A Post-Modern Vampire Story : FICTION : STAINLESS,<i> By Todd Grimson (HarperPrism: $12, paperback; 272 pp.)</i>

In the 99 years since Bram Stoker initiated the modern vampire story with his novel about Dracula, perhaps no genre of fiction has been so rigidly codified. Every schoolchild knows the formula, the way vampires hold supernatural sway over their victims yet remain vulnerable to crosses and ropes of garlic, to silver bullets or stakes through the heart. It’s almost as if by adhering to a particular set of guidelines, we can keep these dark and feral fantasies in their place. How real, after all, can a creature be whose reflection does not appear in the mirror, who can never walk out in the sun?

This is the question Todd Grimson sets out to answer in his second novel, “Stainless,” a vibrant, edgy love story that takes the conventions of vampire fiction and subtly transforms them until the existence of the undead seems not only plausible but profound. Revolving around Keith, a 28-year-old former junkie and rock guitarist, and Justine, the Beverly Hills vampire for whom he functions as factotum, “Stainless” is, at heart, about the tenuous connections that sustain us, the way that, even in the most nebulous situations, we can discover a kind of grace.

Keith and Justine occupy a shadow world, neither fully human nor truly supernatural, and initially they hover within it like a pair of ghosts, “in between, living but dead.” Pretty soon, however, the two have forged a bond that goes beyond mere surfaces, as Keith begins to open up and Justine looks for the lost traces of her own humanity in his attempts to draw her out.

In many ways, “Stainless” could be called a post-modern vampire story, as Grimson tweaks our preconceptions with the literary equivalent of a knowing wink. The vampires here watch horror movies on television and Justine wears “a little gold chain, with a gold cross right there on her neck, contradicting all vampire myth.” Immortality is, of course, not what it’s cracked up to be, as Justine reflects, “in many ways no single night was more important than the next, and she forgot.” And although there is savagery in the novel--embodied primarily by David, a vampire whose visceral pleasures give new meaning to the phrase “blood sport”--Justine herself is almost demure in her ministrations, killing only when she has to, preferring to leave her victims alive. This is what’s most compelling about “Stainless,” the vampire with a soul and a conscience, preying on human beings not out of amorphous evil but because it is her nature to feed.

The notion of a vampire with a conscience is not a new one, but by making it so essential to his story Grimson humanizes Justine in a unique and startling way. Especially in her relationship with Keith, he plays against our expectations, using their love as the instrument of Justine’s redemption from the impulses to which she is bound. “The mere thought that [Keith] exists,” Grimson writes, “rouses her from inattention: Everything becomes more interesting, the world takes on color, it sharpens, it contains the possibility of joy.” Still, Grimson’s universe possesses a rigorous cosmology, with its own rules, and every step she takes toward humanity is a step Keith takes away. Thus, if love “is made of the stuff of God,” the price Justine must pay is an increased vulnerability, an awareness that Keith “is like her. She has poisoned him. The unhealed wound, the dirt of the flesh, the inner blackness that they share.”

Ultimately, of course--despite his liberties with tradition--Grimson does end up conforming his novel to certain rules. The story builds toward an inevitable confrontation, and its characters are repaid for their sins. But what sets “Stainless” apart is not so much its narrative structure as its character details, its moments of intimacy between human and vampire. These touches give the book its identity, creating a framework in which such resonances are, if not exactly natural, then organic, part and parcel of some larger plan.