by Lee Hayton
“Do you want me to call back to head office?”
“Hm. I’m sorry to have bothered you, ma’am. I’ll check it with the office and sort it out.”
“I’ll need a cabin, too. The work ahead of me is dangerous, and I need to have my own space to prepare and sleep.”
“This ticket doesn’t—”
“Make sure it does.”
Finally. Asha had put some spin on it with brain chemistry. Even I understood that there was no way a man could be talked into that level of backtracking just by a steely voice.
Despite the fact I was still zipped into a suitcase, and my cat had gone missing, I smiled.
“Certainly. I’ll just requisition one from another set of passengers.”
Yeah, you do that buddy. Do it well, and maybe Asha will leave a little treat inside your head.
“That would be suitable.”
Asha picked me up and moved along, banging me gently on a wall in the narrow confines of the train. I bore the insult well. We were nearly home, Scott free.
“Thanks for that,” Asha continued. “Also, I had to leave my animal with the ticket officer while I boarded. Would you be a dear and go and fetch her for me? I really can’t travel without my cat.”
The train had been clipping along the tracks for a good few hours when Asha finally dared to unzip the suitcase. The rush of cool air against my face was a godsend. When she insisted that I remain inside, ready to be zipped up in an emergency, I nodded. I was so grateful just to lose the claustrophobia that I didn’t give a damn about the rest of the discomfort.
“Close call with the tickets, I gather.”
Asha shrugged. “I got it sorted in the end.”
Miss Tiddles snorted. “Yeah. Thanks for letting me in on the plan. You know that the greasy officer felt me up for a good ten minutes on his break.”
“I can’t sort everything for everybody, you know.” For a change, Asha actually sounded grumpy. Not surprising, except she usually hid her emotions better than that. “It wouldn’t kill either of you to sort yourselves out for a change.”
“Of course, it would.” Miss Tiddles stretched out on the seat. She was half-changed, a humanoid head attached to a furry, ginger body. “The amount of effort required in doing that is perfectly baffling.”
“Hm,” Asha said. “You might talk a good game now, but I know the truth about you, Miss Tiddles. Given the people you used to work for, I know damn well there’s a lot more to you than just a lazy-ass cat.”
“Do we have any water?” Miss Tiddles asked, ignoring the statement. “My mouth is starting to feel all dry for some reason. Plus, I think I’ve got a headache from all the noise back at the station.”
I grinned at her discomfort, ducking my head down so she couldn’t see. Welcome to the world of hangovers, kitty cat.
I’d been so young when I was changed, that I didn’t get much of a chance to experience them. However, one summer’s night spent with a bottle of cider and my elder cousin had taught me the drawbacks to an evening full of drinking.
Even from my position on the floor, I could see enough out of the window to feel a sense of excitement. The good kind, not the one that made my stomach curl in dread.
The landscape out of the city was so different that it may as well have been on another planet. Trees hunkered down on either side of the train tracks like old men nattering to each other as we passed. The low bushes were hardy, their branches selected from a flora catalog for the ability to withstand the whip of air pressure as the train sped past.
The countryside. In my youth, I could travel for thirty miles through areas like this and never see another dwelling. Now, houses pressed close in, dotted with an occasional building. There’d be gaps for a few miles between—nothing like in my youth.
Not that the countryside would be where we ended up. Not unless something went terribly wrong. A few stops on from here, we’d get off at another city. The population would press up against us again, slaves to the concrete slabs of progress.
Not something I’d seen for myself, but I had heard it from reliable sources.
The town I remembered would be buried so deep under the structure of the new that nothing would remain. In a way, that was a blessing. The few fond memories I retained had already been twisted into something vile by the time I was carted off to a new life.
My parents may have held my lifestyle as the reason they turned me in, but in the back of my mind, I’d always believed something else. I thought they handed me over to the authorities at the first opportunity as a way to absolve themselves for the wrong that they’d done.
I still remembered how the sickness felt as it ate its way out of my bones, claiming hold to other parts of my body thanks to the handy transport route of my blood supply. The fevers became so frequent and the drugs they used to quell my pain so strong that the ending weeks were a haze. The memories that lay there were intangible, no matter how hard I searched for them.
The decision was made, the vampires turned me. Overnight, I became something different. Healed but no less unwell.
I could cry you a sob story about how unfair my life was. The truth of it felt stranger, though, lit with a different hue.
Yes, it was completely unfair that my bone marrow grew cancer instead of white blood cells. Even more unreasonable, that the age I was born in was well before there was any hope for a cure.
After I was turned, further unfair things happened. The enslavement, of course. Even before that, though, life wasn’t the one that had been promised to me.
I used to lie out on the grass in the meadow watching all the living things of the world on display. As the hot sun burned my hair into a shade far fairer than it had any right to be, I’d observe and note down the findings as I gulped in the world around me through my eyes.
To say I miss the sun is so foolishly simplistic that it may as well be the opposite of what is said. Those fields were the happiest part of my memory. I lived in those few snapshots when the rest of my world turned to shit.
I missed the sun? I lost the promise of what it offered.
Once upon a time, I wanted to grow up and be a scientist. In the back of my mind, I thought I could travel the world and notate it into order the same way that Darwin had before me.
Every sketch of each insect or bird or snake out in that field was a stepping stone to my ultimate destiny.
A vampire didn’t just steal the sun. He took my perception of what I would be.
I hated nighttime living, hated the reliance on blood for me to keep functioning. I hated the hunger, I hated the way I looked. As my skin grew paler and my old blood darker, I felt such disgust at myself that I wished the old tales were correct and I couldn’t see myself in the mirror.
If only.
During that hatred, I fell in with a group of men who exploited everything about being a vampire. They took pleasure in the infliction of pain and distress and taught me how to do that, too. Each time they celebrated the terrible acts we committed, I shrank away from them in spirit even as my voice yelled the loudest in praise.
My parents had failed me. Not just in listening to the advice of a priest who should have known better. They failed me by not helping me to learn how to be such a vile thing in the world.
Once I was turned, they expected me to forge my own path. As though I had any better idea of what to do.
My mind may have a few lifetimes of memories stored in it now, but it’s never matured beyond the years that I lived. That’s what they didn’t see, refused to see when I tried to ask them. My parents thought that because they grew older and wiser that I would, too.
My brain is stuck at age thirteen forever. Even as I know this, I reject it—a situation that’s an admission of the truth in and of itself.
The people meant to love and nurture me—meant to protect me—turned me over to strangers who chained me up.
Now, heading back to the same part of the country as they’d once lived and died, I hoped
that it had changed beyond all recognition. I expected that it had buried people like that, with minds frozen in fear instead of embracing the truth, into the past and left them far behind.
As the train clicked over toward our final destination, I closed my eyes and relived every step of my life’s journey in my mind.
“Hey, you awake?” The violence with which Miss Tiddles shook my suitcase meant I would have been soon, even if I hadn’t been yet.
“Get off. I’m awake.” I swatted her away with a grumpy hand, and she slapped it back into the case with a frown.
Oh, right. The hangover. It looked like the passing hours hadn’t treated Miss Kitty very well at all.
“Time to get locked away again,” Asha said, leaning over. A piece of her hair fell into the suitcase, and I pushed it outside of the zip with a finger.
“See you later, then. How are we getting to your witch friend’s from the station?”
“Buggered if I know,” she replied with a grin. “Just hoping that I don’t have to haul you all the way around town like this.”
Make that two of us. The claustrophobia recurred with a vengeance as Asha zipped me away again, into the darkness. The fabric of the suitcase was thick enough that no light penetrated. Of course not. If it had, she’d soon be hauling around a flaming pile of vampire.
The passage off the train seemed uneventful, from where I was curled up anyhow. After a wait, sitting still in the same place on the platform, I was heaved aloft and placed on a rack, high in the air.
I fell asleep again for a while after that. When Asha picked me up again, I jerked awake and kicked out with my foot. A warning jab came back, aimed at my shoulder.
Right. Public. Best not to make it visible there was a live something in the case.
After a short exchange with a lobby bot, I was carried into an elevator and then along a hall. After being unceremoniously dumped on the bed, I waited for the case to be opened.
I might have issued a command, but there was no way of knowing who else could be in the room.
“Here you go,” Miss Tiddles said at last. The zipper opened to expose me to a world of pain.
“Close the blinds properly,” I shouted, attempting to zip myself back in. They need to be all the way across, for goodness sake. The cat quickly remedied the situation.
Instead of replying with an apology, she sulked on the twin bed to the one my case sat upon. “There’s no need to shout.”
“I’ll remember that the next time you get set on fire,” I said dryly, getting out of the case and looking around. Asha was in the bathroom, staring at herself in a mirror. Despite the beauty of her symmetrical features, I don’t think she liked what stared back at her.
“What’s the plan?” I asked. “Now that we’re here, is there any clear idea of where we should start looking?”
Miss Tiddles flapped her hand at me in a shushing gesture. After closing her eyes, she fell immediately into a deep sleep.
“I’m going out to have a quick recce. The office wants me to keep them apprised of the situation, so I’ll send a few photos their way to keep them off our backs. You get to sit here and do nothing to attract any sort of attention.”
“Sounds like a fun plan.”
“You can try and search out some info on the net but seeing as the hotel is government-grade, you’ll have a hard time getting anything reliable. Just try not to get flagged by the monitors. We don’t need someone checking out the room.”
Asha paused by the door, looking around as though checking that she hadn’t missed anything.
“Don’t talk too loud, either,” she said as a last goodbye. “Management thinks it checked in two women, so a man talking up here is going to be suspicious.”
“Don’t worry,” I said with a smile that Asha didn’t return. “I’ll do nothing to soil your reputation.”
With a single curt nod of her head, she was gone.
After a few hours alone with just a sleeping cat for company, I started to rethink that promise. The late afternoon stretched into early evening, and the streets grew dark enough for me to pull back the curtains and look out.
Gray concrete stretching as far as the eye could see. Gosh, it sure felt like home. The roads and buildings weren’t as dilapidated as the ones in our community, but that just meant they held even less interest to a passing gaze. The love of pink neon that had taken hold in our home suburbs had passed this town by. Without that piece of bad taste to distinguish it, everything that I saw blended into just more of the same.
When I’d been trying to get home with Jimmy, all I’d wanted was to sit down and stay on the couch, safe and warm. Now that I’d been asked to stay indoors and out of harm’s way, all I wanted was to traipse around the city streets.
If the cat had been in a better mood, the room might have held more enticements to stay. As it was, apart from turning over every once in a while, Miss Tiddles may as well have been dead.
Bored. I was safe enough to quickly grow bored.
My oversize coat was hung from a hook on the back of the door. It only took a second to don it and then pull the cap down low over my eyes. I couldn’t imagine that the people out on the streets at this hour would be too curious, but it paid better dividends to be safe rather than sorry. I scrawled a quick note to the cat to say that I’d left, and then I closed the door behind me.
Three yards down the corridor, I realized that I didn’t have a key. I could knock, of course. Equal odds that the next door room would poke their head out to see what the racket was before the cat woke up and answered the bloody door.
Oh, well. I’d just have to stay out longer than expected.
The lobby was more crowded than I’d thought it would be. An influx of late check-outs or check-ins had overrun the front desk and spilled out into the lounge. Easy enough to tell those waiting for service from those who’d nipped down for a quick drink. Those seeking relaxation didn’t often bring their cases down with them.
After passing through the lobby, I felt a bit easier. Outside, there weren’t as many folks about as back home. There, the street kids scattered when you shone a light out of the window. Here, a few couples were walking around arm in arm, and that was about it. I hoped those few were on their way to or from somewhere. If they came out for the sole purpose of walking these unremarkable streets, then they were sad sacks.
Just like me.
Two turns away from the hotel, I had my head down so far that I missed the fact that someone was walking toward me. I gave a start and jumped back when the shadow of two women snuck into my vision. My head tipped back from instinct, checking out the threat. Stupid. The two women immediately clocked me.
“You shouldn’t be out here alone at night, honey,” the first one said.
Okay, they clocked that I was a kid. Hopefully, they’d missed the whole vampire thing.
“Leave him alone, Cheryl,” her friend complained. “You're not his mother.”
“Do you know where your mother is, hun?” Cheryl pulled her hand out of her pocket, gripping a large phone. “I could give her a call. Let her know you’re safe.”
I muttered something unintelligible and moved off to one side, increasing my pace to get past them. Cheryl wasn’t letting me away that easy, though. She’d seen the opportunity to do some good, and she wasn’t about to let it slip by.
“How about your dad, love? He’d be home from work by now, wouldn’t he? Just type your number in here”—she pointed at the large phone display—“and I’ll get him down here. It’s not safe to walk alone around this place at night. Are you from the area?”
Now, her friend was starting to get interested. Since she couldn’t dissuade Cheryl from her cause as savior, she decided to join in.
“If you don’t want to phone them, we can give you a lift. Our car’s just around the corner.”
“Don’t tell him that, Maddy. He might be one of them hoodlums that you see on the news. I don’t want to get beaten up so someone can steal my c
ar.”
Cheryl looked at me and giggled, placing a hand over her mouth. “You wouldn’t do that, would you? Beat up some old ladies for their motor car? I can tell you right now, it’s not worth it. My Gary calls it a classic, but it’s at least triple that old.”
“I’m fine, thanks,” I said, edging further away with every second. They must have gone out for a drink. Both women’s eyes were far too bright for this time of the evening.
“We can call the police if you prefer,” Maddy said. “It’s bloody suspicious that you’re out here alone at your age and won’t let us call for help.”
“That’s right,” Cheryl said, stamping her foot and giggling. “It’s our civic duty to report all suspicious activity.”
I backed up another step, trying to gauge what distance away the corner was. If I made a run for it, I doubted these two would follow along very far. If I was too near the intersection though, I was just as likely to bang into another couple of do-gooders coming at me the other way.
“Hey, kid,” Cheryl called out, her voice pitching into strident. “We’re talking to you. The least you can do is pay attention and answer our questions.”
“They don’t raise children the way they used to,” Maddy opined. “He’s nothing but a street rat. Call the cops. For all you know, you’ll reach your car and find out he’s stripped it already.”
Given that my hands were empty, though thrust deep into the pockets of the large coat, her assertion didn’t hold any water. The glass of wine I’d imagined them having increased in number, two, three. More.
“I’m all right. Thanks for the offer. I don’t want anything to do with your car.” I waved. If I’d known, I could’ve started off like that and forestalled all this nonsense. Cheryl was staring at her phone screen in consternation, picking at numbers as though she couldn’t read what they said.
“Goddammit!” she shouted as the phone tipped out of her slippery hands and fell into the gutter. While they both attempted to rescue the dirty device, I took my chance and sprinted around the corner. The next street was empty, thank god.