by Aidan Wayne
Darren snorted. “Gee, thanks. But hey, yeah, while we’re out here, what do you wanna try this time?”
“Could you call some animals again?” Vlad said after a moment. “I think I’m getting better. I practiced yesterday with some birds in Tabitha’s garden.”
“Sure thing,” Darren said. “And hey, good for you. How’d it go?”
“Not bad,” Vlad replied hesitantly. “I… I think interacting with you has been helping too. Getting used to living things again.”
“Happy to help,” Darren said with a grin, before sucking his juice box dry and stowing it back in his bag. “Let’s see what I can summon up for you.”
MONDAY AFTERNOON, and Darren was, for once, blissfully free of homework. They were well and truly headed into finals prep time, so from here on out it was mostly studying, maybe a few papers, as he entered week after week of quizzes and tests. But for now he was free for the rest of the day, and it was awesome.
He said goodbye to Bethany, who had driven him home, and headed inside, dumping his backpack and swinging by the kitchen to grab a snack. Then he wandered upstairs to see if his parents were home, working in their office.
They weren’t, so not only did he have absolutely nothing to do, but he was home alone. He went back to the kitchen to get another, slightly junkier, snack before padding into the living room and plopping down on the couch to decide what to do with his free time.
Then he had a stroke of genius and called Tabby’s house, asking for Vlad.
“I’ll go get him,” Tabitha said, and Darren could hear her smile through the phone. “Just a sec.”
A minute later there was a hesitant “Hello?”
“Hey, Vlad, it’s Darren. Listen, you doing anything now?”
“No, not really.”
“Cool. Okay, well, look you wanna come over? Feel free to say no, I know you just saw me yesterday, but—”
“I would like to come over,” Vlad interrupted. “Thank you.”
“No problem! I can introduce you to my gaming system. You wanna come over now?”
“I—All right.” A pause. “Where do you, um, where do you live?”
Oh yeah, Vlad didn’t actually know anything about the area. And was also just getting over the fear of leaving his house. “I live right up the street from you,” Darren said. “Like two blocks, but I could come get you, if you wanted. No point in you getting lost on the way, right?”
“Thank you,” Vlad said quietly. “That would… be good.”
“Sure thing. Be over in a few minutes.” Darren hung up, hopped back into his shoes, and hurried outside, not wanting to keep Vlad waiting. He’d kinda called on a whim, but when he actually thought about it, this was probably a huge step for Vlad. The woods were one thing, but this was Darren’s house.
Darren really hoped it’d be a good experience.
It didn’t take very long for him to get to Tabitha’s, especially since he was maybe half running the whole way. Vlad was the one who answered the door when Darren knocked. He was shifting around nervously, hand clenching tight around the doorknob as he closed it.
“Thank you for coming,” Vlad said, face determined. He always fell back on politeness when he felt out of his depth, Darren had noticed.
“Don’t worry about it,” Darren said breezily. “Come on—we’re just going down this way.”
The walk back to Darren’s house was a little slower, and Vlad spent most of it nervously looking around as they made their way up the block. He didn’t bolt, though, and soon enough Darren was opening his front door.
“My parents are both at work,” Darren explained as he led Vlad into the foyer, “so you don’t have to worry about—Vlad?”
Vlad was still standing outside the doorway, looking at it with wide eyes. “I can’t go in,” he said.
“What? Why not?”
Vlad lifted a hand and made to pass it through the doorway. He ended up with his palm flat, pressing against nothing.
“That is really weird,” Darren said. He squinted at the doorway and stepped out, so that he was standing next to Vlad, then walked back in again. “Okay, so our doorway isn’t, uh, broken. But, huh. What if I….” He wrapped a hand around Vlad’s wrist and tried to pull him through.
“Uff, okay, you weren’t joking. That is, like, actual resistance. What the heck?” He pulled harder, and Vlad pushed against the invisible barrier. “This—is so—stupid—why can’t—you just—come in—”
All at once, the pressure dissipated, and the two fell into a tangled heap onto the floor.
“O-kay,” Darren said from underneath Vlad as he pushed himself up into a seated position and glared at his front door. “You maybe have any idea what just happened?”
Vlad quickly got off Darren and stood up, offering Darren a hand and pulling him to his feet. He eyed the door and then blinked, eyes widening in realization. “You did not invite me inside,” he said.
“I didn’t do what now?”
“Invite me in. Neither of us noticed, but—when we got here, you did not say ‘come in’ or anything to that effect. You started talking about your parents.”
“Oh!” Darren snapped his fingers. “Oh crap, I forgot about the invitation thing with vampires!” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Guess that was my fault. Sorry.”
Vlad shook his head. “I did not remember either. It has been a long time since I had to worry about that. It slipped my mind.”
“Well, nothing’s broken anyway.” Darren reached to pull the door shut and kicked his shoes off. “So come on. Shoes off, please, and then I’ll give you the tour, if you want. You can see the inside of a whole ’nother house.”
Vlad smiled tentatively. “I would like that. Thank you.”
Darren proceeded to give Vlad a probably unnecessarily thorough tour of the house, up to and including going down into the basement.
“And I’ll show you our backyard too, if you want,” he said as they were heading back to the first floor. “But maybe not right now. I tend to get into details, and then the next thing you know, it’ll be sundown, and I promised you video games.”
It turned out that Vlad’s reflexes were amazing, but he really needed to work on his aim.
“Shoot him, shoot him! Aw no what, stupid ’porter went behind the wall again. I’ll have to take him out at close range. Cover me!”
“I’m already covering you,” Vlad panted, waving around his controller. “And I’m running out of ammo!”
The sound of the door opening would have been lost underneath the noise from the video game and their own screaming, but Vlad’s nostrils flared once, and he practically leaped to his feet. Darren fumbled to pause the game.
“Vlad? You okay?”
The sound of footsteps was loud in the sudden silence, and then Darren’s mom walked into the living room.
Darren darted a glance at Vlad before trying to smile at his mother. “Hi, Mom. Uh, welcome home?”
“Good to be home,” Darren’s mother said before smiling at Vlad. “And who’s your friend?”
Darren opened his mouth to answer, but Vlad beat him to it. “I am Vlad Melnyk, ma’am. Tabitha’s cousin.”
“Well,” she said brightly, “it’s certainly nice to finally put a face to the name, especially since Darren’s been over so much recently. I hope he hasn’t been bothering you.”
Vlad shook his head. “Not at all, ma’am,” he told her shoes. “It has been very nice, having a friend here.”
“Glad to hear it,” she said. “Darren, homework?”
“Didn’t have any today,” Darren said reverently. “It was amazing.”
She shot him an amused look. “All right. I’ll let you boys get back to your game. Vlad, would you like to stay for dinner?”
Vlad’s eyes widened before he looked back at the floor. “No thank you. I… have a very special diet.”
Mrs. Qh’lothital nodded pragmatically. “Well, next time, we can plan ahead.”
“You
r mother is very nice,” Vlad said quietly after Darren’s mother had left the room.
“She’s pretty great. Not a whole lot fazes her either, just so you know. For instance, she didn’t exactly know my dad was fae, when they first started dating. So yeah. Vampire in her living room? Not a cause for alarm. Especially when he’s a friend of mine.”
Vlad gave Darren a cautious smile. “That’s two,” he said.
“Two what?”
“Two people, besides Tabitha, now,” Vlad said. “I did notice her, when she first came into the room, but it was gone quickly. She was just a person.”
“That’s great!” Darren bounced up from the couch. “No way, that’s fantastic! Go you!”
Vlad grinned back.
Chapter Four
DARREN WAS frowning down at the introduction to his paper on Nature Affinity and Me the next Wednesday after school when the house phone rang.
“Darren, can you get the phone?” his father called from downstairs. “I’m in the middle of something!”
Darren scrambled off his bed and ran to his parents’ office, diving for the phone on the sixth ring.
“Hello?” he managed.
“Darren? It’s um, it’s Vlad.”
“You called me!” Darren said, feeling proud. “On my… house phone. Why didn’t you just call my cell?”
“I do not have your cell number.”
“Oh. Yeah, right. I’ll have to give it to you next time we hang out. So what’s up?”
“Are you busy?”
“Trying to write a paper that’s due Friday,” Darren said. “How come?”
“Would you… mind coming over for a little bit?”
“Oh, uh, sure!” Darren wasn’t about to say no to Vlad’s first social request ever. He had called Darren on the phone. “I’ll be over in a few.”
“I’m on my way out,” Tabitha said when Darren showed up. She was carrying two huge tote bags. They were wiggling. Darren was about to ask when she added, “But Vlad’s in the kitchen.”
“Okay, thanks.” Darren kicked off his shoes and made his way back. Vlad was sitting at the table staring down a mug.
“You guys in a staring contest?” Darren asked. “Am I breaking your concentration?”
Vlad sighed and waved Darren over. “Thank you for coming.” He glared at the mug again. “I wanted moral support.”
“For… eating your food?”
Vlad sighed again. “Tabitha thinks that I need to try drinking human blood, at least once in a while. She worries I might be lacking nutrients, going without. That it might be why I’m not instinctively learning about some of my powers.”
It was Darren’s turn to stare at the mug. “Whoa. So that’s people blood in there?”
Vlad wrinkled his nose. That answered that.
“And it’s freaking you out,” Darren guessed. “That’s perfectly reasonable.”
Vlad squared his shoulders and lifted the mug of blood to his lips, gagged, and set it back down. “I admit, the idea itself I don’t like, but it’s the smell. I can’t—” He made a face.
“Smelling the peopleness, I got you.” They both stared at the mug. “Okay, idea, what if you did something to it? To like, mask the smell. You said before you can add flavors, right? So what if you just put in something strong enough that the, you know, people smell is less obvious to you? Beth does that all the time with stuff. She can’t stand the smell of pasta for some reason, so she douses it in garlic and boom, no problem.”
“That might work,” Vlad said slowly. “But I don’t know what would be strong enough.”
“Well… we could try garlic. If it can work for a werewolf nose, it might work for you too. And it can’t do anything but improve the flavor. And it’s one of those things that you can add a lot of without it being a problem. Too much garlic is not really a thing, so—” Darren froze. “Oh. Wait. Hang on, right, vampire, garlic, bad combination.” He shook his head at himself. “Not the best idea for you. Sorry, that was dumb of me.”
“No, no, it’s a good idea,” Vlad said, sitting up in his chair. “Also, I am pretty sure the garlic is a myth.”
Darren narrowed his eyes. “Pretty sure like how you know the sun thing is a myth, or pretty sure like ‘those flowers are just ornamental’ and they totally weren’t.”
“I said I was sorry about that,” Vlad muttered.
“And I accepted your apology, but I’m still gonna bring it up that you were wrong when you’re pretty sure about things that could potentially, you know, kill you.”
Vlad rolled his eyes. “Even if garlic did hurt me, it would not kill me. It would be an irritant at best.”
“And how do you know that?”
“It’s come up on forums.”
Darren sighed. “Let’s just try it with a different flavor, okay? Like cumin! Or maybe something spicy! That would probably do it.”
Vlad wrinkled his nose again. “I do not like spicy. Let’s just try the garlic. What harm could it do?”
“Um, gee, let me think about it, oh wait, I know, you could die.”
Vlad shot Darren his unimpressed look and stood up, going over to rummage in one of the cupboards. He pulled out a spice shaker, opened it, and proceeded to dump some of the contents into his mug. Darren watched, interested despite himself, as Vlad held the mug under his nose.
“Does it still smell?”
“No, not nearly as strong. There’s something I cannot place, but I’m sure it’s fine.”
“… if you’re sure.”
Vlad shrugged, lifted his mug to Darren, and took a sip.
The mug crashed to the floor a second later, Vlad falling down with it, eyes wide and desperate as he choked. Darren was out of his seat like a shot, kneeling in front of him, trying not to panic. Vlad was already clearly panicking; one of them had to not panic. He’d only had a sip, and that couldn’t do much harm, right? He wasn’t, like, melting or turning into ashes, so chances are he’d heal if given the chance, right? Right? And in the meantime, Vlad needed to calm down.
Darren tried to soothe him through his own panic.
“It’s okay! It’s okay, you’re okay! Just… breathe? Try to breathe, come on, it’s cool, you’re fine, it’s fine.” Vlad was scratching at his throat, his nails suddenly sharper, actually breaking the skin, and Darren quickly grabbed both his hands to keep him from doing so. Vlad’s fingers twitched in the hold, but he didn’t try to get away. “You’re fine,” Darren said. “Just keep breathing. It’ll be out of your system soon. You’re fine.”
Some agonizing minutes later, Vlad stopped making horrible choking noises and managed a deep breath. “I’m all right now, I think,” he rasped. “I can feel my system healing.”
“Oh thank god,” Darren said, relaxing where he was before realizing that he was nose-to-nose with Vlad and holding both his hands down. He let Vlad go and scrambled away.
Vlad hauled himself upright, braced his hands in his lap, and just breathed for a minute.
“Thank you,” he managed, taking the glass of water Darren brought to him and gulping it down.
Darren sank back down to the floor, the panic-adrenaline wearing off a bit. “Okay, so I know that we have this unspoken pact wherein I don’t bring up certain subjects, but you really need a vampire tutor person. Someone who can tell you stuff like the garlic thing isn’t just a myth. Before you ingest it and die.” He knee-crawled over so he was a little closer to Vlad. “You and Tabby and whoever have been doing pretty great since you got turned, considering, and I know vampires are apparently super rare now or whatever, but if you keep flying this blind and only trust dusty books and the internet, you could get seriously hurt.”
Vlad played with the rim of the glass and stared at the floor, and for an awful second Darren wondered if maybe he’d finally crossed the big line, before Vlad mumbled, “It’s not just that they’re rare.”
“Sorry?”
“Vampires,” Vlad said slowly. “It isn’t that they are ra
re. They are a little, but if you know where and how to look, there are clans and soloists all over the world.”
Darren stared at him incredulously. “You were bitten over eight months ago, have access to vampires, and you’re not utilizing that? What—Why?”
“I’m political,” Vlad spat out.
Darren blinked at him. “I’m gonna maybe need more than that, Vlad. Political?”
“The vampire who turned me,” Vlad said, and whoa this was something he’d never mentioned before. He’d always gotten shoulder-hunchy if Darren ever slipped and brought it up. “She is… very powerful, and very well-known. She’s old. Mostly keeps to herself. The other clans do not want to get involved with me. They worry she’ll take it as a challenge.”
“That is super messed up.” Darren did not ask the obvious question of why she didn’t train Vlad, ’cause clearly this was like, the epitome of touchy-subject territory.
Vlad just nodded. “When I first got bitten, someone was there to help me,” he said. He swallowed and licked his lips. “It’s why I know what I do. She taught me a lot. And—and helped me learn most of what I could eat. Though clearly we missed some things,” he added, voice bitter. “She, um, she was a servant to the vampire who turned me. When I got my sense back, remembered who I was, she helped me… leave. She didn’t know I’d been turned against my will.” Darren stayed quiet, hoping that would encourage Vlad to keep talking.
“Things just got messier,” Vlad said. “I’d been gone for almost two months. My family—my family thought I was dead. I knew that if I went back to them, she’d probably find me through them, maybe hurt them. The Ukrainian council tracked down a family member who was in the community, and who’d be able to take care of me. I was under warding for weeks to get me out of the country without her discovering the plan. I’m technically a political refugee here. I was granted asylum in order to live with Tabitha.” Darren was hanging on to every word. This was unreal.
“That’s why I can’t look for a tutor,” Vlad concluded. “A freshly turned vampire, my age, alone, needing help? Everyone would know it was me. Including her.” He rubbed at his wrist. “She could find me. I… I can’t risk that.”