The Mammoth Book Of Vampire Stories Written By Women

Venom spikes Jean-Guy's heart. He chokes down a numbing, stinging mouthful of cold that takes him to the brink of sleep and the edge of climax simultaneously as the chevalier's astringent tongue rasps over the inflamed tissues of his mouth, harsh as a cat's. Finds himself grabbing this whippet-slim thing in his arms by the well-arranged hair, anchoring himself so it can grind them ever more firmly together, and feels a shower of loose powder fall around both their faces like dirty city snow; the chevalier's ribbon has come undone, his neat-curled side-locks unravelling like kelp in an icy current. At the same instant, meanwhile, the nearest lapel of his lurid coat peels back deft as some mountebank's trick — to reveal the cold white flesh beneath: no pulse visible beneath the one flat pectoral, nipple peak-hard but utterly colourless

Oh, yes, yes, yes

Jean-Guy feels the chevalier's hands — clawed now — scrabble at his fly's buttons, free him to slap upwards in this awful red gloom. Then sees him give one quick double thumb-flick across the groove, the distended, weeping velvet knob, and send fresh scarlet welling up along the urethral fold faster than Jean-Guy can cry out in surprised, horrified pain.

Name of death and the devil!

The chevalier gives a thin grin of delight at the sight of it. His mouth opens wide as a cat's in flamen, tasting the slaughterhouse-scented air. Nearly drooling.

People, Revolution, Supreme Being, please

Lips skinning back. Fangs extending. His sleek head dipping low, as though in profane prayer

oh, God, oh, Jesus, no —

to sip at it.

More muffled words rippling up somehow through the femoral knot of Jean-Guy's groin, even as he gulps bile, his whole righteous world dimming to one pin-prick point of impossible pain, of unspeakable and unnatural ecstasy as he starts to reel, come blood, black out.

Ah, Citizen, do not leave me just yet. Not when

we are so close

— to meeting each other, once more.

In 1815, meanwhile: Jean-Guy looks up from the bloody smudge now spreading wide beneath his own splayed fingers to see that same familiar swatch of wet and shining scarlet resurface, like a grotesque miracle, above his gaping face. Dumouriez's death stain, grown somehow fresh again, as though the wall — the room, itself — were bleeding.

Plaster reddens, softens. Collapses inward, paradoxically, as the wall bulges outward. And Jean-Guy watches, frozen, as what lies beneath begins to extrude itself, at long last, through that vile, soaked ruin of chalk dust, glue and haemoglobin alike: first one hand, then another, one shoulder, then its twin. The whole rest of the torso, still dressed in the same rotten velvet equipage , twisting its deft way out through the sodden, crumbling muck, grub-white neck rearing cobra-like, poised to strike, grub-white profile turning outward — its lank mane still clotted with calcified powder, its red-glazed glasses hung carelessly askew once more to cast empty eyes Jean-Guy's way

This awful revenant version of M. the former Chevalier du Prendegrace shakes his half-mummified head, studying Jean-Guy from under dusty lashes. He opens his mouth, delicately, pauses, then coughs out a fine white curl, and frowns at the way his long-dormant lungs wheeze.

Fastening his blank red gaze on Jean-Guy's own. Observing:

"How terribly you've changed, Citizen." A pause. "But then — that is the inevitable fate of the impermanent."

"The devil," Jean-Guy whispers, forgetting his once-vaunted atheism.

"La, sir. You do me entirely too much honour."

The chevalier steps forward, bringing a curled and ragged lip of wall along with him; Jean-Guy hears it tear as it comes, like a scab. The sound rings in his ears. He puts up both palms, weakly, as though a simple gesture might really be enough to stave off the — living? — culmination of a half-lifetime's nightmare visions. The chevalier notices, and gives that sly half-smile: teeth still white, still intact, yet jutting now from his fever-pink gums at slight angles, like a shark's but could there really be more of them, after all these years? Crop upon crop, stacked up and waiting to be shed after his next feeding, the one that never came?

They almost seem to glow, translucent as milky glass. Waiting

— to be filled.

"Of course, one does hear things, especially inside the walls." the chevalier continues, brushing plaster away with small, fastidious strokes. "For example: that — excepting certain instances of regicide your vaunted Revolution came to naught, after all. And that, since a Corsican general now rules an empire in the monarchy's place, old Terrorists such as yourself must therefore count themselves in desperate need of new positions."