Donnie told me that we were what is called “transgender.”
I shrugged when she told me. The word was meaningless. Of course, my vocabulary was relatively limited. I knew what I knew from my various shifts, when I’d change shape to hunt humans. Back when I was an elemental, my mind also shifted to speak a language that would resonate with the ear when I sang.
And the word “transgender” wasn’t one I ever recalled singing. I didn’t have any context for it.
In truth, the whole notion of gender was foreign to me.
Sure, I’d experienced male and female humans. But for the most part, aside from non-universal tendencies toward slightly different body compositions—more or less lean meat to chew on—they tasted the same.
The thing about elementals: we never had genders. For us, gender was fluid because, well… everything about us was fluid, in the most literal way possible.
We didn’t have communities at all, strictly speaking. From time to time our essences would intermingle. We’d come into contact with another of our kind and… whoops… we’d reproduce. Then we’d go on our merry ways. Each parent, and the child, going their own ways. Forging their own existences.
Things were just different.
Now, that life seemed like a dream. I couldn’t shift to whatever form I wanted. What I became was wholly dictated by my prey. What would he, or she, find most alluring? That’s what I became.
If I was going to eat you, and you were into buxom blondes, that’s what I’d be. Suppose you were attracted to well-built athletes with ripped muscles and an artificial tan. I’d appear as exactly that.
If you were in love, I’d appear exactly as the one you adored.
The vampire who bit me was apparently into insanely pretty men.
I’d always become someone’s version of attractive, someone’s ideal. That was the first step in the hunt.
The second step was to combine my physical allure with my singing voice—a voice that all of our kind shared, one unparalleled by any species. If all you heard me do was sing, you’d believe I was an angel.
Who could resist?
In all my existence, and over my many thousands of feeds, no one had yet. Not until that night…
I didn’t even know vampires were a thing, much less that getting bitten by one would leave me trapped in my current form. Unable to shift back.
Or that the vampire would thereby acquire my abilities.
Was Wolfgang a reliable lead? If I cut out his heart, I’d never know for sure. But if I kept him alive, there was a chance…
A chance he’d turn on me and kill me.
But also a chance he’d lead me to Alice.
“What took you so long?” Donnie asked, her hands on her hips as I stepped through the door.
“I’m not your ho,” I quipped back. “Why do you care?”
“Word is you ran out on your set,” Donnie said. “You insisted on performing there… I said it wasn’t a good idea. You’re not a queen, Nicky.”
I scratched my head. The LGBT community in Kansas City isn’t exactly small—but compared to other major cities, it’s certainly more intimate. With the aid of social media, gossip spreads faster than herpes.
I shouldn’t have been surprised that Donnie had already heard I’d skipped out on my second number. And she’d never been comfortable with me singing there. I won’t say she disapproved of it, exactly. But she had legitimate concerns.
“I know I’m not a queen,” I said matter-of-factly.
“Then why sing at a drag show, Nicky?”
I sighed. “We’ve been through this before. It’s the only place I could score a gig.”
Donnie shook her head. “It just reinforces stereotypes. If you’re a trans woman and you sing, people are going to assume you’re a queen. But you’re not. Drag queens are men—mostly gay men, but you and I know that’s not a hundred percent true. They dress up in drag first because they enjoy it, and second they perform to give the proverbial finger to what culture says it means to be masculine.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’ve given me the gender studies lecture before, Donnie. I get it.”
“But do you?” Donnie said. “When we perpetuate stereotypes…”
“We aren’t all the same, Donnie,” I said. “Being trans isn’t the only thing that makes me who I am. I’m also a singer. And since none of the other clubs will give me a chance…”
“How many other clubs have you tried?”
“All of them,” I said. “Every one I could find. And every one of them said I had a fantastic voice, but they all had excuses.”
Donnie sighed. “I’m sure they did…”
“‘We’re not looking for a gimmick,’” I said, beginning a litany of reasons why the other club owners in the city had rejected me. “‘You just don’t have the look we’re looking for…’ ‘I personally support what you’re doing, but it would just be too controversial here…’ ‘Trans performers don’t play well in the Midwest…’ Do I need to keep going?”
Donnie sighed, sat down on the couch, and crossed her legs. “I suppose I get where you’re coming from.”
“If anything, isn’t being trans about living out your genuine self? If I can’t sing, if I can’t perform… That’s as much a part of me—more, in fact—than my gender. I’ve had singing as long as I’ve existed. I only got into a world where gender mattered a few years ago.”
Donnie nodded. “It isn’t easy trying to navigate this life in a world that’s constantly saying you don’t belong.”
I nodded. Donnie was the only human who knew my story. Well, aside from a few of the nurses back at the asylum in New Orleans. When Donnie and I met, she immediately saw I was out of sorts. I was dejected. Wandering the streets, trying to come to grips with what I was.
At first she figured I was full of shit. She pretended to believe me when I told her my story. Secretly, she later admitted, she was looking for mental health services.
I realized that my story sounded crazy.
But she was kind. She understood more about me than anyone else. And I had to tell someone. I had to have at least one person who knew my truth. My whole truth.
But I wasn’t full of shit. I was full of water. Figured that one out when I shaved my legs, nicked myself, and I didn’t bleed.
I leaked.
I patched myself up, sewing the gouge shut with a few stitches from my hair. But Donnie was there. She saw it…
And she didn’t judge me. She accepted me.
She gave me confidence again. She helped me believe that being me was okay. If it wasn’t for her, I never would have gathered the courage to chase Alice down to New Orleans and back again to Kansas City. If it wasn’t for her, who knows what would have happened to Gina earlier that evening… If I hadn’t been there, if I hadn’t staked—or heeled—Wolfgang…
“So,” I said, “I have a vampire chained up at the Edge of Hell.”
“You what?” Donnie asked. “Just left there in chains?”
I nodded. “He says he knows Alice. If he can lead me to her…”
Donnie took a deep breath. “Would that make you happy?”
“To find Alice? Of course it would. I mean, I’ve been obsessing over that ever since I lost my abilities.”
“But is going back to our old life what you really want?” Donnie asked. “You’ve described what it was like to be an elemental before. You’ve used a lot of words. But happiness has never been one of them.”
I shrugged. “It was a simpler life. Maybe I wasn’t happy, but I knew what I was. I knew who I was.”
“And you’d go right back to eating people again?” Donnie asked. “After you’ve gotten to know us?”
“I wouldn’t eat you. I’d only eat assholes.”
Donnie laughed. “You should choose your words more carefully, Nicky.”
My eyes widened as it dawned on me what I’d actually said. “No, I mean…”
“I know what you meant,” Donnie said. “
Think about this. Say you find this vampire, Alice. You kill her. What if you can’t get your old abilities back? What if once she took them, they can’t be returned?”
I shook my head. “Then I’ll know. At least I’ll know it’s done. But I think if I eat her heart…”
Donnie winced. “Eat a vampire heart?”
I nodded. “It has to work, right? I mean, it’s the best chance.”
“Seems like a gamble,” Donnie said. “It might also turn you into a vampire, right?”
I shook my head. “No, I’d have to be drained of my own blood and healed again. Only then… and I don’t know if consuming a vampire heart as a bit. I mean, maybe there’s something about the bite itself…”
“Never been done before?” Donnie asked. “I’m shocked!”
“Right? I mean, who hasn’t had a craving for vampire heart now and again?” I smiled slyly.
Donnie grinned. “Meeting you has been one of the strangest experiences of my life, Nicky.”
“Likewise. Of course, everything about my human existence has been strange. So don’t think that makes you special or anything.” I winked so she’d realize I was just giving her crap. Truthfully, I’d be lost without her.
And it wasn’t like she didn’t have a point. About everything. About performing with queens. I mean, you’d be surprised how many straight folks don’t realize the difference between men who dress in drag and trans women.
Donnie was right.
We aren’t the same.
But we also aren’t all that different. We’re all just expressing our true selves. We’re all fighting for the right to be the men, or women, that we are without other people telling us what it means to be what we know we are already.
But then again, I didn’t even know the difference between men and women at all until I became human. Or human-ish.
I hadn’t struggled with these issues my whole life.
Not like Donnie.
I just wanted to sing. It was the only thing I could do that resembled what I used to be. It’s the one thing I retained from my former self.
But perhaps I was being insensitive. I owed her the respect to hear her out. To acknowledge her concerns. After all, I hadn’t been this way long, and I didn’t intend to remain like this forever.
Not once I caught Alice…
Was singing at the club selfish? Was I thinking about myself without recognizing how I might be complicating the lives of people like Donnie? People who would have to go on living in this form of existence even after I was gone?
Doing the right thing isn’t as black and white as people make it out to be.
Take it from someone who used to eat people.
CHAPTER FOUR
I climbed through the window of the warehouse, the Edge of Hell. I’d managed to shimmy the window open before, and so long as I left it unlocked I could come and go pretty much as I pleased.
There was no way to be free.
Not like this. Not in this world.
We had to be careful not to reinforce stereotypes. But why should I have to turn down opportunities because of other people’s ignorance?
What people don’t realize is that if you’re a part of this community, sometimes the hardest part isn’t the explicit hate. It’s not the people who reject you for what you are, for who you are.
I’ve accepted that a lot of humans are closed-minded. They’re fearful creatures who tend to despise what they don’t understand. It’s not a shock when someone laughs when they walk past me going down the street. I’m used to that. It sucks—but it’s something you regrettably get used to.
What’s harder than all of that is the little ways you have to adjust your life, the sacrifices you have to make “for the sake of the cause.” It’s the systemic oppression, the little ways that biases—conscious and unconscious—force us to live our lives in ways we shouldn’t have to.
It’s about not being able to find a place to sing, and not being able to sing in the one place that would have me because doing so could potentially reinforce other people’s unfair stereotypes.
It’s about others in the community not being able to compete in sports. After all, if you were assigned “male” at birth, it’s presumed you have athletic advantages over female competitors. But trans women can’t compete with women without both denying their true selves or being accused of using hormone therapies to unfairly improve performance.
I’m not saying there aren’t concerns on both sides of the issue. But the way much of society would have it, and as many politicians would argue, there just isn’t a place in the world for trans athletes.
I resonated with that struggle as a singer, albeit for different reasons. There just wasn’t a place for me, no matter how talented I was, how much better a singer I might be than others who had their choice of gigs.
I’m not sure there’s any one person to blame. It’s the whole system—a society with gendered institutions, gendered activities, and gendered roles. It is what it is.
I didn’t ask for this.
No one did.
Surgeries weren’t an option for me. Can you imagine how doctors would respond when they cut into me and water poured out on the floor? And I couldn’t just cut it off. I’d drain out before I could stitch myself shut.
Eventually, even if I drained out, I’d come back with all my “wounds” restored, and anything I happened to have chopped off would be back as it was. Trust me, I tried it once before.
Doesn’t take a big wound for me to drain. Even a small paper cut will do it if left unattended. But once I’d drain out, my corpse would absorb water and I’d be back again. Throw me in a river and it would happen faster. Bury me or leave me out in the open and I’d absorb moisture from the soil or the air. In the Midwest, with so much rain and humidity, it wouldn’t take as long as you’d think before I’d be back again.
I only had one option.
I had to kill Alice.
I had to get my abilities back.
I had to return to my old life.
Maybe Donnie was right—maybe I wouldn’t find happiness that way. I hadn’t for centuries. But at least I wouldn’t have to deal with all of this…
Did you know that the suicide rate for trans persons is ten times the rate of the general human population? It’s worse if you’re trans and an ethnic minority—their rate is more than thirty times higher than average. Some studies suggest that upwards of fifty percent of all trans persons have attempted or will attempt suicide.
Too many people turn a blind eye to the problem.
It’s about escape…
Escape from this conflicted existence.
Escape from a world where we just don’t fit.
Escape from all the bullshit, the sacrifices we make that we shouldn’t have to make just to be ourselves…
I couldn’t transition. Suicide wasn’t an option. I’d eventually come back from that just as I was.
But I could escape.
I could recover my abilities.
And Wolfgang, the former nightwalker I had chained up, had offered me a shot.
Maybe he’d betray me.
So what if he did? What’s the worst that would happen? Maybe he’d kill me. I’d get over it.
Sure, the place had a security system, but it wasn’t all that sophisticated. And I didn’t need free reign over the place. The part of the building I used wasn’t accessible from the rest of the haunted-house attraction.
Still, I appreciated the poetry of it all…
I was, in a very literal way, taking my vampire hostages to the edge of hell itself.
I held a wooden stake as I climbed through the window.
I hoped I wouldn’t need it. But if push came to shove, at least this time I wouldn’t get blood on my Jimmy Choos.
Yes, I’d changed. My Louboutins were back at the apartment. These Jimmy Choo stiletto boots were my favorites. Not the most comfortable pair I had, but when I wore them, I defined glamorous.
I
pulled out my phone from my pocket, turned on the light, and shone it around the hall as I went to the room where I had Wolfgang bound. I directed my phone’s light to where I’d had him chained.
The chair was empty.
The chains, still with garlic cloves pushed through the links, lay on the ground.
“Shit,” I said out loud.
Wolfgang was the best lead I’d had since New Orleans. I mean, he didn’t have any hard evidence on Alice’s location. Not from what he’d told me. But he knew her habits. Her tendencies. Her behaviors. Short of any specific information on her whereabouts, his knowledge was the next best thing.
Vampires tend to be creatures of habit. The older they are, the truer it is.
I could relate to that, I suppose. As an elemental, I didn’t often do anything new. Float around in the waters in relative bliss. Wait until my essence demanded sustenance. Focus on a human target, connect to their mind, take the form they desire the most.
And the rest, well… I’d say it was history. But it was just dinner.
Then it was back to the waters, more floating… like a dream, without many cares or concerns. Lonely, perhaps, but at least as an elemental I didn’t have to worry about fitting in or meeting other people’s expectations.
I suppose a vampire’s existence was a bit more complicated than that. But they still tended to get in a rut. They had feeding habits, ways of securing prey and feeding that they tended to repeat. They had their regular hunting grounds, usually a series of spots they’d frequent. The older the vampire, the less regularly they’d appear in any single location.
Older vamps didn’t have to feed as often. It might be decades before a vampire returned to the same place to feed. But chances were, if a vampire was found in a particular place or in a general part of town, unless they were a youngling they’d been there before.
I sighed. Even with Wolfgang’s help, catching Alice was going to be hard.
I was about to turn around and go home. Then someone cleared their throat. I turned around.
Wolfgang stood there, leaning against a support pillar.
I lifted my stake and was about to charge when the vampire raised his hand.
“Now just hold on.” Wolfgang had the sort of calm in his voice that only centuries of surviving precarious predicaments could warrant. “I’ve been waiting for you to come back.”
Scared Shiftless: An Ex-Shifter turned Vampire Hunter Urban Fantasy (The Legend of Nyx Book 1) Page 3
