by Tanith Frost
“Aviva,” I say, nearly stuttering. I don’t often introduce myself to other vampires, and it feels strange to not have a last name to append to it anymore.
Wallace looks deep into my eyes and gives me a wink so quick I almost miss it, then turns to Daniel. “They’re doing well. Will they be following you through this assignment?”
“No.” Daniel’s voice is firm. “Investigation only. No hunting. They’re not ready.”
“We are!” Trixie protests. Daniel shoots her a look that shuts her up before she can get another word out. He won’t tolerate us making him look bad.
He did warn us about that.
My thoughts drift back to the kitchen. I can’t help thinking I’ve missed something. Not the windows, though I should have remembered that detail. This is something ephemeral. A feeling, not a physical detail I should have noted.
I wander away from the conversation, back toward the bodies. No one mentioned fingerprints, so I assume there weren’t any, or that it doesn’t matter. If there was anything here that would tell us who did this, Wallace and Daniel would be all over it.
I think over what little I know about rogues from the few times Daniel talked about his hunting days. They don’t stay in any one city for long. Our elders keep each other informed of their presence if they cause trouble, at which time the hunters deal with the problem swiftly and without mercy, often crossing clan territory lines with the elders’ permission. I can see why Daniel’s stories would make Trixie eager to join the hunt. It’s a hard job, but Daniel spoke of it fondly—usually while contrasting it with the hardship of his current assignment.
But it’s not just an exciting opportunity to see the world and catch bad guys. Seeing this kitchen makes me understand how serious the hunts really are. The rogues that attacked here aren’t just an inconvenience for us, or even the ultimate horror for this family. If word of this got out, if the living knew we existed outside of their stories and their nightmares, if they had even the slightest understanding of the unquenchable blood lust that comes over even the most civilized among us when we haven’t fed for too long… No. The situation would be unthinkable.
This is why we have things set up the way we do. We know what happens when the living feel that they must kill or be killed.
It seems disrespectful to leave the woman naked and exposed on the table. I glance up at the dark staircase heading to the upper level from the kitchen. There’s a basket of folded laundry there, and I take one of the quilts from it and cover the children first. Something catches in my chest as their frightened eyes disappear, as they lose sight of their mother.
They can’t see, I remind myself. They’re gone. They’re safe.
Fear suddenly courses through me, high and fluttering in my throat. I close my eyes. Behind my eyelids, shadows move around the room, quick and graceful and terrifying. An echo of high-pitched laughter rings through my mind, and a deafening scream follows. It’s all gone when I open my eyes, but the feeling is worse. I’m afraid like I haven’t been since I left the facility. Afraid like these people were. It’s not enough to set my heart pounding, but even without physical response, the feeling is unmistakable.
I’m losing my mind. Hallucinating. I must be.
After a minute of standing perfectly still, the feeling ebbs, leaving anxiety where there was terror. I can handle this, unpleasant though it may be.
I blink hard to clear my head and grab another blanket to place over the naked form on the table. I close her eyes, careful to only touch her with the blanket, not my bare hands. I’m not wearing gloves.
That’s better. I should have done that with the others. It makes her look more peaceful.
“What happened?” I whisper as I cover her.
“She’s not going to answer you.” Trixie is leaning in the doorway, watching me. Concerned.
“I know.” I motion her closer. “Trix, have you ever seen a body that could be… you know. Like us?”
She shakes her head, setting her hair bouncing. “I’m not sure I’d know one if I saw it, though I’m told I would. Daniel’s never really told me the difference. Smell, or something? Even if I did, though, I couldn’t, like…” Her already pallid skin lightens a shade. “No thanks.”
I couldn’t either, I’m sure. When I was alive, I thought vampires were made when a living person was bitten. I mean, I didn’t think they were made outside of stories, but I thought that was how the theory went. The truth is that it’s not so simple, and definitely not pleasant. It starts with a body. A corpse, but not just any corpse—one with the blood factor that makes our transformation possible. In most cases a clan will have identified this person and watched them for a time, assessing them, seeing whether they’ll make the transition easily or whether their corpse should be left to rot. I suppose they look for the traits that make Trixie so good at what she is. Cunning, cleverness, resilience, strength, and a healthy dose of self-interest. Everything I’m not.
An exasperated nurse at the facility once let it slip that I wasn’t chosen. No one approved my change. No one was informed until it was done. For all I know, a rogue with a grudge against civilized vampires did it and dumped me so some clan would have to care for me through my terrible adjustment.
I doubt anyone would be that committed to a practical joke, though. The transformation process is horrible for the maker. Within a few hours after death, the vampire has to drain the dead blood by mouth, consuming every drop of it.
It’s unbearable to think of. Living blood brings us something close to life, but dead blood depletes us. I’m told that the taste is vile, that it becomes thick and dark, that the one consuming it can easily succumb to the despair and pain it brings. To go through all that, to create a new vampire, is considered a great sacrifice.
And not one that’s always appreciated by the recipient.
“Would you do it?” Trixie asks.
“What, right now?”
“Yeah. Like, if you knew you could drain her or one of those kids, give them what we have, would you?”
“Absolutely not. Do you think they’d want to come back after what they’ve gone through?” Never mind how terrible it would be for the children. Their brains wouldn’t develop any more. They’d never mature, not in a hundred years.
“Just asking. I don’t think I could.” She sticks her finger down her throat and mimes gagging. I try not to take the gesture personally. If she heard me retching earlier, she wouldn’t make fun of me for it.
I hope.
I don’t want to look around anymore, but this is why we’re here, and I’m not keen to go back to the living room with that technician and her knowing glances. Much as I might want to switch to another career in the future, this is my assignment tonight.
Whoever did this cleaned it up well. Not the blood and human mess, but the traces the attackers might have left. The woman on the table is filthy, but the fingernails visible beneath the edge of the blanket have been scrubbed clean. Parts of the floor have been wiped down, leaving no footprints. The technicians will have measured the bite marks, but until we have suspects to compare them to, they’re useless.
Trixie watches me for a few minutes as I look on top of the fridge, inside the cupboards, behind the microwave. I give the flesh in the glass bowl a once-over. It’s less horrible without the victim watching.
Wallace, Daniel, and the technician enter the room. “Second time this month,” Wallace says as he watches me poking around. He nods at the bowl. “Though this little detail is new.”
“When did they all die?” I ask.
“These ones, early this morning. Very early, after a night of… well.” He nods at the blanket covering the body on the table, gives me an odd look, but doesn’t ask about what I’ve done. “The one before that was the middle of the afternoon. They’re getting bold, taking chances with times and locations.” His gaze flashes to the children’s bodies huddled under their quilt, just for a moment. “With their victims.”
Dan
iel flexes his fingers, popping the knuckles. I keep thinking he’s broken the habit, and then there it is again. I guess it’s hard to break one after so many years. “We’ll just hope they become bold enough to make a mistake next time.”
“Next time?” I didn’t know I was going to speak until it happens. Everyone looks at me. I fight to sound like I’m interested rather than horrified. “You don’t think we’ll find them before they kill again?”
“Nothing here to go on,” Wallace says as he shrugs into his trenchcoat. “I doubt they’re ready to move on, though, so we’ll have our chance soon enough.”
The silence grows awkward. Trixie rolls her shoulders back in a deep stretch. “Well, then. Pleasant as it is here, I’m about ready to go home if we’re all done.”
The technician nods at the blankets before she steps out the door. “I suppose these folks will be cozy enough until the crew comes to move them.”
I don’t react to her tone. She’s right. I shouldn’t have covered them if I didn’t want anyone thinking I was weird. It’s probably too late for that, anyway, but I could have made more of an effort.
“So we’re just leaving them?” I meant for it to sound like a casual question, but there’s a note of desperation in my voice that contrasts starkly with my cold analysis in the living room. Trixie shifts her weight onto one leg, hands on hips, giving me what she probably means to be a sympathetic glance.
Wallace pauses on his way to the door and turns back to give Daniel a questioning look as a door slams outside. The cleaners are here to make the victims disappear.
My throat tightens.
Daniel steps close enough that he looms over me. “There’s nothing you can do for them now,” he says quietly. Not pleading with his voice, but there’s something in his eyes that’s begging me to shut up. This could be far more embarrassing for him than Trixie’s excessive enthusiasm.
“We’re going to let it happen again.” I don’t ask. I accuse, if quietly. It seems I wasn’t so far off in my assessment of our attitudes toward the living, and I wonder how much of Daniel’s sympathy toward my emotions earlier was just to perk me up and get me back into the house to save face.
Daniel looks back at Wallace, who is definitely not leaving until he sees how this plays out.
Daniel’s expression hardens completely as he turns back to me. “We’re keeping our stock safe. Our job is to cover this up until it happens again, and then we get more information. Or we deal with it until these rogues get uncomfortable with our investigation, move on, and become someone else’s problem. Wouldn’t be the first time.” He lifts the blanket up from the table, glances beneath, and steps away. “Taking care of bodies isn’t my job. Be glad it’s not yours.”
There’s a yet there. I hear it in his voice, a subtle reminder that I’m not on a good path right now, that it’s only thanks to his patience that I’m not out on my ass, joining the clean-up crew.
I bite back defensive anger that wants to make me lash out at him. There’s no point, and embarrassing him further will only make things worse for me.
I swallow hard, fighting back the anger that’s replaced the fear that nearly overcame me earlier. It hasn’t hit me this hard in a while, this disgust with how we talk about the living, as though they’re nothing to us. Daniel’s not usually this blunt about it, but he’s never voiced a contrary opinion, either. Trixie has no problem with it. Neither does anyone else, judging by the relieved look Wallace gives Daniel as he exits the house.
Daniel looks like he has more to say, but he turns to leave.
I follow him and Trixie to the car, ignoring the dark van and the vampires in grey uniforms heading for the back door of the house. I have no choice but to leave. But I let Trixie take shotgun this time.
I don’t feel like talking.
I close my eyes as Daniel starts the engine. The terrifying shadows are gone. I remember the laughter, but that’s all it is. A memory, not a hallucination. Maybe I’m not going crazy, after all.
Maybe.
8
Home is a townhouse near the old beating heart of St. John’s. It’s not as conspicuous as the Jellybean Row houses that show up on postcards and tourism websites, but the look is similar: turquoise siding, white window frames, and a door that Trixie insists on repainting every time the mood strikes her. This month it’s violet. Last time it was bright rose, which replaced a pea-soup green. By next week it could be yellow.
I certainly don’t mind. It’s a remnant of the free spirit I suspect she was in life, sort of like the ever-changing hues of her hair. It’s nice to know we all hold on to something. Trixie’s fortunate that her remnants of her old self all seem relatively shallow, and therefore tolerable in a new vampire.
The inside of the house suits us all just fine. Living room and eat-in kitchen down below, Trixie’s and my bedrooms a flight up, and Daniel’s territory on the third level. He stays out of our space except to pass through or use the shower, and we’re not invited up to his. Daniel might seem almost friendly when we’re not actively training and Trixie’s not actively pissing him off, but separation suits his role as our elder and our trainer.
Distance. Respect. Rules.
Only occasionally does he have to thump on the floor to get us to shut up when he’s trying to get to sleep.
Tonight, Trixie and I speak in whispers as we chat in her room, dressed in pyjamas—adorable nightie for her, long pants and a white camisole for me—with a pot of hot tea on the bed between us. Daniel is upstairs already. He shut down completely on the short drive home, scowling out the windshield, refusing to speak. Trixie tried a few times to start a conversation about how she and I might help with the rogues, but Daniel wouldn’t have it. He left us as soon as he walked through the door, checking a message on his old flip phone as he climbed the stairs.
He’s not obligated to explain himself to us, but this isn’t like him. While he’d be well within his rights to take a “because I said so” approach with us, he tends to only demand unquestioning obedience when we’re in physical training. Otherwise, he lets us ask, even if he doesn’t always answer. The fact that he allows this, while apparently obeying his own orders from his superiors without question, is just one more of his little mysteries.
“I don’t know what crawled up his ass,” Trixie says, squeezing a lemon wedge and watching the juice roll over her fingers and into her tea. “He was fine until we left that house. Maybe he didn’t get a good feed in earlier.”
I flop back on the white bedspread. “Maybe he’s sick of my issues.”
“Probably. You’ve got to let it go, Viva. You’re going to get a reputation.” She wrinkles her nose. “And not the good kind. What happened tonight, anyway?”
There was a time when my back would have gone up at her talking down to me, heaping on advice like a superior big sister, but it’s just her way. She means well, and talking things out helps. “I don’t know. I just… didn’t it bother you at all, walking in there and seeing those bodies?”
“No.”
“Even the children?”
She sighs. “It was sad, yeah. But it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t know them, I didn’t kill them. And they weren’t our stock.”
“No, I know. It was just a shock, maybe because—” I pause. For some reason I don’t feel like explaining about my death. I’m not even convinced that’s the reason I freaked out. Maybe that was just Daniel trying to justify my failure. “I don’t know. It’s hard to not care. I reacted, and I shouldn’t have.”
Trixie sips her tea and stretches out beside me, lying on her side. “And after, when you went back in and covered them? You looked like you were going to have a panic attack or something.”
My stomach knots again at the memory. “I don’t know. Just a blip.”
“A blip?”
“Yeah. Something screwy in my mind. A momentary perception issue. It passed.”
I won’t tell her about the screams, the shadows. Nor will I tell Daniel. I don
’t need this in my file.
She frowns and sits up. “It sucks for them that they died. But it’s not our job to protect the living. We’re not superheroes or angels or anything.”
Sometimes I feel like Trixie and I are perfectly matched as friends. At other times, I wonder whether I understand her at all. “Doesn’t your conscience bother you, though, when you realize that our existence as a species led to this?”
“Conscience?”
I roll my eyes. “Yeah. Conscience. The little voice that sits on your shoulder and whispers in your ear that a thing is wrong.”
She sips her tea delicately, pinky outstretched. “Oh, that,” she says. “No, I caught that little motherfucker years ago and crushed him under my boot. Improved my life immensely, let me tell you.”
I stare at the ceiling, unsure of what to say to that. She’s probably not wrong. If we vampires have morals, they’re to serve ourselves and our clans, not the greater good of the world. “But we need the living,” I say, trying another angle. I need her to understand so I’ll feel less like a complete failure here.
She gives her head a firm shake. “We need our stock. The feeders. That’s it. Even then, one’s pretty much like any other. Not a big loss if we lose one. We just keep them safe because that makes them trust us and saves us a shitload of trouble.”
“I know.” I’ve heard it enough times that I’m going to scream if someone says it again. We are not human. We are vampire. We are the hunters, they are the prey. We just don’t let them see it.
“Try looking at it this way,” Trixie says, setting down her cup on the nightstand. “I mean, I was weirded out at first, too. You care about them because you feel a connection to them.”
“I was them, Trixie. So were you, just a few years ago. You were alive as a human far longer than you’ve been a vampire.”
She presses her lips together as though mustering her patience. “Yes. But—and pay attention, now, because I’m about to drop a whole lot of wisdom on your pretty little head.”