Vampires of Cairo_Vampires of the World by Geoffrey Knight

Author:Geoffrey Knight [Knight, Geoffrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Squid INQ Press
Published: 2020-10-01T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

In her day, she had been a star. A theater idol. The name that appeared on everyone’s invitation list. But there was no holding back the years, nor holding back younger, more beautiful starlets who followed in her wake. Yes, she had paved the way for them, but the day came when they simply left her by the side of the road that she had built.

Doris Beauchamp struggled with this for many years, as she lost her fans, lost her agent, lost the jewels and the applause. And eventually she lost the light—the spotlight she adored so much—altogether.

But then the boy came along. That orphan lad on the brink of manhood, clueless and penniless, yet handsome beyond belief. And so Doris Beauchamp taught him the one talent that got her started in the first place. The talent of making somebody feel young again. The talent of making somebody feel wanted. Needed.

The talent of love.

She thought about him often, the young man she’d loved so much, the one she had set free, the one who had made a name for himself in the big city. The place where stars are born!

But not tonight. Tonight, she was thinking about her cats.

She had so many of them that she had lost count long ago. There were always cats scattered around the house. Fat ones, skinny ones, handsome ones, ugly ones, young ones, old ones, cats with perfect coats, cats with frayed whiskers, cats on the bed, cats on the sofa, cats on the stairs, cats licking the melted ice out of last night’s glass of gin and tonic. She loved them all. And yet tonight, for some strange, unnerving reason, every cat in Doris Beauchamp’s large, rambling Nashville home—

—had vanished from sight.

She had called them from the porch. She had looked for them in the basement. She had tapped a fork against an open can of cat food as she walked through every room in the house. Yet nothing. Not a sound, not a purr, not a patter of a single paw.

And so here she was, standing in front of the bathroom mirror, putting on her make-up at midnight and throwing a silk scarf around her neck in haste because this had always been Mrs. Doris Beauchamp’s job. To look beautiful. To look dignified. To look like a lady every time she left her house, even if it was only to look for her cats in the dead of night.

She took a flashlight with her. One step at a time, hand on railing, she made her way warily down the porch steps that were in dire need of maintenance. She walked cautiously through the long grass covering her property, cursing herself for not finding a new gardener, despite the fact that the old one had canceled her account because she couldn’t afford to pay him. The out-of-control dandelions brushed against her shins. The cotton candy weave of a spider web caught the beam of the flashlight, and she shook it off with fright.

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