Sips of Blood (33 page)

Marie rasped. Trying to speak? He could not
tell for sure. Dragging her body in short spurts, Marie headed away
from the entrance to the bedroom and closer to the farthest
window.

"Marie, I want you dead, but not by my own
hand."

The words seemed to strike terror in Marie's
eyes. Without moving her head, her eyes searched the room. While
attempting to stand, Marie crashed her head against the wooden leg
of the bed.

Like an animal, he thought. Like an animal
hit by a car on a lonely road. No understanding in the eyes, only
fear.

The front door opened and closed. He always
forgot to lock the door; this had often caused arguments between
him and his father.

"Shit," he cursed. How could he explain what
had happened in this room? Would anyone believe him? "Shit!"

* * *

Sade kicked aside a fallen book. The room to
his right filled his heart with glee. She was there. Waiting.
Unable to escape him.

He touched the knob of the door and
hesitated. Slowly he rubbed the faceted glass. His chill already
permeated the room, he knew. While holding the knob, he lightly
tapped an index finger against the wood panel of the door. Hardly
audible by most, but meant to echo inside Marie's head.

Suddenly the door was pulled open and Marie's
favorite slave stood in the doorway.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

Sade reached out and touched Wil's healing
chest.

"She is sharing her blood with you." He
tsked.

Wil went to push his hand away, but Sade
grabbed Wil's hand and squeezed, squeezed until Wil on his knees
begged him to stop. Sade pulled back his own hand and kicked Wil to
the side.

A dead man lay on the bed: Marie's last meal.
Beyond the body he sensed
La Maîtresse
on the floor. Quiet
now, she lay in a crooked ball, her neck out of kilter, her mind
racing, her time decreasing in seconds, moments.

"Liliana has been destroyed."

"What?" Wil's mouth hung open.

Marie made no sound.

"At the cemetery
mon enfant
was torn
apart by raging, demented husks called vampires."

"Vampires? What the hell are you talking
about?" asked Wil.

But Marie was still.

"Une belle enfant, une belle femme
lost to me forever."

"She's dead?"

"Elle a eu une existence misérable
between an uncle too enchanted to free a lovely
jeune femme
and a grandmother wrapped in her own hedonism. We were wrong,
Marie. We should have let her go long ago." Sade walked around the
bed to confront his mother-in-law.
"Vouz allez cruellement
souffrir."

"What in hell are you talking about?" asked
Wil, on his feet, looking lost.

Sade looked at Wil.
"Monsieur,
you are
one of us, or perhaps almost one of us." Sade looked over at Marie.
"You always liked the slow, excruciating way. Now you will not be
able to complete your creation. A creation you swore you never
would consider making. I know you can't help but lie. I was to be
freed from the Bastille, only I didn't know that I would
immediately be taken to an insane asylum. But I grew in strength
there, Marie. A strength you cannot imagine in a puny body like
yours.

"Monsieur,
I noticed you have a
fireplace. Does it work?"

"Hell, on a hot day like this, what does it
matter?"

"Does it work,
monsieur?"
Sade stared
directly into Wil's eyes.

"Yes."

"Fire wood is outside?"

"Yes. Needs to be chopped, but it's there for
winter."

"C'est l'hiver, ma petite amie."

Sade turned away from Marie and strode out of
the room. He hesitated at the threshold and looked over his
shoulder to see Wil moving closer to Marie.

"Monsieur,
you must show me where the
ax and firewood are."

"I'm not helping, you bastard."

Sade sighed.
"Monsieur,
do you know
why you are healing so quickly?"

"I know why I have these scars."

"No, no,
monsieur,
that is not the
point. It was a test to see how quickly you could recuperate. You
see, she is turning you into one of us."

"God help me, I'll never be like either of
you."

"True, since she will not have the
opportunity of completing her
vicieux
work. I'm not sure
what you will become,
monsieur,
and I don't really care. But
you will find yourself with a strange thirst, and you will need to
feed just as she has on this poor old man."

"My father."

"Ah!
La vengeance est douce,
monsieur."
Sade saw the blank look in Wil's eyes. "Revenge,
monsieur.
Do you not seek to avenge the death of your
father?"

"I don't want any more killing."

"Monsieur,
that is the philosophy that
caused my poor Liliana's demise. If you wish to survive, you will
learn to enjoy the stalking, the smell of fear, and the golden feel
of prey pressed between your palms."

Wil shook his head.

"I hope you will at least not try to stop
me."

Wil backed away from Marie and walked over to
kneel by the side of his father's bed.

* * *

Holding his father's hand, Wil silently asked
his father for forgiveness. If he had never come home, his old man
would still be living his grouchy hermit life, grumbling at
neighbors, refusing Wil's calls. Caring for his mother's grave. Now
Wil would have to care for both parents. He knew that his mother
had been buried deep enough so that his father could eventually
join her. It would only be a matter of opening the grave, inserting
Keith's coffin, and adding Dad's date of death to the
tombstone.

The house belonged to Wil now. His father had
never prepared a will, unable to leave his possessions to an
ungrateful son and unable to disinherit his wife's only child.

His throat felt parched. The skin on his
chest itched. He looked down at himself. Initially the top layer
had swollen into something that looked like the crust of a freshly
baked pie. That layer had fallen off in a solid piece, and he had
stomped on it until all the scum had gone down the shower drain.
Layers had continued to rapidly peel away, until now there were
only splotches left of the old burn.

Gurgling sounds interrupted his thoughts, and
he looked up at his father's mouth. Lips still agape, the old man
had not uttered any sound. The gurgling persisted, and he
remembered Marie. He turned to his right side and saw how she
hissed and heaved trying to speak, reaching out to touch his dirty
faded jeans, dragging herself across the rough wood floor. A
splinter of wood protruded from her right palm, big enough so that
he could see it plainly catch on the woven cotton blanket that got
in her way.

"Kill me." Her words had come out distorted,
but she was not requesting to be killed, he knew, for she repeated
the sentence more slowly, attempting to enunciate where her voice
box failed.

"Don't... let... him... kill... me."

"Why should I stop him, my mistress?" The
words were spoken coldly and sarcastically.

Her hand waved at his chest, and again she
reached, but couldn't touch him.

"You'--re... life," she wheezed.

"I don't think he wants to kill me, my
mistress."
Mistress
came out with tawdry disgust.

"Bl--ood." She made a leap and fell against
his body.

"Get away from me," he said, pushing her
back, watching her head fall uselessly against the leg of the
bed.

Wil stood to look at his father's body.
Finding a penknife on the nightstand, he used the point to jab his
fathers arm.

"Damn you! You sucked my father dry," he
yelled.

"Oui, monsieur,
Marie is a
sangsue.
What you would call a vampire. Now help me start a
fire. You must have newspaper or something I could use."

"Lighter fluid." Wil stared darkly at
Sade.

Sade smiled. "Good to retain a sense of
humor,
monsieur.
You will be needing it. Meanwhile, you
torture my poor Marie with this lingering wait. Even she would
prefer it over,
oui,
Marie? Ah, no! I am afraid Marie has a
grip on her existence that she refuses to unlock.

"Paper,
monsieur,
lighter fluid,
anything, I must be gone by morning
quand nous serons dans la
merde.
A translation for you,
monsieur,
when the shit
hits the fan."

Wil did not assist Sade; instead, he checked
the wounds upon his chest. He healed much faster than normal. His
strength had increased to the point where he no longer could gauge
the power behind his moves.

A vampire, he thought. A humorless chuckle
caught his breath when he thought of his friends in Greenwich
Village who had pretended at vampirism. How they would envy
him.

He smelled smoke and rushed to the living
room, where he found Sade adjusting the fireplace damper.

"Monsieur,
a good cleaning certainly
is in order here. My... former housekeeper can recommend a reliable
chimney sweep. She always saw to that.

"Marie, come view the fire." Sade started
toward the bedroom.

Wil assumed that Sade was mad, with talk of
vampires and setting a fire in midsummer. He watched as Sade
carried Marie to the living room.

"Come, sit before the fire, Marie." Upon
setting her down on the oval rug in front of the fire, Sade lifted
an oil lamp in his hands.

"Better than lighter fluid,
monsieur."
He dumped the full contents of the lamp onto Marie's head, rubbing
the oil into the fine fibers of her hair.

Marie twitched and wrinkled her face
horribly. The oil seemed to run into her eyes and mouth. She
attempted to spit the oil out, and Sade scooped the oil from her
chin to press between her lips.

Wil's body felt tired. His arms ached, his
legs wobbled unsteadily, and his heart beat so faintly that he
couldn't be sure he still lived.

"I am sorry for the mess,
monsieur,
but there is a shortness of time." Sade reached for the ax that he
had carried in with the wood. "I cannot tarry with you any longer,
Marie. I have someone waiting to begin her new life, and she is
eager." Sade swung back the ax and lowered the sharp edge quickly
on Marie's neck. The head rolled away from the body, stopping short
of the flagstones leading to the fireplace.

"She, too, is eager,
monsieur."
He
smiled at Wil and shrugged when he received no response.

Blood soaked the oval rug and had splattered
the old Barcalounger his father had used every night.

Wil looked down at his right hand and found
that blood had marred his skin, round red dots blotching the blue
and white of his veins and skin. The smell of his mistress' blood
caused his breath to catch. By the time he noticed the odor of
burning flesh, he found himself standing on the oval rug, lapping
at his right hand.

"Feel free,
monsieur.
Don't be
embarrassed. I will certainly not fight you for that crone's stale
hostile blood." Sade made a magnanimous hand motion toward the
headless body dripping its contents. "If you do not hurry, it will
be wasted in the fibers of that disgusting cheap rug." Sade
continued to poke at Marie's burning head, which melted in the
fireplace.

The blackened flesh shrivelled and layered
itself onto the burning wood.

"I will take the skull bones with me,
monsieur,
and dispose of them when I am sure that they are
ground into unformable ashes. You,
monsieur,
are wasting
time." Briefly he used the poker to indicate Marie's headless
corpse. "You will need the nourishment. I suspect it will take you
a while to understand certain aspects of your new life, but here,
allow me to guide you this once." Sade walked over to Wil and
pressed the hot poker on Wil's left shoulder, driving him down onto
his knees directly in front of the spilling blood. Sade left Wil
there to drink his full.

Wil realized he was alone when the stickiness
of Marie's blood made him feel dirty. Blood no longer flowed from
between the body's shoulders. The staleness of blood, wool, and
dirt emitted by the oval rug turned his stomach, and he lifted
himself to his feet and returned to his father's bedroom to curl up
next to the cold body.

"Profit from the fairest period in your life; these
golden years of our pleasure are only too few and too brief. If we
are so fortunate as to have enjoyed them, delicious memories
console and amuse us in our old age. These years lost... and we are
racked by bitterest regrets, gnawing remorse conjoins with
sufferings of age and the fatal onset of the grave is all tears and
brambles... But have you the madness to hope for immortality?

Philosophy in the Bedroom

by the

Marquis de Sade

Excerpt from

Quenched

Book Two

Histoires de Le Vampire Marquis de Sade

* * *

Prologue

Fog dampened every surface, sinking into
clothing and through flesh to chill the bones of the San Francisco
inhabitants. Day bowed out to allow night’s darker citizens to walk
the streets, moving freely in each others shadows. Homeless huddled
under a freeway overpass setting up their bedrooms on cement
sidewalks. One man swept the sidewalk with a flimsy broom, losing
straw with every pass, but cleaning away the day’s trash, dumping
it at the curb. Slices of cardboard rested atop mounds of blankets,
clothes, and personal property that the man had collected into his
Safeway cart. He had separated himself from the homeless crowd half
a block away in order to retire for a decent night’s sleep.