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As long as the sun is down.
Sycorax didn't bother to follow. I had no choice but to do as I was bid. It's more than a rule; it's a fact. I expected there were still a few women I knew who would get a kick out of that.
My girls staggered somewhat, weaving. One was a blonde, brittle dyed hair and a red beret. The other one had glossy chestnut brown waves and the profile of a little girl. I tracked them through the district toward the ocean, neon glow and littered sidewalks. A door would open and music would issue forth, and it wasn't long before I found myself mouthing the words to one particular song.
There's something gloriously ironic in a man charting a number-one hit twenty-five years after he's dead.
Otis Redding, eat your heart out.
My quarry paused at an open-air patio where a live band played the blues. Girl singer, open coat and a spill of curls like wicked midnight: performing old standards, the kind I've always loved.
Mama, tell my baby sister, not to do what I have done. I'll spend my life in sin and misery, in the House of the Rising Sun. A song that was already venerable when Eric Burdon made it famous.
There's all kinds of whoredom, aren't there? And all kinds of bloodsuckers, too.
The singer nailed "Amazing Grace" a capella like heartbreak, voice sharp and gritty as little Mary Johnson doing "Cold, Cold Heart." I caught myself singing along and slashed my tongue with needle teeth before someone could overhear. Still no blood. I hadn't fed in a long time and it hurt more than it should have.
The girls sat down at a table and ordered food. I smelled beer, hot wings, eyewatering garlic. I suddenly very badly wanted a peanut butter sandwich and a milkshake.
Leaning against the high black iron fence, I watched the girls watching the band until a passerby in her fifties turned to get a startled better look at me. I stood up straight and met her gaze directly, giving her the crooked little-kid smile. It almost always works, except on Sycorax.
Trying to hide your face only convinces them they've seen something.
"Sorry," she said, waving me away with a smile. A moment later, she turned back. "You know you look like.…"
"People say," I answered, pitching my voice high.
"Amazing." She nodded cheerfully, gave me a wide wondering grin, and continued on her way. I watched her go, chattering with her friends, shaking their heads.
The girls didn't stay for "King of the Road," although I would have liked to hear the version.
Kids.
I almost turned away when they walked past. They stank of garlic-stuffed mushrooms and beer. The reek of the herb knotted my stomach and seared my eyes. I actually tried to take a half-step away before the compulsion Sycorax had laid on me locked my knees and forced me back into pursuit.
They walked arm in arm, ski
I ducked down a side street to cut them off and waited in the dark of an unlit doorway. Sycorax's control permitted that much. I leaned against the wall, scrubbing my face against my hands. It felt like a waxen mask, cold and stiff. My hands weren't much better.
They weren't long. I was unlucky. They picked the better of the two routes through the brownstones, the one I had been able to justify choosing, and just that i
The scent of bougainvillea and jacaranda filled the spaces of the night. I watched them skipping from streetlight to streetlight, shadows stretched out behind them, catching up, and then reaching before. The brown-haired one walked a few steps ahead of the bleach-blonde, humming to herself.
I couldn't help it. It wasn't one of my standards, but every blues singer born knows the words to that one. Hell, I used to have a horse by that name.
I picked up the tune.
I had to.
".…they call the Rising Sun. It's been the ruin of many a poor boy. And me, O God, I'm one!"
Their heads snapped up. Twenty, maybe. I was dead before they were born. Gratifying that they recognized my voice.
"Fellas, don't believe what a bad woman tells you-though her eyes be blue, or brown.…" I strolled out of the shadows, ducking my head and smiling, letting the words trail away.
The dark-haired girl did a double take. She had a lovely nose, pert and turned up. The blonde blinked a couple of times, but I don't think she made the co
The stench of garlic on their breath would have thickened my blood in my veins if I had any left. I swallowed hard, remembering all those songs about wandering ghosts and unquiet graves. Ghosts that all seem to want the same thing: revenge, and to lay down and rest.
I smiled wider.
What the lady wants, the lady gets.
"Oh, wow," the darker girl said. "Do you have any idea how much you look like.…"
The street was empty, dark and deserted. I came up under the streetlight, close enough to reach out and touch the tip of that nose if I wanted. I dropped them a look that used to melt hearts, sidelong glance under lowered lashes. "People say," I answered.
And, sick to my stomach, I broke their necks before I fed.
It was the least I could do.
Poison roiled in my belly when I laid them out gently in the light of that streetlamp, in the rich dark covering the waterfront, close enough to smell the sea. I straightened their spines so they wouldn't look so terrible for whoever found them, but at least
they wouldn't be coming back.
It was happening already: my limbs jerked and shook. My flesh crawled with ripples like fire, my tongue numb as a drunk's.
I'm going back to New Orleans, to wear that ball and chain.…
Not this time. Struggling to smooth each step, to hide the venom flooding my veins, I hurried back to my poor,
hungry mistress. I stole the brunette's wallet. I stopped and bought breath mints at the all-night grocery.
I beat Sycorax home.
A Standup Dame by Lilith Saintcrow
Lilith Saintcrow's most recent books are Hunter's Prayer, the latest in her Jill Kismet series, and Strange Angels (as by Lili St. Crow), the first in a new series for young adults. The third Jill Kismet book is due out around the same time as this anthology. Her other work includes the Dante Valentine series, as well as several other novels.
Saintcrow says each generation invents and reinvents different variations on the vampire theme. "Blood, sex, love, death, repression, liberation from the confines of civilization or meditation upon the link between Eros and Thanatos-vampires are tremendously versatile," she said. "They endure because we can (and do) remake them with every generation. To Bram Stoker's readers, vampires were about disturbing untrammeled female sexuality, discomfort with modernity, and the excesses of colonization. Since then they've gone through several incarnations, as filthy corpses, investment bankers, androgynous sexy avatars, you name it. The strength of the vampire is her ability to shapeshift for each new set of popular neuroses."
This story is an homage to the noir gumshoe greats-Hammett and Chandler. "I was working on a very dark, ugly book and needed something shorter and a little more hopeful," Saintcrow said. "Not too hopeful, though. Noir isn't very hopeful."
When a man wakes up in his own grave, he sometimes reconsiders his choice of jobs.