The Mammoth Book Of Vampire Stories Written By Women

They're waiting for me, thinking of me. I can feel the heat of their dreams and desires. For me they would forget their quarrels, even forget their relationships to each other, just to feel my lips on them again and my fangs driving into them to lose themselves in bliss. I long to go to them. I want to feel their arms around me, and their bodies pliant under mine, and their genitals stiffening and opening like exotic flowers and their blood leaping into me, God, yes, their blood

The woman pricks herself with the needle. I watch the blood-bead swell on her finger. Then her lips close on the wound, and my desires throb like pain.

My hand is on the window

Meg looks up with her finger still pressed to the moist bud of her mouth, and sees me. I grip the frame of the sash window and push it upwards. The warmth of the room rushes to meet me and I hear her gasp, "He's here!"

The men jump to their feet. Their faces are rapt, eyes feverish, lips parted. All three of them are coming towards me and I long to stroke their hair, to feel the heat of their bodies through their clothes and taste their skin. Brooding Rupert and leonine Daniel and sensual Meg. Three golden figures in a cave of fire. "There you are," they whisper. "Come in, Antoine, come in to us."

I reach out to them, as they are reaching out to me. Our fingertips touch

Someone slams down the window between us. A hand grips my arm.

"They will suck you in," says Charlotte into my ear. "They will be your slaves and you will be theirs."

Now if it had been Karl who shut the window I should have been furious. But I can never be angry with Charlotte; not for long, anyway. In a flash I am detached and ironic. "That sounds quite appealing."

Their faces are pressed against the cold pane, staring into the twilight. Charlotte pulls me aside so they can't see us. I yield, and we walk slowly along the back of the house, with grit and soil and the debris of autumn accumulating on our shoes. A graveyard scent. I'm looking for another way in. I feel like a revenant, scratching at windows, rattling door handles.

This path leads us into the kitchen garden again. In the gloom there are rooks on the furrows, pecking at the delicious morsels

Meg's father has turned up with his digging. Will he know what his daughter does with Daniel, and with Rupert, and with me? Will he join us? An old man, smelling of sweat and earth, creating green life from the ground I should like to taste his essence.

"If you go in, they won't let you go," says Charlotte. "You won't be able to leave."

I pull her to me and kiss her neck. "I shouldn't want to leave. I love them. And you sound thrilled at the idea yourself."

She laughs. "Wasn't I right, Antoine? Yes, this is excitement. This is ecstasy. Shall I tell you why Karl is so cold? Not because he's different to us. No, it's because he's the same, he can't leave humans alone. Only he hates the consequences. Oh, I always plunge in head first, I can't help myself, I always think it will be different this time. But Karl he's the realist."

And Karl is there, as if he stepped out of thin air in the shadows. He has been waiting for us. Now he's strolling on the other side of me, his hand so affectionate upon my arm. They are guiding me away from the house, along the grassy path towards the hedge at the top of the garden and the bare trees beyond, away, towards redemption. Every step is agony.

"The trouble is, there's a price to pay," Karl tells me. "You can say 'yes' to them and you can let yourself fall; but you can't have them and keep them. They're dying, Antoine. The more you love them, the more you kill them."

"Don't think it won't hurt you, when they die," says Charlotte. "Don't imagine the pain of it won't claw your heart to pieces!"

"But if I" My voice is weak.

Charlotte knows what I'm thinking. "Yes, you could make them into vampires," she says crisply. "With a great amount of energy and will and strength, you could do that. But it won't be the same. Then you will have three cold-eyed predators, vying with you, resenting you, perhaps hating you. But your warm, moist, blood-filled lovers will be gone."

"So leave," says Karl. "Leave them now!"

We have reached the gap in the hedge. I stand there despairingly. I raise my arms in anguish and the flapping of my overcoat makes a dozen rooks rise in alarm. But one remains. It hops in circles on the grass, trailing a damaged wing. It cannot escape the earth.

I break away from Karl and Charlotte. I run back to the house and stand outside, breathing hard.

My lovers are inside, waiting for me. I can hear the blood thundering through their hearts, their red tongues moistening their lips in anticipation. I only have to turn away and they will remain like that for ever: aching for me, waiting, their lust turning to fevered agony — but alive.

Grief will, I think, be interesting.

I press my fingers to the cold glass of the kitchen door, and I go in.

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