Underground Vampire (18 page)

At first, Jesse thought he’d
missed, that the skin wasn’t even broken until a thin line of blood appeared
across her arm.  Bird Girl positioned herself directly under the widening
cut, her lips parting in anticipation.  A droplet of blood coalesced from
the cut and began to roll down the arm.  

Unable to restrain herself, Bird
Girl arched her back and neck, extending her dainty tongue to touch the drop so
that it broke upon her tongue tip, saturating her mouth with rouge.  The
blood flowed thicker now and she followed the trickle up the arm, her lips and
tongue making love as she tasted the girl. 

Around them, the Vampires were
silent but for the deep breaths they released as she continued to work her way
up the arm sampling the taste of the beautiful girl.  When she reached the
cut she became more aggressive.  Her lips covered the cut and Jesse could
see the muscles of her neck contract as she sucked at the wound.  After an
eternity lasting a minute or two, the sommelier and his assistant moved in and
gently separated her mouth from the arm. 

Bird Girl had the glazed look Jesse
had seen all too infrequently, but did not resist beyond reaching with her lips
and tongue for the girl.   A final drop fell from the cut into her
mouth as they returned her to the Master, who applied a poultice to her arm and
maneuvered her from the bar through the cellar and out a sliding door, which
opened at his approach.  The two disappeared into a private space, the
back bar slowly closed and the place returned to normal.

Finally, Bird Girl held her hand up
and Jesse could see a drop of blood on her index finger sitting like a dewdrop
on a rose.  She held her finger above her open mouth so that the last drop
fell into her and, putting her hand to her lap, closed her eyes in a moment of
personal ecstasy that made Jesse a voyeur for the moment. 

When she came back she turned to
Jesse asking, “It is so with you and Arabella, yes?” 

The confused look on his face was
her answer and she gently laughed, saying, “Oh you are virgin, I
apologize.  You see, when we Vampires make love with a Human, sometimes we
enjoy a petit taste of our lover; it is the ultimate joining for us.”

“Well, no,” he stammered, “I’m
mean, of course I’m not a virgin,” as manly as he could, while inexplicably
feeling like a seventh grader talking to the experienced older woman.

“Of course,” she said softly,
looking into his face, “I mean you have not been with her.”

He did not feel possessed by her
eyes, as he looked deeper, feeling a great peace and serenity unfold within
him.  He wanted only to fall into her, to be absorbed in her eyes, bury
his face in her hair and touch her body.

“Please, that was very rude of me
but it felt very intimate just now with you, and I assumed that she and you
had, well, it is none of my business,” her voice broke the spell and he lurched
backwards in his seat, almost toppling off to the floor but for her reassuring
touch on his arm.

As he turned towards her to find
out why she thought he was a virgin, he saw Arabella coming across the room
with Jason following close behind her.  He felt that he had done something
wrong although he wasn’t sure what, and tried to make his face blank like a
gang banger at an interrogation.  Then he tried to put a smile on his face
but couldn’t get the corners of his mouth to turn up; all he could manage was a
tight-lipped gash cut straight across his face.

He stole a look into the back bar
mirror and thought he looked paralytic so he tried showing some teeth as
Arabella said, “You two enjoying yourselves?”

She looked at him and snapped
around to Bird Girl, who was busy looking at the crowd, and said to Jesse,
“What happened, what’s the matter with you, what’s wrong with your face?”

“Nothing,” Jesse managed to get
out.  “I’m fine, she took very good care of me,” nodding towards Bird Girl,
who smiled back with a goofy dreamy look on her face.

“Did she,” retorted Arabella,
taking a closer look at Bird Girl.

“He was a perfect gentleman,” said
Bird Girl.  “I’ll take care of him whenever you want, it was a pleasure,”
she gushed like he was a two year old, thought Jesse.

“You treated our guest to some of
our finest and took care of yourself,” said Jason.  “May I offer you a
nightcap before you leave, perhaps a taste of the same?”  He leaned in to
Arabella as he spoke and seemed to be whispering in her ear, although Jesse
could hear him clearly.  For a moment Arabella considered the offer then,
abruptly, she stepped to Jesse saying, “Take me home please, my business here
is concluded.”

They crossed the dining room at a
brisk walk and at the door Arabella thanked Ismaeli, who thanked her in turn
for “No problems tonight.”  Then she was off like a woman on a
mission. 

As they passed Drop Dead Chic, the
Pomeranian ran out closely followed by its owner who scooped him up, inviting
her in to inspect his hidden treasures.  Begging off with promises to
return at the earliest, she pushed off down the street ignoring the Vampires in
the streets, the shops, the bars, the restaurants and, Jesse thought, him.

As they entered the tunnel, the
same two guards stepped out and then back as, without breaking stride, she
marched through where they had been standing with a curt, “Out of my
way.”   Jesse found himself having to trot to keep up with her and
finally called “Hey, slow down,” to her back as she disappeared around a
corner. 

As he rounded the corner he almost
ran her down as she had stopped and was standing in the middle of the walkway,
her arms crossed against her chest.  He bumped into her, stopping and
putting his arms around her to steady himself and as an excuse to put his arms
around her. 

Still feeling the whiskey and
floating on the Bird Girl’s attention he said, “You know you look gorgeous
tonight.”  It was true.  When he had arrived at her apartment and she
saw how he was dressed, she paired a semi sheer ivory silk blouse over a black
bra with a pair of fitted black designer jeans and her favorite Louboutin’s of
the moment, the leopard platform bootie and covered it with a fitted black
leather jacket that showed a bit of ruffled cuff for effect.

“The way you have your hair reminds
me of the way Cher had hers in an old Sonny and Cher video I saw,” he whispered
in her ear.

“Get your hands off of me,” she
said, giving him a push in the chest that rocked him back onto his ass.

“I’m sorry,” he said from his back,
“I’ll be sure not to compliment you ever again.”  He rolled over and tried
to get to his feet with all the dignity he could muster.

“What did I tell you,” she said,
visibly struggling to keep her voice calm.  “Don’t look into a Vampire’s
eyes, don’t relax and get lulled by the voice, it can be hypnotic.  Also,
remember, we were visiting the bad guys; be aware they will try to play
you.”  The sarcasm hurt more than the words; definitely overreacting.

“Nothing happened,” he said, all
defensive now, feeling both rejected and humiliated.  “We just had a drink
and talked that’s all.   I can’t really say anything, can I, because
you haven’t really told me anything, have you, partner?”  He was up on his
feet now and blazing away like a wronged suitor as she stood with her arms
crossed cool and collected like she didn’t know what he was irrationally going
on about. 

When he was finished she asked
conversationally, “So, what did the two of you talk about, anything in common?”

The six ounces of super-premium
whiskey followed by the three beers opened his mouth and before his brain could
catch up it blurted out, “She wanted to know why I was still a Vampire virgin.”

“You spoke to her, to that bar
slut, about my private life?” no longer cool and collected.  She was
actually kind of scary, he thought.

“She just took it for granted that
we were, you know,” he said, realizing that the conversation had spun out of
his control.

“No,” she said sweetly, “I don’t
know, explain it to me, we were what?”

He could feel the trap closing, he
knew that somehow he had blundered into dangerous territory and couldn’t see
the path home.   He thought about Bird Girl’s breast and the whiskey
and the upside down penises and the naked ladies and the way she touched his
leg and decided to play dumb, which at the moment was easy.

After dragging it out longer than
he felt necessary, she said, “Is there anything else you happened to mention to
her while you were blabbing about us?  It‘s a good thing I don’t tell you
anything important.”  The final arrow firmly stuck in his chest, she
pivoted on her impossibly high heel and started off down the sidewalk,
oblivious to him hurrying behind so he wouldn’t be left lost in the
Underground.

The way home was wet, cold and
silent.  As they approached her building and he was winding up to
apologize, she preempted him with a chilly, “Good Night,” and pushed through
the door, leaving him in the rain on Second Ave.

Donning the shawl his
great-grandfather wore when first they appeared, Finkelstein descended the
stairs into the basement of the family business.  He doubted that the Blue
Anchor would remain in the family after his death.  His two sons were
culturally Jewish on their Jewish dating site and cared only about sports. 
Both were majoring in sports management in college and dreamed of running a
professional basketball team. His daughter ran a popular yoga studio on Mercer
Island catering to the spiritual needs of the community’s affluent wives. 
None were attracted to the idea of running a downtown bar far removed from the
more glamorous nightlife of the city. 

Gently but firmly his wife
dissuaded him from divulging the glorious secret history of the Finkelstein
family; to them it would have been an embarrassment.  After her death, he
knew he would not go against her memory, so he let it slide day to day until it
was only him and the other alta cockers, not even enough for a minyan.  To
pray they had to either go to a temple where they weren’t welcome or entice males
to join the service. That, unfortunately, led to questions about their
practices, questions which did not have easy answers.  So, the nine prayed
alone, studying and seeking, looking always in the shadows for the evil that
the prophets foretold. 

The first born for four generations
each faced the evil unclean to save mankind from disaster.  Now, if his
studies and his calculations were correct, it was his turn.  Once his part
was finished, another would appear to manage the upstairs, pray in the
basement, study, always study to learn the unspoken names of God, the sacred
and profane.   Now, it was enough to dream.

Shuffling down the basement steps,
he thought it wouldn’t be a bad thing to leave the headache of the Blue Anchor
behind and move to the suburbs, live near his children, and join a synagogue in
the suburbs concerned with assimilation, not the Vampyra.  Of course, he
would still come in to pray and study in the basement; that would never change,
he had so much to tell the one who would come after him. 

For now, the circle of old men who
greeted him was enough.  Almost enough to maintain the barrier that kept
the Night People from crashing into the basement and into the City; enough to
draw the ancient diagrams, symbols of the Nameless that protected them at night
on their way home; enough to summon the Human who would ally with the Vampire
woman to defeat the evil.

After first meeting Ortega he had,
it was true, rechecked his calculations, redrawn diagrams and recruited another
male to ensure passage of the prayer.  It was hard to believe that this
Human, this Jesus Ortega, was the result of supplication.  Heroes, it was
true, came in different forms, different shapes, manifestations not always
apparent.  So why not a third-generation Mexican immigrant alcoholic prone
to violent episodes nurtured by a paranoid police command. 

This evening, though, was simpler
than wrestling with heterodoxy.  Now they only needed to strengthen the
wall that protected them from the outside.  The Vampyra stayed in their
portion of the Underground, accessing the City through various points scattered
through downtown. An uneasy peace lay upon the unknowing City, enforced by the
rigid rule of the Queen. The old checkpoints were long abandoned as the Human
souls left from the last troubles died off, leaving few alive with knowledge of
the People of the Night.  Lately, there had been disturbing signs, barely
perceived images flickering in the corner of vision, dreams rife with contagion
and death.  Even the damn rats seemed disturbed.

Mort, bald headed, stooped, cranky
Mort, said he detected something, a feeling he hadn’t felt in many years, dread
and fear.  The boys would say he felt a disturbance in the force. 
Abraham Finkelstein didn’t know from any force but he trusted Mort’s feelings.
Mort had been keeping the group alive for a long time and he wasn’t about to
start ignoring his premonitions now.  Mort was the canary; Abraham hoped
he didn’t have to be sacrificed, but that was his calling and he was grateful
that Mort was still coming to the basement, sitting on his stool by the door
waiting for them to come again.

Entering the room, he was heartened
that everyone made it.  It was becoming harder to assemble the
group.  Travel for the frail was difficult and their families, most
dispersed to suburbs east of the lake, didn’t relish two trips across the
bridge so they could schmooze for an afternoon.   Most worrisome was
the sight of bagels on the side table. “Mort must have something really bad to
report,” mused Abraham, “if he made his daughter stop at Kosher Bagels on
Capitol Hill on the way in.”  The general unease didn’t impede anyone's’
appetite as the group jostled each other for the bagels and cream cheese, he
noted.    

Abraham got in line behind Moishe,
an Israeli-born who had emigrated after two wars.  He was the only one of
the group with formal combat training and actual battle experience. He often
said if he knew what he was getting into he would have stayed and faced the car
bombs, it was safer.  He nodded his head at Abraham, his glasses on his
forehead, and whispered conspiratorially, “it must be bad, he brought
lox.”  Trained in intelligence, Moishe cobbled together a network of the
dispossessed keeping them informed of the bizarre and strange happenings about the
city.

Abraham felt his stomach curl at
the site of the salmon on the plate. The last time Mort treated was when a
deranged Vampire with psychotic visions of redemption tried reenacting the
crucifixion utilizing a yeshiva student in an attempt to bind his soul. Mort’s
timely warning and a quiet word to Malloy had squelched that problem. Malloy
had contacted the Queen, who had put her house assassins on the
matter.   “You have to hand it to her,” Moishe had said when the
Times reported a bizarre incident where a babbling Torah student was found tied
to a tree in Woodland Park with a cone of ashes smoldering at his feet. 
“She knows how to take care of a problem.”

Finkelstein’s eyebrows merged, a
bristly white and grey caterpillar squiggling above his eyes, as he observed
the eight noshing away at the bagels.  To the world they would look like
what they were, men at the ends of their lives meeting for a meal, some
companionship and prayer.  The esoteric symbols and calculations drawn on
the walls competed for space with the amulets concentrated on the walls and
windows facing the Underground. 

Marco the ancient Sofer delicately
transcribed one of God’s secret names in square letters that did not touch,
surrounding it with names of his angels, all the while reciting precise words
as his pen dipped into the dark and correct ink.  The purpose of the
Amulet was vague, purposefully so, to divert the attention of the ignorant and
confuse evildoers.  Describing the need for protection in esoteric terms, referring
to impregnable walls of stone, it sought protection in this time of
need.   The passage was important yet cryptic, the universal appeal
for help, so prevalent in Torah.  The lettering could only be done in the
precise ritual as proscribed by the laws known to Marco and would be finished
in his own time. Nevertheless, Finkelstein wished he would get a move on; soon,
very soon they would need all the help there was. 

Mr. Finkelstein savored the three
amulets surrounding the door.  Each recited his family’s lineage, and the
three had served to block entry to the Blue Anchor from the Underground for
these many years.  The Vampyra had tried many times to breach the shield,
but the power of the Nameless One and his Angels had thwarted their
siege.  He had resisted obtaining his own amulet, preferring to rely upon
his father’s, grandfather’s and his father’s for protection.  All these
years he avoided commissioning a personal Amulet, fearing it as a harbinger of
his own death, a silly superstition he kept to himself.

Today they would finish the
Tetragrammaton, the symbol that would extend the protection into the corridors,
extending their borders into the frontiers of the Unclean.  As they worked
upon the sacred design, they each felt in their own way emanations from the
other side. Or, as Moishe the pragmatic warrior said, “We push, they push
back.”  They meant to hang it on the old door to the Underground. 
Once the front door of the original saloon, it now served as the passageway to
the darkness, a passageway that the group understood ran both ways.

As Marco, their scribe, leaned over
the symbol, softly chanting the prayer for dipping the brush in the ink, then
the prayer for lettering the esoteric letters into words, they all stood
quietly observing a ritual codified by Maimonides and honored ever since. 
Their job was to observe the divine process, to pray as required, to protect
Marco as he bowed over the symbology, his frail neck stretched like the
sacrificial fowl as he carefully wrote the names.

Sensitive Mort was the first,
lifting his unseeing gaze from the floor, sliding off his stool to stand one
last time, hearing in his quiet place the silent tread of vicious
history.  Called again he did his duty, warning the men of the danger
descending on them. Stepping to the door he opened it to stand in the passage,
a beacon in the night, his inner eye focusing down the corridor.  “Get
back in here,” snapped Finkelstein.

The others fell into an accustomed
array, lining up along the windows with Finkelstein at the door, prepared to
repel the invaders.  They came in a dark and foul cloud like excrement
from the sky, staining the windows and blighting righteous souls, for that is
what they did when entrance was denied them.  They invaded the
consciousness to darken and depress, until a crack appeared in the resistance
and in false hope of relief, they were invited in. 

Marco, undisturbed, continued his
lettering, neither hastening nor slowing his hallowed progress.  Faces
coalesced out of the darkness, pressing against the windows closer than they
had ever been before.  Finkelstein stifled the urge to tell Marco to
hurry; the amulet would be finished in God’s time, not theirs.  Now, all
they could do was face the past as their fathers and forefathers had before
them.

The demons, perverted spawn of
golem and the daughters of men, raged at the door.  Finkelstein prayed
that the amulets would hold; although not made for him, the residual connection
of his bloodline to the amulets had always been strong enough to resist any incursion. 
This time, though, the powers of the night seemed stronger; he could not tell
if the demons were more powerful or the amulets weaker.  In either event,
the demons were closer than they had ever been, pressing their teeth against
the windows, their hideous tongues flicking at the panes of glass.

Moishe was the first; his kippahed
head thrust forward the righteous energy, forcing a bulge in the Vampire
line.  As the others shuffled up following Moishe’s lead, a power from the
past, one long thought dead, appeared in front of Finkelstein.  Known to
him from the secret oral tradition he realized that the one they believed
banished had returned. The shock of recognition caused Finkelstein to stumble,
opening a slight fissure in the line allowing the demon’s arm to snake through
the doorway, its taloned fingers locking on to Mort’s neck and jerking him from
the cellar into the corridor, where he disappeared beneath a tangle of howling
Vampires. 

Paralyzed, their numbers reduced by
one, the men stood wavering before the onslaught; the only thing saving them
from being overrun by the horde was the blood scent distracting the
undisciplined Vampires from advancing.  As Finkelstein struggled to bring
his emotions under control so he could rally his friends, he was roughly pushed
aside and watched, dazed, as the Indian stepped beyond the shielding amulets
and repeatedly drove a wooden stake into the howling mob. 

Shocked by the improbable scene, he
watched as the Indian, known as the best shuffleboard player ever at the Blue
Anchor, methodically drove the howling mob down the corridor.  Lying on
the cracked sidewalk just outside the door were the remains of Mort, horribly
disfigured by the ravenous attack.  Around him several Vampires turned to
ash, testament to the fighting prowess of the Indian who retreated toward the
men. 

“Pick him up,” said the Indian, “we
need to get inside before they come back.”

Galvanized by his calm voice, they
surrounded what was left of Moishe and all together hoisted his torn and frail
body into the air, carrying him back into the basement.  Marco looked up
from his prayers as they laid the body to rest announcing, “I am finished, it
is completed.”

Reverently, Finkelstein left his
friend’s body.  Taking the parchment in his hands, he carried it to the
doorway and hung it on the door, belated protection against the evil of the
night. Behind him the diminished group huddled around the body, chanting the El
Molai Rachamimas as Mr. Finkelstein telephoned Malloy, reporting the
tragedy.  

Sergeant Malloy, as he had many
times before, arranged to have the body retrieved and prepared reports
establishing the senseless death of an elderly man on the streets of
Seattle.  Another tragic and inexplicable homicide without any apparent
motive, similar to all the other homicides Malloy had disguised throughout his
distinguished career in Special Matters. 

Turning to the Indian, Finkelstein
held out his hand saying, “We’ve never been formally introduced.”  The
Indian, a small smile on his face replied, “I’m Lee, my family sent me to help
you.” 

“How did you know?” Finkelstein
asked.  “We didn’t see the danger.”

“We have resisted the Vampires
since they first appeared in the Northwest.  We noticed you were about to
come under…. pressure,” he paused when he said the word, as if searching for a
diplomatic phrase, “so the council decided to send you assistance.”