Blood Vivicanti (9781941240113) (5 page)

You see: I had recently
made a mistake when I introduced him to movies, especially to
Chinese Martial Art features. He wasn’t impressed with
two-dimensional entertainment at first, but he quickly got swept up
in the narrative. Soon he loved how the martial artists decimated
their enemies by gracefully defying Newtonian laws of
gravity.

He wanted me to be just
like a martial artist. He thought that I should find them, drink
their blood, and eat their Blood Memories.

It was difficult convincing
him that that would be impossible, especially after he’d watched
Jet Li’s
Hero
. Red
wanted me to be able to deflect a rain of arrows while
simultaneously painting Chinese calligraphy.

Never in a million light
years would I have guessed that he felt protective of me, or even
that he cared.

He’d always seemed too shy,
always keeping to himself, although every now and again I could
catch him studying me through the corner of his eye.

His love for me was not a
father’s love, nor a brother’s love, nor a neighbor’s, nor a
friend’s. It was not animalistic and it was not selfish. He was
patient with me and kind with me. Perhaps he had never had the
chance to feel this way about anyone else before.

Perhaps I was just like him
because, when I was with him, I never talked either. Around him, I
could be the girl I always was, the silent one, the one fearful of
being misunderstood.

Perhaps the Red Man, my
Red, understood me better than I realized.

He released me and lowered
me back down to the ground.

He withdrew his tongue from
the sweet spot on my throat.

The pleasure of our embrace
ebbed. Reality slowly set in.

That is always the case
when a Blood Vivicanti pierces you: Once pierced, forever changed,
and usually for the better.

Our pierce feeds you with
pleasure. Many people we pierce have never truly known real
pleasure. They come away from the piercing experience different in
some way, maybe small, maybe great, maybe with a spring in the
step, maybe ending the winter of some discontent.

That was the case with me.
Red’s pierce changed me inwardly, the way Wyn’s had done on the
night I became what I am.

I had not gained any Blood
Memories. But experiencing that much pleasure – especially as I lay
dying – changed me the way no Blood Memories ever could.

Blood Memories change Blood
Vivicanti by a conversion of the mind. Being pierced by a Blood
Vivicanti changes you by a conversion of the heart.

Wyn’s pierce had changed my
heart. And my heart changed the way I thought about myself. And the
euphoria of his venom made me want to be a better person, a more
confident person, a girl who truly loved her
self
, perhaps for the first time in
my life.

And my changed heart
changed my mind. And I wanted what he wanted for me – my safety.
Yet I did not want this for my sake alone, but for the sake of the
one who loved me, Red.

So I would do it, I
decided, in my heart and in my mind. I would change my
self
for him. But I would
do it for me too.

I left the safety of the
Locomotive Dead-yards. Red went with me. I was beginning to like
his company and I was glad that he was by my side. He was a good
helper and friend.

Together we flew in his
Kharetie spaceship to New Orleans.

It was the season of Mardi
Gras. The streets were thronged with parades and beads and Bacchic
festivities.

Strangely, I felt right at
home.

Red parked his spacecraft
in a warehouse packed with parade floats. It blended in
perfectly.

So did he. We walked up and
down the crowded streets of the French Quarter. People put thick
beads around his neck and kissed his cheeks because they thought
his costume was the best they’d ever seen.

I’d never seen him look so
nervous. His red cheeks blushed a deeper shade of
purple.

Only his reserve stuck out
like a sore thumb.

We spent a few days looking
for the right set of people whose blood I should drink and whose
Blood Memories I should eat.

We squatted in empty
mansions and shot gun houses. And one desperate night we slept in
one of the haunted crypts in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1.

Incidentally, a ghost woke
me up that night. She was carrying a ghostly lantern and looking
for her lost lover.

I told her to try the next
sepulcher over, the one with the stone cherubs over the
mantle.

The ghostly woman nodded
and thanked me in a wispy voice. Then she left us alone for the
rest of the night.

But she had scared Red half
out of his wits. He didn’t like the strange ways of human ghosts.
And he couldn’t get back to sleep. He was fearful that she would
return any moment to shine the ghostly light of her lantern in his
face.

I held him all night. I
stroked his bald head. My fingernails caressed his red skin. I
hummed a human lullaby.

He was so big. I was so
tiny.

It was nice to hold in my
arm such a reversal of power.

It was nice to hold him
too.

It took a few days and
nights, but soon we made a list of everyone from whom I should
drink.

The first person on the
list was my personal choice. It was an old homeless man whom I’d
seen several times.

Red did not like this
choice at all. He had learned through his own Blood Memories that
shaking his head was a great way to say, No! without saying a
word.

He was shaking his head a
lot.

But the old homeless man
impressed me, in the same way that Theo’s old man had impressed
him, all those months ago – it seemed like centuries by then. Theo
had drunk that old man’s blood because he had wanted to drink the
blood of someone who might not have been skilled in life, yet was
skilled with living.

My old homeless man was
like that. He had never been a drunk since he never drank. He
begged for money all day and all night, but he used only a little
bit of it for himself. He took most of his earnings from begging to
a small church that was in disrepair, a church begging for money to
fix a hole in the roof, and he put it in the collection box. He did
this every day, several times a day too, lest some cowardly thief
try to steal that money from him. My beggar was helping other
beggars.

I loved him for
that!

It actually happened on the
day I decided to drink his blood. A thief tried to take his money.
But I got there right in the nick of time.

Red was following me
reluctantly, his arms crossed, his head still shaking, No! in
disagreement.

I caught the thief right as
he drew out his knife. I lifted him off the ground and threw him
over the nearest roof.

My old homeless man looked
at me the same way he had looked at the thief – with a kind smile
and a twinkle in his eye. Most people would have been
terrified.

“
You’re an angel,” he said
to me in an old man’s gravelly tone.

“
Maybe I’m a devil,” I
said.

“
Devils are angels,” he
said.

“
I need something from you,”
I said.

“
Will it hurt?” he
asked.

“
For a second,” I said, “and
then there will be happiness.”

“
Okay,” he said. “Take what
you need from me.”

I told him to close his
eyes. He did.

I went around behind him.
My Probiscus extended from the tip of my tongue. The shadows in my
mind would not let me forget the horror of drinking Nell’s black
blood. But the determination of my mind to destroy Lowen the Dark
Man scattered the terror of those shadows.

“
For Theo,” I said as I saw
the sweet spot on the back of the old man’s neck. But then, almost
as an afterthought, I added, “And for me too.”

I pierced the old man’s
neck and drank his blood and ate his Blood Memories.

He said, “Oh!” and then he
went limp in my arms.

No one else had ever done
that before. They usually stumbled way with a euphoric smile on
their face, remembering nothing from my pierce, except for a foggy
sense of pure pleasure.

The Blood Memories of my
old homeless man filled me. I saw the world through his eyes and I
realized that the pint that I had swallowed down was the last pint
his heart had pumped. It stopped beating the instant the tip of my
tongue slipped out from his neck.

My old homeless man died in
my arms with a contended smile on his face, but I don’t think it
was from my venom. I hadn’t released it.

For a moment I was tempted
to believe that I had killed him.

But I knew that that was
not true. The early surging of his Blood Memories told me so. His
heart simply gave out. It was just his time. It was as if it was
meant to be. Call it fate. Call it a Divine Plan. Yet I cannot
allow myself to believe that my pierce and his death were some sort
of happy accident.

Serendipity exists only
when an accident does not hurt. Otherwise it would be called a
tragedy.

The old man’s Blood
Memories went to work in me.

He had been homeless by
choice. He had no fear of death, no fear of the future, no fear at
all. He took life one day at a time, and when that was too much, he
took it one minute at a time because sometimes a whole day can be
lived in sixty fleeting seconds.

I knew that I had made the
right choice.

The old man’s Blood
Memories would be the fire that tempered all the others I would
soon swallow down and digest in my photographic memory.

I admit: I had gotten my
appetite back for blood.

It really only takes a pint
or two.

Red and I then went down
the list that we had made. It was filled with fighters and
thinkers.

Red approved it. He stopped
shaking his head.

I drank the blood of
seventeen martial artists, each skilled in a different style. There
was Kung Fu and T’ai chi and Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and Nguni Stick
Fighting and West African bare-knuckle boxing, and let’s not forget
that wonderful Canadian martial art, Defendo.

I also drank the blood of
three chess grand masters.

All those Blood Memories
were teeming within me like a perfect storm.

And I was the perfect
storm.

I was ready for a
fight.

My plan was to go to
Lowen’s Black Building and rescue Wyn.

Red disapproved of this. He
shook his head again. He wanted the war to take place at the
Locomotive Deadyards. The Black Building was Lowen’s territory. We
needed him on ours.

Red and I were arguing
through gestures so much that we had to pierce one another again.
But this time we came together by mutual choice.

Our coming together
happened so violently that it might have seemed like anger. Only it
wasn’t. We were simply releasing some pent-up
frustration.

He was gentler with me this
time, partly because our piercing was my suggestion, and partly
because my new Blood Memories had made me the world’s most lethal
fighting machine.

I could have kicked his red
tuchas from here to Timbuktu…wherever that is.

Red and I craned our necks
for the other. We pierced one another’s sweet spot with the tip of
our tongue. We drank one another’s blood. We communicated through
our Blood Memories all of our hopes and dreams and fears and
worries. This sharing was more intimate than the first two because
it was a shared dialogue.

Willingly I participated.
Openly I shared my
self
.

This time I enjoyed
piercing him. And he enjoyed piercing me too.

We enjoyed each
other.

He and I came to a
compromise. I would slip into the Black Building, but then I would
lead Lowen, his Devicanti, and his Sleeper Devils back to the
Locomotive Deadyards.

Red learned also that
nodding his head meant,
Yes
, in so many words. Slowly he
nodded, bringing his tongue from my neck.