Sinners’ Opera

She seemed to be in close communication with the man on the cross. My upper body rested on her lap, my legs stretched on a cold floor. Lush breasts cradled my head.  I was tempted to turn my face into the warm softness but that might get a man slapped.  Her red blouse smelled of baking bread, the tiny pearl buttons mesmerizing.

"I do declare you had me worried. You been so still like.”

Her thick dialect called to me from the past, but I didn't know if it was yesterday or years ago.  I don’t know who I am.  Frowning, I tried to remember.  A tentative smile toyed with her lips.  I started to smile back, but the scent of fear distracted me.  My clothes reeked of fear.

Another fragrance—dusky red and delicious—sent a wonderful shiver through me.  The rich aroma of her blood appealed to me on levels I didn’t understand.  The sensation was raw hunger mingled with passion, yet more, much more.  Beyond the blood-scent, the musk of old wood and incense, the perfume of religion, summoned a vision of a blond boy in black velvet and white lace kneeling at an altar.  As I grasped at memory, like a wave retreating from the shore, something important slipped away from me.

The woman gazed down at me with such compassion, I wanted to touch her lips, tell her how much...how very much...I ached to kiss her, but when I tried to lift my hand nothing happened. Terrified, I glanced at my hands, the bleached fingers curled into dead claws.  The hands once considered magic and beautiful were horrible.

Panic drew my knees toward my chest. "Oh God, my hands can't be paralyzed."

The blow was physical, knocking the breath from me.  If I'd been struck blind, even deaf, I could still play but if my hands were paralyzed—I was lost.  Music was my most beloved mistress.  My piano alone stood between madness and me.

My companion shook her head, refusing to meet my gaze.  “Shush now, you going to be all right. Mother Superior’s gone to call for help.”

“Mother Superior?" Was I lying in a nun’s lap? I was in a church, and that seemed totally absurd for some reason but I was too terrified to laugh.  Crisp dark curls peeked from beneath a red bandana not a wimple. "You’re not a nun.”

“I come help the sisters out.  I might be a nun some day.”

Why didn’t she shut up?  Her pity mortified me.  Since I'd been that boy in velvets and lace, no one had seen me cry.   Swallowing convulsively, I squeezed my eyes closed.  The other feelings she excited, I couldn't deal with now.  She gripped my shoulder, and I remembered to breathe but refused to open my eyes.  I couldn’t bear the sight or the scent of her.

Like an internal map, an anatomical image of flesh, muscles and veins spread across my eyelids.  Hours, days, years might have passed but it was probably only a moment or two. Tingling needled my numb arms, swept into my fingertips, relaxing the ugly claws.  Breath held, afraid to hope, I willed my right hand to rise, felt the sensation of movement and opened my eyes.  The hand lifted, hovered, flopped on my stomach.  Dried blood crusted a jagged hole in my velvet coat.  Fresh blood warmed the center of the wound.

Ah, another shade of the dusky red fragrance.  My blood possessed a wild bouquet, almost feral, and completely different from the woman's blood.

"See. Your hands is okay.  You want a drink of water?"  She rested a warm palm on my forehead, reached behind her with the other to produce a gold chalice, set with garnets.  “You're not feverish. Chilled more like.  Try to drink a little, Hon."

Relief made me giddy.  I smiled, imagining a geyser of water gushing from the hole in my stomach.  Mustn’t laugh or I'd never stop.  To be sure, my situation was no laughing matter.

The water smelled fresh as a mountain spring, and I was parched. When I placed my hands over hers, she inhaled, surprised how cold they were.  I drank deeply, the molten liquid searing my throat and bursting into flame in my stomach.  Agony folded me over her arm as bloody water spewed between my clenched teeth.  She stroked my back while I retched, trying to vomit my guts on the church floor.  At last, shuddering and weak, I collapsed in her lap.

"It’s just tap water.  Are you okay?”  She mopped my lips with a crumpled paper towel she’d fished from her pocket.  “Poor angel. We found you on the river bank, legs in that freezing water.  When we pulled you out, we thought you was—”  She trapped her lower her lip between her teeth, biting off the last word.

Dead whispered in my mind with the woman’s thick accent.  Mystified, I glanced at the man on the cross.  What miracle was this?

“We was looking for a little girl that her momma called and said was coming this way.  Lucky I was here helping. I’m strong. I helped them get you up here.”

I watched the woman who'd rescued me struggling for words of comfort.  None came. Rain hissed at the silence.

Her gaze shifted.  We both watched her fingers deftly untangling blood-matted blond hair stuck to my jacket.  As she worked, she hummed the hymn, Just As I Am.

“You’re very kind.”  The water had scalded my throat raw, but I wanted to reassure her that she hadn't frightened me by thinking I might die.  "Thank you for helping me."

She lifted her head, a wistful smile on her lips and asked, as if we were conversing at a garden party, “Are you English?"

“I think I am,” I said, frowning with the effort to remember. "Yes."

“You talk like it." Tender as a mother, she stroked the hair back from my forehead.  "Do you hurt bad?"

"No."  The pain had lessened with each heartbeat.  No longer warm and wet, the wound tingled and I'd seen it healing.  Was I delirious?

“Talk to me some more if it don’t hurt. I do just love an English accent.  I used to dream of going off to England, meeting my Prince Charming."

Dreams misted the black gold eyes drifting over my face. Her memories came to me as clear as images projected on a movie screen.  She thought I resembled a British musician in the rock band she'd been watching on television the day the lawyer delivered adoption papers.  That sinful day Mary Jones had cast her illegitimate son away, like little Moses, on a river of legal documents.  Mary considered taking vows to atone for that sin.  My heart segued to the rhythmic throb of her pulse. I was too sick to question why I heard her thoughts so I simply closed my eyes to listen.  In the limbo between wakefulness and sleep, her sorrow lapped at me.  I wished somehow I could ease her pain.

Razor-sharp memory sliced me open and I sat bolt upright. "God's Teeth!"

Before the fall, I'd been shot.

And like machinegun fire, images snapped before my eyes.  I saw my Jag plunging over the guardrail at the very top of the Cooper River Bridge.  Now, in the silent sanctity of a church, I felt the wind whistling past my face as the force of the fall sucked the breath from my lungs and tried to pluck me from the convertible.  Irrationally, I’d clung to the wheel as my beloved roadster sank, in a slow rocking ballet, to the river bottom.

During that interminable swift plunge, I hadn’t been afraid of dying.

Mary touched my arm, gazing at me across an unbridgeable gulf.  "Be still, Hon, or you're gonna start bleeding again."

I was in no danger of bleeding to death or dying from any natural cause. I knew why I’d heard her thoughts, why the aroma of her blood bedeviled me.  I knew who and what I was.

The blood staining her blouse was a miracle drug that could cure the most grievous human diseases—and secure eternity for a predator. The wound that would have been fatal to a mortal had almost healed. Within hours after the ritual blood exchange, a fragile yet potent virus had mutated my DNA.  I'd never actually died; would never feel death's cold hands.  The Vampyre Effect was a transformation from one species to another.

What miracle I’d asked?  An unholy miracle.  Resurrection at the price of human sacrifice.

The pain twisting inside me was a living thing—ugly, urgent, older than the world.  In a vain attempt at control, I ground my teeth together until my jaw ached, clenching my hands into fists, the tendons bunched like steel bands beneath the translucent skin.

I lost control, my eyes turning red.  I shoved at her.  “Run, Mary. For God's sake run.”

Her hands branded my shoulders, sending shockwaves of need coursing through me. “How did you know my name?"

“You look like a Mary.”  I gasped, trying to crawl away. “Bloody Hell, run woman.”

Saliva broke beneath my tongue.  My heart thundered like the charge of the Scots Grays.   Instinct twisted me around to face my salvation and my damnation. My lips parted to reveal the one unmistakable characteristic of my kind.

“Lord Jesus, save me.” Mary clutched the little cross around her neck.

I knelt in front of my savior as was befitting.   Holding her gaze, slowly I leaned very near her heaving breasts to touch the cross to my lips.  “Too late to run.  Too late to hide and Mary Dearest, your cross won't save you."

Her eyes clouded. Her jaw went slack. Even when I was too weak to command my more esoteric powers like enchantment, I’d mesmerized her anyway.  It was just too bloody easy. Vampires were the perfect predators.  But I had a choice.  Didn't I?

They are cattle for the slaughter.  My maker's words echoed across the centuries.  I’d never held that truth to be self-evident.  I preferred to view our relationship with humanity as a mutual love affair with death.  If I 'd followed my vampire mother’s advice, I’d be a damned sight better off tonight, and Mary’s life, unhappy as it had been, wouldn’t be in jeopardy.  I hated myself and I hated the wannabe nun for tempting me.

“What’s your name?” She inhaled a long, slow breath as she toyed with my hair. “You’re as beautiful as an angel.”

Another wave of misery washed over me.  She wasn't the only one who thought I looked like an angel.  Once someone, lost to me now, believed I was an angel.

“My name is Morgan.” I couldn't bring myself to say my second name, an angel’s name.

Mary ran her finger down my cheek.  "Pretty name Morgan.”

So simply, the seductive dance that would end in Death began.

The pulse beneath her jaw and her breathing quickened.  I was starved for living blood.  Moth to flame, I bent over her, my open mouth brushing a kiss to her satin skin.  When my tongue traced the thudding artery, she whispered my name and shivered, didn’t cry out when I ripped her cotton blouse from neck to waist, the pearl buttons popping off to dance on the floor.

“I’ve been bad.”  She stroked my shoulders. “Sold my body to men. Had to. To keep body and soul together.”

“One does what one must to survive.”  I caressed her lips with my tongue.

Her mouth opened for my kiss.  Shuddering, she melted into my embrace.

Instinct was too strong, my need too desperate to indulge in a slow seduction or to worry about the spiritual ramifications of taking a would-be nun.  In shades of crimson, I saw her, a vessel brimming with life.  With a moan of desperation, I crushed her to my chest.  My fangs glided into the right carotid artery.  Blood, as sacred to me as Sanctified wine, spilled into my mouth.  My body and my cock went rigid.  Locking her arms around my neck, she welded my mouth to her throat.  I sucked hard, bruising her flesh.  She moaned, undulating against me.

Mary wanted a man not these cold dead saints.  Or my cold deadly lips.

Deep in bloodlust, I would probably have killed her then and there, but a psychic warning like a chill seeped through me.  In my mind, images formed.  A black bat battled the rising storm.  Robes billowing, a nun hurried down a brick path shadowed by an arbor of water oaks.  Like dirty grave shrouds, Spanish moss fluttered in the wind.

Thunder rattled the stained glass windows, and sirens screamed louder at the night.

"’Od’s teeth not now." Blood-blind, I tore free of Mary’s embrace, scrambling to my feet as the door opened on a frigid blast.

A hand climbed my leg.  Mary called my name.  The Mother Superior’s back was turned while she flipped a switch.  My hands shot up to shield my eyes from the stab of light.

The old woman’s voice rasped like a rusty saw, setting my teeth on edge. “Bad accident. Some fool drove off the Cooper River Bridge.  Finally got through to the EMS."

Hail pelted the roof.  The Mother Superior turned.  Her hand flew to her chest, clutching the stab of pain.  I licked the blood from my lips.

“Dear Merciful God.”  She staggered back, fumbling behind her for the latch. “What—what—"

What a grisly sight I must be.  Blood and mud caked my clothes, leaves and refuse tangled in my hair.  I felt supremely evil. Evil with a tear in his eye.

The old woman had become a religious statute, only her lips moving. “God help me.”

The irony of it struck me, funny really, but very sad.  The victim of that bad accident at the bridge had drifted downstream to wash up at the mercy of the Church. The sirens screamed for me.  Mary’s blood, spiced with lust, moved hot in my body, sharpening perception.  I could read the old woman as easily as I might read a book.  Cancer ate at her lungs but the well-worn grief gnawing at her faith would claim her life before the disease ran its fatal course.  I felt sorry for her, but the hunger had no friends, knew no compassion. Injured, bled dry, I required blood to heal.

The Mother Superior squared her shoulders in a show of courage though the acidic odor of terror betrayed her. “The police are on their way.  You’ll never get away with this.”

“Indeed.” Like a priest offering benediction, I spread my arms in invitation. “Mother, give me your pain.”

Elizabeth Berry, Mother Superior, clasped the loose scarf of flesh beneath her chin in a futile attempt to stifle a cry.  As she limped toward the altar, her legs gave way beneath her bulk.

“Oh, oh, Johnny.”  Rocking to and fro, she keened, “How could God be so cruel?”

Would that I could free her from the spell I’d cast, but her misery was my ticket to freedom.  I supplied lurid detail from my sojourn in the Cooper River because little Liz hadn't actually seen her brother drown.  As if a ghost struck the old pipe organ, thunder boomed a long rolling chord.  I turned back to Mary.  My Madonna had roused from her swoon.

Dark eyes watched me.  Her tongue glided across her lips.  Ample breasts rose and fell in a hypnotic rhythm. I smelled the musk of sexual desire.  Mary would not have made a good nun.

I smiled and stroked her hair.  “And so you shall hold me.”

When I drifted down beside her, she kissed me full on the mouth, didn’t flinch when my teeth lacerated her tongue.  Vertebrae by vertebrae, she relaxed.  It was a holy experience—the sweetest water to a man dying of thirst.  I drank her beauty to the end, and when it was done, I was whole.  At last, Mary was free—without having to utter those black-and-white promises.

The fierce electricity of the kill shocked me to my feet, power vibrating every cell.  The texture of light and dark I felt in shimmers—the light translucent, weightless, the dark opaque, soothing.  The howling wind, volleys of rain, even the hellish wail of sirens, were music.

I checked my watch.  At twenty to nine, the expensive timepiece had stopped marking time.  My sojourn in the river and recuperation had been short.   Ninety minutes give or take.  Immortality, isn’t it grand?  That remained to be seen.  For me, eternity had become a game of chance.  Health and powers restored, I faced an uncertain fate.

The Mother Superior wept.  Mary slept at my feet.  I met remorse and sorrow in their most immaculate form.  In the name of love, I’d dared to break all the rules. In the name of love, I’d thought to shed my nature like a worn cloak.  In the name of love, I’d lost everything, even my own identity.  Regrets were immaterial now.  Before dawn, there’d be a gracious plenty of time to mourn.  Behind me, my savior awaited her funeral pyre.

I bent to sign the cross over Mary’s forehead and sank into trance to collect the power.  Fire and ice resonated in the core of my being.  Blue sparks shot through my aura. It was pleasure; it was pain.  It was necessary.

“Go to your God, Sweet Mary.”  I focused white-hot, blue-cold wildfire on an empty shell.  The body glowed, ignited in a blinding cerulean flash.  When the searing light faded, no trace of the sweet sorrow named Mary Jones remained.

The buzz of voices on a police radio warned me that time had indeed run out.  I hurried to the old woman weeping for her long dead brother.

"I'm sorry."  I kneaded her shaking shoulders, but the Mother Superior ignored my apology as I must ignore her pain. "Sister Mary ran away. Forget the man you fished from the river. He was never in your church. Release the pain.  Sleep, Mother."

Tears overflowed the deep wrinkles carved in her face. She swayed, and as she collapsed, I caught her, easing her to rest at the altar.  In the parking lot, car doors slammed.  I fled down a dark hall, found a side door and burst into the fury of the storm at the back of the church.

Across the brick path, a stained glass window cast a reflection in primal colors.  An image of a crucified Christ gleamed in a puddle of rain.  I’d grown up Protestant in a world where Catholicism was a punishable offense.  Now I was an infidel.  Still a shiver leapt down my spine.  Moments ago, I’d taken a prospective bride from Him.  I stared at the wavering reflection.  The heartbreaking truth was that I’d find no friend in this town tonight, and tomorrow who'd be the first to find me?  The police or the vampire who loved me yet was duty-bound to destroy me?

The clamor of men’s voices broke my trance.  Charleston’s finest were on my heels like hounds on a fox.   I jumped over the accusing Christ and whisked into the stinging darkness.  Swift and silent, I skimmed over the brick path.  Beneath the canopy of oaks, stone angels guarded mausoleums in the newer part of the cemetery.   I sank down on a wet stone bench, buried my face in my hands.  Mustn't allow the police to catch me, of course, but I’d hear them long before they drew close.   The wind still howled.  Yet here it was quiet as if the sleet and rain were a curtain cutting off all sound.  Spectral light, like foxfire, darted behind the trees—the headlights of passing cars—another world and I was trapped outside.

The shimmer of a presence roused me from thought.  I lifted my head, eyes narrowed at the darkness.  The ghost of a child watched me from hollow eye sockets.  A deep chill rolled over me. My ancestral home was haunted, but I'd never been this close to an apparition.

“Mister? You all right?”  Her voice lilted like a xylophone.

Laughing at myself for allowing my imagination to run away with me, I swept wet hair back from my face and lied. “Yes, thank you.”

A refugee from Les Miserables peered at me with the strangest, most beautiful eyes I’d ever seen.  They were gray, flecked with black.  Her hair was as straight, thick and pale as mine, flowing over thin shoulders past her hips.  When she took a tentative step closer, I saw that her legs were horribly twisted, a birth defect.  Anger burned a hole in my chest.  I could have helped end the needless suffering of the innocent.  With what I’d given her—without me—soon Isabeau would save unborn children from this misery.  Tears stung my eyes.  I gritted my teeth against the grief and regret surging in me.

"That looks like blood on your coat."  The girl wiped her nose on her hand.  “It’s dark. What’re you doing alone in the graveyard?  Did somebody you love die?”

My throat closed.  I couldn’t breathe for a moment.  “Not exactly.”

“You’re either dead or you’re not.” The ghost-like urchin, shivering in a thin, torn jacket, couldn’t have been older than ten.

“That’s not exactly true either.”  I kicked an acorn with my toe.

She stepped a little closer into the shadow of the tomb where I sat.  “You talk funny.  Where you from?  Like music, kind of going up and down.”

“What are you doing here alone at night?  Aren’t you afraid of ghosts?”

Her face was young but too wise.  “Momma says the dead can’t hurt you.  It’s the living you got to worry ’bout.”

“Your mother is a wise woman.”  I studied rain-jeweled trees, rain-slick path.

The girl shrugged a shoulder.  “If she was all that smart, she'd get rid of Tommy.”

I wished I'd time to continue this conversation.  “That’s why you ran away?”

“Yep.  Sick of kids laughing at me.  Tired of being hungry.  I’m going to ask the sisters to take me in.  I can work.”  She tilted her head to the rain, sparkling on her lashes and her long hair. “I always thought I’d be a great lady someday, you know?”

“A great lady?”  My voice sounded as hollow as the stone angel weeping over the tomb.

She flung her hands wide above her head. “I’d marry a prince or somebody famous.”

I tried to smile but failed.  “Prince Charming isn't likely to find you in a nunnery.”

This little girl was my chance to play the angel once more.  Last night, I’d withdrawn ten thousand American dollars from an account in the Grand Caymans as a safety net for my high wire act.  There was scant chance the authorities had thought to freeze, or could even find my holdings, and I had plastic by the number.  I fished in the chest pocket of my coat.  My wallet was still there, bulging with soaked thousand dollar bills.

“Are you a bum?” She cocked her head and a charming eyebrow

“Do I look like a bum?”  I’d dreamed of changing the world.  How the Mighty fall.

“Well, yeah.” She stressed the last word.

A bitter laugh burned my throat. "Hold on to your dreams.  Dreams do come true.  Allow no one to convince you otherwise.”  My hand shook, and I almost dropped the wallet engraved with my initials and the St. Averil crest—worthless reminders of a life left behind.

As I began shoving handfuls of sodden currency into her pockets, she gasped.

“Is this real money?”  Her eyes narrowed, studying the bills.  “It is.  A lot of money.”  An accusing gaze locked to mine.  “Did you rob a bank?"

“The money is mine.  Now it's yours." Thinking of a special little girl I’d taught to dream, I smiled wistfully.  “I must warn you.  Princes are in short supply.”

“You are an angel,” she whispered reverently.  “Grandma said angels didn’t always look like angels when they appeared to you.”

A sharp pain lanced my heart.  “I’m not an angel, child. Run along home before you catch a chill.”  And I used energy I couldn't afford to expend to simply disappear.

I reappeared behind a mausoleum ten feet away, still smelling of rotting flesh.  I fled past the new headstones, gliding around the shadowed turn where the path twisted sharply, the bricks chipped and broken.  The old cemetery dated to the birth of the colony—a time I’d well enjoyed.  Here there were no faded silk flowers.  The loved ones who’d tended these graves were moldering in other graves.  I stopped at a raised tomb, wiped the inscription with my sleeve.

Samuel Rutledge, a soldier of the South.

"Samuel, Old Man, I shall be honored to accept your hospitality this bleak evening.”

I eased the lid of the crypt back.  The stench of aged death assaulted me, but I’d run out of luck and choices, so I climbed into dusty, dank darkness.  A long sigh escaped me as I settled the stone in place, extinguishing the fury of the night.  The static of lightning capered along taut nerves.  Thunder resounded like the final chords of a requiem, but I was safe from the storm raging outside.  A different storm raged inside the tomb I shared with Samuel.  Eventually, one must pay the piper. Tonight, I’d paid handsomely for a very short dance.

“Move your elbow, Sam,” I told my musty bedfellow.  “You’re poking my ribs. By the way,” my voice caught, “it’s my birthday.”

While the hours crawled by, I explained to Sam how I’d lost the only woman I’d ever loved.  I told him about my purpose and my dream.  After all, the dead tell no tales.

The instant sleep claimed me, I saw Isabeau reflected in her bathroom mirror.  The light from a single candle flickered over her pearly nakedness.  In her hand was a red, red rose.  On a white marble countertop, burgundy wine shimmered in a fragile blown-glass goblet.  Eyes closed, she swayed hypnotically as a concert grand piano sang The Moonlight Sonata.   My beloved was listening to my music!

A convulsion of dry sobs wracked her naked body.  She squeezed the rose tighter and tighter until blood leaked from the crevices between her fingers and red rivulets ran down her arm.  She opened her hand, stared at the blood then, shaking with silent sobs, raked the brutal thorns into her wrist.

I screamed, “Isabeau,” but there was no sound.

Like the dead, at sunrise, the undead tell no tales.

Thus dawned the first day of a future without Isabeau.

**

For nearly four hundred years I've witnessed miracles of technology and the political wars that reshaped the world.  I've seen much to hate, a great deal worthy of forgiveness.  I was born May 29, 1633, the only son of the Earl of St. Averil and his Lady Ilsabeth de Gueraint D'Arcy.  He died at the Battle of Naseby fighting with Charles I.  Heartbroken, she died alone in 1685.  By that time, an unnaturally long youth had forced me to fake my own death for the first time.  I watched from afar, unable to attend my mother’s funeral.

Yesterday I was a celebrated pianist.  I learned my art on the harpsichord from an Austrian genius named Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.  Later, I studied with Liszt, Ravel and Debussy.  From the Duke of Newcastle, then the Frenchman de la Gueriniere, I studied classical horsemanship.

Tonight I am a wanted man.  Mortal justice would try me for a crime I did not commit.  My brethren wish to destroy me for a crime I committed with willful intent.

It all began in January, a brief five months ago.  Actually, the saga began in 1659 before the restoration of Charles II, but that's another story...

This is our story—Isabeau’s and mine—our Folie à deux.