Sips of Blood (27 page)

"Grandmother, I feel so helpless. I know what
her life will be like, but I can't explain it to her."

"He must be stopped from ever turning anyone
again."

"He'll never stop."

Maria rubbed Liliana's knee with her ungloved
hand.

"You remember all those children who went
missing in Paris around the time we thought you had died?"

Liliana's hands began to tremble, and Marie
placed her own hands around her granddaughter's.

"This is something we must talk about. We
cannot continue to ignore his savage behavior." Receiving no
response from Liliana, Marie persisted. "The general consensus of
the people at the time and in history books, as far as I can tell,
was that the children were kidnapped by the government in order to
populate the new world.

"None of those children made it to the
colonies. They were all killed, and Sade paid to have it covered
up. I know because several people came to me and asked what to do.
Of course, I was terrified of Sade and advised the people to accept
the money. I've been so ashamed. Obviously Sade bled those children
and buried, burned, or in some way disposed of the bodies. I
wouldn't be surprised to learn that many of the children are living
wild as vampires."

"No," Liliana softly said.

"Why else would he pay to have the rumor
spread about the government? He tortured those children and then
drained their blood."

Liliana kept shaking her head.

"You can't continue to ignore the truth about
your uncle. He's a fiend, and we are the only ones who can stop
him."

"Grandmother, you don't understand."

"Evil." She squeezed her granddaughter's
hands tightly. "Insane evil. Children as young as four and five
being raped and murdered by that fiend."

"He didn't do it."

"Liliana, give up the denial. I've enlisted
Wil's help in destroying Sade. He'll pound the stake in and cut off
Sade's head, but we need to know when he is vulnerable. You live
with Sade. He trusts you.

"Damn, stop shaking your head and pay
attention to what I'm saying."

"He didn't kill those children," Liliana
screamed.

"You believe that the government would send
children just out of babyhood to colonize land?"

"No," Liliana whispered.

"Then help us, Liliana. Tell us when he is
most vulnerable, for Will means to destroy the fiend."

Liliana jumped up from the step on which she
had been sitting and ran to her car, pulling the door open and
throwing herself into the seat behind the steering wheel.

The car choked but finally started, and she
drove away at high speed.

"Oh dear, Liliana, I tell you a little lie
and you run away." Marie had always accepted the idea that the
children were kidnapped by government agents; after all, it had
happened several other times. She even knew people who had made a
considerable amount of money delivering children. However, Marie
had decided to use the incidents to enrage her granddaughter.

What if Liliana reported their
conversation to Sade? Shit! She hadn't wanted to inform him of her
plans. Perhaps the girl would be smart enough to keep the
conversation to herself.
If not, Marie was in big trouble.

* * *

Liliana undid the few buttons on the back of
her dress and let the blue linen slide down her naked body. She
slipped out of her sandals easily.

Before her stood the off-white coffin that
her parents had selected for her. She opened the lid, and the smell
of earth hit her nostrils. The yellowed satin had begun to gray and
fray. The threadbare pillow lay crooked. The pretty lace dress her
mother had selected for her lay to the side of the coffin. Bits and
pieces of the convoluted lace spiked out from the dress. The light
layer of dirt scattered across the bottom of the coffin clumped
where her fingers had dug into the soil.

"Mamma," she said, clutching the tattered
lace in one hand. "Mamma, I never meant to do any of it."

The feeding frenzy had gripped her tightly in
its spell. Her uncle had allowed her body to be underground too
long. She had awakened famished, clawing at the satin surrounding
her. At first she had thought that she still lived, that she had to
reach the surface or die. After two days lying conscious in the
coffin, she realized she couldn't be alive. No gasping for air.
Sleep did not come to reprieve her from the insanity of being
enclosed in a small space. She had to be dead, and this possibly
was her eternity.

When Sade finally pulled her up from the
grave, a ravenous hunger seized her body. He offered her a young
child. The other children she had hunted and slaughtered on her
own, until Sade instructed her in how to be satisfied with a taste
and not gorge on blood.

Yes, there were times, many, she knew, when
he killed while drinking, but he loved the hunt and always felt the
prey belonged to him to dispose of as he wished.

He taught her caution and managed to rid
Paris of the small empty hulks she left behind. He paid people to
spread false rumors about the children being kidnapped.

"No, Grandmother, you are blaming the wrong
fiend."

Liliana reached up to feel her fangs. Sharp,
pointy, only slightly larger than her other teeth. Large enough to
pierce flesh down to crimson blood. She pulled at the fangs until
her mouth ached, but they stayed in place, waiting for the next
meal.

All those children coming to her, trusting
her, giving themselves over to her spells. Early on one or two had
fought before she understood the mesmerizing control she could
exercise over the tiny minds. They had played games with her,
shared their sweets, and smelled of the dreadful hovels from which
they had come, hovels no worse than the final resting places Sade
had found for them.

One girl had felt so warm that Liliana had
stripped the child's body in order to touch the warm flesh while
savoring the freshness of the child's blood. The little girl's
eyelids had closed over the dreamily shiny blue eyes while Liliana
sang a soft lullaby. Eventually the gentle sleepy breaths slowed,
then suddenly stopped.

Liliana pulled the lace dress from the coffin
and rent the material, scattering the tatters onto the wood
floor.

"Mamma," she said, kneeling down to gather
the threads into her hands. "Mamma."

Lifting the remains of the dress, she
stood.

"Mamma," she again said and spread the ruined
lace across the bottom of the coffin, mingling her mother's gift
with her homeland's soil.

Her long legs stepped into the coffin.
Immediately she felt the decay begin. Her skin would shrivel inside
the coffin. The body would finally rest, at least for a few hours,
never for eternity.

Cautiously she lay her body down. Shame,
repulsion, and fear swept through her as the overworked skeleton
eased into the centuries of abuse and pain.

Her uncle had raped her, but she had found a
perverted joy in his taste, smell, and touch.

She yanked on the lid and let the coffin slam
shut.

"Mamma, come and save your little girl."

"And indeed what creature is more precious, more
appealing in the eyes of men than the person who has cherished,
respected, and cultivated the virtues of the earth and, at each
step of the way, has found naught but misfortune and grief?"

Eugénie de Franval

by the

Marquis de Sade

Chapter 51

Bubbles wet the flakes of skin on Keith's
lips. The stale breath blew an occasional bubble away. He projected
a hiss and a gurgle into the room. His stubby beard hid the
slackness of his skin underneath. Hairs grew from his nostrils and
snot clogged the air passages. The open eyes stared at the ceiling.
Occasionally Wil thought he caught his father glancing at him. The
furrows hemmed in between Keith's eyebrows seemed to have deepened
since the accident. A pulsing vein caused the lines on his forehead
to quiver. Keith's hair, swept back off his face, shined with an
oily sheen.

Wil had been sponge-bathing his father,
noticing the shrunken chest, the stretch marks covering the lean
abdomen, and the wilted hood of his father's penis.

"Old man, how did this happen to you?"

Keith's legs shook in a trembling spasm, the
right foot kicking upwards from the ankle twice. The son rested his
hands on Keith's legs and waited for the spasm to quit.

"You know, Dad, I miss that wizened voice of
yours. The throaty bark of your cough in the morning is something
else that I miss. I never thought I'd ever miss those sounds, but
yeah, I do." The spasm had ended, and Wil returned to sponging down
his father. "Sometimes I imagine I hear you spitting up a gob of
sputum. God, you were so disgusting. I wish you could do it again
so's I don't have to worry about pneumonia setting into your
chest.

"One thing you got me to do, though, and
that's stay here in this house. Can't put you away in a home, Dad.
Can't go back to the city, either. May as well stay here with you.
This is our one last chance to become buddies, and there you are,
stricken dumb." Will shook his head and dropped the sponge back
into the tepid water. "You're as clean as you'll ever be. Your
skin, that is. Your soul is another matter."

Keith's fingertips pattered against the towel
covering the sheeted mattress. He emitted a hoarse breath from his
mouth. His lips trembled.

"I wonder whether anything is going on inside
your head. Major thoughts of how to save the world? Or curses
damning me? Maybe a whole lot of nothing."

Wil easily lifted his father and brought him
into the living room.

"Have to leave you on the sofa for a few
minutes while I change the bed. Here, let me wrap you up in this
throw." Wil grabbed the hand-knitted blanket his mother had knitted
while pregnant with him. "Has a few moth holes, but it will keep
you warm until I get back." Wil looked around the room. "Want some
television?" Wil shrugged his shoulders and used the remote to turn
on the screen. He clicked between several stations before settling
on a televised stock-car race.

When Wil returned to the bedroom, the stink
suddenly hit him.
Stay in a room long enough and you start
getting used to piss and shit.
He dumped the wash basin out in
the sink in the bathroom. Another room he needed to clean, he
thought, wiping shaving cream off the medicine chest.

In the bedroom, the distant roar of the
televised car race seemed like white noise. He went through the
mechanics of tossing the towels and used sheets on the floor. Down
to one more clean set of sheets--then he'd have to do the dreaded
laundry. He picked up the soiled bedclothes and carried them into
the bathroom to fling on top of the rest of the laundry stacking up
in the tub.
Thank God dad had thought of putting in a shower
stall.

The dark wooden sleigh bed, a wedding gift to
his parents, looked pristine covered in clean sheets, but he knew
the sheets would soon be soiled again. He plumped up the pillows
and took a deep breath, preparing himself for the return to the
living room.

A red race car was spinning off the track
when he entered the living room. His father's blanket-wrapped body
lay on the couch, shaking.

"Hey, hey, old man. The excitement too much
for you?" Wil shut the television off and hurried over to hold his
father. "It's okay. How the hell did you get into this shape? How
could anyone do this to you? I confronted Marie, and she denied
having anything to do with this. Hell, she's strong, but not strong
enough to break a man like this.

"You'd really be pissed now if you knew what
she wants me to do. Kill her son-in-law. Says he's already dead.
I'd just be disposing of the body." Keith laughed. "The worst part
is that I agreed. Shit, I don't know how I got myself into this.
Wants me to flee to Paris with her, but I can't leave you." Keith
kissed his father's forehead.

Keith's hands began to claw at his son's
shirtsleeve. Saliva dribbled down his chin.

"Hey, don't worry, I'm not going to kill
anyone for that bitch. Look at me. I'm talking to you as if you
understood." Wil looked closely at his father's face. Tears welled
in his father's eyes. Wil couldn't tell whether the eyes looked at
him or through him. A knock on the front door distracted Wil.
"Listen, Dad, I'm going to put you back in bed and see who that
is." His father's seizure seemed to be almost over, but Wil lifted
his still-trembling father with difficulty. Another knock. Wil
cursed. Carefully he carried his father back to bed. Wil had lain
out his father's pajamas at the foot of the bed, thinking that he
would dress the old man before tucking him in.

Another knock.

"I'll be back in a few minutes, Dad." He left
his father on the bed, bundled in the blanket.

"I hate waiting. You know that."

"Keep your voice down, Marie. Dad's
recovering from a seizure."

"He piss himself again?" Marie walked into
the house and directly toward the father's bedroom.

"No, no. You can't go in there," Will said,
grabbing Marie's right elbow.

"I've only seen him once since the accident.
Mind if I go in and give my regrets? Tell him how we're all praying
for him?"

"Stop it, Marie."

"You are still talking to him, aren't you, as
hopeless as it is?"

"The doctor said I should act as I did before
the accident."

"Oh my God, you're not picking on him
again."

"Marie, what do you want?"

"To take you for a drive."

"I can't go right now. There's no one to
watch Dad."

"Call someone. What about that visiting
nurse? Is this a visiting day?"

"She'll be coming over tomorrow."