Incubus Dreams - Laurell K. Hamilton [291]
“The blood lust,” I said.
He laughed again, and nodded. “Yeah, yeah, I can’t drink liquor but I can still drink. I still like to drink.” He slapped the lighter down on the table, and both Zerbrowski and I jumped. Benchely didn’t seem to notice. “Everyone thinks you get to be pretty when you’re made over. That you get to be sauve and good with the ladies just because you got a pair of fangs.”
“You get the gaze with the fangs,” I said.
“Yeah, I can trick ’em with my eyes, but legally that’s not a willing feed.” He looked at Zerbrowski as if he represented all the laws that had held him down all his life. “If I use vampire tricks, and she comes out of it yelling force, I’m dead.” He looked at me, and it wasn’t exactly an unfriendly look. “It’s considered sexual assault, as if I slipped her a date rape drug. But I’m a vampire, and I won’t see trial. They’ll give me to you, and you’ll kill me.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that. It was true, though they’d amended the law so that you had to have more than one count of gaze-induced blood taking to execute someone. That’s what they called it, gaze-induced blood taking. The far right was crying that it was letting sexual predators loose on our communities. The far left just didn’t want to agree with the far right, so they’d help push for the change in the laws. Those of us in the middle just didn’t like the idea of a death warrant being issued on the say-so of one date who woke up the next morning with a bad case of buyer’s remorse.
“I don’t have the money to throw around that the church deacons do,” Benchely was saying, “I’ve got to get a woman to donate her blood through charm.” He said the last word like it was curse. “I know drink ruined my life, but I am a hell of a lot more charming when I’ve had just a few drinks.”
“That’s not usually true,” I said.
He looked at me. “What isn’t true?”
“A lot of drunks think they’re charming drunk, but they aren’t. Trust me, I’ve been the only teetotaler at a lot of parties. There is nothing charming about a drunk, except maybe to another drunk.”
He was shaking his head. “Maybe, but all I know is that I’m reduced to feeding off the church. The church makes taking blood as tame as it can. Something that should be better than sex, and they make you feel like you’re at one of those places where you only get your food after you’ve listened to the sermon. It makes the food taste bad.” He picked up his lighter again turning it over and over in his hands, until the gold of it swirled in the dim light, shining. “Nothing tastes good when you have to swallow your pride with it.”
“Are you saying that Moffat, a deacon of the church, misrepresented what life would be like after you became a vampire?” I tried for as casual a question as I could make it.
“Misrepresented, not exactly. More like he let me come in believing all the stuff in the books and movies, and when I talked about it like it would be that way, he didn’t tell me different. But it is different, real different.”
If you were Belle Morte’s line you spent eternity with people lining up to donate. If you were from some of the bloodlines that gave power, but not beauty or sex appeal, then in a country where using vampire tricks was illegal, you were screwed. The only vamp I knew well that was descended from a line like that was Willie McCoy. I had never wondered what Willie, with his ugly suits and uglier ties and slicked back hair, did for food. Maybe I should have.
The Church of Eternal Life didn’t promise much more than most churches promised, but you could join the Lutherans, and if you didn’t like it, you could quit. Joining the Church of Eternal Life as a full member meant never being able to do anything about regrets you might have.
Zerbrowski got us back on track. “You didn’t see anyone in the parking lot who could confirm when you left the Sapphire?”
He shook his head.
“Did you smell anything?”
Those washed out eyes flicked up to me. He frowned. “What?”
“You didn’t see anything, or anyone, but sight isn’t the