Obsession: Tales of Irresistible Desire (8 page)

The Nunc Dimittis is the traditional Gospel Canticle of Night Prayer (Compline). It begins: Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine, secundum verbum tuum in pace.

(Now you are releasing your servant, Master, according to your word in peace.—Luke 2:29)

Tanith Lee

The Vampire was old, and no longer beautiful. In common with all living things, she had aged, though very slowly, like the tall trees in the park. Slender and gaunt and leafless, they stood out there, beyond the long windows, rain-dashed in the gray morning. While she sat in her high-backed chair in that corner of the room where the curtains of thick yellow lace and the wine-colored blinds kept every drop of daylight out. In the glimmer of the ornate oil lamp, she had been reading. The lamp came from a Russian palace. The book had once graced the library of a corrupt pope named, in his temporal existence, Rodrigo Borgia. Now the Vampire’s dry hands had fallen upon the page. She sat in her black lace dress that was 180 years of age, far younger than she herself, and looked at the old man, streaked by the shine of distant windows.

“You say you are tired, Vassu. I know how it is. To be so tired, and unable to rest. It is a terrible thing.”

“But, Princess,” said the old man quietly, “it is more than this. I am dying.”

The Vampire stirred a little. The pale leaves of her hands rustled on the page. She stared with an almost childlike wonder.

“Dying? Can this be? You are sure?”

The old man, very clean and neat in his dark clothing, nodded humbly.

“Yes, Princess.”

“Oh, Vassu,” she said, “are you glad?”

He seemed a little embarrassed. Finally he said:

“Forgive me, Princess, but I am very glad. Yes, very glad.”

“I understand.”

“Only,” he said, “I am troubled for your sake.”

“No, no,” said the Vampire, with the fragile perfect courtesy of her class and kind. “No, it must not concern you. You have been a good servant. Far better than I might ever have hoped for. I am thankful, Vassu, for all your care of me. I shall miss you. But you have earned,” she hesitated, then said, “You have more than earned your peace.”

“But you,” he said.

“I shall do very well. My requirements are small, now. The days when I was a huntress are gone, and the nights. Do you remember, Vassu?”

“I remember, Princess.”

“When I was so hungry, and so relentless. And so lovely. My white face in a thousand ballroom mirrors. My silk slippers stained with dew. And my lovers waking in the cold morning, where I had left them. But now, I do not sleep, I am seldom hungry. I never lust. I never love. These are the comforts of old age. There is only one comfort that is denied to me. And who knows. One day, I too . . .

She smiled at him. Her teeth were beautiful, but almost even now, the exquisite points of the canines quite worn away. “Leave me when you must,” she said. “I shall mourn you. I shall envy you. But I ask nothing more, my good and noble friend.”

The old man bowed his head.

“I have,” he said, “a few days, a handful of nights. There is something I wish to try to do in this time. I will try to find one who may take my place.”

The Vampire stared at him again, now astonished. “But Vassu, my irreplaceable help—it is no longer possible.”

“Yes. If I am swift.”

“The world is not as it was,” she said, with a grave and dreadful wisdom.

He lifted his head. More gravely, he answered:

“The world is as it has always been, Princess. Only our perceptions of it have grown more acute. Our knowledge less bearable.”

She nodded.

“Yes, this must be so. How could the world have changed so terribly? It must be we who have changed.”

He trimmed the lamp before he left her.

Outside, the rain dripped steadily from the trees.

The city, in the rain, was not unlike a forest. But the old man, who had been in many forests and many cities, had no special feeling for it. His feelings, his senses, were primed to other things.

Nevertheless, he was conscious of his bizarre and anachronistic effect, like that of a figure in some surrealist painting, walking the streets in clothes of a bygone era, aware he did not blend with his surroundings, nor render them homage of any kind. Yet even when, as sometimes happened, a gang of children or youths jeered and called after him the foul names he was familiar with in twenty languages, he neither cringed nor cared. He had no concern for such things. He had been so many places, seen so many sights; cities which burned or fell in ruin, the young who grew old, as he had, and who died, as now, at last, he too would die. This thought of death soothed him, comforted him, and brought with it a great sadness, a strange jealousy. He did not want to leave her. Of course he did not. The idea of her vulnerability in this harsh world, not new in its cruelty but ancient, though freshly recognized—it horrified him. This was the sadness. And the jealousy . . . that, because he must try to find another to take his place. And that other would come to be for her, as he had been.

The memories rose and sank in his brain like waking dreams all the time he moved about the streets. As he climbed the steps of museums and underpasses, he remembered other steps in other lands, of marble and fine stone. And looking out from high balconies, the city reduced to a map, he recollected the towers of cathedrals, the starswept points of mountains. And then at last, as if turning over the pages of a book backwards, he reached the beginning.

There she stood, between two tall white graves, the chateau grounds behind her, everything silvered in the dusk before the dawn. She wore a ball gown, and a long white cloak. And even then, her hair was dressed in the fashion of a century ago; dark hair, like black flowers.

He had known for a year before that he would serve her. The moment he had heard them talk of her in the town. They were not afraid of her, but in awe. She did not prey upon her own people, as some of her line had done.

When he could get up, he went to her. He had kneeled, and stammered something; he was only sixteen, and she not much older. But she had simply looked at him quietly and said: “I know. You are welcome.” The words had been in a language they seldom spoke together now. Yet always, when he recalled that meeting, she said them in that tongue, and with the same gentle inflection.

All about, in the small café where he had paused to sit and drink coffee, vague shapes came and went. Of no interest to him, no use to her. Throughout the morning, there had been nothing to alert him. He would know. He would know, as he had known it of himself.

He rose, and left the café, and the waking dream walked with him. A lean black car slid by, and he recaptured a carriage carving through white snow—

A step brushed the pavement, perhaps twenty feet behind him. The old man did not hesitate. He stepped on, and into an alleyway that ran between the high buildings. The steps followed him; he could not hear them all, only one in seven, or eight. A little wire of tension began to draw taut within him, but he gave no sign. Water trickled along the brickwork beside him, and the noise of the city was lost.

Abruptly, a hand was on the back of his neck, a capable hand, warm and sure, not harming him yet, almost the touch of a lover.

“That’s right, old man. Keep still. I’m not going to hurt you, not if you do what I say.”

He stood, the warm and vital hand on his neck, and waited.

“All right,” said the voice, which was masculine and young and with some other elusive quality to it. “Now let me have your wallet.”

The old man spoke in a faltering tone, very foreign, very fearful. “I have—no wallet.”

The hand changed its nature, gripped him, bit.

“Don’t lie. I can hurt you. I don’t want to, but I can. Give me whatever money you have.”

“Yes,” he faltered, “yes—yes—”

And slipped from the sure and merciless grip like water, spinning, gripping in turn, flinging away—there was a whirl of movement.

The old man’s attacker slammed against the wet gray wall and rolled down it. He lay on the rainy debris of the alley floor, and stared up, too surprised to look surprised.

This had happened many times before. Several had supposed the old man an easy mark, but he had all the steely power of what he was. Even now, even dying, he was terrible in his strength. And yet, though it had happened often, now it was different. The tension had not gone away.

Swiftly, deliberately, the old man studied the young one.

Something struck home instantly. Even sprawled, the adversary was peculiarly graceful, the grace of enormous physical coordination. The touch of the hand, also, impervious and certain—there was strength here, too. And now the eyes. Yes, the eyes were steady, intelligent, and with a curious lambency, an innocence—

“Get up,” the old man said. He had waited upon an aristocrat. He had become one himself, and sounded it. “Up. I will not hit you again.”

The young man grinned, aware of the irony. The humor flitted through his eyes. In the dull light of the alley, they were the color of leopards—not the eyes of leopards, but their pelts.

“Yes, and you could, couldn’t you, Granddad.”

“My name,” said the old man, “is Vasyelu Gorin. I am the father to none, and my nonexistent sons and daughters have no children. And you?”

“My name,” said the young man, “is Snake.”

The old man nodded. He did not really care about names, either.

“Get up, Snake. You attempted to rob me, because you are poor, having no work, and no wish for work. I will buy you food, now.”

The young man continued to lie, as if at ease, on the ground.

“Why?”

“Because I want something from you.”

“What? You’re right. I’ll do almost anything, if you pay me enough. So you can tell me.”

The old man looked at the young man called Snake, and knew that all he said was a fact. Knew that here was one who had stolen and whored, and stolen again when the slack bodies slept, both male and female, exhausted by the sexual vampirism he had practiced on them, drawing their misguided souls out through their pores as later he would draw the notes from purse and pocket. Yes, a vampire. Maybe a murderer, too. Very probably a murderer.

“If you will do anything,” said the old man, “I need not tell you beforehand. You will do it anyway.”

“Almost anything, is what I said.”

“Advise me then,” said Vasyelu Gorin, the servant of the Vampire, ”what you will not do. I shall then refrain from asking it of you.”

The young man laughed. In one fluid movement he came to his feet. When the old man walked on, he followed.

Testing him, the old man took Snake to an expensive restaurant, far up the white hills of the city, where the glass geography nearly scratched the sky. Ignoring the mud on his dilapidated leather jacket, Snake became a flawless image of decorum, became what is always ultimately respected, one who does not care. The old man, who also did not care, appreciated this act, but knew it was nothing more. Snake had learned how to be a prince. But he was a gigolo with a closet full of skins to put on. Now and then the speckled leopard eyes, searching, wary, would give him away.

After the good food and the excellent wine, the cognac, the cigarettes taken from the silver box—Snake had stolen three, but, stylishly overt, had left them sticking like porcupine quills from his breast pocket—they went out again into the rain.

The dark was gathering, and Snake solicitously took the old man’s arm. Vasyelu Gorin dislodged him, offended by the cheapness of the gesture after the acceptable one with the cigarettes.

“Don’t you like me anymore?” said Snake. “I can go now, if you want. But you might pay for my wasted time.”

“Stop that,” said Vasyelu Gorin. “Come along.”

Smiling, Snake came with him. They walked, between the glowing pyramids of stores, through shadowy tunnels, over the wet paving. When the thoroughfares folded away and the meadows of the great gardens began, Snake grew tense. The landscape was less familiar to him, obviously. This part of the forest was unknown. Trees hung down from the air to the sides of the road. “I could kill you here,” said Snake. “Take your money, and run.”

“You could try,”’ said the old man, but he was becoming weary. He was no longer certain, and yet, he was sufficiently certain that his jealousy had assumed a tinge of hatred. If the young man were stupid enough to set on him, how simple it would be to break the columnar neck, like pale amber, between his fleshless hands. But then, she would know. She would know he had found for her, and destroyed the finding. And she would be generous, and he would leave her, aware he had failed her, too.

When the huge gates appeared, Snake made no comment. He seemed, by then, to anticipate them. The old man went into the park, moving quickly now, in order to outdistance his own feelings. Snake loped at his side.

Three windows were alight, high in the house. Her windows. And as they came to the stair that led up, under its skeins of ivy, into the porch, her pencil-thin shadow passed over the lights above like smoke, or a ghost.

“I thought you lived alone,” said Snake. “I thought you were lonely.”

The old man did not answer anymore. He went up the stair and opened the door. Snake came in behind him, and stood quite still, until Vasyelu Gorin had found the lamp in the niche by the door, and lit it. Unnatural stained glass flared in the door panels, and the window-niches either side, owls and lotuses and far-off temples, scrolled and luminous, oddly aloof.

Vasyelu began to walk toward the inner stair.

“Just a minute,” said Snake. Vasyelu halted, saying nothing. ”I’d just like to know,” said Snake, “how many of your friends are here, and just what your friends are figuring to do, and how I fit into their plans.”

The old man sighed.

“There is one woman in the room above. I am taking you to see her. She is a princess. Her name is Darejan Draculas.” He began to ascend the stair.

Left in the dark, the visitor said softly:

“What?”

“You think you have heard the name. You are correct. But it is another branch.”