Women of the Bite.

Cecilia Tan.

Introduction.

I have edited many books of vampire stories, but this is the first time I have done one exclusively lesbian in theme. The previous volumes have mixed all genders and s.e.xualities together, since in my mind the vampire's allure is less about what gender or orientation s/he has and more about the vampiric power of seduction and the prospect of immortal love. The vampire entwines our dual fascination with s.e.x and death into one character. And the vampire being a seductive figure has always been an erotic concept for me.

It's interesting, though, to see the patterns and commonalities that emerge by turning the focus specifically to the female vampire. There are seductresses here, to be sure, but also many incarnations of the vampire as a kind of avenging angel, a distillation of female potency that protects her own, whether her territory, her lover, or her children.

We also get a glimpse of many different ways and milieus in which women love women, from modern leatherd.y.k.e subculture to period-piece cross-dressing, as well as fantastical scenarios that we can only dream of, like what happens in a "mixed marriage" between a vampire and a werewolf, or what if the great silent film actress Theda Bara had encountered real vampires?

Ultimately, whatever shape our fantasies take, they reveal the desires of our culture and our hearts for pa.s.sion, for the thrill of danger, for cathartic and eternal love. I present to you the Women of the Bite and hope you enjoy.

Cecilia Tan Boston, MA.

The Queen of Goth and Sugar Cat Rambo.

Some people read palms; I read groceries.

Every day, as I slid items over the scanner, I learned who was planning a romantic interlude (steaks, red wine, chocolate sauce) or a school birthday celebration (cake mix, candles, cupcake holders). Ben and Jerry's signaled an evening of self-indulgence or pity, especially in large quant.i.ties. Other meals meant nostalgia and homesickness: grits and black-eyed peas, or meatloaf and mashed potatoes. An a.s.sortment of cheeses betrayed a c.o.c.ktail party. They could keep no secrets from me. I knew who was menstruating or dieting, who had a wheat allergy, who was trying to ward off colds and fevers. I knew who had warts.

I silently named the shoppers while they eased their debit cards through the machine and tapped in numbers. Old Man Pinchmouth and his laxatives. Lady Bountiful, every cart br.i.m.m.i.n.g full of desserts. The Harried Woman, with her three children following after her in a chorus of demands.

Then there was the woman I called the Queen of Goth and Sugar. Goth, because she never wore anything but black over a form that was Somalia-skinny and midnight pale. For a while I thought she might be a software dev-Microsoft's down the road, after all, and she had that late-night pallor they all sport. But the women there dress in only two ways: the management track in neat little suits, and the rest in fleece from Eddie Bauer or REI. She was too dressy, p.r.o.ne to wearing velvet shirts and black jeans, and gold jewelry in odd configurations-a cl.u.s.ter of hoops cascading along one ear, or a ring chained to a bracelet. Her eyes were alive-neon blue, like ardent lightning, so bright that you'd swear they glowed in the dark. Maybe they did.

And Sugar, because she only bought candy. A particular type, unadulterated by chocolate or cookie. Pure, hardcore sugar-Brach's mints or Pixy Stix or circus peanuts. She liked Peeps in particular-the day after Easter, she bought ten flats of them, each marshmallow lump coated with sugar, colored a poisonous yellow. I tried to catch her eye and smile, two adults laughing at the childishness, but she stared straight ahead, face blank as an unmarked grave.

I am not a cashier by trade. My business card, which I pa.s.s out at the drop of a hat, says "Lily Summerchylde, Photographer," and that's what I am. I make a little money from it. Mainly I take cemetery shots and tweak them with Photoshop into something they're not: spectral landscapes that sell well in a certain kind of gift shop. My boyfriend Bill is a photographer too, and ekes out his own existence with a job at an electronics store, pumping up the volume and selling toys to gadget-hungry geeks.

We didn't have family, Bill and I. We had each other, two plain-looking people living plain lives. Bill wasn't as good as I was. It's a fact. I learned that if my luck sweetened, I should play it down, twist it sour, because when he was frustrated, he lashed out. I used to say, "It's just the way he is." Or, "He doesn't really mean it." And once, humiliatingly, embarra.s.singly, I heard the words come out of me: "But he's so sweet later on," and I felt like a battered wife on Oprah. I hated myself for that, the way I hated him sometimes. But it was why she spoke to me.

I had a black eye that Valentine's Day. I told the head cashier I'd been s...o...b..arding, and maybe she believed me, maybe she didn't. I came in with lots of sports injuries. I tried to make them seem real by learning the names of the equipment, the maneuvers, the best places to go. If you know the names, it's more convincing to people. "I was up at Whistler," I told the cashier. "Trying to do a frontside 540 and I fell. Boy, what a weekend!" She nodded, gave me my drawer, and pointed to register five.

The Queen had three sacks of candy hearts, colored pastel and printed with slogans like "U R so sweet" and "Cool babe." The counter belt slid them along to me and I grabbed the first bag. Her motion stopped me. She reached out with fingers as cold as truth and traced them along the bruise, so softly that it didn't hurt.

"Put ice on that when you get home," she said. "It keeps the swelling down."

I didn't know what to say, so I nodded, and kept on swiping the bags through until "1.49" showed red on the register display. She paid with a twenty and indicated I should drop the change in the MEOW fund-raising jar. She paused and looked at me again before she left.

Pinchmouth, following after her, looked at me too. He didn't say a word, but when he gave me his money, there was a business card. It said "EastSide Women's Shelter-Education and Intervention." On the flip side was a list of questions, under the heading "Are you a victim of domestic abuse?" I could have answered yes to every question, but I didn't want to.

The 250 bus stops running at 10:40, and I'd missed it. The store manager had kept me late over a seventy-five-cent discrepancy in my drawer. It had been one of those incidents where you realize you're a wage slave, and that every petty authority figure around you is more interested in making you kiss a.s.s than finding out how hard you work. I could feel weariness down from my shoulders to the aching arches of my feet. The business card was burning a hole in my pocket, though I refused to think about it. Bill would be in bed by the time I got home. Things had been bad lately. But asleep, I could pretend. Pretend I wasn't bruised. Pretend I wasn't battered.

The Queen rose from the bench where she'd been sitting, pouring Pixy Stix sugar down her throat. When she said, "You look tired. I'll buy you a drink," for once I felt as though someone was interested in me for me, not to take advantage of, not to f.u.c.k, not to preach to, not for anything but talk. She took me to the Celtic Bayou and I drank microbrewed hefeweisen with a lemon slice, and she drank Tom's Cream Soda with no ice.

"I don't know how you do it," I said. "Nothing but sugar."

She shrugged. "Sugar for energy. It keeps me going. Other things are more difficult to come by."

We talked about photography, time she'd spent in New Orleans, and how the winters in Seattle are fine, except when the black ice hits, two or three times each year. She didn't tell me what she did or where she was born, or even her name. But I felt like I trusted her, the way you trust your best girlfriend in school. Sometimes she'd look at me with that azure gaze and I'd feel warmth along my skin, blushing, and her mouth would quirk, amused as something in me stirred.

She drove me home and I asked her in. She hesitated in the doorway, shy, until I turned and beckoned. It was late, and the apartment complex was silent. Bill would be sleeping. If we kept our conversation quiet, he'd never know. She settled on the couch like a bird finding its roost, her eyes thoughtful, contemplative.

"I've got chips," I said, moving towards the kitchen.

"I don't eat them."

Glancing back at her, I asked, "Too unhealthy?" a beat before we started to laugh.

I looked up from the laughter and saw Bill standing in the doorway. I knew the look on his face, but I'd never seen it before in front of someone else.

"A working man's got to sleep!" he snarled. "Get your b.i.t.c.h friend out of here and come to bed."

I felt my face throbbing, felt the blood moving through the bruise there. Her gaze traveled from me to him. Then back again, and I felt her question in my mind.

G.o.ddess help me, from the sullen twist of his lip and the frustrated fury in his stare, I knew it would be worse than a black eye this time. So I nodded. I nodded to the Queen of Goth and Sugar.

She moved quicker than anything I ever saw.

There's a story by H.P. Lovecraft that mocks the trend of saying something is too horrific to describe. The hero makes fun of this tradition and then, of course, something kills him. His last words are a gasp, something like, "It's unnamable!"

I never understood that until she raised her face from Bill's throat, a scarlet puppet jaw, eyes brighter and bluer than before. Her face had color in it for the first time, and every time she leaned down to drink from him, she flushed as the blood pa.s.sed into her, her cheeks ruddy. But the look on her face-was indescribable. I couldn't name it. I couldn't name her. I wouldn't name her.

I stumbled back through the doorway, unable to speak.

But I left the door open.

When she came to me, her mouth still tasted of sugar and copper. She trailed kisses along my neck, almost hard enough to bruise me. Almost. Her hands were cold but sure, stripping away my clothes. Her lips were warm with Bill's blood.

She cupped my b.r.e.a.s.t.s, raised them to her mouth. Touched her tongue in circles around a nipple, slow relentless circles, not touching the aureole until I gasped with need, tried to pull her to me. She raised her head and looked at me, a sound deep in her throat like a wolf's growl, an edge of thunder that made my pulse race until it pounded in my ears, swallowing up all noise.

She pressed me back on the bed and I opened to her like a flower. She poured kisses like wine along my stomach, let them pool in the hollow of my hip. Her body was white and slim and unreal as an anime heroine.

I did not think of Bill, did not think of the scarlet display in the other room, the broken marionette on the floor that had been his body. Everything was sweet l.u.s.t and fire. Her fingers slid inside me-slick with blood or from my own wetness? I could not tell, could only groan out my pleasure as she drew my c.l.i.t into her mouth, let me feel the caress of fang, the honed dance of her tongue.

She would pause just as I was about to come, draw back, let me cool, then begin again. I hovered on the edge for hours, it felt like. Then, as sudden as her attack, she lowered her head and this time I knew she wouldn't stop. Waves washed through me, as though I was caught in an inescapable current, drowning. I clung to her, shuddered against her as she drew o.r.g.a.s.m after o.r.g.a.s.m from me.

She could have killed me; I wouldn't have cared, so lost in the deep well of pleasure.

Perhaps she did.

I woke in my own bed, by myself. The living room was clean, the body gone. I would have thought it was a dream but for the fact that Bill never came back. His boss called a couple of times looking for him, then let it go. It's not hard to find a new wage slave.

I still don't know her name. I leave Pixy Stix on my doorstep each night-three of them, bright-colored strawberry. I keep hoping she'll knock, but that never comes. But sometimes, in the morning, the candy is gone.

Till Death Fran Walker.

How long will you love me? she would ask.

Until I fall in love with a living girl, I'd always reply. I'd walk my fingers up her arm, and we'd both laugh. We knew our kind don't fall in love with the living. They're occasionally a good lay, sometimes an amusing toy-and always, always, prey.

I yawned and opened my eyes. My muscles felt languid, and shadows sweetly perfumed the corners of the bedroom. Nightfall.

Valerie turned to me, her brow furrowed. "How long will you love me?"

I rolled over, pulling her on top of me, and delicately sc.r.a.ped my fangs along the side of her neck. "Until I fall in love with a living girl," I said.

It was better than the real answer. Forever only lasts until you make a mistake. And sooner or later, everyone makes mistakes.

Valerie smiled and pressed her body against mine. I was wet already, turned on by the thought of the razor's edge we straddled. Sunlight. I grabbed her hips. Her coa.r.s.e pubic hairs sc.r.a.ped against my c.l.i.toris. Religious zealots. Hunters. I rubbed harder, faster, pulling Valerie against me. She bent her head to my b.r.e.a.s.t.s. One fang, needle-sharp, p.r.i.c.ked my nipple. I reared up against her and came in a gush.

She laughed, triumphant, as I lay there panting in the tangled sheets. I pictured her as a hunter poised over me, b.r.e.a.s.t.s sheened with sweat, ramming a c.o.c.k into me. Imagine f.u.c.king a hunter! My c.l.i.toris throbbed at the thought.

Her brow furrowed again. "What are you thinking about?" she asked.

"About you," I lied. "And that I'm hungry."

"You just think you're hungry."

"Let's go out. How about that club at the corner of Superior and Wells?"

Her eyes narrowed. "Who are we meeting there?"

"Meeting?" I looked at her, perplexed. "No one. Eating, maybe, but not meeting. I just want to get out. Play a game of darts or something. See who's around. Have a feed. Have a bit of fun."

"Okay." Her shoulders looked set and tense as she climbed out of bed. "Remember to wear something heavy. It's winter."

I shrugged. "So? Let them stare. I don't like hiding my a.s.sets." I waggled my hips at her and pulled a red mini-dress from the closet.

"They stare. Then they start to wonder why you're oblivious to temperature. Then they talk, and someone tells someone else, then a hunter hears rumors, then..."

"At that rate, we should never leave the house. Look, if you want to stay in, I can go alone."

"Never let it be said that I provided you with an excuse." Valerie yanked an oversized Cubs sweatshirt over her head, then zipped up her jeans.

"Huh? I don't-"

Valerie stalked out of the room.

We walked in silence to the nearest taxi stand, then rode in silence to the club. The gallery district, though upscale, smelled like most of Chicago-car exhaust fumes, sulfites, and that weird, acrid, ozone-like smell that comes from everyone using fake heating. I missed the smell of wood-smoke.

Once inside the nightclub, we were swept apart by a boisterous crowd. I played pool with a couple of rough-looking skinheads. I scoped out a few possibilities: a Latino girl sitting alone in a corner, an older black man with a shaved head who looked at my miniskirt disapprovingly, a nerd in polyester who stared at every woman in hopeless desperation. The skinheads in the pool room were high on crack, or whatever was this generation's drug of choice. Definitely not meal material.

I imagined grabbing the nerd and sinking my fangs into his neck, right here in front of everyone. How fast could I eat and run? Would I get away before the crowd grabbed me, held me down, called the cops? The thought aroused me. I wish I'd taken Valerie's advice and worn jeans, so I'd have a seam to rub my c.l.i.t against as I prowled the pool room.

After a while I wandered off in search of Valerie. I found her conversing with a woman whom she introduced to me as Doctor Mary Malone, psychologist.

"Mary's teaching a night cla.s.s on the psychology of movies and modern entertainment choices," Valerie said. "It starts next week. I'm signing up."

"That's nice." I studied Valerie. She wasn't trying to lull this Mary woman into the standard pre-meal trust. And Valerie never fed at nightclubs or on the street; on the rare occasions she indulged, she preferred to hunt at O'Hare and Midway airports, or sometimes at the trade shows held at McCormick Place. No, she seemed to be serious about this cla.s.s. Psychology? Who cared about what made living people tick?

I flicked off the TV. Everyone, even the dogs and cats in the commercial advertis.e.m.e.nts for pet food, looked far too appetizing. Maybe I'd go out to feed after Valerie got home. Or maybe I was just bored.

Singing an off-key jazz duet with Nora Jones, I dusted, vacuumed, and tidied up the TV room. Then the bedroom. The smell of Valerie clung to her shirts, and I held each one to my face before folding it and putting it in a drawer. Finally the CD ended and I ran out of rooms to clean. I prowled the inner house, sc.r.a.ping my fingernails along the wall that separated our rooms from the windowed areas.

Valerie would be home soon. That night cla.s.s of hers only lasted an hour or two. I still didn't understand why she'd waste her time on something as bizarre as psychology. It must be a whim on her part, a distraction, a fling. A temporary thing, like her current bad mood. I frowned. Maybe not so temporary. When was the last time I'd seen Valerie smile?

She'd tell me if she were unhappy, wouldn't she? If she thought I were being too selfish or lazy or demanding? I wandered outside and stared at the stars.

Valerie never complained. Never asked for much, really. Even the other night, when I'd gone out to feed and got home bare moments before dawn, she'd not said anything. Just looked sad. And she hadn't laughed at my joke about being able to identify my ashen remains by DNA testing, as long as she could guess who my last meal had been.

The moon slid across the sky. Where the h.e.l.l was Valerie? She hated shopping. She never stopped off at a club for a game or a chat. Hunters were rare occurrences, but law enforcement was a lot more active and prevalent now than back when I'd first started out. They'd grab you and cuff you and throw you in a cell, and if morning came before you got a chance to break out, well, it'd be too late. And the baby vampires nowadays seemed a lot more compet.i.tive, more cutthroat, quick to turn on you for no reason. My bare feet on the patio slapped out a rhythm that set up a what if? what if? chant in my head.

Fantasizing about hunters and sunlight was a turn-on. Worrying about Valerie being caught by them was making my head hurt. Maybe, I thought, maybe this was how she felt all the times when I stayed out late.

The crescent moon stabbed a bright beam in my direction, as if mocking my newfound realization. No more clubbing, I decided. No more late-night feeds. I'd spend more time with her. Find some new hobbies, do stay-at-home stuff. Maybe I should get us an Xbox or PlayStation, or install a home theater. We had more money than we could ever spend, thanks to that little job we did for the CIA years ago-back when we first met.

I watched as tattered clouds shrouded the moon. Valerie had been a newborn, practically, when she'd been caught by the feds and offered the choice between a commission and a wooden stake. I was as wild as be-d.a.m.ned back then, convinced I was indestructible. I volunteered for the job, as enticed by the danger as the money. Poor Valerie was terrified to death-at the interview, on the ship, on the train, of every living person we saw. Me, I only lost it when I recognized one of the people we'd been sent to a.s.sa.s.sinate. A former lover of mine, no less.

As always, I'd found the danger arousing. And back then, I'd been stupid enough to act on it. There we were, me and my ex, locked in a sixty-nine in what we thought was an empty room. Just as I slid up and snapped her neck, a dozen or more security guards came into the auditorium and turned on the stage lights. What I'd thought was a wall were the stage curtains, which rose to expose me stark naked with a corpse in my arms. All that was missing was an orchestra playing a fanfare.

Valerie surprised me by running onto the stage, grabbing the body, and racing off with it. The guards followed her. I shimmied up the curtains and hid on the catwalk. By the time she'd dumped the body, shaken off the guards, and returned to join me, I was so hot with desire I wanted to bury my face in her c.u.n.t. But she was gibbering with terror at what we'd done.

We got out, of course, and left four collective European governments without a clue to go on. And in less than a week, Valerie had forgiven my stupid antics and we became lovers.

How could she be so overly cautious, yet be so courageous and cool-headed when danger peaked? I tapped my tongue against my fangs. Where the h.e.l.l was Valerie?

She came over the high stone wall around the garden, dropping to the ground so noiselessly that no living thing would have heard her. I swept her into a hug.

"I missed you," she said.

I kissed her, hard and pa.s.sionately. She cupped her hand around my cheek for a moment. Arms linked, we walked into the house.

"Do you remember what you were like when you were living?" Valerie asked me.

"Sure. I've told you. I lived in Akron, Ohio. I was married to a-"

"No, I mean how you felt. Your emotions."

I thought about it. "No. I can remember places I went, things I did. Falling out of a tree once and breaking my arm. Flashes of stuff like that. But I don't remember if I was scared, or hurt. Just that it happened. Why?"

Valerie shrugged. "No reason. I guess I don't remember much, either." She looked sad.