Moonlight & Vines (7 page)

“I'm sorry,” Imogen said. “I didn't mean to hurt you.”

“How can you not breathe?”

Imogen smiled. “It's a talent I don't have,” she said.

This was seriously strange, Nita thought. She was way, way out of her depth.

“So,” she began. She had to stop to clear her throat. Her mouth felt as though it was coated with dry dust. She took a gulp of whiskey and fumbled another cigarette out of her package. “So what are you?” she finally managed.

Imogen shrugged. “Immortal. Undead.”

That moment in the alley flashed in Nita's mind. The three men, dispatched so quickly and Imogen not even out of breath. The vise-like
strength of her fingers. The weird gleam in her eyes. The cool touch of her skin. The fact that she really didn't breathe.

Nita tried to light her cigarette, but her hand shook too much. She flinched when Imogen reached out to steady it, but then accepted the help. She drew the smoke in deeply, held it, exhaled. Took another drag.

“Okay,” she said. “So what do you want from me?”

“No more than I told you earlier: company.”

“Company.”

Imogen nodded. “When the sun rises this morning, I'm going to die. I just didn't want to die alone.”

“You want me to die with you?”

“Not at all. I just want you to be there when I do. I've lived this hidden life of mine for too long. Nobody knows me. Nobody cares about me. I thought you'd understand.”

“Understand what?”

“I just want to be remembered.”

“This is too weird,” Nita said. “I mean, you don't look sick or anything.”

Like I'd know, Nita added to herself.

“I'm not sick. I'm tired.” Imogen gave a small laugh that held no humor. “I'm always amazed at how humans strive so desperately to prolong their lives. If you only knew . . . .”

Nita thought about her own life and imagined it going on forever.

“I think I see where you're coming from,” she said.

“It's not so bad at first—when you outlive your first set of friends and lovers. But it's harder the next time, and harder still each time after that, because you start anticipating the end, their deaths, from the first moment you meet them. So you stop having friends, you stop taking lovers, only to find it's no easier being alone.”

“But aren't there . . . others like you around?” Nita asked.

“They're not exactly the sort of people I care to know. I'm not exactly the sort of person I care to know. We're monsters, Nita. We're not the romantic creatures of myth that your fictions perpetuate. We're parasites, surviving only by killing you.”

She shook her head. “I look around and all I see is meat. All I smell is blood—some diseased, and not fit for consumption, it's true, but the rest . . .”

“So how do I smell?” Nita wanted to know.

Imogen smiled. “Very good—though not as good as you did when those men attacked us in the alley earlier. Adrenaline adds a spicy flavor to human scent, like a mix of jalapeños and chili.”

The new turn their conversation had taken made Nita feel too much like a potential meal.

“If your life's so shitty,” she asked, “why've you waited until now to put an end to it?”

“My existence is monstrous,” Imogen told her. “But it's also seductive. We are so powerful. I hate what I am at the same time as I exult in my existence. Nothing can harm us but sunlight.”

Nita shivered. “What about the rest of it?” she asked, thinking of the dozens of late-night movies she'd watched. “You know—the running water, the garlic, and the crosses?”

“Only sunlight.”

“So tomorrow morning you're just going to sit in the sun?”

Imogen nodded. “And die. With you by my side to wish my spirit safe-journey and to remember me when I'm gone.”

It was so odd. There was no question in Nita's mind but that Imogen was exactly what she said she was. The strange thing was how readily she accepted it. But accepting it and watching Imogen die were two different things. The endings of all those late-night movies went tumbling through her in all their grotesque glory.

“I don't know if I can do it,” Nita said.

Imogen's eyebrows rose questioningly.

“I'm not real good with gross shit,” Nita explained. “You know—what's going to happen to you when the sunlight touches you.”

“Nothing will happen,” Imogen assured her. “It's not like in the films. I'll simply stop living, that's all.”

“Oh.”

“Have you finished your drink?” Imogen asked. “I'd like to go for a last walk in the park.”

Fitzhenry Park was probably the last place Nita would go for a walk at this time of night, but remembering how easily Imogen had dealt with their attackers in the alley behind the club, she felt safe enough doing so tonight. Walking hand in hand, they seemed to have the footpaths to
themselves. As they got deeper inside the park, all sense of the city surrounding them vanished. They could have been a thousand miles away, a thousand years away from this time and place. The moon was still working its way up to its first quarter—a silvery sickle hanging up among the stars that came and went from view depending on the foliage of the trees lining the path.

Nita kept stealing glances at her companion whenever there was enough light. She looked so normal. But that was how it always was, wasn't it? The faces people put on when they went out into the world could hide anything. All you ever knew about somebody was what he or she cared to show you. Nita normally didn't have much interest in anyone, but she found herself wanting to know everything she could about Imogen.

“You told me you live a hidden life,” she said, “but the way you look seems to me would turn more heads than let you keep a low profile.”

“I dress like this to attract my prey. Since I must feed, I prefer to do so on those the world can do better without.”

Makes sense, Nita thought. She wondered if she should introduce Imogen to Eddie back at the club.

“How often do you have to . . . feed?” she asked.

“Too often.” Imogen glanced at her. “The least we can get by on is once a week.”

“Oh.”

“I've been fasting,” Imogen went on. “Preparing for tonight. I wanted to be as weak as possible when the moment comes.”

If Imogen was weak at the moment, Nita couldn't imagine what she'd be like at full strength. She wasn't sure if she was being more observant, or if her companion had lowered her guard now that they were more familiar with each other's company, but Imogen radiated a power and charisma unlike anyone Nita had ever met before.

“You don't seem weak to me,” she said.

Imogen came to a stop and drew Nita over to a nearby bench. When they sat down, she put a hand on Nita's shoulder and looked her directly in the face.

“It doesn't matter how weak or hurt we feel,” she said, “we have to be strong in here.” Her free hand rose up to touch her chest. “We have to project that strength or those around us will simply take advantage of us. We can take no pride in being a victim—we belittle not only ourselves,
but all women, if we allow that to happen to us without protest. You must stand up for yourself. You must always stand up for yourself and your sisters. I want you to remember that as you go on with your life. Never give in, never give up.”

“But you're giving up.”

Imogen shook her head. “Don't equate the two. What I am doing is taking the next step on a journey that I should have completed three hundred years ago. I am not surrendering. I am hoping to kill the monster that I let myself become and finally moving on.”

Imogen looked away then. She shifted her position slightly, settling her back against the bench. After a few moments, she leaned her head against Nita's.

“What do you think it's like when you die?” Nita asked. “Do you think everything's just over, or do we, you know, go on somewhere?”

“I think we go on.”

“What'll you miss the most?”

Imogen shrugged. “What would you miss if you were in my position?”

“Nothing.”

“Not even your daughter?”

Nita didn't even bother to ask how Imogen knew about Amanda.

“You've got to understand,” she said. “I love her. And it makes me feel good to know that something I was a part of making isn't fucked up. But it makes me feel even better knowing that she's going to be raised properly. That she'll be given all the chances I never had. I didn't want her to grow up to be like me.”

“But you still visit her.”

Nita nodded. “But once she's old enough to understand what I am, I'll stop.”

If not sooner. If John's old man didn't get the judge to revoke her visitation rights because of what he'd seen her doing tonight.

“It's getting late,” Imogen said. She stood up, drawing Nita to her feet.

“Where're we going?”

“To my apartment.”

To call it an apartment was a bit of a misnomer. It turned out that Imogen owned the penthouse on top of the Brighton Hotel, overlooking the
harbor. The only time Nita had ever seen a place this fancy was in the movies. While Imogen went to get her a drink, she walked slowly around the immense living room, trailing her hand along the polished wood tables and the back of a chesterfield that could seat five people comfortably. There was even a baby grand in one corner. She finally ended up at the glass doors leading out onto a balcony where she saw two images superimposed over each other: a view of the lake and Wolf Island in the distance, and one of herself standing at the window with the living room behind her, Imogen walking toward her with a brandy glass in each hand.

Nita turned to accept the brandy. Imogen touched her glass against Nita's and then they both drank.

“Why'd you pick me?” Nita asked.

“The name on the flyer outside the club first caught my eye,” Imogen said. “Then, when I began to study your life, I realized that we are much the same. I was like you, before the change—deadened by the ennui of my life, feeding on the admiration of those who courted my favor much the same as you do with those who come to watch you dance. It's not such a great leap from using their base interest as a kind of sustenance to taking it from their flesh and blood.”

Nita couldn't think of anything to say in response to that so she took another sip of her brandy.

“I want you to have this when I'm gone,” Imogen went on.

“Have what?”

Imogen made a languid movement with her arm that encompassed the penthouse. “This place. Everything I have. I've already made the arrangements for everything to be transferred into your name—barring unforeseen difficulties, the transaction will be completed tomorrow at noon.”

“But—”

“I have amassed a considerable fortune over the years, Nita. I want it to go to you. It will give you a chance to make a new start with your life.”

Nita shook her head. “I don't think it'd work out.”

She'd won a thousand dollars in a lotto once. She'd planned to do all sorts of sensible things with it, from taking some development courses to better herself to simply saving it. Instead, she'd partied so hearty over the space of one weekend she'd almost put herself in the hospital. The only reason she hadn't ended up in emergency was that everybody else that weekend had been too wasted to help her. She still didn't know how she'd managed to survive.

“It'd just make me fuck up big-time,” she said.

Imogen nodded—not so much in acceptance of what she was saying, Nita realized, as to indicate that she was listening.

“I have to admit that I haven't been entirely honest with you,” Imogen said. “What we're about to embark upon when the sun rises could be very dangerous to you.”

“I . . . don't understand.”

“I won't die the instant the sunlights strikes me,” Imogen said. “It will take a few minutes—enough time for the beast inside me to rise. If it can feed immediately and get out of the sun, it will survive.”

“You mean you'd . . . eat me?”

“It's not something I would do, given a choice. But the survival instinct is very strong.”

Nita knew about that. She'd tried to kill herself three times to date—deliberately, that is. Twice with pills, once with a razor blade. It was astonishing how much she'd wanted to survive, once it seemed she had no choice but to die.

“I will fight that need,” Imogen told her. “It's why I've been fasting. To make the beast weak. But I can't guarantee your safety.”

Nita filled in the silence that followed by lighting a cigarette.

“Understand,” Imogen said, “it's not what I want. I don't normally have conversations with my meals any more than you would with a hamburger you're about to eat. I truly believe that it's time for me to put the monster to rest and go on. Long past time. But the beast doesn't agree.”

“You've tried this before, haven't you?” Nita asked.

Imogen nodded.

“What happened?”

“I'm still here,” Imogen said.

Nita shivered. She silently finished her cigarette, then butted it out in an ornate silver ashtray.

“I'll understand if you feel you must leave,” Imogen said,

“You'd let me go—even with everything I now know?”

Imogen gave her a sad smile. “Who'd believe you?”

Nita lit another cigarette. She was surprised to see that her hands weren't even shaking.

“No,” she said. “I'll do it. But not for the money or this place.”

“It will still be in your name,” Imogen said.

Unspoken between them lay the words: if you survive the dawn.

Nita shrugged. “Whatever.”

Imogen hesitated, then it seemed she had to ask. “Is it that you care so little about your life?”