Vampire Eden (5 page)

"The endless noise
outside these walls makes it difficult to sleep," Aoleon muttered. Cressida murmured silently in agreement. "If I only knew where the King of the Dead lay, where he slept. He sleeps somewhere, hidden away at night, when we are free to move about. Somewhere protected. It vexes me to think he is sleeping more soundly than I, if at all. Zombies do not sleep, do they?"

"Not according to lore," Cressida said as she sank to the ground, waiting patiently.
"Which is why they are so addled of brain."

"How unfair that a creature such as he is given eternal life. I bring surrender, he brings chains. I bring solace, he brings suffering. The King of the Dead has e
luded me for far too long." Aoleon's hands curled into fists. "His very existence vexes me." She rose from her coffin and paced the floor in bare feet, her soles occasionally stepping on a sharp piece of debris. I watched the cuts bleed and heal, bleed and heal, as Aoleon spoke, storming about, her gown flying about her as whenever she turned. "Once making promises of love, the scoundrel. Promises of salvation. I shall never forgive him for what he did to me. All men shall feel the punishment for his transgressions."

"Had you known him long?" I asked.

"We have all known him. You have known him all too well. All too strongly. That is what brought you to your wretched existence."

I cringed
as I examined the filthy carpet. "What did the King of the Dead do to you?"

"When I changed, I consumed my lover before I could change him. I had not the discipline to stop drinking his blood. So I live an eternal life of regret. As do a
ll young girls with their dreams of knights in shining armor and heroes of tales filled with love. The King of the Dead. The embodiment of passion. Ardor. Love."

She spat the words like vulgarities. "
No longer. These are but dreams that will never exist for us. They are tricks, meant for us to succumb to until the pedestal is pushed away, and the human woman is torn down to the ground by her hair, and stomped upon by the man she loves. This is the true nature of love in the mortal world."

She clenched her teeth and gripped the sides of the coffin.
The silk lining crumpled under the grip of her hands. "This is the lie of the light, for all of love's paths lead to darkness. Love is said to be the encompassment of all that is beautiful, yet my beauty reigns even without love. The truth about love is that love is as savage as the creatures of darkness: enticing, charismatic, enchanting. Until he grips you by the neck and shakes the life out of you. This is what love truly is. Nothing but a foolish, treacherous lie."

"
Comfort, my beloved queen." Cressida crouched next to her and enveloped her body in a hug. Aoleon's head turned sharply in Cressida's direction, as if she had forgotten Cressida sat before her. She slowly pulled Cressida's arms from her, letting them drop away and sank back into the satin lining of her coffin bed.

"Every night, we see the fruit of human trivialities," Cressida went on.
"They are nothing we would want for ourselves."

"Clearly, you have n
ever experienced love, Cressida," Aoleon said. "I changed you not a moment too soon. Tread carefully for you have seen me weak. Do not remind me of this moment. Ever. Or I shall be forced to destroy you. With Eden as my witness. She will gladly take your place since that will mean she must be changed earlier. Eden, you shall bring the King of the Dead here to me. Tomorrow night. Or I shall rip you apart into tiny pieces. I shall place your head upon a shelf and keep that as the part of you that lives, and when you hear what the voices say, you may tell me. And if you cannot hear what the voices say, you need never address me at all. You will simply be my decor. Tonight, you will bring us our dinner. With your kissing lips you may have stolen Patrick away from me. Only the King of the Dead can bring him back."

I opened my mouth to speak. Aoleon held up a hand to silence me. "Say nothing. I know you only mean to thank me for granting you a life eternal." Her hazel eyes challenged me. I looked down at the floor.
Excavators and forklifts beeped outside as the walls of the coven shook. "Construction and noise. Always in this city." Aoleon scowled and lowered herself into her coffin, pulling the lid closed. Cressida dutifully covered the encasement with thick blankets.

Cressida arranged herself into her coffin and prepared to lie down.
"Wait," I whispered. "What does she mean when she said I must be changed earlier? If she had to destroy you."

"She won't destroy me, hag," Cressida snarled.
"What a motley manner of five you would make, even if you were to take my place. This coven can do far better than you. Now go fetch our dinner and be back by nightfall. I want someone juicy and fat."

"Yo
u're in the right town for that. I'll start looking at the buffet line."

"I know."
Her lips pursed with disdain as she wrinkled her nose at me. "It may take a hundred years for me to accept you as one of us. Even now, in your changed form, you are grossly imperfect." She closed the lid of her coffin.

"Thanks. Same to you," I called back over my shoulder. I strolled down the decrepit stairs as rats scurried down the steps.

*   *   *

The desert air blew hot as I walked down a block to the gas station. The hotels and casinos jutted up against the blue sky, weathered and dirty in the heat of the morning sun. I brushed a lock of hair back from my eyes as I walked past a sun-withered man who stalked by me with his hands in his pockets, his eyes glancing around hungrily at the seedy casinos and a sign that read
Ham and Eggs, $1.99
. He let out a long wolf whistle as I passed by.

I strode into the gas station and paid for a five
-gallon portable gas container.
You've got yourself in a real mess now, Eden. For all eternity. Thanks for the warning, Patrick.
The gas meter clicked off when the four dollars and seventy-five cents I had prepaid showed up on the digital readout. I twisted the black cap onto the container and set out back to my apartment to burn Kevin's body and the whole complex while I was at it.

Turning the corner down Paradise Road, I kept my hea
d down as I watched one sandaled foot step in front of the other.
Eternal life. As if my life weren't crappy enough, I decided to prolong it by living forever.
I contemplated pulling up a stake from the rosebushes and stabbing the vampire women in the hearts as they slept.
Then I would change back to me. Easy-peasy. My luck, they'd grab the stake and pop me in the eye, then keep me that way like some kind of winky-eyed gimp. The things I do for excitement. I cut off my nose to spite my face. Most people think I act out of stupidity. They don't realize I craved the thrill of the unexpected. Maybe all of us streetwalkers do. Maybe we're so used to being blindsided by the things that happened to us when we were catapulted out of childhood far too early. We're just replaying the same bad song, over and over and over in our own minds.

"Look for love," a voice whispered behind me. I whirled around and saw an empty sidewalk behind me and buildings surrounded by dried grass and tumbleweeds. "Look," the voice whispered again from the sky.

"Look for what?" I shouted into the air. I turned my face up to the sky. "My whole life I've been looking for something. But everything fades. Everyone leaves. Look for what?"

“
Listen, listen, listen
.”
The voice faded away as I stood there, my lips pursing together with confusion. I waited to hear more but the voices were gone.

I strolled onto the apartment's grounds, passing by a sagging chain
-link fence with a pair of little girls' jeans that had been blown off a clothesline stuck on a metal wire. Empty potato chip bags, candy wrappers, and beer cans littered the dead grass, and the sound of salsa dance music blared from an open window. Reaching my apartment door, I turned the key in the lock and heard a woman's greeting singing my name like the jingle on a 1940s radio show. I hid the gas can behind my back as I turned. "Hi, Christine," I grinned.

She clutched a cheap leather brief
case in one hand and a cardboard cup of coffee in the other. "Hi, Eden. Your car run out?" She wore a suit with a white and red diamond pattern print and white high heels. Her hair looked stiff in a heavily sprayed coiffeur hovering around her shoulders.

I'm just about to torch the place.
You might want to grab your cats.
"Exactly," I said. "It's parked in the back of the building. I'm just going in to tell Kevin I'm back and then fill 'er up." I threw in some emphasized Southern twang and inwardly cringed at the sound of my voice. "You off to work?"

She nodded.
"Hey, my brother lives down the road and has a moped. I was just going to drop by his house. You mind if I borrow that gas container?"

"Sure.
I'll bring it by tonight."
Along with a few friends I'm indebted to for eternal life. For dinner.

"I can wait.
Just go ahead and fill up your car and I'll just hang out here." She tapped her foot, taking a long, slow sip of her coffee.

"Be right out."
I opened the door just enough for my body to slip through and glanced back at her. She cocked her head and smiled as I shut the door and locked the bolt. I leaped toward the computer, determined to log in and Google “How to Make a Fireball
.
”

A figure leaped
out of the darkness and jumped on me, slamming my body to the ground. A sheet of white light glowed over the attacker's face as his hands clamped down around my throat. I raked my fingernails into his skin. The slimy texture reminded me of manta rays I had touched at an aquarium once when I was a kid. His teeth pulled back from green lips and his grotesquely mashed face hovered near mine.
Kevin.

I reached up and pulled at his hair, which
easily detached with pieces of scalp from my hand. Screaming, I wiggled out from under him as he grunted and pawed at me. "Kevin! Stop!" I shouted as I jumped to my feet. The thing that was once Kevin growled at me and lurched forward. His hands reached up for my neck. His fingers scrabbled at my hair and chest. His index fingers wormed their way up to my eyes and tried to dig in. I screamed as I imagined living hundreds of years as an eyeless beggar woman who couldn't die.

The door to the apartment flew open as Christine kicked it in and pointed a gun at him.
"Just what I thought. Another one." She pressed the trigger and a bullet flew out, striking him right between the eyes. He moaned and pushed past me with a smell of rotten marine mammal exuding from his mouth. He lurched and grabbed a handful of the hair on top of her head.

Christine brought her high
-heeled foot down on his toes as she popped off another shot, this one point-blank into his heart. He reeled back with his hands flailing and tipped over on the couch. She followed and fired shot after shot. I looked over her shoulder and saw a mass of bone tissue, brain, and blood that once was Kevin. The mess on the carpet resembled the cherry Jell-O ambrosia with marshmallow and canned fruit cocktail my mother had always made for potlucks.

"What else is going on in here?"
she asked, her eyes wide and hair sticking out at crazy angles.

"F
ive vampire women not so long ago," I gasped. "Actually, six. Including me."

"Let's get breakfast," she said as she pushed me out the door
with her back against it, keeping her gun raised in my direction. "Leave the gas can. They can clean up their own mess." My stomach heaved as we crossed the threshold. She closed the door softly behind her.

"Just exactly who the hell are you again?" I said.
We sat in a booth in the Lucky Thirteen Diner. The place was decorated with pictures of Old Town Vegas in garish red, with red tables, booths, and chairs to match. A jukebox on the table played the song "Blue Suede Shoes.” Christine Leavensworth sipped on her second cup of coffee and looked me over.

"
Eden, either you must have had some expensive work done or you let one of those vampires change you. My guess is the latter. Vanity is the world's most rash motivator. That and stupid, unrequited love."

"You get a psychology degree to come up with that?
’Cause I really need you to explain what you saw in that awful suit."

"Let's start over.
I'm Christine Leavensworth, Paranormal Investigations Agent for the Central Intelligence Agency." She handed me her badge and I ran my fingers over the Seal of the United States. The badge looked one hundred percent legitimate, and I had seen some excellent forgeries of Social Security cards and identification from bankrupt strippers who sought to bilk the government yet again. "Are you still Eden the bar maid?"

"Something like that."

"Aoleon and her women are under investigation. They have been hunting in the United States for almost a hundred years."

"A hundred years?"
              "In artificial light they are transparent. Same in total darkness. They've thrived in Las Vegas because artificial light is in abundance and total darkness is not. They possess extraordinary strength and agility. Aoleon has never changed a woman before, and I'm still trying to figure out why she chose you."