Lilith’s Dream: A Tale of the Vampire Life (28 page)

“Uh, at home.”

“I got it. Hey, my handle’s Lilith. What’s your moniker, buddy?”

“Uh, I’m Ian. Ian Ward.”

She lifted her champagne. “Here’s lookin’ at you, kid.”

L
eo was fighting hard to stop being sick, and George was helping her, holding her as she retched again and again. She’d never had stage fright, and this wasn’t stage fright. She had never, ever seen anybody like that woman, never felt anything like she felt right now. Her blood was ringing in her ears, her heart was thundering, and when she shut her eyes during a heave, she saw her again, the most perfect being she had ever beheld.

She shuddered all over. The vampire was a woman, but that was okay. She was completely fabulous, more so even than Miriam. Leo could see now why she had been so careless as to leave a remnant on the dock: she was imperious, an empress of vampires, if they had that. God only knew where she had come from, but Leo absolutely adored her and wanted to serve her and give her happiness and be for her what she had so briefly been for Miriam, that and more. And the boy—of her blood, she had said. He looked it, too, shining, a young Apollo with wisdom and hardness in his eyes. Leo thought: I am going to feel him inside me, and she screamed a little and staggered, then forced herself to soldier on.

“The blood is a magnet,” Sarah had said. “Other vampires will drive you wild.”

She had wanted so badly to be loved, and she was going to be loved. She was, her. She imagined him. He’d be huge, a wild, savage post sweeping upward, and his muscles would glow in the candlelight, and he would just plain break her in two, he would be so powerful and take so so so long.

“We’re on ten minutes ago,” George said.

“Oh, Christ. Makeup. Hair.”

George clapped. “Kids!”

She went into the dressing room, and Nilda immediately began getting her costume on her. She would wear black leather boots up to the knee, a complex, thonged dress covered with silks and held together by breakaways, and a black collar around her neck dotted with diamonds and emeralds. That was it, nothing under, nothing else. She had a plan for this show; it wouldn’t just be music. Until that woman had showed up, she hadn’t been sure if she would dare to execute this outrageous plan. But now she would. For sure.

She was going to do it for them, for the angels in the front row, the god and the goddess, and unless hell damn well swallowed her, she was going to fuck their brains out tonight, both of them, until she was spent to ash.

Francie and Lester did makeup and hair. The black lipstick was the good kind that doesn’t dry out your lips. Her hair was sprayed, teased, transformed from Maurice’s elegant creation into something out of a wilder, harder reality.

“How can I do this?” she whispered.

“You can,” George said. “You’re so wonderful.”

But he didn’t know what she was going to do, nobody did but Nilda, who had to have guessed. So his words meant nothing. She felt like a nervous schoolgirl now, like she had the time she’d done a striptease for Bobby Carney and Dan Belton when they were all eleven years old, the way it had felt when she sat naked in Bobby’s lap, with her leg over Dan’s bare leg, and felt them both as hard as little twigs in their shorts. She had been thrilled and incredibly embarrassed to be the only one naked, and when they had parted her legs, she had felt like she felt right now, deliciously helpless and deliciously, wonderfully exposed. It had never been like that again, except once with Miri and Sarah, in the back of Miri’s car, racing downtown in the deep of a wild and druggy night.

I am going to do this, she told herself. I am going to. She took a deep breath, wished with all her soul for a beautiful cigarette. But there could be no cigarette now, not when her voice had to be huge and perfect and as delicate as a chime.

“Okay,” she said, as hair and makeup pulled away and she stepped toward the crack in the curtains. “Let’s go to the office.”

Lilith almost could not release the boy’s hand. His beauty had appalled her, had made her instantly desperate. He sat beside her in his rags, glowing with the purest glow she had ever seen from a body. He was not just a Keeper, he was more than a Keeper. From all the Keepers, there was something missing. She had never understood what it was. But something was missing from their eyes that was not missing from this boy’s eyes.

She wanted only to embrace him, to press her lips against his, to taste his delicious mouth and breathe his intoxicating breath. Never in this life had she wanted to be under a male, but she wanted so badly to be under this glorious creature that she could hardly bear to sit. If she wasn’t in a room full of humans, she would have cast herself on the floor at his feet.

He was not only Apollo, he was Gilgamesh, he was Osiris, he was every imagined lover, he was the boys who had laid her in the golden bowers of child’s play and pressed on her until she wept from pleasure.

The boys of childhood? She recalled with gasping force that she dreamed about a boy such as this, a boy who was waiting for her. Yes, he was her husband. Her husband! Oh, yes, and he was waiting.

But where?

She saw a town of stone houses with spreading roofs of wheat thatch, and in the middle of the square was a beautiful fountain, the Fountain of the Hours. Sitting there was a boy with long legs and tan, muscled arms, dangling his hand in among the fish. He looked up, and his eyes filled with smiles. “Lilith,” he said, his voice ringing like the bells of memory.

For a moment, she was actually frantic. He was her husband, they’d just gotten married, she had to get back to him!

Then the lights went out. She sucked breath, tensed, immediately ready for an attack. Silence fell. After a short delay, the beautiful creature Leo appeared, prancing out onto a little dais. She wore black clothing, tight, and black boots. Her long limbs swayed in the air as she moved around on the stage, keeping time with the rough beat being emitted by men with various musical instruments. Lights played about, flattering her with their brilliance.

I used to be a woman!

What is that?

The fuck
is
that?

She pointed a leather-clad stick at a male human who sat nearby.

You made me a woman, told me I was a woman.

What is that?

The fuck is that?

She threw off a piece of the clothing. There came from the darkness a stir of movement. The others were reacting strongly to this ritual. Lilith sensed that they disliked it.

I chose what you made me,

I love what I am,

A wo-man, a woo-o-o-man.

I belong to the moonlight.

I am your mother.

You rest in my arms…

The music was low now, repetitive, dangerous and yet soft. She was moving more and more directly in front of this table. Lilith began to get the impression that she was singing
to
her.

I will give you every part of me,

Just let me love you, please let me.

Let me let me, please let me,

O let me let me, please let me…

She came down off the stage and reached out for Lilith’s hand. Her touch was cool and soft, and as the fingers closed, Lilith could feel a firmness that sent a little thrill through her.

Let me let me, please let me, let me let me, please let me…

Then Lilith was rising, she was going up on the stage with her, and Leo was guiding her hands, taking her fingers to the snaps and the hooks. She was scented like a maiden and had curved breasts that she now exposed, to the gasps of the faces upraised out there in the shadows.

Let me let me, please let me, let me let me, please let me…

The voice was rough but soft, trembling on the stillness. Lilith almost moaned when the singing stopped, it was so gorgeous—like listening to some seductive whisper of the earth itself. She looked out across the room. It was difficult to see out from under the lights, but she knew that she stood before the audience now.

This ritual, then, was about her. The music pounded and sounded gentle at the same time. Leo undulated, and Lilith longed to touch that smooth skin of hers. But also, she wanted the boy. His uplifted face was bright with desire, she could see that.

Leo seemed to know, to be called, perhaps, by the blood, for she leaned down to him, still moving to the music, her breasts like cream in the light, and stretched out her hand as far as she could. “Come on,” she said to him, “come on, baby.”

“Uh—I—me?”

Let me please let me, let me please let me…

She drew the cringing boy closer, smiling at him, urging him until finally he came onto the stage, and in the lights his face was so dear and somehow familiar that Lilith had to fight bursting into tears of joy.

Somewhere, sometime, there had been for her such a boy. “Only an hour,” he had said, had promised…

Back in the depths of time…

So far back that the moment had dipped below the horizon of the real.

Now the dream was here.

“We’re entertaining people, here,” Leo muttered.

“I—how do I—”

Leo dropped to her knees before him, took his hands to her cheeks.
“Let me please let me,”
she sang.

Watching this, Lilith saw his cheeks flush, saw his pupils dilate, felt the increased heat that flowed from his body.

Leo began unzipping his trousers, and he, a fixed, tense smile on his fresh young face, resisted her, clumsily shuffling, trying to turn away.

Let me let me, please let me. Let me let me, please let me…

*   *   *

His mind had gone numb, he knew that. Looking down at Leo’s face was like looking through water. He could feel her hands fooling with his zipper, but he couldn’t believe—no—that she would do this on a stage. They were on a stage, yes, that was real. And standing over there in a flaring rush of light was the goddess of the world. She was tall, she had eyes like searchlights, lips that welcomed, and she was looking at him with liquid desire. She was jealous, he could see that.

His pants slipped down to his knees, instantly followed by his underpants.

He looked down, but she was already standing. She came to him, her face fierce now, and with a gesture of greater power than he would have thought possible, ripped his shirt open.

Let me please let me, let me please let me…

It was a nightmare, the naked-in-a-crowd nightmare. But it was real, it was happening. The audience was totally silent. He turned away from them, but she put her arms around him and danced with him, her body rubbing him, and he heard, out there, soft clapping as they danced and the drums muttered. He felt the warm, stage-bright air against his skin, and her fingers tight on his buttocks, her long nails just worrying the sensitive rim of his anus.

The stage seemed to get tiny as Becky struggled with a shock so great it had almost knocked her cold. She shook her head, but the stage was still there, two balconies below them, and on it was Ian with his clothes off, and Leo Patterson naked but for a G-string, dancing dirty with him. The most beautiful damn woman in the world stood a couple of feet away, getting out of her ill-fitting clothes.

She joined them, and the three began dancing together.

A few members of the audience were clapping softly to the jungle rumble of the drums, but most were dead silent, as shocked and amazed, Becky knew, as she was.

Paul’s hand in hers was cold, hard iron.

She felt the sudden scalding of woe that comes to those who have unexpectedly lost. Even what Ian was doing here was a mystery. He looked bewildered, and his hands kept hopping about like nervous little birds as he pitifully tried to conceal himself. Becky thought that it was the blood: the blood had drawn both Leo and Ian to the vampire. What other explanation could there be? Somehow, they knew or felt by instinct, or the vampire knew—in any case, they had come together, and now they were together, and now Paul would take their lives.

“Let me let me, let me let me,”
Leo sang. The three of them, more beautiful than the most perfect of statues, danced slowly naked before the stunned-silent audience. They stood face to face, their pale backs and buttocks exposed.

Becky was almost afraid to look at her husband, because of what she feared she would see. But she did look, she had to look—and she saw the worst thing, the most terrible thing that she could possibly see: his eyes were totally blank. He could have been a doll, for all the life that flickered there.

The man was devastated.

“What’s happening?” he asked, “what’s happening…”

Leo broke away from Ian and the vampire. She turned and stepped to the proscenium. Then she bent far forward and slowly came up, until she was leaning far back, her legs spread so wide that her vagina was open to the gaze of the audience.