'How do I get them to submit?'
Scuroforno yawned. 'That's your problem. Rescuing you was hard work. Now you'll have to find your own way. You're cleverer and stronger than humans now. Did you notice your sinus infection is gone?'
'Nick, help.'
He did not look at her. 'It would be better if you left town now.'
'But you saved me.'
'You're my competitor now. Leave before the rage for blood takes you, before we go after the same prey.'
She held the hunger down inside her, remembering human emotions. 'It makes no difference that I love you?' And suddenly, she did love him.
'Tomorrow you'll know what hate is, too.'
On the way out, she noticed he had a new screen saver: red blood cells floating on black, swelling, bursting apart.
On the bus to Seattle, she wept. Yes, she had loved him, and she had learned what hate was, too. She played with a sewing needle, stabbed her fingers. Numb. But her feelings were not numb, not yet. Would that happen? Was Nick emotionally dead?
Would the physical numbness spread? If her body was immortal, why would she need nerves, pain, to warn of danger?
Maybe she would regret the bargain she had made.
The numbness did spread. Her fingers and hands were immune to pain. But she still felt thirst. The cancer metastasized into her tongue and nerves, wanted to be fed.
Her seat-mate was a Mormon missionary, separated from his partner because the bus was crowded. In Chicago, he asked her to change seats, so he could sit with his partner. But she refused. It didn't fit her plan.
She stroked his cheek, held the back of his neck in a vice grip, all the while smiling, cat-like. Scarcely feeling her own skin, but vividly feeling the nourishment under his. He tried to repel her, laughing uneasily, taking it for an erotic game. A forward, sluttish gentile woman. Then he was fighting, uselessly. He twisted her thumb back, childish self-defence. She felt no pain. Then he was weeping, softening, falling into a trance. She kissed his throat with her open mouth. Drank from him. Drank again and again. Had he fought, she could have broken his neck. She was completely changed.
In Seattle, the floor nurse in Paediatrics challenged her. Sniffing phenol and the sweet, sick urine that could never quite be cleaned up, Gretchen glanced at her reflection in a dead computer screen behind the nurse. She did look predatory now. Like a wax manikin, but also like a cougar. Powerful. Not like anybody's mother. Two other nurses drifted up, as if sensing trouble.
She showed the nurse her driver's licence. They almost believed her, then. Let her go down the hall, to room 409. But still the nurses' eyes followed her. She had changed.
She opened the door. The floor nurse drifted in behind her.
This balding, emaciated tyke, tangled in tubing, could not be her Ashley.
Ashley had changed, too. From a less benign cancer.
The nurse sniffed. 'I'm sorry. She's gone downhill a lot in the last few weeks.' The nurse clearly did not approve of noncustodial mothers. Maybe still did not believe this quiet, strong woman was the mother.
When Gretchen had been human, she would have been humiliated, would have tried to explain that Ashley had been taken from her by legal tricks. Now, she considered the nurse simply as a convenient beverage container from which, under suitable conditions, she might sip. She smiled, a cat smile, and the nurse could not hold her gaze.
'Ashley,' said Gretchen, when they were alone. She had brought the Jan Pienkowski book, wrapped in red velvet paper with black cats on it. Ashley liked cats. She would love the scary haunted house pop-ups. They would read them together. Gretchen put the gift on the chair, because first she must tend to more important things. 'Ashley, it's Mommy. Wake up, darling.'
But the little girl only opened her eyes, huge and bruised in the pinched face, and sobbed feebly.
Gretchen lowered the rail on the bed and slid her arm under Ashley. The child was frighteningly light.
Gretchen felt the warmth of her feverish child, smelled the antiseptic of the room, the sweet girl-smell of her daughter's skin. But those were all at a distance. Gretchen was being subsumed by something immortal.
We are very territorial . Isn't that what Nick had said? It's not an emotional numbness; it's physical . And the memory of him jabbing the pen into his arm, the needle into his vein, her own numb fingers, how everything, even her daughter's warmth and the smell of the child and the room were all receding, distant. Immortal. Numb. Strong beyond human strength. Alone.
She touched her new, predatory mouth to her child's throat. Would Ashley thank her for this?
Now she must decide.
The Vengeful Spirit of Lake Nepeakea
Tanya Huff
The author of more than sixteen novels, Canada's Tanya Huff has written five books featuring vampiric ex- police detective Victory ('Vicki') Nelson : Blood Price, Blood Trail, Blood Lines, Blood Pact and Blood Debt. Her short stories have appeared in anthologies such as Northern Frights, Vampire Detectives and Time of the Vampire, and have been collected in Stealing Magic and What Ho, Magic!. Her recent fantasy novel The Second Summoning is a direct sequel to her 1998 volume Summon the Keeper, and she is currently working on a new Torin Kerr space opera .
' I have no idea why vampires have been so incredibly popular for the last decade,' says the author. 'Perhaps
