And I could only tolerate so much time in front of a television.
I think a lot of humans get hooked on the tube during childhood. I didn’t have a childhood. Not a human one, at least… and even as an elemental, there really isn’t a comparable experience.
When I was in the asylum, Doctor Cain—the shrink who ran the place—ran into all sorts of challenges working with me. I mean, so much of what he did with most clients involved an analysis of one’s youth, diving into one’s relationship with her parents. In lieu of that, he tried to use my entire previous experience as a baseline.
I still remember him sitting there, his legs crossed, looking at me intently. “How did it make you feel when you ate someone?”
“Satisfied,” I told him. I mean, how else was I supposed to answer that? At the time, humans were nothing more than food to me.
Funny how the wind in my face, riding my bike early in the morning, was even more invigorating than later in the day. The dew of the morning before sunrise—it was refreshing. Not like later in most summer days when the sun had a chance to bake the smog into the air.
Satisfying…
Not in the same way a meal, perhaps, used to be in my previous life. But something about the air striking my face, my hair blowing from beneath my helmet, was incredibly calming.
I had a change of shoes in a duffel bag strapped to the back of my bike. I figured my leather pants and my white blouse—a button-up shirt with a little lace around the wrists—were probably the most gender-neutral pieces I owned. At least I wasn’t wearing a dress.
These pants were better when I was on the bike, anyway—for obvious reasons.
If the Order folks questioned my style, I’d simply say I had Elizabethan tastes. I didn’t wear it often, but it was a part of my get-up for the local renaissance festival.
Aside from Leotards and Lace, it was the only semi-consistent gig I’d managed to score. Sure, they only had the festival once a year. But with my musical talents, I’d worked the fair as a bard… or bardess, as the case might be.
When I wasn’t doing that, I offered crossbow demonstrations—a weapon I also had in my oversized duffel and mounted to my bike. Aside from the common stake—or, in a pinch, a stiletto—the crossbow was the best weapon I’d found for hunting vamps.
I mean, a crossbow bolt is basically a flying stake. Bullets don’t work; they go right through the vampire’s heart, allowing the fiend to immediately heal. A bow and arrow would do the same thing.
But a crossbow was easier to aim, at least for me. The bolts were, on average, a little smaller than arrows. I could carry more of them. And for the most part, it was more consistent. So many factors can impact the force of an arrow when it leaves a bow. But with my crossbow, the bolts flew with predictable force. Too little power, as could happen with a bow, and even if the arrow broke the sternum or got through the rib cage, it might end up diverted away from the heart.
After all, that’s what the rib cage is for—to protect the heart. Even staking a vampire by hand, unlike how it’s often depicted in the movies or on television, often fails if a hunter doesn’t know what he or she is doing. Many newbie hunters have failed—and gotten bitten and drained—because they made the mistake of trying to go straight through the sternum.
There was an art to the hunt… and I needed to present myself as the Pablo Picasso of vampire slaying.
A painter wouldn’t show up to create a masterpiece without his brushes, paints, and a proper canvas. I couldn’t show up to meet the Order without some basic vamp-hunting weapons.
If they didn’t believe I was a professional, they’d probably turn me away. Hunting vampires is a dangerous business. Hell, if I had a vehicle with a trunk, I’d probably bring a vampire corpse with me to make my case. If it came to that…
When I pulled up to the church, I was more drawn to what looked like a multicolored house, striped in all the colors of the rainbow, just across the street.
I smiled to myself. Epic trolling. Love it.
I dismounted my bike and straightened out my blouse. Err, shirt. I had to remember to refer to it as a shirt. I licked my fingers and pulled my hair back behind my ears before grabbing my duffel bag.
I walked through the door. The place was quiet and dark. The sun hadn’t quite risen yet; it would soon. That’s when the Order was supposed to meet.
Then I heard running water. It’s a sound I can pick up from a mile away.
I followed the sound down a long hallway.
An older lady was standing behind the counter of a small church kitchen, filling up a carafe of water and pouring it into a coffee maker.
“Excuse me,” I said. “My name’s Nicky…”
“Nicky?”
I grunted. “Or just Nick.”
The woman nodded. “Sometimes childhood nicknames stick.”
“They do.” I feigned a smile. At least she’d thought “Nicky” was meant to be a child’s name rather than a woman’s name—as it was. I knew my undercover job was a bit shoddy, and didn’t need any red flags suggesting I might be one of those whom their divinity apparently despises.
“Can I help you with something?” the lady asked.
I nodded, unfolded the flyer Wolfgang had given me, and handed it to her. “I was referred to your quilting guild.”
“You were referred, you say?”
I unzipped my duffel bag and pulled out a stake, twirling it in my hand. “I think you know what for.”
The woman nodded as the coffee machine started to grumble behind her. “Just a little farther down the hall, third door on the right. I’ll be bringing in the coffee shortly. Cream or sugar?”
I shook my head. “No ma’am. I’m something of a purist, I suppose.”
The woman nodded. “Many of your sort are, dear.”
I shrugged. I wasn’t sure what she meant. Hunters? I guess that made sense. If you thought that vampires were a “stain” on humanity, that their existence was an abomination, I suppose that was a form of purism.
I walked through the door. Three white-haired older ladies grinned widely at me. I nodded at them politely.
I guess I expected the room to be arranged like a classroom. Rectangular tables and chairs, that sort of thing. It looked more like someone’s living room.
I always make a point to survey my surroundings—a habit I developed for a couple of reasons. Obviously, when hunting vampires it’s important to know where all your exits are. What items might be nearby that could be used in a pinch. Chair legs that could become stakes. Things like that. Sometimes when you’re coming after a vamp with what’s obviously a stake, they’re harder to handle. They know what you’re doing. But when I come after them with a shoe in my hand, or quickly bust a leg off a chair, I gain the element of surprise.
I also learned to gain an awareness of my surroundings as a trans woman. There’s a bit of a nasty word in the community: passable. The word is meant to describe how well a trans person resembles their true gender identity as opposed to the one that’s assumed based on the genitalia. Well, I’m not exactly what some people would call “passable.” Fabulous, yes. Beautiful, of course. But I couldn’t count on my fingers or toes how many times I overheard people asking one another, “Is that a man?”
When people recognize you as trans, you have to exercise some of the same precautions I’d use as a vampire hunter. I always had to be aware of the exits. On the one hand, I couldn’t sit in corners because if someone confronted me, I’d be left with no choice but to fight my way out. And I couldn’t sit in an open room comfortably without a lurking fear that someone would sucker punch me from behind.
It’s sad, but it’s just the way it is for many of us. People like me. And while I felt reasonably confident that none of the women were a direct threat, they did belong to an organization rooted in fundamentalist convictions. They hated vampires and witches because they were convinced that their Bibles—albeit with questionable interpretations—told them so. And based on
the reputation of the folks who attended this church, they’d likely hate me for the same reasons if they knew my truth.
The room didn’t have any clear exits other than the door through which I’d come. There were a few small windows that could work in a pinch, but I doubted it would come to that. The room had several mismatched couches, their backs against the walls. A giant, oval-shaped rug in the middle of the room featured oranges, greens, and golds. Similar colors decorated the couches—probably donations to the church, I presumed, from people who realized they were at least four decades out of style. There were also a couple old-style rocking chairs, the sort that actually rock on their curved bottoms, not the kind that glide on an internal mechanism.
“Excuse me,” I said, “is this the Order of the Morning Dawn?”
“Praise be the morning light!” the three elderly women said in unison as they wove their crochet hooks through woven yarn.
“Do you crochet, dear?” one of the ladies asked. “I think I have an extra set of hooks.”
I shook my head. “Never learned.”
“I suppose you don’t know how to knit, either?” a second woman asked.
“No ma’am,” I said. “I’m here to…”
“Yes, yes, yes,” the third woman said. “You’re here because you want to kill vampires.”
I cleared my throat. “Well, yeah. How did you…”
The lady in the middle set her hooks and what looked like a sweater-in-progress to the side. “I can see the pain in your eyes, dear. The devils have hurt you, haven’t they?”
“In ways you couldn’t imagine.” I slung my duffel bag off my shoulder and onto an empty loveseat adjacent to the couch where the other three women were seated.
The first woman I’d met came in behind me with a pot of coffee.
I instinctively checked over my shoulder, just to be sure she was who I thought she was.
Everything inside of me was screaming “danger,” despite the fact that nothing about these women suggested they were a threat. I had the same sort of adrenaline surge—if I actually had adrenaline like humans—that I felt when stalking vamps in dark alleys.
I chuckled a little at the ridiculousness of it. If this place wasn’t what it was, and if it wasn’t for these women being members of the Order, and if they didn’t defy everything I assumed an order of vamp-hunting religious zealots should be like, I’d be more relaxed.
I unzipped my bag. “Do you want to see my weapons?”
“Just take a seat, dear.” The first lady I’d met handed me a cup of coffee, a wide smile showing off teeth so perfect I presumed they had to be fake.
“Thank you.” I took the steaming mug in both hands. I turned and sat on the loveseat next to my duffel bag.
“I’m Mina,” the first lady I’d met said, gesturing to the others. “And I presume you’ve met Dorcas, Carol, and Susan?”
I smiled as I glanced at each of the women. “I’m Nick.”
“You’re not from around here, are you, Nick?” Mina asked.
“Not originally,” I said honestly. “But I’ve lived in the area for a while now.”
“European?” Dorcas asked.
“Originally from Germany.”
“Believe it or not,” the middle woman—Carol—started to say, “I’ve never slept a night of my life outside of the state of Kansas.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Seriously? Never?”
“I know what you’re thinking,” Carol said. “I’m eighty-five years old. You’d think in all those years I’d have left at some point. But home is home.”
Susan waved her hand through the air. “And I’ve been to all fifty states.”
I smiled. “So opposites attract?”
“We’re not attracted to each other, dear!” Carol said.
“I didn’t mean like…”
Dorcas laughed. “She’s giving you a hard time, dear.”
I smiled. I’d never been called “dear” so many times in all my existence. It was oddly… endearing.
“So what brings you to us?” Mina sat in one of the rocking chairs across the room.
“A vampire took something from me,” I said. “I’ve been hunting them for the last five years. But I’m at a dead end.”
Dorcas started laughing, then she covered her mouth with her hand. “Sorry, dear! You said dead end. That was funny.”
I nodded. “Sorry, I wasn’t trying to make a pun.”
“An undead end, maybe?” Susan asked.
“You could say that.”
“Tell me,” Mina said, “what did this vampire take from you?”
I sighed. How was I going to explain this in a way that didn’t reveal too much? I mean, I could lie. But I didn’t want to tell a story that might be subject to ill-considered inconsistencies. “I was bitten,” I said. “And I just haven’t felt like myself ever since.”
“They took a piece of your soul,” Susan said. “That’s what they do.”
I nodded. “I suppose that’s correct.”
“And you think by killing a vampire you’ll recover what was stolen from you?” Mina asked.
I sighed. “I don’t know if that’s possible. But at least if I can spare others from going through what I’ve had to endure…”
Mina smiled wide. “It’s good to hear. That’s what the Order of the Morning Dawn was founded upon. To make the world a better place for all humanity. It isn’t about vengeance.”
I nodded. In truth, vengeance had a lot to do with what I was about. And I’d started hunting vamps for mostly selfish reasons—to get my abilities back. But I had to admit that when I’d thought Wolfgang, before I knew who he was, was attacking Gina—someone I considered a friend—and the impact the attack had… that wasn’t just vengeance. It was about protection. Guarding my own. Defending the defenseless. After all, with few exceptions, humans are defenseless when hunted by vamps.
Yes, I was working with Wolfgang now. So my conscience was plagued by anxiety-inducing inconsistencies. But it was nonetheless true: even though Gina wasn’t bitten, the experience was traumatic.
“I don’t know much about the Order,” I said, only partly telling the truth. I knew more than I was letting on, but didn’t know as much as I probably thought. “But I have acquired skills I think might be useful. And… I’m tired…”
“Tired, dear?” Dorcas asked.
“Of hunting alone,” I said. “It’s tiring. And lonely. I mean, hunting vampires isn’t exactly something you can talk to most people about. Not if you don’t want them to think you’re off your rocker.”
Mina smiled wide at me as she rocked back and forth in her rocker.
“No offense,” I said.
Mina laughed out loud. “Dear, I’m on my rocker at the moment. No offense taken.”
“I like this one!” Dorcas interjected. “He’s funny.”
I smiled. “I’m just looking for a way to help.”
Mina smiled. “When we take on new hunters, we usually partner them up with one of our seasoned hunters.”
I nodded. “Alright.”
“It’s for your safety, dear,” Dorcas said.
“Not that we don’t think you’re capable,” Carol continued, almost as if these four women had a single stream of consciousness. “But until we’ve seen you in action, we can’t know for sure.”
“Understandable,” I said. “So you want someone to come with me and see me in action?”
“Yes,” Mina said. “And we tend to send out our hunters in pairs, anyway. It’s safer that way. You always want someone who has your back.”
I nodded. “I can see the value in that.”
“I was thinking Devin.” Mina glanced at the other three women.
“Devin?” Dorcas asked. “Are you sure he’s ready to mentor a new hunter?”
Mina nodded. “The young man deserves a shot to come out from beneath his father’s shadow. Working with a more experienced initiate might be a great way for him to start.”
I smiled. “Trust me, I’ve staked more vampires than I can count. I’ll have his back as much as he has mine.”
Dorcas nodded. “Very well, I’ll send for him.” She pulled out her smart phone from her purse, which was situated at her feet. I smiled a little; I don’t know why. Seeing old ladies navigate smart phones felt strange. But she scrolled her finger across the screen without any trepidation, not at all with the same confusion I’d noticed when older folks tried to wield cutting-edge technology.
“He’s on the way,” Dorcas said.
I smiled. “Thanks for giving me an opportunity.”
Mina nodded.
The four women exchanged glances and recited in concert, “Praise be the morning light!”
11
I’M NOT SURE what I expected—but Devin wasn’t it.
He was a young man, probably in his early twenties. He was tall, roughly my height at six feet. A white man with dark-brown hair and blue eyes. His features were delicate. He was clean shaven and reminded me of a young Jake Gyllenhaal. Attractive, for sure. Not at all what I expected from an up-and-coming vampire hunter with an organization like the Order of the Morning Dawn.
Then again, I don’t know what I expected. Someone a bit rougher around the edges and no sense of style. Devin, though, while certainly not about to grace the cover of GQ, clearly paid attention to his appearance. His jeans fit perfectly. His shirt was tight, but not overly so. And his nails were well manicured.
I suppose it isn’t everyone who notices a man’s nails right away. But you can tell a lot about someone based on how they take care of their nails. Well-trimmed and polished. No oil or grime on his palms or under his nails. He didn’t bite his nails—didn’t mean he didn’t have anxieties, or compulsions that he’d use to control them, but at least nail biting wasn’t one of them.
Everything about Devin was attractive, except for his posture. His eyes were directed toward the floor. Even as I stood and extended my hand, he only glanced back at me momentarily before looking away again. As I shook his hand, he gripped mine casually—not with the firm sort of shake a lot of men use to communicate their dominance. Devin certainly looked good, but he was anxious. He was uncomfortable and shy. This was supposed to be his world, not mine, but he was the one who looked like a fish out of water.
Gates of Eden: Starter Library Page 99
