Sweeter Than Wine Read online

The next song was “All My Exes Live in Texas”. Perfect.

  We found a Formica table in a dim corner and sat. Before too long, a harried-looking waitress in tight cutoffs and a nice little black midriffy top came to record our order for posterity. The constant harassment, sexual and otherwise, of the motorcycle class she could take, but a dozen small, noisy children appeared to be grinding her down. Two big helpings of Rocky Mountain Oysters, some raw veggies with ranch dressing to go with them, Negra Modelo for me, Fat Tire for Anton.

  To tell a fundamental truth, it rarely gets better than that.

  She carded me, of course. Eighty-nine years old and I still get carded. Surica brought me over when I was 24. I looked younger than that, although the way it really works is that the virus decides what your genetically optimal age is, was, or will be, and modifies you to suit. I’ve read horrifying medieval accounts of children—little babies—growing up overnight after being bitten. Not a very pleasant idea.

  I don’t carry a driver’s license and I never have. I don’t have a Private Investigator’s license, either, or a concealed carry permit for my pistol and revolver. (If I have a Social Security number, I’ve long since forgotten what it was and so has the rest of the universe.) Instead, I slipped my hand inside my coat, withdrew it, and showed the waitress an empty palm. Anton watched it happen, but he saw the same thing she did. “Okay, honey,” she said, “I’ll get those beers right up.”

  And she did.

  Anton held his glass up. “Nice to think they make this stuff only a few miles from where we live. I’ve always meant to take the New Belgium brewery tour.” He took a long drink, and I concentrated on my lovely dark Mexican beer, which is also made at a small brewery, south of the border. Some places had it on draft, but you could only get it in bottles at Bryce’s, which was a damn shame. “Here’s to Fort Collins.”

  “Fort Collins,” I repeated Anton’s toast. Nice place. I had business there from time to time. Younger natives call it “Fort Funky.” Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea readers call it “Fnord Collins”.

  Our “oysters” arrived at that moment, and we dug in. Fried just right, for the uninitiated, they are what make the difference between a bull and a steer. Removing them encourages the animal to concentrate on generating steaks, rather than on the cows in the next pen. The splendid snack the process provides us with is only a byproduct. They come in sheep and turkey flavor, too, and no, they do not taste like chicken.

  We talked about this and that, avoiding the topic of Anton’s wife. He wanted to know what I thought about putting some glow-in-the-dark tritium sights on his Glock. I allowed as how it might be a good idea. To be polite, I asked him about his AR-15, which he’d brought with him but hadn’t shot. It had all the bells and whistles: a red-dot slightly telescopic sight, built-in flashlight, high-tech sling, Little Orphan Annie secret decoder ring, and this thing in the stock that tells time.

  Too cluttered, for my taste.

  There was one small incident at Bryce’s Bar that night, when I got up to go to the bathroom. The men’s room door, when I exited the facilities, bumped into some guy on the other side of it who didn’t seem to be a part of the natal day festivities, and he didn’t take it kindly.

  “Wash wear yer goin’, Zorro!” I reasoned that his clever literary reference was to my hat, which I probably should have left in the Suburban. I’d more or less forgotten I was wearing my long coat and floppy chapeau, though I don’t really need them after dark. I thought they made me look more like a Lamont Cranston than a Don Diego de la Vega.

  There wasn’t enough room to change your mind in the dark, tiny corridor that led to the men’s room, straight ahead, and the women’s on the right. His back to the main room, he raised a drunken fist to collarbone level where only I could see it. “I’ll make you a new face!”

  With that, he threw a short jab, which I caught and held, trying not to crush his hand. Someday he might be sober again and a decent guy. Or not. His do-rag was leather. His stubbly face had more craters than the back of the Moon. His breath was a violation of the Geneva Convention.

  “You don’t want to do that at a kiddies’ birthday party, do you?” I pushed him as hard as the powers I possessed would let me. His face softened. He looked guilty. “I have a better idea: why don’t you pee yourself?”

  Which he did, then and there.

  It probably wasn’t the first time.

  I went back to the table and ate some more bull’s testicles.

  8: NIGHT MOVES

  “It is in the solitary mind and soul of the individual that

  the battle between good and evil is waged and ultimately

  won or lost.”—M. Scott Peck

  We got back into town just before midnight, driving past the chain motels, bars, all night coffee shops, and diners. New Prospect night life.

  Toward the center of the town, Anton said, “Please drop me off at the hospital, will you Giff? If you don’t mind. Patrick has his mom’s Cherokee just now. We’ll come over and pick up my car and long guns tomorrow.”

  “That’ll do.” I mustn’t hesitate. “Can I come up and see Priscilla now?” I’d been thinking hard about this since Anton had told me the news.

  Anton looked a little surprised. “I didn’t realize you’d want to, Giff. It’s not fun. But if she’s awake, she’d love to see you, I’m sure.”

  We parked in an almost empty lot. This time I left my hat in the Suburban, but took my long coat for the contents of its pockets. I’d made my decision on the way back from Bryce’s. Priscilla, after all, was my friend, and the love of my best friend’s life. She had accepted me into her family. I was not just going to sit around and watch her die.

  One certainty that nine decades have taught me: despite the lofty declarations made by those who can only theorize and won’t have any choice to make about it, I will never get tired of living; for all of its faults and hazards, life offers far too many pleasures, far too many satisfactions, far too many joys and delights, to just let it slip away without a fight. After my millionth slice of lemon meringue pie, I’ll look forward to my million and first. And if the Grim Reaper ever comes for me, the bastard’s going to require serious medical attention.

  If I brought Priscilla over—a choice I’d really rather not have to make for her—if I inadvertently made her into a vampire like me, then I would deal with it, under the same general rule as the one that says it’s better to do something you believe is necessary, and have to apologize for it, than to ask permission and get turned down. They both might end up hating my guts, but Anton would have his Priscilla, alive.

  Not dead, not undead, not even partially dead, but alive.

  It’s a virus, remember?

  “Stairs or elevator?” Anton asked me. Usually, he was a big fan of what I regarded as gratuitous exercise. I shrugged, so we took the elevator. They had her up on the oncology floor, of course, one of the weirdest, nastiest-smelling places in New Prospect. Even those without my olfactory acuity notice it. It isn’t anybody’s fault, it’s just ugly. Might have been part of what Anton had meant by its being not fun.

  Patrick was waiting for us (Anton had called ahead), sitting by the bed, holding his mother’s hand. He stood, hugged his dad for a long moment, tears starting in his eyes. Shaking them off, he took my hand with both of his. Light blond like his mother, he was tall and lean, better looking than his old man, better muscled than he had been before the Academy—wearing his uniform, probably for his mother. He looked like a recruiting ad for the Master Race but that wasn’t his fault.

  Patrick had regarded me as his uncle all his life. I had been the family sitter over the years, had taken him and his sister to play miniature golf (at night, of course), to the batting cages in the park—he pitched for the Academy, now—occasionally bowling, and to the movies.

  “Hello, J!” Priscilla smiled up at me from the bed. She looked terrible: thin, strained, more silver in that shining cap of gold than I had ever seen before.
I suddenly realized that I knew this woman better—or at least I’d known her longer—than any other female in my life. I’d known Priscilla almost exactly as long as I’d known my mother.

  She had deep, dark circles all the way around her eyes, at the moment, and was having some difficulty breathing, despite the transparent oxygen line crawling across her upper lip. I looked to Anton and his son, then I perched on the edge of the bed and took her hand.

  “Don’t talk if it’s hard for you, Priscilla. I’m happy just to see you smile. You’re gonna beat this, I promise, no matter what the docs say.”

  Behind me, I heard twin gasps, whether at the promise or my hubris making it, I didn’t know. I did know that I had to get rid of them for about fifteen minutes, and I didn’t want to erase their memories. Far easier to send them away. They couldn’t remember what they hadn’t seen.

  “Why don’t you two guys go down to the cafeteria. The kitchen’s almost certainly closed, but they’ll have a lot of stuff in machines, and I know they keep a great big kettle of fresh coffee going all the time. It’s not too bad. In fact you can bring me some when you come back up. I’ll keep Priscilla company. You guys would probably like to talk.”

  I pressed a little with those last few words. They blinked, then nodded at the unassailable logic of it. “We’ll be right back, baby,” Anton told his wife. I stood up and got out of his way so he could bend over the bed and kiss her. Then he and Patrick went out the door and headed for the elevator. I could hear Patrick telling his dad that his sister Amber would be taking a shuttle bus from the airport in Denver.

  I shut the door behind them, reached for my blood kit in my coat, which I’d draped over a chair, and looked Priscilla in her weary eyes. She had been pretty. She would be again. “Tired, aren’t you? Bet you’d like to sleep. Let go of your pain and worry. Take a nice nap. Don’t wake up again until I ask you to. By then, the guys will be back, okay?”

  She nodded weakly and shut her eyes. When her breathing was right, I pulled out one of my fifty-microliter syringes, used an alcohol wipe on myself, and drew blood, which I immediately injected into her right carotid artery. I would rather have used the femoral, but the needle wasn’t long enough. I was getting ready to repeat the procedure with her left carotid, when the door opened suddenly. In it, stood a young nurse.

  “What are you doing?” the girl demanded in a horrified tone. Like many another nurse, she smelled of fresh coffee and violet-scented handsoap. Like many another nurse, she would weigh two hundred and fifty pounds before she turned thirty. I’ve never figured that one out.

  She also had a cat. Siamese.

  I looked over my shoulder and went on getting ready to draw more blood. “Please, nurse, just stand there and be quiet. What’s your name?”

  She blinked. Her eyes were big and almost black, “I...I’m Consuelo.”

  “That’s a pretty name, Consuelo.” Another thing I’ve never figured out why a Mexican girl’s name has a masculine ending. “I’m J,” I said. “Just a letter, not an initial. When I was born, my folks couldn’t agree whether to call me John or James, so my birth certificate reads ‘J’.”

  Even after 65 years, I still don’t know much about this persuasion thing. I know it helps to be as matter-of-fact and conversational as possible.

  “Why don’t you turn around, stand there in the door, and let me know if anybody else heads in this direction. Will you please do that, Consuelo?”

  She smiled, and it was like the sun coming out. “I’d be happy to, J!”

  I finished with the draw, then applied another swab to Priscilla’s neck, and injected a second half CC of my blood. This was completely unexplored territory to me, and it was all I dared to use this first time around. Maybe I’d use more later on. “Mrs. Varick’s going to get better now, Consuelo. If she doesn’t, if she gets worse, you call me right away. My phone number is...” And I told her. “Don’t forget it. But don’t remember any of this unless she gets sicker again, and then only the number—and the fact that you’re supposed to call me, all right?”

  The puncture mark would be undetectable in five minutes, gone in ten.

  She smiled at me again. “All right, Doctor.”

  “Not doctor, just a friend. I’m J,” I reminded her, putting my blood kit away. I was tempted to tell her that if she could manage to lose half a pound a week for the next year and a half, she could be the prettiest, slenderest nurse in the whole hospital. But she knew that.

  “Okay, J.” She smiled and I let her go.

  THE TRAVELER: WICHITA, KANSAS

  “The pious pretense that evil does not exist only makes it

  vague, enormous and menacing.”—Aleister Crowley

  Hard times had come sweeping down over the Grand Prairie, just as they had on many occasions before this, and doubtless would someday again.

  This time, it was the empty parking lots at shopping malls and downtown, the shuttered storefronts, and the abandoned businesses that told a story of political incompetence and economic disaster (another age, it might have been deserted farms), along with unfilled potholes and crumbling curbs that added an epilogue of civic despair all their own.

  This town had been an historic, all-important hub for the westward movement of Americans in the 19th century. Cattle from Texas had been herded here to meet the railroad. For a while it had been a center for the manufacture of aircraft. For an interesting hour or two before sunrise, the traveler explored the streets of Wichita until the Camaro passed by a boarded-up national brand motel not far from the city’s center.

  It certainly presented possibilities, although the police would be watching the location to keep the homeless from squatting in the many rooms available here or from throwing trash into the emptied swimming pool, which at present had a tall, padlocked chainlink fence around it.

  But one thing was certain: they would not be getting out of their safe, secure, heated, or air conditioned patrol cars if they could avoid it. Gang signs, some of them oddly beautiful in a way, had been spray-painted on every vertical surface of the place, in their secret language claiming territory, making threats, exchanging insults. The traveler had seen it all many times before, in ancient times, on other continents.

  It had started in the caves.

  What the signs said, in language anyone could understand, was that this was not a safe place to walk down a street thinking of anything but walking down a street. It was a place to be alert—or somewhere else.

  Hearing in Europe of the American version of this phenomenon had led the traveler to the opinion that every graffitist caught at the scene of his crimes ought to be killed outright—whether by police or private individuals was immaterial—not for his contempt for private property, but for the assault it represented on civilization itself.

  On the other hand, the traveler reasoned, there was such a thing as freedom of artistic expression. Just think about Lascaux. Perhaps it was a value noble enough to die for, maybe even for an entire civilization to die for. And if everything should collapse tomorrow—as the traveler had thought it might on many previous occasions over the millennia—life would go right on for a vampire with very few significant changes, exactly as it had long before the dawn of human civilization.

  On the next street over from the abandoned motel, rose a four-story parking structure. For a nominal fee, the Camaro could be left there all night in relative safety. There were security cameras everywhere (although many of them seemed to be in a sorry state of disrepair), or the traveler might have dragged the attendant from her booth and fed then and there. Instead, the traveler walked from the car park to the abandoned motel. Instead of a room, the main building was selected, rather easily broken into, and secured again from the inside.

  Although clean and relatively tidy, considering the fact that it had fallen into disuse, the lobby was completely unpromising for the traveler’s purposes. Downstairs in the basement there was a large conference room, meant for corporate meetings and small conve
ntions. Rows of folding tables—many still had tablecloths and carafes for drinking water—and folding metal chairs still occupied most of the space.

  Best of all, there were no windows.

  Although the electricity had long since been shut off—no one who could see perfectly in the dark would care about that—there was still running water in a kitchen-like facility that served the larger room, possibly owing to fire regulations, and the plumbing worked. The traveler could pass a day here in relative comfort and safety, resting, then resume the westward journey again, once darkness had fallen.

  Only one thing remained before the traveler could sleep, and that was a brief exploration of the alley behind the motel in hopes of finding some derelict to feed from. Or perhaps some young person behind the counter in one of the seedy little gift shops across the street.

  Slipping out of the motel again, and remaining in the shadows of the alley, it wasn’t long before the traveler found a young woman taking her dog for a morning walk. It was a full-sized male poodle, its wooly coat uncut. The traveler didn’t care much for dogs and never had.

  Humans always seemed to have them around. They warned their masters and protected them from strangers—especially non-human strangers—which the traveler found inconvenient. They smelled bad, drooled, defecated, and urinated on everything in sight. But they fawned on their human masters, offering them what appeared to be unconditional love, which the humans returned abundantly. It was sickening.

  The girl obviously intended to avoid eye contact with the traveler and pass by in the alley shadows without acknowledging another person’s presence. Her dog had other ideas. Poodles have a reputation that demeans them, brought about by their silly name and the ridiculous (albeit utilitarian) way their fur is sometimes sculpted. They are intelligent, for dogs, fierce—they have been bred to hunt—and intensely loyal and protective to those they think of as their family.

  The instant the traveler had appeared in the alley, the animal had reacted as if something in its genes had recognized an ancient enemy, baring its teeth, growling, rigid in a posture of threat display. When the traveler reached for the young woman, the poodle leapt for the adversary, and the vampire nearly lost control of the prey.