by Winter Reid
I’d gotten so used to running in the woods that I’d forgotten how much I loved running in the city—the brush of strangers on the sidewalks, obstacles to jump and dodge: crates, dogs, cars, men. And the night. I had so missed running in the night and the anonymity it gave me, my feet sure and solid against the pavement in spite of the darkness.
I’d taken one of my old routes by the university, finding I wasn’t ready to stop when it was over, though logic told me to take it easy. Skipping my ortho appointment earlier in the day had been an easy decision after the way my doctor had behaved two weeks before, his suspicion over the speed with which my bones knit themselves back together making me wary.
I passed through a residential neighborhood, lights and TV screens glowing in the windows of little bungalows and apartment buildings. Eventually I turned, intending to double back toward downtown, but I miscalculated and found myself wandering around the industrial district. It was empty; a ghost town in the evening hours. Most of the major factories had moved their operations to big distribution centers outside of town, leaving behind old warehouses and garages. I turned again, passing a few abandoned buildings, their doors chained and windows broken.
“Shit,” I said, coming to a full stop, something I hated to do. I spun around in a circle and looked up to study the sky, searching the horizon for a bright spot where the light pollution intensified, knowing it would be a herald of downtown. Something dark moved in the corner of my vision and I ground to a halt. My own breath was deafening in my ears, my lungs forcing air in and out.
A man stood on the sidewalk about thirty feet away from me. Behind him was the lighter sky I was looking for.
“Shit,” I said again.
He was unfamiliar, his dark clothes rumpled. His smell—unwashed, old, and stale—hit me, and I was amazed it could travel so far.
I held my hands up, showing him they were empty. “I don’t have any money on me,” I said out loud.
He didn’t respond, but didn’t move closer either. I let him see me put my hand on the pepper spray at my hip and crossed the street, passing him on the other side as I ran toward the light.
I shouldn’t have bothered.
He was on my heels in an instant, close enough to reach out to touch me. And he did, his fingertips brushing the skin on my arm. There is a biological function for terror, and adrenaline broke through my body like a hand at my back, forcing me to move faster. I managed to put a small space between us but couldn’t keep the pace for long, the long muscle fibers in my thighs burning.
A five-story office building stood to my left, clearly abandoned; its glass door smashed open. I ducked inside, racing up a dark stairway just beyond the main entrance. The old banister creaked under my hand as I tore around the landings and up to the fifth floor. A door at the top of the stairwell opened to a hall that ran the length of the building. It was thick with the smell of the vagrants who made it their sometimes home—the pungent stain of old urine and sweat.
I slipped into the first door to my right and flattened my back against the wall, straining to hear anything at all over my panting.
There! Broken glass under a boot heel.
I listened for more but there was nothing. No sounds on the stairs. No breathing except for my own.
Reaching for my pepper spray, I held it tight in my fingers and peeled my back away from the wall. My legs weren’t working well, the lactic acid buildup in my thighs making my muscles twitch. I pressed my hand against the door frame, keeping my face close enough to it that I could smell the old varnish, wet and sticky in the heat.
I peeked into the hall. It was as bleak and empty as it had been minutes before, faint light leaching in from the open doors on either side. At the end of the passageway, a wide, tall window framed the top of a fire escape. I crept toward it, glancing over my shoulder at the stairwell, grateful for my sneakers’ silent rubber soles.
Handles had been screwed into each side of the window sash, a couple inches under the glass. I stashed the pepper spray in my waistband and grabbed both at once, wrenching up as hard as I could, ignoring the way the flaking paint cut into my skin. The window shrieked, unwilling and swollen, opening barely ten inches. Footsteps tore up the stairs and I yanked again but the window didn’t budge. Swinging my leg through the narrow gap, I turned my head to the side as I slipped the rest of the way through. He burst out of the stairwell, running at me full bore.
By the time I straightened up on the fire escape, he was already there at the window, smirking from the other side of the glass. He hissed and snarled, and I could see his teeth, the canines longer than they should have been. I couldn’t move, transfixed—this was not my monster. Not the same one I’d met in the swamp.
Of course, there’d be more than one.
His white hand snaked through the window opening and caught me mid-thigh. I ripped away, his broken nails gouging, pulling up my skin. The fire escape shook beneath me as I scrambled down the stairs, rusted bolts yanking free from the building bricks.
There was the sharp, gritty sound of breaking glass as he burst through the window. Its shards and slivers fell around me, pinging off the fire escape and crunching under my sneakers. I struggled to keep my feet but slid on the second level, scraping down the last five steps and slamming my back against the far railing. I struggled to my feet just as his hand closed on my neck.
The little canister of pepper spray dug into my hip as he jerked me backward. I grabbed for it, feeling for the nozzle, and aimed over my shoulder, pressing down on the lever as hard as I could.
My lungs caught fire as traces of the chemical tore their way through my mouth, ripping and shredding my mucous membranes. My eyes watered, my nose gushed, and through it all I heard a horrendous shrieking.
The vampire shoved me away, clawing at his eyes and face. I stumbled toward the bottom landing, holding blindly to the rail. I blinked when I got to the last ladder, listening to him moving again above me. The ladder was locked up high above the ground to discourage robberies, held in place by a rusty latch. I knew I had to free it, and that once I did, it would slide down and I could climb to the ground. I lifted the safety latch and yanked. The ladder didn’t budge. I yanked again and it gave, falling hard enough that the entire metal structure groaned and wobbled.
The top rung had snapped off one of its side rails at some point, the ragged end sticking up and back, frozen with rust. I stepped over it, so desperate to get to the far side of the ladder that I didn’t care when it snatched at my shirt, drawing a deep scrape of blood and rust against my belly. My foot slipped and I caught myself a couple rungs down, clinging tight while the rest of my weight dangled free in the air, the small imperfections in the metal bar slicing into my palms.
The fire escape shuddered above me again. I looked up and his teeth came into view, hissing and spitting at me from the top of the ladder. He tried to follow me but the fire escape didn’t approve of our concentrated weight. Several more of the bolts attaching it to the building snapped free and the entire structure lurched. Enraged, the vampire grabbed the ladder’s side rails, flexing and straining to pull the entire thing back up. I felt myself rising, his face red and contorted with the effort.
I glanced at the ground roughly six feet below me.
There was no choice.
I let go.
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The ladder rocketed upward with the full force of the vampire’s strength guiding it. I landed hard in a pile of garbage and the pain in my leg might have killed me in and of itself. Whatever progress I’d made in healing the last few weeks was gone. I thought I heard my bones splinter but the sound hadn’t come from me. Looking up, I saw the broken top rung embedded in the vampire’s chest, a freakish stroke of good luck.
We watched each other, dumbstruck, until a trickle of blood rolled off the ladder and hit me on the mouth. I screamed. He writhed and the fire escape groaned, more bolts breaking away from the wall. The weighted vampir
e end collapsed to the ground, coming down at an angle and the bottom of the ladder hit the pavement close enough that I felt the ground shudder. The ladder shot upward again, driving the rod all the way through his chest and heart, pinning him to the underside of the landing above. He hit the back of his head hard enough I heard that sound—the slick, hollow crack that comes before blood runs thick with other things.
I scrambled back on my hands and knees but my foot was tangled in something; a wire or rope. It pulled tighter the more I struggled against it. Another metallic whine sang through the alleyway and the broken rung gave under the vampire’s weight, dropping him like a stone. I screamed again when he landed on me, his crushed skull bleeding onto my shirt while he looked at me with empty, vacant eyes.
There was silence then. Nothing but the sound of my shattered breath in the alley. My entire body shook with a violence I could not control but I sat up anyway, shoving him off of me as quickly as I could manage. Rain came and I wiped my eyes with dirty fingers, clawing at refuse until I could see my foot, wrapped in wiring. It took me centuries to calm down enough to free myself.
He hadn’t moved again, and I didn’t expect him to. Not with a hollowed-out brainpan. I kicked him with my good foot just to be sure. Nope, nothing. I kicked him again and let out the breath I didn’t know I was holding.
The rain fell harder and my leg was stiff enough that I didn’t dare run on it. I imagined pulling the downpour around me like a cloak, letting it keep me safe from prying eyes, human or otherwise. My shirt was dark enough the wetness on it could have been rain.
I kept to the side streets going home, surprised by how easy it had been to orient myself again once I was out of the alley considering how lost I had been only twenty minutes before.
By the time I opened the door to my apartment, I was so exhausted I thought I might collapse in the hallway. Instead, I dropped my keys on the table by the door and toed off my sneakers. My living room was quiet, peaceful. Bathed in blue by the city lights that seeped past my curtains, oblivious to the horror I’d just been a party to.
Olive made a low noise in her throat and rushed in from the kitchen, rubbing my legs and licking the blood off my abandoned shoes. I nudged her away with my foot and stripped out of my ruined shirt and sports bra, fighting to keep the blood from smearing over my face. I hated the way it stank.
Gathering up the shirt and shoes, I made my way to the bathroom and dumped everything in the sink. I peeled off my shorts and panties, adding them as well, the waistbands warm and damp. My old faucets squealed when I turned the water on; hot from one spout, cold another. I reached for the hydrogen peroxide and doused my clothes with it, watching the pink foam rise in the water. I don’t know why I didn’t just throw them away.
The light over the medicine cabinet was so bright and yellow it hurt, and I had to squint for a minute before I could take stock of the damage on my body. Road rash peppered my right arm and leg, black gravel stuck deep in the skin. There was glass embedded in my left palm—I wasn’t sure where that came from—and the deep cut from the broken ladder rung probably needed stitches. Luckily, I’d gotten a tetanus shot during my last ER visit because I wasn’t willing to go to the hospital again. My ankle was fat but didn’t feel broken, and my leg wasn’t as painful as I’d thought it would be.
Olive joined me in the bathroom and started drinking from the toilet. I grimaced and realized I couldn’t remember feeding her that day. Carrying her with me into the kitchen, I set her on the counter while I opened a can of tuna, setting it down beside her.
I moved back to the living room in a daze, absently yanking the elastic from my hair and combing it out with my fingers while I watched the rain. I needed to shower and scrub out my wounds, but instead I just stood there, studying the droplets that collected on my window.
This is shock, I thought, and it bothered me that the feeling was so familiar.
“Whose blood is that?” A voice demanded, too brutal and loud in the quiet. I didn’t need to turn and look to know it was him. My vampire. Funny that I thought of him in the possessive form. He charged at me from the hall, a flurry of dark clothes and anger. I hadn’t even heard the door.
“I didn’t invite you in,” I said. I should have been terrified but I wasn’t, not even as I backed up toward my desk. It might have been the shock that made me brave but I didn’t think so. He hadn’t tried to kill me the last time he’d been in my apartment and everything about our situation felt unfinished. Oddly enough, I was surprised that he hadn’t come sooner.
“I didn’t ask you to,” he answered, catching my hand and bringing it close to his nose to sniff. He drew his eyebrows down low, concentrating. His hair was wet and it dripped onto my arm. He knew what I had done. I saw it in his face the same moment I tried to kick out his knee.
He threw me up against the wall before my foot made contact and the shelf beside me broke, tearing out of the plaster and raining books onto the floor. I crumpled, draped half across the desk as I struggled for breath. He came closer and I palmed the glass paperweight, just as I had the rock with my alligator. My nose started to bleed.
He reached down to pull me upright and I swung my weapon as hard as I could. I heard the wet crunch when I broke the cartilage in his nose, saw his lip split open. He roared and shoved me back again, pinning me against the wall. I tried to hit him but he grabbed my wrist and slammed it back against the plaster. He squeezed until I cried out and dropped the paperweight, my bones rubbing together. He caught my other wrist as well, holding them both above my head, the wallpaper cool on the backs of my hands.
We were still for a minute, breathing hard and gathering ourselves. I tried to bring up my knee but he caught my leg between his, pushing harder against me.
“Stop!” he said.
I spat in his face.
He growled and tightened his grip on my wrists.
“Stop,” he said again. “Leave them alone.”
The words took me off guard and my mouth fell open. “You think I went after him on purpose?” And really, why wouldn’t he after I’d stalked him with my mother’s silverware?
His expression shifted and there was a quick flash of something other than anger. If he’d been anyone else, I might have called it regret.
“Stay away from the others,” he ordered. “Don’t go near them. If you see one, run.”
“I did,” I said and my voice broke, his face suddenly blurred and distorted in my vision. “I did run.”
I hated that I sounded so small.
He watched me, still and silent as I swallowed and blinked, struggling to collect myself. When I looked at him again, he was closer, his bruised and bloodied mouth nearly on mine. His breath was soft and hot on my face, and for one sick, strangled moment, I thought he was about to kiss me. Worse, I wanted him to. Wanted to put my head against his chest. To let him hold me the way he had before—minus the biting and bleeding.
The thought broke my heart, coming from some part of me I did not recognize and didn’t want to acknowledge. Confused and ashamed, I looked away toward the windows. He made a low, frustrated noise deep in his throat and dropped his face to my collarbone, rolling his forehead along the ridge of it, breathing the blood that smeared my chest—mine, his, the other’s. He let go of one of my wrists and brought his hand up to my face, wiping his thumb through the red that stained the skin above my lip and the tears that tracked down my cheeks. My arm fell at my side, tingling and numb. Releasing my other arm as well, he moved his fingers down, past my breasts to my belly, sketching the cut there, making a soft sound and flattening his palm over it like a bandage.
“I am sorry,” he whispered.
His pants grazed the back of my hand where it hung in the shadows between us. My fingers wandered up to touch him on their own, their tentative movements hidden in the dark like secrets. My forefinger skated along his waistband, dipping into it just a little, his hip warm against my skin. I don’t have an explanation for my actions excep
t to say that touching him had become strangely familiar. And that he was the only one who knew my truth.
He stilled again, as if afraid to spook me by moving. Granny’s Saint Patroclus hung around my neck, a small, warm weight on my chest that rose and fell with my breath. After a minute, he took it in his palm, wrapping the chain twice over his wrist and yanking it free, hard and quick. He stepped away from me, and my legs gave out. I slid down the wall to the floor, raindrops on glass the only sound in the room.
“Stop,” he said again, the word a whisper, and then he was gone.
Chapter Eleven
The Red-Eared Slider Dream
I’m always running when he catches me… except this time. This time I’m walking. And not by the oak tree but on the trail that cuts through a dogwood grove. I can feel him watching, and his gaze at the base of my spine makes my hips swing. I leave the path and move through a thicket of trees to the pond where I saw a red-eared slider the year before. Branches reach out to touch me, leaves skimming along my naked arms, stroking my bare stomach, my breasts. In the pond itself, clusters of lily pads make their own continents, and the duckweed is thick and green as moss on the water.
I stop and steal a dogwood flower. It’s small and cool in my hand, pink at the edges, thin and curled at the tips. His hands come around from behind me, firm on my belly, drawing me back against him. They wander my body, up and down, and I lay my head back against his shoulder, closing my eyes, concentrating on his fingers—the way they move in and out of me.
He takes my wrists, pressing my palms to the tree. The red-brown bark is rough on my skin. The air surrounding us is kinder, thick and humid on my back and arms, but it isn’t kinder than his mouth, which makes its way down my shoulders and over my ribs, his beard tickling until it doesn’t. Until it makes my breath come faster and wanting sounds escape my throat. I rest my head on the backs of my hands and close my eyes again. He slides his fingers inside my panties, drawing them down my legs until they loop my ankles like lace garland.