The Mammoth Book Of Vampire Stories Written By Women

"Yeah, or go drive a stake through her heart!" Mona straightened up, fingers combing nervously through her silver-streaked hair. "Man, I thought I killed Diva Demona but that psycho bitch went and dug her up. Now my dead past is out there walking around and I feel like I oughta go shoot it in the head or something."

"Don't sweat it, kiddo. I'm sorry I brought it up." Minerva put her hand on her heart like a boy scout. "I swear it'll never happen again."

She leaned in and squeezed Mona's thigh.

"So, honey," she said, wiggling her eyebrows in preposterous imitation of some smooth-talking pick-up artist. "You wanna go back to my place and fool around?"

Mona laughed.

"Why, I thought you'd never ask!" she said.

Minerva had a session that night and so Mona struck out on her own, needing to move, to walk, to drink down the essence of the city, her long-lost lover. Some primal gravity drew her back to her old stomping grounds and she found herself walking the avenues of her misspent youth with a strange and clinging sense of unreality. It seemed the neighbourhood had changed as much as she had. So many of the old familiar bars and clubs that had nurtured Diva Demona were gone, scabbed over with rusted metal shutters or mysteriously replaced by trendy cafes full of immaculate counter-culture acolytes. The streets all seemed fake, like a low-budget movie set of themselves.

She stood on the corner of First Avenue and Ninth Street, letting the warm ache of nostalgia wash over her. There was the Korean fruit stand where she always bought oranges and cookies and cool white roses. There was the news-stand where the old Indian man used to scowl at her choice of fetish-oriented periodicals.

In a sudden rush, she was assailed by ghosts, flickering memories of all those old endless nights sparkling with dreamy, drunken glitter and arrogant passion as she stalked these streets like a high-heeled predator, marking territory, immortal in that moment like only the young and stupid can ever really be. She remembered tumbling like a kitten through the most extreme fantasies with the utter conviction that there would never be a tomorrow.

She took a deep breath. The rich smell of hot salted dough and spiced tomatoes wafting from the steamy interior of the corner pizzeria competed with the dark thundercloud of patchouli and jasmine surrounding a vendor of essential oils and the toxic-sweet exhalations of passing buses. So many memories.

Mona shook her head. It was easy to be seduced by the past, the good times. Easy to forget the way that lifestyle had nearly swallowed her with its unrelenting embrace and narcotic bite. The armour-plated image of the Vampire Goddess, the mistress of men's fear and desire, the Queen of Pain, that exotic persona that she had worked so hard to craft had become a prison, a mask fused to the soul, with no escape, no way out. With Victorine, she had to be on stage 24-7, always performing until she began to forget who she really was. Victorine could never accept her longing for simplicity, for humanity. Everything had to be like those damn photos she always took. Gorgeous and exotic and frozen in time, immune to the entropy and inanity of everyday life.

It was Mona who had crated Diva Demona, but it was Victorine who would not let her die.

Mona bit down on the soft flesh inside her cheek. No matter what Victorine decided to do with her irretrievable leftovers, Mona had already escaped, years ago. That crazy life was for ever past tense and she had grown up into a strong and unapologetic woman. A passionate writer who had mulched under the nightmares and ecstasies of the past to create fertile ground for unflinching fictions. She knew who she was.