“Yeah, I get bored.”
“So what do you do?”
“I hunt. I read. I eat. I hang out with Lola.”
“Night after night after night?”
I realized that he used the word “night” where a few days ago he probably would have used the word “day.”
“Pretty much.”
“That’s why you hunt the way you do.”
He said this without any need for a response, and I didn’t respond. He had figured something out in two days that had taken me several decades to wrap my head around.
Matt closed his eyes, and he looked just like a corpse for a fraction of a second before I saw his chest rise.
Out of comfort or curiosity, I don’t know, I reached my hand toward him and placed it on his chest.
“You’re warm and cool at the same time,” he said with his eyes still closed.
I didn’t remove my hand.
“Touch my arm,” he said, and I moved my hand to his bicep.
“Touch my neck,” he said, and I placed my hand over his throat.
“Now, my face,” he said, and I touched first his cheek and then his forehead.
“Kiss me,” he said and opened his eyes briefly to see what my reaction would be. I didn’t have one.
I touched my lips to his in as chaste a kiss as I had ever given, but he quickly became more passionate. I pulled away and put a hand to his face, which on the surface looked affectionate but the purpose of which was to put distance between us.
“You need to rest. You’ll be ravenous soon. And you know you can’t hunt until tomorrow night.”
What I was saying was technically true, but that’s not really why I was saying it. I was selfish enough that I would have taken whatever I wanted from him, but in reality I had stopped because an odd feeling had come over me.
He lay back down on his side and opened his arms up to me.
Something inside of me resisted this whole-heartedly and yet I ended up on my side, next to Matt, with his arm draped over me.
Before I fell asleep, I thought that it had been many, many years since I had kissed another vampire. And also many, many years since I had kissed someone who would still be alive in the morning.
4
When I woke up it was light out, and Matt was still asleep. We were on separate sides of the bed again, having pulled apart at some point while we both rested.
I got out of bed, and though he didn’t move, Matt probably knew I was now awake. He made no move to open his eyes or say anything, and I let him be.
I felt strangely embarrassed by his presence, and for a moment wished that he would go away. And then I remembered that he basically lived here now, and I spent a few minutes thinking about that. I wasn’t sure how I felt, but I couldn’t really kick him out on his own. Could I?
I made my way into the kitchen and started making coffee.
Similar to alcohol, caffeine didn’t really affect vampires, but it had been a ritual in my life now for many, many years and so every morning I got up and made it. Although, usually, I was alone making it. I remembered once again that Matt was still here. Would he continue to stay here? I hadn’t really thought this all through. I knew he needed to stay while in his “infancy” but after that, I didn’t know what would happen.
Vampires didn’t really pair up. It was unnatural to our lifestyles, and, frankly, completely unnecessary.
Sex was easy to come by, and feeding was a constant need. So for many vampires those two things often went hand in hand. There were no children to raise, and stability and security were of no concern to creatures whose very existence was guaranteed.
The only reason to pair up was if you really wanted to, and very few did.
There just didn’t seem to be any point.
I added some sugar into my coffee after I poured the cream in and stirred it, watching the black liquid turn tan, and I felt something that I had not felt in a very long time. Sadness.
I would spend the day indoors. Reading, looking out the window, eating maybe, hanging out with Matt since he was here, and wait for it to get dark. It had been like that most days of my life.
I heard Matt stirring and wished he wouldn’t come out here. I felt like I might say something, or do something, that I shouldn’t.
He finally walked out of the bedroom and down the little hallway. When I saw him I couldn’t help but admire his body, but I wished I could just get rid of him.
He smiled when he saw me and it broke my heart. He came closer and kissed me, and not a “good morning” kiss either. A passionate one. One that picked up where we left off the night before.
He pulled away and I stared at him, watching the smile fall from his face.
“What?” he said.
“So you just get to kiss me now whenever you want?”
He turned his head and looked confused, and a little scared too.
“I thought you wanted to. Last night...”
“I did. But...”
“But what?”
God, he was so simple. I didn’t know what I wanted to express, or even exactly what I felt, but I was starting to feel bogged down. Constrained, and I had been running from that for as long as I could remember. Even when I was human.
“Matt. We have forever.”
“I know. I know we do.”
“No, you don’t. This is your third day. Nothing feels different to you yet. It’s like you’ve been on vacation or at some awesome party, and you haven’t gotten to the hangover yet, but you will. And it will hit you hard. And it will never end.”
Of course, he couldn’t know what I meant. I mean, he could know it, but he couldn’t feel it. And if he couldn’t feel it, he could not know the ache of immortality.
“But what does that have to do with us?”
I stood up abruptly, my elbow crashed into my mug, and coffee spilled all over the counter.
“There is no us,” I said loudly. “You’re here because I am responsible for you. Because you need to eat and figure some stuff out before you can be on your own. I had to bring you here.”
He looked as sad as I felt as he stood in the entrance to the kitchen, leaning against the wall like it was the only thing holding him up right now.
“Look,” I said, starting up again, “this was never supposed to happen. I didn’t want you that night. You were just there and I needed to eat, and I couldn’t kill you...but I made a mistake. You should be dead right now. Not here with me. Not a vampire.”
Matt had tears in his eyes, and I felt like the monster I was. But he couldn’t stay here. I had to cut my losses.
“Matt, you can stay here until your appetite goes down, but after that...you’ve got to go.”
His demeanor changed suddenly, and he stood straight up, letting go of the wall.
“No, I’m going to go now.”
He walked out of the kitchen and, presumably, back toward the bedroom, where he emerged a couple of minutes later fully dressed.
I half expected him to have a packed bag with him, and then I remembered that the only things he had were whatever he had with him when he had gone out three nights prior.
Without saying a word to me, he walked to the door and put his hand on the knob. I had to give him at least one more piece of information.
“Matt, you can only be in the light for five to ten minutes before it will start to harm you.”
He turned around and looked at me, hand still on the knob, and in his eyes I saw the last thing I wanted to see.
Fear.
5
A week later, I went hunting again.
Lola was surprised when I called her and asked if she wanted to come. She told me she wasn’t hungry yet, and I could tell that she wondered if I was actually hungry again or something was up.
She knew about Matt and also knew that he was still in the city. I wondered if she would tell me if he ever left. I wanted to ask her but didn’t.
There had been a death at the university.
The article I read said a young man had fallen—or jumped—from a pedestrian bridge on campus.
Of course, the article hadn’t mentioned whether or not there was still a drop of blood left in his body, but I put two and two together and didn’t need to tell myself that it added up to four.
As far as I could tell, there were no other reported deaths on any of the nearby college campuses, so Matt had either gotten really sneaky or was already hunting elsewhere. Either way, by this point, his appetite had gone done and he was now a normal part of the vampire population as far as feeding went.
I was glad I could get back to my old routine.
Lola and I sat at one of the local bars, with our preferred drinks, and chatted aimlessly. I was keeping an eye on a target I had spotted earlier, but I couldn’t focus like I normally did, and, frankly, my heart wasn’t in it.
Finally, my target made eye contact with me. That would sometimes happen with the more perceptive men I watched. It was like they could feel my presence on them before I ever got near them. He smiled and I knew he would come talk to me later. This guy was confident, and he wouldn’t let me leave without making contact.
Lola wasn’t hunting at all tonight. She was here purely to keep me company. I could tell she wanted to ask what was up, but she hadn’t yet. I sort of wished she would.
“Looks like he saw you,” Lola said, taking a sip of wine from her glass. “Should be easy from here.”
“Yeah,” I said, and the apathy I was feeling must have come out in my voice because Lola’s eyes turned gentle, but suspicious.
“Are you really hungry?” she finally asked, and I was relieved.
“No,” I said, looking down at the table. “I just...don’t know what else to do.”
I looked up at Lola, feeling ashamed and embarrassed for displaying so much emotion. I wasn’t exactly known for wearing my heart on my sleeve.
She tilted her head and looked at me with the same expression that I must have looked at Matt with on the night I turned him.
“Is this about Matt? He’s still here, by the way. I know you’ve been wanting to ask.”
I looked at her and raised my eyebrows, communicating without sound to her that yes, that was exactly it. It felt better to say it without words.
“But you were the one to ask him to leave,” Lola said in the same gentle tone she had been using.
“I know,” I said, as I found my voice again, “because I couldn’t stand him being around.”
Lola looked like she wanted to slap me, but in a really nice way. And, honestly, I wanted to slap myself because I knew I made no sense.
“Why did you turn him?” Lola asked, and I knew she had been wanting to ask this since it had happened.
“I don’t know,” I said, honestly, throwing my hands up into the air beside me. “You left that night, and my mark had gotten too drunk. He was of no use, and I panicked a little bit. Matt was right there and I kissed him—or he kissed me, or something, and then next thing I knew I had him in an alley, and I just...”
“You just what?”
“I just...he was going so peacefully, so willingly, and...I couldn’t let him go.”
Although the bar was loud, between Lola and me, you could have heard a pin drop.
When you have to kill people to live, feelings about your victims are dangerous. There was something I had not wanted to admit to myself about why I didn’t want to feed on Matt that night. I knew it from the very beginning.
“I didn’t want him that night,” I said, continuing on, “but, there he was, and he was the only option I had. I didn’t want to kill him.”
As I finished my confession, I looked away from Lola and found my mark looking directly at me like I was something he’d like to eat. I appreciated the irony as I averted my eyes to communicate as much disinterest as possible. When I did so, I noticed a man walking through the doorway.
He wore a hat and a jacket that was heavier than necessary given the weather. He caught my eye in a way that gave me a chill and then walked to the bar.
His body movements were odd, stiff and unnatural, and the pallor of his skin threw me off. I looked over at Lola as if to say “vampire”? but even as I asked her I knew that wasn’t the case. She responded and confirmed my thought.
Still, as I continued to watch him, my intuition shouted at me something I knew couldn’t be true, and yet the evidence seemed to be right in front of my face.
He wasn’t human.
6
“What is he?” I said, keeping my voice at a level that would barely be heard over the din of the bar.
“I don’t know,” Lola said. “But he’s definitely not in my count.”
“I wasn’t aware...” I said but didn’t get a chance to finish.
“I wasn’t either.”
One of the things the movies always get wrong is the number of other creatures out there. I’m not going to lie. It’s entertaining, but as far as we know it’s only vampires and humans. And it had always been that way.
Could this guy have been human?
No, I told myself. Humans had a certain air to them—a way that they moved and talked and existed that marked them plainly as mortals. Part of detecting other vampires was (for non-locaters) detecting their immortality.
Immortal creatures had a slowness to them. Like a turtle or a snail, but elegant. Un-rushed, un-hurried, I often wondered if this was part of what attracted humans to us so much, and so in a way they could also detect our immortality, but only subconsciously. But if humans had a fault, and let’s get real, they had many, it was their un-willingness to believe.
This group living right now in particular needs to see and touch and analyze so much, that in the end they miss what is right in front of their eyes. The irony would kill me, if I could die.
I suspected this was also why vampires had been able to keep their identity secret even with the numbers of dead bodies that showed up without blood.
I had always imagined the examiner coming up with all kinds of reasons why the body in front of him was dry yet showed no visible wounds.
But after all the speculating, all of the thinking, he would never come up with the reason that something—someone—had drank that body dry. It was just too outside the realm of possibility. So I guess that’s how we got away with it.
Lola and I continued to watch the man at the bar, and my mind—hers too, I’m sure—spun with all the possibilities of who or what this guy was. But I couldn’t come up with any.
And suddenly the ground I had been walking on cracked and rumbled, and for the first time in many, many years I felt unsteady.
Were we the only ones who had seen this guy? Any other vampire would have had the same immediate reaction we had. I hadn’t heard any whispers. But then again, I didn’t associate much with my own kind.
Lola was much friendlier and being a locater tended to make you a good networker.
“You haven’t heard anyone talking about him?” I asked her. She shook her head as her nose wrinkled in disgust.
And there was something disgusting about him. He inspired a feeling in my gut and in the back of my throat that could only be described as the deepest feeling of disgust imaginable. He was vile, and I wasn’t exactly sure why.
And, he was walking over here.
All of my muscles tensed, even though I appeared perfectly still. Lola was the same.
It was so bad, I felt my fangs start to descend, which only happened in the direst circumstances, except for feeding.
Because I was in public, I willed them back up by slowing my breathing and forcing myself to be calm.
His gait was so incredibly stiff, it was like he walked on two peg legs, and there was a smell about him. I’m not sure the humans would have picked up on it. I had never picked up on anything like it before. It had a staleness to it, but stale what I didn’t know.
Also, I was pretty sure he knew exactly what we were.
“Ladies,” the man said, standing be
fore us, “let me buy you new drinks.”
I did not reply and neither did Lola, and I didn’t want to admit to myself that it was because of fear.
“I’m sorry to enter your territory without being invited,” he went on as he flagged a waitress over and ordered us all drinks.
“Who are you?” Lola finally asked, and I could hear her voice tremble a bit.
“A friend,” the man said simply as the waitress returned with our drinks.
“So what do you want?” Lola asked again. I couldn’t seem to move my mouth or make sounds.
“To talk to you. To make contact.”
I had never seen him before in my life, but there was something so familiar, and so frightening, about him. I wanted to say something, but couldn’t. Thank God Lola was doing the talking.
“Why?”
“Well, I’ve watched you here. In this city, I mean, and I wanted to make friends.”
When Lola spoke next, her voice was strained, and I could clearly see her fangs when she bared her teeth and spoke.
“You know what we are. But what are you?”
The man smiled, and it looked as though his skin might crack. Up close, his skin looked like a combination of wax and concrete, if that was even possible. I couldn’t get over how stiff he appeared.
“Yes, I know what you are,” he said slowly, but he didn’t directly address Lola’s other question. “And I know I don’t show up in your numbers.”
“And why is that?” Lola asked again, much calmer.
“Well, I think that’s for another conversation.”
He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a couple of bills, which he dropped on the table.
“This should cover the drinks.”
He looked at me directly then, from behind the fog that clouded his eyes, and the familiarity struck me again.
“Victoria, you are just as beautiful, and just as deadly, as you ever were.”
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