Ellen Datlow - Teeth - Vampire Tales

His voice called to me out of the dim roar of the waterfalling firelight, “Daisha, come up a minute.”

The woman folded an orange towel over a white one, and I numbly, speechlessly, climbed the stair, and Zeev said, “I have asked Emil, and he says, very kindly, he doesn’t object if you see how this is done.” So I stood in the doorway and watched as Zeev, with the help of a thin, clean knife, decanted and poured out a measure of his life blood into a mug, which had a picture on it of a cat, just like the smart black cat in the room below. And the smiling man, sitting on the bed in his dressing gown, raised the mug, and toasted Zeev, and drank the wild medicine down.

“We’re young,” he said to me, “we are both of us genuinely young. You’re seventeen, aren’t you? I’m twenty-seven. We are the only actual young here . And the rest of them, as I said, switched off. But we can do something, not only for ourselves, Day, but for our people. Or my people, if you prefer. Or any people. Humans. Don’t you think that’s fair, given what they do, knowingly or not, for us?”

We had walked back, slowly, along the upper terraces by the black abyss of the ravine, sure-footed, omnipotent. Then we sat together on the forest’s edge and watched the silver tumble of the fall. It had no choice. It had to fall, and go on falling forever, in love with the unknown darkness below, unable and not wanting to stop.

I kept thinking of the little blood mark on his sleeve that night, what I’d guessed, and what instead was true. And I thought of Juno, with her obsessive wasted tiny blood-drop offerings in the “shrine,” to a man she had no longer loved. As she no longer loved me.

She hates me because I have successful sun-born genes and can live in daylight. But Zeev, who can’t take even thirty seconds of the sun, doesn’t hate me for that. He. he doesn’t hate me at all.

“So will you go back to Severin tomorrow?” he said to me as we sat at the brink of the night.

“No.”

“Daisha, even when they’ve married us, please believe this: If you still want to go away, I won’t put obstacles in your path. I will back you up.”

“You care so little.”

“So much.”

His eyes glowed in the dark. They put the waterfall to shame.

When he touched me, touches me, I know him. From long ago, I remember this incredible joy, this heat and burning, this refinding rightness — and I fall down into the abyss forever, willing as the shining water. I never loved before. Except Juno, but she cured me of that.

He is a healer. His blood can heal, its vampiric vitality transmissible — but noninvasive. From his gift come no substandard replicants of our kind. They only — live .

Much, much later, when we parted just before the dawn inside the house — parted till the next night, our wedding day — it came to me that if he can heal by letting humans drink his blood, perhaps I might offer him some of my own. Because my blood might help him to survive the daylight, even if only for one unscathed and precious minute.

I’ll wear green to be married. And a necklace of sea green glass.

As the endless day trails by, unable to sleep, I’ve written this.

When he touched me, when he kissed me, Zeev, whose name actually means “wolf,” became known to me. I don’t believe he’ll have to live all his long, long life without ever seeing the sun. For that was what he reminded me of. His warmth, his kiss, his arms about me — my first memory of that golden light that blew upward through the dark. No longer any fear, which anyway was never mine, only that glorious familiar excitement and happiness, that welcomed danger. Perhaps I am wrong in this. Perhaps I shall pay heavily and cruelly for having been deceived. And for deceiving myself, too, because I realized what he was to me the moment I saw him — why else put up such barricades? Zeev is my sunrise out of the dark of the night of my so-far useless life. Yes, then. I love him.

NATHAN BALLINGRUDlives with his daughter just outside Asheville, North Carolina. His stories have appeared in Inferno: New Tales of Terror and the Supernatural; The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy; Lovecraft Unbound; SCIFICTION ; and The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Two , and will be forthcoming in Naked City: New Tales of Urban Fantasy . He recently won the Shirley Jackson Award for his short story “The Monsters of Heaven.”

CHRISTOPHER BARZAK’s first novel, One for Sorrow , won the Crawford Award for Best First Fantasy. His second book, a novel-in-stories called The Love We Share Without Knowing , was placed on the James Tiptree Jr. Award’s Honor List. His stories have appeared in the young adult anthologies The Coyote Road, The Beastly Bride , and Firebirds Soaring . He is at work on his third novel and teaches fiction writing at Youngstown State University in Youngstown, Ohio, where vampires have begun to fight for equal rights. You can find out more about him at www.christopherbarzak.wordpress.com.

STEVE BERMANbegan writing and selling weird stories when he was seventeen. His novel Vintage: A Ghost Story was a finalist for the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy and made the Rainbow List for recommended gay-themed books for young readers by the American Library Association’s GLBT Roundtable. His favorite vampire movie is Near Dark . And if you email him at sberman8@yahoo.com and ask for more vamp-slaying adventures for Saul, he just may write them.

HOLLY BLACKwrites bestselling contemporary fantasy for readers of all ages. She is the author of the Modern Faerie Tale series, The Spiderwick Chronicles, and the graphic novel series The Good Neighbors. Currently she is hard at work on The Black Heart , the third book in the noirish caper series The Curse Workers.

EMMA BULLgrew up in California, Texas, Wisconsin, New Jersey, and Illinois. As soon as she finished school and headed out on her own, she started collecting more states and a Canadian province. She’s been writing since elementary school, when she discovered that turning in a short story when the teacher asked for an essay got her an automatic A.

She’s been in five bands, plays lame guitar, and likes to sing. She lives (for now, at least) in Arizona with her husband, Will Shetterly, and cats Toby (best cat) and Barnabas (worst cat).

CECIL CASTELLUCCIhas published four novels for young adults: Rose Sees Red, Beige, The Queen of Cool , and Boy Proof, and a picture book, Grandma’s Gloves . She also wrote the graphic novels The PLAIN Janes and Janes in Love , illustrated by Jim Rugg, which were the launch titles for the DC Comics Minx line. She has had numerous short stories published in various places, including Strange Horizons, The Eternal Kiss, Geektastic (which she coedited), and Interfictions 2 . Her books have been on the American Library Assocation’s Best Books for Young Adults, Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers, and Great Graphic Novels for Teens lists, as well as the New York Public Library’s Books for the Teen Age and Amelia Bloomer lists. Upcoming books include a graphic novel for young readers, Odd Duck, illustrated by Sara Varon, and two new novels, First Day on Earth and The Year of the Beasts . In addition to writing books, she writes plays and opera libretti, makes movies, does performance pieces, and occasionally rocks out. For more information, go to www.misscecil.com.