by Shadow Soft
The woman laughed and wrinkled her nose. “Are you kidding? Have you seen Stefan and Victoria lately? They’ve only known each other two months and they’re practically ready to tie the knot!” She hesitated and took the candy cane out of her mouth. “But you wouldn’t know that. You just got here yesterday.” She stuck her hand out over the counter. “I’m Trish.”
“Hi Trish.” I shook it a bit nervously, as if I expected her to sprout fangs and leap over the counter the moment our skin touched. She didn’t, and I wiped my palm surreptitiously on my pants. “I’m Valx, though you probably already know that.”
She shrugged, opening the cash drawer and thumbing through some dollar bills. “Yeah, Rose’s been lecturing us about you for a while.” There was a moment of quiet, filled with the sound of rustling bills and Trish sucking on her candy cane. “You can have one if you want,” she said out of the corner of her mouth, gesturing absentmindedly to the tin on the end of the counter.
I almost burst out laughing. Here I was fretting about torture at the hands of vampires, and here Trish was talking about candy canes and raccoons having babies and Stefan and Victoria practically ready to tie the knot. Wiping a dusting of snow from the shoulders of my coat, I picked a candy cane from the tin and peered at the transparent plastic wrapping.
Trish started humming as she counted the dollar bills. She sang a snatch of song, scrawled a figure on a bright pink sticky note, then tucked the bills back into their drawer and slammed it shut. “That’s done . . . .” A sudden frown creased her forehead as she patted both front pockets of her coat. “Where on earth did I put that . . . .” Looking up at me suddenly, she laughed. “Are you having trouble with that? Here––”
I handed the candy cane over. My fingers were numb and my nails bitten short, and I couldn’t seem to find the edge of the transparent wrapping.
“These things are always a pain,” Trish muttered, turning it this way and that. “Can never find the thrice-blasted . . . . Ah! There it is . . . . No . . . .” She scowled at it fiercely, then without warning—and rather unceremoniously—bit off an inch of the end. “Ah! There you go. If you’re having trouble, there’s always one way in.” Picking up her humming again, Trish fumbled the plastic apart at the place where she had bitten it. The end of the candy cane dropped to the counter and she peeled the plastic away from the rest, handing it to me.
Not sure how to respond, I accepted my bitten candy cane and held it.
Trish picked up the broken-off end and offered it. “Eh?”
I shook my head.
Shrugging, she popped it into her mouth and slipped off her jacket. “You need anything? Or are you just in here ‘cause it’s warm?” She winked and tossed me her jacket. “Hang that by the door, would you?”
I fumbled to catch the heavy garment. “I was just wandering,” I said cautiously as I did as she asked. “You’re the first person I saw.”
Trish rolled her eyes. “I know. Everyone sleeps in around here. In a town as small as Symbiosia you don’t have the rest of the world telling you when to wake and eat and dress and sleep—it’s all just what you want. Well, you and a handful of neighbors. Especially up here—cold makes you want to stay indoors.” She flipped a switch on the wall and a string of multi-colored Christmas lights flickered on. “There’s a stool under the counter if you want.”
“It’s the beginning of summer,” I pointed out, pulling the stool out and taking a seat.
Trish looked up at me, perplexed. “Yes?”
“You have Christmas lights . . . .”
“Oh.” She chuckled throatily. “Yeah. It’s snowing outside.”
“But it’s summer.”
“But it’s snowing outside. We’re in the Swiss Alps, boy.” She flicked my ear playfully in passing. “It’s always Christmas.”
Always Christmas in Symbiosia. For a couple minutes I sat in silence, watching Trish as she meandered about her shop, flicking on lights and tidying things. Boxes and cans lined most of the shelves—imperishable goods, for the most part. Made sense. You live up in the Swiss Alps, you need food supplies that will last a long time.
Finally, after two or three minutes, I summoned enough courage to clear my throat. “So . . . .”
Trish’s head popped around the end of a shelf. “Hm?”
I cleared my throat again. Nervousness made my voice scratchy. “Are you . . . ?”
She cocked her head curiously.
I licked my lips. Saying the word out loud seemed like bad luck. “One of . . . ?”
Trish emerged from around the end of the shelf carrying an armful of cans. “Ohhh!” she said expansively, “am I a vampire?” She laughed. “Nope. Not me.” My expression must not have been entirely trustful, because she laughed again—a high sound of amusement—and pulled up her top lip, exposing a pink gum-line. “Take a look, kid.”
I looked blankly. I knew vampires wore dentures—that much was obvious—but I didn’t know how to tell the dentures apart from regular teeth.
Trish sighed. “If I was one of them you’d be able to see it right here.” She indicated toward the back of her upper jaw. “They have wires that clip into their normal teeth.”
I looked closer, then settled back on my stool, trusting her. “Ok.” I laughed nervously. “That’s a bit of a relief.”
Trish winked, spreading her hands on the counter. “It’s a bit nerve-wracking living around here, isn’t it?”
“I thought all the humans here trusted the vampires?”
“Well––” Trish rolled her eyes “––we do. They’re our employees and friends. Heavens—Sabrina Tomec is practically in love with Josh, and he’s even shown her his fangs. But––” she pinned me with hard eyes “––you volunteer for this kind of work you know there’s a risk. There’s always a risk. If there wasn’t Symbiosia wouldn’t be a classified scientific experiment and we wouldn’t be hiding in the Swiss Alps and I wouldn’t carry a gun.” She patted her thigh meaningfully. “So sure—we trust them. They’re all painstakingly chosen and meticulously screened. But that doesn’t mean there can’t be any slip-ups.” She grinned. “And that doesn’t mean we don’t fear them.”
“So you’re afraid of them,” I asked slowly, “but you still . . . .”
Trish frowned suddenly and bit off the end of her candy cane. “I hate it when you suck them until they’re all sharp,” she muttered. “They can practically slice your tongue off. Hm? Yes, of course. We know––” she tapped her head “––they’re the best of the best. Moral. Safe. Trustworthy. Vampires are no different from humans, you know, aside from their desire for blood. So why can’t we treat them the same? Some humans are dangerous and some aren’t. Some will lie, steal, and kill, and some won’t.” She shrugged. “Vampires must be the same, right? And the ones here in Symbiosia are trustworthy.”
Trish grinned. “But you know how when you were little you were afraid of the dark? There’s really no greater chance of anything bad happening when it’s dark, but you’re still afraid. See, fear isn’t a rational thing. If humans were rational about fear we wouldn’t have it. Danger is real. Danger is physical. Danger will end with you broken-necked or stabbed. Fear won’t. Fear is all in here.” Again, she tapped her head. “Isn’t it funny how two opposite things can come from the same place? Logic tells me that Symbiosia is one of the safest places on Earth I can be. Nobody is going to crash into me with their car and no mad terrorists are going to go suicidal and blow me up. But fear tells me that I should be terrified. And so––” she threw up her hands “––alas! Humanity! As we fear, so we are. It’s a tug-of-war, Valx kiddo. Between logic and instinct.”
I knew exactly what she was talking about. Logic told me that the Nightfall family didn’t mean me harm, that they had treated me Kindly for three years. They could have imprisoned and abused me, taken advantage of my X blood. Instead they had welcomed me into their home and family. I had become a son and brother to them. Logic said I shouldn’t fear them. But I did. I f
eared them because they were vampires, because it is human instinct to fear vampires.
“How long have you been here?” I asked.
Trish rolled her eyes ceiling-ward, calculating. “Ah . . . . a year now? Just over––thirteen, fourteen months.”
“Has anything . . . . bad happened while you’ve been here?”
She began to sort the armful of cans she had brought to the counter, setting them right-side-up and peering at their labels. “Well, Castor fell off the roof and broke his arm,” she said, “but other than that . . . .” Her tone turned serious. “No, there haven’t been any issues. There were some at the beginning—before I arrived. But none since. Help me sort these, will you? The dates are all messed up. I need them in a line from newest to oldest.”
I set to helping her with alacrity. Anything to occupy my hands. “So the system just works out fine?” I probed. “Vampires work for humans, who donate their blood as wages?”
“Worked great so far. I don’t have to pay my employees. That’s a plus.” She handed me a can. “That one goes at the front.”
Just then the bell on the door jangled and a man stomped in, shaking the snow off his back. “I tell you,” he announced in a husky voice, “moving from Florida to the God-forsaken middle of the Swiss Alps is not the––” He saw me and suddenly petered out. “Well, well, well.”
Instinctively, I scooted off my stool and edged around the side of the counter, closer to Trish. I knew she had a gun in her pocket. If this was . . . .
“If it isn’t the infamous Subject X himself!” the man exclaimed. He pushed back his hood to reveal a bearish head framed by tousled orange ringlets.
“His name’s Valx, Geoffrey,” Trish said around the stem of her mostly-gone candy cane. “How’d you like it if everyone went round callin’ you Grizzly all the time?”
Geoffrey regarded her with bright blue eyes, like chips of summer sky. “Why,” he said, “they practically do.” He stuck out his hand—a massive hand, one made for hauling lumber and swinging an axe. “Name’s Geoffrey, mate. How’re you?”
Trish nudged me with a knowing smile. “You’re fine, kiddo. Geoffrey’s human too.”
A wobbly grin fought past the anxiety in my face. “Sorry,” I said, a bit sheepishly. I shook his hand. “I’m Valx.”
“You’re scared right outta your socks is what you are.” Geoffrey laughed. “You can call me what you want—Geoffrey, Geoff, Grizzly—they all work.” He unwound a scarf from his neck and tossed it onto the counter.
“Don't––!” Trish began, then made a sound of frustration in her throat. “Heavens, Geoff, how many times do I have to tell you to not get everything on my counter all wet––?”
Muttering apologies, Geoffrey snatched up his scarf and tossed it over Trish’s jacket where it hung by the door. “She’s a prickly one,” he grinned at me, jerking his thumb toward Trish where she stooped over the cans on the counter.
“Am not,” Trish spat. “You just don’t have enough room in that hair-brained head of yours to––”
“You’re cousins?” I interrupted.
They both looked at me as if I had just announced that I was Napoleon.
“Gods be gracious,” Geoffrey murmured, “I thought X blood only made him heal quick! Come to find it makes him omniscient too!”
“I’m not omniscient,” I said, smiling faintly. “It’s just––the family I’ve been living with, they have a couple cousins. I’ve seen how cousins interact. You two are just like them.”
Trish bent back to her cans, shaking her head.
Geoffrey blinked. “Oh.” He sounded distinctly disappointed. “Well I guess . . . . hm. That’s not quite as exciting.”
I went back to helping Trish sort the cans by date, oldest to newest. “What do you think of the set-up here in Symbiosia?”
Geoff—or Grizzly, as apparently most people called him—picked something off a nearby shelf and tossed it into the air, spinning, as he pulled a stool from under the counter. “Perfecto!” he said in what I was fairly sure was a French accent. “Everything I could––”
“You know perfecto is Spanish,” Trish interjected without looking up.
Grisly looked at her in clear affront. “So it is. I never said it was anything else.”
“You said it with a French accent.” She jotted a couple more figures on the pink sticky note.
“So? That––” He made a face. “You can’t say one word in an accent, Trish!”
“Sure you can!”
“Maybe I’m a Frenchman speaking Spanish.”
“Or you’re an Irishman who doesn’t know how to speak proper English.”
“Rubbish. I’m from Florida.”
“Your parents weren’t.”
Grizzly snorted. “Yeah, my parents were from New Hampshire.”
“Griz.” Trish looked up and gave him a flat look. “Our dads are brothers. I know where you’re family’s from. They moved from Ireland when they were boys.”
Grizzly hesitated with the little cardboard box in his hand half opened. “Hm,” he grunted, “that’s right. They are brothers, aren’t they?” He pulled out a plastic-wrapped package of crackers. “All the same. My mum was from the States.”
Trish rolled her eyes. “You mean––”
It was about then that my impatience outpaced my amusement. “Grizzly,” I said, “will you please answer my question?”
The bearish man looked at me in evident surprise. “Question, lad?”
I cleared my throat. “I asked you how you like Symbiosia . . . ?”
“Ohhh! That’s right––” He gave me a hard look, as if I had just pulled some elaborate prank on him. “You did, didn’t you. Well, skin an’ scale me.”
I sat waiting patiently, until Trish nudged me to keep helping her sort the cans.
Grizzly heaved a contemplative sigh. “Well,” he said, opening the plastic wrapping and pulling out a cracker, “as I was sayin’––Symbiosia’s perfect for me. Perfecto.” He glared at Trish in faux-exasperation. “Everything I could ever want is here: incredible scenery, fabulous hunting, and gracious gods––peace! Ever-blessed peace! No traffic, no tourists, no city lights and honking horns, no two-hour commutes––”
“Griz,” Trish said, “Florida doesn’t have that much traffic.”
He scowled at her, popping the cracker into his mouth. “Hush, Trish. You lived in Virginia. You wouldn’t know.”
“West Virginia.”
He made a vague motion with his hand. “All the same. West Virginia’s part of Virginia, isn’t it?”
“No, it’s an entirely different state.”
“Oh.” Grizzly stopped chewing in the middle of the bite, as if re-evaluating his life. “Well.” He grunted somewhere deep in his vast chest. “Wasn’t always.”
Trish rolled her eyes and kept working.
“As I was saying, young man––” Grizzly turned his attention back to me “––Symbiosia’s perfect. The peak of human existence, if you ask me. Mountains and mist and hardly a soul to ruin it.”
I put the last can in place and stepped back to let Trish take a look. “I was asking along the lines of vampires,” I said patiently. “I don’t have any arguments about the scenery.”
“Although,” Trish chipped in, “the appeal of year-round gelid temperatures can be debated . . . .”
Grizzly grinned and winked at me. “I’m not sure what that word means, but Trish is usually wrong. About––”
“Am not!”
“Trish.” I laid a hand on her arm, forestalling the impending argument. “He was about to answer my question.” Which would be something of an achievement at this point. Shaking her head, Trish subsided. She gathered slid the cans—in order—onto a rolling cart and wheeled it down an aisle, disappearing from view. I looked back to Grizzly. “You were saying?”
He shrugged and stuck two crackers in his mouth at the same time. “I don’t mind it.” He gave a hearty chuckle. “By gaw, laddie,
I have enough blood in this body to go the whole town round!”
“Yes, but are you ever afraid of the vampires?” Clearly I was going to have to be more specific with my questions. “Afraid they’ll try to take over Symbiosia, maybe throw all the humans into prison, torture and bleed you?”
Grizzly looked truly horrified at the suggestion. “They don’t have a real jail here, you know,” he said. “Just a few secure cells inside the research center.”
“That wasn’t my point.” I was trying very hard to not grow impatient. Grizzly was a likable guy most ways, he just clearly wasn’t the sharpest. “When you pass a vampire in a dark alley at night, are you afraid he’ll knock you out and suck your blood?”
The big man seemed to consider that for a moment. “There aren’t any alleys here,” he said finally, “whether at night or during the day.”
“But . . . . ok, well when you pass one of them in the street, then. Are you ever afraid? Or say you’re in one of the aisles here––” I indicated the grocery aisles all around us. “And there’s no one else in sight, and one of them is coming toward you.” How could he not be getting my question? “Are you afraid then?”
“Mm.” Grizzly’s brow furrowed and he crumpled the cardboard box in his hand meaningfully. “Vampires aren’t gods,” he rumbled. “If one jumps me––eh, too bad for him. Grizzly’s arms crush trees.”
Somehow I doubted that. I mean, he was strong. Formidably so. But . . . . How did you crush a tree, anyway? “Would you think one might jump you?” I asked, trying to get him back on topic. I didn’t want to know what Grizzly could do to one who did jump him. I wanted to know what the likelihood was one would.
Grizzly shook his head. “Naw. We’re all buds.”
I almost sighed in relief. Finally, something resembling a helpful answer! “Well that’s good. You like to hang out with them then?”