Nyx chuckled. “It seems we do, in fact, have more in common that we thought. My apologies, for earlier… it’s just, after the last vampire I encountered, I’ve been leery of any vampires I encountered here. I never got a good look at the one who attacked me. But I came here to New Orleans on a lead… thinking I’d find her. So far, no luck. Anyway, it’s nothing personal. But when you’ve been attacked by a vampire…”
“I get it,” I said. “I feel the same way about the demons.”
Nyx cocked her head. “What demons?”
“There are demons possessing humans,” I said. “When they leave the host, they poison their blood. It’s why I lost control before. I tried to feed on someone who’d been infected.”
“Curious,” Nyx said. “I did something similar… but I didn’t have the excuse of being possessed.”
“What did you do?”
“Well, unable to shift out of this form, I couldn’t return to my home. In my natural state you could swim by me in the sea and never notice me at all. We are made of water, and we are one with the water. After a feed, I would typically return to the abyss… return to our kind. But it is taboo amongst our kind to retain a human form for any purpose other than to hunt.”
“So you had to leave your home?” I asked. “Sounds like something else we have in common.”
“But my diet didn’t change.”
“So you tried to make a meal out of someone and the paranormal police brought you here?”
Nyx laughed. “The paranormal police? More like a young lady and her witch of an apprentice. Who’s also a vampire, by the way.”
I nodded. “Annabelle and Hailey… I know them well.”
“They put you here, too?”
I nodded, “I’m pretty sure. But my vampire boyfriend cooperated with them. This is his fault, too.”
Nyx nodded. “Well, I won’t try to attack you again.”
“I appreciate that. I mean, I think you ripped a hole in my hospital gown… heaven forbid I have to get another one.”
Nyx chuckled. “These gowns are the worst.”
“Tell me about it,” I said. “The draft is something awful.”
“So long as it doesn’t drop below thirty-two degrees, I should be fine,” Nyx said.
“Because you’re water?”
Nyx nodded. “Precisely. One advantage of being in a warmer climate than I’m accustomed to. My people typically dwell in rivers. The water always moves, so we don’t freeze. But in this form… it’s a bit more difficult to stay fluid.”
“Where are you from, then? Your people, I mean?”
“Kansas City.”
I narrowed my brow. “Why Kansas?”
Nyx coughed. “Missouri.”
“What?”
“Kansas City, Missouri. There are two Kansas Cities. My people dwell in the part of the Missouri River on the Missouri side.”
“Why rivers? I mean, wouldn’t oceans be more pleasant?”
“Not for us,” Nyx said. “We prefer fresh water. But in this condition, it really doesn’t matter. I’m stuck living amongst the herd.”
“You refer to humans as a herd?” I asked, smiling slyly.
“Well, what else would you call them?”
I shrugged. “Can’t think of a better term, frankly. I mean, they do tend to congregate in groups or herds. And they exist mostly as a food source.”
“Now,” Nyx said, “that’s something we can agree upon. In spite of my general aversion to your kind, perhaps I’ll make an exception in your case.”
“The fact that you can’t stake me kind of makes befriending me your best option.”
“I confess,” Nyx said, “my reasons are altogether selfish.”
“Besides,” I said, “we both have a special diet. What do they feed you in this place?”
Nyx rolled her eyes. “Imitation human meat.”
“What the hell is that?”
“Ground-up chicken that they season and flavor to make it taste more like human. Doesn’t take much seasoning. Humans taste like chicken, anyway.”
“They kind of do, don’t they?” I asked. “Not that I generally eat humans, but hunting them for their blood, you can’t help but get a taste of some flesh every now and again.”
Chapter Eight
Nyx and I pretty much stuck together in the asylum. Neither of us should have been there. We weren’t mentally ill. Mental illness presumes disease—something gone wrong that isn’t according to design. In neither her case nor mine were we diseased. We were both acting according to our natures, but acting out of character on account of rare, supernatural encounters that had made us behave differently than we normally would. Nyx not only had to deal with speciest arrogance—discrimination against those who consume humans, either their flesh or their blood—but had to deal with facing discrimination as one who was, for all intents and purposes, a trans woman. Stuck in a male body even though she felt, on the inside, closer to female than male. Wrong body or not, though, I had a hard time taking my eyes off her. If she really did take the form that her prey desired the most, then the vampire who she’d attempted to lure, the one who’d bitten her, must have incredible taste in men. And based on how quickly Nyx stiletto-staked me when I first met her, I knew if she ever found the vampire who bit her I’d have to pity him. The vampire would be in hell before he could say “Christian Louboutin.”
Nyx hated vampires. I wasn’t particularly fond of people who typically tried to eliminate me from the world, but when you’re in a place like the Vilokan Asylum for the Magically and Mentally Deranged, you have to find your allies where you can get them. And Nyx and I had more than a little in common, in spite of her general distaste for my kind.
Nyx nudged me with her elbow. “Think we can take them in a game of two-on-two?”
I laughed as I stared at the centaur and equisapien who were still engaged in a game of table tennis. I move fast. Nyx moves just as fast, if not faster.
Nyx and I approached the table.
“You two up for a game of two-on-two?” I asked.
The equisapien brayed.
“Is that a yes or a no?” I asked, looking at the centaur. His tattoos were actually quite intricate. A hundred different designs, some colored, some just in black. Almost every inch of his torso was covered. They stopped just below his neckline. Maybe he thought he’d need to get a job someday, and if his equine bottom half didn’t freak out employers already, face tattoos certainly would.
“Hell if I know,” the centaur said. “Just because I have a horse body you think I can understand donkey speak?”
I shrugged. “Well, I sort of assumed… but not because of that. On account of the fact that you two are playing together. I figured you were communicating somehow.”
The punk-rock centaur shrugged.
“I’m Mercy,” I said. “Vampire.”
“Nyx,” Nyx interjected. “Elemental.”
The centaur narrowed his eyes. “My name is Ed.”
I covered my mouth to hold in my laughter. “As in Mister Ed?”
“Yeah, yeah. Funny funny. Ha. Ha. As if you’re the first person to ever make that joke.”
“Sorry,” I said. “Your parents must suck.”
“They are both assholes.”
“So were your parents both…”
“Yes”—Ed rolled his eyes—“they were both centaurs like me. Contrary to popular belief, we aren’t created when dudes fuck horses.”
“Wasn’t what I was implying,” I said. “But I suppose that’s good to know. I just haven’t ever met any of your kind before.”
“We don’t get out much.”
“And what about you,” I said, turning to the equisapien. “What’s your name?”
“Hee-haw.”
“Your name is Hee-haw?”
The equisapien shook his head.
“So you can understand us?”
The equisapien nodded.
“Do you even have a name?” I asked.
/>
This time he brayed as he shook his head yes.
“Good luck getting him to tell it to you,” Ed said.
“I have an idea,” Nyx said. “Does your name start with the letter A?”
“Dude, really?” I asked.
“You have a better way? Or, would you rather just call him Donkey?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I like Shrek.”
“Who is Shrek?” Nyx asked.
“An ogre.”
Ed huffed. “I hate ogres.”
“Wait, ogres are real, too?” I asked.
“Of course,” Ed said. “But like many of us, they don’t get out much. Humans aren’t the most tolerant species in the world.”
“Tell me about it,” Nyx added, brushing a stray strand of white hair out of her face.
“This is going to take forever,” I said, “going through the whole alphabet. Donkey, can you write?”
The equisapien nodded again.
Nyx narrowed her eyes. “Should have thought of that. Writing isn’t something we do much on account of the fact that paper doesn’t mix well with water. The Neck are an oral culture.”
“You like oral?” Ed asked.
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t be an ass.”
“Just saying, I have a horse-sized…”
“Enough,” I said. “No one cares.”
“Speak for yourself,” Nyx interjected. “I’m not saying I’m interested. But damn, I can’t say I’m not, either. At the very least, I’m awfully curious.”
Ed smirked.
“You behave yourselves,” I said. “I’m going to go see if I can get a pencil and paper from the nurses.”
“Good luck with that,” Ed said. “The nurses here don’t put out.”
“That’s a strange way to talk about generosity with pencils,” I said, rolling my eyes.
Ed smirked. “Pencil is just code… remove two letters, and what have you got?”
“Penc?” Nyx asked.
“Those aren’t the two letters he means,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Ed, what are you, twelve?”
“I’m twenty-nine.”
“Going on twelve.”
Ed shrugged.
“Be right back.”
Nurse Rutherford wouldn’t give me a pencil. She said it could double as a stake, so it was to my advantage pencils weren’t readily available to patients. Little did she knew that stakes aren’t a threat to me. Still, in my experience, letting someone think they were could work to my advantage at some point. More than once I’d been staked only to laugh in my assailant’s face before going in for the bite.
Instead, Rutherford gave me a box of crayons and a pad of construction paper. At least it was a new box—the standard twenty-four-color set. Nothing is worse than a box of half-broken crayons. Okay, I take that back. There are a lot of things in life worse than that. But still, it sucks.
I approached the equisapien and handed him the crayon box before opening up the pad of construction paper in front of him. I chose a yellow sheet—easier to see what he wrote than a red, blue, or black sheet might have been.
He retrieved a purple crayon from the box and started to write. My name is Galahad.
I squinted. “As in, the Knight of the Round Table, that Galahad?”
Galahad huffed. Yes and no, he wrote. All my siblings were named after knights.
“So Galahad is your namesake?” I asked.
Galahad nodded. Then he started writing again. Apologies for not being more talkative. I’m a little horse.
I laughed. Galahad shrugged. I had to admit, aside from having a donkey face, Galahad was actually a rather attractive specimen. He lacked in style—but I could excuse that. His shoulders were broad, his body well-chiseled. And he seemingly had a sense of humor. Not that Ed didn’t—but in the few minutes I’d known Ed, most of his jokes were penile in nature. Not that I don’t appreciate a good dick joke here and there, but they had to be good ones. You can’t leave bad wiener jokes just… dangling out there.
“So, fellas. What got you guys locked up in here?”
“I’m detoxing,” Ed said.
“So you’re here by choice?”
Ed shook his head. “Hell no. If it was up to me I’d keep drinking. I have a horse’s liver. My uncle kept drinking until he was a hundred and thirty-five.”
“Is that your life expectancy?” I asked.
Ed shrugged. “Around that. We don’t live forever, but I’d say that’s average. Some of the oldest of us have lived to be two hundred.”
“And where do your people live?”
“Wherever. Most of our kind keep to remote islands, where we don’t have to worry about being seen. That life isn’t for me. I usually travel with renaissance fairs.”
I laughed. “You know, that’s actually rather brilliant. People would just assume you were two people in a really good costume.”
“Yeah,” Ed said. “People ask all the time about the guy inside. They slap my back as if to say hello. I always tell them he can’t talk on account of his head being in my ass.”
I smirked. “So you basically live in renaissance fairs and drink…”
“Constantly,” Ed said. “But I’m not really into the whole cosplay side of it all. It’s just a place I can exist freely. And there’s always plenty of mead to go around.”
“What about you, Galahad?”
Galahad took his crayon to paper again. I’m an accountant.
I laughed. “I guess that makes sense. Something you can do in isolation.”
Galahad brayed. That’s why I’m here. I exposed myself and people freaked.
“You exposed yourself?” Ed asked.
Galahad rolled his eyes—which, I should say, is a strange look on a donkey’s face. Not like that. I just wanted a friend.
“This is fucked up,” I said. “As far as I can tell, none of us really need to be here. Nyx and I were just put in impossible situations, but we aren’t deranged. And Ed, if you don’t want to get sober, there’s no point in any of this. And Galahad just wants friends?”
“Hee-haw,” Galahad brayed.
“Well, now you have friends,” I said. “So by my accounting—not a joke about your profession, Galahad—you’re cured.”
I grabbed one of the ping-pong rackets. Do those things have a technical name? I wouldn’t know. To me, it’s just a racket. “You guys ready to give this a go?”
“Might as well,” Ed said.
“Mercy and me together,” Nyx added. “Against Ed and Galahad.”
Galahad grabbed his tablet of construction paper, scribbled something, and showed it to the rest of us. Best of three?
I nodded. “Sounds good. After that, maybe we can talk about how we’re all going to get out of this hellhole.”
Chapter Nine
The bottled blood was, predictably, intolerable. Hardly the best breakfast I’d ever had. My days and nights were all turned around. They insisted I stick to a daytime schedule. I hadn’t done that since I was a human. Having breakfast at the time I’d normally be going to bed for the day was mildly jarring. I choked down another sip of blood. While he hadn’t been right about much, Dr. Cain had said that it would take the edge off temporarily. That was accurate. After all, thirty seconds or so is quite temporary.
Still, I wasn’t a newbie vamp. I’d gone longer than this before without feeding. Push me much longer than a month or two, though, and sunlight collar or not, a nurse was going to get drained. Surely I wouldn’t be here that long…
I nudged Nyx, who took a bite of an “imitation” human meat nugget, a disfigured look on her face. “How can anyone who doesn’t eat human have any idea how to make something taste like it?”
I shook my head as I took a sip of one of my blood bottles, choking it down. “The same reason, I suppose, they think this shit is going to satisfy me. They’re humans… which means they don’t have two fucks of a clue.”
“You know,” Nyx said, “humans have a fascination with impr
isoning creatures that could kill them.”
“Interesting thought. Like zoos… lock away an example of anything that’s stronger, faster, more ferocious than they are. Helps them preserve their illusion of dominance.”
Nyx nodded. “They aren’t the dominant species on the planet. They’re just the most destructive. And the least self-aware.”
I nodded. “You do realize I used to be a human? Don’t hate too hard.”
“Are you kidding?” Nyx asked. “I love humans!”
I rolled my eyes. “Because they’re delicious?”
“Precisely!”
“You know, if you’re going to try and fit in with humans… until you get your shifting powers back, anyway… it might help to try actually fitting in a bit. I could help with that. If nothing else, aside from once being a human myself, blending in is a part of our expertise.”
Nyx narrowed her eyes. “Fit in how?”
“I’m not talking about changing your style. You do you. I think you’re fabulously gorgeous.”
“Thank you, Miss Mercy. I could say the same of you.”
I grinned. “But have you considered using a name that might help people perceive you more… as a female?”
Nyx shrugged. “Technically we don’t have names. We are the ‘Neck’ in English. But I spent the first thousand years or so of my existence in the Germanic lands. Not Germany, mind you. I left before there ever was a Germany, formally speaking. But still, there we were once known as the Nyx.”
“Did you say first thousand?” I asked, raising my eyebrows. “I’ve only known one vampire that old, myself. The one who made me.”
Nyx nodded. “Doesn’t mean we are more experienced with the world. We only really experience time when we assume this form. So, for brief moments. When we are one with the water it’s like there is no time. Everything just… flows.”
“I don’t know if I can even get my mind wrapped around the idea of not experiencing time.”
Bloody Mad: A Dark Urban Fantasy Story (The Legacy of a Vampire Witch Book 2) Page 5
