The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires(114)

“I panicked,” Maryellen said. “I’m sorry.”

“I need you to put pressure on that wound,” Mrs. Greene said, pointing to Patricia’s thigh.

The place where James Harris had been torn away from Patricia’s leg looked ragged and ugly. Blood oozed from it like sap.

“You haven’t changed a thing,” James Harris said from the bathroom. “She’ll die later rather than sooner. So what?”

“Don’t speak to him,” Mrs. Greene said. “He’s going to talk, try to convince us of something, but that’s all he can do now. We need to remember our jobs and do them. Get a washcloth and hold it on her leg.”

Kitty went into the bathroom, stepping over James Harris, avoiding his hands, and brought back all the hand towels and washcloths she could find. Maryellen folded one of the washcloths into a square and pressed it to Patricia’s thigh. Mrs. Greene and Kitty went back into the bathroom.

“What’s your big plan?” James Harris asked, as they rolled him over. His arms flopped uselessly. “You’re going to book club me to death? Not invite me to your next meeting?”

They each gripped him beneath an armpit, raised him to a sitting position, and then Mrs. Greene and Kitty exchanged glances and nodded. One…two…

“Lift from your legs,” Mrs. Greene said.

…three. They heaved James Harris up to sit on the edge of his huge whirlpool tub.

“Drowning won’t work,” he said, grinning. “It’s been tried.”

They didn’t care what happened to him now; he was as good as dead, so they let go and he toppled backward and smashed into the bottom of the fiberglass tub in a jumble of limbs.

“You’ll have to do better than that,” he said.

Kitty arranged him so that he lay full length, his back propped up against one end of the tub, while Mrs. Greene moved everything out of the way. Then she left the room and came back in with the cooler and the grocery bag.

They unfolded a blue tarp over the floor and taped it down with painter’s tape. Kitty had taken several of Horse’s deer hunting books and photocopied the relevant pages. When they taped them up on the wall over the bathtub for reference, James Harris got a good look.

“You can’t,” he said, eyes dilating with shock. “You can’t do that to me. I’m one of a kind. I’m a miracle.”

Mrs. Greene laid out the tools from the cooler. Bow saws, ten identical hunting knives with crossguards, a hacksaw with two packs of extra blades, a squashed coil of blue nylon rope. Chain-mail gloves to prevent cuts if they slipped. She and Kitty put on green gardening knee pads.

“Listen to me,” James Harris said. “I’m unique. There are billions of people and I’m the only one like me. Do you really want to destroy that? It’d be like smashing a stained-glass window or…or burning a library of books. You’re a book club. You aren’t book burners.”

They pulled off James Harris’s shoes and socks, then his pants, and let him lie naked on the bottom of the whirlpool. His nipples were pale, and his penis flopped upside down on his blond pubic thatch. Mrs. Greene turned on the water and made sure it was draining. She put in a drain catcher so no big pieces went down the pipes to cause problems later. She handed Kitty a hunting knife.

Kitty got on her knees next to James Harris’s head. She looked at the diagram with its dotted lines and reached for James Harris’s arm. The first cut was supposed to be all the way around his elbow, slicing through the ligaments, and then she was supposed to twist and pull it off. She told herself it would be just like dressing a deer.

“Didn’t Patricia tell you about me?” he said, trying to make eye contact. “I’ve lived for four hundred years. I know the secret to eternal life. I can tell you how to stop getting old. Don’t you want to stay this age forever?”

Kitty touched the tip of the knife to the soft skin on his inner arm, hardly daring to breathe. The point dimpled the inside of his elbow.

“This is the one time in your life you are face-to-face with something bigger than yourselves,” he said. “I am a mystery of the universe. Is this really how you’re going to respond?”

In the bright light, with James Harris lying helpless in the tub, and everyone watching, in the calm rational white-tiled bathroom, Kitty froze.

“Exactly,” James Harris said. “You haven’t done anything permanent yet. Just give me a few minutes and I’ll be as good as new. Then I’ll show you how to live forever.”

“Here,” Mrs. Greene said, putting one hand on Kitty’s shoulder and holding out her hand. “You wait in the next room. Keep an eye on Patricia.”

Gratefully, Kitty handed the knife to Mrs. Greene and got up, then stripped off the warm chain-mail glove and handed it to her. Mrs. Greene closed her eyes in silent prayer.

“I’m the one thing in this world that’s bigger than all of you,” James Harris called after Kitty. “I can make you stronger than anyone you know, I can make you live longer; you have come face-to-face with something truly amazing.”

“What would that be?” Mrs. Greene asked, opening her eyes and kneeling by the side of the deep tub. She pulled on the glove.

“Me!” he said.

“We’ll have to agree to disagree,” she said.