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Swansong short story #2: Love

Archived from the official Vampire the Masquerade: Swansong website.

Three short stories were posted on the official Swansong website, providing more information on its main characters. Originally posted on 6/22/2022 at "news.vampire-swansong.com", this was the entry featuring Emem, her sire - Hilda MacAndrews and what love is among the undead.

Short story #2 - Love

Vienna, late 30’s

A spin. A high kick. A jump. The pounding of heeled feet on the stage. A step to one side. A step to the other. A peek of bosom. A flash of behind. And then, with a confident grin, the singing started up again.

Hilda MacAndrews sat at the table farthest from the stage, but held Emem’s stare as she’d suggested — kindly, but firmly — that sitting right at the stage’s edge every night was a distraction. A pleasant one, to be sure, but a distraction nonetheless. Better that Emem looked across the room into the eyes of her lover while she sat at the bar, than kept glancing down at Hilda’s appreciative smile.

Forever mine... Hilda hadn’t touched the drink in front of her — a prop, really — but stirred it slowly as she watched her childe’s every move. This audience loved her for her voice, or more likely, her body. And they could all want her, she didn’t care, she was hers. Hilda was sometimes overwhelmed with the idea of consuming Emem, so keenly did she want to know, to possess, every part of her. On those occasions, a long walk along the Danube and the taking of some hapless prey was enough to soothe her inner Beast, but damn all if the urge didn’t emerge at the most inconvenient times.

As Emem’s song waxed on, covering the familiar subjects of illicit love, stolen passions, and the pining for another, Hilda slipped her hand up, inside her dress. Nobody was looking in her direction; nobody but Emem, and sure enough, Emem caught her sire’s risqué behavior, her eyes widening. And then she laughed — her generous, lively, angelic laugh — which she incorporated into her song as she danced only for the lady at the other side of the club, her moves increasingly indecent, her words ever more suggestive.

***

“You were quite, quite amazing tonight, darling.” In Emem’s dressing room, Hilda approached her childe from behind, put her arms around her torso, and laid kisses on her shoulders and the back of her neck. “I know when you’re using unnatural talents to captivate a crowd, and my love, tonight was all natural.”

Emem played coy, removing her earrings and removing the ties from her hair while Hilda lavished attention on her body. She ran her finger along her dressing table, noticing it appeared to not have been dusted in some time. “Oh, really? I thought it was just the first time these old bastards saw a brown body on their stage, and were wondering if they’d walked into the wrong joint.” She placed her earrings — both pearls — into a small box emblazoned with her initials looped with those of Hilda. EL−HM.

“Don’t be foolish, darling. They paid to see you. They knew who they were coming to see. Every night you fill this place to the rafters. Every night they clap, they make their happy noises, they throw their schillings onto the stage, and they pray you'll look at one of them. Hell, I guarantee if you flashed one of them a smile while keeping eye contact, you’d have a man’s death on your conscience.” Hilda helped her childe out of her dress, which took little effort. The outfit was designed to come apart easily, and there wasn’t much of it left on by the time the show came to an end.

“I know you hate it, baby.” Emem let the clothing drop to the floor, turned, and took Hilda’s hands, once again looking into her eyes. “You think they sound like farmyard animals, mooing and braying for feed. You don’t think they deserve to get to see me like you see me, do you?”

Hilda bit her lip. This was all part of the routine. She was supposed to act all shy and ashamed of her protectiveness, Emem was supposed to reassure her that it was okay, that she loved it. And then, the two of them would hold each other, even feed from each other if appetites were suitably aroused. But before Hilda could answer, someone was hammering the dressing room door.

“Miss Louis? Miss Louis! The Gauleiter requests your attention! He says to meet him in the lobby!”

The post-performance haze of romance and blood was drifting away with the concierge’s words. Hilda was a combination of crestfallen and furious, her eyes narrow as she contemplated dragging the boy into the dressing room and beating him for his interruption. But as she always did, Emem calmed her sire. “Hugo, let that stuffed shirt know I’ll be out as soon as I'm goddamn ready, you got that?” The sound of footsteps dashing away from the door was the answer Emem wanted.

Emem wrapped her arms tightly around her sire’s body, feeling the cold skin warm as the two vampires motivated their vitae into action. They’d both be hungry after tonight, but sometimes, sacrifices were necessary. “Now, where were we?”

***

“With all due respect, you’re full of shit.” Hilda pushed the man back with her index finger, advancing to block his view of Emem. “She’s my client. We’re free to perform wherever we fucking well choose, if the theaters will have us, and guess what? They all want Miss Louis! She’s the most successful singer and dancer in Vienna, and has toured every major city in Europe! So again, Herr Aigner: you’re full of shit.” Hilda pushed him back again, forcing him to stumble down a step, out of the theater lobby and toward the sidewalk.

Aigner was surprised at the strength she carried in that little digit, but more shocked at the effrontery these two women were showing him. He had orders when it came to women like Emem Louis, and they didn’t involve being pushed around. “Little women… Irregardless−”

“That’s not a word,” Emem called from her position in the lobby, her arms folded as she watched her sire play with this little fascist like a chew toy, “but if you’re going to struggle speaking to us in English, we’re more than capable of speaking to you in German, French, Italian, or… what language was it you’ve started learning recently, Hilda?”

“Croatian.”

“Croatian.” Emem stepped up to stand beside her sire, acting in this instance as her agent and manager. “We ‘little women’ aren’t that easy to push around or gouge with your new taxes. Which I didn’t see published in any newspaper, by the way. I’ve heard assholes like you like to invent new methods of extortion for people like us. Well, buster, you’re not getting a single dime from my purse, and I sure as hell am not restricting my shows to the parts of Austria you designate as ‘proper for my kind.’ You can fuck off all the way back to your little buddies in brown and tell them I welcome the goddamn challenge. Did you get all that, or do we need to break it down into German?”

Aigner remained silent. A time was coming for women like this, with their attitudes, and their cosmopolitan behavior. He finally opened his mouth to speak, only for Hilda to cut him off with a fist to the jaw, sending him sprawling to the cobbled street.

“Hilda!”

“Don’t worry about it, darling. I don’t think the Gauleiter is going to be telling his friends a ‘little woman’ knocked him out. Come on.” The two descended the short staircase to the street and Hilda hopped over his body, holding out her arms to lift Emem over as if with a dance move. The two laughed the evening away as they found a cab and made their way back to their hotel.

***

“Will I need this?”

“Stop asking me that.”

“How am I supposed to know what to keep and what to leave behind? I’ve not been to Paris in years!”

“Well I’m as in the dark as you are!”

“Please, let’s not fight.”

Hilda slammed her case shut and wheeled on Emem. “No, let’s. I told you last month.”

“You told me?” Emem’s jaw dropped.

“I told you! But you had to be hardheaded and say ‘the show must go on!’ Well, look at us now. Being harried out of Austria because we couldn’t leave in good time!”

“Me?” Emem repeated herself. “You’re the one who punched the tiny prick in the mouth! If we’d been a little more controlled, perhaps, we’d have got away with just slipping him some of our earnings. Stayed on easy street for a while longer. But no, you’ve got to be my guardian angel all the fucking time!”

Hilda paused a moment before pulling an electric lamp from the wall and smashing it to the ground. The room had darkened naturally, but a coldness came with it as Hilda drew in the dread and fear around her. “Do not piss me off, childe.”

Emem couldn’t help but back away, tripping and falling into the wardrobe, clothing coming off its hangers as she grabbed upward, leaving her covered in a small pile of sequined gowns and short dresses, and a scattering of dust that seemed to pour from the shelf above. “Hilda… I−”

Hilda could feel the fangs growing pointed in her mouth. She could feel the smug roar of the Beast clutching up her throat, trying to force her mouth open in another show of intimidation. She closed her eyes, cracked her knuckles, shook her head, and spoke. “No. No. This isn’t the right time. I’m sorry.” She opened her eyes. “I’m so sorry, darling. I just wish we’d been smarter.”

Emem remained half-sitting in the wardrobe, terrified of her sire, but slowly pushed herself free from her mound of clothes. “It’s…” she couldn’t find the words. She’d seen Hilda as a predator many times, of course, and had fed alongside her on more occasions than she could count, but rarely had her lover and sire directed that anger at her. “It’s fine. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have provoked you. Help me up?” Emem forced a chuckle, trying to defuse the situation.

Hilda strode forward and yanked Emem to her feet. There was no warmth in the gesture. “Come on. We need to pack and get to the station by midnight if we’re going to get to the right train for Paris. If I’ve planned everything right, our luggage carriage won’t be opened until two nights away, by which point we’ll be in France. Just pack some reading, I guess, because we’ll be stuck inside those trunks.”

“And a light?” Emem offered, again attempting to add some levity to this dire affair.

“Yes,” Hilda’s coolness finally broke and she allowed herself a smile, “pack a book of matches and try not to set your novel on fire.”

The two continued packing their bags without exchanging words, before Emem broke the monastic atmosphere. “Where did we go wrong, baby?”

Hilda finished her second suitcase and rested on the edge of the bed. “I guess punching out one of the Warlock council’s ghouls didn’t help matters.” She sat in silence for a moment before letting out an uncontrollable laugh. “Yeah, you could say we fucked that up. Pissing off the Warlocks in Vienna of all places… My God. What were we thinking?”

Emem joined her sire in laughter, sitting next to her on the bed, stroking her hair, and finally kissing her on the cheek. “We’re going to be okay, you hear me? Whatever the hell’s going on in Austria’s not going to follow us across the Alps, and you know something?” Emem’s hand moved from Hilda’s hair to her cheek, which she gently stroked with her thumb. “Even if it does, we just keep moving. As long as we’re together, we’ll survive.”

Hilda felt a genuine smile forming on her face, Emem’s hot skin against her cold flesh. Her childe always knew what to say and what to do to make a bad time better. “Just… Let’s not do anything stupid for a while, okay?”

“Okay.” Emem kissed her sire again, and let one fang bite into Hilda’s lips.

***

“So you truly are... leaving us?” As the two vampires loaded their bags into the luggage carriage and waited for onlookers to drift away so they could follow suit, a voice interrupted their plans. Emem turned around to see the tall, stooped figure of Hugo Kaufmann standing, watching them. The Nosferatu’s face appeared at first glance to be covered with a light coating of fur, but when approached, one could see it was a thick, ever-blooming layer of small, white fungal infection and dead skin. He leaned from under his hood, creating a small cloud of dust where his skin brushed against the fabric.

Even undead, Emem struggled to not feel repulsed by this poor monstrosity, who bore the same affliction all over his body. He was a vampire rarely seen in public, or even the city’s infrequent Elysia. “Have you come to see us off?” She had no closeness to the hideous Kindred.

“Oh yes.” Kaufmann moved forward a fraction more, even more dead skin particles blossoming into the air. “I wanted... to make sure you got to your… train.” His rasping voice was almost as unpleasant as his appearance. “Your presence in Vienna… will be missed.”

Hilda, her inclination to protect Emem rising to the fore, stepped between her childe and the Sewer Rat. “How did you know we were catching this train, Kaufmann? We didn’t tell anybody.”

The Nosferatu’s contorted grin showed an array of vicious yellow fangs. “I’m a fan. I keep up… with everything Emem… does.” He peered over Hilda’s head, easily a foot taller than the Toreador. “I’ve watched all… of your shows… Emem Louis. From Paris… to Vienna. And now… back again? Haven’t you… noticed me?”

Emem screwed up her face and shook her head, placing her hand on Hilda’s shoulder. “Come on, baby. Let’s get out of here.”

Hilda just shook Emem off and stared at the man in front of her. “We first met you here, in this domain. I’ve never seen you at one of Miss Louis’s shows. Tell me exactly what’s going on, Hugo, or I’m going to peel layers off your skin until I start seeing red.”

The threat provoked a mocking laugh from the Nosferatu and a retching sound from Emem. Undead or not, she suddenly felt nauseated, like she wanted to purge the vitae from her system. “Oh shit… Jesus Christ.”

“What is it? What did he do?” Hilda turned to Emem, then back to Kaufmann, then back again, her expression changing from care, to fury, to fear. “What did he fucking do, Emem?”

“The dust… All over the damn place. My dressing room… Our haven… The hotel… I… I just thought… I didn’t…” Emem turned and walked away from the two Kindred, lost in disgust.

“My autograph…” Kaufmann volunteered, still bearing those fangs, the cloud even thicker with spores. “You put on so many… private shows for… me. Signed so… many autograph books… for me while I dressed… in a suit and… bowtie… wore a new… face in your... audience... “ He lurched toward Hilda, shoving her with amazing power, sending her flying through the air and into the side of the train with a crash. “Only fair to give you… mine.”

“Baby!” Emem awoke from her fugue state and rushed to Hilda’s side. Her sire’s head had a crack running across the top of the skull from the force of Kaufmann’s blow. She could see her partner’s skin and bone knitting itself together, the vitae working to repair the wound, as Hilda’s eyes rolled and then fixed in anger at the Nosferatu now looming over the both of them.

“Kill him for me, darling.”

Emem required no further prompt. She jumped to her feet and onto Kaufmann, making the vampire stagger back as she bit and clawed at his face and neck. Much smaller than the Nosferatu, Emem clung on like a feral animal, her legs wrapped around his waist and hooked together; her hands inside his hood, ripping at his skin; her fangs gnashing at his nose and lips. Kaufmann screeched in pain, not having expected such ferocity from the young Diva. In Emem’s head, however, she heard it as this pervert enjoying himself, and only worked harder to break his head apart in her hands.

As Hilda unsteadily climbed to her feet she found herself gasping in horror despite her undead state, as Kaufmann displayed that awesome strength again, pulling Emem off his body and slamming her into the stone ground. “Get away from her!” Hilda twisted every emotion she could in Kaufmann’s mind to focus on her and fear her, and hopefully send this monster fleeing into the night.

Instead, Hugo Kaufmann stamped his foot into Emem’s chest. “Your power is no… match… for how much I… love her.” He brought down his foot again, driving his heel into her sternum. “And if I can’t have… her… you... cannot…” He leered at Hilda then, showing the wreck Emem had made of his face, a horrible open wound of raw pinks and reds, coated with seams of fuzzy white.

And then he screamed in pain again. Looking down, Kaufmann could see Emem had driven a railway spike through his knee, and was about to stab him again. He reached down to grab her wrist, to squeeze it tight enough to break, when he heard the split second crunching of fast footsteps on the train track’s gravel sidings, the sound of splintering wood, and then felt all sensation abruptly mute, as Hilda with inhuman swiftness impaled him through his heart.

***

Hilda pulled the carriage door shut. It was dark inside, but it was a comforting darkness. Neither woman could see the other’s wounds, or the mess of blood around their respective mouths from where they’d replenished their strength by feeding from Hugo Kaufmann. Alone time, as possible as such a thing is in a small luggage carriage, was necessary at this point.

For a long time as the train rolled out from Vienna, Emem’s head rested in Hilda’s lap while her sire comforted her by stroking her hair or singing to her just loudly enough to be heard over the sound of the rumbling train.

Eventually, Emem broke the melancholic feeling, as she so often did. “Do you think when the train rolled over that piece of shit, the station was suddenly coated in a snowstorm of skin flakes?”

The thought of it made Hilda smile. She leaned down and kissed her childe’s forehead. “I can’t have anyone else loving you, you know?”

“I know, baby.” Emem remained in her position, enjoying the attention. “Those men in my audiences… People like Kaufmann… They think they know what love is, but they don’t know the kind of love we have. They want to own me.” Through the gloom, she thought Hilda was silently crying, though it was difficult to tell whether the rivulets on her cheeks were her tears or Kaufmann’s dried vitae.

“Hey. That’s not how we are.” She gripped her sire’s hand. “We have each other, tonight and always. We’ll always love each other. We’ll always forgive each other when we fuck up. We’ll always be there for each other. Got that? There’s nothing you could do that’d make me stop loving you. You understand?”

Hilda squeezed her childe’s hand in response, but didn’t say another word that night.

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