Sips of Blood (14 page)

"Sometimes time can't be turned back,
depending on the gentleman's experiences."

"He has similar experiences. He was in the
armed services. He still blushes."

"How charming!"

"Les femmes
do appreciate that.
Although he may not be as shy as he once was." Sade recalled the
contact David had made with Evie. "But then, that may be a plus.
Before he never knew where to put his hands, never mind his--"

Matilda cleared her throat.

"Excusez-moi.
I am interrupting your
work schedule. Please finish up."

Matilda ran for the exit to the kitchen, but
stopped when Sade called her name.

"How is Cecilia doing?"

"Fine." She turned back to exit.

"By the way, she mentioned a dance recital
that she's going to perform. Has the date been set yet?"

"It's been cancelled, sir." Speedily she
withdrew from the room.

Chapter 25

Seeing the gates of the cemetery in daylight
chilled Liliana's soul. When she had been with Keith, it had been
dusk, and she couldn't make out many of the fine details--or at
least they hadn't attracted her attention.

The bars on the gates were closely fitted,
and the top of each bar ended in a sharp point. No one would be
able to gain entrance
or leave
the cemetery. Did spirits
waft through the narrow spaces between each bar? Certainly vampires
couldn't. Unlike the stories fed to the mass market, vampires were
not able to turn into a puff of smoke.

Liliana left her car on the triangular dusty
space to the right of the gates. Today she had dressed comfortably
in sneakers and jeans. An old sweatshirt with the logo of an
out-dated rock n' roll band topped the outfit.

When she touched the door of the gate, she
thought she felt an electric shock and immediately pulled her hand
away. But there was obviously no circuitry hooked up to the gate.
Only her imagination, she thought. She picked up a medium-sized
branch and used it to pull back the gate. The gate barely swung
open, but it was enough to allow her to squeeze through.

The gravel road she traveled immediately
forked into three different paths. Straight ahead she would find
Emmeline. Before paying a visit to Keith's wife, Liliana took the
path leading to the right. Evidently this led to the old part of
the cemetery, for it was less maintained, with tombstones either
leaning or fallen over. There did not appear to be any mausoleums,
only a few crosses interspersed among the tombstones. Most of the
writing on the stones was illegible. Once in a awhile she could
make out an unfamiliar name. Most of the surnames were very
English-sounding: Stafford, Vaughn. An occasional Irish or Scot
name broke the monotony. The tombstone dates preceded the American
Revolutionary war. Nettles stretched out onto the road, causing her
to trip occasionally. She wondered whether any vampires lived here.
She had heard of a mysteriously impaired line of vampires that
spent nights looking for food and days hiding underground or in
mausoleums. These vampires led a primitive existence. Although she
herself had never encountered any of these, she believed the
stories about them to be true. There was even talk that some of the
impaired vampires had once been fully functional, but that
something in their brains had broken down and that they had become
something closer to ghouls than true vampires.

The trees here were old and tall. Only an
occasional ray of sun poked through the thick branches, comfortable
for Liliana and perfect for the impaired vampires. Yes, she
decided, if any vampires existed in this cemetery, this would be
their dwelling place.

She looked for dirt that had been recently
moved or a path disrupting the weeds that grew among the
tombstones. Nothing-- until she caught sight of a yellowed piece of
lace resting next to a fallen cross. The material did not fly in
the breeze; instead it seemed caught in a clump of earth. She
walked to the lace and picked it up. She smelled the cloth. Blood,
stale, perhaps a week old. She touched the material with her tongue
and tasted human baby's blood. Not healthy blood. The child must
have been quite ill. The faded blood appeared as pink slashes
across the material. After feeling the cloth between her fingers,
she could tell the cloth had not belonged to the baby. Instead the
lace had been aged well over a century.

Again she searched for moved earth. Did these
vampires really dig back into their coffins each daybreak? Or did
they hide during the day behind bushes and in hollowed-out
trees?

Many weeds but few bushes covered this part
of the cemetery. Most of the trees were old and gnarled. A squat
dead tree stood to her left. On closer examination Liliana noted
some remaining greenery on its branches. She walked around the tree
and saw a hollowed-out pit. The hole in the tree was big enough for
a child or very small adult. She couldn't see inside. Blindly she
slipped her hand into the opening. She could feel the uneven
surface of a walnut, and she broke several webs. Certainly the pit
hadn't been occupied in a long time. But then her hand caught onto
something rubbery. When she pulled out the object she recognized
that it was a baby's pacifier.

Now she noticed something she had missed
earlier. There were no ants running up and down the bark of the
tree. No insects at all. And birds seemed to avoid this area of the
cemetery completely, although she couldn't remember whether she had
seen any birds near Emmeline's tombstone.

She continued along the path until she
reached the ivy-covered fence. No squirrels. No insects. No
birds.

An old French hymn came into her mind and she
began to hum. She couldn't remember the words, but the tune kept
ringing inside her head. It had been a century since she had heard
this music. Why would the hymn come to her now? She sensed that at
least one ancient vampire slept nearby, one of the primitive ones
that survived by the sufferance of a disbelieving public. Could
this thing that she tracked be considered human anymore?

She retraced her steps, humming and
attempting to memorize as many family names as she could. When she
had returned to the fork, she took the center path. The path that
led to Emmeline.

Here a mixture of tombstones and mausoleums
shared the earth. Flowers had been left at most of the plots, and
some plots even had small gardens, carefully planned and colorful
as if to deny the emptiness of the cemetery. The doors on the
mausoleums were closed. None stood ajar.

She saw Emmeline's tombstone before her. The
charcoal-gray granite shined in the sunlight. The simple and
legible legend on the stone stated her birth and death dates and
that she had been the wife of Keith Bridgewater and the mother of
Wilbur.

Liliana investigated Emmeline's neighbors and
found that Emmeline was the youngest female buried in this part of
the cemetery. One male child slept to her right. The rest had died
in their seventies or eighties and one had barely reached one
hundred. Wives and husbands buried together for the eternal
rest.

"What are you doing here?"

Liliana turned quickly. How had anyone
sneaked up on her? Her hearing was acute, and her sense of smell
was definitely sharp. Obviously she had allowed herself to be drawn
into a deep reverie on death.

"I'm sorry, Wil. I didn't know family would
visit today."

"Hadn't planned on it, but the old man's been
giving me a hard time all morning. Thought I'd come here and draw
on some of my mother's famous patience."

"Famous?"

"Whenever I was bad, my father would wish
that mom were around to deal with me. She had the patience, he
said."

"Were you that wayward as a child?"

"Willful, as he called it."

Wil walked past Liliana and stood at his
mother's tombstone in silence. Liliana was ready to move away when
he spoke to her.

"Dad takes good care of the grave."

"He loves your mother."

"And because of that he hates me."

"Your father and I talked about you and your
mother yesterday evening. My impression is that he's confused."

"Why are you here," he asked. "Out of
curiosity?"

"I wanted to see how..." How the dead really
lived.
"Your father talked about her a lot. He even got me
to drive him here to the cemetery before taking him home."

"He had to spit-shine the stone."

"I think he missed her and was trying to
figure out how to connect with you."

Wil faced Liliana.

"When I was a boy I used to spy on my Dad.
See that tree over there?"

An oak nestled its roots outside the
cemetery; many of its branches hung over several stones near the
fence.

"Yes."

"I climbed that tree as a child. Used to
watch Dad cleaning the stone, planting flowers, even kneeling in
prayer.

"I had to be careful, though. See that big
branch that glides out over the fence?"

"Yes."

"Sam, a boyhood friend, used to climb up
there with me sometimes, until once he nearly fell right down on
top of the spiked fence. I grabbed him in time, but he never
climbed that tree again. Almost found himself truly staked out over
the cemetery." Wil laughed.

"Bet Sam didn't think that joke was
funny."

"How did you guess? Do you know him?"

Liliana turned away and began her walk back
to the cemetery gate.

"Wait up," yelled Wil.

She stopped for a second, then continued.
When Wil did catch up, he was slightly breathless.

"You doing anything special tonight?"

"Yes, I am."

"Okay. How about tomorrow night or anytime
within the next six months would you go out with me?"

"No."

"Because of your grandmother?"

"No. I don't want to."

"But let us consider matters from another viewpoint.
Is this a personal chastening I'm getting? and as if I were a
naughty little boy, the idea is to spank me into good behavior?
Wasted efforts, Madame. If the wretchedness and ignominy to which I
have been reduced by the Marseilles judges' absurd proceedings, who
punished the most commonplace of indiscretions as though it were a
crime, have failed to make me mend my ways, your iron bars and your
iron doors and your locks will not be more successful."

LETTER (1777)

To Madame la Présidente de Montreuil

by the Marquis de Sade

Chapter 26

It had been just over a week since Garrett
had met Letcher and his dog, and Garrett's body had just started
feeling better. Not well enough to have sex with his wife or to
return to his regular workout program, but comfortable enough not
to mind the potholes his chauffeur couldn't avoid.

Garrett set aside the legal pad on which he
had been doodling and leaned against the back seat of his Lincoln.
Useless. His brain was useless today. He couldn't concentrate. He
couldn't forget. He glanced out the window. The road they were on
did not lead home.

"Philip, where are you going?"

"It's Tuesday, sir. I always take you upstate
at this time."

They were coming up on
La Maîtresse'
s
home. He could see the house and the bright colors of her garden.
He had no appointment with
La Maîtresse.
She had told him
she would call when she could take him back.

Philip turned and pulled up in front of
La
Maîtresse'
s garage. The chauffeur immediately got out of the
car and opened the back door to allow Garrett to exit.

An older man stood on the porch of the house
and stared at the car. He had white hair and his stance appeared
haughty. Could he be the favored slave?

Garrett stepped out of the car and walked up
to the porch.

"Is Marie expecting you?"

"Marie". Garrett had never known her real
name. Hadn't wanted to. Fantasy began when he crossed the threshold
of her home. The home of
Maîtresse la Présidente.
He paid in
cash and never asked anything about her own life.

"Is... she here?"

"No. But I am. Perhaps I can help you." The
man's smile was a cross between a leer and humor.

This man knew why Garrett came here.

"Do you live with her?"

"No,
monsieur,
but I'm quite familiar
with the place."

"Are you her husband?"

The man with the French accent guffawed.

"Son-in-law,
monsieur."

"Sorry."

"Ah! Sad it is, because she drove my own
Renée-Pélagie away from me. May she rest in peace. But you are not
here,
monsieur,
to inquire about my relationships. Instead,
I think, you seek pleasure.
N'est-ce pas?"

"Will she return soon?"

"Not soon enough for you, I'm sure,
monsieur.
Perhaps you could help me with this Eton Bench. I
want to bring it down to the
donjon.
Perhaps I may even set
it up now,
monsieur.
It has not tasted flesh against its
platform in some time."

Why did his fucking cock ache? wondered
Garrett. Hadn't he learned his lesson? The bruises had been slow to
fade. His butt still had a yellowish cast from the last beating. On
the other hand, this would allow him access to
La
Maîtresse'
s house and a world with which he was familiar.

"I assure you,
monsieur,
that Marie
allows me full use of the
donjon.
At least when she is not
here. By the way, I introduced her to many of
les instruments de
travail.
And with my expert guidance she has become a
well-educated dom."

Garrett's breath caught. Sweat beaded on his
forehead. His body tingled. A breeze carried the sweet smell of
honeysuckle to his nostrils, almost turning his stomach.