A long sigh leaks out of me. “I get that you mean I shouldn’t reveal myself to the world.”
“Good plan, that,” says Dalton. “People don’t much care for strange.”
I punt a small stone into the road, but decide not to feel sad. I’ve always been good at being the invisible good girl. Rules, I can follow, even if the game’s different.
Mystical Nonsense
11
Cottage Lake is pretty quiet at whatever time it is now. Again, I grab for my missing iPhone.
Damn. It’s like a vital organ’s been stolen from me. Maybe my parents can look into what happened with it since I can’t go outside during the day. Whoever came up with the idea of ‘normal business hours’ clearly didn’t take vampires into account. I wonder if I can like hire a lawyer or something and go after them for discrimination.
It’s also raining again, but thankfully not hard. My T-shirt soaks through pretty quick, but doesn’t make me uncomfortable. At least not from cold. The wet-and-clingy thing is annoying, but at least the shirt’s black. No one’s getting a show.
We walk past houses where normal families are going about their normal lives. I glance at a few windows, peering in at people on their sofas watching television. My life hadn’t really started yet. I’ve been eighteen for a couple of months, out of school not even two weeks. So much for high school graduation being a major life event. Think I have that beat. I kick at a rock or two while trying to figure out how I feel about this new me. I’m never going to do the whole career, find a guy, get married deal. My life up until last Thursday had been pretty much sheltered and tame. Not in my worst, wildest nightmare could I have imagined I wouldn’t live to see thirty… or even die before twenty.
But… I get to be eighteen forever. I won’t get fat, grow old, or really have any responsibilities. Somewhere in the mess that’s been this change, I’ve gone from being eager to get out of my house and be independent to having this desperate need to cling to my old normal. The idea of leaving scares me. Probably because home is the only thing in my world that’s the same. Having parents who’ll still protect me despite the change is a huge deal. By the time they get old, I should be at least comfortable with myself. When they’re gone, and my sibs are all grown up and living on their own, maybe then I’ll think about leaving home… or maybe I’ll keep the house. Making money shouldn’t be hard since I seem to be able to get normal people to do whatever I want.
“You all right?” asks Dalton.
My thumbs still hooked in my pockets, I shrug. “Just thinking.”
He rubs my shoulder. “It’s pretty normal to be sad. Not everyone gets to mourn their own death.”
“Oh, I’m not upset about that.” I pull my hair off my face and chuckle. “Okay, I am… but I’m not depressed. So far, this vampire thing is kinda cool. I’m thinking about the future.”
“Ahh.” Dalton nods and stops with one foot off the curb, waiting for a slow-moving car to roll by us. “Thinking about the future is a good way to get into a bad mood.”
I laugh. “I’m immortal.”
“You’re a teenager. All teenagers are immortal… or think they are.”
“But―” I zip across the road and jump onto the sidewalk, grinning at him. “I actually am.”
Dalton, hands in his pockets, strolls over and steps up on the curb. “You’re adjusting rather well. The last newbie I knew spent forty years whinging about it.”
“Pff. This is cool. Who’d be all emo about being able to fly and live forever?”
He puffs at a stray bit of hair hanging over his face. “You’d be surprised.”
I resume walking. “At least you got over it.”
Dalton trots up alongside me on the left. “I wasn’t being self-referential there, luv. You’re my second progeny. Really, it’s a nice change.”
“Well, you didn’t kill me.” I grab the post of a stop sign and swing around it, hanging by my arms. “What happened to asshole?”
“Oh.” He whistles innocently. “The last you’ll see of him was in that thermos.”
I gasp in horror, lose my grip on the stop sign, and fall with a splat in the wet grass between the sidewalk and the road. Yeah, the dude murdered me after cheating on me, but we’d still spent two years together. A bunch of our better memories flood over me: birthday parties, dates, weird random shit he’d do at school between classes… the first time we really made love. Grr. What a disaster. Two weeks ago, I caught him cheating with a cheerleader. Scott’s idiotic defense was ‘It’s not like I’m dating her. She’s just a one-time hook up.’ The flavor of cheeseburger bubbles in my throat. “That was… Scott’s blood?”
Dalton reaches down, grasps my hand, and pulls me back to my feet. “Aye.”
“Huh.” I ponder that for a moment, then sigh. “That’s not what he had in mind when he asked me to eat him.”
“Uhh…” Dalton coughs.
“I didn’t. That’s probably why he hooked up with Bree. Bet she agreed to do stuff I wasn’t comfortable with.”
He rubs his forehead. “Truly the world has lost one of its shining luminaries.”
“I can’t believe you killed him.” I tap my sneaker at the grass, making mud squish. Bits and pieces of that night come back to me. Our shouting voices echoed over the woods, drowning out the music from the party going on a hundred yards away. It’s hard to think about someone my age being dead, gone forever. Even a complete asshole like Scott. “We dated for like two years.”
“Well, he did kill you first.” Dalton smiles.
“Yeah.” I start to walk on, but stop after a few steps and spin to face him. “Were you really too slow? I’m new at this and I can move pretty damn fast.”
Head down, he nods. “I was watching from a ways back, enjoying the show and planning to feed from you once you’d stormed off to have a good cry. Was not expecting the knife.”
“Good cry?” I roll my eyes. “I’m the one who told him we were over. He accused me of throwing ‘us’ away.”
“And you shouted something like ‘I’m not the one shagging Bree Swanson.’ Only, you didn’t use ‘shagging.’” He winks.
Even good girls can drop F bombs with good cause.
“Yeah. He asked me to forgive his cheating, tried to say it wasn’t anything but sex… no love involved, and she meant nothing to him. I couldn’t trust him anymore. Told him that was it for us, and then he attacked me.” I flinch at the memory of Scott lunging at me with a blade.
Dalton pulls me into a big brother type hug. “You’re too young. Bastard deserved what he got. What’s wrong with Americans? Always jump straight to the violence.”
I chuckle. “People have been killing over love for a long time. He didn’t really love me though. He was pissed off because he couldn’t control me. My dad never liked him.”
“Aye. Makes sense.” He holds me out to arms’ length with a hand on each shoulder, gives me a head-to-toe glance, then hands me a small card. “Well, looks like you’ve got the basics sorted.”
“Huh?” I peer at the card, which has his name, Dalton Ames, plus a phone number. “What’s this? You’re leaving?”
Dalton backs up a step. “Aye. Remember that whole ‘not a pet’ thing? Besides, you’re clinging to your mortal family. That’s going to create complications I need to distance myself from. If you’d ’ave done the usual fake death business, I’d be bringin’ you with. We’d have spent a decade or so together, then you’d have toddled off.”
“I couldn’t put my family through that.”
“Aye.” He chuckles, still walking backward. “If you’re still inclined to, look me up when your parents are gone and the siblings flown the nest.”
“Wait.” I hurry after him. “What about teaching me all the vampy stuff?”
“I already gave you the basics, but the advanced things you’ll need to suss out on your own. We’re all a little different. Pretty sure you’re an Innocent.”
Arms folded, I smirk at him.
“Hardly.”
Dalton laughs. “No, dear. I’m not talking about virginity. Some of our kind are quite difficult to tell apart from normal living people. You have a lot of empathy, or soul if you believe in that mystical nonsense.”
I raise an eyebrow. “You’re a vampire who doesn’t believe in mystical nonsense?”
“I believe in whatever magic makes us what we are. Not so sure there’s such a thing as a soul though.” Dalton waves dismissively. “There’s been plenty of mortals who didn’t have one, more so than our kind.”
Ugh. Now he’s reminding me of history class. “Yeah.”
“Anyway, your skin looks pink and alive, you’ve got an easy time faking body heat. You appear to be breathing and your heart is beating. Quite likely, you can even eat normal food and not feel like you’ve got a weed eater running around in your guts. It won’t do any good for you, but you can enjoy the taste. Vampires like you are called Innocents.”
“Ooo-kay, but you don’t look like a walking dead man.”
Dalton chuckles. “Innocents aren’t the only vampires who can pass themselves off as alive. You can do it without thinking, and maybe can’t turn it off. For me, my skin’s pretty much like the gas needle on a car. The longer it’s been since I’ve eaten, the greyer I get. I can force natural color, but it’s effort to do so.”
“So, if I’m one of these Innocents, what else is there?”
He nods to the side in a ‘let’s walk’ gesture as he falls into a lazy stride. I brush some grass off my wet jeans and trot after him.
“Well, first, you’ve got the Old Guard, then there’s the Lost Ones, Furies, Beasts, Academics, Scraps, and Shadows.”
“Oh, that helps.” I chuckle. “What does any of that mean?”
Dalton pretends to look at his watch. “You’re just tryin’ ta keep me around aren’t you?”
“Okay, you got me. I find you irresistibly charming with that British accent. I’m going to take my pants off right now.”
He laughs, waits a few steps, and glances at me. “Are you serious?”
“No.” I playfully punch him on the shoulder, because I know he’s messing with me. The man still thinks of me as a little girl he felt compelled to ‘save.’ “But I am serious about what that stuff means.”
“Right.” Dalton snaps his fingers, feigning disappointment. “The Old Guard are basically the European snobs. Been vampires for ages, think they’re better than everyone else, that sort of thing. Some of the really old ones even look down on humans as livestock. Furies are relatively normal, but prone to anger issues. Beasts are quite savage, with little self-control, driven by pure impulse. They’re so taken by the dark part of vampiric nature that they won’t even wake up if something attacks them while they sleep. Those blokes retire to vaults or tombs for protection, and they also burn through blood so fast it’s nutters. Easy that they wind up feeding two or three times a week. They drink a lot more than us too, and sometimes kill when feeding. You can thank them for the existence of vampire hunters.”
“Ugh. That’s horrible.” I cringe. “How dangerous are these hunters?”
Dalton grins at me. “Mileage may vary. But, I doubt you’ll have much to worry about. Innocents only real advantage among our kind is how easily they can pose as a human.”
“Oh, yay.” I fake clap.
“Shadows are the most recognizable by sight. They’re rather ghastly, honestly. Grey skin, look―and smell―like walking corpses, but they’re rather adept at hiding. Rumor has it they even interact with ghosts and such. The Academics lose their capacity for emotion and often devote themselves to learning and knowledge. Lost Ones are the antisocial types―rebels you might say. They tend to be loners or cluster in small groups of their own kind, and are occasionally tricksters. And, Scraps are… well… scraps are abominations. Accidents, really. They’re weak and don’t often last more than a month or three.”
“And Innocents?”
He stops walking and pats me on the cheek. “You’ve got a front row seat for that, Sarah. Except for sunlight, you’ll be able to pass yourself off as a human with ease. Of any vampire, you’ve got the strongest hold on the person you used to be. Your inner bits don’t even shrivel up.”
“Inner bits?” Both my eyebrows go up.
“Organs. Take, for example, the Shadows. You cut one of them open, you’ll get a bunch of crumbly bits and dust, like yer doin’ an autopsy on Tutankhamen’s mummy. All your stuff’s intact, and might even work if you can figure it out.”
Whoa. “Are you saying I can still get, like, knocked up?”
He makes a face like I slapped him with a raw fish. “You know, I’ve never even thought of that. I was talkin’ about forcing food through the usual pathway. Medically speaking, you’re deceased. But… I suppose if any vampire would be capable of it, it’d be an Innocent.”
“Darn.” I lean back with an arm to my forehead. “So much for my daydreams of wild hedonism.”
Dalton cracks up to the point of tears.
Oh, gawd. I don’t look that wholesome, do I? Hello, sarcasm? Maybe I was the good girl when it came to booze and drugs, but if my parents knew half of what I’ve done with Scott, they’d probably explode from shame. The last thing on my mind now is finding a hook up. Maybe I’ll get around to that in a couple years after the ‘holy shit I’m not dead!’ wears off.
“I wouldn’t worry about it.” Dalton raises a hand, laughs a bit more, and lets out a big sigh of relief. “Oh, that was brilliant. I needed a good laugh. Look, even if those bits still managed to work, it would likely take an awful lot of concentration and focused intent. And I’ve not the first clue how to go about describing that thought process since I lack the requisite equipment.”
“Right…”
Dalton brushes a finger at my forehead, tucking some of my hair behind my ear. “If you have questions, call me, but you’ll need to figure the rest out for yourself. I have no idea how to be innocent.”
“You’re a Lost One, aren’t you?”
He wags his eyebrows at me with a ‘maybe’ smile, and turns to walk away.
“Wait.”
Dalton glances back at me.
“Thanks for saving me. You didn’t have to do that. I’m glad you didn’t just leave me there.”
He smiles. “I always was a sucker for a pretty face.”
“Wait,” I say, as he turns to leave again. “One more question.”
“Ask away,” he says without looking.
“Aren’t you going to tell me to keep this whole vampire thing secret?” I walk up to him, arms out to my sides. “You didn’t even say anything about me telling my parents.”
Dalton offers a blasé shrug. “It’s easy enough to make people forget if you screw up and tell the wrong person, someone who can’t handle it. It’s not like we’re in Europe.”
He vanishes, leaving behind a patch of fog. I turn around in a complete circle, but there’s no trace of him anywhere… or any scuffing footsteps. Huh. Neat trick.
And what the heck did he mean about Europe?
Innocent
12
It takes me a few minutes to stop staring at the sidewalk where Dalton vanished. Is that disappearing thing something I’ll be able to do eventually or is it, like, special for Lost Ones? I’m sure it’s a lot more complicated than he made it sound. I get the feeling my being an Innocent will let me do stuff he can’t. But ugh. Seriously? Why do I have to be called Innocent? That’s so… I dunno. Makes me feel like a little kid.
Anyway, our wandering left me at the intersection of 198th Ave and NE 160th. I’m closer to my friend Michelle’s house than home or Ashley’s. Cool. Hope it’s not too late. If it is, I’ll just float up to her bedroom window.
I jog down 160th, following it around a corner past a bunch of houses ’til I can hook a left onto NE 162nd. Michelle lives two houses in from the corner. No surprise, both her parents’ cars are there at this hour… or whatever hour this is. Grr. I miss my phone.
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Conversation and canned laughter from a sitcom comes from inside, loud enough for me to follow along while creeping up onto the front porch. Someone’s still awake at least. I knock, wait a minute, then knock a little louder.
The television mutes.
“Who in the hell knocks at damn near eleven at night?” mutters Michelle’s mom.
Footsteps pad up behind the door, but it doesn’t open.
I wave at the peephole. “Hi, Mrs. Gerard.”
Michelle’s mother opens the door in a few inches and peers through the gap at me. “God on Earth… Sarah?” She blesses herself. “Are you haunting me?”
“No. It’s really me. Is Chelle here?”
“Good Lord, girl.” She pulls the door the rest of the way in, gawking. “How are you here? They said you’d been murdered.”
Her oversized purple sweater and black sweat pants make me jealous, since I’m rocking wet jeans and a tee. She hasn’t quite closed her mouth yet, still staring at me like she’s seeing a ghost. Hah. Guess she is in an odd way, right?
“Someone at the hospital made a mistake. They…” Think fast. Umm. “There was some other woman who died, and they got my name mixed up with a Jane Doe.”
“Lordy, lordy, lordy.” She clucks her tongue, shaking her head. “How do you go from being dead to standin’ here like nothin’ happened so fast?”
“It wasn’t a big wound. Just hit me in a bad spot.”
Mrs. Gerard takes my hand. Her dark fingers make me feel deathly pale, but I’m really no more ghoulish than I’d been in life. In fact, I think I have a little more color in my cheeks now. She squeezes my hand a little, as if to make sure I’m really here. I stare into her eyes, wanting her to think someone made an error when they announced me dead.
“Good to see you’re all right. Did that boy really do what they said?” asks Mrs. Gerard.
“Yeah. He stabbed me after I broke up with him. Sorry for bothering you so late, but I wanted to let Michelle know I’m okay.”
“Oh, she went over to Ashley’s. Was gonna spend the night. That girl’s been pretty upset. You best get on over there soon, and let her know someone at the hospital messed up. Your poor parents. They ought to sue for bein’ put through that.”
A Nighttime of Forever Page 9
