The Mammoth Book Of Vampire Stories Written By Women

But then Danielle said, "But should I kill myself I go to hell! Should I live I live in hell!"

"Oh, sweet Mother of God," said Clarice, "what has happened to you, dear friend?"

Danielle broke away, and reached the barn to see if she'd made a mistake, to see if Alexandre was waiting for her in his stall. But the straw was kicked about, and the pitchfork dropped on the floor where Alexandre had tried to protect her. His jacket was in a tangle by the wall. Danielle wailed, picked up the jacket, and clutched it to herself. Her friends stood in the doorway, dumbfounded.

"I must die, too!" she screamed.

"Danielle!" It was Clarice. "Come out of there. Talk to us! You've got us frightened!"

Alexandre's journal was on the beam. But the Bible was gone. Danielle dug through the straw, clawing and sifting the sharp, golden bits, but the Bible was not there. Alexandre had not taken it with him. But it was no longer there. What had happened to it? She wanted it for herself, to take it with her to her death.

Danielle stood, and fled the barn. She knew the answer, as surely as she knew LeBeque and Blue Eyes and the man with boils and the man at the beheading machine would go to hell for their civil and humane test. She shoved past the other maids, saying, "I shall go to the places where the prostitutes wander. I shall make myself available to a murderer, that's what I shall do! I will go to heaven if I'm murdered. For I will not live without him!"

Marie and Clarice tried to grab Danielle to hold her back, but she was too fast, too mad with grief, and they were left clutching air and the first raindrops of the evening.

They followed her. Against Clarice's concerns that they'd be relieved of their duties for leaving Bicetre without permission, they scurried after Danielle, shawls drawn up around their faces. Down one narrow Parisian street after another they went, calling for their friend, but not so loudly to attract the attention of the increasingly frightening citizenry of the streets. The rain let itself go in full force, driving some pedestrians from the roads and leaving only the determined, the tardy and the mad.

Danielle pushed her way to the rue Leon, a small and dismal alley lined with tall, narrow whorehouses, saloons and tenement shacks, some of which leaned precariously on poorly placed foundations. The rain blurred the lights of the lanterns which sat in splintering windowsill. Whores stood in petticoats and stockings in sagging doorways, thrusting their breasts and wiggling their tongues. Drenched clients in coats hurried for the warmth of the diseased temptresses, and vanished into the houses with low chuckles and growls. A skeletal dog limped across Danielle's pathway and wormed its way into a tenement cellar through a cracked window. In the shadows beneath rain-blackened stoops and behind rust-banded barrels lurked eyes that seemed to have no sockets. Teeth that seemed to have no mouths.

Danielle stopped in the centre of the alley. She stared up at the dark, rain-sodden sky and raised her hands as if bidding some divine spirit to save her.

"Kill me!" she said above the drumming of the rain on the cobblestones and rooftops. "Come now, there is surely someone who would relish the chance to satiate a blood lust! Here I am, and there is no one to charge you for my death, for there is no one in this God-forsaken town who would care I was gone!"

She closed her eyes and kept her hands aloft. She took a breath, expecting to feel a plunging knife in her ribs, or a dagger drawn across her throat. Now , she begged silently. Let it be done and over .

She heard nothing, save the giggling of the prostitutes in their houses and the cries of babies in the tenement rooms. She said again, "Here I am! A gift, for free!"

Spattering rain and muted laughter.

Then, "No, I don't want to die. God forgive me." And then again, "Yes, die I must! Release me!"

And then a hand on her forearm and a whisper, "Sister, you're soaked to the skin!"

Danielle opened her eyes to see a pair of red orbs gazing intently at her, mere inches from her own. The skin around the eyes was as white as a corpse's. Danielle gasped and floundered, but the full red mouth smiled and said, "Fear not, dear. I have what you want. You are certainly a young thing, yes?" Cold fingers gently brushed Danielle's hair from her neck and tipped her head to the side ever so slightly.

Danielle could not move her gaze from the red eyes, and she thought for the briefest moment, This is just a painted whore. A whore who kills on the side to assuage her anxieties. That's fine. That's good. A whore may kill more kindly than a man would have.

"I will release you to life that is not life, death that is not death. My gift to you. The gift many of us have asked for because of the dreadful state of our mortal existence as women on earth. Hold, dear, hold now."

Danielle held her breath.