Free Gypsy Blood by Steve Vernon Page B

from the shadow’s depth. Dust, and dirt.
    Maya folded her wings and swallowed her anger.
    “My lord, I meant nothing.”
    The shadow seemed content. It blew another puff of dust, just to rub it in.
    “What you meant means nothing more than piss in the ocean. You’ll do as you’re told, so long as I hold your dirt.”
    Maya cringed.
    “Now be careful what you do around that gypsy. There’s more to him than cards and lines.”
    She spat a clot of blood tinged phlegm, trying to muster a scrap of self respect.
    “He’s meat,” she muttered. “Nothing more.”
    “Keep it in mind. You do as I say, when I say. So long as I’ve got your dirt.”
    The shadow dissolved like a slug beneath salt. The cathedral vanished. Maya stood in the darkness. In the cellar beneath the abandoned church. The cellar where she hid her coffin.
    How she’d got here, she couldn’t say. She remembered climbing down the trapdoor, remembered being surprised to find it hidden beneath Carnival’s cot. She’d climbed down into the darkness and found herself here in the church cellar. Sometimes it worked that way. As old as Maya was, there were things about being a vampire that even she didn’t understand.
    The cellar was ancient. Its walls shrouded with the intricate death traps of a thousand spiders. The walls were constructed of recycled railway ties. You could smell the creosote, and if you pressed your ear closely enough to the dark ties you could hear a train screaming a hundred years away.
    Maya turned to her coffin. Her head hung like an eon of grief. Her hair frayed and tattered, like parchment worn by the sun. She picked a handful of it out, dry and brittle like cobwebs gone old and smothered in dust. That was the dirt at work. As long as it wasn’t hers she would continue growing older. Nothing could be done for now.
    She opened the coffin. She stared at the portrait she’d spiked to the inside of the lid. A portrait of a small girl in Victorian garb, holding a cup.
    You’ve broken your cup.
    She climbed into the coffin’s welcoming darkness like a sailor clambering into a leaking lifeboat. She closed the lid gently behind her. Gazed up in the darkness that had swallowed her whole, staring with cold cat’s eyes at the portrait looming above her.
    “Good night father.”
    And then, in a whisper as soft as the ripple of dust dry skin she mouthed a final soft good night.
    “Good night Carnival.”
    She let the darkness take her and swam into a long deep forever sleep.
    If she dreamed, she wasn’t telling.

Chapter 13
     
    The Most Important Meal
     
    C arnival woke up crucified beneath the weight of the morning sun. His solar alarm clock was a snapped window blind. The damn thing had been broken since he’d moved in. He liked it that way.
    Get up, slug-a-bed.
    “Shut up, Poppa.”
    You sleep too much.
    This morning he needed that open blind like a face full of scalding iodine. The sunlight was too bright, too illuminating. It made things too damn clear. It hurt his head. Was he catching it? Vampirism? Could you catch it, like a cold? Maya said you couldn’t but he wasn’t so sure.
    He stood up. The room started to spin. He felt light headed. Got up too fast, he guessed.
    Poshrat. You can’t hold your wine.
    “I wasn’t drinking last night, Poppa.”
    Maybe you weren’t drinking but somebody sure slaked their thirst.
    Carnival sat back down. He tried to breathe slow and easy. His breath felt like he’d climbed a dozen or so flights of stairs. He scratched his head and belly and places best left undiscussed. He massaged his hands across his face, stirring up a little circulation.
    His neck itched worse than ever. Maybe he’d caught some sort of weird toxic rash in the dumpster. Maybe he was allergic to bloodsuckers.
    You should wear your rubber boots when you play in garbage. Any whoremaster will tell you that.
    Carnival tried standing up again, only slowly. He looked at the mirror on the wall. For a moment he thought he