A Matter Of Taste by Fred Saberhagen (best reads .TXT) 📗

drawn shut, except for one side where a window still stood open narrowly, letting in a whiff of chilly dampness. Outside, full darkness had overtaken the city. Angie’s gaze fell on the bedside clock. The time was only a little after five, which meant she couldn’t have been unconscious long. A fifth of a mile away, just below the windows of this room, the evening rush hour would be approaching its peak.

      Not until Angie had taken her first steps away from the bed did she realize that she was completely naked. Every piece of her clothing had been ripped off and lay about the room in shreds and little rags. Her attackers, both fully clothed, were still lying motionless upon the bed, their frozen claw hands stiffly clutching empty air, their faces smeared with blood. At the moment she could almost believe, she was at least able to hope, that both of them were dead. Certainly both of them were unconscious.

      —and it was her own blood. Her own blood everywhere, although the bleeding had stopped now. In the first moments of full horror after she gained her feet, she had the impression that vast quantities must have been drawn from her body, enough to drown the whole room in gore, crimsoning sheets and carpets, smearing her skin and the clothing and faces of the creatures who had bitten her.

      But she was still alive, and not too weak to move. Dizzily Angie put her hands up to her own throat. Yes, the stickiness felt freshest there, where one vampire’s fangs had only recently released their grip. Another fresh wound, like a double pinprick, showed on her right thigh. In both places there was pain, sharp, awkward, and occasional; but it was bearable and therefore the least of her concerns right now. Worse was the fact that behind the pain and shock there still lay, lingering and insidious, remnants of an exquisite pleasure. Faintly her nerves still throbbed with an alien joy.

      Beyond those sensations, something still persisted of the giddy drug-high Angie had been experiencing just before the attack. Dimly she understood that the potion administered by Uncle Matthew was still shielding her, to some extent, from what otherwise would have been the full extent of terror.

      Dazedly, stumbling, she began to move toward the bathroom. There she could find water—thirst was suddenly very strong. There she could find a mirror-like image of her own ravaged body that would let her begin to understand this disaster, this horror that had overtaken her. In a moment she was staring at her electronic reflection, pale to the lips underneath the smears of gore. In the next moment she was drinking hungrily from the faucet at the bathroom sink, then splashing water on her face, her throat, her breasts, her bitten leg. With a towel she wiped off as much bloodstain as she could.

      Moving dazedly back into the bedroom, acting without a conscious plan, Angie groped in the closet for one of Uncle Matthew’s robes, and put it on to cover her nakedness.

      As she turned away from the closet, she saw movement on the bed. One of the vampires, the smaller one, was stirring, was pushing himself up slowly, first sitting, then sliding to his feet. His pale face still looked blind, looked dead. His figure moved uncertainly. It tottered and almost fell, groping outward with both arms like a blind man trying to achieve balance. The vampire showed no awareness of Angie’s presence.

      Pulling the skirts of the robe close to her legs, Angie sidled toward the bedroom door, which stood half open, showing part of the hallway beyond.

      Whether the pale-faced thing was able to see her or not, it suddenly knew that she was in the room. Perhaps it heard her movement. Eyes turning uncertainly toward her, feet shuffling unsteadily, it was just barely quick enough to block her path, before she could dash past it to escape the bedroom.

      Rage exploded in Angie’s abused mind, and simultaneously in her muscles. Screaming, this time more in rage than fear, she charged with shoulder and elbow straight into the unsteady thing, broke its balance and sent it sprawling.

      Dashing past it, eluding hands that swept toward her ankles, she fled the room. A second later, in the bedroom hallway, she collided with a figure that blocked her path. An eternal moment passed before she realized that this was John. John was shouting at her, and gripping in both hands an object Angie could dimly recognize as one of the wooden spears that had decorated the living-room wall.

      Disentangling himself from Angie, he stepped aside and thrust hard and desperately with the spear at the thing that had followed her out of the bedroom. She turned to see the vampire struggling on the impaling lance, pale face contorted, pale claws outspread and wrenching at the wood. The point of the spear had caught only grazingly in the vampire’s ribs, and with an anguished grunt it seized the shaft. A moment later it had torn the weapon from John’s hands and broken it in two.

      Wood was what it took to hurt them, always wood. Angie had absorbed that lesson swiftly. Running into the living room, with frantic hands she swept bric-a-brac from a wall-mounted shelf, then grabbed from its supporting brackets the oaken weight and length of the shelf itself. Turning quickly, she swung her weapon awkwardly, beating the pale-faced vampire across the forehead as it came running after her. At almost the same instant John came at it from behind and stabbed it with the broken lance.

      It staggered but did not fall. It turned on John.

      “Angie—honey—Angie—” Calling her name as if he couldn’t see her, John drew back what was left of his spear and tried again. The splintered end tore flesh from his opponent’s face before a powerful arm once more knocked it away.

      John renewed the attack, calling to Angie meanwhile. His voice sounded inarticulate and almost crazy.

      Angie uttered strange noises and strange words. She stepped forward, pounding away