Knighty Night

Looking for something to watch one Saturday evening, we landed on A Knight’s Tale. It’s one of our favourite movies, guaranteed to make us laugh and cheer and all the other warm fuzzy things aroused by an entertaining story wherein an ordinary man overcomes all odds to become a champion. It’s bright, it’s funny, it’s touching, it’s loud; except for a bit of clunky writing in one spot, it’s the perfect popcorn period piece.

“I love that film,” one of us remarked when it was done.

“Me too,” the other replied. “We should do another one next weekend.”

“A knight film?” Since we have a number of them in our DVD library, it seemed a theme might be fun. We began listing titles—King Arthur (starring, appropriately enough, Keira Knightley, bwahahaha), Kingdom of Heaven, Excalibur, even The Court Jester, which led to a round of terrible puns that left us breathless with more laughter:

“Saturday Knight at the Movies.”

“Saturday Knight Fever.”

“Give Me the Knight.”

“Knights in White Satin.”

“Knight of the Iguana.”

“One Knight in Bankok.”

Okay, most of them are song titles, but you get the idea. King Arthur was screened the following week, and Kingdom of Heaven ran last Saturday. Excalibur may be up next, but while pondering further possibilities, I asked Ter if Jedi knights count; if so, the Star Wars saga will prolong the theme for a couple more months. And I almost forgot: Monty Python and the Holy Grail!

It’s likely no coincidence that I am currently writing a story about knights returning from the Crusades, but I do wonder which came first, the story idea or the movie theme. Whichever it was, something has sparked the creative impulse and on my week off, I intend to make it count.

Count. Hm. Ter and I toyed with viewing vampire movies before “knights” fell. Perhaps our next round starts with Dracula ...

Pick a Favourite

“Which writing project are you the most proud of?”

This question was posed as a creative exercise. Once I got over it ending with a proposition, I thought it was a bit like asking a parent which child she loves best. I also realized that I have a more extensive catalogue than one might assume, given my constant whining about writer’s block and lack of time/inspiration/talent. Picking one was suddenly a daunting prospect.

My initial thought was “Fixed Fire”. Writing five novels in four years and self-publishing two of them was no mean feat. What started as a one-off about a disillusioned warrior in denial of his magical powers quickly evolved into a saga set in a world beyond the mountains. The landscape was rich, the romance was blistering, the characters were vivid, and the family dynamic was utterly—sometimes hilariously—dysfunctional. It was a blast to write ... until it was not. Stalled at volume 7 since 2011, I’ve written novellas about some of the lesser players in the greater tale and each of them is captivating in its own way. But to pick the one that does me most proud? Errrr ... Next!

How about the vampires? I am secretly impressed with myself for writing three different versions of the genre starring three different incarnations of the iconic immortal: the romantic Julian Scott-Tyler, the power-hungry Darius Wolfe, and the outlaw Ariel Black. Perhaps I love my vampires a little more than I do the “Fixed Fire” crew (it truly depends on the day), but which of the trio does me the most proud? It’s really too close to call.

Then I considered the list of short stories spanning a decade from “Four Legs and a Tale” to “Ruby Red”. I’ve written about centaurs and witches and princes and waiters and angels; how can one stand out above the others when they’re literary apples and oranges?

Oh, and let’s not forget the blog. I’ve posted some dandy diatribes and yes, I have favourites among them, mostly among the fictional pieces but including a few of the philosophical. Winnowing out a singular post for personal pride is impossible.

Finally, I realized something that maybe should have been obvious from the get-go. I love them all, every one of them, and always will. However, given the folder of half-started stories on my hard drive, and the difficulties I encounter in actually completing something, I’ve decided that the project I am most proud of will always be the one I’ve just finished.

The Horror of Romance (or the Romance of Horror)

I want to write a romance.

There. I said it.

Not one of those formula romances, of course. That’s not my style. Besides, I tried it once, and I couldn’t keep the characters in line. You’d think two-dimensional people would be easy to manage, but my people were, ironically, too-dimensional. She was too independent and he was too conflicted, so I decided to write a vampire story instead.

That story turned out to be a romance. Well, romantic. She was independent and he was conflicted, but somehow the love affair worked. Too bad it ended tragically. When one party is immortal and the other one isn’t, it’s kinda doomed from the start. Mine worked without a happy ending because, quite frankly, paranormal romance is a genre unto itself and I can’t stick to that formula, either. I have utmost respect for authors who can follow those rules. Trust me, it’s harder than it looks.

You know who wrote great “outside the box” paranormal romance? Anne Rice. She set a new standard for Gothic horror with a romantic slant—or was it Gothic romance with a horrific slant? In any case, her work with vampires and witches was phenomenally fabulous, crazy romantic, deeply, sensuously, gorgeously written, and it gave me permission to blow off the doors when developing my own style. She was my example, my mentor, my yardstick, and my escape. I learned from her while reading everything she wrote.

So why was she not included in the top 100 of PBS’s Great American Read? Anyone? Anyone?

Naturally, I couldn’t resist tuning in to find out how many authors I recognized and which books I’d read (more than I thought and not as many as I’d hoped). After the show, I came away with a lengthy reading list ... and some big-time bitterness on discovering the literary Queen of the Damned’s legendary Vampire Chronicles did not make the top 100 while Stephenie Meyer’s horrific-for-all-the-wrong-reasons Twilight series did.

Weeks later, I’m still not over it. In truth, I may never be over it. Twilight led to the Fifty Shades of Grey debacle (which also made the list, gods help us) so I guess it gets points for inspiring a new voice, but I believe it’s also responsible for destroying an eternal genre and lowering the bar for writing in general.

I know I sound hysterical. I could be overreacting, I suppose, since vampires are rarely out of fashion for long, but comparing Interview with the Vampire to Twilight is like comparing cream to dishwater. I also understand that lists are completely ego-based and of no value in the grand scheme, yet it truly pains me that the writer whose work first obsessed me then compelled me to become the writer I am (undiscovered and pretty darned good) was sacrificed in favour of a writer far less deserving of the placement.

So, in dark and stormy tribute to the incomparable Anne Rice, I am setting out to write that romance.

Grrrrr.

Vampire Rain

The rain/snow/sleet/hail pings on the window pane behind me. The morning dawned grey and cold in the raw, rainforest winter way that makes your finger bones ache within minutes of stepping outside. It’s my day off, so no worry of having to venture into the unfriendly weather, but my plan to work with Caius and Aurelia is hijacked by my desire to write a vampire story.

I tend to write vampires in winter. Not so much in summer. No idea why.

*wink*

Anyway, last year, I began a vampire story that remains unfinished. It might get done this year. This winter, in fact, if I can keep my mojo going; it took a while, but I have reacquainted myself with the story so far and gained a little traction in getting it where it has to go.

I already know the ending. It’s the centrepiece in a trio of tales, the first of which, titled “Reunion”, was written in 2013. I’ve been sitting on the first line of the third part since then, with a relatively clear idea of how the trilogy will end—only in 2013 I had no idea that it was a trilogy. All I knew—all I still know—is that I am in no hurry to write what is now the third story.

Simply put, someone is going to die.

In avoiding what I thought was the sequel to “Reunion”, it came to me that a significant part of the greater story was missing, so a duo became a trio. I started writing the bridge last summer. It’s unusual for me to start a vampire story in August, but since this one takes place in Morocco, it was helpful to be sweltering while writing about the heat. Revisiting it now is part of my non-NY resolution to finish something in 2017, especially if it was started in a previous year.

Am I having fun with it? Actually, I am. I’m familiar with the characters and understand their MOs, and one of them wants the story finished almost as much as I do. He’s hardly impatient, but I sense that he’s getting tired. I also sense that my reluctance to complete the trilogy doesn’t make a darned bit of difference to him—and suddenly, I let go on a strangely comforting revelation.

He will tell me when it’s time to write that third story.

Bibliography X

“Nevermore (a Cal Leandros novel)” – Rob Thurman

How the &$^%#* did I not know about this book? Imagine my surprise—and Ter’s unbridled glee—when I peeled the paper from a book-shaped Christmas prezzie and spied Cal Leandros on the cover!

I think I screamed.

One of the questions in a getting-to-know-you survey for a work conference last November was Which character from your favourite book would you like to meet? I chickened out and picked Louis de Pointe du Lac. Cal is so scary that I picked a vampire instead of him.

Yes, I love him. I think he’s f***ing awesome … but do I want to meet him?

Hell, no.

What really messed me up was how Ter knew that this, the tenth in the series, had been released and I didn’t. “Easy,” she replied. “I got an email from amazon.”

Oh, right. I haven’t purchased a Cal novel online for years. The last was Blackout, which put me on amazon’s reminder list, but when they advised me that Doubletake was due, I went to Munro’s Books and had them order my copy. I did the same with Slashback the following year. I got the nudge about Downfall , but because it came out close to September, I bugged Ter into getting it for my birthday in stead of buying it myself. Three strikes, I’m out, and now she gets the notifications.

Am I disappointed?

Hell, no! It was the best stunner ever! She’s still so proud of herself that she snickers when she sees me buried in it (I read the prologue before breakfast on Christmas Day); again, it’s a breakneck run-for-your-life shoot-’em-up roller coaster ride with my half-human, half-monster hero at the wheel. I read these novels so fast that I have to read them again when I’m done, to catch the details. They are primarily entertainment, but I’ve learned a lot about writing urban fantasy from them, too. I have to admit, despite my love and respect for The Vampire Chronicles and A Song of Ice and Fire, I have a soft spot in my heart for incorrigible Cal that puts the ongoing trauma of his fight to survive so high on my list of favourites that he may very well be the champion.

He’s a guilty pleasure, for sure.

Everything Old is New Again

Is it cheating if a new story idea features familiar characters? It’s been a long time since I’ve written anyone new (or old, for that matter), but a few weeks ago, I started looping a song from the 70s and with it came a scene so powerful that I had to stop what I was doing and let it play out in my mind.

With the playing came the questions. Who, what, and why? “Where” was obvious from the song. “Why” became clear once “who” was answered, and if I bucked the characters’ identities at first, it’s only because I already know them.

The story appears to be a bridge in one of my ongoing vampire sagas, which is fine. At least it’s not a fourth variation on the vampire theme. I’m rather pleased that each of my three vampire worlds stands alone from the other two, but really. How many vampire societies can one author write before she begins to repeat herself?

My dilemma—if it even exists—is a growing concern that perhaps I am unable to write new characters. I don’t want to be the artist who paints the same tree for the rest of her life. I want to explore new worlds (and seek out new civilizations, ha ha), yet the comfort of a familiar voice, even a villain’s voice, is almost irresistible.

Like most writers, I get attached to my characters. When I want to go home, I return to Castasia, where the cast is so huge that I actually could spend the rest of my life writing about them. I still have plans to revamp (no pun intended) the Cassandra story from 2000, and a fourth Black story is presently incubating. I am not adverse to new characters by any means. I have a bunch of half-finished projects to prove it … so why is it that this latest nugget is about existing characters?

It probably doesn’t matter. Three vampire worlds and a mountain fantasy likely contain more characters than a lot of short fiction writers will conjure in a lifetime. The last thing I want is to be one of those folks who leaves the names blank and fill them in by global replacement after the story is finished. If I know the players so well, they know me as well, and that’s why they return.

There you go, Ru. No dilemma. Write on.

Gender Swapping

My tea fairy, Treena, recently sent me an anguished email featuring the link to an online article about the latest blight on the literary scene. The queen of vampire schmaltz has struck again, and with a new twist on the same blunt instrument. I thought we’d dodged a silver bullet when a draft manuscript of Twilight told from Edward’s POV was leaked and Stephenie Meyer sacked the idea of releasing it, but she has since re-written her horrifying-for-all-the-wrong-reasons series, this time with the protagonists swapping genders. Yup, mortal Bella is now Beau, vampire Edward is now Edyth, and werewolf Jacob is now Julie. 

It’s a new way of wringing a few more drachmas from the golden udder for sure—E.L. James has done precisely the same thing by rewriting her candy-coated S&M trilogy from the sadist’s point of view.

As my dear friend Nicole would say, BLERG.

Maybe it’s not new to take a familiar story and change the hero to a heroine or vice versa. I admit, the idea is intriguing. I’ve even spent an idle moment or two toying mentally with my own work and wondering how a female Julian or a male Cassandra might alter the plot of their respective stories. On a less daunting scale, I considered a revamp (no pun intended) of Between the Storms, but then I thought, wait a minute. I don’t have to regurgitate what I’ve already done. I can write new stuff!

Snide asides notwithstanding, change the sex of a character and you must change the story. I only got so far when contemplating the switch for my tale of a hit man on hiatus who discovers a girl washed up on the beach outside his house. Sure, female assassins exist, and the man washing up on her beach might be on the run from a control freak, but the rest of it would require more than a global replacement of character names. The villain, for one thing, would have to become female, and a man who runs from a domineering woman will be regarded with more ridicule than sympathy, possibly even by the heroine who saves his life. So the whole back end of the piece, including the resolution, would have to be redone, and if I’m going to write a story, I’d rather do it with all new characters and a new beginning.

On the other hand, I have considered taking a really badly written story and rewriting it to standard—but that would mean reading Fifty Shades of Grey first, and I just can’t bring myself to do it.

“The Green Fairy Speaks” (Preface)

A few years ago, I heard a song called “Dark Waltz” sung by Jackie Evancho on PBS. It was eerie as heck, hearing this very grown up lament sung by an eleven-year-old girl who sounded like a thirty-year-old woman. I tried to find her version of it on Youtube, but found this one instead. The video is glorious, the song perfect, and while not sung in the same mezzo soprano as the kid’s, Viktoria Tocca’s rendition does justice enough to the sentiment.

Who knows why something doesn’t ignite right away? I loved the song on first hearing, but wasn’t inspired to write from it until a few weeks ago. While one might automatically think “vampire”, the lyrics actually struck me as something that might be applied to someone on the precipice between this life and the next. It’s sad, it’s haunting, it’s romantic… as my Nicole would say, le sigh.

Imagine my surprise when a character I hardly know stepped up to finish a story begun more than a year ago, where a Parisian waiter named François rescued a girl named Odette from the clutches of her artist admirers. I wrote a fairly lengthy sequel to the original piece, but less has turned out to be more. It goes up tomorrow.

And so their story ends.

Enjoy.

“The Philosophical Vampire” – Preface

I happened on tomorrow’s post during a lunch break this week. Intending to raise my creativity from the grave in the midst of a hectic workday, I carried my exercise book to the library and flipped to what I thought was a blank page. Instead, I found the bulk of a conversation with Julian Scott-Tyler, a sort of preternatural episode of Philosophy Quest in which he smashes the myth of the brooding vampire to smithereenies. This is amusing because when I first met him, he was the quintessential brooding blood hunter, the conflicted hero prone to bouts of romantic drama, at war with what he was and the one who had made him. Great fun at the time. Nicole was writing a poetic cycle called Eros American and almost every poem within it reminded me of Jules—dark, glittering, savagely beautiful, crazy sexy, and absolutely ruthless in possession of his prey.

He still has those qualities. Perhaps his most admirable trait, however, is his flexibility. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating that he fits as easily into the modern world as he did in the Victorian age or seventeenth century Europe. This flexibility has saved his sanity in ways that elude many of his kind—and many of mine, too. I have also noticed that he looks over my shoulder when I’m reading Anne Rice, as if he’s comparing himself to Lestat and chuckling softly under his breath—at who, which or what, I am unsure and he is not saying.

Or he wasn’t.

This conversation resulted from the recent resurgence of the Rice vampires, most notably during Lestat’s ardent lamentation of what terrible fate must await his lost and aching soul. I’d be reading merrily along and suddenly Jules would cough or snort or sigh in my ear. Fed up, I finally dared him to tell me what the heck he was thinking because a major difference between Lestat and my Julian is that Julian thinks. He acts when he must, but he’s no James Bond. He reads and he ponders—and he’s come up with a fair argument for getting out of this estate with his soul intact.

Enjoy.

Bibliography VI

“Blood Canticle”—Anne Rice

I love Lestat. I love Anne Rice. I’m not too crazy about the Mayfair witches, especially Rowan and Mona, so having them show up in this volume of The Vampire Chronicles was going to be a challenge, but I was willing to give it a whirl.

Parts of it were dazzling. She will never lose her ability to mesmerize with written imagery. I think I even got the point of the story—Lestat longs to be a saint; he wants to do good though he believes he is eternally damned, so he sets out to solve a mystery for a pair of mortal witches—but the end result was more crazy quilt than polished brocade.

It helps to like the characters, and I don’t like the two Mayfairs who showed up here. I don’t get why Lestat insists on making a vampire of everyone he loves when a) he always ends up alone and b) their mortality is what attracts him in the first place. He does it over and over, and it always backfires on him. He’s young in vampire years, but really? I’m way younger than he is and I’ve figured it out. But why he felt so passionately for one mortal in this story absolutely escapes me, as I saw nothing remotely lovable about her and he didn’t explain it. He was simply, suddenly, obsessed and in love. That relationship didn’t fit within the story, either; it was more of a distraction, an annoying buzz that popped up during a lull in the action, and culminating in a final chapter that meant pretty well nothing so far as I could tell.

Then there’s the haunting—he’s plagued by the Mayfair patriarch’s ghost, who resents Lestat stealing the favoured daughter from the light, but again, that relationship didn’t work for me. It made too little sense. I couldn’t figure out how he appeased the spirit enough to make him go away, so it either wasn’t explained very well or I didn’t care enough to carry it with me when I wasn’t actually reading.

I like a story that stays with me between bouts.

It’s painful to admit. I didn’t get it, so I didn’t feel it, and that made me an indifferent reader. Whether a book is good or bad is completely subjective, that’s why I place little value on critical reviews. I will rave about a book that inspires me, however, and adhere—or try—to the adage about saying nothing if you can’t say something positive. I’ll wear the fact that I missed the author’s vision in this instance, but the greater angst lies in my having once understood and adored her work. Honestly, her earlier novels are magical. Her later ones harbour diamonds in the prose, but the stories are less coherent, more chaotic and peopled with characters in relationships that I find hard to swallow. Blood Canticle, unfortunately, almost choked me.

Bibliography V

“Prince Lestat”— Anne Rice

Loved it! But, of course, I love Lestat. The self-proclaimed James Bond of vampires, he is likely more celebrated than Dracula … though he hasn’t had the same amount of screen time. Something to do with copyright law, no doubt. And just as well. What screen versions I’ve seen have fallen far short of my imagination. Some things are better left on the page. One might also suspect the author, in this case, of falling back on her most famous hero to resurrect a flagging career, but I tend to think that the character simply had something more to say. The scribe merely answered the call.

That is, after all, what we writers do.

For the longest time, I revered the way Anne Rice did it, too. Her style was my blueprint. I aspired to write those deeply lush and sensual descriptions myself. I perceived her work as the most meticulously cut-and-polished jewels: richly-hued, multi-faceted, artfully displayed, and absolutely bedazzling to the mind’s eye. I swore to write as well as Anne Rice or die trying.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I began this read in luscious anticipation and discovered myself editing the copy as I went along! Make no mistake: the story is riveting, the possibilities purely believable, the characters drawn in lovingly minute detail, the scenery meticulously described … but the writing itself runs rough, seeming more like an initial draft than a satiny smooth final version. I found myself making mental corrections when I should have been slipping into a world I remember as flawlessly buffed and burnished. I emerged thinking—arrogantly, perhaps?—that I could have done a better job with this absolutely wonderful story!

Which begs the question: which is more important, the story or the telling? Does a good writer make a half-baked story work? Or does a good story make a half-baked writer look competent? I guess either option is true, depending as much on the reader as any plot portent or turn with a phrase. I consider myself—arrogantly, perhaps?—to be a fairly high level reader, which is why I’m resisting the reading assignment from hell (blog post TBD), and because I love wordplay as much as I do a vivid character or an intriguing storyline, I demand a lot from my authors. Chuck Wendig advises all writers to read good books and bad books, one to inspire humility and the other to inspire confidence. Prince Lestat is a damned good story. The writing may even meet today’s appalling standard. It’s just not up to my memory of Anne Rice’s standard, and that makes it a little disappointing.

To assure myself that I have not misremembered her earlier skill, I am revisiting The Tale of the Body Thief, which also happens to be my favourite of the Lestat stories. And, no, I have not misremembered. I am sitting with him at the café, I am laughing out loud at his ongoing angst with Louis, I am seeing the sights and smelling the scents and shivering in the snow with no internal editor to distract me from the magic of the tale. So what gives? Did the author get lazy? Did she become too famous to require an editor? Is the editor intimidated by her fame? A fan will pick up the book no matter what the critics say, which is as it should be, and a fan will make up his/her own mind as to whether or not the money/time was wasted. For myself, it absolutely was not. I learned a lot from this book, even more than the future of the Rice vampires or the fate of their prince. I learned a little more about myself, about my craft, and about how important it is for a writer to keep reading.

Now, about that assignment from hell …

Year of the Vampire

Back in 1976, my older sister brought home a paperback novel called Interview with the Vampire. A fifteen-year-old Ru read it and it changed her world. Anne Rice’s vampires did what Bram Stoker’s could not—they made the night sexy and romantic and tragic and gorgeous. The story was Louis’, but Lestat stole the show.

Walking through the mall in 1985, I spied a display of hardcovers in the bookshop, each titled The Vampire Lestat. Apparently, the villain in Interview had captured more souls than mine, and while it took Anne Rice a decade to publish the sequel, it was worth the wait. Her writing inspired me to pattern my own style after hers; oft accused of indulging in “purple prose”, she painted scenery and sensation like no one else I’d read. I wanted to paint the pictures in my head with the same robust strokes, employing the same air-brushed hyperbole to burnish the end result. I read each successive volume of The Vampire Chronicles (The Tale of the Body Thief remains my favourite), but hopped off the bandwagon when Ms. Rice veered off to tell stories of ghosts, witches and werewolves. I admit, fascinating as the other creatures of the night may be, vampires top my food chain.

This past year, Ms. Rice returned to the vampire world with Prince Lestat—I am nearly finished devouring my copy (thanks, Ter!), and once again, my imagination has been fired by the beauty in liberating darkness. The ultimate predator, armed with preternatural allure and indomitable will, the vampire does more than inhabit that darkness. He owns it.

Over the past twenty years, I’ve written a slew of my own vampires, each from a wholly different world and possessed of entirely unique and individual personality. Each of my top three exists in his own nocturnal sphere that, like parallel dimensions, operates side by side with, but doesn’t cross over into, the others. I recently had the brilliant idea of bringing them together for a writing exercise, but every one of them wanted to know why he should oblige me.

Except Black, of course. Black flatly refused … which opened the floor to his arch-nemesis, Raymond de Haven, but still, with Julian reluctant and Darius plainly unconvinced, my great idea seems doomed. Unless they have something to say, none of them will cooperate. I guess it’s a sign of pure character development that I can’t make my vamps do my bidding. Apparently I work for them …

… as it should be.

“Black and Blonde” (Preface)

 

The Internet is a wonderful thing. Without it, I would never have been invited to become a member of the 21^st Century Poets—an online group of writers who started a forum wherein we posted bits and pieces, chatted back and forth, and generally communed with others of our ilk. It was a small group, more of a cluster, really, but boy, did we jam up cyberspace with our bounty. The forum was a safe place to exchange ideas, ask for reviews, assistance, advice, and assurance on things we had already done, and experiment with things we wanted to try. It was the most convivial, supportive, and creative group I have ever been a party to, and I miss them all—except Nicole, who was a founding member and remains my sister in propinquity—dearly. Nic might even remember this story, posted in installments as I wrote it, with neither revisions nor any idea of what was going to happen next.

 

At the time, I was writing the Julian stories and watching reruns of Miami Vice. Ter and I have all five seasons on DVD, since we were too busy living life on Friday nights to be home for the series in its heyday. It was more inspiring without commercial breaks, anyway. I adore what Don Johnson did with Sonny Crockett, and since I am usually inspired by actors, rock stars or both, I decided it would be fun to write a vampire with attitude.

 

Enter Ariel Black, a blood hunter as different from Julian Scott-Tyler as burlap is from cashmere. He’s cynical, savvy, abrasive, and cursed with a set of morals that most of his kind abandoned long ago. His world also differs from Julian’s in that he operates among knowing mortals—vampires are an emerging reality that we are just beginning to accept. Black has figured out how to live among us without posing a threat, but when a determined mortal woman shows up with a proposition for him, he is forced to reconsider his position …

 

Part one of eight goes up tomorrow. Enjoy.

"A Singular Gift"

Julian sits, barefoot, at the piano. His hands rest lightly on his thighs. A glass of cabernet is within reach and candlelight shimmers over the elegant bones of his face. He is very still, as if he’s waiting for something.

Or someone.

Outside the window, snow falls in soft lazy flakes. Winter is here, but indoors the only sign of the season is a string of white fairy lights sparkling amid the leaves of a potted fig tree.

We meet every year at this time. It’s about magic for me – the magic of the holidays, and the magic in his hands. As with most musicians who prize an instrument over vital body parts, the Steinway is a part of him. I rarely hear him play, but once a year, at this time of year, he plays for me.

“Shall I begin?” he asks, and I know that he knows I’ve arrived.

I look around the loft, at raw brick walls splashed with abstract canvases, at glossy fir floors and buttery leather furniture. Naturally, there’s a fire. He’ll never be a fan of artificial light.

“How ’bout a drink?” I ask.

He slips me a pained sidelong look and deigns to keep silent. Now is not the time for our brand of verbal jousting.

I make myself at home on the couch. The piano is behind me, angled to put Julian’s back to mine. He sits a moment longer, to be assured that I’m settled. I breathe in, breathe out, close my eyes, and wait.

The silence ripples like still water disturbed by a falling leaf. The fire murmurs in the grate. He will drag this out until I’m on the brink of snapping, but I know why he’s reluctant. It’s a measure of his affection that he’s willing to give me this one thing when he’d as soon ignore it on his own.

As usual, I considered skipping it this year, but he loves jazz and he loves his piano … and he loves me. Just as the reminder crosses my mind, the music begins: a gentle twinkling of notes cascading effortlessly into the opening of my favourite holiday instrumental—Christmastime is Here, played with the same artless panache as if Vince himself is at the keyboard.

Julian is true to the recording, though he can’t resist adding his own air-brushed embellishments during the extended bridge. That’s when I know that his passion for the music has eclipsed his fondness for me, and for a few minutes more, he and I are bound by the same spell: a mutual love of music and of each other, regardless of the season.

I’m sunk in the cushions, warm and safe and drowsy, when the last notes dwindle and the Steinway falls silent. “Was it good for you?” he asks with a smile in his voice.

“As always,” I reply. I stand up to go. “Thank you, Jules.”

“My pleasure,” he says. He’s still seated at the piano and his hands are back on his thighs. I want to duck in and kiss his cheek but a) his personal space is precious and b) you don’t come at a vampire from behind. I’d like to wish him a merry Christmas, too.

I don’t. I thank him again, then I leave.

He doesn’t celebrate Christmas anymore.

“From the Inside (conclusion)”

 

 

She was getting into her car when his voice boomed like thunder, rolling into the corners of the cavernous parkade: “Janine!”

She turned. It suddenly hit him that she had lied about her name as well. She froze, one foot on the running board and one hand on the car door, waiting while he approached at a stilted jog.

He put out a hand to steady himself against the Jaguar’s rear quarter. His heart beat so fast that his breath came shallow and ragged.

“What is it, Peter?”

“We’re not finished yet.”

“I have no further need of you,” she said, coldly. “You can explain the million pounds. Blame it on poor investments. You’ll not be punished. You can go on with your tedious little life as if I had never come into it.”

“You think it’s that simple! What about me?”

“What about you?” she retorted smartly. “Are you in love with me?”

“No!”

“Then we shall trouble each other no more.” She turned her back and sank into the driver’s seat. He grabbed her arm and hauled her onto the pavement. She stumbled and recovered as quickly, wrenching from his grasp.

“Give it to me!” he demanded, blocking her escape into the car. “Give me the blood, Janine. After everything I’ve done, you owe me that much.”

Her stare was brittle. “Do you think that I care?”

“I don’t think about you at all,” he snapped. “It’s what I want that matters.”

She laughed at him, truly amused by his audacity. “I don’t think so.” She gripped his shoulder in one hand. “Get out of my way.”

The force of her strength nearly cost him his balance, but he kept his feet by clutching her sleeve. She spun to dislodge him. He lunged, driving her back against the car, taking a perverse pleasure in the wince she failed to restrain. He shoved her once more, just to watch her face contort. Her fangs flashed, lethally sharp in the brutal light—the only proof that he was not assaulting a woman as mortal as himself. “That hurt you, didn’t it?” he sneered, so pumped on adrenalin that fear was not an option. “Maybe you’re not as indestructible as you’d like me to believe.”

“And how do you intend to find out?” she growled. Her eyes fixed like a lynx’s on his own. She hated him. Loathed him. Despised him—but not because he was weak. She had not expected him to fight and was now scrambling to regain control of him. Without even realizing it, he had turned the tables on her. The revelation was as thrilling as the doubt which suddenly rattled him. Having gained the upper hand, how was he going to use it?

“Is there a problem here?”

Peter maintained his hold on her, refusing to break his lock on her gaze in favour of acknowledging the owner of the voice. She appeared equally intent, though her eyes had narrowed slightly at the intrusion. Neither of them was concerned with the scene they presented—the interruption was not a welcome one.

“Just having a discussion with my girlfriend,” Peter said, tightly.

“ ‘Girlfriend’?” There was a hilarity in the stranger’s voice that warranted a look. The voice belonged to a man about his own age, slender and handsome, who seemed more entertained than appalled by the violence he had just witnessed. His dark eyes were aimed, sparkling, at Janine. “ ‘Girlfriend’? I like that.”

“He’s exaggerating,” Janine said, acidly.

“I should certainly hope so.”

Peter could not ignore the evidence that they knew each other—and quite intimately, from the sound of it. A grave sense of foreboding began its rise to the surface. He fought it down with what he hoped was a venomous glare in the newcomer’s direction. “I’ll thank you to mind your own business, chum,” he declared with more vehemence than he had intended.

“Oh, this is my business,” was the mild reply.

Peter scoffed to cover his nerves. “And who might you be?”

The newcomer grinned, displaying a pair of incisors as jagged as Janine’s. “I’m the boyfriend.”

The adrenalin rush abandoned him, leaving an oily nausea in its wake. He saw now what he should have seen right away: the white skin, the thick mane frothing with a life of its own, the elastic grace that mortal dancers strove and failed to achieve. The vampire stood completely at ease, arms casually folded across his chest; absolutely, inhumanly still. Even the fringe on his leather jacket hung motionless in defiance of the parkade’s air circulation system. Peter’s knees abruptly weakened. “What in God’s name is this?” he whispered, fearing that he already knew.

Janine irritably shrugged his hands from her shoulders, but it was the male who answered. He stepped forward, gently taking Peter’s elbow and leading him a few paces from the car. “She tends to get in over her head,” he said in a conspiratorial hush. “She thought you might be trouble, so she invited me along for the finale.”

“Jolly sporting of her,” Peter remarked, tersely. There was an amiable warmth about the male; under different circumstances, he might have liked the fellow. “What do you mean, ‘the finale’?”

They had reached his BMW. The vampire cast a glance over the vehicle, assessing its value and deciding it was probably overpriced. “What’s the top speed you’ve been ticketed for?”

Perplexed and suspicious, Peter answered the question. “One-ten.”

The vampire smirked. “I’ve done one-forty in the Jag.”

“In the Sovereign?” Peter asked, momentarily astonished.

The vampire shook his head. “That belongs to Jan. I have an E-type that would blow this into the weeds. Still, if you like German engineering, I can’t argue with your choice.”

“It got good reviews in all the motoring magazines.”

“Indeed.” The vampire rested his hip against the car and folded his arms again. “I don’t want to kill you,” he said frankly, “but I will if I have to. The decision is yours.”

“You’re giving me options?” Peter asked, only half-aware of the absurd turn his life had suddenly taken.

“You have two,” the vampire said. “You have a girlfriend of your own?”

He thought briefly, regretfully, about Sandy, and nodded.

“Go back to her.”

“What’s my second option?”

“I’ll have to kill you.”

It was not much of a choice, considering the matter of the embezzled funds. He glanced back at Janine. She stood by the black Jag, watching him bargain with the devil for a life he was unsure he could reclaim. He had tossed everything on the hollow promise that she would give him eternity. It was easy to hate her.

The vampire had followed his gaze and now nodded as if reading his thoughts. “Imagine what my life has been like,” he commented, dryly.

Peter was not the least bit amused. “She promised me immortality.”

“She lied.”

“Then why doesn’t she kill me?”

“She grows too attached when she plays these games. Take my advice, Peter. Go back to your life and forget about her.”

Peter uttered a lame attempt at laughter. “That’ll be a bit tricky when Scotland Yard comes to call.”

“They won’t come.”

“What do you mean?”

The vampire pulled a wallet from his back pocket and flipped it open to extract a business card, which he handed over. “I’ll replace the funds you moved for her. By the time you ring this number in the morning, the arrangements will have been made.”

The ground wobbled beneath Peter’s feet. Gratitude was not the first emotion that surfaced. He boldly met the vampire’s brown eyes. “You sorry bastard,” he said. “Do you always wind up righting her wrongs?”

The vampire smiled. “Not always. But I’m not the sorry bastard in this instance, am I?” He gave Peter an amicable clap on the shoulder and sauntered back across the parkade, the fringe on his jacket whispering as he moved.

Peter watched Janine get behind the wheel when the male circled the car to the passenger side. They sat in conference for a few moments, then she started the motor and backed the Sovereign from its space. Neither of them bothered to grace him with a parting glance.

Death did not come for Peter Aldroyd that night. It waited a full fortnight. His secretary found him in his office, slumped over his desk with the back of his head blown out and a pistol clutched in his hand. There was no note, but the investigation revealed that a million pounds had disappeared from a number of client accounts over three months preceding his suicide. His fiancée took the news well, all things considered; she told the police that he had not been himself for months. He had recently suffered from impotence and depression—the latter, she had imagined, brought on by the former though they had never discussed the subject. Further investigation failed to turn up the whereabouts of the missing funds, and the subsequent attempt by authorities to classify the case as a homicide failed due to lack of evidence.

In a jazz club across town, the owner finished reading the article and laid the newspaper on top of the bar. His grey-eyed lover was flirting with the patrons as usual, casting her spell over those who had no ward against her magic. She caught his eye and came toward him. When she reached the bar, he silently turned the paper around so that she could see the headline. She gave it a cursory glance before uttering a disdainful snort. “You should have killed him,” she said.

“And finish the job you started?”

“He was corroding when I met him,” she declared. “Rotting from the inside out, bored to death by his job and his woman. I gave him his fantasy in the flesh. It’s not my fault he couldn’t handle it.” She pushed the paper back across the bar. “Let it go, lover. You did all you could.” She flashed him a dazzling smile and flounced back into the crowd, resplendent in violet velvet.

The vampire read the article once more, slowly. “You sorry bastard,” he murmured. Then he folded the newspaper and tucked it into the garbage can beneath the bar.

 

THE END 

written May 9, 1999

revised October 6, 2013