Wounds Read online

  RAVE REVIEWS

  FOR JEMIAH JEFFERSON’S

  DEBUT NOVEL,

  VOICE OF THE BLOOD!

  “Die-hard vampire fans are going to love it.”

  —Hellnotes

  “Jemiah Jefferson has proven herself as an author

  to watch with this novel. If you let Voice of the Blood

  get under your skin, you’ll be hooked.”

  —Horror World

  “Jemiah Jefferson [is] a welcome voice

  in character-driven horror fiction.”

  —Gothic.net

  “Jemiah Jefferson draws us into an erotic, violent

  and tragic world of vampires. . . . Voice of the Blood delivers

  all the bittersweet irony and tragedy

  requisite of modern Gothic horror.”

  —Dark Realms

  DINNER FOR TWO

  “Quickly;” Daniel whispered from the backseat, his eyes scanning the empty street. The leaves on the trees drooped under the weight of ice. No one, just the freezing mist and the midnight bells lowing from a nearby church.

  Ariane rolled up the woman’s coat and sweater sleeves, exposing a forearm glossed with an unseasonable tan, waxed smooth and gleaming. Ariane almost winced with hunger looking at it before she lowered her head and took a bite.

  And then a deeper one.

  The woman’s head wobbled. Daniel reached around the seat and worked the plastic latch to lower it back, toward him; her body stretched and relaxed. He wanted to mention the woman’s excellent breasts, but it wasn’t worth it, watching Ariane suck down blood and knowing that if he didn’t hop to it, there’d be nothing left for him.

  Ariane lifted her head and gulped the air. “I’m hot,” she said in a small voice. Her teeth glistened red between reddened lips.

  “She’s not dead yet,” said Daniel, holding his thumb over the new wound under her chin. “Finish her. Don’t waste it.”

  “No,” she whispered. “I’m done. Go for it.”

  “You’re too kind.”

  There wasn’t much left. . . .

  JEMIAH

  JEFFERSON

  WOUNDS

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright © 2002 Jemiah Jefferson

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Montlake Romance

  P.O. Box 400818

  Las Vegas, NV 89140

  ISBN-13:9781477806494

  ISBN-10: 1477806490

  Contents

  Title

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  Scene One: “A long time ago in Hollywood . . .”

  Scene Two: Ricky

  Scene Three: The click and flash

  Scene Four: Supernova and Syncopation

  Scene Five: Fetish Objects

  Scene Six: Looking Too Close

  Scene Eight: The Creeping Awfuls

  Scene Nine: Transmission

  Scene Ten: Shattering

  Scene Eleven: Phone Calls and Photographs

  Scene Twelve: Oxygen Drunk

  Scene Thirteen: Coming down

  Scene Fourteen: Lest We Forget

  Scene Fifteen: What’s Wrong with Art Today

  Scene Sixteen: Daddy Spank

  Scene Seventeen: Caught in a Storm

  Scene Eighteen: The Beautiful Warehouse That Burned

  Scene Nineteen: Curiosity/Jealousy

  Scene Twenty: “It Ends in Your Hands”

  Scene Twenty-one: Idiotically Dangerous Animals

  Scene Twenty-two: New Year’s Eve

  Scene Twenty-three: New Year’s Day

  Scene Twenty-four: Survivors

  Scene Twenty-five: The Center of Silence

  Scene Twenty-six: The Prince of Bones

  Scene Twenty-seven: Angels Are Dreaming of You

  Scene Twenty-eight: Sybil Spank

  Scene Twenty-nine: The Truthful Precipitates of Dreams

  Scene Thirty: Renewed Exorcisms

  This title was previously published by Dorchester Publishing; this version has been reproduced from the Dorchester book archive files.

  To the Rev. Chris Lotus

  and the polar bear twins Ananda and Lilith,

  and the people of New York City.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  All the thanks in the world are not adequate to show my appreciation for Neil Gordon and his amazing book Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic Life of Weimar Berlin, my hero, Elicia Cardenas, Tony Borodovsky, Willow Roberts, Alex Colby and the folks at Nexus Dumbo, “Sweetie” and Joey Arias, Gilad Rosner and the Collective Unconscious, Kevin Sampsell, Lisa Steinman, Alexander Stone, Mykle and Gesina, the fabulous ladies of Crush, Joey Pruett, Don D’Auria and the crew at Leisure, Mehitobel Wilson, Monica O’Rourke, the Horror Writers Association, all the great folks at WHC 2001 who made me feel good, Lawrence Krauser, Colson Whitehead, Celeste Ramsay, and Mom and Dad. If I’ve forgotten anyone, please give me two hard punches next time you see me.

  WOUNDS

  “. . . They always want to hear about . . . and I want to give them the experience itself . . . so they will be terrified, and awaken. . . . They do not realize that they are dead.”

  —Antonin Artaud

  Scene One: “A long time ago in Hollywood . . .”

  And why did it, after so many midnights, always come to this?

  “Oh my fucking God! Oh my God—I’m puking blood! Oh my—oh my fucking Go-ho-hod!”

  Daniel stood across the room, gently scraping flecks of the girl’s hardened, dead skin from beneath his fingernails. Already, the formerly florid crimson stain on his shirtfront had darkened to the color of newspaper ink. “Thank you so much for pointing out the obvious,” he said to the steamed pane of the window. “I told you it would happen. But did you listen?”

  Her litany went on. “Oh my fucking God! I can’t—I Can’t breathe . . . ” Her continued wordless screeching belied her for a moment, then the telltale gurgles of true choking started up and the room became blessedly quieter. A long time ago in Hollywood, a beautiful redhead taught him the difference between fake choking and true choking—if it can vocalize, it ain’t really choking.

  Ariane, the redhead, was still human back then, if he remembered correctly.

  Daniel was always misremembering Ariane, thinking that she’d done something miraculous and superhuman, vampiric, when she had not yet been capable of any such thing. He had barely ever known her as a vampire. He definitely wasn’t still in love with her, so that couldn’t have been the factor that skewed his long-term memory. He hadn’t loved Ariane since that night in the airport when they were fleeing for their lives. He hadn’t loved anyone since that night. He certainly didn’t love the twisting wreck of screeching blasphemy over on the other side of the bed, ruining the pressed linen sheets. Stupid, disbelieving little bitch. She just couldn’t take “I’m going to kill you if you don’t go away” for an answer.

  In the Supernova Gentleman’s Club, earlier. “So what happens if you only have a little taste?” The girl’s face was moist from the exertion of laughing and drinking and talking. “Like, not even a mouthful?”

  Daniel sighed patiently. “It would be like drinking a solution of lye,” he explained again. “It would destroy any tissues that it came into contact with, trying to reshape them on a genetic level, or whatever. And even if it didn’t destroy those tissues, it would change them into non-human tissue, and then your body would de
velop a massive infection trying to reject this new flesh that isn’t even human. You’d probably die from it. If you were lucky. If you weren’t lucky—and I’ve seen this happen—your mouth would become this glory hole of scar tissue, no teeth, no tongue; just scar. Trust me, you do not want to have a little taste of vampire blood.”

  The girl laughed again, just like the first time he told her, and muffled her mouth in the narrow opening of her cocktail goblet. He had been talking to her for hours, watching her steal cherries from the plastic tub in front of them at the bar, rubbing them against her lips, nipping them away with tiny bites of her small yellow teeth. Maybe she knew he was going to kill her, and the idea excited her. She was on the make, looking for something strange. Daniel was good-looking and bizarre, dressed in a masculine suit but wearing full drama makeup—ruby lipstick, gray-shadowed cheeks, Cleopatra-lined eyes, crunchy blue glitter on his lids. In his hunger, he curled his lip to expose wolf’s teeth, and his colorless skin fluoresced creamy lavender, growing paler by the hour. She asked him, flippantly, first if he was a fag, and then if he was a vampire, and he was too bored to lie about either. It was too easy.

  “Well, does it hurt?”

  “Of course it hurts—look, imagine a mouthful of lye.”

  “No, when you really . . . I mean really . . . transform.”

  “Yes,” Daniel said, “change always hurts.”

  She grunted with drunken giggles. “So, Mr. Vampire, what kind of super powers do you have? Can you turn into a bat?”

  “No, I can’t turn into a bat. That’s stupid. And my name’s not Mr. Vampire. My name’s Thomas.”

  “I’m Angelika. With a k.”

  “Yes, you told me.”

  She shook her head and squinted back toward the empty, tinsel-glittering stage, awaiting the scheduled naked female reinforcements. She didn’t work as an exotic dancer but, tolerated by the proprietors, her purpose was to take care of the needs of gentlemen who wanted more than a lap dance, and enough of them did to make it worth her while. Her young face already showed the scoring of professionalism. “So, like I said, we should go on a date.”

  “I haven’t got any cash,” said Daniel. “I spent it all, buying you drinks.”

  Angelika smirked. “That’s all you brought?”

  “I have to stay for the next set.” Daniel yawned. “There’s a girl dancing who I really want to see.”

  “Oh, really? Which one?”

  “I don’t know her name,” Daniel said. “Like you. I don’t know your name. I know it’s not Angelika. Well . . . I could try to guess it. I’ve got that ‘super power.’” He smiled slowly, tingling with anticipation. Parlor tricks, infinitely satisfying; magic; the impossible. He half hoped it would scare her away. Of course, if he really wanted her gone, it would be easy to repel her, but he found himself enjoying her obnoxiousness.

  “OK—here goes—if you’ve really got powers, try to guess my name.” She closed her eyes and appeared transfixed in thought, like a game-show contestant struggling with the final quiz question, the one for the new car.

  Daniel examined her scrunched-up face. Her fake ID listed her age as twenty-one, the oldest age that might be believable for her; she was closer, he felt, to seventeen or sixteen, a mature sixteen. He reached out and wiped the last daub of lipstick from her bottom lip with his thumb, and rested his palm against her hot drunk-moist cheek. “Allison,” he said, calling her awake.

  She opened her eyes. “How did you know?” she said.

  “You showed me your driver’s license about an hour ago. Remember I said I didn’t think you were old enough to drink.”

  “But my fake—I mean my driver’s license says Jane.” She shook her drooping head. “Jesus Christ, I must be drunk.”

  Daniel made a small humming laugh and shrugged.

  She put her face in her drink again. “So what’s the name you think this chick is called?”

  “The last time she did her dance, they called her Silver.”

  “Oh.” Angelika sputtered elaborately and rolled her eyes. “Her? She’s a big buffalo beast. And she’s psycho. Last time I was in here she tried to start a fight with me for, like, no reason at all.”

  “I like her dancing.” He paused, distracted, also eyeing the empty stage. Angelika put her hand on his thigh, and when that failed to produce a response, threw her arms around him, pushing her spit-glossy lips toward him. He recoiled involuntarily, then covered it by patting her shiny hair. “All right, you beautiful toy, you leave now, and I’ll join you at the coffee shop at the corner. Get a coffee and I’ll join you. Fifteen minutes.” He gently pushed her away, imagining her slipping off the stool and falling onto her ass, a roomful of people looking over.

  She smirked again. “Right, OK,” she said, sliding bone-lessly from her bar stool. “You better be there; I’ll be looking for you.” Underneath the fur coat, she wore a very tight mustard-yellow velour dress and black herringbone stockings. She looked like she shopped at Hooker Thrift Store. Between her thighs was a bowlegged concavity, her string-bean legs interrupted by giant bony knees like a racehorse. She was cute, in her own disgusting way. Daniel felt a throb of misplaced compassion, and wondered if he should just let this brainless child go on her own way, pick up some other bastard and have him rape and kill her. Why should he make the effort to be her special one, the very last trick, the one to remember forever?

  But it was too late now.

  She had had a little taste. She lay now jerking in a pool of her own fluids, her nervous system jabbering into convulsions as her arteries fed her body the poisoned blood. She would only live a few minutes more; her brain already sent out crazed messages to seizure, and one of them would stop her heart. At least she wasn’t squeaking anymore. Daniel used to really enjoy the sound of lungs that begged for air but got only blood; the sound of a fatal throat injury. He heard the sound in countless voices, voiceboxes, inflections, tones, each one unique but universal. But it was a song that he’d heard too many times, and he was sick of it. Now, when it got to the squeak, he got into the habit of just kicking the poor bastard’s head in, whoever it was, just to get it over with for them both. He considered it his version of compassion.

  That kick of her mind into his when he drank deeply from her veins was not its usual mutual ecstasy; she had, at the last minute, been terrified, and the jagged fear in her thoughts blasted him. Yes, the adrenaline was tasty, like fresh cream is tasty—pure nourishment for some part of his vampire body—but such a difference between the adrenaline pumping through the body of a lover and that of a struggling victim. And her mind—a barren wasteland of non-thoughts and non-emotions! She was just a stupid kid from a nasty city, having aborted three babies, veins running slick with liquor and methamphetamine, who had never had any real love or dream or hope about anything. She was too scared even to pray at the last minute. It was a damn shame.

  Daniel stood over the biomass in the velour dress and found it silent and still. He had fucked her a little over an hour ago, up against the wall in the room, holding her lank chestnut hair from her forehead as he shoved against her from behind. She had gotten weird about “vampire sex” in the middle of it and started yelling, “Hump me, Dracula!” He lost interest and erection immediately. There were limits to his indulgence. He pushed her against the wall away from him, wiped off, and zipped his pants. Undaunted, she slid down onto her knees on the floor, grunting and touching herself. “Let me drink your vampire blood,” she said.

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  “Drink my blood, then—or are you full of shit?”

  Snarling, he seized her and threw her on the bed. Following her down, he covered her with his body so that she wouldn’t struggle, pierced her in the hollow of her collarbone with his fingernail, and put his mouth to the overflowing, crescent-shaped hole. She screamed, of course, as though she hadn’t just asked for it. He tried to cover her mouth with his lips, but as she struggled, she bit hard through his bottom lip. She got a
big mouthful of Daniel’s blood for her trouble. Now she was just a horrid-looking body and this room was on one of trust-fund kid Thomas Arlington’s credit cards that still had masses of credit left on it. If only he had just bitten her when she was amused by his caresses . . . ! Stupid!

  He rubbed the back of his hand against the fast-healing wounds in his lip and sighed. Nothing to do now but get to work.

  He began bundling up her body in the linen bedsheets, cursing how runny she was from both ends, but simultaneously thankful that she was still warm and flexible enough to fold up easily. She was only five feet tall; this would be simple.

  In the midst of work, his mind wandered to pleasanter things. The dancer called Silver had danced again that night, but she went this time under the name of Shaneen, coursing and sparking and exploding on stage in ways that made him envious, amused him, disgusted him, filled him with awe. During her first set, he thought to himself that either she couldn’t dance or she was a genius. He still hadn’t decided during the second but decided that it was immaterial. Underneath red-sequined lingerie (stark as flags against her powdered white skin, shedding spinning particles that softened the spotlights) every inch was smooth; in fact, the only hair visible on her entire body was on top of her head. In the middle of her dance she cast aside her fluffy blond wig like a TV newscaster’s scalp. Underneath, short, greasy spikes of dull yellow-silver.

  He beckoned her with a twenty-dollar bill and she approached, stopping at the edge of the stage near his bar stool, gyrating her hips slowly, half-tempo against the music, eyeing him emotionlessly. He couldn’t smile in the face of such perfect blank neutrality, keeping her near with a succession of twenties. More than anything, he wanted to rub his cheek against her mons pubis and catch enough of her skin oil onto his cheek to remember her by scent. He felt that he might have gotten away with it, had he tried it, but there were simply too many different people around, and he just didn’t feel that he had the strength to confuse and distract them all.