'…I thought so,' the thing said at last. 'I thought so.' Night wind tossed the treelimbs above our heads, and it seemed as though beyond them stood only ultimate darkness-no sky, no stars, nothing but unending emptiness.
'Very well,' the vampyr said at last. 'Your silence speaks all. I have won.' There was not the slightest note of triumph in its voice. 'Give me my prize, and then I may let the rest of you flee my mountains.' The dark shape withdrew a little way.
We all of us turned to look at one another, and it was just as well that the night veiled our faces. I started to speak, but Ibn Fahad interrupted me, his voice a tortured rasp.
'Let there be no talk of volunteering. We will draw lots; that is the only way.' Quickly he cut a thin branch into five pieces, one of them shorter than the rest, and cupped them in a closed hand.
'Pick,' he said. 'I will keep the last.'
As a part of me wondered what madness it was that had left us wagering on story-telling and drawing lots for our lives, we each took a length from Ibn Fahad's fist. I kept my hand closed while the others selected, not wanting to hurry Allah toward his revelation of my fate. When all had selected we extended our hands and opened them, palms up.
Fawn had selected the short stick.
Strangely, there was no sign of his awful fortune on his face: he showed no signs of grief-indeed, he did not even respond to our helpless words and prayers, only stood up and slowly walked toward the huddled black shape at the far edge of the clearing. The vampyr rose to meet him.
'No!' came a sudden cry, and to our complete surprise the clerk Abdallah leaped to his feet and went pelting across the open space, throwing himself between the youth and the looming shadow. 'He is too young!' Abdallah shouted, sounding truly anguished. 'Do not do this horrible thing! Take me instead!'
Ibn Fahad, the vizier, and I could only sit, struck dumb by this unexpected behavior, but the creature moved swiftly as a viper, smacking Abdallah to the ground with one flicking gesture.
'You are indeed mad, you short-lived men!' the vampyr hissed. 'This one would do nothing to save himself-not once did I hear his voice raised in tale-telling-yet now he would throw himself into the jaws of death for this other! Mad!' The monster left Abdallah choking on the ground and turned to silent Fawn. 'Come, you. I have won the contest, and you are the prize. I am… sorry… it must be this way.…' A great swath of darkness enveloped the youth, drawing him in. 'Come,' the vampyr said, 'think of the better world you go to-that is what you believe, is it not? Well, soon you shall-'
The creature broke off.
'Why do you look so strangely, man-child?' the thing said at last, its voice troubled. 'You cry, but I see no fear. Why? Are you not afraid of dying?'
Fawn answered; his tones were oddly distracted. 'Have you really lived so long? And alone, always alone?'
'I told you. I have no reason to lie. Do you think to put me off with your strange questions?'
'Ah, how could the good God be so unmerciful!?' The words were made of sighs. The dark shape that embraced him stiffened.
'Do you cry for me? For me?'
'How can I help?' the boy said. 'Even Allah must weep for you… for such a pitiful thing, lost in the lonely darkness…'
For a moment the night air seemed to pulse. Then, with a wrenching gasp, the creature flung the youth backward so that he stumbled and fell before us, landing atop the groaning Abdallah.
'Go!' the vampyr shrieked, and its voice cracked and boomed like thunder. 'Get you gone from my mountains! Go!'
Amazed, we pulled Fawn and the chief-clerk to their feet and went stumbling down the hillside, branches lashing at our faces and hands, expecting any moment to hear the rush of wings and feel cold breath on our necks.
'Build your houses well, little men!' a voice howled like the wild wind behind us. 'My life is long… and someday I may regret letting you go!'
We ran and ran, until it seemed the life would flee our bodies, until our lungs burned and our feet blistered… and until the topmost sliver of the sun peered over the eastern summits.…
Masrur al-Adan allowed the tale's ending to hang in silence for a span of thirty heartbeats, then pushed his chair away from the table.
'We escaped the mountains the next day,' he said. 'Within a season we were back in Baghdad, the only survivors of the caravan to the Armenites.'
'Aaaahh…!' breathed young Hassan, a long drawn-out sound full of wonder and apprehension. 'What a marvelous, terrifying adventure! I would never have survived it, myself. How frightening! And did the… the creature… did he really say he might come back someday?'
Masrur solemnly nodded his large head. 'Upon my soul. Am I not right, Ibn Fahad, my old comrade?'
Ibn Fahad yielded a thin smile, seemingly of affirmation.
'Yes,' Masrur continued, 'those words chill me to this very day. Many is the night I have sat in this room, looking at that door-' He pointed. '-wondering if someday it may open to show me that terrible, misshapen black thing, come back from Hell to make good on our wager.'
'Merciful Allah!' Hassan gasped.
Abu Jamir leaned across the table as the other guests whispered excitedly. He wore a look of annoyance. 'Good Hassan,' he snapped, 'kindly calm yourself. We are all grateful to our host Masrur for entertaining us, but it is an insult to sensible, Godly men to suggest that at any moment some blood-drinking afreet may knock down the door and carry us-'
The door leaped open with a crash, revealing a hideous, twisted shape looming in the entrance, red-splattered and trembling. The shrieking of Masrur's guests filled the room.
'Master…?' the dark silhouette quavered. Baba held a wine jar balanced on one shoulder. The other had broken at his feet, splashing Abu Jamir's prize stock everywhere. 'Master,' he began again, 'I am afraid I have dropped one.'
Masrur looked down at Abu Jamir, who lay pitched full-length on the floor, insensible.
'Ah, well, that's all right, Baba.' Masrur smiled, twirling his black mustache. 'We won't have to make the wine go so far as I thought-it seems my story-telling has put some of our guests to sleep.'
Lifeblood by Michael A. Burstein
Michael A. Burstein is a ten-time finalist for the Hugo Award and the winner of the 1996 John W. Campbell Award for best new writer. His fiction frequently appears in Analog Science Fiction & Fact magazine, and much of his short work was recently collected in I Remember the Future, from Apex Publications.
'Lifeblood' takes the vampire mythos out of its usual Christian context and adds Judaism to the equation. 'I've always been interested in the question of how someone who doesn't use the cross as a religious symbol would turn a vampire,' Burstein said. 'I was interested in the specific question of how a Jewish person might turn a vampire. Could he or she use a cross? Would a Jewish symbol have any sort of power?'
Although Burstein originally wrote the story just to play with the concept of Jews vs. vampires, the story ended up being a cautionary tale about the dangers of assimilation. 'A lot of debate takes place among the Jewish people, especially American Jews, about assimilating into the overall culture,' he said. 'Without my realizing it, 'Lifeblood' turned out to display my own biases in the debate.'
Lincoln Kliman burst into the synagogue, causing the cantor at the front of the room to halt his chanting momentarily. Lincoln panted, catching his breath, and the congregants turned to look at him. He knew his disheveled appearance would not endear him to them, and he noticed one or two of the congregants scowling.
The cantor resumed his Hebrew chant, and Lincoln took a moment to study the synagogue. It wasn't a synagogue really, just a small room where these particular Jews gathered to pray. There were three rows of folding chairs set up, mostly empty of people, which gave the room an aura of despair, at least for Lincoln. He was used to much more elaborate synagogues, but then again, he hadn't been in one for over fifteen years.
He counted the number of congregants. Ten men, exactly the minimum number of Jews required for a minyan. Technically, Lincoln 's presence made the number eleven.
He approached a man sitting alone in the back row, bent over and murmuring to himself.
'Pardon me,' he said, 'but-'
The man looked up from his siddur, his prayer book, and waved his hand to quiet Lincoln. 'Shush,' he said. 'Put on a yarmulka.'
Lincoln nodded and went to the back of the room to don a skullcap, another thing he hadn't done in a very long time. He sat down next to the man and said, as quietly as he could, 'I must speak with the cantor. It's important.'
The man glared at him. 'You must wait. We're about to do the Alenu; the service will be over soon.' His tone was accusatory, as if he was questioning Lincoln 's right to show up at the end of a service.
Lincoln wondered that himself, but felt better when he realized that he still remembered to stand and bow at the appropriate times. He didn't pray, though. The man next to him offered his siddur, but Lincoln shook his head; he couldn't read Hebrew anymore even well enough to pronounce the words, let alone understand them.
True to the man's word, the service ended in a few minutes. The congregants began folding the chairs and stacking them up next to the wall. Lincoln muttered, 'Excuse me,' to his row companion, and darted to the front of the room. The cantor was just removing his tallis, his prayer shawl, when Lincoln approached. He was an old man, slightly stooped, with a pair of round glasses on his face.
Despite the fact that Lincoln had interrupted him before, the cantor smiled as he folded his tallis. 'Good shabbes,' he said. He spoke with a slight Hungarian accent.
Lincoln repeated the phrase; it echoed oddly in his ears. 'Good shabbes, Cantor-?'
'Erno Gross. How may I help you?'
