by Logan Keys
I get to my feet, shoulder my gun. I point a finger in the doctor’s face. “The monsters took and took but not from me, so I’ll fight back, for the weak ones, for those who can’t.” I point at the room knowing now, I’m just ranting and getting it all out, more for me than him. “And Jeremy does too, or did, and you shouldn’t have told him! He’ll be in one of his phases for a long time now, and one more person is getting purged, or ten, or thousands---all because we can’t get them to revolt like we need! All because of you!”
I breathe hard, fighting to keep from hitting something or someone.
Are these stages of grief? Because, already I mourn Mimi for Jeremy---more for Jeremy than Mimi herself because I can’t get close to little girls that die. If I did, for every one of her, there are thousands, maybe millions more.
I fist my hands at the futility. “We almost had Anthem last time and now it’s right on the brink. One more time and she’ll be ours. If you sabotage---”
“Ours or the Skull’s?” he asks.
I punch a fist into the palm of my other hand. “The peoples.”
He finally does give a shadow of a smile. “And that’s why you should be the one to have it. You’ll give it right back.”
Chapter Twelve
Dallas
The playback ends with the sharp sound of emptiness. Joelle and I have walled each other out of our thoughts. Mine, because seeing Tommy again, alive and well, doesn’t bring only friendly memories. I’m in love with him anew. This isn’t just a crush. He’s quite loveable. A hero.
Heart in hand, I’d watched him be torn away from the podium and arrested.
If he were here right now, I’d be ten years old again kicking his chair. Bugging him. I may tell myself I’ve moved on from Thomas Ripley Hatter, but my heart is utterly broken.
Joelle’s walled me off, too. Probably for the same reason, she saw him as a brother, I know that already, and she probably has things she’d wished she could unsay.
“He was then killed, my darling,” Joelle’s mother says, not without sympathy. Adrian turns off the screen.
“How?” Joelle’s voice is a sliver of sound, a ghost of noise.
“Simon called your friend treasonous,” Adrian mutters. “Do you see how these men end one another with barely a thought?”
“Where is he?” Joelle asks.
“The machine. With the men.”
I can almost sense her mother’s glee. Having turned her daughter quite easily against her own newly found father.
Joelle moves to leave.
I take her cue.
We’d mourned him the night she told me she thought he was dead. We’d mourned many days. And now it feels fresh once again, a confirmation of a tragedy.
And his face… his handsome hope-filled face of such…
Now we know the truth. Tommy is dead. Murdered by the people her mother hates and who fear her stone-like gaze. The people on the other side of the barrier.
Things echo inside Joelle’s thoughts. “Turn them all to stone. Kill them all.” but that fades into an empty pattern of deep regret.
I fear this little “queen” might be an off with their heads sort.
We pass back outside. No men allowed, Joelle was wise enough to send ours across the water to hide. From her very own mother.
We find more stone statues of soldiers, men, those who’d defied the Medusa. They call this place La La Land, like we’re in a fairytale and then I suppose that would make Joelle’s mother the wicked queen.
I feel a pang because I want to talk to Cara about it. She always loved a good story. She’d be so awed at the spiders crawling along the walls, freely roaming the chambers in Adrian’s rooms.
We’re immune to things like spiders and snakes, all creepy-crawlies of the nocturnal kind. They know us as we know ourselves, we are one and the same, together scratching across the belly of the night as we both hunt prey. But Joelle most of all, she’s as if a moon-child was born of darkness and all the brighter for it, does she shine. Her skin even glows in the absence of light.
And her mother, a woman of such great vengeance, shouldn’t I agree with her hatred? Wouldn’t it make sense that I should also want to rule all men?
Unhindered by mind barriers, Joelle’s and my thoughts do swarm all but one topic: Tommy.
His death is like a cloud following us around the city. My heart is broken. Joelle’s heart is too young to break. Still flexible rather than brittle, it’s folded up inside her chest.
Her thoughts are swiftly becoming too much chaos to focus or track.
She longs to be with her people. She longs to decide what we must do. She focuses on that.
Joelle is too young for so much sadness and responsibility. But you’d never know it
Long live the queen, indeed.
Chapter Thirteen
Dallas
It seems as though after watching the video that I should cry. My face should be wet with tears that constantly flow over what is lost in my short lifetime. Yet, I embrace the new numbness like a friend.
I no longer feel things like I should. It might worry another, but it does not worry me. The city of L.A. is split between two sides. Women and men. We go to the women’s side but the male vampires seem to take offense to this hiding we’ve made them do.
They won’t argue with Joelle; however, a loyal bunch is the vampire. But if she doesn’t decide, we might test the constraints of such a thing much too far.
Why I feel responsible for our little hive of blood and darkness and death is beyond me, but we are tethered together now, and a sense of loyalty does prevail.
However, our ranks grow more tense. That is true.
Luckily, Lotte has been the one who’s decided to stay behind with the men. She’s going to keep them in line, I believe, and if I had to trust another to do it, it’d be her.
But the line through the city is a peculiar thing to me.
I don’t sense that my gender represents me anymore. I never wanted to be a man in a man’s world either, though. No one has it truly and honestly fair. For every fist that fell on my face, for every hammering blow that rained down on me, I never blamed it on being a girl. There were plenty of boys at school hiding bruises. One in particular would give me that little chin-nod, his eyes behind dark glasses, his teeth bared in an angry smile, never a normal one, because those shades covered another black eye.
But he’d seen mine too.
He knew the madness.
And then in turn he’d beat on anyone in the halls who’d mentioned it until they never mentioned much to him at all ever again.
Violence begets violence.
But sometimes it stops it too.
My thoughts turn to Tommy again. He stood up to my dad like no one in my life ever had. And he was a guy…
Gender vs. gender was bound to happen in a time like this. Women were not just finding an equality gifted by some government, no, they were given a cinder gaze of fire and brimstone by geneticists and they were burning their coparts to the ground.
Payback has always been the bitch of bitches.
In male-dominated wars, then male-dominated rings of rebellions, then lastly, male-dominated wilds, the tide has not just changed, it’s filled with an X chromosome set to drown everyone who’s been in the driver seat thus far.
Can a person blame them?
I long to quiz Tommy about it. Daughter of Eve type things come to mind. She’s not tempting Adam with an apple anymore, she’s shoving that thing down his throat for bringing the entire planet to its knees over a toxic masculinity gone awry.
The proof is at my feet. The maturity of the situation is the line drawn through the center of the city between two towers. It’s done in red paint, thick, and straight. I wonder who drew it? I wonder if they are an artist and hated wasting such a gift on this great divide?
“Dallas,” Joelle says, and beckons me into her room. “Well?” she asks once I’m inside.
“We could leave,�
�� I say but she shoots me a glare.
“You saw the video, Dallas.”
I bite back a shudder. The picture of Tommy at the podium, a desperate but firm look upon his face. Shouting to the crowd to fight for peace…
“Yeah.”
“We have to try. Don’t you think?”
I sigh. I knew that might be what she got out of it. The thing about Joelle is we are drawn together for good reason, sleepwalking in the coma of our parent’s mistakes. We have no identity.
Tommy reflected to us something more. He has enough purpose to share it.
Had…
I try the elephant in the room. “Joelle, your mother…”
“Is a monster.”
“I was going to say has pretty much put herself into a war we can avoid.”
The silence speaks volumes.
“So, you want to involve us in this then?”
Joelle nods but crosses her arms, a stubborn jut to her chin.
The thing about teenagers is, we never hear much, we talk a lot, and no matter how mature we seem, we have a naïve ability to pretend that everything, everything, is gonna work out all right. Even if an elder would be telling us right now this won’t end well, we both would shrug them off.
Like she shrugs me off.
Even as we stand here as vampires who’ve lost everything we hold dear. Even if we had no purpose.
Now we have one.
It’s not a good one. As the statistics have shown. Vampirism is the new result of bad parenting.
“What do you think we should do?”
“Me?” I shrug.
It’s an acerbic shrug. A “You’re the one with all the ideas, kid.” type of shrug.
“My mother, she says there is a headstone…”
I swallow.
Neither of us really wants to talk about it, like speaking will motivate the reality to rear its ugly head and eat us alive.
I close my eyes, say a prayer, and the tears I’ve been holding since the moment her mother had said, “Your friend is dead, Joelle. He was a hero.” They come in a rush. Finally.
Hero. It seems to Adrian that the dead men get a pass from her hatred.
I want to scream at myself: Wake up! That I’ve been spending time in a dream I can’t escape.
Can he truly be gone?
Are we not indestructible?
Inhuman?
No.
Inhuman doesn't begin to cover what we are. It's not strong enough a word. We've become shadows of shadows.
But this.
The tremendous pain in my chest, the building pressure behind my eyes, and the heat on my face… This feels human.
Tears slip silently over my cheeks, and without looking I know Joelle’s crying, too. We mourned loudly before, now quietly we cry, over an empty bed, but soon, we will cry over a headstone where our very warm friend is cold beneath the dirt.
I hiccup and softly moan.
Joelle joins me.
We make sounds, strange and embarrassing sounds, we make them so the world might know we don’t care what they think, we mourn the way we mourn, and it’s fueled by love of a fallen friend.
“Did he go to heaven?” she asks a long time later and slips a small hand into mine.
“Absolutely,” I whisper.
Chapter Fourteen
Dallas
It’s days before we can inspect the city as it stands. I go it alone to the side where the men are. I’m wary when I approach but there doesn’t seem to be any guards. I hide under the cover of darkness, anyway. I can see what they cannot. But the opening to their side is empty.
Strange.
Just as I’m about to walk through, he slips into my space. Before I can react, there’s a knife at my throat. I know it’s a he because of his size and outline, but he’s merely a shadow otherwise. I’m so surprised at being outmaneuvered, that I freeze. How he’d gone undetected by me… no scent, nothing.
We’ve been the only dark ones, us vampires, but the Underground has made more of us it seems. I feign one direction then another. The knife does not leave my skin. He keeps pace with me easily, gliding in a mimic of my movements.
The blade has not even cut me, such is his perfect ability to hug close at a speed no human eye can see, let alone follow.
Only one thing can move like us. And that’s us. They’ve made a better model. Now that he’s in my space, he does have a scent, it’s faint and blends, but I don’t smell the one thing that I should: need.
He’s not starving. Jealously strikes me swift and fast. I swipe at his throat and he backs away. He disappears, but I finally track him from place to place in the building’s shadows. He slides through the night like a wet thing.
I watch his abilities with surprise. All of our benefits without any drawbacks.
How irritating.
“Can you walk in the day, too?” I demand.
If they can make us like him, then why are we cursed?
His eyes glow more like a laser than my own blood-red. Our hunter is pain, and pain is in everything now, regret and pain.
I sense none of that on him though. I still have not seen his eyes beyond the glow. Dots, electrified, and he seems to decide he will stop trying to kill me for a moment. Not that a measly piece of sharp metal at my throat will do the job even if he were to cut deeply. Even decapitation won’t work.
Instead of answering me, he disappears.
He’s faster than me.
I growl when he jumps from the gloom again into my space. I bare my teeth. I suspect the sound he’d made before dodging away was a chuckle. He’s toying with me!
“Show yourself,” I say, claws raised, spinning a circle. I’m angry with myself for being the vulnerable one when I haven’t been that in what feels like forever.
“Why are you here?” he asks, striding leisurely into the moonlight. He comes close from a new direction, before appearing in another one, side winding, making wind at such a speed. And the swagger on this guy.
“To see your leader," I say.
“What are you?” he asks.
“I’m like you.”
He laughs from behind me and I whirl around. White teeth flash in the shadow.
“No one is like me,” he says, deep voice rumbling with warning.
He’s suddenly an inch away, and I realize something. I gape at him. “You can’t leave the shadows.” Wherever he moves… he takes the darkness along with him. “You’re a wraith of a person, aren’t you?”
So that’s it then. He’s part of the shadows themselves. It’s not that he can or can’t walk in the day, his face never is more than a black void even in the moonlight.
He comes closer as if to show me. The void where his face should be is so empty it swirls. Teeth that grin of white across inky nothingness, then eyes that glow, but between, blackness.
I laugh. “How terrifying.”
That seems to interest him. He cocks his head. “What are you,” he asks.
“Vampire,” I say. “Well, a version of it.”
“You drink blood?” He’s disgusted by the sound of it.
I stiffen, indigent. “I ate meat before. The carcass of a dead animal is not any different. I actually think eating blood from a living thing is quite nicer. It’s painless, if we choose.”
I can sense his humor. “What’s your name?”
“Dallas.”
He moves back a step giving me space just now seeming to realize he’d been clinging to me… like a shadow.
I do catch a scent, now. A craving. It’s one I’m not familiar with, and I’m now the one who follows him, getting into his space. Then I pause, feeling an overwhelming sense of sadness.
Loneliness comes off him in waves, and I’m stunned by the size of it. “You’re not the only one who’s alone,” I say softly.
I don’t know why I say it, but he startles as if I’ve cut him.
Then anger builds, the waves of its heat billowing off of him, burning my senses. His emot
ions each have a certain smell. It helps to read him because I can’t exactly see his expression.
“Why are you here,” he bites off.
The deepness of his voice resonates through me. I’m ultra-sensitive to the noise. It rattles my core.
“I’m here to see Bradford.”
“Why?”
“Maybe we don’t want to follow Adrian. Perhaps he’s a better leader. You have most of the force. We can add to your numbers.”
“Is that really why you’re here?”
This time, I smile. “No.”
“So, you’re going to size us up?”
“Yes.”
“How are we doing so far?”
I cross my arms. “That depends. Are there any more of your types in there?”
The white teeth again. His arms raise to either side. “Alas, I am one of a kind.”
He says it so full of boast, yet laced with sadness, that my heart hurts for him. Here I thought I walked the lonely road, even with the other vampires, I felt left out. But he is truly alone.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
“Shade.”
“Nice to meet you, Shade.”
His shadow head inclines.
Shade turns toward the entrance. “I’ll take you to Bradford. I won’t let them tear you apart either. I can offer you my protection if you like?”
“I don’t need it. But why would you offer?”
“It’s not every day I meet someone who---”
“Is like you…?”
“Not exactly. You have a face.” His bitterness is a brightly burned smell. I taste this in the back of my throat.
“What’s going on in there?” I ask when I hear shouting.
“Tonight? Oh, the usual.”
“Liar.”
He smiles again. At least his teeth let me know when he’s smiling, even if the smell is a tip off.
Shade sounds weary of it all. “Change of guard is always a little tense. There’s some infighting. Many don’t want to follow the guy but he’s got the machine. They fear it.”
