The Mammoth Book of Dracula (40 page)

The web of the
Nosferatu
is spreading, its strands adhering and corrupting wheresoever we require them to. Throughout Europe Richelieu, the Borgias, the others, have all ensnared new subjects from the highest echelons. There may be in existence other worthy
Nosferatu,
perhaps to the east, and we seek to ferret them out and bring them into our alliance. We cannot be stopped, we
will not
be stopped. And none will be aware of this silent acquisition. Who was it who said that Satan’s greatest trick was to make mankind not believe in him?

You appear to be horrified. So are we all when first we awaken to this enhanced existence. But then comes the hunger and the awareness, and the horror soon passes. Your initial reluctance is understandable, though, and I will not compel you into my Empire. I will be American, democratic; I will offer you free choice.

It is dawn now, and having feasted well I go to rest. You died and were reborn within this room and it must be your temporary abode. In time, and if your decision is to become one with me, to become Dracula’s first consort both in his New World dominions and in the Greater World, then I will arrange a more fitting place for you to rest.

If you do not wish to join with me, then so be it: there is a way for you to end it. You will see that the windows are well covered with heavy velvet drapes. Outside the sun is rising and it promises to be a fine, bright day. When I have retired, you may—if you wish—draw aside those drapes to enjoy that brilliant sunshine.

I do hope that you will not choose such a course, dearest Roisin,
for we are the future.

<>

~ * ~

ROBERTA LANNES

Melancholia

ROBERTA LANNES lives in Southern California with her husband, British poet/journalist/music critic and software developer for the J. Paul Getty Trust, Mark Sealey. Retired from thirty-eight years teaching secondary school English and art, she is a successful digital artist whose work has appeared on CD labels, as well as numerous websites and iPhone application screens.

Since 1985, when she sold her first horror story to Dennis Etchison for his seminal anthology
Cutting Edge,
she has published science fiction, fantasy and horror fiction in many anthologies, including
Alien Sex, Splatter punks, The Bradbury Chronicles, Still Dead: Book of the Dead II, Dark Voices
5,
The Mammoth Book of Werewolves, The Mammoth Book of Frankenstein, Spatterpunks II, Dark Terrors, Lethal Kisses, Love in Vein II, White of the Moon, The Mammoth Book of Vampire Stories by Women, Don’t Turn Out the Light
and
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror
and the
Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror
series. A collection of short stories,
The Mirror of Night,
was published in 1997 by Silver Salamander Press with an Introduction by Harlan Ellison.

Lannes is currently working on a YA dark fantasy trilogy.

Like nearly everyone else in Los Angeles, Dracula is in therapy ...

~ * ~

THAT I AM bereft, perhaps insane with grief and melancholia, is beyond dispute. That I seek to take my own life as a result, may be up for contention, but it is my choice. What I leave behind, here, is a sort of last will and testament. More testament than will, since all that I leave is the myth, and mystery.

I, Dracula, Prince of Darkness, have lived too long a life, full of depravity on a par with no other, compulsions beyond what the great artists of pain might imagine, and a loneliness that, until recently, lies deep within me, unexamined. I have hurt many, killed some, and left others with the same affliction from which I suffer. In all my memory, I’ve brought true joy to only one. And that one is gone. I have no more reason to go on.

Ironically, it was to love that would become my ruin. To love, and to enter analysis.

Most know my history, or a version of it, but no one knows of the last thirteen years. No one but myself, Ashley Lark Hibbert, and Dr Alex Bloward PhD, psychologist. I am telling it here so my death might be understood, and in that, so my life.

I have worked nearly my entire existence, which will destroy the myth of my endless independent wealth, but perhaps will show all that this Dracula was far more worldly, resourceful and diverse than imagined. When I came to the City of the Angels, I found my calling working the graveyard shift at a shelter for homeless and runaway children in Hollywood.

I have never been fond of children, but I found the bedevilled souls who ended up in the haven on Las Palmas to be clever, wicked and defiled, and therefore fascinating. That they were also wounded from this experience on the streets, and abusive homes, was of no interest to me. I wasn’t called to heal the poor bastards, just watch them sleep and keep others from wandering in to sell drugs or seduce a sorry body.

There, I met Ashley. She came in writhing and hollering in the hands of two Christian Soldiers, a group of evangelical teenage pus-faced fanatics who “cleanse the streets of Sodom” as part of a volunteer army “sent from God”. She was tall, blonde, skinny, and no different from most of the kids brought in by the Christian Soldiers, a prostitute.

Sitting in my office, which amounted to nothing more than a corner of a room strewn with tatami mats and sleeping bags inhabited by teenagers, I watched as they threw her into the intake seat across from me. Some of the sleeping lot woke and complained, but most snored on. They held her as I retrieved the proper forms from my desk and wearily began the futile process of writing down a string of false information, all of which would later be nothing less than confusing if used in the actual attempt of locating the girl.

“Name?”

“Princess Daisy.” She snarled at me.

I wrote it down. “Age?”

She stared at my writing. “Fifty.”

I wrote that as well. “Address, if any?”

“Address ... you’ve got to be kidding. Hell, the corner of Hollywood and Vine. That’s as good as any. The motel around the corner. What difference does it make? I’ll be back on the street in an hour ...” She rolled her eyes.

“We’re not the police, Miss Daisy. We don’t release you. We don’t hold you, either.” I frowned at the burly idiots holding her. They loosened their grip on her and she rubbed her arms.

“You two can go. I’ll handle the princess here.” I smiled as vacantly as I could manage.

When they were gone, Ashley, then the princess, looked around at the sleeping forms and took me in more carefully.

“What is this place, a hostel?”

“It’s a shelter. A place for runaways to crash so they don’t have to sell themselves. The bullies for Jesus seem to think it’s easier to dump the lowlife here than take them into the church. I’d have thought they wanted to save them. Isn’t that what their sort do?”

She was squinting at me in the dim light. “Wow, a deep thinker. Great. So. I can go?”

“You can go. You can also come back anytime you want to. It’s relatively clean, dry, and sometimes there’s even food and clean clothes donated by some Samaritan. Nothing worthy of a fashion statement, but it beats shoes with holes in them. And then there’s my scintillating company. As you can see, I don’t have anyone to converse with at these hours.”

“Yeah, well, then, bye.” She stood, turned to go, then looked back to me. “By the way, my real name is Ashley.”

“Nice name. Mine’s ... Vlad.” Sometimes I use that name, though we were never the same person. One of many of my myths I resent.

“Vlad? Russian, right?”

“Romanian. But I’ve been in this country a long time.”

“Sure, I’ll come visit sometimes. When it gets slow ... you know, out there.” She pointed girlishly to the streets.

“Whenever.” I was clearly uninterested, which somehow intrigued her.

She sauntered out into the fall night, and I wasn’t to see her for a ridiculously long three hours. When she returned, she was bruised on her forehead, cheekbone, and had a nasty welt on her neck. I enquired if she wanted medical attention, but she asked only that I sit beside her while she slept on the only mat left available. I said I’d watch her, but that I needed to be at the desk for the phone, and such. She shrugged, but I could see she was hurt.

I left at six and she was snoring as loudly as the next guy.

Ashley began haunting the shelter, but only after she’d earned out the night. Sometimes she’d try to engage me in conversation, but mostly I sat listening to her tales of torrid and tragic family dysfunction. She was fifteen, and already had seven years of therapy behind her.

At first, she interested me no more than any other bastard who fell into the shelter. I was simply doing my job, earning enough to keep a dark room for the daylight hours. I had my free time to ferret out a good vein before I went to work. Perhaps that was why, in part, I was often lethargic and uncaring with the kids. That and I simply have never spent enough time with anyone to develop an attachment or emotional bond.

Then, Ashley got pregnant. I hadn’t seen her for nearly four months. She was different. Bulging a bit at the belly. And she glowed. Had put on weight.

A Madonna. That’s what she was.

Ashley sat down, put a stuffed make-up bag on the desk and sighed. “Vlad, you’re my only friend. I need a place to live until my baby’s born, and then I’ll split. I have enough money to pay part of the rent. I don’t do drugs, but your sort never believe that anyway. Would you take me in?”

Maybe it was the way she looked. That I hadn’t had a meal in twenty-four hours. Or gradually, I’d come to miss her and felt some kind of connection to her after all this time. Regardless of why, I said I would.

It didn’t dawn on me until I left for home at six that I would have to tell her who I really was, and assure her silence before she could stay a night. Or day. Seemed we both worked at night and might sleep all day. An auspicious sign.

I sat her down in the dinette and paced as I explained.

“Okay, here’s the story. Don’t interrupt me. My name is Dracul, I am a count from Transylvania. I am commonly known as Count Dracula, and I’m far older than I can remember. I am a vampire, I survive because I live on human blood, and I can’t have you living here with me unless you understand that if you tell anyone this truth, you endanger my very existence. And ruin your chances for having a place to stay, since I’d have to leave, and you’d be summarily put back on the street.”

She grinned. “Helloooo, Halloween was in October. This is March?”

I froze. “You don’t believe me?”

“Besides the fact that you have very long, ink-black hair you keep tied up in a band, have skin that’s clearly never seen the sun, and eyes the colour of kiwi, I’d just say you’re a very weird guy who needs to believe he’s a guy who turns into a bat. Fine, just don’t be drinking my blood, okay? I need to keep some to feed junior, here.” She nodded down to her belly.

“You don’t believe me.” So few had known the truth in the past, and all were in awe when they learned it. I didn’t know how to approach her incredulity.

“Does it matter? I need you. You could be Napoleon for all I care.”

She was right. It didn’t matter. I listed my rules for living with me, and she shrugged at all of them.

“Anything’s better than living with my family. I sleep all day, too. But I’ll be eating a lot. I can’t seem to help that. But I won’t bug you. Promise. I’m actually grateful.”

She looked at me then with something I came to learn later was love. Gratitude isn’t love, though that was there as well. Dr Bloward taught me that.

For three months we lived together. I grew more and more fond of her, to the point of distraction. I found it difficult to concentrate on my seductions in order to feed. I got sloppy, and I admit, a bit too preoccupied and aggressive. I nearly killed a woman in Los Feliz. When Ashley had the baby and gave it away, her sadness and guilt became mine. We were becoming something of a family, albeit an odd one.