Hunter's Kiss

by Niall Teasdale

  The last few days had been insane: a rollercoaster of excitement, stress, and emotional upheaval. Leanne decided that relaxation was a good idea right now. She needed to get her head together. There had been times, in the hospital when the nightmares had struck, when she had doubted her own senses, her own mind. That would not do. There were no vampires. Dead men did not get up and attack nurses. That was shock and guilt talking. Time to get back to real life.

  9th January.

  If you could call the Black Candle on a Friday night ‘real life.’ There was something about the place which Leanne could not quite fathom: some feeling of unreality about it, at least on the dancefloor at the bottom. The dancers, maybe. The way they moved, the way they watched anyone coming in with a sort of predatory look. Not that they looked quite the same way at Mike, Leanne, and Lisa, but that was another thing: there was almost deference in the glances Leanne saw coming their way which just seemed weird.

  On the middle floor, the band was playing some form of techno-rock-ambient… Leanne had no idea what it was and was fairly sure it would not grow on her, but then they were going to the bar so what the Hell. Maybe it would be cool to get Mike on the lower dancefloor later. They did not dance much, but down there, maybe they could get into the swing…

  ‘Hey, what’s above the bar?’ Leanne asked as they started up the stairs. ‘Anyone know?’

  ‘Staff break rooms and storage, then Pat’s apartment,’ Lisa replied. ‘It’s really cool up there. It’s quite modern, but there’s a lot of retro, hippy-type stuff.’

  ‘You’ve been up there?’

  ‘Uh-huh. I stayed over after New Year. It was really late when they closed up, so me and Di didn’t leave.’ Lisa kicked herself a little: sometimes it was really hard to avoid mentioning too much about her current relationships.

  ‘Oh, right.’

  They got to the bar and, of course, Dione was there. But tonight some extra stools were arranged so that the three friends could sit up at the end of the bar with Dione, and enjoy visits from Pat when she was free. That was more often tonight since many people were taking it a little easy after Christmas and New Year had sapped their funds and energy.

  ‘You’re feeling better, Leanne?’ Pat asked as they started on their first round of the night.

  ‘Much. Back to work on Monday. We were a little surprised that I recovered so fast, but everything’s settled and back to normal.’

  ‘Oh, that’ll be Di kissing you,’ Lisa said, a slight smirk on her lips.

  ‘You know about that?!’ Leanne felt her cheeks reaching flame-point almost instantly.

  ‘It came up in conversation,’ Pat informed her.

  ‘Really,’ Lisa said, ‘what a set-up. “I’ve never kissed a girl to see if I like it.” You just had to ask, you know?’

  Leanne looked at Mike for help and he said, ‘I am staying out of this one.’

  ‘Don’t tease the invalid!’ Leanne tried.

  ‘You were declared medically fit for work,’ Lisa countered. ‘That means you’re fit for teasing too. Anyway, who said I was teasing?’

  ‘I was weakened and sleepy. I wouldn’t normally… I mean…’

  ‘You didn’t like it then?’

  ‘I… No, I did,’ Leanne said, because it would have been rude, and lying, to deny it, ‘but I liked what Mike and I did after a little more.’

  Now Mike’s cheeks flushed. ‘Okay, no teasing the invalid,’ he said.

  Dione raised her glass, rescuing them both by saying, ‘It’s the first time we’ve all been together this year, so… To the New Year, may it be all we wish of it.’

  ‘I can drink to that,’ Leanne said, ‘though it could have had a better start.’

  ‘Then it should be all uphill from here, should it not?’

  12th January.

  Leanne was not entirely sure that being back on a medical ward was uphill, but it was routine and, relatively, quiet. The hospital administration had decided that putting her back on A and E so soon would be unwise, so here she was dealing with various patients undergoing minor operations or recovering from them. Lisa was on the same ward, so that was something. They were busy, but there were mandatory breaks which they sometimes actually got to take.

  ‘You’re sleeping with Pat as well as Diana, aren’t you?’ Leanne asked on one of them. They were alone in the area laughably called the ‘break room’ by those who had to use it. There were a couple of seats, a kettle, and some instant coffee.

  Lisa considered for a second and then said, ‘Okay, yeah, I am. They’ve been friends for fifteen years, on-and-off lovers for a lot of that time. They share.’

  ‘They share you?’

  ‘God, yes, it’s amazing when both of them are working on me. I feel like I’m going to explode or something. Uh, but that doesn’t happen too often.’

  Leanne pushed what she thought might be jealousy out of the way. ‘Why didn’t you mention it?’

  ‘Well… I didn’t want you to think I was a slut or something. It just kind of happened…’

  ‘I don’t think you’re a slut. I think you’re kinkier than I thought you were, but it’s not like you’re bedding people left and right.’ Leanne frowned. ‘You’re not, are you?’

  ‘No! I haven’t even had a one-nighter since I met Di. Haven’t felt the need for it. You are looking at a satisfied woman.’

  Leanne giggled. ‘I’m happy for you. Really I…’ The slight frown on Lisa’s face made Leanne pause, and she was about to ask what was wrong when they heard the voice.

  ‘Aimee.’ In the doorway a man stood, his pale, somehow iridescent, blue eyes fixed on Leanne. He was tall, thin, and pale with narrow features framed in untidy, blonde hair which fell around his neck. He was not unattractive, in a gaunt sort of way.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Leanne said, ‘you must have me mistaken for someone else. I’m Doctor Drake. Can I… help you somehow?’

  He smiled thinly. ‘Of course, you don’t remember me, but I see it’s you, Aimee.’

  Out of the corner of her eye, Leanne saw Lisa taking her phone from her pocket, keeping it hidden from the man in the doorway. ‘My name’s not–’

  ‘No, they’d have given you a new name, like they did for me. When you’ve lived for over a hundred and seventy years, you go through a few names.’

  Lisa was on her feet now, moving around to Leanne. ‘Back away from him,’ she hissed.

  The blonde man’s eyes flicked to Lisa and went hard. ‘You keep out of this. I lost her once and no one’s going to–’ The statement ended in an ‘oomf!’ as something barrelled into him from behind, carrying him into the room and onto the floor at Leanne’s feet. Leanne barely had time to be confused before Lisa was dragging her off her seat and back toward the window. Leanne’s coffee mug hit the floor, shattering.

  The newcomer looked to be in his late teens, not tall but heavily built. His clothes, T-shirt, jeans, and a long coat, were black and had seen better days. He had black hair bound up into a ponytail, which might not have seen much care in the last month, and dark brown eyes which seemed even darker as he flashed a glance at Leanne and Lisa, and then yanked something from his coat. Leanne let out a scream as she realised it was a knife, cross-hilted with a thin blade.

  And then the blonde turned, swinging his elbow around to connect with the teenager’s jaw. The boy fell backwards, rallied, and stabbed at the blonde, punching the thin blade into his shoulder. It seemed to make no difference at all, and the blonde swung his fist up and connected with the teen’s stomach. There was a grunt of pain and another stab, low, straight into the blonde’s thigh.

  That was when Dione rushed in. Her eyes flicked over the room and then she turned, grabbing the blonde’s arm, twisting, and then swinging. Unbalanced, he was tossed into the wall across the room. Dione began to turn again, and the boy stabbed her in the side under the ribs. Lisa screamed with Leanne now, but Dione seemed oblivious, continuing to turn and snapping the blade off. She slammed the underside o
f her fist into the boy’s cheek and he stumbled, reaching into his coat again.

  Mike rushed into the room, his eyes falling on Leanne, apparently unharmed, and pausing long enough there that he did not see the boy change his mind about finding a new weapon. Instead, he ploughed forward, pushing Mike into Dione and then rushing out. There was the crash of glass as the blonde threw himself out through the window.

  Leanne checked that Mike was basically unharmed and disentangling himself from Dione, who looked really pissed off, and then turned to look out the window. It was a two-storey drop, and she could see the blonde man running away.

  Dione rushed out into the corridor, looking both ways, but the dark boy was nowhere to be seen. She walked back into the room. ‘Fuck!’ she said. ‘Is everyone all right?’

  ‘You’re not!’ Lisa said, moving forward.

  Dione held up a hand, glowering down at her torn coat. Then she calmly unbuttoned the black blouse she was wearing, reached to her side, felt around for a second, and pulled out six inches of steel. ‘I’ll be fine,’ she said, dropping the blade and starting to button her blouse up again.

  Mike started toward Leanne, but she held up a hand, stopping him. She looked pale, confused, and with a hint of anger brewing. ‘What just happened… isn’t… He ran away from a two-storey fall after getting stabbed, twice. I just saw Diana pull a knife blade out of her side which she barely noticed going in. And you knew those two would come here?’

  ‘No,’ Mike said, ‘Di suspected they might, so we were nearby when Lisa texted us.’

  ‘He has fangs.’ Leanne’s gaze turned up from the floor to Dione. ‘You have fangs. Tell me the truth, are you a vampire? Is he?’

  Dione looked her in the eyes. ‘Yes.’

  The straight answer still caught Leanne by surprise. Her jaw worked for a second and then she started for the door. Mike reached out for her, but she pushed his hand away. ‘You knew,’ she snapped. ‘You knew and you said nothing. Just… Just keep away from me. Keep away until I can… I need to… think.’ And she rushed out.

  ‘Let her go,’ Dione said when Mike started to follow.

  ‘Those bastards could–’

  ‘Those bastards will be licking their wounds for at least a few hours and we’ll know where Leanne is at all times.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Well, for one thing, there are only two places she’s likely to go. She’ll go to her apartment or your mother. For another, the pendant I gave her for Christmas has a GPS tracking chip in it.’ Mike stared at her. ‘She’s your girlfriend, Mike. I take precautions. I’ve been trying to work out how to do the same with your mother, but she’s less of an issue since she’s a sensitive, and I asked a few of the local vampires I know I can trust to keep an eye out for her.’

  Mike’s lips tightened, and then he relaxed. ‘If you broach it the right way, Mom would probably agree to wear something. I think she’d view it as nice that you were thinking of her safety and my well-being.’

  ‘I… hadn’t thought of just asking her.’ She gave Lisa a glance. ‘See why I like having humans around?’ Lisa nodded dumbly. ‘I’m sorry, you’re worried about me and I’m being pissy. I’ll be fine in a few minutes. You’ve never had to see one of us heal. We do it fast.’

  ‘Do you need blood?’ Lisa asked, unconsciously lifting her arm to offer her wrist.

  ‘Not right now. Unless I run into trouble, I’ll be fine until next month.’

  Lisa managed a smile. ‘Shame.’

  ‘Now, hush. Security’s coming. Lisa, you’ve had a nasty shock. I’ll be taking your statement and then running you home. Mike, you’ll handle the uniforms and hospital authorities. After you call Mary and get her to activate Leanne’s tracking chip.’

  ‘I don’t like this,’ Mike said.

  ‘I know, but she needs space. I think she’ll go to her apartment, it’s closer. Lisa will talk to her and she’ll come around. Don’t worry.’

  ~~~

  It was dark when Lisa opened the apartment door, but there were no lights on inside. She was beginning to think that Leanne had been there, taken the pendant off, and then left when she heard Leanne’s voice.

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

  Sitting in the dark in the lounge, and she did not want to talk about it. Right. ‘Can I turn a light on before I trip over something?’

  A table light clicked on. Leanne was sitting on a sofa, her knees pulled up. ‘You knew about her too, didn’t you?’

  Lisa ignored the fact that Leanne had said she did not want to talk about it. ‘Yes, obviously. So why are you talking to me and giving Mike the silent treatment?’

  ‘I’ve known him since I was five. I don’t want to talk about it.’

  Nodding, Lisa began taking off her coat. Mark and Andy were on the night shift so there would be no interruptions. She could do this. ‘I’m going to open a bottle of wine and we’re going to get drunk. And we’re not going to talk about it.’

  ‘Okay,’ Leanne said, smiling weakly, ‘let’s do that.’

  13th January.

  ‘Do you let her bite you?’

  The question came out of nowhere and surprised Lisa. They had been resolutely not mentioning the v-word for hours, and now Leanne was going there. She figured there were a couple of ways to go with this, but Dione had counselled that truth was the best way, so Lisa went with that: honest and total.

  ‘Simple answer, yes,’ Lisa said.

  ‘It’s more complicated than that? You let her bite you and suck your blood out. She’s a vampire and they drink blood.’

  ‘They eat food too. You had Christmas dinner with her. Which I envy you a little, by the way, but I was with her the night before and she bit me then, but didn’t take blood. Look, vampires aren’t like they are in the movies.’

  ‘They’re dead people animated by some sort of virus. Natural, but not exactly natural.’

  Lisa’s eyes widened. ‘Yes. How did you know?’

  ‘A “hypothetical” conversation I had with Diana. She told me all about it and I just… Am I monumentally naïve?’

  ‘They’ve been around for thirty or forty thousand years, in one form or another. They aren’t the incredible, supernatural beings of legend. They have to hide among us. You don’t think, after all this time, they haven’t got really good at it?’

  ‘Huh… I guess, yeah.’

  ‘To be honest,’ Lisa mused, ‘I know Dione figured you’d eventually work it out, but I think she wanted you to, for Mike’s sake. It can’t have been easy, keeping it from you, but he couldn’t tell you. He has to abide by vampire law as well as ours, and keeping the secret is, like, the first one on the list. It’s why they have vampires like Di.’

  ‘So, her name’s not really Diana?’

  ‘Oh no. She’s had loads of names. Diana’s Roman, right, and she’s Greek. Spartan, actually. Her real name is Dione.’

  ‘How the Hell old is she?!’

  ‘Knocking on twenty-five centuries. But that’s unusual. Most of them are a few centuries at most.’

  ‘And what is it that… Dione does? What’s Mike mixed up in?’

  Lisa took in a deep breath. ‘When a vampire does something that threatens the secret, or a few other crimes against their laws, Dione’s the one who ends them. In New York, there’s something they call “the Agreement.” The city’s Hunter, that’s Dione, works with the NYPD to keep a lid on things and the city wants her to have a partner, a human one. That’s Mike.’

  ‘He’s hunting dangerous vampires for a living?’ There was a warning hint of worry in Leanne’s tone.

  ‘With the best equipment and the absolutely best partner there is. They’re out there, Leanne, and if one goes bad, like the one in Harlem, would you rather he was a normal cop who didn’t know what he was facing or the guy with the explosive shotgun rounds? You know how it went when he didn’t know about them. He almost died. Dione was there to save him.’

  Leanne considered the statement for a f
ew seconds. Dione had been alone when she saved Mike that time, so what had happened to her previous partner? But that was a question for Dione, not Lisa. Lisa was helping, smoothing things out at the edges, but to get to the core of this, Leanne was going to have to talk to Dione, and Mike. It hurt that he had not told her, but there were always things about his job he was barred from talking about, and Lisa was right: it cost him to keep secrets from the girl he had loved from a time before either of them knew what the word meant.

  ‘I need to talk to Mike,’ Leanne said. ‘And Dione, but mostly Mike. Well, and Dione. I mean… vampires are real, Lisa.’ A sort of delighted/confused grin spread across Leanne’s face and Lisa giggled. ‘They’re really real. They’re something… I mean, they aren’t these supernatural monsters like in the legends, but they’re even better! Who’s that expert they have? Winthrop? He must have the most amazing job in the world! Studying something so fundamentally outside the normal parameters of life.’

  ‘I know,’ Lisa said, grinning. ‘Just from what I’ve seen and learned… I’m not the scientist he is, or you are, but the possibilities are… You healed fast, right? You healed faster than expected from the beating you took? I wasn’t joking when I said it was because Dione kissed you.’

  ‘Another thing I just ignored.’ Leanne rolled her eyes.

  ‘Yeah, but you didn’t know. The bite transmits some of the virus in their saliva and it causes accelerated healing. It’s a survival thing. Their victims have usually healed the wound before they even know they’ve been bitten. Dione, and Pat, can transmit it with a kiss. So she used the excuse of ribbing you a little to give you a dose.’