Blood Sisters_ Vampire Stories by Women - Paula Guran Page 0,184

around the open bedroom door, past the crib, one more shadow among shadows. The little boy slept on his stomach, knees drawn up under him, butt a round crooked mountain under the cheap acrylic blanket.

When Mahasti picked him up, he woke confused and began to cry. The parents roused an instant after, their heat crystal-edged against the dimness, fumbling in the dark. “Your turn,” the man said, and rolled over, while the woman slapped at her nightstand until her fingers brushed against her eyeglass frames.

“You probably have a gun in the nightstand.” Mahasti hooked the hem of the octopus shirt and rucked it up over her gaunt, cold belly, revealing taut flesh and stretch marks. She slung the baby against her shoulder with her left hand. “I don’t think you want to do that.”

The woman froze; the man catapulted upright, revealing a torso streaked with convoluted lines of ink. His feet made a moist noise on the floor.

“Lady,” the man said, “who the hell are you? No wetback fucking junkie is gonna come in my house …”

“You shouldn’t put a child to sleep on his stomach.”

The baby’s wails came peacock-sharp, peacock-painful. She cupped him close, feeling the hammering of his tiny heart. She freed her breast one-handed and plugged him on to the nipple with the deftness of practice.

He made smacking sounds at first, then settled down contented as her milk let down. Warmth spread through her, or perhaps the chill drained from her dead flesh to his living.

The vampire didn’t take her eyes off the man, and he didn’t move towards the nightstand. The mother—a thick-shouldered woman barelegged in an oversized shirt—stayed frozen, her hands clawed at her sides, her head cocked like a bird’s. An angry mother falcon, contemplating which eye to go after first.

Mahasti moved. She closed, lifted the woman up one-handed, and tossed her across the room. Trivial, and done in the space of a blink; the mother had more hang-time than it took Mahasti to return to her original place by the door. The man jumped back, involuntarily, as the mother hit the wall beside him. “Shit,” he said, crouching beside her.

“Shit, shit, shit.”

The woman pushed herself up the wall, blood smearing from a swollen lip, a cheek split over the bone.

“What’s your son’s name?” Mahasti said, threat implicit in her tone. The babe had not shifted.

The mother settled back on her heels, but the stretched tension in the tendons of her hands did not ease. “Alan.” She gulped air. “Please don’t hurt him. We have a little money. We don’t have any drugs—”

Mahasti stood away from the door. “We’re going out front,” she said to the man. “And then you’re going to open the front door.”

It took thirty seconds and a glare from the woman before the man decided to comply. Once he had, though, he moved quickly around the bed and past Mahasti. He was lean as a vampire himself, faded tattoos winding down the ropy stretched-rubber architecture of his torso to vanish into striped cotton pajamas.

He paused in the doorway and glanced back once at the nightstand. Mahasti coughed.

He stepped into the hall. The woman made a noise low in the back of her throat, as involuntary as an abandoned dog.

“You too.” Mahasti snuggled the baby closer to her breast. “Go with him. Do what I say and you won’t get hurt.”

She made them precede her down the short hall to the front of the house, which had been converted into the two rooms of the tattoo parlor. A counter constructed of two-by-fours and paneling divided the living room. Cheaply framed flash covered every wall.

Bullet-headed as a polar bear, sparing Mahasti frequent testing glances, the man went to the door. He turned the lock and pulled it open, revealing Billy with his hat pulled low, on the other side of the security door. A muscle jumped in his jaw as the man opened that lock, too, and stepped back, as if he could make himself flip the lever but not—quite—turn the handle.

“Invite him in,” Mahasti said.

She came from another land, where the rules were different. But unfair as it was, Billy was cursed to play the game of the invader.

“Miss—” the woman said, pleading. “Please. I’ll give you anything we have.”

“Invite,” Mahasti said, “him in.”

“Come in,” the man said, in a low voice, but perfectly audible to a vampire’s ears.

Billy’s hat tilted up. In the shadow of the brim, his irises glittered violet with eyeshine.

He opened the security door—it creaked rustily—stepped over