him away, but it does no good. He crawls back on his belly, as fast as a lizard on a hot rock. I was afraid something like this would happen.
“I’ll d-do anything you w-want—give you anything you d-desire!” He grabs the cuffs of my jeans, tugging insistently. “B-bite me! Drink my b-blood! Pleeease! M-make me like you!”
As I look down at this wretched human who has lived a life so stunted, his one driving passion is to become a walking dead man, my memory slides back across the years, to the night a foolish young girl, made giddy by the excitement that comes with the pursuit of forbidden pleasure and made stupid by the romance of danger, allowed herself to be lured away from the safety of the herd. I remember how she found herself alone with a blood-eyed monster that hid behind the face of a handsome, smooth-talking stranger. I remember how her nude, blood-smeared body was hurled from the speeding car and tossed in the gutter and left for dead. I remember how she was far from dead and yet not living. I remember how she was me.
I am trembling as if in the grips of a high fever. My disgust has given way to anger, something I’ve never been very good at controlling. Part of me—a dark, dangerous part—has no desire to ever learn. I try hard to keep a grip on myself, but it’s not easy. In the past when I’ve been overwhelmed, I’ve tried to make sure I only vent my rage on those I consider worthy of attention, such as vampires. Real ones, that is. Ones like myself. But sometimes…
Well, sometimes I lose it. Like now.
“You want to be like me?!?”
I kick the groveling little turd so hard he flies across the basement floor and collides with the wall. He cries out, but it doesn’t exactly sound like pain.
“You stupid bastard—!” I snarl. “I don’t even want to be like me!”
I tear the mirrored sunglasses away from my eyes, and Rhymer’s face goes pale. My eyes look nothing like his scarlet-tinted contact lenses. There is no white, no corona—merely seas of solid blood boasting vertical slits that open and close, depending on the light. The church basement is very dark, so my pupils are dilated wide—like those of a shark rising from the sunless depths to savage a luckless swimmer.
Rhymer lifts a hand to block out the sight of me as I advance on him, his trembling delight now replaced by genuine, one-hundred-percent monkey-brain fear. For the first time he seems to realize that he is in the presence of a monster.
“Please don’t hurt me, Mistress! Forgive me! Forgive—” For a brief second Rhymer’s hands still flutter in a futile attempt to beg my favor, then scarlet spurts from his neck, not unlike that from a spitting fountain, as his still-beating heart sends a stream of blood to where his brain would normally be. I quickly sidestep the gruesome spray without letting go of his head, which I hold between my hands like a basketball.
Turning away from Rhymer’s still-twitching corpse, I step over the ruins of the antique coffin and its payload. No doubt the dirt had been imported from the Balkans—perhaps Moldavia or even Transylvania. I shake my head in amazement that such old wives tales are still in circulation and given validity by so many. As I head up the stairs, Rhymer’s head tucked under my arm like a trophy, I wonder if Sable and Tanith will make Serge clean up the mess I’ve left behind.
Rhymer isn’t the first vampire wanna-be I’ve run into, but I’ve got to admit he had the best set-up. The Goth chicks wanted the real thing and he gave them what they thought it would be, right down to retrofitting the church with theatrical trapdoors and stage magician flashpots. And they bought into the bullshit because it made them feel special, it made them feel real, and—most importantly—it made them feel alive. Poor stupid bastards. To them it’s all black leather, love bites, and tacky jewelry; where everyone is eternally young and beautiful and no one can ever hurt you again.
Like hell.
As for Rhymer, he wanted the real thing as badly as the Goth chicks. Perhaps even more so. He’d spent his entire life aspiring to monstrosity, hoping his heart-felt mimicry of the damned would eventually turn him into that which he longed to be, or that he would eventually draw the attention of the creatures of