San Francisco - 1986 Jasmine’s Tale

The destiny of man is in his own soul -Herodotus

Anatomy is destiny. -Sigmund Freud

Note: This is not a vampire novel. It's about mythology, genetic determinism, fate and what it means to be alive. It just happens to be peopled by a few vampires.

E. E. King

Prologue

October 1961 San Francisco, The Castro District Fate

They don’t seem like sisters. They appear generations, possibly even species apart. Asia, the eldest, is gaunt and grim; her bones prominent beneath thin, pale, taut skin. Her dress, black, long and tight as flesh, falls water straight to the ground. A large scissors dangles round her waist on a heavy chain. It is worn and used, but the blades gleam, sharp as endings.

Decima, the middle sister, is brown as soil, solid as earth. She sits behind a wooden table, twisting a tape measure round and round her hands.

Nona, the youngest, is beautiful. She sits before a large wooden loom. Her hands, smooth and pale as milk, flutter like doves, continually drawing woof through warp, creating intricate designs.

The sisters sit in a dim backroom of a small shop, on a dark alleyway.

“I have never woven anything like this,” says Nona. “I don’t have a pattern. I don’t know what thread to use.”

Decima frowns. She prefers plain, simple fashions. “It is odd,” Asia says, staring at the lopsided fabric, “I’ve never seen one like it.”

* * * * *

San Francisco - 1986 Jasmine’s Tale

I'm unequivocally a night person. I think sunrise looks better in reverse.

He was a morning man. You might think our love was doomed, but no, it was just the reverse. We meet at twilight and so never tire of each other.

He is crepuscular, I vespertine. Crepuscular creatures are lively at dawn and at dusk. But the vespertine do not wake until twilight - the hour of vespers.

I expand the word to mean anything that comes alive only at nightfall; neon for example, or nightlights, or my soul.

My Love is strong, healthy, with almost white-blond hair and eyes clear as a cloudless sky. He smells of sunlight. His skin is warm.

Not I. I am pale, hair black, hands cold as coffin nails.

We meet in the grey hours of transformation, when the world has lost its light but not discovered darkness. My teeth have not yet lengthened, although they are always a tad pointy: Audrey Hepburn with razor incisors, Claudette Colbert with fangs. I am not yet thirsty and my hot sun lover can bare his throat to me with no fear.

He has the strong, white, flat teeth of an exceptionally well-groomed horse. As he tosses his head in the glooming I feel the heat and see the light of a small sun. He is as close as I will ever get to daylight. I am as close as he will ever get to death. In his arms, I can imagine a sunrise without pain.

We don’t talk, there is too little time. Besides, what could he tell me that I have not learned from his being? I know that he sweats under a bare clear sky, that tiny flying insects are attracted to his moisture and his scent. I know he does not enjoy this, but I am fascinated. Insects fear me. They drop from the night and lie unmoving at my feet. Only the bats enjoy my company, bats, owls and the occasional nightjar.

My body tightens with longing even as my incisors lengthen. My Love yawns. Luckily for him our time together is almost over.

If only the night would not come, making me thirsty. Making me lust for other pleasures. If only the sun would not rise denying me my love… I imagine I could be happy. I think he could be content. But that is fantasy. I know that sun will rise and that night will come.

I never mention it, but I can’t help noticing that he has never invited me into his home. I cannot enter without permission. Though once inside, I can forever come and go at will, through keyholes or under doors.

We do not dine together. He likes pasta with garlic. I like blood. He does not give me rings of silver. Even if they did not burn my flesh I could not admire myself, because I have no reflection. He cannot marry me… at least not in a church.

We clasp each other in these few hours between dusk and dawn. Wishing that vampires really do sparkle in the sun, that flesh rots not and that love lasts. Wishing that this time will be different.

One night my Love comes too early, or maybe he stays too long.… I don’t remember, although I can still recall the intoxicating sun scent and taste the rich warmth of his blood.

My love affairs eternally end so. I always long for them to turn out differently. It’s so disheartening. If only I did not fall in love so often with these warm-blooded vessels of nutrition. I constantly swear I’ll convert. Become a celibate bloodsucker, a monastic mosquito, a vamp nun. But then I see some sun-glazed man smelling of day and it begins again.

Chemistry. Alchemy. Love Potion Number 9… Blood... locked in the body, like a coffin, like a grave, changes color in the air, binding oxygen, absorbing different wavelengths; blue blood turns to red desire.

My men end up as pale as I, but much more finite and more still. I’d weep if I had tears, but we have no water in us and no salt. We are dry ice, we creatures of the night. You probably think that I could make my Love immortal with a bite. But it’s not that easy. First, they need to be healthy and dead, which is difficult. Then they need to have ingested some vampire blood and, lastly, within twenty-four hours, they need to drink copious amounts of human blood. My lovers are decidedly unpeckish when they’re dead. I can’t even get them to swallow. Not that I try that hard — if I’m completely honest — once they lie before me, still, pale and bloodless, I lose affection for them. I’m like an old man with a trophy wife — I’m not proud of it — but there it is.

Not that I have never changed anyone. I did, once. Jeremy was his name. I can still see his face. He was pale for a human, hair sleek as a seal’s and emerald eyed. I followed him one night. He smelled of smoke. He tasted of sorrow.

Reviving him was even more unpleasant than I’d imagined. I cut my wrist but he would not suck. I had to rub my wound against his, fusing blood to blood, marrying plasma.

From the first moment, I had been turned I had sucked eagerly. I hunted easily and with fervor. But not Jeremy, he lay limp, barely undead. I had to stun four late-night partiers and present them, unconscious and practically giftwrapped before he would drink. Even then he was ill. It was two weeks before he began to hunt on his own. We parted; or rather, I did, disappearing one night, drawn to new blood and more finite lovers.

San Francisco — 1986

Endings and Beginnings

One midnight I go to a discothèque… a new one. They have flashing crystals, but luckily no silver. They serve drinks and finger food, but happily no garlic. On the dance floor, Sumo wrestlers, huge men, over 300 lbs. each, butt each other like hippos.

Between bouts, one lumbers outside. Quicker than a dance step I am upon him. Who would have thought that the fat man had so much blood in him? I am more than sated. While not as tender or tasty as my lovers it is nice to be so filled. Inside, I can enjoy the night without hunger pangs.

I dance with abandon, baring my white neck to the flashing disco ball.

A pale man, eyes cobalt as twilight, unfathomable as belief, joins me. He does not smell of sun or day, but of secrets. He whispers his name, “Aidan,” into my ear, tickling the fine hairs on my neck, making them rise.

I tell him mine, “Jasmine.”

Together we walk into the night, down dark streets glowing with neon, to an apartment. His apartment. He invites me in. Love has never been like this. I know it must be love because my circadian rhythms, usually so finely tuned, are silent.

We rest in each other’s arms. I do not sleep at night. But I watch him slumber and still my breath to match his, pretending, just for a while, that this will last.

I look upon his face, memorizing his perfectly carved features, imprinting this time forever in my mind. Suddenly, I realize that he is not asleep. His indigo eyes are wide open. The only things that can kill a vampire are sun and werewolves. Not really much to boast about for a creature with supernatural power. Being staked through the heart or attacked by a werewolf will put an end to pretty much anything. Why two creatures governed by dark should be at such odds with each other is a mystery. But there it is.

Silver, garlic and crosses, while definitely not pleasant are rarely lethal. I’ve known more than a few of my kind who’ll gladly bear some pain, to wear a pair of glittering earrings or carry a silver bullet. A silver bullet, after all, is the only foolproof way to kill a werewolf. And silver is no more painful than a pair of tight stiletto heels. It’s much less painful than foot binding, circumcision or any of the myriad ways humans find to torture their own.

Aidan is no werewolf; he is a man like any other… I have the power. I know his name. He has invited me into his home.

He is beautiful — fine chiseled features, eyes so deep an indigo you can forget time in his arms. And I do. Day and dark seem of no more urgency or import to me now than to the living. A pliable light steals across him, delicate and tender. It is much different than a sunset. I thought I was immune to the pain love brings. Being undead should make one infinite, but even we creatures of the night have our soft spots. The sun is one, a big burning white hot one. Under his gaze I cannot flee to that good, dark night. He holds me in this new day. It burns. It scorches. It blazes onto my retina a last vision of his even flat white teeth. Who would have thought that the lust of an omnivore could be deadly?

PART I Beginnings: Neil and Aidan “Light is meaningful only in relation to darkness... We only exist ... in the zone where black and white clash.”

— Louis Aragon

Chapter: 1 Aidan

San Francisco 1980 — Healdsburg 1961

Circadian Rhythms

Aidan wakes besides Jasmine. She is ash and dust. He is elegance and grace, his skin pale as pearls.

Aidan has murdered forty-five so far, more than Jack the Ripper, but fewer than Vietnam…far fewer. Still, impressive, considering he’s an army of one. No Rambo either. No heavily muscled behemoth. He is slender and lean, a dancer of death to the undead. He is estranged from his family. His father’s people unknown, his mother’s people as fair and ruthless as he, but oh so different.

Aidan was born under a new October moon in the golden hills north of San Francisco. He is a mutt. His mother was a vampire. His father died in childbirth, bite marks still bleeding. He had gone looking for romance and found death, or perhaps death had found him. He had been seeking perfection, drawn to Aidan’s mother by her unearthly beauty. If only he’d been satisfied with someone more flawed, something more attainable, he might have survived. Nothing is as dangerous as transcendence, nothing so deadly as desire.

Vampires rarely give birth. Usually they just bite someone. They are not alive, so it is impossible for them to create life, although they can create immortality.

Aidan’s birth is much more unusual than virgin birth. Granted, human virgin birth is miraculous, but in many species of fish, lizard, insect and shark, virgin birth is the norm. It is helpful to remember that a miracle is not necessarily good, it is simply unnatural.

Some say there is an order to the universe. The earth revolves, turning day to night, summer to fall. Things sprout and die with precision. There is a master clock, perhaps a master clockmaker. If so, Aidan is an un-clockmaker. He is a crossbreed, a rare twining of DNA He dropped from his mother cold and odd as ice in the desert. His mother gazed at the small kicking bundle, fists balled, pale and un-crying. She considered abandoning him, biting him, even leaving him in the vicinity of a church, but, instead she stayed, watching his hungry body twist and squirm. She did not know, would not know until first light, that he had already poisoned her circadian watchdogs.