"No," I pleaded.

"You can't stop me. It won't hurt you." His fangs glinted at me. "I can't get you pregnant, I can't carry disease. I am safe sex."

"I don't wanna become any more obsessed with you than I already am!"

"I need you! You're in love with me! Admit it."

"Fuck you." I gasped. "Oh, my God."

"Come on," he said. "Come with me. Come on."

"No," I said, but I already was.

Chapter Seven.

Another glorious terrible evening had ended on the mattress in Daniel's office on the top floor; I could feel the contours of Daniel's penis inside me as if my cunt were a sheet of metal hammered into shape. I had fallen asleep at dawn, exhausted, in the middle of a sweaty fuck, Daniel whispering Deutschen exhortations of love into my ear. I slept hard, too tired to dream.

Awakening many hours later, I lay on my side blinking at the cracks of sunlight creeping through the shrouds of garbage bags that covered the windows. The tape we'd been listening to all night still ran-David Bowie's Hunky Dory and some Nico thing on the other side; "Oh! You Pretty Things" was playing as I awakened. All was vague brownish polygons. My back was cold as ice. I snuggled closer to Daniel behind me, trying to gain warmth from the phlogiston of his body, but that was where the cold was coming from. I felt like my back was to a cold tile floor.

I rolled over, rubbing my eyes. "Dan?" I whispered.

A corpse lay there where Daniel had been; it had Daniel's hair, the black shiny shocks of it lying across the mattress cover, and Daniel's bone structure, the long Adam's apple, and the jutting Teuton cheekbones. But the eyes were sunken, the lips dark and lifeless, the luminous white skin gone gray-blue. His hands were curled into mummy fists, like the feet of a dead bird.

My scream echoed three full times. Before the last died down I was in the far corner of the room, a single droplet of nervous urine streaking down my leg like quicksilver. I couldn't get far enough away. And to think that I could still feel the sweet displacement of that cock inside me, still feel his hot shaky breath on my ear!

A boy came tumbling out of the bathroom, half zipped up, and ran over to me. I stared at him. "What's the matter?" he asked me quizzically, squatting down and regarding me like a curious bird. I couldn't say anything for a long time. The boy had very white skin, but a mortal white, with pink fingers and bare toes, and a slightly rounded childish belly; his head was shaved, but for a blond and black forelock that fluttered in the slight breeze coming from the garbage bags on the windows.

"Daniel," I managed to get out, and pointed.

The boy looked over at the grimy mattress on the other side of the room, half covered with clothes and black sheets, and then back at me. "What's the matter?" he asked again. "Haven't you ever seen him sleep before?", "Sleep?"

He helped me stand up, putting his arms around me to steady me. I was buck naked, but I didn't even care. He led me slowly back over to the mattress, and had me kneel down beside it. The boy put out his hand to the blue shrunken body, and touched the shoulder. The impression of his finger stayed there. I felt nauseated. "He's fine," said the boy. "You've never seen him sleep. You never saw your other vampire sleep?"

I was beginning to breathe again. "No," I said. "He wouldn't let me."

The boy made a sound of understanding. "If he were dead for real, there wouldn't be anything left except bones-maybe not even that."

We looked at each other.

"You wanna shower?" he asked shyly. "I brought you some towels."

"Yeah," I said. "Thanks."

I somnambulated to the bathroom, and took a shower, The tiles in there were white and clean, but the grout between the tiles was black and shiny, with God only knows what. I soaped myself for twenty minutes, silently thanking Ricari for those small, ruthless mercies.

I toweled off with more stolen hotel towels, and put on a pair of new black jeans and a plain black T-shirt that the boy had kindly set on the tiles while I was in the shower. He was outside sitting in a folding chair when I got out, reading a comic book with one leg crossed over his lap. He was a beautiful morsel of a young boy-handsome legs, narrow girl-shoulders, a smooth flexible torso with a tattoo of a question mark on the belly and a crescent moon on the right shoulder. Both of his marzipan-perfect rosy nipples were pierced laterally with delicate steel barbells. He smiled at me. "Feeling better?"

"I don't think I ever want a shock like that again."

"Dan loves to shock people," said the boy. Politely he closed his comic book. "It'll be sundown soon, and he'll be waking up. I think we have plans for the night. Do you want to come downstairs with me and smoke some kind buds? I have some French bread and chocolate."

I followed the boy down the winding staircase. The formerly deserted building was now host to probably a dozen young kids, mostly dressed in black, from punky tatters and safety pins to elegant black lace gowns and silver buckles. They smiled at me as we went past, as if they knew all about it. I blushed my head off. They all knew. Had they all gone through waking up next to the graying horror and having their screams echo through the broken bricks? I felt like a royal idiot.

The boy led me to a smallish room three floors down, strewn with couch cushions, tapes, comic books, stubs of votive candles. He left the door open. "Do you have a cigarette?" I asked wanly.

"Of course." He had a crushed packet of black Sobranies, one of which he lit for me. He took a swallow from a plastic container of pinkish liquid, and busily began to pack a tiny purple plastic bong. "I'm sorry. Don't feel bad. They all look like that when they sleep. Or at least, Daniel does."

"Who are those people?"

"Them? They're just Dan's kids. You know. They follow him around. They hang out here. A lot of them saw Daniel's shows, and came here to find him. A lot of them, he picked up off the streets and brought here so he could take care of them, you know, have fun with them. Most of them ran away from home, like me." He handed me the bong.

I took a short, soothing hit. "What's your name?" I said, exhaling slowly.

"Lovely," he said. "Well, duh, of course that's not my real name. My real name sucks. The first thing Daniel said when he saw me was, 'Oooh, lovely,' so I decided that would be my name from now on."

"Do you know my name?"

"Sure," he said. "Ariane. Daniel told us a long time ago."

"What were you doing upstairs?"

He paused while the smoke worked its way around his lungs, then blew it all out with a mighty cough. He shook his head. "Daniel called for me," he said. "He wanted me to watch over you both. I've been there since about noon, just chillin', listening to Bowie and reading comics. I do it all the time."

I refused a second bong hit. "How long have you been here?" I asked.

"About two years now."

I smoked my cigarette, watching the tiny flames licking up the sides of the smooth black paper. "And how old are you?"

"Eighteen."

"You Daniel's lover?"

He nodded slowly. "Yep," he said. "Most us of are, or have been, at some point."

"And you all know... ?"

"That he's a vamp? Well, yeah, of course, why else would we be here? I mean, Daniel's hot, and he's talented and great, but there's one reason mainly why most people stay. Some people come around just to find out if it's all true, then they drift off. But a lot of kids stick around. He's real, you know. It means a lot to us."

"How'd you find out about... uh..."

"Your other vampire?" He smiled at me over the rim of the bong. "Daniel told some of us. His most important folks-me, Chloe, Mimsy, those of us who were there when we found you. Chloe was the one who actually did a lot of the fixing up. She used to be a nurse, I guess. We gave you plasma. I should say, I gave you plasma."

"What do you mean?"

"We've got the same blood type," he said. "She set us up on some tubes, and I dripped all this blood into you. Then I passed out. I missed the big ritual-Daniel's big laying on of hands and all that. I've never seen him so into saving someone's life before. But he showed us all that note that was stuck to you, and said, 'You know who wrote this? It was that bastard who changed me over. He's too chickenshit to do it again, so he sends 'em to me, like fruit baskets.' I'll never forget it for a million years. I could have puked laughing. So what was he like? Was he really horrible?"

"I don't know," I sighed. The dope was soaking into me finally, making my body throb. My body missed Daniel, all asleep and dead upstairs. "I was totally in love with Ricari. I would have done absolutely anything for him-but he didn't want me to do anything for him. Except kill him. Which I didn't do. Which I should have done."

"Wait a minute. Wait a minute. What?"

"He wanted me to kill him," I said. "He couldn't do it himself, because it was a sin."

"No way!"

"And I couldn't do it either, because I loved him too much and I wanted him to take me away or something. All he wanted me to do was stuff him in the oven and walk away. But I fucking couldn't. I didn't want to face life without him." I crushed out my cigarette into an overflowing brass tray.

Lovely was completely absorbed, his pot-reddened eyes wide and awed. "Was he really, really beautiful?"

"Really, really beautiful."

"More beautiful than Dan?"

"In a way. He's a tiny little eighteenth-century guy."

"Blue eyes?"

"Gray. Brown hair. Really amazing skin."

"Oh, wow, he sounds cute." The boy stretched out on the cushions. "I kind of like my men a little more macho. Daniel's just about perfect. He has the savory body."

"I don't know if I want to hear about Daniel's body," I mumbled.

He laughed. "Tough. I talk about it all the time. I am so, so into Daniel, you have no clue. I seriously love him so much more than life itself. I don't even want to be like him. It would be wrong. I just want to be with him until the end. Listen, I have it all planned out, and Daniel even said yes." He rolled over and grabbed my ankle. "So, we're going to make out in a big bed all hung with black satin, like in an old movie. He's going to fuck me really hard. Then he's going to bite my artery and drain me dry in one big swallow. That's how I want to die, and Daniel said yes. Isn't he the greatest?"

"And when are you planning this blessed event?"

"On my twenty-first birthday."

"Oh, Lovely, don't you want to get a little older than that?"

"Fuck, no!"

He punctuated this with another bong hit and a fit of coughing that left him prostrate on the cushions, giggling faintly.

I fingered the French bread and chocolate and began to nibble tiny bites from it. At some point a very small girl in a black corset and floor-length skirt came in and asked for a bong hit; she was followed by another girl, and then a boy, and another girl. They crouched on the couch cushions smoking, introducing themselves. I was a little too stoned to remember any of their names, but they offered me drinks from flasks of hot tea, wine, whiskey, and water; they shared their berries and cigarettes. I asked them their ages; sixteen, sixteen, nineteen, seventeen. The boy had clear piercing pale blue eyes and hair colored black with shoe polish; he began massaging Lovely's bare, dirty-bottomed feet. One of the girls braided my hair, cooing in admiration of its color.

At last Lovely sat up and looked at a clock. "Shit," he said, "sundown."

Everyone scrambled up and ran up the stairs as quietly as possible. Not just us, but kids from every corner, galloping up the stairs two at a time, making little macabre haunted-house noises, giggling, spilling fragrant drops of wine.

We all gathered round the mattress where Daniel slept on. They made a place for me at the front. For a long time he looked as wretched as ever; then, as suddenly and as slowly as the sun begins to rise, his flesh began to come to life.

The gray shaded back to white, then to a healthy pale cream. His nipples pinkened and became erect, his lips flushed with color. Everyone was silent except for taped David Bowie, moaning, "It's War-hole, War-hole ... as in 'holes.' "

Daniel took a great breath; and stirred. He scratched his face. He scratched the top of his head, and his balls. Some of the girls giggled faintly.

He rolled over and opened his eyes, and smiled like a pampered king.

"Morning, Daniel," Lovely said, his voice thick with adoration.

The liqueur eyes scanned us. Then he reached out and grabbed the tiny corseted girl from Lovely's room, dragging her into bed with him. He pulled the covers over them and a giggling and shrieking ensued.

I turned away, a wave of jealousy rising up so fast it made me dizzy. How could this have happened? What did I care? The girl made desperate noises of pain, culminating in a hollow "Owwwww!" that rose up like smoke. Lovely put his warm naked arms around me and hugged me very tightly; if he hadn't, I would have gotten up then and left that place and never returned.

Daniel sprang up from the bed, wrapping a sheet around him like a big black toga. The girl lay motionless on the mattress, her eyes rolled up in her head and one wrist trailing red streaks across the cheap fabric of the cover. "Get out, all of you!" Daniel shouted majestically, and without a word of protest, that was what everyone did. Everyone except Lovely and myself.

"What have you done?" I demanded of Daniel.

"Nothing, Ariane, keep your panties on." He rolled back his head, smiling and licking his very red lips. "She'll be fine in a few hours. Go on, you too. Lovely, take her outside, would you?"

I went down the stairs with Lovely.

"I don't get it," I said.

"He does it almost every day," Lovely explained, drinking from his plastic container. He handed it to me and I had a sip-gallon chablis. "Everyone wants to be it. He grabs you, gives you a little fondle, then he goes CHOMP! Sometimes you get more than a little fondle-I've sat there for hours while he fucks someone's brains out. But the bite's always part of it. It's Daniel's breakfast. He can't get going without it."

"That looked kind of serious," I said, glancing over my shoulder. "Does he ever..."

"Go too far? Sometimes. Part of the game. You never know." Lovely shrugged and smiled. "He doesn't kill any of us except rarely, and usually because they've asked him in advance. But he can't be told. Sometimes a kid will beg him and beg him to be taken and killed, and Daniel won't do it unless he feels like it. Usually, though, when someone comes to him and wants it ended, Daniel does what they want him to do."

"That's so fucked up."

"Isn't it great?"

"Is this what I'm to become?" I said out loud bitterly. "I just hang around, hoping he picks me to go with his bacon and eggs?"

Lovely stared at me with his eyebrows up-well, his eyebrow muscles anyway-his eyebrows were shaven clean off. "Do you really think that?"

I shook my head in mute fury.

"Girl, everybody gets jealous like that. You don't have to worry. He loves you. You're special to him-you've seen his sire. You've been with him. He loves you, Ariane, I mean it. Daniel may be a slut, but he doesn't say he's in love when he's not."

"When did he tell you he was in love?" I snapped.

"Night before last." Lovely blushed. "When you were asleep in his apartment. We went out hunting together in Venice Beach, and he told me, 'Lovely, I am completely nuts about this girl, and I don't know if she even cares.' "

"Hunting? Together?"

"I'll tell you about it later," he said. "What's important for you to think about now is that you're important to him. Has he bitten you yet?"