Angel Falling Softly (14 page)

Then the girl’s rapture subsided, her breathing slowed, grew even, relaxed. Her face glowed with an almost angelic pleasure. There was a slight smile on her lips. Milada knelt beside her. The palatine tendons tightened across the roof of her mouth. She opened her mouth in a half-yawn. The ophidian fangs snapped down into the vertical grooves along the back of her lateral incisors.

Except, her venom should not have acted so quickly.

The girl was fast asleep.

Milada groaned with frustration. It was the alcohol that had emboldened her after all. The girl’s warmth radiated up at her, a soft heat rich enough to taste. Milada took a deep breath. She could still take her. The blood would be dulled without the hormonal tempering that came with sex. But prey was prey. Blood was blood.

In the aftermath of those incomprehensible days in Southwark, after Rakosi had infected her and her sisters and to his astonishment they had not died, the entirety of her life was given over to the hunger. She had taken girls younger than Teresa and far more innocent. She bent them to her will and shared them with her sisters and then handed them over to Rakosi, who had his way with them and left them for dead.

You shall not be like him.
The law Mihaly Daranyi had etched upon their hearts.
Never reveal, never infect, and take only in the consent of the act.
What counted as
consent
—what qualified as the necessary
quid pro quo
—the distinctions she forced herself to make were tenuous ones. But it was in the splitting of these hairs that she created the moral justification for the existence of her soul.

Milada bowed her head, tightening the maxillary muscles in her jaw. The fangs folded back against the roof of her mouth. After retrieving her sweats, she kissed the girl’s cheek and whispered in her ear, “It was a dream, now all forgotten.” She stroked the girl’s cheek, leaving behind the invisible traces that would carry out what she willed.

Milada gathered up the bedding. For a moment, she paused. Propped against the pillows, her left hand draped across her right thigh, the girl was a living portrait of Manet’s
Olympia.
The resemblance made her smile.

Yet still so innocent. And so she would remain this night.

Milada tucked her in and shut off the light.

It was a mile back to the bar, maybe two—in either case, a brisk, pleasant walk. The exercise should blunt her cravings. She paused at the corner of First South and University, where the street sloped down from the bench and pushed across the valley toward the lake. At the bottom of the hill, the traffic light turned green. A red 1964 Ford Thunderbird convertible, almost black in the yellow penumbra of the sodium-vapor street lamp, climbed the hill, left turn signal blinking.

A kid stood up in the back seat and waved his arms. “Hey!” he shouted. Hey!” He caught Milada’s attention. “Yeah, you! Stay there! Don’t move!”

The car screeched to a halt. The kid toppled over. He picked himself up from the back seat. There was a vigorous exchange of opinions between the occupants of the front seat and the back seat. Even from her vantage point, Milada could see the driver rolling his eyes. But he cranked the wheel over, made a wide U-turn, and pulled up to the curb next to her. The kid scrambled over to the side of the car. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” said Milada.

“What’s your name?”

“Milly. What’s yours?”

“I’m Chad. This is Cole, that’s Kevin there in the driver’s seat.” He reached over mussed Kevin’s hair. Kevin tried to look too mature for this sort of horsing around and didn’t quite succeed. Chad said, “So what’s a nice girl like you doing out at this time of night?”

Milada smiled slyly. “Who says I’m a nice girl?”

Chad and Cole stared at each other with wide eyes. “Whoa!” they both yelled and knocked foreheads.

Milada said, “And what are you boys doing out at this time of night?”

Chad held up two plastic grocery bags, each straining with a pair of six-packs. “Refills!”

“You’re going to a party?”

“We’re keeping the party
going.
”

“Wanna come?” Chad gazed up at her with pleading eyes. He looked like a dog begging for a bone.

Milada laughed. “How about Kevin here? I hope he’s not as drunk as you two.” Realizing how intoxicated the girl had been aroused in her an extra note of caution.

Chad and Cole shook their heads. “Kevin is our designated driver.” Chad spoke like he was narrating a driver-ed video. “He
never
drinks and drives.”

Kevin smirked. “Yeah, I’m a real Boy Scout.”

“He was, too.”

“A real honest-to-God Boy Scout.”

She asked, “A Mormon?”

“No, no, no, no, no. Hell, no.” Chad turned his puppy-dog look on her again. “Wanna come?”

She felt like patting his head and scratching his chin. “Sure,” she said. “Sounds like fun.”

Chad yelled, “Bail! Bail!” and grabbed Cole by the shoulders and pulled him out of the front seat. Milada couldn’t help laughing. Taking Cole’s place, she said to Kevin, “Interesting company you keep.”

“Yeah, a pair of regular court jesters.”

“Marry, sir,” Cole declaimed, “they praise me and make an ass of me.”

Milada replied, “Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.”

Cole perked up. He struck a dramatic pose. “Foolery does not walk about the orb like the sun; it shines everywhere.”

“Ah, this fellow is wise enough to play the fool.”

“What are you two talking about?” said Kevin.

“Shakespeare,” said Cole. “
Twelfth Night.
”

Two blocks farther up First South, past a row of frat houses, Kevin made another U-turn and stopped in front of a shabby-looking structure after the American Foursquare design: a two-story, brick-faced house with a squat hip roof and broad overhangs. They tramped into the kitchen. From the sound of things, the party was still well underway. Chad and Cole set to work replenishing the alcohol. Amidst the litter of beer bottles and microwave popcorn bags, a haggard-looking boy sat with his laptop and a liter of Diet Pepsi, staring at the screen with bloodshot eyes. Milada peeked over his shoulder. It looked like C++. She repressed the urge to give him a business card.

“A beer?” Kevin asked her.

“I’m not much of a beer drinker.”

“How about wine?”

“That might be interesting.”

Milada wandered into the living room. The party was a decidedly low-brow affair. She blended right in. An iPod plugged into a stereo amplifier churned through an eclectic collection of Japanese idol pop and German techno MP3 files. Nobody was dancing. A couple lay tangled together by the radiator. Three boys—no, wait, one of them was a girl—crowded together on the couch cradling laptops strung together with CAT5 cable, eyes focused with blazing intensity on the screens, saying nothing except for triumphal yelps when an opponent’s character got blasted to bits.

“Wanna play?” Chad asked. He and Cole retrieved their laptops from the coffee table.

“Video games have never been my forte.”

Kevin handed her a Dixie cup. “Here you go. The best booze in the house.”

She took a cautious sniff. It was a generic red wine, the kind she imagined got shipped from the Napa Valley in tanker trucks. “What vintage is it?”

Kevin laughed. “It’s been in the back of the refrigerator for about a month.”

Milada took a sip. “Hmm,” she said, nodding, “cheap and unpretentious.” She drained the cup. The soft sting of alcohol at the back of her throat, the bittersweet taste of dextrose and tannin focused her appetite. She said to Kevin, “What about you? Are you, as they say, a gamer?”

“Only if I want to lose.”

She laughed and touched his arm. The MP3 player cycled into another techno dance mix. Milada leaned into him and lowered her voice. “So where does a body go around here to get a little peace and quiet?”

Kevin nodded his head toward the stairway. She saw the hot spark in his eyes, the willingness and the desire. Her appetite quickened. She put down the cup and walked toward the stairway, her hand brushing across his arm. It took him no more than a moment to react. As she climbed the stairs, she glanced back at the living room. Nobody seemed to have noticed they’d left.

At the end of the hall, he opened a door and clicked on the light. Milada had to walk almost to the side of the bed so he could close the door. There was barely enough space between the foot of the bed and the wall to access the closet, barely enough space to cram a computer desk into the corner next to the window, barely enough space between the windows and the door to fit a chest of drawers and bookcase. Still, the room did not appear unsanitary. The air was tinged with male sweat and cologne.

Milada said, “You have interesting roommates.”

“As Cole says, this ain’t a Greek house—this is a
geek
house.”

Milada plucked a book off the bookcase. “
Applied Structural Mechanics,
” she read.

Kevin held up his hands in surrender. “Okay, I confess. I’m not a true computer geek. I only use them—I don’t live for them.”

“The Thunderbird is your work then?”

He preened. “Yeah.”

“I thought you looked a bit out of sorts.”

“They keep me around for my charm and good looks.”

She smiled at him. Kevin shrugged self-consciously. “Um, want the radio on?” He leaned against her side to click on the boom box perched atop the dresser. The radio was tuned to the university station. The velvet tones of Miles Davis’s
Kind of Blue
filled the small room like a rich perfume.

Milada replaced the book. She leaned back against the boy’s chest and closed her eyes. The boy wrapped his arms around her. She snuggled into his embrace, tucked her arms under his, pressing his forearms up against her chest. He was remarkably restrained—a modern-day college student trained to not misconstrue even the most suggestive of advances by a woman. But even a civilized man had his limits. Milada drew away from him. Not giving him time to imagine he’d done something wrong, she pulled off her top and then smothered his exclamation of surprise and delight with her mouth.

She fell onto the bed with him, her hands playing across his chest. As their intimacy progressed, she tasted the bite of the venom at the back of her throat. Turning the boy on his back, she parted his lips with hers and dripped venom into his mouth. His heart kicked as the drug hit his bloodstream and his blood pressure spiked. The adrenaline in his blood would soon catalyze the drug. In the space of that transition, she must do her work.

She straddled his waist, leaning forward so he could run his hands along her sides, across the velvety sheen of sweat and oil. He watched her like a child watching fireworks, wide-eyed and amazed, simultaneously falling into a waking dream as the alkaloids took hold. He passed the point of no return.

Her breath rushed out of her lungs in a barely controlled gasp. Her fangs sprang into her mouth. She clenched her mouth shut to keep the razor-sharp fangs hidden. When she could again catch her breath, she caressed his face and kissed him. Giving the venom time to do its work.

Consciousness at last fled his mind.

Milada studied his supple body, unspoiled by age. She smiled at the luster of satisfaction on his face. With cool efficiency, she straightened his body and tucked the pillow under his neck. She turned his head to the left and covered his body with her own, pinning him against the mattress, her left hand across his forehead.

Were he to move abruptly while she fed, her fangs would vivisect his muscles and tissues like a hot scalpel through soft suet. She ran her tongue across his neck, tasting the heat in his veins, seeking the optimal point of penetration. Feeding from the wrist was less carnivorous in appearance, but the slighter volume and pressure in the limbs made it markedly less pleasurable and intolerably more tedious.

She opened her mouth wide. Her fangs extended and sank through the flesh, finding the vein with the precision of a skilled phlebotomist. The blood spouted through the hollows in her fangs and arced across the roof of her mouth. Half a pint would suffice. In her present desk-bound state, her body would metabolize no more.

Stopping the palatine ducts with her tongue, she withdrew her fangs and pressed her lips over the wound, sucking the last of the oozing blood. When the punctures had clotted, she licked the skin clean. By morning, only a pair of slight bruises would remain, hardly indistinguishable from a lover’s hickey.

Milada lay on her back next to the boy. The raw plasma burned in her throat. The hemocytes flooded into her bloodstream, disgorging a fresh supply of hemoglobin. Her metabolism spiked as the sudden rush of oxygen surged through her like a hot Santa Ana wind, every cell in her body lighting up in a chain reaction. She arched her back and clenched her fists to keep from crying out.

Her breath relaxed into a throbbing purr. She sank back on the bed exhausted. In this moment, in this silent hour, she was at peace, free from the demons that raged at her out of a dark and wicked past. She drew the covers around her shoulders, laid her head on the boy’s chest, and listened to his beating human heart.

In this moment only, she felt sorry for herself. She indulged her loneliness. There were tears on her cheeks when she fell asleep.

Milada’s watch alarm chimed.

She awoke. The air touching her face was cool, the boy’s body warm. But she could not risk staying longer. She dressed in the darkness. Before she left, she knelt next to the bed. She touched his cheek with the tips of her fingers and whispered, “
Do not remember me. I was a dream. And now I am gone forever.
”

He’d be groggy in the morning. Over the next several days, however, he likely would feel much better for the experience. Such were the palliative properties of her venom.

The television in the living room was tuned to ESPN SportsCenter, volume muted. No one was watching. One of the gamers had crashed on the couch. A faint electronic beeping caught her attention. The programmer in the kitchen had dozed off at his computer, his forehead resting against the keyboard. The screen printed row after row of the letter “Z.” Milada eased his head off the laptop and rested it on the smooth Formica. He stirred and grumbled incoherently. “
Shh
—” she said. He complied.