Accessing the Vein
Vlad wanted to kiss Candy but she wouldn't let him.
"Your fangs hurt," Candy said.
"But I capped them," said Vlad.
"No you didn't," she said.
Lying to Candy never worked. He hadn't heard of fang caps but they seemed like something a vampire could get rich inventing.
Candy and Vlad were on Blood Mountain, on the tail end of their camping trip to Makeout Forest. They decided to go back; neither of them had been since they accidentally burned down Candy's old house. Candy and Vlad were giving things another try. They sat atop a round hump of exposed maroon sandstone, covered by red lichens. Legend had it that an Indian maiden tossed herself over the hill's edge. Plummeting clumsily to her death, she left a jagged trail of blood, which the lichens soaked up. It had been a slippery walk. Vlad's head hurt from sunshine despite the dark shades and hat he'd worn. Candy polished off three pound cakes to rejuvenate.
"You knew I had fangs when we met," Vlad said.
"Yeah, but I didn't know how deep you'd bite me," Candy said. "These neck punctures I have don't heal."
"They're not supposed to. You're mine now," Vlad said.
Candy stared off into the distance.
He tried to empathize. Maybe she was so naïve when they met that she didn't realize she'd be his eternal slave. She'd tried breaking up with him, and here he was again, years later. She was the one who invited him back. Everyone knows what happens when a vampire sucks your blood. The amazing thing about Candy is that she hadn't had blood sickness yet. Since she lives on sugar, she has a magical metabolism.
Vlad put his cape around Candy's shoulders.
"Vlad?" she asked. "You never gave me a choice."
"About what?"
"Dating you."
I don't tell girls I'm a vampire, or I'd never have a girlfriend again. Vlad thought.
"What's so funny?" Candy asked.
"The part you forget," Vlad said, "is how attracted you were to me."
"You're like a spider," she said. "You lure people in and lie to get your way."
Exactly, Vlad thought.
"Come on," Vlad said, grabbing her waist. "Just one …"
He turned Candy's neck back, resting her head in his hand. Her straight brown hair fell onto his arm. She was submissive but tense, like a horse. Vlad's black beard stubble rubbed her chin as he dug in, biting harder than usual. When they argued, and Candy gave in, she liked it hard because it got her more in the mood.
Sinking Vlad's fangs into Candy was like biting bread pudding or octopus sashimi. He had to gnaw if it got chewy. If she hadn't soaked in a bath or used lotion, he had to bite, then let up, then bite, shark-like.
To Vlad, sucking blood was like eating a chicken wing. It required delicacy and finesse to avoid waste. Accessing the vein was difficult both psychologically and physically. He tried not to masticate the flesh around fang holes because of bruising. Most of the time, he'd bite steadily into Candy, clamping down pit bull-style. This time, her neck melted away, craving to be bitten.
People physically want different things than what they think. Candy's neck was sweet and inviting like watermelon. What else was Vlad to believe other than that she really wanted him? She may have said it hurt, but Vlad knew she liked it when she felt her blood pumping straight into his mouth. He tried to match his gulps to her heart rate, so the transaction's fluidity matched the liquid nature of their love.
When Vlad drank Candy's blood, she shrank. Everything swirled around her until her vision was blocked by white dots. It was like looking away from the sun after staring at it. Candy hated it but couldn't get the rush any other way. Before this camping trip, Candy had seen a woman covered from head to toe in sheer fabrics. This woman's lipstick was especially red, and under her neck scarf, Candy noticed teeth marks. Candy still had Vlad's old marks but they were scabby. All of a sudden, she wanted fresh ones. She was too plain. For the first time, she saw wounds as jewelry, as Vlad had said. She called him out of the blue after not having spoken in two years, and that's how they ended up back on Blood Mountain.
Vlad sank deep into Candy, keeping his lips loose to get maximum glugs. He drank for thirty minutes before she came to and said,
"Vlad, that's enough!"
He mumbled, "I'm almost done."
"Stop," she said, nudging him. She didn't push Vlad off because his fangs would rip her if incorrectly withdrawn. He extruded his teeth slowly, to cauterize the spots. It didn't work, so two streams of blood ran down Candy's shoulder. She touched her fingers to them and said,
"Fuck."
"It's okay," Vlad said. He took his gold medallion out and waved it. He was hypnotizing himself as well, so he wouldn't have to watch her panic.
Candy's stress increased her heartbeat, so she bled more. She grew a pale, greenish white. They used a shirt from the backpack to absorb liquid, but blood permeated that too.
"Take me home," Candy said.
"Calm down," Vlad said. "Or you'll lose more." He laid her down, putting a sweater under her and a sleeping bag over her for warmth. Vlad didn't care if stuff got bloody. The blood pool next to her head looked like an oil slick.
Deep down, Vlad hoped that Candy would bleed to death so he could feast on her. He felt bad, but mostly excited. On the other hand, he wanted her to live so he could keep his constant girlfriend blood supply flowing. The dead-or-alive debate says that if your host is dead, you gorge, but alive, they're a fountain of youth.
"Candy," Vlad said. "Look at your beautiful blood pool." Clouds floating by were reflected in the pool as inverted, miniature renditions.
She cocked her head to see the puddle next to her ear. Her expression softened as if she'd had a shot of whiskey.
"I want yours now," she said.
Vlad felt proud. Finally, she wanted blood, not that she would ever get his. He kissed her forehead.
***
Candy came to on the couch, across from the wood-burning stove. Her new candy shack was better than the one that burned, with more candy décor and more color. Vlad had carried her down Blood Mountain, her arms and head limply hanging over him. Only one hiker passed them on the trail. Looked instantly terrified, he feigned distraction by stooping to study a bush. Vlad looked pretty regular with his mouth shut, black hair slicked back, green tee shirt, jeans, and boots. His cape was draped over unconscious Candy. He thought she'd look less dead covered up, though maybe the passerby thought the opposite. That cracked him up. He'd carried corpses, but not hiking.
"You schlepped me all the way?" Candy asked, groggy.
"I saved you," Vlad said. "See? I really am nice."
"Just because you salvaged what remains of my blood-drained body after you nearly killed me…" Candy said.
"You never get it," Vlad said.
"You bit me and I almost died," she said.
"I wasn't trying to harm you," he said.
Candy quieted when conversations came to this. Vlad had told her before that his blood thirst was sexy, since he'd committed to drinking only her blood. They'd been together for four years before, broken up, and now he wanted her to understand that she really didn't have a choice. The dark purple, circular, two-holed bruises were meant to comfort her, like diamonds. Each bite was an engagement ring. But she complained. Nothing he did was good. Vlad fell asleep sitting on the floor in front of the couch, with his head in Candy's lap.
Candy rested on the couch with a bloody towel around her neck. Vlad dozed while she thought of running away or casting a spell. What reincarnation would best suit him: a toad, tree stump, clay, or a steak? Something edible, she thought.
A bit should be said about the complexities of using witchcraft on Vlad. One would assume that Candy could fight back at any given point. Just as she didn't strike her mother with lightning upon learning that she was a cannibal—oh how Candy wanted to—and just as she didn't have a baby delivered to her porch by forest animals, although she was, lately, wanting a child, she didn't automatically zap Vlad at every whimsy. Witches learn that with power comes responsibility. Candy learned this as a kid.
As a teenager, when Candy made the Hand of Glory to charm her stalker into exposing his identity, Candy discovered that the crimes she'd committed to thwart his future flirtations far outweighed his. There are times for magic and times for common sense. Kenny Rogers sings, You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold em', know when to walk away, know when to run. Being a witch is like gambling.
Still, magic for self-defense is one of the main good uses for sorcery. Her idea was to shapeshift Vlad into something harmless. Vlad loved her, but didn't acknowledge a difference between life and death. To him, she'd have been just as lovable lording over a coffin. He mentioned in his sleep what kind of coffin he wanted to get for Candy—pink satin with mahogany. He wanted bronzed Smarties on top. Their blood was commingled, but she still knew she could survive without him.
Technically, if Candy had turned Vlad into a marble statue and didn't like it, she could make him a vampire again, but they'd already have been permanently broken up. When a witch transforms you, she isn't happy.
Candy had spent the entire four years they dated trying to please Vlad. She dumped him the day he bit her while her house was on fire, but she'd always cared. She understood his blood addiction. His bloodlust was more severe than her candy obsession. His sickness prevented him from walking, talking, thinking. She just got migraines and stomach cramps. There must be some spell, she thought, that could make a monster a man. But no. A monster stays a monster.
She decided to let the universe choose Vlad's fate, inventing a spell in which she pictured Vlad as a lovable formless being. Vlad was still asleep in her lap, so Candy rubbed her fingers through his hair, brushing him like an animal. She said,
"My pet, you will never bite my neck again. I am only saving my life. I am not yours. You're mine."
While words came out, Candy processed the following: Vlad's bloodsucking has to stop. She wanted Vlad around but she didn't want him to control her. She was disappearing before she'd even established a presence on Earth, and she didn't want her soul stolen. She'd noticed that, passing by mirrors, she sometimes couldn't see her reflection.
Candy nodded off, since the spell took all her power. She woke to a tingling lap. Vlad got hot and vibrated. He stayed asleep as he got smaller and furrier, shinier and softer. He shrunk until his whole body fit into Candy's lap. His legs got shorter and his arms got longer. His shiny black hair grew down his chest, back, legs and arms. His clothing fell onto the floor, and his fingers and toes curled up, morphing into paws. His fangs remained but shrunk into teeny needles that hid beneath whiskered cheeks.
Vlad opened one eye and saw a furry paw. He opened the other eye and saw Candy, huge, leaning over him. Her face was still pale, but she was smiling and stroking his body as if she'd just given birth. Vlad rolled off Candy's lap, got onto his feet, and fell down onto his four new legs. "Change me back!" He yelled, but hisses came out. He was a cat. Candy tried to pick him up. Vlad clawed her and ran to hide in the bedroom.
What are my new properties? Vlad wondered, staring out from beneath the bed. Dust and crumbs were giant now, littering the floor like icebergs. A sock was a mountain. Am I a vampire cat, reduced to hunting mice and birds instead of women? Can I still drink Candy's blood? Or am I fully feline? Can I now function in the daytime without dark sunglasses? Will Candy keep me?
Vlad had the urge to lick his fur. He licked then spat to avoid ingesting hair. After bathing, he walked back out to see Candy from a new angle.
How do you talk to a cat who was, ten minutes ago, your boyfriend? Candy picked her kitty up and cried into his silky, black pelt.
"I'm sorry, Vlad," she snuffed. " I just needed a change."
She could sense Vlad trying to speak. She couldn't make out words, but she could feel his rage and confusion. She could tell the cat was Vlad because he was manipulating her for sympathy. Sympathy was the key to his seduction. She felt so guilty about what had happened that she rubbed her face into his fur and kissed his cheeks. She lay back down on the couch, stretched Vlad out on her chest, and held his paw, pretending it was a hand.
Vlad and Candy met when she was twenty, in a cave beneath her old house. She was in the back when she noticed a skunk climbing out of a hole obscured by wild fennel. Candy hacked away the fragrant, wispy foliage and found a crevice blowing cool air. She could tell the hole was deep. Asking around, it seemed everyone except her knew of available cave tours nearby. Candy headed straight there, signed up, and paid the fee. Their docent took them into an elevator and pressed the C key, for Cave. From there, they were escorted through a series of red, blue, and green lit rooms, down stairs that had been carved into the granite floor.
One room was the Wedding Chapel, where thousands of human ceremonies had been performed. Behind the altar was a grotto filled with crystals. Inside, fine, green moss curled around implanted lights, placed strategically to illuminate trickles of seeping groundwater. Candy felt the power of that space, and wanted to soak it up. Conveniently, a carved calcite heart had been inlaid into the ground, over a yellow floodlight. This glowing, luminescent spot was the ideal place to absorb subterrestrial atmospherics.
The tour guide mentioned that a colony of bats dwelled in a nearby tunnel. Nearing dusk, Candy heard them screech and flitter, blindly hitting cave walls towards their exit. A few flew through the chapel. One was large. She noticed it hovering in the grotto, licking the mossy water trickle. The bat was wearing a tiny cape, which she wrote off as an extra fur, feathers, or some kind of echo locating foreskin. Only later, when, once again, she was raking leaves and that very same bat flew up through the cold-air crevice, did she realize that, in fact, he was wearing a velvet cape and a button-sized medallion. She set the rake down as he circled towards her.
The bat smoked. That is to say, smoke came off of him as if he'd been barbecued. Enshrouded by gray haze, he grew into a man.
"You liked the heart," he said, dusting off his cape.
"I loved it. Do you live down there?" Candy asked.
"During the day," he said. "I'm Vlad."
Vlad made a strong impression. His shapeshifting skills were stellar, and Candy was impressed that his hair came out combed. It also seemed significant that they lived on the same plot of land, at different depths.
"I'm Candy. I live above you." She thought of the cave as the bottom floor of their apartment complex.
"I could see your magic," Vlad said, "when your eyes lit up in the grotto. They turned red."
"That's funny," she said. "I wasn't angry."
"Red is my favorite color," Vlad said.
Vlad walked over and wrapped Candy in his cape. He bit her neck, but she didn't fight because she was enchanted by his handsome bat persona.
Vlad, the cat, was purring. Candy took her shirt off to feel his fur. She held him like a football. She liked his body small, objectified. She could crush him. She used to like being scared of him. In the beginning, she liked that he came from a cave, that he spent hours as a bat, and that he kissed her in this new way. A little blood loss didn't bother her. She liked how suave he was. She liked being tangled up in his cape.
Vlad, the cat, crawled up onto Candy's breasts, lying in between them with his paws outstretched. Like a kitten, he kneaded his claws. Little blood droplets popped up. Candy stared into his green eyes and saw the same horny expression Vlad got before sex. Vlad's tail wagged across her tits, and he said, like a tomcat,
"Meeowwww."
Candy didn't want to get with her new cat. She could picture how it would go, pussy on pussy. Vlad's claws were relatively delicate and his new fangs were just big enough to bite her finger, which was cute. But it seemed wrong.
"Are you hungry, kitty?" she asked Vlad, purposely misunderstanding him as she put him on the ground.
What difference does it make if I'm a bat, a vampire, or a cat? Vlad wondered. I need intimacy to start my new feline life. Candy's rejection, as usual, made Vlad want her. This passion gave Vlad hope. He wanted to find out whether he still needed blood.
He jumped back on Candy, digging his claws into her thigh and nestling under her dress to lick her belly.
"Get off!" Candy yelled, yanking his scruff.
Vlad hissed and sprang towards her stomach, aiming his paws for her breasts. He wrapped around her like a muff, biting as hard as he could. He never wanted a vein so badly. He was submerged in her midriff, far from a good blood source, but Vlad was too preoccupied to care. Candy pinched his face to break his cheekbones. Vlad decided he'd die trying to eat Candy. What better way to perish than to be feeding on your loved one?
Vlad and Candy had spent most of their first summer together in her basement, sitting around naked, watching vampire movies, and having sex. During screenings, Vlad separated vampire fact from fiction. Garlic was bullshit, for example. Vlad didn't worry about clothing and eyewear, since it was cool and dark. He didn't need sleep in these optimum conditions, and Candy was so into him that she didn't go upstairs.
They talked a lot that summer about Epicureanism and their specialized diets. As a history scholar, Vlad was knowledgeable about cultural dietary theory. Candy had a vat of marshmallow brewing that she tried stirring blood into, so that they could both eat it. She called it Scarlet Sink, because the goo looked like quicksand. Vlad ate sugar sometimes to be nice.
Vlad only made Candy drink blood once. It was blood he kept jarred from a girl he'd necked ninety years back in Hungary. Her blood had great flavor that he said Candy had to try.
"It will make me sick," Candy told him.
"You'll get sick if you don't drink," he said. "You're a vampire, too."
"I've never needed it," she said. "Maybe I'm immune."
She never told Vlad that after their first bite, she ingested an owl bone powder to prevent her from becoming a vampire's concubine.
"Try it anyway," Vlad said. "It's delicious."
Candy sipped the rich, bitter drink. Vlad thought he'd converted her when Candy licked her lips and said,
"Interesting."
Their relationship had always been about gourmandise.
If Candy had really wanted to kill Vlad, she would have done it the day they burned her first house down. But she wasn't about to let Vlad, the cat, attack her for one more second. Recalling how hungry they'd both been gave Candy a final idea.
Stumbling into the kitchen with a cat strapped around her neck, Candy opened drawers and cabinets until she found her cookbook entitled Divinity. It breezed open to a page she knew from childhood, when she'd changed snails into something tasty.
"I'll finally get you," she said, prying Vlad off and pinning him to the counter. Vlad's eyes glowed his favorite color. She shoved Vlad into a double boiler, chucked in a couple of chocolate bars, and turned the burner on. Vlad howled and sparks flew. Five seconds later, she had a chocolate kitty. Cobwebs grew in her ceiling's corners while he cooled on a sheet of wax paper. Candy slipped the candied cat into cellophane and bowed it. If she couldn't bring herself to eat him, at least Chocolate Vlad would make an exquisite gift.