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Poof."
He released him and Max could breathe normally again. Their father straightened.
"Now, there remain one thing," he said. "The head must be remove, and the mouth stuff with garlic. Rudolf!"
Max turned his head slowly. His father had moved back a step. In one hand he held a hatchet, Max didn't know where it had come from. Rudy was on the stairs, three steps from the bottom. He stood pressed against the wall, his left wrist shoved in his mouth to quell his screaming. He shook his head, back and forth, frantically.
Max reached for the hatchet, grabbed it by the handle. "I do it." He would too, was confident of himself. He saw now he had always had it in him: his father's brusque willingness to puncture flesh and toil in blood. He saw it clear, and with a kind of dismay.
"No," his father said, wrenching the hatchet away, pushing Max back. Max bumped the worktable, and a few stakes rolled off, clattering to the dust. "Pick those up."
Rudy bolted, but slipped on the steps, falling to all fours and banging his knees. Their father grabbed him by the hair and hauled him backwards, throwing him to the floor. Rudy thudded into the dirt, sprawling on his belly. He rolled over. When he spoke his voice was unrecognizable.
"Please!" he screamed. "Please don't! I'm scared. Please father don't make me."
The mallet in one hand, half a dozen stakes in the other, Max stepped forward, thought he would intervene, but his father swiveled, caught his elbow, shoved him at the stairs.
"Up. Now." Giving him another push as he spoke.
Max fell on the stairs, barking one of his own shins.
Their father bent to grab Rudy by the arm, but he squirmed away, crabwalking over the dirt for a far corner of the room.
"Come. I help you," their father said. "Her neck is brittle. It won't take long."
Rudy shook his head, backed further into the corner by the coal bin.
His father flung the axe in the dirt. "Then you will remain here until you are in a more complaisant state of mind."
He turned, took Max's arm and thrust him towards the top of the steps.
"No!" Rudy screamed, getting up, lunging for the stairs.
The handle of the hatchet got caught between his feet, though, and he tripped on it, crashed to his knees. He got back up, but by then their father was pushing Max through the door at the top of the staircase, following him through. He slammed it behind them. Rudy hit the other side a moment later, as their father was turning that silver key in the lock.
"Please!" Rudy cried. "I'm scared! I'm scared I want to come out!"
Max stood in the kitchen. His ears were ringing. He wanted to say stop it, open the door, but couldn't get the words out, felt his throat closing. His arms hung at his sides, his hands heavy, as if cast from lead. No-not lead. They were heavy from the things in them. The mallet. The stakes.
His father panted for breath, his broad forehead resting against the shut door. When he finally stepped back, his hair was scrambled, and his collar had popped loose.
"You see what he make me do?" he said. "Your mother was also so, just as unbending and hysterical, just as in need of firm instruction. I tried, I-"
The old man turned to look at him, and in the instant before Max hit him with the mallet, his father had time to register shock, even wonder. Max caught him across the jaw, a blow that co
Abraham's eyelids sank as he began to slide into unconsciousness, but they came up again when Max sat down on top of him. His father opened his mouth to say something, but Max had heard enough, was through talking, had never been much when it came to talk anyway. What mattered now was the work of his hands; work he had a natural instinct for, had maybe been born to.
He put the tip of the stake where his father had showed him and struck the hilt with the mallet. It turned out it was all true, what the old man had told him in the basement. There was wailing and profanity and a frantic struggle to get away, but it was over soon enough.
Nunc Dimittis by Tanith Lee
Tanith Lee, a two-time wi
The Biblical phrase "nunc dimittis servum tuum"-"now dismiss your servant"-evokes images of selfless sacrifice. But so often when we tear away the mask of "You need me," we find underneath the face of "I need you."
We sometimes describe a certain type of person as an "emotional vampire." For all their romance and dangerous magnetism, vampires are at heart blood-suckers-that is to say, parasites. A parasite ca
After reading this story, ask yourself how many vampires are in it. Are you sure? Maybe you should count again.
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 grey 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-coloured 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, Roderigo Borgia. Now the Vampire's dry hands had fallen upon the page. She sat in her black lace dress that was one hundred and eighty 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. She 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."