“What’s the clearing?” Lola asked.
“A place where I go. I brought Matt there to try out his new vampire skills,” I said and laughed a little.
I had never brought Lola there, nor told her I went there. It had been my spot only, until Matt.
“What do you think?” I asked Lola.
“I don’t really think anything, but you guys both seem to agree.”
“So what? We go out there and you point, and then we go in that direction?”
“That’s what Raven said.”
“That is not what Raven said,” I said in reply. “She mumbled and you somehow got something out of it.”
“She specifically said ‘follow the fog,’ Vic.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Where will we end up?”
“I don’t know. We’re just following.”
“Following what? What will we get to?”
Lola just shrugged. I had always been a little amazed at her propensity to take Raven at her word, but even more so that she didn’t need...to have a reason. She could just go. Follow.
I thought about this as both Lola and Matt waited on me. I was apparently the leader here, though I wouldn’t be the one to direct us.
I had no idea how this fit with my creator coming back into the picture and everything he had told me, if it even did fit. And I wasn’t sure I trusted Raven. In fact, I knew I didn’t trust Raven. But Lola did, and I didn’t have much else to go on.
And then it occurred to me that it wasn’t like I had anything else to do. Why not go? See where this led us. It couldn’t hurt anything.
“How far away is this? Do I need to pack?”
Matt laughed at this, but I was being serious.
“Vic,” Matt interjected before Lola could answer, “let’s just go. Why not? And, at the least, you’ll get away from...”
“Ivy. Doctor Ivy.”
I finally said his name, which made the situation feel a lot more real. I hadn’t thought of him in a long time before this, and he was someone I wished could just fade into the centuries. But that was no longer possible.
“Right,” Matt continued. “He doesn’t seem to be in much condition to travel.”
I looked at both of them for what seemed to be a long time, but which was probably just a few seconds. They both looked at me expectantly, like they were waiting for my permission or something. Finally, I just gave in.
“Alright, let’s go tonight.”
5
It was another clear night, as I led both Matt and Lola on my makeshift trail into the clearing.
We had my car and some personal items each. Oh, and plenty of money. Lola would tell us what direction to go, and we would go.
I stepped out into the clearing and turned around, watching both Matt and Lola. Lola appeared very clear-eyed to me as she took in her surroundings, and the thought occurred to me that maybe this place had some kind of energetic quality that made it special. Raven would probably be able to tell us, but I was happy to be leaving Raven behind too.
I watched as Lola walked around a little bit, finding the right spot. Eventually, she walked over to the drop-off and watched the river a little while. Then she moved more into the middle of the clearing, staring in the direction where Matt had tested out his speed for the first time. Finally, she stopped.
“I like this spot,” she said. And then, “That’s our direction.”
“Northeast,” Matt said, and it was all settled.
We didn’t waste any time getting back to the car.
Silently, the three of us walked back through the trail and to the gravel lot. I got in the driver’s seat, of course. Lola sat next to me and Matt got into the back.
Lola pulled her seat closer to the dash to give Matt some more leg room, and after that we were off.
“So where do we stop?” I asked, turning my head toward Lola. But Matt answered.
“Between the two of you, we’ll know where to stop,” he said, and I wondered why he thought that. Well, I guess it was obvious why he thought that about Lola, but I wasn’t sure how I was a part of this.
The car purred as I took it out onto the highway and got it up to seventy-five miles per hour. The night was pleasant and cool, though it was still warm from the day. The sky was clear.
The three of us made conversation and listened to music—jazz—which was probably still my favorite, even though much time had passed since its heyday.
Trends were funny. I had seen so many of them come and go, and I really didn’t care much about them. I liked what I liked, even if it had been popular seventy-five years ago. And anyway, it just seemed to fit with our nighttime adventure. The music moved with us. Or maybe we moved with the music. Either way...
I looked in the rearview mirror and checked out Matt, who lounged in the backseat, stretched out as much as he could. His hair blew lightly from the trickle of wind that entered though Lola’s cracked window. He didn’t seem to notice me watching.
I had the sudden realization twenty-five miles away that we were all now outside of the protection of our respective homes and were at the mercy of the sunlight. We’d need to find someplace to stay before dawn.
It was weird, never really spending any time in the daylight, but I guess I had gotten used to it over the years. I missed it, though, when I looked out the windows of my apartment and saw people on the sidewalks of the city enjoying themselves. In those moments, I remembered what it was like to feel sun on my arms and not be worried that I’d fry myself.
What was life-giving to all of humanity was our greatest enemy.
We drove for six hours, with me in the driver’s seat all the way. Matt dozed off after a little while, and Lola and I talked. I was always amazed that we still had things to say to one another after so many decades of being friends.
We found a place to stop and holed up there for the day, checking out when it was dark again and getting back on the road with Lola at the helm. I wondered when we would stop and change directions.
We both told Matt stories. Vampire tales. He laughed and gasped, and at least a couple of times accused us of outright lying. We swore to him we were telling the truth, and we were.
He told us some stories too. From his life. From college and from his childhood. He had been an athlete—football, basketball and baseball—and I knew that meant he had been both popular and successful. I didn’t much care myself. That’s not why I liked him, but I knew from observation that he had been special in the eyes of others because of his talents. And, in a way, he still carried that with him, though I bet he didn’t know it.
This was a twentieth-century phenomenon, of course, and one that I found particularly interesting, if not a little odd.
When I was human, everyone around me worked on a farm. Boys played games and sports, yes, but only for play. And at a certain age, everyone—men and women—worked, and that was it.
The idea that a grown man or woman would spend most of their time playing what was essentially a game and maybe even getting paid for it was a completely foreign idea. The idea that such a person was culturally special was even more foreign. I had watched with amusement the rise of professional sports leagues and, in this country at least, college sports. I thought it a very odd permutation of human society. But, whatever. I had seen a lot of odd things.
We told Matt about the wealth builders, essentially vampire bankers, when he started to worry about running out of money.
One thing about being a creature who runs around at night and drinks blood is that you were taken care of. There weren’t that many of us, even in the world as a whole, and we had...particular needs. So when you needed money, you went to a wealth builder, and they gave you what you needed, which was essentially whatever amount you asked for.
The thing about living forever is that compound interest takes on a whole new meaning. The builders (as we tended to shorten their label) had made money work for us for millennia, or as far back as there was currency to
be traded.
Their gift was the magnetization of money. They attracted it. Like I attracted people to seduce. I didn’t know too much about it and didn’t really care. I just knew I had all the money I wanted.
Finally, I started to feel like we were slowing down, even though Lola was keeping the car steady at eighty, and I wondered if we were ready to stop.
“Lola? Do you feel that?”
“No, what?”
“I feel like we’re slowing down.”
“Like we should slow down or like we are?” Matt asked from the passenger seat.
“No, like we are literally slowing down.”
“I’m still driving the same speed,” Lola said, glancing in the rearview at me with a look of confusion on her face.
“Pull over,” Matt said. I thought for a moment he was going to grab the steering wheel, but Lola quickly got us to the shoulder of the road.
“Okay, now what?” she said.
I opened the door and got out of the car. The dust was still settling from the movement of the car.
Something was calling to me from this spot. I looked up and watched the stars for a moment, and they seemed to speak to me.
“I think we go from here,” I said to Matt and Lola, who had both gotten out of the car and were watching me.
They looked at each other, and I felt momentarily crazy, like they were both against me and deciding what to do. But that passed, and when they looked back at me, Lola indicated that she was ready to locate.
As before, she situated herself, stopped finally, and pointed at one o’clock.
“That’s due east,” Matt said. I was starting to feel that he was a human compass. Or maybe I should say vampire compass.
I considered the direction. Eventually, we would hit an ocean, and we weren’t more than eight hours away at this point. I wasn’t sure what we would do if that happened, so I didn’t worry about it. I just got back in the car.
Matt took over for Lola and we drove a few more hours until it was light.
We got two rooms at the place where we stopped because Lola said she was getting tired of us. She smiled when she said it, but I knew she was telling the truth because I was starting to feel it too. Both of us had high personal space needs, which partly accounted for the success of our friendship. Actually, I would have said this was somewhat typical of vampires in general. We were all somewhat introverted, I guess.
Matt and I hung out in our room as Lola retreated into hers. I decided that later in the day I was going to put the two of them together, and I was going to retreat. I wasn’t sure how Matt was feeling, but he generally seemed to prefer being around other people most of the time. If he wanted some time by himself, he could say so.
Matt and I passed the time, as all vampires do, as best we could. We had sex, which I was still having some difficulty with. Not the physical part, but the part where Matt wasn’t dead afterward. I wished I could let go of that discomfort completely, but, you know, old habits die hard after three centuries.
A little while later, Matt was resting and I was reading. I looked up from my book, or my e-reader I should say (I was still getting used to the idea of not reading a paper book, but on this trip it just made more sense to bring the device) and looked out of the sheer curtains that hung over the window. For the first time in a really long time, I longed to be outside.
I was stuck in this room, granted, with Matt at least, and any way I looked at it, I was trapped here. I could seduce people at will. I was faster, stronger, and in almost every way superior to a regular human, and, yet, here I was, in a hotel room, that I could not leave, because I would eventually die.
It was cruel to be so gifted, and yet not be able to experience the simplest aspects of existence. For many years, I had lived in the dark and not thought about it, convincing myself that I preferred it even, so it surprised me to have the very human desire to simply be outside. To be able to move where I wanted, when I wanted. To live.
And therefore to die.
My own death had become something of a phantom to me. It was something I once had, that now mocked me. And I was angry.
It had been taken from me.
And the person who had taken it now wanted to live from me.
I had never thought much about being created. I simply hadn’t had time to when I was first transformed. I was surviving those first few weeks, doing what I needed to do to get by. Figuring out, even, what I needed to do to get by. I was alone and exhausted and weak. And in a lot of ways, I still was.
Anger was not something I had ever felt a lot of as a vampire. It seemed silly somehow. To be angry when many humans would give an arm and a leg to have what you had. To feel powerful. To be powerful. To live forever.
If they only knew.
It surprised me when I felt tears come to my eyes. I began to cry, softly at first, then a little harder. Matt must have noticed.
“Vic?”
“I want to die,” I said, softly and with gaps between words where my sobs were.
I didn’t want to look at him, to see the look of disgust or shock or whatever it was on his face at hearing my proclamation.
Maybe it was the human part of me. The part of me that had lived for twenty-three years that shuddered every time those words came close to my mind. But it was true. I wanted to die. And I never would. And I hadn’t accepted that yet.
I went to push myself off the bed so I could get away and be alone, but Matt reached out for me and wouldn’t let go.
Finally, I just laid back down and cried, and Matt didn’t say anything. He put a hand on the back of my head and it felt soothing in the way a parent might do the same thing. His large hand exerted a certain pressure, a weight that felt good.
We lay there like that for a long time.
PART SIX
1
It was four hours down the road later. We were halfway to the ocean.
It had been a long time since I had seen the ocean, and I half wanted to drive all the way there and get out and smell the salt on the air. Look out over the wide expanse of water that seemed to go on forever.
But we had a task at hand, and I really didn’t think we would get that far. If we were about to hit the ocean, we were probably supposed to get across it. Which meant we needed an airport. Matt and Lola must have been thinking the same thing.
I hadn’t spent a lot of time thinking about what was at the end of this path, but a part of me thought I already knew. Like I had always known this was there. And that I would one day find it.
Although, without Lola I never would have found it. And, to some degree, without Matt I wouldn’t have found it either.
But either way, none of us talked about where we were going and what we would find there. We were going to cross that bridge first and then talk about it, I guessed.
As I sat in the backseat, I thought that at least one of us, probably, would need to feed soon, and that would pose an interesting situation.
I was out of my element and in some ways Lola was out of hers. Not that I couldn’t do it, but I had gotten complacent, if I was really being honest, and this would stretch me a little.
We drove past a lot of trees and a lot of hills on our way to ocean. A lot. There seemed to be nothing else, as we got closer and closer. I wondered what would happen, but I thought I already knew.
“We should stop,” Lola finally said, pulling the car over onto the side of the highway.
“You ready to locate again?” Matt asked, looking just a little surprised.
“Not exactly,” Lola said, pulling the keys out of the ignition and opening her car door to get out.
Matt and I followed because it seemed like the right thing to do, and all three of us stood on the side of the road watching cars go past at seventy miles per hour.
“I think we’ve got to find an airport,” Lola said, which confirmed what I had been thinking now for some time.
“Airport, huh?” Matt said while he kicked a few rocks and t
hen turned his gaze up and out.
“Yeah, we’re going across,” Lola said.
“Are we near an airport?” I asked.
Matt was already on his phone taking a look.
“Yes, actually. Um, about twenty miles away.”
“There we go,” I said.
Lola made eye contact with me and started to get back in the car.
“Wait, how do we know where to go when we get there?” I asked.
“I’ll know,” she said, sliding the rest of the way into the driver’s seat.
2
We parked the car, grabbed our bags and headed inside to the terminal.
I didn’t travel much.
I tended to stay in one spot, until it was time to move on for good. The last time that happened was seven years ago. I hadn’t left the city since, much less been on a plane.
Matt and I followed behind Lola as she walked up to a “departures” sign. I wasn’t sure how this was going to work, since pointing at one o’clock wasn’t going to help us much.
She looked at the cities listed on the board and the flights that were going there. Then she pulled out her phone.
I looked around me at the people going by and thought about dinner. This would actually be a great place to hunt. The body, however, would pose a problem. But anywhere people were in motion, transient types, was a good place.
I was brought back to the present by the sound of Matt and Lola discussing our next move.
“I think it’s this one,” Lola said, pointing at a flight to a centrally located city across the ocean. “It leaves in two hours.”
Matt looked at me and shrugged in a “might as well do what she says” kind of way. I agreed.
We went and bought our tickets, and the attendant at the counter gave us a look. We didn’t have much luggage, we were all young—or at least looked young—and we were buying first class tickets for a flight that left in two hours.
She probably thought we were spending Mommy and Daddy’s money. Or maybe that one of us was a tech billionaire. I smiled inwardly as I thought she would never guess the real reason. Humans.
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