s lips with the wet tip of his
tongue.

 
          
Nothing
looked up. The other three were watching him avidly. Twig looked on with a mild
predatory interest. Molochai’s mouth hung open; his teeth glistened with spit,
and his cheeks were flushed pink. He looked almost healthy. But Zillah …
Nothing tried to disentangle himself from Laine. Zillah was sitting up very
straight, his black-nailed hands clenched on his knees, his eyes full of that
cold green fire again.

 
          
“He’s
my friend,” Nothing managed to say. “From back home.”

 
          
“How
nice,” said Zillah; his voice was like a bonbon of creamy white chocolate
filled with some green corrosive poison. The fire in his eyes snapped, spat. It
seemed about to burn a line through the air to Nothing, crisp Nothing’s eyes
with its luminescence.

 
          
“He’s
cool,” said Nothing without much conviction. “Maybe he could ride with us.”

 
          
Surely
Zillah wouldn’t make Twig stop the van and put Laine out in the chill September
night just because Nothing knew him from back home. But worse than that—what if
Zillah put them both out? What if they put him out on some glittering 2:00 A.M.
stretch of nowhere, tripping his brains out, with only Laine’s cold little hand
to hold?

 
          
He
wouldn’t be able to stand looking at Laine’s face again, the sulky mouth and
the eyes shadowed with wispy white-blond hair, not if Laine lost him his new
family. Not if he was banished from this dragged dreamland of wine and song,
where the graffiti writhed on the coiling and the stars sped by all night long.
Not if he was banished from Zillah’s arms, from the half-painful sorcery of
Zillah’s lips. From the only place where he had ever felt truly accepted.

 
          
In
an instant he made the choice that would fashion the rest of his life. Hating
himself, but feeling something dark and fathomless begin to open within him, he
slid out of Laine’s embrace and pushed him away.

 
          
“Nothing?
What’s going on?” Laine stared around at the circle of eyes: Molochai’s and
Twig’s tripped-out and hungry, Zillah’s still spitting green fire. He tried to
crawl back across the mattress to Nothing, but Zillah hooked a finger through
the string of beads around Laine’s neck and pulled back hard. Laine made a low
choking sound as the beads tightened across his throat.

 
          
Then
the strand snapped, and bits of sparkling bright plastic were everywhere–rattling
under the mattress, landing in the folds of Nothing’s raincoat, catching the
moonlight and all the colored glints from the dashboard. Molochai grabbed at
them as if they were candy, put one in his mouth.

 
          
Then
Molochai and Twig were on either side of Laine, flanking him, pushing him down
onto the stained mattress. Their hands encircled Laine’s arms just above the
elbow.

 
          
Their
sharp fingers dug into the soft meat there.

 
          
Laine’s
eyes, terrified but still trusting, found Nothing’s. “Make them stop,” he
pleaded.

 
          
“Don’t
let them hurt me.”

 
          
Zillah
grabbed Laine’s kicking feet and forced them to the mattress with one hand.

 
          
Zillah’s
grip seemed to span both of Laine’s ankles; on the back of the hand, veins
stood out darkly purple. Laine was wearing pink
hightop
sneakers with laces of the kind that had been popular with trendy girls a
couple of years ago, white patterned with small rainbow figures.

 
          
Laine’s
seemed to be striped, but looking closely, Nothing made out tiny letters.

 
          
BULLSHITBULLSHITBULLSHIT,
said Laine’s shoelaces.

 
          
Laine
bucked on the mattress. His eyes never left Nothing’s. They had an accusing
look now, and Nothing felt a flash of anger. I didn’t ask you to follow me, he
thought, I didn’t tell them to hurt you. And he didn’t think they would hurt
Laine, not really. Not yet. But why did Zillah look so expectant and yet so
scornful? Why was Molochai drooling out of the corners of his mouth?

 
          
“He
looks sweet,” said Molochai. “You’ll share, won’t you?”

 
          
“You
can use this if you like.” Zillah held up a little pearl-handled straight
razor, a lethal-looking thing he had produced from his pocket or some fold of
the mattress. “But you really should do it with your teeth. That’s the best
way. The most…intimate.”

 
          
Laine
made a small sound deep in his throat, something between a laugh and a moan.

 
          
He’s
talking about it like it was a drug, Nothing thought. Like he had some hash and
he was talking about whether he should smoke it in a pipe or chop it up and
roll it in a joint… Then, with a clarity that nauseated him, he realized just
what Zillah was talking about. It all came together then, with no jagged edges
and no loose threads. It all meshed like the strands of a rich and crimson
tapestry, the time he had spent with these three, the eternity that had
comprised a day and a half on the road. Their sharpened teeth, the bite marks
Zillah left all over him. The blood in the wine bottle, which he had thought an
exotic, delicious affectation.

 
          
It
was not an affectation. It was their life.

 
          
For
the blood was the life …

 
          
They
were vampires. The cynical thought that they might be just a bunch of
blood-drinking psychopaths never crossed Nothing’s mind. He had always believed
implicitly in things supernatural, things beyond the ken of the world he woke
to every day. He believed in them because they had to be there; otherwise there
was no hope for him, because he had always known he could not live his whole
life in the real world. He had had faith that someday he would find them… or
they would find him. And now they had. They had seemed to recognize him from
the first, and was that not sign enough?

 
          
Suddenly
Laine cried out. But it was not a sound of mortal pain. Twig had grabbed
Laine’s chin and forced his head back, and Zillah’s razor had flashed out to
nick the exposed throat. Zillah dipped his finger in the blood and rubbed it
over Nothing’s lips, painting his mouth, slicking it with Laine’s blood.

 
          
Nothing’s
head had begun to dear a little, but the taste of the blood sent his brain
swirling back down into acid-mad-
ness
. Laine was
sobbing, long hopeless sounds that seemed wrenched out of his guts. Molochai
and Twig sat up straight, their eyes flickering from Zillah’s bloody finger to
Nothing’s bloody mouth to Laine’s bloody throat. The blood glistened black in
the moonlight.

 
          
Tears
coursed down Laine’s face, silver in the night, dampening the hair at his
temples.

 
          
Nothing
knew how they would taste, mild and salty like Laine’s mouth. But now he found
himself wondering how they would taste mingled with Laine’s blood. He saw
himself licking a sheet of wetness off Laine’s cheeks, a sheet of blood
streaked through with crystal tears.

 
          
That
was when he realized that he could do it. He could tear Laine’s pulse open and
drink from it. Not because Zillah wanted him to—not even that—but because he
wanted to. Somewhere in his mind was the knowledge that they would probably
kill him along with Laine if he refused, but that hardly mattered anymore. The
fresh blood had given him a hunger of his own.

 
          
“I’ll
help you,” Nothing told Laine. “Don’t be scared.” He lay down beside Laine,
spread himself on top of Laine. His arms stretched along the length of Laine’s
arms, up to Laine’s wrists, which Molochai and Twig still held pinned. His hips
met Laine’s hips, his legs locked with Laine’s legs. Laine’s body was shaking
violently. It vibrated through Nothing, turned him electric. Faintly he was
aware of music. Someone had put a tape on.
Ziggy
Stardust.

 
          
He
kissed Laine deeply. His mouth moved down to Laine’s throat, to his pulse. He
thought of the biker, Spooky. He thought of cutting his own wrist and suckling
from it, thought of how unsatisfying that had been.

 
          
“Please,”
Laine sobbed, and some small dim part of Nothing, some part untouched by acid
or the night, realized what he was about to do. Laine had once held Nothing’s
head over the toilet at a party, after too many screwdrivers. Laine had
whispered meaningless words of comfort and kissed the sick-sweat away from
Nothing’s face. Laine had been his friend, in another life.

 
          
Nothing
twisted to look at Zillah. Zillah smiled a dark smile and said, “Come and be
one of us,” and Nothing knew he was being told to make his choice. Come and be
one of us –or suffer the consequences of your refusal: die, or be alone, and
never drink from the bottle of life again. For the blood was the life—So he
opened his mouth as wide as it would go and bit into the soft flesh of Laine’s
throat. Zillah had marked the spot right over the pulse, and there was no
cartilage or bone in his way. But the skin was hard to tear; his teeth would
not go all the way through it. He had thought they would sink smoothly in, like
needles, like fangs.

 
          
Instead
it was like trying to chew through tough raw steak. He ground his teeth into
skin and pulled at it and felt it begin to come away in a wet chunk, peeling
away from the great vein.

 
          
Then
he felt the vein itself throbbing against his lips. What am I doing that last
sane part of his mind screamed, o god what am I doing WHAT AM I DOING, and it
kept screaming even as his teeth tore out Laine’s jugular.

 
          
The
torrent of blood washed over Nothing’s face and bubbled into his mouth. It was
as different from his previous small tastes as whiskey from water. This was the
taste of life,
its
very essence. More than that–he
was actually drinking a life, swallowing it whole. He felt himself borne up by
the mindless, agonized convulsions of the thin body beneath him and the
churning guitar of the spiders from Mars.

 
          
The
taste of blood meant the end of aloneness.

 
          
As
Laine’s movements became weaker, the others fell upon him. Molochai and Twig
nestled into the crooks of Laine’s elbows; there was the sound of their mouths
churning, then a long wet sound like the last drops of soda being sucked from a
glass. Zillah had pulled Laine’s pants off and buried his face in Laine’s
crotch. He fed with delicate licks instead of noisy sucking, but when he looked
up at Nothing, his smile was red, and a pulpy shred of flesh was caught in the
comer of his mouth.

 
          
Soon
Laine no longer struggled, but he was still alive. A long continuous sound came
from his open throat, a keening beyond pain or hope. He had come away from home
because Nothing had; he had followed Nothing, trusting him. But Laine should
have learned by now that when you have too much faith in something, it is bound
to hurt you. Too much faith in anything will suck you dry. In this way, all the
world is a vampire.

 
          
Nothing
held Laine close and drank his life, lost in the slowing pulse, in the taste of
blood and salt. He never realized that most of the tears he tasted were his
own.

 
          
Heavy
rains came to Missing Mile during the night and turned the weather cold, turned
the sky leaden. The last sprays of goldenrod withered and died under a coat of
rime, and people
shovelled
last year’s ash from their
fireplaces. It would stay cold now.