by Eris Adderly
Leo blinked at her. “Um …”
Vampires couldn’t work on the surface, but there were plenty of negs who had jobs underground. But for her to kill one? Somehow the law seemed to spell ‘murder’ with a capital ‘M’ when one of ‘her kind’ was on trial.
“I … imagine you had a reason?” Her gate partner took no new steps toward the couch.
“He thought spiking my coffee with sunshine would be a hilarious prank.”
“Oh, Jesus.”
“Among other swear words,” she said. November might have overreacted at the time, but then she also could have died. If she’d taken a larger gulp. But her union rep hadn’t wanted to hear it. “He was one of those eugenics assholes, though. I don’t know why he even got a job working underground in the first place. You don’t like us, why be there?”
“Right.” Leo looked at the floor. “So I guess your parents, um … don’t really get to say anything about it, do they?”
“I mean … they don’t like it, but …” She spread her palms. “I’m grown. They have their own lives. My mom’s in her hundred-twenties, she’s got a whole research lab in U-Tokyo to run. My dad’s there with her, but he’s in his seventies. He didn’t want to convert, so she’s taking care of him.”
“So you’re bloodline, then?” It was kind of a rude question to ask a woman, but they’d done some pretty rude things right here in this room already, so she dipped a nod.
He’d folded an arm over his chest to support his other elbow where he rested his chin on the backs of his knuckles. His gaze had widened to an unfocused place somewhere between her and the lay of the room, and November watched him processing information. She stifled a yawn with her hand.
The motion, though subtle, brought him around. And like always, it was contagious.
“Shit,” he said, “I was gonna be asleep already. You can still have the bed, though.” Leo moved toward the couch, where he’d been before she’d yanked them down another corridor.
“You should sleep in your own bed,” she said.
“I’m not making you sleep on the sofa.”
“Then don’t.” November eyed the bed. “There’s room.”
The corner of his mouth ticked up.
* * *
November tended not to dream, so when the feel of a cool palm and fingers wrapped over her mouth and chin, it didn’t morph in alongside any nebulous images or scenarios already playing out in her head. She popped awake like a soap bubble, eyes wide and heart in her throat.
“Do not wake him.” A familiar voice hovered near in the darkened apartment.
Minimal lights from the few electronics slumbering about the room gave November a hint of a male form. With a glare he might or might not be able to see, she raised a deliberate hand to his wrist and gripped it to grind bone. To pull the silencing touch from her face in a slow way that would not wake her gate partner spooned up behind her, and would also convey to this vampire just where she sat on the spectrum of afraid to pissed off at that moment.
“The fuck do you want?” she hissed.
Radoslav didn’t flinch in her hold. “I need you to come with me. Now.”
November scowled. If they kept up this back and forth right there, they would wake up Leo. She let go his wrist and made a shooing motion with her hand. Snaked out of the bed when he’d made room.
He was nearly to the front door when she was on his heels, still only in Leo’s undershirt. “Hey!” Her voice was a fierce whisper. “I’m not going anywhere with you. What is this?”
“Yes, you are.”
He didn’t bribe, threaten or cajole. He had the door open with one hand and jerked her out into the corridor with the other, a grip on her upper arm clamping into place like a gate on lockdown.
November stumbled to keep on her feet, and blue-white light panels in the hallway had her blinking watery eyes. Radoslav was already dragging her along, her own cartwheeling momentum making it easy.
“Goddammit, stop!” She had no shoes, no underwear. There were no windows, but the doors to other apartments marched past while she tried to wrench her arm loose from the grim-faced, striding vampire. “You fucking convert piece of shit, what is this?”
She was strong, but he was stronger—which meant he was likely older—and had no problem keeping his hold. Or his pace.
“I’m supposed to show you this,” he said. “Fucking calm down.”
“Show me what?” She had no problem raising her voice in the corridor. “I’m not gonna be calm when you come dragging me out o—oh fuck no! Fuck you!”
The sign on the antique swing door at the end of the hall read ‘Street Access.’ November twisted her arm in his hold like she’d set cutters to a live ground and sipped a few thousand volts.
“No!”
She jerked free for a wild instant and lunged, but a new fist latched into the back of her shirt and yanked. Her balance tipped and Rado was jerking open the door. Hauling her through it.
There were concrete stairs, going up and turning a corner. He had a grip under her armpit this time, and November dropped to the ground, instincts reverting in her panic.
“I will drag your dead weight up both flights,” he said, moving for the metal handrail.
Her heels scrabbled the floor and the vampire proceeded to do just as he’d said. November clawed at his wrist. Wounds on her shins and ankles healed as fast as they opened on the steel reinforcement strips cornering every riser.
He was hauling her to the surface.
Mad terror had her reality strobing into fragments by the time he pulled her onto the landing in front of the second door.
“Stop!”
He had the thing open.
“Don’t do this!”
She was going to get burned to a crisp.
“Come. On!” The other vampire flung her out into the open air with a final burst of force.
Rows of parked surface vehicles spun around her as she wheeled in horror. Overhead was the black of a real, breathing night sky, and her arms snapped to clasp over her own body, as though they could block the uv that way.
“November.”
Her muscles screamed, all clenching against the pain at once. She dropped to her knees, balling up. Pointless.
“November.”
His voice was nearly overhead, and …
She could hear the rush of her own heavy breath, coming against the tops of her knees.
Nothing was hurting.
The soles of her feet. Her bare upper arms.
Her eyes came open. She uncurled just enough to spread her own palms under her face and stare at them. They weren’t burning.
Alongside her folded legs, a pair of black boots waited, impassive. Radoslav wasn’t making a sound. Her head cranked around on a slow swivel, to look up at him through a sea of shock. A lump was condensing in her throat.
“What …”
He put a hand down. “Come on.”
November could only stare, wide eyes slipping from his face to the sky behind him. The sky that was supposed to kill them.
When she didn’t move, he reached down for one of her hands and pulled her to stand anyway.
Cool air moved on her skin. She understood the word ‘fresh’ in a way that the underground had never been prepared to teach her. Bright pinpricks stood out on a field of black so infinite and far above, Rado had to catch her by the shoulders when she nearly fell backward trying to look at it. She’d seen images of the sky her whole life, but they meant nothing. Not against … this.
And when her gaze fell to find the horns of a thin crescent moon—the Moon!—November tried not to choke.
Instead, the sensation imploded. She spun on the man at her back.
“What. The fuck.”
He gave her a look, the few artificial, outdoor lights attached to the building putting a sharp gloss on his eyes and hair.
“How long?” she demanded.
Radoslav tucked thumbs into the front pockets of his dark pan
ts. “About”—his eyes rolled up to look for a number—“seventy-five years after the Tenacity left.”
“What?” The world’s governments had sent the colony ship out in the early twenty-second century, before the scientists had figured out how to swing the climate back around far enough for at least negs to live on the surface. And then they’d lost communication with the ship, no chance to call back the crew.
“That’s almost two hundred fucking years!”
“We know.” He was straight-faced in the spray of her venom. No doubt he’d expected as much.
“Who is ‘we?’ ” She gestured, calm not even within grabbing distance. “Who knows about this?”
“Presidents. Prime Ministers. A very few military leaders.” He gave her a cool tilt of his head. “A few down below.”
November’s grasp on the world was crumbling. It no longer mattered that she was on the surface, yelling at another vampire and wearing only a shirt. “I don’t understand,” she said, “If they know it’s safe at night for us now, why are they keeping it a sec—wait, people underground know?”
He nodded, pulling at his lower lip with an idle fang.
“That makes zero sense!” She flung a hand at him. “If vampires knew we weren’t stuck down there w—”
“This is why you were attacked.”
She blinked at him. “But those people are idiots! No one believes their bullshit.”
“But they heard the rumors from somewhere. Didn’t they?” He was ice to her fire, and November wanted to throttle him. “It’s getting around.”
They’d called her ‘traitor,’ the Goodnighters.
All you HateSec cunts are in on it. Just taking their money. Looking the other way.
They’d hit her with sunshine. Beaten her to the ground.
Fucking keep us down here! We know the truth!
November wanted to beat someone bloody, too.
“I have to get back.” Her eyes went to the ground, more concrete, scanning. “I have to tell someone.”
“You do,” Rado said, taking a step toward her. “Just not the people you think.”
Her whirring plans came to a halt. She looked back up at him. “What do you mean?”
“Who do you think keeps GateSec running on your side?” His question was a dangerous whisper, and November searched his face. “You go back there and make an official report, you’re going to disappear.”
But …
You and the fucking Athanati.
“No.” She refused. “That’s not even real.” People just liked to keep myths alive about some ancient vampire mafia. That was old-world bullshit like holy water and having to be invited into a building.
“November.” His eyes were intense, now. “On my mother’s fucking teeth, it is real. You can’t go back the way you came.”
Too many things were tumbling in around her. The way he looked at her. If he’d wanted to lie, he could have just told his stories down in the apartment. The real and true night sky was over her unprotected head that very moment, and nothing was happening. Nothing.
“Then …” She hadn’t felt this tiny in decades. “Then who am I supposed to tell?”
“I can give you that information once we’ve figured how to smuggle you back underground.”
Her arms weighed a thousand pounds each, and her knees wanted to fold again. “All this time,” she said, eyes beginning to burn. “All of us … just … down there.” She put a hand over her mouth and moaned between her fingers. “Why?”
The tears welled, whether November was giving permission or not, and her face stung with grief. In the last move on Earth she might have seen coming, Rado stepped close. Arms came around, folding her into darkness. Into warmth.
She wadded up into an angry little brick and sobbed.
November had been born underground. Generations of V-positives. It was all they had known. Down there never seeing a real sky. Or the real Moon overhead. Working all those jobs the insurance companies preferred them for over negs. Dangerous jobs. Liability jobs.
And for what? The government wanted to keep them down there? And lie to them to do it? And she still almost refused to believe the Athanati were even a thing. Running GateSec?
“God dammit!” She warbled into his chest, unable to give one shit that she was having a breakdown all over some dickhead vampire she barely knew.
Radoslav cradled her head and spoke quiet words in what was probably his native tongue just above her ear. She felt him move—he was stepping backward to lean against the trunk of one the vehicles in the lot, and November followed him, like a shitty dancer, too overwhelmed to question why he’d gone from prick to protective. Why she was letting her weight lean into his chest, and he stroked her hair while she sniffled into his shirt.
“Shhh … știu, știu.”
At some point, another vampire had to have told him. That was her only guess. Someone had broken his understanding of the world in the same way, and perhaps his reaction had been just as bad. Maybe worse. It was the only way to make sense of the how he’d softened.
And somehow, November knew she wouldn’t have let herself lose her shit this way if it had been her gate partner standing here. How would Leo understand? He could go wherever he wanted, day or night. The vampire here now shared with her a kinship of struggles the sleeping young man back at the apartment could never experience firsthand.
After a time, the rush subsided. November felt emptied, a lanced wound that needed to breathe. To heal. Rado had loosened his hold but left her the option to stay or retreat. The silence of the outdoor parking lot was of a different kind than the sublevels where she lived and worked. Echoless, and swallowing up even the small sounds of her wiping her face dry with her hands.
Still raw with catharsis, she raised her eyes, at least to the level of his neck. “I had a Vision,” she said, high on uncomfortable truths. “Leo let me feed. Again. And I … he thought I blacked out.”
“Tell me.”
There was never a question of whether she’d told Leo. Radoslav knew better. November stayed in the circle of his arms, shifting her weight where the concrete began to bruise her bare feet, and described what she’d seen. The conflict. The gate exploding. She didn’t mention the man in the white suit—it would make her sound insane.
When she finished, the idea of eye contact was too much. She turned to lean her back against him, instead, and his fingers stayed laced around her middle. Stars—real stars—splayed out in the impossible black, a ceiling above them that wasn’t. Her staring seemed to bring them closer and push them further into the void, at once.
“Am I nuts?” Her head was on Rado’s shoulder. “I’m too young, right? For a Vision?”
She felt him shrug. “Maybe not.”
He was warm at her back. In the ebb of her freakout, the night air had licked gooseflesh along her naked arms and legs.
“How old are you?” she asked. The question was more about pecking order among vampires, and not the social faux pas it was for negs. There was no guessing age from looks—occasional dated fashion choices aside—but longevity was a decent indicator of drive and at least persistence, if not ambition.
“Seventy-six.” His arms tightened just a little, and he’d leaned down a hair to deliver his answer closer to her ear—a less-than-subtle flex of power that told November not only did he already know he was older, but that he also knew it gave him the slightest edge on her, even if he would only ever be a convert.
In another century, though, that twenty-five-year gap wouldn’t mean shit. She was bloodline. They both knew that.
The moon was sinking lower toward the tops of buildings in the distance. November sighed.
The tops of buildings. I’m outside. On the mother-loving surface.
Her head cocked to the side. Eyes narrowed.
“Are you … kidding me right now?” she said to the vampire who hadn’t bothered to let go his hold.
“Sorry.” Rado shifted a firming ridge away
from her ass, sounding not sorry at all. “You’re kind of my type.”
November leaned far to one side and gave his profile a skeptical eye. “The fuck type is that?”
He grunted amusement, and it was the first of anything like it she’d heard from the man. “Impatient,” he said. “Bitchy. Not wearing underwear.”
“Yeah, well whose fault was that last one?” she said. “Dragging me out here.” But the crossed forearms below her breasts now meant something else. Not just comfort for a fellow V-positive after he’d shattered her universe.
“You let him fuck you,” Rado said, curling close again. “Before you fed.”
“My business,” said November, preparing to lock horns again as needed, but she made no moves to extract herself from what might be a different sort of embrace.
“I can smell it on you.”
She couldn’t tell if he was making it an accusation or if the idea aroused. He drew his arms apart so his hands could settle around her waist.
“I fuck who I want,” she said. Leo was sweet, but if this one wanted to be salty, November could play those games, too.
“Yeah?” Rado pulled her against him, hiding nothing this time. “Well, don’t break this one. I need him intact. I meant what I said, November.” The voice threatened and seduced at once. “You might get me hard, but I have no problem ruining your li—”
His head snapped up.
She followed his gaze, muscles tightening to alert, but saw nothing. Heard only some scuffling, steps on concrete, distant and retreating, well past the far end of the lot.
“We should go back,” Rado said, his hold coming loose. “We might not be burning, but we’ve been up here too long.”
November stepped away, eyes still on the stars.
They want us to never see this. To never be up here again.
“Come on.” He jerked a nod to the door where he’d shoved her out into the night. “If we’re lucky, he’ll still be asleep.”
But how long before her gate partner woke up?
Before they all did?
Leo had been asleep. Then he’d woken up and gone to work again, leaving November to drift in and out her own cycle of listless napping and haunting the living space of his apartment. Hovering over secrets.