BORGO PRESS BOOKS BY DON WEBB
Do the Weird Crime, Serve the Weird Time: Tales of the Bizarre
A Velvet of Vampyres: Tales of Horror
The War with the Belatrin: Science Fiction Stories
Webb’s Weird Wild West: Western Tales of Horror
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 1994, 1995, 1996, 2012 by Don Webb
Cover art Copyright © 2009 by Fergus Fitzpatrick
FIRST EDITION
Published by Wildside Press LLC
www.wildsidebooks.com
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated with respect to Lilith Aquino.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
“Introduction: Why Vampyres? Why Now?” is published here for the first time. Copyright © 2012 by Don Webb.
“The Most Beautiful Man in the World” was first published in Dreams of Decadence (date unknown). Copyright © 2012 by Don Webb.
“Thirteen Lines” was first published in Blood Muse: Timeless Tales of Vampires in the Arts, edited by Esther Friesner and Martin H. Greenberg, 1995. Copyright © 1995, 2012 by Don Webb.
“The Lamp” was first published in The Edge, May/June 1996. Copyright © 1996, 2012 by Don Webb.
“The Evil Miracle” was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, August 1994. Copyright © 1994, 2012 by Don Webb.
“Scholomance” is published here for the first time. Copyright © 2012 by Don Webb.
“Kissing Sleeping Beauty” was first published in Fringeware Review #666, October 1994. Copyright © 1994, 2012 by Don Webb.
“Poe on the Morning After” is published here for the first time. Copyright © 2012 by Don Webb.
INTRODUCTION
WHY VAMPYRES? WHY NOW?
When John Polidori wrote “The Vampyre” in 1819, he created a lasting genre by remanifesting an old myth. Although centuries of good Christian thinking had done their best to bury the notion we know. We know. We know that the Past wanted to fuck us and suck the life out of us. And although it’s scary, we like the notion. As modern humans as we rush about in our daytime world we know that although we are too numbed and scattered to really deeply desire anything, we know that there must have been figures in the past who could have so desired. Odysseus was more clever, Hercules more strong, Solomon wiser. These are acceptable myths. But what of someone or something that craves Life much more strongly than we can? Are they not as likely heroes as well?
Or can deer make heroes of wolves?
Polidori took a few elements of folklore, his own interest in Mesmerism and his unrequited love for Lord Byron and hit the chord. What happens when our unconscious mixes the fear of death, the pang of the loss of loved ones and the desire for the unobtainable? It is a powerful and corrosive alchemy—sort of a Jungian Shadow with an Everclear chaser.
The Vampyre rears its lovely head in times of stress. When the objective universe has become overburdened with political, economic and environmental strife, the Vampyre is there. The unspoken longing, “If I could only, just once loose control!” summons them from their crypts and some of our inkbottles.
This small booklet has certain magical properties. If you keep under your pillow after you have read it, you dream of Vampyres. And they will dream of you.
—Don Webb
THE MOST BEAUTIFUL MAN IN THE WORLD
Her favorite hunting ground was the Café du Monde. She wasn’t the only one who preyed there, of course, there are great advantages to tourists as prey. It was an open-air cafeteria for vampires: as they wiped their powdered sugar from their chins and talked about how you couldn’t get coffee like this back home, you could size them up. Ever since the place opened in 1862 it had served the needs of the city’s undead.
There was a fellow there right now. He had had a hard night, maybe an argument with some friends, maybe a fight with his wife and so he had come down to Decatur Street to stare gloomily into his steaming coffee. He didn’t even notice the fat pigeons that landed by the tables, keeping like the café itself a twenty-four-hour schedule.
She would wait till he decided to walk back to his hotel. He didn’t look like someone that was staying in the Quarter, probably he had a room in one of the big hotels near the stadium. Sizing up prey was her second favorite part about being a vampire. She fantasized sometime about being a criminal profiler. Mrs. Sherman was very into criminal profilers. Not a lot of work opportunities for anyone who puts 240 down for age. Unlike some of her kind, she prided herself on keeping some tabs on the human world. It made the stalking better, it made the world more sensible, it made the feeding much, much better.
She was sitting in the shadows in the Square. Nine out of ten people couldn’t see her, some people regarded this as a feat of invisibility. She had thought so for years, until she had caught Norbert, that physics students from Tulane. He had known so much! He was the only victim that she had kept alive for a long time. They had had nearly eighteen months together. When she killed him, she had hoped that he would cross over. He was going to write a dissertation on the temporal bio-physics of vampires. Of course, she had to kill him before he had submitted anything to his doctoral committee, such information might be useful to the crowd of want-to-be Van Helsings that hovered around the vampire community like avenging angels. But it had made things so clear when he had told her…
Wait. He’s leaving the café now. Let him pass. Walk up from behind.
“Excuse me sir? Are you on the way to the hotel?” she asked.
He turned and took in her auburn hair, her warm brown eyes, her diaphanous dress; and she had seduced him with a glance. It was too easy sometimes.
“Yes, Ma’am. Can I help you?” he said.
“I am worried to be out so late. I had seen you at the hotel earlier, and I was hoping you could walk me back. I would feel much safer,” she said, already putting out her arm for him to take, which he did lightly, and with a smile thinking that he was the hunter not the prey.
“Of course I’ll walk you back, Ms—?”
“Burgess,” she said, “Sheila Burgess.”
They walked and he began small talk. Had she been in the city before? Did she like Bourbon Street? Had she visited the Voodoo Museum? What about the cemetery?
He was boring, so she decided not to spend too long with him. She talked about her knowledge of architecture, about the wrought iron and balconies and the numerous hidden gardens and tiny retreats.
“In fact,” she said, “there’s a famous courtyard just up that alley. We could look over the fence at it.”
They entered the alley.
He said, “I don’t see any courtyard, I don’t see any fences for that matter.”
“Silly I just wanted you off the street for a minute, so I could have you for myself.”
She put her arms up as if to draw him close for a kiss, and he bent down. When he passed close enough, she felt her will pouring into his body, holding him still for the feeding. The victim has to give himself willing, but once the gift is made, he is hers.
Her fangs pierced the throbbing artery, and hot life poured into her in great spurts, filling her with what she Needed.
Along with the blood came images, a dream-like stream of the victim’s last thoughts and deeds and dreams. Nothing special here—he was a shoe salesman here for a business meeting, he couldn’t sleep, he had a loveless marriage. His image of his wife was so weak that she couldn’t see her