Tall, Dark & Dead

by Tate Hallaway

  “I didn’t think so,” Sebastian agreed darkly, sliding his gaze over to where Feather watched the proceeding with a hungry look. William was talking to her about something, but she only had eyes for Sebastian.

  I hated their mutual obsession, even though my brain understood that, for him, at least, right now, this was about survival. He needed the blood to regenerate. It still felt like I was complicit in my own betrayal. Queasy with shame, I insisted, “I want to watch.”

  Sebastian’s jaw flicked, but his eyes stayed locked on Feather like a panther sighting its prey. “Fine.”

  The last bit of the arrow splintered, and Izzy broke the shaft deftly with a quick twist. She nodded for me to grab an arm, and the two of us pulled. Sebastian inched painfully forward. Another heave, and the arrow cleared enough of his heart that he was able to help us by stepping forward the last little bit. He stumbled, and though Izzy and I tried to support him, Sebastian ended up on his knees. Feather rushed to help so fast, I nearly fell on her.

  Sebastian wasted no time. His teeth were at her throat before I could suggest to William that he might want to avert his eyes.

  Blood, by the way, pulses out of a punctured jugular in hot jets.

  Though Sebastian’s mouth covered the wound, he couldn’t swallow fast enough. The heat of Feather’s blood speckled my face. Izzy screamed. She clawed at the spots where blood clung to her skin, while trying to back away from the quickly spreading viscous mass at our feet. Some part of my mind reminded me that Mr. Saunders, my tenth grade biology teacher, once told us that a person could bleed to death in something like three minutes if their jugular is slashed. However, having that information didn’t help me know what to do. If I pushed Sebastian away, Feather would only bleed faster. It’s not like I could put a tourniquet around her neck. I had the sinking realization that Feather was going to die, and that I couldn’t do anything to save her.

  William stood near my bookshelf, his hands fiddling with the miniature cast-iron statue of Kali I picked up at an estate sale the previous month. He looked sick, stricken.

  I looked into his lost, dazed eyes and felt inspired. I’d called a Goddess of destruction once when I’d needed strength; I could call on one of healing to help me now. I shut my eyes and remembered. That night had been much like tonight. Vatican agents and blood. No time to really think, to really prepare. I’d just reached out in desperation for someone, anyone.

  The world around me evaporated. Time slowed. I felt the coin in my pocket glow red-hot. Astrally, I reached out a hand in desperation. I repeated the words I had that Halloween night, only this time I added a modifier, “Bright Goddess, help me!”

  Someone took my hand in Hers.

  I felt something… a presence—the feel of armor on my shoulders, the weight of bronze, and the constant hiss of snakes, of the aegis… ? Then it was gone.

  Instead, Lilith’s voice said through my lips, “Stop, child.”

  Sebastian looked up, his mouth still pressed to Feather’s neck. My hand, of its own volition, slid along her neck until it covered the pulsing tear mark left by Sebastian’s teeth. Sebastian looked down in surprise, no doubt as uncertain as I was as to how my hand came between him and his meal. He growled deep in his throat, his eyes narrow with uncontained hatred.

  I thought for a moment he would pounce on me next, but he was out the door and gone with the speed only the undead possess. William dropped the statue and sat down hard on the floor.

  “Is she dead?” Izzy croaked from where she’d collapsed under the window.

  Where it pressed against Feather’s flesh, my hand felt tingly with pinpricks, as though it had fallen asleep. Lilith answered for me, “I shall not allow it.”

  Feather’s eyelids fluttered, and her skin against my palm felt warmer than it had any right to be, considering how much blood she’d lost.

  “Can I call an ambulance now?” William wanted to know in a small voice.

  Izzy was already dialing the numbers. To us she asked, “What the hell do we tell them?”

  “Nothing,” Feather said, her voice surprisingly strong. I wouldn’t have thought she’d have vocal cords intact after that nasty bite. “I’m fine.”

  “The hell you are,” Izzy said, but she clicked off her cell all the same.

  “I could use a little orange juice, though,” she said.

  I felt myself blush deeply, remembering how Sebastian had fed me orange juice just this morning. Was OJ some kind of ritual for the bloodletees?

  None of us moved to get her any juice, however.

  I kept my hand on her throat, though the part of me that was Lilith knew the danger of Feather bleeding to death was past.

  Feather’s face looked pale in the soft spotlight cast by the floor lamp, which now stood alone in that corner of the room, surrounded by dust. Previously, it had peeked over the edge of the couch, but the couch was still propped against the wall where the Vatican agents had tipped it. Parrish’s makeshift curtains blocked out any natural moonlight and made the room seem uncomfortably close and dark.

  Izzy’s back pressed against the ruined wall, and she hugged her knees close to her chest. Freckles of blood dotted her cheek. Her eyes were riveted to the pool of sticky blackness that spread out in a circle around Feather’s head and drowned the blond strands of her hair.

  William sat on the floor, his hand resting limply between his outstretched legs. His head was bowed. I thought he might be hyperventilating until I heard him let out a huff of a sigh. “So,” he said. “Vampires are real, huh?”

  I nodded mutely. What could I say? He’d seen the evidence. Hell, the evidence was spattered all over three of us, covered parts of the plaster wall, and slowly seeped into the seams of the hardwood floor.

  William’s eyes stayed focused on the space between his tennis shoes. “Can he turn into mist or a wolf or a bat? It’s just that a stake through the heart clearly didn’t kill him.”

  “Crosses don’t help, either,” I heard Izzy mutter. “I was wearing mine.”

  “Yeah,” William continued, opening his eyes to look at me. “So, like, what’s real and what’s not?”

  I wasn’t ready for such an existential question. Besides, I didn’t know. Sebastian was a different kind of vampire from the others I’d met. For all I knew he could turn into a bat.

  Honestly, since the moment he tore into Feather’s throat, I doubted I really knew anything about him at all. The look in his eyes had been so cold, so predatory. This was not the herb gardener who listened to Johnny Cash and sautéed bell peppers for breakfast.

  I didn’t know this man at all.

  “Vampires aren’t shape-shifters, generally.” It was Feather who answered. Entwining her fingers under her breasts, she continued in a psuedo-academic tone. “That’s just physically not possible. Conservation of mass and all that.”

  “Oh. No werewolves, then?” William asked.

  “No, not like you’re thinking, anyway,” she said with an air of authority, which amused me, since I doubted Feather gave a shit about anything beyond her addiction to the bite. Speaking of which, I removed my hand from her throat cautiously. No blood came spurting out. I wiped my hand on my jeans, leaving a smear of brown-black.

  I looked down at the smudge. I had to get some cold water on that before it set.

  A tear trickled down my cheek. I pushed it away with my forearm and stood up to fetch the bleach and paper towels.

  “What about zombies? Are there zombies?” William was asking as I stepped over Feather to get to the kitchen. I didn’t even want to hear her answer to that, so I quickly made my way to the sink and turned the faucets on full blast. I used sweetgrass-scented soap to wash my face and hands.

  “Me next.” I nearly jumped at the sound of Izzy’s voice.

  I handed her the soap and moved out of the way.

  She gave me a terse grimace. “Your taste in men leaves a lot to be desired, girl.”

  “You’re the one who gave me the big thum
bs-up the other night.”

  “Shit,” she said, looking up from the sink with a face full of suds. “That was the same guy? I didn’t recognize him.”

  “You’re not the only one,” I said.

  Izzy finished rinsing and vigorously rubbed her face and neck with the hand towel. She tossed it into the sink and leaned a hip against the counter. “That sounds serious.”

  “He would have killed Feather.”

  She nodded. “Yeah,” she said, her eyes averted, as though she didn’t want to think about it. “I got that.”

  “That’s not cool, Izzy,” I said. “I know she offered herself, but he doesn’t have to kill to get what he needs.”

  “He doesn’t?”

  “No.”

  “Oh,” she said. “That changes things.”

  It did. I understood that Sebastian had been hurting, but he’d ripped into Feather like a beast, like a monster. I grappled with how to feel about that. Once again, I found myself feeling stupid. I mean, he’d told me he was a killer. This shouldn’t be any kind of shock to me; I knew preying on humans was part of his nature. Even so, it was much easier to romanticize the notion of dating a vampire when you didn’t have to look forward to scrubbing someone’s blood off your floor.

  I grabbed the mop bucket and the bleach from under the sink. Izzy found my paper towels and tucked a handful of cotton rags under her armpit. She seemed relieved to have a mission. Thus armed, we marched back into the living room.

  The sight of the mess instantly disheartened me. Plaster dust and blood mingled together on the floor, no doubt turning to some kind of sanguine concrete. The hole in the wall gaped like an open wound.

  “Yeah, but how does that work?” William was saying, “How can blood really sustain someone after death? It makes no sense.”

  William sat up a little straighter, engaged in the debate, but Feather hadn’t moved from where she lay in the quickly congealing pool of blood.

  “Lots of cultures believe blood is the essence of life.”

  I tried to decide what to clean first. I checked the clock: ten thirty. At least the Vatican probably wouldn’t be back tonight.

  “Sure,” William conceded with a sharp nod of his head, his glasses glinting in the darkness. “But, that’s, like, a metaphor. What’s the science? How can drinking blood keep a person alive past death?” He stopped himself. “Oh, magic. Right. I keep forgetting it really works.”

  I set the bucket down next to Feather’s head, careful to keep it out of her blood-soaked hair. “Are you strong enough for a shower? You could use one.”

  “I can help her,” William offered, brightening at the opportunity to be useful.

  Izzy, William, and I all aided Feather to her feet. William got his shoulders underneath her arm and surprised me by being strong enough to support her weight. I guess hauling all the boxes of inventory around the store had finally paid off for him.

  Once I got the two of them situated with towels and soap and directions on how to use the showerhead, Izzy and I bent to the task of scrubbing out the gore. Even after we’d gotten rid of the obvious stains left by Sebastian and Feather, I kept finding tiny flecks of it everywhere: on the windowsill, on the wall, and even on the ceiling.

  We’d opened the windows and pulled down a few of the curtains that would need washing. The distant sounds of evening traffic drifted in on a cool, refreshing breeze. Somewhere out there Sebastian hunted.

  Parrish, too, for that matter; though knowing him, he’d already scored some more-than-willing-and-able masochist. Or maybe a dozen, all lined up for—what had Sebastian said?—“the privilege”?

  I didn’t know which of them I found more repulsive at this moment. I pulled off my bloodstained shirt and grabbed something clean from my closet.

  When I came back into the room, Izzy had returned from the kitchen with the third bucket of clean water. She put a hand on her hip. “You and Feather. You’re not the same, right?”

  I wondered how long she’d been stewing over how to ask me that question. “No,” I said. “Feather is a junkie. I usually don’t let them bite me.”

  “Usually.”

  I shrugged, conscious of the exposed bruise on my shoulder. “The bite can be highly… pleasurable in the right circumstances.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Look,” I said. “I don’t seek it out. That’s the difference.” More to the point, while I might enjoy the biting, I hated the aftermath.

  I stared back hard as Izzy scrutinized me for any signs that I was lying. Apparently satisfied, she said, “All right, then, but you got to stop dating boys like that.”

  I laughed. “Deal.”

  Izzy and I righted the couch, and I plunked down in the middle of it, surveying the room. Other than the ten inches of sawed-off arrow stuck in the wood of the window frame and the antiseptic smell that clung to everything, you could hardly tell that there’d been a barely averted massacre here.

  Well, except for the big hole in the wall chewed by the machine gun fire. “Crap,” I said, pointing to it. “What should I do about that?”

  Izzy glanced around my apartment. Getting up, she walked through the dining room area to the kitchen. I thought I heard her rooting around in the tower room. Just as I was going to get up to investigate, she came back hauling a big potted plant—my dwarf Teddy Bear sunflowers to be precise. She set it in front of the hole. The flowers didn’t quite cover everything, but they were tall and wide enough to distract the eye.

  I nodded my approval.

  A knock on the door startled me. “It’s the police,” a male voice said from the other side.

  Oh, like I was going to fall for that one again. I ran to the window and looked out. Oh, okay. This time the car was there.

  “Your neighbors called about some noise?”

  His voice didn’t sound like Leader Guy’s at all. Even so, I was reluctant to open the door. Izzy stared at me with eyes that asked, Shouldn’t you let them in?

  I cautiously opened the door a crack. I made a mental note to invest in one of those chain locks. I’d never gotten one before because the building was supposed to be secure, but my deadbeat downstairs neighbors tended to forget to lock the front door.

  On the other side was the traditional blue-and-black uniform. A nice shiny, silver badge rested over the breast pocket. An even shinier blond, blue-eyed farm boy’s face squinted suspiciously at me. He totally looked like all the jocks I went to high school with in Finlayson.

  The officer, whose name appeared to be Heillman, at least according the embroidery on his pocket, gave me a classic cop grimace-smile. “I’d just like to talk to you for a moment, ma’am. Your neighbors say there’s been some kind of argument going on up here. Do you think I could come in?”

  I almost laughed. Argument? Yeah, like a shoot-out.

  “My boyfriend and I had a little fight,” I said, not moving from the doorway. I thought I remembered that I didn’t have to let the police in if I didn’t want to. “He’s gone now.”

  Officer Heillman craned his neck, trying to look past me into the apartment. I wondered if he smelled all the bleach. His eyes strayed over my face and my clothes. I resisted the urge to check to make sure no blood showed.

  “You’re all right then?” He asked, though it was more of a statement. I almost thought I detected a hint of disappointment from Officer Heillman.

  “I am. Thank you for your concern.”

  He stared at me. I could tell he wanted to check out my apartment, maybe find those shell casings I tossed in the garbage not less than five minutes ago. Officer Heillman’s jaw twitched, but he gave me a pleasant enough smile. “You take care.”

  “Yes, sir, I will.”

  When he turned to head down the stairs, I closed the door. Tomorrow I’d go shopping for industrial-sized dead bolts and security chains.

  I leaned my head against the doorframe, feeling bone tired.

  “What are you going to do now?” Izzy had curled herself i
nto the beanbag chair. She raked her fingers through the tight curls at the side of her head.

  I’d just formulated an answer when I heard shouting from the bathroom. William and Feather were arguing about something. Great. And the cop wasn’t even out the front door by now.

  “Shhh!” I hissed.

  “You pay them?” I heard William shout. “Are you fucking serious?”

  “I’m not talking about this anymore.” Feather came into the living room, her multicolored hair wet and featherless. She’d gotten dressed. She’d borrowed my favorite Hello Kitty T-shirt, but since I had her cats-and-books shirt hostage in the basement washing machine, I figured I’d get it back.

  She paused to take in the clean floor and the bucket of filthy water we hadn’t gotten around to emptying yet. “Yeah, so it was nice to meet you both,” she said, as she continued toward the exit. “It was certainly a fun evening.”

  William followed close on her heels. He wore only jeans, which wasn’t actually a bad look on him if you liked your boys thin and wiry. “He nearly killed her, didn’t he?”

  William gave us both a back-me-up-here look. “This was serious, wasn’t it?”

  I started to agree when Feather cut in with, “I already told you, I’ve been bitten much harder before. It’s no big deal.”

  No she hadn’t, and everyone in this room, including her, knew it. Izzy shifted uncomfortably in the beanbag. I probably should have been embarrassed for Feather, as well, but my eyes were glued to the two of them like I was watching a soap opera.

  “Yeah,” William said, clearly hurt. “What you didn’t say was how many times.”

  “A few,” she said, shrugging into her coat. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

  “I’m your boyfriend.”

  “Not my keeper.”

  Oh, ouch. I managed to tear my eyes away from the hurt expression on William’s face.

  “Fine,” he said. “If that’s the way you want it.”

  “That’s the way it is, William.”

  And, with a clatter of rubber soles on stairs, she left.