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The house began to whoosh and crackle. Twelve jerries is a lot of fuel, and there was a lot to burn in there. Even if it was raining like God had opened every damn tap in the sky.
She fell out of the Packard, the black dress immediately soaked and flashes of fishbelly flesh showing as she scrabbled on gravel. Her crimson mouth worked like a landed fish's, and if I was a nice guy I suppose I might have given her a chance to explain. Maybe I might have even let her get away by being a stupid dick like you see in the movies, who lets the bad guy make his speech.
But I'm not a good guy. The shovel sang again, and the sound she made when the flat blade chopped three-quarters of the way through her neck was between a gurgle and a scream. The rain masked it, and she was off the gravel and on the lawn now, on mud as I followed, jabbing with the shovel while her head flopped like a defective Kewpie doll's. I chopped the way we used to chop rattlers back on the farm, and when her body stopped flopping and the gouts and gouts of fresh steaming blood had soaked a wide swatch of rain-flattened grass I dropped the shovel and dragged her strangely heavy carcass back toward the house. I tossed it in the foyer, where the flames were rising merrily in defiance of the downpour, and I tossed the shovel in too. Then I had to stumble back, eyes blurring and skin peeling, and I figured out right then and there that fire was a bad thing for me, whatever I was now.
She was wet and white where the black dress was torn, and the flames wanted to cringe away. I didn't stick around to see if she went up, because the house began to burn in earnest, the heat scratching at my skin with thousands of scraping gold pins, and there was a rosy glow in the east that had nothing to do with kerosene.
It was dawn, and I didn't know exactly what had happened to me, but I knew I didn't want to be outside much longer.
Of course she hadn't gone to sleep. As soon as I got near her door, trying to tread softly on the worn carpet and smelling the burned food and dust smell of working folks in her apartment building, it opened a crack and Sophie peered through. She was chalk-white, trembling, and she retreated down the hall as I shambled in. It was still raining and I was tired. The thirst was back, and my entire body was shot through with lead. The pinpricks on my throat throbbed like they were infected, but the divot above my right eye wasn't inflamed anymore. But my skin cracked and crackled with the burning, still, and the thirst was back, burrowing in my veins.
I shut her door and locked it. I stood dripping on her welcome mat and looked at her.
She hadn't changed out of the blue dress. She had nice legs, by God, and those cat-tilted eyes weren't really dark. They were hazel. And her wrist was still bruised where I'd grabbed her, she had peeled the Ace off and it was a nice dark purple. It probably hurt like hell.
Her hands hung limp at her sides.
I searched for something to say. The rain hissed and gurgled. Puddles in the street outside were reflecting old neon and newer light edging through gray mist. "It's dawn."
She just stood there.
"You're a real doll, Sophie. If I didn't have-"
"How did it happen?" She swallowed, the muscles in her throat working. Under that high collar her pulse was still like music. "Your…you…" She fluttered one hand helplessly. For the first time since she walked into my office three years ago and a
"I got bit, sugar." I peeled my sodden shirt collar away. "I don't want to make any trouble for you. I'll figure something out tomorrow night."
Thirty of the longest seconds of my life passed in her front hallway. I dripped, and I felt the sun coming the way I used to feel storms moving in on the farm, back when I was a jugeared kid and the big bad city was a place I only heard about in church.
"Jack, you ass," Sophie said. "So it's a bite?"
"And a little more."
Miss Dale lifted her chin and eyed me. "I don't have any more steak." Her pulse was back. It was thundering. It was hot and heavy in my ears and I already knew I wasn't a nice guy. Wasn't that why I'd come here?
"I'll go." I reached behind me and fumbled for the knob.
"Oh, no you will
not." It was Miss Dale again, with all her crisp efficiency. She reached up with trembling fingers, and unbuttoned the very top button of her collar.
"Sophie-"
"How long have I been working for you, Jack?" She undid another button, slender fingers working, and I took a single step forward. Burned skin crackled, and my clothes were so heavy they could have stood up by themselves. "Three years. And it wasn't for the pay, and certainly not because you've a personality that recommends itself."
Coming from her, that was a compliment. "You've got a real sweet mouth there, Miss Dale."
She undid her third button, and that pulse of hers was a beacon. Now I knew what the thirst wanted, now I knew what it felt like, now I knew what it could do-
"Mr. Becker, shut up. If you don't, I'll lose my nerve."
Sophie is on her pink frilly bed. The shades are drawn, and the apartment's quiet. It's so quiet. Time to think about everything.
When a man wakes up in his own grave, he can reconsider his choice of jobs. He can do a whole lot of things.
It's so goddamn quiet. I'm here with my back to the bedroom door and my knees drawn up. Sophie is so still, so pale. I've had time to look over every inch of her face and I wonder how a stupid bum like me could have overlooked such a doll right under his nose.
It took three days for me. Two days ago the dame in the black dress choked her last and her lovely mansion burned. It was in all the papers as a tragedy, and Shifty Malloy choked on his own blood out in the rain too. I think it's time to find another city to gumshoe in. There's Los Angeles, after all, and that place does three-quarters of its business after dark.
Soon the sun's going to go down. Sophie's got her hands crossed on her chest and she's all tucked in nice and warm, the coverlet up to her chin and the lamp on so she won't wake up like I did, in the dark and the mud.
The rain has stopped beating the roof. I can hear heartbeats moving around in the building.
Jesus, I hope she wakes up.
Twilight by Kelley Armstrong
Kelley Armstrong is the bestselling author of the Otherworld urban fantasy series, which began with Bitten, and the latest of which, Frostbitten, comes out in October. She is also the author of the Darkest Powers trilogy, a young-adult series that began last year with The Summoning. Armstrong is currently in the midst of writing a five-issue arc for Joss Whedon's Angel comic book series.
Armstrong says that the most obvious appeal of vampire fiction is the mingling of sex and death. "But for me, the appeal has always been the concept of immortality," she said. "Particularly the problems with it, and the sacrifices we would-or wouldn't-make to retain it."
This story, which features Cassandra DuCharme from Armstrong's Otherworld series, was written for Many Bloody Returns, an anthology with a vampires-and-birthdays theme. "When I think birthdays in regards to my vampires, I think rebirth day, which is the a
Another life taken. Another year to live.
That is the bargain that rules our existence. We feed off blood, but for three hundred and sixty-four days a year, it is merely that: feeding. Yet on that last day-or sometime before the a