Love in Vein Read online

  LOVE IN VEIN

  Edited By

  Poppy Z. Brite

  * * *

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Do Not Hasten to Bid Me Adieu

  Norman Partridge

  Geraldine

  Ian McDowell

  In the Greenhouse

  Kathe Koja and Barry N. Malzberg

  Cafe Endless: Spring Rain

  Nancy Holder

  Empty Vessels

  David B. Silva

  The Final Fête of Abba Adi

  Jessica Amanda Salmonson

  Cherry

  Christa Faust

  White Chapel

  Douglas Clegg

  Delicious Antique Whore

  Wilum H. Pugmire

  Triptych di Amore

  Thomas F. Monteleone

  Queen of the Night

  Gene Wolfe

  The Marriage

  Steve Rasnic Tern and Melanie Tern

  In This Soul of a Woman

  Charles de Lint

  The Alchemy of the Throat

  Brian Hodge

  Love Me Forever

  Mike Baker

  — And the Horses Hiss at Midnight

  A. R. Morian

  Elixir

  Elizabeth Engstrom

  The Gift of Neptune

  Danielle Willis

  From Hunger

  Wayne Allen Sallee

  A Slow Red Whisper of Sand

  Robert Devereaux

  * * *

  THE SCARLET LETTER IS NOW A “V. “

  A vampire who feeds on something far more intimate than blood.

  A revenge as perfect as true love.

  A Japanese vampire who burns with passion — literally.

  A legendary sexual dismemberment performed on stage.

  A boy introduced to the sweetest pleasures of Hell.

  A vampire who finds fulfillment on the last night of her life.

  VAMPIRIC EROTICA BY

  Charles de Lint • Jessica Amanda Salmonson • Gene Wolfe • Kathe Koja and Barry N. Malzberg • Christa Faust • Steve Rasnic Tem and Melanie Tem • Norman Partridge • Ian McDowell • Nancy Holder • David B. Silva • Douglas Clegg • Wilum H. Pugmire • Brian Hodge • Mike Baker • A. R. Morlan • Elizabeth Engstrom • Danielle Willis • Robert Devereaux • Thomas F. Monteleone • Wayne Allen Sallee

  * * *

  Love in Vein

  Twenty Original Tales of Vampiric Erotica

  Edited by

  POPPY Z. BRITE

  HarperPrism

  An Imprint of HarperPaperbacks

  * * *

  This anthology owes much to the assistance of

  Martin Greenberg and Richard Gilliam. Thanks to

  them and the authors who did the real work.

  —P. Z. B.

  * * *

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the authors’ imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  HarperPaperbacks A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers

  10 East 53rd Street, New York, N. Y. 10022

  Copyright © 1994 by Poppy Z. Brite and Martin H. Greenberg.

  Introduction copyright © 1994 by Poppy Z. Brite.

  “Do Not Hasten to Bid Me Adieu” copyright © 1994 by Norman Partridge. “Geraldine” copyright © 1994 by Ian McDowell. “In the Greenhouse” copyright © 1994 by Kathe Koja and Barry N. Malzberg. “Cafe Endless: Spring Rain” copyright © 1994 by Nancy Holder. “Empty Vessels” copyright © 1994 by David B. Silva. “The Final Fete of Abba Adi” copyright © 1994 by Jessica Amanda Salmonson. “Cherry” copyright © 1994 by Christa Faust. “White Chapel” copyright © 1994 by Douglas Clegg. “Delicious Antique Whore” copyright © 1994 by Wilum H. Pugmire. “Triptych di Amore” copyright © 1994 by Thomas F. Monteleone. “Queen of the Night” copyright © 1994 by Gene Wolfe. “The Marriage” copyright © 1994 by Steve Rasnic Tem and Melanie Tem. “In This Soul of a Woman” copyright © 1994 by Charles de Lint. “The Alchemy of the Throat” copyright © 1994 by Brian Hodge. “Love Me Forever” copyright © 1994 by Mike Baker. “-And the Horses Hiss at Midnight” copyright © 1994 by A. R. Morlan. “Elixir” copyright © 1994 by Elizabeth Engstrom. “The Gift of Neptune” copyright © 1994 by Danielle Willis. “From Hunger” copyright © 1994 by Wayne Allen Sallee. “A Slow Red Whisper of Sand” copyright © 1994 by Robert Devereaux.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address HarperCollins Publishersh, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, N. Y. 10022.

  First printing: November 1994

  A signed limited edition of LOVE IN VEIN is available from Borderland Press.

  Printed in the United States of America

  * * *

  HarperPrism is an imprint of HarperPaperbacks. HarperPaperbacks, HarperPrism, and colophon are trademarks of HarperCollinsPublishers

  Cover illustration by Mel Odom

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Love in vein: twenty original tales of vampiric erotica / edited by Poppy Z. Brite. p. cm.

  ISBN 0-06-105312-0: $11. 99

  1. Erotic stories, American. 2. Vampires—Fiction. I. Brite, Poppy Z. PS648.E7L68 1994

  813’.01083538—dc20

  94-29901

  CIP

  * * *

  Introduction

  The vampire is everything we love about sex and the night and the dark dream-side of ourselves: adventure on the edge of pain, the thrill to be had from breaking taboos. In editing Love In Vein, I hoped for the chance to see what some of my favorite writers would make of an endlessly versatile creature that had, after all, been kind to me.

  I wanted stories exploring the visceral connection between vampirism and eroticism, the attraction we feel to a creature who requires our lifeblood (and sometimes more) for eternal sustenance. I wanted stories that ventured into a world where the mutant can be considered beautiful even as it is feared; where the bizarre is something to be sought and treasured, not destroyed; where the drinking of blood does not necessarily make one a monster.

  I selected the stories by sending out guidelines to several of my favorite writers in horror and related genres. I would have liked to ask even more, but I only had one volume to fill, and stories by all the writers I admire would have required at least twenty. Some of the writers had too many other deadlines to meet, a fate I understand all too well. Some were attracted by the idea and agreed to write stories.

  And a few heard about it through the grapevine.

  Love In Vein was a more-or-less invitational anthology, which meant I didn’t put out a general call for stories, but I did read anything that came in over the transom. Of these, I think I ended up taking three. A few others I would have liked to use came in after the book was already full. The interest in this project reinforced my belief that most horror writers enjoy trying their hand at the traditional tropes—the vampire tale, the ghost story—sooner or later, perhaps because the familiar canvas can show off one’s individual flourishes so well.

  In my guidelines I asked the authors to explore all types of vampirism and sexuality. They have done so more thoroughly than I dared hope. Though blood is drunk in some of these stories, you won’t find many fanged guys with capes and cruciphobias here. Yet all the stories in Love In Vein are vampire tales of one sort or another, in that they deal with creatures who feed off others’ vital forces in some way.

  My first novel, Lost Souls, was begun when I was nineteen but not p
ublished until I was twenty-five. Lost Souls is a homoerotic, Southern Gothic rock ‘n’ roll vampire tale set partly in New Orleans and partly in my fictitious town of Missing Mile, North Carolina. I had never been especially fascinated with vampires before this book. I chose to write about them because it was 1987 and I was interested in and involved with the Gothic subculture—the beliefs distilled from dark music and darker emotion, the black lace and torn velvet, the affinity for graveyards, the bloodletting. That was what I wanted to write about, and vampires are an essential icon of that culture. Those kids are beautiful, alienated, at once craving wild experience and romanticizing death. Is it any wonder they identify with vampires?

  By the time the novel was published, my outlook had changed somewhat, mostly because the eighties were over and I was still alive. You can only maintain an intensely Gothic frame of mind for so long before either killing yourself or starting to feel like a bit of a poser, and neither alternative appealed to me. 1 (1. Heather Bricks, editor and publisher of Chicago gone zine The Web, made me rethink this by pointing out that many participants in the Gothic subculture do not worship or court death. They simply refuse to fear it, and they stop themselves from fearing it by exploring it, becoming intimate with it. I suspect Heather’s perception will strike a chord with any number of horror readers and writers. )

  But now that I had said all I ever wanted to say about vampires, I was asked to talk about them in interviews, solicited to write ever more about them, even accosted at parties and signings by people who claimed to be them. The vampire is not only perennially popular, he is the only supernatural creature who has become a role model.

  After Lost Souls sold to Delacorte Abyss, I heard that another publisher had declined to bid in the auction because an editor found the story “amoral. ” That editor was right. Attempting to cram the fun-loving, sensuous vampire into the tired old dichotomy of good versus evil denies all that is potentially appealing, even useful about him. To impose morals on him is to deny his erotic decadence, or to imply that erotic decadence itself is somehow without morals. This is insulting to anyone who enjoys sex. Most people do not consider their pleasures or their loves amoral, and do not appreciate being lectured on how wrongly they are conducting their private affairs.

  The most famous and enduring vampire tales—from Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Sheridan Le Fanu’s “Carmilla” to Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles—are almost invariably shot through with a strong vein of eroticism. And eroticism in fiction—meaning the exploration and enjoyment of sex in all its forms—is often subversive. It can be openly so, as in Flaubert’s Madame Bovary or Burroughs’s Naked Lunch; it can be subtly so, as in “Carmilla.” This nineteenth-century lesbian vampire love story contains no explicit sex, yet it disturbed many critics so deeply that they all but rewrote the story to prove that Le Fanu’s obviously female narrator was a boy!

  The vampire is a subversive creature in every way, and I think this accounts for much of his appeal. In an age where moralists use the fact that sex is dangerous to “prove” that sex is bad, the vampire points out that sex has always been dangerous. These days, if you wish to make love to someone without a layer of latex separating your most sensitive membranes, it becomes necessary to ask yourself, “Would I be willing to die a slow, lingering death for this person?” The answer may be yes—but for the vampire, it’s not even an issue. He laughs in the face of safe sex, and he lives forever.

  Since I write about gay male characters and include explicit sex in my work, I am often suspected of Trying To Make A Statement. An interviewer for a gay/lesbian newspaper in Colorado recently said to me:

  One gay friend of mine thought you were trying to capture an aura of decadence. I thought you were simply presenting [homosexuality] as a norm of youth counterculture. Or perhaps you’re just trying to turn mainstream conventions upside down…

  The answer could be all of the above, but truly it is none of the above. I don’t feel that one genital configuration is inherently more decadent than another; I’m not aware that youth counterculture has any norms; and I care about my characters far too much to put them on soapboxes and make them rail against mainstream conventions. Like most writers of erotic fiction, I simply write about what turns me on, what I love. If a gay reader finds courage in my words—if a conservative reader is bothered or, dare I hope, swayed by them—I am ecstatic. But I couldn’t make it true on the page if it wasn’t true inside me.

  I believe the authors of these stories have found erotic truth inside themselves and put it on the page for you to read. From this point on, Love In Vein is their book. I hope you enjoy it.

  Poppy Z. Brite New Orleans, November 1994

  * * *

  Do Not Hasten to Bid Me Adieu

  by Norman Partridge

  One

  He was done up all mysterious-like—black bandanna covering half his face, black duster, black boots and hat. Traveling incognito, just like that coachman who picked up Harker at the Borgo Pass.

  Yeah. As a red man might figure it, that was many moons ago… at the beginning of the story. Stoker’s story, anyway. But that tale of mannered woe and stiff-upper-lip bravado was as crazy as the lies Texans told about Crockett and his Alamo bunch. Harker didn’t exist. Leastways, the man in black had never met him.

  Nobody argued sweet-told lies, though. Nobody in England, anyhow. Especially with Stoker tying things up so neat and proper, and the count gone to dust and dirt and all.

  A grin wrinkled the masked man’s face as he remembered the vampire crumbling to nothing finger-snap quick, like the remnants of a cow-flop campfire worried by an unbridled prairie wind. Son of a bitch must have been mucho old. Count Dracula had departed this vale of tears, gone off to suckle the devil’s own tit… though the man in black doubted that Dracula’s scientific turn of mind would allow him to believe in Old Scratch.

  You could slice it fine or thick—ultimately, the fate of Count Dracula didn’t make no nevermind. The man in black was one hell of a long way from Whitby, and his dealings with the count seemed about as unreal as Stoker’s scribblings. Leastways, that business was behind him. This was to be his story. And he was just about to slap the ribbons to it.

  Slap the ribbons he did, and the horses picked up the pace. The wagon bucked over ruts, creaking like an arthritic dinosaur. Big black box jostling in the back. Tired horses sweating steam up front. West Texas sky a quilt for the night, patched blood red and bruise purple and shot through with blue-pink streaks, same color as the meat that lines a woman’s heart.

  And black. Thick black squares in that quilt, too. More coming every second. Awful soon, there’d be nothing but those black squares and a round white moon.

  Not yet, though. The man could still see the faint outline of a town on the horizon. There was Morrisville, up ahead, waiting in the red and purple and blue-pink shadows.

  He wondered what she’d make of Morrisville. It was about as far from the stone manors of Whitby as one could possibly get. No vine-covered mysteries here. No cool salt breezes whispering from the green sea, blanketing emerald lawns, traveling lush garden paths. Not much of anything green at all. No crumbling Carfax estate, either. And no swirling fog to mask the night—everything right out in the open, just as plain as the nose on your face. A West Texas shit-splat. Cattle business, mostly. A matchstick kind of town. Wooden buildings—wind-dried, sun-bleached—that weren’t much more than tinder dreading the match.

  The people who lived there were the same way.

  But it wasn’t the town that made this place. He’d told her that. It was that big blanket of a sky, an eternal wave threatening to break over the dead dry husk of the prairie, fading darker with each turn of the wagon wheels—cresting, cresting—ready to smother the earth like a hungry thing.

  Not a bigger, blacker night anywhere on the planet. When that nightwave broke, as it did all too rarely—wide and mean and full-up with mad lightning and thunder—it was something to see.

  He’d
promised her that. He’d promised to show her the heart of a wild Texas night, the way she’d shown him the shadows of Whitby.

  Not that he always kept his promises. But this one was a promise to himself as much as it was a promise to her.

  He’d hidden from it for a while. Sure. In the wake of all that horror, he’d run. But finally he’d returned to Whitby, and to her. He’d returned to keep his promise.

  And now he was coming home.

  “Not another place like it anywhere, Miss Lucy. Damn sure not on this side of the pond, anyhow.”

  She didn’t fake a blush or get all offended by his language, like so many of the English missies did, and he liked that. She played right with him, like she knew the game. Not just knew it, but thrived on it. “No,” she said. “Nothing here could possibly resemble your Texas, Quincey P. Morris. Because no one here resembles you.”

  She took him by the lapels and kissed him like she was so hungry for it, like she couldn’t wait another moment, and then he had her in his arms and they were moving together, off the terrace, away from the house and the party and the dry rattle of polite conversation. He was pulling her and she was pushing him and together they were going back, back into the shadows of Whitby, deep into the garden where fog settled like velvet and the air carried what for him would always be the green scent of England.