Black Market Blood

by Francis Gideon

  “No, no,” Chaz said. “It’s helping to make sense of a lot of things. About you and about Artie. This case too.”

  Sully shrugged. He hunched over in his seat, making himself smaller, and tried to steady his breathing.

  “Can I ask what happened?”

  “You can always ask,” Sully said. “Doesn’t mean I’ll answer.”

  “I know. I’m surprised you told me as much as you did.”

  “Me too, really. Only Artie, Trinity, and Tabby know this. And Tabby only knows bits and pieces from our game of whose childhood is worse. Spoiler alert: she won.”

  Chaz was about to say something just as the timer dinged on the oven. Sully rose from his spot right away, murmuring under his breath.

  “Almost forgot! Shit.”

  “It’s fine. Nothing’s burned.”

  Sully tested the second cake with a toothpick. When it came up clean, he placed it on a cooling rack and went to get the frosting from a can the fridge. He stirred a knife inside without actually putting anything on the cake yet.

  “So, I found the arrows,” Sully said, continuing his story and speaking toward the kitchen counter. “It was completely by chance. I was getting groceries for John when I walked by a site like the one we went to today. I saw the monster hospital, the brothel, and then I saw the arrows. I talked to one of the girls, and I realized the passageway was real. It actually existed. And though I was not a creature, I wanted to go. I needed to go. John wasn’t bad. I mean, he still bought me like a piece of meat, but honestly, he wasn’t the worst.”

  “That… that doesn’t matter. You deserved more.”

  “I know that now. I do. But then I just was focusing on the present moment. From day to day, that was all I did. This was the first time I was struck by a future. If I found the arrows and followed them, then I could be safe. So I did. It took so long, and I thought I’d get caught so many times, but I basically had to run away from John and live in a house for a week until all the girls and some of the elemental boys left. When I got to Artie’s, she went to take my blood for her intake exam—partly so she can make sure everyone is healthy, another part to figure out where everyone is coming from—and I burst into tears because I was so afraid she’d send me back. It was the first time I had cried in years.”

  “She didn’t send you back, though,” Chaz said. “Obviously.”

  “Obviously.” Sully put the can of frosting down and held his hand above the second cake pan. He made a face. “This is still too warm to frost. The other one is perfect, but it’s supposed to be the bottom of the layer cake. I’m hungry and want this now.”

  “Put the warm one in the refrigerator, then. Only for five minutes, but it should be enough.”

  Sully considered this with bright eyes. “You’re a genius.”

  Chaz laughed. Sully popped the cake onto a plate and placed it in the fridge. When he was done, he set the oven timer again.

  “And you’re a genius for figuring out my kitchen.”

  Sully smiled, but it soon fell from his face. “Where was I? Artie. Um. Well, yeah. She let me stay. She said humans were always allowed in her place. Either they could work or have some time to rest before figuring out what to do next. She never forces anyone to work—I need you to know that.”

  “Okay. Noted. So why did you stay and continue to work?”

  “I didn’t. I slept for like four months.” Sully laughed. “Okay, more like four weeks. Then she asked if I wanted to stay and keep working, or if I wanted a different job, and I just shrugged. I’d literally been doing this all my life. I could have gone out and restarted, but… I figured I may as well keep going.”

  Chaz’s stomach flipped. And I’ve been a part of this. I’ve gone to this place…. Even if they weren’t trafficked specifically for this, everything is tainted in some way. Everything was tarnished. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

  “Hey.” Sully shook his head, eyes narrowing with anger. “Please don’t. I’m not broken. I didn’t tell you that ordeal so you could feel bad for me. I don’t want pity. I’m good at what I do. There’s no shame in that. Even if the job itself has problems. Right now… everything is just fucked by the law. More than anything. The only reason Artie has to come in and try to save us all is because the system won’t.”

  “I know. I can’t even investigate half the murders I see. And with this one, even if we solve it, we may never go to trial because all these victims are monsters. So far, anyway.”

  “What?”

  Chaz explained the person under the law construct. Sully’s face became pale, then ashen. “So it basically has to be human or bust? I’d figured this out years ago, but hearing it out like this…. Fucking hell.”

  “I know. I hate this city so much sometimes.”

  “I do too. It’s the double bind of everything. This city trapped me with John, but it also set me free with Artie. You can’t have one without the other, so I guess it’s fitting. I’m human and you’re monster. We’re like, the perfect crime-fighting duo.”

  Chaz laughed with Sully. It seemed so perverse, so gross to laugh after the dark and gritty material that had just been talked about. Chaz wanted to have a shower, and he was sure Sully did too. But when the timer rang for the cake, Chaz’s mind turned to something else.

  “You need help frosting?”

  “Oh yes. Please.” Sully smiled. His eyes were softer, his body language completely different. He extended a hand to Chaz to help him up from the table. They walked together to the counter and Sully removed the cake from the fridge. They passed around utensils, and even with his limited mobility, Chaz set to work. From the corner of his eye, he studied Sully’s mannerisms. He was more carefree now, stepping closer to Chaz. And Chaz wanted to get as close as they could.

  He’s not broken, Chaz told himself. He doesn’t want to be thought of that way either. Chaz wanted to treat Sully better than he had before, better than anyone else who had come across him. Sully had been hurt, but he was whole again. And there was such a thing as a good monster—a good supernatural creature with laws and ethics. Chaz had to believe that, or else become the fiend from his past that he’d worried he’d become with Nat.

  “What do you think?” Sully said, referring to the now-frosted cake. “Is it good?”

  “Yes. It’s perfect. I can’t believe you knew about the cake. The red velvet. It’s my favorite.”

  “You mentioned it once in a meeting. I thought, hey, it’s better than chocolate so why not grab it.”

  “Thank you.”

  Chaz sat back at the table while Sully cut them both slices and brought them over. He also made coffee and handed out mugs to them both without asking. Chaz had barely taken one bite and a sip before Sully scooted closer.

  “Can I ask something now?”

  “Yes,” Chaz said, knowing that no matter what it was, he’d answer honestly. As honest as Sully had just been.

  “How did you become a vampire?”

  “Oh, that’s a long story.”

  “Surely not longer than mine.”

  “You’re right. It’s not.”

  Chapter 23

  OVER RED velvet cake and coffee, Chaz told Sully the story of Vanessa, a woman he met when his parents were away one weekend.

  “My first job was the Friday and Saturday night shift at a convenience store,” he said. “My dad thought it would build character, while my mom was always really worried about the people who were around. I’m a couple years older than you, so when I was this age, only some people were aware that monsters were more than metaphors.”

  “And how old are you now? Thirty-five? Maybe forty?”

  “Hey. Ouch. Thirty-three.”

  Sully grinned. “Don’t worry. I’m teasing. You actually look pretty young. You were changed when you were fifteen, right?”

  Chaz nodded. Vampires aged because, contrary to popular belief, they could go out in the sun and the sun was what aged almost everyone. Chaz’s lines around his m
outh and eyes seemed to take far longer to form than for anyone else, though, and he often got compliments about how his high-stress job wasn’t eating him alive like it had most of his coworkers. Chaz would always look younger than those around him, but he’d age eventually.

  “I remember reading about one of the first cases of vamps in the paper,” Chaz said. “I should have known our neighborhood would get a lot of it.”

  “Why?”

  “I just…. It seems sometimes like I attracted it. Like I deserved it, and the neighborhood was part of that, so I’ve never gone back to the store. Where my parents are. It’s too hard. Sometimes, especially when I was a beat cop, the places around Toronto changed from being streets to being big name locations. You know the house on Main Street that’s a museum, right?”

  “For the Ghoul,” Sully said. “The demon that killed a family.”

  “Right,” Chaz said. “There are other places too. Bloor Street became the fairy district; York and Dundas became a dragon hangout until they were pushed farther and farther north. Church Street used to be the gay district, but it changed to allow more werewolves in too. Well, the vamps were first found in my neighborhood. Then I became a vamp. And it’s always been that place where blood is tainted. It’s sour. Like all the bodies we keep finding.”

  Sully seemed uncomfortable.

  “No,” Chaz said, “I didn’t do those, if that’s what you’re thinking. I know vamps have a bad reputation as addicts and, well, that’s true for some. Me, for a while. I was blackout drunk when I was teething. I couldn’t handle anything. Most vamps can’t, which is why they form dens.”

  “And Vanessa?”

  Chaz hated how he smiled when he thought of her in his store, with her blonde hair and winged eyeliner. The leather jacket and brass knuckles on her keychain. “She was beautiful. I flirted her when she bought Gatorade and she flirted with me. Then we were making out in a car. She was my first everything, and because she was twenty-five, I thought I’d hit the jackpot. She wanted to give me a hickey. Then she was drinking from me. Then I had turned.”

  “I’m sorry,” Sully said. It was a straight-to-the-point apology. Not because he’d done something, but because he recognized something in Chaz’s description that resonated with his own experience. “I’m very sorry.”

  Chaz slipped his hand around Sully’s, still warm from the coffee. “It sounds a lot more dramatic than it was. I thought I was fine for a week. Had the flu, then I was starving. I kept trying to find Vanessa, but she disappeared. I found one of her friends, named Crystal, but when I tried to feed off her, she was sour. So a vamp.”

  “How did you get your next meal?”

  “Literally anyone I came across. I did the exact thing that Vanessa did to me, which was essentially trick someone. How much do you know about vampire teeth?”

  Sully shrugged. “I’ve seen a couple fangs, but Artie doesn’t let us feed anyone that way. Always bags, never biting. I know blood-to-blood contact is what turns someone. It’s possible to be fed from and not be infected but very rare.”

  “It is,” Chaz said. “I bit five people before I was caught, and turned four of them because I cut my mouth at the same time. I’ve never killed anyone, but what I did seems worse. A lingering reminder that I’ve changed someone’s life irrevocably. I’ve… I’ve done a lot of things that I shouldn’t have.”

  “And someone did something to you first,” Sully said. “It’s no excuse, but it happened. You were also a kid when all of this was going on. Did your parents know about Vanessa?”

  “They did.” Chaz chuckled, remembering. “When my dad found out, his response to me was ‘Well, at least you saved one. That is all that matters.’ But it wasn’t. It was actually worse. Because one of them was still human, she counted as a victim. So I was charged. In court by sixteen.”

  “And your parents supported you? Got you a good lawyer?”

  “Yes, they did. But they also wanted me to atone for what I’d done. They were simultaneously disgusted by what I had become and searching for the good in me still. My mom used to stare at me in the courtroom and I swear she was rearranging my face, so she could reconcile the vampire part and the human part.”

  “So what happened? In court?”

  “System is broken,” Chaz said, laughing harshly. “It’s always broken.”

  “For humans and monsters.”

  “Right. I’m sorry. Everyone falls through the cracks at some point. The other four victims I bit went and formed a vampire den. Vanessa was there. When I was out on bail, I tried to go home but found the doors locked. I understood, deep down, that my parents were protecting themselves. So I went and lived in a den. The charges kept coming after that, and soon, not even my good lawyer showed up. I ended up taking a plea bargain to end up in a facility. Alone, in debt, not even Vanessa by my side.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “She just left. When I was a cop, I fed her name into the computer and realized she’d been introduced into a gang. She’s still with them as far as I know. A shell of who she used to be.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Why? She turned me. She’s just as bad as John or all the others you described.”

  “I know. But you loved her.”

  Chaz wanted to argue but couldn’t. That had been why he’d gotten into her car, why he’d let her feed on him. It was some twisted form of love, some bastardization of trust and relationships. And then you went around and did it to Nat. You took him away and fed off him and turned him in to his brother. And got him killed.

  “What’s wrong?” Sully slipped a hand over Chaz’s and pushed their coffee mugs away. “I’m sorry if I overstepped. I know how difficult it is to separate love and hate in these instances. I hated John, but I also loved him. I spent so many years with him that it was difficult to not see the man inside of him and not find endearing moments.”

  “How can you find endearing moments? It seems impossible.”

  “It’s not. You know that opera I like?” When Chaz nodded, Sully went on. “He found it for me. His parents liked it, and though John never thought it was as good as they claimed, he took me to see it one night. And I fell in love. The colors, the characters, the music. It was beautiful. After the show, he took me out to a nice meal, held my hand as we walked around the city, and told me he was proud of me for coming so far, like Petra, the main character. Everything was good. I believed him when he said he loved me rather than what I represented to him. These….” Sully paused, trying to gather his words. “Feelings are complicated. I hated myself for not leaving for so long, but Artie and Trinity and everyone else at the house helped me to realize that even if I loved John, that didn’t mean I couldn’t also hate him. And just because he took me out to one nice dinner and I felt amazing doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have left. And staying for all those years beforehand wasn’t because I deserve to be kept. No one deserves stuff like that.”

  Chaz nodded.

  “You nod as if you understand,” Sully said, “but I don’t think anyone else has ever told you the same thing for the stuff you went through. And forgive me if I’m overstepping again, but it sounds as if you’ve never said any of this story aloud before.”

  “I have. But to one person. And from there, I didn’t tell anyone else.”

  “Nat?” The question came easily from Sully’s mouth. Chaz felt so transparent and useless. He didn’t know how to say yes, so he just shrugged.

  “Tell me about him. What happened there? I have a feeling those stories interact a lot.”

  Chaz laughed. When Sully didn’t follow him in another chuckle, Chaz pushed the cake around his plate. He heard the off-key version of “Happy Birthday” from Divine Interventions, and he spilled out another story over coffee and cake. This one was more lucid than the one about Vanessa and his parents, mostly because he’d been dreaming and reliving it since then.

  “I’m sorry,” Sully said after Chaz had shared everything. “If I’d known ab
out what the cake really meant—”

  “No. This cake was perfect. It was the last time I felt free and happy. The last time someone called me my name.” Chaz crumbled for a moment, struck by how much he missed being known as Chaz. Chaz Solomon. Chaz Solomon, Chaz Solomon. That’s my name. That’s me. No one could take it away from him, not even Atticus.

  Chaz was surprised to realize the recitation of his name wasn’t just happening in his head—it was coming from Sully’s mouth too. Sully pulled their chairs together, bridging the gap between their bodies, and hummed the name like a psalm. Chaz shuddered as he held Sully closer.

  “I know, I know,” Sully said, finally breaking the chain of his name again and again. “It’s okay. I will call you this. You’ll be known as this with me.”

  “It’s not that simple. It’s my other name. The other life, the one I’ve been hiding from and the one people have taken from me. I could never be a cop as Chaz, as a vampire. I could—”

  “I know. But here, in this apartment, I will call you this name. When we are together, you do not have to be in the present moment either. We can be in the past. And maybe you can get a future too.”

  Chaz shuddered. He wanted that. He wanted it so much, but it all seemed impossible. None of what he had he really owned. It was all rented furniture and borrowed time. He should have died when he was fifteen. He should have saved everyone so much trouble.