by Trisha Telep
She shook her head to clear it of thoughts of blood and turned on Dante’s phone. Although she didn’t expect it, a text message was waiting: I cant tell if I luv u or if I want to kill u.
Relief washed over her. Her mouth twisted into a smile and her newly sharp canines cut her lip. She winced. Dante was okay.
She opened up Lydia’s blog and posted an anonymous message: Tell Julian his girlfriend wants to see him … and you.
Matilda made herself comfortable on the dirty mattress. She looked up at the rotted boards of the ceiling and thought of Julian. She had a single ticket out of Coldtown and two humans to rescue with it, but it was easy to picture herself saving Lydia as Julian valiantly offered to stay with her, even promised her his eternal devotion.
She licked her lips at the image. When she closed her eyes, all her imaginings drowned in a sea of red.
Waking at dusk, Matilda checked Lydia’s blog. Lydia had posted a reply: Meet us at the Festival of Sinners.
Five kids sat at the top of the stairs, watching her with liquid eyes.
“Are you awake?” the black-haired girl asked. She seemed to pulse with color. Her moving mouth was hypnotic.
“Come here,” Matilda said to her in a voice that seemed so distant that she was surprised to find it was her own. She hadn’t meant to speak, hadn’t meant to beckon the girl over to her.
“That’s not fair,” one of the boys called. “I was the one that said she owed us something. It should be me. You should pick me.”
Matilda ignored him as the girl knelt down on the dirty mattress and swept aside her hair, baring a long, unmarked neck. She seemed dazzling, this creature of blood and breath, a fragile mannequin as brittle as sticks.
Tiny golden hairs tickled Matilda’s nose as she bit down.
And gulped.
Blood was heat and heart and running-thrumming-beating through the fat roots of veins to drip syrup slowly, spurting molten hot across tongue, mouth, teeth, chin.
Dimly, Matilda felt someone shoving her and someone else screaming, but it seemed distant and unimportant. Eventually the words became clearer.
“Stop,” someone was screaming. “Stop!”
Hands dragged Matilda off the girl. Her neck was a glistening red mess. Gore stained the mattress and covered Matilda’s hands and hair. The girl coughed, blood bubbles frothing on her lip, and then went abruptly silent.
“What did you do?” the boy wailed, cradling the girl’s body. “She’s dead. She’s dead. You killed her.”
Matilda backed away from the body. Her hand went automatically to her mouth, covering it. “I didn’t mean to,” she said.
“Maybe she’ll be okay,” said the other boy, his voice cracking. “We have to get bandages.”
“She’s dead,” the boy holding the girl’s body moaned.
A thin wail came from deep inside of Matilda as she backed toward the stairs. Her belly felt full, distended. She wanted to be sick.
Another girl grabbed Matilda’s arm. “Wait,” the girl said, eyes wide and imploring. “You have to bite me next. You’re full now so you won’t have to hurt me—”
With a cry, Matilda tore herself free and ran up the stairs—if she went fast enough maybe she could escape from herself.
By the time Matilda got to the Festival of Sinners, her mouth tasted metallic and she was numb with fear. She wasn’t human, wasn’t good, and wasn’t sure what she might do next. She kept pawing at her shirt, as if that much blood could ever be wiped off, as if it hadn’t already soaked down into her skin and her soiled insides.
The Festival was easy to find, even as confused as she was. People were happy to give her directions, apparently not bothered that she was drenched in blood. Their casual demeanor was horrifying, but not as horrifying as how much she already wanted to feed again.
On the way, she passed the Eternal Ball. Strobe lights lit up the remains of the windows along the dome and a girl with blue hair in a dozen braids held up a video camera to interview three men dressed all in white with gleaming red eyes.
Vampires.
A ripple of fear passed through her. She reminded herself that there was nothing they could do to her. She was already like them. Already dead.
The Festival of Sinners was being held at a church with stained-glass windows painted black on the inside. The door, papered with pink-stenciled posters, was painted the same thick tarry black. Music thrummed from within and a few people sat on the steps, smoking and talking.
Matilda went inside.
A doorman pulled aside a velvet rope for her, letting her past a small line of people waiting to pay the cover charge. The rules were different for vampires, perhaps especially for vampires accessorizing their grungy attire with so much blood.
Matilda scanned the room. She didn’t see Julian or Lydia, just a throng of dancers and a bar that served alcohol from vast copper distilling vats. It spilled into mismatched mugs. Then one of the people near the bar moved and Matilda saw Lydia and Julian. He was bending over her, shouting into her ear.
Matilda pushed her way through the crowd, until she was close enough to touch Julian’s arm. She reached out, but couldn’t quite bring herself to brush his skin with her foulness.
Julian looked up, startled. “Tilda?”
She snatched back her hand like she’d been about to touch fire. “Tilda,” he said. “What happened to you? Are you hurt?”
Matilda flinched, looking down at herself. “I …”
Lydia laughed. “She ate someone, moron.”
“Tilda?” Julian asked.
“I’m sorry,” Matilda said. There was so much she had to be sorry for, but at least he was here now. Julian would tell her what to do and how to turn herself back into something decent again. She would save Lydia, and Julian would save her.
He touched her shoulder, let his hand rest gingerly on her blood-stiffened shirt. “We were looking for you everywhere.” His gentle expression was tinged with terror; fear pulled his smile into something closer to a grimace.
“I wasn’t in Coldtown,” Matilda said. “I came here so that Lydia could leave. I have a pass.”
“But I don’t want to leave,” said Lydia. “You understand that, right? I want what you have—eternal life.”
“You’re not infected,” Matilda said. “You have to go. You can still be okay. Please, I need you to go.”
“One pass?” Julian said, his eyes going to Lydia. Matilda saw the truth in the weight of that gaze—Julian had not come to Coldtown for Matilda. Even though she knew she didn’t deserve him to think of her as anything but a monster, it hurt savagely.
“I’m not leaving,” Lydia said, turning to Julian, pouting. “You said she wouldn’t be like this.”
“I killed a girl,” Matilda said. “I killed her. Do you understand that?”
“Who cares about some mortal girl?” Lydia tossed back her hair. In that moment, she reminded Matilda of Lydia’s brother, pretentious Dante who’d turned out to be an actual nice guy. Just like sweet Lydia had turned out cruel.
“You’re a girl,” Matilda said. “You’re mortal.”
“I know that!” Lydia rolled her eyes. “I just mean that we don’t care who you killed. Turn us and then we can kill lots of people.”
“No,” Matilda said, swallowing. She looked down, not wanting to hear what she was about to say. There was still a chance. “Look, I have the pass. If you don’t want it, then Julian should take it and go. But I’m not turning you. I’m never turning you, understand.”
“Julian doesn’t want to leave,” Lydia said. Her eyes looked bright and two feverish spots appeared on her cheeks. “Who are you to judge me anyway? You’re the murderer.”
Matilda took a step back. She desperately wanted Julian to say something in her defense or even to look at her, but his gaze remained steadfastly on Lydia.
“So neither one of you want the pass,” Matilda said.
“Go to hell,” spat Lydia.
Matilda turne
d away.
“Wait,” Julian said. His voice sounded weak.
Matilda spun, unable to keep the hope off her face, and saw why Julian had called to her. Lydia stood behind him, a long knife to his throat.
“Turn me,” Lydia said. “Turn me or I’m going to kill him.”
Julian’s eyes were wide. He started to protest or beg or something, and Lydia pressed the knife harder, silencing him.
People had stopped dancing nearby, backing away. One girl with red-glazed eyes stared hungrily at the knife.
“Turn me!” Lydia shouted. “I’m tired of waiting! I want my life to begin!”
“You won’t be alive—” Matilda started.
“I’ll be alive—more alive than ever. Just like you are.”
“Okay,” Matilda said softly. “Give me your wrist.”
The crowd seemed to close in tighter, watching as Lydia held out her arm. Matilda crouched low bending down over it.
“Take the knife away from his throat,” Matilda said.
Lydia, all her attention on Matilda, let Julian go. He stumbled a little and pressed his fingers to his neck.
“I loved you,” Julian shouted.
Matilda looked up to see that he wasn’t speaking to her. She gave him a glittering smile and bit down on Lydia’s wrist.
The girl screamed, but the scream was lost in Matilda’s ears. Lost in the pulse of blood, the tide of gluttonous pleasure and the music throbbing around them like Lydia’s slowing heartbeat.
Matilda sat on the blood-soaked mattress and turned on the video camera to check that the live feed was working.
Julian was gone. She’d given him the pass after stripping him of all his cash and credit cards; there was no point in trying to force Lydia to leave since she’d just come right back in. He’d made stammering apologies that Matilda ignored then he fled for the gate. She didn’t miss him. Her fantasy of Julian felt as ephemeral as her old life.
“It’s working,” one of the boys—Michael—said from the stairs, a computer cradled on his lap. Even though she’d killed one of them, they welcomed her back, eager enough for eternal life to risk more deaths. “You’re streaming live video.”
Matilda set the camera on the stack of crates, pointed toward her and the wall where she’d tied a gagged Lydia. The girl thrashed and kicked, but Matilda ignored her. She stepped in front of the camera and smiled.
My name is Matilda Green. I was born on April 10, 1997. I died on September 3rd, 2013. Please tell my mother I’m okay. And Dante, if you’re watching this, I’m sorry.
You’ve probably seen lots of video feeds from inside Coldtown. I saw them too. Pictures of girls and boys grinding together in clubs or bleeding elegantly for their celebrity vampire masters. Here’s what you never see. What I’m going to show you.
For eighty-eight days you are going to watch someone sweat out the infection. You are going to watch her beg and scream and cry. You’re going to watch her throw up food and piss her pants and pass out. You’re going to watch me feed her can after can of creamed corn. It’s not going to be pretty.
You’re going to watch me too. I’m the kind of vampire that you’d be, one that’s new at this and basically out of control. I’ve already killed someone and I can’t guarantee I’m not going to do it again. I’m the one that infected this girl.
This is the real Coldtown.
I’m the real Coldtown.
You still want in?
“SO DID YOU come all the way from Transylvania to join this totally awesome band, Chris?”
“Er,” said Christian. “I’m from Birmingham.”
The lights in the studio hurt Christian’s eyes, and their interviewer was blowing a pink, bobbing balloon of bubblegum while she interviewed them. Every time she blew up the bubble a vein in her neck jumped under her makeup.
She’d introduced herself as Tracy. Christian didn’t like to think such filthy things about a girl he’d just met, but he couldn’t help suspecting she spelled it with an “i.”
“So tell me, boys,” said Traci, swallowing the bubble, which collapsed and folded neatly into her mouth. “Any of you found that special girl yet?”
Bradley, who Christian might well have hated the most of all, gave her his best smile.
“Still searching, Traci,” he said, and looked bashful. “It’s hard to find someone really real in the music biz, you know? I just want a normal girl. Someone who gets me.”
Christian knew for a fact Bradley had been sneaking off with Faye, which was a bad idea both because she was their manager and because she was possibly Satan’s emissary on this earth.
“How about you, Chris?” Traci chirped, turning her eyes on Christian like two blue helicopter beams. “Do you have a girlfriend?”
“Christian,” said Christian. “And, um, of course I don’t.”
“Of course you don’t?” Traci asked with sudden, terrifying intentness. In the shadows Christian could see Faye uncoil like a viper about to strike. Traci leaned toward him, her smile inviting honesty and her breath smelling of Bubblicious watermelon. “And why is that, Chris?”
“Uh,” said Christian. “Because I’m undead?”
“Do the girls not get the real you, Chris?” Traci drawled, leaning back and looking a little disappointed.
“I think they probably do, to be honest,” Christian said. “I think that’s sort of the problem. I mean, they’re aware of the fact that I drink blood, so I can’t take them out for dinner, plus understandably they worry about getting all the blood drained from their bodies. And if they asked me on a date to a barbecue, I might wind up on the end of a chargrilled stake. The prospect isn’t exactly appealing.”
Faye was pacing like a caged leopard, which alarmed Christian extremely. She’d said “just be yourself,” before the interview, and this was the only self Christian knew how to be, even though Faye seemed intent on redesigning him.
Bradley laughed far too loudly in Christian’s ear. Christian jumped.
“Good thing you’re cute, am I right, Traci?”
Traci winked back at Bradley. “How right you are, Bradders. So, Josh and Pez,” she said, turning to the rest of the band. “Do you two have girlfriends?”
Josh looked terrified. Pez looked distracted by Traci’s shiny earrings.
Christian wondered what having girlfriends had to do with music. They’d just come in from recording the last song for their first album—why hadn’t Traci opened the interview by asking about that?
It wasn’t like Christian had enjoyed much success with girls when he’d been alive anyhow. He’d been shy, and he’d had all that acne. Whenever he liked a girl she’d claim she valued their friendship too much, and in the name of said friendship she’d be forced to make out with rugby players while Christian held her purse. His mum had always said that there was plenty of time, that soon he’d be in college and there would be a thousand different paths for him to choose.
There had only been one path, though—the alley Christian had used as a shortcut home from school. It had been dark and cold, Christian stumbling along with his hands in the pockets of his thin school-uniform trousers and being glum that he’d forgotten his gloves. There was the huddled form of someone he had thought was homeless, who he’d stopped to help, and then there was the bloody attack that Christian didn’t remember clearly. It had been so fast, the brutal snarling creature leaping on top of him. He’d managed to open the blade on his Swiss Army knife and score a long line up the vampire’s face. The wound had opened, dark and dripping blood into Christian’s mouth.
And then there were no more choices.
Christian was roused from the memory of that dark alley by Bradley’s loud laugh and the terribly bright television lights.
Why they had made the vampire with the super-hearing sit next to the man with the laugh of a hyena on speed, Christian didn’t know.
“I’m sweet seventeen,” said Bradley, who was a liar and a fiend and at least twenty. “And never been—”
He waggled his eyebrows without finishing his sentence and Traci laughed uproariously.
“Oh Bradders, you are so bad! How about you, Chris?”
Christian blinked. “Me?”
“How old are you?” Traci asked. “Two hundred? Three hundred?”
“Er,” said Christian. “I’m nineteen.”
At that point Traci leaned in again, covering his hand with hers and not drawing back at the chill. She looked deep into his eyes and said, in a warm, understanding voice:
“Would that be nineteen in … vampire years?”
“You didn’t have to get so narky with her, Chris,” Faye said as she shepherded them back to the limo which was meant to take them to their concert.
“Vampire years!” Christian repeated.
“Like dog years, but in reverse,” Bradley explained helpfully.
Christian did not hit him because the pamphlet they had given him at the re-education clinic after his attack—The Responsible Citizen’s Guide to Vampirism—was very clear about the fact that he had the strength to knock Bradley’s head clean off his shoulders and into the bucket of champagne set in front of them. Bradley was the stupidest person Christian had ever met, but he didn’t deserve that.
Besides, Faye would have given him hell.
“Yes, I understood her horribly speciesist and insensitive point, actually. Thanks,” he said instead, and rubbed at his temples. When he was annoyed his fangs tingled, and it always ended up giving him a migraine.
“I can’t believe we’re going to do our first concert right now,” Josh said, avoiding Christian’s eyes as usual and bouncing nervously in his seat. The roof of the limo was making his fuzzy brown curls a little static.
“Nor can I, since we don’t even have fans yet. What with only finishing up recording our first album today and everything.”
Josh carefully pretended he hadn’t heard Christian. Vampire in the limo? his body language screamed. What vampire in the limo? I have no idea what you mean!