by Jen Pretty
The train rolled up to a stop, and I watched all the happy shiny people step off. Groups that were excited to be in Las Vegas; off to gamble and drink too much, party with friends and dance.
I boarded the train and found my seat. I was next to a window, and as the train pulled out of the station, I remembered what the woman at the ticket window had said. Vegas wasn’t for everyone. The bright lights and the music. The city that never sleeps. Sin City. It wasn’t for everyone.
My mind kept spinning with thoughts of the city, the one I loved. The waves of people. Matthew.
The further I got, the more I wondered where the hell I was going.
My life was in Belcrest, wasn’t it?
With a sigh I let it all go. I was going home. I could curl up on my couch and watch soaps under my heated blanket and go to the club on Saturday nights. That was the life I had created for myself and that was what I wanted.
I nodded in and out of sleep, my head on a tiny pillow jammed up against the cold glass of the window. The country flew past, with tall buildings then open fields for miles and miles. I had plenty of time to think about things, but mostly I tried to get the words out of my head. The ones that Matthew had whispered. “There are more things in heaven and earth…”
It was like a puzzle and I wanted to fit the pieces. When I got off the first train, I stopped at a bookstore and bought Hamlet— the Cliff Notes version.
The second train ride was long enough so that I read the Cliff Notes three times.
I kept getting stuck on the quote. It didn’t make sense. I needed the full version of the book. The next train transfer was too quick, and I didn’t have time to find a bookstore. I would have to wait until I got home.
On the last leg of my trip, I tried to nap, but my mind wouldn’t shut up. The man in the seat next to me he had a laptop out and was surfing the net.
“Hi,” I said.
He looked up and smiled. “Hey, how’s it going?” He had a New York accent. It was kind of dirty and delicious.
“Not bad. Where are you headed?”
“Nowhere. I bought a pass and I’m seeing the country,” he replied.
“You are going nowhere?”
“Yup, wherever the train takes me.”
“How will you know when you reach the end?” I asked, turning in towards him.
“Wherever I am when the clock strikes midnight on January first, that is the end.”
“Then what?”
“Well, I guess I get a job and find a place to stay and start a life,” he said with a shrug.
“Are you a vampire?” I asked. Vampires would change place and names and start over when they got bored. I’d never heard of a human doing it.
“No,” he laughed. “Just trying to find my place in the world, and maybe fate will have better luck than I have.”
I sat back in my seat and pondered fate. It was the opposite of religion. Fate wasn’t a father’s guiding hand, it was more like a practical joke. Perfectly set up with cause and effect.
“Where are you headed?” he asked, breaking me out of my thoughts.
“I don’t know anymore,” I replied.
He nodded, knowingly, like we were kindred spirits.
When I got off the train in Belcrest, I was the only person in the station except for the janitor who ran his mop left and right across the tiled floor. I exited the station and walked through town to my apartment. It was a good hour by foot, but I had no one waiting for me and had been sitting so long, my legs had gotten stiff.
It was Friday night and there were lots of college students around town. They were all filled with youthful enthusiasm; their laughter and calls echoed through the moonlit streets of my little city. I wanted to join them. Go dancing and feel their life pressed up against me, but the city held no pleasure for me right now. I got back to my old building and realized I didn’t even have my keys. I called up to Mrs. Henderson’s apartment, but she didn’t answer. Probably going deaf.
Finally, I sat down on the steps and rested my head against the hard brick exterior of the apartment building. I stayed there until morning when a police car rolled up and parked in front of me.
“Hey, Bert, how’s it going?” I said as his bushy eyebrows came together, though my voice made the question sound tired and I wondered if the joke was getting old.
“I brought your keys for your new door. Mrs. Henderson had your spare set, so I brought them too.”
“Where is Mrs. Henderson?” I asked as I stood up and dusted my pants off.
“She passed away.”
I froze and raised my eyes to meet Jenkins’. “She died?”
“Yeah, last week,” he replied, holding out my keys.
She was really old but for some reason, I didn’t think she would ever actually die. With 19 grandchildren and some great-grandchildren running around, she had more life in her pinky finger than I had in my whole body.
I took the keys. “Thanks, Jenkins.” I turned and walked into the building. Then I took the elevator up to my apartment and unlocked the door. I paused in the doorway and listened, straining my ears to hear Mrs. Henderson’s heartbeat. I knew in my mind she was dead, but the sound of her heart was so much a part of the building, I imagined it would just keep thumping. It was silent. Snuffed out like a candle in the wind.
I shut the door behind me and turned the lock. My apartment was still a mess from the idiot with the stakes, but at least my door had been fixed. I crawled into my bed and flicked on my old heated blanket. It felt good to lie down after 24 hours of sitting and I spent the next day sleeping.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Saturday night, I got up and showered. I found a cute skirt and paired it with a tank top. Then I swept my hair up into a high ponytail so it swung around my shoulders. I called a cab and grabbed my purse.
I paused at Mrs. Henderson’s door again. It was still silent. I wondered how long it would take for someone new to move in. Hopefully, they wouldn’t have children.
I took the elevator down and stepped out onto the street. It was cool and damp here, something I had forgotten. The desert air was dry in Las Vegas. I missed that.
My heels clicked on the sidewalk and I slid into the waiting cab. I watched the quiet city slip past. It was dark and sleepy.
When the cab stopped in front of Ray’s, I walked past the lineup of college kids and past the bouncer who held the door for me. Inside the music pounded. I slipped onto a bar stool.
“Nia!” Ray called. “Where you been?”
“Nowhere!” I shouted back.
He shook his head and got me a drink. I downed it fast, and he handed me another. The second one went down just as fast and I felt like my old self again. I got up and danced with a group of barely legal kids. They were drunk. The girls were holding hands and laughing while the guys were trying to dance with them. They were all stupid, but I tried to ignore it and dance. If I got lost in the music, I could get back in the swing of things. I half-heartedly scanned the room for a target but saw no one I wanted.
After polishing off another drink, I headed back out to the dance floor when the hair on the back of my neck prickled. I spun around and scanned the crowd. He couldn’t be here. I saw no one, but I was definitely being hunted. My adrenaline spiked. I danced, glancing around, trying to find the hunter that stalked me.
For hours someone hunted me but whoever it was avoided my line of sight, driving me crazy. Frustrated, I turned to the closest human and bared my fangs, sinking them into his neck the same moment he tipped his head. I bit hard and drank fast before sealing his wound and storming through the crowd to escape. As I moved farther away from the club, the music hushed and the city surrounded me with its sleepy darkness.
The pre-dawn dew fell on my bare shoulders as my heart beat pounded an angry song in my chest. The feeling wasn’t euphoric, it was antagonizing like the eyes that stalked me all night. I had never even glimpsed the vampire who hunted me. It could have been Ryan though it wasn’t his
style. He preferred me to look at him like he was a peacock and his colourful tail would win me over.
I climbed the stairs to my apartment as my heart slowed and closed my door behind me to the final beat. Blocking out the night with the click of my lock, I let the idea it could have been Matthew die with the last of my conscious thoughts. Sleep took me away.
The next evening, I went back to the club. My mind wouldn't let go of the thought it had been Matthew watching me. I had to prove it wrong. I sat on a bar stool and drank. I thought I felt someone watching me once, but I couldn’t see anyone and I never felt it again. I prayed all night it would be Ryan, acting strange, but he didn’t show up either. I was the only vampire in the bar full of humans. Eventually, I grew tired and went home.
As I walked in the door, I reached for the lights, but a steel arm wrapped around my waist and something sharp stabbed at my neck, sending ice through my veins. The world went black.
“Good morning, Princess,” a voice I didn’t recognize said.
"I’m not a princess," I muttered. The masculine voice chuckled. Who the hell was in my room? Sensation returned to my body and I felt heavy iron cuffs on my wrists and ankles. I was not in my apartment. I was laying on a cement floor. I moved my arm and the sound of chain clinked. Did they chain me?
I tried to go back through my memory but it was hazy and muddled. I scanned the room. It was a dingy basement or something. The voice was coming from a shadow in the far corner. The gooseflesh on my skin told me he was a vampire. No human had ever made me feel like prey.
“Where am I?” I asked, panic taking over. I pushed my legs to move and stood with a loud clatter of chains. The room was dimly lit with a single bulb. I had about five feet of chain on each of my limbs.
The sound of footsteps above me made me look up at the ceiling and suddenly the vampire from the corner had me pinned. My head cracked off the floor. His fangs sunk deep in my throat, tearing the flesh and grinding off my collar bone as his messy aim and careless bite took away most of the skin of my neck. I screamed and a gurgling sound followed as blood filled my airway. Pulling my legs into my body, I kicked out hard, launching him across the room with a crash.
I jumped to my feet and wrapped a hand around my neck to staunch the flow for the moment it would take for my injury to heal.
The vampire laughed and stepped into the light, my blood smeared on his face. He had long hair and a psychotic glint in his eye.
“What do you want with me?” I croaked when my throat had corrected itself sufficiently.
“Me? I want nothing with you. Although you taste delicious.” He laughed and walked out, closing the door behind him. His shoes clomped on the stairs. I strained my ears to listen but murmured voices and feet shuffling was all I heard. A door opened upstairs and another set of feet added to the murmurs. I slid down the cement wall and sat on the floor. I had to shuffle my chains, but I wrapped my arms around my knees and waited.
A few hours later, I stood up to stretch and my legs were already tight. I hadn’t lost much blood, but it was enough I would probably freeze up if I stayed down here much longer.
I didn’t want to make too much noise, but I wrapped one chain around my hand and pulled hard, hoping the ring they attached it to would break out of the cement. It didn’t budge. If I had just had a blood meal, I could have done it but I hadn’t eaten last night and, bitten by that disgusting vampire, I didn’t have the strength.
“That won’t work, Nia.” That voice I recognized.
I turned and hissed at the bastard, Ryan. I knew he was a total shit.
He dropped his eyes to the floor but didn’t move to help me.
“Take the chains off me now, Ryan!” I commanded.
“I can’t do that,” he replied.
“Do it now!”
“Listen, I tried to win you over, but it didn't work. I need a coven. I can’t keep going like this. I might as well die if I'm never have a city."
“You think you will get a city by chaining me in a basement? You will get your head on a pike!”
“You don’t know the old laws. Before the awakening, there was a law that said if a vampire possessed the heir, they would get the dowry.”
“Possessed?” I scoffed. “I don’t think it meant chaining her up.”
“That’s exactly what it meant.” He sneered. “You weren’t around when every move you made was part of a game of chess. Back then vampires didn't drink from peasants. They drank from human kings and queens and owned the city they controlled. Time changed everything! Now there are no kings and queens and your father controls all the cities on this continent. How am I supposed to get ahead when he chooses who will succeed and who will get the scrapings left behind?”
“So that’s it then?” I asked. “You'll keep me locked away so you can have a city? What will happen once you have this dowry you believe you are entitled too?”
"You will stay with me forever, Nia." His voice lowered, his eyes just barely reaching mine. "Either by will or by force."
“It will never be by choice.”
He nodded and turned to leave.
“Where are you going?”
He kept walking, closing the door behind him. I slid down to the floor again. Cold and exhausted. Stupid vampires and their idiotic laws. It would have been nice to know about this particular one before now. I could have protected myself from desperate idiots like Ryan.
There were no windows in the room they chained me in, so I lost track of time. Eventually, I stopped moving, my joints seized, my jaw stuck shut. My eyes blinked, but my eyelids felt like sandpaper as they ran over my eyeballs. I would mummify next. My consciousness would stay intact, but my body would dry until I was leathery skin over bone. I had seized with my knees pulled up to my chest. Like an infant curled in sleep, and just as vulnerable.
The time passed, I assumed. My mind would drift in and out.
At one point I drifted in as there were people standing around me. Ryan’s face came into view, but my eyes couldn’t track him.
“We are going to our new city,” he said, as he slipped from view.
“God, this is disgusting. Remind me never to skip a meal.” A voice I would never forget said. It was the vampire who had bitten me. When I had my chance, I would stake him and burn his body to ash.
My hands and feet had no sensation at all, but as they lifted me a hollow, mournful sound came from my throat. My legs were being forced to move by their careless treatment and it felt like knives stabbing my knees.
“Now, now. None of that. We need to get to our new home, maybe then you can have a little drink to feel better, hmm?” I felt the rumble of his words. The vampire who bit me was carrying me now.
“Cecil, you shouldn’t provoke her,” Ryan said.
Now I had a name to for the vampire I would slaughter. He would die painfully. I would make sure. Ryan would die too. I would spare no vampire who was part of this.
My vengeance would paint the walls red.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
We travelled for a long time. I was under a blanket on the back seat of a car. It was pitch black and I couldn’t tell if my eyelids had stopped blinking. If so, it was only a matter of time before my vision left me.
There was no way I could save myself now. I sunk into my sadness like it was a soft bed. My tired mind let go of the present and didn’t rouse itself again until I heard a clatter. It was the sound of sliding jail door. That hollow steel sound was like the police station jail, but I could see enough out of one eye to tell I was not in Jenkins’ jail. I was somewhere dark and damp.
They must have carried me in here, but I had slept through it. At least that meant I no longer felt pain. I wasn’t a glass half full person, but this was a different circumstance.
“I have my city, now, Nia.” Ryan’s voice rang in the space like an empty concert hall. “I will give you more time to think about things. But I hope you will join me and help me run the city. Baltimore could use a prince
ss.”
I couldn’t be further from Las Vegas now without leaving the country. Baltimore. My father must have been laughing when he sent me here. They get snow in the winter. They could even have snow now. It must be close to Christmas. Or perhaps Christmas had passed. Time didn't matter anymore.
Ryan’s face came into view and then moved too far and all I could see was his neck. “Please, think about it, Nia.” His hand came up close to my face. He must have moved my hair back. I couldn’t feel anything now. “You are so beautiful, it seems a crime to leave you like this.”
But he walked out anyway, leaving me to my desperation.
I craved blood for days. My mind, broken. I could smell the copper tang and feel skin on my tongue. I swore there was blood near me, but I was blind now. There could be a pot of fresh blood in front of me and I would still starve and waste away here. For weeks or months, I languished in the dark silence — broken only by a constant drip. I counted 27 seconds between the drips. I could almost see it there, a tiny drop of water hanging on the brim of a tap, building and building until its weight bore it to the ground. Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
I counted them. The rhythm they created was almost pleasant. My mind convinced me it was a heartbeat. That someone was standing before me with a pulse. A vampire or a human. I hoped it was a human. The tiny heartbeat was pushing blood through a body, not releasing water from a tap.
The jail cell door slid open one day while I was counting the heartbeats or the water drips. I had made it over a million, but I had slept sometimes in between. Missing out on those heartbeats or water drips drove me to stay awake longer. I kept counting.
“I’m sorry, Nia. I wish I could release you.” Ryan’s voice was drowning out the heartbeats. I wanted him to shut up. “This city is a mess and I’m afraid I can’t risk you. Someday soon I will make sure you come back, but for now, you must stay safe.” His voice sounded unsure. He had no business running a city. Soon someone would kill him and take over. Although I doubt many vampires wanted Baltimore.