Chapter 7: Solecism

"And I will show that nothing can happen more beautiful than death." – Walt Whitman

Audrey's death was beautiful and she did not suffer. I'd held her too long, as Angela had warned me. We were not creatures for love, except that of the most selfish sort. We loved ourselves and tolerated others and I had grown fond of Audrey, adoring her in those last few days of her life.

I would brush her hair, which had grown long over the passing months. I would brush it until it shone golden in the yellow light of our candles, and she sat still and smiling. I couldn't bring myself to harm her, not anymore. I'd tortured her at first, punished her for no other reason than I wanted to know the extent of my cruelty. I wanted her to love that part of me best because it was the part of me I hated most.

And that last night, when I held her trembling in my arms, I hated everything I'd become. The only love I felt was for her, for my Audrey, a girl who had just wanted to go home and I'd taken that from her. I'd taken everything she'd ever hoped of being, every dream in her heart, and turned them to ashes. And oh, I was getting wise then. Beyond my years, because I knew this was part of it. Like Angela sacrificing her friends at that monastery so long before, this was my sacrifice.

"Every vampire suffers this," Angela told me once. "Without exception, we will find that one thing, that one person which is precious to our being. We will take them, covet them, and destroy them. It is who we are."

And I'd scoffed then, listening to Angela talk, because I'd lost everything already. My parents had died, my life had ended, I'd been dead many years before Angela had taken my life. Where would I find something so important to me again? I'd asked her that, and Angela had merely smiled.

Now I knew.

I made love to her, as only another woman can. With my lips and fingers and skin on hers. I straddled Audrey's thighs as she lay on her stomach, her arms crossed beneath her cheek, and I pressed my breasts to her back and moved myself up and down. My kisses fell on her neck and face, and on her shoulders as I slid my damp sex along the soft round curve of her ass.

My feet moved to stroke Audrey's calves and my thighs rubbed hers. I used my hands along her sides, feeling the softness of her breasts swollen by the weight of us upon them. I ran my fingers along her arms, moving us together, as if we were flying, our arms moving on the great empty bed around us.

I kissed her armpits, the soft short hair perfumed with Audrey's scent. I licked at her skin and my nipples burned against her, cold and hard and dragging along her body. Audrey warmed me as if I had fresh blood in my veins. Being with her, just making love to her in that simple fashion, it stoked the fires in my belly, and deeper in my barren womb.

My clit grew hard and I moved my hips, as if I were a boy and I could take her from behind. I imagined myself within her, pressing my clit to her firm buttocks and Audrey moved against me as well, with soft sighs and whispered words of love and devotion.

And I bit her, just beneath her left arm, behind her breast where the vein lies close to the skin and she didn't feel it as anything but another kiss. I filled my mouth with her, over and over, my beautiful Audrey, the girl I loved. I filled my veins with her warmth, laying on her back, holding her close and when her heart stopped, and her eyes closed into that final sleep, I wept for her.

I wept remembering the many promises I'd made to myself, that I'd never cry again. They were all broken now as I covered her like a dark cloud in autumn, leaving a cold bitter rain on fields once ripe with a life now harvested. It was the secret way of it, this murder of innocence. I'd raped her many times, so often that it had become something else, something tender and romantic. But this death was final and forever and with it fled my hopes of redemption.

I buried Audrey in the hillside and stayed near her for many months after.

"I see you in my dreams now," I said softly as I awoke and Angela was beside me, her arm over my body, just beneath my breasts and I felt her foot moving against mine.

Angela was awake, but she wouldn't answer.

"I see my parents too." I furrowed my brow, trying to remember. "You're with them, I think."

"It's just a dream," Angela murmured, turning onto her side, removing her right arm and replacing it with her left hand.

"Yeah," I licked my lips. "We're altogether. You and me, my parents ... but..." It was already fading, the way my dreams always did.

Angela massaged my breasts, playing with my bare tits and rubbing her thumb around my stiffening nipples, moving from one to the other as if she couldn't decide between them. It felt nice and I was smiling, but my mind was distracted.

My parents and Angela and ... They were alive in my dream, but I knew they were always dead. When I dreamed of my parents they were dead. I always dreamed about the after, sitting in the ambulance. The voices, the other people, and it was always jumbled and confusing and I tried to remember but it was gone.

"School tonight." Angela kissed my ear, moving closer.

"Oh," I frowned, but I didn't complain. I had to go to school, but it was night school for high school drop outs and people wanting a GED if nothing else in life. I probably would have ended up there anyway, even if Angela hadn't found me.

The only real point of it was that if I had to live for a hundred years, or a thousand, or whatever, did I want to go through it sounding like an uneducated kid? Not that night school was going to make me smart, but it was something anyway, and Angela was always trying to get me to read. She wanted me intelligent, able to converse about more than drugs, sex, and rock'n roll. I think she just wanted me to go to school in the hopes that I'd stumble across something interesting, but it seemed pretty unlikely to me.

Anyway, I suppose she had a point and her idea was that I go to school and then continue with college, I guessed. Get an education in liberal arts or the humanities, or even psychology maybe. Something timeless, something that had no practical value other than to make me more interesting at parties, or simply in bed. It was strange sometimes realizing how mundane life could be, even for a vampire.

"After that we'll get some money," Angela promised me. "How about that?"

"You know somebody?" I asked her, reaching to feel her own breasts.

"Uh-huh. I found them last night, followed them." She was licking her lips, sliding her leg up between mine.

"Them?" I bit my lips, pinching her nipple gently and rolling it.

"Three guys." Angela's thigh found my sex and I shifted my hips. "Bad, bad men."

I giggled as she widened her eyes playfully. We had money, but I didn't concern myself with how much. Angela owned four houses that I knew of, in Seattle, Portland, and two in Klamath. Those were our places, our cities, and other vampires did not come there. We had cars and plenty of cash. But I suppose plenty is never enough, not with such a long future to plan for and so the easiest way, Angela's favorite way, of getting cash money was to find drug dealers. Because they had a lot of money for one thing and we both hated to nickle and dime. I mean, all I had to do was ask nicely and a man would give me his wallet and not remember a thing ten minutes later, but ... Who wants to mug people every night?

For another Angela loved hunting men, and so far as she was concerned the bigger and badder they were, the better. She didn't like the pretty boys, the frail young men who played at being vampires, seeking us out in clubs or whatever. She liked the ugly guys, scarred and tough and ready to fight for their place under the stars. She liked the danger and there was precious little of that to be had, really.

She'd taken me hunting those men before, several times, but I'd watched mostly. I still had much to learn and Angela wouldn't let me risk hurting myself, although I seriously doubted those men could. Still, all it would take was a little bad luck. So I'd watched and waited and tonight, if Angela kept her previous promises, I'd hunt with her. Get a little blood under my nails.

"I can skip school," I grinned at her, grinding my sex against Angela's leg and stroking her cheek.

"No you can't," she laughed. "Lick me..."

We moved into a sweet sixty-nine, side by side on the bed with Petra watching. She was always there when we awoke and we always ignored her. She was sitting on the floor, watching as we made love, touching herself slowly, being quiet. Occasionally Angela would invite her between us, but only rarely and then we fed on her mostly, just small sips to warm our blood, like having a cup of coffee in the morning.

Other times, much more rarely, we'd awaken to find someone else in our bed, usually a young woman or a girl in her teens, because that was my preference and Angela would indulge me. She would be a runaway, someone that Petra had found and always at Angela's bidding. The girl would be our breakfast in bed, as I liked to joke, although it was macabre as the girl would plainly not survive our tender kisses.

I groaned as Angela bit me, several times deep in my sex. It was our game and I did the same to her. The pain was fleeting, just a flash and it made the pleasure much more intense. The blood we might draw was meaningless really, only making us hungry for the real stuff. Vampire blood is dead to us, like wine turned to vinegar and it was only useful for the turning, when it would mix and spread through a dead girl's veins. Vampire blood had a life all its own in that sense.

And I locked my thighs to Angela's face, her cheeks, moving my body as I dragged my tongue along her slit, making it stiff so I could fuck her soft pussy. I mouthed her clit and washed it with my tongue, dragging my teeth across her skin like twin razors so that long cuts would open and then heal themselves within a few moments. There was little we could do to harm each other during our sex, the bites and scratches were just expressions of our lust.

"Hey," the guy said and it wasn't the first time he'd tried to talk to me.

He was tall, maybe six feet with long sandy hair and a gold earring in his left ear like some kind of pirate. They boy was cute I suppose, which is where his confidence came from. He had a nice face, a good smile, and he knew how to use it.

I'd been going to school for nearly a month already, just English, math, and American history. I kept to myself, as much as I could, going to my three classes and avoiding the other students. Most of them were older, 18 and 19 year old kids who'd dropped out a few years before. Some girls who'd gotten pregnant maybe, some guys who'd gotten in trouble.

I was vulnerable there, as I was no place else, for it wasn't hard to disguise myself, pretending to be the girl I looked like, but it wasn't easy either and there were little things I had to be wary of. Like mirrors, is an obvious one, but also if a girl sitting close to me was menstruating, for example, it was hard to ignore the scent, especially if I hadn't fed in a few days. My eyes would turn red and my teeth grow long. I'd have to still my heart and will my lungs to cease.

And being hit on, how little that had changed from my former life. If anything, I think being undead made me even more attractive to the boys around me, and perhaps that was just the aura that all vampires possess, like pheromones intended to draw their prey close. I wasn't sure, but I did find it annoying and my instinct all too often was to lead the boy on, to lead him outside or to the rooftop, and tear into his frail throat with my teeth.

But I couldn't do that, nor could I ignore everyone all the time, it would attract attention. I needed to blend in, to be unremarkable so far as that was possible, and so I found myself talking with this guy who said hey. I'd end up teasing him and then playing a mind game, pushing him away with a suggestion he couldn't refuse. I'd gotten very good at that, but like all good tricks, it just wasn't fun without a challenge. Or at least a better reason than turning a guy down for a date...

"What's goin' on?" I asked, trying to sound bored, waiting for the teacher of our math class to show up. Sometimes he didn't.

"Nothing, this waiting sucks," he shrugged. "I'm Jay."

"Lisa." I leaned up against the wall. We were in the Klamath Falls armory, or what used to be an armory. Now it served as a senior citizen's center mostly, and classrooms for GED students.

"I was gonna go have a smoke, want one?" he jerked his head towards the doors and I nodded.

"I'm tryin' to quit," he told me, lighting a Kool and handing it to me, then lighting one of his own. I thought that was a little personal and I felt the faint stain of Jay's saliva on the filter.

"I quit," I smiled. "But who cares, right?" I took a drag and blew the smoke up at the moon. We were sitting on a short wall with half-dead shrubs planted behind it. The parking lot was in front of us, quiet and empty.

"Not me," he laughed. "How long you been coming here?"

"Bout a month," I nodded. "It sucks, huh."

"Yeah," he nodded too. "How old are you?"

"Fifteen."

"Shit." He gave me a look like he didn't believe me. "You look older."

"Is that good or bad?" I giggled.

"It's good with me," he grinned, flashing that killer smile of his and I bet that worked out real well with the other girls.

"How old are you?" I asked, smoking my cigarette slowly.

"Eighteen." He ran his fingers through his hair as a breeze came up. "I was touring for awhile."

"Touring?" I dipped my head. "Like what? You go to Disneyland?"

"No," he laughed. "Touring. I got a band, you know? I play the bass, do some singing, that stuff."

"Really?" I smiled at him, a real one cause I always thought people who could do that were pretty cool.

"Yeah. Our band's called Broken Window," he flicked his cigarette. "Ever heard of us?"

"Nope," I laughed softly, shaking my head.

"We got some demos out, looking for a deal now. We played a couple weeks ago at Cornucopia, over by Medford." He paused and then looked at me. "I got a cd in my car. Wanna hear it? Just over there," he gestured at the parking lot.

I knew better, I mean really, this guy was putting all the moves on me now. But they were good moves and if I was into guys I might not have minded at all. If Jay had been a cute girl, I'd have been all over her already, so yeah. I knew better, but I did it anyway, because that's what fifteen year olds do, girls or vampires, makes no difference.

"Sure. Yeah," I tossed my cigarette in the bushes, half-hoping it would start a fire just so somebody would water the poor things.

"Cool." Jay put his hand on the small of my back, against Audrey's jacket which I planned on keeping the rest of my life.

Beneath that I just wore jeans and a t-shirt and my old boots. I had my knife in my back pocket, but I'd never need it, not anymore. It just felt good, that heavy thing, like a memory I liked to keep handy. Like my useless key. I had my bag over my shoulder, my books and notepads, not very many, just enough to be a nuisance.

"Here we go." Jay said once we were in his car. I sat in the passenger seat of an old Mustang, one of the ugly ones from the eighties, rusty and dusty with the back seat littered.

He pushed a Memorex cd-r into the dashboard player and the sound of some serious Nirvana wanna-be band came through the speakers. One thing about that part of the country, grunge was alive and well and probably would be for the next fifty years. Until the next Kurt Cobain came along with the talent and heart to do something different.