He tried not to think about it much. It wasn’t an especially cheering train of thought.
For a time, his nanny raised him. But only for a time. She had a living to earn, after all, and she could not watch him and another family’s children at the same time. So it was that shortly after his first birthday, he was handed off to an orphanage.
His memories of the place were unclear for the first few years, and when he could pick out a few details, they were hazy, unpleasant things. Strict demands in sharp voices. Children crying. He was always hungry. Occasionally, a family would walk in; one of his friends would leave with them, and he would never see them again. Eventually, he learned to be happy for them. At first, though, he hated them, for every day they got to have a family that he did not.
He remembered talking to families, now and then. He was a sullen child, though, and in the beginning, he was largely incapable of making a positive impression on anyone. His schooling was patchy, with a Christian bent that rankled at his nerves. Why did God care about his education, after all? God didn’t seem to care much about him, or why would he have left him without a family of his own?
Maybe he could have tried harder with the parade of families that strolled through, but he couldn’t bring himself to. He wasn’t exactly thrilled at the idea of performing to prove to strangers that he was worth existing.
He sold papers in the street from the time he was old enough to shout out the proper price and the main headline, and he hoarded each coin he got as if each one was a piece of gold. He got by on the bare minimum the orphanage offered him, hiding every scrap of money he could get, hiding it like a dragon might hide its treasure trove. As he grew, he ran the streets like a wild child, and he ran errands for anyone who would give him a quarter to do so. As he got older still, he managed to make himself into something of a handyman, always looking for a new way to stuff his pockets.
It worked out well enough, all things considered. By the time he aged out of the system, he had enough to make it so he wasn’t entirely helpless. Holding down a steady job wasn’t a skill that came naturally to him, but he did whatever work came to him and he kept himself afloat. For a time, at least.
When he’d wound up in the military, it was less out of a desire to serve and more because he needed something he could actually do that lasted longer than a few months. He didn’t think anything much would come of it. He thought he would be safe. He made a few friends, but not many. It wasn’t why he was there. He kept his head down and did enough to get by and not get discharged or lectured for incompetence. He could live with being middling. He had been for his entire life, anyway. Why change the status quo?
Then World War II struck, and the United States got dragged into it. Eventually, he found himself in a trench on the opposite side of the ocean. Those were days he chose not to think about. He pushed them away, buried them beneath layers of disinterest and boredom and apathy.
When he went home again, it was not because the war was over but because he was paralyzed from the waist down, and he was being medically discharged. He would make a decent pension, at least. It didn’t give him back the use of his legs or anything else he’d lost, but at least it was better than nothing.
Everything…stopped, after that. True enough, the world kept turning, and life moved onward, but it left him behind, as if he was trying to pull himself out of a sinking quagmire while everyone else was simply strolling by, never thinking to lend a hand. The few friends he had faded away, and he stretched his pension as far as he could. No one wanted to hire a man in a wheelchair who could hardly be expected to even say hello.
The world grew cold after that. Frigid. Numb. He couldn’t feel his legs, of course, nor could he feel much of anything else. He told himself he didn’t mind. He couldn’t be lonely if he couldn’t feel at all.
He carried on. There wasn’t much else to do.
It was some years later—not many, but a few—that he met Regina. It was only in passing, at first. A kind, entrancing Samaritan helping him get his wheelchair off a curb at night. Going out at night was just…easier. There were fewer people to trip over him.
It took a few run-ins before he realized she was keeping an eye on him, and he invited her in for tea. Well, it was phrased as an invite, but it was more of a demand. He knew, later, that she could have responded in a hundred, a thousand, a million different ways, but she simply smiled and came inside.
His house was small and smelled perpetually musty. He hadn’t been upstairs in years; who was to say how much dust had accumulated? But he could make a pot of tea, and he could demand answers.
That she chose to provide those answers, he knew later, was something of a miracle. She didn’t have to. Truthfully, there was nothing he could make her do unless she decided to humor him.
She found him…fascinating. Never before had she seen someone existing out of spite as fully and as entirely as he was, as if he wanted to flip off the entire world and chugging onward was the only way he could think to do so. He reasoned that he couldn’t afford to drink himself into a stupor, so what else was he supposed to do? And he politely ignored her when she pointed out there were others options that he had neglected to take, regardless of what he said.
She found him fascinating and sad. And some part of her, deep in her core, wanted to do something for him. She couldn’t make him happy—no one can truly make another person happy and she knew that—but she could offer him a chance to grasp for happiness himself.
She had an offer for him. A deal, laid out at his kitchen table from a pointed smile in blood-soaked words. She could turn him into something else, something whole and stronger, if he was willing to sacrifice a few human luxuries, and if he was willing to keep her company. She lived a long life, she argued. There were none who could match it naturally. If she wished for company, she had to acquire it for herself.
He had little to lose, and he cared even less for the sun at that point. It made the world seem darker to him. And yet still, he had to think about the offer. Think on whether or not he wanted the chance she was offering. If he…felt like he actually could be happy again, or if he would just be wasting her time.
So, she told him she would be back in two days. He had until then to make up his mind. She needed him to think carefully while she was gone; she needed him to take it seriously. It was the rest of his life, after all, and if he agreed, then that life could wind up being so much longer than he could have anticipated.
He spent two days contemplating another few decades of drifting listlessly and purposelessly along, bobbing through life like a canoe without a paddle. He thought about it, and for the first time in a very long time, he wanted to scream.
As it turned out, her visit—her offer—had given him hope. Not much. Just a sliver. Just enough to make it seem unbearable to keep trudging forward down a darkening tunnel when there was no light at the end of it.
When she showed up two days later, he agreed to her offer before she could even close the door behind herself. She didn’t seem surprised. She did seem pleased, though. Her smile was something that he wanted to see again, as often as he could.
It didn’t hurt when she bit him. Not at first. It began to burn, eventually, but he didn’t mind. It wasn’t until feeling slowly began to creep back into his legs that the pain fully set in, and he started screaming until he passed out.
When he woke up again three days later, he was nowhere near his home in Buffalo, but he had no particular attachment to that house. Even so, he hoped it would eventually find a good owner to take care of it.
He did many things as her companion. He was partially an assistant, partially a guard, and partially just a friend. She taught him how to live his new life, regardless of how much he bumbled and broke at first.
He was most eager to run. Regina taught him how to do that before she taught him anything else. From then on, he was pretty happy to pretend most of his life before that had never happened, and she was content to let him. He was sta
rting over. He appreciated the chance to do so.
*
“It took a couple days before the mental bond really solidified,” Jack explained, tugging absentmindedly at a loose thread in one of his pants pockets. “It was actually a bit funny. It set in, and she started crying the first time she got a full read on it.”
Siobhan’s eyebrows rose. “She started crying?” She tried to imagine the ethereal, otherworldly woman she had met bursting into tears, and it wasn’t quite lining up. Like trying to imagine a dog suddenly meowing like a cat.
Jack shrugged one shoulder. “Most of the people she had turned before me were similar to when I turned you: there wasn’t much choice, or they would die. I was one of the first who’d had a real choice in it. So, once she really got a read on my feelings, I…guess they were sort of intense?”
“You mean because you were about eighteen flavors of depressed?” Siobhan guessed bluntly, side-eying him pointedly.
Jack rolled his eyes and punched her shoulder, though there was little force behind the blow. “If you want to put it like that, yes.”
“I’m not wrong,” Siobhan protested, shoving her shoulder against his. “But…” She trailed off, sliding him a sideways glance. He glanced back at her curiously, his eyebrows rising when she failed to finish her statement. “But I’m glad it didn’t stick,” she finished, glancing away briefly before she looked at his face again.
He was smiling at her crookedly, his expression soft. From there, it seemed pretty natural for her to turn and lean toward him.
When their lips met, it was with none of the hurried roughness of that first kiss in the woods. It was soft and slow, their lips moving against each other gently. It was almost exploratory. There was no reason not to take their time about it. The town was close enough to hear some of the daily goings on, but the foliage between them and the town was still thick enough that they weren’t readily visible. It seemed…ideal, honestly. Like the world was personally giving them a break.
Jack turned so their necks weren’t twisted at uncomfortable angles, and he lifted a hand to cup her cheek. Siobhan tipped her head to deepen the kiss, the tip of her tongue trailing over the seam of his lips until they parted. Their tongues twined for only a moment before the kiss softened again, and Siobhan threaded the fingers of one hand into his hair, her other hand curling around the back of his neck, as his free hand settled gently on her hip.
Slowly, the kiss began to get more heated…when Barton started growling. He surged to his feet, his ears swiveling for a few seconds as he scented the air, before his ears pinned back and stared off into the distance, angling himself so he was planted firmly in front of Siobhan and Jack. He growled with the intensity of a car’s engine revving up for a race.
Considering the last time he had reacted with such emphatic aggression to something, a spike of dread speared itself straight through Siobhan’s heart. She and Jack separated, getting to their feet and peering around cautiously.
Watching them placidly in the distance, a single angel hovered several yards above the ground. Perhaps they wouldn’t have been concerned, but four wings were spread behind him, black feathers gleaming like mercury in the moonlight.
“That’s an archangel,” Siobhan observed, her tone remarkably even. “Right? Four wings is an archangel?”
“Right,” Jack confirmed, just as steadily. “We probably shouldn’t fight one of those.”
“Or else that whole ‘literally ripped apart’ thing,” Siobhan finished. “Should we, like, lead him away from town or something?”
Slowly, Jack shook his head. “No,” he answered carefully, as if he wasn’t quite sure of the answer himself. “So far they’ve avoided acting in crowded areas. Kind of hard to keep a low profile if they can’t get rid of every witness and every cell phone within six miles is recording them.”
“So…?” Siobhan slid him a questioning look, setting a hand on Barton’s back to make sure he wouldn’t go running off. He stayed rooted where he was, thankfully. Siobhan no longer needed his protection, but he was determined to offer it regardless. “What should we do, then?”
“He might not have realized we’re not regular humans yet,” Jack mused, and he reached out to take one of Siobhan’s hands in his. “So, what we do is act like any regular couple who has sneaked off for a heavy kissing session, and we creep back to town. We’ll spend the night and tomorrow, and then tomorrow night we’ll go looking for the next Vampire Lord.”
Siobhan nodded slowly, her fingers tightening around his. He backed up a few steps, pulling her along with him, until he turned and they began walking in earnest toward town. Siobhan clicked her tongue and patted her thigh with her free hand. After a moment of glaring into the distance, Barton reluctantly turned and began to trot after them, slowing as he got to her side. He glanced over his shoulder a few times, his ears still pinned back and his tail low, but he remained at her side.
The walk back into town was quiet, but it went without incident. Soon enough, they were safely back in their hotel room. They sat in silence for the first few minutes, both of them seated on the end of the bed.
Gradually, they moved closer together until their thighs were brushing together, and soon enough, they decided to carry on with their previous activities, before the angel’s arrival had interrupted them.
CHAPTER SEVEN
They got an early start the next day…so to speak. It was early by their standards, as the sun was still sinking below the horizon, just a line of gold in the distance. They grabbed the tarp. They fed Barton. They took their backpacks with them, just in case. And they set off into the wilderness. They walked for a short while until the sun disappeared entirely, and then Siobhan handed her bag to Jack to carry, and she picked up Barton so they could set off at a sprint.
(He tolerated it fairly well, all things considered. Admittedly, he was likely so confused by the oddity of being carried that he just didn’t know how to react to it. Siobhan had to admit there was something sort of novel about being able to carry a dog of his size like he was a Pomeranian puppy.)
Now and then, they slowed so Jack could check a map on his phone. Siobhan set Barton down each time, letting him shake himself vigorously, do his business, and stretch his legs. After the first few repetitions, he tried to wiggle away, but then after a few more repetitions, he resigned himself to his fate of being intermittently carried like a toddler.
On one such stop, Jack abruptly pumped a fist into the air in excitement and exclaimed, “We’re in the right general area!”
Siobhan looked around slowly, as if to silently note that there wasn’t actually much of anything around them. There were trees. And rocks. A few shrubs. A lot of vaguely orange ground stretching out in every direction. The sound of waves had long since receded into the distance.
“I’m just going to take your word for that,” she mused flatly, reaching down to scratch the top of Barton’s head.
Jack rolled his eyes. “Love the vote of confidence,” he drawled blandly. “We’re looking for…I don’t want to say a cave, since I’m not sure if that’s really what you would call it, but it’s a recess in the rocks, and it should lead down to a tunnel.”
Siobhan pouted as she looked around. “That doesn’t really narrow things down much,” she huffed.
Jack clapped her on the back and pressed a brief kiss to her cheek. “Then I guess we better get started. I’ll start over this way. You head that way.” He hooked his thumbs into his pockets and loped away.
With a slow sigh, Siobhan gave Barton a final scratch behind the ears and set off in the opposite direction.
*
“Dead end” became the phrase of the evening. The first crevice Siobhan peered into was broad but barely deep enough for her to shove her hand in up to her wrist. Instead of a tunnel to a Vampire Lord, it was home only to an aggravated spider and a great deal of dust. Pouting, Siobhan wondered how long it would take her to wash her hair afterward.
She hoped Jack did
n’t find the right rock outcropping before her. Maybe it was petty (it was most definitely petty) but if she was going to be stuck digging through rocks for the entire night, she at least wanted to win the nonexistent contest.
Abandoning the first crevice, she pulled the feathers she had taken from the angel in Japan from her pocket and stabbed one of them into the ground beside the outcropping. The task was already shaping up to be pretty mind-numbing. She didn’t need to make it worse by getting confused and checking the same crevice more than once.
*
Siobhan wasn’t sure how long they had been at it—she hadn’t been keeping track, since “how long have we been rooting through rocks” seemed like a bit of a depressing concept, though she was running low on feathers, and then they started getting visitors.
Barton suddenly started running, and Siobhan looked over her shoulder in time to see him chasing a pair of dingoes away from her.
Really? Dingoes now? She sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose.
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