The Beasts: A Winter's Tale

The Blood Drinkers

There are no beautiful surfaces without a terrible depth.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

There was a knock on Laurie’s door,

When he answered it he was surprised to see:

“Lynn. Lynn!”

Laurie recovered himself. Vampire or no, he had to find a way to admit the woman having his baby into the house filled not only with vampires, but with the other woman he loved.

But Lynn said, “No, Laurie. That’s alright. I… I’m going to stay out here. I have something to tell you.”

Laurie nodded and came out into the hall, closing the door behind him. He felt for a moment like he was just a man again in a normal world, not a vampire with a nest of blood drinkers filling his apartment. But he had never been normal. It had only been a pose for Lynn. And now she knew the truth, or at least the beginnings of it.

“Lynn, there’s so much to tell you,” Laurie said. “And so much for you to see. And so much for us to arrange. After all, we’ve got a baby coming into this world and—”

“Laurie,” Lynn interrupted him.

“Yes?”

“Let me speak.

“Laurie, we don’t have to worry about any of that.”

“Okay,” Laurie shook his head, his brow furrowed, waiting for clarification.

“We don’t… I don’t need you to be a part of the baby’s life.”

“Oh, Lynn, please don’t say that.”

Laurie almost lunged forward, remembered that the modern woman didn’t care for such things. Tried to stand back.

“Maybe you’re not ready to see me yet, and I understand that, but that kid’s going to want a father.”

“No he isn’t,” Lynn said. Then, “No he or she wouldn’t. It… It doesn’t matter. This is… a lot harder to tell you than I thought.”

Lynn hands twisted together and she frowned.

“There are so many things I thought I’d never do. Never go through. Laurie, listen. There isn’t going to be a baby.”

Laurie blinked.

“What do you mean?’

“I mean there isn’t a baby. Not anymore.”

“What are you?—Are you?”

Laurie flushed, and his dark eyes were wide with concern.

“You had a miscarriage? Are you alright? Tell me what you need?”

She could have left it at that. Her head told her she should have, but she said, “I didn’t have a miscarriage. I had an abortion.”

While Laurie’s face changed over this, Lynn wondered how a Republican who was apparently, at lest one hundred seventy years old would react to that. She wondered if she should have said something else. She couldn’t imagine having done anything else. It was all too strange. This baby by a vampire who was her grandfather. Or something like that. This baby would have connected them forever, and connected her to a world she couldn’t bear to look at. She couldn’t look at those photographs of family members she should never have known about. She could not look at Lawrence Malone preserved in sepia.

“I need you to leave,” Laurie said in a dead voice.

“I understand,” Lynn said.

She wanted to give him the speech about how it was her choice and this was her body and they were in the twenty-first century. She wanted to explain that if she had come to him before, he would never have let her do it. She wanted to say how she couldn’t imagine carrying this child for almost a year and giving it up, and she certainly couldn’t imagine raising it. She wanted to say how relieved she was. She wanted to stand on her tiptoes and kiss him on his cheek. She knew better.

Instead Lynn said, “Goodbye, Laurie.”

There was a knock on Kruinh’s door,and the old vampire did not say come in because they were all his children and he knew they would.

“You look like a kicked dog,” he said when Laurie entered.

Lawrence Malone closed the door with his back and jammed his hands into his pockets.

“Tell me.” Kruinh ignored the lavish appointments of the guest bed room and beckoned to Laurie.

And then the dark haired man did what he rarely did. He suddenly let out a howl and threw himself on Kruinh, weeping. He was weeping so hard that the door cracked, and Dan stuck his head in, but Kruinh shook his head. He could already see that Levy was with him, Good Lord. Dan closed the door behind him and Kruinh said, “Tell me or… Share with me.”

Laurie sniffled and nodded his head and Kruinh thrust his hands into Laurie’s hair and lay back while he held the other man. He absorbed all of the sorrow of the last few days and the last few minutes, his face shocked by the last revelation.

“Oh, no,” he sighed. “Oh, Lawrence.”

He held him tighter remembering a time when the vampire did not only look like a handsome and in command thirty year old, but when he had in fact been a boy who had lost much and was new to this world and Kruinh was one of his only comforts.

“Oh, my child,” Kruinh murmured. “It will all be better in the end.”

THERE was a knock on Levy’s door,but before he had a chance to remember it wasn’t his door, it opened and in came the girl from last night. Not Loreal, she was gone, but the girl with the tea colored hair and big eyes. She was pretty. She looked fun and kind of wise. Her eyes and movements were older than the rest of her, and she smelled good. He was pretty sure she was a vampire.

“What time is it?” Levy blinked into the light.

“You’ve been asleep awhile. Kruinh sent me to wake you up.”

Levy looked around the nicest room he’d ever seen. He could take things in stride, so he didn’t seem terribly impressed, but the white carpet, the huge windows, the huge room, the stereo in the wall, the weird expensive art not to mention the silence, no one screaming on the other side of the wall, no one fucking upstairs, his mother not shouting, it was all more luxury than he’d ever known.

“I though this was that guy Laurie’s house.”

“It is,” Anne said, “but Roma est, ubi Caesar est.”

“I don’t speak Italian. No,” Levy snapped his fingers. “That’s Latin.”

Anne nodded.

“And I still don’t speak it.”

“It means Rome is where the emperor is. And Kruinh is the emperor, and so this is his home.”

As Levy climbed out of bed he said, “Kruinh is the little black guy?”

“He doesn’t often get called that, but yes.”

“And he’s your king?”

“King, ruler, father, head of our house.”

“Nice!” Levy said, coming out of the room behind Anne. He was still very much impressed, and when they came down the great hallway, through the living room and dining room and into the kitchen, Levy saw Laurie looking professional and tall and really amazing despite—yes—a certain sadness. And then there was Dan and the blond guy with the big eyes and curly hair and, frying eggs, which seemed most un kingly, was Kruinh.

As Kruinh turned around and began to slide eggs onto a plate, he nodded to Levy, and instantly, the boy went down on one knee, gave a deep bow and intoned, “Your Majesty.”

The blond guy, Sunny, snorted, and Dan murmured, “What the fuck?” and when Levy looked up, Kruinh had something like a lopsided smile on his face, though his eyes looked genuinely confused.

“Good morning, Levy.” he said, blandly, while the boy sprang up.

Kruinh looked at the rest of them and said, “Why can’t you ever do that?”

“We could start,” Laurie said. “If it please you.”

“It would please me if you didn’t behead any more people and leave their corpses for me to clean up,” Kruinh said.

“Now eat up,” he said to Levy. “dress, and then we’re going to leave.”

Levy nodded, and when Kruinh perceived that he didn’t understand, he added, “You’re coming with us.”

“Oh!” Levy’s eyes went wide, and he reminded himself to stop salting the egg.

“Are you kidnapping me and taking me to your lair?”

“Am I… what?” Kruinh almost spat in disgust.

“We’re babysitting you, kid,” Dan said.

“Baby…”

“It turns out the place where Chris and Lewis went isn’t far from where we live. Is actually where I grew up,” Dan said.

“Lassador, Ohio,” Kruinh pronounced. “So there’s really no need for us to stay in Chicago when you could be closer to your friends.”

“Well, you know,” Levy said, “I really only met them right before I met you, so technically you’re all my new friends.”

“He’s got a point,” Dan said.

“Is Dan gonna watch me?”

“We’re all going to watch you,” Sunny said.

“I gotta go to work,” Dan said.

“You work?”

“If I want to eat,” Dan said.

“But you don’t even have to eat. None of you do.”

“More pancakes?” Kruinh held out the plate

Anne forked two and put one on Sunny’s plate while he nodded, and then Levy said, “So I’m going to be staying in your lair?”

“If by lair you mean old Victorian in a suburb, then yeah,” Sunny said.

“Cool. Are you guys gonna turn me into a vampire too?”

Kruinh looked at the boy coolly and said, “You’re going to be a lot of work, aren’t you?”

When Levy asked Laurie if he had locked his apartment, the tall man replied, distractedly, “Enough.”

“What does that even mean?” Levy whispered.

No one answered. He marched right beside Dan and behind Kruinh. Sunny and Anne were behind him and soon they all entered that silent elevator and it zoomed up, and then stopped. Laurie pushed a button, and the elevator flew higher and now opened, and suddenly Levy was hit by the complete cold. As they stepped out onto the roof, even without looking over the parapet that surrounded them, Levy could sense the largeness of the white sky and the distance of the city below.

Dan turned around and said, “I need you to not scream or be terrified.”

“That,” Levy began, raising an eyebrow, “is not promising.”

“We’re about to go home.”

“Did you take a helicopter?” Levy looked around.

“Not quite,” Kruinh said, handing Levy a thick face mask and then, while the boy put it on, Anne made sure it was secure and Kruinh took out what he carried with him and began to drape it over Levy, securing it at the boy’s hips and at his shoulder so that it was like a very thick blanket tied to his body.

“Keep your face down, in his shoulder. Wrap your hands around Dan’s waist.”

“I got you man,” the chocolate haired vampire said.

“Oh,… shit…” Levy realized something.

“Don’t be afraid.”

“I’m gonna throw up.”

Laurie shook his head and touched Levy’s head. “This is going to be so quick, you’re not gonna have time to throw up.”

Kruinh and Anne methodically attached Levy’s legs to the back of Dan’s, his torso to Dan’s, his arms around Dan’s, bolted the heavy cloak thing about them, even fixed Levy’s head to Dan.

“We’ve done this before,” Kruinh said, “Though rarely in such cold air.”

Kruinh said it climbing up to stand on the parapet of the building right beside Sunny, and then, just like that, he fell off. Sunny waved, and then casually fell of the building and both times Levy stopped himself from screaming.

“It’s best if you guys go now,” Laurie said to Dan and Levy, “Instead of being the last ones.”

Levy wanted to ask what had happened to Kruinh and Sunny, why he had not seen them again. He wanted stalling time, a little more instruction, but now he noted that Dan really was strong, that Dan Rawlinson moved, with him strapped to his back, as easily as anything, and now Dan stood on the parapet and turned around facing Laurie and Anne so that Levy was also facing them.

“See you guys in Lassador,” he said, and without turning around, Dan fell back. As Levy Berringer’s stomach lurched and his bowel’s lightened, Laurie and Anne were replaced by a rapid flight of descending similar stories, and then a rocket rise in the air and a shwish of blue, grey and green as the air whistled past Levy before he blanked out into blackness.