Normally, Henri would not bring his fine pair of matched sorrel geldings to this poor part of Paris. He was very choosy about which streets he trusted with his fine coach with the German-milled springs and the seats upholstered in Spanish leather. But he had no choice tonight. He had missed his customary roast beef dinner at the Cafe Jolie, the trilled flirtatious greeting of Madam Rousseau, his two glasses of red wine, the small salad afterward to cleanse the palate, and to finish, the little cup of espresso with lemon peel and cardamon. Not only was he bringing his unusual passenger to her squalid destination, he was going to wait to take her home once her unspeakable business was concluded.

That passenger was Adulfa, wearing a man's expensive evening suit and a top hat, the apparel she favored during the 1930s. She carried a cane with a ruby knob and wore a fashionable short, black wool cape. Nobody would catch her wearing a man's shirt and suit coat with a long skirt, like the faux-butches who frequented Le Monocle. But then, Adulfa did not have to worry about getting stones thrown at her by angry citizens who disapproved of mannish women. Street toughs and fishwives gave her a wide berth. Adulfa thought to herself, with deep self-satisfaction, I am a tiger with brass tits, a lioness stalking on two legs through the wilderness of mankind.

Tonight, she was bound for the Heavenly Golden Palace of Sleeping Dragon Dreams, an upscale opium den cum brothel run by the fascinating and dedicated libertine, Monsieur Albert Ching. Last year, Adulfa's passion had been for tubercular poets (too wheezy). After a brief fling with absinthe addicts (too sticky), she found herself gravitating toward the hazelnut flavor of humans besotted with the exotic, dark gum of the Turkish poppy (just right). Monsieur Ching was as happy to take her money as he was to receive the coin of any other degenerate Caucasian. Unlike many other opium parlors, the Dragon's Palace did not serve any Chinese patrons. Adulfa suspected him of being quite racist, in his own way. But she saw no reason why Mr. Ching should be any fonder of one part of the human race than she was of the entire species.

The cab driver waited on his bench, chafing his hands and blowing on them, wondering why his stomach hurt. It was a cold, foggy night. Adulfa had placed enough of a compulsion on him to make him keep to his station, but she had not bothered to erase his awareness that he was doing a dangerous and foolhardy thing. Let him worry. She didn't want him in a barmy state of bliss that might result in a heist or an assault that would leave her without normal human transportation. She'd left him her small, pearl-handled derringer, and imprinted the knowledge to use it.

She walked through the carved mahogany doors, handed Monsieur Ching her usual fee (without removing her gloves), and adjusted her monocle before strolling through the corridors. As usual, the palace's beneficiaries ignored her. Given her slim silhouette, Adulfa was often mistaken for a youth, until she opened her mouth to speak. So perhaps the Golden Dragon's habitués were as unaware of her gender as they were of her sinister intentions.

This was the ground floor, where most cubicles were occupied by single men, each attended by a Chinese girl or boy who knew how to load the proper sized bead of opium into the tiny bowls of the pipes, how high the flame must be turned, at what angle to hold the pipe, when to put the pipestem to the client's mouth so he could inhale heaven. There were also larger rooms where friends could chase the dragon together, and hire female or male companionship if they wished. Though this was more for show than actual eroticism. Opium ecstasy apparently superseded the more acrobatic human pleasures.

No one seemed to notice her passing. If the inebriated customers saw her at all, they probably assumed she was on her way to her own cubicle or cubbyhole. They sprawled, heads full of peaceful and lovely visions, dead to any awareness of the Chinese servants' scorn or the murderous intention of the cross-dressed woman with short blonde hair. The people who worked here were already familiar with Adulfa, and let her know, through their exquisite courtesy and bland smiling faces, how much they detested her mission. It would not have surprised her to learn that they knew she was a vampire.

She idly sorted through the personalities of these besotted people, as if they were fortune-telling cards bearing bright illustrations of many possible futures. What mood, what story, what sort of face and body did she wish to dine upon? She had been overindulging of late, so the hunger was not particularly painful. She could afford to take her time tonight and select someone pleasing, somebody special. The palace was such an appropriate venue for her quest. All of the people here wanted to die, or at least escape. She was simply a more rapid means to that end than opium or syphilis.

A pipe at Mr. Ching's did not come cheap, and you had to be brought here by someone who was already in good standing in order to gain membership. So he had taken some trouble with the appearance of his establishment. It was not a hovel of mismatched boards and dirty plaster like some of the more desperate opium dens closer to the shipyards. There were thick rugs with embossed designs in deep blue, soft red, and tan upon on the floor. The walls had been painted red, with occasional ornamentation in black and gold. Here and there stood lacquered screens with carved designs of birds or flowers. Oversized blue-and-white porcelain vases full of fresh flowers stood on pedestals in alcoves. There was plenty of detail to catch and confuse an intoxicated eye, enough pretty comfort to keep the atmosphere tranquil. Though Adulfa could not imagine how anyone could become contentious or rowdy with depression after a bowl of opium. It was the perfect drug, except for the part where you got addicted and felt utterly miserable if you could not afford to smoke a little more of it every day, twice a day, three times a day.

Monsieur Ching's attention to appearances extended to his employees. The Chinese attendants wore red or blue brocade jackets embroidered with the sleeping dragon that was his escutcheon. They wore matching round caps and slippers. Their lower limbs were swathed in loose black trousers. The young men were handsome, the young ladies pretty, and all of them moved as if they were dancing, an everyday grace that charmed Adulfa no end. Their faces were never marred by sadness or anger. The atmosphere of the palace was always calm and measured. No crisis in the outer world had power here.

She yawned. So far, nobody was proving to be as exciting as she had hoped. There was a professional gambler who had lost all of his sponsor's stake. Again. Not even he could pretend to be surprised. A successful businessman with too much money who was angry about his wife's affair with his secretary. What a bore, when he could simply have embarked upon his own adulterous fling. A man in pain from arthritis. Another man in pain from something else, some annoying mortal ailment. A shopkeeper who had acquired the opium habit when he was a young sailor. She almost turned aside for this one, because he had many interesting stories to tell, but his body was past its prime, and she was in no mood to hold a soft, aging body tonight, or look into middle-aged eyes ringed with laugh-wrinkles.

She hesitated before climbing the stairs. Was the second floor going to be more of the same?

Unwilling to come up with another hunting ground this late at night, Adulfa sighed and put her cane to the first step. Up she went, remarkably spry for a person of her advanced age. This floor was arranged differently than the one she had just left. There was one large, circular room, with little individual zones of privacy partitioned off with curtains that could easily be pulled back. The floor was littered with huge, brightly colored cushions. There were much smaller, secret rooms around the perimeter, with hidden peepholes, but the women who came here to shed their troubles did not know about that. Adulfa had paid to be the only spectator at this evening's debauch. The idea of men spying upon women's ways with one another offended her. But she did not enter one of the voyeur's stalls. She stood near the fireplace (this room was kept quite a bit hotter than downstairs), and took it all in.

The party had begun at sundown, as soon as enough worshippers of the scarlet flower had gathered. Already most of the curtains had been withdrawn, so that the women were able to see (and touch) one another. Adulfa watched as two of the female servants approached a reclining woman whose eyes were closed as she savored the twilight state induced by the drug. One of them loosened the brunette's clothing, gradually unbuttoned the top of her dress, and briefly massaged her shoulders before moving down to her breasts. Adulfa felt her breath quicken as the nipples crinkled and became painfully hard. It didn't take them long to completely open her dress, and her naked body lay against a purple cushion, like a gift for royalty.

Smiling at each other, the attendants continued their mission of seduction. One of them tied an ivory object to the drowsy woman's right heel. It was shaped like a plump duck with a long neck, round head, and fat protruding bill that pointed straight up, as if the bird was trying to retrieve a fish held over its head. The other drizzled oil upon the toy, and then her partner bent the woman's leg at the knee and guided the duck's head into her. She had only to move that leg back and forth a few times before the client took over and penetrated herself of her own accord, moving slowly and sleepily.

Oil fell in a thin stream from the enamel pitcher, directed at the top of her sex. One attendant put her index finger there and rubbed the oil in, moving in time with the flexing thigh, calf, and foot that were stroking their owner deep inside. The brunette put both of her own hands at the juncture of her thighs and massaged herself, then one hand moved to her breasts, plucking and compressing them. The attendants smoothed her hair away from her face and withdrew, chatting softly in Mandarin about their lucky numbers, in preparation for buying their daily chances in the lottery. One of them asked the other about an herbal remedy for swollen ankles, to take home to her grandmother.

Other servants had lifted one of their guests into a large piece of fabric that hung from the ceiling like a sling or a hammock that one could sit in. While one of them gave her more opium to inhale, the others parted her legs and inserted a pair of fairly large, enamel balls. Adulfa knew the balls were hollow, and contained smaller, heavier spheres. As their host was rocked to and fro by her attendants, this device would engender a slowly building sensation of pressure and heat within her.

Other, more adventurous or simply more compliant patrons were being guided to one another, arranged in various tableaux which seemed to be the product of the serving girls' imaginations. Several pairs lay head to foot, pleasuring one another with nimble tongues, occasionally dipping their languid fingers into themselves or the other woman.

Adulfa took a few steps to her left to get a better view of a couple who had perhaps known each other before they arrived. The smaller one reclined in a chair with her legs splayed. Her brown hair was cropped fashionably short, and she wore a filmy slip that did nothing to hide her charms. Her bulkier partner had a more masculine short haircut, and thrust between her legs, manipulating an artificial phallus that looked as if it was made of ivory or smoothly polished bone. Her strong hands held her lover's shaved sex open, and Adulfa liked the way the bare skin became shiny with her juices. She relished the play of muscles across the active partner's shoulders. She loved the liquid slapping sounds of penetration, the abrupt changes in breath that communicated a desire for a change in pace or depth. The two of them seemed perfectly in synch, and Adulfa wondered how the woman on her knees obtained her own pleasure.

Eventually she wandered on, loathe to miss any of the fun. There was something that was not easy to arrange--a daisy chain, a small circle of women placed on their sides, each one's pretty mouth aligned with the inner lips of the one who was ahead of her in the circle. This had apparently been one of the first configurations put together this evening, because the participants had roused themselves from their dreams, and were perhaps even a touch frantic in their pursuit of mutual release. Adulfa made herself laugh by going 'round the circle and putting everybody back a pace or two. By the time they each got what they were trying to achieve, perhaps they would value it a little more, having had to work harder for it. Under the incense, Adulfa could smell their sweat and other secretions, and it reminded her of the hunger that had brought her here.

A continuous sobbing sigh came from the women scattered throughout the room, a rising and falling noise that pleaded for just a little more. The attendants moved through the orgy occasionally replacing a small toy with a larger one, or adding their attentions to bring about the crisis of climax. No wonder Monsieur Ching's establishment was so very lucrative, Adulfa thought. Men were so ignorant of women's needs that they were stunned by the simple sight of a girl making herself come, and could not believe it when they learned that each woman has a different way of touching herself. Why the sight of women together should arouse men so much, she could not understand, since the ease and great success of lesbian lovemaking would seem to her to indicate they had no need for male companionship.

Enough of these fruitless speculations about alien psychology. There, curled up like a little lost doggy on a Nile green silk pillow, was Adulfa's pet. She knew it the instant she spotted the girl's Raphael-esque red curls and skin the color of the first slightly blue milk of spring. Not to mention the bruised psyche that oozed out of her, and the remarkably high level of entitlement. Resentment, pride, weakness, indolence, and a desire to be special. A tasty combination. Tabitha (what an odd name) was still fully clothed, having resisted the blandishments of her attendant, who now sat back on her heels and kept her narrow eyes on the pipe and lamp. There, at least, was one person who would not be sorry to see someone leave the palace on Adulfa's arm.

Adulfa took the young lady's elbow and helped her to get up. Tabitha did not like being disturbed, but she came upright rather than do something as undignified as fight off Adulfa's hand. She balked, however, at being led toward the staircase, and so Adulfa saw she would have to take the pipe and its contents along. The lamp she had already in her flat. She pocketed the drugs and paraphernalia, then Miss Cloud of Ruddy Hair was willing to follow her anywhere.

A conspicuous purchase of more opium from Monsieur Ching by the front door was enough to seal the bargain. The girl even patted her hair and bit her lips to pretty herself up when she saw the number of bills that were changing hands. Adulfa was pretty certain that he had no illusions about what happened to the unfortunate inebriates she "helped to find their way home." The only limit he placed upon her was that she must not abduct anyone with a yellow skin. She had toured Japan five years ago and had her fill of geishas and samurai. It was no sacrifice.

Once outside, Adulfa dropped Tabitha's arm, and walked to the coach without looking behind her. The girl ran after what she thought was a young gentleman who could afford costly clothing, somebody who would not be too difficult to manipulate, someone whose embrace, if he should be enough of a boor to insist upon it, would not be aesthetically displeasing.

Adulfa did not help Tabitha into the carriage, which was up a little high for a girl in party shoes. But once the redhead had settled into the seat across from her, the vampire maiden slammed the door with the knob of her cane, and gave her prisoner a conspiratorial chuckle. "Ready for a bit of fun?" she asked, and relished the look of comprehension, the ambivalence on the girl's face as she realized that her companion's sex mirrored her own. So you smoke opium among the devotees of Sappho, Adulfa thought, but you consider yourself high above the cunt-lickers. We'll just see about that. Right now.

"Show me your breasts," she said crisply.

Tabitha gasped, and kept both of her hands on the cold leather seat.

Adulfa's cane spun through the air and struck her across the thighs. It was a crushing pain, and Tabitha cried out from it, and rubbed at the welt.

"I never repeat an order," Adulfa said, clearly prepared to strike again, and derive as much pleasure from it as she would from activities that would be much easier for Tabitha to endure.

The lass reluctantly undid her sheer floral print dress, and allowed it to fall to her waist. She had small, perfectly round breasts with coral pink nipples. At first, she thought to cross her arms in front of them, but one look at Adulfa's avid face persuaded her to drop all defenses.

The ruby-headed cane crossed the gulf of space between them once more. Adulfa drew its almost sharp end tip down Tabitha's cleavage, twirled it at the line between white skin and aureole. The nipples responded, and Adulfa smiled triumphantly. Effective stimulation was always more important than a mortal's illusions about their erotic preferences. She firmly believed there was no such thing as a woman she could not seduce and satisfy, even without using her vampiric power to alter the object of her desire.

"Pull up your skirt and spread your legs," she said, putting a mean note into the sentence.

Tabitha grew pale and stammered. But as she dithered, she gathered up the skimpy skirt in both of her hands and crumpled it just below her belly. She wore stockings held up with elastic garters around her thighs.

"Take those off," Adulfa said, pointing to the thin cloth that covered her mons.

Tabitha was so frightened, she actually used one hand to keep her skirt up while she awkwardly used the other hand to slip her panties off. Once she had removed them, she did not know what to do with them, and Adulfa said curtly, "Drop that!" Henri would find a fragrant little surprise in his empty cab, a tawdry flower.

"What a pretty cunt you have," Adulfa said, being vulgar because she knew it would offend her victim. Tabitha's face was flushed, making her look as if she had applied rouge that was too dark. She was one of those women who get large, perfectly round circles of color on their cheeks when they blush.

Knowing Tabitha would study her slightest gesture, Adulfa put the knob of her cane to her lips and delicately licked it all over. "Well-spread now," she reminded the girl, whose thigh joints were already aching, and put the cane between her legs. Its handle was as large as a goose-egg, a ruby-red oval of handblown glass, so carefully mated to the wood of the cane that there were no sharp, protruding edges. It was just the right size to make an impression on a self-centered beauty who disliked having to pay her own way. There was resistance at the entrance, which Adulfa neatly overcame, and soon Tabitha was hissing as her secret passage was filled.

"Let's just sit and be cozy, shall we?" Adulfa purred. The bouncing of the carriage moved the rod within Tabitha. The vampire kept one hand around it to make sure the motions did not cease. She watched Tabitha through slit eyes, interested to see if this cold and calculating person had a sensual side that could be awakened under duress.

It took more than a mile, but eventually Tabitha began to respond to the relentless pressure within her. She bit her lips as her hips moved involuntarily.

"Go ahead," Adulfa said crudely, "moan and groan and fuck yourself. Lick your fingers and finger your clit. You're my whore for this evening. Put on a good show, if you expect me to light the lamp for you later. Pretty slut."

This bald statement of the situation seemed to give Tabitha permission to reveal the sensations she was experiencing and the need they evoked. Her narrow hips went back and forth, struggling with the piercing head of the cane, and she ran her hands down her own breasts, scratching them lightly, before placing one hand between her own legs and squeezing her sex. She used the palm of her hand to apply pressure to her clitoris, rather than stroking it with a fingertip. Adulfa watched and remembered.

"Do you want me to fuck you?" she asked, escalating her attack on Tabitha's notions of propriety.

"Oh!" Tabitha said.

"Oh!" Adulfa mocked. "Any whore would know the right answer to that question, my dear. Are you too stupid to figure it out? Is my little adventuress less bright than a streetwalker who is more honest about her trade?"

"Yes," Tabitha whispered, her hand going up and down upon her vulva. "Oh, please, I must--I need--put it in me, yes, oh, it's in so deep, it's so big. I--I--"

"You have permission to come," Adulfa said dryly, just before the inevitable storm of weeping and genital contractions took over. It was a good way to plant the idea that Tabitha's sexual response was now under someone else's control. She yawned. When she was not replete with blood, it was difficult for her to empathize with a human in heat, or to remember what it felt like to crave such an inferior delicacy. La petit morte, indeed. Let's hear it for le grande morte.

Withdrawing the cane, Adulfa put the jewel to Tabitha's lips. "Clean it," she insisted. The girl's little pink tongue came and went with surprising rapidity. So she doesn't mind tasting herself, Adulfa thought, then said it out loud.

"I wouldn't mind--" Tabitha began, then stopped herself and stared out the coach's bobbing dark window, one hand stroking her thigh.

"You wouldn't mind, but you can't say it," Adulfa responded meanly, unwilling to give her any credit. She sponged the cane off with her pocket handkerchief and checked their location out the window. They were getting close to her home. A few moments of silence would be useful for bringing Tabitha's anxiety to a peak.

"Nothing from your old life can remain with you now," she explained, sounding almost kindly, when the carriage halted. "Leave your dress and shoes here in the cab. You can keep your stockings on. Walk ahead of me into the house."

Tabitha hesitated, and Adulfa brought the stem of the pipe out of her coat pocket far enough to remind her of the reward that awaited. She was surprised to realize that Tabitha's picture of her social status had gone up as Adulfa's demands had gotten more outrageous. Eccentricity and decadence were apparently associated in her bourgeois imagination with shimmering gold heaps and piles of inherited wealth. This was how Tabitha persuaded herself to obey the latest shocking command. Surely such a wealthy person would not discard her in the morning without replacing her cheap dress with something finer.

Henri had done more than a night of good work for her. Adulfa gave him a generous amount of money and allowed him to remember a brief glimpse of Tabitha's hindquarters. Then she sent him home, and followed Tabitha's slim but nicely rounded buttocks, straight back, and narrow, sloping shoulders down the path that led to the large house where she lived when she was in the mood for a sojourn in Paris.

The path to the house was made of irregularly shaped slabs of slate. It curved between thick stands of night-blooming jasmine. Adulfa was especially fond of this plant, and had it put in around every house she occupied for more than one season. The stones must be cold beneath Tabitha's naked feet. It occurred to Adulfa that she could remove her jacket and drape it over the frightened girl's shivering shoulders. But she dismissed this uncharacteristic, charitable thought with an impatient shrug. Tabitha would know much greater discomfort before she expired. She had been brought here to provide Adulfa with pleasure, and right now, the only pleasure available was the sight of the naked stem of her dark legs, the pale blossom of her torso, the slight tremble that verified Adulfa's power.

A turquoise light bathed the front door, the illumination of an electric bulb dispersed through a blue-green glass fixture. On either side of the door was a pair of panels made of inlaid ebony, bits of mirror, and mother-of-pearl. Adulfa liked the geometric figures, their impersonal symmetry. Tabitha waited, hugging herself and looking down, as if she were shy, poor little wench. Adulfa put her key in the door, but before she would let Tabitha into the warm house, she pressed the redhead's naked skin against the cold decorative panels and inflicted a particularly intimate kiss upon her sulky lips. Adulfa's mouth did not ask for a response; she simply went where she wished to be, and forced Tabitha to yield and be sweet about it.

It was particularly enjoyable to know that her prey's thighs smarted from the pressure of Adulfa's body, and to sense her indignation when Adulfa's insolent hands investigated her buttocks. Adulfa stepped back, drew Tabitha away from the wall, and spun her through the door. Would girls never learn that their false modesty simply attracted attention to the very zones they were pretending to defend?

In the hallway, Adulfa hung up her hat and cloak, and doffed the coat of her suit. Now she was clad in snug black wool trousers, a starched white shirt with a pleated front, and a satin bow tie with a subtle black-on-black design woven into the fabric. Her hair had grown a half-inch past her scalp, she noticed as she removed the top hat. Dawn was only three or four hours away, then. Enough time, surely, to have all the fun that was possible to wring out of slender, small-breasted, wary Tabitha.

The girl was standing awkwardly with her weight on one foot, looking off to the side with an unattractive blank expression on her fact. Adulfa shoved her toward the drawing room and kept after her like a sheepdog until she was safely behind its doors. The fire had to be fed, and she ordered Tabitha to take care of this task, ignoring her plea that sparks might fly and singe her bare skin. "All to the good, my dear," she said, arranging the lamp, pipe, and opium upon a low table. "Injuries become you."

The wallpaper was the color of weak tea, printed with the segmented stalks and thin, long leaves of bamboo, and the floor was covered with a stippled brown-and-cream wool carpet. There was only one chair in the room, a carved wooden throne imported from Malaysia. Tabitha was bright enough to understand that this was not meant for her, and even asked Adulfa's permission to sit on the floor at her feet. Though perhaps her motivation was to get closer to the flame and the pipe it would bring to life.

"You may smoke as much opium as you like," Adulfa said, and handed her an already-loaded stem and bowl. Tabitha hesitated for a moment, not precisely sure of how best to heat the opium, but there was so much of it, she probably would not get into trouble for wasting some. So she attempted to imitate the attendants at Monsieur Ching's, and eventually drew the solace she had been waiting for into her eager lungs. Adulfa relished the smell of a happy mortal and the hazelnut smoke.

They sat there for at least an hour. From time to time, Adulfa would require Tabitha to submit to one sort of vulgar fondling or another. Appeased by the opium, Tabitha moved in a drowsy semblance of enjoyment. But Adulfa was not some rube who could be conned into thinking he had actually driven a courtesan into a state of ecstasy.

There was a mirror with a wrought-iron frame in a corner of the room. Behind it was a larger-than-life framed oil painting of the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian. Adulfa had bought it because it was one of the few works of art she'd ever seen that actually captured the correct color of fresh blood. The saint's loins might be swaddled in yards of prudish white cloth, but his hips thrust lewdly forward to receive the pointed shafts of his enemies. His eyes were turned heavenward, and the look on his face evoked the transports of the brothel rather than the quiet pleasures of the cathedral. Adulfa positioned Tabitha so that she faced the mirror and the painting, and was not surprised to see that she had no response to the work of art. If someone was stupid enough to give her such a fine thing, she would hock it.

Instructing Tabitha that she must remain standing, Adulfa proceeded to stroke her with the sharp claws that her nails had become. The night passed. More quickly and more quickly still her hands flew across the blue-white flesh, striping and scoring its surface with faint red lines. Tabitha writhed, but kept her footing, terror barely kept at bay by the reassuring fumes of the poppy.

"Look," Adulfa ordered her. "Do not turn away. On penalty of death, do not close your eyes."

Then she took Tabitha's chin in her left hand, twisted her neck a bit, and sank her fangs into the tender skin at its base. Even lost in the joy of feeding, she had enough presence of mind left over to rejoice at Tabitha's response--naked fear, repulsion, pain, disbelief, and still more fear.

Adulfa decided to make things still more difficult for her victim, and forced her legs apart. Her hand sank home, ignoring the dryness created by the narcotic. The combination of sexual penetration with the puncture wounds of the vampire's sharp teeth made Tabitha's eyes go wide with panic and confusion. Adulfa wound her own priorities through and over Tabitha's instinct for self-preservation, so that the girl stopped thinking about the danger of being fucked by someone with razors at the end of her fingers. Get hot, Adulfa willed her victim. Pant for me. You've never had it so good. You can't get enough of it. You don't care what you have to do to get more of it. Yes!

Hating herself even more than her captor, Tabitha yielded to Adulfa completely. She had no idea that her thoughts and physical sensations were no longer her own. Her orgasm was a catastrophe. It shook her to her foundations and left her wondering if she'd ever really had one before. If not for Adulfa's hand beneath her buttocks, she would have fallen to the floor.

Adulfa withdrew from her feeding place, contented by the lovely texture and savor of Tabitha's blood. She had not drunk hard enough to still the girl's heart, but she was fairly sure she had not left her enough blood to keep it going for many more hours. Dawn was closer than she had estimated. It was long past time to be abed. Let the wench expire here before the fireplace, Adulfa thought. She would take out the trash tomorrow evening.

"Where are you going?" Tabitha asked, clutching at her ankle.

Adulfa evaded her fingers. "Away from you," she succinctly replied. "Somewhere you cannot go."

"But what about me?" Tabitha cried.

Adulfa shrugged. "What about me?" she mimicked shrilly, and left the room, stopping to take her coat and cape with her. Tabitha might try to steal something valuable or vandalize the house. Who cared? The villa was rented. The only thing Adulfa knew she was unlikely to do was run away, because there was not a stitch of female clothing in the entire place.

When she arose from her coffin the next evening, Adulfa was a little surprised to see that Tabitha had lived through the night, and furthermore had used up every bit of the opium they'd brought home from Monsieur Ching's. "You don't have any food in this house," Tabitha informed her, sounding cross. "What am I to do for breakfast?"

"It's dinner time," Adulfa said absently, looking at her injured and still-bloody neck.

"So take me out to dinner," Tabitha suggested. She had found a length of fabric that Adulfa recognized as an ice-blue damask tablecloth. It took her only a moment to wind it about her body, tuck it here and there, and she looked as if she was wearing a chic evening gown. She did up her hair in one of the matching napkins, after the fashion of Josephine Baker's African headwraps.

"You deserve a reward for such ingenuity," Adulfa said, and went to fetch her coat and hat. She was amused by how quickly Tabitha had accommodated herself to the unique physical requirements of her new sugar daddy. Perhaps getting your neck mauled was less unpleasant than being pummeled by some gin-soaked student of philosophy. Tabitha could gorge herself while Adulfa decided where to go for her own feast. Perhaps, Adulfa thought, I shall slip out without paying for her meal.

But she did no such thing.

Looking back on their first evening many years later, Adulfa could not say for certain when she had decided to keep Tabitha by her side, and allow her to live. Perhaps it was the great joy of clasping and blooding someone whose shock and fear were expressed with unusual intensity. Certainly she was tasty, exceptionally so, though that had never been enough to engender mercy in the past. She was really quite an annoying person--petty, whiny, greedy, vain, ungrateful. But nice to look at and charming simply because she would never try to be anything other than herself. Tabitha was content to be a social-climbing parasite with no particular talent other than her youthful beauty, flawless table manners, and ability to waltz like a swan or charleston like a harlot. No matter how much she enjoyed the pleasure that Adulfa gave her, she never abandoned her firm belief that she was not a lesbian, and did not like or need these perverse caresses. Contact with the supernatural could not budge her stout French atheism, tinged with a dollop of Roman Catholic guilt. Adulfa supposed people loved their dogs or cats for less good reasons. Anyway, she did not love Tabitha. And certainly did not need her. She was simply a convenient amusement that overstayed its welcome by a year or two.

Toward the end, things did, Adulfa was prepared to concede, get a little out of hand. She didn't seem to be able to stop herself from taking blood from the girl too frequently, and taking too much of it each time. She was ambivalent about her decision to allow Tabitha to live, and part of her was curious to see how much hard use she could survive. The girl got more wan, she swooned more often, she became more prone to talking to herself and even had the occasional hallucination. But she went on living, a scion of the durable middle class.

Tabitha almost at once developed the irritating habit of trying to run away while Adulfa was asleep. For a while, it was entertaining to pursue and retrieve her. Adulfa would sometimes wait several days before setting out after her, to allow Tabitha to think that this time she had really gotten away. But eventually that was not very much fun. Tabitha could not seem to think of many original ways to run, or new places to hide. So Adulfa kept her chained to the four-poster Chinese lacquer bed where she preferred to use her.

It's true that Tabitha complained bitterly about this, but why? Adulfa brought her everything she might need--food, books, games, newspapers, art supplies, music, toiletries, even bathed her. The chains were long enough to allow her to reach the commode and bidet. Adulfa also brought her kittens, puppies, fish, a bird or two, though she had trouble remembering to care for them, so they did not last very long. But Adulfa thought the novelty of having a new sort of creature about the place ought to have made up for that. And the opium was never allowed to run out.

The problem was that Tabitha could not entertain herself. She had inadequate inner resources. She longed for the society of others like herself. She would, Adulfa knew, not last very long in the isolation of the vampire's cursed immortality.