Blood Sisters_ Vampire Stories by Women - Paula Guran Page 0,18

Székely girl she once was asks if the consequences would truly be so unfortunate, discovery and her subsequent undoing. What sort of life is this? it asks. Sometimes, Eõrsebet listens to this voice. Sometimes, she allows it to speak at length, but only sometimes, as it inevitably fills her with melancholy and anger and memories she’s no longer sure are even her own. Today, she bids it be silent, if ever it wishes to be heard again. She shows it the outskirts of hellish regions of the mind, to which she might so easily banish that voice, were it her fancy to do so. Eõrsebet replies (speaking aloud, though not above whisper) that this is the sort of life for which she has been shaped. And there are too many lighthouses and sea caves remaining that she has not yet harrowed, too many ships she has not foundered, countless beating hearts not yet stilled by drowning, entire oceans left unexplored. But, also, there is the unending hunger, István’s hunger and her truest master, pulling her along like a cod hooked on an angler’s taut line.

“I am not finished,” she says, and her English is better now than when she came ashore at Dover the year before, or at Brighton, the year before that. She repeats the words, delivering them with more finality, “I am not finished.” Hearing this, both the meaning and the tone, that small ghost in her withdraws, and will not be heard again for very many months.

In short order, Eõrsebet Soffia espies a dingy young Irishman with eyes the color of the sky on a clear November day and hair like soot. He will do. He will be more than sufficient, and as the young man is somewhat worldly, and possessed of a famishment all his own, it is a simple enough matter to lure him into the side lane and to her. She knows ten times ten thousand songs, and each one is more beautiful that the last. She sings, in a voice pitched so that none but he will hear the melody, and he thinks this must be an angel’s voice. And so, as he draws near, what he sees is angelic beauty, not the ruin of her, not the demon. The concealing glamour is another facet of her father’s gift, though she may choose whether or not to don the mask. But it is easier to seduce a man to a warm embrace, and to lost brown eyes and lips that do not stink of estuary muck. Later, in the aftermost instant left to him, when she has been bedded and fucked and he is, for the moment, spent, she will cast aside the charade. He may see the truth of her at the end, and she has always thought this her own singular gift. Clarity at the brink of oblivion, largesse before the void. It is no manner of kindness, however, for what unimpeachable gift in this world may be kind? It is one honest breath, before her sharp yellow teeth and the saltwater flood that flows out of her from every pore and orifice.

Whoever finds the broken, oddly shriveled body, may wonder at the mattress and sheets drenched and reeking, at the gaping hole in the Irishman’s throat. That unlucky innkeeper may cross him- or herself, may mutter a prayer before calling upon a constabulary beadle or policeman. More likely, the corpse will be disposed of in a less sensational and less public fashion. Regardless, she has never been hunted, and has begun to doubt she ever shall be.

By sunset, she has slipped back into the muddy river, regretting only that another year must past before she can again step foot on dry land and take her prey from amongst the breathing multitudes. But this one rides the tides, hardly more than a shade, and her mistress is the sea, as her father was a devil. Her belly full, she finds a wreck and coils herself in between the limpets and mussels, the oysters and thick growths of sponges. She will sleep for a few hours, or a day, or, more rarely, a fortnight. She will dream of the sun and high mountain villages, of meadows dotted with goats and sheep. Of rain. And then she will awaken, and slip away, unnoticed, except by the crabs and eels that wreath her like a winding shroud. The white, wheeling gulls may glance down to perceive her silhouette moving swiftly past just beneath the