Vamp Pt. 01

**********

Early autumn, 1953
New York City...

Lorelei had hurried from the park and into her bookstore, wondering how long he had known where she was... a day, a week, a year? Five years? For them, time had no meaning save to mark the seasons.

She sat down in the small kitchen; putting her arms down on the table and then her head, trying to cry, she thought back to when she had come to this new land. The trip had been perilous and for several days, she had nightmares of floating in the cold Atlantic for eternity if the ship were to sink. How could the undead drown? Let alone cry?

Lorelei heard the shop bell tinkle and went to see the customer. Without a word, she took him to the right section of the store and gave him the three books and two magazines he had been looking for all year. Another satisfied customer, she thought. "Dragons in Amber," by Willy Ley, Heinlein's "The Green Hills of Earth," "Galaxy" science fiction, several others... her business had grown through word of mouth, one satisfied customer after another until the store was bringing in more than a thousand dollars a week.

**********

Spring, 1921
Basin Street, New Orleans...

Once, she thought she could escape his cold influence, hoping for an existence away from what she knew was demon-spawn. After the Colonial War of Rebellion, she had stowed away on a ship that eventually arrived in French New Orleans. Disappearing into the Basin Street area, ten years later she had her own brothel, filled with 'octoroon' and 'quadroon' girls, as they were known then, catering to the wishes of Southern 'gentlemen' with a predilection for colored girls with impeccable manners.

As time went by, she was able to expand until she had one of the most private 'gentlemen's clubs in the French Quarter, a three-story building overlooking a park. Since the girls came and went, usually marrying well-to-do men entranced with their beauty, she was able to buy and sell the house to herself time and time again.

Over the years, she had one favorite or another until there was Isabel, an eighteen year old fair-skinned quadroon beauty who loved to write poetry. If Lorelei could have ever had a daughter, it would have been her.

Occasionally, there was a photographer, Bellocq, who came to see the girls of Storyville and take their portraits. "For history," he had said, never posing one girl or another, but seeing them for what they were, young women in search for that elusive love.

Rather than the pervasive vices lurking in shabby taverns, dank bordellos, dark alleys inhabited by drug addicts and alcoholics, her 'gaming house' was well lit, full of entertainment and of the loveliest girls in the city. And yet, she knew the aura of decadence surrounding her trade supplied a means for the city to develop a tourism trade, the vice stirring the imagination of free-spending, joy-seeking men from out of town.

"Oh, Thomas, you are so welcome. Yes, Isabel is waiting for you, that is, unless you wish for, perhaps, someone else?"

"No, Miss Lorelei, Isabel is fine, thank you. That is, unless, you perhaps..."

"Now, Thomas, you know that if I ever do, I will let you know. Ah, here is Isabel, now."

The beautiful light-skinned woman came down the curving stairs, dressed in a long, formal dress, her hair ironed flat in the flapper manner. The man put out his hand and kissed hers and as she took him back up the stairs to her room on the second floor he turned once to look at the house's madam with a wistful gaze. Not once had she deigned to give him a night of pleasure, no matter how often he had enquired. He knew she never would but that never stopped him from asking each week.

Isabel's room, as always, was dominated by the large, brass bed, covered with fluff and pillows and lit by the nightstand lamp.

As soon as she closed the room's door, softening the jazz playing downstairs, Isabel moved into his embrace. Each time, he wished her to play the ingénue for him, for he enjoyed the thrill of the first time, even if it were all a ruse.

After the Great War, he had stayed in Europe for another year, feasting on the ebony girls that had lain with him in Paris. He found he had a previously undiscovered passion for the African form and knew he would seek them out once he returned to America.

Isabel closed her eyes, almost forgetting to guard her words.

"I wouldn't need to convince myself if you hadn't come back," she said, staying close to the story he wished to hear each time.

He leaned forward, turned her face to his. His eyes were intent, serious.

"I'm..." she started to say.

"What?" he asked, wondering if she had forgotten their story, surprised if she had. It had been over a year, now, that their playacting had been done.

"I just wish..." She shook her head. "That things were different. That we were different."

It shouldn't have made a difference, he thought, he wished but it did in his family's eyes. Even if she would pass for a white woman, a single hint of impropriety from her past would cause him to be disinherited, something he refused to chance, not for any woman, no matter how much she might profess her love.

"That you weren't born..." He stopped. The evening wasn't starting as he wished.

"I'm sorry," she said, wishing for the evening to start anew. She shouldn't even be thinking of them as a couple in the first place. Too many people were counting on her to do the right thing, to play the rich man's whore, to bring the money home.

"Shh... Baby, I know. I love you, you know that. It's just that..." What could he say, that money was worth more than her love? That to marry a whore was laughable, no matter how pretty she might be? To think that he would have a child with the grandchild of a former slave?

But when his lips touched hers, something close to desperation burst within him. He wanted her to rest against him, to climb right next to him, to be the woman of his heart.

Her fingers trembled as she began to unbutton his shirt and touch his smooth, bare chest. How many times had she done this, having the freedom to caress... to explore? His muscles beneath his sleek skin were so well defined, but those of a gentleman and not those of a common laborer and even as she felt them bunch and flex under her touch, she knew he had never worked a day in his life.

The wanting was like a storm raging inside him. Maybe it was wrong but the pull for her flesh was too strong to keep him away. She made him feel cherished. She owned his heart, even if he knew he would never be more than what he was.

She shifted against him, buried her hands in his light, silky hair. "If only the world would go away," she whispered, forgetting the story that she usually followed. "Make love to me, Thomas. I've waited so long for you to love me."

"I never knew," he said. His words bolstered her and she wound her arms around his neck. He wasn't making promises, she knew that. She slept with others; that he knew. It broke his heart to imagine her lying with men who laid their silver down and used what he had come to think of as his. Maybe, he wondered, he could take her away and set her up in a place of her own... but, the scandal if it became known, not so much that he had a mistress but that she was a quadroon, no matter how light.

He wanted to beg her for promises, that she would just be his, but he knew he couldn't. How would he explain the expense to his father? So, he'd take what she could give, for the moment... for the moment.

Some day, he would inherit... but, would it be too late, then?

He saw her gaze shift to the mattress, then back to him as she licked her lips. He expected a cool professionalism, not the innocence she seemed to express.

Her lips trembled. "I love you, Thomas. I truly do."

The admission charmed him down to his heart and for a moment, he wondered if what he had thought of could be possible.

With a single finger, he traced her throat, and then ran his palm to her breast through the satin of her dress. Wanting to linger, afraid he'd rush, he gripped the hem of the gown and slowly drew it over her head.

"I knew you'd be perfect," he said, trying to return to their playacting. A delicious quiver of excitement spiraled through her as he simply watched her. He spent a long moment tracing her lips with his, then moved lower, gently, her knees nearly buckling when his lips and tongue replaced his hands between her smooth thighs.

Isabel grabbed his shoulders for balance and arched into him.

Making a frustrated sound deep in her throat as she wrapped her arms around him, she pressed her breasts to his bare chest. Skin to skin, the friction was almost too much for her to bear.

Desire whipped through her as he cupped her buttocks and pulled her firmly against him. "Hurry," she moaned.

"No... who knows what tomorrow may bring? We're going to make this last." He sucked in a breath, looking at her naked form before him. "The reality's always better than the fantasy."

"What?" she asked, surprised.

"You... it's been pure torture waiting this past week, your sweet body..." He cupped her breasts, his eyes dark-red with passion and he looked almost dangerous. Her heart pumped and her mouth went dry as dust. This is what she wanted, what she had waited for, for a man who wanted her this way.

His gaze shifted, in a slow, thorough way, from the top of her head to the tips of her bare toes.

Would that he loved her, she wished. Her breath was coming faster now and for an instant, he went absolutely still, alert to every nuance of her body, afraid of what she always did to him.

She set his soul on fire.

She grabbed the waistband of his trousers, working the buttons and as she dragged him down with her on the bed, slipped her hands inside and pulled them down.

At times, he was ashamed, finding such ecstasy in the arms of a colored woman, even one as pale as she, still the whorish daughter of the whorish daughter of a slave. He wondered if he would ever be free from the spell that she had cast over him.

He lowered his head, his lips touching hers gently, and her heart quaked in anticipation once more. He was everything she wanted and tonight, he was all hers.

His tongue traced that spot just behind her ear, then slid lower and lower still, covering every inch of her almost pale flesh. His face brushed against her thighs and when his lips settled over her in the most intimate of kisses, she nearly flew off the bed. Her mind went blank of everything except the wild, incendiary explosion that suddenly consumed her.

He rose above her and then filled her completely, clear to her soul and all she could do was hold him, meet his fervor, lost in the storm of their coupling, giving her the rarest glimpse of what could have only been paradise, just not for her.

The next morning, he awoke to find his lover... dead. What had happened? Thomas only knew that his head pounded, he had too much to drink, something that had become almost common with him. Oh, God, he cried, what have I done?

There was an insistent knock on the door. "Mr. Thomas, suh, it's late, suh."

Thomas tried to move but his body refused to cooperate. "Ohhhh," he moaned and then looked at the lifeless beauty lying next to him. "Oh, God..." For one solitary instant, he had hoped it was all a bad dream.

She's just a whore, he thought, his mind still muddy. It'll be all right, I just have to pass enough silver across the madam's hands, that's all.

He heard the key in the door and then saw it swing open. It was Miss Lorelei and two tall, swarthy coloreds. She took one look at Isabel's body and set her face into a rageful countenance. Even now, though, he couldn't see any change in the color of her face. Maybe, he hoped, it would be all right.

"It was an accident," he tried to say, hoping she would understand. He looked for his money, there were hundreds there. Surely, that would be enough.

"Leave us," she said to her two retainers and as they turned to go, she closed the door behind her and approached him, still lying on the disheveled covers of the bed.

"It was an accident," he repeated, not really knowing what had happened, everything lost in the murkiness of his alcoholic haze. The last thing he ever saw was Miss Lorelei baring her mouth to his neck and the last thing he ever felt was the sharp bite of her teeth.

That evening, his now-stiff body, its throat slit, was taken to the bayou and buried by the two men who had accompanied Miss Lorelei that morning. Neither man was shaken by the task, for Isabel had been a friend to both and deigned to bestow her favors on them, at least weekly.

Isabel's funeral was a sad affair and even though no one could see through her dark, black veil, Lorelei knew that if she could cry, she would have for the young woman that she had thought of as a daughter.

And... Lorelei tried to cry.

**********

"Madam, there are..."

"Policemen... yes, I know. Thank you. Have them wait in the parlor." She expected it; after all, a man as wealthy as Thomas would have someone wondering where he was. She walked down the stairs to meet with the men.

They rose as she entered... politely without speaking and waited for her to sit. The room was large enough to accommodate the piano and ten or so 'guests' that came each night, each knowing the evening would be expensive but well worth the price of exclusivity.

She took the red velvet chair in the corner by the painting, a Monet, one from his water lilies series. Her visitors looked uncomfortable, one, the younger, looking through the doorway at two of the girls waiting for their afternoon trade. She rested her head on the lace doily, her white hair spilling onto her shoulders, her feet on the Persian, knowing the cause of their journey. The crystal chandelier offered no light and the sunlight coming through the heavily curtained window fought with the ever present shadows of the room.

"We apologize," the shorter one said, "for intruding, but we're looking for Thomas Rector and it seems that he comes here once a week, Tuesdays, to be exact."

"Yes, that's right. He had a standing assignation with our Isabel. Would you care for something to drink, perhaps?"

"No, thank you. You said, 'had'." He started to write in his small notebook, his pen scratching across the paper.

"That's correct. They left. He mentioned something about going to California, San Diego, I believe. I should have seen it coming," she prevaricated. "It was just a matter of time."

"So, they left that Tuesday evening?"

She gave him a deadly look and he became still, his face flushed somehow with fear and he ran his fingers along the metal beading of his chair.

"Uh... thank you," said his younger companion, seeing the sudden change in his partner. "Sorry to bother you, Madam. I think we've heard enough. Thank you for your time." His attention was once again captured by one of the girls in the front room, seemingly smiling at him, wondering if he were to spend some time with her.

"Please feel free to return, when you can. I will tell Lincoln that you are my guest, any time. I support the police... when I can." She stood, her white hair now loose and swinging, bringing the conversation to an end.

"Uh, yes, ma'am. Thank you."

The two detectives left the house, got into their parked automobile and drove away toward the center of the city. They would not return, she knew, either for more questions or for the delights of her girls. Too bad, though, she thought. The younger one looked to have possibilities. Maybe, he would return. It was always good to have... 'friends'? Acquaintances?

She remained in the parlor, remembering Isabel. She had known the girl her entire, sadly short life and had loved her, as much as someone such as she, could. Several times, she considered turning her, to be her companion and yet, each time, refused to damn the girl to the existence she was forced to have... an existence usually without passion unless it came wrapped in blood.

Antoine came in and began to play the aria from Puccini's La Bohème. Lorelei wished she could cry, just once, for her lost love. Isabel, oh, Isabel... She closed her eyes and wished that she had been more selfish... the young girl would still be alive.

**********

Early winter, 1953
New York City...

Lorelei walked down the aisle to the back of the shop and went up the stairs to her apartment. The radiators were full on and to someone else, the heat might have felt stifling. Still shocked from seeing him again, she found her bed and lay upon it, hoping that it had all been a horrible dream. How he had found her no longer mattered, how long he had known no longer mattered. The fact that he had indeed done so was what mattered.

She heard the front door bell ring and knew that he had followed her back. The door was locked but since when had barred doors stopped him?

She turned and there he was, almost behind her, the wolf heeled at his leg. She never became used to his movements, here one second, there another.

"Lorelei, come with me, please."

The wolf looked at her, head cocked to one side. Was it the same one, she wondered. No, it couldn't be, too much time had passed but who knew what powers had been called to bear.

"I can't... I won't..." she tried to say, did say, knowing it didn't matter, she would, she was weak. Only distance and stealth had kept him away all this time... thirty years since the last time he had found her, destroying her life once again.

She reached down to pat the animal's fur, knowing resistance was futile, no matter what she had hoped. The wolf bared his teeth and licked her hand.

"No!" she sobbed, but the sound was lost, obliterated by the cruel pressure of his mouth forcing her lips open to allow him to ravage the softness within. She was unable to move. Held so tightly and forcefully beneath him, she was aware of every muscle in his powerful body. His kiss seemed unending and she was almost in tears when the pressure of his mouth gradually lessened and she trembled as his lips became soft and seductive, igniting a fire deep within the icy coolness of her body.

Shamefully, she appeared helpless to resist a response that seemed to arise of it own accord; a fierce excitement which filled her entire being. A slow, pulsing ache began to throb deep in her stomach as he once more teased her quivering lips lightly open and unconsciously she arched herself against him. Her arms clung weakly to his shoulders, her senses spinning out of control as a hot storm of desire roared through every fiber of her being.

There was no thought to deny him as his hands moved enticingly over her body, a moan breaking from her throat as his fingers slid beneath her blouse, releasing the fastening from her bra to free the pale fullness of her breasts.

An explosive tension was mounting deep within her, ignited by a flame that had never really died. But now, it was a far darker, more fiercely raging fire that had little to do with her virginal night with him so many centuries before. Only with him had she experienced this wanton need to touch a man, the ever-increasing pleasure spiraling through her almost still veins.

Her breasts tingled as her pale, almost white nipples became hard and swollen beneath the mastery of his touch.

Ambrose was right, she realized in despair. This was what he set out to prove. He meant her to feel like this... to acknowledge the fact that she still wanted him. And then, she was lost, mindless, moaning softly as his lips trailed slowly down the long line of her throat. Her heart slowly sped up, making her feel almost alive again, as he lifted her toward him, his lips and tongue teasing first one exposed, erect nipple and then the other, bringing moans of pleasure from her as she was carried along on a tide of sensuality so intense she felt as though she was drowning in ecstasy.