Hotter Blood: More Tales of Erotic Horror

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