Jeff Gelb: Hotter Blood: More Tales of Erotic Horror

Barnes, one of the butlers, a tall, balding, black-haired man, pulled his bony-fingered hand away and smiled, inclining his head slightly as he said, in a low, quiet voice, "Mr. Hawk prefers that this room remain closed. It's locked anyway."

"Oh. Oh, sure. Okay, sure, I'm sorry." Embarrassed, Caryl nodded as if her head were about to bob off. As Barnes walked away, she asked, curiously but timidly, "Um, what's in there?"

Barnes turned slowly, his thin face still smiling. "Just some dusty old personal items. We aren't even allowed to clean in there," he added with a soft chuckle.

Caryl nodded and smiled and said, "Ah, I see," and Barnes headed back down the hall. But before following him, Caryl turned back to the door and stared at it a moment. Above the knob was a second lock, a deadbolt. She tossed a glance back to make sure Barnes was gone, then tried the doorknob. It was, indeed, locked.

But something was wrong.

There in the shadowy end of the hall, Caryl could see the faintest orange glow seeping from beneath the locked door.

The next few days were like a wonderful hazy dream to Caryl. She only saw Hawk for a few minutes in the morning and then in bed after he got home, when they would make love so furiously that a couple of times they actually ripped the sheets. Hawk still refused to wear a condom and it terrified Caryl just as much as it had during their first time in his dressing room. She was scared of picking up any diseases, of course, and she most definitely did not want to get pregnant. Not yet anyway.

"You don't have to worry about that, babe," Hawk told her one night as he moved inside of her. "I can't make babies. I've been fixed."

Caryl thought that was kind of sad, but they were too busy to talk about it then. In fact, they were always too busy to talk about much of anything. When they were together, they were either making love or sleeping, or Hawk was just on his way out. And he went out every day, long after his promise that he'd be busy for just a few days. Caryl was still so overwhelmed by the fact that she was actually living with Hawk that she was able to ignore the inadequacies easily. At first. One morning after breakfast, as Hawk lit up a joint before leaving, she asked him why he was gone so much… every day , in fact.

He kissed her, pulled a wad of cash from his jeans pocket and pressed it into her hand. She shuffled through it and, shocked, discovered twenties, fifties and hundreds. "Whuh-what's th-this for?"

"I'll have Kelsey drive you into town. Go shopping. Beverly Hills is great for shopping. Get some clothes. Some jewelry. Go over to Gucci and get yourself a nice leather outfit. Have lunch. Baby yourself a little. And don't come back till you've spent all of that." He kissed her again, slipped his tongue into her mouth and squeezed her ass as he held her close for a moment. "I've got a few meetings to go to. Some asshole video director wants to tell me his ideas for the new song. Then I'm going to the studio for a while. I'll see you tonight." And then he was gone.

Caryl was afraid she would stick out like the proverbial sore thumb in Beverly Hills, but riding through the immaculate streets in a black limousine with tinted windows made her blend in like a chameleon.

She did buy a leather outfit at Gucci, just as Hawk had suggested, along with a gorgeous pair of shoes. At Tori Steele she bought two dresses (one of which she wore out of the store) and a coat, and at Tiffany's she got a beautiful diamond necklace and a pair of ruby earrings. She'd felt guilty at first and was hesitant to spend so much of Hawk's money, but he had told her to spend it all, so she decided to find someplace quiet and elegant for lunch. Maybe Kelsey the driver would have a suggestion.

On her way out of Tiffany's she stumbled to a halt with a startled gasp when a woman stepped in front of her suddenly, stopping just inches away. She was tall but stooped, leaning on a cane in her left hand; her right hand held the collars of her heavy ragged coat tightly together, although it was a warm, sunny day. Both of her trembling hands were skeletal and blotched with scabrous sores, as was her long, flour-white face. Her scalp was visible beneath her dark greasy hair which fell in thin strings around her skinny, frail neck, where more sores disappeared beneath her collar. The worst of it was that in spite of the pasty skin and the horrible wounds all over her and the stick-thin wrists and the pasty eyes, she looked young… and she looked as if she might have once been beautiful.

"Excuse me," Caryl said, going around her, but the woman stepped in front of her again.

The woman's mouth opened, and a few slow seconds passed before she finally spoke. "Have you been with him yet?"

Caryl flinched and stepped back, but the woman just stepped forward, her cracked lips curling up in a rictus grin around darkening teeth as she nodded knowingly. "You have."

"I'm sorry, but I don't think I —»

The woman leaned even closer, so close that Caryl smelled her putrid breath when she hissed, " Have you been tested yet ?" Then she turned and, as quickly as she could on unsteady legs, hurried away, disappearing in the crowd of pedestrians.

Caryl had lunch at a small sidewalk cafe. She ordered a glass of white wine before her cobb salad; the woman had shaken her up. She was obviously some hopeless street person who appeared to have reached the end of her drug-addicted rope and probably had no idea what she was saying. But that didn't make it any less upsetting. What she'd said had been so… so frighteningly appropriate.

Don't be stupid , she thought, sipping her wine. It was warm in her stomach; she wasn't used to alcohol.

She nibbled on a bread stick as she waited for her order, wondering how her mother was, reminding herself that she had to call her soon before she started to worry.

A metallic squeaking behind her made her look over her shoulder. A well-dressed but frail-looking man was walking into the cafe, slowly pulling a green oxygen tank on a dolly at his side. A thin transparent hose stretched from the tank's nozzle to the man's face where it wrapped around his head just beneath his razor-thin nose. Although he walked slowly, he took short labored breaths. He glanced at her, and she saw the dark gray circles under his shadowy eyes, the blue veins in his skull-thin temples and the gray patches of skin on his sunken cheeks. His blond hair was cropped short and his hairline receded halfway back on the top of his head. He looked at her and smiled, and the taut skin of his face looked ready to split and peel back over his skull; there were dark gaps between all of his upper teeth, which were small white beads.

Caryl jerked her head away so quickly she almost spilled her wine.

The man wound his way around the tables to the far corner of the short wrought-iron fence that surrounded the cafe; he seated himself so that he was facing her. Caryl diverted her gaze by reading the small dessert menu. As she sipped her wine, she tossed a casual glance toward the man's table. He was just sitting there without a menu or a glass of water or any food in front of him. But he was still watching her with a hint of a smile on his cadaverous face. Caryl returned her eyes to the dessert menu and studied it as if it were fascinating until her cobb salad and croissant arrived. As she ate, she tried to cheer herself with the thought of all the wonderful things she'd bought that day — the beautiful clothes and jewelry — and with thoughts of what she might buy for Hawk to surprise him when he came home, but she could not shake the feeling of being watched by that gaunt balding man at the corner table with the oxygen hose under his nose.

Finally, she heard the squeaking again. He's leaving , she thought with relief.