I was going to die. But we all go sometime. I didn’t want to die like a coward. I remember thinking that. Which is why I tried to stand as bravely as I could, which is why I cast around me, trying to find something—anything—to defend myself with. There was a dumpster behind me, and some pieces of cardboard, which were worthless, but there was also, by my feet, a particularly large chunk of broken glass.
I picked it up, my fingers scrabbling against it as I tried to grasp it with shaking hands. I held it tightly in front of me, and I took a deep breath as the four men paused, just out of reach, staring down at me with those wide, terrible grins, all of their sharp teeth exposed.
“I’m not afraid of you,” I lied to them. The words came out shaky, and no one would ever know that I’d said them besides these four terrible men (who would probably laugh about it later). But it didn’t matter. I’d needed to say them, and I’d said them.
And that’s when it all began to go a little…strange.
I felt a movement behind me, something so cold that a shiver ran through my body before I’d even realized that someone was standing behind me—right behind me. A strong, muscular arm snaked itself around my waist, and then my back was held tightly against hard curves.
Curves that, even though I’d only been held against them for such a little time…I still recognized.
Elle stood behind me, holding on to me tightly as she stared down the four men, her eyes flashing in the darkness and her mouth set in a slim smirk of satisfaction. She’d wrapped her left arm around my waist, which pressed my back snug against the front of her, and her other hand was busy holding yet another steel girder (where was she even finding these?) like one might hold a bat. She hefted the metal beam lightly, with a calculated stare at the four men. As I stared up at her, as I watched, she began to smile, too…revealing a set of incisors that were long, pointed, and—as they glittered in the dying light—I realized were razor sharp.
“You seem to be awfully fond of this one, Elle,” said the leader heavily, his thin eyebrows raised as he stared the two of us down, lifting his hawkish nose as if all of this was beneath him. “Magdalena knows what you did last night. She’s not happy.”
Elle snorted and actually chuckled, her body reverberating against mine, as I swallowed, still panting and shaking against her. I seemed to be caught in the middle of something that only in the most minor ways involved me.
There was a long moment of silence, where none of us moved a muscle. Finally, the leader cleared his throat, casting a backward glance at his accomplices.
“I’m tired of this, gentlemen. You need to be leaving,” Elle hissed out then, all traces of humor gone as her voice came out between us and the men as a low, threatening growl. The tiny hairs on the back of my neck came to complete attention, and I gulped. It had seemed that the pavement beneath us, for the tiniest of moments…trembled.
“Why are you protecting her?” asked the leader then, his tone turning wheedling as he cocked his head, crossing his arms in impatience. “She is of no consequence, Elle. If you give her to us, we will not bother you anymore, and this whole thing can be—”
“Enough,” said Elle, the word so unexpectedly sharp and deep spoken that again, it seemed the very pavement beneath us shook, the ground quivering beneath the soles of my feet. “Leave,” she growled. Her eyes flashed in the darkness like sparks about to ignite. “Leave now.”
For a moment, the leader considered this, and for half a heartbeat, he actually looked like he was about to continue to posture or cajole her, but Elle took a single menacing step forward, her boot crunching softly against the broken glass beneath it. That’s all it took. The four men took one quick step backward…and then the spell was broken. They said nothing more, only turned and moved so quickly that my eyes couldn’t even follow their motions, only the shadowy suggestion of running men, out of the alleyway and disappearing in a single shadow into the twilit evening.
“Now then,” said Elle in that low, velvety voice. She let go of me suddenly, and I turned, reeling and wobbling on my heels as I put out a shaking hand again against the crumbling brick building, still panting, still feeling my blood move through me quicker than it ever had before. I stared up at this impossible woman, this impossible woman who held my gaze and, opening up her hand, let the steel girder drop to clunk loudly by our feet where it came to rest, one tip against the edge of my high heel.
“They will be back, Cassandra,” said Elle, lifting her chin and staring down at me with her dark, flashing eyes. She searched my gaze for a long moment to make certain I understood. She turned slightly then, tugging at the edges of her impeccable white blouse that seemed to shine in the darkness. She cleared her throat, a single, elegant brow raised. “They will bring others,” she continued, “and they will be back, and they will kill you slowly when they find you. And they will find you. Do you want that to happen?”
I held her gaze. I don’t know why I did it, but I had to know. I guess I just needed to make certain, in that moment, that all of this was real. I crouched down slowly, wobbling on my heels as I placed my shaking fingers under the steel girder, curling them around the cold, slick metal.
I tried to lift it.
It wouldn’t budge. It was as if the girder itself was bolted to the ground. It was thick, perhaps six inches around and solid steel. I wondered if a crane would normally lift one this thick.
“Cassandra,” Elle repeated, her gaze flicking down to my fingers curled around the girder and back to my face. She tapped a toe and shook her head as if she was losing patience. “You don’t seem to understand,” she growled out. “You need to make a decision now, or you will die.”
I straightened slowly. I held her gaze, my heart roaring inside of me as I stood up, my hands curling and uncurling into fists at my sides, curling into my skirt’s fabric, my mouth suddenly bone dry as I tried to swallow.
I needed to know. So I asked her.
“What are you?” I whispered to Elle.
She sighed out for a long moment, shaking her head, her dirty blonde locks, carefully and perfectly curled to ringlets, swaying around her shoulders, the cream-colored blouse still shining in the dark. “We don’t have time for this,” she insisted, her gaze turning steely as she frowned, as she leaned toward me.
“No,” I said, gritting my teeth, searching her face as I took a step back. The chain-link fence pressed against my back. “What are you?” I repeated, my voice shaking.
Her expression smoothed itself down, and then her lips were curling up at the corners, but just a little. But it was enough for me to see the glinting points of her incisors as she took one long stride toward me, as she cupped my chin with her long fingers. She lifted my face so that she could stare down into it, lifted it not cruelly but with a sure and absolute strength. Her fingers against my skin were as cold as stone.
“What do you think I am?” she whispered.
This close, I could see the contours of her fangs, could see the depth and darkness to her flashing eyes. I knew what she was, even though it was impossible, even though it was impossible. I knew it, even as the wounds in my neck began to throb in time to my pulse, even as I felt the string connected from my heart to hers tighten and tighten, like I was being reeled in, hook, line and sinker.
And maybe I was reeled in, as I stared into the swirling depths of her night-dark eyes. After all, out of the whole city of Boston with its millions of hopes and dreams and nightmares, I had found her again.
Yes, I knew what she was.
“A vampire,” I whispered, holding her gaze. Her eyes didn’t even flicker at that statement, only seemed to deepen, to draw me in more, down into the darkest parts of her.
“Does it frighten you?” she asked, her velvet voice draping around me, holding me as close as she was now. It was only her fingers that touched me, our bodies still inches apart, but we could have been miles apart, and I would have felt the need to touch her. It roared through me, that uncontrolled want, and I k
new that my own hands were drifting up before I’d even realized that they were moving slowly, slowly, to place themselves at Elle’s waist.
It was probably the slow, unconscious movement that teenagers would make at their first dance, and it seemed just as, if not more, awkward. But my fingers were wrapped gently around her strong, hard hips now, her muscles taut and steely beneath my touch and there was no turning back. They were there. She felt me touching her.
And she breathed out slowly in the gathering darkness, for a single moment losing her intensity as she closed her eyes, taking a deep breath.
“Cassandra,” she said again, opening her eyes, searching my face. “You need to make a decision.” Her words were soft and strained.
“What decision?” I asked, my voice catching in my throat. She had neither confirmed or denied the fact that I had just said she was a vampire. But her fangs were still glinting in the half-light, and again, four burly men had run away from her, and again, she had hefted a steel girder like it was nothing. I knew it to be true—how else could any of this be explained? But now the single word “vampire was in the open between us like a wound, and it couldn’t be taken back. We couldn’t go back to a moment ago when it was still all conjecture. When I wasn’t certain.
But maybe I’d been certain all along. Maybe I’d known, and had still been trying to explain it all away. And failing.
“Those men are going to come back,” said Elle softly, quietly, one brow raised. “And you must make your decision. You can stay and wait for them,” she said, raising a finger as I made a move to speak. I fell silent, watching her dark gaze. “Or…” She trailed off, inclining her head toward me as her smile deepened—but there was not a single bit of warmth behind it. It was a cold, calculating smile that showed off her incisors and nothing more. “Or,” she repeated mildly, “you could come with me.”
“With you? Where?” I asked, brows furrowed.
“I can keep you safe,” she whispered, leaning forward, her lips so close to mine that if I closed my eyes, I could already taste her mouth.
I didn’t believe her, not for a single second, but I stared deeply into her eyes, my heart thrumming, my body waking up and alive and insistently turned towards her like she was the sun in my universe. She could keep me safe?
“What about you?” I asked her, then, feeling my cheeks warm, even as I said it, but I held tightly to my defiance. “Could you keep me safe from yourself?” I asked her sharply.
She let go of my chin, dropped her hand to her side. Again, for half a heartbeat, her expression wavered. It was for such a tiny space of time that if I’d blinked, I would have missed it, but I hadn’t blinked. I’d seen what had come over her face this time.
Pain. And regret.
But it was immediately replaced by her cold mask of indifference. She shrugged and smiled widely, her full lips up and over her wickedly sharp incisors. “No,” she said companionably. “You would not be safe from me. It’s really a choice,” she said, reaching out and tracing a long-nailed finger down the side of my neck. I shuddered against her, breathing out heavily as a flare of desire blossomed brightly in my belly. “It’s them,” she said, leaning forward and whispering the words sibilantly into my ear, “or me.”
“What kind of choice—” I began, but she shook her head, glancing over her shoulder back down the alleyway.
“I can keep you safe,” she repeated, one brow up as she looked back deeply into my eyes.
There was so much want inside of me. Want for things I’d never experienced, want for her, want for safety. It wasn’t much of a choice, my rational brain (which was, admittedly, being quickly taken over by all of the emotions and unfurling desires inside of me) knew, but it was the only choice I had.
I could choose the cruel men who wanted to destroy me…or this beautiful woman who I knew to be just as cruel as they were…to save me.
I feverishly tried to consider other options. The police. I could go to the police, couldn’t I? “I can save myself,” I told her, then, defiance rearing up inside of me as I searched her gaze. It was half-hearted, how I said those words, but it was true. I didn’t really want her to save me. There were a lot of desires and wants inside of me, but from the tiniest of kids, I’d never been the one to play the damsel in distress—I was always playing the knight who saved the damsel. I wasn’t a weakling. Throughout my entire life, I’d taken care of myself.
Again, there was a flicker in her expression, but it passed too quickly this time for me to make out exactly what it might have been. “Maybe,” she conceded with a soothing, low growl. “Maybe normally you could save yourself…but this isn’t a normal situation you’ve stumbled into, Cassandra,” she said, whispering my name like it was a prayer. Again, I shuddered against her. “Make your choice,” she whispered.
I closed my eyes for a long moment. I took a deep breath. And I told her the truth:
“I don’t want to die today,” I whispered.
Her smile grew wider before she gave me a single tight nod.
“Not today,” she agreed. And placing one strong arm around my waist, she led me out of the alleyway and down the sidewalk, the night descending around us without a single star in the sky.
A cold wind blew, but I was too numb to feel it.
Chapter 4: Not Really Safe
“This is where you live?” I asked, staring up at the monstrosity before us.
We’d only been walking a block, and where we now found ourselves was only a block away from the art gallery, a block that led into a more residential neighborhood—if “residential” was even the right word to describe it.
These houses were about the size of the typical McMansions, but definitely not as I’d ever pictured McMansions. The homes were straight out of a previous century, the sprawling houses and old trees that lined this block, complete with iron-spike-tipped fences two feet thick, built of old stones and fading brick. The road itself was lined with cobblestone sidewalks, worn smooth by hundreds of years of people walking over them. I could imagine Victorian men and women ambling under these old streetlights, with canes and top hats and really wide skirts as they leaned close together, laughing in hushed tones.
And at the end of this strange cul de sac was Elle’s…house.
It was the only house on the block that didn’t seem to fit with the others. For one, it was of modern construction. As in, whatever poor old house had been sitting on this bit of property had obviously been bulldozed down to make room for the new. The building was all straight lines and metal and enormous walls of glass that was tinted so that you could see the reflection of the descending nightfall, but not the inside of the house itself. It reminded me of a small skyscraper, but was only three stories tall, with balconies at odd places, and enormous colored metal doors that didn’t seem to have any handles. It was the sort of thing that some modern surrealist would put into a painting and call it “The Oubliette” or some nonsense.
It didn’t look comfortable, or even remotely like a place where people could live our a normal life. But I could certainly imagine very, very rich business associates hosting a dinner party there.
We paused at the gate and Elle keyed something into the electronic box hanging on the worn brick wall. Almost immediately the sleek metal fence rolled back on its little wheels, letting us in. We walked the paved driveway up to what I was assuming was the front door, but what was, in reality, two enormous slabs of metal that looked vaguely door-shaped, which were painted bright red. They had no handles, but they still opened soundlessly for us to enter without Elle making a single motion. Maybe there was someone on the other side opening them, I thought, but when we moved through the doors into the building itself, the doors clicked quietly back into place, and there was no one here in this main entryway who could have opened and shut them.
It wasn’t really an entryway, so much as one large, industrial room. There were exposed beams and metal piping and duct work in the ceiling, and the floor was a pure, clean conc
rete. The walls seemed to ascend forever, and were either shiny concrete or metal and black as night. At the far end of the room were a few enormous openings to a couple of hallways, and a sprawling metal-looking fireplace with a single large chair seated in front of it.
The chair seemed out of place—there was no other furniture in this high-school-gymnasium sized room, but even apart from that, it didn’t fit in with the aesthetic. The chair itself was a sumptuous ruby red, and looked like it’d been plucked from a Victorian living room, with its high, hand-carved back replete with flowers and vines and curlicues. It also looked like it was probably the most uncomfortable chair that anyone had ever sat in. Which is why it looked like no one had ever sat on it.
“This way,” murmured Elle, not even breaking pace as she walked across the room with an even, predatory stride. She’d let go of my waist when she’d keyed in the entrance code down at the beginning of the driveway, and she’d made no move to touch me since. I have to admit, in this cold, sterile backdrop, and with everything that had just happened, I could have really used a bit of comfort. Not that I needed her to touch me, but I needed some small sign of assurance from her that I’d made the right decision.
I didn’t even really know what I was doing here.
My head had cleared just a little, walking that block from the alleyway to her home. Or, at least, what I was assuming to be her home. The pounding in my veins had subsided, I could take a deep breath again, and the immediate danger had faded into a regrettable—and what would probably be dredged up in my frequent nightmares—memory. Now that I was clearer headed, I could fully examine what sort of predicament I’d gotten myself into.
I glanced backward, toward the “doors,” and then back at Elle clicking her way slowly and sedately, the sharp retorts from her high-heel shoes echoing off the high ceilings, her hips swaying in time to a beat only she could hear, as she made her way across the floor of this massive room.
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