by Evie Byrne
Alex tried to say, “No, I’m leaving now.” It would have been dignified. But the hurt, damaged part of him was so relieved to have somewhere safe to sleep that he couldn’t object. He said, “Thank you,” but his voice was too low and she ran away too fast.
Helena retreated to the kitchen, sat down at the bar, and began to laugh. It was either that or cry. She’d been bickering with a vampire. Weren’t you supposed to go after them with stakes? Instead she accused him of violating her boundaries.
That’s when she realized she wasn’t frightened anymore.
From the moment she’d found him collapsed in her backyard to her first talk with him this evening, she’d been in a state of continual, existential terror. But when they quarreled, Alex, huddled in the shadows of the staircase, sounded just like a man. Not a blood-sucking denizen of the night, but a pissed off, defensive guy. One who was maybe scared too. He’d been a jerk, but so had she in some ways.
Just when she thought she’d run the gamut of bad relationships, she’d hooked up with a vampire. One who was less than honest, to put in nicely. One who expected not only that she’d marry him, but that she’d become a vampire as well. He wanted to feed off her. Talk about control issues. Talk about co-dependency. She’d had enough of that of with Jeff.
The thing was, she’d had good chemistry with Jeff, too. Maybe not as wild as her attraction for Alex, but then again, Jeff didn’t have vampire mojo backing him. But from the moment she and Jeff had met during a ski weekend in Telluride they’d been glued to one another. He was gorgeous, successful, and a five-time Ironman champion. She thought she’d finally found Mr. Perfect. They moved in together after three months. Problem was she was never perfect enough for him.
In short, Jeff was controlling and manipulative. And she’d never be involved with another man like that again, even if she had to be celibate the rest of her life.
She unwrapped a frozen pizza, wondering what Alex would be eating that night. He’d said he wouldn’t kill the neighbors. How reassuring. She didn’t know her neighbors real well, and honestly didn’t like a couple of them, but she didn’t think they deserved to be sucked on. At the same time, he had to eat.
He’s a giant parasite. She’d not defined it so clearly yet, but that was exactly what he was. How could he live with himself, stealing from other people every day just to live?
He couldn’t go back to New York fast enough.
On his second night alone, Alex woke up with rat hair between his teeth, hating Mikhail. His phone held concerned messages from his mother and Gregor, but no one was petitioning for his return. His father could override Mikhail’s decision, but had not. As usual, the Faustins held strong—even against one of their own.
Alex braced himself for another farcical, humiliating outing. The night before he couldn’t find any dogs or cats outside. It was too cold. He’d peeked through windows at people watching TV and considered creeping up on them while they slept. But if they woke up, if they pulled a gun, if they hit him… The thought of being struck made him hunch over. He was nothing but raw flesh and exposed nerve.
Children were tempting, but if they saw him, they’d be scarred for life. He just couldn’t do it.
That left vermin as the only menu option.
Suffice it to say he’d found enough to fill his belly, and that was what mattered. The details of that night couldn’t be forgotten too soon. But on the way home, he’d sniffed out a squirrel nest that he could start with that evening.
Squirrel. Mmm.
Around ten, when he could count on most people being settled in for the evening, he crept from the house. Helena was out somewhere. The blood bonding, incomplete as it was, amazed him. Helena traced through his mind like a blip on his radar. At any given moment he could pinpoint her location and her mood—which was always somewhere on the spectrum from nervous to frightened. The further away she was, the less he knew. At that moment all he knew was that she was somewhere north of him, and if he had to find her, he could.
It still hurt too much to dress. Or to wear shoes. He stepped naked onto the ice-slick pavement outside the back door. The next step took him shin deep into sharp, granular snow. The wind bit into his skin. The only way to warm himself was to move and eat and keep eating until dawn.
Though people were scarce, he kept to the shadows, walking off road among the trees, ducking behind them when he spotted headlights. Though he did his best to walk carefully, tree branches scored his arms and poked at his eyes. He flared his nostrils. Where was that damned squirrel nest?
His mind drifted to better times. His loft. The big windows sparkling with city lights. His sofa, the black leather buttery under his fingers. Candlelight. A slow groove on the stereo. A happy woman sprawled under him, tiny bite wounds marking her pulse points. That was how a vamp ate. Not this bullshit.
Thing was the woman in his daydream didn’t have a face. No matter how he tried, he couldn’t call up the faces of his former lovers. He could only see Helena. He almost groaned remembering how her skin yielded, resisted, then broke under his teeth. The sweet wash of her blood over his tongue.
Dazed with memories, Alex stepped out of the trees and onto an embankment where the snow was thin. Three deer—no, they weren’t deer. Too big. Moose? No, not that ugly. What the hell were they?
Whatever they were, they were huge—fucking huge—and they were right in front of him, nibbling on dry grass. One had horns that must have been six feet across. In unison they lifted their heads and stared at him with wide, startled eyes. Alex froze too, listening to the wet, sweet rhythm of their hearts, the swish of blood in their veins. As one, they turned tail and ran, and without thinking he took off after them.
What are you doing, Alex? The reasonable part of him, the New Yorker, knew he couldn’t bring down a…whatever. Caribou? Even if he were well, he couldn’t do it alone. But another part of him, the hungry, burnt part, didn’t give a fuck. It wanted beast blood, and a lot of it. And that part of him seemed to have the steering wheel. So, feeling foolish and more than a little out of control, Alex began to stalk the whatevers. Reindeer?
They were harder marks than people, that was for sure. One snapped twig could send them bolting for a half mile, and it took him forever to catch up with them. He tracked them by nose and eventually found them in someone’s backyard—if an acre of unfenced land could be considered a backyard.
The deer things looked surreal—and larger than ever—as they nibbled their way around a big jungle gym with three frozen swings and a slide piled with snow. He circled around the yard to get upwind of them. All the lights in the house were off.
Okay, what now, nature boy?
He really didn’t know, or maybe he just didn’t want to think about it, but he found himself selecting a strong, smooth log from the woodpile at the side of the house. One that felt right in his hands. Nervous, and beginning to salivate, he swallowed hard. The arousal lengthened his incisors, forcing him to pull back his lips and open his mouth slightly so he wouldn’t cut himself.
In the same way that smiling can make you feel better despite yourself, the adoption of that particular, snarling expression focused Alex like nothing else. It reminded him that he was vampyr, and not just vampyr, but a Faustin.
He guessed he had enough strength for one sprint and one blow. After that, all bets were off. But he’d be damned if he’d spend another night creeping after vermin. He wanted what was in front of him and he wanted it with every fiber in his body.
Peeking around the corner of the house, he saw the one with the horns was closest to him. It was as big as a horse and looked like it had two coat trees growing out of the sides of its skull. That one he’d rather avoid. He waited for one of the smaller ones to circle around.
But while he watched, the…wildebeest?…raised its massive head and sniffed the air. Alex knew it was going to bolt, and so would the rest of them, and he might not catch them again before dawn.
Alex rushed forward, moving so f
ast that he’d be a blur to the human eye. It confused the deer thing too, because it didn’t take alarm until he was right next to it. It saw him then, but by that time it was too late. He was already swinging the log like a baseball bat. It cracked against the buck’s skull, loud and hollow sounding. The blow jarred his arms to the sockets.
Alex could see the rattled confusion in the deer thing’s eyes. It hurt, but it didn’t fall. Instead, it charged.
Alex scrambled backward, keeping one bare step ahead of the coat hooks of death.
Alex didn’t experience any moments of spiritual clarity during this brush with mortality. It sucked. It sucked profoundly as he scampered for his life. He wanted to live. But he also knew it was funny. Fucking hysterical that he should die naked out here in the sticks, skewered by a really pissed deer-like thing.
Funny until his back slammed into a cold, rattling wall. A cheap aluminum storage shed. The buck rammed the shed with a deafening, metallic crunch, its antlers encircling Alex like a cage, the short points bruising flesh and bone.
An elk! Alex realized in a moment of perfectly clarity, memories of some long gone nature show returning to him in a final blessing. That’s what it is! I’m being killed by a goddamn bull elk.
The elk pried its horns from the aluminum to come at him again. Just before he was impaled Alex wrested the log up and brought it down right between the elk’s eyes.
It dropped like a sandbag.
He jumped on it, straddling the shoulders and leveraging the horns back to stretch out its throat. The carotid arteries and the jugular veins throbbed deep beneath the elk’s thick, black ruff. The rest of its body was covered with lighter-colored, shorter hair, but to get what he wanted Alex had to rip his way through that coarse, musky mane, growling with frustration until he found flesh and pierced the carotid.
A fountain of blood struck Alex’s cheek. He opened his mouth and drank as fast as he could. The elk struck out with its legs and tried to raise its head, but Alex shoved its head back down to the ground and kept drinking. The elk heaved a huge sigh of resignation, one that lifted Alex like a swelling wave, and then subsided.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
The heat of its dying body soaked into his chilled, needy bones. Its massive, pumping heart sent mouthful after mouthful of hot, gamey blood down his throat. As fast as he swallowed, he could not take it all in. It flowed out of his mouth and down his chest.
In the back of his mind he knew that someone might come out of the house to see what the noise was about, but he just didn’t care. All that mattered was feeding.
Alex had never gorged on a single victim—not once in his whole life.
And he’d never killed to eat, either, except for the vermin the night before. Their squirmy little lives he’d gulped down as fast as he could, just trying to get it over with. But taking this noble creature, this adversary, into death swallow by swallow seemed both an honor and a sin.
When the blood slowed to a sluggish trickle, Alex began to weep. He knew he was blood drunk. That is, overfed, over stimulated and prone to melancholy as well as violence. He knew the symptoms, had seen it in the newly converted, but knowing didn’t make him feel any better.
The elk gasped over and over, trying to draw oxygen into its collapsing system. Its drum-like heartbeat turned erratic. He clenched the elk’s thick hair in his fists, lapping and sucking until he couldn’t pull fresh blood up anymore. Then he just lay still, marking the last, fluttering protests of its mighty heart.
When it was over, he slid to the ground. Droplets of frozen blood studded the snow around him like rubies. Icy, pinpoint stars winked in the sky above him. He’d never been so sated in his entire life. It seemed possible he might never move again. But eventually the blood on his face began to itch. He rubbed some of it off with a handful of granular snow and found his way to his feet. Even dead, the elk was still regal. Alex bent down to touch it one last time, then walked away, dazed and lost. For a time he followed the twin tracks of the other elk, but then he veered another direction, his sense of Helena guiding him home. At first he walked slowly, then he began to jog as a surge of unexpected energy buoyed him up.
As a test, he decided to run flat out and see how far he could go. He thought he could run maybe fifty yards. Instead he ran all the way back to Helena’s house, one thought beating over and over in his brain, I’m going to be okay.
Around what he guessed to be three in the morning, he slipped in the back door on the lower level, meaning to head straight down to the basement.
High on elk, he didn’t bother to pinpoint Helena’s exact location.
He figured she’d be asleep.
Not in her office, gaping at him in mute horror.
“Uh, hi,” he said, giving her a little wave.
Chapter Seven
Helena shrieked and threw herself at the office door. The cheap, hollow core door couldn’t even make a convincing slamming noise, and it had no lock. Alex heard the hiss of her bathrobe on the wood as she braced herself against it. He heard her panicked breathing and her racing heart, too.
Shit. Alex glanced down. He looked like he’d been rolling around in an abattoir. Oh yeah, and he was naked. She was going to call the cops.
“Helena?” He tried to sound as casual as possible. As human as possible. “It’s elk’s blood. That’s all. Long story. But I’m, uh, going downstairs now. So…goodnight.”
He waited a couple of heartbeats, until he heard a long, shuddering exhale on the other side of the door. “N-night?” she said in a whispering squeak.
Stomping so she’d hear every step, he went down into the basement, and then stood at the base of the stairs, listening, tense as a pointer. If she called for help, he’d be facing more outdoor adventures. But he heard nothing until, after a long while, she tiptoed upstairs. He followed her up and leaned out the door, listening until he was sure she’d gone back to bed.
Amazing she didn’t have a complete freak-out. Helena was actually very brave. She just didn’t know it yet.
And she kept her word. He liked that about her. Two nights in the basement, she’d said. Two nights he had. Even if he was scary as hell.
After a half hour or so Alex realized that there was no way he could go to bed early, not with his heart beating so fast. It wasn’t a bad feeling at all—just an over-energized one. Like he could run all the way back to New York. Like he might never sleep again. And there was absolutely nothing to do in the basement.
Moving like a shadow—an antsy shadow—he slipped into Helena’s domain and walked around the dark rooms, learning what he could from them. He found pictures of her parents and a case full of trophies topped with tiny silver and gold runners. Helena was a track star. He wondered if she still ran. Idly he imagined them running side by side in Central Park, cutting a jogger off and bringing him down in the bushes.
He shook his head, abandoning the image for what it was—complete fantasy. Unless he straightened things out between them, their future would last about fourteen more hours.
Mikhail said Alex’s job was to make Helena love the monster. He also said that Alex and Gregor didn’t believe they were monsters. Mikhail was a bastard, but he was right. If Alex wasn’t proud to be a vampire, how could he ever ask Helena to convert?
The last few days had taught him what it really meant to be a vampire. The learning curve wasn’t pretty, but he was better for it. He’d been caught out, his worst fear, and he’d survived. He’d been hungry and sick, left without family or donors and he’d fed himself. He’d killed an elk with firewood.
And best of all, he’d tasted his destined mate. This wasn’t a disaster. He wasn’t Roland. He was going to win Helena back. All he had to do was show her that while he was undeniably a blood-soaked monster, he was a complex and sensitive blood-soaked monster. One she wanted to marry.
Jesus Christ, I’m still drunk.
Laughing at himself, he wandered into the kitchen. It looked like a typical vamp k
itchen—in other words, she didn’t use it. His cabinets were better stocked, but then he was unusual in that he liked experimenting with human food. In light of recent events, he could now see that as another form of denial of his vampirism.
A traditionalist like Mikhail lived on blood, water, and good scotch. Gregor liked beer, and if he didn’t have one cup of black coffee when he woke up you just didn’t want to be around him. But that was as far as he went. Alex, freak that he was, fetishized beverages of all sorts. He knew how to make perfect espresso, green tea with powder and a whisk, Italian sodas, and ices scented with cardamom and orange flower water. He crafted clear broths rich with the distilled essences of herbs and vegetables and meats, trying to recreate what he smelled drifting out of the restaurants of the city.
As a child he experimented with solid food, despite his father’s patient attempts to explain to him the difference between vamp and human digestive systems. Chocolate bars, popcorn, even a Nathan’s Original hotdog all took the roundtrip journey down his gullet. One of his earliest memories was of stealing a carrot from a bodega. He ate it like a machine, like Bugs Bunny, reveling in the sweetness of the carrot, its strange, plant-kingdom texture, the satisfying crunching noise.
Fun to begin with. After two hours of misery he threw it up in an alley, careful that his brothers wouldn’t see. Because pretending to be human was even lamer than pretending to be a girl. Which he’d also done. Just for a little while.
When he was really little.
Alex peered into Helena’s fridge full of old condiments and reduced calorie yogurt. There were eggs at least, and milk of dubious age. A stack of bleak frozen entrees sat in the freezer, accompanied by several cartons of ice cream at various stages of consumption. She had a few staples, but the spices in her pantry probably dated to the mid-80’s.
As far as he’d been able to smell from the basement, her diet consisted entirely of ice cream, pizza and red wine, and now that he saw her kitchen, he didn’t think that was far from wrong.