Instrument of Chaos

by Rebecca Hall

  Mitch snorted, “How much money do you have?”

  “No idea, but I have to do something with my time.” He sank a little lower into the bed and Mitch waited until he was asleep before easing his arm free and tiptoeing out of the room. With Nikola getting some rest all he had left to do was make up with Amelie. He sighed; the two of them had a lecture together this afternoon and they did live together. Even if she stayed on campus between classes.

  He wasn’t even sure how to fix things with her. Hell, he wasn’t even sure what they’d been arguing about. It had started with Nikola and then turned into something else and god only knew how he was supposed to fix it. Maybe he should just do as Nikola said and take her out to dinner. Nikola wouldn’t be cooking anything tonight and neither of them could do much more than instant noodles and boiled eggs. At the very least if they went out for dinner they could talk without disturbing Nikola.

  #

  Mitch encountered Amelie sooner than he’d expected even knowing that they had a lecture together. It was in one of the larger lecture theatres and he’d expected to miss her in the press of people. Instead he arrived early, coffee in hand, and Amelie arrived in the corridor a short time later.

  “Hi,” Mitch said, waving awkwardly. It was pretty clear that they’d seen each other and pretending otherwise just seemed silly.

  “Hey,” she managed a small, fleeting smile and leaned against the wall next to him. “I’m sorry about before.”

  “So am I,” Mitch said, though he was mostly sorry that their yelling had dragged Nikola out of bed. He still wasn’t sure what exactly they’d been arguing about. Fortunately Amelie wasn’t a mind reader.

  “You just… you sounded so much like Gawain and he’s always known how to push my buttons.”

  “It’s fine,” Mitch said though he suspected that any button pushing Gawain did was secondary to looking after Nikola.

  “Now you sound like Nikola,” she sighed and this time her smile was a little stronger. “I’ll try to do better, I know that Nikola is fragile. It’s just… I’m sorry.”

  Mitch returned her smile. “I’m sorry too. I know I should have called you after…” he trailed off. ‘I became a vampire’ was probably not a good thing to say in a corridor full of psych students. They might be in their own little worlds now with their phones and their friends but no doubt they’d all hear that, particularly with the recent spate of bloody murders. “Well, you know.”

  Amelie shrugged and shuffled a little closer, entwining her hand with his. “I wasn’t exactly forthcoming about my family either,” she said. “Stars, I think Nikola is the only one who managed to say anything without someone else prodding him.”

  “I probably should have worked it out sooner,” Mitch said. In hindsight there had been plenty of clues. Nikola had probably hoped that the academy would cotton on and expel him for not being human.

  “It’s not the only thing you should have worked out about him,” Amelie said, inching a little closer and resting her head on his shoulder. He was going to have to get a sign saying that his shoulder was not a headrest. Not that Amelie and Nikola would pay any attention to such a sign.

  “What? Oh right, that,” Mitch said. He hadn’t really thought about it once the initial surprise wore off.

  “Yes that,” Amelie sighed. “I suppose I should apologise to him when we get home as well, I know he feels guilty about monopolising Gawain and Morrigan. And he thinks that mother wouldn’t have been such a complete failure of a parent if she’d only had the one of us to worry about.”

  “That sounds like Nikola,” Mitch said, giving her hand a gentle squeeze. “Do you wanna go out for dinner tonight? We can eat something fried and unhealthy and you can put off that apology a little longer.” With any luck Nikola would still be asleep anyway.

  “Sure,” she smiled at him as the lecture theatre doors finally opened and a horde of students poured out.

  A Drop to Drink

  “Are you sure you don’t mind?” Mitch asked, rummaging through his drawers in search of something that wouldn’t need ironing to appear respectable. He wasn’t even sure that they had an iron and this was one of those very rare instances in which the floordrobe system failed him.

  “For the eleventh time yes,” Nikola replied. “Just stay away from me when you get back.”

  “But–” Mitch began, finally fishing out a shirt that wasn’t too creased and might just meet Amelie’s standards.

  “I can entertain myself for one night Mitchell,” Nikola said. “One of us should experience a night out on the town and it’s not going to be me.”

  “You only just got better,” Mitch said.

  “Which is why I should stay in where it’s warm instead of traipsing across town all night,” Nikola said. “You spent the last week looking after me Mitchell, you’re allowed to go out and have fun.” He eyed the shirt critically and held out a hand. “Give that here, I’m not letting you face my cousin looking like that.”

  “You couldn’t have said something before I put it on?” Mitch asked, taking off the shirt.

  “I couldn’t see it as clearly then,” Nikola said. He lay the shirt on the desk and used magic to press it flat.

  “And you couldn’t do that while it was on me?” Mitch asked, taking his shirt back.

  “I’m not Morrigan,” Nikola replied.

  “Do my jeans pass muster at least?” Mitch asked. “Or do I need to take them off as well?”

  Nikola grinned, “Only if you really want to but you should probably save that for Amelie.”

  “Probably,” Mitch said. He didn’t want to start another fight with her. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen my shoes?” he asked, picking his way through the clothes scattered across the floor. He wasn’t even sure which ones were clean anymore.

  “By the door,” Nikola said, swivelling the desk chair around to point. “It wouldn’t kill you to fold everything you know.”

  “I like my system,” Mitch said, extracting his shoes from under a hoodie.

  “Chaos is not a system,” Nikola replied, “honestly Mitchell, you have a washing basket.”

  “It’s not a part of my system,” Mitch said, sitting on the bed to put on his shoes.

  “Your system needs an overhaul. At least your books are in order.”

  Mitch shrugged, the books were a lot more important and vastly more expensive than his clothes. It didn’t matter if he tore his jeans as long as he could find something clean to wear in the morning. The books Nikola had given to him were irreplaceable.

  “Do I look presentable?” Mitch asked. Amelie had issued dire threats in the event that he wasn’t up to her standards.

  “More or less,” Nikola said, “your hair is a mess.”

  Mitch checked his appearance in the mirror and sighed. It did look a little scruffy and he needed to get it cut, he had no idea how Nikola could stand to have his hanging down around his face. For now though he’d just have to make do with what Nikola had once referred to as goo.

  “Now?” Mitch asked when his hair was more or less flat.

  “I don’t really know what passes as presentable in a bar,” Nikola said. “I don’t go near them.”

  “Amelie said smart casual,” whatever that meant. She’d been getting ready for the last hour.

  “You’ll do, just straighten your collar.”

  “Yes mother,” Mitch said, tugging at the wretched thing. Nikola sighed and got up to fix it for him and brush imaginary lint off his shoulder.

  “There you go,” Nikola said, “just try not to wake me up when you stagger home drunk.”

  Mitch grabbed his wallet and stuck his head out the door, Amelie was still shut away in her room.

  “What is she doing?”

  “Hair, nails, make-up, dress, shoes… want me to keep going?”

  Mitch sighed, “Want to play cards?”

  “We’re not playing pick up fifty two are we?”

  “Ha ha, I know where the cards are,”
Mitch said, pulling them out of a desk drawer. “We might have to sit in the lounge though,” he conceded.

  Mitch was losing horribly when Amelie came out; he still hadn’t got the hang of playing with cards that randomly changed suit, and he was somewhat relieved to have an excuse to exit mid-game. That the excuse came in the form of a gorgeous girl in a red dress was just an added bonus, one that was offset by her insistence that he twirl for her. Nikola gave him a round of applause.

  #

  “There are a lot of people in here,” Mitch said when they stepped into the nightclub. He was getting used to being around people again but in lectures they were typically sitting down and wearing less revealing clothes. Here he couldn’t move without brushing against someone.

  “What?” Amelie yelled. Mitch repeated himself and she laughed. “It’s not even that busy yet,” she said, “wait until after midnight.”

  Mitch gulped, nothing good ever happened after midnight, particularly not at parties attended by vampires.

  “Come on,” Amelie grabbed his hand and towed him towards the bar. Mitch sighed in relief. The Dance with the Dead might be horrific but at least it had a proper band. He had no idea how he was supposed to dance to this remix or dubstep or whatever the hell it was. He’d been taught ballroom dancing at school but there was nowhere near enough room for that in the gyrating tangle of limbs that was the dance floor.

  “What do you want to drink?” Amelie yelled in his ear. The people around them were using their phones to message each other but neither of them had one. They seemed rather pointless when magic interfered with wireless technology.

  Mitch shrugged. His parents had allowed him the occasional sip of wine or beer over the summer but between a vampire’s deficient sense of taste and slow metabolism he didn’t think that it would matter much what he had. Amelie rolled her eyes and turned to the barman, ordering two drinks then leading the way to a comparatively quiet corner.

  “I think I’m going to need a lot more alcohol to dance to this,” Mitch said. He’d have to down half a bottle of vodka to throw his limbs around like that, or to be so badly out of time with the music.

  “Just shuffle your feet and loom protectively,” Amelie said, taking his empty glass and setting it on a table.

  “Since when did you need protection?” Mitch asked. She could rip him limb from limb if she wanted to, hell she could probably bring the entire building down. He wasn’t even sure that he could loom over someone the same height as him, particularly not when he’d always been lean rather than muscular.

  “I don’t,” Amelie replied, “but it’s easier if I avoid the need to incapacitate drunken creepers.”

  Mitch nodded, though he wasn’t sure that a vampire doing the incapacitating was much better. On the other hand Amelie was a lot more comfortable around blood and squishy things than he was. He didn’t even like looking in her biology and anatomy textbooks.

  Mitch had no idea what Amelie was ordering but the next round of drinks was a lot stronger. It came in tiny shot glasses and he felt it burn on the way down. Whatever it was it definitely wasn’t something that his parents had let him try on special occasions.

  “Let’s dance some more,” Amelie said.

  “I think I need another drink,” Mitch said. She had been right, the dance floor was more crowded now and the dancing less inhibited.

  “I think you need to relax,” Amelie retorted. They did eventually get another drink, and another after that and then they moved onto another bar, and another, steadily working their way in towards the Octagon and eventually finding somewhere with slightly less atrocious music. He even managed to work out the foot shuffling and protective looming, something that became increasingly necessary as the night wore on.

  Last call was announced and they poured out into the street, Amelie shivering as they left the warmth of the final bar for the cold of the streets. They walked quickly, their bodies cottoning on to the fact that in addition to being cold it was four am and they hadn’t had anything to eat since dinner or any sleep in almost twenty four hours. It was only four hours until Mitch’s next lecture.

  “It’s too bad Nikola couldn’t come,” Mitch said, “it was fun.”

  “We’ll have to do it again sometime,” Amelie replied. “But no Nikola, even without the alcohol giving him a rash he’d be a third wheel.” She tilted her head back to kiss him and he kissed her back, his fangs scraping across delicate skin and tearing it. Warm, fresh blood flooded into his mouth, the first he’d tasted since the Dance with the Dead.

  He froze, memories of Ms. Saris flailing in his arms, dying, filled his mind even as Amelie’s blood was sucked through his fangs and into his blood stream. There was no taste but it was intoxicating nonetheless, far more so than the alcohol had been, and he found himself wanting more even as the notion of taking it repulsed him.

  Ms. Saris had been a monster. An angel that had made Nikola’s life hell, kidnapped Belle and killed him. Amelie was his girlfriend and he’d rather like for her to remain that way.

  He broke away, tearing her skin further, and backed into the low fence separating the footpath from the river. He clung to it with clammy hands as if he could physically stop himself from hurting Amelie even though what felt like every fibre of his being was crying out for her blood.

  Amelie raised one hand to her bleeding lip and held blood-smeared fingers up to the streetlight.

  “Relax Mitch,” she said, “it was just an accident.”

  Mitch shook his head, his gaze never leaving the blood trickling down her chin. It had been an accident but it bloody well wouldn’t be if he proceeded to rip her throat out. Where was all the distracting traffic when he needed it, early as it was they were on the main road. Surely someone had to go to work in a bakery or something.

  “What do you want me to do? Drag you home by the ear?”

  “Just…” Mitch swallowed and forced his eyes shut. He took a couple of slow deep breaths and cracked his eyes open, staring resolutely at the ground. “Let’s go home.” He started walking again, very carefully not looking in Amelie’s direction.

  “It’s stopped bleeding you know,” she said after a while. “Honestly Mitchell, it’s not the first time a guy has given me a hickey.”

  “I bet the others weren’t vampires,” Mitch muttered, trying not to imagine Marcello kissing her and failing.

  “Minor detail,” Amelie replied, “you stopped didn’t you?”

  “But what if I hadn’t?”

  “Then you’d be thankful for all the rain we’ve had recently because I would have thrown you in the Leith.”

  “Oh, right,” Mitch mumbled.

  Amelie went straight to bed when they got home but Mitch was too fidgety to sleep. He showered instead and then paced up and down his room until he realised that he was being silly. It was already after five, he’d have to get up in like an hour for his lecture with Nikola. He paused, Nikola would be getting up soon, he liked to go running before class.

  Mitch crept out of his room and across the hallway to Nikola’s room, breathing a sigh of relief when he saw the light shining out from under the door.

  “Come in,” Nikola called in response to his gentle knocking.

  “Hey,” Mitch said, shuffling into Nikola’s room and closing the door behind him. Somewhat to his surprise Nikola was still in bed, his eyes heavy with sleep and blinking in the light of the reading lamp. Maybe he wasn’t as much of a morning person as Mitch had always thought.

  “How late did you two stay out?” Nikola yawned and sat up, reaching for a glass of water.

  “Late.”

  “Did you have fun?”

  Mitch nodded.

  “But?”

  “I… I bit Amelie,” Mitch confessed. Nikola arched an eyebrow and Mitch related the whole night in response to his silent prompt, sitting next to him on the bed when Nikola shuffled over for him. “I’m a monster,” he finished.

  “I don’t think you’d feel quite so gui
lty if you were,” Nikola replied. He yawned and rubbed his eyes. “Will you be more careful next time?”

  “Of course,” Mitch replied, rubbing Nikola’s arm. Nikola had settled against his side as he talked and Mitch had wrapped one arm around his shoulders, for once not complaining about the use of his shoulder as a pillow.

  “Well there’s really nothing else you can do about it now. What’s the time?”

  “Six,” Mitch replied, glancing at his watch.

  “Ugh, maybe I’ll just skip this morning’s run.”

  “Any chance you’ll let me skip this morning’s lecture as well?” Mitch asked. Now that his heart had stopped racing he was beginning to feel tired and what he thought might be the beginnings of a hangover.

  “Nope, but we can get a little more sleep first.”

  “Sleep is good,” Mitch agreed, sinking a little deeper into Nikola’s bed. Nikola didn’t reply. “Sweet dreams.”

  #

  Mitch no longer wondered why everyone missed their eight am maths lectures on Fridays. He wished that he could as well but Nikola had ignored his pleading and hauled him out of bed after an all too brief nap. At least Nikola had showered before doing so, allowing him an extra ten minutes of blissful rest. A bag of blood with breakfast had helped a little, the fact that vampires had no gag reflex and an incredibly slow metabolism didn’t.

  “Why did you think that trying to keep up with Amelie was a good idea?” Nikola asked. He was practically skipping along the footpath beside him, making Mitch once again revise his assessment of Nikola’s morning person-ness. At least their pace meant that Mitch would have time to pick up his usual coffee.

  Mitch shrugged, he didn’t recall doing a lot of thinking last night. Could it even be accurately described as last night when it had only been a couple of hours ago? Someone less hungover than he was would have to work that out.

  “I just did what Amelie told me.”

  Nikola shook his head, his golden curls shining unnaturally bright in the early morning sun. Mitch wished he’d remembered to grab his sunglasses. Or that he knew for sure where they were, if he did then Nikola could have used magic to retrieve them. Even the light in the mini-fridge had stung his eyes and the sun was about a million times brighter.