Hotter Blood: More Tales of Erotic Horror

CONFESSION Kurt Busiek

My name is Roger," I lied. "And I'm an alcoholic."

They say confession is good for the soul, but it's never done much for me. I was in a basement room a few blocks off Union Square. There were about thirty other people in the room, sitting around card tables on folding chairs, smoking, sipping coffee and listening to me. One or two of them were newcomers, checking out a meeting for the first time. The rest were familiar to me, faces I'd seen at other meetings. Smoke hung thick in the room, like nobody had ever heard of the Surgeon General's report. Pretty typical for an AA meeting.

I went through the rest of it, how both my parents were alcoholics, how coming home and finding one or both of them passed out in the living room revolted me so much I knew it'd never happen to me. But it did. I was establishing a career as a securities broker when I started winding down from the day with a beer or two. Then it was screwdrivers, then scotch, and by the time I got fired I could knock off a bottle of tequila while alone, watching TV. After that, of course, I needed the booze to cope with how those assholes had treated me. It wasn't until I woke up in Hoboken, bleeding on somebody's BMW, and couldn't remember how I'd gotten there that I faced up to the fact I was in trouble. It was a stirring story. I'd told it so many times I almost believed it myself.

There was a girl at a nearby table. I'd seen her before, even spoken to her once or twice. Wendy something. Maybe Cindy. She watched me closely, and when I looked over, she smiled. There was warmth in her eyes and her pulse went up slightly, her steady strong heartbeat pumping the blood through her veins a little faster. I smiled back. I shouldn't have — she'd take it as an invitation — but she looked like Kate, with that silky red hair, an expressive mouth and a sharp little chin.

I swear, I deserve all the shit I get.

After I finished my qualification, there was a round of applause and some guy started a collection to help pay for the room and the coffee and all. I drew myself a black coffee from one of the urns in the corner and drifted over to join the only all-male conversation in the room.

Mike was talking about a murder, listing detail after detail of knife wounds, finger marks, torn clothing. It was the same conversation as always, just a new installment. Some nights it was baseball, some nights politics, once in a while the deplorable state of Broadway. But it always boiled down to the same thing — how bad New York had gotten. They'd chew over the latest news, trade the latest stories, compare failures, atrocities, outrage. Then Lou would shake his head slowly and the others would join in. Not like that when they came to the city, no sir. Tonight's tidbit was a dead woman found on a tenement roof. Lou took it as a sign nobody cared about people anymore. Fred disagreed. Contract killings, he said. They made it look like a crazy, killed ten or twelve to hide the real motive and got off scot free. Mike didn't think that was how hired killers worked, but he wasn't making much headway against Lou. I just listened. The ritual of it was oddly comforting.

Sure enough, she came over. "Some of us are going over to LB's for coffee and sandwiches afterward. You want to come along?" Her pulse was really going now, and blood filled her face, coloring her cheeks and filling out her lips, making them deeper, heavier, inviting. What was I supposed to do? Women at AA meetings aren't generally overflowing with self-esteem to start with, and it obviously took a lot for Wendy (or Cindy) to do this.

"Look, I'd love to," I said, "but I've got to meet this guy." I smiled in a you-know-how-it-is way.

It didn't work. She opened her mouth to say something and I knew what was coming. A "Half an hour won't kill anyone" or a "We'll be there late; you can stop by after," something along those lines. I locked on her eyes and thought, Go away. Just go away. "Maybe next time," I said aloud.

She closed her mouth. Looked around in transient confusion and absently turned, not seeing me anymore. I watched the way her hips rolled, making her wool skirt twitch as she headed back to her friends. She even dressed like Kate. I wanted to call after her, to change my mind, but I knew better.

Oh well. There were other meetings I could go to for a while. I put my Styrofoam cup down and headed for the door before she remembered me.

Outside, the air was cold and crisp, and the night sky was bright, the city glare that generally shrouds Manhattan thin enough to let a couple of stars through. Nights like that make New York seem small and cruddy, no more than a crusty infection on the side of a diseased planet, and all its inhabitants inconsequential and irrelevant. I didn't need that; I needed to feel human, plugged-in, like life was crucial and death was a horror, like moral choices had weight and power. I went up to 16th Street, walked into Shay's and ordered bourbon, straight up.

I knocked it back, ordered another.

The anonymous hubbub calmed me down a little. I realized I was breathing heavily and slowed it down, settling back on the barstool and looking around. There was the usual crush of evening revelers: couples, knots of workplace buddies and solo cruisers looking for action, mixing and mingling in their urgent quest for camaraderie, comfort, sex or oblivion. One of them, about ten feet down the bar, was staring at me.

She was a cowgirl type, lanky and lean with streaked blond hair, a wide-brimmed leather hat, a fetching overbite and long, long muscular legs that promised action, energy and staying power. The legs were sheathed in skin-tight denim, and when she saw she'd caught my eye she flexed them, arched a little and pursed her lips at me in an insolent smile. Her heart beat like a racehorse's, sluicing the blood around her body with more gusto than your average beer commercial. My teeth hurt and I wanted to test my strength against hers and see who collapsed first.

I shot her a c'mon-aren't-you-too-old-for-this-shit look and turned back to my drink.

The bartender, Rachel, was right in front of me, offering to top up my glass. Shit, I thought, I must really be on tonight. I knew Rachel from a few other nights at Shay's, and she struck me as the tough, no-nonsense type. I thought she was immune. But her pulse was up, her breathing shallow, and she looked at me without quite focusing. She leaned forward, crossing her arms under her breasts, lifting them and pushing them together, emphasizing her cleavage. Her chin was up, exposing the long line of her neck and the vulnerability of her throat. She was talking about how dangerous the streets were — especially late at night. It made her nervous, or so she claimed, walking home alone.

I said something I forgot as soon as the words left my mouth and looked past her at the mirror behind the bar. When people in a bar don't know what to do, they look at their reflection in the mirror. Out of long habit, I do the same, despite the fact there's no reflection to see.

I took Rachel up on that refill. I needed it. But don't get me wrong, I'm not an alcoholic. Alcohol has no effect on me — it just gives me something to do while I'm out, something to concentrate on other than blood and the thirst. Sometimes it's harder than others, like now. Shay's had been the wrong place to go to forget about Wendy.

There was another vampire in the place, at least one. I didn't know where exactly, but he was there. I could feel it. It's like sharks — one vampire alone is usually okay, but if others are nearby, each one's thirst will affect them all, increasing the buzz of the blood around them and their need for it, like an addiction that makes it hard to think about anything but your next drink, your next fix. Vampires tend to avoid each other — alone, they can be clever and canny, but together they get blood-crazed and stupid and sloppy.

I was starting to get it bad — there was a crimson haze over everything, and the murmur I heard wasn't the crowd but their pulses, throbbing loudly enough to overwhelm ordinary sound, the sweet call of the blood tugging at me, making my throat dry and hot and my hands and feet cold.

"Look," Rachel said, low and husky. She brushed my hand — hers was warm, very warm. "There's something I've been wanting to tell you."

"Not tonight, huh, Rache," I said, running my knuckles across her arm. "I'm just not in the mood for confessions right now."

She jerked back as if struck, and the blood rushed to her face — this time in embarrassment rather than arousal. Tight-lipped, she fled for the other end of the bar. I put a twenty by my glass and left. If I was starting to think about confessions again, it was going to be one of the bad nights.

I left the blood-haze behind in Shay's, but couldn't just shuck off the state it had left me in. I was aroused and jangly, a hot ache in my throat and a dull throbbing pain at the back of my teeth. I needed blood, but that wasn't the problem — I had six jars of plasma in the fridge. What I felt went beyond thirst.

The blood of the living is a constant temptation, but I've never surrendered. When I (What? Emerged? Arose? Awakened?) in a Dumpster off Bleecker five years ago and felt my humanity sloughing off like a childhood memory, I swore I'd never forget, never succumb to this perverse state, as if by force of will I could keep at least a shred of what it felt like to be alive. A modern vampire, that's me. Sensitive. No mess, no fuss. Well-behaved. The AA meetings help a lot, the feeling that I'm not alone, that others have a constant craving and can control it. One day at a time, like the Big Book says — that's how I do it. There are troublesome nights, sure, but I just stay home with my plasma and read some Austen, some Eliot, something that affirms the innate dignity of man, and I get through. No, the thirst isn't the real curse. Not by a long shot.

A couple of girls passed me in Village uniform — black skintights, black leather and crucifix earrings. The crucifixes hit hard. The pain didn't bother me — I deserve it when I'm like this. It was the thought of the needle spearing through their lobes, the momentary pain, the small welling of blood that followed. They were too absorbed in their conversation to see me, and for that I was grateful. After they passed, however, I could still sense them, a twin nimbus of heat and life pulsing with energy and release. I wanted to turn back, to go after them. I forced myself to walk onward.

I was seven blocks away from my apartment building and the streets were busy, a small knot of people at every intersection, waiting to cross. Most nights I can handle it — a breast nudging my arm as a woman squeezes by here, a thigh brushing mine there, the momentary flash of eyes and lips and throat and flesh — but tonight I couldn't shut it out, the pulses hammering at me in syncopation, buffeting me from heartbeat to heartbeat. The blood-haze returned, and the sense of the passersby lingered after them, mingling in an undertow of desire that threatened to sweep me off my feet and pull me along. I hunched deeper into my jacket, warding it off, concentrating on my feet, on each individual step.

Up ahead a couple of women in wool overcoats stood behind a rickety card table, hawking animal-rights literature and begging signatures. They frowned at me as I approached, and I welcomed the distraction of their scorn. My jacket always attracts their attention. It's an ostrich-hide flight jacket, imported from South Africa, and it reeks of political incorrectness. I'm not insensitive to their message — but it eases something in me to be near something dead, particularly something that died in pain. Whenever I hear about a company being boycotted, I write for catalogs. I have a fabulous collection of objectionable shoes, belts, cuff links and tie tacks, and I often wish raccoon coats hadn't gone out of style for men. I'm not proud of it, but if it keeps me from feasting on the living, it's worthwhile.

As I approached, the frowns disappeared and the younger, more vulnerable of the women smiled tentatively at me. I suppressed the urge to backhand her into the wall (though the image of the rough concrete tearing a gash in her scalp and the blood mixing with her lustrous auburn hair flashed into my mind and took a long time to fade). Even if I can't see my reflection any longer, I know what I look like. I'm nothing special, never was. I never made women melt, never was particularly desirable. My love life was unenviable at best — oh, I had relationships, but they were never easy, never solid — and I'm no different now than I was then. Except, of course, that I'm a vampire — and vampires draw women like dog shit draws flies. And what a piece of self-knowledge that is — I'm sexually irresistible to women because I've been damned to hell. It's not even like they want me because I'm rich or famous. That I could deal with — at least that might be something I earned. But this — these deeply felt, seductive smiles on the faces of women who would have had nothing to do with me in life — it isn't me they're smiling at at all, it's the curse. It's insulting to me, degrading to them and it never, never ends.

I reached my building, but it no longer seemed to be a construction of stone, wood and masonry, glass and mortar. Instead, it was a living thing, pulsing with pockets of life, each individual blood-signature intimately familiar to me, the smell and rhythm of them, nightly visitors, old temptations. The crimson glow behind that window was Mrs. Wintour, behind that one Anna Berkowitz and her niece Brenda. My inflamed senses faultlessly registered who was home and who was out, longtime tenant or relative newcomer. They also told me I had a visitor.

She waited by my door, clutching her coat around her in the chilly hallway. Her pulse was sluggish, but she saw me and it jolted to life, her eyes lighting up and her skin taking on a rosier tone.

The ache in my teeth was like a knife. "Kate, you should be at home. You shouldn't be here. You should be with Tim, asleep."

"I couldn't stay away." She looked away, then back, defiance in her eyes. She set her lips in a determined line and I knew what was coming. She'd done it before.

"Kate, no — " But she opened the coat. She was naked underneath, as I knew she would be. Her body gleamed in the dim light, but it wasn't just her body I saw. I could see the blood racing up and down under her skin and my hands ached to trace it. It collected, taunting me, in the hollows of her pelvis, in her nipples, her lips. Heat poured from her and I knew I couldn't resist. My good intentions vanished, my need exploding in a crimson fog behind my eyes.

She must have seen it, because as I took a half-step forward, she gave a little cry and leapt, her arms wrapping around my neck, her body flattening against mine. I buried my face in her throat, the powerful flow of her jugular enfolding me, begging for the release of my teeth. I held back, instead tasting her with lips and tongue, the salt tang of her sweat and the musk of her perfume filling my senses, masking momentarily the siren call of her blood.

She bit my ear and pulled back. "Well," she said throatily, looking into my eyes, "aren't you going to invite me in?"

Once inside, she shucked the coat and headed for the bedroom. I thought of the cold, bitter taste of the plasma in the refrigerator, of my sturdy, lockable closet, lined with furs and leathers (I didn't have a coffin, was never interred; it'd be no more than a box to me), of Mansfield Park or yoga breathing or self-hypnosis or just plain teeth-gritting waiting, waiting for dawn, and made one last attempt to extricate myself.

"How can you, Kate? How can you demean yourself? You're educated, an adult — a lawyer! You have a life, a husband who loves you, kids, for God's sake!" The holy name ripped through my larynx like broken glass, but I needed the pain, needed anything to help me break free. "If self-respect won't stop you, then what about them?"

"Oh, fuck 'em," she answered, a savage glint in her eye. "I don't care about anything but you. And you want me too — you know it!"

It was true. I'd met her in college, when she was already going with Tim. I was attracted to her, and she was flattered but didn't feel anything for me — not when I was alive. We'd become friends, the three of us, and I'd settled for that. My mistake was thinking I could still hang around after my death — that my vampirism wouldn't matter. By the time I realized what I was doing to her, to them, it was too late. Horrified, I cut off all contact, but it didn't do any good. We'd been too close for too long, and now, when my need got too strong, she felt it as much as I did. I moved three times before I realized she wasn't finding me through an address book. She was following my need.

One of the things I do to control the need, to beat it down and shut it away, is to tell myself as brutally as possible that these women don't want me, wouldn't be interested for a second if I was alive — and that, if not for the curse, I wouldn't want them either. I avoided old lovers, long-ago crushes, anyone I felt anything for before, and for the most part it worked. But not with her. She was a real person to me, someone I not only wanted but also maybe even loved.

She pulled me down on the bed. I didn't resist. Her lips found mine and her tongue slipped into my mouth. There was a trace of blood, left over from a bitten tongue or lip, and the taste was sweet, overpowering. I caressed her back, her hips, her breasts. Her skin tingled beneath my hands as I traced veins, arteries, the delicate fuzz of capillaries tiny fractions of an inch away from my fingertips. I could feel a power building up within me and shuddered.

Her hands fumbled with the buttons of my shirt, pulling it open, over my shoulders. She began to kiss my chest and I twisted around on the bed so I could reach her as well, kissing the underside of her breast and working my way downward, scraping the skin of her abdomen delicately with my teeth, scratching but not breaking it, still holding back. I felt her hands and lips work lower as well, pausing at my nipples and then my navel. Then her fingers were groping at my belt as my lips nibbled at her inner thigh.

I felt light-headed and weak. She was becoming transparent to me, her skin dissolving, her bones no more than a ghostly image. All I saw was the delicate tracery of her circulatory system, branching and twining like some exotic flora, the oxygen-rich blood slamming through the fragile vessels of her body with every heartbeat. Her jugular was too far away, but it didn't matter. Her femoral artery would do — less than an inch away from my teeth, swollen with pleasure and life and release. My lips parted.

She slid my zipper down and reached for me, finding me, as always, limp, flaccid, unresponsive. She stiffened, her heat suddenly tainted with confusion.

She pulled away to look at me, and the uncertainty in her face triggered a surge of rage in me, the power I'd felt earlier turned dark and ugly.

"What's wrong?" she asked. "Don't I —»

I lashed out, grabbed her by the throat, and stood, lifting her. Her body dangled weightless from my hand, and her pulse throbbed under my thumb, throbbed like my teeth, my throat. "Oh yes — yes you do." She twitched, trying to free herself, her legs kicking out gracefully. Her hands came up to pull at mine. It felt like the flutter of a bird's wing.

I put her against the wall. I thought I was gentle, but the wall shuddered when she hit, and she winced in pain. "Be still. Do you know? Do you know what it is I want?" She looked back at me, her head cocked to the side, her eyes meeting mine aslant. There was worry in her eyes, but it was clouded with desire. I had to find a way to get through it — I had to make her see my ugliness, my depravity. "I want to rip your throat out! To tear your flesh with my teeth and nails and drink your blood! To have it smeared on me like paint, to sink my hands into it, to bathe in it until it grows cold!" She licked her lips. "I want to kill you! That's what does it for me. That's the only thing that does it for me. Do you understand?"

She nodded, slowly. But there was no resistance in her. The worry slipped away. Deliberately, carefully, she lifted her chin, exposing her throat to me as best she could.

I would do it. This time, finally, I would.

"No!" I shouted the word, flinging her to the bed. I am not an animal. I would not give in.

I dropped to my knees, leaning on the edge of the bed and running my fingers along the edge of her jaw. So warm. There would be a bruise on her neck soon. I could see crushed capillaries oozing below the surface of her skin. "I don't like this, Kate. The fear, the pain. I'll do something bad, I know it. I've been strong, but I can't be strong forever. Somebody has to do something — don't you see?"

I cupped her face in my hands, stretching out toward her, begging for understanding. "I'm vulnerable during the day. I can be stopped. I can be killed. It would be easy. No risk, no danger.

"All you'd have to do would be to open the drapes. I took the apartment because it gets a lot of sun. Or would — I've never checked it out." I laughed, a sharp, bitter bark. "The forecast's good for tomorrow. It's good all weekend."

The heat still smoldered in her eyes, and I could see she was still caught up in it, still welcoming death. She could hear me, but my words didn't penetrate. "Please, Kate. You're my friend. I need your help."

I slumped to the floor by the bed, looking away from her, at the wall. There was only one way. "I hurt somebody, Kate. I don't remember much about it. Her skin was so soft — her heart beat so fast. I wanted to bite her, to tear at her throat, but I didn't — I didn't. I promised myself I'd never do that." I took a breath. "But I remember hurting her, hurting her badly. She needed help, I think, but there was no one else around. All I could do was leave — stop hurting her — and hope that was enough.

"I'm scared, Kate," I whispered. "Scared of what I might do."

Finally. The heat left her face and she shivered, naked in a cold apartment. Fear flickered through her eyes. Death in passion was one thing. Pain, disfigurement — that was something else.

I reached out to comfort her, but she pulled away. "Oh, Kate. Don't think that way — I'd never hurt you. I could never do that." I was smiling. It was going to work.

"Why — why are you telling me this?" When her eyes darted toward the doorway, I reached out without thinking and clutched her arm. It was right then my mood collapsed. Right then I realized it wasn't going to work after all.

"I've told you four times before," I said dully. One of these times, one of these nights, I'd have the strength to let her remember, and there'd be an end to it. And it'll be over. When I let her remember.

One of these times. I looked at her, and she forgot.

While she dressed, I threw on a clean shirt and headed to the kitchen. I opened the refrigerator door and looked at the plasma. It looked like homemade soup in its jars. Warm, thick soup, a reminder of homey days and good times. I wouldn't be needing it tonight. I heard her close the door after her, and I opened the utensil drawer, pulling out a carving knife. Oneida steel. Long, sharp, with a guaranteed stainless blade.

They say confession is good for the soul, but it doesn't do a thing for me. Maybe it soothes my soul somehow, prematurely damned to hell and writhing in flame and agony for eternity, but up here it doesn't do shit.

I slipped the knife into my jacket, absently grabbed an empty jar from the shelf, and headed out. It was still a long time until dawn. There were still people out. Hell, maybe Wendy was still at LB's. Couldn't hurt to drop by.