by Winter Reid
I snorted and looked around, stopping again on his face. I could make out his bottom lip and the top of his chin, just under it. “Was your lover human?”
I was still wearing my dress from the opening; a fitted, sleeveless bodice that fell into a gauzy, knee-length skirt. He caught a fold of baby blue crepe with his free hand, sliding the length of it through two fingers.
“No. I doubt I’ve ever had a human lover.”
“Do you have any lovers now?” I asked before I could stop myself.
The corner of his mouth crept upward. “One.”
I pursed my lips and blew out a breath. “We’re not lovers.”
He took the last step up, so we came too close together. His breath was like July, hot and humid where it touched my face, my neck. Moving his hand under mine, his index finger traced the soft, delicate skin under my wrist. “May I come upstairs with you?” he asked.
“No.”
“Please,” he said very softly, following my vein up to my elbow.
Something in the way he touched me seemed to call every sensation I didn’t want him to control from the deepest part of my being. I looked beyond him at the door, concentrating on pushing the feeling away.
“No,” I answered after a minute.
Don’t stop, I heard Lacey whisper.
He cupped the back of my neck with his free hand and brushed his lips over mine in a featherlight kiss before he pressed harder, coaxing my mouth open with his tongue.
I might have moaned. Just a little.
He chuckled and withdrew, stroking my cheek with his finger. “Tomorrow then?”
“Okay,” I breathed.
“Yes?”
“Yes,” I said. “But only to talk. And you have to bring me a gift.”
“What kind of gift?” he asked, smiling.
“A story,” I answered. “Or just… something about us. Something true.”
“Done.” He leaned in again, dropping a lingering kiss on my forehead. My eyelids fluttered shut, and I didn’t open them again until I was sure he’d gone. Until I heard the door click shut behind him, the glass rattling gently in the window.
Chapter Fifteen
The Dust Dream
I walk into the kitchen though I’m not sure why since I spend so little time here anymore. I know that I’m looking for something but I can’t remember what. It’s so quiet. I hear the refrigerator click on and hum. There’s a dark lump on the floor and I step closer to look at it. It’s my Olive but she looks wrong, curled up by her empty bowl, too skinny, her ribs sticking out like angel wings. I reach down to pet her and her fur slips loose under my hand, sliding away from her skin. I retch and then try to pick her up. She falls to pieces in my fingers, dried out and dusty.
Chapter Sixteen
I woke at noon. Olive wasn’t dead, but she wasn’t happy with me either. That we were completely out of cat food didn’t help. I managed to find a can of salmon from a recent episode of Omega-3 mania buried in the cupboard. I gave her too much, and she wolfed it, bones and all. I didn’t care if I’d have to pick it up again later. It killed me that I wasn’t being good to her when she had always been so good to me. After she was finished, I carried her into the living room. She went limp, feigning nonchalance. We sat on the couch, and I buried my face in her fur, breathing in her warm kittiness.
There were a few uncomfortable realities I was facing. Things I hadn’t really wanted to scratch too deeply yet. All I’d gotten from my vampire so far were hints about what would happen to me once the molting was finished. My gut told me it would be more Resident Evil than Dracula. Horrible as my Olive dream had been, it could have been worse. There could have been blood everywhere, and it could have been my fault.
I’d had a quick thought I hadn’t paid attention to the day after I’d accidentally killed the vampire at the warehouse. It popped in again, demanding my focus.
My vampire had said the last man he turned remained human for a year before he succumbed to his vampy nature. Even though I was physically smaller, I figured I had some time left; at least three months. I was already different from my human counterparts: stronger, faster, better able to heal. I could absolutely use my new gifts to do what I could for humanity in the time I had left. I could protect other people from being unfairly eaten or press-ganged into monsterhood. I could kill every single bloodsucker I could find.
Standing in the lumber section of a big box home improvement store, I stared at a stack of one-by-two’s, wondering if they’d be strong enough to get the job done. How long does a stake have to be to pierce heart muscle? And how much force is required to actually use one? Do stakes have to be made of wood? Or would metal be acceptable? The ladder rung had been metal, and it had done a pretty fair job of staking a vampire.
A teenager with multiple earrings and blue hair walked up to me. The tag clipped to his red vest read Caleb.
“Need some help?” he asked.
“I need some stakes.”
“Those are in the gardening department. I’ll show you.”
“Are they flimsy?”
“Kinda.”
I shook my head. “Won’t work. I need them to kill vampires.”
He went quiet for a minute.
“Well, oak would be better for that than this pine shit.”
A few hours later, I caught my reflection in a building on Eighteenth Street and Market. I looked like any other twenty-something city-dweller on her way to the gym: high bun, black yoga pants, tank top, and sneakers. The strap for my yoga mat stretched over my shoulders and across my chest. Caleb and I had eventually settled on two-foot pieces of half-inch rebar, currently rolled discreetly into the rubber mat on my back. He’d thought the weight of the steel would make it easier for me to penetrate the chest wall. On top of which, I could whack vamps with it if I was having trouble stabbing them. I bought a hacksaw and he cut the ends off for me at an angle in the parking lot.
My stomach growled; empty. I’d been too nervous to eat; painfully aware of how unprepared I was for what I was doing. Because let’s be honest, my first vampire kill had been pure luck. I told myself the difference was role reversal. I was the hunter now. The hunter who’d slipped out of her apartment an hour before sunset so she wouldn’t have to face the vampire she’d slept with and stupidly—so, so stupidly—invited over yet again. The hunter who had no idea where to start hunting.
Well, not no idea. Recognizing that the homeless Olive impersonator I’d seen that night in the Historic District was, in fact, a vampire, I’d come into contact with a total of three bloodsuckers. All of them dirty, wild, and mean as fucking copperheads. These were not the sexy, sophisticated, and occasionally sparkly creatures of modern archetype. And they were definitely not social butterflies. My initial contact with all of them had occurred somewhere isolated. Somewhere inside city limits, but also quiet. Lonely. After nine-thirty p.m. on a Tuesday, I was thinking the industrial area was still my best bet. I turned south, heading out of downtown and toward the warehouses near the train yards and river docks.
It took me nearly three stinkin’ hours to find a vamp. I’d poked my head into countless broken windows, rattled a hundred chain-link fences, and peeked under a thousand cars. I was thinking seriously about giving up when I turned around at the back of a dead end alley and found what I was looking for—blocking my exit. He was an ugly motherfucker, wearing dark, dirty clothes and a snarl.
My stomach sank. I was batshit crazy. What the hell had I been thinking? My legs burned with the urge to run but there wasn’t a clear path around him. I’d brought my pepper spray with me, tucked into my waistband. The last time I’d fought a vampire, it had bought me precious seconds. I palmed it, sliding the top around so it was ready to spray.
The vampire made a low growling noise. As far as I was concerned, I still had the upper hand. He didn’t know what I was there for, and as far as he was concerned, I was just easy pickings. A food truck taco. A dollar menu burger. He wasn’t anticipating
I would fight back the way I was going to. Besides, all I really had to do was get past him. Once I did, I could run home and reevaluate this whole ridiculous idea. I could ask myself why I’d thought it would be easy or brilliant to fight soul-crushingly terrifying vampires like this one instead of fucking a slightly less soul-crushing vampire like the one who was probably waiting for me at my door that very moment, ready to give me multiple orgasms until he had to slink away before dawn.
The vampire was getting twitchy, tired of waiting. Ready to pounce.
I reached down deep and pulled out my best Brooklyn. “Hey, Skinny! The fuck you lookin’ at?”
He charged at me.
I charged back.
He wasn’t expecting that, and he didn’t have time to stop. We crashed into each other and fell to the ground. Ready, I rolled on top of him, giving him a face full of pepper spray before he could recover. He howled and let go of me, covering his eyes and nose with his hands. I crawled off him and scrambled to my feet, racing toward the open end of the alley.
The fastest way to get back downtown was to run along the river. It was probably the only straight shot in the entire city. I ran north and took my first left. I could see the edge of the road that paralleled the riverbank. It was close; maybe half a mile away. Pouring on the gas, I tried to sprint but the rebar was a hindrance, bumping and thumping on my back.
I reached the river at the same moment the vampire came up behind me. Jesus, he was fast. I hung a quick right. The I680 bridge loomed in front of us. We were still a good fifteen minutes from downtown at a good clip and I was getting tired. I hit the shadows under the bridge and glanced behind me. He was too close.
Reaching out, he grabbed my yoga mat, yanking me back. I tried to slip out of it, but he caught my hair, making wet, snarling noises in my ear as we went down together again. I landed on my stomach, the rebar knocking me in the back of the head as it lurched forward, slipping out of the sleeve. He was still pulling on my hair, using it to yank my head to the side. I grabbed a piece of rebar and whipped it behind me where it connected with some part of his body. He roared. I used his momentary lapse of attention to flip onto my back. There was a deep, red gash across his scalp and down his ear. His eyes were still pink and teary, mucus and saliva pouring from his nose and mouth. I lifted my rebar stake to strike again. He caught it, wrenching it out of my hands and tossing it away before he bent down to bite me, pinning me down with his legs. He was really freaking heavy. So much heavier than he looked. I bucked beneath him and my hips didn’t even clear the concrete. I tried to get my hand under his chin, pushing up with everything I had just to keep his mouth off of me.
There was a whooshing sound and something crashed into us.
Then he was gone.
I struggled to sit up and saw my own vampire. He had the other one on its knees on the pavement, one hand cupping its chin, the other resting, palm flat, on top of its grizzled head. He made a whipping movement, fast and sharp and short. I heard bones snap, and the wet, sick pop of dislocation. The vampire’s watery eyes went blank, his mouth slack and soft over his fangs before his head fell forward.
My vampire turned to me. I clambered to my feet, backing away as he stormed closer. I came up hard against the wall of the bridge, cold behind me. He followed, brandishing a length of rebar.
“What is this?!” he growled.
“It’s a stake,” I answered lamely.
“A stake,” he repeated.
“It worked before.”
His face was cruel, eyes narrowed and mouth a hard line, incredulous and condescending. “Why not just douse him in holy water? Pelt him with garlic?”
“Well, what do you suggest?” I asked, my cheeks going a little pink in embarrassment. Stake/vampire. Vampire/stake. Everybody knew that.
“How about a fucking firearm?!” he shouted and turned, flinging my hard-won weapon out into the water.
“A firearm?” I asked, confused.
His eyes went wide with disbelief. “A gun!” he answered. “A pistol! A rifle—”
He was shouting again and I cut him off, disgusted. “I know what a firearm is. I’m not a total idiot.”
An eyebrow went high at that.
I took a deep breath. “I just thought that you had to… you know… stab them through the heart.”
Hanging his head down for a minute, he took the three steps he needed to touch me.
“I realize this is all new for you,” he said, “but being that you now know we are not, in fact, dead, has it occurred to you that any living being with a punctured or severed primary organ is unlikely to survive?”
I sighed and rolled my eyes. “No,” I admitted.
“If it had,” he continued, “it might have further occurred to you that being out of arm’s reach when trying to dispatch a creature bigger, faster, and stronger than yourself is generally prudent.”
“I get it.”
“I don’t think you do,” he replied and turned back to the dead man. I watched him pick up a nearby rock and then, to my horror, beat the vampire in the mouth with it. After a few good licks, he reached in and yanked out the loosened fangs, shoving them into his pocket.
“What the hell are you doing?” I asked.
He didn’t answer but stomped away, returning after a few minutes with a barrel of some kind of industrial chemical. He kicked the body over into the shadows under the bridge, emptying the contents of the barrel on top of it.
“Hey!” I shouted.
“What!”
“What are you doing?” I asked in a fierce whisper.
“Ruining the body,” he said, pulling a book of matches from his pocket. He lit one, touching it to the vampire’s coat. It smoldered for a moment and then went up like tissue paper.
“Why?” I asked.
He grabbed my yoga mat and the remaining rebar off the ground, pitching them into the river.
“Hey!” I protested.
He grabbed my hand and walked off, pulling me behind him, away from the ghastly smoke. I looked back at the fire; a poor man’s funeral.
“And just what do you think would happen, my little huntress,” he asked, “if the police found a body with fangs and a belly full of blood?”
We were heading north, nearing the Riverwalk. Ahead, paper lanterns dancing on their strings like bobbers on fishing line, jazz, and laughter floating toward us. He steered us east through a quiet blue-collar neighborhood instead.
“Won’t he just shrivel up?” I asked.
He turned toward me, not slowing, and wrinkled his forehead. “Shrivel up?”
“Yeah, just turn to ash in the sunlight or something? Dissolve or… decompose?”
“Would you?” he asked and then he stopped very suddenly. Gripping me hard at the elbow he shoved me into an alleyway and pushed me back against the wall. My hair stuck in the bricks like mosquito legs on flypaper.
“What did you mean?” he asked. “When you said it worked before?”
I shrugged and looked at my feet.
He roared and punched the wall, pacing the alley for a few minutes before coming back to stand in front of me.
“Please,” he said, running a hand over his face. “Please tell me that you have not been leaving vampire corpses all over the city.”
I flinched. “Just one,” I said.
Fifteen minutes later we stood under the broken fire escape looking down at a bloated, greasy vampire mess. Its macabre perfume had spread, settling like fog over several blocks. Happily, the summer months in my city often brought such smells, be they from the river or the woods, and the stench of decomposing animal was not uncommon. Human noses, like the human mind—doing what they do best when faced with the unpleasant—either grew accustomed or ignored it.
Beside me, my vampire sighed.
“The garbage must have sheltered him from the sun,” I said cheerfully. “And it’s been raining pretty steady. We’re lucky no one comes down here.”
He didn’t answer, but
looked at me in a way that made it clear I should stop speaking. After kicking aside some garbage bags to get closer, he stood at the corpse’s feet and picked it up by the legs.
“Get his arms,” my vampire said with a little more authority than I would have liked.
“What?” I asked. Touching that asshole once had been enough, and though I was not all that familiar with the principles of organic decomposition, he seemed pretty far along after only three weeks. Not something I wanted to lay my bare hands on. My mouth went dry, my heart racing.
“Get. His. Arms.”
“No way,” I said, shaking my head and backing away.
My vampire released the corpse’s legs and its shoes hit the ground with a thud while its legs made a soft, spreading sound, like dropped jello salad. A new rankness rose from it and I covered my mouth and nose with my hand, closing my eyes to keep from vomiting.
“I,” my vampire said, suddenly very close to me, voice black as tar, “am not the one running around like some sort of vigilante vampire hunter!”
“A Van Helsing?” I suggested, swallowing back the saliva that had surged into my mouth.
“Get over there and pick up his arms.”
Opening my eyes, I looked at my vampire and then nodded, picking my way through the garbage to stand near the dead one’s head. His face and lips were thick and swollen, and his skin looked somehow looser in spite of it—more fragile.
I picked up his wrists.
“You’ll want to get him from under the shoulders,” he said.
“Nuh-uh,” I answered, unwilling to get any closer.
“As you wish,” he said and I would have thought it adorable if not for the situation. “On three. One… two… three!”
And then came the most vile, disgusting moment of my life. Ever. I yanked as hard as I could, and instead of the body coming up off the ground as I expected, its skin gave way, peeling off the meat of its arms like wet, sloppy evening gloves that smacked me square in the face.