Page 25 of Farkas: Gothika

Vincent, who’d resumed his more human façade, remained several feet away. “There are those who enjoy serving me and feeding me. I almost always keep some of them around, and many of them have lived for a very long time in this manner. You met one of them, in fact—my driver. He has been with me for over fifty years. I found him when he was just a boy, cast out from his family and living on squalid streets.”

“Are you trying to convince me that what you do is… charity work?”

“No,” Vincent said. “I only want to explain that what I do is complex. I am a monster, I suppose, but I have certain ethical standards nonetheless.”

Maybe it was stupid, but Lee didn’t doubt the truth of that. “I have questions.”

“I will try to answer them.”

Lee looked over at the youth slumped against the wall. Possibly still breathing. It would be hours before the garbagemen arrived, and it didn’t seem right to abandon him for that long. “I want to get him some help,” he said.

Vincent surprised him by appearing pleased with that announcement. “There is a telephone at the corner.”

They walked there together, and when Lee realized he didn’t have a penny on him, Vincent calmly handed him a coin. Lee had the operator put him through to the fire department who might, he thought, be gentler to a kid found outside a queer bar than the cops would be. As soon as he made his report, he hung up and began walking back toward his apartment, Vincent at his side.

“What if the kid narcs you out?” Lee asked.

“He will not.”

“You seem pretty sure of that.”

“If he survives, his memory of the encounter will fade—like a wisp of dream—as soon as he wakes up. He will not recall either of us or what happened, apart from a vague sense, perhaps, of having experienced something pleasant.”

Lee frowned. “He’ll have those holes in his neck.”

“If he lives, they will heal by the time he reaches the hospital. The doctors will note the blood and assume he had a severely bloody nose. They will do some examinations and find nothing amiss aside from severe anemia, and once he has regained his strength, they will send him home with a warning to ease up on alcohol and drugs.”

“Is that what always happens?” They were stopped at a corner, waiting for the light to change even though there was no traffic, and Lee glanced at Vincent.

“No. Sometimes a corpse is discovered. Police assume a robbery or an overdose and conduct little or no investigation. Perhaps they would if my victims were more valued.” He shook his head. “I used to feed from peasants. Now it is homosexuals and immigrants and the poor, and the authorities care just as little.”

Lee thought about this the rest of the way home. He knew from personal experience how much a man’s status mattered in this world, but he’d never thought about some of the more arcane ways in which that would make a difference.

They paused outside the entrance to Lee’s building. “Will you come up?”

“I would very much like to, but I think not. Our focus right now should not be on the physical.”

Just those words were enough to make Lee shiver with want, but that in itself was proof that Vincent was right. There was no question that Vincent was exactly what he yearned for in a lover, but he was aware that Vincent was possibly offering something more complicated than that. More permanent.

“I want coffee,” Lee said.

Vincent nodded once. “Of course.”

This time Lee took the lead as they walked to Figueroa, where there was a 24-hour diner. He ate there sometimes after working late, but tonight only a few exhausted-looking people sat in the orange vinyl booths or on the blue counter stools—men and women who’d just ended a late shift or were about to begin an early one. Lee and Vincent slid into a booth, and suddenly ravenous, Lee ordered biscuits and gravy, sausage, eggs over easy, and potatoes. Vincent didn’t order anything, and the droop-eyed waiter apparently didn’t notice that Vincent cast no reflection in the adjacent window.

“Can you eat… regular food?” Lee asked quietly after the waiter left.

“I cannot digest it.”

“Does that upset you?”

Vincent shrugged. “All things come at a cost. I cannot enjoy a fine meal or stand in the sunshine. I must sleep near soil from my homeland. If I do not feed, I grow weak and decrepit. I cannot enter a private home without being invited. I am repulsed by the scent of garlic. I have occasionally been hunted. I will never… never belong among humans.” He gave a sad smile. “But I do not age or grow ill or die. I possess astounding powers. I am quite content with my fate.”

Lee was curious about Vincent’s past. Had he once been an ordinary man, and if so, how did he change? Did he choose to change or was it thrust upon him? Were there many others like him? How old was he?

But those weren’t the important issues right now, so instead Lee took a sip of his coffee, scalding his tongue, and sat back. “The kid from tonight, will he become—”

“No. I told you—it is not an easy process, and not one begun on a whim. Which is why I left you alone for two weeks and why we are having this discussion now.”

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