by R. B. Fields
I swallow hard and ease backward, reaching for the phone, snatching up the knife, ready, ready, but I’m not as steady as I need to be. I grit my teeth.
The crouched man freezes abruptly as if he senses me watching and draws himself to standing, giving me a better view of the man on the boardwalk. The killer’s black sweatshirt doesn’t show blood, but I can see it on the wood beneath, staining the planks in brilliant crimson. The crater of his abdomen gapes, a bloody hole edged in shattered ribs and yellow fat and a large piece of meat that might be his liver.
Goddammit. I came here for a serial killer and ended up with a werewolf. Awesome.
But there’s no fur — he should have fur. Instead, he’s pale, chiseled, every feature honed in marble. Except for those eyes. Those violet eyes. A trick of the light?
I can’t breathe. His feet make no sound as he draws nearer, but there’s something about him … he feels older than the walking path beneath us, the way the ocean feels old, the way the dirt and stone feel heavy with unknowable wisdom — as if he’s seen more than any mortal ever could.
The man looks down at me and blinks. Violet eyes, not just from the light — I’m sure. The glow is coming from inside them, reflected like a lion. Like a hunter. His teeth are long, pointed — wickedly sharp.
His face is covered in blood.
2
Silas
The dying light of a million stars stares down at us, the ocean’s roar like the closing notes of an opera, both steeped in tragedy — what have I done?
The dark-haired woman is crouched with her back against the railing on the far side of the boardwalk, a knife clenched in her hand as if she may lunge at me. Perhaps she will, but that is a fight she will lose.
I heard her coming well before she took notice of me, but not in the way I hear most humans. Her inner voice is shrouded in static like a radio tuned half a click south of the wrong station. But her scent … that’s unmistakable, heavy and sultry and flowery, like nothing I’ve smelled recently. Or ever. I want to touch her — to taste her. I clench my fists, nails digging crescents into my palms.
I want to savor that scent, let it roll over my tongue the way it did earlier, let it invade my nostrils, but Mikael is ruining the moment. His blood is bitter on my lips.
I did not expect him to be one of us.
It is rare for vampires to hunt this way, to leave their victims in the open — he is a slovenly specimen, wasteful too. But I should have known; I should have heard him inside my head. I did not realize he was a vampire until we were locked in death’s embrace.
Until it was him or me.
The woman blinks. Her eyes are jewels the color of the ocean that darken when they land on the body.
I follow her gaze. I made him look the way he made his victims look, which wasn’t hard — his veins are still flush with blood from his last kill, and in death, we are all human. At the end, we revert back to our most vulnerable state. And though the police might be confused should they decide to test his blood — it will match his last victim — they’re unlikely to cause much fuss. They’ll explain it away somehow; a clerical error, a mix-up. They’ll pretend so they don’t have to acknowledge the existence of monsters.
They always do.
But I’m not worried about the police. I’m worried about my own kind.
I killed one of my own. For her. I came here, drawn by her scent, and ended up making a mess of things in the most spectacular way possible.
She’s still staring at me, a fine trail of blood slipping down the back of her neck — I can smell that more than see it. And her brilliant blue eyes are not the bright, terrified panic I expect. She looks furious as if I was supposed to let her die here, or perhaps she thought she should have been able to fend Mikael off herself. But as tough as she is, humans don’t have the tools to fight off a vampire.
I offer her my hand. She squints at it, frowns, then pushes herself to standing, and though I can’t hear her thoughts, I feel them like a slap — Get away from me before I kick you in the balls. She’d tried that with Mikael, tried punching him. Fat lot of good it did. But she made it further than most humans do. Battling a finely-honed killing machine is not for the weak. She should not have survived. And yet, here she is, leaning back against the railing, cheeks pink with cold and the flush of her blood.
Most vampires would kill her now — the world can’t know what we are. It makes things complicated.
But the mere thought of hurting her sends a sharp sting into my chest, where once a heart beat freely. Is it her smell? Is it the way she’s glaring at me, too strong to die? Why would I choose to protect her over myself, over my family? Why isn’t she afraid of me?
I’m missing something. Something crucial. I can hear the ocean, the sounds of a million creatures riding the waves into the night. There’s a couple at the peninsula, too, miles away at the Ferris wheel. If I squint, I’d be able to see them, tiny silhouettes beneath the silvery metal bars of the structure, making love in the dirt. Like animals.
But not her — I can’t hear her.
“Are you hurt?” I say.
Her muscles clench — tiny movements, but they make the blade glint in the moonlight. The weapon … that makes me uneasy, the way carved symbols glow near the hilt as if each is infused with its own light. It should not have caused Mikael much harm, but it did. I saw him scream. I saw him struggle to breathe. It took a mere snap of my wrist to finish him off, as if he were already nearly dead, and nothing in this world should be able to kill a vampire like that — nothing that I know of. We are not prone to poisons. And while we do each have a fine line of vulnerability across our throats, humans are rarely able to hit it just right — there is no mark on our flesh to show where we must be cut to sever our heads. And she stabbed Mikael in the leg — it shouldn’t have pierced his flesh at all. Did she bewitch the knife? If she’s a witch, she’s as much a threat to me as I am to her. Covens use our blood for all manner of spells, but they rarely let us live.
She’s still staring. Angry.
“Are you a witch?” I’m rarely at a loss for words, but there is something in her gaze that freezes all other thoughts. This is the only question that seems relevant. And if the answer is no … I want to take her with me. Home to the others. We can figure out what to do together unless my family decides she’s better off dead.
And what will I do then?
She laughs and straightens, and for a moment I think she might be preparing herself to run — humans always try running before they realize there’s no point — but she doesn’t. She crosses her arms and leans against the railing once more. Her jogging suit is unzipped at the top, and the white tank top beneath is red with the blood that’s trickling over the front of her shoulder, a slowly widening stain. Her sleeve is torn, too, the flesh beneath weeping. She touches her head and winces. “A witch? You’re kidding, right?”
It seems genuine, but it’s off-putting that I can’t verify it as truth by listening to her thoughts. And though I know this blindness may prove problematic, the fact that I can’t read her is, in itself, alluring. Mysterious. “Do you need a hospital?” I say, and the words surprise even me. I should kill her — I’m supposed to kill her. Then again, she’s supposed to run screaming into the night at the sight of me, so it looks like all bets are off.
She frowns. “No. Might be a concussion, but it’s probably minor.” Her eyes finally meet mine. “Are you going to kill me?” she asks. I startle — did she read my mind? But she said it so matter-of-factly, almost as if she doesn’t care whether she lives or dies, but I saw the way she fought Mikael — I know she cares. She’d fight me just as hard.
“I’m trying to come up with reasons not to,” I say. But I don’t need more reasons — I can’t do it. I can’t.
She glances at the body on the boardwalk. “Maybe you should let me live just to avoid being more of a dick. You already killed your partner.”
I pause, narrowing my eyes at her — what d
oes she think happened here? “My partner?”
“You tore him apart like those other women.” Her nostrils flare. “So, is that your shtick? He strangles them, you get to eat them? Like a … serial-killer-vampire tag team?”
She knows what I am, and still, she remains here, standing on the bridge in the dark. She squints as if thinking, and the uncertainty in her gaze knots the muscles at the base of my spine — her blood tingles in my nostrils with an electric tang that might be anxiety. I run my tongue along the tips of my teeth. They’ve settled now, only my canines are sharp, not like when I attacked Mikael.
Mikael. The hive to the north will miss him soon.
“We aren’t a team,” I say, “and he didn’t need the wire to kill you. But it’s useful to make it look like a human crime if you plan to leave your leftovers lying around.” And the body — he’s still there, just lying on the boardwalk, blood soaking into the wood. I turn away from her, panicked for a split second that she might be gone when I turn back, but she isn’t. She watches me collect his corpse. Mikael’s body is floppy, unruly, but not heavy — not much requires exertion except battling another vampire … or a witch. But hexes are more the stuff of legends — I don’t know any vampire who’s dealt with a curse. I hurl the body beyond her into the night and listen as the flesh hits the rocks below.
“It’s not safe here,” I say, but my voice is strained.
She snorts. “If there are vampires running around, it’s not safe anywhere.” Is that a spark of excitement in her gaze? Or is it fear? Have I become so accustomed to hearing the thoughts of others that I can’t read facial expressions any longer? It’s … uncanny. Unnerving.
Enthralling.
Terrifying.
“We need to leave this place.” Mikael’s hive will find her, probably tonight. And Mikael’s group has wanted me dead for a century — they will not let this slide.
Now she and I are both in danger.
She glances up the boardwalk as if weighing her options — as if there is a better one. Perhaps she’s is planning her escape.
“Come with me,” I try again. “You’re in danger, but we can protect you.” If I can convince the others. Will they feel the same way about her, or am I the only one who feels the wicked pull of her blood? But her knife … she hurt Mikael. I’ll lead with that. I do not recognize the markings on it, and I want to know where it came from — all of them will want to know.
She purses her lips, considering, but her smell … I’m lost in it. Finally, she shrugs. “I do like the whole safety in numbers part of joining a gang.”
“We’re not a gang, we’re — ”
“I know, vampires. Potato, po-tah-toe.” She says it nonchalantly, but she raises her hand to rub at her neck. I can see the line of bruising beginning to form across her tender throat. I should be struggling harder, watching the pulse of blood through her neck, but that band of purpling flesh does not fill me with thirst or the desire to kill her; it fills me with a rage I’ve not felt since I watched my family die of plague.
I could have turned them. But I didn’t.
No one deserves a life like that of the undead, and that’s the other reason she must come with me — if Mikael’s blood has found its way into one of her open wounds, the virus is already making its way through her veins. We have about two hours until she dies to this world and wakes up in ours. I can’t leave her to turn on her own. That type of cruelty is the stuff of humans.
Vampires are better than that … some of us, anyway.
I meet her eyes, those shining orbs of blue. I can drag her, force her back to the house, but I don’t want to. Please come with me. Please.
Beneath the boardwalk, something scratches, louder than the waves, louder than the drone of fish and far-off human breath. “Come home with me,” I say. “His group … they can smell you, as I could. If you want to live, we have to go. Now.”
3
Dawn
I follow him off the boardwalk with my heart aching against my ribs. My lungs are fighting with me as well, too tight to do much more than wheeze, but at least I can breathe — the wire didn’t crush my trachea. But I don’t really have time to think about my heart or my lungs or my sore neck or my shredded arm or my busted head; I run beside him, the salty air stinging the slashes on my arm. His hand on my elbow is hard as stone. What are you doing, Dawn?
The night on either side of the bridge envelopes us in blackness, and the dark, usually my solace, is more suffocating than comforting. I saw a vampire. Two of them. It seems an insane thing to believe, but it’s not the first time; I thought I saw a vampire the night my mother died, thought I heard a monster tearing her apart. All these years, I imagined it was a dream — all the shrinks said it was a dream — but what if it wasn’t? Am I an orphan because of a creature like the one rushing up the boardwalk beside me?
But the man I’m with now is a different breed. This vampire — “Call me Silas.” — doesn’t feel like a monster, not like the one on the boardwalk, and certainly not like the one from my childhood. My shoulders are already more relaxed, the panic bleeding from my veins. Is that normal? It seems I shouldn’t be able to breathe while running for my life with a man who is already dead, even if he doesn’t look it. I can only see his silhouette, but the moonlight makes his blond hair gleam and casts streaks of silver over his already pale cheekbones — sharp and high. Yeah, he’s much too beautiful to be a monster.
“Why are you protecting me?” That’s what he’s doing, isn’t it?
“I cannot say.”
“Can’t or won’t?” My soles grind against the crumbling asphalt of the parking lot — off the bridge. Finally. There’s only one streetlight on the far side of the lot, but after the velvet blackness over the water, it shines like a beacon.
“Can’t — not yet. I imagine things will become more clear in the coming days. But you need us if you want to survive the night.”
“The hell I do.” It’s a knee-jerk reaction, but he’s probably right — what am I going to do, fight a whole gang of vampires by myself? And he’d said … us. We’re going to meet more of them. “Your family, they’re not like … ” I hook a thumb back in the direction of the bridge. The wind shrieks as if angry at the association.
He shakes his head. “We’re nothing like Mikael. We’ve been a bit disconnected from the rest of our kind for some time. But killing him … it won’t go over well for me.” He keeps his eyes on the darkness in front of us, searching the shadows, his broad shoulders tense with anticipation.
Knowing that he’s accountable helps some — there’s a camaraderie there. “I didn’t know you could kill a vampire without a stake to the heart.”
“Humans and their stories.” He shakes his head. “Sever the nerves of our brainstem, stop the connection between mind and body, and we cannot survive. Tear out our organs, same, though there are few weapons that can pierce the flesh of our abdomens.”
But I stabbed the vampire on the boardwalk, hadn’t I? Yet, it didn’t kill him — maybe I didn’t really hurt him at all.
“Here we are,” he says.
I follow his finger. I shouldn’t be shocked that he drives a motorcycle, but I am. Not about the bike itself — I used to ride — but because I hadn’t imagined him with any vehicle. Had I thought he’d just lift me up and spirit me away? Ridiculous.
I swing onto the bike behind him and cling to his back, pressing my face to the rock of his shoulder. Despite the hardness of muscle under his sweatshirt, the skin at the nape of his neck is soft and warm against my forehead, and it makes me feel woozy — drowsy. I clench the bike harder between my thighs. What’s happening here? Just being close to him is making my brain hazy. It’s the way you feel at a club when you’re three shots deep with a strange man’s hands wrapped around your waist, and the promise of a good time in the parking lot driving every pulse of your hips. But this is far more intense, and we didn’t dance — we killed a monster. Together. Well, okay, mostly him, but I�
��ve always wanted to stab a serial killer in the face. That wouldn’t go over well, though, and I’m not about to wind up in prison for these assholes whether I think they deserve to die or not.
But even if I didn’t do it, someone is dead.
And I’m on the back of a vampire’s motorcycle.
Come home with me. What kind of idiot agrees? The wind whipping by me is tight with impending doom and cold with fear. My mind races with questions. Why this is happening? (Because I decided to fuck around in the middle of the night.) Am I losing my mind? (I don’t think so.) Does Silas want to kill me? (I doubt it, or he wouldn’t have saved me, and he definitely wouldn’t have killed one of his own for my sake.) He ripped that serial killing jerk apart, threw him right over the edge of the boardwalk, and he certainly didn’t seem conflicted about it. And though it is possible this man between my legs is an unfeeling psychopath, a creature absolutely devoid of feeling, I doubt that too.
There’s one thing I absolutely believe: I’m in danger. I feel it in the air, like gooseflesh prickling against my arms, but it’s a stronger sensation than goosebumps — needles. I think I can hear the danger, too, a howl that’s more like a moan from somewhere behind us, and I’m not a fan of any sound that might be a creature capable of hyper-speed; the vampire on the bridge closed the gap between us and hit me in the head before I even registered he was moving.
The flesh on my arms prickles harder — sharp, stabbing. This is not the result of my brain going haywire due to some concussion complication. This is … familiar. It’s a warning.
And I know exactly where I remember it from.
