by Trisha Telep
It would all have looked really classy, except for the fact Christian had left his coffin out in the center of the room with the lid on the floor, instead of tucking the whole thing away under the extra bed.
“Er, sorry,” Christian said, and dived toward it.
“No,” Laura said. “It’s fine. Leave it.”
He’d heard that girls liked to set the mood, but he didn’t even like to think about what kind of mood a coffin set.
“We do kind of need to get it out of the way,” Christian pointed out, “so we can get to the—”
Laura looked at him, her face a blank.
“Unless you’ve changed your mind,” Christian said hastily, “which is absolutely, completely fine. I would understand. We could go back to the party—”
He was interrupted by Laura walking into his open arms. He closed them around her almost by reflex, drawing her close because she was warm, because she felt soft and smelled sweet and he wanted her there, wanted her to want to be there so badly.
She turned up her face to his, and he kissed her, light and exploring, letting her breathe, letting her set the pace. Her pulse thundered beneath her skin, singing a song of life and pleasure to him every time he touched her. He kissed her mouth lightly, the corner of her lips, her chin, and then her mouth again. She started, as if she had not expected him to be so tender, and the tip of his fang cut her. Christian tasted blood.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he murmured, drawing back.
“It’s fine,” Laura whispered, her voice trembling a little, but it must have been with excitement because she threaded her fingers through his hair and brought his face down to hers again.
He kissed her again, delicately, mouth lingering against hers with all the gentleness he possessed. He didn’t want to taste her blood. This wasn’t about feeding.
Her mouth opened, yielding and lovely. Her fingers in his hair tugged. He kissed her a little harder, kissed her cheek, her chin, brushing butterfly kisses along her jaw. She pulled his head down again so his mouth slid from her jaw to her throat.
Even then, he didn’t get it. He kissed her there, where her pulse was beating fast but safe beneath her fragile skin.
“Do it,” she said, breathing hard and determined.
He lost the rhythm of her warm heart and breath then, slid back into a cold place.
“Do what?” he asked, but he was already drawing back. He already knew.
Christian stepped away and walked alone to the crimson curtains, stood on the threshold of the door that went nowhere.
“Don’t you want to?” Laura asked, her voice breaking. “My friend Rochelle said that if you liked me, you’d want to.”
“Did she?”
“I thought human blood was best—”
“I don’t care if it is. I do not want to be something who thinks about human beings as food,” Christian said, keeping his voice low.
“That’s really noble,” Laura began.
“No,” Christian told her. “No, it isn’t. I do not think about you as food. I do not want the blood, so I am not noble for not taking it. Can’t you give me credit for a little human decency?”
Laura’s silence made her still. It was the silence of anyone hurt and embarrassed and being shouted at by a stranger.
Christian took a deep breath he didn’t need at all. “No. Of course you can’t. That’s the problem, isn’t it?”
He shouldn’t be shouting at her. She wasn’t wrong, after all. He’d threatened to drink Bradley’s blood this very evening. He and Laura were just strangers who didn’t understand each other. It was now they were learning that.
He’d wanted her to be human for him. That was just as insulting.
“I’m sorry that I upset you,” Laura said in a small voice, her eyes combing the corners of the room as if searching for places she could hide. “I don’t quite … I don’t know what I did wrong.”
Christian’s mother had taught him at a very early age that it was wrong to make girls cry.
“You did nothing wrong,” he said as gently as he could. “I guess I’m just not vampire enough for you.”
Not yet.
He offered her his arm and led her gently back to Rochelle, who would be her friend for the night because she had got them invited to this great party. They both seemed willing to engage in a little human deception.
“I’ll see you around?” Laura asked. She sounded both uncertain about whether she would and about whether she wanted to.
Christian lied to her, intentionally, for the first time, and said, “You will.”
When Christian tried to go back down to his room, he almost tripped over Haley and Josh on the basement stairs.
“I’m terribly sorry,” he said, and backpedaled hastily before Josh could become asthmatic with combined terror and passion.
He crashed into a man wearing a papier-mâché lion head who turned out to be Pez.
“Oh, hey, man,” said Pez. “Where’s your lady friend?”
Christian was mildly surprised that Pez had noticed Laura existed at all. Many things happening on Planet Earth passed Pez right by. “I think she only liked me because I’m a vampire.”
Pez looked stunned. “Hang on,” he said. “You’re actually a vampire?”
“Ah, yes?”
“I thought that was a gimmick Faye came up with!”
“Yes, Pez,” Christian said wearily. “I’m a gimmick. I’m also a vampire.”
Pez nodded his fluffy, dreadlocked head which bounced with all the product that Faye ordered into it every day.
“Huh.”
Christian waited while Pez processed the idea, feeling slight dread at the thought of how terrified Josh was of him.
“Dude,” said Pez. “If you’re actually a vampire, it is really nice of you to go grocery shopping so much.”
“Oh, well,” Christian mumbled, feeling unexpectedly flustered. “There’s a late-night grocery shop down the road. I don’t mind. I know Josh needs sugar, and Bradley drinks all that milk, and you kind of use up all the bubble bath.”
“It’s tangy,” Pez assured him. “Very refreshing.”
“Okay.”
Pez punched him in the chest and then swayed back, laughing. “Appreciate it, man,” he said, and then rejoined the conga line.
Christian was feeling a bit too fragile to cope with a conga line full of unlikely and intoxicated papier-mâché animals, so he went down to the projection room where he thought he could hear the video recording of their first concert being played.
He did not at all mean to see Bradley and Faye kissing in the darkened room, but that was exactly what he saw, and his vampire vision left nothing to the imagination.
Christian blinked hard three times to dispel the terrible sight.
“Chris, you are in so much trouble,” said Faye, disentangling herself from Bradley’s embrace, her lipstick blurred.
“I am so sorry, I had no idea. The music was up very loud. Please don’t kill me.”
“You keep sidling away from the wind machine,” Faye said, ignoring him superbly, as she did when she had decided people were being stupid. “Don’t try to lie to me. It’s extremely clear.”
Christian looked at his blown-up image on the farthest wall, bathed in violet light and definitely shying away from the wind machine.
“Hey, where’s Laura?” Bradley asked. He was wearing Faye’s lipstick, too. It made him look monumentally ridiculous.
“Not with me,” Christian said. “You were right.”
Bradley looked sympathetic, which Christian appreciated. The look on Faye’s face gave him chills.
“Chris, do you mean that you just gave me a dramatic rescue and a tragic love affair, all in only two days?” she asked slowly. “Because if you’ve done that, I have to say, I think I love you.”
Bradley made a distressed face. “Faye, give the guy a break. He has feelings.”
“I know—torment, isolation, longing for love,” Faye said, as if c
hecking boxes in the terrible list that lived inside her brain. “Adore it. Totally classic.”
“I’m not …” Christian burst out, and stopped.
He wasn’t that vampire thing Laura had longed for. That was what he wanted to say. But to Faye and Bradley, of all people, he just couldn’t do it.
Faye’s face softened a little. She walked over to him, hair mussed and lipstick smeared. For a moment, Christian thought that she might actually be experiencing a wave of womanly sympathy.
“But you are,” she said, stabbing her perfectly manicured nail in his direction, and his wild dream died. “You’re the vampire wishing for his lost humanity, yearning for love as a way to recapture it, always thinking that someday, someone will understand.”
“You don’t understand,” Christian said reflexively, and then bit his tongue (that was extremely painful for a vampire).
“Oh, I know,” Faye said. “Nobody does. But you’ll keep thinking maybe someone will. You’ll keep searching for the one, and they’ll keep hoping they could be the one, and the album will go to the top of the charts!”
“I feel somewhat exploited,” Christian said. “I think that’s due to the fact that you’re exploiting me.”
He looked over Faye’s shoulder at the images onscreen. Bradley was shaking what his mother and his plastic surgeon had given him, Josh and Pez shuffling behind him. Christian was all alone, his black hair lifted like wings by the wind machine.
“Sure,” Faye agreed. “But what else are you going to do? What else are you going to be? You’re a vampire, Chris. And I’m going to make you a star.”
The haircut on that lit-up musician on the big screen didn’t look as stupid as it always did in the mirror. Even the cloak didn’t look stupid.
“It’s not so bad, Chris,” Bradley said encouragingly. “Stop moping.”
Faye whirled on him. “Never tell him that again!”
“Sorry, Faye.”
“Keep moping, Chris,” said Faye sternly. “Mope your little heart out. Now, I’m tired of this party. Nobody is doing anything scandalous or newsworthy at all. We’re going to my house, Bradley. Feel free to mope here alone, Chris. Or if you like, you can join us.”
Chris took a moment to ponder the possible implications of Faye’s offer, and feel his head go all swimmy with horror. He looked at Bradley to check that Bradley was also horrified, and Bradley gave him a thumbs-up.
Christian’s horror reached almost cosmic proportions.
“I think,” he said coldly, “I will fetch my cape and go for a walk.”
“It’s raining, man,” Bradley informed him.
“I think that I will fetch my cape and go for a long, miserable walk in the rain.”
Faye smiled brilliantly. “And that’s why we all love you, honey.”
Christian paused on his way out to cast one more reproachful and traumatized look at the pair of them.
Over their heads he saw his own image: the rock star vampire, eyes shut, lost in the music and the moment of love. Christian saw himself looking wistful and oddly beautiful, pale in neon lights and makeup, yet somehow divorced from both, shining like an icon. He looked happy and almost human.
Almost, but not quite. He was smiling a little.
In the spotlights, his fangs gleamed.
THE VAMPIRE HUNTERS came just before dawn. I was sound asleep—a total knock-out sleep, deep and dreamless, after a night spent sparring with Marguerite. I woke to her cool fingers gripping my bare shoulder.
“Kat?” she whispered. “Katiana?”
I pushed her away, muttering that I’d skip the bus and jog to school, but her fingers bit into my shoulder as she shook me.
“It’s not school, mon chaton,” she said in her soft French accent. “It’s the hunters. They’ve found me.”
My eyes snapped open. Marguerite was leaning over me, blue eyes wide, her heart-shaped face ringed with blonde curls. When I was little, I used to think she was an angel. I knew better now, but it didn’t change anything. She was still my guardian angel.
I rolled out of bed and peered around the dark room. If I blinked hard enough, I could see. Cat’s-eye vision, Marguerite called it. I was a supernatural, too, though not a vampire. We had no idea what I was. At sixteen, I still didn’t have any powers other than this bit of night vision.
Marguerite pushed clothing into my hand. For two years, we’d slept with an outfit and packed backpack under our beds, ready to grab if the hunters came. Two years of running. Two years of staying one step ahead of them. Until now.
“Where are they?” I whispered as I tugged on my jeans.
“Outside. Watching the house.”
“Waiting for daylight, I bet.” I snorted. “Idiots. Probably think once the sun comes up, you’ll be trapped in here.”
“If so, they will be in for a surprise. But I would like to be gone by then, to be sure they are not waiting for reinforcements.”
“Going up, then?” I asked.
She nodded, and we set out.
We snuck through the top-floor apartment we rented in the old house. In the living room, I hopped onto the couch, and Marguerite handed me a screwdriver. I popped off the ventilation shaft cover, handed it down to her, grabbed the edge and swung up and through.
Ever seen a TV show where the hero sneaks into the villain’s lair through a ventilation shaft? Ever thought it looked easy? It’s not. First, your average ventilation shaft is not action hero-sized. Second, they’re lined with metal, meaning it’s like crawling through a tin can, every thump of your knee echoing.
Fortunately, neither Marguerite nor I are action hero-sized either. And we know how to move without making a sound. For Marguerite, it comes naturally. Vampires are predators, and she’s never sugar-coated that for me. My skill comes from training. I’m a competition-level gymnast, a brown belt in karate and a second-degree black belt in aikido.
I’d been taking lessons since I came to live with Marguerite eleven years ago. All supernaturals need to be able to defend themselves, she says. I might eventually get powers that help me, but if I turn out to be something like a necromancer, I’m shit outta luck. Not that she’d use those exact words. Marguerite doesn’t swear and doesn’t like me to either. She has no problem with me kicking someone’s ass—she just doesn’t want me saying the word.
When my elbow bumped the metal side, I managed to swallow my curse, turning it into a soft growl.
“You’re doing fine,” her whisper floated to me. “Keep going.”
We finally reached the attic, where we’d removed the screws from the vent right after moving in. As I pushed it up and out of the way, I mentally cursed again, this time cussing out the landlady for nailing shut the attic hatch, which would have made for a much easier escape route. That was why we’d rented the place—Marguerite had seen the hatch in our apartment and slapped down the cash … only to realize it was nailed closed, the wood too rotted to pry open.
Once in the attic, Marguerite took over. She can see better in the dark than I can. In the vent, she’d let me go first to cover my back, but here she led to make sure I didn’t trip or step on anything nasty. That’s the way it’s always been. She trains me to defend myself, but when she’s there, she’s always the one taking the risks. When I was five, it made me feel safe and loved. Now … well, there’s part of me that wants to say it pisses me off, but the truth is, I still like it.
Marguerite walked to the dormer window. Oak branches scraped against it like fingernails on a chalkboard, setting my already stretched nerves twanging. She wrenched off the rotted window frame. Those branches, creepy as they were, made excellent cover, hiding us as we swung up and onto the roof. Following her lead, I slid across the old shingles, feeling them scrape a layer or two off my palms. We crept along to the shadow of the chimney, then huddled against it and peered out into the night.
Marguerite started to close her eyes, then opened them wide, her nostrils flaring.
“Yes, I’m bleeding,�
�� I whispered. “Scraped palms. I’ll live.”
She handed me a tissue anyway. Then she closed her eyes, trying to pinpoint the vampire hunters with her special senses. A vampire can sense living beings. Marguerite doesn’t know how it works, but years ago I saw this show on sharks and how they have this sixth sense that detects electrical impulses, making them perfectly evolved predators. So I’ve decided that’s what vampires have—a shark’s electrosensory system. Perfect predators.
Tonight her shark-sense wasn’t up to snuff, and Marguerite kept shaking her head sharply, like she was trying to tune it in. She looked tired, too, her eyes dim, face drawn. I remembered how cool her skin had been when she woke me up.
“When’s the last time you ate?” I whispered.
“I had a storage pouch—”
“Not that stale blood crap. A real meal, I mean.”
Her silence answered. While she can get by on packaged stuff, it’s like humans eating at McDonald’s every day. Not very healthy. She needs real food, hot and fresh. Though she doesn’t need to kill people to feed—she just drinks some blood, like a mosquito—it’s always dangerous, and since we’ve been on the run she doesn’t do it nearly enough.
“You can’t do that. You need to feed more to keep up your energy.”
“Oui, maman.”
I made a face at her and hunkered down, letting her concentrate. After a moment, she pointed to the east.
“Two of them, over there. Watching and waiting. We must go.”
I nodded, and followed her back to the rear of the house and down the tree, hidden by its branches. We hop-scotched through yards as the darkness lifted, giving way to predawn gray, pink touching the sky to the east. The rising sun wasn’t a problem. Bram Stoker got one thing right with Dracula—vampires can walk around in daylight just fine.
We headed for the bus station three blocks away. These days, when we looked for a place to live, Marguerite didn’t ask how many bedrooms and baths it had or even how much it cost. She picked apartments based on how easily we could escape them—and get far away, fast.