Outsider (19 page)

"Maybe you need convincing?" Stacee beamed a
warm smile at the freelance reporter whose cheeks' blood flow
suddenly increased.

Probably an excellent timing for Terry Harley
to start heckling the audience. Joy had regrets that no one had
mentioned any vampire organisations or websites, but no regrets
about the omission of Dracula. After all, he –and his author– had
never experience femalehood first hand. Sid had regrets that no one
had given her the opportunity to claim belief in the existence of
the immortal blood drinkers. After all, she knew something they
didn't!

Soon, Second Look were rocking their audience
and Sid was dancing, under the vampire's watchful eye. Joy could
see how the ex-performer was feeding. A brief eye contact was
enough to gain extra energy. Enough for Sid, and barely noticeable
to the victims.

After twelve years around the world, Toni
felt a certain pleasure at seeing that London was still ripe with
music, alive and pumping, rocking and breaking, beating with hungry
hearts. Even if still reeling with the recent spree of a serial
killer. Nonetheless, she felt very tired and very feverish; she
felt the need for an unrestrained feed. Camden was alight with
laughing people and awash with the tantalizing scent of blood. The
sky was the lighter shade of blue she could handle. She felt
hungry. The beating of hearts was almost deafening to her
senses.

A passer-by caught Toni's attention. She
walked hurriedly, almost stumbling. A light whiff of fear tickled
the vampire's nostrils. She looked almost as young as Toni. The
vampire's feet automatically started moving, matching the step of
the prey. Beneath the gothic looks (hair dyed black, black
eyeliner, skin afraid of bright sunlight, long black velvety coat,
bulky silver rings on almost every finger), the unknown quarry had
features reminiscing of Dee-Dee. Her eyes were of the same grey
behind the unruly hair.

Dee-Dee was the reason bringing Toni back to
London. She had followed her to Berlin, Venice, Istanbul, Beirut,
Karachi, Calcutta, Bangkok, Jakarta, Manila, Nagasaki, Honolulu,
Mexico City, San Francisco, Vancouver, Toronto, New York, Dublin,
and back to London, where once upon a time Toni had made Dee-Dee
into a vampire.

Dee-Dee was in London, Toni was sure of that.
How many times had she missed the angry fledgling? Sometimes only
by a day, sometimes barely spotting her confident stride at the end
of a street, just before dawn. She hoped that this time, she would
see her and they would talk, and Dee-Dee would understand.

But right now, Toni needed to feed.

* * * * * * *

Jade hurried through the busy crossroad,
leaving a Building Society on her left, the Last Inn on her right,
without checking out the gig list for the Everlasting (she had seen
the Ghost of Lemora playing there a few months ago and the Theatre
Des Vampires only a few weeks ago). She passed a few shops, one
selling Doc Martin boots, and almost tripped in her knee-high New
Rock boots. She was late, and her girlfriend was very certainly
angry. Fifteen minutes. More traffic than usual had delayed her bus
already moving at the speed of a snail.

At last, she reached her destination. The
portrait of a spiderlike woman was gracing the wall next to the
entrance of the Black Behemoth, a pub with a rather alternative
clientele. She walked in and an Inkubus Sukkubus track hit her
ears.
"Can't get you out of my head."
She was glad to see
the evening was still quiet, and scanned the drinking and chatting
pale goths and cheerful punks. She recognized a few regulars and
felt relief at the sight of Janeane and her Cruella-Devil hairdo
behind the bar. She walked to the end of the pub, stared at the
savaged female cyborg guarding a corner of the stage, but didn't
spot her dreaded girlfriend anywhere. She sighed, almost with
relief. The cyborg stared back, undisturbed.

* * * * * * * *

Toni stepped in and took in the decoration.
Some bat tinsels forgotten after Hallowe'en were still dangling
from the ceiling wallpapered with band-promo posters. A sleeping
bat, made out of rubber, was hanging by its feet behind the bar,
next to a couple of grinning skeletons. Here and there along the
walls, skulls were laughing at everyone. Toni smiled lightly at the
colourful mohicans and the black dye darkening much hair across the
pub. She was not the only one favouring a black, dust-dragging
leather coat. Her prey had eventually slowed down after staring all
around, and was now getting a red drink from a barman whose velvety
outfit would have been perfect to get him a butler job with
Dracula.

Toni was quickly served, too. Her barmaid was
not of the smiling kind. She had stars tattooed on each temple and
on the sides of her neck. To Toni, she looked like a beautiful
skunk.

Jade had sat at an empty table and got a
dog-eared paperback out of her black, velvety shoulder bag. Two men
dressed in standard black clothes and leery smiles approached her
table, ready to inquire about the vacancy of the two other chairs,
but before they got beyond opening their mouths, Toni was standing
next to them with a look in her eyes dark clouds would have been
jealous of. They quickly steered away, while Toni claimed her new
territory. The young goth hadn't had a chance to notice. She was
heavily absorbed in ‘Memnoch the Devil’, a novel by Anne Rice, a
classic that most vampires had checked out.

A sudden, sharp noise made Jade jump back to
reality. In a flurry of panic she started fumbling with the
contents of her bag while the sound of sharpening blades kept on
ringing, louder and louder. At last, she found her mobile phone and
answered its call with a worried tone:

"Where are you?"

Toni's acute hearing had no problem catching
the reply: "I can't make it tonight. Have you been waiting
long?"

"What's happening?"

"Oh, nothing. Everything's fine. Just more
work than I expected." A silence.
What a feeble excuse
, Toni
thought, sensing lies in these few words. "I'll catch up with you
tomorrow. I'll ring you, ok? You take care."

Before Jade could add a word or even sigh,
her girlfriend had abruptly ended the communication. Sadness spread
across her face. She did not know how to feel: disappointed to be
let down at the last minute, or relieved that she had not to face
her girlfriend's anger for her lateness. It was only then that she
noticed the young woman sharing her table. She was not reading or
staring at anything especially. She seemed to be lost in another
world, in between long sips of her pint of snakebite.
Another
one into lager and blackcurrant.
Jade thought she looked very
young and so innocent, and went back to her book and her own drink,
without much enthusiasm. She'd probably finish her drink and leave.
The DJ had just selected a jokey Bow Wow Wow number.

* * * * * * *

When Jade found herself with less than two
inches left to drink in her pint glass, the voice of the Smiths
started to claim: "
I am the sun, I am the air
" and a
stranger's voice offered: "May I buy you a drink?"

Jade looked up and into the green eyes and
friendly smile of the attractive woman with very white teeth, who
looked as skinny as a scarecrow. She hesitated. What would her
girlfriend think? But her girlfriend was elsewhere, busy working,
or so she had said, and she didn't need to know. After all, it was
just one drink.

"Yes, that would be nice."

"Snakebite, is it?"

"Yes, thanks!"

By the time Toni got back to their table, the
crowd having thickened, but no one having tried to interfere with
Toni and Jade's building intimacy, the satanic Cradle of Filth had
taken the soundtrack over. Jade had shed her velvet and Toni could
see scars, some already white, some still red, creeping out of the
three-quarter sleeves of a hugging, black T-shirt.
An abusive
girlfriend and self-harming? I will take you away from your
misery.
Toni rested the two pints on the wooden table and next
dropped her leather.

Soon, they were entranced in an animated
conversation, with very little help from Toni's hypnotic power.
Jade was easily talking about herself, Toni's looks of innocence
making her look even more trustworthy. Alcohol aiding and abetting,
Jade was getting increasingly personal in her details.

"Maybe she isn't working late tonight," she
said suddenly.

"Your girlfriend?"

"Maybe she is with someone else."

"I think your girlfriend doesn’t deserve
you."

Jade looked at Toni with surprise and
eventually, her speech slightly slurred she queried: "What do you
mean?"

"From what you told me, your girlfriend is
not such a nice person. You're sweet. You deserve a woman who
really cares."

Jade lost herself in Toni's eyes for a minute
before looking away. After a long silence, with sadness in her
eyes, she articulated: "I think I've drunk too much. I should go
home." She stood up clumsily and dropped her book on the floor when
she turned around to reclaim the velvet from the back of her chair.
Toni picked it up: "I've got it!"

"I'm so sorry! I'm so clumsy! I should have
left ages ago!"

"It's ok," Toni grabbed Jade's right hand to
stench the flow of panic. "It is really ok." She smiled a gentle
smile that stopped Jade's features in mid-expression, and went on.
"I think I should take you home. It's my fault if you got so drunk.
Come on. I'll get us a cab." She grabbed her coat while her prey
obediently gathered her things.

* * * * * * *

Jade's lips tasted soft when Toni kissed them
after closing the door of the goth's room.

The vampire gently undressed the young woman,
who was too surprised to act otherwise. She accepted the hands
caressing her body while pulling up her T-shirt and zipping down
the long skirt. She accepted the mouth gently kissing her legs when
Toni took the boots off her feet.

As gently, the scarecrow laid her down on the
bed and quickly proceeded to free her own body with the now
unnecessary clothing. Jade looked at the pale body, the small
breasts, the slender legs, amazed to find herself in the company of
such a beautiful woman. About to make love with such a beautiful
woman.

* * * * * * *

Her girlfriend was never as gentle, making
sex a quick affair where Jade's pleasure was of little
consequence.

* * * * * * *

Toni was the tenderness incarnated, never
biting, but gently nibbling Jade's nipples, never scratching, but
her hands like fluttering butterflies. Jade sighed. Eagerly
drinking kisses from Toni's mouth, she was discovering that love
could feel good and even wonderful.

When Toni's fingertips came in contact with
her clitoris, Jade almost tensed, she was used to get two or three
of her girlfriend's fingers in her vagina, pumping hard, fast and
painful. Toni's fingers were gentle and pleasuresome.

Jade relaxed and moaned, simply enjoying the
feel of Toni's mouth kissing every inch and every scar on her skin,
letting her body move with the rhythm of sensations. In Toni's
embrace, she was discovering pleasure, she was discovering freedom
of expression.

Jade moved her legs apart to let Toni kiss
her vulva. She felt the tongue licking and the mouth sucking, ever
so gentle, ever so pleasurable. She moaned, louder, and when she
reached orgasm, cried out.

They made love again and again throughout the
night, enjoying each other's body with a passion Jade had never
known. She relished in Toni's pleasure as much as in her own.

"you are so beautiful," she murmured into
Toni's ear.

"I promise you, my sweet one, you will never
suffer again."

Jade's grey eyes looked up into Toni's green
eyes in a new and long silence. Toni's mouth found Jade's for
another tender and deep kiss, then followed the throat, tongue
gently licking the skin. And at last, Toni's fangs came out and
into Jade's jugular.

Jade never felt pain while Toni drank her
life away.

(SID'S DIARY)

……. I thought vampires were supposed to be
cruel. But Joy……. Well, what do I really know. I don't watch her
hunting and feeding, I only sleep with her. Sure, she feeds on my
menstrual blood. But she is always so tender, she can be so
passionate, even loving. Is she like that with every prey? She was
certainly not feeling erotically inclined when Death gave her a man
to feed on instead of me! She was actually rather angry. She
probably killed countless times. After all, she is a predator (so
are
homo sapiens
).

……. But, what about the cruelty of the
vampire? Many books mix their cruelty with eroticism (I guess it
sells), and a humongous sense of loneliness that the passing of
centuries only increases. (Except maybe
Carpenter's Vampires
and the book that inspired it, and that, actually, were narrated
from the (male) slayer point of view. Can’t remember about the book
now, but the movie (and so did its first sequel) ended with a
romantic turn from the freshly turned) Is Lestat romantic? No,
purely selfish. A romantic veneer to hide the unbearable
cruelty.

……. I just watched an entertaining TV program
about animal bloodsuckers. The bite of most of these creatures is
painless (the horsefly is an exception). Most of them are likely to
be germ-free (but there is a list of exceptions including the tiger
mosquito –and other mosquitoes, of course-). Some of them live at
night: vampire bats (in Mexico only), fleas, bedbugs, body lice and
kissing bugs. Some live by day: mosquitoes, tics, (legendary)
leeches, deerflies, horseflies, lampreys and finches. Lampreys are
fish from the American Great Lakes (and salted waters); the finches
are birds from some Galapagos island. Like their human counterpart
(at least in literature, I could ask Joy about the "real thing"),
their saliva is anti-coagulant and they're mostly after the red
blood cells as it is a source of proteins. Proteins?! What about
vitamins and minerals???????