Awake, Nicky? her maker said, his hand on her bare hip. Too bad ya can’t remember.
“Okay, fine.” Nico’s tone was hollow. She shut her mouth tight as the officer took Bear and his harness off of her and then bagged him. The female detective looked on.
Come closer and I will break your face with my head, Nico thought at the detective as Bear and the cop walked away, but the detective never neared.
Nico sat, feeling the effects of having been punched into concrete, and tried not to think about Bear. She concentrated on healing her swollen face and eye. Already, the vampire with the hole in his throat had closed the wound, his eyes shut as he focused. The vampire with the slit throat appeared to be meditating, the slash across his throat a thin, bleeding line.
My weak diet as a vampire child is showing. She concentrated harder on diminishing her swollen eye, even as the police made the vampires regain their feet, and then walked them out to a waiting van. MP-1634 stood on the lit loading dock, watching the vampires emerge.
“We got this, Makepeace,” the female detective said.
“Get in there, bloodsucker.” A cop pushed Nico into the van.
Things are looking up on the new planet. Instead of misogyny I’ll get bigotry now. They shut and locked the van, and it lurched as it drove away.
The other vampires sat in silence and either glowered or ignored her. The male she’d stabbed in the eye slowly regenerated, the inside of his head making squishy sounds. His mouth lifted at one corner in seeming amusement as his remaining eye looked at Nico.
Except for the business of selling humans as food and possibly other unsavoury activity, she thought she might find the elder vampire likeable outside of his “work.” Then she realised: she seemed to measure all vampires against him.
No one, it seemed, could be worse than him.
The steel mesh over the small back window allowed the occasional light from street lamps to flash on her companions’ faces. Nico looked at the window.
Come get me, she thought towards the dark.
***
The stone and brick precinct where the cops processed her resembled one right out of New York City, complete with worn wood interiors with peeling paint, cracked tile, and dusty, wrought iron fixtures. Nico found the place confusing to her senses. It didn’t smell or feel like a recreation, but the real thing, having gone through its earned age and received the feet and noise of human presence. Below, they put her in a holding cell with the female vampire.
“I should kill you,” the female said.
“Kill your alibi? Pshaw,” Nico said. A jailer then returned and fetched the other vampire for questioning. Nico blinked, testing her healed eye, then became irritated by the pungent odour Grun’s dried blood exuded.
“We smell like a meat eater,” she complained to Bear, forgetting that he had been bagged for safekeeping. Noticing his absence, she hung her head, and her heart hurt. She told herself to forget, then slept.
She woke when the female vampire reentered the cell. The woman took a seat on the other side and ignored Nico, who blinked, disturbed by the odd, residual effects of some dark dream. An uneasy, ugly dream, set in some facility like Royal Bento.
She remembered: the electrical plant where she’d found another of her maker’s victims. Her dream had recalled a true memory. Nico had been enraged that night, because the strung, sharpened wire she’d lured her maker to had failed to take his head off. He shot Nico four times. Then he violated her.
I’m going to melt you in a nuclear reactor, she’d said, and he laughed.
***
The male detective took Nico’s statement in an interrogation room, his partner standing over her, glowering. His manner was congenial, with an air of consideration and understanding, but his teeth, when he paused, slid against each other, reminding Nico of calculated men rolling a toothpick as they bided their time. She did her absolute best not to ask about Bear.
He queried: your reason for being at Royal Bento that night? She answered that she’d wanted words with Grun, having heard about the missing waitress at Lucy’s.
“So you were working for him?”
“No.”
“Why did you and your vampire gang start shooting?”
“No. I’m in no gang.”
“How much was your cut, selling the humans?”
“No. I’m not a seller.”
The questions continued in that manner, a fabrication designed to eventually addle her, make her admit to something, even hypothetical, so they’d leave her alone. It didn’t matter that she’d arrived on Darqueworld only hours before. They were not going to ask the human captives or even the vampire thugs about her, and if they did, it would not be to validate her story. He asked her to tell the truth. He tried to convince her nicely. Then the detectives left the room, and Nico sat in the chair and slept.
***
BAM.
Nico started awake, the female detective leaning over the table menacingly. The detective had smacked the table hard. Nico had heard them reenter the room; she’d decided to sleep a little more rather than acknowledge their return.
“You have Cru’k blood, all over you,” the detective said, menacing.
“Yes,” Nico said.
“Because?”
“Grun bled all over me while I was standi—”
The detective suddenly grabbed Nico’s front and hauled her up from her seat. Her blood-stiffened cardigan creaked in the detective’s grip.
“Don’t touch me,” Nico said with calm.
“You are lying,” the detective said, staring into Nico’s eyes.
“You know I’m not,” Nico said.
“You killed him.” The detective’s grip tightened. “We can beat you dead again, you know, until you talk, and you’ll heal right up.”
“Yes,” Nico agreed. “But you won’t.”
“We won’t what?”
“You won’t heal right up,” Nico said.
She looked into the detective’s eyes and made a string of assertations: the evidence would disappear, the suspects would go free, and the victims would be charged with vagrancy, prostitution, or any other illegal whatever that could be dug up or trumped up, silencing demands for justice.
“Did they take your baby hostage?” Nico suddenly asked. “Or did you like Grun’s money?”
The detective looked at her, both flabbergasted and revealing another emotion, swiftly shuttered from Nico’s scrutiny.
“It must have been a real surprise seeing me there,” Nico added, “a vampire you didn’t know.”
The detective let her go. She walked out, her partner looking at Nico with his teeth sliding, and then he departed too. As the door shut behind him, Nico nodded off and slept.
***
By the end of the night, the detectives charged her with nothing.
Nico walked through the worn precinct, escorted by a uniformed female officer in New York blue, and felt she might really be in the original New York City if not for the dawning light coming through the window blinds, falling on her without harm. Chasca Vasquez leaned with both hands on a detective’s desk, too focused on the protesting detective to notice Nico passing by. Nico admired how alert and beautiful the woman looked so early in the morning, and wondered if Ms Vasquez could trace back the digital delivery to her.
“Probably,” Nico said to an imaginary Bear, then yawned. She heard loud voices outside the window. When she peered out, PETH protesters were organising on the walk, signs in hand. Nico continued to follow her escort to the property clerk’s window in the reception area, where the female officer then left her. Nico hoped PETH wouldn’t notice the green blood on her—especially that it was Cru’k’s blood.
I’m not a crusader.
She wasn’t a vigilante either. Her attention was already drifting away from the trafficking of human flesh for consumption. Grun was dead, Shayla and the others at Lucy’s were safe, and Ms Vasquez and PETH could follow up on the rest. But something sti
ll unnerved at the pit of Nico’s soul, and she felt at the beginning of things again.
“This wasn’t it,” she said.
“This wasn’t what?” the property clerk said as he scanned the claims voucher stored in her bio-tag.
“I don’t know,” Nico answered.
When the clerk returned with Mr Bear and her possessions, she gave Bear a big hug—his poor head stained with blood—checked to make sure he hadn’t been tampered with, inspected the state of her blade, then pocketed all her things and put on the harness. With Bear back, she was complete again.
While situating Bear, the vampire whose throat she’d slit approached the window to have his bio-tag scanned. As the clerk retrieved his items, the vampire looked down at her.
“You’re dead,” he threatened in a raspy whisper.
“Not before I sleep with your wife,” Nico said.
At the vampire’s blank expression, she realised her error.
“Or your husband?” she asked. “Or your sheep?”
The vampire picked up his things and walked out, ignoring her.
“I’ll have to come up with a new retort,” Nico told Bear. She hurried, and fell in step behind the bigger vampire as he descended the steps. He pushed his way through the PETH protesters and their signs with Nico closely following.
Once passed the protesters, she let the vampire walk away. She marvelled at a street with buildings contemporary to her time except the smell of it and the smooth, crisp sound of traffic could not be mistaken for Old Earth. She paused by a young cop in blue, leaning with his back against the building, coffee cup in hand. Head raised, he looked at the hotel holo marquee across the street. The letters resembled an old-fashioned neon marquee, and reminded Nico of the Rocklyn Hotel in Los Angeles. Pigeons flew through the holo projection and disrupted it. She glanced at the cop’s youthful face.
When you get tough, make it for all the right reasons. Merope emerged from between distant, sky-piercing buildings to hit the hotel’s windows with bright light, dazzling the world. Nico flinched. The cop looked at her.
“Heliophobic?” he asked.
“I guess so.” She pointed up to the holo marquee. “It just reminds me of the time I watched a vampire burst into flames, right up there on a hotel’s neon sign.”
The cop’s brow knit, and because of his youth, Nico wasn’t sure if he knew what a neon sign was.
“What was the vampire doing up there?” he asked.
“I put him there. Nailed him to the Y of a marquee.”
The cop frowned more. “The Y, huh?”
“It was to be poetic. Because I was asking ‘why’,” she said.
“Why you did that?”
“No.” She walked away. “Why did he pick me.” She pulled out the sound-buds stored in the back of her Id and put them in her ears.
Dorothy, play me Last Exit For the Lost, she typed.
She crossed the street. A white, domed church stood, a golden cross atop. The morning sun struck, making the cross bright enough to burn.
Nico stared at it.
Her maker wept as his face blistered and smoked, and Nico felt her own face burning in the shadows, but she had to see.
Nicky, he cried, before erupting into flames.
“When the gods felt their twilight had come, they left Earth in their star chariots, sky boats, and sentient ships. They followed living maps for the star cluster known to all celestials, as these stars were visible from every part of Earth: the Seven Sisters. There, they found a dusk planet perfect for shaping, and established cities and settled lands destined for the Earth kin who also saw their approaching twilight times: the Tuatha Dé, the Dream-time, the circumpolar peoples, and the leviathans.”
The what? Nico thought in mid-suck. She was watching an educational holo film while heading back down “puke street”—a street a roaring, automated truck presently power cleaned. In the crisp morning light, the hostels, bars, and shops that had seen so much activity sat silent and shuttered. Nico tossed her scrunched snack pack, Fire Butt Good! in the truck’s path, its vacuum sucking the litter up. The blood had the salty, red-hot flavour of sriracha sauce, which made for a nice wake-up call. Her Id then lit, indicating an incoming message. She paused the citizenship course vid, Immigrations Holo Vid No 1: Darqueworld Beginnings.
“A reminder from the Immigration Centre,” Dorothy announced, “you are scheduled for your citizenship exam on this date and time.”
“What?” Nico exclaimed. “That’s four days from tomorrow.”
“If you would like to appeal the scheduling, you may make an appointment to see the immigration judge presiding at circuit court—”
“No thanks. Are they rushing us so that whoever fails can be made into soylent green? Never mind. What do I have to study?” Dorothy then sent her one hundred civics questions and their answers.
A girl in a Sushi Hut uniform hurried down the walk, her gait erratic. It was the vampire from the girls’ dorm. She bumped into Nico and Nico saw the dark circles under her eyes.
“I got to get to work,” the vampire murmured to no one in particular, and hurried on.
“I guess she needed even more sleep,” Nico said in surprise to Bear. “We better get there before Violet Eyes leaves. I want to make sure she’s okay.”
***
People were already hitting the exercise machines within the YOBA. Nico looked up at the rooftop, spying a different Makepeace silhouette from the broad V shape of the muscular Makepeace from last night. Even backlit by the rising sun, Nico recognised the long, sinuous body.
MP-1634.
Nico had Bear wave at thon while she crossed the street, the Makepeace’s gaze following her.
When she reached Again Friends, two agitated boys quickly exited and the door shut behind them. Nico pulled on the door handle and her hand abruptly slipped off. The door remained locked.
“This is so rude,” she said to Bear. Dann sat in the caged booth, waved, then pressed something. Nico grabbed the door handle again and pulled it open.
“In need of our free showers and laundry facilities, I see,” Dann said cheerfully. “Funny, I didn’t see you leave this morning.”
“I didn’t see you leave last night,” Nico said. “Or did you turn invisible and just stay inside there? Do you even go to the bathroom?”
“I’m here until 22:30, those are the rules,” Dann said. “I was in the john.”
“This place has barely any windows, and no fire escape signs,” Nico said. “I didn’t see one emergency exit. Where do I go when there’s a fire?”
“Oh—the roof?” Dann looked at her, disconcerted. “I—well, you’re vampires. Can’t you just jump out or something?”
“You guys actually lock us inside,” Nico exclaimed. “How is this legal?”
“Well, you signed to the terms of agreement on the sign-up sheet.” Dann lifted paper on the sign-up clipboard and revealed the bottom sheet, indicating a long, typed legal document. “Y’know. The one where you agree to be a vampire kept off the streets in exchange for free lodging, showers, lockers—”
“You never mentioned this piece of paper,” Nico accused.
“I didn’t?” Dann said.
Broody boy hurried down the stairs and walked quickly for the entrance. He looked at the dried green blood on her with raised brows, and then rushed out the door, pushing it open.
Oh good. Dann’s not needed to get out.
“Did the girl with the choker come down already?” Nico asked instead. “Little spikes on the collar. She has violet eyes.”
“There’s no fraternising in the dorm rooms,” Dann stated.
“I’m just asking if you’ve seen her,” Nico exclaimed.
“I don’t know. You all kinda—that vampire look? You all start to look the same.” Dann shrugged.
“If we all look the same, then how do you remember me?”
“Because of your, uh, soft buddy? Want to sign for tomorrow night? We’re already filling up.�
� He pushed the sign-up sheet before Nico. Only half the spaces had signatures. One of them, a Danica Rodriguez, had checked the boxes for two nights.
“No thanks.” She picked the sheet up to look for the old sheet from last night. It was missing.
“Oh? You found someplace cheaper than free?” Dann asked. He then pushed a holo card towards her from beneath his window. It said: Chaikov’s Collectible Coins & Currencies.
“You gave me one of these already,” Nico said.
“Have you gone yet?” He pushed the sign-up sheet in her direction again.
“I wish you guys would just proselytise and shake me down that way.” Nico left to go upstairs.
Up in the girls’ dorm, all the beds had been made. A new vampire stood over the last bed. Freckle-faced and with her long curly brown hair in a ponytail, she wore narrow, frameless eyeglasses (for appearances, Nico thought,) a plaid shirt over a tee, and cargo trousers. She looked at an Id with a sturdy rubber casing. The locker at the foot of the bed lay open, her red backpack with garish, green accents sitting beside it.
“Hi,” Nico said. “Did you see the girl who was in this bed last night? She wears a choker, little spikes on the collar.”
“No,” the new girl answered. “Bed was all made up when I got here. But that stuff was in the locker, maybe it’s hers.” She nodded to a Welcome to Again NewYork bag on the bed. “I’m Danica, by the way.” She held out a hand, and Nico shook it. “What type of blood is that on you, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Oh, it’s Cru’k’s blood. I’m Nico, and this is Bear. Mind if I claim this for the friend I’m looking for?” She pointed at the bag.
“Go right ahead.”
Nico picked it up and looked inside. The Id was still sealed, its logo label on it.
“Heyy,” Ozzie girl hailed as she entered the room. She walked across and smiled at Danica. “You’re giving it a fair go. Fantastic.”
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