by A. M. Hudson
“No, I really don’t.”
“I promise, just watch for one minute, then I’ll take you home—or maybe on a real date, like a movie or something, since you’re only friends with David.” A wry smile slipped across his lips.
“A date, I can do, but, Eric, please, humans aren’t like vampires. This stuff causes psychological damage, and I’m already pretty mess—”
“You’re fine, Amara.” He grabbed my wrist again. “You’ll be fine.”
I tugged, trying to break loose again, but he was all-too conscious of my methods now, and merely held tighter. “Please—let me go.”
“No. If you want to hang out with us, you need to understand us,” he stated calmly, talking loud enough for my human ears to hear him over the electronically-generated music.
“Eric. Please. I don’t want to see this,” my panicked voice broke against the tears, but he dragged me along, through the mess of heated bodies and barely-covered limbs, until we reached the top of the stairs. No one even looked up to the fact that I was crying and struggling against this man who was bigger and stronger than me.
“Sit.” He pushed me into a chair and sat beside me.
“Why are we sitting here?”
“Just watch.” He dropped his hands into his lap and sat back, smiling.
The balcony had cleared, the people rallying in the slums below, almost as if they knew something we didn’t. I felt out of place, like I’d entered the wrong room. Fear rose in me like a wave of heat, settling in my feet as determination. “No—I’m outta here.”
Eric grabbed my hand and pulled me back into the chair. “Sit,” he ordered in the harshest tone ever.
Swallowing, I folded my arms, making myself smaller.
“I don’t mean to be cruel, Amara, but I’m tired of playing these games with you.” He nodded to the dance floor. “It’s time you got a reality check.”
“Okay. It’s real. I get it.”
“Just humour me, please? Just stay for five minutes, then I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”
“No deal. Take me home now,” I demanded. He went to shake his head at me, looking up quickly when I added, “Jerk.”
“You can say what you want about me, Amara. But I’m trying to save the last few weeks of your relationship with my council leader. If you keep this up, he will have to leave.”
“You think he’d really leave because I won’t let him kill?”
“Yes. If you think for a second that anything outranks our primal needs, you’re delusional, girl. It’ll start with lies, then he’ll just start coming back from ‘walks’ a little later than usual. Eventually, the pain of being without the bite, the kill, will be worse than being without you, and he’ll leave.”
“How...how long will that take—’til he gets that bad?”
“He left you in a pool of your own tears tonight, didn’t he?”
I folded my arms. “Fine. I’ll stay, but I don’t have to watch.”
“Oh, you’ll watch,” he noted in an annoyingly conceited tone. “You’ll watch because you won’t be able to help yourself.”
Don’t be so sure.
The room became darker then; the blue strobe stopped, giving way to a cloudy red spotlight that excited the crowd as it touched their fingertips.
“What’s happening?” I said, leaning closer to Eric.
“Diversion.”
“What’s that smell?”
He frowned. “You can smell that?”
“Yeah, what is it, it smells like...lavender?”
“That’s how the vampires know it’s time—to make a kill.” He unfolded his arms and sat up to look over the red handrail running the length of the balcony. “It’s laced with a drug, something that makes the humans a little more relaxed.”
My fingers tingled; I looked down, watching them kind of grow thicker and thinner, while small, clear circles ran over my flesh like winding vortexes. “It’s affecting me, too.”
“It won’t last long.”
“Does it affect you?”
“I get a breath of it, maybe feel a bit jollier than usual, but that’s about it.”
“You won’t eat me, will you?”
He didn’t even look at me, and I didn’t hear his response, although I’m sure it was comical. My head swelled, my ears becoming thick with muddy volume all around me, like everyone was speaking under water, and moving that way too.
“You okay, kiddo?” He laughed at me.
“I feel like I’m sitting on the very top peak of a roller-coaster,” I said, not sure if I’d actually said it.
He laughed again and sat back, nodding to the far corner of the room, darkly shadowed by the lack of light. “Watch carefully over there. It’s not easy to see, we’re pretty skilled at discretion.”
In the pitch black corner, a flash of white teeth caught my eye. Each wall was tightly packed with half-naked bodies; the girls, with their heads rolled to one side—necks exposed—were topless; their companions clothed.
“Are there any female vampires here?”
“A few.” He shrugged. “They usually pick the women off too, though.”
“Really, why?”
“Don’t know. Ask ‘em.” He shrugged again, shuffling forward on his chair to watch.
“Do you eat here?” I asked so casually it almost sounded like we were discussing Betty’s Burger cafe.
“I do. But not tonight.”
“Why?”
“Because I have you with me.” He reached across and folded my fingers into his. “I won’t make the mistake of walking away from you when we’re in a room full of vampires, ever again.”
The gluggy feeling of being filled up with too much water or oxygen dissipated, leaving me feeling slightly giddy. I sat forward, suddenly not so worried about the fact that, below, people were about to die; a feeling I think was owed to this drug. But it cleared my head in a way that made it safe for me to watch, to look below and see the beauty in the motion—the way the vampires seemed to move to a pulse; to hold their victims with what almost looked like love; to see the slender lines of the human’s throats, open and completely exposed; to understand the trust, the dedication to give their life over.
“It’s sort of...”
“Beautiful,” Eric finished for me; I looked at him, wanting to be disgusted, but too high to process that.
“Yeah. Sort of.”
We stood then and I wrapped my fingers around the red rail, feeling each nub of raised paint around it, aware of the sticky residue of sweat and maybe blood from nights passed. “Do any of the dancing one’s ever notice?”
“Nope. And if they do, we just kill them. But mostly, everyone’s high on one thing or another. Add the vapour-remedy to that—” he nodded to an air-conditioning vent, “and you pretty much get a peaceful, effortless kill.”
“Doesn’t that take away the thrill—the stalk?”
“That’s not what we crave, really. That’s kind of like, well, you know how some humans watch horror movies, because they like the thrill, and the ones who watch romance think the horror-watching ones are creepy and sadistic?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, it’s like that with stalking your kill. Some do it, but it’s seen as a bit of a bizarre act—more for those who like that kind of thing.”
“Does David?”
“I don’t know his killing style, Amara. You’d be better to ask Emily.”
“How would Emily know?”
“She hunts with him.”
Oh, yeah. Right. Didn’t think of that. “So, if they’re all high—” I pointed below, “—do you get high too, when you drink their drug-laced blood?”
“Yeah.” Eric rested his face on the ball of his palm, his elbow on the railing. “But I’m not into drugs. I pick off the drunk ones—or the designated drivers.”
“What about David?”
Eric shrugged. “Dunno.”
“Do you think he could be here tonight?”
�
��Nope. This place is a little beneath Council members.”
“Is public sex?” I nodded toward a vampire and a human, practically fornicating in the corner, the kill still only a suggestion among the possibilities. “Do all vampires have sex with their victims?”
“You mean, is David out there, right now, fu—I mean, making love to some blonde?”
“Yeah.”
“Nope.” Eric shook his head. “It’s optional, but most of us do.”
“Even in public?”
“Yeah,” he said with a chuckle, his gaze floating to the couple below, now completely naked—their bodies slamming together. My ears burned, the embarrassment tied up beneath the weight of the drug, but still severe enough to show itself a little.
“Is that not bound to attract attention?” I asked.
“Only if the thirty-or-so humans doing the same is.” He pointed to the dance floor. “This is just one of those places, Amara. It’s an adult club—a seedy, drug infested, rave. You’re just so sweet and naïve, you’ve never heard of places like this, before.”
“I’ve never uh—” I felt stupid saying this. “I’ve never seen people have sex before either.” Aside from Emily and Mike, but that was so locked away it didn’t count.
His fingers went white around the railing. “Really?”
“Yeah. Is that...bad?”
It was almost like he became weightless, his body seeming to float above the ground, though he didn’t move. “I’m sorry, Amara. I didn’t realise. I’d never have brought you here if I’d known you were that sheltered.”
“I’m okay.”
“I know you are. But, I’ve tainted you, haven’t I?”
“Maybe a little.” I shrugged. It’s not like I really cared.
“I’m sorry.”
“Like I said, I’m okay.”
The spotlight flashed past, illuminating the vampires in a splendour of blood red before plunging them into darkness again. “That’s their cue.” Eric leaned on the railing again.
I picked a kill to watch, choosing the artistic appeal of a girl with long fiery-red hair, standing out among the crowd. Her perfectly white skin looked like porcelain; bare from the shoulders up, her spine arched over the arm of a vampire—his hold relaxed, but tight, like he was struggling with the weight of her slender body.
“Are they heavy?”
“Who?”
“The bodies.”
“No. Why?”
“That guy looks like he’s struggling a bit.”
Eric looked. “Oh, he’s probably not eaten for a few days.”
“Oh. Okay.” I nodded and watched, mildly aware of the lives being taken on the outskirts of this room. No one else noticed, no one screamed—not even the victims, though I hadn’t expected them to anyway.
I could tell from the way the red-head rolled her chin to the heavens that she was moaning, that the lips of the vampire, tracing her collar and breast, brought only pleasure for her. I knew the ecstasy. I’d felt it myself, in David’s arms, and in his brother’s.
The vampire sliced a small cut in her artery, watching intently as the blood seeped out with her pulse, making rivers of red along her china-white flesh. He hesitated, their eyes meeting; hers pleading, his, though I could only see the back of his head, I imagined were comforting—wordlessly reassuring her that she would be okay. But she wouldn’t.
He moved quickly then, dropping to one knee, her spine arched backward over his thigh, his lips on hers, his fingers tangled in her fiery hair. She opened her mouth to swallow his tongue, hungry for his kiss, his lips, her death at his hands.
The velvet drug that had made me giddy slipped backward in my chest, leaving me suddenly more vulnerable to the emotions of my human-self; a wash of repulsion lifted my fingers to my chin as if I could cup away my own disgust.
Is that what David and I looked like when we shared blood? Am I really that—deluded?
“You okay?” Eric asked.
“Just disgusted in myself.”
“Why?” He laughed.
“Because...well, I do that with David. Do I really get that—desperate?”
“It’s more fun in the act,” he said, “Like karaoke.”
“Precisely why I don’t do karaoke.”
The room moved with the beat of a heart as the vampires, tiring of the lust, made final their bite, while the rage continued at the centre of the dance floor for the lucky few who would go home with their lives tonight. But the girls didn’t just drop to the floor, lifeless and limp, which did surprise me.
Eric waved at a few vampires walking past with the stumbling girls on their arms, heading into a room I could only image was the last one they would ever see.
“Why are they going in there?”
“They have to dispose of the bodies somehow.”
His words chilled me. I didn’t want to know how they did that, or even if they waited until the girls actually died first before either burying them or incinerating them.
Back in the killing pit, a few vampires, now going for seconds, remained in the universe of wild and unconcealed ecstasy, except the one with the red-haired girl; he held her in his arms, her curls splaying out like ribbons, her neck bowing back, his head angled down at her limp, oeuvre body.
“Eric?” I leaned closer, unable to take my eyes off him.
“Yes.”
“What’s up with that guy?” I pointed to him. “Is he a newb?”
Eric laughed, looking at the vampire, then grabbed the railing, practically jumping a foot in the air as he leaned over it, his eyes wide. “Ah, shit—Amara, get down.”
“What? Why?” I pushed his hand from my head, looking back through the iron bars as he shoved me to the floor.
The vampire looked up from his kill, our eyes meeting, my mind becoming only vaguely aware of the way he dropped the body to the floor, rising slowly, his face draining of all colour.
“David?”
“Ara?” He appeared before me, hoisting me from the ground by my arm—his eyes black with blood-lust. “What are you doing here?”
Eric stood slightly between us, his shoulder against mine, focusing intently on David. “Amara? He’s dangerous right now. If I say run, you run, got it?
“Why did you bring her here?” David grabbed Eric by the front of the shirt and slammed him against the wall.
“I didn’t know you’d be here, David—are you crazy?” Eric shoved David’s fists off his shirt. “If you’re seen, if anyone knew who you were—”
David stood down, looking away as his fist clenched by his side. “I needed to come. I had to come.”
“Not here. There are a hundred places to go in this town.” Eric pointed elsewhere, scanning the room below with his eyes. “You need to leave before someone recognises you and notifies the Council.”
“Relax, Eric.” David walked toward me then, his eyes returning to that brilliant green I loved—the green they became after he’d had blood—usually my blood.
“Relax? I’ve just subjected an innocent human girl to witness her boyfriend suck the life out someone from her own species.”
“Ara?” David’s long, loving fingers, the very ones that just took life, wrapped my arms and held me still, stopping the shaking through my entire body with just one touch. “I’m sorry, my love. You were never supposed to see that.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but the shock just left an empty hole where my words were lost.
He killed her—he killed her, and worse—he kissed her.
“David.” Eric pushed him aside and grabbed my arm. “Just get back and clean up your kill. I need to get Amara home.”
I was given no choice; we walked away from David, who stood there and watched us leave.
Chapter 14
As the cool night air outside hit my skin and loosened the sweat from my brow, I fell to the floor, barely feeling the gravel break through the skin on my knees. Tears that had been held back around David finally took the command to leave. �
��How could he?”
“Amara, he’s a vampire.”
“He let us leave—he didn’t try to make it okay. He didn’t even try to explain.”
“What’s to explain?” He squatted beside me, gently touching my back. “Do you want him to apologise for being a vampire? Because, kiddo, you chose to be with him, you chose to love him. How can you ridicule him for that now—that’s not fair?”
“Did you know?” I looked into Eric’s eyes. “Did you know he’d be there?”
“No.” He shook his head. “No, beautiful girl—I didn’t. He’s a fool. If anyone from our Set was there, aside from me, they could’ve reported him.”
“Was there? I mean, did you see anyone?” The tears stopped as panic overtook.
“No.” Eric tilted his head, looking down at the small graze on my knee. “And he’s damn lucky, too.”
The blood pricked through my broken skin, bursting where the skin was tight around my bent limb. “Does this bother you?”
He smiled, the single light in the alley, struggling to exist, flickered above us, making this whole scene look like something from an old L. A. private-eye movie. “A little. But I won’t eat you. I promise. Besides—” he sat next to me, loosely letting his wrists fall over his knees, “—your friend, David, has made it pretty clear what’ll happen if I ever touch you again.”
Oh God, what did he do? “Did he hurt you?”
Eric scratched his chin and stared at the flickering streetlamp. “Weird thing is? He didn’t. He—” he chuckled, “—he spoke to me about it.”
“Spoke to you?”
“Yeah. I think you’re making him soft, Amara.”
Spoke to him?
“Come on.” Eric lifted me from the ground. “Let’s get you home.”
Sleep found me quickly, despite trying to stay awake to either greet the morning or be there to talk with David when, or if, he returned. I felt myself slip away, waking, surprised when my hands fell against grass, soft, like baby’s hair. I pushed my arms straight and angled my face to the sky, feeling the glow of moonlight radiate across my skin.
Jason’s world; the dreamland I go to meet him.
