Vampires: The Recent Undead Part 17

And when she spoke of her food, the blood, he didn't want to smile behind his hand or gag at the thing she told him. He felt a kind of wild rejoicing. Despite the fact she was here in this building in the desert, despite her growing old and-nearly-tame, she had remained Chaika.s.sia.

Because of this, he was finding it easy to talk to her, and would find it easy to perform the interview. And he wondered if others had found this too. He even wondered if that had been the problem for the one who left under the care of paramedics-it had been, for him, too easy.

At the nineteenth hour, when the moon was at the top of the first window and crossing to the top of the second, someone came in to check on them.

They had been talking about two and a half hours.

Verbally, they had crossed vast tracts of land, lingered in crypts and on high towers, seem armies gleam and sink, and sunrise slit the edge of air like a knife. And she had been, through memory, a child, a girl, a woman.

She had spoken of much of her life, even of her childhood, of which, until now, he had known little. A vampire's childhood, unrevealed in her book, or in any other medium. He had even been able to glimpse her own adolescence, where she stood for him, frosted like the finest gla.s.s with candle-s.h.i.+ne and ghostly falling snow.

As the door was knocked on, this contemporary and unforgivable door, in such an old fas.h.i.+oned and fake way, Chaika.s.sia threw back her head and laughed.

"They must come in. To see whether I have attacked you."

He knew quite well that there were three concealed cameras in the room, perhaps for her protection as much as his. He suspected she knew about these cameras too.

But he said, "They see, surely, you would never do that."

She glanced playfully at him. "But I might after all be tempted."

He said, "You're flattering me."

"Yes," she said. "But also I am telling you a fact. But again, I have given my word, and you are safe."

Then a uniformed man and woman were in the room. Both gave a brief bow to La Vampiresse. Then the man came over and handed her a beaker like a little silver thimble on a silver tray.

"Oh," she said, "is it time for this, now?"

"Yes, Madame."

She glanced at him again. "Did you know they make me also swallow such drugs?"

"I knew something about it."

"Here is the proof. For my health, they say. Do you not?" she addressed the man. He smiled and stood waiting. Chaika.s.sia tipped the contents of the silver thimble into her mouth. Her throat moved smoothly, used to this. "But really, it is to subdue me," she murmured softly. And then, more softly, almost lovingly, "As if it ever could."

The uniformed woman had come over and stood by his chair.

She said to him politely, "Do you wish for coffee, sir, hot tea, or a soft drink?"

"No, thank you."

"I must remind you, sir, your three hours are nearly through."

"Yes, I'm keeping count."

When they had gone out again, Chaika.s.sia stood up.

"Three hours," she murmured. "Have we talked so long?"

"We have twenty-four minutes left."

"Twenty-four. So exact. Ah, monsieur, what a captain you would have made."

He too had got up, courteous, in the old style, He saw now, taken aback for a moment, that even in her high heels she was shorter than he. He had gained the impression, entertaining, approaching, she was about a tenth of a meter taller, for he wasn't tall.

She had always seemed tall to him, as well. Perhaps she had shrunk a little. Despite their best efforts-the diet she now lived on . . . like the loss of her own teeth.

"What else shall I tell you?" she asked.

"Anything, Madam. Everything you wish to."

So she began one of her vivid rambling anecdotes. Only now and then was he required to lead her with a question or comment. Of all the things she had already told him, many he recognized from other material. Yet others had proved changeable, or quite fresh, like the childhood scenes, different and new. He was aware they alone might make a book. The tape chugged on over his heart, a full four hours of it, to be on the safe side, its clever receptor catching every nuance. Even when, for a moment, she might turn her head. And he marveled at her coherence. So much and all so perfectly rendered. If she repeated herself, he barely noticed. It didn't matter. This was really more real than anything else, surely? More impactful and apposite than any tragedy which was human.

"Look at the moon," she suddenly said. "How arid and cold and old she is tonight." Her voice altered. "Have they told you? I'm always better when the moon is up. When it's full. I wonder why the h.e.l.l that is? Crazy, isn't it?"

And something in him stumbled, as it seemed something had done in her. For not only the pattern of her speech had changed, the faint accent wiped away, but as she looked back at him her face was fallen and stricken. And from her eyes ran two thin s.h.i.+ning tears. Lost tears, all alone.

Made dumb, he stood there, seeing her oldness and her shrunkeness. Then he heard his voice come from him and, for a second, was afraid of what it would say.

"Madame Chaika.s.sia, how you must miss your freedom, it must be so intense, the lonely sorrow of all these hundreds of years you have lived-and you are the last of your kind. You must feel the moon is your only friend at last, the only thing that can comprehend you."

And then her face was smoothing over, the strength of imagination working its power upon her. The trite ba.n.a.lity of his words, like some splash of bad dialogue from the worst of the scripts, but able to change her, give her back her courage and her center. So that again she rose, towering over him, her eyes wiser than a thousand nights, older than a million moons.

"You are a poet, monsieur, And you are perceptive. Come to the window. Do you see? The bars are of the finest steel, otherwise they think, my captors, I will escape them. But they have forgotten-oh, shall I tell you my secret?"

They leaned together by the cold gla.s.s, observing the slender bars.

She said, "Unlike most of my kind, I am able to make myself visible, monsieur, in mirrors-have they ever told you? Oh yes, it is an old trick. How else was I able for so long to deceive your race and live among you? But there is, through this, a reverse ability. I can pa.s.s through gla.s.s. Through this gla.s.s, through these bars. I do go out, therefore, into the vastness of the night. But I am then invisible. I see you believe me."

"Yes, Madame Chaka.s.sia. Many of us have long thought this was what you must be doing."

She leaned back from him, triumphant, and laughed sharply again. He caught the faint tang of the drug on her breath, the drug they gave her to "subdue" her.

"I fly by night. And though I return then to this prison-cage-one night, one night when I am ready-believe me, I shall be gone forever."

Her eyes glittered back the stars.

He knew what to do. He took her hand and brushed the air above it with his lips.

"I'm so glad, so very glad, Madame, you are no longer shut in. I salute your intrepid spirit and your freedom."

"You will tell no one." Not a plea, an order. (Yes, she had now forgotten the cameras.) "I swear I will tell no one."

"Not when you print your story-piece about me?"

"Not even then. Of course not then."

Flirtatiously she said, "You are afraid I will kill you otherwise?"

"Madame," he said, "you could kill me, I'm well aware, at any instant. But you've given your word and will not. Now I have given my word, and your secret is secure with me, to my grave."

He found his eyes had filled, as hers had, with tears. This would embarra.s.s him later, but at the time it had been, maybe, necessary.

She saw his emotion. Still smiling, she turned from him and walked away across the room, and up the steps to her gallery of books. She did this with the sublime indifference of her superior state, dismissing him, now and utterly, for all her unfathomable length of time, in which he had only been one tiny dot.

So he went to the door and pressed the b.u.t.ton, but it opened at once, because the cameras had shown the interview was over.

A copy of the piece he wrote-less story or interview than article-would be sent to her, apparently. She had stipulated this as part of the deal.

And so had he. He made sure, too, the copy she received which would be only one of three, one for her, one for himself, and one for the archive, was exactly and precisely right. Which meant it stayed faithful to the flawless lie she was now living.

He didn't want her or intend her ever to see the real article, the commissioned one. n.o.body wanted her to see that. But that was the one the public would see. Christ, he would cut his throat if she ever saw that one-well, perhaps not go so far as cutting his throat . . . But he had made absolutely certain. The truth was the truth, but he'd never grasped why truth always had to be used to hurt someone. To her, life had done enough. And death would do the rest.

So in his version of the article which Chaika.s.sia would later receive and glance over in her great room, in the tall building in the cold, moon-bled desert, an article complete with a most beautiful photograph of her, taken some twenty years before, she would see, if she looked, only what she might expect from one devoted, loyal, and bound by her magical spell. But that was not what the rest of them would read, marveling and sneering, or simply turned to stone by fear at the tricks destiny or G.o.d could play.

But the real article would anyway make little stir. It wasn't even going to be very lucrative for him, since the travel expenses had been so high. And it was only of interest to certain cliques and cults and elderly admirers, and to himself, of course, which was why he had agreed to write it, providing he could interview her, by which he had meant meet her, look at her, be with her those three hours.

The photograph used in the real article was chosen by his editor. It was very cruel. It showed her as she had become-not even, he thought, as she had appeared to him. But perhaps some of them, with imaginative muscles, would still see something in it of who she was, had been. Was, was. This phantom of his adolescence, who would now be the haunting of his dying middle-age.

Who remembers Pella Blai?

She was once said to be one of the most beautiful women in the world, or at least on TV. She had the eponymous role in that fantasy series of the previous century, La Vampiresse.

The storylines of the series were gorgeous if slender. It was all about a (seemingly, somewhat) Russian vampire, located (somewhere) between the Caucasus and Siberia, though G.o.d knows where. A winter country around eighteen-something of moonlit gardens and gravestones, and wolf-scrambled forest. And here she flew by night under the moon, gliding at first light down into her coffin, as any vampire must.

Though never at the top of the tree (not even her famous pearl-hung Christmas tree at Bel Delores), Pella enjoyed much success, and most of us forty years and up know the name. But then the whole ethos of this kind of romantic celluloid vampirism slunk from prominence.

What she did with her between-years remains something of a mystery. And even the lady herself never now talks of them. But there is one very good reason for that.

Diagnosed in her fifties with Alzheimer's disease, Pella lives out her final years in a luxurious private clinic somewhere south of the northern U.S.A. It is a clinic for the rich and the d.a.m.ned, a salutary lesson for any visitor of what fate may bring. But in the case of Pella Blai, there is one extraordinary factor.

For the strangest thing has happened. Another blow of fate-but whether savage or benign, who dare say? For Pella Blai's disintegrating brain has by now wholly convinced her that she is not herself at all, but the heroine she played all those years back on TV, on screen, and about whom she wrote her own novel: the one true vampire left alive on Earth.

Her only memories, then, and perhaps continually reinvented, concern the role she acted and has now come to live, Chaika.s.sia, the eternal vampire. (And please note, that is p.r.o.nounced Ch'-high-kazya.) Bizarrely, inside this framework, she is pretty d.a.m.n near perfectly coherent. It is only, they tell you, when she comes out of it, and just now and then she does, that she grows confused, distressed, forgetful, and enraged. When she is Chaika.s.sia-and that takes up around ninety per cent of her time-she is word perfect. No one seems to know why that is. But having spoken some while to her, I can confirm the fact.

Chaika.s.sia's wants and wishes too, are all those of a vampire-let me add, a graceful and well-bred vampire. And to this end, the amenable if expensive clinic permits her to sleep in some sort of box through the day. While at mealtimes she is served "blood"-which is actually a concoction of fruit juice, bouillon, and vitamins-the only nourishment she will knowingly take. They can even leave a decanter of malt whisky in her room. She never touches it-what decent vampire would? "For guests" she tells you, with her Russian aristocrat's grace, learnt in her earliest youth in a winter palace of the mind-her mind. Which is all so unlike the real Pella Blai, the hard-drinking daughter of an immigrant family dragged up somewhere in lower London, England.

Frankly, having met her only last month, I venture to say there is nothing left of that real Pella at all. Instead, I talked with a being who can make herself appear in mirrors to deceive us all, and who pa.s.ses at will out through the bars of her nocturnal windows. A being too who never takes your blood if she has promised not to, but who once, with one of the fake books from her gallery, broke the nose of a reporter who offended her.

And this being lives in a high white tower in the middle of a moon-leached desert, as far away from the rest of us as it is possible to get. And, until the last of her mind sets in oblivion and night, and finally lets her free forever, I swear to you she is-without any doubt-La Vampiresse.

Dead Man Stalking: A Morganville Vampires Story.

Rachel Caine.

Rachel Caine is the author of more than thirty novels, including the internationally best-selling Morganville Vampires series, the Weather Warden series, and the Outcast Season series. She's been fascinated by the undead since she first got a glimpse of Barnabas Collins on Dark Shadows, and has never lost her interest in the subject. She was writing vampire fiction when vampire fiction was cool, when it wasn't, and when it was cool again, and probably will keep on writing it as long as they'll let her. She lives in Fort Worth, Texas. Outcast Season's Unseen was recently released in February 2011, and Morganville Vampire's Bite Club (the tenth in the series) will be released in May 2011. She starts a new series, The Revivalist, with the release of Working Stiff in August 2011.

Caine's Weather Warden series (beginning with Ill Wind in 2003) brought her a considerable following, but The Morganville Vampires, a young adult series (initial book: Gla.s.s Houses, 2006) brought even greater fame and New York Times best-selling status. Claire Danvers is the central character of the series. The precocious sixteen-year-old attends Texas Prairie University in Morganville, Texas. Although most of its human inhabitants are unaware, Morganville was founded and is secretly controlled by vampires. Claire lives off campus in an unusual house with three other young adults: gothy Eve, the not entirely human Michael, and Shane, who becomes her boyfriend early in the series. Shane takes the lead role in "Dead Man Stalking," a story that shows Caine's flair for creating a convincing setting, exciting adventure, and indelible characters who young people-and anyone who was ever young-can identify with.

Living in West Texas is sort of like living in h.e.l.l, but without the favorable climate and charming people. Living in Morganville, Texas, is all that and a takeout bag of worse. I should know. My name is Shane Collins, and I was born here, left here, came back here-none of which I had much choice about.

So, for you fortunate ones who've never set foot in this place, here's the walking tour of Morganville: It's home to a couple of thousand folks who breathe, and some crazy-a.s.s number of people who don't. Vampires. Can't live with 'em, and in Morganville, you definitely can't live without 'em, because they run the town. Other than that, Morganville's a normal, dusty collection of buildings-the kind the oil boom of the '60s and '70s rolled by without dropping a dime in the banks. The university in the center of town acts like its own little city, complete with walls and gates.

Oh, and there's a secluded, tightly guarded vampire section of town too. I've been there, in chains. It's nice, if you're not looking forward to a horrible public execution.

I used to want to see this town burned to the ground, and then I had one of those things, what are they called, epiphanies? My epiphany was that one day I woke up and realized that if I lost Morganville and everybody in it I'd have nothing at all. Everything I still cared about was here. Love it or hate it.

Epiphanies suck.

I was having another one of them on this particular day. I was sitting at a table inside Marjo's Diner, watching a dead man walk by the windows outside. Seeing dead men wasn't exactly unusual in Morganville; h.e.l.l, one of my best friends is dead now, and he still gripes at me about doing the dishes. But there's vampire-dead, which Michael is, and then there's dead-dead, which was Jerome Fielder.

Except Jerome, dead or not, was walking by the window outside Marjo's.

"Order up," Marjo snapped, and slung my plate at me like a ground ball to third base; I stopped it from slamming into the wall by putting up my hand as a backstop. The bun of my hamburger slid over and onto the table-mustard side up, for a change.

"There goes your tip," I said. Marjo, already heading off to the next victim, flipped me off.

"Like you'd ever leave one, you cheap-a.s.s punk."

I returned the gesture. "Don't you need to get to your second job?"

That made her pause, just for a second. "What second job?"

"I don't know, grief counselor? You being so sensitive and all."

That earned me another bird, ruder than the first one. Marjo had known me since I was a baby puking up formula. She didn't like me any better now than she had then, but that wasn't personal. Marjo didn't like anybody. Yeah, go figure on her entering the service industry.

"Hey," I said, and leaned over to look at her retreating bubble b.u.t.t. "Did you just see who walked by outside?"

She turned to glare at me, round tray clutched in sharp red talons. "Screw you, Collins, I'm running a business here, I don't have time to stare out windows. You want something else or not?"

"Yeah. Ketchup."

"Go squeeze a tomato." She hustled off to wait another table-or not, as the mood took her.

I put veggies on my burger, still watching the parking lot outside the window. There were exactly six cars out there; one of them was my housemate Eve's, which I'd borrowed. The gigantic thing was really less a car than an ocean liner, and some days I called it the Queen Mary, and some days I called it t.i.tanic, depending on how it was running. It stood out. Most of the other vehicles in the lot were c.r.a.ppy, sun-faded pickups and decrepit, half-wrecked sedans.

There was no sign of Jerome, or any other definitely dead guy, walking around out there now. I had one of those moments, those did I really see that? moments, but I'm not the delusional type. I had zero reason to imagine the guy. I didn't even like him, and he'd been dead for at least a year, maybe longer. Killed in a car wreck at the edge of town, which was code for shot while trying to escape, or the nearest Morganville equivalent. Maybe he'd p.i.s.sed off his vampire Protector. Who knew?

Also, who cared? Zombies, vampires, whatever. When you live in Morganville, you learn to roll with the supernatural punches.