The Shake
precise my memory of Mio might be, it always failed to prepare me for seeing her in the flesh. Mio’s face was not, in any conventional sense, beautiful. She had what might be described as a horse face: long and narrow, with a high forehead, a long, broad, flat nose, and a wide mouth with narrow lips. She also had very pronounced epicanthic folds and extraordinarily narrow slits for eyes. Nevertheless, these features somehow managed to harmonize with the most unexpected charm.Just under five feet tall and an eternal ninety-one pounds, she was an incarnation of feminine animal vitality: slender, narrow-hipped, densely muscular, but without any suggestion of either adolescence or masculinity. Her body exuded a formidable prowess, tangible in predators like leopards and other big cats, but rare in a creature possessing self-consciousness. Her simple presence could be deeply unsettling, even for another vampire. Especially for another vampire. She was, in her own way, magnificently beautiful. However, saying this did not convey anything fundamental. It only concealed something much more profound. There was something about her: a force, an energy, something spooky and invisible, like radiation, that burned into everything around her.
I first met Mio in Mexico in 1976. Many parts of the country were in a state of civil unrest, and I was there taking advantage of the chaotic conditions, using them to mask my feeding on humans. By that time in my life as a vampire, I was very much a loner, having given up any wish to associate with others of my kind. So I was not all that pleased to be interrupted one evening by another vampire. In truth, we were both initially put off by the presence of the other, but we were both also curious, intrigued by the improbability of our encounter. As the night passed, we found ourselves unexpectedly comfortable together. The novelty made us careless and we lost track of the time. As dawn approached, we realized we would have to push ourselves in order to make it back to my lodging, which was closer than hers, before the sun put an unpleasant end to the evening.
If you’ve ever watched a world-class sprinter compete, you may be able to imagine the driving intensity required to propel a two-legged animal at forty-plus miles per hour. Then consider that I’m a head taller than Mio and for every two strides of mine, she had to take three to keep up. But she did keep up. She was like some incredible machine driven by her own velocity. Her arms and legs churned in a blur of absolute and precise physical determination. With a few hundred yards to go, the sun was starting to peak above the horizon. The threat of death along with the all-out exertion to reach cover, produced in me a kind of euphoria. I would have laughed if I’d had any breath to spare. It was then that I witnessed something I did not expect. Mio began to pull ahead of me. With all my strength, I could not keep up with her. Witnessing her under those extreme conditions, seeing her terrifying will to survive manifest itself in the physical perfection of her body pushed to its absolute limit, was for me the single most pure and intense moment of beauty I have ever experienced.
We reached my lodgings with only seconds to spare. Once safely inside, it was all I could do to breathe. When my heart finally stopped pounding, I realized Mio was crouching naked across the room, watching me silently through the narrow slits of her eyes. That was to be the first time I would have sex since 1908. It was also the first of many times I would witness the gymnastic precision Mio was capable of. She sprang across the room like she’d been shot from a cannon and hit me chest to chest. Her legs locked around my waist, she wrapped her left arm around my neck and pressed her mouth hard against mine, while simultaneously her right hand had unzipped my fly and grasped my cock. I felt myself swell in her hand as she guided me into her.
She stopped kissing me long enough to say the only words she would speak for some time. “Don’t do anything. Just stand still.”
She pressed her mouth back to mine and began slowly raising and lowering herself on me. I stood obediently, my back braced against the wall, amazed once again by what it meant to be a vampire.
And now, in the quiet of the shoebox, Mio stood before me again, naked, her expression betraying no emotion. I moved the book aside and let it fall to the floor, unbuckled my belt, unfastened and unzipped my pants, raised myself enough to push my pants down below my knees, then relaxed back into the lounge chair. I had not seen Mio for almost six months, an absence made unmistakably salient by my erection. Mio stood as if frozen for an eternity that must have lasted two or three minutes. Almost clinically, she reached between her legs and slipped a finger into her vagina. Without looking at her hand, she let it fall back to her side, rubbing the moisture between finger and thumb. Apparently satisfied, she walked forward, climbed into the chair, her knees straddling my hips, and once again guided me inside her.
•
Later in the day, after we’d slept, I told Mio about Arnaud; everything from the night I drank Francine’s blood to the information I’d gotten from Richardson about Yavorsky.
“And all of this,” Mio asked, stretched out on the bed, “because the word ‘bloodsucker’ was printed on a photograph in a trunk in a dead woman’s closet?”
“Well, no. It’s a little more complicated than that.” I said. “For one thing, it wasn’t just any photograph, but one of a man I already had a certain interest in. It wasn’t just the word ‘bloodsucker.’ That was just a detail that initially caught my attention.”
“Okay. I can