Blood Sisters_ Vampire Stories by Women - Paula Guran Page 0,88

imagined Leary moving through the centuries, gathering acolytes, spreading the word. Not about vampirism, surely. Either he would agree to silence on that score, or Dracula would refuse him.

The moon moved through her courses. Dracula watched its progress and Leary watched him, eager to die.

Finally Dracula decided that as much as he wanted the gift of great consciousness, he could not share his powers with Leary. The man was already too strong. His powers of persuasion were admirable and awe-inspiring. If ever they found themselves in disagreement, Dracula would have created his own worst enemy.

He put off telling the charismatic mortal, hoping Leary would understand his reticence and give up the idea himself.

Then Alexasandru informed him the FBI were coming. They had been pursuing Leary, a fugitive from justice, ever since his jailbreak, and they had just picked up on the scent.

Dracula was alarmed. This did not bode well for a blood freak. The blood freak of all time.

He told Leary, who apologized profusely.

“The best thing you can do now,” Dracula told him, “is to leave as soon as possible.”

“Yes,” Leary agreed, and Dracula was relieved. He ordered his servants to prepare a marvelous feast for the great man’s last night among them. Rosemary dressed for the occasion in a stunning black dress embroidered with jet beads, a costume Dracula’s mother might have worn. He wanted her more than ever, and he was sorry he would never have her.

There was wine and revelry and though neither Leary nor Dracula had told the hippie children that Leary was leaving, they seemed to know. Some were packing with the idea of following him wherever he went. At dinner he rose and begged them not to, pointing out that the FBI would surely find him with so many little bloodhounds trailing after. Dracula, jealous, wished the disloyal ones would leave: he would cull his herd that way, swooping down in the dead of night as they made their way across the vast expanses of Leary’s flight to Egypt.

“One last glass together?” Leary asked after they finished the magnificent dinner.

“Yes,” Dracula agreed.

Dracula led him to the turret room where the already-bubbling hot tub was. They got in, sighing with the heat. Leary poured two glasses of deep, rich Hungarian wine from a bottle on the deck. He handed one to Dracula—who could drink it, contrary to folk myth—and they toasted.

“To the incredible possibilities of existence,” Leary said, and Dracula found tears in his eyes for that which was not to be, a long and enduring friendship with this extraordinary man.

They drank. Above them, in the skylight, the full moon glowed. Dracula leaned back in the hot water, to discover the beautiful hands of Rosemary kneading his shoulders. He smiled at her and closed his eyes while Leary spoke of something: of what he was not sure, the religion Leary had founded or the beauty of LSD or any of a number of topics. He muscles relaxed, releasing the tension of centuries. He drank more wine, unable, as mortals were, to get drunk.

Words in Leary’s soft voice of change and optimism for the future, and the unfolding of mankind, and the need to fly out of oneself

and change

and Rosemary melted the furrows out of Dracula’s brow

and change

and the next thing of which Dracula was aware was a sharp, deep penetration in his neck, and sucking. Slowly he opened his eyes and said, “You tricked me,” but he didn’t know how.

Yet, as the blood seeped out of him, the room melted down itself and became a stunning, incandescent forest. Beatific women smiled down on him like the Madonnas of Russian Orthodox icons. His muscles were completely gone, his veins, his arteries, his princely blood. That was okay, that was, as they said, groovy.

He saw the melodies of his homeland—blood red, crimson, scarlet, vermilion; he heard the colors of his life—Gothic chants and Gregorian chants, the keening of lonely wolves and the sweet, ethereal voices of his Brides. The sweeping gales of the children of the night. The laughter of the bat; the plaintive whispers of rodents.

Beautiful, beautiful—chimes in the back of his mind, promising him midnight: one, two, three, in the depths of the black night in Carpathia. The splendor that he was—more magnificent than ever he had remembered. The miracle that he was—and the endless possibilities for expression given to him.

“I can catch my soul,” he whispered. “It’s so beautiful.”

Leary said, “You made it, Vladimir. You’re tripping.”

And Dracula immediately crashed.

No longer tripping, no longer mesmerized,