S. P. Somtow - Vampire Junction

Scanned & Semi-Proofed by Cozette

"Terrible things, happen in this book. . . murders, tortures, rapes, abandonments.

. . it's about rock music, about mass hysteria, about vampires, about horror. . . one

comes out knowing, and caring, about a panoply of new friends and acquaintances,

living and dead, and unalive." . . .Theodore Sturgeon, The Washington Post

Welcome to Timmy Valentine's world.

Valentine is a pop star, the idol of millions of young girls and boys. His voice

would make the angels weep; his eyes hold you in thrall.

Timmy appears to be about eleven years old. He is actually over two thousand.

Timmy Valentine is a vampire, and though our modern skeptic age refuses to

believe, Timmy has come to realize that he is in danger as never before.

Too many people have seen him. Photos and recordings survive as paintings and

sculpture never could. Soon, someone will realize that Timmy Valentine has never

grown up.

VAMPIRE Junction

S.P. SOMTOW

MIDNIGHT SACRIFICE

Then comes the smell of blood, overwhelming his senses. He goes up the steps to the altar

where the girl lies bleeding, dying. "I do not want to feed," he says to her; yet, his hunger

pounds like an ocean wave. He removes her bonds; she does not struggle now. "You are a

virgin, of course," he says, remembering. "They use virgins." She only stares at him, awed,

fascinated. "Now I will love you as only the dead can love." He sips the life from her.

Warmth shoots into his veins, tingling, soothing. His eyes redden. She stirs, moans, is gone. .

.

BY S.P. SOMTOW

NOVELS

Jasmine Mights

Vampire Junction

Valentine

Vanitas

Moon Dance

Forgetting Places

The Shattered Horse

Starship & Haiku

Chronicles of the High Inquest

Mallworld

Riverrun

Armorica

The Aquiliad

The Wizard's Apprentice

The Fallen Country

COLLECTIONS

Fire from the Wine-dark Sea

Chui Chai

Tagging the Moon

My Cold Mad Father

VAMPIRE Junction

S.P. SOMTOW

HORROR

A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK NEW YORK

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to

real people or events is purely coincidental.

VAMPIRE JUNCTION

Cover art by Joe DeVno

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

ISBN: 0-812-52596-5

First Tor edition: July 1991

Printed in the United States of America

098765432

To Lydia, who accidentally gave me this title

And toThaithow, who imbued in me an undying love of horror.

CONTENTS

SPRING:

The Red King's Dream......................

SUMMER:

The Gods of Chaos........................

AUTUMN:

Bluebeard's Castle.........................

WINTER:

I Am the Darkness........................

Vampire Junction

SPRING

The Red King's Dream

I'll hop on the train in Kansas

You change at Santa Fe.

We'll cross tracks at the Vampire junction

that sucks our souls away.

—Timmy Valentine

1

*fire: A.D. 79*

. . . brimstone. . . a child's footsteps patter on a splintering mosaic, bittertoast smell of

charring feet . . . fleeing, mountain thunder, then. . .

. . . blood, spatter spatter spatter bursting spatter spatter spatter boiling on the hot

stones spatter spatter spatter

. . . marble columns snapping like bones over the screaming and. . .

. . . blood spatter spatter spatter

. . . bloodgutted eyes through the sulphur-haze and the screaming and. . .

. . . through the ash-hail, fangs glitter blood spatter glitter spatter glitter spatter glitter

*dissolve: the present*

I'm scared.

Why?

Don't you feel anything? I'm cold. Hold me.

All right.

No don't. Your hands are so cold. It's nothing, I guess. Brrr. Ever since I got into the

car though. Maybe I'm not as blasé about the very rich as I'd like to be, huh? You are very

rich, aren't you? I mean, like you're only a kid, but you must be one of the richest people on

earth, what with that new album and everything. Vampire Junction. Yeah. Am I talking

too much? I'm nervous. Where was I? Yeah, money. They want to know about money.

Tell me all about your money.

FDR Drive, Rudy.

I've interviewed lots of people before, you know. You name 'em. But you, like you're

so mysterious. Is this really the first time you're going to be on TV? Of course it must be.

You know you're even shorter than in those photos. How old are you? Twelve? But cute.

I'm . . . twenty-nine. I don't look it, right? They always say I don't look it. Now I want to do

a huge feature for the magazine, understand, huge. You don't have to say anything at all

though, frankly I'm just going to make most of it up, like who gives a shit about those

weeny-boppers anyway, huh? Oh sorry, maybe I shouldn't have said shit. They're your fans

after all.

Well. . .

Hey, like this is some limousine you got. Two phones! I guess the driver picks it up and

then just intercoms it back to you? Ritzy. Look, here's the toll booth. Nice night, huh?

Traffic's not too bad either. Sometimes it can take hours to get to mid-town from

LaGuardia.

I've done it before.

Huh? Yeah, of course. You know you got beautiful eyes. . . so sexy. . . if I were a

weeny-bopper I'd go for you in spades. How do you like New York?

Well enough.

I guess you've seen the whole world though, even if you're just a kid. Huh?

Probably.

Where do you get those cute cloaks from, by the way, the ones you do the concerts in?

In Europe. I have them sent.

Oh.

I love the night.

What? Oh yeah, really, like I love the way you talk, you know, really compact, like

those songs of yours. There's never been a teen star like you before, never in my ten years

of working for Idol Magazine. But if I'm going to interview you you'll have to tell me more

about yourself, I mean like what you like to eat and drink, your views on teen sex, your—

Anything wrong?

No. Just. . . memories.

What kind of memories? That's just the kind of thing the fans want to know, like how

you grew up and stuff and— look, the Big Apple already! I know how I'm going to

describe it in the article: "rearing up over the water like a giant graveyard in the moonlight."

Pretentious.

They love shit.

I can see that.

Huh? Oh, yeah. Back to you, Timmy—can I call you that? You and your memories—

(spatter spatter spatter) You wouldn't want to know.

Bad childhood, huh?

Very bad. I've forgotten it all.

There you go, looking at me with those haunting eyes. I'd swear they shine in the dark.

There now. It's not often I get to hold the hand of a million-dollar property—oh, I don't

mean to hurt your feelings—

?

It's all right. They're like ice, your hands! Your metabolism must be weird or

something. You should try more organic foods, you know? Here, I'll warm them. Better?

Hey, this is sort of a turn-on, you know, I. . . oh, your hand, it's burning my breast, I mean

burning, and . . . why're you smiling at me like that? Oh, let me hug you, let me. . . don't

think I'm kinky now. You're a sophisticated kid, but I don't like little boys, you know, I'm all

of. . . twenty-nine . . . want to see them? Here, look, I keep in shape, you know, I. . . how

am I going to explain this rip? You like my breasts? Here . . . ouch! Like glaciers, your

fingers, like glaciers, and here, don't scratch you've drawn blood it's running down my

Izod sweater don't think I'm into this stuff now but you're so famous and all and ow! Let go

of it! What are you doing? Don't bare your teeth, you animal, you little bastard, you—

I grieve for you. You should not have awakened my memories. I've known. . .

someone like you. . . before.

Let me go you're so strong your teeth the moonlight don't bite! don't bite! it hurts it

hurts it hurts oh oh oh.

Rudy, not this exit yet. If we go into mid-town they'll see us.

I hate it when they scream and struggle. It attracts too much attention. I'm so hungry, it

hurts so! The breasts are all ripped up. She'll die in a minute or two. Oh, the fresh blood . .

.warming. . . easy . . . easy . . . shall I kill you permanently? Shall I? If I did not you would

wake up to a terrible solitude . . . poor creature. I've yanked her heart out, Rudy. That

should save her from the great loneliness. There it is, on the seat, going pit-a-pat as it

seeps into the upholstery. . . easy. . . still now, heart. . . look, her lifeless eyes. . . I'll close

them ... there, she's dead. The seat's all bloody now. Tell Maria to clean it up. My concert's

in an hour.

I'm sorry, Rudy! I was angry, she plucked such vivid memories from me. . . Forget,

master Timothy. How can I?

*memory: 1918*

He has slipped through the railings, this child of darkness, and is standing in a pool of

moonlight by the quadrangle's edge, his thin pale face striped by the shadows of the iron

bars. He feels the hunger a little, like a rodent scurrying in the pit of his stomach. But it is

not hunger that has drawn him out of his hiding place. It is the sound of children singing. It

has touched him in his dreamless sleep; he has followed it blindly, as a bloodhound follows a

scent, many days' walk from London, leaving behind the house on Fitzroy Square and the

old woman who took him in.

For a few moments he watches the stained glass windows, lit from within, of the

massive fifteenth-century chapel. It must be an evening choir practice. The building is one

of the Cambridge colleges with its own choirschool where young boys are trained for

chapel services. He hears the children's voices, cool as the wind.

"What are you doing here, boy?" He averts his eyes, catching a glimpse of the

Cambridge don's face, then looking down at the mirror-polished boots and the edge of the

gown. "Answer me. Are you lost?" The hunger stirs in him for a moment. "Are you late for

practice?" The don indicates the chapel. "No, you're too scruffy to be one of the choristers.

Go away, it's out of bounds here."

He stares at the man's eyes, stung by his rebuff. He thinks of feeding for a moment.

The pickings have been slim since he left the city. The young men have gone to the war,

the women have latched their doors, and there are only tramps, whose blood is bitter with

methylated spirits. He is about to spring-But no. The don rubs his eyes and sees only a

black animal, perhaps a cat, dark silver slicing the gloom.

The boy comes to in the nave. Soft light on the Rubens over the altar in the distance. A

few seconds of memory surface; he has been here centuries before, and there are dead

men, dust now, whose memories still touch him through the warm earth and the cold stone.

He longs to join them. In the dark the fan vaulting is shadowed, and there appears to be no

ceiling. The boy crouches in a pew as the singing dies away in the musty stillness. It is

Purcell's Funeral Music: the boy remembers it from long ago, a king's funeral.

For a moment peace steals into his haunted eyes, for he has always loved music.

The voices have allayed his hunger for now. It is at such times that he wishes he could

weep. . .

He hears voices. "Perfect, chaps. But Miles, don't attack that top B flat so viciously in

your solo. Just let it grow naturally from the phrase. It's a nuisance, I know, having all these

extra choir practices, but with all these chaps dying in the war, and all these memorial

services, what can you do? Damn the Kaiser! Very well, that's all for tonight."

The boys troop out, passing under the ornate archway of dark, oily wood that splits the

nave. They are giggling, irreverent. The Organ Scholar has come down from the loft and is

discussing something with the director; childish laughter and old men's whispers blend into

cavernous echoing.

The lights go out. The boy is alone. The dark is kind to his eyes. He must feed now.

He rises, making no noise.

He crosses the aisle, soundless as shadow.

He freezes. Somewhere hinges creak. He hears distant clattering. He dissolves behind

the altar's long shadow. Once, the cross, boy-tall, silver, crusted with amethysts, would

have caused him grief, but it is not a fervent age, and the symbols are losing their power.

Now he sees tiny lights, dancing, flickering, casting shadow-giants on the walls. An old

verger is leading a grotesque processional of men with black robes on which are

embroidered stars and moons and cabalistic signs and hieroglyphs, holding candles and

staves. The boy smells terror.

It comes from a young woman, bound and gagged, whom they are dragging behind

them. Two young acolytes, mere boys, bring up the rear, swinging censers that exude a

stench of perfume and charred flesh.

The boy remembers such things from a past better forgotten. He peers from the pool

of darkness.

The celebrants are giggling. This is no genuine rite of the old ones, but some game they

are playing. The young boys run in front now, scattering the foul smoke everywhere.

"Thank you, Sullivan," says one of the robed ones. He appears to be tipping the verger,

who slinks away, leering at the woman.

"You're sure she can't be traced?" says a plump Asian man.

"A waitress at the Copper Kettle," says the first, the tall one with a paper mitre on

which is painted a crude skull and other sigils. The girl flails about helplessly as they bind

her to the altar. Her arm has almost brushed the boy; his hand has stolen the warmth from

hers. He is invisible to them, for he has cloaked himself in darkness.

They are all laughing now. "Be solemn for a moment, won't you!" the leader cries.

"This is serious business." Laughter breaks out again, stifles itself.

"What a nuisance the incense was! Are you sure this nauseating concoction is quite

necessary?"

"The Book of the Order of the Gods of Chaos absolutely specifies that the

frankincense be mixed with the caul of an unborn child," the leader says sternly. "I had little

enough trouble with our friends in the medical laboratory." The boys are running gleefully

about now, and the fumes are thick and pungent. The girl coughs through the gag.

"Perhaps we shouldn't really—"

"Silence, novice!" says the leader. He pulls a knife from his robe. Now the boy senses

the terror in all of them. "This is serious, I tell you, the summoning of a presence—"

Inside, the boy laughs bitterly. He knows that the presences are long dead, if they ever

existed. Only their shadows have survived the dark times. They are hypocrites, these

humans, they know nothing of my bitterness, my grief. And now the girl will die for it.

The leader has stalked to the altar, knife upraised, the blade catching the candlelight.

Quickly the young vampire blends into the shadows.

There is a sudden gasp from the celebrants; the girl, bound too tightly to move, has

begun to urinate in her terror. It trickles onto the stone.

Delicately the leader slices into her, reddening the crease between her breasts and

drawing a thin line down to her pubes. The stench of fear is overwhelming now, drowning

out the incense and the smoking flesh.

The boy feels the madness within; fear has always been an intoxicant for him. But he

is angry, and he struggles to quell the hunger.

A robed man begins to draw the girl's blood into a chalice. Her eyes widen. Her

scream, through the gag, sounds immeasurably far away. The leader begins to improvise,

carving patterned slits into her abdomen. The boy sees his crazed face, implacable.

Anger rises deep inside the boy, rage at this senseless slaughter. And with the

bloodsmell comes the ancient hunger, leaping, bursting. He leaps—

He is a wild thing now, pouncing—

The knife clangs on the steps. The leader shouts: "The presence! I didn't know—only a

game—!" He sees what he has done. He runs. For a moment, he has seen a wolf, others a

panther, others a monster from their own nightmares. They scatter, screaming, their

footsteps tiny in the echo-rich vastness—

But there is still one. A small boy, his censer smashed . . . the vampire sees him in a

cloud of smoke. Their eyes meet.

"Wait," the boy vampire says, "I do not mean to harm—"

They stare into each other's eyes. The vampire sees what he has always seen: terror,

naked, crystalline. Has the child seen him in his true shape? Has the borrowed form slipped

for an

instant?

And now the vampire recognizes the child. It is Miles, the chorister. Only an hour ago

he heard the boy pluck that high B flat from the air. It was his ethereal singing that he

heard in London, singling it out from the millions of voices that assailed his inhumanly acute

ears, troubling his not-sleep with its

loveliness.

"Miles," he says. His voice is low, half-taunting, half-seductive. But the child is gone.

Then comes the smell of blood, overwhelming his senses. He goes up the steps to the

altar where the girl lies bleeding, dying. "I do not want to feed," he says to her; yet, his

hunger pounds like an ocean wave. He removes her bonds; she does not struggle now.

"You are a virgin, of course," he says, remembering. "They use virgins." She only stares at

him, awed, fascinated. "Now I will love you as only the dead can love." He sips the life

from her. Warmth shoots into his veins, tingling, soothing. His eyes redden. She stirs,

moans, is gone.

Tomorrow, as soon as the light begins to fade, he will seek out a doorstep, a kindly

face, another surrogate mother. He will stay here a while because of that child's voice.

There is music here, music to warm the millennial ice within him. . . .

*dissolve: the present*

They looked alike, Rudy. The two women. Do you believe in reincarnation? Or the

recurrence of certain somas, perhaps?

I don't know, master Timothy.

It's tempting for me to believe in cycles. They relieve the monotony of immortality.

Yes.

I believe it's Thirty-fourth Street. I'll expect the remains to be gone by the time the

concert's over.

Of course.

Stop now.

Of course, master Timothy.

*fire*

Stephen Miles was in his hotel room watching the blaze that reddened the distant

skyline. His tailcoat lay abandoned on the floor; the television had been on all day, even

though he had been out, first at rehearsal, then at a formal, pretentious cocktail party, then

at the final performance of Gotterdammerung and then at a bloody reception afterwards.

Thank God he was still spry at almost seventy.

The fire danced. Smoke-clouds billowed across the night, and he thought he could

almost smell it. He had always loved fire, even since he was a child . . . fire awakened

madness in him.

The phone rang. He cursed.

"Stephen Miles," he said.

"Eva Weiss. I call you too late? The time is different here." A faint voice, a

transatlantic call.

"Weiss? Oh, from the Goethe-Haus. Munich." Quickly he placed her. "How on earth did

you get my number?"

"From your agent. We had. . . an understanding. Listen, when you are coming this

summer to do Tristan in Wintherthurm, do you want a Mahler Nine in Munich thrown in?

Hans Schick is very ill, they think he may go by then actually, you need in any case a live

German Mahler to complement the record series they're reissuing—"

"They're reissuing it? I seem to remember stepping in for Schick then, too. We'll see."

He slammed the phone down and ignored it when it began to ring again at once. His arms

ached. He should have given up the five-hour operas ten years ago, but what could he do?

It was the history of his life. . . the endless circuit of mediocre opera houses and concert

halls, now and then stepping in for some indisposed Big Name ("Miles coped splendidly,

despite the short notice") and basking in borrowed glory.

And the breakdowns, the blackouts. And the terrifying memory that would not be

dredged from his mind. "I'm a flake," he whispered. "Flake, flake." Americanisms still had a

vibrancy for him, even though he had been in America for

much of his life.

He leaned against the pillows. Sirens moaned far away. And then he chanced to glance

at the television set.

The local news. The same fire, close up. Some office buildings. An announcer was

dryly cataloging six deaths.

Miles stared at the screen now. He saw the flames flicker in the windows, saw a

charred child plummeting, the firemen wielding their serpentine hoses. He was excited. He

wanted to make a little fire himself, to watch it dance . . . easing the bedside ashtray onto

the bed, he tore the room service menu into neat strips, groped for a match, lit the paper

scraps, extinguished the match and the room lights. . .

The little fire fizzed for a moment and died. When he turned to the television again they

were relating some dull news item, some minor public figure's assassination. He tapped

impatiently at the remote control, switching to channel after

channel—

A boy's voice was singing in the dark room.

Stephen stopped. He knew that voice. But not singing this . . . this. . .

It was one of those sugary crooning songs that preteen girls listened to; unremarkable

enough, especially after a night of Wagner. But the voice. . . the tone was pure, true, like a

trained choirboy's, inhumanly beautiful. The accompaniment was tawdry; tinkling,

hackneyed piano figures and syrupy string chords pitted against a rhythm dull and incessant

as Chinese water torture. But still that voice soared free above it. It stirred troubled

memories: the choir school, England, so many years ago.

The words were sophisticated; lovers were like trains in the night, crossing at a

vampire junction that sucked away their souls. . . a clever conceit in a song of alienation, of

despair. Surely a child had not written the lyrics. Yet the boy sang with such wounded

innocence, such ancient grief. And now as he watched, the camera panned the audience,

the band, alighted on the singer's face—

He gasped. He had seen this child before—thirty-five years ago! And even then he

had thought him a face from the past, a dream-face out of his childhood.

He was trembling. Outside, the fire was dead now, and the sirens silenced.

The face—

Pale, pale as snow. The long hair swirling like a flock of ravens. The thin mouth, a

crease of crimson. And the dark eyes, hunter's eyes, haunting.

It couldn't be. The boy had been dead for years. That dreadful first summer on the

European opera circuit, taking over from Karlheinz von Hahn. He'd gone to the funeral, for

Christ's sake, and sent the mother a garland! The mother who never cried, who'd ordered a

coffin with steel bands, welded shut, weighted down with boulders . . . madwoman,

madwoman.

And now here was the same boy. The same voice. Unchanged.

I'm dreaming, I'm going mad again, he thought, remembering the "rest home" where he

had first met Carla Rubens.

He wanted to call her now.

Four rings. "Carla . . . "

"Stephen? What is this? I'm asleep." She sounded perfectly composed. He knew she

was only pretending sleepiness.

"I'm sorry."

"Where the hell are you?"

"Arragon, Kentucky. That Wagner festival."

"Yes, I've seen the junk mail for it. Now get off the phone and leave me alone! I

haven't heard from you in two years, and I can do without you now, Stephen."

Images flooded his mind: the hideous rest home, the therapy, the marriage, the divorce,

Carla still trim and beautiful at forty-five and thirsting for younger men. How he hated

being old. . .

"I have to see you. I mean professionally. I mean—"

"Professionally! I do have a secretary, you know. And office hours."

"I know, I know, I—"

"There was a fire in Arragon, wasn't there? I saw it on the late-late-late news." She

had given it away now, she hadn't been sleeping at all. The years since the divorce seemed

to dissolve to nothing. They were still playing the same games; she lying blatantly, not

caring that he knew.

"I know you think it's the old trouble." He guessed what she would have surmised.

After all, he had been under treatment for pyromania, and he had felt a twinge of the old

firelust tonight. "But no, it's not that. I'm still in control of that."

"What then?"

"I've seen the boy, Carla, the dead boy! On TV. Tonight. Now."

Silence. Then, "What channel?"

"It's ZQR here, but—"

"Hold on. . .why that's Timmy Valentine, the latest weeny-bopper idol. You called me

at two in the morning just to—"

"But it's him! The thing from my nightmares at the rest home, the wolf-thing, the boy

with the dead eyes—"

"Come now, Stephen. What did you really call about?"

"Nothing! I mean. . .this is what I called about, and—"

"Imagine being frightened by a child star. Poor kid, probably being exploited to death by

his parents and his agents. He's one of my patients, you know."

"What!"

"No, I haven't seen him yet. His agent's made an appointment for tomorrow, while he's

still in New York."

"Don't see him! Don't see him!"

The phone dropped from his hand. Despair gripped him; he sweated, shook, banged at

the television remote control. The screen went black. He found an uneasy sleep, tingling

with terror.

2

*night child*

"How did you get in here?" Carla said, panicking because nothing was supposed to be

out of place in her Park Avenue office.

"Your door was ajar." A soft voice, an unusual lilt, perhaps even a trace of some

European accent. And there he was, leaning against the sill of the panoramic casement,

against the jagged skyline—a starscape of lit windows, glittering.

Carla sat down in her worn plaid armchair in front of the eerie monochrome

mandala—blowup of a patient's work-that filled half the wall farthest from the window.

"You insisted on an evening appointment," Carla said, "not backing off when I named

an outrageous fee." She didn't want to like the kid. She looked at him, not inviting him to sit

as yet.

He was beautiful, certainly. The way he looked on TV wasn't due to makeup. His hair,

fastidiously unkempt (one knew that not a strand was where it wasn't supposed to be) was

so black that it glinted ultramarine in the subdued light. His face was pale, almost anemic.

His eyes were dark, wide, captivating. His expression seemed both surly and innocent. She

stored all these features in the back of her mind; she'd been taking notes, too, on the songs

of his she'd heard. Apparently he had written them himself. If he had, you could certainly

see the seeds of psychosis . . . if you looked hard enough, and if that was how you made a

living.

"Won't you sit down, Timmy? Wherever you want—the couch, the chair, the floor

cushions." He selected the couch. His eyes never left her. She sensed something lascivious

about the way he fixed his stare on her. "Your agent seems to have gone to great lengths to

get you a Jungian analyst . . . "

"It's fashionable."

"I'm all ears."

"At a hundred an hour, you should be."

"You have only fifty-one minutes left."

A brief silence. Timmy seemed to relax a little. Carla fiddled with a notepad, with the

concealed controls of a tape recorder in the arm of her chair, with a twist of her hair.

Stephen's call had distressed her more than she cared to admit, and she had to remind

herself that she was not paid to think of her own problems, nor of those of an estranged

husband who might set fire to something if provoked.

"Because you deal with archetypes." Abruptly, the boy had answered her question.

A well-read child. Precocious, even. "Yes."

"But can an archetype itself be susceptible to analysis? This is what I've come to ask."

He sounded so serious, yet so childish, too.

"What do you mean?" Was he mocking her?

"I mean," he went on earnestly, "what if some force, some image out of the collective

unconscious, could become focused somehow, be born as a living entity?"

I can't believe a little boy is talking like this, she thought. A sliver of dread pierced her

thoughts, but she made herself ignore it.

"I want to understand myself," the boy said. "And especially to live with my loneliness."

Now they were on safer ground. Clearly, being catapulted into fame had made him

paranoid, awakened old insecurities. She listened, not prompting him.

"What are your feelings about the soul?"

"Well, I'm the analyst."

"The soul."

"In a religious sense?"

"Do you have a soul?"

"In a sense . . . Carl Jung believed in the soul . . . "

"Can you prove it? If I slit you open will it come gushing out, woman?"

. . . Her instincts had been right. There was something there after alt. She sat quietly,

not wanting to interrupt his train of thought.

"I am, in a sense, archetypal, you see," he said. "I have no soul. I am animated only by

your fears, your private terrors. It is this that gives me my terrible aloneness."

"I don't understand."

"I am a vampire."

No emotion, she told herself, don't betray yourself . . . "Then the song, Vampire

Junction—"

"A conceit, nothing more. You see, I like model trains . . . you should see my collection

at home." He smiled disarmingly and shook back his dark hair. But for a second Carla had

seen another look: eyes sparkling crystal-cold, terrifying her. Terrifying!

S. P. Somtow - Vampire Junction

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