Garrett had visible bruises from the last visit, bruises that kept him away from his wife. He worked late. He offered excuses why he could not bed his wife, and she became suspicious. He had wanted to explain all this to La Maitresse, but he feared losing her completely to another client, to another submissive.

La Maitresse spoke infrequently to him now. Instead she demanded that he reveal secrets of his matrimonial bed. If he halted in his stories, La Maitresse did not notice right away. Her mind wandered to someone else, he knew.

She still sought his blood. Often she seemed starved for his blood. The infliction of pain had lessened, as if she feared truly hurting him.

"Maitresse," he called.

Her blonde head rose from the crook of his neck. Blood spotted her chin. Her lips quivered and her nostrils flared. But her eyes were vacant, lost to Garrett. Slowly her hands reached up to touch her own lips.

"Garrett," she spoke as her eyes focused on his features.

Who is it that she sees when she is with me?

She stood. Small, he thought, with hands as strong as a workman's and a mouth more foul than any he had heard. Yet she was small. The black corset cinched her waist into an abnormally small circ.u.mference. The stiletto-heeled boots increased her height by at least six inches. Still he towered above her. Her hips and bust swelled in sensuous curves.

From the wall she took a long peac.o.c.k feather and, waving it in front of him, she began to speak. "You must stay away for a while." The feather touched his cheek, his forehead, the eyelids, the nose, the mouth. "I want you strong. I want both of us to heal." The feather swept his neck and stung the wound.

He shook his head.

While beating his chest with the feather, she demanded that he not talk back. The feather roamed down his abdomen and over his belly. His wrists were manacled together behind his back, but his legs were free. He drew his thighs apart, and she circled his c.o.c.k with the light touch of the feather and dragged the feather down the inside of each thigh.

La Maitresse leaned forward to whisper in his ear.

"Come back to me bloated with life, with fresh blood. Ready to feed the desires of Maitresse la Presidente. Your perverse blood shall feed me afresh."

Chapter 15.

Marie drove onto Keith's property. It had been several days since she had seen Wil, and she meant to change that. In her arms she carried a straw basket filled with scones and preserves. Her special peace offering. She shifted the load in order to rap on the door.

"What do you want?" A yellow tinge on Keith's right cheekbone reminded her of their last meeting. He did not open the door wide.

"I brought some food."

"We're not hungry. They have a soup kitchen in the next town over, give it to them."

"Even managed to collect enough blueberries to make a favorite spread of mine." She lifted the white linen cloth covering the basket and attempted to move closer to Keith. He merely closed the door another quarter inch.

"Dad hasn't had much of an appet.i.te since we last visited you."

Marie turned and saw Wil leaning against the front fender of her car. He stood shirtless, with a tuft of hair rising above the waist of his low-cut jeans. Gra.s.s clippings speckled his bare feet.

"It's been several days, and I wanted to invite you back."

"For what?" Keith's voice rasped behind her.

"I'm afraid there was a misunderstanding." She turned back to the father.

"This 'old fart' got the message," voiced Keith gruffly.

"I was over-playful."

Loud laughter spilled from Wil's lips.

"See! Your son understands it was a joke."

"My son gets off on people sticking needles in him. Not to mention the tattoos covering his hairy legs. Christ, he comes out of the shower looking like a walking mural."

"Dad's jealous. He'd like some color on his legs other than the bulging purple knots of his veins."

Marie placed the basket on the tattered pillow of the porch rocking chair. She took a deep breath and turned to face Keith.

"I apologize if I frightened you. And really, I didn't mean to hurt you. I see the bruise is practically gone." She reached out a hand, and Keith pulled back. She joined her hands and steepled her fingers to her lips. "Dinner. This Sat.u.r.day evening at, say, eight o'clock. I'll invite my granddaughter. She always manages to keep me in line." She smiled. "I do owe it to you both. Lord only knows what your son thinks of me."

"Whatever he thinks would be right," Keith said.

"I think you're a lovely, stylish woman. My father and I accept your gracious offer."

Keith groaned.

As long as Wil showed up, she didn't care what the old man did. Already she had projected her strong desire for Wil onto a client. A client who was too willing to accommodate her l.u.s.t and blood hunger.

Marie descended the steps.

"I look forward to seeing you both." She started for the door of her car. "And oh! Do dress casually. Shorts are fine." She winked at Wil and then entered her car.

"I'll wear my oldest boxers. Just see how much casual she can stand."

"Dad, calm down."

"Maybe you don't mind that she wants to jump your bones, but... well, you'd sleep with anything."

"You're jealous."

"Huh?"

Wil pulled out a kitchen chair, swept it between his legs, and sat.

"I think you've got a crush on your neighbor."

"s.h.i.t, I don't need that kind of woman hanging around me." Keith moved to the stove. "d.a.m.nit, the soup's boiling away. It'll take another half-hour for it to cool. It's her fault."

"Because you happened to be heating up soup when she knocked on the door? Or because you were too attracted to her to remember the soup?"

"Wilbur, I've got a single bed, just big enough for me. I don't have any room for a woman."

"That wasn't true when I was a kid."

Keith looked at his son.

"I may have had a lady stay over once in awhile."

"Whole weekends you'd be romping around in your bedroom. That's when I learned to do for myself. You and your wh.o.r.es would swat me out of the way when you came out for air."

"They were ladies. I never had to pay for it. Paying for s.e.x is a sin."

"If you had gone to church on Sunday, you would have learned that s.e.x without the blessing of marriage is a sin."

"You certainly didn't learn anything on Sundays."

"I learned lots, Dad, without having to leave my own home."

"You didn't learn to be a f.a.g in this house." Spit sprayed the air in front of Keith.

"I'm bis.e.xual."

"The only kind of woman chasing you is a perverted old lady." Keith grabbed a bowl off the Welsh dresser and brought it over to the stove to pour his soup. "Besides, if your mother hadn't died, there wouldn't have been any other women in this house." He slowly poured the soup into the bowl.

"G.o.d, it would have meant sleazing around cheap motels." Wil shook his head in sympathy.

Keith slammed the pot down on the stove.

"I loved your mother. I wasn't about to get married again and go through the loss of another good woman just because her maternal instinct kicked in." He placed the bowl of soup on the table and sat on one of the vinyl-covered chrome kitchen chairs.

Wil listened to his father slurp down the soup. The jiggling of his father's false teeth fascinated him. Dad's too cheap to even pay for a decent set of teeth.

"What?" Grasping his soup spoon just above the bowl, Keith looked at his son.

"When's the last time you got laid?"

Keith dropped the spoon back into the bowl, causing a light splatter of tomato soup.

"That's why you're so grumpy, Dad. Let me treat you."

"What the h.e.l.l are you talking about?" Keith's eyebrows seemed to crouch down over his eyelids.

"You still wouldn't be paying for it. I would. You're all clogged up. Let me call my favorite Roto-Rooter girl."

"Disgusting. You made me lose my appet.i.te." Keith stood and walked to the sink with the bowl in his hand. After dumping the soup down the drain, he pulled open the dishwasher and shoved the bowl inside the machine. "You and the Wicked Witch of Rathbone deserve each other." Keith started to exit the room.

"Don't forget to mark Sat.u.r.day down on your calendar. If her granddaughter's cute, we might be able to have a foursome.

Chapter 16.

He had the face of a young man. Liliana guessed him to be in his mid-twenties. His features, while coa.r.s.e, still had some fine detail through the mouth and in the shape of the nose. His slicked-back hair gave only the faintest hint of red, while his brows and beard stubble glistened with the color. The frame of his body indicated that he had been a dedicated athlete. A dusting of reddish-brown hair covered his chest.

Young. Too young to be lying on the stainless steel table.

She poured kerosene into the knife wound on the lower abdomen. The maggots shriveled and died. While sponging down the body with a disinfectant, she wondered about this man's life. So short, unlike hers, which was never-ending. Would death be preferable to her existence?

Stomach fluid bubbled between his lips. Quickly she rolled over the body to drain the purge from the corpse's mouth. Later she would have to remember to tie off the trachea and esophagus before exposing the arteries of the neck for embalming. Her fingers left tracks on his discolored back. After returning him to the supine position, she swabbed out his mouth and nose.

When she grasped the palm of his hand, she felt the rough calluses marring his flesh. Gradually she flexed the arm several times, then continued on to the other arm. After bending his legs to relieve the rigor mortis, she started to ma.s.sage the thick thighs as a lover would, allowing her fingers to sink deep into his crotch, pushing aside his b.a.l.l.s. The erection caused by the settling blood stood useless; she touched it softly with the tips of her fingers. It had been so long since she had tasted the smooth tip and ridge of a male organ. Closing her eyes, she remembered the salty chlorine flavor of seminal fluid. Her hand circled the erection and moved up and down.

The sound of a moan pulled Liliana back into the reality of the embalming room. She checked his gaping mouth, but no sound had been emitted from there. A shiver and a smile acknowledged her own senseless fear. It had probably been her fantasy that had caused her to moan with forgotten pleasure.

She extended his legs and arms over the gutter circling the table. While elevating the head, she rubbed the back of her hand across his stubble. The beautician would shave him later, but for now he had the look of a sleeping lover.

Visually she sought his left and right carotids for the arterial embalming she was about to perform. No beat existed to a.s.sist her search; experience and the leanness of his body made it easier. His odor and the coolness of his flesh were familiar to her. Her own body carried the same chill, and often she awakened in her coffin to the scent of her own reposal decay. Her body healed fast, so that by the time she stepped from the casket her flesh had sweetened to the reality of life. The same could not be said of her clients, who stretched out into eternal decay.

After closing off the trachea and esophagus, she exposed the carotids and inserted hollow metal tubes in order to inject the formaldehyde and methyl alcohol mix. Before using the solution, she cut a major vein to drain the blood.

The commingling odors of the embalming fluid and the blood always made her feel light-headed. Her mouth watered at the sight of the blood dripping into the surrounding gutter. The temptation to drain the body with her own lips pa.s.sed quickly. Once she had tried, and the rancidness of dead tissue had roiled her stomach. Uncle Donatien was right. They were meant to feed from the living. Vampires were not scavengers, they were game hunters. Not vultures picking at the remnants of nature.

Her fingers ma.s.saged the young man's cold flesh, helping to spread the embalming fluid that would firm up muscles that never would be used again.

Often she felt intrusive, preventing the body from taking on its final state, saving the body sh.e.l.l to satisfy the whims of the living. A final prep. A final farewell. The final facade with which each man must face friends, relatives, and sometimes enemies.

Intently she watched his face and hands, waiting for evidence that the fluid was entering the visible areas. And she continued to ma.s.sage, feeling the ribs and hip bone dig into her palms.

"Freedom from the bonds of humanity will come. I promise," she whispered, knowing that her own blood bond was too addictive to vanquish.

When the hands showed evidence of the embalming fluid she quickly moved to apply Superglue to conjoin his fingers. The nails were ragged, and some were split. The fingers were short, the knuckles k.n.o.bby with the indication of early arthritis. A white scar circled his right thumb. His palm had a congestion of lines. She kissed the palm and brushed it against her cheek.

"If only I were brave enough to join you."

Gently she placed the hand over his chest.