by Winter Reid
Meidias couldn’t have looked more out of place in the small hospital chapel—my angel of death, dressed all in black, sitting in a cushioned pew and gazing up at a backlit stained-glass panel.
Bell paced back and forth between the altar and the door, scraping his hands through his hair every twenty seconds and taking deep breaths he’d blow out through pursed lips.
I leaned my head against Meidias’s shoulder, watching the red sanctuary candle cast a soft, flickering light on the wall. His heartbeat had slowed in the hours since we’d left the swamp, coming back down to its natural rhythm. I suspected his thoughts were still out there though. He hadn’t spoken since he’d carried Lacey out to Bell’s jeep.
I reached up and touched his cheek. “Meidias, I—”
Renfield rushed in wearing surgical scrubs, his face mask hanging loose around his neck, grinning from ear to ear.
Bell pressed his palms against his eyes, a quick sob of relief escaping his lips. I stood up, throwing my arms around Renfield’s shoulders.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
Renfield took Bell up to Lacey’s room and Meidias and I started home. The back of my head still ached, and I was bone-tired. I reached for his hand as we walked through the business district, all put to bed for the night except for the few lights left on in taller buildings.
I kissed his knuckles, lips brushing over dried blood on his index finger.
“Tell me that’s not yours,” I said, half-joking, lifting his hand into the meager streetlight.
“It’s Lacey’s. Can’t you smell her?”
“It all smells like meat to me.” I sniffed at it, trying to figure out what made this blood belong to Lacey. It wasn’t like the smell of her in general. I wish that I could say it was prettier, that it smelled like chocolate or some exotic fruit, but then it wouldn’t be blood, and there would be no tragedy in my wanting it so badly.
The drive to taste it took me off guard; so much that I couldn’t stop myself. I put my tongue on his finger, feeling the whirl of ridges on his skin, the smoothness of the blood that had settled in the valleys between, thick as whole milk. I wanted to paint my lips with it. I wanted more.
Walking him back against the darkened wall of the nearest building, I sucked his finger clean. Then I turned his hand over and licked his palm, following the smell of copper to his wrist. I could see his blood moving under his skin and I put my mouth on his pulse, rolling my eyes up to look at him. He nodded and put his free hand against the back of my head.
My new teeth weren’t long enough yet to tap his skin the way they do in movies, so I turned his wrist to the side. It was less of a mouthful that way. I bit down. My bottom teeth met bone but my top teeth broke his skin and sank deep. I didn’t hit any arteries or veins so the blood didn’t rush the way it might have. It wasn’t especially hot or thick. It wasn’t especially delicious either. Not at first.
He rubbed my scalp with his fingers, making circles behind my ears. I’d taken my teeth out of him so I could suck harder on the wound. He’d have a hell of a hickey by the time I finished.
After a couple minutes, he pulled back on my hair a little. I made a small noise—it might have been a growl—and pushed in closer to him, using my body to press him harder against the wall. Not erotic, my ass. Though maybe it wouldn’t have been had he been anyone else. It felt like his blood made a line straight from my mouth to my coochie. I straddled his thigh, losing control. My lips slipped, making wet, slurping noises on his skin.
“You’ll get sick,” he warned.
I glanced up at him again, not willing to let go. The corner of his mouth twitched. He pulled on my hair for the second time, and he wasn’t gentle. It felt so good I thought I might cry. I let go of his wrist even though I didn’t want to. My lips were swollen, and my jaw ached like the devil.
“You are so beautiful,” he whispered. Taking my hips in his hands, he pressed me down on his leg while he kissed me, biting my lower lip.
I came.
“Holy shit,” I said.
He laughed.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Three hours later my phone rang.
“My dear, I’ve had a thought.”
I put my book down on the coffee table and sat up on the sofa. “Dr. Renfield?”
“The one and only.”
“Is Lacey ok?”
“She’s fine. Billy’s super-glued himself to her leg.”
“It’s after two-thirty.”
“I had a hunch you’d be awake.”
I reached for my honeyed water and looked over at Meidias, sitting naked beside me on the sofa. He was watching National Velvet with the sound turned down. We’d tried Die Hard, but it was still too much for him; too scattered and frantic. He looked at me and smiled.
“I had a thought about your problem,” Renfield continued, the sounds of the ER behind him, beeping machines and muffled voices.
“What sort of thought?”
“Have you ever heard of endosymbiosis theory?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Endo-symbi-osis. The idea that evolution involves a positive relationship between an organism and its cooties.”
“Like probiotics?”
“Similar. There’s a thought that some of the organelles in our cells evolved from invading bacteria.”
“Okay.”
“So, what if you ran into someone who evolved from a different set of cooties?”
I looked at my vampire again. He was leaning forward, elbows on his knees, totally engrossed by Elizabeth Taylor.
“That’s certainly possible.”
“Or perhaps prions.”
“Prions?”
“Prions, like Mad-Cow Disease. A protein that corrupts other proteins.”
“One bad apple spoils the bunch?”
“Exactly. But what if, instead of causing damage, your prions actually make you stronger and faster?”
“Can either of these theories stop this process?”
“Sweetheart, I’m an ER doctor. I can’t do anything unless you want me to call in the boys in the ivory tower.”
“Ivory tower?”
“Researchers.” He said it like a dirty word.
“So what do you suggest?”
“I think, whatever you are, you should accept it. Revel in it.”
“And the bloodsucking is unimportant?”
“Have you ever met a guilty chicken?”
“Of course not.”
“But you eat them anyway.”
“You are one dark, twisted man, Renfield.”
“Maybe so, darlin’. Maybe so.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
I was dozing. Dreaming about her, the vampire I’d taken to calling Ophelia. It was the same as the first dream I’d had about Meidias, except I had taken his place and she had taken mine. My hand reached out and grabbed her. My mouth tore open her neck, drank from her, fed her… left her.
“I was you,” she whispered when I leaned over to kiss her goodbye.
Back in my own bed, Meidias woke me with his fingers on my lips.
“Nadine,” he whispered.
It was getting easier and easier to see his face in the darkness. I looked at him and his eyes were sad.
It had been a month since we’d killed Ophelia. And we had killed her, even if she’d been the one to actually pull the trigger. It was getting harder and harder for me to live with that fact and Meidias knew it. He almost never left me anymore, unless he had to feed.
“Sing for me,” he whispered.
“What?”
“Sing for me,” he repeated, his face half hidden in the pillow.
“Sing what?”
“The song you sang when I kept you,” he said.
I blinked and swallowed hard.
“Please.” His voice was soft, gentle.
I studied the ceiling.
“I’d bought a dress,” I said finally, and if I’d confused him, he didn’t complain but only watched
me, waiting for me to speak again.
“It’s taffeta… this electric blue color I never wear. Tailored at the top, like a safari shirt, but with a big, swirly skirt.” I swallowed again and shook my head. “I remember seeing it in the window on Market Street. I fell in love, and even though it was half a size too small, I couldn’t let it go.”
I looked at him again. “I never ran the swamp trail but I started the day you took me because it added an extra mile to my regular route. An extra mile a day, four days a week. I figured I’d be able to wear it inside a month.”
He rolled all the way onto his side, propping himself up on his elbow.
“I am sorry,” he said, resting his hand against my cheek. “The words are weak but the sentiment is not.”
“No?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“What would you do to make amends for it?” I asked.
“Other than what we have done already?” His expression was mildly curious.
I took a deep breath and blew it out. “I’m changing faster now.”
“I know.”
“I feel this restlessness in my chest.”
He nodded.
“And you didn’t ask me if I wanted this,” I said, priming his guilt for my request.
He nodded again.
“And I don’t,” I said, shaking my head.
His eyes narrowed. “What are you asking me?”
“I want you to kill me once I turn completely. Like you should have done from the start.”
“No.”
I sat upright. “You owe me this.”
“Absolutely not.”
I looked at him; the hard set of his mouth, his eyes cold and stoic.
“Fuck!” I yelled. “Why not? You should have before. You said you would have if you’d been thinking clearly.”
“I didn’t know you then. I didn’t…” he trailed off.
My eyes went wide. “You didn’t what? You didn’t love me?” I jumped out of the bed.
He was in front of me before I could make it into the living room, his face murderous, backing me back through my bedroom until I hit the far wall, caging me in with his arms.
“I have indulged you in madness,” he growled. “I have killed our kind for you, cleaned up after you, saved your life and licked your wounds—”
“If I live,” I cut in, “then everything I’ve done up to now is meaningless.”
Meidias looked like I’d dropkicked him in the gut.
“I don’t mean us,” I rushed out, blinking to keep from crying, “but I would be a murderer.”
“You’d rather be a martyr?”
I cupped his face in my hands and kissed him though he didn’t kiss me back.
“What are you going to do?” I asked him. “Wait for me? Protect me? Keep me safe until some smattering of conscience sneaks in again?”
“Yes. The same as I have for the others I’ve made.”
I flinched.
He pressed his forehead into mine. “I have nothing but time,” he whispered. “And someday you will come back to me.”
“You can’t know that. You don’t even remember who you were. You have no idea who I’ll be after.” I looked down at the space between us. “If I’ll even want you.”
“Tell me you don’t love me,” he whispered and bumped my nose with his.
I hesitated, then forced it out. “I don’t.”
“Liar,” he breathed against my ear.
And he was right.
I lied.
I lied because not to would lay waste to so much of who I thought I was. This man had kidnapped and tortured me, changed the very nature of my being. What kind of woman fell in love with a man like that? What kind of woman built a forever with a man like that? Especially a forever that could potentially last centuries.
I slipped out from under his arm. He let me.
“We don’t get to have a happy ending,” I said. “Not us.”
I went into the dark kitchen and poured a glass of water, dumping honey into it, watching it curl in on itself and coalesce on the bottom. When I turned around, he was in the doorway, far across the linoleum that seemed to stretch for miles.
“I won’t do it,” he said at last. “But I won’t stop you either.”
I walked over and kissed him on the cheek.
“Thank you,” I said.
“When?” he asked, grabbing my hand as I pulled away, as if he could pin me to him.
I shrugged. “Soon I think.”
“You wouldn’t have asked me unless you knew.”
“On the Winter Solstice,” I said finally. “The shortest day of the year.”
He was quiet. Then he pulled me closer.
“Say you don’t love me,” he said again.
I tried but the words wouldn’t come.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Bell and I stood in the doorway of his living room watching Lacey sleep on the couch. She looked almost normal again, the pink back in her cheeks, blond curls loose around her face and on the pillow.
My story was her story, too.
Except she would recover from Ophelia’s attack, and the same blood test that had told Renfield I wasn’t pregnant told him Lacey was.
“She sleeps all the time,” Bell said, grinning. “The doctor says it’s normal during the first trimester.”
“Sleeping beauty,” I said.
He was in street clothes: jeans and a sweatshirt. He had a black knit hat on, too. It made his face look leaner, his eyes extra blue.
“She is,” he said, smiling.
“Does she remember anything from that night yet?”
“Nope. Just that she was going to your apartment and someone attacked her from behind. You could ask her this stuff, you know. You don’t have to keep sneaking over here in the middle of the night to check on her.”
“Nah.”
“She misses you, Nadine.”
“It’s better this way.”
“How’s Meidias?”
“Next question.”
“You wanna see a picture of my progeny?”
“Absolutely.”
He reached into his back pocket, pulling out a black leather wallet and retrieving a folded square of paper, opening it wide as he handed it to me.
I looked carefully at the ultrasound image. “Aww,” I cooed, “you’re having a blob.”
Clucking, he yanked it out of my hand, pointing to the black ink spot with a thick finger. “No, see… that’s his head there—”
“His? The blob has a dick already?”
“And that’s his foot bud.”
I covered my mouth with my hand to shield my smile.
He looked at me, grinning. “You’re an asshole.”
Lacey shifted on the couch and farted, way louder than someone her size should have been able to.
Billy and I lost it on the spot, shoulders shaking with muffled laughter.
“It’s the baby,” he said. “She’d die if she knew.”
I gagged a little, pulling my shirt up over my nose. “Christ, Bell. What the fuck are you feeding her?”
“It’s the hormones, I swear.” He looked down at her, love all over his stupid, goofy face.
We were quiet for a minute, each of us lost in our own thoughts. Eventually, he gave me a sidelong glance. “You know… I do, Levitt.”
“Do what?”
He threw his arm around my shoulder and squeezed. “Remember everything about that night.”
I sighed. “I need a favor, Billy.”
“Name it.”
“You like cats?”
I cried for a week straight after Bell picked up Olive. Correction: I cried alone for a week straight. Alone, because Meidias left once I fell asleep the night we discussed my suicide, and he didn’t come back. At first, I thought it was just a temporary thing, that he just needed a little time to adjust, but a little time became a lot of time. Days slid into weeks, and eventually I realized he wasn’t coming back. Not i
n the way I wanted him to. I felt him from time to time, watching me when I went out, walking a circuit of the places we’d been together. Occasionally I thought I felt his fingers graze mine in a crowd. Once I’d come home to his scent in my apartment, so strong I thought he was still there. I traced it to my pillow, breathing it in for hours until it faded and disappeared.
I was stripping the bed when my cell phone rang. You’d think transitioning from human to vampire would make the more common chores of life less important, but for some reason, I found comfort in routine. I scrubbed my kitchen floors, shampooed my carpets, deringed my bathtub, and washed every stitch of clothing I owned.
I let the call go to voicemail. The only person I was talking to anymore was my mother, and I’d realized after our last conversation that would have to stop soon. She was too perceptive, reading my sorrow through the line.
My screen lit up with a text.
Renfield: Alligator Queen. Get your ass down to The Hanged Mackenzie and talk to me.
“Where’s your shadow?” Renfield asked after the waitress walked away.
The autumn months meant night was coming earlier to the city, and the bar was quiet at eight-thirty even though it was already pitch-black outside.
I shrugged and took a huge gulp of whiskey, letting it burn down my throat.
Renfield looked me over carefully: my messy hair, dull eyes… lips turned down at the corners.
“What happened, Nadine?” he asked.
I took another drink and leaned in closer to him across our table, fiddling with a wet spot on my coaster, scraping into the damp cardboard with my fingernails. “You ever heard of the trolley problem, Renfield?”
“Sure. Weak experiment, though.”
“Why?”
“Aside from vilifying obese people? The physics don’t fly. A fat person can’t stop a trolley. The transplant problem is a better model.”