A Velvet of Vampyres. Don Webb

for the cake. His blood was healthy, vital and tasty.

      He lost consciousness, and fell out of her arms.

      She took his wallet. She seldom needed or used cash, but she­ felt it lessened the chance of him reporting a vampire to the police. He wouldn’t remember much, and the missing wallet would answer such questions as he might have or generate.

      She stepped back.

      There was time for another victim, she had fed, it would have to be someone really special. There was a little all-night café in the garden district. She only went rarely, but she wanted something more exciting than the half-formed dreams of a ­shoe-salesman chasing around her head as she lay hidden away­ during the day.

      She was about to fly, when she saw him—the most beautiful man in the world.

      He had been watching her, standing less than five feet away. He looked full of admiration and maybe a little lust or love or some emotion that she knew from long ago but didn’t have a name for now. He had long black hair, and eyes of cobalt blue. He had a slight tan, making him into some sort of pale-dark demigod.

      “Hello, beautiful,” he said. If anyone anywhere else had ever said that, she would have laughed, but she felt he meant it, and that she deserved it.

      Her first thought was that he was also a vampire. From time to time the undead do seek each other’s company, but such relationships are doomed because of the predator’s need for resources. Always the hunger gets in the way, always eats love, friendship, art—whatever.

      “Hello,” she said.

      The victim at her feet moaned. She looked down, then back to the beautiful man, but he was walking away.

      “Who are you?” she asked.

      “I am the shape of your dreams,” he said.

      She decided not to follow, she had to think. Vampires are a vulnerable lot because of the daily sleep, and the hatred of mankind for their captors.

      She decided to call it a night, and flew home.

      Home was a tiny boarding house in the garden district. The landlady knew what she was, and thought it was great. The­ landlady had hopes of being a great horror novelist, and felt the experience of having a vampire tenant would be good on her literary resume.

      The landlady was an idiot and Sheila knew she would have to kill­her someday.

      Inside the room with its heavy drapes and dust-covered blinds laythe coffin.

      * * * *

      From The Temporal Biophysics of Hemoglobin-Consuming Undead by­ Norbert Neilly (unpublished thesis), p. 14:

      The attraction that human beings have toward vampires is not a ­simple sexual or aesthetic attraction; although such elements may­ certainly exist. I will show in this paper that the attraction is based on the normal movement of complex systems in time. In short humans are drawn to vampires because the vampire is more closely associated with the field-state called the future, than the present. There is a capacity discharge between the human and vampire that allows the human to have the same sort of­ experiences that they would normally associate with the future—that is to say, intense fantasy activity, or, if you will, daydreaming raised a quantum level. The vampire on the other ­hand has a discharge of the human’s past in the form of memories­ and reveries. This relationship draws the human toward the­ vampire, by a simple intensification of the force that draws all­ of us toward the future every day. The vampire is drawn to the­ human, much as the mind is drawn to past events. This has­ profound effects on the psychology of both species, often times ­in ways concealed by themselves. The first study of the­ micro-tubules which appear to be responsible was by Penrose­(1994) and.…

      * * * *

      All day long were half-formed phantoms for shoe salesman life, ­when dusk came she wanted to wash out her brain. She would go­ clubbing and find someone interesting, someone that she could sink her teeth into, as it were.

      She choose a skimpy little outfit of green satin that showed all kinds of things when she wanted it to.

      She stopped by her landlady’s.

      “You’re going out tonight, aren’t you?” her landlady asked with that flair for the obvious that seemed to be her most developed trait.

      “Yes, Mrs. Sherman,” Sheila said.

      “How do you pick out you clothes for hunting?”

      Sheila gave a brief description of the idea of looking sexy, when you want to attract men. This seemed novel to Mrs. Sherman, and Sheila wondered for the thousandth time how she had ever managed to find a Mr. Sherman in the first place. Of course Mr. Sherman was long gone by the time Mrs. Sherman had moved to New Orleans from Boston. Sheila often thought that everyone in the city except her was a transplant. Of course she was one of the ver­ few that still regretted the Louisiana Purchase.

      She had taken the name “Sheila Burgess” because she saw it on an envelope she found in Canal Street. Two men, Dick Clark and Ed Something-or-other, had been promising great wealth to Ms. Burgess. She had found Mrs. Sherman a short time afterward. It had been time to move the coffin again. Sheila moved every nine years, it relieved boredom, and perhaps stopped the stake happy. Vampire hunters had never been a problem until about a century ago when Bram Stoker’s novel had come out. That dreadful Rice woman, whom she had met at a party once, had made everything much worse by connecting New Orleans with vampire lore. Since her books the sale of cigarette cases with hidden mirrors had­ increased disgustingly.

      There were great side effects though, there were all these young people called Goths and Emos who wandered around the city hoping to be victims, and there were scads of would-be writers hoping to somehow tap into the success as though success were a vein. She wondered if she was the only vampire that had a literary landlord, ah well being a muse isn’t so bad.

      She told Mrs. Sherman that it was time to fly, and the middle-aged matron giggled with delight.

      The club was for the Goth crowd. Normally they were pretty dull. The images and dreams that came along with their blood were full o­f black clothes, black walls, and the disgusting use of black makeup. This monochrome approach to life once again convinced Sheila that she was glad she was dead. However, such clubs did­ collect a truly delectable food, the young would-be artist, whose blood was seasoned with the holy fire. She loved the blood of poets. One intense young man that she had lost control with and drained last year, had the most searing dreams and images in his blood—so much so that she tracked down his works and read­ them. She was terribly disappointed, it seemed that his hunger for art was high, but that he regrettably knew nothing of the hard work—the precision that must match the passion.

      She saw a likely fellow almost as soon as she passed in the Black Orchid’s portals.

      He was even handing a little book to a girl he was trying to impress, who was in turn doing her best unimpressed face.

      She walked over.

      “Are you the poet?” she said, her eyes big on the chapbook. Bat Wings and Rose Petals by Robert Severson. He drew himself up, quite nice looking in his black velveteen suit. “I am the poet,” he said. Then the veneer of arrogance broke with a smile, “It’s my first book, would you like a copy?”

      “Yes,” she smiled.

      Then they were talking and he was drinking coffee, and she wasn’t drinking anything, but that wasn’t too odd—half the patrons were trying to give out that they were vampires.

      Then she glanced across the room and saw him.

      He was in a blue shirt that matched his eyes, and wore a turquoise and silver pendant. He looked fierce and beautiful.

      The poet had been speaking, and then noticed her distraction, and­ started to get up and leave.

      “No,” she said, “I thought I saw an old friend. I’m new to the city and had been hoping to run into Rebecca.” A name picked quickly