The Bone Woman

by Brian Herbert and Marie Landis

At midnight someone knocked on the Bone Woman’s door. She pressed her shapely body into a shadowed corner of her house and didn’t answer.

Too early for the delivery.

Still, she trembled with anticipation.

Was it one of the neighbors? They never spoke to her, but the night winds carried their voices. The voices said they didn’t like her weather-beaten beach shack. It reduced the property values of their expensive homes. And her appearance was questionable—hair too long, too black, and her dark skin was obviously not a hard-earned tan, but more the sort caused by genetic insufficiency.

“Whatever she is, she’s not one of us,” they whispered.

Sometimes the Bone Woman wished her hearing was not so acute, that she could drown their words in the roar of the surf. Sometimes she wished she was more human.

Sand drifted in and out beneath the bottom edge of the Bone Woman’s front door and piled in the corners of her living room. Strange sculptures rose from these small sand dunes: animal bones and human bones fused into unusual creature shapes and coated with plaster and white resin. Her creations. Some were horned and winged and poised to take flight, while others crouched deep in their beds of sand as though recently hatched from an alien egg.

A tall sculpture stood among them, created from the bones of a man named Michael, her last lover. The one she’d loved the best. But he was long dead, and now she had neither lover nor friend. What kind of life was this? She smiled ruefully at her choice of words.

She, who was not quite alive.

The knocking persisted. She ignored it and spoke to the sculpture.

“Michael, do you know how difficult it was waiting until your flesh decomposed and your bones were ready to be sculpted? I took your pieces from the grave and bathed them and tried to recreate you.”

A deep wail escaped her lips. “My grandmother, a Mage, taught me how to alter reality. I am a Dreamspeaker, a Shaman of great potency. I can divine the secrets of the spirit but cannot give you life. Shall I tell you again why I failed you, how I became what I am?”

As always, the bones did not answer.

Tabitta closed her eyes, reversed time, and forced her past to live again.

She stood within a grove of vines that coiled above her head like a roof of green serpents. Moisture dripped from their tendrils, fell on the dark skin of her shoulders and trickled across her full breasts.

A few feet away a man smiled at her from beneath the overhang of a wide-brimmed hat. The features she could see were handsome but twisted, his skin moon-white.

“Go with him,” her parents ordered. “We owe him money.”

“You will call me Colbert,” the pale man said to Tabitta. “I am childe of Baron Dieudonne, who is a descendant of Louis XIV of France. It is an honor to live in his house. How old are you, girl?”

“Fifteen,” her father answered. “A good age.”

“No!” pleaded Tabitta.

But Colbert’s hands gripped her arms tightly, and she felt his strength and cruelty as he pulled her away from her parents forever.

Daily, Colbert fed her small or large doses of affection and cruelty. He seduced her with words spoken in a voice as soft as velvet, and filled with promises. When finally he placed his lips against her throat and raked his teeth across its smooth, dark surface, she no longer feared him but drowned in the sharp pain-pleasure of his bite.

“I want to be part of your flesh,” she whispered as she sank into the oblivion they shared.

“You shall,” said Colbert. He cut a small slit on his wrist and held it to her mouth. She drank until life flooded her body again. And then she slept.

Upon awakening in that long ago time, she stared into the face of a stranger. A man with elegant clothes and eyes as cold and hard as black ice. Baron Dieudonne?

“I warned you, Colbert,” shouted the stranger. “No vampire shall sire another without permission of his elder.”

Colbert leaped from the bed. “Forgive me, sire. The girl is a witch and made me forget our traditions.”

The Baron signaled two shadowy figures. “Kindred! Take them to the forest.”

Shivering with cold and fear, Tabitta watched as the Kindred stuffed wood around Colbert’s bound body and struck the match that would set him afire.

“One of the few ways to kill a vampire,” said the Baron. He held Tabitta in a hard embrace, allowing her no choice but to stare in the direction of that frightful bonfire.

“Keep your eyes open,” he warned, “or I’ll make your death more painful than his.”

She listened to Colbert’s agony slash the air, his screams an endless cacophony until he was no more than a blackened lump of charcoal sizzling on the ground.

“Beast!” she screamed.

“Beast I am,” the Baron laughed, “of the vampire clan Nosferatu. We take only the most depraved for our progeny. Colbert is my progeny, and now you are his!”

Tabitta’s anger rose bitter as bile and she concentrated, as her grandmother had taught her, stirring the ashes with her rage. They swirled upward, enveloping the Kindred in a noxious gray cloud. Those who had participated in the burning writhed on the ground with pain.

“Release them, witch!” shouted the Baron. “And I’ll let you go.”

“I hate you!” Tabitta cried as she ran from the Baron and the smoldering obscenity that had been her lover. “I’ll always hate you!”

O O O

She returned her spirit to present time, her voice still echoing the words she’d spoken over two hundred years before. “I hate you, Baron! I’ll always hate you!”

Knocking … persistent knocking. She closed her ears to the sound.

“I am part Nosferatu,” she said to the sculpture that was Michael. “As much a beast as Colbert and the Baron. Humans are so fragile, their circulatory systems ineffectively pumping blood through a maze of constricted arteries. It almost seems criminal to siphon off any of their juices. Yet, the Hunger can be overwhelming.”

Drowning in loneliness, she howled her grief. “I need flesh and blood, not bones and memories!”

Again, she became conscious of the knocking at her door. Perhaps it was the blood delivery. But so early?

She took a chance and opened the door. Her eyes glittered red in the darkness like a feral animal’s, and her senses were alert to each detail of the being in front of her. The creature on her doorstep was a heavy-set, bleary-eyed human. She could smell his cruelty and something else. A sickness inside. Heart? Yes. It was pumping with difficulty. The sound of his moving blood was almost more than she could bear.

With a foolish grin, he extended a wine bottle.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“I’m your neighbor.” His voice was well modulated but insincere. “Thought we should get acquainted. This is expensive wine, two-hundred bucks a bottle.”

“You’ve wasted your time and money.”

He swayed on uncertain legs, his face twisted into a scowl. “Look. I came to tell you something for your own good.” He held the bottle in a gesture of salute. “You’re a fine-looking woman. Some men don’t like dark skin, but I prefer it.”

“How nice for you,” she purred, “deciding which slice of the bird you’d like to eat.”

“No need to get snarly. I came in a friendly way. You’ve got some enemies you ought to know about. I’ve watched you walking the beach, swinging those long legs. A woman like you needs protection.” Forcing himself through the door, he put an arm around her waist. “It’s about your house.”

He ran fingers along her spine.

I could snap his neck with one hand, thought Tabitta, but she wanted to listen to his blood pumping. And his story might be important.

The delivery, where was the blood delivery? The Hunger came over her suddenly, welling up unbidden and voracious. She fought it back. “What do they call you?” she asked softly.

“Ted.”

“Who are my enemies?”

He smirked. “Be nice to me, and I’ll tell you.”

He pressed his heavy body against hers, placed a large hand inside the neckline of her silk dress. She removed his hand gently.

“First, tell me about the neighbors,” she said.

“They plan to condemn your property … get the zoning people after you. Lawyers will take care of the rest. That’s enough conversation.” He tore her dress open, pushed her toward the floor.

Tabitta stopped time.

A few moments was all she could manage. But any kind of dominance over the physical world was important to a Mage, and it was enough time for her to turn her bone sculptures into flying, pouncing, nasty little beasts. She activated Michael, so thin and white, clattering around the room with threatening motions, placing his long, bony hands on her assailant’s throat, raking his nails lightly across the jugular.

It was amusing to watch the man thrashing about the room clutching his chest, gasping for air and finally collapsing to the floor.

She bent to examine him. Stupid human, did he think the information he’d furnished meant she was bought and paid for? She’d spun a little magic, only intending to frighten him. But now he was breathing with difficulty.

“I didn’t mean this to happen,” she said. “But you were not a gentleman. Not at all.”

She stared into his glazed eyes and saw his thoughts as clearly as if she were watching a stage play. His lust had turned to terror.

Heart fibrillation!

She touched the side of his throat, detected no pulse. Dead now, but still slightly warm to the touch. Tabitta leaned over and bit his carotid artery, sucking hard to bring the congealing blood into her mouth. Already the elixir was losing its freshness but was still delicious, and she groaned with sensual pleasure.

Two hours later she pressed her fists hard against his body, kneaded back and forth like a baker making piecrust. When she felt his ribs crack, she manipulated them into a flattened position. Then she folded him up neatly, carried him upstairs to her workshop and placed him inside a large, metal drawer beside other bones she’d collected. The bones of dead lovers.

Satiated, she tore off her ripped and bloody dress, walked naked outside, into the darkness. The beast within had spoken, but she’d only given in to the frenzy after the human died. Was it so wrong to take a dead man’s blood, when one was hungry and the blood delivery was late?

Only humans would criticize her, like the neighbors who wanted to condemn her house.

It’s not the house they want, she thought. It’s my existence. I belong nowhere. Not with humans, not with mages, not with vampires.

She turned and looked back at her home teetering on the edge of the Pacific Ocean like upended debris washed ashore by the tides. The glass was missing from an upstairs window frame, which made the house appear to be staring at the world with a Cyclopean eye. A dead eye. As dead as I am, she thought.

The pulse of the ocean increased, grew louder. Waves crashed and churned into a white froth against the sand. Ahead, Tabitta saw a small figure, a female shape moving with a severe limp. What was she doing? Wading in the ocean? Should she warn the woman that the ocean was dangerous at night? On the other hand, what did she owe humans?

Still, she couldn’t stand by and watch someone drown. After all, she wasn’t a total beast, despite certain necessary acts. Remnants of her original humanity remained.

She increased her pace and began to run. Wet sand splattered across her legs, and she took a giant leap, sailed with the ocean wind and landed close to the place she’d seen the figure.

The female stood with her back to the shoreline, her dress trailing through the foaming water, her blonde hair tangled like seaweed and her arms hanging limply at her sides in a gesture of hopelessness. She seemed unaware, detached. When she moved forward into deeper waters, the wind tore at her hair and the waves shook her thin body, as if she were a rag doll.

“Come back!” Tabitta screamed. “You’ll drown!”

A great wave curled over the figure’s head and broke into a rain of white foam. Tabitta dived into the breaking water, pushing against its force with her own. Struggling with the sea for possession of their mutual prize, she was finally able to seize the female around the waist.

When she carried the limp body onto the beach and out of the ocean’s grasp, she saw that this was a young girl, maybe sixteen or seventeen. Her eyes were closed as though in sleep, and her body was cold as the sea. Something odd. Body too thin? Heartbeat … couldn’t detect it yet.

Tabitta carried the girl to the beach shack and placed her in the dark, soft cocoon that served as Tabitta’s own bed.

The girl’s eyes remained shut, but she sighed. “Where am I?”

“In my house, in my bed. What were you trying to do, drown yourself?”

“I can’t drown,” whispered the girl. “But I can sink. I can sink until I reach the bottom of the ocean and the fishes eat me.”

She opened her eyes.

“You’re a vampire,” said Tabitta, staring at the red glow in the girl’s pupils.

“And so are you,” answered the girl. “I’ve been one since a month ago. My lover’s sire didn’t approve of me. I’m imperfect, crippled.” She pulled up her wet dress. One leg was badly shriveled. It lay against the other like a small twisted branch.

“I’ve been fleeing from the Kindred,” the girl continued. “Hiding in public places. Taverns, all-night cafeterias.”

“You’re very pretty. I’m surprised some man didn’t take advantage of you. What’s your name? And where do you go during the daylight hours?”

“I’m Alicia. The street people let me crawl inside their cardboard boxes and under their blankets. They know what it means to be an outcast. But the Kindred will find me sooner or later. They’ll kill me and anyone who tries to help me. I’m a monster. Look at me! A crippled monster.”

“If you’re a monster, so am I,” said Tabitta. “There are many of us around. Who pursues you?”

“My lover’s sire, his father in effect. Baron Dieudonne.”

“I know him well,” Tabitta said. “He’s Nosferatu. Not as bad as the Sabbat Clan. But bad enough.”

“I’ve put you in danger.”

“Let me decide that,” said Tabitta. “I think we can help each other. We are, in a manner of speaking, cousins. My sire was also the progeny of Dieudonne. Do you know much about the Baron?”

“Only what my lover told me.”

“Dieudonne means ‘God-given’ but God has little to do with the Baron. He is said to be the bastard of Louis XIV, a king who declared he was ordained by God, that he had absolute power and was free to do anything he desired. Dieudonne was the king’s birth name.”

“What does he have to do with the Baron?”

“Hear me before you ask. During his reign, Louis XIV decreed that all prostitutes should have their noses and ears cut off, if they cohabited with soldiers. What happened to those poor women? Disease, death? Males didn’t fare much better. They were chained to galley boats, punished for crimes they hadn’t committed. Homosexuals were put to death and peasants flogged for fun while Louis ruled.

“The illegitimate offspring of the king, our Baron, became a vampire while bedding one of the Kindred. It’s no coincidence that the Baron possesses the disagreeable qualities of his birth father, Louis.”

“Are we any better?” asked Alicia. “Am I destined to spend the rest of eternity killing, so that I may live?”

“We’re no better or worse than humans. With the exception of Dieudonne.”

“I’ve heard the Baron has developed a blood supply that carries no disease.”

Tabitta nodded. “True. I buy it from him, or I was buying it from him. The blood doesn’t satisfy the Hunger completely, but it works passably well. Have you fed since your escape?”

“Sucked on a few scraps of meat.”

O O O

In the small hours of the night, Tabitta lay beside Alicia. What to do with this girl? There were probably more like her out there, digging in the woods for mice or insects, trying to hang on to what little life they had. Had she, Tabitta, been so preoccupied with her own loneliness that she hadn’t paid attention to anything else? Had she lost all of her humanity?

The thick, stifling odor of smoke wakened her a short time later. The room was warm, too warm, and sound crackled and snapped in the lower half of the house. Tabitta crawled from bed and opened the door to the hallway. Flames and smoke greeted her. She slammed the door shut.

“Wake up!” she cried to the girl. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

From the beach, they watched fire consume the house, a great red demon swallowing walls and floors and ceilings, and all that lay within.

She put an arm around Alicia’s shoulder. “I have a motel room I keep for various purposes. We can go there. But first we’ll steal something to wear. Before the sun rises, we’ll visit the Baron. You need blood. He won’t hurt you while I’m with you.”

O O O

Miles away, in the quiet of a darkened industrial building, Baron Dieudonne flipped a switch. Along the conveyor belt empty plastic containers began to move, stopping and starting, stopping and starting like a line of dancers moving in rhythm to the whoosh and clatter of the machinery. The sounds brought Dieudonne deep satisfaction. During the day, the containers would be filled with milk and on their way to the packing and shipping room. At night his vampire crew filled similar containers with blood.

Located in Torrance, California, the bottling plant was one of the largest of its kind and headquarters for a worldwide organization of like facilities. Ownership of a seemingly legitimate business had made the Baron acceptable in the human world.

At the rear of the building, in a small laboratory, a researcher tinkered with something other than milk. Blood! Blood from cows and humans in a marvelous genetic mixture that provided all that was needed by the Kindred. An endless supply of uncontaminated blood.

A human, Gene Spratt, was his scientific researcher, the genius who’d created the modern blood formula—far superior to the Baron’s own early mixtures. Although he didn’t understand the complexity of Spratt’s discovery, he didn’t worry. Spratt took care of such things. Spratt might not be a vampire, but in a sense he’d renounced his humanity in order to have the lab and the money to run it.

Out of necessity, since he relied on Spratt so much, the Baron never felt a strong desire to draw the human’s blood. He had other sources. Maybe one day when the researcher was old and near the limit of human mortality, he would give Spratt the dark gift. But only after he, Dieudonne, understood all the details of the genetic technology.

Humans, if they’d known, might call Spratt a collaborator. Dieudonne didn’t respect him any more than they might, but he was a pragmatist, understood it was necessary to pay for such people—necessary, if distasteful.

He’d understood this centuries before, and understood it even more now that he was a wealthy businessman applauded for his desire to benefit mankind. Television and tabloids wrote accolades about his financial contributions to various charities, about his humble nature that kept him from attending public functions honoring his generosity. How he donated free milk to underprivileged children.

Milk! His laughter carried across the plant, over the sounds of machinery. Milk made him money, and money paid for a huge cattle ranch near Santa Barbara that offered him the privacy he needed.

Bored momentarily with the equipment, he turned off the machinery and walked to the lab. The door was ajar. Spratt was working overtime tonight.

“Time for a talk,” Dieudonne said.

The researcher, a gaunt young human with weak eyes, squinted at his employer. “Yes sir, what do you need?”

“Don’t you ever relax? Wouldn’t you like to have some intelligent conversation?” the Baron asked.

“I’m not much of a talker.”

“I intend to do the talking! In the old days, I was forced to roam the streets, searching for companionship, eternally in quest of fresh human blood. But now I have you to keep me company. And I have the blood.” He pounded a tabletop. “The best there is. Still, despite all the progress I’ve made, there are a few vampires who don’t like the taste of this processed blood. Not fresh enough they claim. Too many additives, and doesn’t taste like the human blood some of them favor. Anything we can do about that? Put on new labels that make them think they’re getting something different? Go to work on it.”

“That wouldn’t be ethical.”

“Ethical? You’re working for me, don’t forget that! Maybe the blood doesn’t taste as good as fresh-pumped, but we’ll brainwash the Kindred.”

“But—”

The Baron wagged a finger under Spratt’s nose. “I’ve come a long way. The Kindred used to take advantage of adolescent females because they were easy targets. Think about how many times you’ve read about young women disappearing as a result of human assaults and kidnappings. Sometimes at the hands of boyfriends or husbands and sometimes by serial killers. But many times, for unexplained reasons. Vampire reasons. We don’t do that any more.”

Dieudonne smiled inwardly. Of course, there were exceptions. Like himself. He was an elder and had the right to do as he pleased. Over the years, he’d invited many young females to his ranch, usually transients or hitchhikers on their way to nowhere. They came for entertainment and a good meal. A good meal. What a joke!

He felt no guilt. There were humans who did worse to their female companions.

No matter his public façade, the old ways were best!

Again, he turned his attention to Spratt. “This facility is based on an operation I set up over a century ago, the first vampire blood bank in London. It’s still operating. Of course, in the old days we didn’t have all your scientific know-how. That facility, ostensibly a brewery at the time, furnished dark green beer bottles filled with blood. We distributed them by beer trucks down alleys to decaying apartments where the Kindred lived. Ah, those were halcyon days. Now I prefer the pace of life in California, though I travel regularly to inspect my other facilities.”

“You do a good job,” said Spratt.

“Indeed I do. I developed the modern system of sustenance delivery out of necessity, to reduce the open conflict that for centuries threatened to break out between vampires and humans. The elders no longer have to add new members to Kindred society at the pace once thought necessary. Progeny can be added slowly and discriminately, utilizing higher standards of selection. After all, the Kindred are an elite society. We, the undead, do our business best when humans don’t expect us to be present, when humans are not thinking of vampires at all. I realize that legends of vampires remain in human society. But for the most part we are shadowy figures, present but not present. Elusive targets. Only a handful of humans are aware of our presence, humans such as you. Trustworthy humans.”

Spratt moved restlessly on his stool, began to remove his lab coat. “Sorry. I have to leave. Have to get up early.”

The Baron examined his watch. “See that you’re here on time. You have about four hours to sleep.”

He bid Spratt goodnight and walked toward his office. Things were going smoothly, except for the witch, Tabitta. A burr in his side. And some of the elders … but he could handle them, as well as he did ordinary Kindred. During the past two years he’d begun to furnish the elders with a special blood mixture. Richer and more rewarding than the one ordinary vampires received, he’d told them. Blood that would give them back their humanity within a hundred years. All vampires longed for their lost humanity. So he gave the elders, who missed most what they had lost, the special blood, and they rewarded him with favors.

Dieudonne opened the door to his office, sat at the computer and gave it instructions to continue the reduction of blood deliveries to Tabitta. Not enough to send her into a feeding frenzy, just enough to let her know his displeasure.

He walked back into the bottling facility, and realized he had company.

The witch Tabitta stood before him. And next to her, the one he’d been searching for … the miserable outcast who’d escaped and never received proper punishment.

“Alicia,” he said. “How pleasant to see you again! I’ve been looking for you.” He extended his hand.

“Don’t touch her,” warned Tabitta. “She’s under my care.”

“And that’s supposed to frighten me?”

“When I last saw you, I didn’t understand the full extent of my powers. Now I do. I’ve come to demand justice for this poor girl. As vampires living in a civilized world, we shouldn’t be killing ourselves off. There aren’t enough of us to spare.”

“She’s not one of us. She wasn’t invited.”

“Your ‘son’ decided to convert her.”

“That sounds familiar.” The Baron’s smile was sardonic. “Didn’t something like that happen to you a couple of centuries back?”

“I didn’t come here to discuss my history. In addition to helping this girl, I came to find out why I haven’t been receiving the blood deliveries I’ve paid for. What are you up to? New ways to cheat us?”

“I perform an important service for my kind. All Kindred know the sacrifices I’ve made in order to obtain fresh human blood for them. AIDS and hepatitis and other diseases have grown rampant. Humans aren’t donating blood like they used to. I’ve overcome such obstacles! Made a breakthrough that benefits humans as well as vampires.”

“You’re a clever bastard,” Tabitta answered. “I’ll give you that much. But I ask again. What about this poor girl?”

Dieudonne glared. “Our traditions must be obeyed.”

“Our cruelties is what you mean.”

“Cruelties? All over the world my political intervention has led to laws mandating that human adults give blood at regular intervals. To save them from killer diseases. For humanitarian purposes … for research. For all of us!”

“While you’re blathering about your good deeds, I need blood for this girl. And don’t forget I want the blood I’ve paid for.”

“And what if I cut you off? Locally, I have twenty-two Kindred at my disposal. Shall I bring them forth? Care to test your feeble magic against our combined strength?”

Tabitta considered his words carefully. He looked as imposing as always, dressed in a black silk suit and red velvet vest, the picture of a ruler whose only ambition was the good of his subjects.

A lie! As a Mage, Tabitta understood better than he the true reality. Humans often deceived themselves, created their own reality so they could discount the truth. Dieudonne might be a vampire, but he was behaving like a human. He used blood as a weapon against both vampire and human.

“You manipulate humans and Kindred, as though they were dancing dogs.”

“Watch your tongue!”

She knew he feared her, or he would have reacted immediately. Yet, were her powers strong enough to protect Alicia and fight Dieudonne and his followers at the same time? Her powers were untested in this arena. She’d always had only herself to consider. And as for his followers, it was obvious he’d already summoned some of them. There they stood, shadows within shadows at the rear of the building.

Despite their presence, it wasn’t a good idea to back down or show uncertainty.

“Let’s put each other to the test,” she said, and drew an imaginary line with her mind, allowed it to circle her body and Alicia’s. Then Tabitta closed her eyes and pulled forth sparks from the fire that had destroyed her home. They flew to her like birds on the wind, and she took them gently in the palm of her hand and scattered them on the circle. And lit them. Cold fire leaped upward.

The shadows in the background moved forward.

Tabitta could feel Alicia’s fear scorching the air.

“Don’t move,” she warned the girl. She forced the flames upward and over their heads and shaped a protective dome of fire. Through the fire-tongues she saw the approaching shadows assume solid shapes. Three of them, vampire males moving slowly but with purpose, circling the fire like wolves. And urging them on, Baron Dieudonne. His eyes glittered in the semidarkness, and his descended canine teeth shone bone-white against lips turned black by lack of light.

Once again, Tabitta reached deep inside herself for the knowledge her grandmother had given her. “Turn your enemy’s reality against him.”

The fire that distracted the Baron’s servants was cold and harmless, but the perception that it would blister their flesh restrained them. If necessary, Tabitta decided, she would blister their minds as well. Make them feel heat and pain where none existed.

The Baron was another matter. Not so easy to fool. Very powerful. His main weakness was his belief that he had absolute control over any situation or individual.

Louis XIV had kept his children … those of his mistresses as well as his wife … in his palace. Had Dieudonne been one of those privileged children, raised in an atmosphere of ostentation, influenced by the cruel philosophy of his father?

Whatever his background, she would have to divert him, stop time so that she could disappear to some quiet place, to consider her solution. But what about the girl she was protecting? She couldn’t leave Alicia behind.

Dieudonne spoke to his minions. “What you see is an illusion. Seize the females!”

The three vampires took tentative steps toward Tabitta’s dome of flames and stopped at its edge.

“Cowards!” shouted Dieudonne. “I command you to destroy them!”

At that moment, Alicia screamed and plunged through the fire. As she passed through, the flames fluttered, as though a small wind had disturbed them.

The illusion died.

Tabitta leaped forward, seized Alicia’s hand and clung to it tightly. “Don’t do anything until I tell you.”

Almost immediately, in one corner of the bottling facility, several dozen Kindred stepped forward.

“Why are you here?” asked the Baron. “I didn’t call you. Identify yourselves!”

“Some of us belong to Clan Tremere, some to Clan Toreador, some to others,” said a fair-haired man who appeared to be leader of the group. “Blood sources are scarce for all of us, and your blood is too expensive for us to purchase. You are starving us.”

“We came to renegotiate!” cried another vampire.

“I charge what the market allows,” said the Baron. “That’s the price you must pay.”

“Not a good answer. So, we’ll take whatever blood you have on hand. Where is it?”

Dieudonne jerked a finger toward a large freezer. “Do you really believe you can steal from me and get away with it?”

The rebel didn’t answer but proceeded to unload the freezer with the help of a companion.

Tabitta considered her situation, closed her eyes and floated out of her body. Now she was an unseen entity above the crowd, watching, listening, feeling. She turned her attention to the rebel leader. He’s angry, she thought, but not poisonous. A young vampire. His beast does not control him. She touched his mind and found strength and charity. He had a cause but not exclusively for himself. She returned to her own body.

The Baron pointed a long finger at Tabitta. “Witch! I’ll see you chained and spread-eagled in the desert under a noon sun. Your skin will shrivel and peel from your bones.”

She ignored the threat, turned to the rebel leader and whispered, “This girl … the Baron means to kill her. Can you take her in?”

“We’ll give her blood and sanctuary. But what about you? Come with us yourself. It’s nearly time for the sun to rise.”

“The melanin in my skin protects me. I can endure the sun’s heat for periods of time. I won’t leave quite yet. There’s something I must do.”

“Then, good luck!”

Tabitta smiled and slipped forward in time a few hours.

O O O

The day shift had arrived, and the music of machinery and humans clanged and clashed in an odd sort of harmony, as she moved invisible among them. Humans! Sweaty bodies and pungent odors. Different from vampire bodies which had a cool, dry texture and sweet scent.

She could hear myriad hearts beating, pumping blood, slowly and not so slowly. No two heartbeats were the same. Nearly irresistible and overpowering sounds. She straightened her dress, shook her long black hair so that it floated around her shoulders, and walked barefooted toward the research lab at the rear of the facility. Upon reaching it, she became visible again and knocked. A gaunt young man in a white smock opened the door.

“Yes?” he said. His unlined face wore a puzzled expression.

“Gene Spratt?”

“That’s who I am.”

“I’d like to speak with you,” said Tabitta. “I need some information. It shouldn’t take long.”

He hesitated, and she entered his mind and nudged him from indecision.

“Come in.” He pulled something from one corner of the small room that served as a laboratory. “You can have my stool, and I’ll stand.” He stared at Tabitta’s bare feet and legs.

She sat on the stool, pulled her loose-fitting red dress up to her thighs, and stretched a long brown leg in his direction.

He licked his lips with nervous excitement. “Who are you?”

She improvised. “My stage name is Michael.” She heaved a small sigh. “I call myself that because the name comforts me, reminds me of a man I once loved.”

“I had a girl once,” Spratt volunteered. “I wanted to marry her.”

“And did you?”

“She ran off with someone else. So what is it you want?”

“I’m attending the University of California,” she said, lying. “Taking drama courses, trying to become an actress. I’ve been asked by a local theater group to play the role of a scientific researcher. I thought if I could watch you at work, I’d have a better understanding of the part I’m to play.”

“Who told you to come here?”

“Baron Dieudonne is an acquaintance. He speaks highly of you.”

“He doesn’t like us telling strangers about our activities. They’re confidential.”

She leaned toward the human, her eyes dark and soft, staring into his weak, blue orbs. Her senses pulled forth information. His body pumped blood vigorously. Strong, healthy human, but color-blind! In dim light, he’d never notice the red glow of her eyes. She reached out and touched his hand and let her fingertips trail across each of his fingers.

“I’d never ask you to reveal business secrets. Just the day to day routines without specifics.” She paused. “This is a busy hour for you, so early in the morning isn’t it? Not a good place or time to talk. Could you meet me for lunch somewhere? Maybe at the motel where I’m staying?”

He hesitated. “Dieudonne doesn’t like us to go out for lunch. We have a lunchroom here, though I usually brown-bag it.”

“I think he’d forgive you this once. I could order us something nice, and we could eat it in the room and talk without interruption. Would you like that?” Once again she stared into his eyes, her own full of all the love she knew he’d been denied during his life. This human was too restrained to have known much affection. He desired it, but had no idea how to attain it.

She planted a seed in his mind and repeated what she’d just said. “Do you want to do that?”

“Yes,” he said. “I’d love to. Where are you staying?”

“Driftwood Shores on Pacific Coast Highway near Torrance.” She liked the place. The management asked no questions of its tenants. “Noon, Gene?” She could hear his heartbeat accelerate.

“I’ll be there.”

O O O

He arrived at exactly noon. The room was dark, the curtains drawn, the bed partially turned down. Soft music drifted from a radio, and there was food and drink on a coffee table by the couch. An inviting lair, she thought.

“I ordered sandwiches and coffee for you,” she said. “Hope you like chicken.”

“Anything’s fine.”

She saw that he was uncomfortable and gently tugged him toward the couch. “I feel so close to you Gene, and I never feel that way about strangers. I want to know all about you.”

And I want to listen to your heart beating and beating and beating, she thought. Most of all, I want to listen to that wonderful pounding music.

He chewed on his sandwich and swallowed a little coffee.

She moved closer to him and pulled off his glasses. “You look uncomfortable. Why don’t you take off your jacket and tie?”

He grinned.

An uncertain grin, she thought. He doesn’t know I’m a predator, a vampire. Thinks I’m just an aggressive human female.

“I’m not very good at conversation,” he said.

“Would it be more comfortable to talk if you were lying down?” she asked. “We could lie together on the bed and turn the lights off, and you won’t feel you’re talking to anyone in particular. It’s much easier to let feelings flow in the dark.”

He followed her suggestion without argument. She turned up the volume of the music … a ballad … then switched off the light and curled against him. His skin was hot, damp with perspiration, and his heart jackhammered. A good strong heart. “Start at the beginning,” she said, as if he was about to read her a child’s fairy tale.

She stroked his forehead softly and undid his shirt as he spoke. Once unleashed, he expressed himself well.

“I’ve heard that Dieudonne is a wonderful employer,” she said. “You must enjoy working with him.”

“He’s a bastard,” Spratt replied. “You think you know him, but you don’t. He lies. Makes promises he can’t keep.”

“To you?”

“Yes, and to the elders … I mean to the executives. Well, it’s not something you’d be interested in.”

“Oh, but I would,” she said and pulled down the sleeve of her dress and placed one of his hands on her exposed breast. After a while, she let him make love to her in the human way.

When he finally lay back exhausted, she placed her mouth on his neck and bit deeply into an artery. Blood oozed and she sucked it and listened to his moans of pleasure and pain. The beautiful horror of it sent his body into spasms, as she drained him of life.

“I love you,” she said. “Or I wouldn’t do this for you. Can you hear me?”

Hours later, she propped his limp body up and gave him a little of her own blood as required to complete his transition. “You’re mine now,” she said. “Not the Baron’s, but mine. Are you happy?”

“Very happy.”

“And you’ll tell me all your secrets?”

“All of them.”

“You’ll be with me forever, you understand. You’ll be my companion.”

He seized her. “I need you.”

She placed her bloody lips against his. “I’ll have to leave when night falls, but I’ll return. I promise.”

O O O

Baron Dieudonne was waiting for her in his office that night, his anger evident on his features. “Where is my researcher?” he asked. “What have you done with him, witch?”

“He’s mine now,” she said. “He won’t share his secrets with you any longer. But he told me some of yours.”

“I shall kill you for that,” he said. “Slowly and with much pleasure!”

“Spratt said you’ve been deceiving the other elders, selling them blood they believe will return them to a human state of being.”

Dieudonne screamed, a piercing sound that reverberated from the walls. “You accuse me? You … you nothing! Your neighbors destroyed your house! It seems your power has limitations!”

“Thanks for your concern, but I have a great deal of insurance money coming. I can rebuild my house with fire retardant, space age materials developed by NASA. I intend to establish a halfway house for outcast vampires.”

Dieudonne snarled. “Do you know what we used to do to witches? We hung them by their thumbs, forced their mouths open and placed lighted candles inside. Then we flogged them to death. Those were my direct orders. Mine! The orders of King Louis XIV of France! History has hidden the truth for political reasons. The elders have concealed it for theirs. I’m not the bastard offspring of a king, I am a king! And I am Nosferatu as well. You will bow to me before I kill you!”

“I’ll never bow.”

The air crackled and cold light spilled into the room. Three elderly vampires emerged from the illumination.

“I’m sick of all these uninvited guests!” shouted the vampire, once the most powerful monarch in Europe. Then he realized who his visitors were.

“We are the Primogen,” the three said in one voice. “Appointed by the most ancient among us. The elders are indebted to the Mage, Tabitta, for revealing your lies to us. The consequences of your greed and deceit are upon you, Louis! Judgment is about to be passed. We will be taking over your bottling plants, all of them … in this country and other parts of the world. From this moment on we will make sure that the Kindred are well fed, that the Kindred survive! We share this world with humans, therefore we will share your scientific discoveries with them.”

The Primogen surrounded Louis XIV, containing him with their combined powers. The eyes of their prisoner reflected his fear, and his voice wavered, yet his bravado continued. “I am a King!” he shouted. “And I will kill the witch who betrayed me!”

The elders ignored him and turned to Tabitta. “Thank you for revealing the falsehood that has been inflicted upon us. You are dismissed now.”

“No one dismisses me,” answered Tabitta. “I leave because I wish to.”

She soared upward into the night. Below, there was a great roar of sound. A hot wind licked her feet, and she rose higher to avoid the burning timbers that shot up like torches from hell. A scream tore through the flames, and she glanced down. The bottling plant was burning, and Dieudonne’s punishment had been delivered by the elders.

As she’d promised, Tabitta flew back to Gene Spratt.