by Jim McDoniel
Belying the giddiness he felt, he slowly made his way upstairs to face his destiny.
• •
“Are you ready?” Amanda asked as the vampire strolled into the kitchen. The sight of her seemed to give him pause, and she could feel his eyes sweeping across her body in a disapproving, oddly parental way. He muttered something under his breath that sounded like “never be free of these Puritans.”
“What?” she asked, certain she had misheard him.
“Nothing,” he replied. “I am ready.”
They made their way through the hallway to the front of the house.
“Simon, we’re leaving!” Amanda called upstairs.
“Okay,” called a voice that sounded busy.
“Stay out of the basement, boy!” shouted the vampire.
There was a long pause before Simon finally answered, “Okay.”
Once the two had gone outside, Amanda rounded on the vampire. “What was that about?”
Yulric grinned. “There is a rather tarnished old box that I would like restored.”
“Huh,” she replied with a smirk. “You’re learning.”
Amanda made it as far as the car before—
“What are you doing?” cried a voice from behind her. She turned to find the vampire frozen on the stoop, face aghast, as if he wasn’t sure whether to run or ravage. Amanda let out the kind of sigh that only saints and people with children make, for only they know the secret of turning oxygen into patience.
“The vampires are not in Shepherd’s Crook, present company excepted. Shepherd’s Crook is a boring, small town, and no self-respecting vampire would ever set foot here, present company excepted. So we need to go to New York City or New Amsterdam or whatever they called it in your day. And to get there, we need to drive.”
“I am not getting into that infernal machine,” he proclaimed. “It can’t hit you while you are inside it,” she assured him.
“So say you,” he replied, having lost all ability for reasonable thought.
“It is a carriage,” she explained. “A horseless carriage. A means to transport people from one place to another. It does not have a mind of its own. It is not out to get you. It will not ignite or implode in on itself just because you’re inside.”
The vampire looked at her as if he didn’t believe a word she was saying, and so she continued. “I am getting inside. Where the controls are. And you, the person annoying me, will be outside where the controls aren’t. And then who knows what might happen.”
Angrily, the vampire moved to the passenger side of the car. After she gave him a pointed look, he opened the door and, with a few starts and hisses, got inside, moving toward the middle of the seat, away from the door, which he eyed warily.
Between the corset, the skirt, and the boots, it took Amanda a moment to negotiate her way inside. After she had, she instructed, “Seat belts.”
The vampire turned to the strip of fabric hanging off his shoulder. Amanda knew he had learned from the television what they were, so he could not play ignorant this time.
“I have no need for a life saving restraint,” he argued.
She was ready for this fight, as well. “If you don’t put it on, the police might pull us over and make inquiries.”
“Then I will change their minds,” he said impatiently.
“Can you also change the mind of the video cameras that will be recording you? Or the people who will be watching those videos?”
It was a bluff. Amanda had talked to her brother on the subject and was pretty sure this vampire wouldn’t show up on video. Still, Yulric didn’t know that and neither Linske was about to tell him. And so, with some trepidation, he reached out, took the clip attached to the fabric, stretched it across his body, and inserted it into the device meant to receive it.
“Well, here we go,” she said. And away they went, the girl and the vampire.
Driving with the vampire turned out to be a lot like driving with a dog. Or a small child. Or a small dog with fingers. As soon as she hit the freeway and they started going faster than Yulric had ever seen anything go, his fear of the car was apparently overcome by awe and curiosity. He watched as they zoomed by the outside world, often choosing to pick objects in the distance and follow them with his head until they had passed. This eventually caused him to lean on the window controls, which Amanda had foolishly forgotten to lock. So, up and down went the window. Then, out of the window went hands, followed by arms, and finally a head. All the while, questions were being asked. “How fast are we going now?” was said with the same annoying frequency as “Have we arrived yet?” or the panicked shouts of “Watch out!” and “No, no, no!” when she weaved the car through traffic.
Amanda had never really understood the theory of relativity. When they had explained it in school, it had gone over her head, and when Simon tried to show her two years ago, it had been during the Phantom season finale, so she wasn’t really listening. Now, though, she looked on at people passing in their cars, also headed for New York, and finally understood. For those passengers, this trip would only take a few hours. For Amanda, it would be so much longer.
Chapter 12
Yulric had been to cities. To say he’d lived in any would be both literally and metaphorically incorrect. It’s hard to live in a place you intend to flee in six months. But he had stayed in dozens, maybe even hundreds of cities, and what he lacked in time spent, he made up for in the quality of the cities themselves. Any college student or ardent world traveler wishes he had the résumé that Yulric could boast.27
He had also lived long enough to understand that change and growth were inevitable. In his years, small farming villages filled with serfs had turned to towns filled with merchants and craftsmen, on their way to becoming cities filled with serfs again. Castles and walls had become largely irrelevant fortifications allowing for the outward expansion of dwellings and brothels.28 What ancient artifices weren’t torn down ended up mixing with modern structures, like cathedrals or palaces.
Cities grew. This was the way of things. Unless there was a war or a plague or a mysterious stranger, in which case, a city might crumble, dwindle, or disappear/explode/sink into the sea. But barring any of these occurrences, cities grew, and one need only have looked at Shepherd’s Crook to see this fact in motion. Three hundred years ago, it was a small collection of farmhouses around a church, barely worth calling a village. Today, from what Yulric had seen whizzing by, it took up nearly as much land as Paris or London had in his day. However, Yulric’s understanding of population growth did not prepare him for the contemporary city.
“Is that a building?” he asked after they’d barely passed beyond what Amanda called the suburbs and into the city proper.
Amanda glanced at where he was looking. “That? That’s nothing. An apartment complex probably.”
Yulric looked at her aghast. He’d besieged towers in castles smaller than this building. And those had been filled with noble lords and soldiers aplenty. These . . . these were for regular people.
Amanda could not help but smile at the vampire’s childlike amazement. “Wait until you see the real skyscrapers.” Thirty minutes later, however, Yulric was still waiting.
“Should we not be moving?” he groaned.
“I take it they didn’t have traffic back in the 1600s?” said Amanda. She inched the car forward slightly, then stopped.
“What is the point of this hideous monstrosity if it does not go fast?” he protested.
“We’ll get there when we get there, all right?” Amanda replied, although he thought she was secretly agreeing with his sentiment.
Yulric looked out the passenger window and pointed. “Why do we not take the empty road?”
“That isn’t a road. It’s a sidewalk,” she told him.
“There are no cars on it,” Yulric pointed out.
“That’s because it’s for people,” explained Amanda.
“They would get out of the way,” he said absentmindedly
. He had just noticed a small boy watching him from the car in the next lane. He smiled, menacingly. The boy started screaming.
“Stop that,” scolded Amanda.
“Stop what?” Yulric replied, having adopted the appearance of innocence, both for her and the child’s parents, who were now looking at him.
“You know what,” Amanda said. She pointed at the windshield. “There, see. There’s the city.”
“Where?” Yulric asked.
“It was past those condos. You must have missed it,” she explained. “Just keep looking.”
Yulric craned his neck, trying to peer around the building in question. It was another ten minutes before he realized he’d been tricked, but by that time, it didn’t matter because they could finally see the gray tips of distant towers peeking out from around barely moving semis or just above YMCAs. As they inched forward, these monoliths of glass, concrete, and metal resolved themselves and grew. Ten minutes and half as many miles later, they equaled heights rivaling the cyclopean towers of R’lyeh or the ruins of Leng,29 and still the car had not reached their base. Higher and higher the buildings rose, not one or two, but dozens, stretching into the sky, some even disappearing into the very clouds overhead, making it impossible to tell if they ever ended.
“I may have underestimated the Dutch.” The vampire gaped.
A few minutes later, they were pulling off the road that ran alongside the edge of the island and into an area with an entrance marked by squat, brick buildings, which took up entire blocks. Amanda pointed to one in particular. “That’s where we’re going.”
“A slaughterhouse,” Yulric purred.
“Um, maybe. This is the Meatpacking District,” Amanda stammered, uncomfortable with his tone of voice. “How did you know?”
The vampire just closed his eyes and breathed in, trying to extract blood from the neighborhood’s history. He stopped when Amanda began to drive away from their destination, turning his breathing into a series of inarticulate noises that basically all translated to “Why?”
“We need to park the car,” she explained to the still-grunting vampire.
“But . . . there are cars all around,” protested Yulric.
“And no space for ours,” she replied. Apparently anticipating his next suggestion, she added, “We can’t park on the sidewalk.” The vampire fell back against his chair in a resentful huff. “Look, we’re on our way to a . . . stable for cars.” And indeed, a few minutes later they were pulling into a parking garage: a hideous, cement structure built specifically to temporarily house cars for a fee. Which came as a shock. He’d assumed, based on what he’d seen on TV, that such buildings were designed for clandestine meetings and brutal murders. Though when he thought back, there had been cars in those scenes, as well.
Amanda guided the car up, level by level, until they finally found a single, open parking spot. Carefully, she squeezed in the car between a Prius and a brand new Hummer, which had tried to take up two parking spots without getting a ticket. This meant there was an inch and a half of space on the passenger’s side to open the door.
“You can mist your way out, right?” Amanda suggested to the vampire. He gave a shrewd grunt of a laugh and then dissolved into smoke, just like she’d had in mind. The mist then crawled over her on its way out the driver-side door, which was very much NOT what she’d had in mind. When the vampire materialized once more, and Amanda was quite certain she wasn’t going to vomit, she, too, exited the car. “From here, we walk.”
Whatever smugness Yulric’s face had gained from his defiant stunt quickly evaporated as he put together what he’d been too distracted to realize before. “But”—his voice became a nervous hush—“what about the—” A distant screeching of tires finished his sentence for him.
“You’re not going to be hit by a car,” she said exasperatedly.
“They’re everywhere,” he whispered. The vampire wrung his hands manically, his eyes darting this way and that.
Realizing he would not budge from this spot until certain of his safety, she tried to calm his fears. “In the city, people have the right-of-way. The cars will stop.”
The monster folded his arms. “In my day, people on horses stopped for walls and spears and little else. Those who were inattentive or slow were trampled underfoot.”
“Well, that doesn’t happen now,” Amanda said.
“Why?”
“Because people are basically decent and good.”
“Ha,” laughed Yulric. “Times have not changed that much.”
“And we have laws,” Amanda added, conceding his point. “Mmm,” mused the vampire. “And how harshly are these laws enforced?”
Amanda had absolutely no idea. “Death,” she lied.
“Very well,” Yulric nodded approvingly, finally allowing himself to be led away. “Let us go.”
Woman and immortal made their way slowly, owing to the former’s footwear, to the elevator. The vampire clacked his long nails impatiently on a nearby trashcan with increasing volume while they watched the numbers descend. When the lift finally arrived, the doors opened to reveal a pair of newly minted twenty-one-year-old college boys. They looked to the left at busty blond Goth with a slit skirt and hooker boots, and their eyes spun to “jackpot.” Then, they turned to the hottie’s dead grandfather, whose eyes—to their horror—were also flashing “jackpot.” The boys nervously took a step back and to the right, allowing the newcomers to board.
It was the most uncomfortable elevator ride imaginable. For starters, the college kids were standing behind Amanda, which she knew was a strategic move on their part so they could check out her ass. However, this intention was being nullified by Yulric’s inexperience with elevator etiquette. Instead of turning to face the doors like everyone else in the known universe, he was staring directly at the boys, his sharp teeth bared in a malicious, hungry grin. Their brains short-circuited as the greatest forces that govern human behavior—libido and self-preservation—fought for control of their actions.
“Hey,” one of the boys whispered to Amanda, libido having unsurprisingly won out. “We’re headed to a party. If you wanted to, well, you know . . . ?”
Amanda appraised them both, then turned to Yulric. “What do you think, Dad? Can I go with them?”
The boy who’d spoken up immediately went white and shut his mouth. His companion scrunched himself into the corner, trying to distance himself physically and figuratively from his friend. For the rest of the ride, they stood tensely in uncomfortable silence, until the elevator doors opened and the pair of would-be Romeos fled, not even bothering to brush up against Amanda on their way out.
“What?” Amanda said, noticing the vampire watching her.
“How did you do that?” he asked, apparently curious how she had succeeded where the horror of his presence had failed.
She shrugged. “Horny guys fear parents. Everyone knows that. Can we go?”
“Lead the way.” Yulric bowed.
• •
Amanda was absolutely right about the behavior of automobiles in the city. Not only did they not jump up onto the far clearer walkways, but they halted even when pedestrians strode out in front of them in defiance of both the metal constructs’ potential for death and the signs flashing Don’t Walk over and over. They might honk their horns loudly in protest, their drivers might make obscene hand gestures or suggest you remove your head out of various orifices, but that was the worst you could expect to encounter from the cars.
One could not say the same of the pedestrians.
A flood of humanity filled every available walking path in the city. The established convention of staying to the right side, which prevailed on the roads, was here a mere suggestion, flouted as often as it was followed. In some places, crowds obstructed all movement, waiting outside tableless restaurants for pizza with toppings that appeared on no other menu in the world.30 They jostled, they trampled, they indiscriminately plowed ahead, indifferent to the ancient monstrosity in th
eir midst.
A five-foot-four woman texting on her phone walked directly into Yulric. “Excuse me?” she snapped, making it clear that he was the one being unreasonably thick. With an annoyed sigh, she stepped to the left and disappeared into the throng, never even so much as looking up from her cell.
“I thought people knew about vampyrs?” Yulric said, annoyed at the woman’s lack of mind-numbing terror.
“Everyone knows about them, but hardly anyone thinks they’re real. Especially not the normals.” Amanda laughed. “To them, you’re just a thing that shows up in movies sometimes.” She smiled smugly. “Though not really, because you aren’t pretty enough.”
“So, when they look at me, what do they see?” he asked.
In response, Amanda drew his attention to a grubby-looking homeless man panhandling at the end of an alley. The vampire hissed in disgust. As he did, a set of stairs caught his eye. “Where do those go?” the vampire inquired.
“To the subway,” answered an impatient Amanda.
“Subway,” Yulric mused. “I will return.”
“Wait!” Amanda called out, but it was too late. Yulric had leapt down the stairs and disappeared. Amanda waited at the top, unwilling to chase after him in heels. A minute later, he reemerged, stowing a subway pamphlet into his robes.
“It always pays to be familiar with underground tunnels.” Yulric beamed.
For a fleeting second, she thought of explaining to him what a subway was, but thought better of it. “Are you done now? Can we go?”
He bowed his head and followed her another three blocks to the old, repurposed warehouse. The pair ducked into a dark alleyway that separated it from the building next door. Here, nearly hidden by steam, was a staircase leading down. At the bottom stood a red velvet rope and an intimidatingly large man.
Even seated as he was, the man was nearly as tall as an average-sized person and as wide as two. His neck glittered with gold, as did most of his fingers. Despite the time of night and darkness of the alley, he wore sunglasses, as if light was a meager consideration when compared with style. Not that he wasn’t classy; he was, after all, wearing a sports coat over his shirtless torso. Amanda called him a bouncer, but Yulric easily recognized uniform of a guard. And he had ways of dealing with guards.