The Mammoth Book Of Vampire Stories Written By Women

Marie had a brochure in her lap that touted the city's finer points. "They call it the 'Electric City of the Future'," she read, holding the paper to the light of the lamp beside her on the wall. The train jerked constantly, and she had to move her head with the tremors to keep up with the printed words. "More electric lights are in use here than in many other places in the United States. What do you think of that, Danielle?"

"That sounds fine," said Danielle. She picked at the cloth-covered buttons on her bodice, imagining her hands were Alexandre's. His hands were beautiful. She would never forget those hands. Marie continued to read and Danielle heard nothing but the tone of her voice.

Then: "Danielle?" It was Marie.

"What?"

"You've been silent for hours. It's nearly dawn and the train is still miles from Buffalo. We must find a sanctuary."

The Sisters moved gracefully from the passenger car to the storage car. It was here that luggage was stacked, and flats of tools and boxes of foodstuffs and sacks of material and paper. They curled up into three crates filled with nails, and awakened that evening on a loading dock along the Erie Canal. Quietly, they removed themselves before the dockmen got to the crates, and wandered out to Ohio Street to the scents of filthy water and ozone. A railroad track was in the middle of the street, and in the yellow glow of street lights an engine bearing a number of freight cars clacked and rattled past.

It was easy to find the part of town that revelled in drink and sex for money. It was not unlike the seedy sections of any city, except that here the dens and whorehouses sat toe to toe with grain elevators and shipyards. The number of undead was small; Danielle estimated no more than five or six from the vibrations in the air. They were the only Sisters. They stopped outside the gate to a large, canal-side elevator and teased the lone watchman at the gate into letting them in.

"We're from France," cooed Marie. "Just freshly arrived, Monsieur. We've never seen such a structure. It has us quite mesmerized. Please?" She touched her red lips coyly, and winked.

The man, flustered with the attention, said, "I don't do no whores. Go on 'bout your business."

Marie feigned horror at the suggestion. "Whores? Mon Dieu! Sir, we are ladies in the truest sense, sisters come from another land to learn what we may. But if we offend, then we shall be gone." The three turned away, and the man relented.

"Well, then," he said quickly. "I'm sorry, ma' ams. I meant no disrespect. Come in and I'll show you how the grain elevators work here in ole Buffalo." He unlatched the gate and the ladies came through, invited. But his brief introduction to the history of the canal was cut off as the three of them fell on to him and took his blood, then his life. They then found a comfortable hide-away in a small storeroom next to the elevator.

The following days tumbled one into the other. The Sisters slept undetected in the storeroom during the day, pressed like shadows behind old bits of furniture covered in cobwebs and many months' worth of dust. At night they walked Ohio and Erie Streets, dressed like ladies, unthreatening and demure, finding human creatures on which to feed and, when done, throwing the twisted bodies into the canal with the other sewage.

Things were as they had been for a long time. Until early March, when Danielle was pretending to sip coffee at a shop soon after nightfall and she spied through the grease-iced window a fruit peddler on the street pushing his cart and wiping his brow with a large and muscular hand. The man's face was not familiar — a hollow and sunken face it was — and the body thin and unspectacular. But the hands she knew. The hands were Alexandre's. She gasped.

Marie and Clarice, seated at the tiny round table with their friend, reached for her. "What is it?" whispered Clarice.

"Alexandre," said Danielle.

"You're mad!" said Marie. "What blood have you drunk last, that you would think you have seen your dead lover?"

"It's him."

"It's a fruit vendor, for Christ's sake," said Clarice. "Get your wits, and now. Don't lose your head."

Danielle tore free and raced out to the street. The vendor was gone, and she spent the rest of the night tracing his path by his scent and the scent of his rotting pears and apples. But the smells of the Electric City were strong, and mingled, woven together into a brash and stinging tapestry, and she lost track.

They retired when the darkness began to dissolve into day, and for the first time since her rebirth in Paris, Danielle felt a new hope. A new reason to embrace her immortality.

She would be with Alexandre again.