I STAYED ON THAT roof for three days eavesdropping on my onetime comrades. In the day, the sun would rise, bellowing across the sky, and I’d fall into a coma after a while. At night I roused and watched my friends as if they were prey.
On the fourth evening I chased a young man down an alley three blocks north of Central House. I yoked him in a doorway and bit into his shoulder. He whimpered and cried as I drank of the serum of his life. It felt uncomfortably sexual. I realized that unless it was necessary, I’d prefer the blood of women.
“What did you do to me?” His speech was slurred, but he was still afraid.
“Go,” I said in a deep voice that was alien to me.
He ran.
I’d forgotten about Central House by that time. For the rest of the night I prowled the streets, looking but not wanting, a danger but not a threat.
At dawn I returned to the Brooklyn warehouse where Julia had taken me. Two floors below the room she’d first taken me to was the tomblike chamber that would be home from then on. She’d left the key to the door in my pocket.
In the darkness, far below the street, I could hear the faraway singing of the sun. I felt safe in my vault- dangerous too.
THAT WAS THIRTY-THREE YEARS ago, October 1976. Since then I’ve inhabited the underground chamber that Julia somehow owned. The title had been signed over to me, and I lived there, sleeping in that bed or sitting on the straight-backed chair, going out now and again for a cupful of blood from some unwary pedestrian. Sometimes I’d bite them just enough to introduce the drug into their system, then use their money to let a hotel room where slowly, over the course of the evening, I would lick their necks and growl like a great wolf.
I have killed no one and discovered many things about my mutation.
One very important detail is that I heal very quickly.
I found this out one evening when a gang of young men decided to attack me and the woman I was feeding on in Prospect Park. There were eight of them, but I was at full strength and so fought them off after some effort. I realized later that I had been stabbed three times in the chest. Certainly my lung was pierced and possibly I’d sustained damage to my heart.
I considered going to the hospital, but something kept me from human company when I was wounded and so I went home to die.
For many days I lay on the floor of my chamber feeling the pain in my chest. But after a week or so I revived enough so that I could go out and feed. Now all that’s left of my fatal wounds are three whitish scars on my chest.
I don’t read books or go to movies, watch television or follow the news. The only human contact I’ve had up until quite recently has been primarily limited to the whispering euphoria of my victims. I’ve fed every few days or so and have lived on the sustenance of human blood and the soul seepage when they are under my sway. I can sit for days in my underground chamber savoring the soft murmurings of my victims. Their words about secret desires and unfulfilled dreams imbue me with the possibilities of a life that has been denied me. Sometimes I drift for hours in the secrets told me from swooning lips. I can see the images that they remember and feel the emotions they have hidden from everyone else.
For the first few years I only went after women because of the intimate nature of my bite. But as time has gone by I have also preyed upon some men. My taste for blood has been refined and I seek out certain flavors and scents. Some nights I go out and there is no one for me. And though I prefer young women, there are others who demand notice.
I have discovered other things about my nature. I am, for instance, allergic to the full moon. Those nights, if I am exposed to lunar regency, I develop a fever and a headache so powerful that I am blinded by its potency. If I go out in the full moon, I remain incapacitated for over a week.
This is how I found out another quirk in my physical characteristics. When the fever is upon me I am weak, so much so that most normal people can fend off my attack. And because the malady lasts for so long I am further weakened by the subsequent lack of sustenance. In this diminished state I am forced to seek out quarry that is likewise incapacitated.
After the first time I was weakened by the lunar allergy, I came upon an old woman confined to a wheelchair who had been left for a while by an unprofessional attendant. The attendant had gone down to the water not far from my crypt and was talking at a phone booth. While she was there I snuck up behind the old woman and bit.
Her dreams were fragmented and her blood thin, but it was all I could do. I hoped that she would not die from my attack. I find that since my transformation I have an instinctual reverence for life in all its myriad forms. Spiders and roaches, rats and human beings all have a right to life in my eyes. I drank half a dram of the old woman’s tasteless blood and hurried away to revive.
Four weeks later I saw the woman walking with a new nurse. She was healthy for a woman her age and chattering happily with the new helper. I realized then that my bite has certain curative properties. I remember smiling at my elderly prey as I walked past. She looked as if she recognized something about me, though that should have been impossible seeing that I’d attacked her from behind.
ANOTHER PART OF MY life has been the coronas, empty circles of light that are seemingly invisible to the human eye. They come in every color and have a variety of natures. Some are predatory, attacking and destroying others of their kind. Some are able to communicate with me. Not many approve of my being. I don’t know if it is that they don’t want to be seen or if they are repulsed by my urges and needs. Regardless-we exist on different planes and cannot touch or affect each other in any physical way.
The only corona I recognize is the yellow being that approached me while Julia was making me into Juvenal Nyx. It appears to me at times, imparting cryptic messages about knowledge and perception.
“You are on the path to knowing what should be secret,” it has said more than once-not in words but the meaning has crossed the void between us and settled on my mind.
I paid little attention to these messages until nine months ago.
I was down on Water Street watching the old woman who had been wheelchair bound before I bit her. By now she no longer had a nurse and was herself looking after what might have been a toddler grandchild.
I felt paternal toward the old woman and ancient in my bones. It was a summer evening and the sun was far enough behind the horizon that I didn’t have to worry about light-headedness.
“Come,” a voice in my head said.
I turned and saw the jagged yellow corona floating in the air behind me.
I stood to follow, but the strange piping voice then said, “Later.”
“Come later?” I asked the empty air.
The corona disappeared and I went back to my subterranean home to wait for it to reappear. I had eaten quite recently and so had no need to hunt.
Late that night the yellow light appeared in my chamber. It did not speak but led the way up and out of my home. It brought me to the pedestrian entrance of the Brooklyn Bridge and faded from sight.
I walked out on the pathway. It was late in the evening and unseasonably cool, so I was one of the few people out strolling. When I had just passed the first pylon of the bridge, I caught sight of a woman who had climbed out on a girder and was now about to jump.
My condition makes me quite agile and strong. I ran straight out across the girder and caught the woman by her wrist just as she was falling over the side. I pulled her up and held her around the waist in case she wanted to try again.
“This is not a good idea,” I said. My voice was dry and cracked, as I rarely spoke out loud.
“What’s wrong with your eyes?” she replied.
For some reason this made me smile.
“You were going to kill yourself,” I said.
“That’s not going to happen now,” she said, “obviously.” She looked back over the side a little wistfully. “You want to buy me some coffee?”
