Best New Vampire Tales: Vol 1 Part 20

She shook her head. "He's getting a free ride. I'm his meal ticket. This other woman won't last. They never do. It's me he loves. It's the job thing that's the problem. He gets really mean when he's bored and doesn't have enough money to spend."

"Does he hurt you?"

Her laugh was dry and bitter.

The vampire tried again. "Does he beat you?"

"He's. .h.i.t me twice. I told him I'd leave if it happened a third time. Since then he hasn't laid a finger on me. I don't believe he will again."

A habitual misuser of women himself, Anton said nothing.

"I mean it," she said, misinterpreting his silence. "I'm not stupid, and we've been married ten years. I know him."

They came up on a deserted pull-off. Rachel parked the Saturn and used both hands to ma.s.sage her temples and forehead. Trees still surrounded them. The night was quiet. Apparently she had forgotten her fear that he would fall upon her as soon as she halted the vehicle.

Anton decided.

"Rachel, I can solve your problem."

"Don't," she said. "If you're going to kill him, or make me like yourself, so that I'm stronger than he is, forget it. That's not what I need."

"I cannot make you into what I am," he said. "At least, it has never happened yet. But I can certainly remove your difficulty."

"I just told you. We love each other. Anything that hurts him, hurts me, one way or another. Forget I mentioned it. I'll work it out. Just leave us alone."

The wind rippled the trees around them. Slivers of liquid moonlight glowed in her eyes. The blood was drying.

"You know what helps me?" she said eventually. "It's when people tell me about their own lousy marriages. Because then at least I know I'm not the only one."

He didn't immediately understand her.

Then, he did.

"I've known countless women," he said. "But ouraa"What was the word to go with the plush Saturn and the quick self-awareness of modern women?"aarelationships were rather different."

"I see."

"I've known love," he said. "I ... "

"What?"

"Never mind," said the vampire. "None of it would help you."

"Ah," said Rachel. "The boundless wisdom of the millennia. I feel better already."

He searched her face.

"I'm not being sarcastic. Knowing there isn't an answer really does make me feel better." She smiled weakly. "Look: this is me, feeling better."

"There are many answers," he said. "You are intelligent. You are rich. You are holding all the cards. You can leave him, kill him, or change him."

"I'm trying number three," she said.

The vampire's face was expressionless.

Rachel watched him, a woman waiting for a stone to break in two and yield up water. Anton was confused. He must be missing a step in the modern conversational dance. He had nowhere to go.

"Okay," she said. "Your turn."

It was odd, this glance inside the mind of a twenty-eight-year-old.

Once, he had been so young himself.

"Come on," she said. "Tell me what makes a vampire frown."

His eyes looked back over the centuries.

"Maybe I'd understand."

"n.o.body has ever asked me before," he said.

Her fingers touched the back of his hand. He jumped. "I'm not just anybody," she said quietly. "I'm good at empathy."

Without knowing what he did, he pushed his sleeves up his arms. Roman tunics left the forearms bare, and he preferred it that way.

"Try," she said.

"I'm a soldier," he said abruptly. "In the Roman army in Gaul. I'm still human. Twenty-one years old and stupidly brave, the way you are. There are Gauls in the hills and we have to wipe them out. We cross the last Roman bridge before the wilderness, over a mountain gorge with a rushing stream hundreds of feet below. Up the trail, there's a cave. The cave mouth is narrow and the earth in front of it trodden flat. We draw straws and I lose, and I go in with a burning branch, ready to flee or shout if I encounter Gaulish tribesmen or a bear."

"Oh my G.o.d," she said. "You did that?"

"Choice is a recent invention," said Anton. "Hatred is not. I hated them all. They were my comrades, my own tribe, if you will, but I left them in hatred because they stayed outside safe in their numbers and sent me alone into the cave. A sacrificial goat."

He laughed.

"I am in the hillside. It is dark and damp and close, but no Gauls have fallen upon me. I think perhaps I will live after all. Then there is a huge rustling and a rush of air, and they are on me. They knock my torch away; it falls on the floor and goes out before I can even see them. There are hundreds, or thousands, beating into my face and my body. They are biting me and drawing out my blood."

Rachel's hand was over her mouth. "Gauls bit you?"

"Not Gauls. Vampire bats. I awoke eventually, sore in a million places, but the soreness did not even last until I fumbled my way to the cave entrance. I could not find the torch, but the darkness did not seem so dark any more.

"My cohort were all dead. The Gauls ma.s.sacred them while I was interred in the hillside becoming a vampire. When I returned down the path I found them hanging from the bridge. The Gauls had tied a rope around each neck and thrown each soldier into the gorge in turn. Ninety-nine bodies in Roman armor hung beneath the bridge. They swayed in the breeze, b.u.mping into each other. Ninety-nine men who had died bathed in my hatred, while I became immortal."

Silence filled the car.

Anton discovered her fingers were entwined with his. Her skin was warm. The little scars from her earlier bloodletting felt rough against his palm. It surprised him how comforting her touch was. He squeezed, gently and instinctively, and Rachel squeezed back.

His mind was empty, and full.

"There's nothing you could have done," she said, after a long pause. "If you hadn't been in the cave, you would have died with them."

"I know," said the vampire.

"And you couldn't have escaped the bats."

"I know."

"And you must have ... killed many more people than ninety-nine, over the last two thousand years."

"I have. But they died one by one, and they were not my cohort, and they were not my friends, and I did not hate them, and I was not twenty-one."

"Butaa"

"You cannot help," he said. "It is complicated, and besides it might not have really happened that way. It was a long time ago. It is just the memory of a memory."

"But you think about it a lot."

Anton looked out at the night.

Rachel sighed, and looked at her watch. "I have to get home. Ken gets suspicious if I'm home late and he doesn't know where I am."

He looked at her. "You are afraid to go home?"

"Sometimes," she said, with reluctance. "When I don't know ... whether he's been drinking."

"I could watch from theaa"

"No," she said. "He's my problem. Remember, you've only heard my side of it. His might be different."

"You do not believe that."

"It's probably about as true as your memories," said Rachel.

He looked away.

She glanced at him and softened.

"I'm sure they forgive you," she said.

"I doubt it. Anyway, they have been dead for centuries." He paused. "Your Ken will not change, you know. Do not live your whole life hoping that he will."

Rachel closed her eyes. "All right."

"If he does not changeaa"

"I'll still love him," she said. "There's always the other twenty percent. Sometimes, it's wonderful."

She pressed a b.u.t.ton and the car doors unlocked.

"I will be near," he said.

"Don't be. This was enough. It's too dangerous.

He wanted to care. He did care.

"I liked it when you held my hand," she said. "It was nice. I don't get much of that."

Her life would go on, and it would get better or it wouldn't.

Ninety-nine men hung beneath a bridge, blackened tongues protruding.

"Fly away home," said Rachel softly, and he opened the door.

The last thing she said to him was "Thank you."

He had no words for her in return.

The engine purred. The Saturn's red taillights diminished.

In the road, wind against his cheeks, he could still feel the pressure of her fingers against his. He closed his hand to lock their warmth away from the night.

Anton closed his eyes, and did not watch to see which road she took.

The Sabbatarian.

DAVID M. FITZPATRICK.

"I need you to help me kill a vampire," the wrinkled old man with the eye patch said. "I'm getting too old for this, and this vamp's too powerful anyway."

Rogan Mallory looked at him with a deadpan gaze, not knowing quite what to think. The street corner was desolate under an overcast sky; a few green leaves and paper sc.r.a.ps blew past them and the rows of houses. "And you're a vampire hunter? You hunt them down and kill them?"

"For sixty-two years," the old man said. "Killed my first at age twelve. Took over for my father, who took over for his."

"So this is a family business?" Rogan pulled his brown duster tightly around his waist and crossed him arms defensively. This guy was a crackpot, and he wanted to finish walking home from the library before Delia worried. He remembered summers not long ago when he'd never have spent a warm summer day at the library, but out tearing up the streets on his motorcycle. Age and marriage had certainly tamed him.

"For more generations than I can recount. But I have no son to carry on the tradition. I fathered six kids, four of them boys, but they have predeceased me."

"So you stop the first man on the street?" Rogan said.

"Not quite. You're special, Rogan Mallory."

Rogan looked at him, leery. "How'd you know my name?"