Peterson stood at the doorway, the tray balanced on one hand. He didn’t want to go down there again—not with that monster there.
It hadn’t been his fault. He couldn’t help it. She had been so beautiful, with her hair slicked back from her pale face, the shirt clinging to her damp body. She was the first one he had touched while she was still alive. It had been incredible, the combination of her cool skin and the still soft, supple body so much more exciting than the chilling rigidity of the others. And she had it coming, for trying to hurt him like that.
The thought of her swayed him, warred with his memory of the monster’s terrible, knowing gaze. You think she’s yours, don’t you? Well, she’ll be mine in the end. Buoyed by that realization, he opened the door.
Halfway down the stairs, he realized that something was very wrong. He took the next steps as quickly as he dared, spilling orange juice all over the tray. At the door to her cell he stopped.
She lay on the floor, by the bars to the monster’s cell. She was on her back, wearing only white briefs, her shirt now spread open to bare the curves of her breasts and the sharp edges of her ribs. One hand, fingers curled up slightly, rested in the vampire’s cell. Her eyes were closed, but he knew she wasn’t asleep. Her skin was too pale, too glowingly white for that, and the bare breasts did not move.
Peterson put down the tray and unlocked the door. The dungeon faded around him, awareness of anything but her blotted out by the sprawl of her white body on the stone floor. He walked to where she lay and crouched beside her. He touched her face, caressing the still eyelids and flaccid lips. His hand slipped behind her head and he bent, aching to touch her chill lips.
“Peterson.” For a moment, he thought it was her voice, crooning his name in welcome. Then he realized it came from beyond the bars. Don’t look up, he thought, but it was too late. He fell into the grey emptiness and was swallowed by whispers.
He carried her body through the woods. She seemed lighter than the others, her body still soft and malleable. The arm he rested over her shoulder did not move as he walked.
Roias had not been nearly as angry as Peterson had expected he would be. “We’ll just buy one of Greg’s girls for tonight. We only have to keep His Highness happy for another couple of nights, then he’s out of our hair forever.” He stood in the control booth, staring out over the empty makeshift studio. “Well, what are you waiting for? You know what to do. And don’t forget the stake.”
The stake and shovel were in a bag slung over his shoulder. Don’t worry, asshole, Peterson thought angrily. I won’t forget your precious stake. I’ll just do it last, that’s all.
He shifted her in his arms and her head rolled against his shoulder, almost as if she were snuggling up against him. She would be the last one, he realized. It would have to end now, just when it was getting easy, getting perfect. As much as he hated the monster in the dungeon, if the vampire went away, so did the women. Without the vampire, Roias would just go back to making his porno movies, and those women didn’t interest Peterson at all. Unless Roias decided to keep on making snuff movies . . . but Peterson couldn’t see him doing that, not without the vampire to make it special.
The monster had power—and both Peterson and Roias hated him for it. Roias’s bosses needed the vampire a lot more than they did Roias, and that gave the monster power. That made Roias angry, made him play his stupid games with the ultrasound and the girls.
But that was what Peterson envied. The vampire wasn’t at all like the smooth seducer he remembered from late-night movies, but it still had power. Power over anonymous hookers that Roias snatched off “the track” in Toronto and put into the cell next door, until they grew pale and luminous and beautiful. Power over the desperate junkies that “starred” in Leseur’s movies, then surrendered to the vampire’s embrace.
He had seen it in all their eyes in the final moments; the longing for that gaunt, grey monster, the dizzying desire for death itself. The neon-scrawled death’s head logos he wore on his chest didn’t seem to either scare or draw them. But they all went into that grey death with their arms open.
If it was death they all loved, couldn’t he be it to them? he wondered. He was better, he loved them more than that monster, who only wanted their blood to hang on to his own awful life. He remembered the hot, contemptuous eyes and held the body in his arms tighter. You’ll be gone, he thought at the memory. Roias will take you away and his bosses will do whatever they want to you. I’ll still be there. I’ll still be free. I know what to do now. I know how to do it.
He was almost disappointed when he reached the makeshift graveyard and had to lay her on the ground in order to dig the shallow grave. They were deep in the woods surrounding the asylum. The sky was overcast and the light shifting through the leaves of the overhanging trees seemed cold and grey. Peterson shivered, then started as leaves rustled beneath a squirrel’s passage. He hated the woods, feared them with a city-born mistrust of the seemingly deceptive quiet in their depths.
He dug the grave, once or twice shifting its angle as the shovel struck one of the other bodies buried there. When he was done, he stood back to survey his work. It was a weirdly shaped hole, but he could bend her to fit in.
Peterson went back to take her in his arms, carried her to her new bed. He laid her gently into the shallow indentation and brushed the leaves from her hair. Spreading the sides of her shirt wide, he gazed at her for a moment. There were bruises on the sheen of her skin, spreading along one side of her breast, discolouring the point of one hipbone. The largest, darkest one was on her throat and he turned her head to hide it.
“Ardeth,” he whispered, the first time he had said her name aloud. She was the most beautiful of them all, even the ones Roias brought for the movies. There was a glow about her, a silver radiance that none of the others had possessed. So beautiful that he could forgive her anything, even hitting him with that tray.
He put one hand on the soft curve of her stomach, then ran it up along her side, pausing over the ridges of her rib cage. A breeze touched her hair, sent it fluttering about her in a way that made it seem as if her head moved. Peterson’s hand froze for a moment, then shifted to cover her breast.
Suddenly, he could not bear the thought of piercing the soft flesh that filled his hand with the stake waiting in the bag at his side. Roias said you had to, he reminded himself. Roias doesn’t have to know, a cool, grey voice murmured, deep in his mind.
“Maybe,” he whispered to the face tilted away from him. “Maybe if you’re real nice to me . . .” He leaned forward to watch her, to wait for the welcome he could sense in the yielding of her limbs.
The chill came suddenly, like a wind he couldn’t feel, and the shadows from the trees seemed to thicken, lengthen out to caress her hair, tumbled among the leaves. Peterson shivered and reached out for her shoulders, to draw her up into his arms, to get warmth from her cool flesh.
What about us? a voice hissed in his mind, to be echoed by another. Traitor . . . cheater . . . You said you loved us . . . we loved you . . . lie down and we will love you again. . . .
He froze, as the dead leaves heaped over the graves began to move, to ripple as if something shifted and stretched beneath them.
Come and love us . . . lie down and touch our cold skin again. . . .
He looked at Ardeth, desperately searching for the sign of the welcome he had almost seen. He thought her eyelid flickered, then another, stronger voice joined the others.
Come and love me . . . come and love us forever . . . forever and ever and ever. . . .
A vision opened up before him, of rotting bodies stirring beneath the leaves, of skeletal hands dragging him down and embracing him in a horrifying parody of all his secret dreams.
“NO!” he cried out, frantically scooping at the dirt by the grave and tossing it in to cover her beckoning arms and the still, waiting face. “No. I don’t want you . . . not like this. Leave me alone!”
When she was covered, he snatched up the bag and shovel and ran, pursued by feminine laughter that whispered through the leaves.
Halfway to the asylum, he remembered that he was still carrying the stake. He slowed down long enough to throw it into a shallow gully.