The evening passed. Two’s steady but aimless path took her through SoHo and Little Italy, moving in a general eastward direction until she reached Second Avenue, where she turned north, heading up into the East Village, past Union Square, and into the Flatiron district. Finding this area nearly deserted by Manhattan standards, she made her way west along 18th Street. She scanned each passerby as she went, looking for the right combination: pale face, oddly luminescent eyes, an ethereal sense of balance. Everywhere she walked, Two looked for vampires and found none.
This did not surprise her anymore, though it still pained her. She had spent more than enough time doing the math, figuring out the odds, coming to the understanding that in a city of twenty million, the relative handful of vampire inhabitants would be almost impossible to locate. There might even be several hundred – she had no way of knowing for sure – but Two saw more people than that in a given hour of walking. The probability was akin to the needle-in-a-haystack conundrum, except the needle and each individual piece of hay were in constant motion.
When she reached Ninth Avenue she turned north again, moving along the border between the Garment District and the neighborhood the city government was trying to rebrand as “Clinton,” but which would, she knew, always remain Hell’s Kitchen. The fabric shops gave way to theatres, the streets overloaded with garish neon signs and old-style marquees. Two found it possible, even likely, that the type of vampire she was looking for might frequent the New York theatre scene, but she found herself unable to face the crowds of tourists and so turned left instead, making her way to Tenth Avenue via 48th Street before turning south.
Near midnight she stopped for a slice of pizza, more out of the need to fuel the rest of her walk than out of any desire to eat. She sat on a stool at a counter, looking through the plate-glass window in front of her, watching the people walking by. It was a Saturday night, and the New York nightlife was in full swing. Two knew that there were still four good hours of searching left to her.
She continued her walk south, listening to the sounds of cars passing, people talking, music blaring from the open doors of various restaurants and bars. She was headed toward the entrance to the Lincoln tunnel, an area not well-regarded, but was not afraid. She had not been afraid of New York in a long time, not since the days before the needle had gotten hold of her. The city’s dangers paled in comparison to those she had faced on the grounds of the mansion. There was nothing in New York more dangerous than Abraham.
She passed this relative dead zone without incident, still checking everyone she passed for the telltale signs of vampirism. Even the drunk and quite possibly homeless man urinating on the side of a building, near 36th street, did not go without scrutiny. He responded to her stare with a leering grin and a beckoning wave of his hand. Two wordlessly declined the implied invitation, continuing her walk.
The neighborhood slowly grew upscale as she made her way south, skirting the edge of the Meatpacking District and moving down into the West Village. The wind freshened and Two shivered, but not from the cold. She was feeling a curious doubling sensation, something like déjà vu but not as strong, nor so disorienting. She had not been here before, had not lived this moment already in some past life, but she knew this feeling just the same. She was shaky, tense, excited; she hadn’t felt these emotions in what seemed like years.
Two thought back to an evening last October, when a hand had fallen suddenly on her shoulder and a voice had whispered her name. She thought of waiting on the curb outside of Darren’s building – waiting for her destiny, as it turned out – and she wondered if she was remembering correctly how it had felt then. She thought it had felt like this.
* * *
The club on Hudson Street made its presence known two blocks away; the blue glare from its myriad neon lights bathed the street, the buildings, and the nearby trees in icy hues. The ground floor on both sides of the street was occupied by commercial space, but above the shops and restaurants were numerous apartments. Two wondered briefly how anyone in these buildings could sleep with the light from the club shining so brightly, and thought of the heavy blackout curtains that had lined all of the windows in Abraham’s mansion.
The face of the club was nothing but glass, and all of this had been painted jet black. The neon blue lights converged above the entrance to form words: L’Obscurité. Two wondered if it was a Goth club. She’d been to many, in the early days of her search, before considering the fact that only one of the vampires she’d known, Missy, had seemed a fan of that particular subculture. Theroen had been a fan of black clothes and heavy eyeliner, but that was the extent of his interest.
Two hadn’t been able to understand the young men and women she’d met, obsessed with death, morose and often disturbed. While it was true that the vampires she had known were trapped in darkness, the world that Theroen had shown her was not a place of grim and Gothic depression. Vampires were not cold, dead things; they breathed. Their hearts beat. Their lives could mean warmth, love, and immortality; there was little, if anything at all, to do with death.
I’m going in, she thought to herself, though she couldn’t say why this particular place had brought about that strange, familiar feeling within her. The club’s entrance seemed to call to her, drawing her near, as if pulling with a magnetic force. Two had relied on her instincts for so many years that she no longer questioned them. When they told her to go inside, she listened.
L’Obscurité was not a Goth club, much to Two’s relief. The clientele was upscale and Two, in a pair of jeans and her leather jacket, felt underdressed. She moved through the crowds on the dance floor, inspecting faces, avoiding eye contact. She had to pass through two rooms to reach the bar, but it was quieter back there. The music had become a part of the overall background noise, no longer assaulting her ears or shaking her entire body with pulsing thuds.
“Girl, you do not have a drink. It is my pleasure and my duty to put one in front of you.”
The bartender was young and black and beautiful, his muscles filling out a leather t-shirt and matching pants. Two thought he was wasting his time tending bar when he could’ve been modeling. His head was bald, and when he smiled at her his white teeth cut through the haze of neon and black light that colored the mist from the fog machines by the stage. They were dazzling and Two smiled back, almost despite herself.
“OK. What’s good?” she asked.
“It’s all good, honey, but the specialty of the house is the Cup of Blood.”
Two shuddered. She tried to stop herself, but couldn’t. It seemed she had lost all control of her body for that brief moment as the spasm passed through her.
The bartender raised an eyebrow. “Hey now, did I scare you? It’s not real blood. You OK?”
Two took a breath, squeezed the back of her neck once to relieve the tension, and got a grip on herself.
“Yeah. Yes, I’m fine. Sorry … what’s the Cup of Blood have in it?”
“Whiskey, cherry liqueur, little sour raspberry syrup, bitters. It’s dark red. Good stuff.”
“That’s fine. One of those, then.”
The bartender nodded and moved away to make her drink. Two turned her back to the bar, leaned against it, looked at her hands. They were shaking, and she took a few deep breaths. What the fuck is wrong with me?
The other customers seemed relatively normal. There was a lot of money on display in the form of clothing, jewelry, and expensive haircuts, but the bar’s DJ had attracted a share of younger, less well-dressed customers as well. One of these, a young man with short hair dyed blue, seemed to notice her. He stood up from his table of friends and wandered over, trying to look casual and doing a terrible job of it.
“Haven’t seen you around before,” he said, leaning against the bar next to her. “I like your jacket.”
“Never been here before, and thanks. I like your hair,” Two said, smiling. She felt alive tonight, able to connect with these people in a way that she hadn’t in ages. This young ma
n held no interest for her in the way he was hoping, but she wasn’t offended by his presence as she might normally have been.
“My name’s Jeremy. So uh … can I buy you a drink?”
“You can buy the one I already ordered, if you want. Here it comes now.”
Jeremy nodded, motioned to the bartender that he was covering Two’s drink, and then to his own glass. “Jack and Coke, please.”
The bartender smiled, took the glass, moved away again. Two sipped at her drink. It wasn’t bad; a bit sweet after weeks of nothing but straight bourbon.
“Thank you, Jeremy.”
“No problem.”
There was a pause. Two sipped at her Cup of Blood, watching the people in the other room writhe in time with the music. The bartender returned with Jeremy’s drink, took two twenties in return, made change and moved on. Jeremy leaned with her against the wood of the bar.
“Can I ask your name?” he asked at last.
“Sure. It’s Two, like the number.”
“That’s cool.”
“Thanks.”
There was another silence, slightly awkward. Two was having a hard time not laughing.
“Can I ask you something, Jeremy?”
“Shoot.”
“You the type who’s easily offended?”
“Mmm … don’t think so.”
“OK, then I’ll be honest. You’re cute, you seem sweet enough, and the hair’s a nice touch … but I’m not looking to get lucky tonight. If that’s what you’re after, you should pick another girl.”
Jeremy looked at her for a moment, eyebrows raised. Two couldn’t tell if he was shocked, angry, or amused.
“Sorry,” she said, shrugging.
Her hopeful paramour smiled a little, then broke out into a full-fledged grin. He glanced over at the table full of his friends, all of whom were pretending not to watch in a way so obvious it bordered on ridiculous. Jeremy laughed to himself.
“What’s funny?” Two asked.
“I’m gonna get a lot of shit when I go back over there.”
“Why’s that?”
“We’re visiting from upstate. Never been to the city before … none of them think we have a shot at meeting any women. They think New York girls don’t give a shit unless you drive a Jag and shower them with diamonds.”
Two smiled. “Come here …”
She stood up on tip-toe, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him, long and slow and in full view of his buddies, who began whooping. Laughing, Two let him go. Jeremy looked at her, happily surprised but unsure how to proceed. Two waved at the table full of guys, then turned back to the young man in front of her, still grinning.
“It was nice meeting you, Jeremy. Thanks for the drink. Go sit down, and tell your friends I said that they’re a bunch of pussies who don’t know anything about New York girls.”
“I … yeah, OK. It was nice meeting you, too! I’ll tell them.”
Two watched him go, gave one last wave, and turned away from the group, surveying the rest of the room. She sipped at her drink, laughing to herself. It took a moment to feel the eyes on her, not from Jeremy’s side of the room, but from the other, in one of the darker corners.
Two looked up, meeting the eyes of a young woman sitting by herself at a table, and understood the girl’s amused expression immediately: this person had witnessed the incident with Jeremy, had understood it, and had found humor there. Two read this in the eyes, the grin, the entire set of the woman’s body.
Her second realization took a moment longer, but when it happened Two felt her entire frame go rigid. The woman regarding her with that amused, detached expression was young – so young that Two wondered if she was even old enough to legally drink. She was also beautiful, with hair that was either dark blond or light brown, pale skin, and large eyes that seemed to catch all of the light in the room and absorb it, collecting it in a soft glow. They were ageless, these eyes, and Two recognized in them something she had not seen since Abraham’s death.
She was looking into the eyes of a vampire.
Two’s heart seemed to halt in her chest before giving a single, excruciating throb. She wondered, in some small corner of her mind, if she was going to die. She tried to force her heart to keep beating, tried to make herself breathe, tried to do anything other than stare. Her right hand was clutching her cocktail glass with such force that she feared the stem would snap in half. Her left hand hung limply at her side.
No, she thought. It’s impossible.
She had to know, had to be sure, had to confirm what she wanted so badly to believe. Two felt like shrieking, throwing her glass in the air, and bolting across the room to fall at the feet of this woman, begging for the gift, pleading for the blood. She couldn’t do that, of course, and so she simply stood and stared.
Eventually the girl across the room glanced at her again, and Two had all the confirmation she needed. It was those eyes that gave it away. No one else was likely to notice; the difference was too subtle, otherwise this woman would not be out in the middle of a crowded club. Two had seen vampire eyes before, however. She had possessed them for a time. She knew exactly what they looked like.
The vampire woman focused on Two, cocking her head to one side and narrowing those eyes. She had clearly not been expecting this continued scrutiny, and her smile faded from her lips, becoming a frown. She looked at Two in wary suspicion, then stood without warning and moved toward the door.
“No!” Two cried. She left her drink on the bar, forgotten, and began to push her way through the mass of people between herself and the vampire. She tried to keep the other woman in her sights, but it was a losing battle. The girl moved with an ethereal grace that Two couldn’t hope to match even in the best of circumstances. To make things worse, it seemed that tonight she had lost any of the natural finesse she might once have possessed.
Before she had even reached the dance floor, Two had lost track of the woman. She felt frustration rising, despair on its heels, and tried to shove these things to the back of her mind. She made her way to the door and finally burst out into the cool night. There were tendrils of mist rising up off the wet pavement, and Two turned right and left, looking down the street as far as she could. There was nothing but the traffic and a tight cluster of people smoking near the front of the club. The vampire was gone.
Two stood there on the sidewalk, hands clenching and unclenching, panting, listening to the throb of music from the club behind her. She closed her eyes, trying to retain control, not wanting to cry in front of strangers. She tried to remind herself of what Theroen had told her: vampires were just extraordinary people. They became attached to certain places, certain areas, just like normal human beings. They had favorite spots and didn’t often range far from home.
Two forced herself to relax. She opened her hands, unmindful of the burning crescent marks her nails had dug into her palms. Shaking, she reached into her jacket, brought out a cigarette, and lit it. She dragged, breathed, stared out into the fog, feeling suddenly exhausted. She wanted to go home, to sleep and dream of Theroen and of the blood.
“See you tomorrow,” she said to the empty street, and she began the walk home.
Chapter 4
The Children of the Sun
Tori put her parents into the ground on a Wednesday afternoon, five days after she discovered their bodies. She supposed that for some people the time after such an event might have seemed an eternity, but to Tori it was little more than a blur. She remembered being interrogated by the police and finally being released in the early evening, to drive first to a liquor store and then to a motel. Tequila had burned away most of the following days, leaving huge gaps in her memory. She thought she might have called her friends, before deciding that doing so might put them in danger. She had also managed, somehow, to plan the funeral.
She knew she had gone back to the house at some point after it had been cleaned up. She knew she had tried to sleep there. She remembered spending the night
curled up on the couch, every light in the house burning bright, drinking and weeping as she leafed through old photo albums. Her father and mother stared out at her from these pictures, happy and healthy and alive. Here, too, was the old Tori, the girl she once had been, the girl that Mona and Jim had loved so much.
The love was there, stamped on their faces in every picture, so clear and obvious that Tori wondered how she had never noticed it. She would become lost in the pictures for a time, and then would stumble across something that reminded her of the sad, confused love she had returned home to. This, in turn, would cause that painful wrenching sensation within her as she realized again that even this love was now gone, taken from her by someone or something. She had finally left the house at sunrise, taking a suitcase and moving back to a motel.
The police were hunting for clues but finding little. Tori’s alibis were strong and she had established them immediately. No, she couldn’t possibly have been murdering her parents sometime during the night in question, because she had been busy drinking herself blind and having sex with a random stranger. Admitting this to a group of police officers had been unpleasant, but it was better than being considered a suspect in her own parents’ deaths.
Her story had checked out, of course. Tori was not a murderer, not in this life. She did not hate her parents and had never wished them dead. If anything, she had loved them too much to share her past with them. She had tried to shield them from it, and she wondered now if this heartache was some kind of penance she must pay for the things she had done, for the people she had killed.
The priest droned on about God. Tori was not crying; she felt as though she had emptied herself of tears completely in the past week. There was only a deep, hollow ache within her as she looked over the twin caskets being lowered into the ground. It was warm out, pleasant, and that made things somehow worse. Funerals were supposed to take place in the rain and the cold. The earth had no right to be celebrating now.
The II AM Trilogy (Book 2): Blood Hunt Page 6
