He couldn’t stop the grin. He covered it by pulling on his shirt. “I’ll come again—soon. Zoë, I didn’t know I needed this so much.” He grabbed her and gave her a quick, fierce kiss.
But it awoke bitterness once more. He was a failure at even this mockery he’d become. He’d spent years thinking of them as mindless, stupid creatures unfit to live, to make it easier to use them; now he had let one become real to him. What am I going to do? He thought. I won’t be able to hunt again. He’d shrivel and twist but never die—and always the awful hunger. The idea of himself wasted and quite mad, crawling through some back alley somewhere, made him shudder.
She touched his face, her unbearably human eyes showing more concern than he’d ever deserved.’ ‘What’s wrong?”
“I’ll never get my revenge,” he said. “Christopher is too clever for me. I might as well run away while I can and hide from him. Make some kind of a worthless life for myself elsewhere. I’ve always been a fool. A failure. He’ll keep on killing and keep on evading me. He’ll win.”
“No. He can’t.” He was surprised by the quick spark of fire in her.
He tucked the portrait back under his arm and flung his jacket over his shoulder. She walked him to the door. “He will win, you know, because even if I kill him, I’ll go on living endlessly, futilely, hating every unnatural second.”
“Don’t talk that way,” she said. “You deserve more.”
“No, I don’t.”
She let out a small cry of protest, of pain.
“Sorry. Till later, then.”
She closed the door slowly, as if afraid to trust him to his own despair; then he was out in the dark again.
He slipped through the streets to his den, trying to sort out what he felt. The scruffy youth who began to follow him near the park was a minor problem. He lost the boy fast through the dark backyards.
At the light of dawn he curled in a dusty corner, and abandoned thought for the musky sleep that tasted of blood.
11
Zoë
Zoë sat in the moonlight that slid molten through her window. It lay pooled on the pillow where her head had been minutes before. The silver light had pierced her eyelids as if they were transparent, keeping her from sleep.
They say people who sleep in moonlight become lunatics, she thought, and smiled. But it’s too late, she added. I already am.
She curled her legs up to hug them with her arms, feeling the window-seat cover bunch beneath her, cotton daisies from a long-ago spring. The lawn outside sparkled with frost, and the whole night was diamond and fairy.
She thought of Simon. He’d held her so carefully, and his kisses had been so sweet that she’d wanted more. He had laced her neck with shivers. She barely noticed it when his fangs pierced her throat; except then it felt like silver bubbles started to rise from her breast and burst within her head like champagne, and her body responded, surprising her into quickened breath. She blushed to think of how she had pulled him close. What was I saying to him? she wondered. It was like I was drunk.
I should be disgusted, she thought. But no, it wasn’t disgusting now that she thought of it, but it was frightening. You could rush into your death unknowing, inviting, enjoying the ecstasy of it, burned up in bright light like a moth. She hadn’t wanted him to stop.
Was it something Simon did on purpose, she wondered, or was it part of the disease, a compensation for the victim like the numbing poison of a spider’s bite? Yet Christopher liked to feel his victim’s fear. My God, she thought. If Simon can control the senses like that, what does Christopher do to them? The air of the room grew icy, and she pulled her robe closer around her.
What Simon had done was hard to believe at first, but there was the blood she had wiped from her throat, and the puncture wounds on her neck that had healed so fast. They had sealed in a matter of hours to leave just a bruise. She was still groggy and weak but strangely stimulated.
He had grown hotter and hotter as he drank from her warmth, and he had trembled. That trembling had aroused her as much as anything. She’d caused it. And he had stopped, hadn’t he? She could trust him. Despite her doubts it was his loneliness that convinced her of that finally. He just needs someone to talk to, she thought, that’s all, like me.
A dark shape in the yard below caught her eye, and her heart thumped. But it was just a cat, passing through. What was I afraid of? she thought. A small boy, perhaps, creeping up on my house?
But why was Simon afraid of Christopher? What could Christopher do to Simon that Simon couldn’t do to him? Why was Simon giving up? Stop being a wimp, she wanted to shout at him as anger flashed through her. You can do something about your problem.
She eased her clenched fists. God, it was so dumb getting mad at someone who wasn’t even there. But then, she’d been angry a lot lately. “Uh-oh,” she breathed softly. She’d forgotten to call Lorraine back. I’ll have to do it tomorrow, she thought, then sighed. She’d be wiped out tomorrow if she didn’t get some rest. She rubbed her eyes and tried to feel sleepy. I better go back to bed, she decided.
She pulled the curtains against the disturbing light.
A steady gray rain beat down on the taut skin of Zoë’s umbrella as she splashed her way to the bus stop. Each puddle caused the damp to creep farther up the legs of her corduroys, stiffening them against her calves. Cars hushed by, their drivers oblivious to the spray of water they sent splattering the sidewalk, their rear lights leaving streamers of red in the slick black street. Over the sidewalk the streetlamps misted the air with fractured light.
Her mother mustn’t have known it was raining this hard. She never would have called if she knew Zoë would have to rush outside on a night like this, but the phone call had come, the one Zoë longed for but seldom received nowadays. “Come visit me,” the husky voice had said. “Your dad’s working tonight. I’ll be lonely.” Zoë had flung on her mother’s London Fog raincoat, grabbed the red umbrella from the hall stand, and ran out into the night, barely taking time to check if she had bus fare in her pants pocket. Who cares about rain, she thought, grinning. She felt like a different person, miles from the girl who had been too tired to go to school today.
Then a spatter of footsteps from behind echoed someone running. They drew closer, fast. She stopped before she could help it, more curious than fearful. She turned just as the runner reached her.