Microsoft Word - The Mammoth Book of Vampire Romance.doc (49 page)

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balding thirty-something dentist with rather small brown eyes

and a blotchy complexion, Sol saw an Adonis.

He looked even more carefully. With astonishment,  he discovered his hair was thicker, his belly flatter, his face leaner and his incisors . . . were definitely longer.

Wonderment overtook him. The fright of Krista’s attack was forgotten. Sol was changing from Brooklyn dentist  –
interest-free financing available, new patients welcome
 
–  to a fully fledged, amoral vampire, as promised.

Weeks passed. The hot New York summer season slid effortlessly into autumn. The Yankees won the pennant. October brought cool nights.

And Sol had two private sessions with Krista in his examining room to complete his transformation while she was fitted with the latest in invisible plastic braces. By the time her overbite was noticeably better, he had become a new man  –  no longer human and undead to the core.

The benefits  were visible. Sol’s hair grew lush, black and wavy. His waist shrank to a size 28. He began to favour tight black jeans, loafers with no socks and Armani shirts.

His sister, Glenda Faye, marvelled at his transformation. He told her he had had a hair transplant, hired a personal trainer and seen a nutritionist. She immediately wanted to introduce him to one of her friends. He knew who she meant and deftly refused.  Even Aunt Blanche phoned him one evening, wanting to fix him up on a blind date with the daughter of a friend. But Sol had some backbone now. Regretfully, he said, he must decline. He was far too busy to date.

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And he was. From that first momentous week in July, new patients had poured into his office in an unending stream. He hired a receptionist  willing to work at night, since daylight appointments were out. He found a cute dental hygienist with a fondness for the late shift. And he worked from sundown to

sunup, every night but Friday, at which time he didn’t venture  out but fell asleep exhausted  in front of the new plasma TV.  And so, despite his drastic transformation, Sol’s life  –  except for  his shrinking from sunlight, aversion to garlic, and need for  infusions of blood  –  didn’t seem much different than before.

In other words. Sol had no time to get back to the Blood  Lust club. He hadn’t attended another orgy. And, while he did take blood donations in lieu of payment services occasionally, he was getting restless. He was both horny and bored.

He called Brice for advice.

“Have you hunted down a  human yet?” Brice asked,

knowing full well that Sol had not.

“I don’t even own a gun,” Sol said appalled.

“Not that kind of hunting,” Brice countered. “I mean

stalking, pouncing and saying ‘I vant to drink your blood’.”

“You really do that?” Sol asked.

“All vampires do,” Brice said, “I’ll show you the ropes.”

The lesson took place on a cold, overcast night in late  October. Sol met Brice in a dark park along the Hudson River, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

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With his wide mouth a sensual sneer  and his eyes heavily lidded, Brice was as dissolute looking as a young Mick Jagger.  He wore a black leather trench coat and tight leather pants. He walked with a swagger.

Sol didn’t look too shabby himself, even though he felt more comfortable with his black jeans and tight Armani shirt under a nice, warm, down parka.

“Just watch me. Do what I do,” Brice said and began

walking north along a lighted footpath.

A lonely wind howled. The damp seeped into Sol’s bones.  The only footsteps to be heard were their  own. No sane person would be out alone in this dark and lonesome place. Sol thought  Brice might be better off hunting humans in Times Square.

Suddenly Brice pulled Sol off the path and stationed him in the shadows. A fish jumped in the river behind them.  A tugboat whistle sounded. Sol blew on his hands to warm them.

“Shh,” Brice said and pointed.

A young woman stopped to light a cigarette not fifty feet away. In the flare of the lighter’s flame. Sol could see tear stains on her cheeks. A fight with a lover had sent her outdoors, he guessed. How foolish, he thought.

Brice stepped out of the shadows into the path. Sol hung back and observed. The girl looked up startled. She turned to flee but Brice was faster. He caught her by the arm and turned her around. Her pretty eyes widened in terror. But  she didn’t scream. She simply stared.

Brice said something Sol didn’t quite hear. The woman smiled and stepped into the vampire’s arms. Brice brought his

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mouth down to hers in a kiss. She went limp in his embrace.  He  dragged her off onto the lawn behind some shrubbery. His  incisors grew sharp and gleaming in the lamplight. He bit her  white throat and drank. When he was done, he left behind a  small puncture in her throat and a thin red thread of blood.

“I don’t know if I can handle that,” Sol said as he looked  closely at the prone body of the young woman, sprawled on the  lawn with her head thrown back.

“She’s not hurt, you know, Brice said. “I could have been a

mugger. She was lucky.”

Sol looked at her again. “She  has a wide gap between those

front teeth. Maybe I should leave her a card.”

“Not a bad idea,” Brice agreed. “Now, let’s find a victim for

you.”

Sol’s first target was a buxom blonde out walking her  Yorkshire terrier. She smiled when he approached. He  stopped and asked her the time. She said she’d be glad to show him the time and then some. Why didn’t he come back to her place?

Once he got over his surprise, he thought: where was the terror? Where was the chase? He shook his head and declined.  He retired to the shadows, where Bryce waited, stamping his feet and sucking on an Altoid mint.

“Give it another try,” Brice advised.

It took Sol a while to get it right. He finally bit a long-haired

Asian student with a tattoo of a coiled snake on her ankle. She

swooned right into his arms and he drank his fill.

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It was interesting, it was titillating and Sol was left physically sated. Emotionally, however, he remained unsatisfied and empty inside. With uncharacteristic boldness, Sol decided he and Brice needed  to have a heart-to-heart conversation. He

needed to do better in the sex and romance department than his  old friend Howie. He needed to be able to boast of his

conquests. He needed to meet the girl of his dreams.

A few days later, on the Saturday night before Halloween,  Sol looked over towards the door of an East Village pub for the hundredth time. Another young woman dressed entirely in black with piercing in every visible orifice pushed her way into the steamy interior of Mac’s Pit and didn’t give him a second glance.

None of them are my type anyway, Sol Tytel thought getting miffed. He was also disappointed. He had wanted to become a vampire to become irresistible to women, to have the girl of his dreams in his bed. But Brice’s stern directive to use this particular bar tucked on a side street off Second Avenue in  Manhattan for Sol’s first solo into the underworld of seduction and bloodsucking was a bust. It had not produced an introduction to any bite-worthy sweet young things whose flesh smelled of  strawberries and whose tits would fill his hands like melons.

Sol checked himself out in the mirror behind the bar. He was gorgeous: he was a hunk. But nothing was happening for him. Maybe he was giving off the wrong vibes. He considered calling it a night, but he ordered another Martini instead, determined to give this, his maiden voyage as a fully fledged vampire on the prowl, his all.

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At exactly 12.10 a.m.. right after a third gin with just a

spray of vermouth, the door to Mac’s Pit opened once more.

Sol swore he heard a drum roll because his head snapped in

that direction.

There she was. Beneath a faux mink jacket, she had on a pink bustier with the straps pushed down to leave her shoulders bare and she wore a black micro mini above slender, tanned legs. As she stepped into the bar’s interior, she lifted her head high, showcasing her long neck and making her hair, tawny blonde and sun streaked, flow down her back like silk. Her cornflower-blue eyes scanned the room. Sol’s heart nearly seized up in a  cardio infarction when this  nubile vision marched right over to put her perfect size-two well-shaped ass on the bar stool next to his.

Heart going like a trip hammer, his body responding like a soldier snapping to attention, he turned to her. “Buy you a drink?” he asked. His eyes clung to the curve on the top of the bustier where white breasts peeked up in a tantalizing swell.

“Oh, I’d love that,” the blonde said and asked for a gin and  tonic. Her cherry-red lips parted in a dazzling smile. Sol saw it  at  once. She had a bit of an overbite, not as bad as Krista’s. This  could be easily corrected and he had to admit, although he  tended to be critical about a woman’s teeth, this misalignment  was sort of cute.

“Do you come here often?” he fumbled, trying to think of

something witty to say.

She swirled her ice cubes with her swizzle stick. They clinked against the glass. She lifted it and drank. Sol watched with hungry eyes while she swallowed. “My first time,” she said.

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“Me too,” Sol admitted. “I guess we have something in

common.”

The blonde gave him a meaningful look, holding his doe-soft eyes with her lapis-lazuli ones. “I believe we do.” She smiled wider and her razor-sharp eye teeth gleamed.

Sol’s heart raced. His breath caught in his throat. She had

clearly given him a signal. “Ahh, errr, when you finish your  drink, do you want to go back to my place? I live in Brooklyn.  It’s a short subway ride, but better yet, I’ll spring for a cab.”

The blonde scrutinized him again. She couldn’t possibly be disappointed. He was a vampire now, strong of jaw and virile of expression. An odd look flickered across the young woman’s beautiful face but only for a nanosecond before she answered. “I can’t think of anything I’d like more.”

They fondled each other in the cab.  They rushed, breathing hard, to his front door. They kissed in the hallway. They tore off each other’s clothing in Sol’s bedroom.

“please say your name is Bunny,” Sol whispered as he

tongued her neck.

“No it’s London, like the city,” she answered nibbling on

his ear. “But my friends call me Sunny. Will that do?”

“Oh yes,” Sol moaned.

A ray of moonlight came dancing through the window. And

somewhere in the New York sky, Sol was sure, stars fell.

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After a heated encounter using every position Sol could remember, he felt satisfied, quite exhausted and yet the tiniest bit disappointed, something he refused to admit. The coupling had been good, but no more imaginative than some of the romps he had at college back in the day when he was younger and still  100 per cent human.

Sunny sat up in the bed letting the sheet slip to her waist.  She had a great set of knockers, Sol thought, and promptly forgot everything else.

“Do you mind if I smoke?” she asked.

Sol had never started smoking the Cuban cigars he had fantasized about. He discovered he didn’t like the aftertaste of tobacco or the nasty smell. He started to say he did mind but, as his eyes roamed over Sunny’s skin, which was as smooth as golden ivory, he murmured, “Go ahead.”

He watched her stand up,  walk to his dresser, where she had left her purse, and spill out the contents while she rummaged around for her pack of Camels and a lighter.

He devoured her with greedy eyes as she leaned her hip against the dresser, her head tipped back while she inhaled deeply, making her bosom rise and fall. Her nails were painted red. The toenails of her narrow, beautiful feet were red too. A gold ring pierced her perfect navel.

Sol’s chest felt so tight with longing he thought he was drowning. She was a goddess, an  Aphrodite. He loved her. It was kismet.

“So how long have you been a vampire?” she asked

blowing out a cloud of smoke.

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Sol turned on his side and leaned his weight on his elbow.  He tried to make his eyes heavy lidded and sensual like Brice’s.  “A long time,” he lied. “And you?”

“A couple of decades. I was touring Italy after graduation  and met this Florentine count. He seduced me, bit me and  abandoned me. The rest is history. You like the life?” She drew  deeply one last time on the cigarette before looking around the  dresser for something to use as an ashtray. She found a plaster  cast of an upper jaw, turned it over and stubbed out her butt on  the palate.

Sol felt a brief annoyance until he became distracted by the

smooth curve of her buttocks.

Her voice  held a trace of irritation too when she spoke again. “I said, do you like the life? You know, the restrictions and all. I have to use artificial tanner now. I used to love the  Hamptons.” She sighed and gazed somewhat forlornly at the beige bedroom wall.