by Aidan Wayne
Table of Contents
Blurb
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
About the Author
By Aidan Wayne
Visit Harmony Ink Press
Copyright
Showers, Flowers, and Fangs
By Aidan Wayne
Darren is your average half-human, half-fae trans teenager, busy figuring out his powers and puberty while trying to survive finals. When Vlad, a newly turned vampire, moves in with the witch down the street, he and Darren get off on the wrong foot. Darren is always one to give somebody a second chance, though, and as they become friends, he realizes Vlad is just lonely and struggling with his new powers. That’s something Darren can definitely relate to, and he’s happy to lend his support. But while he coaxes Vlad out of his shell, Darren ends up learning about Vlad’s past… and the danger Vlad is in. Darren only wants to help—help Vlad feel comfortable in his own skin and help him feel safe.
He hadn’t planned on falling in love.
I believe in you.
Chapter One
IT WAS a beautiful sunny day, and Darren’s mother found him curled up on the couch, clutching at his stomach and wanting to die.
“Darren?” she asked.
“Mmgglph,” Darren groaned into the couch cushions. Stupid period. Stupid fae genes that didn’t mesh with modern medicine. Stupid period.
“Darren,” his mother said again. “What’s the matter?”
“Cramps,” Darren mumbled, rolling over just enough to grimace at his mom. “And I don’t have my herbals ’cause I’m like a week early, and ow!”
His mother sighed. “Do you need me to make a run to Tabitha for you?”
Darren managed to push himself up. His mom was holding a stack of files and clearly on her way up to the home office she shared with Darren’s dad. It was tax season. She didn’t exactly need any added stress.
“No,” he managed. “I can do it. Gotta suck it up, right?”
“Are you sure you—”
“It’s okay, Mom,” Darren said, taking a deep breath and forcing himself to his feet. “It’s two blocks. I’ll take a dose when I get there so coming home’ll be easy. No… no sweat.”
“If you’re sure,” she said doubtfully.
“Uh-huh.”
“Okay. Just take it easy. Oh, and don’t forget that Tabitha has her… guest. So be nice, okay? He’s a little wary around people, she’s said.”
“Got it,” Darren forced out as he carefully stepped into his shoes. “Wary around people. Right.” Darren didn’t know a whole lot about Tabitha’s visitor, but the entire town was talking about him, what with the kid being a vampire and all. He’d apparently been run out of his hometown in, like, Russia or something. Darren wasn’t too clear on the details, but since it had to do with vampires, he guessed they were probably messy. Not that Darren had ever met a vampire personally or anything, but it seemed like a logical conclusion, right?
He hadn’t really thought much about it. He figured, give the new kid his space, let him take a breather from whatever happened in Russia, don’t tempt the possibly unstable vampire into biting him. Sound plan.
Of course that was before he’d started bleeding out his insides. Really, it was just Darren’s luck that his period had to come right when Tabitha had decided to adopt a vampire kid. At least it was a nice day. It was still March, but it was sunny and just the right mix of not too hot and not too cold.
Tabitha lived in a cheery-looking house that she’d had painted yellow with black shutters, giving it the overall impression of a strangely shaped bumblebee. Her garden took up both the back and front lawns, and Darren was pretty sure she didn’t have a single blade of grass on the property. It was great. Grass was, in Darren’s opinion, lawn weeds for boring people. It gave him a little boost of happy when he got to the house, especially after having to limp past two blocks of neatly trimmed lawns.
There was a guy sitting on the porch when Darren approached. He looked maybe a little older than Darren, though not by a whole lot. He looked kinda like Tabitha actually; his brown skin was just a little darker than hers, and their noses were roughly the same shape. And as Darren got closer, he saw that their bright green eyes were the same too, so they almost had to be related. He got all the way up to the front stoop before he realized the guy was most likely Vampire Kid. Which meant he could probably see through Darren’s glamour. Yay.
Vampire Kid was currently scowling at him.
“Uh, hi,” Darren said. “Is Tabby home?”
Vampire Kid stopped scowling and tilted his head, looking confused. “You are not here to gawk at me?” His voice was heavily accented. Darren guessed that was the Russian.
“No?” Darren grimaced and tried to stay upright. “Look, no, I don’t gawk. Is Tabby home? I need her for a thing.”
“She stepped out for a minute,” Vampire Kid said. He was looking kind of tentatively concerned now. “Can I—do you need help?”
Darren hissed. “Not unless you know Tabby’s stock.” He got another wave of pain and sat before he fell over. “Fffff—I’ll just wait.”
“I, I know how to apply bandages,” Vampire Kid said in a rush, sounding really alarmed now. He reached out to put his hand on Darren’s shoulder and then seemed to rethink it and let his hand drop. “It will be better if you wait inside. I can call Tabitha.”
“Nah, it’s fine. I’ll wait here.” It’s not like he wasn’t doing just that before his mom sent him over here, and he also really didn’t want to move much at the moment. Then he caught up with the rest of what Vampire Kid had said. “What? Bandages, what?”
“I can smell blood,” Vampire Kid said. He wrinkled his nose. “It’s… bad, I think? It smells rotten. And mixed with other things. I think you need a hospital.” He made another aborted motion at Darren’s shoulder.
Oh man, Darren was not in the mood to deal with this, especially with a vampire who could totally see through the glamour. “I’m on my freaking period, you douchebag!”
Vampire Kid blinked—Darren should probably get his name at some point, but now was not exactly a good time—and gave him a not-at-all-subtle once-over. Then he leaned in and actually sniffed at him.
“Whoa! Rude! Back off. You are not allowed to be smelling me!”
Vampire Kid narrowed his eyes. “I do not understand. You say you are menstruating.”
“Way to still be rude, asshole,” Darren hissed. Freaking ow he was not in the mood.
“But you are a male.”
“Damn right I’m—” Darren had to swallow the rest of his retort after realizing that he wasn’t being questioned. Couldn’t see through the glamour, then? “…Right. Yes. Yeah. I am. So shut up.”
“I will ignore the rudeness as you are in pain,” Vampire Kid said. Jerk. At least he wasn’t up in Darren’s space sniffing at him anymore. “What are you, then?”
“What do you mean ‘what am I’?” Darren said, eyes narrowed and hackles up. “Because oh my god, that is so not in any way your business.” He caught a glimpse of bright yellow and turned to see Tabitha coming down the walkway, sunshine-colored dress swishing, her dreadlocks twisted up in a neat bun at the back of her head. She was carrying a basket of mushrooms—she must have come from the woods a few blocks away. She was also watching the two of them carefully, but Darren didn’t bother trying to interpret her expression. She’d save him from Vampire Kid, which was
all that mattered. And also give him wonderful, wonderful herbals. Darren stood up, still clutching at his stomach, hoping he looked suitably pathetic. “Tabby! Hi, hey, I ran out of my herbals and your weirdo vampire cousin won’t stop talking to me. Help, please, help help help.”
Luckily Tabitha took it all in stride, even if Vampire Kid did start scowling again at being called a weirdo. Whatever. He could deal; he wasn’t the one bleeding out his insides.
“Come on in, Darren,” Tabitha said, smiling. She opened the door, nodding both him and Vampire Kid inside.
Darren breathed in deep when he entered, already feeling a little bit better. He loved the inside of Tabitha’s house too. It was decorated with a mishmash of furniture and art that the witch had acquired over the years—through her various travels when she’d studied her magic and potion making—and that was all great. But more importantly, she also kept plants: medicinal, herbal, and edible, another slice of garden indoors. Darren always felt right at home in Tabitha’s house—sometimes more than at his home; her collection of plants was a little bit more exotic than the ones Darren and his dad kept.
“Go on into the kitchen,” Tabitha instructed, swinging her basket. “I’ll be there in a jiff. Vlad, why don’t you join him?”
Vlad? Darren swung around to stare at Vampire Kid, who frowned and ducked his head. “Your name is Vlad?”
He scowled. “Yes. So?”
Okay, now Darren might have been gawking. “No, you can’t actually be serious.”
“Kitchen, boys,” Tabitha said, before she left them alone.
Darren shrugged and headed toward the kitchen, Vlad following him. They sat across from each other, and Vlad gave Darren a deeply unimpressed look. “I am from Ukraine. It’s not an uncommon name there.”
“What? Oh. Right, your name.” Darren winced at a new wave of pain. “Common in Ukraine. Got it. Great.”
“My father—” Vlad only barely paused. “My father’s name is Ivan.”
Darren knew what that pause probably meant, knew he shouldn’t push, but he couldn’t help himself. “What’s your mom’s name?”
“Veronika.”
Vlad’s face was kind of doing a shutting down thing. “It sounds really nice, when you say it,” Darren tried. “With the rolling Rs and all.”
“Thanks,” Vlad said after a pause that went on a touch too long.
“But Vlad the vampire is still like, the most cliché thing I have ever heard in my life.”
“You are a jerk.”
“You were a jerk first.”
Vlad had no response to that.
“Here we are!” Tabitha said, coming in carrying a steaming bowl in one hand and a paper bag in the other. “Darren, your herbals are in the bag. The usual method of taking them—chew one of each of the four leaves when you wake up before you eat anything else, and right before you go to bed with a glass of warm water. And don’t use or eat anything with aloe vera until your period is over.”
Darren made grabby hands at the bag. “Great, thank you. Am I allowed to take some now, even though I’ve already had breakfast?”
Tabitha shook her head and set the bowl down in front of him. “Nope, sorry. But I mixed up a steam form that you can take now. It isn’t as effective for pain, but it’s fast-acting, so it should at least help some until you can take your nightly dose. But you can’t wear anything with polka dots for the next twenty-four hours.”
“I don’t even own anything with polka dots,” Darren said, throwing his face into the bowl and taking a deep breath in.
“All right, just spend a few minutes inhaling that, then,” Tabitha said. “I’m going to get my mushrooms into the dehydrator. Vlad, why don’t you keep Darren company?” Then she was gone again.
There was a long pause, and then Vlad said mulishly, “You could have just told me you were trans. I would not have made a big deal of things.”
“Not the sort of thing I tell complete strangers, man.” Darren was feeling a little more charitable now. Sweet steam relief. “Or anyone. It’s kind of a need-to-know basis thing. And you? Did not need to know.”
Vlad opened his mouth and then closed it again. “Sorry,” he said after a moment.
“Um yeah, it’s uh… it’s okay I guess.”
More silence. Vlad kept staring at him and seemed disinclined to leave Darren and his steam in peace.
Darren didn’t do well with silence. It made him twitchy. And he’d never spoken to a real live vampire before. Live? Unalive? Undead? A million questions shot through his mind, and he ended up blurting out, “So I thought all vampires were super pale,” before he could think better of it.
Vlad gave him another look. “Black people have been invented for quite some time now,” he said, voice dry. “Several centuries at least.”
Darren winced and not out of pain this time. “No, I-I just mean, y’know, you’re not pale?” A short pause, which he rushed to fill. “Okay, sorry, that sounded super awful, sorry.”
Vlad raised an eyebrow, but he looked less mad and more amused. “My being turned did not somehow leech the color from my skin. I just cannot tan. My skin heals too fast for that, now.”
Darren blinked at him. “Wait, you’ve tried it?”
“Tried what?”
“Going out into the sun.”
Vlad’s unimpressed look was back. Darren took that as a yes.
“But I thought the sun made you guys go poof.”
“I am not going to go poof in the sun.” Vlad actually rolled his eyes. “When you met me, I was sitting outside.”
“In the shade!”
“It’s March. There’s sun. You do not care much about history, do you?”
“Um.”
“That is what I thought.” And that was definitely at least the beginnings of a smirk. Darren was getting the feeling that Vlad thought he was super dumb. Which, ugh, not fair.
“We can only cover so much stuff about different supernatural species every year,” Darren said to defend himself. “And it’s all stuff everyone knows.”
“Except that you do not know it.”
“Oh, like you know so much about it,” Darren retorted. “You’re the one all sniffing up in people’s space. Even Layla knows not to do that in public and she’s six.”
“Is she a vampire?” Vlad asked, sounding tentative. It took Darren aback, amid all the sniping.
“Uh, no. She’s a werewolf.”
“Oh.” They lapsed back into silence.
“Vampires aren’t exactly common around here,” Darren said, feeling kind of awkward. “I think you’re the first one our town has ever had.”
“Yes. Tabitha mentioned that.” Vlad stared down at the table.
“I just mean we’ve got the usual assortment of supernatural mixed in with the humans,” Darren added, feeling like he should explain himself. “You know, common stuff. Nymphs and werewolves and witches and golems and harpies. It’s not like those special boarding-school towns. You’d probably have better luck finding other vampires at those places. Vampires aren’t exactly common in the Americas. I remember that from class.”
“Right.” Vlad still didn’t look up from the table. “Yes.”
Darren took one last lungful of steam and pushed the bowl away. That would hold him until tonight, at least. “Hey so, why are you here, anyway?”
After a long moment, Vlad said, “Need-to-know basis. I do not tell complete strangers.”
“How do I still qualify as a complete stranger?” Darren asked, oddly insulted. “We’ve been arguing for the last ten minutes.”
“I still don’t know your name.” Vlad crossed his arms. “I told you mine, and then you made fun of it.”
Darren blinked. And maybe turned a little red. “Oh, uh. Whoops? Uh, hi.” He stuck out a hand on reflex. “I’m Darren.”
Vlad actually took his hand and shook it. And then didn’t let go. “Darren what?”
Was this a vampire thing? Was he supposed to try to take his hand b
ack? “Darren Qh’lothital.”
Vlad squinted at him. “And you made fun of my name? I cannot pronounce that.”
“You are a vampire named Vlad.”
Vlad released Darren’s hand to cross his arms again. And maybe hunch in a little. “I’m sure my parents did not name me expecting that to happen.”
Okay, maybe Darren felt a little bad now. Vlad was, like, a week in from Ukraine, he was the only vampire in town, and he clearly wasn’t here because he wanted to take a vacation to the States. And he was a possibly newly turned vampire who got upset when he mentioned his parents. That didn’t bode well. Darren should probably cut him some slack.
“Okay, well, nice to meet you, I guess. Hope you like our town and settle in okay. Tabby’s pretty great, so… yeah. I’ll see you around.” And then Darren fled. It just seemed like the best option.
THE NEXT morning Darren woke up, rolled out of bed, and immediately made a beeline for the stairs. He got to the kitchen, pulled his herbals out of the fridge, stuffed the four different leaves into his mouth, and started to chew as he headed back upstairs. He stopped in the bathroom, emptied his Mooncup on top of his usual morning routine of brush teeth, use bathroom, take shower, and then ended up back in his room in a towel, ready to sort through clothes.
Even with the herbals, he was still feeling kind of lousy, so he decided against wearing his binder today, instead grabbing one of his sports bras. It wasn’t like he was all that big to begin with, thankfully, and his glamour gave him the illusion of a masculine chest anyway, but he normally liked to wear the binder just because it made him feel better. A sports bra was much more forgiving, though, and he was always in favor of comfort during period week.
Bra and boxers on, Darren threw a T-shirt and shorts on top of them, stuffed his books and homework into his bag, and was ready to face another school day.
Just as soon as he had breakfast. He hoped there was still some tiger lily left. He might have eaten it all yesterday.
BETHANY MET him at his locker and gave him a look of pity, meaning she’d sniffed out what Vlad had yesterday. “So you’re early, huh?”