Vampire Rising (2 page)

He looked up and, seeing Barnabas in the
doorway, gasped, for Barnabas was as beautiful as he’d remembered:
his caramel skin glowed with youth and vigor. His wide, innocent
eyes were clear and his dark hair was cropped short; gone was the
defiant retro Afro he’d worn in high school. Staring at him, the
frisson of lust and love that shot through him caused Gatsby to
miss a note, and frown. He bent over the keyboard; his face dipped
into shadow, dissolving into triangles of violet and purple.

To Barnabas, Gatsby looked exactly as he had
when he had been his teacher seven years before, and yet he seemed
more glamorous; he looked like a 1930s film star perfectly
preserved on silver nitrate.

Barnabas, unsure, started to walk across the
room to where Gatsby sat at the piano. Gatsby, without taking his
eyes off Barnabas, rose and, closing the piano’s lid, murmured
something to his audience, who turned to watch Barnabas. Keeping
his gaze on Barnabas, Gatsby drifted over, bringing with him sepia
tones and a martini.

“Hello, Barnabas,” Gatsby whispered. A
smile, fragile as tissue paper, wrapped around his words. He
offered his hand like an argentine gift of inestimable value.

Barnabas took his hand shyly and murmured
back, “Hi, Mr. Calloway.”

“Please! We’re no longer in high school. I’m
no longer your teacher. Call me Gatsby.”

Barnabas nodded. “Gatsby.” He’d always
addressed him as Mr. Calloway, but he thought of him, in his head,
as Gatsby. Still, saying his name aloud sounded strange to his ears
but he liked the way the syllables felt in his mouth:
 
Gats-by
.

“Ah. That’s better.”

The room was cool and Barnabas shivered.
“You’re cold,” Gatsby said, taking his arm.

There was something antique about him.
Heightening the effect was the way he treated Barnabas—with a
certain genteel courtliness that in itself seemed of a different
age. Indeed Barnabas noticed most of the men in the room exhibited
a similar old world mannerliness.

“Come, let us sit by the fire.” Gatsby
gestured for Barnabas to sit.

As Barnabas sank into a worn leather club
chair, Gatsby placed his martini glass on a passing waiter’s tray
and took from it two fresh Martini glasses. “A Vesper martini,
tonight’s signature cocktail,” he explained handing one to
Barnabas. “Two more,” he said to the waiter before sitting in the
chair opposite Barnabas.

Gatsby smiled and it was then that Barnabas
saw the canine teeth. He’d suspected it but still he jumped a
little. Gatsby noticed the tremor that passed through Barnabas. He
stopped smiling and stared into the middle distance as firelight
played over his features, painting them now pink, now pearl. After
a moment the tension passed and they continued as before.

“Tell me, what have you been up to since
high school?”

They began to talk, Gatsby’s voice as soft
and seductive as the crackle and pop of the wood in the fire. The
room and everyone in it seemed to fall away as they spoke of their
histories and traded jokes. Barnabas slipped into a drowsy haze of
contentment, and when Gatsby finally stood and said, “Come it’s
late, you must go,” Barnabas was surprised to discover the room was
empty. Gone was any sign that there had been a party. For a moment
he wondered if he had dreamed it all.

Gatsby slipped on a long wool cloak and
pulled its hood over his headed before walking Barnabas outside. A
black town car waited at the curb. Gatsby opened the door and
motioned Barnabas inside. “Alfred will take you home.”

“I can catch the bus,” Barnabas
protested.

“I know you can but I don’t want you to.
It’s late. Besides no bus will come down here before day break.”
There was an edge of bitterness in his voice. “Come. Off you go,”
Gatsby continued. He pressed his lips against Barnabas’ forehead.
Disappointed by the kiss, Barnabas threw his arms around Gatsby and
buried his face in his broad chest. Gatsby gently disengaged and
helped him into the car.

As Gatsby walked up the steps to his house,
he could feel Barnabas’ gaze on his back but he dared not look
back, and listened, instead, to his heart, so long silent, as it
thudded in his chest, disquiet, and awakened.

The screen on the Wearable that cuffed
Barnabas’ wrist brightened with an incoming message from Gatsby.
“Did anything tonight frighten you?”

Barnabas, who had half-expected the
question, texted back, “No.”

“Good. Come to dinner. Tomorrow.”

“I’ll be there.”

He looked at his Wearable until the screen
went dark, then, lifting his eyes, he looked out the window as the
car made its way down streets empty and bright with dawn.

+ + +

They dined quietly and simply at the big,
round table in the rotunda. When they were done, Gatsby took his
arm and guided him though the French doors into the moonlit gardens
beyond.

The garden, small, and well-kept, was a
wilderness of shade plants: hosta, periwinkle, Asian jasmine, baby
tears, ajuga, dichondra, sweet woodruff, liriope, and
pachysandra.

Gatsby stood, with his hands crossed behind
his back, staring at a fountain—an overwrought confection crowded
with pissing cherubs riding on the backs of spitting copper
dolphins; their unstoppable streams splashed and sparkled in the
fountain’s great marble basin.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were a Vampire?”
Barnabas asked, sitting on a stone bench.

“It never came up. We’ve only been speaking
for a few weeks, Barnabas.”

“You could have told me before then. We used
to spend so much time together—you were my teacher. I trusted you.
You could have told me.”

“You were a child—”

“I was seventeen!”

“It never came up! How was I supposed to
bring it up? Do you think I should have just blurted it out in
class one day? Apropos of nothing?”

Barnabas thought for a moment. “You could
have said something when we were reading Bram Stoker’s
 
Dracula
.”

“That was fiction, Barnabas! It reflected
what humans thought of us—what many think of us
 
still
—it had nothing to do with me!”

“Still—”

Gatsby sighed. “It was different then—not
that things have changed all that much. Oh, there has been
incremental change, I grant you—back then I would have been forced
out of the profession—”

“Surely, they wouldn’t have driven you out
brandishing torches—”

“Believe me that
 
has
 
happened, more times than I care to remember,”
Gatsby said with the same edge of bitterness in his voice Barnabas
had noticed before. “Even without torches and rabid dogs, they
would have found a way. I did eventually come out, you
know—actually I was outed. When it happened, several teachers came
to me and said they didn’t care that I was a Vampire, that I was a
good teacher, that they would stand by me. Shortly after that I
noticed the male teachers all began wearing turtle necks under
their blazers, and the women all took to wearing elaborate scarves
tightly wound around their necks—as if they had anything to worry
about from me! And when there was a union hearing to decide if I
should be dismissed, not one of them came.”

“I’m sorry,” Barnabas said, “That was
childish of me. I’m sure it’s not easy to come out.”

“I have been called unnatural, an
abomination, a monster like Frankenstein’s—a monster so grotesque
he could not be named, neither by the doctor who made him, nor by
the writer who created them both! So believe me when I tell you I
couldn’t tell you, even as…” Gatsby’s words trailed off.

Embarrassed to have caused him distress,
Barnabas glanced skyward and was surprised to discover the bleeding
edge of the night: the moon had lost its bright focus and the sky
was paling with the effort to deliver itself of the new day.

“You should go,” Gatsby said, glancing at
the sky.

“Or, I could stay,” Barnabas offered.

Gatsby shook his head and pulled him to his
feet. “Not tonight, anyway,” he said. His lips curled into a slight
smile as he leaned down to kiss Barnabas on the forehead.

This time Barnabas was prepared. He leaned
back and, standing on tiptoes, pressed his lips against Gatsby’s.
At first Gatsby’s lips were resistant, cold, but then he yielded
and his lips became downy-soft and suffused with warmth. Barnabas
pushed his tongue between the parted lips and ran it along the
teeth. Gatsby seemed to pull back slightly and hold his breath as
Barnabas searched his mouth. Gatsby tasted of spearmint. Barnabas’
tongue dragged along his teeth which felt jagged and slightly
pointy across the top, while the flat surface seemed to carry
regular indentations like the serrated edge of a knife. Gatsby
broke the kiss. “Goodnight, Barnabas,” he said, turning again to
face the gurgling fountain.

+ + +

When Barnabas next visited Gatsby, a strange
young Vampire answered the door. The Vampire, with unconcealed
curiosity, looked him up and down as if he was trying to figure out
what Gatsby saw in him. His haughty attitude disconcerted Barnabas.
Glancing into the street behind Barnabas, he nodded at the rusting
carcass of the Achieva, “You come in that?” he asked.

“I did,” Barnabas answered.

Under the glare of his scrutiny, Barnabas
remembered his paint spattered hands. He’d come straight from the
studio, not wanting to miss a moment in Gatsby’s company, and
knowing Gatsby loved the smell of paint on him, he hadn’t stopped
to clean up. Now, he shoved his hands into his pockets as casually
as he could. He needn’t have bothered for Vampires are quick, and
notice everything. Still Barnabas’ obvious concern for what he
thought of him touched the Vampire and he stepped back allowing
Barnabas to enter. “I’m Alfred, by the way,” he said, “I drove you
home the other night.”

“Oh, right.” Barnabas hadn’t recognized him
because that night, he’d been wearing a hoodie and black wraparound
sunglasses.

Alfred directed Barnabas to the garden,
where he found Gatsby perched on the edge of the fountain.

As soon as Barnabas sat, Gatsby began
pacing. “I must apologize,” he said.

“For what?”

“For that kiss the other night—”

“
I
 
kissed
 
you
,
remember? So, I should apologize, but I don’t regret kissing you.
Not for a minute.”

“I kissed you back. I know you are
developing feelings for me. I shouldn’t have led you on. I don’t
want to hurt you.”

“I can take care of myself—and my heart,”
Barnabas said angrily, “Why don’t you trust me?”

“I can’t trust you because I can’t trust
myself. Or
 
my
 
heart.”

“Gatsby. What are you talking about?” The
impatience in his voice was unmistakable. He loved Gatsby and
craved and rejoiced in his touch, and he believed Gatsby loved him
in return, but he sensed Gatsby was holding back, and resented him
for it.

“I can’t fall in love with you,” Gatsby
blurted. “I can’t fall in love with a human—you’re all too fragile.
You’re mortal. It would kill me to lose you—”

“What if you turned me?”

Gatsby’s head jerked back as if Barnabas had
slapped him.

“No! Don’t say that! Being a Vampire is
awful. I wouldn’t wish this life on you! To be a Vampire is to be
splashed with red paint as you walk down the street, simply because
your skin is pale. To be a Vampire is to make constant choices—to
live in a Vampire ghetto or live among humans and move every five
to ten years so they don’t notice you’re not ageing. You can be out
and despised, or you can live in the shadows, hiding your pallor
beneath bronzer and rouged cheeks. Those are your only
choices.”

“Gatsby, I know all that, and still I say,
turn me.”

“No! I couldn’t do that to you. Immortality
is a burden. One gets so tired…You’d come to hate me—or worse, I’d
hate myself.”

“Gatsby, you can’t know that! Have you ever
turned anyone?”

“Yes. Once. A long time ago. He was a
Creole, slender and beautiful and proud. You remind me of him.”

Gatsby’s voice took on a dreamy quality and
Barnabas felt himself getting drowsy and vague as if the words he
heard were a narcotic of increasing potency.

“His name was Yvet. I met him in the French
quarter in New Orleans in a bordello. Ah, I can see you’re shocked,
but I must ask you not to judge me too harshly. Back then there
were not many options to meet other men of similar mind and the
ones that existed were dangerous for men like me.

“As soon as I met him, I knew he was
special. The other men and boys were hard and coarse, but he was
fine and delicately made. Even in rags there was something of the
gentleman in him. He was twenty when I met him.

“His mother died in child birth. His own
father raised him as a slave. When he was thirteen, his father sold
him to the bordello where I found him. There, he came to know
affection only through a man’s caresses.”

“
Papa!” Yvet wailed, sounding much
younger than his thirteen years, his large eyes round with
fear.

“
This is your home now,” his father told
him coldly. “You will remain here all your days and do as Madam
says. This is how you will repay me for killing your mother—a woman
I loved above all others—so that you may live. Know also that the
debt you owe your mother, and me, will only be paid in full with
the forfeiture of your life.” With those words, he tipped his hat
and turned and walked away.

Madam, with slim compassion, for she was a
woman after all, put an arm around the trembling boy and led him
inside.

“He got sick during the yellow fever
epidemic of 1878—by the time I got word that he’d fallen ill, he’d
had the fever for several days. When I got to him, he was
yellow—the very whites of his eyes were yellow! And he was vomiting
blood,
 
vomito negro
. Madam
would not let me take him. Sick as he was, she refused to let him
go though he was no earthly good to her, or her unholy business. As
repulsive as I find the idea of owning another man, I bought him
from her.