Vampire$

against hers in the mirror.

But he wasn’t there!

And then… And then he sort of was. Sort of. Outlines, flashes, traces of his features when he moved. He wasn’t completely invisible. But… But.

And then he dropped the mirror and turned and bored his eyes into hers and opened wide his mouth and the fangs were growing out.

“Vampire, mite!” he hissed that awful hiss. “VAMPIRE!”

And his mouth went wider and the fangs grew longer toward her and his features went red and demonic and unholy and she screamed a scream of hopeless irrefutable terror and all was black and dark.

The next night she signed everything over to him. The stocks, the bonds, the CDs, the cash, the houses… everything. Full power of attorney.

Ross, the vampire, owned her.

After that, things started happening pretty fast.

First, Ross decided to redecorate.

Soft things. Sickly-sweet, tender-to-the-touch things. Tasteless things. Expensive things. Gone were the great broad antique leather sofas from the library. He replaced them with silk-pillowed lounges. And he replaced the tapestries, some centuries old, with what looked to Davette like red satin bedsheets.

Ross actually did take the time to sit down and show her his new “motif.” It looked like a cross between a sultan’s harem and a Colorado Gold Rush Whorehouse. “No-Class” Ross’s true colors were, quite literally, coming through.

He fired all the servants Aunt Vicky had retained for years. He replaced them with a handful of gray-faced, dull-witted, self-loathing slobs. It always amazed Davette how they simply could not seem to tidy up. No matter how rich and expensive their uniforms, no matter how much care and attention was paid to their appearances — their hair was always razor-cut, their faces always shaved, fingernails always clean — they still looked like unmade beds. Their jackets, however well pressed and tailored, never quite seemed to fit. And their starched white shirts never managed to stay tucked in for over a minute or two.

Davette had no idea where Ross had found these people who knew he was a vampire and still wanted to work for him. And she didn’t want to know. Still, Ross managed to replace the entire staff in one single evening. He also managed to get a terrific amount of the redecoration done that first night — all the library, most of the main living room. An army of preened and primped men of all ages showed up to handle the work, all blatantly homosexual and each clearly enraptured by Ross’s slightest notice of them.

In the midst of this, still in her bathrobe, Davette sat drinking vodka on the rocks and watching these dreadful people reshape her universe. It was all so distant somehow, as if this really weren’t her house and Aunt Vicky weren’t really dead and one morning she’d wake up…

No. Best not to get too detailed and lose the fantasy.

So she just sat and drank some more and waited for the scurrying trolls to leave. Which they did about midnight. Not because they were finished. But because Ross couldn’t wait one more minute to try out his new playhouse. He dismissed the workers and went out to hunt.

Ross returned soon, just after two, with two couples driven in a limousine of their own. The four were well dressed and cultured and wildly, happily, drunk and friendly, the two men in their early forties, their wives a few years younger, and they laughed and laughed as they came tripping through the front door following Ross and they laughed as they got their drinks and they laughed some more when one of the ladies caught a heel on the edge of Ross’s new red carpet and when Ross made some comment about Demon Rum they laughed some more and one of the men raised his glass and said, “I’ll drink to that!” And they all laughed a lot at that and then Ross apologized for the unsecured rug, explaining that he was in the midst of redecorating and one of the women, who could not have known that the whorish red carpet was Ross’s idea, picked up an edge of it and said, “Better hurry!”

And all four laughed longest and hardest at that until they realized Ross was not laughing at all. Davette was thirty feet away and above them, hidden in a shadowy recess, still wearing her bathrobe, still drinking her vodka, and she could not only see but feel the change in Ross. His coldness and anger, instantaneous, eruptive, seem to sphere out from him to the high walls of the living room and back, and the two couples, as the wave passed through them, caught their breaths and their faces went slack and pale.

And then Ross was all smiles and laughing one second later, his face animated and gracious and gregarious and endearing. And Davette watched the four stare and exchange uncertain, uneasy looks. But this passed because they had just been having such a good time and Ross was so charming, after all and…

And what was this? A game! How fun!

And Ross was everywhere among them, laughing, making them laugh and oh, yes! we’re going to play a game, a drinking game, but we need one nondrinker, and somehow they were persuaded to fetch their chauffeur in while Ross and an ash-faced servant rolled out the plastic tarp left by the painters to cover the new red rug. The women had to take off their high heels, to keep from making holes in the plastic, and there Ross was, on his knees, to assist them and oh, the comments and the sly exchanged looks and the ooh’s as he performed this sensual task.

But then all was ready for the game and Ross personally positioned everyone, including the chauffeur, at just the right place on the plastic tarp after first taking their glasses from their hands. And one of the men groaned and said, “I thought this was a drinking game!” and Ross smiled a sly smile and, “It is! It is! You’ll see!” and then he had one last person to position, the loveliest of the women, the only name Davette had caught from her perch, Evelyn, whose long black dress suited her so. Ross took her by the shoulders and stepped her over to the center of the tarp, the exact center, and then, with everyone smiling and laughing, turned her once more with her shoulders, turned her around so that her smiling faced his and slit a gaping gash in her throat with the edges of his long fingernails.

The blood fountained from her severed arteries and Ross had an impish moment to catch some of it in his mouth before turning and doing the same thing to her husband who simply stood there staring, with no chance to react. The second husband had enough time to open his mouth to protest, to raise an arm to object before Ross’s vise-grip closed his throat and spinal cord forever. The second woman screamed a high-pitched scream before Ross grabbed her around the waist with his left hand and slammed his right fist into the center of her chest so hard she died, hemorrhaging, before her limp body had reached the plastic tarp.

Ross killed the chauffeur with another blow of the fist, straight down atop the man’s skull. Davette heard it crack.

And then the feeding. The servants, panting the obvious repulsive sexual fervor, began scurrying about lifting the edges of the plastic to drain the blood into an enormous urn while Ross himself clamped a hand over Evelyn’s still-spouting arteries. Then he lifted her body into his arms and positioned the throat within reach.

And then, before removing his palm from the wound, he turned and looked straight at Davette, straight at her, knowing all along she had been there, knowing her, knowing everything. Davette had time to gasp and put a drunken hand to her mouth before she heard the words, heard the Voice, slicing into her shadows.

“Entertained?” purred the vampire, before removing his hand and plunging his fangs into crimson.

Davette had been wondering what had happened to Kitty. She hadn’t seen her for weeks. Now she wondered no more.

She knew.

And she knew the rest.

I’m dead too, she thought.

Soon, I’m dead.

And then the doorbell rang.

“Get rid of them!” hissed Ross’s bloody mouth.

It was not so easy. Pough, Ross’s main slug, went dutifully to the front entrance, checked through the eyehole, and opened the door to dismiss whoever was there. Davette heard his voice briefly. Then, for several long seconds, heard nothing.

Then Pough reappeared. His face was, even for him, ashen. His eyes were wide and bright.