by Chloe Garner
Her eyes flew wide open.
“That is incredible,” she said, and he smiled.
“Thank you,” he answered, taking the other portion and putting it onto his own plate. “If you’re going to eat, you may as well eat well.”
Tina nodded, chewing delightedly. He poured her another glass of wine, and one for himself, and they ate contently, without further conversation until the food was gone.
Hunter stood, taking the plates back to the counter and returning for her. He offered her a hand and she took it delicately, sweeping off of her chair and halfway around him to walk into the seating area under the mezzanine. With a clever flourish, he sat down on one of the black leather couches, drawing her across his lap. She slid her arms around his neck with a laugh.
“You think you’ve hit a home run, here, don’t you?” she asked.
“Dinner and dancing is a classic,” he answered with an easy smile. “I’ve never really gotten the modern fascination with the movie thing. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love movies as much as the next guy, but for a date? There’s no conversation in a movie, and no touch either. Total waste.”
“Well, I get the no talking part,” Tina said and he grinned wider.
“Oh, come on, own it. You aren’t that kind of girl. You don’t want to miss the flick.”
She shrugged an acknowledgment.
He smiled and reached up to touch the line of her jaw with his fingers, the smile fading and turning cool and then very intent as he watched her. There was a pull, just with the pads of his fingers, downward toward his mouth, and Tina blinked as her eyes threatened to settle closed, just smell and touch, when the elevator failed to stop somewhere below them and came all the way up to the top floor, the doors opening into the dark candlelit room.
Tina turned her head to look - no heartbeat - and Tell came off of the elevator, looking around and spotting Tina and Hunter.
“We’ve got a problem,” he said.
Tina changed back into her own clothes, leaving the purple dress hanging on the door to her closet where it wouldn’t get crushed with the other clothes, then went downstairs, listening to the conversation that Tell and Hunter were having the whole time.
“They’re prepping Kyle for ceremonial execution,” Tell had said even as Tina had just started up the stairs.
“Right,” Hunter said. “What does that look like, exactly? Bathing in asses’ milk? Throwing tiny pickles? Walking seven times around a giant guillotine?”
“You know you aren’t funny, right?” Tell had asked. “The magic of necromancy is really, really complicated, and apparently it takes some time to get everything set up even before the guy dies. That’s why they’re standing guard every night, I think. To make sure that Kyle is sticking to the regimen. He isn’t allowed out between sunset and sunrise…” Tell paused. “I just figured that out.”
Hunter snorted.
“You’re unforgettable,” he mocked.
“Anyway, it’s a prescriptive diet and, yes, ritual bathing, and at some point they aren’t going to let him leave the center anymore because the pieces of the magic get to be so intricate.”
“Should I point out that that’s not necromancy?” Hunter asked. “That’s just pre-magicking someone so that they don’t actually die?”
“It’s an interesting philosophical debate they have spent hours on tonight,” Tell said. “When you add up the minutes of time I spent listening to different people argue over it. Apparently they’ve got the magic to make sure he doesn’t die, and it’s just a question of letting him die for a bit before the magic brings him back, and the accomplishment is letting him be dead longer than the last guy.”
“Without him actually staying dead,” Hunter said. “Well, you know, that’s one way to work up to it.”
“Right? The entire time I was blazing through them, I never caught on to how they were doing it, because I didn’t care, but they also didn’t kill anyone while we were at war, so I never got a chance to hear any of it.”
“First, how did you figure any of this out? You were supposed to be setting up long-range photos. Second, what are we going to do about Kyle? Break him out or let him head into what he’s doing? Third, you’re talking about an invincibility potion. You idiots,” Tina said, sitting back down at the cafe table between the two of them.
“That was killing you, wasn’t it?” Tell asked, and Tina nodded.
“I almost yelled over the railing in my underwear,” she answered.
He laughed, and Hunter raised an obligatory eyebrow, though there wasn’t anything but humor behind it.
“Okay, wait, invincibility,” Tell said. “You’re right. How did I not see that?”
“Let’s start with question one and find out,” Tina answered.
“Which one was one?” Hunter asked. Tina narrowed her eyes at him.
“Don’t you play dumb with me,” she said. “Mister I’ve-got-six-or-seven-billion-dollar-deals-in-the-air.”
He flicked an eyebrow again and picked up his coffee mug to sip it.
Coffee.
Tina should need that by now.
She’d drunk almost half a bottle of wine with Hunter.
Drunk wine.
She would have been standing on the counter singing, before, by now.
“The building next door was closed for the night,” Tell said. “So I went in and I went upstairs and I sat and I listened to a leadership meeting. For an hour and a half. Normally that kind of thing is really dull, but the politics are even more complicated than I remember.”
Tina went over to the coffee maker and made a cup, coming back with it and settling in.
“So what do we do about Kyle?” she asked. He shook his head.
“I don’t know. Part of me says that we have to let him do what he wants to do. He isn’t the kid that Colette knew, back in the day, and us rushing in and jerking him out of there just because they seriously wanted to kill his sister… Well, it’s a great reason to do it, but I don’t know what we do after that. Just hold him hostage for the rest of his life? If he’s doing this voluntarily, there’s not a lot I can do to change it.”
“Talk some sense into him,” Hunter said. “There are much better experiences of the after-death than waking up to a room full of fanatics.”
Tina snorted.
“Cheering fanatics who consider you one of the chosen ones,” she said. “Tell’s right. We have to come up with some way of changing his mind. I have a selfish reason for wanting to leave him in there, too.”
“All right,” Tell prompted.
“You’re talking about so-called magic that is interfering with the action of life and death,” she said, chewing her lower lip for a moment and then nodding. “Tell, I need to get all of the samples and testing done on you absolutely as soon as I possibly can. Because I want all of that information in front of me the second we figure out what the Order are doing to keep people from dying. If I can combine whatever it is you’ve got going on - or even just recognize it from what they’re doing - it’s possible that that could be the key to figuring out a cure.”
Tell shook his head.
“It needs to wait. I’m not letting you wander around out there on your own when the Order is active and there are bounty hunters trying to get at Hunter. And we both know that you shouldn’t bring fountains up to the penthouse as long as I might be contagious, which is… we don’t know when. It could be from the first minute. We don’t know. So you’d have to go out to feed, and there would be no one to back you up if you got into trouble.”
“And that’s a very convincing argument,” Tina said. “And yet, when it comes to having a single chance at figuring this out, I’m going to take it. Once we go blow them all up, I might never get another chance at understanding what they’re doing, and that starts with taking an exhaustive dataset from your body.”
“Why not the other order?” Hunter asked. “Why isn’t it just as likely that you’d have your breakthrough having see
n what the Order did, when you have your shot at a live Tell, here? And no way are you going out wandering the city as a brand new vampire with both of us locked away up here.”
She shrugged.
“I will,” she said. “Because that’s what needs to happen and because it won’t be a problem if I don’t expect a problem.”
Hunter blinked.
“That’s called denial, dear.”
“It’s called behaving like a predator rather than prey,” Tina answered. “If I know that no one is going to bother me, no one is going to take a chance on it, because I’ve probably got good reason.”
Hunter looked over at Tell.
“She getting this from you?” he asked.
“Yes,” Tell said. “Though that’s an evolutionary step beyond what I was talking about at the time.”
“Okay, maybe your odds are a little bit better than when you were human, but it still doesn’t answer why now, and I still think that it’s too much risk, regardless.”
“If I was going to live by risk, I would have walked out that door and gone home the minute I found out what Tell was,” she said. “And I’ve paid for it. I died, because of the risk I took. I got kidnapped. I’ve had my life threatened by serious people several times in the last year and change. And… You know what, as big a deal as I make of evaluating the data and coming to sound conclusions, when it comes to my life? The adventure is just worth it. I hate being a vampire, but even that’s worth having been here to do all of the stuff that we do. So I will go out if that’s what the situation calls for, and Tell’s right - if he’s contagious with smallpox, there’s no way I’m bringing fountains up here.”
“Why now?” Tell asked. She nodded, turning her attention to him.
“Intuition,” she said. “They’ve got all of this ritual and this superstition going into what they’re doing, and surely most of it does nothing. So if I’m going to catch the thing that matters, I need to know what’s going on with you. You as a human versus you as a vampire. And, okay, I know you don’t like it, but we can get the Null in here again once more if I absolutely have to and it’s possible that I could find a cure and I’m confident.”
“Nag,” Tell corrected.
“But I’m never going to get another shot at what they’re doing. Because I don’t plan on leaving them in a capacity of ever doing it again,” Tina went on.
“Tell,” Hunter warned.
Tell looked at him quietly for a moment, then shook his head.
“You wouldn’t understand,” he said. “I get that. You love everything about being a vampire. You don’t know why everyone doesn’t want to be a vampire. Sure, it’s got tradeoffs, but you feel like a demigod in a world full of mortals, and you love it. There are plenty of innocent people who would give anything to go back. Tina might be one of them. And while I like who I am and what I am and how I am just fine and I wouldn’t change it, even if there was a simple magic button that did it, I get why she wants this.”
“Tell,” Hunter warned again. Tell checked his phone, then nodded.
“You have equipment coming?” he asked. She shook her head.
“Shouldn’t matter if I ordered it two hours ago, so long as the order goes in at dawn.”
He nodded, dialing the phone.
“Go get it done,” he said. “Expedite everything. Buy local if you can. Give me numbers for hospitals that might be interested in upgrading their equipment and selling the old. We want this done in a couple of days, and no more.”
Tina nodded, already heading for her computer. She paused, turning to walk backwards.
“I need you to tell me how you turn a vampire,” she said. “I need to know, now.”
He nodded as Kirsten from Everyone & Everything answered.
“Hi, Kirsten,” he said. “Is Veronica available?”
He looked intentionally at Tina again and nodded once more.
It was agreement.
He would tell her.
The amount of money involved, when she reflected on it in terms of her human life, was absurd. Astronomical. Inconceivable.
And yet, she didn’t even blink, putting in the orders.
A lot of them were restricted; you had to prove you were a medical facility in order to procure one, and it took some creativity and some of Tell’s online knack to get around the barriers. Even then, wait times on the bigger pieces were in the months.
More creativity, research on third-world solutions, second-hand markets, equivalent testing.
As the sun was burning down on her from somewhere just behind the horizon, though, Tina finally finished out the last of her orders, letting Tell know that he should text Vince to expect the first of the deliveries in just a few hours.
Money moved mountains.
Hunter was in the library, watching a movie and pointedly ignoring the both of them, an act of protest against every one of the plans they were making just now, and Tina was partially tempted to just sulk and leave him to his own sulk, but the night…
To say it had been magical would be wrong. She’d had magical nights, and this…
This had just been sweet.
And she might have appreciated it more, for it.
There wasn’t some heat between them that made her feel like she couldn’t keep her hands off of him. Instead, it had just been familiar and warm, intimate in an entirely different way.
If they’d been sloppy wet and all over each other, half-dressed when Tell had come home, she probably would have left Hunter to his strike, but the tenderness of the night they’d had instead was one she wasn’t ready to just storm away from.
Going upstairs with heavy limbs and a deep need to be somewhere that she wouldn’t hit her head on the way down when the paralysis hit, she turned right instead of left at the bedroom doors, going into Hunter’s room and closing the doors behind her.
The room was vampiric.
Black carpet, black walls, black ceiling, it had red neon bars running along the walls at ceiling-height, and the bed, the couch, the armoire were all dark mahogany and black. The bed was huge and elliptical, over against the far wall with mesh curtains tied up all around it. Tina shook her head, going to lay down on it.
The pillows were black velvet and luxurious beyond what Tina would have considered possible.
After the cream-and-rose of her own room, this was shocking.
A few minutes after Tina had settled in, the door opened and closed once more. Tina recognized Tell by scent.
“I’m not asking so don’t tell me,” he said. “You asked me how you turn a human into a vampire.”
“I did,” she said.
“I told you that you weren’t ever going to do it by accident,” he said. “It’s hard, but it isn’t complicated. You feed on the person you intend to turn, just like you normally would, though I didn’t feed on you anywhere near as hard as I would with a fountain because I was afraid it might kill you. You fill up your sanguine sinuses with their blood, at the very least. And then you feed on your own blood. It won’t heal, because our… magic, chemistry, whatever you want to call it… it doesn’t work on you, so you shouldn’t be surprised when you still have holes in your arm, after. You draw your own blood up into your sanguine sinuses to mix with theirs. And then you bite them again and you let the mix drain back into them through your fangs. The discipline, the physical control it takes to drain your sinuses back into someone is… some vampires never work it out. It isn’t easy.”
“Can you not say sinuses again?” Tina asked. “It’s gross.”
Tell laughed gently.
“At any rate, it’s the mix of blood that does it. Only their blood and literally nothing happens. Only your blood and it will kill them like you injected them with poison. You have to mix the bloods in your own body first, so that it can… cause undeath, if you like.”
Tina pulled air into her lungs and let it out again, sorting through how it felt to know that.
Scientifically, it was just facts.
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But.
To hear about what had happened to her in the moments before he’d turned her…
It was chilling.
He touched her forehead.
“Veronica isn’t available tonight, but she can come tomorrow night. I get why you wanted to know, but you aren’t going to have to turn me. Hunter is here, and he’s going to keep being here for the foreseeable future. I… There’s probably no reason you ever need to actually try to do it, but I know you will. I hope you never turn anyone.”
“Me, too,” Tina murmured. He smiled audibly and stood.
“Rest well,” he said. “You didn’t feed tonight, did you?”
“Not beyond the bottle of wine I split with Hunter,” she answered.
“I hope that goes well,” he said, leaving.
She sighed, letting her body settle further into the bed, and she closed her eyes, her mind drifting. She wouldn’t be able to speak for much longer; getting up was out of the question.
Footsteps on the stairs and down the hallway. The doors opened and closed and she listened to Hunter’s soft feed across the floor.
“Your timing is remarkable, but I don’t know in what way,” he said, sitting down on the bed.
“We’ve got to cut out this will-they-won’t-they thing,” Tina answered. “Every time we have a fight, there’s this idea that it could be enough to put both of us off trying, and this is what I have to say to that.”
“Tell me the truth,” Hunter said. “You hate this room.”
She snorted.
“If I’m going to start spending any serious time in it, I’ll certainly have to renovate it,” she answered.
“Just because you have a room in the penthouse doesn’t mean that you get to run roughshod over the whole place,” Hunter said, unconcerned.
“You really think Tell is going to say no to a new coat of paint and a refresh on the carpet? It smells like unspeakable things.”
“Good times,” Hunter answered. “And, yes, I think he’ll refuse to have workmen up here, just now.”
Tina would have shrugged, but she wasn’t up for it.
“I’ll do it myself,” she said.
She heard him smile as he came to lay down next to her, his head on the next pillow over.