A Girl's Guide to Guns and Monsters - Martin Harry Greenberg [20]
“That’s my grave,” Annabelle whispered. “My resting place.”
“We have a bargain, see?” Sarah told me. “The vampires of Los Angeles. We want new kin. And they want food.”
“They . . .” I said.
“The humans. Father Mark and Mother Mary Patrick. Human food,” Sarah elaborated. “Bread, apples, whatever we can get.”
“But . . . it’s not enough.” Annabelle glided toward me and ran her fingers down my cheeks, and it was not unpleasant. “There’s not enough in the world any more to feed all of you.”
I began to heave. Weak, terrified . . . I bent forward, dry retching, and Annabelle put her arm around my shoulders. She cooed, holding me, and I felt her lips brushing against my neck.
“I agreed,” Annabelle told me. “Sarah, Father Mark, and Mother Mary Patrick. They asked me to become what I am now, and I consented. I wasn’t well.”
She stroked my cheek again. “You came to the chapel. You prayed for me. I was watching.”
I remembered the little scratching noise.
“I would have died, and so will you,” she said.
I shuddered, hard, wobbling on my feet. She held me up. I was going to be sick or faint. “Why-why will I die?” I asked her.
She stroked my hair. “You’re too delicate. You were taught to allow people—men, servants—to take care of you.” Her voice was mournful. She pitied me. “But no one will.”
“No one will,” Sarah concurred. “No handsome knight in shining armor. No government. No one is coming to save you.” She waited a beat. “Or your mother.”
“No,” I whispered.
“Your mother is beautiful,” Annabelle said. “But the world will be too much for her. Humanity has shown its true face. Men don’t care for widows and orphans. They care for money. Gold. And they dare to call us monsters.”
“We are what God intended,” Sarah said. “Born to new life, through the blood.”
Together the two vampires gazed rapturously toward heaven. Moonlight washed down on them; the alabaster beams bleached their foreheads, the hollows of their cheeks. Blood was drying on their lips.
“Who did you kill tonight?” I asked Annabelle.
“Maria. That horrible girl who took your stole,” she replied. “We were watching. We saw everything.”
“They’ll eat you alive here,” Sarah said. “You’re too soft. We can save you.”
“Yes, please,” Annabelle urged, “be our sister. You will never die, or be hungry.” She smiled at Sarah. “And the feeding is most pleasant. It’s like a holy thing.”
Sarah smiled back.
I burst into tears. Annabelle gathered me into her arms, holding me, comforting me, as no one had since my father’s death—my mother had been too shellshocked, too undone, to do anything but lock herself in her room. To watch Our Lady of the Vampires roaming in the hot sunlight, withering, dying inch by inch. I had had no one. Annabelle held me, and rocked me, and I began to forget that there was blood on her lips.
Someone was coming to rescue me. Someone had come: two vampires.
Two angels.
“We should do it now,” Sarah said, “before it’s light.”
“No. Please, let her consider,” Annabelle murmured, cocking her head at me. “Do for her what you did for me, Sarah. Give her some time to think.”
“She’ll tell.” Sarah glared at me in the same way that Mother Mary Patrick had. I was a threat.
“I won’t,” I promised. “I swear I won’t.”
“Tomorrow night, then, give us your answer,” Annabelle pleaded sweetly. “We can change you, and take you away. You don’t have to feed here, among the girls. We can find you someone else. Somewhere else.”
“You’ll never be hungry again,” Sarah said. “You can take the starving, the hopeless. It’s a sort of mercy.”
“Maria felt nothing,” Annabelle assured me.
I frowned. “Her legs kicked—”
“A reflex.” Annabelle crossed her arms over her chest, posing like a dead girl. “I promise.” Then she took her hands. “We’ll teach you everything. Crosses burn us. Wooden stakes through the heart destroy us. You’ll learn to be cunning. And strong.” She glanced at Sarah. “So I have been promised.”
“You will,” Sarah assured her.
“And if I say no?”
Sarah blinked as if the thought hadn’t occurred to her. But Annabelle stepped forward. “We will let you go. If you